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object:1.076 - Man
class:chapter
book class:Quran
author class:Muhammad
subject class:Islam
translator class:Talal Itani

In the name of God, the Gracious, the Merciful.

1. Has there come upon man a period of time when he was nothing to be mentioned?

2. We created man from a liquid mixture, to test him; and We made him hearing and seeing.

3. We guided him to the way, be he appreciative or unappreciative.

4. We have prepared for the faithless chains, and yokes, and a Searing Fire.

5. But the righteous will drink from a cup whose mixture is aroma.

6. A spring from which the servants of God will drink, making it gush abundantly.

7. They fulfill their vows, and dread a Day whose ill is widespread.

8. And they feed, for the love of Him, the poor, and the orphan, and the captive.

9. “We only feed you for the sake of God. We want from you neither compensation, nor gratitude.

10. We dread from our Lord a frowning grim Day.”

11. So God will protect them from the ills of that Day, and will grant them radiance and joy.

12. And will reward them for their patience with a Garden and silk.

13. Reclining therein on the thrones; experiencing therein neither sun, nor frost.

14. Its shade hovering over them, and its fruit brought low within reach.

15. Passing around them are vessels of silver, and cups of crystal.

16. Crystal of silver—they measured them exactly.

17. They will be served therein with a cup whose flavor is Zanjabeel.

18. A spring therein named Salsabeel.

19. Passing among them are eternalized youths. If you see them, you would think them sprinkled pearls.

20. Wherever you look, you see bliss, and a vast kingdom.

21. Upon them are garments of green silk, and satin. And they will be adorned with bracelets of silver. And their Lord will offer them a pure drink.

22. “This is a reward for you. Your efforts are well appreciated.”

23. It is We who sent down the Quran upon you—a gradual revelation.

24. So be patient for the decision of your Lord, and do not obey the sinner or the blasphemer among them.

25. And mention the Name of your Lord, morning and evening.

26. And for part of the night, prostrate yourself to Him, and glorify Him long into the night.

27. As for these: they love the fleeting life, and leave behind a Heavy Day.

28. We created them, and strengthened their frame; and whenever We will, We can replace them with others like them.

29. This is a reminder; so whoever wills, let him take a path to his Lord.

30. Yet you cannot will, unless God wills. God is Knowing and Wise.

31. He admits into His mercy whomever He wills. But as for the wrongdoers, He has prepared for them a painful punishment.


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IN CHAPTERS TITLE
1.076_-_Man

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1.076_-_Man

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   9 Friedrich Nietzsche
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   8 Walt Whitman
   8 Confucius
   7 SWAMI PREMANANDA
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   7 Manly P Hall
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   6 Richard P Feynman
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   1 Homer Simpson
   1 Aristophanes
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   1 Abraham Lincoln
   1 Abd al-Rahman al-Majdhüb

NEW FULL DB (2.4M)

   47 Neil Gaiman
   30 Anonymous
   28 Gayle Forman
   24 Herman Melville
   20 Walt Whitman
   20 Sri Ramana Maharshi
   13 Andr Aciman
   12 Salman Rushdie
   10 William Goldman
   10 Mark Manson
   10 Gordon Korman
   9 Lisa McMann
   8 John Green
   8 Amie Kaufman
   7 Plato
   7 Marilyn Manson
   7 Lev Grossman
   7 Hermann Hesse
   7 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
   6 William Shakespeare

1:No man hath seen God at any time. ~ John,
2:Each man suffers his own destiny. ~ Virgil,
3:Man only has what he strives for. ~ Darqawi,
4:An honest man is always a child.
   ~ Socrates,
5:Walking is man's best medicine.
   ~ Hippocrates,
6:Adversity introduces a man to himself." ~ Unknown,
7:Every man is the son of his own works. ~ Cervantes,
8:This therefore is the highest state of man. ~ Lao Tzu,
9:It takes a wise man to discover a wise man.
   ~ Diogenes,
10:The fool wonders, the wise man asks." ~ Benjamin Disraeli,
11:The fool wonders, the wise man asks.
   ~ Benjamin Disraeli,
12:The world can never own a man who wants nothing. ~ Wu Hsin,
13:Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you. ~ Carl Jung,
14:A contented man is never disappointed. ~ Tao Te Ching, ch.44,
15:A wise man once said nothing." ~ Tanya Masse Source doubtful:,
16:Every man's memory is his private literature. ~ Aldous Huxley,
17:Thou canst not then be false to any man. ~ William Shakespeare,
18:He was a wise man who invented God. ~ Plato,
19:You can knock on a deaf man's door forever. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis,
20:Judge a man by his Questions, Rather then his Answer. ~ Voltaire,
21:Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior.
   ~ Socrates,
22:A man's worth is no greater than his ambitions. ~ Marcus Aurelius,
23:God is a dark night to man in this life. ~ Saint John of the Cross,
24:No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience. ~ John Locke,
25:A man's worth is no greater than his ambitions.
   ~ Marcus Aurelius,
26:Man is on earth as in an egg. ~ Heraclitus,
27:A man's character is his fate. ~ Heraclitus,
28:A prosperous man is never sure that he is loved for himself. ~ Lucan,
29:A slave is but half a man. ~ Aristophanes,
30:The childhood shows the man, As morning shows the day. ~ John Milton,
31:A wise man's questions contain half the answer. ~ Solomon Ibn Gabirol,
32:The man who knows how will always have a job.
   ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,
33:A man who governs his passions is master of his world. ~ Saint Dominic,
34:It is conscious life that constitutes a man's whole being. ~ Asclepius,
35:Let a man conquer anger by love, let him subdue evil by good. ~ Buddha,
36:Man must use what he has, not hope for what is not. ~ George Gurdjieff,
37:A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds." ~ Francis Bacon,
38:A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it. ~ Oscar Wilde,
39:Remember no man is really defeated unless he is discouraged. ~ Bruce Lee,
40:and the conflict is eternal between a man's self and God. ~ William Blake,
41:Concentration is the root of all the higher abilities in man. ~ Bruce Lee,
42:In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. ~ Desiderius Erasmus,
43:A sense of humour is the only divine quality of man. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer,
44:Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one. ~ Martin Heidegger,
45:For a truly religious man nothing is tragic.
   ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein, [T5],
46:In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
   ~ Diogenes,
47:Man has become disconnected from his faith in perceptions. ~ Claudio Naranjo,
48:The New Man Jesus Christ is Son of man and Son of God. ~ Ignatius of Antioch,
49:Even if a man has no natural ability, he can be a warrior. ~ Miyamoto Musashi,
50:Man's greatest wisdom is to choose his obsession well.
   ~ Eliphas Levi, [T5],
51:The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus. ~ Bruce Lee,
52:But he who knows, and knows that he knows, is a wise man-follow him." ~ Sufism,
53:If a man thinks he is not conceited, he is very conceited indeed. ~ C.S. Lewis,
54:No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good. ~ C.S. Lewis
55:No word matters. But man forgets reality and remembers words." ~ Roger Zelazny,
56:The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus." ~ Bruce Lee,
57:The will is what man has as his unique possession. ~ Saint Joseph of Cupertino,
58:Whatever happens on the earth-man must share the responsibility. ~ Jean Gebser,
59:What is possible for individual man is impossible for the masses." ~ Gurdjieff,
60:You may live to see man-made horrors beyond your comprehension. ~ Nikola Tesla,
61:A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants.
   ~ Arthur Schopenhauer,
62:If man makes himself a worm he must not complain when he is trodden on. ~ Kant ,
63:The man was such an intellectual he was of almost no use. ~ Georg C Lichtenberg,
64:The test of a man is: does he bear apples? Does he bear fruit? ~ Abraham Maslow,
65:Is there a single man who can see what the Sage cannot even conceive? ~ Tseu-tse,
66:Man believes either in a God or in an idol. ~ Max Scheler, On the Eternal in Man,
67:A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on. ~ John F. Kennedy,
68:In the highest level a man has the look of knowing nothing . ~ Yamamoto Tsunetomo,
69:The superior man is modest in his speech, but exceeds in his actions. ~ Confucius,
70:Every man is a divinity in disguise, a god playing the fool. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,
71:Numberless are the worlds wonders, but none more wonderful than man.
   ~ Sophocles,
72:Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can talk with him?" ~ Zhuangzi,
73:Beauty is the bait which with delight allures man to enlarge his kind.
   ~ Socrates,
74:People don't realize how a man's whole life can be changed by one book. ~ Malcolm X
75:Try not to become a man of success. Rather become a man of value. ~ Albert Einstein,
76:Give me the child for the first seven years and I will give you the man. ~ Aristotle?
77:The end and the beginning both grow sweet when a god urges on a man's work. ~ Pindar,
78:A man so painfully in love is capable of self-torture beyond belief. ~ John Steinbeck,
79:Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun." ~ Alan Watts,
80:Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one. ~ Marcus Aurelius,
81:As a man thinketh in his heart so shall he be
   ~ Anonymous, The Bible, Proverbs, 23:7,
82:Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind. ~ Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man
83:It is impossible for a man to be cheated by anyone but himself." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,
84:It is man's natural sickness to believe that he possesses the truth.
   ~ Blaise Pascal,
85:Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.
   ~ Alan Watts,
86:One man is worth thousand if he is extraordinary ~ Heraclitus,
87:The present is the only reality of wich a man can truly be deprived. ~ Marcus Aurelius,
88:Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society. ~ Mark Twain,
89:For to know a man's library is, in some measure, to know his mind.
   ~ Geraldine Brooks,
90:Insist on yourself; never imitate... Every great man is unique.
   ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,
91:The soul bound is man; free, it is God. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
92:What a man can be, he must be. This need we call self-actualization.
   ~ Abraham Maslow,
93:Me, poor man, my library
Was dukedom large enough. ~ William Shakespeare, The Tempest
94:No man is crushed by misfortune unless he has first been deceived by prosperity ~ Seneca,
95:No man is defeated without until he has first been defeated within." ~ Eleanor Roosevelt,
96:No man liveth to himself. ~ St. Paul, the Eternal Wisdom
97:Pride alienates man from heaven, humility unites us to heaven. ~ Saint Bridget of Sweden,
98:the uniting of man and God, the two sides of the transformation. Effort and Grace.
   ~ ?,
99:Yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward. ~ Anonymous, The Bible, Job, 5 7,
100:Ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head.
   ~ Michel de Montaigne,
101:It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. ~ Winston Churchill,
102:It is better for a man to confess his sins than to harden his heart. ~ Pope St. Clement I,
103:Man is a small universe. ~ Democritus, the Eternal Wisdom
104:Man suffers through lack of faith in God. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
105:No man ever wrote more eloquently and luminously [than Heraclitus]. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
106:A man walking is never in balance, but always correcting for imbalance." ~ Gregory Bateson,
107:Beware the man of a single book. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas,
108:For every man there exists a bait which he cannot resist swallowing. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
109:It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor." ~ Seneca,
110:It is the duty of every man to uphold the dignity of every woman." ~ Pope St. John Paul II,
111:I don't want to be a genius, I have enough problems just trying to be a man. ~ Albert Camus,
112:A man is always devoted to something more tangible than a woman - the idea of her. ~ Bauvard,
113:No man hath seen God at any time. ~ John, the Eternal Wisdom
114:In working for life, a man works for death, or rather, for immortality." ~ George Gurdjieff -,
115:Let no man think that he is loved by any who loveth none. ~ Epictetus,
116:Man, like a light in the night, is kindled and put out. ~ Heraclitus,
117:The man least dependent upon the morrow goes to meet the morrow most cheerfully.
   ~ Epicurus,
118:The naked woman's body is a portion of eternity too great for the eye of man. ~ William Blake,
119:What a man loves, a man is. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,
120:I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.
   ~ Oscar Wilde,
121:The Guru is the mediator. He takes man to God. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
122:There is nothing in the desert and no man needs nothing. ~ David, Prometheus, Aliens: Covenant,
123:To me one man is worth ten thousand if he is first-rate. ~ Heraclitus,
124:Only one man ever understood me, and he didn't understand me.
   ~ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel,
125:The worst pain a man can suffer is to have insight into much and power over nothing ~ Herodotus,
126:A fool is known by his speech; and a wise man by silence." ~ Pythagoras,
127:As Meander says, "For our mind is God;" and as Heraclitus, "Man's genius is a deity." ~ Plutarch,
128:Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.
   ~ Albert Einstein,
129:Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. ~ Mark Twain,
130:Faith is a dark night for man, but in this very way it gives him light. ~ Saint John of the Cross,
131:No man is free who is not master of himself.
   ~ Epictetus, [T5],
132:The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him. ~ Arthur Schopenauer,
133:Beware of a man of one book. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,
134:Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man.
   ~ Rabindranath Tagore,
135:Every man possesses the Buddha-nature. Do not demean yourselves. ~ Dogen Zenji,
136:If any man hopes to do a deed without God's knowledge, he errs. ~ Pindar, Olympian Odes, I, l. 104,
137:Man's first duty is to conquer fear. ~ Carlyle, the Eternal Wisdom
138:No man can serve two masters. ~ Sankhya Karika, the Eternal Wisdom
139:The righteous man is always active. ~ Chi-King, the Eternal Wisdom
140:A great man is hard on himself; a small man is hard on others." ~ Confucius,
141:It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man. ~ Anonymous, The Bible, Psalms, 118:8,
142:Ecclesiastes shows that man without God is in total ignorance and inevitable misery. ~ Blaise Pascal,
143:Every man has in himself the most dangerous traitor of all. ~ Soren Kierkegaard, Works of Love, [T5],
144:The biggest coward is a man who awakens a woman's love with no intention of loving her. ~ Bob Marley,
145:The good man remains calm and serene. ~ Chi-king, the Eternal Wisdom
146:The heart of man is, so to speak, the paradise of God." ~ Saint Alphonsus Marie Liguori, (1696-1787),
147:A man needs a little madness, or else... he never dares cut the rope and be free. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis,
148:A monk asked Master Haryo, What is the way? Haryo said, An open-eyed man falling into the well.
   ~ ?,
149:Blessed is the man who can love every man equally. ~ Maximus the Confessor, Centuries on Charity 1.17,
150:If there were no suffering, man would not know his limitations, would not know himself. ~ Leo Tolstoy,
151:If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
152:a greater degree than a man is ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 1.93.3).,
153:A man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy and nothing can stop him. " ~ Aleksandr Solzlhenitsyn,
154:The glory of God is the living man, and the life of man is the vision of God. ~ Saint Irenaeus of Lyon,
155:The reaction of a mentality headed for a fall, is only too typical of man in transition. ~ Jean Gebser,
156:True appreciation of his own value will make a man really indifferent to insult. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer,
157:A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it." ~ George A. Moore,
158:Education worthy of the name is essentially education of character. ~ Martin Buber, Between Man and Man,
159:What is a man? A mortal God. What then is a God? An immortal man. ~ Heraclitus,
160:How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book. ~ Henry David Thoreau, Walden
161:Know that the greatest service that man can offer to God is to help convert souls." ~ Saint Rose of Lima,
162:Man's salvation is from grace ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 3.19.4ad3).,
163:The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man. ~ G K Chesterton, In Defense of Sanity,
164:The saint is a man who disciplines his ego. The sage is a man who rids himself of his ego." ~ Wei Wu Wei,
165:A fool sees himself as another, but a wise man sees others as himself. ~ Dogen Zenji,
166:A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer.
   ~ Bruce Lee,
167:For the man who is beautiful is beautiful to see but the good man will at once also beautiful be ~ Sappho,
168:The man of taste will read only what is good; but the statesman will permit both bad and good. ~ Voltaire,
169:The soul bound is man; free, it is God. ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom
170:We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. ~ C S Lewis, The Abolition of Man (1943),
171:Every man is divine and strong in his real nature. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,
172:Hatred of God is man's worst sin ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 2-2.34.2).,
173:O seeing Flame, thou carriest man of the crooked ways into the abiding truth and the knowledge. ~ Rig Veda,
174:There is no reason why the same man should like the same books at eighteen and at forty-eight ~ Ezra Pound
175:The soul of man is the mirror of the world. ~ Leibnitz, the Eternal Wisdom
176:The world turns aside to let any man pass who knows where he is going. ~ Epictetus,
177:A fine quotation is a diamond in the hand of a man of wit and a pebble in the hand of a fool. ~ Joseph Roux,
178:If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. ~ William Blake,
179:The healthy man does not torture others - generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers. ~ Carl Jung,
180:The perfect man does not hunt after wealth. ~ Confucius, the Eternal Wisdom
181:The superior man is distressed by his want of ability. ~ Confucius, Analects, 15:18,
182:Whatever a man does, good or evil, comes back to him someday. And he pays for everything. ~ Valmiki Jayanti,
183:Man is in the process of changing to forms of light that are not of this world.
   ~ Emerald Tablets of Thoth,
184:The charm of a man is in his kindness. ~ Proverbs XII 22, the Eternal Wisdom
185:There is but one cause of human failure. And that is man's lack of faith in his true Self.
   ~ William James,
186:A certain amount of opposition is a great help to a man. Kites rise against, not with, the wind." ~ John Neal,
187:A wise man among the ignorant is as a beautiful girl in the company of blind men. ~ Saadi,
188:Blessed is the man that endureth temptation. ~ James I 12, the Eternal Wisdom
189:Man is divine so long as he is in communion with the Eternal. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
190:No man can be called friendless who has God and the companionship of good books. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning
191:Poetic Knowledge is as natural to the spirit of man as the return of the bird to his nest. ~ Jacques Maritain,
192:Why did Jordan Peterson cross the road?
The answer isn't obvious. It's no joke man. ~ Reddit, hardlygospel,
193:All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town. ~ Leo Tolstoy,
194:All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone. ~ Blaise Pascal, Pensées,
195:Awakening begins when a man realizes that he is going nowhere and does not know where to go. ~ G. J. Gurdjieff,
196:To every man is given a key to the gates of heaven. The same key opens the gates of hell.
   ~ Buddhist Proverb,
197:When a man's knowledge is not in order, the more of it he has, the greater is his confusion. ~ Herbert Spencer
198:A man who prays lives out the mystery of existence, and a man who does not pray scarcely exists. ~ Saint Charbel,
199:I will define him simply as someone set on becoming a god rather than a man. ~ Epictetus,
200:No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.
   ~ John Donne,
201:What thou seest, man, That too become thou must- God, if thou seest God, Dust, if thou seest Dust.
   ~ Anonymous,
202:For anyone, man or woman, who has faith in me, I have never departed. I sleep on their threshold. ~ Guru Rinpoche,
203:God cannot make a man to be without a soul ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ScG 2.25).,
204:Man alone suffers so excruciatingly in the world that we were compelled to invent laughter. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
205:The ideal of man is to see God in everything. ~ Swami Vivekananda, (C.W. II. 152),
206:The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
207:God provides the wind, Man must raise the sail." ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,
208:It is a fine thing when a man who thoroughly understands a subject is unwilling to open his mouth. ~ Yoshida Kenko,
209:Man achieves likeness to God through grace ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ScG 3.151).,
210:Owe no man anything but to love one another. ~ Ro-mans. XIV. 8, the Eternal Wisdom
211:A wise man is full of strength, and a man of knowledge enhances his might,
   ~ Anonymous, The Bible, Proverbs, 24:5,
212:For all things difficult to acquire, the intelligent man works with perseverance.
   ~ Lao Tzu,
213:Man in many respects may be compared with those animals which have long been domesticated.
   ~ Charles Darwin, 1871,
214:The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trial.
   ~ Confucius,
215:Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can have a word with him? ~ Chuang Tzu,
216:A dumb man's tongue is better than the liar's. ~ Turkish Proverb, the Eternal Wisdom
217:Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.
   ~ Albert Einstein,
218:As a lamp cannot burn without oil, so a man cannot live without God. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
219:Every sin makes man a citizen of Babylon ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 1-2.77.4sc).,
220:In this Kali Yuga, even three days are enough to make a man perfect. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
221:Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth. ~ Oscar Wilde,
222:Nothing is more dangerous for man than negligence. ~ Mahabharata, the Eternal Wisdom
223:The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month." ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky,
224:If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and adore.
   ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,
225:It is only when a man tames his own demons that he becomes the king of himself if not of the world. ~ Joseph Campbell,
226:Prayer indeed is good, but while calling on the gods a man should himself lend a hand. ~ Hippocrates, Regimen, IV, 87,
227:As a lamp does not burn without oil, so a man cannot live without God. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
228:I have been born anew. I have become a self-made man in battle, that is how I came to be my own father. ~ Quetzalcoatl,
229:I'm normally not a praying man, but if you're up there, please save me Superman.
   ~ Homer Simpson,
230:The happiest is the man who is not at all selfish. ~ Swami Vivekananda, (C.W. II. 465),
231:The very existence of libraries affords the best evidence that we may yet have hope for the future of man. ~ T S Eliot,
232:What the superior man seeks is in himself; what the small man seeks is in others." ~ Confucius,
233:All my words are but chaff next to the faith of a simple man. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas,
234:A man does not always choose what his guardian angel intends. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas,
235:A wise man speaks because he has something to say; a fool because he has to say something." ~ Plato,
236:Blessed is the man who consumes his lion, and cursed is the man who is consumed by his lion. ~ Gnostic Gospel of Thomas,
237:Each man who thinks ahead of his times is sure to be misunderstood. ~ Swami Vivekananda,
238:Is any man skillful enough to have fashioned himself? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,
239:Let the man in whom there is intelligence... know himself. ~ Hermes, the Eternal Wisdom
240:Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play.
   ~ Heraclitus,
241:Such a reaction, the reaction of a mentality headed for a fall, is only too typical of man in transition. ~ Jean Gebser,
242:The just man is himself his own law. ~ Inscription on the Catacombs, the Eternal Wisdom
243:Faith can achieve miracles, while vanity or egotism is the death of man. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
244:Man is fortunately inconsistent. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Materialism,
245:So long as a man has not realized God, he will have to be born on earth. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
246:A man of understanding is of an excellent spirit. ~ Proverbs XVII. 27, the Eternal Wisdom
247:God sleeps in the rock, dreams in the plant, stirs in the animal, and awakens in man. ~ Ibn Arabi,
248:Let the wise man fight Mara with the sword of wisdom. He should now protect what he has won, without attachment. ~ Buddha,
249:No rational argument will have a rational effect on a man who does not want to adopt a rational attitude.
   ~ Karl Popper,
250:The most perfect man is the one who is most useful to others. ~ Koran, the Eternal Wisdom
251:Without God, man cannot, and without man, God will not. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,
252:You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics. ~ Charles Bukowski,
253:Be not astonished that man can become like God. ~ Epistle to Diognetus, the Eternal Wisdom
254:Books are a poor substitute for female companionship, but they are easier to find. ~ Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear
255:By constantly living in the company of a holy man one verily becomes holy. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
256:He is the happy man whose soul is superior to all happenings. ~ Seneca, the Eternal Wisdom
257:...spirituality alone will not take a man far in the Mysteries; he must have intellectual powers as well.
   ~ Dion Fortune,
258:A just man falleth seven times and riseth up again. ~ Proverbs XXIV. 16, the Eternal Wisdom
259:The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous man runs into it and is safe. ~ Anonymous, The Bible, Proverbs, 18:10,
260:To wear out the veil that occludes the vision of reality is all that man can do, and that he has got to do. ~ Anandamayi Ma,
261:I can't imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once. ~ C S Lewis, Letter to Arthur Greeves (February 1932),
262:The world is full of marvels and the greatest marvel is man. ~ Sophocles, the Eternal Wisdom
263:Who is blinder even than the blind? The man of passion. ~ Buddhist Maxim, the Eternal Wisdom
264:A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.
   ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,
265:I much prefer the sharpest criticism of a single intelligent man to the thoughtless approval of the masses. ~ Johannes Kepler,
266:I teach you the overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?
   ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
267:My children, the three acts of faith, hope, and charity contain all the happiness of man upon the earth. ~ Saint John Vianney,
268:The wise man acts towards all beings even as towards himself. ~ Madharata, the Eternal Wisdom
269:When an ordinary man attains knowledge he is a sage; when a sage attains understanding, he is an ordinary man." ~ Zen Proverb,
270:Man out of Nature wakes to God's complexities, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act I,
271:The man who docth these things shall live by them. ~ Epistle to the Romans, the Eternal Wisdom
272:But at the same time God is great and unspeakably glorious, so that no man shall see God and live. ~ Irenaeus, Against Heresies,
273:Depend upon it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully. ~ Samuel Johnson,
274:Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life. ~ Terry Pratchett, Jingo,
275:If man surrenders himself to Tao, he identifies himself with Tao. ~ Lao-tse, the Eternal Wisdom
276:Man is divine so long as he is in communion with the Eternal. ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom
277:The perfect man is a divine child! ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Heraclitus - VII,
278:Wise kings generally have wise counselors; and he must be a wise man himself who is capable of distinguishing one.
   ~ Diogenes,
279:God plays invisible in the heart of man, being screened by Maya from human view. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
280:Man achieves the highest goal through the practice of Japa. Japa leads to success. Yes, Japa leads to success! ~ Sri Sarada Devi,
281:Man follows the earth Earth follows the universe The universe follows the Tao The Tao follows only itself. ~ Tao Te Ching, ch.25,
282:Respect man as a spiritual being in whom dwells the divine Spirit. ~ Tolstoy, the Eternal Wisdom
283:The man who knows the Tao, does not speak; he who speaks, knows It not. ~ id, the Eternal Wisdom
284:It is useless for a man to flaunt his knowledge of the law if he undermines its teaching by his actions. ~ Saint Anthony of Padua,
285:The mind of the worldly man is largely diluted with the water of impure thoughts. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
286:The mind pre-eminently is man; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Perfection of the Body,
287:The simple and upright man is as strong as if he were a great host. ~ Lao-Tse, the Eternal Wisdom
288:The whole dignity of man is in thought. Labour then to think aright. ~ Pascal, the Eternal Wisdom
289:Indeed, neither fasts nor vigils nor prayers nor alms nor faith nor virginity can help a man without charity. ~ Caesarius of Arles,
290:Rest is in Him alone. Man knows no peace in the world; but he has no disturbance when he is with God. ~ Saint Bernard of Clairvaux,
291:The man who has done good does not cry it through the world. ~ Marcus Aurelius, the Eternal Wisdom
292:Happy is the man whose senses are purified and utterly under curb. ~ Udanavarga, the Eternal Wisdom
293:In old times a lamb, a Calf was offered; now Christ is offered. But He is offered as man and as enduring suffering. ~ Saint Ambrose,
294:It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. ~ Jane Austen,
295:It is by the path of love, which is charity, that God draws near to man, and man to God. ~ Saint Albert the Great, (c. 1200 - 1280),
296:Man lifted up the burden of his fate
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Symbol Dawn,
297:Poetry like everything else in man evolves. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, New Birth or Decadence?,
298:Pride changes angels into devils, humility makes man into angels. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,
299:That man to me seems equal to the gods,
the man who sits opposite you
and close by listens
to your sweet voice ~ Sappho,
300:The eye of man outside matters nothing; the eye within is all.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,
301:A man is great not because he hasn't failed; a man is great because failure hasn't stopped him." ~ Confucius,
302:Is there a single man who can see what the Sage cannot even conceive? ~ Tseu-tse, the Eternal Wisdom
303:It is through the search after Truth that man can elevate himself. This he should regard in the light of a duty. ~ SRI ANANDAMAYI MA,
304:Man only plays when in the full meaning of the word he is a man, and he is only completely a man when he plays. ~ Friedrich Schiller,
305:Man's perfect beatitude consists in the enjoyment of divinity ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ScG 4.54).,
306:Such as the love is, such is the wisdom, consequently such is the man (n. 368) (Divine Love and Wisdom, 1763)
   ~ Emanuel Swedenborg,
307:The knowledge of God may be likened to a man, while the Love of God is like a woman. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
308:The more man meditates upon good thoughts, the better will be his world and the world at large." ~ Confucius,
309:Hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown. ~ Revelations III, 11, the Eternal Wisdom
310:Nothing moves a man to anger except a hurt that grieves him ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 1-2.47.3).,
311:The man who asks a question is a fool for a minute, the man who does not ask is a fool for life." ~ Confucius,
312:There is a potential function in man which is ordinarily inactive for lack of nervous energy or sufficient intensity. ~ Rodney Collin,
313:The spiritual man is one who has discovered his soul. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Gnostic Being,
314:What the superior man seeks is in himself. What the mean man seeks is in others. ~ Confucius, Analects, 15:20,
315:By endeavor, diligence, discipline, and self-mastery, let the wise man make of himself an island that no flood can overwhelm. ~ Buddha,
316:If a man covets nothing, how shall he fail to do what is just and good? ~ Chi-king, the Eternal Wisdom
317:I must create a system or be enslaved by another man's, I will not reason and compare, my business is to create. ~ William Blake, [T5],
318:Just as a silver smith step by step, moment to moment, blows away the impurities of molten silver - so the wise man, his own. ~ Buddha,
319:The man who flees from all worldly pleasures is an impregnable tower before the assaults of the demon of sadness. ~ Evagrius of Pontus,
320:The new man, reborn and restored to his God by grace, says first of all, Father! because he has now begun to be a son. ~ Saint Cyprian,
321:All the world's possibilities in man
Are waiting as the tree waits in its seed: ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri,
322:He that killeth an ox is as if lie slew a man. ~ Anonymous, The Bible, Isaiah, LXVT, the Eternal Wisdom
323:It is more grievous for a man to kill himself than another ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 1-2.73.9ad2).,
324:man carries the seed of the divine life in himself ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti,
325:Man is like an ignorant spectator of a drama played on the stage. ~ Bhagavat Purana, the Eternal Wisdom
326:No man of war entangleth himself with the affairs of this life. ~ II Timothy. II. 4, the Eternal Wisdom
327:Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true. ~ Demosthenes, Third Olynthiac, sec. 19,
328:Nothing is so good for an ignorant man as silence; and if he was sensible of this he would not be ignorant. ~ Saadi,
329:Only in human limits man lives safe. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Towards the Black Void,
330:The superior man must always remain himself in all situations of life. ~ Tsung yung, the Eternal Wisdom
331:A spiritual man is happy with the whole existence. He says 'yes' to the whole existence." ~ Swami Dhyan Giten, born in Sweden. Author of,
332:Let the man [woman] find out his undying Self and die and be immortal and happy. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,
333:Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God
   ~ Anonymous, The Bible, Matthew, 4:4, NIV,
334:No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man." ~ Heraclitus,
335:The Divinity in man dwells veiled in his spiritual centre. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Divine Life,
336:The principal effect of sanctifying grace is for man to love God ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ScG 3.151).,
337:Upright and sincere is the virtue of the man who directs well his mind. ~ Lao-Tsu-Te, the Eternal Wisdom
338:Who am I?

   The Divine under many disguises.
   ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, "The Divine" and "Man",
339:Happy the man who has tamed the senses and is utterly their master. ~ Buddhist Maxims, the Eternal Wisdom
340:Man understands his life only when he sees himself in each one of his kind. ~ Tolstoy, the Eternal Wisdom
341:The ordinary man is not yet a rational being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Curve of the Rational Age,
342:To the soul and Shakti in man nothing is impossible. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti,
343:... we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand.
   ~ Ezra Pound,
344:Do not seek illumination unless you seek it as a man whose hair is on fire seeks a pond.
   ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
345:Every man is not only himself, he is that which he represents. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin, Facts and Opinions,
346:Every man knows how useful it is to be useful. No one seems to know How useful it is to be useless. ~ Thomas merton. The Way Of Chuang Tzu,
347:The greatest kindness one can render to any man is leading him to truth. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,
348:The real truth of man is to be found in his soul. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Spiritual Aim and Life,
349:A dreamer is man who can find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world. ~ Oscar Wilde,
350:By whom is this world conquered? By the patient and truthful man. ~ Pranottaratrayamala, the Eternal Wisdom
351:I call him a man who recognises no possessions save those he finds in himself. ~ Seneca, the Eternal Wisdom
352:Let the man find out his undying Self and die and be immortal and happy. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Talks, 64,
353:Man's conscience is a creation of his evolving nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Suprarational Good,
354:The more a man uses moderation in his life, the more he is at peace, for he is not full of cares for many things. ~ Saint Anthony the Great,
355:A pleasant and happy life does not come from external things. Man draws from within himself, as from a spring, pleasure and joy." ~ Plutarch,
356:Karma in its effect on character is the most tremendous power that man has to deal with. ~ Swami Vivekananda,
357:Let a man make haste towards good, let him turn away his thought from evil. ~ Dhammapada, the Eternal Wisdom
358:Man is a creature blinded by the sun
Who errs by seeing ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act III,
359:Purity is, next to birth, the greatest good that can be given to man. ~ Avesta: Vendidad, the Eternal Wisdom
360:A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion. ~ Francis Bacon, Atheism,
361:A solitary may miss his goal and a man of the world become asage. ~ Fo-sho-hing-tsan-king, the Eternal Wisdom
362:Man's perfect Happiness consists in the vision of the Divine Essence ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 1-2.5.5).,
363:One who thinks that his spiritual guide is merely a man, can draw no profit from his contact. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
364:The man of knowledge with-out a good heart is like the bee without honey ~ Sadi: Gulistan, the Eternal Wisdom
365:To be a man of worth and not to try to look like one is the true way to glory. ~ Socrates, the Eternal Wisdom
366:A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, First Part,
367:For all things difficult to acquire the intelligent man works with perseverance. ~ Lao-tse, the Eternal Wisdom
368:I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor.
   ~ Henry David Thoreau,
369:The salvation of many is to be preferred to the peace of any single man ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 3.42.2),
370:The superior man enacts equity and justice is the foundation of all his deeds. ~ Confueins, the Eternal Wisdom
371:All virtues are comprised injustice; if thou art just, thou art a man of virtue. ~ Theegris, the Eternal Wisdom
372:In sinning, man subjected himself by his affections to corporeal things ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 3.61.1).,
373:In the realized man [woman], the mind may be active or inactive; the Self alone exists. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,
374:The chief purpose of the avatar is to give to man concrete proof that the Divine can manifest upon earth. ~ The Mother,
375:The great man is he who has not lost the child's heart within him. ~ Meng-Tse. I V. II. XII, the Eternal Wisdom
376:Those actions alone are properly called "human" of which man is master ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 1-2.1.1).,
377:Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,
378:Let the superior man regard all men who dwell within the four seas as his brothers. ~ Lun Yu, the Eternal Wisdom
379:There is always one man who more than others represents the divine thought of the epoch. ~ id, the Eternal Wisdom
380:Each man in this path has his own method of Yoga. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Synthesis of the Systems,
381:Evolution is an inverse action of the involution. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Evolution of the Spiritual Man,
382:Eye and ear are poor witnesses for man, if his inner life has not been made fine. ~ Heraclitus, the Eternal Wisdom
383:If a man has his eyes bound, you can encourage him as much as you like to stare through the bandage, but he'll never see anything.
   ~ Franz Kafka,
384:If a man thinks of the images of gods and goddesses as symbols of the Divine, he reaches Divinity. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
385:Man is too weak to bear the Infinite's weight. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon,
386:Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.
   ~ Bertrand Russell,
387:One man's perfection still can save the world. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Finding of the Soul,
388:To have a great man for an intimate friend seems pleasant to those who have never tried it; those who have, fear it.
   ~ Homer,
389:Without heroism man cannot grow into the Godhead. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Suprarational Ultimate of Life,
390:It is always the business of man the thinker to know. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Knowledge and the Ignorance,
391:So long as the heart of man is directed towards God, he cannot be lost in the ocean of worldliness. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
392:The ignorant is the slave of his passions, the wise man is their master. ~ Sutra in 42 articles, the Eternal Wisdom
393:When man is free in spirit, all other freedom is at his command. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - II, Asiatic Democracy,
394:Other things a man can do unwillingly, but he must be willing in order to believe. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,
395:The divine law was given chiefly for this reason: that man might embrace God ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ScG 3.121).,
396:The intellect or mind of man is, as it were, a light lit up by the light of the Divine Word. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III q5 a4 ad 2,
397:The life-work of a great man often does not begin till he dies. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - II, Mustafa Kamal Pasha,
398:Though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. ~ II Coriothians IV. 16, the Eternal Wisdom
399: Thou shalt not kill " relates not solely to the murder of man, but of all that lives. ~ Tolstoi, the Eternal Wisdom
400:When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say. ~ George R R Martin,
401:But the Holy Spirit works this in man, by bringing him to everlasting life ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 2-2.139.1).,
402:Each man ought to say to himself, "I was the creator, may I become again what I was". ~ Upanishad, the Eternal Wisdom
403:ho has ruder battles to sustain than the man who labours for self-conquest? ~ Imitation of Christ, the Eternal Wisdom
404:It is only when a man tames his own demons that he becomes the king of himself if not of the world. ~ Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces,
405:Man's mind is the dupe of his animal self. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, A God's Labour,
406:The growth of the god in man is man's proper business. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, Works, Devotion and Knowledge,
407:The man of merit and ability is always humble and meek, but the fool is always puffed up with vanity. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
408:There is no knowledge without experience, and man has to see God in his own soul. ~ Swami Vivekananda, (C.W. VI. 133),
409:God in man is the whole revelation and the whole of religion. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - II, The Glory of God in Man,
410:I have said that the modern man, and especially the modern American, however much 'know-how' he may have, has very little 'know-what' ~ Norbert Wiener,
411:No salvation is possible for a man as long as he has desire, as long as he hankers for worldly things. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
412:The greatest kindness one can render to any man consists in leading him from error to truth. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas,
413:The one thing that man sees above the intellect is the spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Power of the Spirit,
414:What is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? ~ Matthew. XVI. 26, the Eternal Wisdom
415:As a matter of self-preservation, a man needs good friends or ardent enemies, for the former instruct him and the latter take him to task.
   ~ Diogenes,
416:Friendship ... is born at the moment when one man says to another 'What! You too? I thought that no one but myself' . . .
   ~ C S Lewis, The Four Loves,
417:I am an epitome of opposites. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Man, the Despot of Contraries,
418:I meet the sincere man with sincerity and tie insincere also with sincerity. ~ Lao-tse: Tao-te-king, the Eternal Wisdom
419:A diversity in oneness is the law of the manifestation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Evolution of the Spiritual Man,
420:A man's pride shall bring him low, but honour shall uphold the humble in spirit. ~ Proverbs XXIX. 23, the Eternal Wisdom
421:As a living man abstains from mortal poisons, so put away from thee all defilement. ~ Buddhist Texts, the Eternal Wisdom
422:If we could comprehend all the good things contained in Holy Communion, nothing more would be wanting to content the heart of man." ~ Saint John Vianney,
423:Man cannot persevere after the corruption of human nature without God's grace ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (On Job ch. 7).,
424:Man, human, follows in God's human steps. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Entry into the Inner Countries,
425:Not every truth is the better for showing its face undisguised; and often silence is the wisest thing for a man to heed. ~ Pindar, Nemean Odes, V, l. 30,
426:Realize that you must lead a dying life; the more a man dies to himself, the more he begins to live unto God. ~ Thomas A Kempis, The Imitation of Christ,
427:The sentinel love in man ever imagines
Strange perils for its object. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act I,
428:The whole course of a man's life becomes reoriented as a result of holy association; and its effect, too, is very lasting. ~ Manapurush Swami Shivananda,
429:As the drowning man pants hard for breath, so must ones heart yearn for the Lord before one can find Him. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
430:Having once seen God, man can have no farther object in life than to reach and possess Him.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad,
431:Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others. ~ Philippians II. 4, the Eternal Wisdom
432:Nobility is for each man within him; only he never thinks of seeking for it within. ~ Meng-Tse II 5.17, the Eternal Wisdom
433:Often man is preoccupied with human rules and forgets the inner law. ~ Antoine the Healer; Revelations, the Eternal Wisdom
434:The perfect man employs his mind as a mirror. It grasps nothing. It refuses nothing. It receives, but does not keep. ~ Chuang Tzu,
435:Thou who hast been set in thy station of man to aid by all means the common interest ~ Marcus Aurelius, the Eternal Wisdom
436:A holy man not only pays to womankind honor and respect, but actually worships them as a son does a mother. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
437:I never knew a sorrow that an hour of reading could not assuage, a great man had once said. Let's put it to the test. ~ Anna Gavalda, Hunting and Gathering,
438:Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? there is more hope of a fool than of him. ~ Proverbs XXVI. 12, the Eternal Wisdom
439:The business of poetry is to express the soul of man to himself. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Ideal Spirit of Poetry,
440:This ultimate end of man is called that human good: happiness ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (Commentary on Ethics 1, lect. 9).,
441:As the monkey sacrifices his life at the feet of the hunter, so does a man at the feet of a beautiful woman. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
442:Every individual man must be in little what the Cosmos is in large. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad, The Eternal in His Universe,
443:Every man who returns into himself, will find there traces of the Divinity. ~ Cicero, "De Regibus. I. 22, the Eternal Wisdom
444:Man's consciousness can be nothing else than a form of Nature's consciousness. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Conscious Force,
445:The man of Tao remains unknown. Perfect virtue produces nothing. No self is True self. And the greatest man is nobody. ~ Chuang Tzu,
446:Force of character is man's great strength. If he uses it in his dealings with the world he will indeed be victorious in most directions. ~ SRI ANANDAMAYI MA,
447:It is a truth of the Infinite, one in an infinite diversity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Evolution of the Spiritual Man,
448:It is when one feels like a blind man that one begins to be ready for the illumination.
   ~ The Mother, Some Answers From The Mother,
449:The sage regards the heart of every man in the millions of the crowd and sees only one heart. ~ Tseng Tee, the Eternal Wisdom
450:The supreme Self is one, but the souls of the Self are many. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Evolution of the Spiritual Man,
451:Truth and error live always together in the human evolution. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Evolution of the Spiritual Man,
452:All that man has to do is to take care of three things; good thought, good word, good deed. ~ Swami Vivekananda, (C.W. I. 492),
453:A man must be strong and free in himself before he can live usefully for others. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin, Opinion and Comments,
454:As a nail cannot be driven into a stone, so the advice of the pious does not affect the soul of a worldly man. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
455:Even the animal is more in touch with a certain harmony in things than man. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I, Science and Yoga,
456:For we are always glad to have something to comfort us, and only with difficulty does a man divest himself of self. ~ Thomas A Kempis, The Imitation of Christ,
457:God having entirely become Nature, Nature seeks to become progressively God. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Man in the Universe,
458:Men die that man may live and God be born. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain,
459:The free choice of an angel occupies a middle ground between that of God and that of man ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (DV 24.3).,
460:The malady of the world is that the individual cannot find his real soul. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Double Soul in Man,
461:Through the shocks of difficulty and death
Man shall attain his godhead. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Prologue,
462:When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. ~ 1 Corinthians 13:11,
463:Your duty as a married man is to live with your wife as brother and sister after one or two children are born. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
464:A vast subliminal is man's measureless part. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Parable of the Search for the Soul,
465:Do not wander far and wide but return into yourself. Deep within man there dwells the truth." ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,
466:It is the Absolute who is all these relativities. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Progress to Knowledge - God, Man and Nature,
467:Man moves towards something which fulfils the universe by transcending it. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad, Knowledge and Ignorance,
468:Neither the ethical being nor the aesthetic being is the whole man. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, Aesthetic and Ethical Culture,
469:One who thinks that his spiritual guide is merely a man, can draw no profit from his contact. ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom
470:The deeds a man has accomplished follow him in his journeying when he fares to another world. ~ Mahabharata, the Eternal Wisdom
471:There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. ~ Proverbs XIV. 12, the Eternal Wisdom
472:To make hardship less severe is to face it with strength. That is man's life. Man wants to conquer and God has given the power for it. ~ SWAMI TRIGUNATITANANDA,
473:Blessed is the man who knows his own weakness, because this knowledge becomes to him the foundation, root, and beginning of all Goodness. ~ Saint Isaac of Syria,
474:Do you seek God? Then see Him in man! His divinity is manifest more in man (and woman) than in any other object. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
475:It is the Self who has become all these becomings. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Progress to Knowledge - God, Man and Nature,
476:Money is a conditioning factor of a very strong nature. As soon as a man becomes rich, he is thoroughly changed. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
477:The man veritably free is he who, disburdened of fear and desire, is subjected only to his reason. ~ Fenelon, the Eternal Wisdom
478:This man who knew not scripture, had the highest learning, for he had a pure love for God and could realize him. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
479:All the terrestrial past of the world is there summarised in man. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Ascending Unity,
480:By knowing for an absolute fact that he does not live but is being lived, the man of wisdom is aware of the perfect futility of all intentions. ~ Ramesh Balsekar,
481:Give a bowl of rice to a man and you will feed him for a day. Teach him how to grow his own rice and you will save his life." ~ Confucius,
482:If a man could cast a firm and clear glance into the depths of his being, he would see there God. ~ J. Tauler, the Eternal Wisdom
483:Man is all Imagination. God is Man and exists in us and we in Him... The Eternal Body of Man is the Imagination, that is, God, Himself
   ~ William Blake, Laocoon,
484:Self-interest is the prolongation in us of the animal. Humanity begins in man with disinterestedness. ~ Amiel, the Eternal Wisdom
485:So long as the mind is unsteady, it avails nothing, even though a man has got a good Guru and company of the holy ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
486:The most common sort of lie is that by which a man deceives himself: the deception of others is a relatively rare offense. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ,
487:There is nothing in the world that man's intelligence cannot attain, annihilate or accomplish. ~ Hindu Saying, the Eternal Wisdom
488:Yoga means 'yoke', 'to join', that is, to join the soul of man with the supreme Soul or God. ~ Swami Vivekananda, (C.W. VIII. 36),
489:Your duty as a married man is to live with your wife as brother and sister after one or two children born to you. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
490:A man should be glad of heart. If you have joy no longer, find out where you have fallen into error. ~ Tolstoi, the Eternal Wisdom
491:He alone is truly a man who is illumined by the light of the true knowledge. Others are only men in name. ~ id, the Eternal Wisdom
492:Man demands miracles that he may have faith; he wishes to be dazzled in order that he may see
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,
493:Man is constantly acting upon man both by the silent and the spoken word. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Kena and Other Upanishads, The Supreme Word,
494:The great rule of life is to have no schemes but one unalterable purpose. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - II, The Glory of God in Man,
495:The spirit is doomed to pain till man is free. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain,
496:Whatever work you do, do it as perfectly as you can. That is the best service to the Divine in man
   ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,
497:You will see God when your yearning for him is as intense as a drowning man's yearning for the next breath of air. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
498:Each form and way of being has its own appropriate way of the delight of being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Man and the Evolution,
499:Man is deluded by the intermingling of the conscious Self with the insentient body. This delusion must end. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,
500:Do not wander far and wide but return into yourself. Deep within man there dwells the truth. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, [T5],
501:Men, despise not yourselves: the Son of God became a man; women, despise not yourselves, the Son of God was born of a woman. ~ Saint Augustine, De Agone Christ. XI),
502:Mire is the man who hears not the gods when they cry to his bosom. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
503:No one understands the passion of Christ so thoroughly or heartily as the man whose lot it is to suffer the like himself. ~ Thomas A Kempis, The Imitation of Christ,
504:Only what the man admires and accepts, becomes part of himself; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Early Cultural Writings, A System of National Education,
505:Poetry is a highly charged power of aesthetic expression of the soul of man. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, New Birth or Decadence?,
506:A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards; as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein,
507:As a bee when it has made honey, so a man when he has done a good act, does not call out for others to come and see, but he goes on to another act. ~ Marcus Aurelius,
508:Every man is knowingly or unknowingly the instrument of a universal Power. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Master of the Work,
509:Everything is full of signs, and the one who understands one thing on the basis of another is a wise man of sorts. ~ Plotinus, Enneads §2.3.7,
510:If by realizing God, a man receives a commission and preaches God for the good of others -- there is no harm in that. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
511:The life of a man is unfulfilled unless he has found the Divine. 2 June 1972
   ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, The True Aim of Life, 7,
512:The man who has not found God is full of vain disputation, but he who has seen Him, enjoys silently the Bliss Divine. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
513:A man who governs his passions is master of the world. We must either command them, or be enslaved by them. It is better to be a hammer than an anvil. ~ Saint Dominic,
514:As you turn the direction of the wicked mind, that mind itself will be able to grasp the Chosen Deity. It is the pure mind which shows man the path. ~ Sri Sarada Devi,
515:Even his petty world man cannot rule.
We fear, we blame; life wantons her own way, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act II,
516:For instance, that a white-man happens to be a builder is only an accidental cause of the house ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ScG 3.14).,
517:I'm re-reading Savitri.

   Lucky man! I would love to read it again. And the more you read, the more marvellous it becomes.
   ~ The Mother,
518:It is the resurgence of the barbarian in ourselves, in civilised man, that is the peril. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Divine Life,
519:Man his passion prefers to the voice that guides from the immortals. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
520:The heart of man is nearer to the Truth than his intelligence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Renaissance in India, Indian Spirituality and Life - I,
521:There never was a struggle or a battle that required greater valor than that in which a man forgets or denies himself. ~ Meister Eckhart,
522:Until man in his heart is ready, a profound change of the world conditions cannot come. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, Internationalism,
523:he wise man sits not inert; he is ever walking incessantly forward towards a greater light. ~ Fo-shu-hing-tsan-king, the Eternal Wisdom
524:Man has a natural inclination toward knowing the truth about God and toward living in society ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 1-2.94.2).,
525:Man is at present only partly liberated from the animal involution. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Gradations of the Supermind,
526:No man is simply good or simply bad; every man is a mixture of contraries. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Eternal and the Individual,
527:Sin is nothing other than man's act of turning his face away from God and himself towards death. ~ Angelus Silesius, the Eternal Wisdom
528:The Great spiritual geniuses, whether it was Moses, Buddha, Plato, Socrates, Jesus, or Emerson... have taught man to look within himself to find God.
   ~ Ernest Holmes,
529:The 'work,' whether of the artist or the philosopher, invents the man who has created it, who is supposed to have created it. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good & Evil,
530:To the natural unredeemed economic man beauty is a thing otiose or a nuisance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, Civilisation and Barbarism,
531:Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms ~ to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. ,
532:God alone could produce either a man from the slime of the earth, or a woman from the rib of man ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 1.92.4).,
533:He who has perfectly mastered himself in thought and speech and act, he is indeed a man of religion. ~ Buddhist Text, the Eternal Wisdom
534:Man needs freedom of thought and life and action in order that he may grow. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The End of the Curve of Reason,
535:Spiritual truth is a truth of the spirit, not a truth of the intellect. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Evolution of the Spiritual Man,
536:All things attained by man have been only a possibility in their earlier stages. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I, The Intellect and Yoga,
537:Ananda is the secret principle of all being and the support of all activity of being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Man and the Evolution,
538:As a drunkard will sometimes put his coat on his head, so the God-intoxicated man is not conscious of the external world. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
539:Ego-centrism is our rock of safety against the cosmic and the infinite, our defence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Double Soul in Man,
540:Every - real - happiness - for - man - can - arise - exclusively - only - from - some - unhappiness - also - real - which - he - has - already - experienced. ~ Gurdjieff,
541:If a man shows pity for animals, he is all the more disposed to take pity on his fellow-men ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 1-2.102.6ad8).,
542:Man as a whole is always a complex being, even man savage or degenerate. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Infrarational Age of the Cycle,
543:Only by falling back on our better thought, by yielding to the spirit of prophecy which is innate in every man, can we know what that wisdom saith. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,
544:Science is a light within a limited room, not the sun which illumines the world. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - II, The Glory of God in Man,
545:The greatest man in the world is not the conqueror, but the man who has domination over his own being. ~ Schopenhauer, the Eternal Wisdom
546:The just man is not one who does hurt to none, but one who having the power to hurt represses the will. ~ Pytha-goras, the Eternal Wisdom
547:The natural reason of man is nothing other than the reflected gleam of divine clarity in the soul ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (In Ps. 35).,
548:We have indeed many things to learn from others; yea, that man who refuses to learn is already dead. ~ Swami Vivekananda, (C.W. III. 381),
549:As every man hath received the gilt, even so minister the same one to another. ~ Anonymous, The Bible, 1 Peter, IV. 10, the Eternal Wisdom
550:Follow the great man and you will see what the world has at heart in these ages. There is no omen like that. ~ Emerson, the Eternal Wisdom
551:Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
   ~ Anonymous, The Bible, John, 3-3, [T5],
552:The first use of good literature is that it prevents a man from being merely modern. To be merely modern is to condemn oneself to an ultimate narrowness. ~ C K Chesterton,
553:The man who lives in the bosom of the temptations of the world and attains perfection, is the true hero. ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom
554:We must cultivate our own garden. When man was put in the garden of Eden he was put there so that he should work, which proves that man was not born to rest.
   ~ Voltaire,
555:Adultery is more grave than theft, since a man's wife is more dear to him than his possessions ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 1-2.73.5ad1).,
556:All is Narayana, man or animal, the wise and the wicked, the whole world is Narayana, the Supreme Spirit. ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom
557:He is not a man of religion who does ill to another. He is not a disciple who causes suffering to another. ~ Dhammapada, the Eternal Wisdom
558:Man [Woman] is deluded by the intermingling of the conscious Self with the insentient body. This delusion must end. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,
559:See that the world and your ego are derived from the same Supreme Being. God, Man, and nature are faces of the One Reality. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
560:The Eternal is in every man, but all men are not in the Eternal; there lies the cause of their suffering. ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom
561:The man who recognises in his own soul the supreme Soul present in all creatures, shows himself the same to all. ~ Manu, the Eternal Wisdom
562:Hid deep in man celestial powers can dwell. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Yoga of the King, The Yoga of the Soul's Release,
563:If you cannot sustain japa at all times, at any rate complete two rosaries twice day, morning and evening. The search after Truth is man's real vocation. ~ Sri Ananamayi Ma,
564:Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read. ~ Groucho Marx, The Essential Groucho: Writings For By And About Groucho Marx ,
565:The Divine is ultimately self-revealed in both man and Nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Progress to Knowledge - God, Man and Nature,
566:The man that wandereth out of the way of understanding, shall remain in the congregation of the dead. ~ Proverbs XXI. 16, the Eternal Wisdom
567:The youthful maiden is the ever-youthful earth; so the youthful maiden implies the blessed stage of the God-intoxicated man. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
568:But he turned and rebuked them, You do not understand, he said, what spirit it is you share. The Son of Man has come to save men's lives, not to destroy them. ~ Luke 9:54-56,
569:The man who knows Tao is inaccessible to favour as to disgrace, to profit as to loss, to honour as to ignominy. ~ Lao-tse, the Eternal Wisdom
570:The ninety and nine are with dreams, content, but the hope of the world made new, is the hundredth man who is grimly bent on making those dreams come true. ~ Edgar Allan Poe,
571:The wise man should rein in intently this mental action like a chariot drawn by untrained horses. ~ Swetawatara Upanishad, the Eternal Wisdom
572:Thou art man thou art a citizen of the world, thou art the son of God, thou art the brother of all men. ~ Marcus Aurelius, the Eternal Wisdom
573:To the material man the living progressive thinker is an ideologue, dreamer or madman. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Threefold Life,
574:Yea, the soul of a man too is mighty
More than the stone and the mortar! ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
575:You have told me, O God, to believe in hell. But you have forbidden me to think...of any man as damned ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin,
576:A man cannot understand the art he is studying if he only looks for the end result without taking the time to delve deeply into the reasoning of the study. ~ Miyamoto Musashi,
577:As the musician knows how to tune his lyre, so the wise man knows how to set his mind in tune with all minds. ~ Demophilus, the Eternal Wisdom
578:God exists in Himself and not by virtue of the cosmos or of man. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Progress to Knowledge - God, Man and Nature,
579:He is a true man to whom money is a servant. Those who have it and do not know how to use it, do not deserve to be called men. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
580:If a man continues to mix with the world, it is likely that he will be tainted; but he will remain pure if he lives out of it. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
581:It needs a lion-hearted man to travel the extraordinary path; for the way is long and the sea is deep. ~ Attar of Nishapur, the Eternal Wisdom
582:Mental man has not been Nature's last effort or highest reach. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Evolutionary Process - Ascent and Integration,
583:That it may be easy for thee to live with every man, think of what unites thee to him and not of what separates. ~ Tolstoy, the Eternal Wisdom
584:The man who prays, the prayer, and the God to whom he prays all have reality only as manifestations of the Self. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, [T5],
585:Too heavy falls a Shadow on man's heart;
It dares not be too happy upon earth. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Word of Fate,
586:When one says to a man, "Know thyself," it is not only to lower his pride, but to make him sensible of his own value. ~ id, the Eternal Wisdom
587:And this is what he means when the Apostle says, 'the just man lives by faith' ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (Commentary on Galatians 3, lect. 4).,
588:As soon as a man falls into sin, charity, faith, and mercy do not free him from sin, without penance ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (St 3.84.5ad2).,
589:A stupid man's report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.
   ~ Bertrand Russell,
590:By inordinately using the body through lust, a man wrongs God Who is the Supreme Lord of our body ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 2-2.153.3ad2).,
591:If a man puts a drop of wine into a thousand measures of water, he is not mixing, but spoiling, the wine ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ScG 4.35).,
592:Man can only be happy by the fruit of the labour which he spends on his self-improvement. ~ Antoine the Healer: Revelations, the Eternal Wisdom
593:Man's continuous attempt to freeze time in fixed moments, out of the purposeless swirling of its dance, is the cause of his frustration, fear and insecurity. ~ Ramesh Balsekar,
594:No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us. ~ John IV. 12, the Eternal Wisdom
595:One must accustom oneself to say in the mind when one meets a man, "I will think of him only and not of myself. " ~ Tolstoi, the Eternal Wisdom
596:The reason of man struggling with life becomes either an empiric or a doctrinaire. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Reason as Governor of Life,
597:A man can be secure from sin in the will, only when his intellect is secure from ignorance and from error ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ScG 4.70).,
598:A man really writes for an audience of about ten persons. Of course if others like it that is clear gain. But if those ten are satisfied he is content. ~ Alfred North Whitehead,
599:A man who has comm and over his senses and the forces of his being, has a just title to the name of king. ~ Angelus Silesius, the Eternal Wisdom
600:Circumstances, though they attack obstinately the man who is firm, cannot destroy his proper virtue,-firmness. ~ Bhartrihari, the Eternal Wisdom
601:Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. ~ Louis Brandeis,
602:If anything is to be had — whatsoever, in whatever way — it must be had of Him alone. Man's bounden duty as a human being is to seek refuge at His Feet. ~ SRI ANANDAMAYI MA,
603:It is the legitimate function of the reason to justify to man his action. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Office and Limitations of the Reason,
604:Let the Godhead within thee protect there a virile being, respect-worthy, a chief, a man self-disciplined. ~ Marcus Aurelius, the Eternal Wisdom
605:Man ordinarily offers his sacrifice openly or under a disguise to his own ego. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Fullness of Spiritual Action,
606:So long as man clamours for the I and Mine, his works are as naught: When all love of the I and the Mine is dead, then the work of the Lord is done. ~ Kabir,
607:Spirituality cannot be called upon to deal with life by a non-spiritual method. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Evolution of the Spiritual Man,
608:That man who seeth the self in all beings and all beings in the self, has no disdain for any thing that is. ~ Isha Upanishad, the Eternal Wisdom
609:The virtue of a man who has attained to the height of perfection, extends even to a foreknowledge of the future. ~ Confucius, the Eternal Wisdom
610:A man must of necessity love himself, and it is impossible for a man to hate himself, properly speaking ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 1-2.29.4).,
611:A man's deeds are slavish, his very thoughts false, so long as he has not succeeded in putting fear under his feet. ~ Carlyle, the Eternal Wisdom
612:Heaven and Earth are the father and mother of all beings; among beings man alone has intelligence for his portion. ~ Chu-King, the Eternal Wisdom
613:It is only necessary to destroy in oneself the roots of those motives which determine a man's course, in order to enjoy the omnipotence and immunity of a god. ~ Aleister Crowley,
614:Man was moulded from the original brute. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 02.05,
615:We aspire for a knowledge truly knowing, for a power truly powerful, for a love that truly loves.
   ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, Divine and Man,
616:A man has the spirit of true renunciation who, upon meeting a beautiful young woman, turns away from her, seeing her as his mother ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
617:A man's spiritual gain depends on his ideas and sentiments; it is the product of his heart and not of his works. ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom
618:A prayer, a master act, a king idea
   Can link man's strength to a transcendent Force. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue, [T5],
619:Man is a masterpiece of creation if for no other reason than that, all the weight of evidence for determinism notwithstanding, he believes he has free will. ~ Georg C Lichtenberg,
620:Man's vast spirit in its power to understand things, has a wider extent than heaven and earth. ~ J. Tauler, "Institutions" XII, the Eternal Wisdom
621:No one is shut out from this joy; all share the same reason for rejoicing. Our Lord, victor over sin and death, finding no man free from sin, came to free us all. ~ Leo the Great,
622:The ascent of Life is in its nature the ascent of the divine Delight in things. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Double Soul in Man,
623:The ascent to the divine Life is the human journey, the Work of works, the acceptable Sacrifice. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Man in the Universe,
624:The harmony of the inner and outer man which is the true meaning of civilisation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Renaissance in India, "Is India Civilised?" - I,
625:The scientist is Man the thinker mastering the forces of material Nature by knowing them. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, Civilisation and Barbarism,
626:The Son of God is also the Son of Man and both elements are necessary to the complete Christhood. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation,
627:If a holy man, however cautious he may be, lives in the company of a young woman, some casual thought is sure to arise in his mind. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
628:Killing myself was a matter of such indifference to me that I felt like waiting for a moment when it would make some difference. ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man,
629:Man cannot possess perfect happiness until all that separates him from others has been abolished in oneness. ~ Angolua Siloaius, the Eternal Wisdom
630:Man is a spirit, but a spirit that lives as a mental being in physical Nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ladder of Self-Transcendence,
631:Man is the creator of the gods whom he worships in his temples. Therefore humanity has made its gods in its own image. ~ Hermes, the Eternal Wisdom
632:The angel is free because of his knowledge, the beast because of his ignorance. Between the two remains the son of man to struggle. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi,
633:The perfection of man lies in the unfolding of the ever-perfect Spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Necessity of the Spiritual Transformation,
634:Who is the superior man ? It is he who first puts his words in practice and then speaks in agreement with his acts. ~ Confucius, the Eternal Wisdom
635:Without self knowledge, without understanding the working and functions of his machine, man cannot be free, he cannot govern himself and he will always remain a slave. ~ Gurdjieff,
636:For as without woman Adam produced woman, so did the Virgin without man this day bring forth a man. For it is a man, saith the Lord, and who shall know him. ~ Saint John Chrysostom,
637:Hell has not been created by any one, but when a man does evil, he lights the fires of hell and burns in his own fire. ~ Mahomed, the Eternal Wisdom
638:If, indeed, there were anything better or more useful for man's salvation than suffering, Christ would have shown it by word and example. ~ Thomas A Kempis, The Imitation of Christ,
639:Man should never cease to believe that the incomprehensible can be comprehended; otherwise he would give up his search. ~ Goethe, the Eternal Wisdom
640:The disease of a worldly man is of a serious type. Attachment to Kama Kanchana (sex and wealth) has brought all this trouble on him. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
641:The disease of a worldly man is of a serious type. Attachment to Kama-Kanchana (sex and wealth) has brought all this trouble on him. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
642:The innocent man grieves only for the penalty, yet this pain is more intensified because of his innocence ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 3.46.6ad5).,
643:Without self knowledge, without understanding the working and functions of his machine, man cannot be free, he cannot govern himself and he will always remain a slave." ~ Gurdjieff,
644:A man must be considered as a tool of a higher world-order, a vessel found worth to receive divine influence.
   ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,
645:Knowledge can never be created, it can only be discovered; and every man who makes a great discovery is inspired. ~ Swami Vivekananda, (C.W. VII. 39),
646:Man does not actually live as an isolated being, nor can he grow by an isolated freedom. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The End of the Curve of Reason,
647:Science, philosophy and religion are bound to converge as they draw nearer to the whole. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon Of Man,
648:The soul in man is greater than his fate: ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Eternal Day, The Soul's Choice and the Supreme Consummation,
649:What is God?

   God is the perfection that we must aspire to realise. 8 November 1969
   ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, "The Divine" and "Man" [17],
650:As soon as a man takes on the responsibility of a family, he is weighed down and feels himself unfit for the high attainments of life. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
651:Be master of thyself by taming thy heart, thy mind and thy senses; for each man is his own friend and his own enemy. ~ Mahabharata, the Eternal Wisdom
652:Even though it be true that the conception of God is absolute help, it is also the only help which is absolutely capable of revealing to man his own helplessness. ~ Soren Kierkegaard,
653:It does not really rest with a man whether he goes to this place or that or whether he gives up his duties or not. All these events happen according to destiny. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,
654:It is in a total knowledge that all knowing becomes one and indivisible. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Progress to Knowledge - God, Man and Nature,
655:Man is in his self a unique Person, but he is also in his manifestation of self a multiperson. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Triple Transformation,
656:Man's virtue, a coarse-spun ill-fitting dress,
Apparels wooden images of Good; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Heavens of the Ideal,
657:Restore to heaven and earth that which thou owest unto them...But of this dead man there is a portion that is immortal. ~ Rig Veda, the Eternal Wisdom
658:With what understanding can man apprehend God, who does not yet apprehend that very understanding itself of his own, by which he desires to apprehend Him? ~ Saint Augustine, (DT 5.1),
659:A cultivated eye without a cultivated spirit makes by no means the highest type of man. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Early Cultural Writings, The National Value of Art,
660:By the assemblage of all that is exalted and all that is base man was always the most astonishing of mysteries. ~ Attar of Nishapur, the Eternal Wisdom
661:Every man seeks the brotherhood of his fellow and we can only live by fraternity with others. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin: The Right of Association, Speech,
662:The good man, though a slave, is free; the wicked, though he reigns, is a slave, and not the slave of a single man, but ~ what is worse ~ the slave of as many masters as he has vices.,
663:The kripa-siddhas attain perfection through the manifest grace of God, they are like a poor man made wealthy by the kindness of a king. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
664:The spiritual perfected only by man accomplished first in body, life and mind. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Renaissance in India, Indian Spirituality and Life - IV,
665:A man cannot comprehend spiritual things with his ordinary intelligence. To understand them he must live in the company of holy persons. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
666:He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of youbut to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? ~ Anonymous, The Bible, Micah, 6:8,
667:It is part of the nature of a man that he should exist in matter, and so there cannot be a man without matter ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 1.44.3ad2).,
668:Every man is born into this world as a servant. He must serve life and nature, those to whom he has personal responsibilities, and the spiritual needs of his own soul."
   ~ Manly P Hall,
669:I say to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly. ~ Romans X II, the Eternal Wisdom
670:It is not by shaving the head that one becomes a man of religion; truth and rectitude alone make the true religious man. ~ Dhammapada, the Eternal Wisdom
671:No machinery invented by the reason can perfect either the individual or the collective man. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The End of the Curve of Reason,
672:Our past thinking has determined our present status, and our present thinking will determine our future status; for man is what man thinks. ~ Padmasambhava, The Tibetan Book of The Dead,
673:The death of a man or animal results from the separation of the soul, which completes the nature of animal or man ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 3.50.4).,
674:The Hathat-siddhas attains perfection suddenly, as a poor man may suddenly become rich by finding hidden treasure or marrying into money. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
675:The man of superior virtue is well pleased in the humblest situation. His heart loves to be deep as the abyss. ~ Lao-Tse: Tao-te-King, the Eternal Wisdom
676:The man who does not try to raise his spirit above itself, is not worthy to live in the condition of a man. ~ Angelus Silesius II. 22, the Eternal Wisdom
677:Youth, beauty, life, riches, health, friends are things that pass; let not the wise man attach himself at all to these. ~ Mahabharata, the Eternal Wisdom
678:A Guru does not entrust to a worldly man valuable and exalting precepts, for he is sure to misuse them in pursuit of his own mean designs. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
679:A holy man used to look at a glass prism and smile. He could see various colors, yet he knew these colors were false just as the world is. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
680:If a man loves God, living upon the flesh of pigs, he is blessed; unlike the man who lives on milk and rice but is fixed on lust and gold. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
681:In man it is the ego idea which chiefly supports the falsehood of a separative existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Liberation of the Spirit,
682:Kali when she enters into a man cares nothing for rationality and possibility. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Greatness of the Individual,
683:Some great souls have reached the seventh, highest plane of samadhi, and have thus become merged in God. They come down for man's benefit. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
684:The kingdom of heaven is already in existence if we will have it, that perfection is already in man if he will see it. ~ Swami Vivekananda, (C.W. VI. 354),
685:The vain main of intellect is busy finding out the why and wherefore of creation, while the humble man acquaints himself with the creator. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
686:Civilised man has yet to establish an equilibrium between the fully active mind and the body. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Three Steps of Nature,
687:In Supermind is the integrating Light, the consummating Force, the wide entry into the supreme Ananda. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Double Soul in Man,
688:Man himself, who takes up all that went before him and transmutes it into the term of manhood. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Eternal and the Individual,
689:Man's consciousness of the divine within himself and the world is the supreme fact of his existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, Civilisation and Culture,
690:Man, sole awake in an unconscious world,
Aspires in vain to change the cosmic dream. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon,
691:A man's heart showeth to him what he should do better than seven sentinels on the summit of a rock. ~ Anonymous, The Bible, Ecclesiastes, the Eternal Wisdom
692:Every man is divine and strong in his real nature. What are weak and evil are his habits, his desires and thoughts, but not himself. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,
693:For example, man, ass, stone agree in the one precise formality of being colored, which is the formal object of sight ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 1.1.3).,
694:Man is sanctified by each of the sacraments, since sanctity means immunity from sin, which is the effect of grace ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 3.63.3ad2).,
695:Man must come to the realization that the two most valuable things that he has are his heart and his time. When time is wasted, the heart is ruined and all benefit is lost. ~ Ibn Al-Jawzee,
696:Only the man who knows that God lives in his soul, can be humble; such a one is absolutely indifferent to what men say of him. ~ Tolstoi, the Eternal Wisdom
697:Our consciousness a torch that plays Between the Abyss and a supernal Light. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Man of the Mediator,
698:Our lives are useful only in proportion as they help others by example or action or tend to fulfil God in man. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin, Opinion and Comments,
699:The man full of uprightness is happy here below, sweet is his sleep by night and by day his heart is radiant with peace. ~ Buddhist Text, the Eternal Wisdom
700:A man can be himself only so long as he is alone, and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom, for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.
   ~ Arthur Schopenhauer,
701:If you wish to battle and strive for Truth become a thinker, that is to say, a free man. ~ Apollonius of Tyana, 28th Letter to the King.", the Eternal Wisdom
702:The Master of man and his infinite Lover,
He is close to our hearts, had we vision to see. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Who,
703:When man is introduced by the action of God into the world of Uncreated Light, there are no words to express his wonder, no words, no sighs to tell of his gratitude." ~ Silouan the Athonite,
704:As dawn announces the rising of the sun, so in a man disinterestedness, purity, rectitude forerun the coming of the Eternal. ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom
705:A wise man emulates the smallest good trait of others even if he has innumerable good qualities of his own." ~ Sakya Pandita, (1182-1251), a Tibetan spiritual leader and Buddhist, Wikipedia.,
706:But God's Word is our Lord Jesus Christ, who in these last times was made a man among men, that he might join the end to the beginning: that is, join man to God. ~ Irenaeus, Against Heresies,
707:If a man loves his Guru with his whole heart, obeys what the latter says, his mind being devoted to Him, will naturally shun other attractions and thus get concentrated. ~ SWAMI SUBODHANANDA,
708:If a man loves his Guru with his whole heart, obeys what the latter says, his mind being devoted to Him, will naturally shun other attractions and thus get concentrated. ~ Swami Subodhananda,
709:Putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour: for we are members one of another. ~ Anonymous, The Bible, Ephesians, IV. 25, the Eternal Wisdom
710:The greatest error of a man is to think that he is weak by nature, evil by nature. Everyone is divine and strong in their real nature. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,
711:You can force a man to enter a church, to approach the altar, to receive the sacrament; but you cannot force him to believe. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,
712:And yet, O the happiness of being man and of being able to recognise the way of the Truth and by following it to attain the goal. ~ Gyothai, the Eternal Wisdom
713:Fourthly, our REVERENCE for Him is thereby increased, since we no longer deem Him an earthly man, but the God of heaven ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 3.57.6).,
714:Intellect void of the spirit can only pile up external knowledge and machinery and efficiency. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Evolution of the Spiritual Man,
715:The superior soul asks nothing from any but itself. The vulgar and unmeritable man asks everything of others. ~ Confucius: Lia yu II XV. 20, the Eternal Wisdom
716:Vainly man, crouched in his corner of safety, shrinks from the fatal
Lure of the Infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ahana,
717:Fear of the gods arose from man's ignorance of God and his ignorance of the laws that govern the world. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Godward Emotions,
718:Man may help or man may resist, but the Zeitgeist works, shapes, overbears, insists. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Greatness of the Individual,
719:The high gods look on man and watch and choose
Today's impossibles for the future's base. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon,
720:Both of these are imperfect in man if he is compared to the perfect righteousness of the divine standard ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (Commentary on Job, lect. 4).,
721:elf-control which lies on a man like a fine garment, falls away from him who negligently gives himself up to slumber. ~ Fo-shu-hing-tsan-king, the Eternal Wisdom
722:It is not good to say that what we ourselves think of God is the only truth and what others think is false. Can a man really fathom God's nature? ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
723:Secrecy is sometimes a cause of sin, as when a man employs secrecy in order to commit a sin, as in the case of fraud ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 2-2.66.3ad1).,
724:The divine Spirit dwells in every man. How can we make a difference among those who carry in themselves one and the same principle? ~ Tolstoy, the Eternal Wisdom
725:The sot drinks, and is drunken: the coward drinks not, and shivers: the wise man, brave and free, drinks, and gives glory to the Most High God. ~ Aleister Crowley,
726:Whoever has once felt the glory of God within him can never again believe that the intellect is supreme. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - II, The Glory of God in Man,
727:A man may conquer thousands and thousands of men in battle, but he is the greatest conqueror who has mastered himself. ~ Fo-shu-hing-tsan-king, the Eternal Wisdom
728:Looking for the meaning of life, one man can discover the order of the universe. To discover the truth, to achieve. a higher spiritual state, that is the true meaning of ninja. ~ Masaaki Hatsumi,
729:There is not a grain of dust, not an atom that can become nothing, yet man believes that death is the annihilation of his being ~ Schopenhauer, the Eternal Wisdom
730:Those operations in man not subject to the will and reason are not properly called human but natural ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (Commentary on Ethics 1, lect. 1).,
731:He wades through mud to reach the Wonderful,
And does what Matter must or Spirit can. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Man the Enigma,
732:He whose mind is utterly pure from all evil as the Sun is pure of stain and the moon of soil, him indeed I call a man of religion. ~ Udanavagga, the Eternal Wisdom
733:Let no man deceive himself; if any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him a fool that he may be wise. ~ I. Corinthians III. 18, the Eternal Wisdom
734:Man lives on earth not once, but three times: the first stage of life is continual sleep; the second, sleeping and waking by turns; the third, waking forever.
   ~ Gustav Fechner, Life after Death,
735:The mind is everything. It is in the mind alone that one feels pure and impure. A man, first of all, must make his own mind guilty and then alone can he see another man's guilt. ~ Sri Sarada Devi,
736:The soul that dwells in the body of every man is unslayable, and therefore thou shouldst not weep for all these beings. ~ Bhagavad Gita. II. 30, the Eternal Wisdom
737:Tt is only by liberation and perfection and realisation of the truth of being that man can arrive at truth of living. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Divine Life,
738:Whatever work you do, do it as perfectly as you can. That is the best service to the Divine in man
   ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, Progress and Perfection in Work,
739:Any given man sees only a tiny portion of the total truth, and very often, in fact almost perpetually, he deliberately deceives himself about that little precious fragment as well. ~ Philip K Dick,
740:Considered mystically, the story of the Flood is the wise man's mastery of adversity. It is the philosopher surviving the onslaughts of ignorance. It is ... ~ Manly P Hall?, Understand your Bible?,
741:For he [Christ] receives his own Spirit, and partakes of it, insofar as he was a man, but he gives it to himself, as God. ~ Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on the Gospel according to St John 12.17,
742:If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.
   ~ Henry David Thoreau,
743:One man who earnestly pursues the Yoga is of more value than a thousand well-known men. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Himself and the Ashram, No Propaganda or Proselytism,
744:Step by step, piece by piece, hour by hour, the wise man should purify his soul of all impurity as a silver worker purifies silver. ~ Dhammapada, the Eternal Wisdom
745:The nearer we get to the absolute Ananda, the greater becomes our joy in man and the universe. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Soul of Poetic Delight and Beauty,
746:The new God laughs at imitation and discipleship. He needs no imitators and no pupils. He forces men through himself. The God is his own follower in man. He imitates himself" ~ Carl Jung, Red Book,
747:The philosophy of the common man is an old wife that gives him no pleasure, yet he cannot live without her, and resents any aspersions that strangers may cast on her character. (461) ~ G Santayana,
748:All the world's possibilities in man
Are waiting as the tree waits in its seed: ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Parable of the Search for the Soul,
749:For man here is the result of an evolution and contains in himself the whole of that evolution. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Realisation of Sachchidananda,
750:How beautiful is youth! how bright it gleams with its illusions, aspirations, dreams! Book of Beginnings, Story without End, Each maid a heroine, and each man a friend! ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,
751:If a man could write a book on Ethics that was really a book on Ethics, this book would, with an explosion, destroy all other books in the world. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein, 'A Lecture on Ethics' (1929),
752:It is according to his intelligence and reason, which are incorporeal, that man is said to be according to the image of God ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 1.3.1ad2).,
753:Religion today is but a crutch. God made man with Himself within man, so that man might lean on Him, not on religion." ~ Sunyata, (1890- 1984) Danish mystic, "Dancing with the Void,", (2001, 2015).,
754:That man whose mind attaches itself only to sensible objects, death carries away like a torrent dragging with it a sleeping village. ~ Dhammapada, the Eternal Wisdom
755:The knowledge of faith does not bring rest to desire but rather sets it aflame, since every man desires to see what he believes ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ScG 3.40),
756:We need more understanding of human nature, because the only danger that exists is man himself ~ he is the great danger, and we are pitifully unaware of it. We know nothing of man ~ far too little.,
757:Even as I are these, even as they am I,-identifying himself thus with others, the wise man neither kills nor is a cause of killing. ~ Sutta Nipata, the Eternal Wisdom
758:Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that some spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe, one that is vastly superior to that of man. ~ Albert Einstein,
759:Everyone who remembers his own educational experience remembers teachers, not methods and techniques. The teacher is the kingpin of the educational situation. ~ Sidney Hook, Education for Modern Man,
760:Man epitomises in his being not only the animal existence below him, but the obscurer subanimal being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Ascending Unity,
761:Many are God's forms by which he grows in man; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,
762:No man has a right to constrain another to think like himself. Each must bear with patience and indulgence the beliefs of others. ~ Giordano Bruno, the Eternal Wisdom
763:Self-conquest is the most glorious of victories; it shall better serve a man to conquer himself than to be master of the whole world. ~ Dhammapada, the Eternal Wisdom
764:Spirit is a final evolutionary emergence because it is the original involutionary element and factor. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Evolution of the Spiritual Man,
765:That which distinguishes from others the upright man, is that he never pollutes the genius within him which dwells in his heart. ~ Marcus Aurelius, the Eternal Wisdom
766:The goldness of gold, the silverness of silver, the manhood of man, the womanhood of woman, the reality of everything is the Lord. ~ Swami Vivekananda, (C.W. VI. 378),
767:The knowledge of faith does not bring rest to desire but rather sets it aflame, since every man desires to see what he believes ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ScG 3.40).,
768:When the man who does good, ceases to concern himself with the result of his act, ambition and wrath are extinguished within him. ~ Lalita Vistara, the Eternal Wisdom
769:All philosophies as divergent view-points looking at different sides of a single Reality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Progress to Knowledge - God, Man and Nature,
770:Integral reality is the world's transparency, a perceiving of the world as truth: a mutual perceiving and imparting of the truth of the world and of man and of all that transluces both. ~ Jean Gebser,
771:Like a chariot drawn by wild horses is the mind, the man of knowledge should hold it in with an unswerving attention. ~ CwetawataraUpanishad. II. 9, the Eternal Wisdom
772:Man falls not suddenly into death, but moves to meet him step by step. We are dying each day; each day robs us of a part of our existence. ~ Sencea, the Eternal Wisdom
773:Man is born a predestined idealist, for he is born to act. To act is to affirm the worth of an end, and to persist in affirming the worth of an end is to make an ideal.
   ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.,
774:No man or nation need be weak unless he chooses, no man or nation need perish unless he deliberately chooses extinction. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - I, Bhawani Mandir,
775:There is no one who is without faults, and who is not in some way a burden to others, whether he is a superior or a subject, an old man or a young one, a scholar or a dunce. ~ Saint Robert Bellarmine,
776:312. Each man of us has a million lives yet to fulfil upon this earth. Why then this haste and clamour and impatience?
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Karma[53],
777:A man might sit still and motionless for ever and yet be as much bound to the Ignorance as the animal or the insect. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Divine Work,
778:If you have assimilated five ideas and made them your life and character, you have more education than any man who has got by heart a whole library. ~ Swami Vivekananda,
779:Man, every time he gives up and abandons himself, finds God in the depths of his heart, as if the immutable principle of his abnegation. ~ J. Tauler, the Eternal Wisdom
780:That man whose hair stands on end at the mere mention of the name of God, and from whose eyes flow tears of love—he has indeed reached his last birth. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
781:The Church teaches, "Mary is truly 'Mother of God' since she is the mother of the eternal Son of God made man, who is God himself." ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (CCC 509),
782:We love irrational creatures out of charity, in as much as we wish them to endure, to give glory to God, and be useful to man ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 2-2.25.11).,
783:What is man?... Thou crownedst him with glory and honour.... thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet. ~ Anonymous, The Bible, Hebrews,, the Eternal Wisdom
784:At a certain stage in the path of devotion the religious man finds satisfaction in the Divinity with a form, at another stage in the formless Impersonal. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
785:A Witness dwells within our secrecies,
The incarnate Godhead in the body of man. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Universal Incarnation,
786:Fate is a balance drawn in Destiny's book.
Man can accept his fate, he can refuse. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain,
787:he man who has conquered his unreined desires, offers no hold to sorrow; it glides over him like water over the leaves of the lotus. ~ Buddhist Texts, the Eternal Wisdom
788:However man's mind may tire or fail his flesh,
   A will prevails cancelling his conscious choice .
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon,
789:Man, the mental being, has an imperfect life because mind is not the first and highest power of consciousness of the Being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Divine Life,
790:No-Man's Land
Non-violence is better than violence as a rule, and still sometimes violence may be the right thing. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I, Morality and Yoga,
791:No man works, but Nature works through him for the self-expression of a Power within that proceeds from the Infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Divine Work,
792:There is a greater accumulation of divinity in man. Man is Narayana Himself. If God can manifest Himself through an image, then why not through man also? ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
793:The thought of a solitary man can become, by exercise of selfless and undoubting Will, the thought of a nation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Early Cultural Writings, The Real Difficulty,
794:A higher instrumental dynamis than mind is needed to transform totally a nature created by the Ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Evolution of the Spiritual Man,
795:Although lustful actions may accord with the nature of man as animal, they are not fitting to it as rational ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (Commentary on Colossians, ch. 3).,
796:He whose mind is utterly purified from soil, as heaven is pure from stain and the moon from dust, him indeed I call a man of religion. ~ Buddhist Text, the Eternal Wisdom
797:In the prone obscure beginnings of the race
The human grew in the bowed apelike man. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Parable of the Search for the Soul,
798:In this rude combat with the fate of man
Thy smile within my heart makes all my strength; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Divine Worker,
799:The whole future of the Earth, as of religion, seems to me to depend on the awakening of our faith in the future. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Future of Man,
800:The whole world has been made by the energy of man, by the power of enthusiasm, by the power of faith. Arise and awake, the world is calling upon you. ~ Swami Vivekananda,
801:After sin, the sacrament of penance is necessary for salvation, even as bodily medicine after man has contracted a dangerous disease ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 3.84.5).
802:Not by denying all relations, but through all relations is the Divine Infinite naturally approachable to man. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Supreme Word of the Gita,
803:To perish is better for man or for nation
Nobly in battle, nor end disgraced by disease or subjection. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
804:After sin, the sacrament of penance is necessary for salvation, even as bodily medicine after man has contracted a dangerous disease ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 3.84.5).,
805:Its light stirs man the thinker to create
An earthly semblance of diviner things. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Gospel of Death and Vanity of the Ideal,
806:Our I is not that spiritual being which can look on the Divine Existence and say, "That am I". ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Progress to Knowledge - God, Man and Nature,
807:The foundation of man's life is the dwelling in him of the divine Spirit equal in all men. And that is why men among themselves are all equal. ~ Tolstoy, the Eternal Wisdom
808:There is a need within the soul of man
    The splendours of the surface never sate. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Greater Plan,
809:Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun? ~ Anonymous, The Bible, Ecclesiastes, I, 2, 3, the Eternal Wisdom
810:Christianity was an assertion of human equality in the spirit, a great assertion of the unity of the divine spirit in man. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - II, Asiatic Democracy,
811:Every being carries within him the Divine Inhabitant; and although no being in the whole universe is as weak as man, none is as divine as he.
   ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,
812:If man thinks only of himself and seeks everywhere his own profit, he cannot be happy. If thou wouldst really live for thyself, live for others. ~ Seneca, the Eternal Wisdom
813:Let no man do anything connected with the Church without the bishop. Let that be deemed a proper Eucharist, which is either by the bishop, or by one to whom he has entrusted it. ~ Saint Ignatius of Antioch,
814:Man can only exceed the law of battle by discovering the greater law of his immortality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Vision of the World-Spirit - Time the Destroyer,
815:Man, if thou wouldst discover in the crowd the friends of God, observe simply those who carry love in their hearts and in their hands. ~ Angeles Silesins, the Eternal Wisdom
816:The angel is free because of his knowledge, the beast because of his ignorance. Between the two remains the son of man to struggle." ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, @Sufi_Path
817:The man in whose vision all things are becomings of the Self and who sees in all things oneness, whence shall he have grief or delusion? ~ Isha Upanishad, the Eternal Wisdom
818:The superior type of man is in all the circumstances of his life exempt from prejudices and obstinacy; he regulates himself by justice alone. ~ Confucius, the Eternal Wisdom
819:What we see as error is very frequently the symbol or a disguise or a corruption or malformation of a truth. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Evolution of the Spiritual Man,
820:When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years. ~ Mark Twain
821:Yet is the dark Inconscient whence came all
The self-same Power that shines on high unwon. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Man of the Mediator,
822:Fortunate is the man who does not lose himself in the labyrinths of philosophy, but goes straight to the Source from which they all rise. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Guru Ramana,
823:Historically, the stuff of the universe goes on becoming concentrated into ever more organized forms of matter.
   ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man,
824:Mankind is still embryonic ... [man is] the bud from which something more complicated and more centered than man himself should emerge. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin,
825:Man, wouldst thou be a sage, wouldst thou know thyself and know God? First thou shouldst extinguish in thyself the desire of the world. ~ Angelus Silesius, the Eternal Wisdom
826:The supreme duty of man is to remember the Lord always, whether one is engaged in consciously repeating His name or not. Every breath of ours should be associated with Him, in our mind. ~ Swami Vijnanananda,
827:The truly religious man is he, who does not commit any sin even when he is alone, and when no man observes him, because he feels, that God sees him even then. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
828:Aspiring to godhead from insensible clay
He travels slow-footed towards the eternal day. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Man the Thinking Animal,
829:Faith is indispensable to man, for without it he could not proceed forward in his journey through the Unknown. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Evolution of the Spiritual Man,
830:God and the angels have a ready free choice of the will, whereas man suffers difficulty in choosing because of uncertainty and hesitation ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (DV 24.3).,
831:Not in this living net
Of flesh and nerve, nor in the flickering mind
Is a man's manhood seated. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Baji Prabhou,
832:The religious instinct in man is most of all the one instinct in him that cannot be killed, it only changes its form. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, Religion as the Law of Life,
833:Within man is the soul of the whole, the wise silence, the universal beauty to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal ONE. ~ Emerson, the Eternal Wisdom
834:For then alone do we know God truly, when we believe that He is far above all that man can possibly think of God. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles, I, 5, par. 3,
835:If man surrenders totally to the Divine, he identifies himself with the Divine.
   ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, Elements of Yoga, Surrender to the Divine Will, Surrender, [T5],
836:Man insists continually on making God in his own image instead of seeking to make himself more and more in the image of God, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Rebirth,
837:Man separates from Nature only that Nature may be found again in a higher dignity in the Man. For as the Ideal is realized in Nature, so is the Real idealized in man. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Theory of Life,
838:Since the race of women owed to men a debt, as from Adam without woman woman came, therefore without man the Virgin this day brought forth, and on behalf of Eve repaid the debt to man. ~ Saint John Chrysostom,
839:The history of the cycles of man is a progress towards the unveiling of the Godhead in the soul and life of humanity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Theory of the Vibhuti,
840:What will a man gain by knowing many scriptures? The one thing needful is to know how to cross the river of the world. God alone is real, and all else illusory. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
841:When a man's knowledge is sufficient to attain, and his virtue is not sufficient to enable him to hold, whatever he may have gained, he will lose again. ~ Confucius, Analects, 15:32, i,
842:Faith is the unshaken stance of the soul and is unmoved by any adversity. The believing man is not one who thinks God can do all things, but one who trusts that he will obtain everything. ~ Saint John Climacus,
843:I saw the Son of Man, and he said to me, "Have no fear! I am the First and the Last. I was dead and now I am to live for ever and ever, and I hold the keys of death and of the underworld." ~ Revelation 1:17-18,
844:Just as man understands God through visible creatures, so an angel understands God by understanding its own essence ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (Commentary on Romans 1, lect. 6).,
845:Only by falling back on our better thought, by yielding to the spirit of prophecy which is innate in every man, can we know what that wisdom saith. ~ Emerson, the Eternal Wisdom
846:The proud man wishes to distinguish himself from others and deprives himself thus of the best joy of life, of a free and joyful communion with men. ~ Tolstoy, the Eternal Wisdom
847:The works of man recoil upon himself, and it is of the nature of things human that in collective terms the agent becomes the creature, perhaps the victim, of his action. ~ Hans Jonas, Philosophical Essays p.48,
848:Why do you believe in what the astrologers say? It is the belief that brings the trouble.

   Sri Aurobindo says that a man becomes what he thinks he is.
   ~ The Mother, On Education,
849:Let not therefore the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches. ~ Jeremiah IX. 23, the Eternal Wisdom
850:One man's theology is another man's belly laugh.
   ~ Robert Heinlein, Notebooks of Lazarus Long, from Time Enough for Love (1973). This is sometimes misquoted as One man's religion is another man's belly laugh.,
851:That man whose mind is solely attached to the objects of sense, him death drags with it as an impetuous torrent sweeps away a slumbering village. ~ Dhammapada, the Eternal Wisdom
852:That which has helped man upward, must be preserved in order that he may not sink below the level he has attained. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Early Cultural Writings, The National Value of Art,
853:A man is not a master because he despotically subjects being living at his mercy. He can be called a master who has compassion for all that lives. ~ Dhammapada, the Eternal Wisdom
854:Man is not and cannot be wholly governed either in his thought or his action by the reason alone. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supramental Instruments - Thought-Process,
855:Man's natural joy of life is overcast
And sorrow is his nurse of destiny. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 02.04
856:Nothing can be thought of which is more marvelous than this divine accomplishment: that the true God, the Son of God, should become true man ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ScG 4.27).,
857:Realism is in its essence an attempt to see man and his world as they really are without veils and pretences. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Movement of Modern Literature - I,
858:Religion is the first attempt of man to get beyond himself and beyond the obvious and material facts of his existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Lower Triple Purusha,
859:That is one of the many reasons why I avoid speaking as much as possible. For I always say either too much or too little, which is a terrible thing for a man with a passion for truth like mine... ~ Samuel Becket,
860:The foundation of the pure spiritual consciousness that is the first object in the evolution of the spiritual man. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Evolution of the Spiritual Man,
861:Three things are necessary for the salvation of man: to know what he ought to believe; to know what he ought to desire; and to know what he ought to do." ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas,
862:When a man shakes from him the clinging yoke of desire, affliction drops away from him little by little as drops of water glide from a lotus-leaf. ~ Dhammapada, the Eternal Wisdom
863:Man's knowledge casked in the barrels of Memory
Has the harsh savour of a mortal draught: ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Gospel of Death and Vanity of the Ideal,
864:Many things are wanting to indigence, but everything is wanting to greed. A covetous man is useful to none and still less is he of any good to himself. ~ Seneca, the Eternal Wisdom
865:To eternal light and knowledge meant to rise,
Up from man's bare beginning is our climb; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Little Mind,
866:Every grace granted to man has three degrees in order; for by God it is communicated to Christ, from Christ it passes to the Virgin, and from the Virgin it descends to us." ~ Saint Bernardine of Siena, (1380-1444),
867:Hearing ultimate Truth, the dull-witted man is bewildered.

The wise man hearing Truth retreats within and appears dull-witted. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Ashtavakra Gita, 18.32,
868:It is at some one point or a few points that the fire is lit and spreads from hearth to hearth, from altar to altar. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Evolution of the Spiritual Man,
869:One may say boldly that no man has a just perception of any truth, if that truth has not reacted on him so intensely that be is ready to be its martyr. ~ Emerson, the Eternal Wisdom
870:Since an unlooked-for salvation was to be provided for men through the help of God, so also was the unlooked-for birth from a virgin accomplished; God giving this sign, but man not working it out. ~ Saint Irenaeus,
871:The act done under right rule, with detachment, without liking or dislike, by the man who grasps not at the fruit, that is a work of light. ~ Bhagavad Gita 18.23, the Eternal Wisdom
872:The Divine is the perfection towards which we move. And if you like, I shall lead you to Him very willingly. Have confidence.
   ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, "The Divine" and "Man",
873:The man who has conquered himself and is tranquillised, remains fixed in his highest self, whether in pleasure or pain, in honour or in disgrace. ~ Bhagavad Gita, the Eternal Wisdom
874:Three things are necessary for the salvation of man : to know what he ought to believe, to know what he ought to desire, and to know what he ought to do.
   ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas,
875:All things yield to a man and Zeus is himself his accomplice
When like a god he wills without remorse or longing. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
876:But the holy man (Saint Martin) chose to serve the heavenly God rather than to fight under an earthly emperor... to exchange the sacramenta of the military for evangelical edicts... ~ Alcuin of York, Vita Martini 2,
877:Man within the community is now at least a half-civilised creature, but his international existence is still primitive. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Inadequacy of the State Idea,
878:One's only rival is one's own potentialities. One's only failure is failing to live up to one's own possibilities. In this sense, every man can be a king, and must therefore be treated like a king. ~ Abraham Maslow,
879:se man is never less alone than when he is alone." ~ Jonathan Swift, (1667-1745), an Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer, poet and cleric, became Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, Wikipedia.,
880:Slumbering in a sealed and secret cave
The powers that sleep unused in man within. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Yoga of the King, The Yoga of the Soul's Release,
881:Sometimes, when a man is already excited by violent passions, he is disturbed by mere trifles and behaves as though he were really angry ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (In I DA lect. 2).,
882:The human mind existing in its nature is not a person, for it is not the whole which subsists, but a part of the subsistent; namely, of the man ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ScG 4.26).,
883:These limitations of his power, knowledge, life, delight of existence are the whole cause of man's dissatisfaction with himself and the universe.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,
884:All alters in a world that is the same.
Man most must change who is a soul of Time;
His gods too change and live in larger light. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act V,
885:All creation tends toward man, all mankind tends toward Christ, and, in turn, Christ, as he has revealed himself to us, tends to unite with all mankind, and through it with the universe. ~ Louis Bouyer, Cosmos (231),
886:A man is called virtuous by reason of a single perfect virtue, namely, prudence, upon which all the moral virtues depend ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (Commentary on Politics, lesson 3).,
887:GIRISH: "If a man is so strongly tied hand and foot, then what is his way?"
MASTER: "He has nothing to fear if God Himself, as the guru, cuts the chain of maya." ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
888:Man's soul crosses through thee to Paradise,
Heaven's sun forces its way through death and night. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real,
889:The active Brahman fulfils Itself in the world by works and man also is in the body for self-fulfilment by action. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad: The Inhabiting Godhead, Life and Action,
890:The more a man is truthful, the more he is divine; unconquerableness, immortality, the greatness of the godhead enter into a man along with truthfulness. ~ Emerson, the Eternal Wisdom
891:The small man builds cages for everyone he knows
   While the sage, who has to duck his head when the moon is low,
   Keeps dropping keys all night long
   For the beautiful rowdy prisoners. ~ Hafiz,
892:The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them. ~ Henry David Thoreau,
893:To seek for delight is therefore the fundamental impulse and sense of Life; to find and possess and fulfil it is its whole motive. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Double Soul in Man,
894:When a man has subdued himself and lives in perfect continence, not god, not Gandharva, not Mara, not Brahma himself can turn into defeat his victory. ~ Dhammapada, the Eternal Wisdom
895:Each part of man's being has its own dharma which it must follow and will follow in the end, put on it what fetters you please. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Spiritual Aim and Life,
896:If you give to a man all riches and all might and he looks upon himself with the same humility as before, then that man far surpasses other human beings. ~ Meng-tse, the Eternal Wisdom
897:In each life man has to figure a certain sum of its complexity and put that into some kind of order. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Renaissance in India, A Rationalistic Critic on Indian Culture - V,
898:Man at his highest is a half-god who has risen up out of the animal Nature and is splendidly abnormal in it. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Necessity of the Spiritual Transformation,
899:Regarding virtue, perfection consists in man not following the passions of the body, but moderating and controlling them in accordance with reason ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ScG 2.79),
900:The entire world, from its beginning to end, is nothing more than the dream of a man, who becomes captivated by what he sees, only to awaken and find that it was nothing (fa idhā lā shayy). ~ Umar b. Al-Khaṭṭāb
901:The group-man follows in the wake of the individual and is always far behind the highest individual development. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Drive towards Economic Centralisation,
902:Without the man the moment is a lost opportunity; without the moment the man is a force inoperative. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Early Cultural Writings: Historical Impressions, The French Revolution,
903:For man, below the god, above the brute,
Is given the calm reason as his guide;
He is not driven by an unthinking will ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Word of Fate,
904:Gold is tested by the fire, the good man by his acts, heroes by perils, the prudent man by difficult circumstances, friends and enemies by great needs. ~ Mahabharata, the Eternal Wisdom
905:The meeting of man and God must always mean a penetration and entry of the divine into the human and a self-immergence of man in the Divinity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays In Philosophy And Yoga,
906:Universe is a diffusion of the divine All in infinite Space and Time, the individual its concentration within limits of Space and Time. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Man in the Universe,
907:You must remember one thing. God knows our inner feeling. A man gets the fulfillment of the desire he cherishes while practicing sadhana. As one thinks, so one receives. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
908:But others question because of a desire to know, as the Blessed Virgin did when she said to the angel: "How shall this be, since I do not know man?" ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (Lk 1:34).,
909:Earth cannot long resist the man whom Heaven has chosen;
Gods with him walk; his chariot is led; his arm is assisted. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
910:He who practises wisdom without anger or covetousness, who fulfils with fidelity his vows and lives master of himself, he is indeed a man of religion. ~ Buddhist Text, the Eternal Wisdom
911:Inwardly, the man who does not destroy his lower self-formations, cannot rise to a greater existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Vision of the World-Spirit - Time the Destroyer,
912:A single day of life of the man who stimulates himself by an act of energy, is of more value than a hundred years passed in norchalance and indolence. ~ Buddhist Texts, the Eternal Wisdom
913:At a certain stage in the path of devotion the religious man finds satisfaction in the Divinity with a form, at another stage in the formless Impersonal. ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom
914:Leader here with his uncertain mind,
Alone who stares at the future's covered face,
Man lifted up the burden of his fate. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Symbol Dawn,
915:Leave to the night its phantoms, leave to the future its curtain!
Only today Heaven gave to mortal man for his labour. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
916:Let the superior man bear himself in the commerce of men with an always dignified deference, regarding all men that dwell in the world as his own brothers. ~ Confucius, the Eternal Wisdom
917:Man is good when he raises very high his divine and spiritual "I", but frightful when he wishes to exalt above men his fleshly vain, ambitious and exclusive. ~ Tolstoi, the Eternal Wisdom
918:Son of man, thou hast crowned thy life with flowers that are scentless,
Chased the delights that wound. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Descent of Ahana,
919:The Great Work is, before all things, the creation of man by himself, that is to say, the full and entire conquest of his faculties and his future; it is especially the perfect emancipation of his will.
   ~ Eliphas Levi,
920:The life of grace unto which a man is regenerated, presupposes the life of the rational nature, in which man is capable of receiving instruction ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 3.71.1ad1).,
921:The thoughts of unknown minds exalt me with their thrill;
I carry the sorrow of millions in my lonely breast. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Cosmic Man,
922:At times because of one man's evil, ten thousand people suffer. So you kill that one man to let the tens of thousands live. Here, truly, the blade that deals death becomes the sword that saves lives. ~ Yamamoto Tsunetomo,
923:God and the human are paradigms of each other, and to the degree that God is humanized in a man because of his love for humanity, so does the human deify itself into God, empoweredby love. ~ Maximus, Amb. 10. 1113B11~ 14,
924:It is always well for the man to go the moment his work is done and not to outstay the Mother's welcome. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Early Cultural Writings: Historical Impressions, The French Revolution,
925:Man is condemned to be free. Condemned, because he did not create himself, yet, [he] is free; because, once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism and Humanism,
926:No man ever succeeded in this sadhana by his own merit. To become open and plastic to the Mother is the one thing needed. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - III, Difficulties of the Path - VII,
927:Occult powers can only be for the spiritual man an instrumentation of the Divine Power that uses him. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - III, The Danger of the Ego and the Need of Purification,
928:Religion's real business is to prepare man's mind, life and bodily existence for the spiritual consciousness to take it up. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Evolution of the Spiritual Man,
929:Seek the bridegroom not the teacher; God and not man; darkness not daylight; and look not to the light but rather to the raging fire that carries the soul to God with intense fervour and glowing love. ~ Saint Bonaventure,
930:So long as man has not thrown from him the load of worldly desire which he carries about with him, he cannot be in tranquillity and at peace with himself. ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom
931:Why was not man created good from the beginning?

   It is not God who made man wicked. It is man who makes himself wicked by separating himself from God.
   ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,
932:It is contrary to good morals for one man to have several wives, for the result of this is discord in domestic society, as is evident from experience ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ScG 3.124).,
933:It is impossible for man who has a body to abstain absolutely from all action, but whoever; renounces its fruits, is the man of true renunciation. ~ Bhagavad Gita. 18.11, the Eternal Wisdom
934:Leave inimical thoughts aside if you want to have permanent Bhakti. Hatred is a thing which greatly impedes the course of Bhakti, and the man who hates none reaches God. ~ Swami Vivekananda,
935:Virtues are formed by prayer. Prayer preserves temperance. Prayer suppresses anger. Prayer prevents emotions of pride and envy. Prayer draws into the soul the Holy Spirit, and raises man to Heaven. ~ Saint Ephrem of Syria,
936:A man shall shake off every tie; for when he has no more attachment for form and name, when he is utterly without possessions, sorrow does not run after him. ~ Dhammapada, the Eternal Wisdom
937:A truly religious man should think that other religions are also so many paths leading to the Truth. We should always maintain an attitude of respect towards other religions. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
938:Man is a microcosm, or a little world, because he is an extract from all the stars and planets of the whole firmament, from the earth and the elements; and so he is their quintessence. ~ Paracelsus,
939:She puts forth a small portion of herself,
A being no bigger than the thumb of man
Into a hidden region of the heart ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Finding of the Soul,
940:The highest and widest seeing is the wisest; for then all knowledge is unified in its one comprehensive meaning. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Progress to Knowledge - God, Man and Nature,
941:The savage is perhaps not so much the first forefather of civilised man as the degenerate descendant of a previous civilisation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Three Steps of Nature,
942:A formless yearning passions in man's heart,
A cry is in his blood for happier things ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 02.04
943:All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. ~ Anonymous, The Bible, 2 Timothy, 3:16-17,
944:Having studied books, the sage uniquely consecrated to knowledge and wisdom, should leave books completely aside as a man who wants the rice abandons the husk. ~ Upanishad, the Eternal Wisdom
945:In evolutionary fact the superior is not prior but posterior in appearance, the less developed precedes the more developed and prepares it. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Man and the Evolution,
946:Inheritor of the brief animal mind,
Man, still a child in Nature's mighty hands,
In the succession of the moments lives; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Secret Knowledge,
947:Man over woman, woman o'er man, over lover and foeman
Wrestling we strive to expand in our souls, to be wide, to be happy. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
948:The senses are delusive. Even the highest man is sometimes dragged down by them to the lowest plane of sensuality. For this reason you must wage an incessant war against them. There is no other way. ~ Swami Ramakrishnananda,
949:The superior man lives in peace with all men with- out acting absolutely like them. The vulgar man acts absolutely like them without being in accord with them. ~ Confucius, the Eternal Wisdom
950:The vault of heaven
Is not a true similitude for man
Whose space outgyres thought's last horizon. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Meditations of Mandavya,
951:Man on whom the World-Unity shall seize,
Widening his soul-spark to an epiphany
Of the timeless vastness of Infinity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Electron,
952:We all have inner demons to fight. We call these demons 'fear', 'hatred' and 'anger'. If you don't conquer them, then a life of a hundred years... is a tragedy. If you do, a life of a single day can be a triumph.
   ~ Yip Man,
953:Barbarism is the state of society in which man is almost entirely preoccupied with his life and body, his economic and physical existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, Civilisation and Culture,
954:He who has conquered the desire of the present life and of the future life, who has vanquished all fear and broken all chain, he is indeed a man of religion. ~ Buddhist Text, the Eternal Wisdom
955:The harmony of the inner and outer man which is the true meaning of civilisation and the efficient condition of a true progress. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Renaissance in India, "Is India Civilised?" - I,
956:Whatever the brain may plan, the heart knows first and whoever can go beyond the brain to the heart, will hear the voice of the Eternal. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - II, The Glory of God in Man,
957:A man my fulfill the object of his existence by asking a question he cannot answer, and attempting a task he cannot achieve." ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, (1809-1894), poet, physician, and essayist, father of the judge, Wikipedia.,
958:Charity demands that a man should grieve for the offense committed against his friend, and that he should be anxious to make satisfaction to his friend ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (St 3.84.5ad2).,
959:For man alone of terrestrial creatures to live rightly involves the necessity of knowing rightly. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, Nature's Law in Our Progress - Unity in Diversity, Law and Liberty,
960:Man does not see God by his own powers; but God is seen by men when it pleases him that this should be so. He decides by whom he should be seen, and when, and how for God is powerful in all things. ~ Irenaeus, Against Heresies,
961:The One is attained when man arrives at ripeness in one of these three states of his spirit, "All is myself, All is thou," "Thou art the Master, I the servant." ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom
962:What we call sin,
    Is but man's leavings as from deep within
The Pilot guides him in his pilgrimage. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, In the Moonlight,
963:All she beheld that surges from man's depths,
The animal instincts prowling mid life's trees, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Nirvana and the Discovery of the All-Negating Absolute,
964:A man's mind runs after bad things. If he wants to act virtuously, the mind fails to co-operate. Therefore, if one wants to achieve something noble, he must be sincerely arduous and seized with a firm resolve. ~ Sri Sarada Devi,
965:A truly religious man ought to think that the other religions are also paths leading towards the Reality. We should always maintain an attitude of respect towards other religions. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
966:Holiness had to be brought to man by the humanity assumed by one who was God, so that God might overcome the tyrant by force and so deliver us and lead us back to himself through the mediation of his Son. ~ Gregory of Nazianzen,
967:If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar; for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen ? ~ John IV. 20, the Eternal Wisdom
968:It needs the eye of genius to dispense with the necessity of experience and see truth with a single intuitive glance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - I, The Man of the Past and the Man of the Future,
969:Look between the thoughts, rather than at the thoughts. When you happen to walk in a crowd, you do not fight every man you meet - you just find your way between. ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj,
970:The average man, who does not know what to do with his life, wants another, one which will last forever…" ~ Anatole France, (1844-1924), a French poet, journalist, and successful novelist with several best-sellers, Wikipedia.,
971:The will of self-giving forces away by its power the veil between God and man; it annuls every error and annihilates every obstacle. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, Works, Devotion and Knowledge,
972:Why does it take many people such a long time to realize Him? - MASTER: The truth is that a man doesn't feel restless for God unless he is finished with his enjoyments and duties. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
973:All sadhanas (spiritual practices) are methods to decrease the thoughts and to increase peace and thus slowly man can become God. Not only does one enjoy peace oneself but can give peace to others as well. ~ MATA AMRITANANDAMAYI,
974:An Angel can illuminate the thought and mind of man by strengthening the power of vision and by bringing within his reach some truth which the Angel himself contemplates. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas,
975:Faith in one's own Guru is necessary. If a man loves his Guru with his whole heart, obeys what the latter says, his mind being devoted to him, will naturally shun other attractions and thus get concentrated. ~ SWAMI SUBODHANANDA,
976:God and the human are paradigms of each other, and to the degree that God is humanized in a man because of his love for humanity, so does the human deify itself into God, empowered by love. ~ Maximus the Confessor, Amb. 10.1113b,
977:He is in truth the man of piety who is dead even in his lifetime, that is to say, whose passions and desires have been destroyed and are like a body that is dead. ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom
978:he man whose understanding is in union with the Spirit, casts from him both good doing and evil doing; get this union, it is the perfect skill in works. ~ Bhagavad Gita. II- 50, the Eternal Wisdom
979:...if a man can be properly said to love something, it must be clear that he feels affection for it as a whole, and does not love part of it to the exclusion of the rest. ~ Plato, The Republic and Other Works,
980:It is said that man is the only being that has a fourfold nature exactly corresponding in its levels to the cosmos. The angels lack the lower planes, and the animals lack the higher planes.
   ~ Dion Fortune, The Mystical Qabalah,
981:Man is right when he believes that in all the world there is not a single being above him, but he errs when he thinks that there is on earth a single man beneath him. ~ Tolstoy, the Eternal Wisdom
982:Mind is only a cloud that hides the sun of Truth. Man is, in fact, God playing the fool. When He chooses, He liberates himself." ~ Swami Ramdas, (188 -1963), an Indian saint, philosopher, philanthropist, pilgrim, Wikipedia. See:,
983:Remember your nothingness in the presence of the Great Spirit." ~ Black Elk, (1863 - 1950), Medicine man, holy man of the Oglala Lakota people, Wikipedia. Quote from: "The Spiritual Athlete: A Primer for the Inner Life,", (1992),
984:So we find the humility of the God-man praiseworthy in the extreme when He bore those abject things which He was called on to suffer for the salvation of men ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ScG 4.55).,
985:The collectivity is a mass, a field of formation; the individual is the diviner of truth, the form-maker, the creator. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Progress to Knowledge - God, Man and Nature,
986:The present is always invisible because it's environmental and saturates the whole field of attention so overwhelmingly; thus everyone but the artist, the man of integral awareness, is alive in an earlier day. ~ Marshall McLuhan,
987:The self is the master of the self, what other master of it canst thou have? The wise man who has made himself the master of himself, is a world-illumining beacon. ~ Udanavarga, the Eternal Wisdom
988:And the Lord Jehovah said, "Behold, the man is become as one of us...and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever ~ Genesis, the Eternal Wisdom
989:If the discontented man were plunged into the joys of heaven, disquietude would still gnaw at his heart, because precisely contentment is not within him. ~ Fo-sho-hing-tsan-king, the Eternal Wisdom
990:Immortality for imperfect man,
A god who hurts himself at every step,
Would be a cycle of eternal pain. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Gospel of Death and Vanity of the Ideal,
991:Some sadness is praiseworthy, as Augustine proves, namely when it flows from holy love, as, for instance, when a man is saddened over his own or others' sins ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 3.46.6).,
992:The man who knows the principles of right reason is less than the man who loves them and he less then the man who makes of them his delight and practices them ~ Confucius:Lun-yu, the Eternal Wisdom
993:There is an internal freedom permitted to every mental being called man to assent or not to assent to the Divine leading. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother with Letters on The Mother, Surrender to the Mother,
994:We should not make comparisons between the gods. When a man has really seen a divinity, he knows that all divinities are manifestations of one and the same Brahman. ~ Ramakishna, the Eternal Wisdom
995:In man a dim disturbing somewhat lives;
It knows but turns away from divine Light
Preferring the dark ignorance of the fall. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Growth of the Flame,
996:Man cannot teach by his own power. One cannot conquer ignorance without the power of God. He who teaches men gets his power from God. None but a man of renunciation can teach others. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
997:The love for all living creatures is the most notable attribute of man." ~ Charles Darwin, (1809 - 19 April 1882) English naturalist, geologist and biologist, best known for his contributions to the science of evolution, Wikipedia,
998:The will of man works in the ignorance by a partial light or more often flickerings of light which mislead as much as they illuminate. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Nature of the Supermind,
999:Whatever may be a householder's profession, it is necessary for him to live in the company of holy men now and then. If a man loves God, he will himself seek the company of holy men. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
1000:But the man who bringeth not by his own movement on living beings the pains of slavery and death and who desireth the good of all creatures, attaineth to happiness. ~ Laws of Manu, the Eternal Wisdom
1001:He [Francis Bacon] was a devoutly religious man and was convinced that he would rather believe all the fables of antiquity than deny that the vast fabric of creation is without a mind. ~ Manly P Hall, The Bible, the Story of a Book,
1002:However much their systems of philosophy and religion may differ, all mankind stand in reverence and awe before the man who is ready to sacrifice himself for others. ~ Swami Vivekananda, (C.W. I. 86),
1003:It is appropriate to human nature that a man after coitus remain together with a woman, and not desert her right away to have such relations with another woman ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ScG 3.122).,
1004:Man and cosmos exist by virtue of God and not in themselves except in so far as their being is one with the being of God. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Progress to Knowledge - God, Man and Nature,
1005:Man knows himself only insofar as he knows the world, becoming aware of it only within himself, and of himself only within it. Each new subject, well observed, opens up within us a new organ of thought. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,
1006:Some virtues direct the active life of man and deal with actions rather than passions: for example, truth, justice, libera-lity, magnificence, prudence, and art ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ScG 1.93).,
1007:Suddenly, the persecutors of the Church of Jesus Christ and all those given over to sin will perish and the earth will become desert-like. And then peace will be made, and man will be reconciled with God." ~ Our Lady of La Salette ,
1008:The Immanent lives in man as in his house;
He has made the universe his pastime's field,
A vast gymnasium of his works of might. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Secret Knowledge,
1009:They are caught by the Wheel that they had hoped to break,
On their shoulders they must bear man's load of fate. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain,
1010:A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion." ~ Francis Bacon, (1561-1626), an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, orator, and author, Wikipedia.,
1011:Atom and molecule in their unseen plan
Buttress an edifice of strange onenesses,
Crystal and plant, insect and beast and man, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Electron,
1012:By virtue alone man cannot attain to the highest, but by virtue he can develop a first capacity for attaining to it, adhikāra. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Synthesis of Devotion and Knowledge,
1013:If every man dared speak frankly and highly what he thinks, he would abide always in the reality. How unhappy we make ourselves by striving to hide our nature. ~ Antoine the Healer, the Eternal Wisdom
1014:Only of one thing
Man can be sure, the will in his heart and his strength in his purpose:
This too is Fate and this too the gods ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
1015:So long as a man has a little knowledge, he goes everywhere reading and preaching; but when the perfect knowledge has been attained, one ceases from vain ostentation. ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom
1016:The individual self and the universal self are one; in every world, in every being, in each thing, in every atom is the Divine Presence, and man's mission is to manifest it.
   ~ The Mother, Words Of Long Ago,
1017:This is our present Festival; it is this which we are celebrating today, the Coming of God to Man, that we might go forth, or rather (for this is the more proper expression) that we might go back to God. ~ Saint Gregory of Nazianzen,
1018:Under the pressure of his own need, man can change. He can wipe out the past if he wants to badly enough; but most persons not only do not want to, but do not realize that they can. ~ Manly P Hall, (The Sins of the Father 1967, p.8),
1019:When you raise yourself beyond praise and blame and your will, the will of a man who loves, intends to be master of all things, then for you is the beginning of virtue. ~ Nietzsche, the Eternal Wisdom
1020:God is the universal cause of the enlightening of souls, according to Jn. 1:9: "That was the true light which enlightens every man that cometh into this world" ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 1-2.79.3).,
1021:I must die. Must I then die lamenting? I must be put in chains. Must I then also lament? I must go into exile. Does any man then hinder me from going with smiles and cheerfulness and contentment?
   ~ Epictetus,
1022:In the man who keeps no watch over his conduct, desire extends itself like a creeper. It wanders hither and thither like the monkey running in the forest after a fruit. ~ Dhammapada, the Eternal Wisdom
1023:It is said the warrior's is the twofold Way of pen and sword, and he should have a taste for both Ways. Even if a man has no natural ability he can be a warrior by sticking assiduously to both divisions of the Way. ~ Miyamoto Musashi,
1024:Attentive in the midst of the heedless, awake amidst sleepers, the intelligent man walks on leaving the others as far behind him as a courser distances beasts of burden. ~ Dhammapada, the Eternal Wisdom
1025:Do not try. Just Be. One man cannot be like another, because all are beautifully different. You can only 'try' to do spontaneously what you deem to be good, using intuition to decide." ~ Sunyata, a Danish mystic. http://bit.ly/2MabD8D,
1026:Every man's true teacher is his own Higher Self, and when the life is brought under the control of reason, this Higher Self is released from bondage to appetites and impulses, and becomes Priest, Sage and Illuminator.
   ~ Manly P Hall,
1027:It is quite natural that man forgets God. Therefore whenever the need arises, God Himself incarnates on earth and shows the path by Himself practicing Sadhana. This time He has also shown the example of renunciation. ~ Sri Sarada Devi,
1028:Nothing is equal to prayer; for what is impossible it makes possible, what is difficult, easy.... For it is impossible, utterly impossible, for the man who prays eagerly and invokes God ceaselessly ever to sin. ~ Saint John Chrysostom,
1029:Seek the answer in God's grace, not in doctrine; in the longing of the will, not in the understanding; in the sighs of prayer, not in research; seek the bridegroom not the teacher; God and not man; darkness not daylight. ~ Bonaventure,
1030:If a man knows himself, he shall know God." ~ Clement of Alexandria, (c. 150 - c. 215), Christian theologian. A convert to Christianity, he was an educated man who was familiar with classical Greek philosophy and literature, Wikipedia.,
1031:If you love your Bridegroom, you must observe His death, must picture in your mind His humility, and must press solidly to your intellect as on a coin the virtues which He bore in the flesh after the manner of man. ~ Leander of Seville,
1032:Man is there to affirm himself in the universe, that is his first business, but also to evolve and finally to exceed himself. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Progress to Knowledge - God, Man and Nature,
1033:On his mind vacillating, mobile, difficult to hold in, difficult to master the intelligent man should impose the same straightness as an arrow-maker gives to an arrow. ~ Dhammapada-33, the Eternal Wisdom
1034:Suffocated by the shallowness of the human nature we aspire to the knowledge that truly knows, the power that truly can, the love that truly loves.
   ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, "The Divine" and "Man",
1035:There is nothing on earth more important than the love which conscious beings feel towards each other, whether or not it is every expressed." ~ Thaddeus Golas, (1924 - 1997) "The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment, ", (2010), Wikipedia.,
1036:Language is different but man is the same everywhere. That is why spoken Reason is one, and through its translation we see it to be the same in Egypt, in Persia and in Greece. ~ Hermes, the Eternal Wisdom
1037:That man is a true man whose mind dwells on God. He alone is a man whose spiritual consciousness has been awakened and who is firmly convinced that God alone is real and all else illusory. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
1038:The superior man does not set his mind either for or against anything." ~ Confucius, (551-479) a Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher of the Spring and Autumn period of Chinese history, Wikipedia.,
1039:The woman was not formed from the feet of the man as a servant, nor from the head as lording it over her husband, but from the side as a companion, as it says in Genesis ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (2:21).,
1040:A man who cannot comm and himself, should obey. But there are too those who know how to comm and themselves, but yet are very far from knowing how also to obey. ~ Nietzsche, Zarathustra, the Eternal Wisdom
1041:As the perfect man speaks so he acts; as he acts, so the perfect man speaks. It is because he speaks as he acts and acts as he speaks that he is called the perfect. ~ Buddhist Scripture, the Eternal Wisdom
1042:He who is only an athlete is too crude, too vulgar, too much a savage. He who is a scholar only is too soft, to effeminate. The ideal citizen is the scholar athlete, the man of thought and the man of action.
   ~ Plato,
1043:It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after your own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. ~ Bertrand Russell,
1044:Man cannot seize or hold at once all that the illumination brings to him; it has to be repeated constantly so that he may grow in the light. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Secret of the Veda, The Ashwins, Lords of Bliss,
1045:Man is a hero so long as he struggles. But to conquer one's passions is no joke. Man can only do it by finding something that gives him greater pleasure. Man must give up everything to God, then alone he thrives. ~ Swami Ramakrishnananda,
1046:Since nothing can be expected to rise again, unless it has first been prostrated. It is only the man who is ignorant of the fact that the flesh falls by death, that can fail to discover that it stands erect by means of life. ~ Tertullian,
1047:Taking pity on mankind's weakness, and moved by our corruption, he could not stand aside and see death have the mastery over us; he did not want creation to perish and his Father's work in fashioning man to be in vain. ~ Saint Athanasius,
1048:The crown of conscious Immortality,
The godhead promised to our struggling souls
When first man's heart dared death and suffered life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Secret Knowledge,
1049:Though man is infinitely greater than the plant or the animal, he is not perfect in his own nature like the plant and the animal. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Necessity of the Spiritual Transformation,
1050:Too hard the gods are with man's fragile race;
In their large heavens they dwell exempt from Fate
And they forget the wounded feet of man. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Word of Fate,
1051:An adversary Force was born of old:
Invader of the life of mortal man,
It hides from him the straight immortal path. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain,
1052:For such a man, one who neglects no effort to set himself from now in the ranks of the best, is a priest, a minister of the gods, a friend of Him who dwells within him. ~ Marcus Aurelius, the Eternal Wisdom
1053:He is the wise man who, having once taken up his resolve, acts and does not cease from the labour, who does not lose uselessly his days and who knows how to govern himself. ~ Mahabharata, the Eternal Wisdom
1054:If a man loves, he will know the sound of this voice. For this warm affection of soul is a loud voice crying in the ears of God, and it says: My God, my love, You are all mine and I am all Yours. ~ Thomas A Kempis, The Imitation of Christ,
1055:If you make much of mind you make much of doubt. People are skeptics. Why? Because they make much of this little mind. But the mind never directs man properly. Go beyond the mind and you will go beyond all doubts. ~ Swami Ramakrishnananda,
1056:Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature made them. ~ Bertrand Russell,
1057:Therefore neither you, O judges, nor men in general ought to fear death: they have only to remember one thing, that for a just man there is no ill in life and no ill in death. ~ Socrates, the Eternal Wisdom
1058:You must be genuine if you want to advance in spiritual life. You may cheat a man for some time, but you cannot cheat God. Nor can you deceive the world for long. Your face, your tone, your manner will betray you. ~ Swami Ramakrishnananda,
1059:A branch detached from the contiguous branch must needs be detached from the whole tree: even so man separated even from a single man is detached from the whole society. ~ Marcus Aurelius, the Eternal Wisdom
1060:A lonely soul passions for the Alone,
The heart that loved man thrills to the love of God,
A body is his chamber and his shrine. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Debate of Love and Death,
1061:A man cannot see God unless he gives his whole mind to Him. The mind is wasted on 'lust and greed'. As long as there is bhoga, there will be less of yoga. Furthermore, bhoga begets suffering. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
1062:If we make every effort to avoid death of the body, still more should it be our endeavor to avoid death of the soul. There is no obstacle for a man who wants to be saved other than negligence and laziness of soul. ~ Saint Anthony the Great,
1063:I guide man to the path of the Divine
And guard him from the red Wolf and the Snake. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,
1064:It is only by hundreds or thousands, perhaps even millions of human lives that man can grow into his divine self-existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Renaissance in India, A Rationalistic Critic on Indian Culture - V,
1065:That which brings well-being to man is Dharma. Dharma supports this world. The people are upheld by Dharma. That which secures preservation of beings is Dharma. Dharma leads to eternal happiness and immortality. ~ Swami Sivananda Saraswati,
1066:The captain had answered the man of God, "If the Lord himself should make windows in heaven, could such a thing be?" And he had said, "You shall see it with your own eyes, but you shall not eat of it." ~ Anonymous, The Bible, 2 Kings, 7:19,
1067:There is nothing to prevent a man, who cannot grasp a proof, accepting as a matter of faith, what in itself is capable of being scientifically known and demonstrated ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 1.2.2ad1).,
1068:The superior man perseveres in the middle path. Even though he remains unknown and the world esteems him not, he feels no regret. The sage alone is capable of such an action. ~ Tsang-Yung, the Eternal Wisdom
1069:Wisdom is greater than all terrestrial sciences and than all human knowledge. She renders a man indifferent to the joys of the world and permits him to consider with an impassive heart their precipitous and tumultous course. ~ Fa.khen-pi.u,
1070:At the time of Japa and meditation, we meditate on the Lord keeping our mind concentrated on Him, in the same way, if we learn to see the same Lord in every man, then we shall not forget God even in the midst of work. ~ SWAMI VIRESWARANANDA,
1071:Awake, mankind! For your sake God has become man. Awake, you who sleep, rise up from the dead, and Christ will enlighten you. I tell you again: for your sake, God became man. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,
1072:Be like a solid tower whose brave height remains unmoved by all the winds that blow; the man who lets his thoughts be turned aside by one thing or another, will lose sight of his true goal, his mind sapped of its strength. ~ Dante Alighieri,
1073:Free from the happiness desired by slaves, delivered from the gods and their adoration, fearless and terrible, grand and solitary is the will of the man of truth. ~ Nietzsche, Zarathoustra, the Eternal Wisdom
1074:It would be very surprising if a church constructed by the hands of man should be full of symbols while the universe would not be infinitely full of them. They must be read. ~ Simone Weil, 'The First Condition for the Work of a Free Person',
1075:Let men blame him or praise, let fortune enter his house or go forth from it, let death come to him today or late, the man of firm mind never deviates from the straight path. ~ Bhartrihari, the Eternal Wisdom
1076:No real peace can be till the heart of man deserves peace; the law of Vishnu cannot prevail till the debt to Rudra is paid. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Vision of the World-Spirit - Time the Destroyer,
1077:Things will come to a head, but when man's hand can do nothing and everything seems to be lost, God Himself will intervene and rearrange the world in the blink of an eye, like from morning to night." ~ Ven. Bernardo Maria Clausi (1787-1849),
1078:Think of the life you have lived until now as over and, as a dead man, see what's left as a bonus and live it according to Nature. Love the hand that fate deals you and play it as your own, for what could be more fitting?" ~ Marcus Aurelius,
1079:When by a constant practice a man is capable of effecting mental concentration, then wherever he may be, his mind will always lift itself above his surroundings and will repose in the Eternal. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
1080:Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others.~ Fyodor Dostoevsky,
1081:Man becomes God, and all human activity reaches its highest and noblest when it succeeds in bringing body, heart and mind into touch with spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Early Cultural Writings, The National Value of Art,
1082:Man! renounce all that thou mayst be happy, that thou mayst be free, that thou mayst have thy soul large and great. Carry high thy head,...and thou art delivered from servitude. ~ Epictetus, the Eternal Wisdom
1083:Not on the tramp of the multitudes, not on the cry of the legions
Founds the strong man his strength but the god that he carries within him. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
1084:On the safe land
To linger is to lose what God has planned
    For man's wide soul,
Who set eternal godhead for its goal. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, To the Sea,
1085:The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them. ~ Thomas merton. "No man is an island",
1086:You cannot fathom a wise man's depth until you question or debate him. Until you beat a drum, What distinguishes it from other objects." ~ Sakya Pandita Kunga Gyeltsen, (1182-1251), a Tibetan spiritual leader and Buddhist scholar, Wikipedia.,
1087:Gods change not their strength, but are of old
And as of old, and man, though less than these,
May yet proceed to greater, self-evolved. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Urvasie,
1088:God was manifested to man by birth. On the one hand Being, and eternally Being, of the Eternal Being, above cause and word, for there was no word before The Word; and on the other hand for our sakes also Becoming. ~ Saint Gregory of Nazianzen,
1089:It is always the individual who receives the intuitions of Nature and takes the step forward dragging or drawing the rest of humanity behind him. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Evolution of the Spiritual Man,
1090:It is always well for a man to get experience for himself, when he will not take the benefit of superior experience. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Autobiographical Notes and Other Writings of Historical Interest, To Motilal Roy,
1091:Man finds happiness only in serving his neighbour. And he finds it there because, rendering service to his neighbours, he is in communion with the divine spirit that lives in them. ~ Tolstoi, the Eternal Wisdom
1092:The devil is said to rejoice most over the sin of lust because it involves the greatest attachment and it is only with difficulty that a man can be torn away from it ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 1-2.73.5ad2).,
1093:The natural man has to evolve himself into the divine Man; the sons of Death have to know themselves as the children of Immortality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Progress to Knowledge - God, Man and Nature,
1094:There is only one physician—of flesh yet spiritual, born yet uncreated God become man, true life in death, sprung from both Mary and from God first subject to suffering and then incapable of it—Jesus Christ our Lord. ~ Ignatius of Antioch,
1095:The ultimate felicity of man lies in speculation. So it clearly does not lie in the act of any moral virtue, nor of prudence or craft, though these are intellectual virtues ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ScG 3.44),
1096:Things will disappear [or appear] only as man changes in consciousness. Deny it if you will, it still remains a fact that consciousness is the only reality and things but mirror that which you are in consciousness." ~ Neville Goddard. Mystic.,
1097:Three things are necessary for the salvation of man: to know what he ought to believe; to know what he ought to desire; and to know what he ought to do. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, Two Precepts of Charity (1273),
1098:Beyond the earth, but meant for delivered earth,
Wisdom and joy prepare their perfect crown;
Truth superhuman calls to thinking man. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Debate of Love and Death,
1099:Just as the principal intention of human law is to create friendship of one man to another; so the chief intention of Divine law is to establish friendship of man to God ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 1-2.99.2).,
1100:Nothing profits the world as much as the abandoning of profits. A man who no longer thinks in terms of loss and gain is truly the non-violent man, for he is beyond all conflict. ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj,
1101:Occultism is the ancient science which deals with the hidden forces of nature, the laws governing them, and the means by which such forces can be brought under the control of the enlightened human mind. ~ Manly P Hall, Spiritual Centers in Man,
1102:The cause moving to the Incarnation of the Word could be none other than the unmeasured love of God for man whose nature He wished to couple with Himself in unity of person ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ScG 4.46).,
1103:This grey hour was born
For the ascetic in his silent cave
And for the dying man whose heart released
Loosens its vibrant strings. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Chitrangada,
1104:Whoever thinks himself an imperfect and worldly soul, is really an imperfect and worldly soul; whoever deems himself divine, becomes divine. What a man thinks he is, he becomes. ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom
1105:All would change if man could once consent to be spiritualised; but his nature mental and vital and physical is rebellious to the higher law. He loves his imperfections. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays In Philosophy And Yoga,
1106:And now I have to confess the unpardonable and the scandalous. I am a happy man. And I am going to tell you the secret of my happiness. It is quite simple. I love mankind. I love love. I hate hate. I try to understand and accept. ~ Jean Cocteau,
1107:God sports in the world as man. He incarnates Himself as man -- as in the case of Krishna, Rama, and Chaitanya. One needs spiritual practice in order to know God and recognize Divine Incarnations. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
1108:If a thing is difficult for thee, imagine not therefore! that it is impossible to man; but if a thing is possible and proper to man, think that it is accessible to thee also. ~ Marcus Aurelius, the Eternal Wisdom
1109:Man, by experience of passion purged,
His myriad faculty perfecting, widens
His nature as it rises till it grows
With God conterminous. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Urvasie,
1110:The action of our intellect is primarily the function of understanding, but secondarily critical and finally organising, controlling and formative. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Evolution of the Spiritual Man,
1111:There is no culture, no civilisation ancient or modern which in its system has been entirely satisfactory to the need of perfection in man. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Renaissance in India, Indian Spirituality and Life - IV,
1112:When the thought of a man is without attachment, when he has conquered himself and is rid of desire, by that renunciation he reaches a supreme perfection of quietude. ~ Bhagavad Gita XVIII. 49, the Eternal Wisdom
1113:A truly religious man ought to think that the other religions are also paths leading towards the Reality. We should always maintain an attitude of respect towards other religions. ~ Ramakrishss, the Eternal Wisdom
1114:such as I am, belong not to myself. ..A man should think thus, "All earth is mine," or thus, "All this belongs to others just as well as to myself;" such a man is never afflicted. ~ Mahabharata, the Eternal Wisdom
1115:The UNDERSTANDING of principles results from man's very nature, which is equally shared by all: whereas FAITH results from the gift of grace, which is not equally in all ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 2-2.5.4ad3).,
1116:This hidden foe lodged in the human breast
Man must overcome or miss his higher fate.
This is the inner war without escape. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain,
1117:Always man's Fate hangs poised on the flitting breath of a moment;
Called by some word, by some gesture it leaps, then 'tis graven, 'tis granite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
1118:A man needs a supernatural light in order to penetrate further, so that he might have cognition of certain things that he is unable to have cognition of by the natural light ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 2-2.8.1).,
1119:A man's face shines out more than the rest of his body and it is by the face that we perceive strangers and recognise our friends. How much more, then, is the face of God able to bring illumination to whoever he looks at! ~ Saint Ambrose of Milan,
1120:I beg you to understand this one fact - no good comes out of the man who day and night thinks he is nobody. If a man, day and night, thinks he is miserable, low, and nothing, nothing he becomes. ~ Swami Vivekananda,
1121:... prophecy is, in truth and reality, an emanation sent forth by Divine Being through the medium of the Active Intellect, in the first instance to man's rational faculty, and then to his imaginative faculty. ~ Maimonides,
1122:The animal is satisfied with a modicum of necessity; the gods are content with their splendours. But man cannot rest permanently until he reaches some highest good. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Man in the Universe,
1123:There is only one physician — of flesh yet spiritual, born yet uncreated God become man, true life in death, sprung from both Mary and from God first subject to suffering and then incapable of it — Jesus Christ our Lord. ~ Ignatius of Antioch,
1124:Who can map out the various forces at play in one soul? Man is a great depth, O Lord. The hairs of his head are easier by far to count than his feeling, the movements of his heart. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,
1125:If a man is to be healed of sin his mind must necessarily cleave not only to God, but also to the mediator of God and men, Jesus Christ, in whom rests the remission of all sins ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ScG 4.72).,
1126:God dwells in the nothing-at-all that 'was' prior to nothing, in the hidden Godhead of pure gnosis where of no man durst speak." ~ Meister Eckhart, (c. 1260 - c. 1328), German theologian and philosopher, Wikipedia.,
1127:It is well known that when a man repents the errors of his ways, he is likely to develop an overdose of virtue that will lead to extremes and incline him to become fanatical in his living and thinking. ~ Manly P Hall, (Journey in Truth, 1945 p.153),
1128:I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naïve or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman. ~ Anaïs Nin,
1129:Sin exalted
Seizes secure on the thrones of the world for her glorious portion,
Down to the bottomless pit the good man is thrust in his virtue. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
1130:The good man, though a slave, is free; the wicked, though he reigns, is a slave, and not the slave of a single man, but- what is worse - the slave of as many masters as he has vices. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,
1131:We image your divinity, but you image our humanity in that union of the two which you have worked in a man. You have veiled the Godhead in a cloud, in the clay of our humanity. Only your love could so dignify the flesh of Adam. ~ Catherine of Siena,
1132:When man has known beyond this world the Being who is hidden according to the form in every creature, the Lord who contains in himself all things, then he becomes immortal. ~ wetaswatara Upanishad, the Eternal Wisdom
1133:Whoever wishes to be truly a man, must abandon all preoccupation by the wish to please the world. There is nothing more sacred or more fecund than the curiosity of an independent spirit. ~ Emerson, the Eternal Wisdom
1134:And all man's ghastly company of fears
Are born of folly that believes this span
Of brittle life can limit immortal man. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, To Weep because a Glorious Sun,
1135:Even in all that life and man have marred,
A whisper of divinity still is heard,
A breath is felt from the eternal spheres. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Gospel of Death and Vanity of the Ideal,
1136:Longing is the means of realizing Ātman. A man must strive to attain God with all his body, with all his mind, and with all his speech. By thinking day and night of God one acquires the nature of God. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
1137:The present difficulty is that man thinks he is the doer. But it is a mistake. It is the higher power which does everything and man is only a tool. If he accepts that position he is free from troubles, otherwise he courts them. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,
1138:The two phases of this distinction in life are—first, that the man who knows the real Self, will not be affected by anything; secondly, that that man alone can do good to the world. ~ Swami Vivekananda, (CW. V. 285),
1139:We are the children of the Almighty, we are sparks of the infinite, divine fire. How can we be nothings? We are everything, ready to do everything, we can do everything, and man must do everything. ~ Swami Vivekananda,
1140:A religious man is a person who holds God and man in one thought at one time, at all times, who suffers harm done to others, whose greatest passion is compassion, whose greatest strength is love and defiance of despair. ~ Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel,
1141:God shall grow up while the wise men talk and sleep;
For man shall not know the coming till its hour
And belief shall be not till the work is done. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Secret Knowledge,
1142:I keep men's own ideals intact. But this also I say to them 'Never feel that your path alone is right and that the paths of others a wrong and full of errors. A man can realize God by following his own path if his prayer is sincere. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
1143:It is not the eating of meat that makes a man impure; it is to be hard, calumnious, disloyal, without compassion, proud, avaricious, giving no part of one's possessions to another. ~ Amaghanda Susta, the Eternal Wisdom
1144:No man is fit to enjoy heaven unless he has resigned himself to suffer hardship for Christ. (Nothing is more acceptable to God, nothing more helpful for you on this earth than to suffer willingly for Christ. ~ Thomas A Kempis, The Imitation of Christ,
1145:O young man, go out with your heart, stripped naked of all of your possessions, and be secluded from the whole of you so that you will be compensated for all of that.. ~ Shaykh Abdul Qadir Jilani, @Sufi_Path
1146:That man, O beloved, who knows this imperishable Spirit, in which the Self is gathered with all its powers, lives and creatures, penetrates into all things and becomes omniscient. ~ Prasna Upanishad, the Eternal Wisdom
1147:The nature of the Spirit is a spacious inner freedom and a large unity into which each man must be allowed to grow according to his own nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Advent and Progress of the Spiritual Age,
1148:Vice is contrary to man's nature, in as much as he is a rational animal: and when a thing acts contrary to its nature, that which is natural to it is corrupted little by little ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 2-2.34.5).,
1149:If a man sin after receiving the grace of the New Testament, he deserves greater punishment, as being ungrateful for greater benefits, and as not using the help given to him ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 1-2.106.2ad2).,
1150:Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. He that soweth to his flesh, shall reap corruption: but he that soweth to the Spirit, shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. ~ Galatians VI. 7. 8, the Eternal Wisdom
1151:What wonder if feel no burden when borne up by the Almighty and led on by the Supreme Guide! For we are always glad to have something to comfort us, and only with difficulty does a man divest himself of self. ~ Thomas A Kempis, The Imitation of Christ,
1152:I pronounced a great day, not wherein any temporal potentate should minister, but wherein the Terrible Judge should reveal all men's consciences and try every man of each kind of religion. This is the day of change." ~ Saint Edmund Campion, (1540-1581),
1153:MY CHILD, hear My words, words of greatest sweetness surpassing all the knowledge of the philosophers and wise men of earth. My words are spirit and life, and they are not to be weighed by man's understanding. ~ Thomas A Kempis, The Imitation of Christ,
1154:Now, Macarius, true lover of Christ, we must take a step further in the faith of our holy religion, and consider the Word's becoming Man and His divine Appearing in our midst. That mystery the Jews traduce, the Greeks deride, but we adore. ~ Athanasius,
1155:That being known which is without sound, touch or form, inexhaustible, eternal, without beginning or end, greater than the great self, immutable, man escapes from the month of death. ~ Katha Upanishad, the Eternal Wisdom
1156:The anvil of the blacksmith remains unshaken under numberless blows of the hammer; so should a man endure with unshaken patience all the ordeals and persecutions which may come upon him. ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom
1157:The Son of God born as the Son of man
Has drunk the bitter cup, owned Godhead's debt,
The debt the Eternal owes to the fallen kind ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain,
1158:They tell us that suicide is the greatest piece of cowardice... that suicide is wrong; when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in the world to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person.
   ~ Arthur Schopenhauer,
1159:Vain, they have said, is the anguish of man and his labour diurnal,
Vainly his caravans cross through the desert of Time to the Eternal. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Vain, they have Said,
1160:As soon as there is a little light in the sky early in the morning, we can understand that the sun is in the sky. Similarly, since there is some consciousness in all bodies-whether man or animal-we can understand the presence of the soul. ~ Bhagwad Gita,
1161:His will be done! He is omnipotent! What power has man? All that you can do is to love God. Have intense yearning for Him. The whole world is mad for something; why run mad after fleeting objects of this world? Better be mad for God. ~ SWAMI BRAHMANANDA,
1162:Nature moves forward always in the midst of all stumblings and secures her aims in the end more often in spite of man's imperfect mentality than by its means. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Inadequacy of the State Idea,
1163:Pythagoras said that the universal Creator had formed two things in His own image: The first was the cosmic system with its myriads of suns, moons, and planets; the second was man, in whose nature the entire universe existed in miniature. ~ Manly P Hall,
1164:The mind of mortal man is led by words,
His sight retires behind the walls of Thought
And looks out only through half-opened doors. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain,
1165:The Prince, travelling through his domains, noticed a man in the cheering crowd who bore a striking resemblance to himself. He beckoned him over and asked: Was your mother ever employed in my palace? ... No, Sire, the man replied. But my father was. ~ ?,
1166:Both states of consciousness, sleep and the waking state, are equally subjective. Only by beginning to remember himself does a man really awaken. And then all surrounding life acquires for him a different aspect and a different meaning. ~ Peter Ouspensky,
1167:He who watches over his body, his speech, his whole self, who is full of serenity and joy, possesses a spirit unified and finds satisfaction in solitude, he is in-deed a man of religion. ~ Buddhist Text, the Eternal Wisdom
1168:In this life no one can fulfill his longing, nor can any creature satisfy man's desire. Only God satisfies, he infinitely exceeds all other pleasures. That is why man can rest in nothing but God." ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas,
1169:Lord Naoshige said, The Way of the Samurai is in desperateness. Ten men or more cannot kill such a man. Common sense will not accomplish such things. Simply become insane and desperate.
   ~ HAGAKURE: THE BOOK OF THE SAMURAI, YAMAMOTO TSUNETOMO, 1650 1720,
1170:The present difficulty is that man thinks that he is the doer. But it is a mistake. It is the Higher Power which does everything and man is only a tool. If he accepts that position he is free from troubles; otherwise he courts them. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,
1171:There is only one sin and it is: weakness. When I was a boy, I read Milton's Paradise Lost. The only good man I had any respect for was Satan. The only saint is that person who never weakens, faces everything, and determines die game. ~ Swami Vivekananda,
1172:Without faith, our calendar is simply a way by which the revolutions of the earth around itself and around the sun are measured… In faith, time is measured…by the acts of God, whose heart is, in all his activity, turned toward man. ~ Joseph Ratzinger,
1173:For God appears the greater to every man in proportion as he has grasped a larger survey of the creatures: and when his heart is lifted up by that larger survey, he gains withal a greater conception of God. ~ Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures IX.2,
1174:If human will could be made one with God's,
If human thought could echo the thoughts of God,
Man might be all-knowing and omnipotent; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain,
1175:Let your heart burn away with yearning for God! Feel that life is not worth living without Him! Then He will reveal Himself! As the poor man longs for wealth, as the lustful man longs for a woman, so must the devotee long for the Lord. ~ Swami Turiyananda,
1176:The beasts are mortal, but they do not know or fully understand that fact; the gods are immortal, and they know it - but poor man, up from beasts and not yet a god, was that unhappy mixture: he was mortal, and he knew it. ~ Ken Wilber, Up From Eden, p. x.,
1177:If one hears an ill word from one's neighbor, and, though he could reply in kind, yet fights in his heart to endure the toil and forces himself not to reply ill so as to sadden the other, such a man lays down his life for his friend. ~ Paschasius of Dumium,
1178:Man is a dynamo for the cosmic work;
Nature does most in him, God the high rest:
Only his soul's acceptance is his own. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Nirvana and the Discovery of the All-Negating Absolute,
1179:Mysticism-Magic and Yoga-is the means, therefore, to a new universal life, richer, greater and more full of resource than ever before, as free as sunlight, as gracious as the unfolding of a rose. It is for man to take.
   ~ Israel Regardie, The Tree Of Life,
1180:Great figures of gods
Conscious in stone and living without breath,
Watching with fixed regard the soul of man,
Executive figures of the cosmic self ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Finding of the Soul,
1181:If a man is detested by the crowd, you must examine, before you judge him, why they condemn, and if a man is venerated by the crowd, equally must you, before you judge, examine why they admire. ~ Confucius, the Eternal Wisdom
1182:There are a thousand things which prevent a man from awakening, which keep him in the power of his dreams. In order to act consciously with the intention of awakening, it is necessary to know the nature of the forces which keep man in a state of sleep. ~ GG,
1183:This is the highest, all-embracing benefit that Christ has bestowed on us. This is the revelation of the mystery, this is the emptying out of the divine nature, the union of God and man, and the deification of the manhood that was assumed. ~ Andrew of Crete,
1184:Every action a man performs in thought, word and act, remains his veritable possession. It follows him and does not leave him even as a shadow separates not by a line from him who casts it. ~ Buddhist Texts, the Eternal Wisdom
1185:If a man possesses the true light, darkness cannot lodge in his soul. Who can describe the peace of that luminous country where the true light shines out for ever in its limpid purity? ~ Imitation of Christ, the Eternal Wisdom
1186:Never give a sword to a man who can't dance." ~ Confucius, (551-479), Chinese philosopher and politician. Emphasized personal and governmental morality, correctness of social relationships, justice, kindness, and sincerity, Wikipedia.,
1187:Prayer is the light of the spirit, true knowledge of God, mediating between God and man.... I speak of prayer, not words. It is the longing for God, love too deep for words, a gift not given by man but by God's grace. ~ Saint John Chrysostom [PG 64, 462-466],
1188:The self is the master of the self, what other master of it canst thou have? The wise man who has made himself the master of himself, has broken his chains, he has rent the ties of his bondage. ~ Udanavarga, the Eternal Wisdom
1189:Well is the unconscious rule for the animal breeds
Content to live beneath the immutable yoke;
Man turns to a nobler walk, a master path. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real,
1190:When by a constant practice a man is capable of effecting mental concentration, then wherever he may be, his mind will always lift itself above his surroundings and will repose in the Eternal. ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom
1191:All knowledge and endeavour can reach its fruition only if it is turned into experience and has become a part of the consciousness and its established operations. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Evolution of the Spiritual Man,
1192:It is appropriate to human nature that a man after coitus remain together with a woman, and not ditch her right away to have such relations with another woman, as happens with fornicators ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ScG 3.122).,
1193:Man's concept of his world built on experience of the five senses is no longer adequate and in many cases no longer valid." ~ Shafica Karagulla, (1914 - ca. 1986), Turkish born Medical doctor and psychiatrist who took a special interest in psychic perception.,
1194:Man's nature is like a cup of dirty water—the water has to be thrown out, the cup left clean and empty for the divine liquor to be poured into it. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - III, Emptiness, Voidness, Blankness and Silence,
1195:Man worships the ungrasped. His vagrant thought
Still busy with the illimitable void
Lives all the time by little things upbuoyed
Which he contemns ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Euphrosyne,
1196:I have laboured and suffered in Matter's night
To bring the fire to man;
But the hate of hell and human spite
Are my meed since the world began. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, A God's Labour,
1197:It is the Blessed One, the sole Being, thou sayest, who dwells in every soul: whence then come the misery and sorrow to which he is condemned by his presence in the heart of the soul of man? ~ Bhagavat Purana, the Eternal Wisdom
1198:Man is obliged by a Power within him to be the labourer of a more or less conscious self-evolution that shall lead him to self-mastery and self-knowledge. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supramental Thought and Knowledge,
1199:Matrimony as a sacrament of the Church is a union of one man to one woman to be held indivisibly, and this is included in the faithfulness by which the man and wife are bound to one another ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ScG 4.78).,
1200:The magnetic needle always points to the north, and hence it is that sailing vessel does not lose her direction. So long as the heart of man is directed towards God, he cannot be lost in the ocean of worldliness. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
1201:The man who is sincere and careful to do nothing to others that he would not have done to him, is not far from the Law. What he does not desire to be done to him, let him not himself do to others. ~ Confucius, the Eternal Wisdom
1202:To discover the spiritual being in himself is the main business of the spiritual man and to help others towards the same evolution is his real service to the race. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Evolution of the Spiritual Man,
1203:What is the reason for creating everything unless it is for the Son of Man? We must religiously confess and reverently admit that it is for this Son of Man crowned with glory and honour that God created all things. ~ Rupert of Deutz, Commentary on Matthew 1.13,
1204:When a man is intoxicated with ecstatic love of God, then who is his father or mother or wife? His love of God is so intense that he becomes mad with it. Then he has no duty to perform. He is free from all debts. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
1205:Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you." ~ Carl Jung, (1875 - 1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology, influential in the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, philosophy, and religious studies,
1206:The opinion of the Supreme Lord alone has importance. The Supreme Lord alone deserves all our love and He returns it to us a hundredfold.
   ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, Man's relationship with the Divine, The Divine Is with You,
1207:To think that this world is the aim and end of life is brutal and degenerating. Any man who starts in life with that idea degenerates himself He will never rise higher, he will always be a slave to the senses. ~ Swami Vivekananda,
1208:And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history-money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery-the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.
   ~ C S Lewis,
1209:Christ does not want you to have hatred—or grief, or wrath, or grudge-bearing—toward a man, in any way whatsoever or because of any sort of temporal reality. All four gospels cry aloud this very thing. ~ Saint Maximus the Confessor, Centuries on Charity 4.84,
1210:If you want to be great, give up hatred. Then God's grace will descend on you. No one can become great unless God makes one great. A hateful man can never make progress. If you want to rise high up, renounce hatred. Perform good works alone. ~ Swami Adbhutananda,
1211:On the vacillating, the mobile mind so difficult to hold in, so difficult to master the man of intelligence imposes a rectitude like the direct straightness which the arrow-maker gives to an arrow. ~ Dhammapada, the Eternal Wisdom
1212:We feel in our conscience that that by which we live, that which we call our true " I " is the same not only in each man but also in a dog, a horse, a mouse, a fowl, a sparrow, a bee and even a plant. ~ Tolstoi, the Eternal Wisdom
1213:When a thought of anger or cruelty or a bad and unwholesome inclination awakes in a man, let him immediately throw it from him. let him dispel it, destroy it, prevent it from staying with him. ~ Buddhist Maxims, the Eternal Wisdom
1214:One should know a little of everything. If a man starts a grocery-shop, he keeps all kinds of articles there, including a little lentil and tamarind. An expert musician knows how to play a little on all instruments. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
1215:The growth of the individual is the indispensable means for the inner growth as distinguished from the outer force and expansion of the collective being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Progress to Knowledge - God, Man and Nature,
1216:The Wise men fulfil their desire, and come to the child, the Lord Jesus Christ, the same star going before them. They adore the Word in flesh, the Wisdom in infancy, the Power in weakness, the Lord of majesty in the reality of man. ~ Pope Leo the Great, Sermon 31,
1217:We are not conscious. If we are not conscious we cannot have unity, cannot have individuality, cannot have an Ego or 'I'. All these things are invented by man to keep the illusion of consciousness. Man can be conscious, but at present he is not. ~ Peter Ouspensky,
1218:Ego sum ostium. Per me si quis introierit, salvabitur: et ingredietur, et egredietur, et pascua inveniet."
(I am the dooR By me, if any man enter in, he shall be saved: and he shall go in, and go out, and shall find pastures.) ~ Anonymous, The Bible, John, 10:9,
1219:Having a body capable of suffering, he took the pain of fallen man upon himself; he triumphed over the diseases of soul and body that were its cause, and by his Spirit, which was incapable of dying, he dealt man's destroyer, death, a fatal blow. ~ Melito of Sardis,
1220:If a man gathers his whole, mind and fixes it on Me, then, indeed, he achieves everything. "But what am I? It is all He. I am the machine and He is its Operator. It is God alone who exists in this [meaning his body]. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
1221:Let us have always in our hearts this thought: I am a man and nothing that interests humanity is foreign to me. We have a common birth; our society resembles the stones of a road that sustain each other. ~ Seneca, the Eternal Wisdom
1222:The gnostic individual would be the consummation of the spiritual man; his whole way of being, thinking, living, acting would be governed by the power of a vast universal spirituality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Gnostic Being,
1223:To be immortal is commonplace; except for man, all creatures are immortal, for they are ignorant of death; what is divine, terrible, incomprehensible, is to know that one is immortal.
   To die for a religion is easier than to live it absolutely. ~ Jorge Luis Borge,
1224:Try peaceful tactics the first ninety-nine times, at the hundredth try, you have no choice if there's demand for a fight. A man who doesn't understand this is worse than a dog. If you encounter an aggressive dog, hit it on the nose with a stick." ~ Tibetan saying.,
1225:Ever-knowing - as they hide they seek. Appearing other than they are - to the ordinary man; In inward light they roam - making miracles come to pass, Yet they are 'really' known to none." ~ Aflākī, (d. 1360), wrote "Virtues of the gnostics." http://bit.ly/39gbmbp,
1226:e who punishes not, kills not, permits not to be killed, who is full of love among those who are full of hate, full of sweetness among those who are full of cruelty, he is indeed a man of religion. ~ Buddhist Text, the Eternal Wisdom
1227:I chant the name of Hari. How can I be a sinner? He who constantly repeats: 'I am a sinner! I am a wretch!' verily becomes a sinner. What lack of faith! A man chants the name of God so much, and still he talks of sin! ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
1228:If any man be devout and love God, let him enjoy this fair and radiant triumphal feast. If any man be a wise servant, let him rejoicing enter into the joy of his Lord. If any have laboured long in fasting, let him now receive his recompense. ~ Saint John Chrysostom,
1229:The role of the wise man is to meditate on the truth, especially the truth regarding the first principle, and to discuss it with others, but also to fight against the falsity that is its contrary ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ScG 1.1).,
1230:Ye have been taught that ye put off the old man which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, that ye put on the new man. ~ Anonymous, The Bible, Ephesians, IV. 21-24, the Eternal Wisdom
1231:A man attains everything when he discovers his true Self in himself. The object of sādhanā is to realize that. That also is the purpose of assuming a human body. The body may be given up after the realization of God. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
1232:Don't be ruled by the light in which birds and serpents, beasts and cattle, flies and worms delight. Keep the material light for your bodily senses, and with all your mental powers embrace the 'true light that enlightens every man' ~ John 1:9). ~ Saint Leo the Great,
1233:Once man has lost the fundamental orientation which unifies his existence, he breaks down into a multiplicity of his desires, in refusing to await the time of promise, his life story disintegrates into a myriad of unconnected instants. ~ Pope Francis, Lumen Fidei 13,
1234:Temple-ground
Man, shun the impulses dire that spring armed from thy nature's abysms!
Dread the dusk rose of the gods, flee the honey that tempts from its petals! ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
1235:Without self knowledge, without understanding the working and functions of his machine [his mind], man cannot be free, he cannot govern himself and he will always remain a slave." ~ George Gurdjieff, (c. 1870 - 1949) mystic, philosopher, spiritual teacher, Wikipedia,
1236:As an apparent entity, man does not live his life but is being lived, like a puppet on strings. All his attempts to "live his life", are nothing more than reactions to impulses, engendered by psycho-physical conditions, over which he has no control. ~ Ramesh Balsekar,
1237:For true success ask yourself these four questions: Why? Why not? Why not me? Why not now?" ~ James Allen, (1864 - 1912) British philosopher, wrote inspirational books and poetry, pioneer of the self-help movement. His best known work, "As a Man Thinketh," Wikipedia.,
1238:ho is the Wise man? Whosoever is constantly learning something from one man or another. Who is the rich man? Whosoever is contented with his lot. Who is the strong man? Whosoever is capable of self-mastery. ~ Talmud, the Eternal Wisdom
1239:Meet together in common — every single one of you — in grace, in one faith and on Jesus Christ (who was of David's line in his human nature, son of man and son of God) that you may obey the bishop and presbytery with undistracted mind. ~ Saint Ignatius of Antioch,
1240:Rarely indeed is a man so spiritual as to strip himself of all things. And who shall find a man so truly poor in spirit as to be free from every creature? His value is like that of things brought from the most distant lands. ~ Thomas A Kempis, The Imitation of Christ,
1241:To whom will you compare God? What image will you compare him to? As for an idol, a craftsman casts it, and a goldsmith overlays it with gold and fashions silver chains for it. A man too poor to present such an offering selects wood that will not rot ~ Is. 40:18-19).,
1242:A man said to Rabia al-Adawiyya, "I have committed many sins and acts of disobedience. If I decide to turn to Allah - would He turn to me?"

She answered: “No. Only if He were to turn to you, then you would be able to turn to Him." ~ al-Risala al-Qushayriyya
1243:Let me assure you that a man can realize his Inner Self through sincere prayer. But to the extent that he has the desire to 'enjoy worldly objects,his vision of the Self becomes obstructed. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna,
1244:Thinking-mind
There throned on concentration's native seat
He opens that third mysterious eye in man,
The Unseen's eye that looks at the unseen, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real,
1245:The saviour creeds that cannot save themselves,
But perish in the strangling hands of the years,
Discarded from man's thought, proved false by Time. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real,
1246:The Son of God in the fullness of time which the inscrutable depth of the Divine counsel has determined, has taken on him the nature of man, thereby to reconcile it to its Author: in order that the inventor of death, the devil, might be conquered. ~ Saint Leo the Great,
1247:A man has certain debts to pay: his debts to the gods and rishis, and his debts to mother, father, and wife. He cannot achieve anything without paying the debt he owes to his parents. A man is indebted to his wife as well. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
1248:A man who does the lower work is not, for that reason only, a lower man than he who does the higher works; a man should not be judged by the nature of his duties, but by the manner in which he does them. ~ Swami Vivekananda, (C.W. V. 239),
1249:A mutual debt binds man to the Supreme:
His nature we must put on as he put ours;
We are sons of God and must be even as he:
His human portion, we must grow divine. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Secret Knowledge,
1250:How shall we conquer the old man in us? When the flower becomes a fruit, the petals fall of themselves; so when the divinity increases in us, all the weaknesses of human nature vanish of their own accord. ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom
1251:I have never met a man so religious and devout that he has not experienced at some time a withdrawal of grace and felt a lessening of fervor. No saint was so sublimely rapt and enlightened as not to be tempted before and after. ~ Thomas A Kempis, The Imitation of Christ,
1252:Is it from without that there can come to a man the sweetness and the charm of his life? Is it not rather from the wisdom of his virtues that flow as from a happy source his real pleasures and his real joys? ~ Plutarch, the Eternal Wisdom
1253:The light of God which illumines an Angel enlightens him, and sets him on fire with love, for he is a spirit already prepared for the infusion of that light; but man, being impure and weak, is ordinarily enlightened in darkness, in distress and pain. ~ John of the Cross,
1254:One must renounce the ' I ' that makes one feel, ' I am so and so', ' I am a learned man, and so on. But the ' ego of Knowledge' does not injure one. Sankaracharya retained the ' ego of Knowledge' in order to teach mankind. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
1255:Plant, animal, man, god, the Eternal is there containing and repressing himself as it were in order to make a certain statement of his being. Each is the whole Eternal concealed. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Eternal and the Individual,
1256:The greatest error of a man is to think that he is weak by nature, evil by nature. Every man is divine and strong in his real nature. What are weak and evil are his habits, his desires and thoughts, but not himself. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,
1257:The pure shall not die, but he who leads not the spiritual life dies without ceasing. The wise man knows this difference and takes pleasure in purity and spirituality; it is his joy to live like the saints. ~ Udanavarga, the Eternal Wisdom
1258:When a man who has carried out a great work is destroyed, it is for the egoism by which he has misused the force within that the force itself breaks him to pieces. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Greatness of the Individual,
1259:A man can reach God if he follows one path rightly. Then he can learn about all the other paths. A devotee can know everything when God's grace descends on him. If you but realize Him, you will be able to know all about Him. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
1260:Even if the whole world should believe in the truth of a doctrine and if it should be very ancient, man ought to control it by his reason and throw it boldly away if it does not agree with the demands of his reason. ~ id, the Eternal Wisdom
1261:Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man." ~ Rabindranath Tagore, (1861 - 1941), a polymath, poet, musician, and artist from the Indian subcontinent. he became in 1913 the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, Wikipedia.,
1262:There is surely nothing other than the single purpose of the present moment. A man's whole life is a succession of moment after moment. There will be nothing else to do, and nothing else to pursue. Live being true to the single purpose of the moment." ~ Yamamoto Tsunetomo,
1263:You are still under the control of the Divine Mother. You cannot escape Her. You are not free. You must do what She makes you do. A man attains Brahmajnana only when it is given to him by the Ādyāśakti, the Divine Mother. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
1264:Fanaticism rises from man's will to dominate others. Once it is born, it brings in its frame a lot of other evils. It blinds man's vision and stirs up the animal in him. It hardens man's heart, destroys all sublime sentiments that give sanctity to life. ~ Swami Abhedananda,
1265:I become what I see in myself. All that thought suggests to me, I can do; all that thought reveals in me, I can become. This should be man's unshakable faith in himself, because God dwells in him.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays In Philosophy And Yoga,
1266:It imitates the Godhead it denies,
Puts on his figure and assumes his face.
A Manichean creator and destroyer,
This can abolish man, annul his world. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Parable of the Search for the Soul,
1267:Man's nature is made up of four elements, which produce in him four attributes, namely, the beastly, the brutal, the satanic, and the divine. In man there is something of the pig, the dog, the devil, and the saint. ~ Abu Hamid al-Ghazali,
1268:'Son of man, I have appointed you as watchman to the house of Israel.' ~ Note that Ezekiel, whom the Lord sent to preach his word, is described as a watchman. Now a watchman always takes up his position on the heights so that he can see from a distance whatever approaches.,
1269:The middle path is made for thinking man.
To choose his steps by reason's vigilant light,
To choose his path among the many paths
Is given him, for each his difficult goal ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Word of Fate,
1270:We do not know where death awaits us; so let us wait for it everywhere. To practice death is to practice freedom. A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave." ~ Michel de Montaigne, (1533 - 1592) French philosopher of the French Renaissance, Wikipedia,
1271:Ever since consciousness was born on earth,
Life is the same in insect, ape and man,
Its stuff unchanged, its way the common route. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 02.05,
1272:God must be born on earth and be as man
That man being human may grow even as God.
He who would save the world must be one with the world ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Nirvana and the Discovery of the All-Negating Absolute,
1273:He who afflicts no living creature, who neither kills nor allows to be killed, him indeed I call a man of religion. Whoever wishes to consecrate himself to the spiritual life, ought not to destroy any life. ~ Buddhist Text, the Eternal Wisdom
1274:In tasting gall Jesus took on himself the bitterness and toil of man's mortal, painful life. By drinking vinegar he made his own the degradation men had suffered, and in the same act gave us the grace to better our condition treatise ~ Theodoret of Cyr, On the Incarnation).,
1275:Awe is a sense for the transcendence, for the reference everywhere to mystery beyond all things. It enables us to perceive in the world intimations of the divine…. What we cannot comprehend by analysis, we become aware of in awe. ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel, What Is Man? (89),
1276:Love is in the depths of man as water is in the depths of the earth, and man suffers from not being able to enjoy this infinity that he carries within himself and for which he is made." ~ Frithjof Schuon, (1907 - 1998), Swiss spiritual master, philosopher, author, Wikipedia.,
1277:Man finds himself a centre of Nature, his fragment of Time surrounded by Eternity, his span of Space surrounded by Infinity. How can he help asking himself, "What am I? and whence have I come and whither do I go?" ~ Carlyle, the Eternal Wisdom
1278:No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it. ~ Anonymous, The Bible, 1 Corinthians, 10:13,
1279:The body is the chariot and the senses are the horses of the driving and it is through the bloodstained and mire-sunk ways of the world that Sri Krishna pilots the soul of man to Vaicuntha. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Karmayoga,
1280:The dying man understands with difficulty what lives, not because his mental faculties are dulled, but because he understands something the living do not and cannot understand, and in this he is entirely absorbed. ~ Tolstoi, the Eternal Wisdom
1281:As long as a man is the doer, he also reaps the fruit of his deeds, but, as soon as he realizes the Self through enquiry as to who is the doer, his sense of being the doer falls away and the triple karma is ended. This is the state of eternal liberation. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,
1282:It is far better to be an animal than to be a man making no effort to attain knowledge, for … the animals have no sin and have no need to expiate them." ~ Chandrashekhara Bharati III, (1892-1954 ) a significant spiritual figure in Hinduism during the 20th century, Wikipedia,
1283:Loving yourself is not a matter of building your ego. Egotism is proving you are worthwhile after you have sunk into hating yourself. Loving yourself will dissolve your ego: you will feel no need to prove you are superior." ~ T. Golas, "The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment.",
1284:Thus so wretched is man that he would weary even without any cause for weariness... and so frivolous is he that, though full of a thousand reasons for weariness, the least thing, such as playing billiards or hitting a ball, is sufficient enough to amuse him.
   ~ Blaise Pascal,
1285:A man's delight in looking forward to and hoping for some particular satisfaction is a part of the pleasure flowing out of it, enjoyed in advance. But this is afterward deducted, for the more we look forward to anything the less we enjoy it when it comes. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer,
1286:Faith is the mother of us all, going forward with hope following and with love of God and Christ and neighbor leading the way. If a man is among these then he has fulfilled the commandment of righteousness, for he who has love is far from all sin. ~ Polycarp to the Philippians,
1287:Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.
   ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin,
1288:The characteristic of the ignorant man is that he strives to be other than what he is. To the enlightened one, there is none who are ignorant." ~ "Yoga Vasistha," a philosophical text attributed to Valmiki, real author unknown., (6th-cent. to as late as 14th-cent.), Wikipedia.,
1289:There are two allied powers in man; knowledge & wisdom. Knowledge is so much of the truth seen in a distorted medium as the mind arrives at by groping, wisdom what the eye of divine vision sees in the spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human,
1290:When you kick a man when he is down — do you realize that you are kicking yourself? Give him another kick — if you think you deserve it." ~ Terence James Stannus Gray, (1895 - 1986), under the pen name "Wei Wu Wei", he published eight books on Taoist philosophy, Wikipedia.,
1291:A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: The hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.
   ~ Joseph Campbell,
1292:A man practices spiritual discipline, but his mind is on 'lust and greed'-it is turned toward enjoyment. Therefore, in his case, the spiritual discipline does not produce the right result. Such people cannot be true to their word. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
1293:By their gifts, they acknowledge what they believe in their hearts, that they may show forth the mystery of their faith and understanding. ~ The incense they offer to GOD, the myrrh to MAN, the gold to the KING, consciously paying honour to the Divine and human Nature in union.,
1294:In deep sleep the man is devoid of possessions, including his own body. Instead of being unhappy he is quite happy. Happiness is inherent in man and is not due to external causes. One must realise his Self in order to open the store of unalloyed happiness. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,
1295:Love is immortal. Man obtaining it becomes perfect, becomes satisfied, becomes immortal. Once it is obtained, he desires nothing, is not afflicted, does not hate, is not diverted, strains no more after anything. ~ Narada Sutra, the Eternal Wisdom
1296:Man is given faith in himself, his ideas and his powers that he may work and create and rise to greater things and in the end bring his strength as a worthy offering to the altar of the Spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti,
1297:Men know full well that if they put their hand into the fire, it will get burned; still they do it again and again. Not only that; they invite others to do likewise. If any man differs from them, they call him mad and even go to the point of persecuting him. ~ SWAMI BRAHMANANDA,
1298:Science is the struggle of man in the outer world. Religion is the struggle of man in the inner world. Both struggles are great, no doubt, but one ends in success and the other ends in failure. That is the difference. Religion begins where science ends. ~ Swami Ramakrishnananda,
1299:The divine Narayana of whom the universe is only one ray is revealed and fulfilled in man; the complete man is Nara-Narayana and in that completeness he symbolises the supreme mystery of existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation,
1300:The man of wisdom does not wish for the dissolution of the universe nor is he interested in its continuance. The blessed one lives perfectly contented with whatever turns up in life." ~ "Ashtavakra Gita" [163], (just after 400 BC), classical Advaita Vedanta scripture, Wikipedia,
1301:The very word paradox is paradoxical. Let the paradox be... Remember, after all, that the Gospel is full of paradoxes, that man is himself a living paradox, and that according to the Fathers of the Church, the Incarnation is the supreme Paradox." ~ Henri De Lubac, Par. of Faith,
1302:Uqba ibn Muslim said: 'No quality in a man is dearer to God, Great and Glorious is He, than the longing to meet Him. At no moment is a man closer to God, Great and Glorious is He, than when he sinks down in prostration. ~ Abu Hamid al-Ghazali,
1303:We are not mere creatures of the mud, but souls, minds, wills that can know all the mysteries of this and every world and become not only Nature's pupils but her adepts and masters. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Evolution of the Spiritual Man,
1304:Every essence or quiddity can be understood without knowing anything about its being. I can know, e.g., what a man or a phoenix is and still be ignorant whether it has being in reality. From this it is clear that being is other than essence for quiddity. ~ Aquinas, De Ente cap 4,
1305:Grown men may learn from very little children, for the hearts of little children are pure, and, therefore, the Great Spirit may show to them many things which older people miss." ~ Black Elk, (1863 - 1950) medicine man, holy man and heyoka of the Oglala Lakota people, Wikipedia.,
1306:He [man] is the greatest of living beings because he is the most discontented, because he feels most the pressure of limitations. He alone, perhaps, is capable of being seized by the divine frenzy for a remote ideal.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine,
1307:Man only sees the cosmic surfaces.
Then wondering what may lie hid from the sense
A little way he delves to depths below: ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,
1308:The common good of many is more divine than the good of an individual. So it is virtuous for a man to endanger even his own life, either for the spiritual or for the temporal common good of the republic ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 2-2.31.3ad2).,
1309:When man has seen that he is one with the infinite being of the universe, all separation is at an end, all men, women, angels, gods, animals, plants, the whole world lost in this oneness, then all fear disappears. ~ Vivekananda, the Eternal Wisdom
1310:According to his nature, man is rational. And thus when he acts according to reason, he is acting by his own proper motion and is acting of himself; and this is a characteristic of freedom ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (Commentary on John 8, lect. 4).,
1311:A man who has been justified, who from impious has been made pious, receives a gift (since he had no antecedent good merit) by which he may also acquire merit: what was begun in him by Christ's grace can also be augmented by the industry of his free choice. ~ Prosper of Aquitaine,
1312:A self-willed man cannot be grateful—because when he gets what he wants he gives all the credit for it to his own will, and when he gets what he does not want he resents it badly and throws all the blame on whomever he considers responsible, God, man or Nature. ~ The Mother, WTM
1313:As our Saviour spent three days and three nights in the depths of the earth, so your first rising from the water represented the first day and your first immersion represented the first night. At night a man cannot see, but in the day he walks in the light. ~ Jerusalem Catecheses,
1314:Man has an infinite capacity for self-development. Equally, he has an infinite capacity for self-destruction. A human being may be clinically alive and yet, despite all appearances, spiritually dead." ~ Idries Shah, (1924-1996) author and teacher in the Sufi tradition, Wikipedia.,
1315:None is greater than he. The gods themselves will have to descend upon earth and it is in a human form that they will get their salvation. Man alone reaches the perfection of which the gods themselves are ignorant. ~ Vivekananda, the Eternal Wisdom
1316:The measurements of right and wrong belong to man along. To life there is nothing right or wrong… Stop asking whether you are worthy or unworthy to receive that which you desire." ~ Neville Goddard, (1905-1972), mystic teacher. From "The Complete Reader,", (2013), ed. D. Allen.,
1317:They will ridicule Christian simplicity;... As a result, no principle at all, however holy, authentic, ancient, and certain it may be, will remain free of censure, criticism, false interpretation, modification, and delimitation by man…" ~ Ven. Bartholomew Holzhauser (1613-1658),
1318:This universal order is the same for everything; neither God nor man has created it; it has always been, it is and will be always an eternally living Fire which kindles itself periodically and is again extinguished. ~ Heraclitus, the Eternal Wisdom
1319:Who indeed was This Virgin and from what sort of parents did She come? Mary, the glory of all, was born of the tribe of David, and from the seed of Joachim. She was descended from Eve, and was the child of Anna. Joachim was a gentle man, pious, raised in God's law. ~ Saint Andrew,
1320:Christ is both the way and the door. Christ is the staircase and the vehicle, like the throne of mercy over the Ark of the Covenant, and the mystery hidden from the ages. A man should turn his mind to this throne of mercy, and should gaze at him hanging on the cross. ~ Bonaventure,
1321:Flee the Ignorance and flee also the Illusion. Turn thy face from the deceptions of the world; distrust thy senses, they are liars. But in thy body which is the tabernacle of sensation, seek the "Eternal Man." ~ Attar of Nishapur, the Eternal Wisdom
1322:It is not eating meat that makes a man impure; it is anger, intemperance, egoism, hypocrisy, disloyalty, envy, ostentation, vanity, pride; it is to take pleasure in the society of those who perpetrate injustice. ~ Amaghanda Susta, the Eternal Wisdom
1323:Little man, rise up! Flee your preoccupations for a little while. Hide yourself for a time from your turbulent thoughts. Cast aside, now, your heavy responsibilities and put off your burdensome business. Make a little space free for God; and rest for a little time in him. ~ Anselm,
1324:Man has the possibility of re-creating himself, or more correctly, the human being has the possibility of making itself into a man... what distinguishes man from animals is his possibility of becoming conscious of his own existence and of his place in the universe. ~ Rodney Collin,
1325:Man was created to praise, honor, and serve God. We therefore no more prefer health to sickness, riches to poverty, honor to disdain, long life to short, but desire and choose only that which more surely conduces toward the end for which we were created. ~ Saint Ignatius of Loyola,
1326:Only a blind man can easily define what light is. When you do not know, you are bold. Ignorance is always bold; knowledge hesitates. And the more you know, the more you feel that the ground underneath is dissolving. The more you know, the more you feel how ignorant you are. ~ Osho,
1327:When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats. ~ Matthew 25:31,
1328:A Divine perfection of the human being is our aim. We must know then first what are the essential elements that constitute man's total perfection; secondly, what we mean by a divine as distinguished from a human perfection of our being.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo,
1329:After his departure out of the body, a man may want what is better when he gains knowledge of the difference between virtue and vice and finds that he is not able to partake of divinity until purged of the filthy contagion in his soul by the purifying fire. ~ Saint Gregory of Nyssa,
1330:Before the Christian Churches are renovated and united, God will send the Eagle, who will travel to Rome and bring much happiness and good. The Holy Man will bring peace between the clergy and the Eagle and his reign will last four years." ~ Saint Hilarion of Czenstochau, (+291 AD),
1331:God has entrusted me with myself. No man is free who is not master of himself. A man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things. The world turns aside to let any man pass who knows where he is going.
   ~ Epictetus,
1332:Not wishing to be known any longer, as in former times, through mere image and shadow of his wisdom existing in creatures, he caused true Wisdom himself to take flesh, to become man, and to suffer death on the cross so that all who believed in him might be saved. ~ Saint Athanasius,
1333:The Prophet said: Don't sit with every learned man. Sit with the learned man who calls towards five matters towards faith from doubt, sincerity from show, modesty from pride, love from enmity, and ascetism from worldliness. ~ Abu Hamid al-Ghazali,
1334:There's a lot of things wrong with this country, but one of the few things still right with it is that a man can steer clear of the organized bullshit if he really wants to. It's a goddamned luxury, and if I were you, I'd take advantage of it while you can. ~ Dr. Hunter S. Thompson,
1335:All the world's pleasures, and all the earth's kingdoms, shall profit me nothing. It is better for me to die on behalf of Jesus Christ, than to reign over all the ends of the earth. For what shall a man be profited, if he gain the whole world, but lose his own soul? ~ Saint Ignatius,
1336:I am Prometheus under the vulture's beak,
Man the discoverer of the undying fire,
In the flame he kindled burning like a moth ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,
1337:If a man chooses a certain Way and seems to have no particular talent for this Way, he can still become a master if he so chooses. By keeping at a particular form of study a man can attain perfection either in this life or the next (if a next life is believed in). ~ Miyamoto Musashi,
1338:If someone wants to study the law and find out what gives it its force (it is the bond of love, for whoever loves his neighbour has fulfilled the law) let him read in the psalms how love led one man to undergo great dangers to wipe out the shame of his entire people. ~ Saint Ambrose,
1339:Only if God assumes the human mind
And puts on mortal ignorance for his cloak
And makes himself the Dwarf with triple stride,
Can he help man to grow into the God. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Entry into the Inner Countries,
1340:The Inconscient could not read without man's mind
The mystery of the world its sleep has made:
Man is its key to unlock a conscious door. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Eternal Day, The Soul's Choice and the Supreme Consummation,
1341:Unhappy is the man who knows all those things, but knows You not; but happy is he who knows You, though these he may not know. But he who knows both You and them is not the happier on account of them. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, Confessions 5.4,
1342:When a man has studied all sciences and learned what men know and have known, he will find that all these sciences taken as a whole are so insignificant that they bring with them no possibility of understanding the world. ~ Tolstoi, the Eternal Wisdom
1343:An average man's mind is filled with countless thoughts, and therefore each individual one is extremely weak. When, instead of these many useless thoughts, there appears only one, it is a power in itself and has a wide influence. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,
1344:Just as the fly settles now on an unclean sore and now on the sweetmeats offered to the gods, so a worldly man's thoughts stop for a moment on religious subjects and the next stray into the pleasures of luxury and lust. ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom
1345:One has no reason to regret when one dies, when one has lost money, property or house; all that does not belong to the man. One should have regret when man loses his real good, his greatest happiness: the faculty of loving. ~ Tolstoi, the Eternal Wisdom
1346:Some huge somnambulist Intelligence
Devising without thought process and plan
Arrayed the burning stars' magnificence,
The living bodies of beasts and the brain of man. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Inconscient,
1347:Truth, then, has arisen from the earth: Christ who said, I am the Truth, was born of the Virgin. And justice looked down from heaven: because believing in this new-born child, man is justified not by himself but by God. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,
1348:Only if God assumes the human mind
And puts on mortal ignorance for his cloak
And makes himself the Dwarf with triple stride,
Can he help man to grow into the God.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Entry into the Inner Countries,
1349:The Friend of Man helps him with life and death
Until he knows. Then, freed from mortal breath,
Grief, pain, resentment, terror pass away.
He feels the joy of the immortal play; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Epiphany,
1350:Who art thou in the heart comrade of man who sitst
August, watching his works, watching his joys and griefs,
Unmoved, careless of pain, careless of death and fate? ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Witness and the Wheel,
1351:Although human nature is not nobler than that of an angel, there has nevertheless been conferred upon a human person a grace greater than upon any angel, namely, upon the Blessed Virgin and upon Christ as man ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (On Truth, 24.9ad2).,
1352:Love must not cease to live upon the earth;
For Love is the bright link twixt earth and heaven,
Love is the far Transcendent's angel here;
Love is man's lien on the Absolute. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Debate of Love and Death,
1353:To be malevolent and violent, a slanderer and unfaithful, without compassion, arrogant and greedy to the point of not giving anything whatsoever to others, it is that and not the eating of meat that makes a man impure. ~ Amaghanda Susta, the Eternal Wisdom
1354:To slander is to speak ill of an absent person in order to blacken his good name. Now it is a very grave matter to blacken a man's good name, because of all temporal things a man's good name seems the most precious ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 2-2.73.2).,
1355:Truly, man has no retreat more tranquil and less troubled than that which he finds in his own soul, especially if he carries in it those truths to which it is enough to turn to acquire in a moment an absolute quietude. ~ Marcus Aurelius, the Eternal Wisdom
1356:When a man lusts after a woman then even if she remains chaste he is still an adulterer. The Lord's judgement is clear and true: If a man looks at a woman lustfully, he has already committed adultery with her in his heart. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,
1357:You see many stars in the sky at night, but not when the sun rises. Can you therefore say that there are no stars in the heavens during the day? O man, because you cannot find God in the days of your ignorance, say not that there is no God. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
1358:...a man should say to his soul every morning, "God has given thee twenty-four treasures; take heed lest thou lose anyone of them, for thou wilt not be able to endure the regret that will follow such loss. ~ Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, The Alchemy of Happiness,
1359:On heights unreached by mind's most daring soar,
Upon a dangerous edge of failing Time
The soul draws back into its deathless Self;
Man's knowledge becomes God's supernal Ray. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Debate of Love and Death,
1360:The world possesses a thought and a sensation which is not like that of man nor so varied but superior and more simple. The world has only one sentiment, only one thought, to create all things and make them re-enter into itself. ~ Hermes, the Eternal Wisdom
1361:What business had anybody to direct and dictate to anyone what he should worship and through what? How could any other man know through what he would grow, whether his spiritual growth would be by worshiping an image, by worshiping fire, or by worshiping even a pillar? ~ Swami Vivekananda,
1362:A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.
   ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,
1363:Who are the truly wealthy? Those who are possessed of the Supreme Treasure —they alone are really rich and live in abundance. Poor and destitute must be called the man in whose heart the remembrance of God abides not. To depend solely on Him is man's one and only duty ~ Sri Anandamayi Ma,
1364:Human perfection resides in this: that the love of God should conquer a man's heart and possess it wholly, and even if it does not possess it wholly it should predominate in the heart over the love of all other things. ~ Imam Al Ghazali, @Sufi_Path
1365:Man is a thinker. He is that what he thinks. When he thinks fire he is fire. When he thinks war, he will create war. Everything depends if his entire imagination will be an entire sun, that is, that he will imagine himself completely that what he wants. ~ Paracelsus,
1366:One develop divine love through restlessness- the restlessness a child feels for his mother. The child feels bewildered when he is separated from his mother, and weeps longingly for her. If a man can weep like that for God he can even see Him. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
1367:The body of man is a chariot, his mind the driver, his senses the horses. The man of intelligence who keeps watch over himself, travels on his way like an owner of a chariot, happy and contented, drawn by well-trained horses. ~ Mahabharata, the Eternal Wisdom
1368:The man who proclaims the existence of the Infinite accumulates, in this affirmation, more of the supernatural than there is in the miracles of all the religions. So long as the mystery of the Infinite weighs upon human thought, temples will be raised for the cult of the Infinite. ~ Pasteur,
1369:Wisdom is greater than all terrestrial sciences and than all human knowledge. She renders a man indifferent to the joys of the world and permits him to consider with an impassive heart their precipitous and tumultous course. ~ Fa.khen-pi.u, the Eternal Wisdom
1370:To him who is perfect in meditation salvation is near" is an old saying. Do you know when a man is perfect in meditation? When as soon as he sits to meditate, he is surrounded with the divine atmosphere and his soul communes with the Ineffable. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
1371:Our cravings alone keep us separated from God. Root out all desires and call on Him! If He wills that the body should die, let it die while chanting His name! By worldly standards a man may be great. But he too in some life or other will have to renounce everything for God.~ Swami Turiyananda,
1372:Why don't you give your power of attorney to God? Rest all your responsibilities on Him. If you entrust an honest man with your responsibilities, will he misuse his power over you? God alone knows whether or not He will punish you for your sins. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
1373:Only when Eternity takes Time by the hand,
Only when infinity weds the finite's thought,
Can man be free from himself and live with God. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,
1374:There is no peace for the man who is troubled with thought for the future, makes himself unhappy before even unhappiness comes to him and claims to assure till the end of his life his possession of the objects to which he is attached. ~ Seneca, the Eternal Wisdom
1375:All doubts disappear when one sees God. It is one thing to hear of God, but quite a different thing to see Him. A man cannot have one hundred per cent conviction through mere hearing. But if he beholds God face to face, then he is wholly convinced. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
1376:A man thinks of God, no doubt, but he has no faith in Him. Again and again he forgets God and becomes attached to the world. It is like giving the elephant a bath; afterwards he covers his body with mud and dirt again. 'The mind is a mad elephant.' ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
1377:The man who consents to the death of an animal, he who kills it, he who cuts it up, the buyer, the seller, he who prepares the flesh, he who serves it and he who eats it, are all to be regarded as having taken part in the murder. ~ Laws of Maim, the Eternal Wisdom
1378:All Nature dumbly calls to her alone
To heal with her feet the aching throb of life
And break the seals on the dim soul of man
And kindle her fire in the closed heart of things. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Adoration of the Divine Mother,
1379:Life must be lived as play, playing certain games, making sacrifices, singing and dancing, and then a man will be able to propitiate the gods, and defend himself against his enemies, and win in the contest." ~ Plato, (428/427 or 424/423 - 348/347) Greek philosopher, Wikipedia.,
1380:He is only our Beloved, and we should adore Him devoid all thoughts of fear. A man loves God only when he has no other desire, when he thinks of nothing else and when he is mad after Him. That love which a man has for his beloved can illustrate the love we ought to have for God. ~ Swami Vivekananda?
1381:If soul and body were not united in Christ, Christ was not a man. This goes against the Apostle's words ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (1 Tim. 2:5): "The mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus" ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ScG 4.37).,
1382:I know, O God, the day shall dawn at last
When man shall rise from playing with the mud
And taking in his hands the sun and stars
Remould appearance, law and process old. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Meditations of Mandavya,
1383:The mind and intellect must develop to their fullness so that the spirituality of the race may rise securely upward upon a broad basis of the developed lower nature in man, the intelligent mental being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Infrarational Age of the Cycle,
1384:The superman shall wake in mortal man
And manifest the hidden demigod
Or grow into the God-Light and God-Force
Revealing the secret deity in the cave. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Eternal Day, The Soul's Choice and the Supreme Consummation,
1385:Though a man should have lived a hundred years consecrating his whole life to the performance of numerous sacrifices to the gods, all this is far from having the same worth as a single act of love which consists in succouring a life. ~ Fa-khen-pi-, the Eternal Wisdom
1386:The man who has plunged deep into a pure knowledge of the profound secrets of the spirit, is neither a terrestrial nor a celestial being. He is the most high spirit robed in the perishable body, the sublime and very Divinity. ~ Pico de la Mirandola, the Eternal Wisdom
1387:Holy companionship has the power of generating love for God. Who is really holy man? The man in whose heart sits God Himself. It is only as the result of merit earned in a succession of lives that one has the good fortune to associate with holy people & be blessed by the ~ Manapurush Swami Shivananda,
1388:There is only one temple in the universe and that is the body of man. Nothing is holier than this noble form. To bow down before man is a homage offered to this revelation in the flesh. We touch heaven when we lay our hand on a human body. ~ Novalis, the Eternal Wisdom
1389:The sin of unbelief, which fundamentally severs a man from the unity of the Church, simply speaking, makes him to be utterly unfit for receiving this sacrament of the Eucharist because it is the sacrament of the Church's unity ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 3.80.5ad2).,
1390:The stuff of the universe, woven in a single piece according to one and the same system, but never repeating itself from one point to another, represents a single figure. Structurally it forms a Whole. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man (1959),
1391:Beloved Pan, and all ye other gods who haunt this place, give me beauty in the inward soul; and may the outward and inward man be at one. May I reckon the wise to be the wealthy, and may I have such a quantity of gold as none but the temperate can carry. ~ Plato, Phaedrus, sec. 279,
1392:Scared for their pathetic little lives, they would agree to be injected with literally anything. ~ For surely no man knows his time: Like fish caught in a evil net or birds trapped in a snare, so men are ensnared in an evil time that suddenly falls upon them. ~ Anonymous, The Bible, Ecclesiastes, 9:12,
1393:The worldly man is a hypocrite. He cannot be guileless. He professes to love God, but he is attracted by worldly objects. He doesn't give God even a very small part of the love he feels for 'lust & greed'. But he says that he loves God. Give up hypocrisy ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
1394:To man's righteousness this is his cosmic crime,
Almighty beyond good and evil to dwell
Leaving the good to their fate in a wicked world
And evil to reign in this enormous scene. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real,
1395:If a man repeats the name of God, his body, mind, and everything become pure. Why should one talk only about sin and hell, and such things? Say but once, 'O Lord, I have undoubtedly done wicked things, but I won't repeat them.' And have faith in His name. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
1396:The belief in supernatural beings may to a certain extent increase the action in man, but it produces also a moral deterioration. Dependence, fear, superstition accompany it; it degenerates into a miserable belief in the weakness of man. ~ Vivekananda, the Eternal Wisdom
1397:The Fallacy that Christian Art Generally Portrays Christ as a Northern European man — The Way of.. ~ A 4th-century Coptic icon of Christ painted in Egypt ~ at a time when Western Europe was a cultural and political backwater) shows him as a light-skinned, bearded man. A 17th-century icon of Christ...,
1398:If a man does not read with an intense desire to know the truth renouncing for its sake all that is vain and frivolous and even that which is essential if needs be, mere reading will only inspire him with pedantry, presumption and egoism. ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom
1399:Just as a fly settles now on an unclean sore in the body, now on the offerings consecrated to the gods, so the mind of a worldly man stops for a moment upon religious ideas, but the next it strays away to the pleasures of luxury and lust. ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom
1400:There is no difference between a man of the world and a solitary if both have conquered the illusion of the ego; but if the heart isa slave to the desires of the senses, the external signs of self-control serve no useful object. ~ Fo-sho-hing-tsan-king, the Eternal Wisdom
1401:A creature of his own grey ignorance,
    A mind half shadow and half gleam, a breath
    That wrestles, captive in a world of death,
To live some lame brief years. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Man the Thinking Animal,
1402:One should not use the name of God artificially and superficially without feeling.
To use the name of God one must call upon Him and surrender to Him unreservedly.
After such surrender the name of God is constantly with the man. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Talks, 426,
1403:Those who were with Krishna were in all appearance men like other men. They spoke and acted with each other as men with men and were not thought of by those around them as gods. Krishna himself was known by most as a man-only a few worshipped him as the Divine. ~ Sri Aurobindo,
1404:Where there is knowledge there is also ignorance. Therefore I ask you to go beyond both knowledge & ignorance. The thorn of ignorance has pierced the sole of a man's foot. He needs the thorn of knowledge to take it out. Afterwards he throws away both thorns ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
1405:It is finished, the dread mysterious sacrifice,
Offered by God's martyred body for the world;
Gethsemane and Calvary are his lot,
He carries the cross on which man's soul is nailed. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain,
1406:Man's house of life holds not the gods alone:
There are occult Shadows, there are tenebrous Powers,
Inhabitants of life's ominous nether rooms,
A shadowy world's stupendous denizens. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Parable of the Search for the Soul,
1407:Two genii in the dubious heart of man,
    Two great unhappy foes together bound
    Wrestle and strive to win unhampered ground;
They strive for ever since the race began. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, In the Moonlight,
1408:A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the 'why' for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any 'how'.
   ~ Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning,
1409:Man's hopes and longings build the journeying wheels
That bear the body of his destiny
And lead his blind will towards an unknown goal. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Joy of Union; the Ordeal of the Foreknowledge of Death and the Heart's Grief and Pain,
1410:Moved man's tongue in its wrath looses speech that is hard to be pardoned,
Afterwards stilled we regret, we forgive. If all were resented,
None could live on this earth that is thick with our stumblings. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
1411:The man whose soul aspires to the Eternal cannot give thought to such silly questions as that of daivic food, that is to say, a simple vegetarian diet, and for him who does not desire to attain to the Eternal, beef is as good as daivic food. ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom
1412:God cannot cease from leaning towards Nature, nor man from aspiring towards the Godhead. It is the eternal relation of the finite to the infinite. When they seem to turn from each other, it is to recoil for a more intimate meeting.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays In Philosophy And Yoga,
1413:Knowledge of God can be compared to a man while Love of God is like a woman. The one has his right of entry to the outer chambers of the Eternal, but only love can penetrate into the inner chambers, she who has access to the mysteries of the Almighty. ~ id, the Eternal Wisdom
1414:What right has a man to say he has a soul if he has not felt it or that there is a God, if he has not seen Him? If we have a soul, we must penetrate to it; otherwise it is better not to believe, to be frankly an atheist rather than hypocrite. ~ Vivekananda, the Eternal Wisdom
1415:But if the man who is animated by hatred, could by an effort of his hate enter even into the most detested of his adversaries and arrive in him to the very centre, then would he be greatly astonis bed, for he would discover there his own self. ~ Schopenhauer, the Eternal Wisdom
1416:Man was created to express the Divine. His duty is therefore to become conscious of the Divine and to surrender himself entirely to His Will. All the rest, whatever the appearance, is falsehood and ignorance.
   ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, The True Aim of Life, 8, [T0],
1417:Remember that work is only the first step in spiritual life. God cannot be realized without sattva-love, discrimination, kindness, and so on. If a man is entangled in too many activities he surely forgets God. He becomes more and more attached to 'lust and gold' ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
1418:To him who is perfect in meditation salvation is near" is an old saying. Do you know when a man is perfect in meditation? When as soon as he sits to meditate, he is surrounded with the divine atmosphere and his soul communes with the Ineffable. ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom
1419:War making nought the sweet smiling calm of life,
Battle and rapine, ruin and massacre
Are still the fierce pastimes of man's warring tribes;
An idiot hour destroys what centuries made, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain,
1420:If it be true that Spirit is involved in Matter and apparent Nature is secret God, then the manifestation of the divine in himself and the realisation of God within and without are the highest and most legitimate aim possible to man upon earth. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, 1.01,
1421:All that man does comes to its perfection in knowledge. That do thou learn by prostration to the wise and by questioning and by serving them; they who have the knowledge and see the truths of things shall instruct thee in the knowledge. ~ Bhagavadgita IV-33-34, the Eternal Wisdom
1422:As climbs a storeyed temple-tower to heaven
Built by the aspiring soul of man to live
Near to his dream of the Invisible.
Infinity calls to it as it dreams and climbs;
Its spire touches the apex of the world; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The World-Stair,
1423:I bow not to thee, O huge mask of death,
Black lie of night to the cowed soul of man,
Unreal, inescapable end of things,
Thou grim jest played with the immortal spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Journey in Eternal Night and the Voice of the Darkness,
1424:But for the god in their breasts unsatisfied, but for his spurrings
Soon would the hero turn beast and the sage reel back to the savage;
Man from his difficult heights would recoil and be mud in the earth-mud. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
1425:Most people spend the greatest part of their time working in order to live, and what little freedom remains so fills them with fear that they seek out any and every means to get rid of it. Oh, the destiny of man ! ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther,
1426:Never to cause pain by thought, word or act to any living being is what is meant by innocence. Than this there is no higher virtue. There is no greater happiness than that of the man who has reached this attitude of good will towards all creation. ~ Vivekananda, the Eternal Wisdom
1427:The foolish follow after the desires that are outward and they fall into the snare of death that is wide open for them, but the wise man sets his mind on the immortal and the certain and longs not here below for uncertain and transient things. ~ Katha Upanishad, the Eternal Wisdom
1428:Leave to the gods their godhead and, mortal, turn to thy labour;
Take what thou canst from the hour that is thine and be fearless in spirit;
This is the greatness of man and the joy of his stay in the sunlight. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
1429:There is surely nothing other than the single purpose of the present moment. A man's whole life is a succession of moment after moment. If one fully understands the present moment, there will be nothing else to do, and nothing else to pursue. Live being true to the single purpose of the moment. ~ Yamamoto Tsunetomo,
1430:The gods have invented
Only one way for a man through the world, O my slavegirl Briseis,
Valiant to be and noble and truthful and just to the humble,
Only one way for a woman, to love and serve and be faithful. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
1431:The world is not prepared yet to understand the philosophy of Occult Sciences - let them assure themselves first of all that there are beings in an invisible world, whether 'Spirits' of the dead or Elementals; and that there are hidden powers in man, which are capable of making a God of him on earth. ~ H P Blavatsky,
1432:To be a common man mid common men
And live an unaspiring mortal life
Than call into oneself a Titan strength
Too dire and mighty for its human frame,
That only afflicts the oppressed astonished world,
Then breaks its user. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act V,
1433:None of the heavenly gods quits his sphere to come upon the earth, while man mounts up to heaven and measures it. He knows what is on high and what is below. He knows all correctly and, what is more, has no need to leave the earth in order to exalt himself. ~ Hermes, the Eternal Wisdom
1434:It is natural to all men to love each other. The mark of this is the fact that, by some natural prompting, a man comes to the aid of another in need, even a stranger. For example, he may call him back from a wrong road, or help him up from a fall. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ScG 3.117).,
1435:When he is animated by a certain desire and by hope, man ought not to shrink from risking his life. He ought not to halt for a moment in his quest, nor to remain an instant in inaction. If he halts, he will be violently rejected far from the road. ~ Attar of Nishapur, the Eternal Wisdom
1436:Lying words are unworthy of a disciple, for his aspiration should be sincere and straightforward and knavish and flattering words are kin to witchcraft. The man who occupies himself with spiritual questions, ought not to proffer any such utterances. ~ Fo-sho-tsan-kiug, the Eternal Wisdom
1437:One who first founds on a large scale and rapidly, needs always as his successor a man with the talent or the genius for organisation rather than an impetus for expansion. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Ancient Cycle of Prenational Empire-Building - The Modern Cycle of Nation-Building,
1438:Yet his advance,
Attempt of a divinity within,
    A consciousness in the inconscient Night,
    To realise its own supernal Light,
Confronts the ruthless forces of the Unseen. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Man the Thinking Animal,
1439:In the Grand Grimoire we are told "to buy an egg without haggling"; and attainment, and the next step in the path of attainment, is that pearl of great price, which when a man hath found he straightway selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that pearl. ~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA, The Wand,
1440:These words are explained by our oneness with Christ, for he is our head and we are his body. No one ascended into heaven except Christ because we also are Christ: he is the Son of Man by his union with us, and we by our union with him are the sons of God. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,
1441:I am the Man of Sorrows, I am he
Who is nailed on the wide cross of the universe;
To enjoy my agony God built the earth,
My passion he has made his drama's theme. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,
1442:Each man, before he is Austrian, Serb, Turk or Chinese, is first of all a man, that is to say a thinking and loving being whose one mission is to fulfil his destiny during the short lapse of time that he is to live in this world. That mission is to love all men. ~ Tolstoi, the Eternal Wisdom
1443:He is not sized by the eye, nor by the speech, nor by the other gods, nor by the austerity of force, nor by action; when a man's being has been purified by a calm clarity of knowledge, he meditating beholds that which has not parts nor members. ~ Mundaka Upanishad III.1-8, the Eternal Wisdom
1444:My Force is Nature that creates and slays
The hearts that hope, the limbs that long to live.
I have made man her instrument and slave,
His body I made my banquet, his life my food. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Journey in Eternal Night and the Voice of the Darkness,
1445:To follow jnanayoga in this age is very difficult. First, a man's life depends entirely on food. Second, he has a short span of life. Third, he can by no means get rid of body-consciousness;& the Knowledge of Brahman is impossible without the destruction of body-consciousness ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
1446:It is for this meaningful development of consciousness by thought, will, emotion, desire, action and experience, leading in the end to a supreme divine self-discovery, that Man, the mental being, has entered into the material body.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Self-Surrender in Works,
1447:Nothing is more evident to the sage than the things hidden in the secrecy of his consciousness, nothing more manifest than the subtle causes of his actions. Therefore the superior man watches attentively over the secret inspirations of his conscience. ~ Tsu-Tse: Tsung-yung, the Eternal Wisdom
1448:One must have the true mettle of a man within, if one wishes to be successful in life. But there are many, who have no grit in them ― who are like popped rice soaked in milk, soft & cringing! No strength within! No sustained effort! No power of will! They are failures in life ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
1449:Man's law of progress progress perfection man
He [man] needs the help of the secret Divine above his mentality in his superconscient self; he needs the help also of the secret Divine around him in Nature and in his fellow-men. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Ideal Law of Social Development,
1450:Weight of the event and its surface we bear, but the meaning is hidden.
Earth sees not; life's clamour deafens the ear of the spirit:
Man knows not; least knows the messenger chosen for the summons.
Only he listens to the voice of his thoughts, his ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Ilion,
1451:What is the way of making the consciousness of human unity grow in man?

   Spiritual education, that is to say an education which gives more importance to the growth of the spirit than to any religious or moral teaching or to the material so-called knowledge.
   ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother III,
1452:And yet such an attitude would be wrong. It is clear that all the valuable things, material, spiritual, and moral, which we receive from society can be traced back through countless generations to certain creative individuals. The use of fire, the cultivation of edible plants, the steam engine ~ each was discovered by one man.,
1453:the centre in her brow
Where the mind's Lord in his control-room sits;
There throned on concentration's native seat
He opens that third mysterious eye in man,
The Unseen's eye that looks at the unseen. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real,
1454:It has often and confidently been asserted, that man's origin can never be known: but ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science. ~ Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man,
1455:Nothing is more difficult to conquer in all the world than intellectual pride. If battleships could be lined with it instead of armour, no shell could ever pierce it. This is easy to understand, for if a man thinks he knows it all, there is nothing left for him to know, not even what God might tell him. ~ Venerable Fulton Sheen,
1456:He is only our Beloved, and we should adore Him devoid all thoughts of fear. A man loves God only when he has no other desire, when he thinks of nothing else and when he is mad after Him. That love which a man has for his beloved can illustrate the love we ought to have for God ~ Swami Vivekananda,
1457:182. To mingle the right action with the action that is not akin to it is called the confused practice. The man that erreth therein hath not attained unto the single heart. He knoweth not thankfulness for the grace of the Enlightened One. ~ Shinran, Wisdom of the East Buddhist Psalms translated from the Japanese of Shinran Shonin,
1458:What is it that makes a man want to become sad in beholding mournful and tragic events which he himself would not willingly undergo? Yet, as he watches, he wishes to suffer their sorrow; this sorrow is his own pleasure. What is this but a wretched weakness of mind? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,
1459:You have been changing every moment of your life. You were a child & thought in one way, now you are a man & think another way, again you will be an old man & think differently. Everybody is changing. If so,where is your individuality? Certainly not in the body,mind,or in thought~ Swami Vivekananda,
1460:The ordinary man says in his ignorance "My religion is the sole religion, my religion is the best." But when his heart is illumined by the true knowledge, he knows that beyond all the battles of sects and of sectaries presides the one, indivisible, eternal and omniscient Benediction. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
1461:For if a man moves among sensible objects with the senses delivered from liking and dislike and obedient to his self, he attains to serenity. By serenity is born the slaying of all sorrows, for when the heart is serene, the intelligent mind soon comes to its poise. ~ Bhagavad Gita, the Eternal Wisdom
1462:Who is worthy of the name of Man and of Roman who does not want to be tested and does not look for a dangerous task? For the strong man inaction is torture. There is only one sight able to command the attention even of a god, and it is that of a strong man battling with bad luck, especially if he has himself challenged it. ~ Seneca,
1463:I read [in certain Platonic books] that God the Word was born not of flesh nor of blood, nor of the will of man nor of the will of the flesh, but of God (Jn 1.13). But that the Word was made flesh and lived among us (Jn 1.14) I did not read there. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, Confessions 13.9.14,
1464:Just as the proud devil led the proud man to death, so the humble Christ led the obedient man back to life; and as the former fell when he was exalted and dragged down him who consented to him, so the latter when He was humbled arose and raised him who believed in Him. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,
1465:Whosoever desireth salvation hath no expectation from man, but from him alone who dwelleth in him inwardly and from within the voice speaketh to him; then is he astonished that such words he hath never heard from any mouth, nor hath ever desired to hear them. ~ Epistle of St. Barnabas, the Eternal Wisdom
1466:he action of man made of desire, dislike and illusion starts from his own being, in himself it has its source and, wherever it is found, must come to ripeness, and wherever his action comes to ripeness, man gathers its fruits whether in this or some other form of life. ~ Buddhist Texts, the Eternal Wisdom
1467:Thus said Ramakrishna and thus said Vivekananda. Yes, but let me know also the truths which the Avatar cast not forth into speech and the prophet has omitted from his teachings. There will always be more in God than the thought of man has ever conceived or the tongue of man has ever uttered.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo,
1468:68-The sense of sin was necessary in order that man might become disgusted with his own imperfections. It was God's corrective for egoism. But man's egoism meets God's device by being very dully alive to its own sins and very keenly alive to the sins of others.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Jnana,
1469:In the work of Transformation, who is the slowest to do his part, man or God?

   I replied, - Man finds that God is too slow to answer his prayers. God finds that man is too slow to receive His influence. But for the Truth-Consciousness all is going on as it ought to go.
   ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother III,
1470:There is in man a tendency to good, acc to the nature of his reason, which nature is proper to him, thus man has a natural tendency to know the truth about God and to live in society. In this respect, whatever pertains to this inclination belongs to the natural law ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 2-2.94.2).,
1471:A man's mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild; but whether cultivated or neglected, it must, and will, bring forth. If no useful seeds are put into it, then an abundance of useless weed seeds will fall therein, and will continue to produce their kind. ~ James Allen, As a Man Thinketh,
1472:Beyond a given point man is not helped by more "knowing," but only by living and doing in a partly self-forgetful way. As Goethe put it, we must plunge into experience and then reflect on the meaning of it. All reflection and no plunging drives us mad; all plunging and no reflection, and we are brutes. ~ Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death,
1473:A gay liver who spreads gladness around him, is better than the devotee who fasts all the year round.Fasting is a merit in the man who distributes his food to the needy; otherwise what mortification is it to take in the evening a meal you have abstained from during the day? ~ Sadi: Bostan, the Eternal Wisdom
1474:But man cannot rest permanently until he reaches some highest good. He is the greatest of living beings because he is the most discontented, because he feels most the pressure of limitations. He alone, perhaps, is capable of being seized by the divine frenzy for a remote ideal.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine,
1475:I looked into my own heart and I saw reflected there in its entirety the vast world with all its passions,-pride, hope, fear and the conflagration of the desires. So gazing I understood the word of the ancient sage, "Man is a mirror in which there appears the image of the world." ~ Ryonen, the Eternal Wisdom
1476:Sin makes a man unhappy and makes him feel inferior. Being unhappy, he is likely to make claims upon other people which are excessive and which prevent him from enjoying happiness in personal relations. Feeling inferior, he will have a grudge against those who seem superior. He will find admiration difficult and envy easy. ~ Bertrand Russell,
1477:The man who proclaims the existence of the Infinite accumulates, in this affirmation, more of the supernatural than there is in the miracles of all the religions. So long as the mystery of the Infinite weighs upon human thought, temples will be raised for the cult of the Infinite. ~ Pasteur, the Eternal Wisdom
1478:the priest and the mage, the man of piety, the just man, the man of wisdom, the saint, the prophet, the Rishi, the Yogi, the seer, the spiritual sage and the mystic ... the saint, the devotee, the spiritual sage, the seer, the prophet, the servant of God, the soldier of the spirit
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine,
1479:If thou wouldst not be slain by them, thou shouldst make free from offence thy own creations, the children of thy invisible and impalpable thoughts, whose swarms keep wheeling around mankind and who are the descendants and heirs of man and of his terrestrial leavings. ~ Book of Golden Precepts, the Eternal Wisdom
1480:Man when he dies, knows that nothing peculiar will happen to him, only what has already happened to millions of beings, and all he does is to change his mode of journeying, but it is impossible for him not to feel an emotion when he comes to the place where he must undergo the change. ~ Tolstoi, the Eternal Wisdom
1481:And he knew, also, what the old man was thinking as his tears flowed, and he, Rieux, thought it too: that a loveless world is a dead world, and always there comes an hour when one is weary of prisons, of one's work, and of devotion to duty, and all one craves for is a loved face, the warmth and wonder of a loving heart. ~ Albert Camus, The Plague,
1482:Ignorance of oneself is then an evil in all respects, whether ignoring the greatness and dignity of the inner man one lowers one's divine principle or ignoring the natural baseness of the external man one commits the fault of glorifying oneself. ~ Porphyry, "Treatise on the Precept, Know Thyself", the Eternal Wisdom
1483:Such were a dream of some sage at night when he muses in fancy,
Imaging freely a flawless world where none were afflicted,
No man inferior, all could sublimely equal and brothers
Live in a peace divine like the gods in their luminous regions. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
1484:hen a man is delivered from all the dispositions of his heart which turn towards evil and not towards good and which can be extinguished, let him uproot them like the stock of a palm-tree, so that they shall be destroyed and have no power to sprout again. That I call a true repentance. ~ Mahavagga, the Eternal Wisdom
1485:The ordinary man says in his ignorance "My religion is the sole religion, my religion is the best." But when his heart is illumined by the true knowledge, he knows that beyond all the battles of sects and of sectaries presides the one, indivisible, eternal and omniscient Benediction. ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom
1486:8. O Fire, they have set thee here the Messenger, the Immortal in generation after generation, the Carrier of offerings, protector of man and the Godhead of his prayer. Gods alike and mortals sit with obeisance before the all-pervading Master of the peoples, the ever-wakeful Fire.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, Hymns To The Mystic Fire,
1487:The sons of Adam are the members of one body, for in the creation they are made of one single nature. When fortune casts one member into suffering, there is no rest for the others. O thou who art without care for the pain of another, it is not fitting that one should give thee the name of man. ~ Sadi, the Eternal Wisdom
1488:He who puts away from him all passion, hatred, pride and hypocrisy, who pronounces words instructive and benevolent, who does not make his own what has not been given to him, who without desire, covetousness, impatience knows the depths of the Permanent, he is indeed a.man of religion. ~ Buddhist Text, the Eternal Wisdom
1489:But for the god in their breasts unsatisfied, but for his spurrings
Soon would the hero turn beast and the sage reel back to the savage;
Man from his difficult heights would recoil and be mud in the earth-mud.
This by pain we prevent; we compel his ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
1490:To be a man, discipline is indispensable.

   Without discipline one is only an animal.

   One begins to be a man only when one aspires to a higher and truer life and when one accepts a discipline of transformation. For this one must start by mastering one's lower nature and its desires. ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,
1491:An absolute supernatural darkness falls
On man sometimes when he draws near to God:
An hour arrives when fail all Nature's means;
Forced out from the protecting Ignorance
And flung back on his naked primal need,
He at length must cast from him his surface ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue,
1492:The man in whom all desires disappear like rivers into a motionless sea, attains to peace, not he whom they move to longing. That man whose walk is free from longing, for he has thrown all desires from him, who calls nothing his and has no sense of ego, is moving towards peace. ~ Bhagavad Gita II. 70-71, the Eternal Wisdom
1493:This is the burden of man that he acts from his heart and his passions,
Stung by the goads of the gods he hews at the ties that are dearest.
Lust was the guide they sent us, wrath was a whip for his coursers,
Madness they made the heart's comrade, r ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
1494:What can man suffer direr or worse than enslaved from a victor
Boons to accept, to take safety and ease from the foe and the stranger,
Fallen from the virtue stern that heaven permits to a mortal?
Death is not keener than this nor the slaughter of f ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
1495:Man who has towered
Out of the plasm and struggled by thought to Divinity's level,
Man, this miniature second creator of good and of evil,
He too was only a compost of Matter made living, organic,
Forged as her thinking tool by an Energy blind and ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ahana,
1496:Though the people hear us not, yet are we bound to our nation:
Over the people the gods are; over a man is his country;
This is the deity first adored by the hearths of the noble.
For by our nation's will we are ruled in the home and the battle
An ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,
1497:It was a no man's land of evil air,
A crowded neighbourhood without one home,
A borderland between the world and hell.
There unreality was Nature's lord:
It was a space where nothing could be true,
For nothing was what it had claimed to be:
A h ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Descent into Night
1498:The master of existence lurks in us
   And plays at hide-and-seek with his own Force;
   In Nature's instrument loiters secret God.
   The immanent lives in man as his house;
   He has made the universe his pastime's field,
   A vast gymnasium of his works of might.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Secret Knowledge,
1499:How soon is spent
This treasure wasted by the gods on man,
This happy closeness as of soul to soul,
This honey of the body's companionship,
This heightened joy, this ecstasy in the veins,
This strange illumination of the sense! ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Gospel of Death and Vanity of the Ideal,
1500:Man is in truth a compound of eternity and time. The more he is attached to temporal things and rests in them, the farther he grows from things eternal; they seem to him petty, just as great objects appear small when we see them from a distance, and he can never attain to real peace. ~ J. Tauler: Institutions, the Eternal Wisdom

*** WISDOM TROVE ***

1:Success is man's god. ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove
2:Let the poor man mind his tongue ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove
3:No man is born without faults. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove
4:All bibles are man-made. ~ thomas-edison, @wisdomtrove
5:As a man is, so he sees. ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove
6:Every man is his own hell. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove
7:No man provokes me with impunity. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove
8:A man's kiss is his signature. ~ mae-west, @wisdomtrove
9:A man who has been in danger, ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove
10:But a man needs company. ~ john-steinbeck, @wisdomtrove
11:Hope is man's inner effort. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove
12:Man is a universe in little. ~ democritus, @wisdomtrove
13:No man is hurt but by himself. ~ diogenes, @wisdomtrove
14:Only man makes Karma. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove
15:A man perfect to the finger tips. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove
16:Behold! I've brought you a man. ~ diogenes, @wisdomtrove
17:I am looking for an honest man. ~ diogenes, @wisdomtrove
18:I'm a good woman for a bad man. ~ mae-west, @wisdomtrove
19:Let mortal man keep to his own ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove
20:Poor man. Poor mankind. ~ william-faulkner, @wisdomtrove
21:The covetous man is ever in want. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove
22:The end of man is action. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove
23:A man's character is his fate. ~ heraclitus, @wisdomtrove
24:An angry man is full of poison. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove
25:He was a wise man who invented God. ~ plato, @wisdomtrove
26:Man is a thought-adventurer. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove
27:An honest man is always a child.  ~ socrates, @wisdomtrove
28:I like a man what takes his time. ~ mae-west, @wisdomtrove
29:Man is a tool-using animal. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove
30:Man must endure his going hence. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
31:Ability is a poor man's wealth. ~ john-wooden, @wisdomtrove
32:A man of refined taste and judgment. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove
33:A true man hates no one. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove
34:Money is the wise man's religion. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove
35:Never ask a man where he has been. ~ mae-west, @wisdomtrove
36:The king is the man who can. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove
37:The unenvied man is not enviable. ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove
38:War ought to be no man's wish. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove
39:A man is known by the company he keeps ~ aesop, @wisdomtrove
40:A man is the origin of his action. ~ aristotle, @wisdomtrove
41:A man of wisdom delights in water. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove
42:Call no man happy till he is dead. ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove
43:It is right to give every man his due. ~ plato, @wisdomtrove
44:Let a man nobly live or nobly die. ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove
45:Man is a universe within himself. ~ bob-marley, @wisdomtrove
46:Man is condemned to be free ~ jean-paul-sartre, @wisdomtrove
47:Man is not made for defeat. ~ ernest-hemingway, @wisdomtrove
48:Man must choose his world ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove
49:Nobody loves life like an old man. ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove
50:Silence is an answer to a wise man. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
51:What man speaks to the stars. ~ rudolf-steiner, @wisdomtrove
52:Without dance, a man can do nothing. ~ moliere, @wisdomtrove
53:A man can laugh while he suffers. ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove
54:A man is sorry to be honest for nothing. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove
55:An accomplished man to his fingertips. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove
56:As a man believes, so he will act. ~ sam-harris, @wisdomtrove
57:Beware the fury of a patient man. ~ john-dryden, @wisdomtrove
58:Conscience is God present in man. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove
59:Even a poor man can receive honors. ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove
60:Happiness is not the portion of man. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove
61:Kill the king but spare the man. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove
62:Man is neither angel nor beast. ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove
63:No one loves the man whom he fears. ~ aristotle, @wisdomtrove
64:What a man can be, he must be. ~ abraham-maslow, @wisdomtrove
65:A man's perfection is his work. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove
66:Beware the man of a single book. ~ denis-diderot, @wisdomtrove
67:I'm a holy man minus the holiness. ~ e-m-forster, @wisdomtrove
68:In an easy cause any man may be eloquent. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove
69:Man is always exploited through fear. ~ rajneesh, @wisdomtrove
70:Man is not mind, he is soul. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove
71:Man must be invented each day ~ jean-paul-sartre, @wisdomtrove
72:Prosperity knits a man to the world. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
73:Tempt not a desperate man. ~ william-shakespeare, @wisdomtrove
74:The sky is an enormous man. ~ emanuel-swedenborg, @wisdomtrove
75:The true man breathes with his heels. ~ zhuangzi, @wisdomtrove
76:Beware the man of a single book. ~ thomas-aquinas, @wisdomtrove
77:Life gives nothing to man without labor. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove
78:Man is greater than the gods. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove
79:Man shoot at nothing, sure to hit it. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove
80:Men, Renaissance, Renaissance Man ~ salvador-dali, @wisdomtrove
81:No man is great if he thinks he is. ~ will-rogers, @wisdomtrove
82:Prayer is man's greatest power! ~ w-clement-stone, @wisdomtrove
83:Reason is God's crowning gift to man. ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove
84:The man is either crazy or he is a poet. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove
85:The wise man’s home is the universe. ~ democritus, @wisdomtrove
86:Time and tide wait for no man. ~ geoffrey-chaucer, @wisdomtrove
87:Happy the man who can count his sufferings. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove
88:Never trust a man in a jumpsuit ~ charles-bukowski, @wisdomtrove
89:No honest man will argue on every side ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove
90:Only the just man enjoys peace of mind. ~ epicurus, @wisdomtrove
91:The ignorant man never enjoys. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove
92:The intelligent man is never bored. ~ isaac-asimov, @wisdomtrove
93:The whole earth is the brave man's country. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove
94:Time is the great art of man. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove
95:Walking with her man, Lost in a dream. ~ a-a-milne, @wisdomtrove
96:Where the mind goes the man follows. ~ joyce-meyer, @wisdomtrove
97:A fearful man is always hearing things. ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove
98:A man is nothing but breath and shadow. ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove
99:A man must constantly exceed his level. ~ bruce-lee, @wisdomtrove
100:A man perfects himself by working. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove
101:A man's fate is his own temper. ~ benjamin-disraeli, @wisdomtrove
102:A man without a home can't be lost. ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove
103:For the weariest road that man may wend ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove
104:I never met a man that I didn't like. ~ will-rogers, @wisdomtrove
105:It is the lot of man to suffer. ~ benjamin-disraeli, @wisdomtrove
106:Jesus Chris was more than man. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove
107:Man's conscience is the oracle of God. ~ lord-byron, @wisdomtrove
108:Man, who don't like spaghetti? ~ rodney-dangerfield, @wisdomtrove
109:The old men know when an old man dies. ~ ogden-nash, @wisdomtrove
110:The wise man once said invest young ~ warren-buffet, @wisdomtrove
111:Where the mind goes, the man follows. ~ joyce-meyer, @wisdomtrove
112:A man growing old becomes a child again. ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove
113:A man lives by believing something. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove
114:And thus the child imposes on the man. ~ john-dryden, @wisdomtrove
115:Beware of the fury of the patient man. ~ john-dryden, @wisdomtrove
116:Every man should stay within his own fortune. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove
117:How dark are all the ways of god to man! ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove
118:How many roads must a man walk down? ~ douglas-adams, @wisdomtrove
119:I am a man who does not exist for others. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove
120:I am as free as nature first made man. ~ john-dryden, @wisdomtrove
121:I hope they bury me near a strait man ~ groucho-marx, @wisdomtrove
122:In life, man proposes, God disposes. ~ aldous-huxley, @wisdomtrove
123:I start where the last man left off. ~ thomas-edison, @wisdomtrove
124:It takes a man to make a devil. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove
125:Man's mind is his basic tool of survival. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove
126:Service to man is service to god ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove
127:Silence is the eternal duty of man. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove
128:The essence of man is imperfection. ~ norman-cousins, @wisdomtrove
129:The gift of a bad man can bring no good. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove
130:The object of the superior man is truth. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove
131:Every man needs a place to go to. ~ fyodor-dostoevsky, @wisdomtrove
132:Fear is the tool of a man-made devil. ~ napoleon-hill, @wisdomtrove
133:For man is by nature an artist. ~ rabindranath-tagore, @wisdomtrove
134:For the wise man, every day is a festival. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove
135:God made only water, but man made wine. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove
136:Happy is the man who is nothing. ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove
137:I hate a man who skins the land. ~ theodore-roosevelt, @wisdomtrove
138:Man, I can assure you, is a nasty creature. ~ moliere, @wisdomtrove
139:Man is a perpetually wanting animal. ~ abraham-maslow, @wisdomtrove
140:Man is bound to lie about himself ~ fyodor-dostoevsky, @wisdomtrove
141:Man is free at the instant he wants to be. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove
142:Man is more powerful than matter. ~ benjamin-disraeli, @wisdomtrove
143:Man's worst ill is stubbornness of heart. ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove
144:Men are cruel, but Man is kind. ~ rabindranath-tagore, @wisdomtrove
145:Never slap a man who's chewing tobacco. ~ will-rogers, @wisdomtrove
146:Nobody likes the man who brings bad news. ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove
147:No man fails who does his best. ~ orison-swett-marden, @wisdomtrove
148:The inferiority of women is man-made. ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove
149:The man of humanity delights in mountains ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove
150:The normal food of man is vegetable. ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove
151:The soul of Man must quicken to creation. ~ t-s-eliot, @wisdomtrove
152:The superior man limits his achievements. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove
153:Every man knows the smell of his own fart. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove
154:God never made his work for man to mend. ~ john-dryden, @wisdomtrove
155:I decline to accept the end of man. ~ william-faulkner, @wisdomtrove
156:I love not man the less, but Nature more. ~ lord-byron, @wisdomtrove
157:It is the poor man who'll ever count his flock. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove
158:It takes a wise man to discover a wise man. ~ diogenes, @wisdomtrove
159:Man is his own most vexing problem. ~ reinhold-niebuhr, @wisdomtrove
160:Man is what he wills himself to be. ~ jean-paul-sartre, @wisdomtrove
161:Never slap a man who is chewing tobacco. ~ will-rogers, @wisdomtrove
162:No empty handed man can lure a bird ~ geoffrey-chaucer, @wisdomtrove
163:Old man! &
164:That man made me miss my destiny. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove
165:The best way to hold a man is in your arms. ~ mae-west, @wisdomtrove
166:The man who does ill, ill must suffer too. ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove
167:There is a good deal in a man's mode of eating. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove
168:When facts speak, the wise man listens. ~ stephen-king, @wisdomtrove
169:A fearless man thrives on far horizons. ~ napoleon-hill, @wisdomtrove
170:A man is known by the company he owns. ~ vince-lombardi, @wisdomtrove
171:A man is the sum of his misfortunes. ~ william-faulkner, @wisdomtrove
172:A man who lies about beer makes enemies. ~ stephen-king, @wisdomtrove
173:Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove
174:Don't mess with me, man, I'm a lawyer! ~ robin-williams, @wisdomtrove
175:If you face a man's job, find a woman! ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove
176:Man is stupid, phenomenally stupid. ~ fyodor-dostoevsky, @wisdomtrove
177:Man's existence precedes his essence ~ jean-paul-sartre, @wisdomtrove
178:Man's greatest weakness is his love for life. ~ moliere, @wisdomtrove
179:Man's most serious activity is play. ~ george-santayana, @wisdomtrove
180:Man who want pretty nurse, must be patient. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove
181:No man hates him at whom he can laugh. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove
182:One man cannot practice many arts with success. ~ plato, @wisdomtrove
183:The man is either mad, or he is making verses. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove
184:The man is either mad or his is making verses. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove
185:These are the days that try man's heart. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove
186:A man must take the fat with the lean. ~ charles-dickens, @wisdomtrove
187:A man's character is his guardian divinity. ~ heraclitus, @wisdomtrove
188:An envious man grows lean at another's fatness. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove
189:Every man is, or hopes to be, an idler. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove
190:Hope is man's preparation for the unknown. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove
191:Light means nothing to a blind man. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove
192:Man appoints, and God disappoints. ~ miguel-de-cervantes, @wisdomtrove
193:Man is an animal that cooks his victuals. ~ edmund-burke, @wisdomtrove
194:Man's best possession is a sympathetic wife. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove
195:Never give a sword to a man who can't dance. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove
196:Never trust the advice of a man in difficulties. ~ aesop, @wisdomtrove
197:No man is a hypocrite in his pleasures. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove
198:Now I understand,” said the last man. ~ arthur-c-carke, @wisdomtrove
199:The fool wonders, the wise man asks. ~ benjamin-disraeli, @wisdomtrove
200:The learned man knows that he is ignorant. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove
201:The man who dies rich, dies disgraced. ~ andrew-carnegie, @wisdomtrove
202:The perfect man employs his mind as a mirror. ~ zhuangzi, @wisdomtrove
203:To the man who is afraid everything rustles. ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove
204:You can kill a man but you cant kill a idea. ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove
205:Your neighbor is the man who needs you. ~ elbert-hubbard, @wisdomtrove
206:A boy becomes a man when a man is needed ~ john-steinbeck, @wisdomtrove
207:Ah! devout though I may be, I am no less a man! ~ moliere, @wisdomtrove
208:A man in the house is worth two in the street. ~ mae-west, @wisdomtrove
209:A man's only as old as the woman he feels. ~ groucho-marx, @wisdomtrove
210:A man that is afraid is never a man. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove
211:An artist, a man, a failure, must proceed. ~ e-e-cummings, @wisdomtrove
212:Beware of a man of one book. ~ johann-wolfgang-von-goethe, @wisdomtrove
213:In peace, a wise man makes preparations for war. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove
214:It is best for the wise man not to seem wise. ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove
215:Let every man look before he leaps. ~ miguel-de-cervantes, @wisdomtrove
216:Man is a degeneration of what he was. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove
217:Man's wonder grows with his knowledge. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove
218:No man can lead mean, we have to have unity. ~ bob-marley, @wisdomtrove
219:No man is rich enough to buy back his past. ~ oscar-wilde, @wisdomtrove
220:Respect a man, and he will do all the more. ~ john-wooden, @wisdomtrove
221:Strike at a great man, and you will not miss. ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove
222:The happy man in this life needs friends. ~ denis-diderot, @wisdomtrove
223:The man whom heaven helps has friends enough. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove
224:The perfect man sees nothing but God. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove
225:The soul in man is greater than his fate. ~ sri-aurobindo, @wisdomtrove
226:The wise man does not grow old, but ripens. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove
227:To do something is in every man's power. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove
228:Treat a man like dirt-he produces flowers. ~ e-e-cummings, @wisdomtrove
229:A man does not exist until he is drunk. ~ ernest-hemingway, @wisdomtrove
230:A man who causes fear cannot be free from fear. ~ epicurus, @wisdomtrove
231:Any man's life, told truly, is a novel. ~ ernest-hemingway, @wisdomtrove
232:A prudent man should neglect no circumstances. ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove
233:Every man is like the company he wont to keep. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove
234:Every man is the maker of his own fortune ~ gertrude-stein, @wisdomtrove
235:Every man over forty is a scoundrel. ~ george-bernard-shaw, @wisdomtrove
236:Faith is the highest passion in a man. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove
237:Fate finds for every man; his share of misery. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove
238:How hard, how bitter it is to become a man! ~ albert-camus, @wisdomtrove
239:I like a man who grins when he fights. ~ winston-churchill, @wisdomtrove
240:It is a sin to judge any man by his post ~ saint-augustine, @wisdomtrove
241:Let every man be master of his time. ~ william-shakespeare, @wisdomtrove
242:Let every man mind his own business. ~ miguel-de-cervantes, @wisdomtrove
243:Light may be shed on man and his origins. ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove
244:Man can learn everything if he will but try. ~ e-m-forster, @wisdomtrove
245:Man must go back to nature for information. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove
246:Man's greatest asset is the unsettled mind. ~ isaac-asimov, @wisdomtrove
247:Never is a man wholly a saint or a sinner. ~ hermann-hesse, @wisdomtrove
248:No man can be merry unless he is serious. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove
249:No man ever quite believes in any other man. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove
250:No man is greater than his respect for sleep. ~ ogden-nash, @wisdomtrove
251:No man loves life like him that's growing old. ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove
252:The gods' service is tolerable, man's intolerable. ~ plato, @wisdomtrove
253:The happy man in this life needs friends. ~ thomas-aquinas, @wisdomtrove
254:The Highest Being reveals himself in man. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove
255:The more a man dreams, the less he believes. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove
256:There is no benefit in the gifts of a bad man. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove
257:All God wants of man is a peaceful heart. ~ meister-eckhart, @wisdomtrove
258:A man can smile and smile and be a villain. ~ aldous-huxley, @wisdomtrove
259:A man who lacks reliability is utterly useless. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove
260:A woman should soften but not weaken a man. ~ sigmund-freud, @wisdomtrove
261:Except he be willing, man cannot believe. ~ saint-augustine, @wisdomtrove
262:God created man on purpose, and for a purpose. ~ zig-ziglar, @wisdomtrove
263:How does a man become brave? By doing brave things. ~ plato, @wisdomtrove
264:[I am a] contradictory and paradoxical man. ~ salvador-dali, @wisdomtrove
265:Infinite is the help man can yield to man. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove
266:It is faith that makes a lion of a man. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove
267:Man is the nearest approach to Brahman. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove
268:Man, like Deity, creates in his own image. ~ elbert-hubbard, @wisdomtrove
269:Man's memory shapes Its own Eden within ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove
270:Man suffers through lack of faith in God. ~ sri-ramakrishna, @wisdomtrove
271:Man who eat many prunes get good run for money. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove
272:Of all God's creatures, Man alone is poor. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove
273:Oh, give us the man who sings at his work. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove
274:One aged man - one man - can't fill a house. ~ robert-frost, @wisdomtrove
275:Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you. ~ carl-jung, @wisdomtrove
276:The man in Christ rose again, not only the God. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
277:The real man is the one Unit Existence. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove
278:There are lessons to be learned from a stupid man. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove
279:We do not admire a man of timid peace. ~ theodore-roosevelt, @wisdomtrove
280:We judge of man's wisdom by his hope. ~ ralph-waldo-emerson, @wisdomtrove
281:A barber lathers a man before he shaves him. ~ dale-carnegie, @wisdomtrove
282:After 40, a man is responsible for his face. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove
283:A man cannot do good before he is made good. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove
284:A man who knows he is a fool is not a great fool. ~ zhuangzi, @wisdomtrove
285:A state is not a state if it belongs to one man. ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove
286:Every man is the son of his own works. ~ miguel-de-cervantes, @wisdomtrove
287:I can't explain 9/11, except the evil of man. ~ billy-graham, @wisdomtrove
288:I've never met another man I'd rather be. ~ charles-bukowski, @wisdomtrove
289:Learn that the present hour alone is man's. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove
290:Man have to have friends even in hell. ~ miguel-de-cervantes, @wisdomtrove
291:Man is a demon, man is a god. Both true. ~ elizabeth-gilbert, @wisdomtrove
292:The Bible is God's Word given in man's language ~ max-lucado, @wisdomtrove
293:The rich man and his daughter are soon parted. ~ kin-hubbard, @wisdomtrove
294:Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove
295:What a man has, so much he is sure of. ~ miguel-de-cervantes, @wisdomtrove
296:Young man, make your name worth something. ~ andrew-carnegie, @wisdomtrove
297:A great artist is a great man in a great child. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove
298:Although I am a pious man, I am not the less a man. ~ moliere, @wisdomtrove
299:A man's ego is the fountainhead of human progress. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove
300:A man's mind grows narrow in a narrow place. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove
301:A man without a mustache is a man without a soul. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove
302:A Man Without Honor is Worse than Dead. ~ miguel-de-cervantes, @wisdomtrove
303:An ethical man is a Christian holding four aces. ~ mark-twain, @wisdomtrove
304:Colors express the main psychic functions of man. ~ carl-jung, @wisdomtrove
305:Every man gotta right to decide his own destiny. ~ bob-marley, @wisdomtrove
306:Every man has a coward and hero in his soul. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove
307:Every man has a sane spot somewhere. ~ robert-louis-stevenson, @wisdomtrove
308:Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove
309:Every man should be capable of all ideas. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove
310:Every man should be content to mind his own business. ~ aesop, @wisdomtrove
311:Everything comes if a man will only wait. ~ benjamin-disraeli, @wisdomtrove
312:God exalts the man who humbles himself. ~ miguel-de-cervantes, @wisdomtrove
313:God's most lordly gift to man is decency of mind. ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove
314:He was a wise man who originated the idea of God. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove
315:I ain't no movie star, man. I'm a booty star. ~ richard-pryor, @wisdomtrove
316:It is the nature of mortals to kick a fallen man. ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove
317:It's the wise man who stays home when he's drunk. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove
318:Man is, above all, he who creates. ~ antoine-de-saint-exupery, @wisdomtrove
319:Man is by his constitution a religious animal. ~ edmund-burke, @wisdomtrove
320:Man is not free unless government is limited. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove
321:Man's greatness lies in his power of thought. ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove
322:No man truly has joy unless he lives in love. ~ denis-diderot, @wisdomtrove
323:Not one false man but doth uncountable evil. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove
324:One man's remorse is another man's reminiscence. ~ ogden-nash, @wisdomtrove
325:The discontented man finds no easy chair. ~ benjamin-franklin, @wisdomtrove
326:The inner nature of man is the province of Music. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove
327:The purpose of man is in action not thought. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove
328:When a man's willing and eager the god's join in. ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove
329:Woe to the man who offends a small child! ~ fyodor-dostoevsky, @wisdomtrove
330:You should not consider a man's age but his acts. ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove
331:A man without words is a man without thought. ~ john-steinbeck, @wisdomtrove
332:America, America, man sheds his waste on thee, ~ george-carlin, @wisdomtrove
333:An old young man, will be a young old man. ~ benjamin-franklin, @wisdomtrove
334:Baseball is wrong, man with four balls cannot walk ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove
335:Danger gleams like sunshine to a brave man's eyes. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove
336:Every man has his secret sorrows. ~ henry-wadsworth-longfellow, @wisdomtrove
337:Every man is a book in which God himself writes. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove
338:God is absence. God is the solitude of man. ~ jean-paul-sartre, @wisdomtrove
339:Good and great are seldom in the same man. ~ winston-churchill, @wisdomtrove
340:He is the truly courageous man who never desponds. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove
341:I saw a man with a wooden leg and a real foot. ~ steven-wright, @wisdomtrove
342:Let every man come to God in his own way. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove
343:Let the man who does not wish to be idle, fall in love. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove
344:Luck is what a capricious man believes in. ~ benjamin-disraeli, @wisdomtrove
345:Man is emphatically a proselytizing creature. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove
346:No man ever did or can do a great work alone. ~ elbert-hubbard, @wisdomtrove
347:No man is an island; but some are peninsulas. ~ robin-williams, @wisdomtrove
348:No man truly has joy unless he lives in love. ~ thomas-aquinas, @wisdomtrove
349:Nothing makes a man broad-minded like adversity. ~ will-rogers, @wisdomtrove
350:Reason in man is rather like God in the world. ~ denis-diderot, @wisdomtrove
351:Teach erring man to spurn the rage of gain. ~ oliver-goldsmith, @wisdomtrove
352:Temptation is a woman's weapon and man's excuse. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove
353:The man who ain't got an enemy is really poor. ~ josh-billings, @wisdomtrove
354:The man whose authority is recent is always stern. ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove
355:The real man lies in the depths of subconscious. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove
356:Where a man can live, he can also live well. ~ marcus-aurelius, @wisdomtrove
357:Where flowers degenerate man cannot live. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove
358:A man becomes the creature of his uniform. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove
359:A man is as big as the measure of his thinking. ~ napoleon-hill, @wisdomtrove
360:A man should be upright, not be kept upright. ~ marcus-aurelius, @wisdomtrove
361:A man's life is what his thoughts make of it. ~ marcus-aurelius, @wisdomtrove
362:A man's life of any worth is a continual allegory. ~ john-keats, @wisdomtrove
363:By desiring little, a poor man makes himself rich. ~ democritus, @wisdomtrove
364:Clarity is the politeness of the man of letters. ~ jules-renard, @wisdomtrove
365:Don't ever get angry at a man for stating the truth. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove
366:Each man is haunted until his humanity awakens. ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove
367:Every man gets an opportunity once in a lifetime. ~ will-rogers, @wisdomtrove
368:Everyone wishes that the man whom he fears would perish. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove
369:God lends a helping hand to the man who tries hard. ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove
370:Heaven begat Virtue in me; what can man do unto me? ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove
371:Her wit was more than man, her innocence a child. ~ john-dryden, @wisdomtrove
372:Let a man accept his destiny, No pity and no tears. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove
373:Let no man pull you so low as to hate him. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove
374:Man discovers truth by reason only, not by faith. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove
375:Man governs himself more by impulse than reason ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove
376:Man has will, but woman has her way. ~ oliver-wendell-holmes-jr, @wisdomtrove
377:Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove
378:Man is the greatest being that ever can be. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove
379:Man is the only animal that blushes - or needs to. ~ mark-twain, @wisdomtrove
380:No man sympathizes with the sorrows of vanity. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove
381:Occasionally, a man must rise above principles. ~ warren-buffet, @wisdomtrove
382:Reason in man is rather like God in the world. ~ thomas-aquinas, @wisdomtrove
383:Shun an inquisitive man, he is invariably a tell-tale. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove
384:Suppose, gentleman, that man is not stupid. ~ fyodor-dostoevsky, @wisdomtrove
385:The comedy of man survives the tragedy of man. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove
386:The man of upright life is obeyed before he speaks. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove
387:There are things stronger than the strongest man. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove
388:The superior man is never in anyone's way. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove
389:The wise man is he who knows when and how to stop ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove
390:The worse the man, the better the soldier. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove
391:Time and tide and hookers wait for no man. ~ rodney-dangerfield, @wisdomtrove
392:To be doing good deeds is man's most glorious task. ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove
393:What can a man do with music who is not benevolent? ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove
394:Who then is free? The wise man who can govern himself. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove
395:You're not a man, you're a mushroom! ~ antoine-de-saint-exupery, @wisdomtrove
396:A man is the whole encyclopaedia of facts. ~ ralph-waldo-emerson, @wisdomtrove
397:A man must become wise at his own expense. ~ michel-de-montaigne, @wisdomtrove
398:A man prepared has half fought the battle. ~ miguel-de-cervantes, @wisdomtrove
399:A wise man hears one word and understands two. ~ edgar-allan-poe, @wisdomtrove
400:Faults and defects every work of man must have. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove
401:Give a man a free hand and he'll run it all over you. ~ mae-west, @wisdomtrove
402:God became man, granted. The devil became a woman. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove
403:Heaven never helps the man who will not help himself ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove
404:He (man) is both dust of earth and breath of God. ~ billy-graham, @wisdomtrove
405:I am just a common man who is true to his beliefs. ~ john-wooden, @wisdomtrove
406:If you are a man, Winston, you are the last man. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove
407:In love, each man is his own personal challenge. ~ leo-buscaglia, @wisdomtrove
408:In the life of one man, never The same time returns. ~ t-s-eliot, @wisdomtrove
409:It is commonly a weak man who marries for love. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove
410:Make sure to send a lazy man the angel of death. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove
411:Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel! ~ fyodor-dostoevsky, @wisdomtrove
412:Man is Creation's masterpiece. But who says so? ~ elbert-hubbard, @wisdomtrove
413:Man is only great when he acts from passion. ~ benjamin-disraeli, @wisdomtrove
414:Man knows that love is, but not what it is. ~ emanuel-swedenborg, @wisdomtrove
415:Man seems the only growth that dwindles here. ~ oliver-goldsmith, @wisdomtrove
416:No man becomes rich unless he enriches others. ~ andrew-carnegie, @wisdomtrove
417:No wealth can ever make a bad man at peace with himself. ~ plato, @wisdomtrove
418:One man's style must not be the rule of another's. ~ jane-austen, @wisdomtrove
419:Power gravitates to the man who knows how. ~ orison-swett-marden, @wisdomtrove
420:The center of every man's existence is a dream. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove
421:The first duty of man is that of subduing fear. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove
422:The ideal man takes joy in doing favours for others. ~ aristotle, @wisdomtrove
423:The inner man has access to the sense organs of god. ~ carl-jung, @wisdomtrove
424:The man who has no problems is out of the game. ~ elbert-hubbard, @wisdomtrove
425:The man who wins, is the man who thinks he can. ~ vince-lombardi, @wisdomtrove
426:There's many a man has more hair than wit. ~ william-shakespeare, @wisdomtrove
427:The state of man is inconstancy, ennui, anxiety. ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove
428:Think of a man in a chronic state of anger! ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove
429:Trouthe is the hyest thyng that man may kepe. ~ geoffrey-chaucer, @wisdomtrove
430:Truth is the highest thing that man may keep. ~ geoffrey-chaucer, @wisdomtrove
431:Who then is free? The wise man who can command himself. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove
432:A fair-minded man tries to see both sides of an argument. ~ aesop, @wisdomtrove
433:A great man is always willing to be little. ~ ralph-waldo-emerson, @wisdomtrove
434:A man can't ride your back unless it's bent. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove
435:A man is what he thinks about all day long. ~ ralph-waldo-emerson, @wisdomtrove
436:A man should never neglect his family for business. ~ walt-disney, @wisdomtrove
437:Each man's life represents a road toward himself. ~ hermann-hesse, @wisdomtrove
438:Every man is ignorant - just on different subjects. ~ will-rogers, @wisdomtrove
439:Everyone asks if a man is rich, no one if he is good. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove
440:God provides the wind, Man must raise the sail. ~ saint-augustine, @wisdomtrove
441:He who never says "no" is no true man. ~ antoine-de-saint-exupery, @wisdomtrove
442:I know enough to know that no man is an island. ~ richard-branson, @wisdomtrove
443:I long to set foot where no man has trod before. ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove
444:Immoderate desire is the mark of a child, not a man. ~ democritus, @wisdomtrove
445:It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove
446:Life is full of amusement to an amusing man. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove
447:Man's restlessness makes him strive. ~ johann-wolfgang-von-goethe, @wisdomtrove
448:(Man,) the glory and the scandal of the universe. ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove
449:Many the wonders but nothing walks stranger than man. ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove
450:No man is more cheated than the selfish man. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove
451:No man is useless while he has a friend. ~ robert-louis-stevenson, @wisdomtrove
452:No man profiteth but by the loss of others. ~ michel-de-montaigne, @wisdomtrove
453:Nothing happens to man without the permission of God. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove
454:Nothing is so difficult but that man will accomplish it. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove
455:One monster there is in the world, the idle man. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove
456:The Angel's bread is made the Bread of man today. ~ denis-diderot, @wisdomtrove
457:The Great Man is a man who lives a long way off. ~ elbert-hubbard, @wisdomtrove
458:The man who falls in love chill find plenty of occupation. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove
459:The man who fights for his ideals is alive. ~ miguel-de-cervantes, @wisdomtrove
460:The salvation of man is through love and in love. ~ viktor-frankl, @wisdomtrove
461:When a man of God dies, nothing of God dies. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove
462:Whenever a man makes haste, God too hastens with him. ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove
463:With out some kind of god, man is not very intresting ~ t-s-eliot, @wisdomtrove
464:A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval. ~ mark-twain, @wisdomtrove
465:A man never has good luck who has a bad wife. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove
466:A man without a smiling face must not open a shop. ~ dale-carnegie, @wisdomtrove
467:An honest man's word is as good as his bond. ~ miguel-de-cervantes, @wisdomtrove
468:Best thing that can happen to a man is a good woman. ~ dean-koontz, @wisdomtrove
469:Busy as a one legged man in an ass kicking contest. ~ stephen-king, @wisdomtrove
470:Character, not circumstances, makes the man. ~ booker-t-washington, @wisdomtrove
471:Each man was his own executioner and his own victim. ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove
472:Every man I meet is in some way my superior. ~ ralph-waldo-emerson, @wisdomtrove
473:God never tempts any man. That is Satan's business. ~ billy-graham, @wisdomtrove
474:He's the kind of man who picks his friends - to pieces. ~ mae-west, @wisdomtrove
475:I am at peace with God. My conflict is with Man. ~ charlie-chaplan, @wisdomtrove
476:I do not love a man who is zealous for nothing. ~ oliver-goldsmith, @wisdomtrove
477:If the great man be not grave, he will not be revered. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove
478:I have never loved a man as much as I have loved myself ~ mae-west, @wisdomtrove
479:I have never seen a man as fond of virtue as of women. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove
480:In the creative state a man is taken out of himself. ~ e-m-forster, @wisdomtrove
481:In the stars is written the death of every man. ~ geoffrey-chaucer, @wisdomtrove
482:In war it is not men, but the man who counts. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove
483:It is only God who creates. Man merely rearranges. ~ denis-diderot, @wisdomtrove
484:I want to live like a poor man with lots of money. ~ pablo-picasso, @wisdomtrove
485:Like the man said, a little hope never hurt anybody ~ stephen-king, @wisdomtrove
486:Listen to no man who has not listened to God. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove
487:“Man can alter his life by altering his thinking.” ~ william-james, @wisdomtrove
488:Man does not have a soul. He is a soul. He has a body. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
489:Man is an intelligence in servitude to his organs. ~ aldous-huxley, @wisdomtrove
490:Man is a piece of the universe made alive.   ~ ralph-waldo-emerson, @wisdomtrove
491:Man is the being whose project it is to be God. ~ jean-paul-sartre, @wisdomtrove
492:Man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true. ~ francis-bacon, @wisdomtrove
493:No man can be an agnostic who has a sense of humour. ~ e-m-forster, @wisdomtrove
494:No man is born without ambitious worldly desires. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove
495:The Angel's bread is made the Bread of man today. ~ thomas-aquinas, @wisdomtrove
496:The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship. ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove
497:The greatest man in history was the poorest. ~ ralph-waldo-emerson, @wisdomtrove
498:The man on top of the mountain didn't fall there. ~ vince-lombardi, @wisdomtrove
499:The man who has lost his purse will go wherever you wish. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove
500:There is no end to the power a man can obtain. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove

*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***

1:A man is but an ass ~ W S Gilbert,
2:Fame is a Bleet, man. ~ Brad Pitt,
3:I am a man of my word. ~ Augustus,
4:I'm a very old man. ~ Mark Twain,
5:I'm no' a good man. ~ Donna Grant,
6:Man thinks, God directs. ~ Alcuin,
7:Man was mark'd ~ Philip Massinger,
8:No man is an island. ~ John Donne,
9:Success is man's god. ~ Aeschylus,
10:the man next to me. ~ Renee Rosen,
11:Drink it in, man!! ~ Chris Jericho,
12:I am a wife-made man. ~ Danny Kaye,
13:Man is a bad animal. ~ Brion Gysin,
14:Man is a moral being. ~ Gaspar Noe,
15:Man plans, God laughs, ~ Greg Iles,
16:Man, the mask of God, ~ Ken Wilber,
17:No man is an island. ~ Nick Hornby,
18:Part 1
A Just Man ~ Victor Hugo,
19:Right wrongs no man. ~ Jill Lepore,
20:Vader was not a man. ~ Paul S Kemp,
21:Be groovy or leave, man ~ Bob Dylan,
22:droom van een man ~ Kristan Higgins,
23:Every virtuous man is free. ~ Philo,
24:I am a one success man. ~ Tom Baker,
25:I'm not a leading man. ~ Aaron Paul,
26:I've been a free man. ~ V S Naipaul,
27:Like sweet morning dew ~ Method Man,
28:Lil Wayne is the man. ~ Layzie Bone,
29:little gray man. ~ Antonio J M ndez,
30:Man be my metaphor’, ~ Dylan Thomas,
31:Man is no man, but a wolf ~ Plautus,
32:sex crimes and a man ~ T J Brearton,
33:A good man never dies. ~ Callimachus,
34:A man polished to the nail. ~ Horace,
35:Beat a Pan, Save a Man ~ Tracy Ellen,
36:Chigarid. The man who ~ John Berendt,
37:God is man idealized. ~ Amiri Baraka,
38:I am the rich man's guru. ~ Rajneesh,
39:I'm a very wealthy man. ~ Elton John,
40:Man is all symmetry ~ George Herbert,
41:Man plans, God laughs. ~ Erik Larson,
42:No man is an island... ~ Nick Hornby,
43:No man liveth to himself. ~ St. Paul,
44:Oh, no man knows ~ Walter de La Mare,
45:Oouuu, you nasty man! ~ Stephen King,
46:THE CROOKED MAN ~ Arthur Conan Doyle,
47:the Masked Man’s son, ~ Chris Colfer,
48:There is no dark man ~ Quentin Crisp,
49:Women love an honest man. ~ Rita Ora,
50:Alas for the seed of man. ~ Sophocles,
51:Happy man, happy dole. ~ John Heywood,
52:I am dead man alive. ~ Santosh Kalwar,
53:I don't need a man in my life. ~ Enya,
54:Man can hope, dream even. ~ E L James,
55:Man is a bad animal.... ~ Brion Gysin,
56:Man is a small universe. ~ Democritus,
57:Man must choose his world ~ A W Tozer,
58:Man must conquer nature. ~ Mao Zedong,
59:man plans god laughs ~ Craig Ferguson,
60:Man plans. God laughs. ~ Harlan Coben,
61:Man proposes, God disposes. ~ Plautus,
62:Man with the Muckrake ~ Edmund Morris,
63:Masked Man—it was Dad! ~ Chris Colfer,
64:The man read my thoughts. ~ Anonymous,
65:Time waits for no man. ~ Choi Hong Hi,
66:What's Your Road, Man? ~ Jack Kerouac,
67:White Man’s Grave ~ David A Livermore,
68:A hard man is good to find. ~ Mae West,
69:A man is never ugly". ~ Buchi Emecheta,
70:A man who is 100% sane is dead. ~ Osho,
71:Any man can turn traitor. ~ Mario Puzo,
72:A selfish man is a thief. ~ Jose Marti,
73:Don't have a cow, man. ~ Matt Groening,
74:Every man is an artist. ~ Joseph Beuys,
75:followed ir the man’s ~ Jeffrey Archer,
76:God pity a one-dream man. ~ Carl Sagan,
77:I am a man of my word. ~ Aleatha Romig,
78:I am not a normal man. ~ Stevie Wonder,
79:I hated the man ~ William Kent Krueger,
80:Man, I'm sick of doubt. ~ Jim Morrison,
81:Man is a gaming animal. ~ Charles Lamb,
82:Man is what he reads. ~ Joseph Brodsky,
83:Man seeks answers from afar ~ Rajneesh,
84:Man's Place in Nature. ~ Thomas Huxley,
85:Modesty becomes a young man. ~ Plautus,
86:Money makes a man laugh. ~ John Selden,
87:the Mind of Man-- ~ William Wordsworth,
88:Water is the key to life, man. ~ Dessa,
89:A bad man is a good man's job ~ Lao Tzu,
90:Art? That's a man's name. ~ Andy Warhol,
91:Bruckner he is my man! ~ Richard Wagner,
92:Doubt makes a man decent. ~ Harry Crews,
93:Every man has one destiny, ~ Mario Puzo,
94:Every man heals himself. ~ Janet Morris,
95:fear no man but only God ~ Tupac Shakur,
96:Grace was a good man, ~ Walter Isaacson,
97:I am a dead man alive. ~ Santosh Kalwar,
98:I'm a horse of a man! ~ Jeremy Clarkson,
99:I'm a regular supra man ~ Joseph Heller,
100:I think I am a moral man. ~ Gary Condit,
101:I will hit a man with glasses. ~ Eminem,
102:Let the poor man mind his tongue ~ Ovid,
103:Man plans, God laughs. ~ Nelson DeMille,
104:Man’s Search for Meaning: ~ Russ Harris,
105:man with a chinchilla beard ~ Anonymous,
106:Milk-livered man! ~ William Shakespeare,
107:Milk-livered man, ~ William Shakespeare,
108:No man is born without faults. ~ Horace,
109:No man is infallible. ~ Kristin Cashore,
110:No man was ever wise by chance ~ Seneca,
111:No other man will have you ~ Maya Banks,
112:Serve man Serve god ~ Swami Vivekananda,
113:The common man is a fool. ~ H L Mencken,
114:This man is my boatswain. ~ Scott Lynch,
115:This man might kill me. ~ Gillian Flynn,
116:Who is the honest man? ~ George Herbert,
117:Wine is a peep-hole on a man. ~ Alcaeus,
118:Ain't fit for man nor beast ~ W C Fields,
119:As a man is, so he sees. ~ William Blake,
120:As man acts, God reacts. ~ Baal Shem Tov,
121:Baby You’re a Rich Man ~ Walter Isaacson,
122:Be kind to an old man. ~ Walter Cronkite,
123:Chess is a curse upon a man. ~ H G Wells,
124:Every man is his own hell. ~ H L Mencken,
125:Follow the blind man. ~ Maureen A Miller,
126:freckle-and-red man ~ F Scott Fitzgerald,
127:Hello, Doctor. It's your man. ~ J R Ward,
128:I am a hard man to replace. ~ Junot D az,
129:I'm not a lovable man. ~ Richard M Nixon,
130:I'm really a one-man band. ~ Graham King,
131:in the mind of man, ~ William Wordsworth,
132:is the man who finds wisdom, ~ Anonymous,
133:It’s all part of it, man. ~ Jerry Garcia,
134:Know a man by his metaphors. ~ Anonymous,
135:Man alone can enslave man. ~ Simone Weil,
136:Man and wife make one fool. ~ Ben Jonson,
137:Man believes and lives. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
138:Man by nature wants to know. ~ Aristotle,
139:Man is a biped without feathers. ~ Plato,
140:Man is what he believes. ~ Anton Chekhov,
141:Man plans and God laughs, ~ Harlan Coben,
142:Never trust a man in red trousers ~ Mika,
143:No man hath seen God at any time. ~ John,
144:No man provokes me with impunity. ~ Ovid,
145:she treads lightly old man. ~ John Green,
146:Stupid f***ing white man. ~ Jim Jarmusch,
147:Sutton is a good man. ~ Clifford D Simak,
148:Thanks, man.” “And Maggie ~ Stormy Glenn,
149:The fate of man is man. ~ Bertolt Brecht,
150:The good man does not grieve ~ Confucius,
151:"The greatest man is nobody." ~ Zhuangzi,
152:The Man of a Thousand Voices ~ Mel Blanc,
153:the one-eyed man is king, ~ Louise Penny,
154:The tide tarrieth no man. ~ John Heywood,
155:Time waits upon no man. ~ Pip Ballantine,
156:Age will flatten a man. ~ Tommy Lee Jones,
157:A man posing for a painting. ~ David Hume,
158:A man's house is his castle. ~ James Otis,
159:A man’s kiss is his signature. ~ Mae West,
160:A man who has been in danger, ~ Euripides,
161:A slave is but half a man. ~ Aristophanes,
162:A wise man once said nothing. ~ Anonymous,
163:But a man needs company. ~ John Steinbeck,
164:Each man is a little war. ~ Frank Herbert,
165:Every man has his price. ~ Robert Walpole,
166:Evil man make me kill you. ~ Jimi Hendrix,
167:God created woman to tame man. ~ Voltaire,
168:He's my man, he was great ~ George W Bush,
169:He was a scribble of a man. ~ Kate Morton,
170:Hope is man's inner effort. ~ Sri Chinmoy,
171:Hunger makes a fool of a man. ~ H G Wells,
172:If a man owns land, ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,
173:I'm a cruel man to myself. ~ Duncan Jones,
174:I'm a simple, simple man. ~ Jeremy Renner,
175:I'm looking for a man. ~ Susanna Kearsley,
176:I'm ready to meet a nice man! ~ Kim Coles,
177:In Yeah Man (aka Yemen), ~ Megan McDonald,
178:I want to live like a man. ~ Janet Morris,
179:Man, I really like Vegas. ~ Elvis Presley,
180:Man is embedded in nature. ~ Lewis Thomas,
181:Man isn't an idea, Rambert ~ Albert Camus,
182:Man's character is his fate. ~ Heraclitus,
183:Money makes a man mirthful. ~ Scott Lynch,
184:No man becomes bad all at once. ~ Juvenal,
185:No man hath seen God at any time. ~ John,
186:No man is hurt but by himself. ~ Diogenes,
187:one-man wave of destruction ~ Morgan Rice,
188:Only man makes Karma. ~ Swami Vivekananda,
189:Peter Norman's a man's man. ~ John Carlos,
190:The lot of man-to suffer and die. ~ Homer,
191:The man gave Westin two ~ Jerry B Jenkins,
192:The proud man is forsaken of God. ~ Plato,
193:Violence is fun, man. ~ Quentin Tarantino,
194:When a man comes to die, ~ John Steinbeck,
195:who is this we, white man, ~ Annie Bellet,
196:You're a good man, Hunter. ~ Lisa Kessler,
197:A dead man has no age ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
198:A dyslexic man walks into a bra. ~ Unknown,
199:All bibles are man-made. ~ Thomas A Edison,
200:A man always has a choice ~ Lorraine Heath,
201:a man is his own worst enemy. ~ James Hunt,
202:A man perfect to the finger tips. ~ Horace,
203:A man who is 100% sane is dead. ~ Rajneesh,
204:...a man within the breast... ~ Adam Smith,
205:Are you a man or a mouse? ~ Kate DiCamillo,
206:Bless you, daugher of man, ~ Richelle Mead,
207:Bless you, daugher of man. ~ Richelle Mead,
208:He wanted another man. It ~ Sloane Kennedy,
209:Hey man! Get away from me! ~ Mickey Mantle,
210:I ain’t Jesus. I’m just a man. ~ C D Reiss,
211:I am looking for an honest man. ~ Diogenes,
212:Idle man, chases after fairy tales. ~ Rumi,
213:I do like to belong to a man. ~ Eva Mendes,
214:I fear no man, no woman; ~ Hilda Doolittle,
215:I left my mark on that man. ~ Alice Sebold,
216:I'm a condition, not a man. ~ J D Salinger,
217:I'm taking one for the team, ~ Method Man,
218:In every cry of every man, ~ William Blake,
219:I will tell the stork-man. ~ Tamora Pierce,
220:Let mortal man keep to his own ~ Euripides,
221:Man by Nature desires to know. ~ Aristotle,
222:Man delights not me. ~ William Shakespeare,
223:Man is incurably curious. ~ Fulton J Sheen,
224:Man is on earth as in an egg. ~ Heraclitus,
225:man lies to himself a lot. ~ G I Gurdjieff,
226:Man lives by imagination. ~ Havelock Ellis,
227:Man was not made for himself alone ~ Plato,
228:Mind the dead man, my dear. ~ Rachel Caine,
229:Noble be man, ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,
230:no man’s a hero to himself. ~ Ray Bradbury,
231:Only the bad man is alone. ~ Denis Diderot,
232:Opportunity makes the man ~ Jos de Alencar,
233:Poor man. Poor mankind. ~ William Faulkner,
234:Reading maketh a full man. ~ Francis Bacon,
235:Slowly you become your own man. ~ Bob Weir,
236:Smith, a tall, lean man with ~ Mary Burton,
237:The covetous man is ever in want. ~ Horace,
238:The end of man is action. ~ Thomas Carlyle,
239:The good man makes others good. ~ Menander,
240:THE OLD MAN AND HIS GRANDSON ~ Jacob Grimm,
241:The right man won't care ~ Cassandra Clare,
242:Unconcerned but not indifferent. ~ Man Ray,
243:Words have divided man from woman, ~ Laozi,
244:A man is above all his will ~ Prabhavananda,
245:A man's character is his fate. ~ Heraclitus,
246:A man's head is his castle. ~ Joseph Heller,
247:A man who causes fear cannot be ~ Epicurus,
248:An angry man is full of poison. ~ Confucius,
249:An honest man is always a child. ~ Socrates,
250:A real man makes his own luck. ~ Billy Zane,
251:Art is man added to Nature. ~ Francis Bacon,
252:At dinner my man appeares. ~ George Herbert,
253:A true artist is an ugly man. ~ Osamu Dazai,
254:A wise man once said nothing. ~ Jen Sincero,
255:Call no man happy until he is dead. ~ Solon,
256:dead man’s chest. He needed ~ Toni Anderson,
257:Each man is led by his own liking. ~ Virgil,
258:Each man's soul is his genius. ~ Xenocrates,
259:Each man suffers his own destiny. ~ Virgil,
260:Every man lives by exchanging. ~ Adam Smith,
261:Every man's entitled to hope. ~ David Milch,
262:For a significant man ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
263:God, I love a man who reads ~ Tiffany Reisz,
264:Good morning,” the man said. ~ Blake Pierce,
265:He was a wise man who invented God. ~ Plato,
266:I'm a man of my word. ~ Floyd Mayweather Jr,
267:I paint when I cannot photograph. ~ Man Ray,
268:I pity the man who can’t cry. ~ Janny Wurts,
269:I've never been a yes man. ~ Rogers Hornsby,
270:Jesus loves a free black man. ~ Cornel West,
271:Make this man a saint now, OK? ~ Elton John,
272:Man is always on the way. ~ Rudolf Bultmann,
273:Man is a thought-adventurer. ~ D H Lawrence,
274:Man is nature's sole mistake. ~ W S Gilbert,
275:Man is not born to be happy. ~ Sarah Dunant,
276:Man is on earth as in an egg. ~ Heraclitus,
277:Man shall learn from man's lot. ~ Aeschylus,
278:Man’s Search for Meaning. ~ Stephen R Covey,
279:Man was formed for society. ~ Francis Bacon,
280:Money makes the man a beast. ~ Irving Stone,
281:No man is wise enough by himself. ~ Plautus,
282:The Masked Man – it was Dad! ~ Chris Colfer,
283:There is no man can take, ~ Hilda Doolittle,
284:The sun will stand as your best man ~ Hafez,
285:The wise man knows he doesn't know. ~ Laozi,
286:Time and tide wait for no man. ~ Robin Hobb,
287:To justify God's ways to man. ~ A E Housman,
288:Vom Leben muß man saufen. ~ Benjamin Lebert,
289:You cannot con an honest man. ~ Ally Carter,
290:You can't cheat an honest man. ~ W C Fields,
291:You've become a clever man. ~ Richard Russo,
292:A Gentle Man and a Gentleman. ~ Jack Dempsey,
293:A man's character is his fate. ~ Heraclitus,
294:And man will go on. Man, not men. ~ Ayn Rand,
295:A shamefaced man makes a bad beggar. ~ Homer,
296:A strange enigma is man ~ Arthur Conan Doyle,
297:Beware of a man with manners. ~ Eudora Welty,
298:business of man is to be happy, ~ John Locke,
299:count no man happy until he be dead. ~ Solon,
300:day. You lost your man and ~ Tracie Peterson,
301:Defect in one's limb ruins a man. ~ Chanakya,
302:Every man must choose his world. ~ A W Tozer,
303:Genius: the superhuman in man. ~ Victor Hugo,
304:God is the mirror of man. ~ Ludwig Feuerbach,
305:He was a man of great statue ~ Thomas Menino,
306:He was a wise man who invented God. ~ Plato,
307:I ain't afraid to love a man. ~ Annie Oakley,
308:I don't wear jewelry, as a man. ~ Alan Tudyk,
309:If man made it, don't eat it. ~ Jack LaLanne,
310:I like being able to be a man. ~ Anson Mount,
311:It's a Man's Man's Man's World ~ James Brown,
312:Jason hated being an old man. ~ Rick Riordan,
313:Man cannot choose his duties. ~ George Eliot,
314:Man is a being in search of meaning. ~ Plato,
315:Man is a god in ruins. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,
316:Man is a mistake. He must go. ~ D H Lawrence,
317:Man is a self-conscious Nothing, ~ Anonymous,
318:Man is a social animal. ~ Seneca the Younger,
319:Man is a tool-using animal. ~ Thomas Carlyle,
320:Man is a vile creature! ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
321:Man must endure his going hence. ~ C S Lewis,
322:Man proposes and God disposes. ~ Ron Chernow,
323:Never trust a man who can dance. ~ E L James,
324:No man can outrun Logic or Time. ~ Anonymous,
325:No man has perpetual good fortune. ~ Plautus,
326:No man's pie is freed ~ William Shakespeare,
327:One day man will connect his ~ Nikola Tesla,
328:Paper is more patient than man. ~ Anne Frank,
329:People know when youre frontin. ~ Method Man,
330:Revenge of the Giant Grill Man. ~ Joan Bauer,
331:Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. ~ Saul,
332:Sex is the poor man's polo. ~ Clifford Odets,
333:Spider-Man had Peter Parker. ~ Gordon Korman,
334:The jungle changes a man. ~ Cynthia Kadohata,
335:The test of any man lies in action. ~ Pindar,
336:The tongue of man is a twisty thing. ~ Homer,
337:time and tide wait for no man. ~ Amor Towles,
338:What man dare, I dare. ~ William Shakespeare,
339:What you call man is time. ~ Terence McKenna,
340:A brave man is seldom unkind. ~ Pretty Shield,
341:All critics should be assassinated. ~ Man Ray,
342:A man can die but once. ~ William Shakespeare,
343:A man of logic is a man of sin. ~ Mike Norton,
344:A man of refined taste and judgment. ~ Horace,
345:A man who had felt less, might. ~ Jane Austen,
346:America is a white man's country. ~ Malcolm X,
347:An aged man is a thinking ruin. ~ Victor Hugo,
348:Art is the signature of man. ~ G K Chesterton,
349:A true man hates no one. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte,
350:A true man hates no one. ~ Napol on Bonaparte,
351:Bernie Sanders is a crazy man. ~ Donald Trump,
352:Beware the fury of a patient man ~ Tom Clancy,
353:Be your own father, young man ~ Ralph Ellison,
354:But is God a Yale man? ~ William F Buckley Jr,
355:But no man’s a hero to himself ~ Ray Bradbury,
356:Call no man happy before he dies. ~ Herodotus,
357:Effort is a measure of a Man. ~ William James,
358:Even a man who's pure in heart ~ Curt Siodmak,
359:Every breath taken in by the man ~ Robert Bly,
360:Every man is a poet at heart. ~ Sigmund Freud,
361:Every monster was a man first. ~ Edward Albee,
362:for vain is the salvation of man! ~ Anonymous,
363:God sinks into dust before man. ~ Max Stirner,
364:going to see a man about a dog. ~ Roger Ebert,
365:Harold?’ ‘Poor man, I suppose ~ Kate Atkinson,
366:Heaven forbids that man should know ~ Statius,
367:Hope is the dream of a waking man ~ Aristotle,
368:Hunger makes thief of any man. ~ Pearl S Buck,
369:I am any man's suitor, ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson,
370:I'm a good man with a good heart ~ John Mayer,
371:Iron has powers to draw a man to ruin ~ Homer,
372:I was a man of jagged risings ~ Gillian Flynn,
373:I was not always a man of woe. ~ Walter Scott,
374:Look twice at a two-faced man. ~ Chief Joseph,
375:Man has created death. ~ William Butler Yeats,
376:Man hath a weary pilgrimage, ~ Robert Southey,
377:Man is an endangered species. ~ L Ron Hubbard,
378:Man is an imagining being. ~ Gaston Bachelard,
379:Man is a robot with defects. ~ Emile M Cioran,
380:Man is not meant to live alone. ~ Dorothy Day,
381:Man is the creature he fears. ~ Josh Malerman,
382:Man is what his dreams are. ~ Benjamin E Mays,
383:Man rarely knows his own power, ~ Mitch Albom,
384:Man's life is thought, ~ William Butler Yeats,
385:Man, sometimes God really sucks. ~ Glenn Beck,
386:Man Va?Haya Va?Haya
~ Bahinabai Chaudhari,
387:Mathematics is as old as Man. ~ Stefan Banach,
388:Modern man is starved for life. ~ Erich Fromm,
389:Money is the wise man's religion. ~ Euripides,
390:Money is what makes a man act funny. ~ Eminem,
391:My father is an amazing man. ~ Sherman Alexie,
392:My father was a beautiful man. ~ Shania Twain,
393:Nobody picks on a strong man. ~ Charles Atlas,
394:no man,
is ever happy, no one. ~ Euripides,
395:No man is above the law. ~ William H Pryor Jr,
396:The king is the man who can. ~ Thomas Carlyle,
397:There is a dog in every man. ~ Linda Hamilton,
398:There is no Great Dark Man!!! ~ Quentin Crisp,
399:The unenvied man is not enviable. ~ Aeschylus,
400:The wise man knows without traveling. ~ Laozi,
401:Throw the lumber over, man! ~ Jerome K Jerome,
402:Time and tide wait for no man. ~ Stephen King,
403:Time is greedy, man is greedier ~ Victor Hugo,
404:Vaster is Man than his works. ~ Rockwell Kent,
405:Walking is man's best medicine. ~ Hippocrates,
406:Ware the man who fakes a limp. ~ Stephen King,
407:War ought to be no man's wish. ~ Thomas Paine,
408:Welcome to Suckersville, man. ~ Matt Groening,
409:Western man is schizophrenic. ~ J B Priestley,
410:What one man can do, another can do ~ Various,
411:2Now a man who was lame from birth ~ Anonymous,
412:Account no man happy till he dies. ~ Euripides,
413:A good man who did a bad thing. ~ Mary Matalin,
414:A hungry man is an angry one. ~ Buchi Emecheta,
415:A man after God's own heart is... ~ Jim George,
416:A man can get killed in there. ~ Robert Jordan,
417:A man is a god in ruins. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,
418:A man is known by the company he keeps ~ Aesop,
419:A man is more than his failings. ~ Rick Reilly,
420:A man is the origin of his action. ~ Aristotle,
421:A man is virgin if he says so. ~ M F Moonzajer,
422:A man must know his destiny. ~ George S Patton,
423:A man of wisdom delights in water. ~ Confucius,
424:An honest man is always a child.
   ~ Socrates,
425:A rich man's joke is always funny. ~ T E Brown,
426:Ariel Sharon is a man of peace. ~ Ariel Sharon,
427:Art is man's refuge from adversity. ~ Menander,
428:A wise man sees failure as progress. ~ Canibus,
429:balding man with a drooping ~ Michael Connelly,
430:But no man's a hero to himself. ~ Ray Bradbury,
431:Call no man happy till he is dead. ~ Aeschylus,
432:Credit is a young man's capital. ~ Oscar Wilde,
433:Every man is a potential rapist. ~ Nandita Das,
434:Every man measures his own greed. ~ Mario Puzo,
435:For a man's house is his castle. ~ Edward Coke,
436:Forget the brother and resume the man. ~ Homer,
437:For never, never, wicked man was wise. ~ Homer,
438:Hope is the poor man's bread. ~ George Herbert,
439:Hope proves a man deathless. ~ Herman Melville,
440:Humor is man's greatest blessing. ~ Mark Twain,
441:I am basically a religious man. ~ Cyril Cusack,
442:I like man, but not men. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,
443:I love you like a man insane. ~ Amanda Bouchet,
444:I never met a man I could marry. ~ Greta Garbo,
445:I never met a man I didn't like. ~ Will Rogers,
446:Is he a good man?" "Define 'good'. ~ Cleopatra,
447:I sing of arms and of a man: his fate ~ Virgil,
448:This was to be man sex. ~ Brandon Shire,
449:It is right to give every man his due. ~ Plato,
450:I want a man with nuclear power. ~ Carla Bruni,
451:Let a man nobly live or nobly die. ~ Sophocles,
452:Let the end try the man. ~ William Shakespeare,
453:Lincoln, the Man of the People ~ Edwin Markham,
454:Lucky is the man who dies at work. ~ Epictetus,
455:Man, I look ugly when I cry. ~ Debra Anastasia,
456:Man is an eternal sophomore. ~ Wallace Stevens,
457:Man is a universe within himself. ~ Bob Marley,
458:Man is condemned to be free ~ Jean Paul Sartre,
459:Man is not made for defeat. ~ Ernest Hemingway,
460:Man is the measure of all things. ~ Protagoras,
461:Man made God in his own image. ~ Eckhart Tolle,
462:Man Proposeth, God disposeth. ~ George Herbert,
463:Man’s first duty is to conquer fear. ~ Carlyle,
464:Man's greatest fear is chaos. ~ Marilyn Manson,
465:Mind is the foundation of man. ~ Baal Shem Tov,
466:My love ruined that man’s life. ~ Karina Halle,
467:Never kill a man who says nothing. ~ Anonymous,
468:Nobody loves life like an old man. ~ Sophocles,
469:No man can serve two masters. ~ Sankhya Karika,
470:No man is an island unto himself. ~ John Donne,
471:No man is ever just one thing. ~ Michael Scott,
472:No man to lord, no child to hold. ~ Tanith Lee,
473:Pigpen grins like a crazy man. ~ Katie McGarry,
474:Reality is fabricated out of desire. ~ Man Ray,
475:Silence is an answer to a wise man. ~ Plutarch,
476:Steel itself oft lures a man to fight. ~ Homer,
477:The bravest man in the universe ~ Bobby Womack,
478:The common enemy is the white man. ~ Malcolm X,
479:There is no great Dark Man !!! ~ Quentin Crisp,
480:The righteous man is always active. ~ Chi-King,
481:The stars spoke once to man. ~ Rudolf Steiner,
482:To laugh is proper to man. ~ Francois Rabelais,
483:When a man plans, a woman laughs. ~ David Wong,
484:Who knows what any man can do? ~ David Lindsay,
485:Without dance, a man can do nothing. ~ Moliere,
486:You are a better man than I. ~ Madeline Miller,
487:You can't trust a man, any man ~ Ellen Hopkins,
488:A boy trying out a man's language. ~ Eowyn Ivey,
489:Act like a lady think like a man ~ Steve Harvey,
490:A drunkard is a dead man ~ William Butler Yeats,
491:A dyslexic man walks into a bra. ~ Tommy Cooper,
492:A few lines to spell a man’s doom. ~ Hugh Howey,
493:A gallant man is above ill words. ~ John Selden,
494:Ain't no man can outrun his fate. ~ Esi Edugyan,
495:A man can laugh while he suffers. ~ Elie Wiesel,
496:A man is known by the company he keeps. ~ Aesop,
497:A Man Is Known By The Mice He Keeps ~ Ken Kesey,
498:A man is sorry to be honest for nothing. ~ Ovid,
499:A man's bathroom is his castle ~ John Steinbeck,
500:A man's biggest enemy is his mouth. ~ Greg Iles,
501:A man's fortune is his own affair ~ Neil Gaiman,
502:A man with a club is a law-maker. ~ Jack London,
503:An accomplished man to his fingertips. ~ Horace,
504:An ancient old raisin of a man. I ~ Esi Edugyan,
505:An empty man is full of himself. ~ Edward Abbey,
506:An honest man is a rare treasure. ~ Jim Butcher,
507:Anything a man can do, I can fix. ~ Chris Abani,
508:A real man's weapon is his mind. ~ Rick Riordan,
509:As a man believes, so he will act. ~ Sam Harris,
510:A shark who dreamed he was a man. ~ Rick Yancey,
511:Beware the fury of a patient man. ~ John Dryden,
512:Bravery is not man's monopoly. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
513:But man proposes, God disposes. ~ Sigrid Undset,
514:Come on, man, I got a full beard! ~ Aziz Ansari,
515:Conquer the angry man by love. ~ Gautama Buddha,
516:Conscience is God present in man. ~ Victor Hugo,
517:Constancy in a man is rare. ~ Catherine Cookson,
518:Don't. You don't know this man. ~ Stylo Fantome,
519:Each man dreams his own heaven. ~ John Connolly,
520:Evan Arden - hit man gone spooner ~ Shay Savage,
521:Even a poor man can receive honors. ~ Sophocles,
522:Every man is a poet when he is in love. ~ Plato,
523:Every man is grave alone. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,
524:Every man lives at swordspoint. ~ Ellen Kushner,
525:Every man's actions belong to him. ~ Ben Harper,
526:Every moment dies a man, ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson,
527:Happiness is not the portion of man. ~ Voltaire,
528:her butt could drive a man crazy. ~ Dean Koontz,
529:Hunger makes a thief of any man. ~ Pearl S Buck,
530:I am the wilderness lost in man. ~ Mervyn Peake,
531:I do not hate the man, but his vices. ~ Martial,
532:I feel like a young man of 15. ~ Nelson Mandela,
533:If man makes it, I don't eat it! ~ Jack LaLanne,
534:I'm a blue Powerade man myself. ~ Evan Goldberg,
535:I’m a man again, and a man works. ~ Dani Harper,
536:I man don't come red, I come Black ~ Peter Tosh,
537:I never mewt a man I didn't like. ~ Will Rogers,
538:Kill the king but spare the man. ~ Thomas Paine,
539:Let each man do his best. ~ William Shakespeare,
540:Let no man thirst for good beer. ~ Samuel Adams,
541:Lipstick is the red badge of courage. ~ Man Ray,
542:Man becomes what he thinks about ~ Rhonda Byrne,
543:Man, God really does love medics. ~ Mark Bowden,
544:Man hopes, genius creates ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,
545:Man is a reasoning Animal. ~ Seneca the Younger,
546:Man is a tool-making animal ~ Benjamin Franklin,
547:...man is a useless passion. ~ Jean Paul Sartre,
548:Man is condemned to be free. ~ Jean Paul Sartre,
549:Man is condemned to be free; ~ Jean Paul Sartre,
550:Man is in love and loves ~ William Butler Yeats,
551:Man is nature as much as the trees. ~ Dan Kiley,
552:Man is neither angel nor beast. ~ Blaise Pascal,
553:man, letting all her doubts fade ~ Rachel Hauck,
554:Man's best friend is his dogma. ~ Timothy Leary,
555:Man's greatest victory is over oneself. ~ Plato,
556:Nae man can tether time nor tide. ~ John Bunyan,
557:Nae man can tether time or tide. ~ Robert Burns,
558:Nobody can hate man more than man. ~ Karel apek,
559:No fox is foxier than man! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan,
560:No man is quick enough to enjoy life. ~ Martial,
561:No one loves the man whom he fears. ~ Aristotle,
562:No sane man will dance. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero,
563:Oh, Tocqueville, you're the man. ~ Maira Kalman,
564:Or maybe it wasn’t a man at all. ~ Stephen King,
565:respected man once said, that the ~ Mitch Albom,
566:Tempt not a desperate man ~ William Shakespeare,
567:That's worst than gonerreha, man! ~ Ned Vizzini,
568:The emperor is just a man, after all. ~ Ken Liu,
569:The happy man's without a shirt. ~ John Heywood,
570:The man-at-arms is the only man. ~ Henrik Ibsen,
571:The man, most man, ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning,
572:The proper study of mankind is man, ~ Anonymous,
573:There is no indispensable man. ~ Woodrow Wilson,
574:There live a great man named Joe ~ Muhammad Ali,
575:There was a young man of Herne Bay ~ Ogden Nash,
576:The sleep of a laboring man is sweet. ~ Solomon,
577:The wise man says: Perhaps? ~ Guy de Maupassant,
578:They say every man needs protection ~ Bob Dylan,
579:to look for a man named Nimble Dick ~ Anonymous,
580:Tongues wrangled dark at a man. ~ Carl Sandburg,
581:Walking is a man's best medicine. ~ Hippocrates,
582:Whatever things a man gives up, ~ Thiruvalluvar,
583:What is man? Dust turned to hope. ~ Elie Wiesel,
584:Who that man in the black Sedan ~ Mickey Avalon,
585:Woman is the lesser man. ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson,
586:Y are you called the cheese man? ~ Barbara Park,
587:You can't hate a man you understand. ~ Ben Bova,
588:A great man is one sentence. ~ Clare Boothe Luce,
589:A mad man sees what he sees. ~ George R R Martin,
590:A man has a right to want to live. ~ Dalia Sofer,
591:A man is not a financial plan. ~ Robert Kiyosaki,
592:A man must know his limitations. ~ David Gemmell,
593:A man's perfection is his work. ~ Thomas Carlyle,
594:A man that runs away may fight again. ~ Menander,
595:A man with courage has every blessing. ~ Plautus,
596:An armed man need not fight. ~ Robert A Heinlein,
597:As a man thinketh, so he behaveth, ~ Mike Dooley,
598:Best is the man who thinks for himself. ~ Hesiod,
599:Beware of the man of one book. ~ Isaac D Israeli,
600:Desire is the essence of a man. ~ Baruch Spinoza,
601:Don't ever let the Man get you. ~ Sophia Amoruso,
602:Don't let the man bring you down. ~ Maya Angelou,
603:Evan Arden – hit man gone spooner. ~ Shay Savage,
604:Every experience makes you a man. ~ Eric Cantona,
605:Every great man is unique. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,
606:Every ill man hath his ill day. ~ George Herbert,
607:Every man is a new method. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,
608:Every man makes a god of his own desire ~ Virgil,
609:Fate is not in man but around him ~ Albert Camus,
610:God improvises. Man systematizes. ~ Mason Cooley,
611:Hope is a working-man's dream. ~ Pliny the Elder,
612:[Hope is] the dream of a waking man. ~ Aristotle,
613:How can kindliness rule that man ~ Thiruvalluvar,
614:I am no man, I am dynamite ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
615:I am not man, I'm dynamite ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
616:I do love competence in a man. ~ Katharine Weber,
617:If a man can beat you, walk him. ~ Satchel Paige,
618:I have never painted a recent picture. ~ Man Ray,
619:—Ilse Aichinger, “The Bound Man ~ China Mi ville,
620:I'm a holy man minus the holiness. ~ E M Forster,
621:I'm a man without a corporation. ~ Robert Duvall,
622:I'm a rapper trying to be an actor. ~ Method Man,
623:In an easy cause any man may be eloquent. ~ Ovid,
624:I saw a man pursuing the horizon ~ Stephen Crane,
625:I smoke because I like to get high. ~ Method Man,
626:It really expresses a man in pain. ~ Mark Hoppus,
627:Luck never made a man wise. ~ Seneca the Younger,
628:Man, an animal that makes bargains. ~ Adam Smith,
629:Man becomes what he thinks about. ~ Rhonda Byrne,
630:Man.
Motorcyle.
Mountains. ~ Tracy March,
631:Man.
Motorcyle.
Mountains. ~ Tracy March,
632:Man cannot stand a meaningless life. ~ Carl Jung,
633:Man does not live by GNP alone. ~ Paul Samuelson,
634:Man is always exploited through fear. ~ Rajneesh,
635:Man is by nature a political animal. ~ Aristotle,
636:Man is not mind, he is soul. ~ Swami Vivekananda,
637:Man lives in a world of meaning. ~ George H Mead,
638:Man made God in his own image... ~ Eckhart Tolle,
639:Man must be invented each day ~ Jean Paul Sartre,
640:Man's feeble race what ills await! ~ Thomas Gray,
641:Man's word is God in man. ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson,
642:No bad man can be a good poet. ~ Boris Pasternak,
643:No man is as big as his own idea. ~ Ray Bradbury,
644:Obsession is a young man’s game. ~ Michael Caine,
645:Old man! 'Tis not difficult to die. ~ Lord Byron,
646:One man with God is a majority. ~ Brother Andrew,
647:Pride and excess bring disaster for man. ~ Xunzi,
648:Progress is the life-style of man. ~ Victor Hugo,
649:Prosperity knits a man to the world. ~ C S Lewis,
650:Remember that dead man you saw ~ Lindsay Buroker,
651:Take it easy man, but take it. ~ Terence McKenna,
652:The free man is a warrior. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
653:The good man remains calm and serene. ~ Chi-king,
654:The man’s been accused of murder. ~ Lauren Royal,
655:The man was poetry in motion. ~ Danielle Bourdon,
656:The man who walks with Henslow. ~ Charles Darwin,
657:The man would fight with a stump. ~ Terri Osburn,
658:The mind's the standard of the man. ~ Alan Watts,
659:The one man who changed everything. ~ Penny Reid,
660:the sin of the representative man. ~ Frank Sheed,
661:The sky is an enormous man. ~ Emanuel Swedenborg,
662:The spirit gone, man is garbage. ~ Joseph Heller,
663:Time and Tide wait for no man ~ Geoffrey Chaucer,
664:To be busy is man's only happiness. ~ Mark Twain,
665:Walking is man's best medicine.
   ~ Hippocrates,
666:Was this kid ever going to be a man? ~ C D Reiss,
667:We salute the rank not the man ~ Richard Winters,
668:When a man's life is under debate, ~ John Dryden,
669:Which man, Fitz?" I asked quietly. ~ Jim Butcher,
670:You are a rare kind of crazy, man. ~ Jim Butcher,
671:"You're a bitter man," said Candide. ~ Voltaire,
672:A blind man. I can stare at him ~ Denise Levertov,
673:A lucky man is rarer than a white crow. ~ Juvenal,
674:A man by himself is in bad company. ~ Eric Hoffer,
675:A man is either free or he is not. ~ Amiri Baraka,
676:A man is great by deeds, not by birth. ~ Chanakya,
677:A man must love his bear. ~ Gregory David Roberts,
678:A name is what a man makes it,” I ~ Louis L Amour,
679:And can a man his own quietus make ~ D H Lawrence,
680:And not a man appears to tell their fate. ~ Homer,
681:An invisible man is a man with power. ~ H G Wells,
682:Apart from Jesus I am a greedy man. ~ Johnny Hunt,
683:Are you looking at a dead man now? ~ Markus Zusak,
684:Are you strong enough to be my man? ~ Sheryl Crow,
685:Are you woman enough to be my man? ~ Eddie Vedder,
686:A wise man can be a fool in love. ~ Chetan Bhagat,
687:A word writ doon can hang a man ~ Terry Pratchett,
688:Britney Spears has shoulders like a man. ~ Eminem,
689:Circumstance does not make the man; ~ James Allen,
690:Come the hour, come the man. ~ Adrian Tchaikovsky,
691:Conscience is a man's compass. ~ Vincent Van Gogh,
692:Donald Trump is man of action. ~ Kellyanne Conway,
693:Don't kiss a man who hasn't shaved. ~ Kevin Kline,
694:Each man the architect of his own fate. ~ Sallust,
695:Everybody likes the ice cream man. ~ Stephen King,
696:Every man alone is sincere. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,
697:Every man to the Devil his own way—as ~ Susan Kay,
698:Give me an honest con man any day. ~ J D Salinger,
699:Guessing at the dead man too late. ~ Annie Proulx,
700:Here I am, an old man in a dry month, ~ T S Eliot,
701:He was the perfectly flawed man. ~ Samantha Chase,
702:Honor is the presence of God in man. ~ Pat Conroy,
703:How easy it is to fool a man’s brain. ~ Matt Shaw,
704:I am no man, I am dynamite. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
705:I am two lesbians in a man's body. ~ Eddie Izzard,
706:I believe I am an honorable man. ~ Joseph J Ellis,
707:If a man's a good kisser, he's a great f-. ~ Cher,
708:I look like the man in the moon. ~ Martin Freeman,
709:I'm a selfish, little pig of a man. ~ Lewis Black,
710:I'm more of a man than any liberal. ~ Ann Coulter,
711:I’m no longer a man, I’m a chorus ~ Stuart Turton,
712:In no man's land, alien is the queen. ~ Toba Beta,
713:In order to exist, man must rebel. ~ Albert Camus,
714:I trusted an untrustworthy man, ~ Jennifer Becton,
715:I've always been a proud man. ~ Herve Villechaize,
716:Jesus you're hurting my man-boobs. ~ Lev Grossman,
717:Let no such man be trusted. ~ William Shakespeare,
718:Life gives nothing to man without labor. ~ Horace,
719:Man does not steal, he conquers ~ Alexandre Dumas,
720:Man follows only phantoms. ~ Pierre Simon Laplace,
721:Man in society is like a flow'r, ~ William Cowper,
722:Man is a self-conscious Nothing, ~ Thomas Ligotti,
723:Man is free the moment he wants to be. ~ Voltaire,
724:Man is greater than the gods. ~ Swami Vivekananda,
725:Man, I smashed her like an Idaho Potato ~ Mos Def,
726:Man is never perfect nor contented. ~ Jules Verne,
727:Man is the animal who laughs, ~ Robert A Heinlein,
728:Man is the cruelest animal. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
729:Man proposes, but God disposes. ~ Thomas a Kempis,
730:Man’s First Mistake: The Wheel ~ Laurence J Peter,
731:Man shoot at nothing, sure to hit it. ~ Confucius,
732:man was born to betray his destiny ~ Paulo Coelho,
733:Men are men, but Man is a woman. ~ G K Chesterton,
734:mummified body of a London man who ~ Jeremy Bates,
735:Never rub another man's rhubarb. ~ Jack Nicholson,
736:Never touch another man's button. ~ Blake Shelton,
737:Never trust a man who doesn't drink. ~ W C Fields,
738:No man is a failure who has friends. ~ Mark Twain,
739:No man is great if he thinks he is. ~ Will Rogers,
740:No man is happy; he is at best fortunate. ~ Solon,
741:No man should be angry with what is true. ~ Plato,
742:One man cannot make a team. ~ Kareem Abdul Jabbar,
743:Pain does not matter to a man. ~ Ernest Hemingway,
744:Reason is God's crowning gift to man. ~ Sophocles,
745:reflection of a very handsome man ~ Scarlett Dawn,
746:Ron Thompson, he's my main man! ~ John Lee Hooker,
747:She was seriously hooked on this man ~ Katie Reus,
748:Sing us a song you're the piano man. ~ Billy Joel,
749:Some things a man simply cannot do. ~ Emily Rodda,
750:Sunshine helps to make man patient. ~ Victor Hugo,
751:Take it like a man and shut the fuck up. ~ Eminem,
752:That man gave piggy banks orgasms. ~ Dannika Dark,
753:The life of man is a winter way. ~ George Herbert,
754:The man is either crazy or he is a poet. ~ Horace,
755:The man was allergic to sleep. ~ Scott Westerfeld,
756:THE MAN WITH THE TWISTED LIP ~ Arthur Conan Doyle,
757:The mastermind, the man with the plan ~ Mikey Way,
758:There was a young man of Quebec ~ Rudyard Kipling,
759:The sea hath fish for every man. ~ William Camden,
760:The Strong Man is Mightiest Alone. ~ Adolf Hitler,
761:The wise man’s home is the universe. ~ Democritus,
762:The wisest man the warl' e'er saw, ~ Robert Burns,
763:The wit of man has devised cruel statutes, ~ Ovid,
764:This is a very sick man, this Obama. ~ Mark Levin,
765:This man belongs to me, I want him! ~ Bram Stoker,
766:Time and tide wait for no man. ~ Geoffrey Chaucer,
767:Trample not on the ruins of a man. ~ Charles Lamb,
768:Valentine cards and birthday wishes? ~ Method Man,
769:Walking with her man, Lost in a dream ~ A A Milne,
770:What a man wishes, he will believe. ~ Demosthenes,
771:what i really need is a dead man. ~ Chester Himes,
772:Who are you as a man? What defines you? ~ Roosh V,
773:Wit and wisdom are born with a man. ~ John Selden,
774:You make me feel like a natural man ~ Carole King,
775:You need a man to go to hell with. ~ Tuesday Weld,
776:Adversity introduces a man to himself. ~ Anonymous,
777:A logoless company is a faceless man ~ David Airey,
778:A man can drown in shades of grey. ~ Mark Lawrence,
779:A man got to have a code. --The Wire ~ David Simon,
780:A man in love is an awful sight. ~ Agatha Christie,
781:A man must constantly exceed his level ~ Bruce Lee,
782:A man should be what he can do. ~ Montgomery Clift,
783:A man will be known by his books. ~ William Martin,
784:A man without regrets cannot be cured. ~ Aristotle,
785:And Oh. My. God. The man could kiss. ~ Marie Force,
786:An ugly sight, a man who is afraid. ~ Jean Anouilh,
787:Any man that walks the mead ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson,
788:A poet is a world enclosed in a man. ~ Victor Hugo,
789:A poor man is a living dead one. ~ Anzia Yezierska,
790:As a man thinks so it becomes. ~ Genevi ve Behrend,
791:bhole whose form no man might see. ~ H P Lovecraft,
792:CHAPTER LXXII ‘BID HIM BE A MAN ~ Anthony Trollope,
793:Count no man happy until the end is known. ~ Solon,
794:course we are reminded of the big man ~ Eva Jordan,
795:Desire is the very essence of man ~ Baruch Spinoza,
796:Dreams are what keep a man going. ~ Daniel Wallace,
797:Each man has his own batch of poems. ~ Saul Bellow,
798:Evan Arden – hit man gone spooner. I ~ Shay Savage,
799:Every man at time of Death, ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson,
800:failings. I also know that a man, by ~ John Bunyan,
801:Fear the power of estrogen, old man. ~ John Corwin,
802:For man plans, but God arranges. ~ Thomas a Kempis,
803:Free is a man who has no desires. ~ Nizami Ganjavi,
804:Fuck her, but she loved this man. ~ Pepper Winters,
805:Good man always stands against that. ~ Jim Butcher,
806:Great is the man who can overcome the ~ Confucius,
807:Happy the man who can count his sufferings. ~ Ovid,
808:He is our man's-man of literature. ~ Andrew Barger,
809:He's just a man names Gatsby. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald,
810:he smiled like a weather man, ~ F Scott Fitzgerald,
811:he was a man on a date with destiny, ~ Kate Morton,
812:He who fears God fears no man. ~ Leonard Ravenhill,
813:I am a shipwrecked man who fears every sea. ~ Ovid,
814:I am the luckiest man in the world. ~ Chuck Pagano,
815:Ignorance of the law excuses no man. ~ John Selden,
816:I have believed the best of every man. ~ W B Yeats,
817:I love kicking a man when he’s down. ~ Celia Aaron,
818:I'm not much of a song-and-dance man. ~ Nick Nolte,
819:I'm the bitch who makes you a man. ~ Gillian Flynn,
820:I was thirty. An old man in Fallujah. ~ Chris Kyle,
821:Language is the charnel house of man. ~ C E Morgan,
822:Leave it to a man to mess things up ~ Jodi Picoult,
823:Let a man overcome anger by love. ~ Gautama Buddha,
824:Let no man's deathbed be a futon. ~ Demetri Martin,
825:Man - a figment of God's imagination. ~ Mark Twain,
826:man can be destroyed but not defeated. ~ Anonymous,
827:Man cannot live by profit alone. ~ James A Baldwin,
828:Man created God, not God, man ~ Giuseppe Garibaldi,
829:Man does not live by destruction. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
830:Man had to hang on to his pride. ~ Robert Ferrigno,
831:Man is an imitative creature. ~ Friedrich Schiller,
832:Man is emphatically self-made. ~ John Henry Newman,
833:Man is free the instant he wants to be. ~ Voltaire,
834:Man is ill because he is never still. ~ Paracelsus,
835:Man is never perfect, nor contended. ~ Jules Verne,
836:Man is the dwarf of himself. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,
837:Man proposes, and God disposes. ~ Ludovico Ariosto,
838:My father was an extraordinary man. ~ Nicolas Roeg,
839:My old man is a man of few words. ~ Scott Eastwood,
840:Never play cards with a man called Doc. ~ Amy Sohn,
841:Never trust a man in a jumpsuit ~ Charles Bukowski,
842:No honest man will argue on every side ~ Sophocles,
843:No man is a devil in his own mind. ~ James Baldwin,
844:No man is hurt but by himself ~ Diogenes of Sinope,
845:No man is lost while he yet lives. ~ Louis L Amour,
846:No man is the wiser for his learning ~ John Selden,
847:Oh, man, man—race of crocodiles, ~ Alexandre Dumas,
848:One Man's food is another Man's Poison ~ Lucretius,
849:Only the just man enjoys peace of mind. ~ Epicurus,
850:Only the man who says no is free ~ Herman Melville,
851:Pension never inriched young man. ~ George Herbert,
852:Sadness diminishes a man's powers ~ Baruch Spinoza,
853:Say it for me, Rainy. No other man. ~ Kenya Wright,
854:Sleep is sweet to the labouring man. ~ John Bunyan,
855:S’tjwetla is a black man’s striptease. ~ Toba Beta,
856:Success has ruin'd many a man. ~ Benjamin Franklin,
857:Success has ruined many a man. ~ Benjamin Franklin,
858:Takes more than combat gear to make a man ~ Sting,
859:That man with my brother is an envoy ~ Naomi Novik,
860:The desire for knowledge shapes a man, ~ Anonymous,
861:The dignity of man is in free choice. ~ Max Frisch,
862:The idle man is the devil's cushion. ~ Joseph Hall,
863:The ignorant man never enjoys. ~ Swami Vivekananda,
864:The intelligent man is never bored. ~ Isaac Asimov,
865:The lazy man does the hardest work”, ~ James Allen,
866:The man has stick-up-his-ass-itis. ~ R G Alexander,
867:The man was an emotional Fort Knox. ~ Ransom Riggs,
868:The man was cold as an albino frog. ~ Ray Bradbury,
869:The man was ruining me, bit by bit. ~ Karina Halle,
870:The man who flies shall fight again. ~ Demosthenes,
871:The man with courage is a majority. ~ Andrew Young,
872:There are some things no man man face. ~ C S Lewis,
873:There is no harm in a man's cub. ~ Rudyard Kipling,
874:The truthful man is usually a liar. ~ Alfred Nobel,
875:The whole earth is the brave man's country. ~ Ovid,
876:the wise man celebrates what he can. ~ Amor Towles,
877:The woman is the reflection of her man ~ Brad Pitt,
878:Time is the great art of man. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte,
879:To be a man you've gotta beat the man. ~ Ric Flair,
880:To be the man, you gotta beat the man! ~ Ric Flair,
881:Understand your man, meditate on it. ~ Johnny Cash,
882:What a piece of work is man! ~ William Shakespeare,
883:What is a rebel? A man who says no. ~ Albert Camus,
884:Where the mind goes the man follows. ~ Joyce Meyer,
885:Who can know the heart of a man? ~ Alice McDermott,
886:You could trust nature but not man. ~ Harlan Coben,
887:A blind man can see how much I love you ~ Amy Bloom,
888:A drowning man groping for a twig. ~ Alison Goodman,
889:A fearful man is always hearing things. ~ Sophocles,
890:Always this man gives me strength. ~ Naoko Takeuchi,
891:A man has to know his limitations. ~ Harry Callahan,
892:A man is known by his heroes. ~ Beno t B Mandelbrot,
893:A man is nothing but breath and shadow. ~ Sophocles,
894:A man of one book, a student of many. ~ John Wesley,
895:A man perfects himself by working. ~ Thomas Carlyle,
896:A man's fate is his own temper. ~ Benjamin Disraeli,
897:A man's just gotta know his limits ~ Clint Eastwood,
898:A man who lives everywhere lives nowhere. ~ Martial,
899:A man with perspective! That’s rare. ~ Kevin Hearne,
900:Any man that tells me what to do is sexy! ~ Rihanna,
901:Art is the signature of man. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton,
902:A sketch of a man facing to the right. ~ Adam Smith,
903:A State for one man is no State at all. ~ Sophocles,
904:As the government is, such will be the man. ~ Plato,
905:Beat a man with what he doesn't know. ~ Gene LeBell,
906:Behind every fortune, there's a crime. ~ Method Man,
907:beware love, especially the wrong man ~ N K Jemisin,
908:Branch Rickey made me a better man. ~ Branch Rickey,
909:Bravery is the dead man’s virtue. ~ Joe Abercrombie,
910:Cultivated leisure is the aim of man. ~ Oscar Wilde,
911:Demons run when a good man goes to war. ~ Anonymous,
912:Distress does not permit man to think.... ~ Various,
913:Dumbledore’s man through and through, ~ J K Rowling,
914:Each man believes only his experience. ~ Empedocles,
915:Each man kills the thing he loves ~ Anthony Burgess,
916:Every long travel changes man! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan,
917:Every man is betrayed by his mother. ~ Iris Murdoch,
918:Every man is the son of his own works. ~ Cervantes,
919:Every man looks better in a powdered wig. ~ Various,
920:Everything man needs is in the world. ~ Idries Shah,
921:For the weariest road that man may wend ~ Euripides,
922:God dwells wherever man lets Him in. ~ Martin Buber,
923:God is more lasting than the white man. ~ Malcolm X,
924:God loves to make a man break a vow. ~ Stephen King,
925:God's ways are better than man's. ~ Karen Kingsbury,
926:Good man, Thorne, thought Adams. ~ Clifford D Simak,
927:Heaven made virtue; man, the appearance. ~ Voltaire,
928:Holy Hannah, that man is dangerous! ~ Colleen Houck,
929:Hope is a desperate man's currency. ~ Paul Tremblay,
930:I am not a man, I am dynamite ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
931:I am not a monster, I am just a man. ~ Ronnie Radke,
932:I am still the fastest man on earth. ~ Asafa Powell,
933:I am the odd man out in the family. ~ Loni Anderson,
934:I don't owe one man one cent. Anywhere. ~ Roy Acuff,
935:I eat more chicken any man ever seen. ~ Howlin Wolf,
936:I have not hated the man, but his faults. ~ Martial,
937:I'm man enough to know when to scream. ~ Obert Skye,
938:I'm not a businessman, I'm a business, man! ~ Jay Z,
939:I'm the man of a million names. ~ Giancarlo Stanton,
940:I never met a man that I didn't like. ~ Will Rogers,
941:I preach as a dying man to dying men. ~ Greg Laurie,
942:"Is God a Man or a Woman ?" ~ Mata Amritanandamayi,
943:It is the duty of man to raise up man. ~ Jose Marti,
944:It is the lot of man to suffer. ~ Benjamin Disraeli,
945:It's doubt that drives a man onward. ~ Paulo Coelho,
946:It takes nine tailors to make a man. ~ John Heywood,
947:It well becomes a young man to be modest. ~ Plautus,
948:I watched the needle take another man. ~ Neil Young,
949:Jesus Chris was more than man. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte,
950:Let us make man [8] in our image, after ~ Anonymous,
951:ManBearPig, half man, half bear, half pig ~ Al Gore,
952:Man becomes what he thinks about ~ Morris E Goodman,
953:Man begets, but land does not beget. ~ Cecil Rhodes,
954:Man cannot live by swine alone. ~ Charlotte MacLeod,
955:Man created words to free himself ~ Leo F Buscaglia,
956:Man-eaters are finally shot dead. ~ Mahendra Jakhar,
957:Man is his own worst enemy. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero,
958:Man is in love and loves what vanishes. ~ W B Yeats,
959:Man is the creature of circumstances. ~ Robert Owen,
960:Man is the only animal to borrow tools. ~ Tim Allen,
961:Man is what he thinks all day long. ~ Joseph Murphy,
962:man jadda wa jada man shabara zhafira ~ Ahmad Fuadi,
963:Man loves most that which is his own. ~ Henry Adams,
964:Man must suffer to be wise. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero,
965:Man naturally yearns for novelty. ~ Pliny the Elder,
966:Man proposes, but God blocks the game. ~ Mark Twain,
967:Man's conscience is the oracle of God. ~ Lord Byron,
968:man that confirmed they were similar ~ Lili Valente,
969:Man, who don't like spaghetti? ~ Rodney Dangerfield,
970:Man with frailty is allied by birth. ~ Robert Lowth,
971:No driven man hears unwanted counsel. ~ Janny Wurts,
972:No man can bear a child's cross. ~ Fran ois Mauriac,
973:No man can see his own prejudices. ~ Frances Wright,
974:No man is an island, entire of itself. ~ John Donne,
975:No man is hurt but by himself. ~ Diogenes of Sinope,
976:No man was ever wise by chance” “Associate ~ Seneca,
977:No one man should have all that power. ~ Kanye West,
978:Nothing can unman you like an un-man. ~ Chuck Hogan,
979:One can love any man that is generous. ~ Leigh Hunt,
980:Play it cool, that's the old school rule man. ~ Nas,
981:Sight is the noblest sense of man. ~ Albrecht Durer,
982:Silence is the space where man wakes up. ~ Rajneesh,
983:Spider-Man is such a whiny loser. ~ Stephenie Meyer,
984:Surely mortal man is a broomstick! ~ Jonathan Swift,
985:Takes more than combat boots to make a man. ~ Sting,
986:Tell me, O Muse, of the man of many devices ~ Homer,
987:The best of man is still at best a man. ~ C S Lewis,
988:The cholerick man never wants woe. ~ George Herbert,
989:The more a man knows, the less he talks. ~ Voltaire,
990:The old men know when an old man dies. ~ Ogden Nash,
991:The way is light and fluid for the man with ~ Laozi,
992:The wisest man may be a blind father. ~ Jules Verne,
993:This man’s name was Albus Dumbledore. ~ J K Rowling,
994:To a good man nothing that happens is evil. ~ Plato,
995:To be a man, a boy must see a man. ~ J R Moehringer,
996:Truth is superior to man s wisdom. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
997:us killed, Barda McClean, to help a man ~ Anonymous,
998:Violence is man re-creating himself. ~ Frantz Fanon,
999:Well that's like, your opinion, man. ~ Jeff Bridges,
1000:What a piece of work is a man ~ William Shakespeare,
1001:When a man grows old his joy ~ William Butler Yeats,
1002:Why not be a man and fight like a man. ~ Tito Ortiz,
1003:Will was now all man. And all cowboy. ~ B J Daniels,
1004:Wise man also fears a weak enemy. ~ Publilius Syrus,
1005:Women love a self-confident bald man. ~ Larry David,
1006:A drowning man will clutch at a straw. ~ Thomas More,
1007:A dying man can do nothing easy. ~ Benjamin Franklin,
1008:A great man is made so for others. ~ Thomas F Wilson,
1009:A honest man is seldom a vagrant. ~ Cato the Younger,
1010:A man can be a hero in any profession ~ Walt Whitman,
1011:A man growing old becomes a child again. ~ Sophocles,
1012:A man is always better than he thinks. ~ Woody Hayes,
1013:A man lives by believing something. ~ Thomas Carlyle,
1014:A man newly in love knows what life is. ~ Ian McEwan,
1015:A man oughta do what he thinks is best. ~ John Wayne,
1016:A man should be what he seems. ~ William Shakespeare,
1017:A man's life breath cannot come back again-- ~ Homer,
1018:A man’s past is forever set in stone. There ~ Seneca,
1019:A man without enemies is a dishonest man. ~ Dan Rice,
1020:An angry man is always a stupid man. ~ Chinua Achebe,
1021:and a hypnotized man is easy to lead. ~ Stephen King,
1022:And since the mind is of a man one part, ~ Lucretius,
1023:A nice man is a man of nasty ideas. ~ Jonathan Swift,
1024:A noisy man is always in the right. ~ William Cowper,
1025:A perfect woman's but a softer man. ~ Alexander Pope,
1026:A tenor is not a man but a disease. ~ Hans von Bulow,
1027:Basically, man, I just love myself. ~ Edward Furlong,
1028:Be a man. Boys brag men don’t need to. ~ Celia Aaron,
1029:Behold! I've brought you a man. ~ Diogenes of Sinope,
1030:Beware of the fury of the patient man. ~ John Dryden,
1031:Beware of the man who has no enemies. ~ Edward Abbey,
1032:Beware the anger of a patient man. ~ James Patterson,
1033:Beware the fury of a patient man. ~ Penelope Douglas,
1034:Beware the man of the single book ~ Bertrand Russell,
1035:But God’s ways are better than man ~ Karen Kingsbury,
1036:Conscience, man's moral medicine chest. ~ Mark Twain,
1037:Dignity: the doomed man's final refuge. ~ Max Frisch,
1038:Disobedience is man's original virtue. ~ Oscar Wilde,
1039:Don’t mistake man’s weakness for God’s. ~ Ted Dekker,
1040:Each man kills the thing he loves. ~ Anthony Burgess,
1041:Every man has a right to kill himself. ~ James Jones,
1042:Every man paddles his own canoe. ~ Frederick Marryat,
1043:Every man should stay within his own fortune. ~ Ovid,
1044:Every unjust man is unjust against his will. ~ Plato,
1045:Fear is the tool of a man-made devil ~ Napoleon Hill,
1046:God made man because He loves stories. ~ Elie Wiesel,
1047:Half Man, Half Sit-Out-The-Season. ~ Charles Barkley,
1048:Heal the boy and the man will appear. ~ Tony Robbins,
1049:Hitler is a medicine man type of leader. ~ Carl Jung,
1050:How dark are all the ways of god to man! ~ Euripides,
1051:How many roads must a man walk down? ~ Douglas Adams,
1052:Hvis En Telegraph Man Vidste
~ Christian Winther,
1053:I always wanted to be a leading man! ~ Randy Jackson,
1054:I am a man who does not exist for others. ~ Ayn Rand,
1055:I am as free as nature first made man, ~ John Dryden,
1056:I am a thespian trapped in a man's body. ~ Tim Allen,
1057:I am not a man, I am dynamite! ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
1058:I can't spare this man, he fights! ~ Abraham Lincoln,
1059:I don't like to look a man in the eye. ~ Lech Walesa,
1060:If I'm with a man I'm soft and buttery. ~ Diana Ross,
1061:I had no desire to crash a man's world. ~ Ida Lupino,
1062:I hope they bury me near a strait man ~ Groucho Marx,
1063:I killed one man to save 100,000. ~ Charlotte Corday,
1064:I lost the man I love without reason. ~ Sejal Badani,
1065:MAN IS THE CREATURE HE FEARS. ~ Josh Malerman,
1066:I'm not perfect. I am not Iron Man. ~ Nobu Matsuhisa,
1067:I'm the man that made wrestling famous. ~ Hulk Hogan,
1068:In choosing myself, I choose man. ~ Jean Paul Sartre,
1069:In life, man proposes, God disposes. ~ Aldous Huxley,
1070:It takes a man to make a devil. ~ Henry Ward Beecher,
1071:Juice is a poor man’s dessert. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana,
1072:looking man, I know my way around ~ Melanie Moreland,
1073:Man absolutely cannot live by himself. ~ Erich Fromm,
1074:Man all of your flows bore me, paint drying. ~ Drake,
1075:Man blir ikke ensom av å være alene. ~ Tomas Espedal,
1076:Man created God in his own image. ~ Ludwig Feuerbach,
1077:Man gave us laws, and God gave us time, ~ ASAP Rocky,
1078:Man Har Sagn Om Borgtapeter (I)
~ Emil Aarestrup,
1079:Man has become great through struggle ~ Adolf Hitler,
1080:Man is a two-legged animal without feathers. ~ Plato,
1081:Man is born for deeds of kindness. ~ Marcus Aurelius,
1082:Man is the inventor of stupidity. ~ Remy de Gourmont,
1083:Man kann nicht nicht kommunizieren ~ Paul Watzlawick,
1084:Man's fatal flaw is misplaced optimism. ~ Allan Wolf,
1085:Man's mind is his basic tool of survival. ~ Ayn Rand,
1086:Many a good man I have seen go under. ~ Walt Whitman,
1087:Many times man lives and dies ~ William Butler Yeats,
1088:May the inward and outward man be as one. ~ Socrates,
1089:Money, like vodka, makes a man queer ~ Anton Chekhov,
1090:No man can be just who is not free. ~ Woodrow Wilson,
1091:No man is a devil in his own mind. ~ James A Baldwin,
1092:No man was ever great by imitation. ~ Samuel Johnson,
1093:No man was ever wise by chance. ~ Seneca the Younger,
1094:Not for any one man's delight has Nature made ~ Ovid,
1095:Not to sink under being man and wife, ~ Robert Frost,
1096:now, young man. That’s no small thing, ~ Jim Butcher,
1097:Observation is an old man's memory. ~ Jonathan Swift,
1098:of character for John Kennedy, a man ~ Bill O Reilly,
1099:One man decides, and the rest obey. ~ Upton Sinclair,
1100:One man's bane is another's bliss. ~ Robert E Howard,
1101:Plain as a nose in a man's face. ~ Francois Rabelais,
1102:Richard, you got to be a man today. ~ Stephen Hunter,
1103:Running should be free, man. ~ Christopher McDougall,
1104:Service to man is service to god ~ Swami Vivekananda,
1105:Silence in woman is like speech in man. ~ Ben Jonson,
1106:Silence is the eternal duty of man. ~ Thomas Carlyle,
1107:Sometimes it takes just one good man ~ Kate Atkinson,
1108:Thank you, Mister Stabby Sword Man, ~ David Dalglish,
1109:The child is father of the man. ~ William Wordsworth,
1110:The child is the father of man. ~ William Wordsworth,
1111:The essence of man is imperfection. ~ Norman Cousins,
1112:The gift of a bad man can bring no good. ~ Euripides,
1113:The healthy man does not torture others. ~ Carl Jung,
1114:The honest man, though e'er sae poor, ~ Robert Burns,
1115:The inferiority of women is man-made. ~ Helen Keller,
1116:The Jew bows before no man only God ~ Menachem Begin,
1117:The man who was only a silhouette. She ~ Ian Fleming,
1118:The object of the superior man is truth. ~ Confucius,
1119:The present alone can make no man wretched. ~ Seneca,
1120:The proper study of Mankind is Man. ~ Alexander Pope,
1121:The proud man hath no God; the envious ~ Joseph Hall,
1122:There once was a man name Barack, ~ Stephen Colbert,
1123:The wise man is astonished by anything. ~ Andre Gide,
1124:The wise man once said invest young ~ Warren Buffett,
1125:The wise man sayth, store is no sore. ~ John Heywood,
1126:This man is wrecking me. I’m wrecked. ~ Sarina Bowen,
1127:..to laugh is proper to the man. ~ Fran ois Rabelais,
1128:Vices of the time; vices of the man. ~ Francis Bacon,
1129:Violence is man re-creating himself. ~ Frantz Fanon,
1130:Walking with her man,
Lost in a dream ~ A A Milne,
1131:Weapons themselves can tempt a man to fight. ~ Homer,
1132:We sent a robot to do a man’s job. ~ Daniel H Wilson,
1133:what is man that you are mindful of him, ~ Anonymous,
1134:What is one man among so many men? ~ Wallace Stevens,
1135:What man does not know, ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,
1136:What measures a man?
'Conduct ~ Devdutt Pattanaik,
1137:What wouldst thou do, old man? ~ William Shakespeare,
1138:When a man is just and firm in his purpose, ~ Horace,
1139:Who can judge another man's suffering? ~ Janet Fitch,
1140:You can just fight one man at a time. ~ Lennox Lewis,
1141:You can't surprise a man with a dog. ~ Cindy Chupack,
1142:You gotta judge a man by his principles. ~ Rick Ross,
1143:You make me wanna be a better man. ~ Theodora Taylor,
1144:You train your man to do nothing. ~ Jennifer Aniston,
1145:A frightened man is a beaten man. ~ George R R Martin,
1146:A lie faces God and shrinks from man. ~ Francis Bacon,
1147:A man can learn wisdom even from a foe ~ Aristophanes,
1148:A man has got to keep his extrication. ~ Robert Frost,
1149:A man hates most what’s in his own heart. ~ Anonymous,
1150:A man in love is a sorry spectacle. ~ Agatha Christie,
1151:A man is only as faithful as his options ~ Chris Rock,
1152:A man is only as good as what he loves. ~ Saul Bellow,
1153:A man is related to all nature. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,
1154:A man may beg, but a woman has to sell. ~ Victor Hugo,
1155:A man’s best friend is a good wife. ~ Thomas A Edison,
1156:A man's got to know his limitations. ~ Harry Callahan,
1157:A man's wounded pride is a violate force. ~ Jean Haus,
1158:A man trusts his ears less than his eyes. ~ Herodotus,
1159:A man with God is always in the majority. ~ John Knox,
1160:A man without memories is just a shell. ~ Mitch Albom,
1161:And pain does not matter to a man. ~ Ernest Hemingway,
1162:And The Cherry On Top Of The Cake A MAN! ~ Steph Bowe,
1163:...an old man is twice a child. ~ William Shakespeare,
1164:Any man who reads is a fine one. ~ Karen Marie Moning,
1165:A [real] man does not flee from truth ~ Rudolfo Anaya,
1166:Art attests to what is inhuman in man. ~ Alain Badiou,
1167:Art is the window to man's soul. ~ Lady Bird Johnson,
1168:A stupid man is every woman’s downfall. ~ Nina George,
1169:A tiny fly can choke a big man. ~ Solomon Ibn Gabirol,
1170:A woman dies young, it’s man trouble. ~ Laura Lippman,
1171:Be assured, he is not an ordinary man. ~ George Meade,
1172:Beauty is the greatest seducer of man. ~ Paulo Coelho,
1173:But he knows that no man is an island. ~ Paulo Coelho,
1174:Call no man happy until he is dead. ~ Johnny B Truant,
1175:Dance is the landscape of man's soul. ~ Martha Graham,
1176:Do not mess with this man's threads! ~ Graeme Simsion,
1177:Don't write about Man; write about a man. ~ E B White,
1178:Everyday is a new life to a wise man. ~ Dale Carnegie,
1179:Every man is the hero of his own song. ~ Tad Williams,
1180:Every man needs a place to go to. ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky,
1181:Every man prays in his own language. ~ Duke Ellington,
1182:every man’s watchman, is his conscience. ~ Harper Lee,
1183:Fear of women love more than hate the man. ~ Socrates,
1184:...for iron of itself draws a man
thereto. ~ Homer,
1185:For man is by nature an artist. ~ Rabindranath Tagore,
1186:For the wise man, every day is a festival. ~ Plutarch,
1187:Get on yo job little man this ain't Saturday ~ J Cole,
1188:God made only water, but man made wine. ~ Victor Hugo,
1189:Goodness, man, don't be so lachrymose. ~ D H Lawrence,
1190:Happy is the man who is nothing. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti,
1191:He is not immutable. No man can be. ~ Dorothy Dunnett,
1192:...he'll never lie - the man is far too wise. ~ Homer,
1193:He looks like a horse in a man costume! ~ Dylan Moran,
1194:I am not a businessman. I am a business, man. ~ Jay Z,
1195:I am not a man at all. I am a cause. ~ G K Chesterton,
1196:I am the man, I suffered, I was there. ~ Walt Whitman,
1197:I am the man my father loved and was. ~ Derek Walcott,
1198:I hate a man who skins the land. ~ Theodore Roosevelt,
1199:I live, like every real man, in my work. ~ Max Frisch,
1200:I love a tree more than a man. ~ Ludwig van Beethoven,
1201:I love not man the less, but nature more ~ Lord Byron,
1202:I'm a decent man who exports flowers. ~ Pablo Escobar,
1203:I may be a man, but I fight like a girl. ~ Andy Cohen,
1204:Improving the soil improved the man. ~ Michael Pollan,
1205:In my mind I'm a blind man doin' time. ~ Tupac Shakur,
1206:Is not parody the eternal lot of man? ~ Milan Kundera,
1207:It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile. ~ Sting,
1208:I’ve never known a man who loved me. ~ Sufjan Stevens,
1209:I want a man in my life, not in my house. ~ Joy Behar,
1210:John is a man of his word. And so am I. ~ Bruce Irvin,
1211:Like Pac-Man, she swallows my ghosts. ~ Andrea Gibson,
1212:Mama shrieked. The first man turned ~ Raymond E Feist,
1213:Man cannot contend with the divine. ~ Cassandra Clare,
1214:Man Har Sagn Om Borgtapeter (Ii)
~ Emil Aarestrup,
1215:Man Har Sagn Om Borgtapeter (Iv)
~ Emil Aarestrup,
1216:Man, I can assure you, is a nasty creature. ~ Moliere,
1217:Man, I can assure you, is a nasty creature. ~ Moli re,
1218:Man is a fugitive from nature. ~ Jose Ortega y Gasset,
1219:Man is a genius when he is dreaming. ~ Akira Kurosawa,
1220:Man is an animal that writes letters. ~ Lewis Carroll,
1221:Man is a perpetually wanting animal. ~ Abraham Maslow,
1222:Man is a universe in little [Microcosm]. ~ Democritus,
1223:Man is bound to lie about himself ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky,
1224:Man is free at the instant he wants to be. ~ Voltaire,
1225:Man is more powerful than matter. ~ Benjamin Disraeli,
1226:man jadda wa jadda, man shabara zhafira ~ Ahmad Fuadi,
1227:Man makes god in his own image. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
1228:Man makes his plans. God has his own. ~ Sujatha Gidla,
1229:Man must fend off the void with his dick. ~ Anonymous,
1230:Man's books are but man's alphabet, ~ Joaquin Miller,
1231:Man's chiefest treasure is a sparing tongue. ~ Hesiod,
1232:Man's rank is his power to uplift. ~ George MacDonald,
1233:Man's singularity is his divinity. ~ Ursula K Le Guin,
1234:Man's worst ill is stubbornness of heart. ~ Sophocles,
1235:Man was created to complete the horse. ~ Edward Abbey,
1236:Men are cruel, but Man is kind. ~ Rabindranath Tagore,
1237:Merry Christmas! the man threatened. ~ William Gaddis,
1238:Money is a poor man's credit card. ~ Marshall McLuhan,
1239:Nature and man are opposed in Spain. ~ Gertrude Stein,
1240:Necessity makes an honest man a knave. ~ Daniel Defoe,
1241:Nobody likes the man who brings bad news. ~ Sophocles,
1242:No man can be judge to his own cause. ~ Thomas Hobbes,
1243:No man could be a khan to his mother. ~ Conn Iggulden,
1244:No man ever became very wicked all at once. ~ Juvenal,
1245:No man fails who does his best. ~ Orison Swett Marden,
1246:No man may be completely invulnerable. ~ Rick Riordan,
1247:No man's credit is as good as his money. ~ John Dewey,
1248:One step at a time, a man walked on the moon. ~ Q Tip,
1249:Oppression makes a wise man mad. ~ Frederick Douglass,
1250:Poor is the man who desires a lot ~ Leonardo da Vinci,
1251:Reason is God's crowning gift to a man... ~ Sophocles,
1252:She has an eye like a man-eating fish ~ P G Wodehouse,
1253:She was a feast, and I was a man starved. ~ Anonymous,
1254:Sorry. I’m too much man for half a woman. ~ C D Reiss,
1255:That man is strongest who stands alone! ~ Ruskin Bond,
1256:That man positively cherishes a grudge. ~ N K Jemisin,
1257:The blind man cannot move without a guide ~ Sophocles,
1258:The devil’s man with the angel eyes.” I ~ Tillie Cole,
1259:The fool wanders, a wise man travels. ~ Thomas Fuller,
1260:The free man is the man with no fears. ~ Dick Gregory,
1261:The Lord instructs me not to judge any man. ~ Marilyn,
1262:The majority can never replace the man ~ Adolf Hitler,
1263:The man is nothing, the work--all. ~ Gustave Flaubert,
1264:The man of humanity delights in mountains ~ Confucius,
1265:The man was awake but not glad to be. ~ Douglas Adams,
1266:The man who wins is the average man, ~ Conrad Hilton,
1267:The normal food of man is vegetable. ~ Charles Darwin,
1268:The other man's arse is always cleaner! ~ Stephen Fry,
1269:The righteous man pays the sinner's bill. ~ Jos Rizal,
1270:The soul of man is immortal and imperishable. ~ Plato,
1271:The soul of Man must quicken to creation. ~ T S Eliot,
1272:The superior man limits his achievements. ~ Confucius,
1273:This isn’t a man. It’s a broken kite. ~ Kurt Vonnegut,
1274:Time and tide will wait for no man, ~ Charles Dickens,
1275:To be a king, is to be a disappointed man. ~ K lid sa,
1276:To create is divine, to reproduce is human. ~ Man Ray,
1277:Tranquility is the old man's milk. ~ Thomas Jefferson,
1278:We will not be caught in no man's land. ~ Masai Ujiri,
1279:Who needed a man when they had a dog? ~ Toni Anderson,
1280:You make me want to be a better man. ~ Jack Nicholson,
1281:A brave man's hand can speak for itself; ~ Bram Stoker,
1282:A heart is a heart in a child or a man. ~ Shannon Hale,
1283:A hero is a man who does what he can. ~ Romain Rolland,
1284:Ahesta boro, Mah-e-man, ahesta boro. ~ Khaled Hosseini,
1285:A man always looks good in a dark suit. ~ Greg Kinnear,
1286:A man can suffocate on courtesy. ~ Henry David Thoreau,
1287:A man in armor is his armor's slave. ~ Robert Browning,
1288:A man in debt is so far a slave. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,
1289:A man is only as faithful as his options. ~ Chris Rock,
1290:A man may be down, but he is never out. ~ Bruce Barton,
1291:A man may learn wisdom even from a foe. ~ Aristophanes,
1292:A man-of-war is the best ambassador. ~ Oliver Cromwell,
1293:A man's books are very much himself. ~ Ford Madox Ford,
1294:A man's country is the world. ~ William Lloyd Garrison,
1295:A man's eroticism is a woman's sexuality. ~ Karl Kraus,
1296:A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do ~ Louis L Amour,
1297:A man's got to do what a man's got to do. ~ John Wayne,
1298:A man well mounted is ever Cholerick. ~ George Herbert,
1299:A man who lies about beer makes enemies ~ Stephen King,
1300:A man who won't listen can't hear. ~ George R R Martin,
1301:A man without fear cannot be a slave. ~ Edith Hamilton,
1302:An afro is a poor man’s haircut. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana,
1303:As a man thinketh in his heart so is he, ~ James Allen,
1304:Because audacity is a young man’s sword. ~ Brent Weeks,
1305:Be it sin or no, I hate the man! ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne,
1306:Cunning to wise, is as an Ape to a Man. ~ William Penn,
1307:Demons run when a good man goes to war ~ Steven Moffat,
1308:Each man is for his lord, do not give chase. ~ Cao Cao,
1309:Empathy is the curse of the new age man. ~ John Zunski,
1310:Even the wisest man grows tense ~ William Butler Yeats,
1311:Every day is a new life to a wise man. ~ Dale Carnegie,
1312:Every man dies. Not every man lives. ~ Anthony Robbins,
1313:Every man is the author of his own life. ~ Paul Auster,
1314:Every man knows the smell of his own fart. ~ Confucius,
1315:For rarely man escapes his destiny. ~ Ludovico Ariosto,
1316:God created man, but I could do better. ~ Erma Bombeck,
1317:God does not need man nor his won works. ~ John Milton,
1318:God had stood up when man had not. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik,
1319:God, it's nice to be treated like a man. ~ Jim Edmonds,
1320:God never made his work for man to mend. ~ John Dryden,
1321:Grief is the doorway to a man's feelings. ~ Robert Bly,
1322:He looks like a gingerbread man. Ginger ~ Tahereh Mafi,
1323:He thought of the man he’d seen seconds ~ Lisa Jackson,
1324:He was a man too busy to flush toilets. ~ Mona Simpson,
1325:Hey man! I'm a comedian but I'm not a clown. ~ Godfrey,
1326:History and man made each other. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana,
1327:Honor, thou strong idol of man's mind. ~ Philip Sidney,
1328:I am just a plain, common man. ~ Nicholas II of Russia,
1329:I am not a number, I am a free man! ~ Patrick McGoohan,
1330:I decline to accept the end of man. ~ William Faulkner,
1331:I'd like to be a song and dance man. ~ Walter Cronkite,
1332:I do love a man with a big vocabulary. ~ Tiffany Reisz,
1333:I’d pay a man to talk to me that way. ~ Kristen Ashley,
1334:I fear no man, no beast or evil, brother. ~ Hulk Hogan,
1335:I love not man the less, but Nature more. ~ Lord Byron,
1336:Im a peaceful man with bad intentions. ~ Charlie Sheen,
1337:I'm a single man! I'm allowed to flirt! ~ Belle Aurora,
1338:In man or woman, but far most in man, ~ William Cowper,
1339:I set off, off to kill the man I love. ~ Richelle Mead,
1340:I start where the last man left off. ~ Thomas A Edison,
1341:I think buddy is man talk for sweetie. ~ Emma Donoghue,
1342:It is the poor man who'll ever count his flock. ~ Ovid,
1343:It takes a brave man to be truly mad. ~ Atticus Poetry,
1344:It takes a wise man to discover a wise man. ~ Diogenes,
1345:I've never been called a man of few words. ~ Joe Biden,
1346:I want to dominate the man's world. ~ Marina Abramovic,
1347:Keep your mind out of the pigsty, man! ~ Robert Jordan,
1348:Let each man exercise the art he knows. ~ Aristophanes,
1349:Look, man, all I am is a trumpet player. ~ Miles Davis,
1350:Lucy almost killed a man during dinner ~ Jenny B Jones,
1351:Man always dies before he is fully born. ~ Erich Fromm,
1352:Man. Being mostly dead is hard on a guy. ~ Jim Butcher,
1353:Man dies of cold, not of darkness. ~ Miguel de Unamuno,
1354:Man does not live by bread alone. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
1355:Man fears time, but time fears the pyramids. ~ Unknown,
1356:Man Har Sagn Om Borgtapeter (Iii)
~ Emil Aarestrup,
1357:Man is a sun and his senses are the planets. ~ Novalis,
1358:Man is bound to lie about himself ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
1359:man is not truly one, but two ~ Robert Louis Stevenson,
1360:Man is what he wills himself to be. ~ Jean Paul Sartre,
1361:Man makes plans . . . and God laughs. ~ Michael Chabon,
1362:Man, not the earth, makes civilization. ~ Ariel Durant,
1363:Man's life is like a drop of dew on a leaf. ~ Socrates,
1364:Man's security comes from within himself. ~ Manly Hall,
1365:Man, there's no boundary line to art! ~ Charlie Parker,
1366:Meant to be doesn't have to man forever. ~ Nicola Yoon,
1367:Nashville, man. That's the place to be. ~ Willie Geist,
1368:Never met a wise man, if so its a woman. ~ Kurt Cobain,
1369:New Year's Day is every man's birthday. ~ Charles Lamb,
1370:No empty handed man can lure a bird ~ Geoffrey Chaucer,
1371:No man can be wise on an empty stomach. ~ George Eliot,
1372:No noble man ever hated good wine. ~ Francois Rabelais,
1373:One man and God can change the world, ~ MaryLu Tyndall,
1374:One man's famine makes another man's feast. ~ Ray Kroc,
1375:One man's fish is another man's poisson. ~ Mark Gatiss,
1376:One man with courage is a majority. ~ Thomas Jefferson,
1377:Only a self-learnt man can teach others ~ Girish Kohli,
1378:Only a self-taught man can teach others ~ Girish Kohli,
1379:Posterity gives to every man his true honor. ~ Tacitus,
1380:President Trump is a man of his word. ~ Reince Priebus,
1381:Real life is much stranger than fiction, man. ~ Mike D,
1382:She didn’t need a man. She wanted one. ~ Robin Bielman,
1383:That man made me miss my destiny. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte,
1384:THE ADVENTURE OF THE CREEPING MAN ~ Arthur Conan Doyle,
1385:The best way to hold a man is in your arms. ~ Mae West,
1386:The car bomb is the poor man’s air force. ~ Mike Davis,
1387:The gentleman is a man of truth. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,
1388:"The life of man is a dubious experiment." ~ Carl Jung,
1389:...the man of my dreams is a girl. ~ Julie Anne Peters,
1390:The man who acts the least, upbraids the most. ~ Homer,
1391:The man who does ill, ill must suffer too. ~ Aeschylus,
1392:The man who fears war and squats opposing ~ Ezra Pound,
1393:The man who seeks revenge digs two graves. ~ Ken Kesey,
1394:The man who thinks with Horace thinks divine. ~ Horace,
1395:There is a good deal in a man's mode of eating. ~ Ovid,
1396:There is a reason God limits man's days. ~ Mitch Albom,
1397:There's no escape. I'm God's only man. ~ Paul Schrader,
1398:The soul of man is the mirror of the world. ~ Leibnitz,
1399:The vain man does not think he is vain. ~ Gilbert Ryle,
1400:The will of man is his happiness. ~ Friedrich Schiller,
1401:The wisest man knows he know nothing. ~ A Lee Martinez,
1402:To Sachin, the man we all want to be. ~ Andrew Symonds,
1403:War had made a man of him before his time. ~ Anonymous,
1404:War makes you a man; war makes you dead. ~ Tim O Brien,
1405:What man is, only his history tells. ~ Wilhelm Dilthey,
1406:When facts speak, the wise man listens. ~ Stephen King,
1407:When God made man she was practicing. ~ Rita Mae Brown,
1408:Who else speaks for the Family of Man? ~ Carl Sandburg,
1409:Yiddish proverb: Man plans, God laughs. ~ Harlan Coben,
1410:You are quite unnecessary, young man! ~ Antonin Artaud,
1411:You can’t catch up from a body bag, man. ~ Celia Aaron,
1412:You can't let a man like this beat you. ~ Ricky Hatton,
1413:Youre a rich man, why arent you smart? ~ Jacque Fresco,
1414:A Brave Man in a Brave Country Surprised ~ Louise Penny,
1415:A critic is a man who expects miracles. ~ James Gibbons,
1416:A father is a man who fails every day. ~ Michael Chabon,
1417:A fearless man thrives on far horizons. ~ Napoleon Hill,
1418:Agua mala', the man said, 'you whore ~ Ernest Hemingway,
1419:All a man can betray is his conscience. ~ Joseph Conrad,
1420:All art is a revolt against man's fate. ~ Andre Malraux,
1421:A man got to have a code. - Omar Little ~ Michael Lewis,
1422:A man is known by the company he owns. ~ Vince Lombardi,
1423:A man is known by the silence he keeps ~ Oliver Herford,
1424:A man is responsible for his ignorance. ~ Milan Kundera,
1425:A man is the sum of his misfortunes. ~ William Faulkner,
1426:A man needs enough...no less, no more. ~ Marina Lewycka,
1427:A man only has a soul to be won or lost. ~ Paulo Coelho,
1428:A man's fate is always shrouded by fog ~ Giles Kristian,
1429:A man's idee in a card game is war ~ Finley Peter Dunne,
1430:A man's pride needs careful handling. ~ Sally MacKenzie,
1431:A man's reach should exceed his grasp ~ Robert Browning,
1432:A man who cheats, cheats only himself. ~ Yasmina Khadra,
1433:A man who lies about beer makes enemies. ~ Stephen King,
1434:A man with no imaginations has no wings. ~ Muhammad Ali,
1435:A man without vision is a man without God. ~ T B Joshua,
1436:An alone man is always badly accompanied. ~ Paul Val ry,
1437:Any man who was a man could travel alone. ~ Jack London,
1438:Are you the man who reads phone books? ~ Thomas Pynchon,
1439:A rich man's war and a poor man's fight. ~ Shelby Foote,
1440:As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. ~ James Allen,
1441:A young man of pleasure is a man of pains. ~ Neil Young,
1442:Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man. ~ Thomas Paine,
1443:Beware the man of a single book. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas,
1444:Blame is seldom on one man’s shoulders. ~ Heather Burch,
1445:Brooding on God, I may become a man. ~ Theodore Roethke,
1446:But man does not create...he discovers. ~ Antonio Gaudi,
1447:…but mortal man was helpless there… ~ Louisa May Alcott,
1448:But without a family, a man is nothing. ~ Aravind Adiga,
1449:By the grace of God, I'll be that man. ~ Dwight L Moody,
1450:Character, not circumstance, make a man. ~ Andy Andrews,
1451:Darwin was Wrong! Man's still an ape. ~ Jerome Lawrence,
1452:Death and ruin is man's preferred ecosystem. ~ Joe Hill,
1453:Demons run when a good man goes to war. ~ Steven Moffat,
1454:Don’t ever thank a man for kissing you. ~ Julie Johnson,
1455:Don't mess with me, man, I'm a lawyer! ~ Robin Williams,
1456:Electronic man has no physical body. ~ Marshall McLuhan,
1457:Even a dark purpose can keep a man alive. ~ Dan Millman,
1458:Even chitlins smell good to a starving man. ~ Greg Iles,
1459:Every man and every woman is a star. ~ Aleister Crowley,
1460:Every man dies. Not every man truly lives. ~ Mel Gibson,
1461:Every man is of importance to himself. ~ Samuel Johnson,
1462:Every man is, or hopes to be, an idler ~ Samuel Johnson,
1463:Every man thinks his own geese swans. ~ Charles Dickens,
1464:Everything Man Sees He Takes for a Toy. ~ Jessie Burton,
1465:For Brutus is an honourable man; ~ William Shakespeare,
1466:God delights to disappoint man's fears. ~ Lettie Cowman,
1467:Her expression stroked the man on his face. ~ Anonymous,
1468:He was a great man. And he was also me. ~ Jeff Goldblum,
1469:Hope could ruin a man who faced forever. ~ Lisa Kessler,
1470:I am not an economist. I am an honest man! ~ Mark Twain,
1471:I cannot love a man who cannot protect me. ~ Anne Bront,
1472:I'd like to do plays, maybe a one man show. ~ Jean Reno,
1473:I envy no man's nightingale or spring; ~ George Herbert,
1474:If any man thinks to swindle God, he is wrong. ~ Pindar,
1475:I feel that I am a man of destiny. ~ Friedrich Schiller,
1476:If you face a man's job, find a woman! ~ John F Kennedy,
1477:I guess a good man IS hard to find! ~ Flannery O Connor,
1478:I LIVED IN the home of the man I’d killed. ~ Lori M Lee,
1479:I love a man with dishpan hands! ~ Suzanne Woods Fisher,
1480:I may not be a human, but I am a man. ~ Stephenie Meyer,
1481:I need to put bread on the table man ~ Latrell Sprewell,
1482:I never saw a man get superior so fast. ~ Louis L Amour,
1483:Inhibition is no good provider for a needy man ~ Hesiod,
1484:I set off, off to kill the man I loved. ~ Richelle Mead,
1485:It`s very hard for a man to fight naked. ~ Stephen King,
1486:It takes a Real man to fill my shoes. ~ Madonna Ciccone,
1487:John Lee Hooker is the funkiest man alive ~ Miles Davis,
1488:Just be yourself man, be proud of who you are. ~ Eminem,
1489:Knowledge is the treasure of a wise man. ~ William Penn,
1490:Last time I was sober, man I felt bad, ~ Mark Knopfler,
1491:Love is a beautiful man bearing caffeine. ~ Sierra Dean,
1492:Man, a hybrid of plant and ghost. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
1493:Man alone is made in the image of God. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
1494:Man is an ape with possibilities. ~ Roy Chapman Andrews,
1495:Man is a pupil, pain is his teacher. ~ Alfred de Musset,
1496:Man is a restless creature, nomadic at heart. ~ Tash Aw,
1497:Man is not above nature, but in nature. ~ Ernst Haeckel,
1498:Man is something to be surpassed. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
1499:Man is stupid, phenomenally stupid. ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky,
1500:Man is the only animal that can be bored. ~ Erich Fromm,

IN CHAPTERS [300/7426]



3275 Integral Yoga
2278 Poetry
  342 Philosophy
  315 Occultism
  314 Mysticism
  267 Fiction
  191 Christianity
  140 Yoga
   92 Psychology
   86 Islam
   66 Philsophy
   40 Science
   34 Sufism
   34 Hinduism
   27 Education
   25 Kabbalah
   22 Mythology
   20 Theosophy
   16 Integral Theory
   16 Buddhism
   11 Zen
   8 Cybernetics
   6 Baha i Faith
   2 Taoism
   1 Thelema
   1 Alchemy


1773 The Mother
1470 Sri Aurobindo
1036 Satprem
  567 Nolini Kanta Gupta
  406 Walt Whitman
  245 William Wordsworth
  213 William Butler Yeats
  166 Percy Bysshe Shelley
  147 Aleister Crowley
  144 John Keats
  126 H P Lovecraft
   92 Friedrich Nietzsche
   91 Carl Jung
   86 Muhammad
   86 Friedrich Schiller
   83 Rabindranath Tagore
   75 Robert Browning
   69 James George Frazer
   66 Ralph Waldo Emerson
   65 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
   63 Plotinus
   57 Sri Ramakrishna
   54 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
   49 Jalaluddin Rumi
   48 Jorge Luis Borges
   38 Swami Vivekananda
   37 Swami Krishnananda
   35 Anonymous
   34 Saint Augustine of Hippo
   33 Rainer Maria Rilke
   32 Lucretius
   32 A B Purani
   31 Li Bai
   30 Saint Teresa of Avila
   30 Kabir
   29 Saint John of Climacus
   29 Edgar Allan Poe
   29 Aldous Huxley
   28 Franz Bardon
   25 Rudolf Steiner
   25 Rabbi Moses Luzzatto
   22 Vyasa
   19 Lalla
   19 Aristotle
   18 Hafiz
   15 Nirodbaran
   15 Hsuan Chueh of Yung Chia
   14 Ramprasad
   14 Ovid
   13 Mansur al-Hallaj
   12 Swami Sivananda Saraswati
   12 Plato
   12 Paul Richard
   11 Sri Ramana Maharshi
   11 Saint Hildegard von Bingen
   11 Peter J Carroll
   11 George Van Vrekhem
   11 Farid ud-Din Attar
   9 Mechthild of Magdeburg
   9 Fukuda Chiyo-ni
   8 Norbert Wiener
   8 Lewis Carroll
   8 Joseph Campbell
   8 Bulleh Shah
   7 Taigu Ryokan
   7 Omar Khayyam
   7 Jordan Peterson
   7 Ibn Arabi
   7 Henry David Thoreau
   7 Hakim Sanai
   7 Basava
   7 Baha u llah
   7 Alice Bailey
   6 William Blake
   6 Thubten Chodron
   6 Kobayashi Issa
   6 Jetsun Milarepa
   6 Bokar Rinpoche
   6 Al-Ghazali
   5 Patanjali
   5 Jakushitsu
   4 Sarmad
   4 Saint Francis of Assisi
   4 Saadi
   4 Alfred Tennyson
   3 Wang Wei
   3 Thomas Merton
   3 Solomon ibn Gabirol
   3 R Buckminster Fuller
   3 Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
   3 Rabbi Abraham Abulafia
   3 Nachmanides
   3 Mirabai
   3 Ken Wilber
   3 Ikkyu
   3 Allama Muhammad Iqbal
   3 Abu-Said Abil-Kheir
   2 Yuan Mei
   2 Yeshe Tsogyal
   2 Shiwu (Stonehouse)
   2 Shankara
   2 Saint John of the Cross
   2 Moses de Leon
   2 Mahendranath Gupta
   2 Judah Halevi
   2 Jorge Luis Borges
   2 Jean Gebser
   2 Jayadeva
   2 Jacopone da Todi
   2 Italo Calvino
   2 Ibn Ata Illah
   2 H. P. Lovecraft
   2 Hakuin
   2 Genpo Roshi
   2 Dogen
   2 Dadu Dayal
   2 Chuang Tzu
   2 Baba Sheikh Farid
   2 Alexander Pope


  663 Record of Yoga
  386 Whitman - Poems
  245 Wordsworth - Poems
  213 Yeats - Poems
  186 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
  183 Prayers And Meditations
  166 Shelley - Poems
  144 The Synthesis Of Yoga
  144 Keats - Poems
  126 Lovecraft - Poems
  113 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
  111 Agenda Vol 01
  110 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
   94 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
   87 Agenda Vol 08
   86 Schiller - Poems
   86 Quran
   83 Agenda Vol 10
   82 Magick Without Tears
   81 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
   81 Agenda Vol 13
   80 Thus Spoke Zarathustra
   80 Tagore - Poems
   77 Agenda Vol 12
   76 Agenda Vol 11
   76 Agenda Vol 09
   75 Browning - Poems
   73 Agenda Vol 07
   73 Agenda Vol 04
   73 Agenda Vol 03
   69 The Golden Bough
   69 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
   69 Agenda Vol 06
   68 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
   66 Emerson - Poems
   65 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
   64 Letters On Yoga III
   61 Agenda Vol 02
   60 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
   60 Agenda Vol 05
   56 The Life Divine
   55 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
   54 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
   52 Questions And Answers 1956
   49 Savitri
   49 Liber ABA
   49 Letters On Yoga IV
   46 Collected Poems
   45 Letters On Yoga II
   40 Questions And Answers 1953
   38 Mysterium Coniunctionis
   37 The Study and Practice of Yoga
   37 Questions And Answers 1955
   34 Words Of Long Ago
   34 Questions And Answers 1954
   34 Questions And Answers 1929-1931
   33 The Divine Comedy
   33 Rilke - Poems
   32 Of The Nature Of Things
   32 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
   32 Essays Divine And Human
   31 Li Bai - Poems
   31 Goethe - Poems
   31 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08
   30 Essays On The Gita
   29 The Perennial Philosophy
   29 The Ladder of Divine Ascent
   28 The Bible
   28 Poe - Poems
   28 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 06
   27 Letters On Poetry And Art
   26 Letters On Yoga I
   26 Labyrinths
   25 On Education
   25 General Principles of Kabbalah
   24 The Practice of Psycho therapy
   24 The Human Cycle
   23 Words Of The Mother II
   23 Faust
   22 Vishnu Purana
   22 The Future of Man
   22 City of God
   22 Borges - Poems
   21 Songs of Kabir
   21 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 01
   20 Crowley - Poems
   20 Bhakti-Yoga
   19 The Way of Perfection
   19 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
   19 Poetics
   18 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04
   18 Let Me Explain
   17 On the Way to Supermanhood
   16 Rumi - Poems
   15 Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo
   15 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
   15 Song of Myself
   15 Isha Upanishad
   15 Initiation Into Hermetics
   15 Anonymous - Poems
   14 The Secret Of The Veda
   14 The Phenomenon of Man
   14 The Mother With Letters On The Mother
   14 Some Answers From The Mother
   14 Metamorphoses
   14 Aion
   13 Twilight of the Idols
   13 The Practice of Magical Evocation
   13 Theosophy
   13 The Confessions of Saint Augustine
   12 Talks
   12 Raja-Yoga
   12 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 03
   12 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 02
   12 Hafiz - Poems
   11 Vedic and Philological Studies
   11 Preparing for the Miraculous
   11 Liber Null
   11 Kena and Other Upanishads
   11 Hymn of the Universe
   11 Dark Night of the Soul
   10 The Problems of Philosophy
   10 The Interior Castle or The Mansions
   10 The Integral Yoga
   10 Knowledge of the Higher Worlds
   10 Amrita Gita
   10 A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah
   9 Hymns to the Mystic Fire
   9 5.1.01 - Ilion
   8 Words Of The Mother III
   8 The Hero with a Thousand Faces
   8 The Blue Cliff Records
   8 Cybernetics
   7 Writings In Bengali and Sanskrit
   7 Walden
   7 Ryokan - Poems
   7 Maps of Meaning
   7 A Treatise on Cosmic Fire
   7 Alice in Wonderland
   6 Words Of The Mother I
   6 The Secret Doctrine
   6 The Red Book Liber Novus
   6 The Alchemy of Happiness
   6 Tara - The Feminine Divine
   6 Milarepa - Poems
   6 How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator
   5 Sefer Yetzirah The Book of Creation In Theory and Practice
   5 Patanjali Yoga Sutras
   5 Arabi - Poems
   4 The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
   4 Beating the Cloth Drum Letters of Zen Master Hakuin
   3 The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma
   3 The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep
   3 The Lotus Sutra
   3 The Gateless Gate
   3 The Book of Certitude
   3 Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking
   3 Sex Ecology Spirituality
   3 Jerusalum
   2 The Ever-Present Origin
   2 The Essentials of Education
   2 The Castle of Crossed Destinies
   2 Symposium
   2 Selected Fictions
   2 Mansur al-Hallaj - Poems
   2 God Exists
   2 Dogen - Poems
   2 Chuang Tzu - Poems
   2 Agenda Vol 1
   2 Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2E


0 0.01 - Introduction, #Agenda Vol 1, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  When we have passed beyond huManity, then we shall be the Man.
  Sri Aurobindo
  This AGENDA ... One day, another species among men will pore over this fabulous document as over the tumultuous drama that must have surrounded the birth of the first Man among the hostile hordes of a great, delirious Paleozoic. A first Man is the dangerous contradiction of a certain simian logic, a threat to the established order that so genteelly ran about amid the high, indefeasible ferns - and to begin with, it does not even know that it is a Man. It wonders, indeed, what it is. Even to itself it is strange, distressing. It does not even know how to climb trees any longer in its usual way
  - and it is terribly disturbing for all those who still climb trees in the old, millennial way. Perhaps it is even a heresy. Unless it is some cerebral disorder? A first Man in his little clearing had to have a great deal of courage. Even this little clearing was no longer so sure. A first Man is a perpetual question. What am I, then, in the midst of all that? And where is my law? What is the law? And what if there were no more laws? ... It is terrifying. Mathematics - out of order. Astronomy and biology, too, are beginning to respond to mysterious influences. A tiny point huddled in the center of the world's great clearing. But what is all this, what if I were 'mad'? And then, claws all around, a lot of claws against this uncommon creature. A first Man ... is very much alone. He is quite unbearable for the pre-huMan 'reason.' And the surrounding tribes growled like red monkies in the twilight of Guiana.
  One day, we were like this first Man in the great, stridulant night of the Oyapock. Our heart was beating with the rediscovery of a very ancient mystery - suddenly, it was absolutely new to be a Man amidst the diorite cascades and the pretty red and black coral snakes slithering beneath the leaves. It was even more extraordinary to be a Man than our old confirmed tribes, with their infallible equations and imprescriptible biologies, could ever have dreamed. It was an absolutely uncertain 'quantum' that delightfully eluded whatever one thought of it, including perhaps what even the scholars thought of it. It flowed otherwise, it felt otherwise. It lived in a kind of flawless continuity with the sap of the giant balata trees, the cry of the macaws and the scintillating water of a little fountain. It 'understood' in a very different way. To understand was to be in everything. Just a quiver, and one was in the skin of a little iguana in distress. The skin of the world was very vast.
  To be a Man after rediscovering a million years was mysteriously like being something still other than Man, a strange, unfinished possibility that could also be all kinds of other things. It was not in the dictionary, it was fluid and boundless - it had become a Man through habit, but in truth, it was formidably virgin, as if all the old laws belonged to laggard barbarians. Then other moons began whirring through the skies to the cry of macaws at sunset, another rhythm was born that was strangely in tune with the rhythm of all, making one single flow of the world, and there we went, lightly, as if the body had never had any weight other than that of our huMan thought; and the stars were so near, even the giant airplanes roaring overhead seemed vain artifices beneath smiling galaxies. A Man was the overwhelming Possible. He was even the great discoverer of the Possible.
  Never had this precarious invention had any other aim through millions of species than to discover that which surpassed his own species, perhaps the means to change his species - a light and lawless species. After rediscovering a million years in the great, rhythmic night, a Man was still something to be invented. It was the invention of himself, where all was not yet said and done.
  And then, and then ... a singular air, an incurable lightness, was beginning to fill his lungs. And what if we were a fable? And what are the means?
  --
  And what if Man were not yet invented? What if he were not yet his own species?
  A little white silhouette, twelve thousand miles away, solitary and frail amidst a spiritual horde which had once and for all decided that the meditating and miraculous yogi was the apogee of the species, was searching for the means, for the reality of this Man who for a moment believes himself sovereign of the heavens or sovereign of a machine, but who is quite probably something completely different than his spiritual or material glories. Another, a lighter air was throbbing in that breast, unburdened of its heavens and of its prehistoric machines. Another Epic was beginning.
  Would Matter and Spirit meet, then, in a third PHYSIOLOGICAL position that would perhaps be at last the position of Man rediscovered, the something that had for so long fought and suffered in quest of becoming its own species? She was the great Possible at the beginning of Man. Mother is our fable come true. 'All is possible' was her first open sesame.
  Yes, She was in the midst of a spiritual 'horde,' for the pioneer of a new species must always fight against the best of the old: the best is the obstacle, the snare that traps us in its old golden mire.
  --
  'Something else' is ominous, perilous, disrupting - it is quite unbearable for all those who resemble the old beast. The story of the Pondicherry 'Ashram' is the story of an old clan ferociously clinging to its 'spiritual' privileges, as others clung to the muscles that had made them kings among the great apes. It is armed with all the piousness and all the reasonableness that had made logical Man so 'infallible' among his less cerebral brothers. The spiritual brain is probably the worst obstacle to the new species, as were the muscles of the old orangutan for this fragile stranger who no longer climbed so well in the trees and sat, pensive, at the center of a little, uncertain clearing.
  There is nothing more pious than the old species. There is nothing more legal. Mother was searching for the path of the new species as much against all the virtues of the old as against all its vices or laws. For, in truth, 'Something Else' ... is something else.
  --
  'Are you conscious of your ceils?' She asked us a short time after the little operation of spiritual demolition She had undergone. 'No? Well, become conscious of your cells, and you will see that it gives TERRESTRIAL results.' To become conscious of one's cells? ... It was a far more radical operation than crossing the Maroni with a machete in hand, for after all, trees and lianas can be cut, but what cannot be so easily uncovered are the grandfa ther and the grandmo ther and the whole atavistic pack, not to mention the animal and plant and mineral layers that form a teeming humus over this single pure little cell beneath its millennial genetic program. The grandfa thers and grandmo thers grow back again like crabgrass, along with all the old habits of being hungry, afraid, falling ill, fearing the worst, hoping for the best, which is still the best of an old mortal habit. All this is not uprooted nor entrapped as easily as celestial 'liberations,' which leave the teeming humus in peace and the body to its usual decomposition. She had come to hew a path through all that. She was the Ancient One of evolution who had come to make a new cleft in the old, tedious habit of being a Man. She did not like tedious repetitions, She was the adventuress par excellence - the adventuress of the earth. She was wrenching out for Man the great Possible that was already beating there, in his primeval clearing, which he believed he had momentarily trapped with a few machines.
  She was uprooting a new Matter, free, free from the habit of inexorably being a Man who repeats himself ad infinitum with a few improvements in the way of organ transplants or monetary exchanges. In fact, She was there to discover what would happen after materialism and after spiritualism, these prodigal twin brothers. Because Materialism is dying in the West for the same reason that Spiritualism is dying in the East: it is the hour of the new species. Man needs to awaken, not only from his demons but also from his gods. A new Matter, yes, like a new Spirit, yes, because we still know neither one nor the other. It is the hour when Science, like Spirituality, at the end of their roads, must discover what Matter TRULY is, for it is really there that a Spirit as yet unknown to us is to be found. It is a time when all the 'isms' of the old species are dying: 'The age of
  Capitalism and business is drawing to its close. But the age of Communism too will pass ... 'It is the hour of a pure little cell THAT WILL HAVE TERRESTRIAL REPERCUSSIONS, infinitely more radical than all our political and scientific or spiritualistic panaceas.
  This fabulous discovery is the whole story of the AGENDA. What is the passage? How is the path to the new species hewed open? ... Then suddenly, there, on the other side of this old millennial habit - a habit, nothing more than a habit! - of being like a Man endowed with time and space and disease: an entire geometry, perfectly implacable and 'scientific' and medical; on the other side ... none of that at all! An illusion, a fantastic medical and scientific and genetic illusion:
   death does not exist, time does not exist, disease does not exist, nor do 'scar' and 'far' - another way of being IN A BODY. For so Many millions of years we have lived in a habit and put our own thoughts of the world and of Matter into equations. No more laws! Matter is FREE. It can create a little lizard, a chipmunk or a parrot - but it has created enough parrots. Now it is SOMETHING
  ELSE ... if we want it.
  --
  Day after day, for seventeen years, She sat with us to tell us of her impossible odyssey. Ah, how well we now understand why She needed such an 'outlaw' and an incorrigible heretic like us to comprehend a little bit of her impossible odyssey into 'nothing.' And how well we now understand her infinite patience with us, despite all our revolts, which ultimately were only the revolts of the old species against itself. The final revolt. 'It is not a revolt against the British government which any one can easily do. It is, in fact, a revolt against the whole universal Nature!' Sri Aurobindo had proclaimed fifty years earlier. She listened to our grievances, we went away and we returned. We wanted no more of it and we wanted still more. It was infernal and sublime, impossible and the sole possibility in this old, asphyxiating world. It was the only place one could go to in this barbedwired, mechanized world, where Cincinnati is just as crowded and polluted as Hong Kong. The new species is the last free place in the general Prison. It is the last hope for the earth. How we listened to her little faltering voice that seemed to return from afar, afar, after having crossed spaces and seas of the mind to let its little drops of pure, crystalline words fall upon us, words that make you see. We listened to the future, we touched the other thing. It was incomprehensible and yet filled with another comprehension. It eluded us on all sides, and yet it was dazzlingly obvious. The 'other species' was really radically other, and yet it was vibrating within, absolutely recognizable, as if it were THAT we had been seeking from age to age, THAT we had been invoking through all our illuminations, one after another, in Thebes as in Eleusis as everywhere we have toiled and grieved in the skin of a Man. It was for THAT we were here, for that supreme Possible in the skin of a Man at last. And then her voice grew more and more frail, her breath began gasping as though She had to traverse greater and greater distances to meet us. She was so alone to beat against the walls of the old prison. Many claws were out all around. Oh, we would so quickly have cut ourself free from all this fiasco to fly away with Her into the world's future. She was so tiny, stooped over, as if crushed beneath the 'spiritual' burden that all the old surrounding species kept heaping upon her. They didn't believe, no. For them, She was ninety-five years old + so Many days. Can someone become a new species all alone? They even grumbled at Her: they had had enough of this unbearable Ray that was bringing their sordid affairs into the daylight. The Ashram was slowly closing over Her. The old world wanted to make a new, golden little Church, nice and quiet. No, no one wanted TO
  BECOME. To worship was so much easier. And then they bury you, solemnly, and the matter is settled - the case is closed: now, no one need bother any more except to print some photographic haloes for the pilgrims to this brisk little business. But they are mistaken. The real business will take place without them, the new species will fly up in their faces - it is already flying in the face of the earth, despite all its isms in black and white; it is exploding through all the pores of this battered old earth, which has had enough of shams - whether illusory little heavens or barbarous little machines.
  It is the hour of the REAL Earth. It is the hour of the REAL Man. We are all going there - if only we could know the path a little ...
  This AGENDA is not even a path: it is a light little vibration that seizes you at any turning - and then, there it is, you are IN IT. 'Another world in the world,' She said. One has to catch the light little vibration, one has to flow with it, in a nothing that is like the only something in the midst of this great debacle. At the beginning of things, when still nothing was FIXED, when there was not yet this habit of the pelican or the kangaroo or the chimpanzee or the XXth century biologist, there was a little pulsation that beat and beat - a delightful dizziness, a joy in the world's great adventure; a little never-imprisoned spark that has kept on beating from species to species, but as if it were always eluding us, as if it were always over there, over there - as if it were something to become,
   something to be played forever as the one great game of the world; a who-knows-what that left this sprig of a pensive Man in the middle of a clearing; a little 'something' that beats, beats, that keeps on breathing beneath every skin that has ever been put on it - like our deepest breath, our lightest air, our air of nothing - and it keeps on going, it keeps on going. We must catch the light little breath, the little pulsation of nothing. Then suddenly, on the threshold of our clearing of concrete, our head starts spinning incurably, our eyes blink into something else, and all is different, and all seems surcharged with meaning and with life, as though we had never lived until that very minute.
  Then we have caught the tail of the Great Possible, we are upon the wayless way, radically in the new, and we flow with the little lizard, the pelican, the big Man, we flow everywhere in a world that has lost its old separating skin and its little baggage of habits. We begin seeing otherwise, feeling otherwise. We have opened the gate into an inconceivable clearing. Just a light little vibration that carries you away. Then we begin to understand how it CAN CHANGE, what the mechanism is - a light little mechanism and so miraculous that it looks like nothing. We begin feeling the wonder of a pure little cell, and that a sparkling of joy would be enough to turn the world inside out. We were living in a little thinking fishbowl, we were dying in an old, bottled habit. And then suddenly, all is different. The Earth is free! Who wants freedom?
  It begins in a cell.

00.01 - The Approach to Mysticism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   But what is not recognised in this view of things is that there are secrecies and secrecies. The material secrecies of Nature are of one category, the mystic secrecies are of another. The two are not only disparate but incommensurable. Any Man with a mind and understanding of average culture can see and handle the 'scientific' forces, but not the mystic forces.
   A scientist once thought that he had clinched the issue and cut the Gordian knot when he declared triumphantly with reference to spirit sances: "Very significant is the fact that spirits appear only in closed chambers, in half obscurity, to somnolent minds; they are nowhere in the open air, in broad daylight to the wide awake and vigilant intellect!" Well, if the fact is as it is stated, what does it prove? Night alone reveals the stars, during the day they vanish, but that is no proof that stars are not existent. Rather the true scientific spirit should seek to know why (or how) it is so, if it is so, and such a fact would exactly serve as a pointer, a significant starting ground. The attitude of the jesting Pilate is not helpful even to scientific inquiry. This matter of the Spirits we have taken only as an illustration and it must not be understood that this is a domain of high mysticism; rather the contrary. The spiritualists' approach to Mysticism is not the right one and is fraught with not only errors but dangers. For the spiritualists approach their subject with the entire scientific apparatus the only difference being that the scientist does not believe while the spiritualist believes.
  --
   The mystic forces are not only of immense potency but of a definite moral disposition and character, that is to say, they are of immense potency either for good or for evil. They are not mechanical and amoral forces like those that physical sciences deal with; they are forces of consciousness and they are conscious forces, they act with an aim and a purpose. The mystic forces are forces either of light or of darkness, either Divine or Titanic. And it is most often the powers of darkness that the naturally ignorant consciousness of Man contacts when it seeks to cross the borderline without training or guidance, by the sheer arrogant self-sufficiency of mental scientific reason.
   Ignorance, certainly, is not Man's ideal conditionit leads to death and dissolution. But knowledge also can be equally disastrous if it is not of the right kind. The knowledge that is born of spiritual disobedience, inspired by the Dark ones, leads to the soul's fall and its calvary through pain and suffering on earth. The seeker of true enlightenment has got to make a distinction, learn to separate the true and the right from the false and the wrong, unmask the luring Mra say clearly and unfalteringly to the dark light of Luciferapage Satana, if he is to come out into the true light and comm and the right forces. The search for knowledge alone, knowledge for the sake of knowledge, the path of pure scientific inquiry and inquisitiveness, in relation to the mystic world, is a dangerous thing. For such a spirit serves only to encourage and enhance Man's arrogance and in the end not only limits but warps and falsifies the knowledge itself. A knowledge based on and secured exclusively through the reason and mental light can go only so far as that faculty can be reasonably stretched and not infinitelyto stretch it to infinity means to snap it. This is the warning that Yajnavalkya gave to Gargi when the latter started renewing her question ad infinitum Yajnavalkya said, "If you do not stop, your head will fall off."
   The mystic truth has to be approached through the heart. "In the heart is established the Truth," says the Upanishad: it is there that is seated eternally the soul, the real being, who appears no bigger than the thumb. Even if the mind is utilised as an instrument of knowledge, the heart must be there behind as the guide and inspiration. It is precisely because, as I have just mentioned, Gargi sought to shoot uplike "vaulting ambition that o'erleaps itself" of which Shakespeare speaksthrough the mind alone to the highest truth that Yajnavalkya had to pull her up and give the warning that she risked losing her head if she persisted in her questioning endlessly.
  --
   For it must be understood that the heart, the mystic heart, is not the external thing which is the seat of emotion or passion; it is the secret heart that is behind, the inner heartantarhdaya of the Upanishadwhich is the centre of the individual consciousness, where all the divergent lines of that consciousness meet and from where they take their rise. That is what the Upanishad means when it says that the heart has a hundred channels which feed the huMan vehicle. That is the source, the fount and origin, the very substance of the true personality. Mystic knowledge the true mystic knowledge which saves and fulfilsbegins with the awakening or the entrance into this real being. This being is pure and luminous and blissful and sovereignly real, because it is a portion, a spark of the Divine Consciousness and Nature: a contact and communion with it brings automatically into play the light and the truth that are its substance. At the same time it is an uprising flame that reaches out naturally to higher domains of consciousness and Manifests them through its translucid dynamism.
   The knowledge that is obtained without the heart's instrumentation or co-operation is liable to be what the Gita describes as Asuric. First of all, from the point of view of knowledge itself, it would be, as I have already said, egocentric, a product and agent of one's limited and isolated self, easily put at the service of desire and passion. This knowledge, whether rationalistic or occult, is, as it were, hard and dry in its constitution, and oftener than not, negative and destructivewi thering and blasting in its career like the desert simoom.

00.01 - The Mother on Savitri, #Sweet Mother - Harmonies of Light, #unset, #Zen
  On a few other occasion also, the Mother had spoken to the same sadhak on the value of reading Savitri which he had noted down afterwards. These notes have been added at the end of the main report. A few members of the Ashram had privately read this report in French, but afterwards there were Many requests for its English version. A translation was therefore made in November 1967. A proposal was made to the Mother in 1972 for its publication and it was submitted to Her for approval. The Mother wanted to check the translation before permitting its publication but could check only a portion of it.
  Do you read Savitri?
  --
  In truth, the entire form of Savitri has descended "en masse" from the highest region and Sri Aurobindo with His genius only arranged the lines - in a superb and magnificent style. Sometimes entire lines were revealed and He has left them intact; He worked hard, untiringly, so that the inspiration could come from the highest possible summit. And what a work He has created! Yes, it is a true creation in itself. It is an unequalled work. Everything is there, and it is put in such a simple, such a clear form; verses perfectly harmonious, limpid and eternally true. My child, I have read so Many things, but I have never come across anything which could be compared with Savitri. I have studied the best works in Greek, Latin, English and of course French literature, also in GerMan and all the great creations of the West and the East, including the great epics; but I repeat it, I have not found anywhere anything comparable with Savitri. All these literary works seems to me empty, flat, hollow, without any deep reality - apart from a few rare exceptions, and these too represent only a small fraction of what Savitri is. What grandeur, what amplitude, what reality: it is something immortal and eternal He has created. I tell you once again there is nothing like in it the whole world. Even if one puts aside the vision of the reality, that is, the essential substance which is the heart of the inspiration, and considers only the lines in themselves, one will find them unique, of the highest classical kind. What He has created is something Man cannot imagine. For, everything is there, everything.
  It may then be said that Savitri is a revelation, it is a meditation, it is a quest of the Infinite, the Eternal. If it is read with this aspiration for Immortality, the reading itself will serve as a guide to Immortality. To read Savitri is indeed to practice Yoga, spiritual concentration; one can find there all that is needed to realise the Divine. Each step of Yoga is noted here, including the secret of all other Yogas. Surely, if one sincerely follows what is revealed here in each line one will reach finally the transformation of the Supramental Yoga. It is truly the infallible guide who never abandons you; its support is always there for him who wants to follow the path. Each verse of Savitri is like a revealed Mantra which surpasses all that Man possessed by way of knowledge, and I repeat this, the words are expressed and arranged in such a way that the sonority of the rhythm leads you to the origin of sound, which is OM.
  My child, yes, everything is there: mysticism, occultism, philosophy, the history of evolution, the history of Man, of the gods, of creation, of Nature. How the universe was created, why, for what purpose, what destiny - all is there. You can find all the answers to all your questions there. Everything is explained, even the future of Man and of the evolution, all that nobody yet knows. He has described it all in beautiful and clear words so that spiritual adventurers who wish to solve the mysteries of the world may understand it more easily. But this mystery is well hidden behind the words and lines and one must rise to the required level of true consciousness to discover it. All prophesies, all that is going to come is presented with the precise and wonderful clarity. Sri Aurobindo gives you here the key to find the Truth, to discover the Consciousness, to solve the problem of what the universe is. He has also indicated how to open the door of the Inconscience so that the light may penetrate there and transform it. He has shown the path, the way to liberate oneself from the ignorance and climb up to the superconscience; each stage, each plane of consciousness, how they can be scaled, how one can cross even the barrier of death and attain immortality. You will find the whole journey in detail, and as you go forward you can discover things altogether unknown to Man. That is Savitri and much more yet. It is a real experience - reading Savitri. All the secrets that Man possessed, He has revealed, - as well as all that awaits him in the future; all this is found in the depth of Savitri. But one must have the knowledge to discover it all, the experience of the planes of consciousness, the experience of the Supermind, even the experience of the conquest of Death. He has noted all the stages, marked each step in order to advance integrally in the integral Yoga.
  All this is His own experience, and what is most surprising is that it is my own experience also. It is my sadhana which He has worked out. Each object, each event, each realisation, all the descriptions, even the colours are exactly what I saw and the words, phrases are also exactly what I heard. And all this before having read the book. I read Savitri Many times afterwards, but earlier, when He was writing He used to read it to me. Every morning I used to hear Him read Savitri. During the night He would write and in the morning read it to me. And I observed something curious, that day after day the experiences He read out to me in the morning were those I had had the previous night, word by word. Yes, all the descriptions, the colours, the pictures I had seen, the words I had heard, all, all, I heard it all, put by Him into poetry, into miraculous poetry. Yes, they were exactly my experiences of the previous night which He read out to me the following morning. And it was not just one day by chance, but for days and days together. And every time I used to compare what He said with my previous experiences and they were always the same. I repeat, it was not that I had told Him my experiences and that He had noted them down afterwards, no, He knew already what I had seen. It is my experiences He has presented at length and they were His experiences also. It is, moreover, the picture of Our joint adventure into the unknown or rather into the Supermind.
  These are experiences lived by Him, realities, supracosmic truths. He experienced all these as one experiences joy or sorrow, physically. He walked in the darkness of inconscience, even in the neighborhood of death, endured the sufferings of perdition, and emerged from the mud, the world-misery to brea the the sovereign plenitude and enter the supreme Ananda. He crossed all these realms, went through the consequences, suffered and endured physically what one cannot imagine. Nobody till today has suffered like Him. He accepted suffering to transform suffering into the joy of union with the Supreme. It is something unique and incomparable in the history of the world. It is something that has never happened before, He is the first to have traced the path in the Unknown, so that we may be able to walk with certitude towards the Supermind. He has made the work easy for us. Savitri is His whole Yoga of transformation, and this Yoga appears now for the first time in the earth-consciousness.
  And I think that Man is not yet ready to receive it. It is too high and too vast for him. He cannot understand it, grasp it, for it is not by the mind that one can understand Savitri. One needs spiritual experiences in order to understand and assimilate it. The farther one advances on the path of Yoga, the more does one assimilate and the better. No, it is something which will be appreciated only in the future, it is the poetry of tomorrow of which He has spoken in The Future Poetry. It is too subtle, too refined, - it is not in the mind or through the mind, it is in meditation that Savitri is revealed.
  And men have the audacity to compare it with the work of Virgil or Homer and to find it inferior. They do not understand, they cannot understand. What do they know? Nothing at all. And it is useless to try to make them understand. Men will know what it is, but in a distant future. It is only the new race with a new consciousness which will be able to understand. I assure you there is nothing under the blue sky to compare with Savitri. It is the mystery of mysteries. It is a *super-epic,* it is super-literature, super-poetry, super-vision, it is a super-work even if one considers the number of lines He has written. No, these huMan words are not adequate to describe Savitri. Yes, one needs superlatives, hyperboles to describe it. It is a hyper-epic. No, words express nothing of what Savitri is, at least I do not find them. It is of immense value - spiritual value and all other values; it is eternal in its subject, and infinite in its appeal, miraculous in its mode and power of execution; it is a unique thing, the more you come into contact with it, the higher will you be uplifted. Ah, truly it is something! It is the most beautiful thing He has left for Man, the highest possible. What is it? When will Man know it? When is he going to lead a life of truth? When is he going to accept this in his life? This yet remains to be seen.
  My child, every day you are going to read Savitri; read properly, with the right attitude, concentrating a little before opening the pages and trying to keep the mind as empty as possible, absolutely without a thought. The direct road is through the heart. I tell you, if you try to really concentrate with this aspiration you can light the flame, the psychic flame, the flame of purification in a very short time, perhaps in a few days. What you cannot do normally, you can do with the help of Savitri. Try and you will see how very different it is, how new, if you read with this attitude, with this something at the back of your consciousness; as though it were an offering to Sri Aurobindo. You know it is charged, fully charged with consciousness; as if Savitri were a being, a real guide. I tell you, whoever, wanting to practice Yoga, tries sincerely and feels the necessity for it, will be able to climb with the help of Savitri to the highest rung of the ladder of Yoga, will be able to find the secret that Savitri represents. And this without the help of a Guru. And he will be able to practice it anywhere. For him Savitri alone will be the guide, for all that he needs he will find Savitri. If he remains very quiet when before a difficulty, or when he does not know where to turn to go forward and how to overcome obstacles, for all these hesitations and incertitudes which overwhelm us at every moment, he will have the necessary indications, and the necessary concrete help. If he remains very calm, open, if he aspires sincerely, always he will be as if lead by the hand. If he has faith, the will to give himself and essential sincerity he will reach the final goal.
  Indeed, Savitri is something concrete, living, it is all replete, packed with consciousness, it is the supreme knowledge above all huMan philosophies and religions. It is the spiritual path, it is Yoga, Tapasya, Sadhana, everything, in its single body. Savitri has an extraordinary power, it gives out vibrations for him who can receive them, the true vibrations of each stage of consciousness. It is incomparable, it is truth in its plenitude, the Truth Sri Aurobindo brought down on the earth. My child, one must try to find the secret that Savitri represents, the prophetic message Sri Aurobindo reveals there for us. This is the work before you, it is hard but it is worth the trouble. - 5 November 1967
  ~ The Mother Sweet Mother The Mother to Mona Sarkar, [T0]

00.02 - Mystic Symbolism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The Mystics all over the world and in all ages have clothed their sayings in proverbs and parables, in figures and symbols. To speak in symbols seems to be in their very nature; it is their characteristic Manner, their inevitable style. Let us see what is the reason behind it. But first who are the Mystics? They are those who are in touch with supra-sensual things, whose experiences are of a world different from the common physical world, the world of the mind and the senses.
   These other worlds are constituted in other ways than ours. Their contents are different and the laws that obtain there are also different. It would be a gross blunder to attempt a chart of any of these other systems, to use an Einsteinian term, with the measures and conventions of the system to which our external waking consciousness belongs. For, there "the sun shines not, nor the moon, nor the stars, neither these lightnings nor this fire." The difficulty is further enhanced by the fact that there are very Many unseen worlds and they all differ from the seen and from one another in Manner and degree. Thus, for example, the Upanishads speak of the swapna, the suupta, and the turya, domains beyond the jgrat which is that where the rational being with its mind and senses lives and moves. And there are other systems and other ways in which systems exist, and they are practically innumerable.
   If, however, we have to speak of these other worlds, then, since we can speak only in the terms of this world, we have to use them in a different sense from those they usually bear; we must employ them as figures and symbols. Even then they may prove inadequate and misleading; so there are Mystics who are averse to all speech and expression they are mauni; in silence they experience the inexpressible and in silence they communicate it to the few who have the capacity to receive in silence.
  --
   We can make a distinction here between two types of expression which we have put together indiscriminately, figures and symbols. Figures, we may say, are those that are constructed by the rational mind, the intellect; they are mere metaphors and similes and are not organically related to the thing experienced, but put round it as a robe that can be dropped or changed without affecting the experience itself. Thus, for example, when the Upanishad says, tmnam rathinam viddhi (Know that the soul is the master of the chariot who sits within it) or indriyi haynhu (The senses, they say, are the horses), we have here only a comparison or analogy that is common and natural to the poetic Manner. The particular figure or simile used is not inevitable to the idea or experience that it seeks to express, its part and parcel. On the other hand, take this Upanishadic perception: hirayamayena patrea satyasyphitam mukham (The face of the Truth lies hidden under the golden orb). Here the symbol is not mere analogy or comparison, a figure; it is one with the very substance of the experience the two cannot be separated. Or when the Vedas speak of the kindling of the Fire, the rushing of the waters or the rise of the Dawn, the images though taken from the material world, are not used for the sake of mere comparison, but they are the embodiments, the living forms of truths experienced in another world.
   When a Mystic refers to the Solar Light or to the Fire the light, for example, that struck down Saul and transformed him into Saint Paul or the burning bush that visited Moses, it is not the physical or material object that he means and yet it is that in a way. It is the materialization of something that is fundamentally not material: some movement in an inner consciousness precipitates itself into the region of the senses and takes from out of the material the form commensurable with its nature that it finds there.
  --
   Thus there is a great diversity of symbols. At the one end is the mere metaphor or simile or allegory ('figure', as we have called it) and at the other end is the symbol identical with the thing symbolized. And upon this inner character of the symbol depends also to a large extent its range and scope. There are symbols which are universal and intimately ingrained in the huMan consciousness itself. Mankind has used them in all ages and climes almost in the same sense and significance. There are others that are limited to peoples and ages. They are made out of forms that are of local and temporal interest and importance. Their significances vary according to time and place. Finally, there are symbols which are true of the individual consciousness only; they depend on personal peculiarities and idiosyncrasies, on one's environment and upbringing and education.
   Man being an embodied soul, his external consciousness (what the Upanishad calls jgrat) is the milieu in which his soul-experiences naturally Manifest and find their play. It is the forms and movements of that consciousness which clo the and give a concrete habitation and name to perceptions on the subtler ranges of the inner existence. If the experiences on these planes are to be presented to the conscious memory and to the brain-mind and made communicable to others through speech, this is the inevitable and natural process. Symbols are a translation in mental and sensual (and vocal) terms of experiences that are beyond the mind and the sense and the speech and yet throw a kind of echoing vibrations upon these lesser levels.
   ***

0 0.02 - Topographical Note, #Agenda Vol 1, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  It was only in 1958 that we began having the first tape-recorded conversations, which, properly speaking, constitute Mother's Agenda. But even then, Many of these conversations were lost or only partly noted down. Or else we considered that our own words should not figure in these notes and we carefully omitted all our questions - which was absurd. At that time, no one - neither Mother, nor ourself - knew that this was 'the Agenda' and that we were out to explore the 'Great Passage.'
  Only gradually did we become aware of the true nature of these meetings. Furthermore, we were constantly on the road, so much so that there are sizable gaps in the text. In fact, for seven years,
  --
  From 1960, the Agenda took its final shape arid grew for thirteen years, until May 1973, filling thirteen volumes in all (some six thousand pages), with a change of setting in March 1962 at the time of the Great Turning in Mother's yoga when She perManently retired to her room upstairs, as had Sri Aurobindo in 1926. The interviews then took place high up in this large room carpeted in golden wool, like a ship's stateroom, amidst the rustling of the Copper Pod tree and the cawing of crows. Mother would sit in a low rosewood chair, her face turned towards Sri Aurobindo's tomb, as though She were wearing down the distance separating that world from our own. Her voice had become like that of a child, one could hear her laughter. She always laughed, this Mother. And then her long silences. Until the day the disciples closed her door on us. It was May 19, 1973. We did not want to believe it. She was alone, just as we were suddenly alone. Slowly, painfully, we had to discover the why of this rupture. We understood nothing of the jealousies of the old species, we did not yet realize that they were becoming the 'owners' of Mother - of the Ashram, of Auroville, of
  Sri Aurobindo, of everything - and that the new world was going to be denatured into a new

00.03 - Upanishadic Symbolism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The Brihadaranyaka speaks of several lights that Man possesses, one in the absence of another, for his illumination and guidance.
   First of all, he has the Sun; it is the primary light by which he lives and moves. When the Sun sets, the Moon rises to replace it. When both the Sun and the Moon set, he has recourse to the Fire. And when the Fire, too, is extinguished, there comes the Word. In the end, when the Fire is quieted and the Word silenced, Man is lighted by the Light of the AtMan. This AtMan is All-Knowledge; it is secreted within the life, within the heart: it is selfluminous Vijnamaya preu rdyantar jyoti..
   The progression indicated by the order of succession points to a gradual withdrawal from the outer to the inner light, from the surface to the deep, from the obvious to the secret, from the actual and derivative to the real and original. We begin by the senses and move towards the Spirit.
   The Sun is the first and the most immediate source of light that Man has and needs. He is the presiding deity of our waking consciousness and has his seat in the eyecakusa ditya, ditya caku bhtvakii prviat. The eye is the representative of the senses; it is the sense par excellence. In truth, sense-perception is the initial light with which we have to guide us, it is the light with which we start on the way. A developed stage comes when the Sun sets for us, that is to say, when we retire from the senses and rise into the mind, whose divinity is the Moon. It is the mental knowledge, the light of reason and intelligence, of reflection and imagination that govern our consciousness. We have to proceed farther and get beyond the mind, exceed the derivative light of the Moon. So when the Moon sets, the Fire is kindled. It is the light of the ardent and aspiring heart, the glow of an inner urge, the instincts and inspirations of our secret life-will. Here we come into touch with a source of knowledge and realization, a guidance more direct than the mind and much deeper than the sense-perception. Still this light partakes more of heat than of pure luminosity; it is, one may say, incandescent feeling, but not vision. We must probe deeper, mount higherreach heights and profundities that are serene and transparent. The Fire is to be quieted and silenced, says the Upanishad. Then we come nearer, to the immediate vicinity of the Truth: an inner hearing opens, the direct voice of Truth the Wordreaches us to lead and guide. Even so, however, we have not come to the end of our journey; the Word of revelation is not the ultimate Light. The Word too is clothing, though a luminous clothinghiramayam ptram When this last veil dissolves and disappears, when utter silence, absolute calm and quietude reign in the entire consciousness, when no other lights trouble or distract our attention, there appears the AtMan in its own body; we stand face to face with the source of all lights, the self of the Light, the light of the Self. We are that Light and we become that Light.
   II. The Four Oblations
  --
   Ritualistically these four terms are the formulae for oblation to four Deities, Powers or Presences, whom the sacrificer wishes to please and propitiate in order to have their help and blessing and in order thereby to discharge his dharma or duty of life. Svh is the offering especially dedicated to Agni, the foremost of the Gods, for he is the divine messenger who carries men's offering to the Gods and brings their blessing to men. Vaatkr is the offering to the Gods generally. Hantakr is the offering to Mankind, to our kin, an especial form of it being the worship of the guests,sarvadevamayo' tithi. Svadh is the offering to the departed Fathers (Pitris).
   The duty of life consists, it is said, in the repaying of three debts which every Man contracts as soon as he takes birth upon earth the debt to the Gods, to Men and to the Ancestors. This threefold debt or duty has, in other terms, reference to the three fields or domains wherein an embodied being lives and moves and to which he must adjust and react rightly -if he is to secure for his life an integral fulfilment. These are the family, society and the world and beyond-world. The Gods are the Powers that rule the world and beyond, they are the forms and forces of the One Spirit underlying the universe, the varied expressions of divine Truth and Reality: To worship the Gods, to do one's duty by them, means to come into contact and to be unitedin being, consciousness and activitywith the universal and spiritual existence, which is the supreme end and purpose of huMan life. The seconda more circumscribed fieldis the society to which one belongs, the particular group of huManity in which he functions as a limb. The service to society or good citizenship entails the worship of huManity, of Man as a god. Lastly, Man belongs to the family, which is the unit of society; and the backbone of the family is the continuous line of ancestors, who are its presiding deity and represent the norm of a living dharma, the ethic of an ideal life.
   From the psychological standpoint, the four oblations are movements or reactions of consciousness in its urge towards the utterance and expression of Divine Truth. Like some other elements in the cosmic play, these also form a quartetcaturvyha and work together for a common purpose in view of a perfect and all-round result.
  --
   Hantakr is the appearance, the Manifestation of the Divinity that which makes the worshipper cry in delight, "Hail!" It is the coming of the Dawnahanwhen the night has been traversed and the lid rent open, the appearance of the Divine to a huMan vision for the huMan consciousness to seize, almost in a huMan form.
   Finally, once the Truth is reached, it is to be held fast, firmly established, embodied and fixed in its inherent nature here in life and the waking consciousness. This is Svadh.
   The Gods feed upon Svdh and Vaa, as these represent the ascending movement of huMan consciousness: it is Man's self-giving and aspiration and the upward urge of his heart and soul that reach to the Gods, and it is that which the immortals take into themselves and are, as it were, nourished by, since it is something that appertains to their own nature.
   And in response they descend and approach and enter into the aspiring huMan soulthis descent and revelation and near and concrete presence of Divinity, this Hanta is Man's food, for by it his consciousness is nourished.
   This interchange, or mutual giving, the High Covenant between the Gods and Men, to which the Gita too refers
  --
   The Gods are the formations or particularisations of the Truth-consciousness, the multiple individualisations of the One spirit. The Pitris are the Divine Fathers, that is to say, souls that once laboured and realised here below, and now have passed beyond. They dwell in another world, not too far removed from the earth, and from there, with the force of their Realisation, lend a more concrete help and guidance to the destiny that is being worked out upon earth. They are forces and formations of consciousness in an intermediate region between Here and There (antarika), and serve to bring men and gods nearer to each other, inasmuch as they belong to both the categories, being a divinised huManity or a huManised divinity. Each fixation of the Truth-consciousness in an earthly mould is a thing of joy to the Pitris; it is the Svadh or food by which they live and grow, for it is the consolidation and also the resultant of their own realisation. The achievements of the sons are more easily and securely reared and grounded upon those of the forefa thers, whose formative powers we have to invoke, so that we may pass on to the realisation, the firm embodiment of higher and greater destinies.
   III. The Path of the Fathers and the Path of the Gods
   One is an ideal in and of the world, the other is an ideal transcending the world. The Path of the Fathers (Pityna) enjoins the right accomplishing of the dharma of Lifeit is the path of works, of Karma; it is the line of progressive evolution that, Man follows through the experience of life after life on earth. The Path of the Gods (Devayna) runs above life's evolutionary course; it lifts Man out of the terrestrial cycle and places him in a superior consciousness it is the path of knowledge, of Vidya.4 The Path of the Fathers is the soul's southern or inferior orbit (dakiyana, aparrdha); the Path of the Gods is the northern or superior orbit (uttaryaa, parrdha)The former is also called the Lunar Path and the latter the Solar Path.5 For the moon represents the mind,6 and is therefore, an emblem that befits Man so long as he is a mental being and pursues a dharma that is limited by the mind; the sun, on the other hand, is the knowledge and consciousness that is beyond the mindit is the eye of the Gods.7
   Man has two aspects or natures; he dwells in two worlds. The first is the Manifest world the world of the body, the life and the mind. The body has flowered into the mind through the life. The body gives the basis or the material, the life gives power and energy and the mind the directing knowledge. This triune world forms the huManity of Man. But there is another aspect hidden behind this apparent nature, there is another world where Man dwells in his submerged, larger and higher consciousness. To that his soul the Purusha in his heart only has access. It is the world where Man's nature is transmuted into another triune realitySat, Chit and Ananda.
   The one, however, is not completely divorced from the other. The apparent, the inferior nature is only a preparation for the real, the superior nature. The Path of the Fathers concerns itself with Man as a mental being and seeks so to ordain and accomplish its duties and ideals as to lead him on to the Path of the Gods; the mind, the life, and the body consciousness should be so disciplined, educated, purified, they should develop along such a line and gradually rise to such a stage as to make them fit to receive the light which belongs to the higher level, so allowing the huMan soul imbedded in them to extricate itself and pass on to the Immortal Life.
   And they who are thus lifted up into the Higher Orbit are freed from the bondage to the cycle of rebirth. They enjoy the supreme Liberation that is of the Spirit; and even when they descend into the Inferior Path, it is to work out as free agents, as vehicles of the Divine, a special purpose, to bring down something of the substance and nature of the Solar reality into the lower world, enlighten and elevate the lower, as far as it is allowed, into the higher.
  --
   Agni is the divine spark in Man, the flaming consciousness in the mortal which purifies and uplifts (pvaka) mortality into immortality. It is the god "seated in the secret heart, who is the possession of infinity and the foundation of existence," as Yama says to Nachiketas.8
   Indeed, it was to this godhead that Nachiketas turned and he wanted to know of it and find it, when faith seized on his pure heart and he aspired for the higher spiritual life. The very opening hymn of the Rig Veda, too, is addressed to Agni, who is invoked as the vicar seated in the front of the sacrifice, the giver of the supreme gifts.
  --
   The three fires are named elsewhere Garhapatya, Dakshina, and Ahavaniya.9 They are the three tongues of the one central Agni, that dwells secreted in the hearth of the soul. They Manifest as aspirations that flame up from the three fundamental levels of our being, the body, the life and the mind. For although the spiritual consciousness is the natural element of the soul and is gained in and through the soul, yet, in order that Man may take possession of it and dwell in it consciously, in order that the soul's empire may be established, the external being too must respond to the soul's impact and yearn for its truth in the Spirit. The mind, the life and the body which are usually obstructions in the path, must discover the secret flame that is in them tooeach has his own portion of the Soul's Fireand mount on its ardent tongue towards the heights of the Spirit.
   Garhapatya is the Fire in the body-consciousness, the fire of Earth, as it is sometimes called; Dakshina is the Fire of the moon or mind, and Ahavaniya that of life.10 The earthly fire is also the fire of the sun; the sun is the source of all earth's heat and symbolises at the same time the spiritual light Manifested in the physical consciousness. The lunar fire is also the fire of the stars, the stars, mythologically, being the consorts or powers of the moon and they symbolise, in Yogic experience, the intuitive thoughts. The fire of the life-force has its symbol in lightning, electric energy being its vehicle.
   Agni in the physical consciousness is calledghapati, for the body is the house in which the soul is lodged and he is its keeper, guardian and lord. The fire in the mental consciousness is called daki; for it is that which gives discernment, the power to discriminate between the truth and the falsehood, it is that which by the pressure of its heat and light cleaves the wrong away from the right. And the fire in the life-force is called havanya; for pra is not only the plane of hunger and desire, but also of power and dynamism, it is that which calls forth forces, brings them into' play and it is that which is to be invoked for the progression of the Sacrifice, for an onward march on the spiritual path.
  --
   Earth represents the material world itself, Matter or existence in its most concrete, its grossest form. It is the basis of existence, the world that supports other worlds (dhar, dharitri),the first or the lowest of the several ranges of creation. In Man it is his body. The principle here is that of stability, substantiality, firmness, consistency.
   Water represents the next rung the vital world, the world life-force (pra). Physiologically also we know that water is the element forming three-fourths of the constituents of a living body and that dead and dry are synonymous terms; it is the medium in which the living cells dwell and through which they draw their sustenance. Water is the veritable sap of lifeit is the emblem of life itself. The principle it represents is that of movement, continuity, perpetuity.
  --
   The Science of the Five Agnis (Fires), as propounded by Pravahan, explains and illustrates the process of the birth of the body, the passage of the soul into earth existence. It describes the advent of the child, the building of the physical form of the huMan being. The process is conceived of as a sacrifice, the usual symbol with the Vedic Rishis for the expression of their vision and perception of universal processes of Nature, physical and psychological. Here, the child IS said to be the final fruit of the sacrifice, the different stages in the process being: (i) Soma, (ii) Rain, (iii) Food, (iv) Semen, (v) Child. Soma means Rasaphysically the principle of water, psychologically the 'principle of delightand symbolises and constitutes the very soul and substance of life. Now it is said that these five principles the fundamental and constituent elementsare born out of the sacrifice, through the oblation or offering to the five Agnis. The first Agni is Heaven or the Sky-God, and by offering to it one's faith and one's ardent desire, one calls into Manifestation Soma or Rasa or Water, the basic principle of life. This water is next offered to the second Agni, the Rain-God, who sends down Rain. Rain, again, is offered to the third Agni, the Earth, who brings forth Food. Food is, in its turn, offered to the fourth Agni, the Father or Male, who elaborates in himself the generating fluid.
   Finally, this fluid is offered to the fifth Agni, the Mother or the Female, who delivers the Child.
  --
   Apart from the question whether the biological phenomenon described is really a symbol and a cloak for another order of reality, and even taking it at its face value, what is to be noted here is the idea of a cosmic cycle, and a cosmic cycle that proceeds through the principle of sacrifice. If it is asked what there is wonderful or particularly spiritual in this rather naf description of a very commonplace happening that gives it an honoured place in the Upanishads, the answer is that it is wonderful to see how the Upanishadic Rishi takes from an event its local, temporal and personal colour and incorporates it in a global movement, a cosmic cycle, as a limb of the Universal BrahMan. The Upanishads contain passages which a puritanical mentality may perhaps describe as 'pornographic'; these have in fact been put by some on the Index expurgatorius. But the ancients saw these matters with other eyes and through another consciousness.
   We have, in modern times, a movement towards a more conscious and courageous, knowledge of things that were taboo to puritan ages. Not to shut one's eyes to the lower, darker and hidden strands of our nature, but to bring them out into the light of day and to face them is the best way of dealing with such elements, which otherwise, if they are repressed, exert an unhealthy influence on the mind and nature. The Upanishadic view runs on the same lines, but, with the unveiling and the natural and not merely naturalisticdelineation of these under-worlds (concerning sex and food), it endows them with a perspective sub specie aeternitatis. The sexual function, for example, is easily equated to the double movement of ascent and descent that is secreted in nature, or to the combined action of Purusha and Prakriti in the cosmic Play, or again to the hidden fount of Delight that holds and moves the universe. In this view there is nothing merely secular and profane, but all is woven into the cosmic spiritual whole; and Man is taught to consider and to mould all his movementsof soul and mind and bodyin the light and rhythm of that integral Reality.11
   The central secret of the transfigured consciousness lies, as we have already indicated, in the mystic rite or law of Sacrifice. It is the one basic, fundamental, universal Law that upholds and explains the cosmic movement, conformity to which brings to the thrice-bound huMan being release and freedom. Sacrifice consists essentially of two elements or processes: (i) The offering or self giving of the lower reality to the higher, and, as a consequence, an answering movement of (ii) the descent of the higher into the lower. The lower offered to the higher means the lower sublimated and integrated into the higher; and the descent of the higher into the lower means the incarnation of the former and the fulfilment of the latter. The Gita elaborates the same idea when it says that by Sacrifice men increase the gods and the gods increase men and by so increasing each other they attain the supreme Good. Nothing is, nothing is done, for its own sake, for an egocentric satisfaction; all, even movements relating to food and to sex should be dedicated to the Cosmic BeingVisva Purusha and that alone received which comes from Him.
   VII. The Cosmic and the Transcendental
   The Supreme Reality which is always called BrahMan in the Upanishads, has to be known and experienced in two ways; for it has two fundamental aspects or modes of being. The BrahMan is universal and it is transcendental. The Truth, satyam, the Upanishad says in its symbolic etymology, is 'This' (or, He) and 'That' (syat+tyat i.e. sat+tat). 'This' means the Universal BrahMan: it is what is referred to when the Upanishad says:
   Ivsyamidam sarvam: All this is for habitation by the Lord;
   or,Sarvam khalvidam brahma: All this is indeed the BrahMan;
   or,Sa evedam sarvam: He is indeed all this;
  --
   TheChhandyogya12 gives a whole typal scheme of this universal reality and explains how to realise it and what are the results of the experience. The Universal BrahMan means the cosmic movement, the cyclic march of things and events taken in its global aspect. The typical movement that symbolises and epitomises the phenomenon, embodies the truth, is that of the sun. The movement consists of five stages which are called the fivefold sma Sma means the equal BrahMan that is ever present in all, the Upanishad itself says deriving the word from sama It is Sma also because it is a rhythmic movement, a cadencea music of the spheres. And a rhythmic movement, in virtue of its being a wave, consists of these five stages: (i) the start, (ii) the rise, (iii) the peak, (iv) the decline and (v) the fall. Now the sun follows this curve and marks out the familiar divisions of the day: dawn, forenoon, noon, afternoon and sunset. Sometimes two other stages are added, one at each end, one of preparation and another of final lapse the twilights with regard to the sun and then ,we have seven instead of five smas Like the Sun, the Fire that is to say, the sacrificial Firecan also be seen in its fivefold cyclic movement: (i) the lighting, (ii) the smoke, (iii) the flame, (iv) smouldering and finally (v) extinction the fuel as it is rubbed to produce the fire and the ashes may be added as the two supernumerary stages. Or again, we may take the cycle of five seasons or of the five worlds or of the deities that control these worlds. The living wealth of this earth is also symbolised in a quintetgoat and sheep and cattle and horse and finally Man. Coming to the microcosm, we have in Man the cycle of his five senses, basis of all knowledge and activity. For the macrocosm, to I bring out its vast extra-huMan complexity, the Upanishad refers to a quintet, each term of which is again a trinity: (i) the threefold Veda, the Divine Word that is the origin of creation, (ii) the three worlds or fieldsearth, air-belt or atmosphere and space, (iii) the three principles or deities ruling respectively these worldsFire, Air and Sun, (iv) their expressions, eManations or embodimentsstars and birds and light-rays, and finally, (v) the original inhabitants of these worldsto earth belong the reptiles, to the mid-region the Gandharvas and to heaven the ancient Fathers.
   Now, this is the All, the Universal. One has to realise it and possess in one's consciousness. And that can be done only in one way: one has to identify oneself with it, be one with it, become it. Thus by losing one's individuality one lives the life universal; the small lean separate life is enlarged and moulded in the rhythm of the Rich and the Vast. It is thus that Man shares in the consciousness and energy that inspire and move and sustain the cosmos. The Upanishad most emphatically enjoins that one must not decry this cosmic godhead or deny any of its elements, not even such as are a taboo to the puritan mind. It is in and through an unimpaired global consciousness that one attains the All-Life and lives uninterruptedly and perennially: SarvaManveti jyok jvati.
   Still the Upanishad says this is not the final end. There is yet a higher status of reality and consciousness to which one has to rise. For beyond the Cosmos lies the Transcendent. The Upanishad expresses this truth and experience in various symbols. The cosmic reality, we have seen, is often conceived as a septenary, a unity of seven elements, principles and worlds. Further to give it its full complex value, it is considered not as a simple septet, but a threefold heptad the whole gamut, as it were, consisting of 21 notes or syllables. The Upanishad says, this number does not exhaust the entire range; I for there is yet a 22nd place. This is the world beyond the Sun, griefless and deathless, the supreme Selfhood. The Veda I also sometimes speaks of the integral reality as being represented by the number 100 which is 99 + I; in other words, 99 represents the cosmic or universal, the unity being the reality beyond, the Transcendent.
  --
   Now this is what is sought to be conveyed and expressed. The five movements of the sun here also are nothing but the five smas and they refer to the cycle of the Cosmic or Universal BrahMan. The sixth status where all movements cease, where there is no rising and setting, no ebb and flow, no waxing and waning, where there is the immutable, the ever-same unity, is very evidently the Transcendental BrahMan. It is That to which the Vedic Rishi refers when he prays for a constant and fixed vision of the eternal Sunjyok ca sryam drie.
   It would be interesting to know what the five ranges or levels or movements of consciousness exactly are that make up the Universal BrahMan described in this passage. It is the mystic knowledge, the Upanishad says, of the secret delight in thingsmadhuvidy. The five ranges are the five fundamental principles of delightimmortalities, the Veda would say that form the inner core of the pyramid of creation. They form a rising tier and are ruled respectively by the godsAgni, Indra, Varuna, Soma and Brahmawith their eManations and instrumental personalities the Vasus, the Rudras, the Adityas, the Maruts and the Sadhyas. We suggest that these refer to the five well-known levels of being, the modes or nodi of consciousness or something very much like them. The Upanishad speaks elsewhere of the five sheaths. The six Chakras of Tantric system lie in the same line. The first and the basic mode is the physical and the ascent from the physical: Agni and the Vasus are always intimately connected with the earth and -the earth-principles (it can be compared with the Muladhara of the Tantras). Next, second in the line of ascent is the Vital, the centre of power and dynamism of which the Rudras are the deities and Indra the presiding God (cf. Swadhishthana of the Tantras the navel centre). Indra, in the Vedas, has two aspects, one of knowledge and vision and the other of dynamic force and drive. In the first aspect he is more often considered as the Lord of the Mind, of the Luminous Mind. In the present passage, Indra is taken in his second aspect and instead of the Maruts with whom he is usually invoked has the Rudras as his agents and associates.
   The third in the line of ascension is the region of Varuna and the Adityas, that is to say, of the large Mind and its lightsperhaps it can be connected with Tantric Ajnachakra. The fourth is the domain of Soma and the Marutsthis seems to be the inner heart, the fount of delight and keen and sweeping aspirations the Anahata of the Tantras. The fifth is the region of the crown of the head, the domain of Brahma and the Sadhyas: it is the Overmind status from where comes the descending inflatus, the creative Maya of Brahma. And when you go beyond, you pass into the ultimate status of the Sun, the reality absolute, the Transcendent which is indescribable, unseizable, indeterminate, indeterminable, incommensurable; and once there, one never returns, neverna ca punarvartate na ca punarvartate.
   VIII. How Many Gods?
   "How Many Gods are there?" Yajnavalkya was once asked.13 The Rishi answered, they say there are three thousand and three of them, or three hundred and three, or again, thirty-three; it may be said too there are six or three or two or one and a half or one finally. Indeed as the Upanishad says elsewhere, it is the One Unique who wished to be Many: and all the gods are the various glories (mahim) or eManations of the One Divine. The ancient of ancient Rishis had declared long long ago, in the earliest Veda, that there is one indivisible Reality, the seers name it in various ways.
   In Yajnavalkya's enumeration, however, it is to be noted, first of all, that he stresses on the number three. The principle of triplicity is of very wide application: it permeates all fields of consciousness and is evidently based upon a fundamental fact of reality. It seems to embody a truth of synthesis and comprehension, points to the order and harmony that reigns in the cosmos, the spheric music. The metaphysical, that is to say, the original principles that constitute existence are the well-known triplets: (i) the superior: Sat, Chit, Ananda; and (ii) the inferior: Body, Life and Mindthis being a reflection or translation or concretisation of the former. We can see also here how the dual principle comes in, the twin godhead or the two gods to which Yajnavalkya refers. The same principle is found in the conception of Ardhanarishwara, Male and Female, Purusha-Prakriti. The Upanishad says 14 yet again that the One original Purusha was not pleased at being alone, so for a companion he created out of himself the original Female. The dual principle signifies creation, the Manifesting activity of the Reality. But what is this one and a half to which Yajnavalkya refers? It simply means that the other created out of the one is not a wholly separate, independent entity: it is not an integer by itself, as in the Manichean system, but that it is a portion, a fraction of the One. And in the end, in the ultimate analysis, or rather synthesis, there is but one single undivided and indivisible unity. The thousands and hundreds, very often mentioned also in the Rig Veda, are not simply multiplications of the One, a graphic description of its Many-sidedness; it indicates also the absolute fullness, the complete completeness (prasya pram) of the Reality. It includes and comprehends all and is a rounded totality, a full circle. The hundred-gated and the thousand-pillared cities of which the ancient Rishis chanted are formations and embodiments of consciousness huMan and divine, are realities whole and entire englobing all the layers and grades of consciousness.
   Besides this metaphysics there is also an occult aspect in numerology of which Pythagoras was a well-known adept and in which the Vedic Rishis too seem to take special delight. The multiplication of numbers represents in a general way the principle of eManation. The One has divided and subdivided itself, but not in a haphazard way: it is not like the chaotic pulverisation of a piece of stone by hammer-blows. The process of division and subdivision follows a pattern almost as neat and methodical as a genealogical tree. That is to say, the eManations form a hierarchy. At the top, the apex of the pyramid, stands the one supreme Godhead. That Godhead is biune in respect of Manifestation the Divine and his creative Power. This two-in-one reality may be considered, according to one view of creation, as dividing into three forms or aspects the well-known Brahma, Vishnu and Rudra of Hindu mythology. These may be termed the first or primary eManations.
   Now, each one of them in its turn has its own eManations the eleven Rudriyas are familiar. These are secondary and there are tertiary and other graded eManations the last ones touch the earth and embody physico-vital forces. The lowest formations or beings can trace their origin to one or other of the primaries and their nature and function partake of or are an echo of their first ancestor.
   Man, however, is an epitome of creation. He embraces and incarnates the entire gamut of consciousness and comprises in him all beings from the highest Divinity to the lowest jinn or elf. And yet each huMan being in his true personality is a lineal descendant of one or other typal aspect or original Personality of the one supreme Reality; and his individual character is all the more pronounced and well-defined the more organised and developed is the being. The psychic being in Man is thus a direct descent, an immediate eManation along a definite line of devolution of the supreme consciousness. We may now understand and explain easily why one chooses a particular Ishta, an ideal god, what is the drive that pushes one to become a worshipper of Siva or Vishnu or any other deity. It is not any rational understanding, a weighing of pros and cons and then a resultant conclusion that leads one to choose a path of religion or spirituality. It is the soul's natural call to the God, the type of being and consciousness of which it is a spark, from which it has descended, it is the secret affinity the spiritual blood-relation as it were that determines the choice and adherence. And it is this that we name Faith. And the exclusiveness and violence and bitterness which attend such adherence and which go "by the "name of partisanship, sectarianism, fanaticism etc., a;e a deformation in the ignorance on the physico-vital plane of the secret loyalty to one's source and origin. Of course, the pattern or law is not so simple and rigid, but it gives a token or typal pattern. For it must not be forgotten that the supreme source or the original is one and indivisible and in the highest integration consciousness is global and not exclusive. And the huMan being that attains such a status is not bound or wholly limited to one particular formation: its personality is based on the truth of impersonality. And yet the two can go together: an individual can be impersonal in consciousness and yet personal in becoming and true to type.
   The number of gods depends on the level of consciousness on which we stand. On this material plane there are as Many gods as there are bodies or individual forms (adhar). And on the supreme height there is only one God without a second. In between there are gradations of types and sub-types whose number and function vary according to the aspect of consciousness that reveals itself.
   IX. Nachiketas' Three Boons
  --
   Nachiketas is the young aspiring huMan being still in the Ignorancenaciketa, meaning one without consciousness or knowledge. The three boons he asks for are in reference to the three fundamental modes of being and consciousness that are at the very basis, forming, as it were, the ground-plan of the integral reality. They are (i) the individual, (ii) the universal or cosmic and (iii) the transcendental.
   The first boon regards the individual, that is to say, the individual identity and integrity. It asks for the maintenance of that individuality so that it may be saved from the dissolution that Death brings about. Death, of course, means the dissolution of the body, but it represents also dissolution pure and simple. Indeed death is a process which does not stop with the physical phenomenon, but continues even after; for with the body gone, the other elements of the individual organism, the vital and the mental too gradually fall off, fade and dissolve. Nachiketas wishes to secure from Death the safety and preservation of the earthly personality, the particular organisation of mind and vital based upon a recognisable physical frame. That is the first necessity for the aspiring mortalfor, it is said, the body is the first instrument for the working out of one's life ideal. But Man's true personality, the real individuality lies beyond, beyond the body, beyond the life, beyond the mind, beyond the triple region that Death lords it over. That is the divine world, the Heaven of the immortals, beyond death and beyond sorrow and grief. It is the hearth secreted in the inner heart where burns the Divine Fire, the God of Life Everlasting. And this is the nodus that binds together the threefold status of the Manifested existence, the body, the life and the mind. This triplicity is the structure of name and form built out of the bricks of experience, the kiln, as it were, within which burns the Divine Agni, Man's true soul. This soul can be reached only when one exceeds the bounds and limitations of the triple cord and experiences one's communion and identity with all souls and all existence. Agni is the secret divinity within, within the individual and within the world; he is the ImManent Divine, the cosmic godhead that holds together and marshals all the elements and components, all the principles that make up the Manifest universe. He it is that has entered into the world and created facets of his own reality in multiple forms: and it is he that lies secret in the huMan being as the immortal soul through all its adventure of life and death in the series of incarnations in terrestrial evolution. The adoration and realisation of this ImManent Divinity, the worship of Agni taught by Yama in the second boon, consists in the triple sacrifice, the triple work, the triple union in the triple status of the physical, the vital and the mental consciousness, the mastery of which leads one to the other shore, the abode of perennial existence where the huMan soul enjoys its eternity and unending continuity in cosmic life. Therefore, Agni, the master of the psychic being, is called jtaveds, he who knows the births, all the transmigrations from life to life.
   The third boon is the secret of secrets, for it is the knowledge and realisation of Transcendence that is sought here. Beyond the individual lies the universal; is there anything beyond the universal? The release of the individual into the cosmic existence gives him the griefless life eternal: can the cosmos be rolled up and flung into something beyond? What would be the nature of that thing? What is there outside creation, outside Manifestation, outside Maya, to use a latter day term? Is there existence or non-existence (utter dissolution or extinctionDeath in his supreme and absolute status)? King Yama did not choose to answer immediately and even endeavoured to dissuade Nachiketas from pursuing the question over which people were confounded, as he said. Evidently it was a much discussed problem in those days. Buddha was asked the same question and he evaded it, saying that the pragmatic Man should attend to practical and immediate realities and not, waste time and energy in discussing things ultimate and beyond that have hardly any relation to the present and the actual.
   But Yama did answer and unveil the mystery and impart the supreme secret knowledge the knowledge of the Transcendent BrahMan: it is out of the transcendent reality that the imManent deity takes his birth. Hence the Divine Fire, the Lord of creation and the Inner Mastersarvabhtntartm, antarymis called brahmajam, born of the BrahMan. Yama teaches the process of transcendence. Apart from the knowledge and experience first of the individual and then of the cosmic BrahMan, there is a definite line along which the huMan consciousness (or unconsciousness, as it is at present) is to ascend and evolve. The first step is to learn to distinguish between the Good and the Pleasurable (reya and preya). The line of pleasure leads to the external, the superficial, the false: while the other path leads towards the inner and the higher truth. So the second step is the gradual withdrawal of the consciousness from the physical and the sensual and even the mental preoccupation and focussing it upon what is certain and perManent. In the midst of the death-ridden consciousness in the heart of all that is unstable and fleetingone has to look for Agni, the eternal godhead, the Immortal in mortality, the Timeless in time through whom lies the passage to Immortality beyond Time.
   Man has two souls corresponding to his double status. In the inferior, the soul looks downward and is involved in the current of ImperManence and Ignorance, it tastes of grief and sorrow and suffers death and dissolution: in the higher it looks upward and communes and joins with the Eternal (the cosmic) and then with the Absolute (the transcendent). The lower is a reflection of the higher, the higher comes down in a diminished and hence tarnished light. The message is that of deliverance, the deliverance and reintegration of the lower soul out of its bondage of worldly ignorant life into the freedom and immortality first of its higher and then of its highest status. It is true, however, that the Upanishad does not make a trenchant distinction between the cosmic and the transcendent and often it speaks of both in the same breath, as it were. For in fact they are realities involved in each other and interwoven. Indeed the triple status, including the Individual, forms one single totality and the three do not exclude or cancel each other; on the contrary, they combine and may be said to enhance each other's reality. The Transcendence expresses or deploys itself in the cosmoshe goes abroad,sa paryagt: and the cosmic individualises, concretises itself in the particular and the personal. The one single spiritual reality holds itself, aspects itself in a threefold Manner.
   The teaching of Yama in brief may be said to be the gospel of immortality and it consists of the knowledge of triple immortality. And who else can be the best teacher of immortality than Death himself, as Nachiketas pointedly said? The first immortality is that of the physical existence and consciousness, the preservation of the personal identity, the individual name and formthis being in itself as expression and embodiment and instrument of the Inner Reality. This inner reality enshrines the second immortality the eternity and continuity of the soul's life through its incarnations in time, the divine Agni lit for ever and ever growing in flaming consciousness. And the third and final immortality is in the being and consciousness beyond time, beyond all relativities, the absolute and self-existent delight.
  --
   Cndram Mano bhtvAitareya, 1.2.4; ManasascandramBrihadaranyaka,1.1.4.
   Divva cakurtatamRig Veda
  --
   The secularisation of Man's vital functions in modem ages has not been a success. It has made him more egocentric and blatantly hedonistic. From an occult point of view he has in this way subjected himself to the influences of dark and undesirable world-forces, has made an opening, to use an Indian symbolism, for Kali (the Spirit of the Iron Age) to enter into him. The sex-force is an extremely potent agent, but it is extremely fluid and elusive and uncontrollable. It was for this reason that the ancients always sought to give it a proper mould, a right continent, a fixed and definite channel; the moderns, on the other hand, allow it to run free and play with it recklessly. The result has been, in the life of those born under such circumstances, a growing lack of poise and balance and a corresponding incidence of neuras thenia, hysteria and all abnormal pathological conditions.
   Chhandyogya, II, III.

00.04 - The Beautiful in the Upanishads, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   awakening is born, wide Manifest
   ruadvast rua wetygt
  --
   The form of a thing can be beautiful; but the formless too has its beauty. Indeed, the beauty of the formless, that is to say, the very sum and substance, the ultimate essence, the soul of beauty that is what suffuses, with in-gathered colour and enthusiasm, the realisation and poetic creation of the Upanishadic seer. All the forms that are scattered abroad in their myriad Manifest beauty hold within themselves a secret Beauty and are reflected or projected out of it. This veiled Name of Beauty can be compared to nothing on the phenomenal hemisphere of Nature; it has no adequate image or representation below:
   na tasya pratimsti
  --
   And what else is the true character, the soul of beauty than light and delight? "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever." And a thing of joy is a thing of light. Joy is the radiance rippling over a thing of beauty. Beauty is always radiant: the charm, the loveliness of an object is but the glow of light that it eManates. And it would not be a very incorrect mensuration to measure the degree of beauty by the degree of light radiated. The diamond is not only a thing of value, but a thing of beauty also, because of the concentrated and undimmed light that it enshrines within itself. A dark, dull and dismal thing, devoid of interest and attraction becomes aesthetically precious and significant as soon as the artist presents it in terms of the values of light. The entire art of painting is nothing but the expression of beauty, in and through the modalities of light.
   And where there is light, there is cheer and joy. Rasamaya and jyotirmayaare thus the two conjoint characteristics fundamental to the nature of the ultimate reality. Sometimes these two are named as the 'solar and the lunar aspect. The solar aspect refers obviously to the Light, that is to say, to the Truth; the lunar aspect refers to the rasa (Soma), to Immortality, to Beauty proper,
  --
   The perception of beauty in the Upanishadic consciousness is something elemental-of concentrated essence. It silhouettes the main contour, outlines the primordial gestures. Pregnant and pulsating with the burden of beauty, the Mantra here reduces its external expression to a minimum. The body is bare and unadorned, and even in its nakedness, it has not the emphatic and vehement musculature of an athlete; rather it tends to be slim and slender and yet vibrant with the inner nervous vigour and glow. What can be more bare and brief and full to the brim of a self-gathered luminous energy than, for example:
   yat prena na praiti yena pra
  --
   That which lives not by Life, but which makes Life liveThat is BrahMan.
   or,
  --
   The rich and sensuous beauty luxuriating in high colour and ample decoration that one meets often in the creation of the earlier Vedic seers returned again, in a more chiselled and polished and stylised Manner, in the classical poets. The Upanishads in this respect have a certain kinship with the early poets of the intervening ageVyasa and Valmiki. Upam KlidsasyaKalidasa revels in figures and images; they are profusely heaped on one another and usually possess a complex and composite texture. Valmiki's images are simple and elemental, brief and instinct with a vast resonance, spare and full of power. The same brevity and simplicity, vibrant with an extraordinary power of evocation, are also characteristic of the Upanishadic Mantra With Valmiki's
   kamiva dupram

00.05 - A Vedic Conception of the Poet, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   'Kavi' is an invariable epithet of the gods. The Vedas mean by this attribute to bring out a most fundamental character, an inalienable dharma of the heavenly host. All the gods are poets; and a huMan being can become a poet only in so far as he attains to the nature and status of a god. Who is then a kavi? The Poet is he who by his poetic power raises forms of beauty in heavenkavi kavitv divi rpam sajat.1Thus the essence of poetic power is to fashion divine Beauty, to reveal heavenly forms. What is this Heaven whose forms the Poet discovers and embodies? HeavenDyaushas a very definite connotation in the Veda. It means the luminous or divine Mind 2the mind purified of its obscurity and limitations, due to subjection to the external senses, thus opening to the higher Light, receiving and recording faithfully the deeper and vaster movements and vibrations of the Truth, giving them a form, a perfect body of the right thought and the right word. Indra is the lord of this world and he can be approached only with an enkindled intelligence, ddhay Man,3a faultless understanding, sumedh. He is the supreme Artisan of the poetic power,Tash, the maker of perfect forms, surpa ktnum.4 All the gods turn towards Indra and become gods and poets, attain their Great Names of Supreme Beauty.5 Indra is also the master of the senses, indriyas, who are his hosts. It is through this mind and the senses that the poetic creation has to be Manifested. The mind spreads out wide the Poet's weaving;6 the poet is the priest who calls down and works out the right thinking in the sacrificial labour of creation.7 But that creation is made in and through the inner mind and the inner senses that are alive to the subtle formation of a vaster knowledge.8 The poet envisages the golden forms fashioned out of the very profundity of the consciousness.9 For the substance, the material on which the Poet works, is Truth. The seat of the Truth the poets guard, they uphold the supreme secret Names.10 The poet has the expressive utterance, the creative word; the poet is a poet by his poetic creation-the shape faultlessly wrought out that unveils and holds the Truth.11The form of beauty is the body of the Truth.
   The poet is a trinity in himself. A triune consciousness forms his personality. First of all, he is the Knower-the Seer of the Truth, kavaya satyadrara. He has the direct vision, the luminous intelligence, the immediate perception.12 A subtle and profound and penetrating consciousness is his,nigam, pracetas; his is the eye of the Sun,srya caku.13 He secures an increased being through his effulgent understanding.14 In the second place, the Poet is not only Seer but Doer; he is knower as well as creator. He has a dynamic knowledge and his vision itself is power, ncak;15 he is the Seer-Will,kavikratu.16 He has the blazing radiance of the Sun and is supremely potent in his self-Iuminousness.17 The Sun is the light and the energy of the Truth. Even like the Sun the Poet gives birth to the Truth, srya satyasava, satyya satyaprasavya. But the Poet as Power is not only the revealer or creator,savit, he is also the builder or fashioner,ta, and he is the organiser,vedh is personality. First of all, he is the Knower-the Seer of the Truth, kavaya satyadrara, of the Truth.18 As Savita he Manifests the Truth, as Tashta he gives a perfected body and form to the Truth, and as Vedha he maintains the Truth in its dynamic working. The effective marshalling and organisation of the Truth is what is called Ritam, the Right; it is also called Dharma,19 the Law or the Rhythm, the ordered movement and invincible execution of the Truth. The Poet pursues the Path of the Right;20 it is he who lays out the Path for the march of the Truth, the progress of the Sacrifice.21 He is like a fast steed well-yoked, pressing forward;22 he is the charger that moves straight and unswerving and carries us beyond 23into the world of felicity.
   Indeed delight is the third and the supremely intimate element of the poetic personality. Dear and delightful is the poet, dear and delightful his works, priya, priyi His hand is dripping with sweetness,kavir hi madhuhastya.24 The Poet-God shines in his pristine beauty and is showering delight.25 He is filled with utter ecstasy so that he may rise to the very source of the luminous Energy.26? Pure is the Divine Joy and it enters and purifies all forms as it moves to the seat of the Immortals.27Indeed this sparkling Delight is the Poet-Seer and it is that that brings forth the creative word, the utterance of Indra.28
  --
   The Vedic Poet is doubtless the poet of Life, the architect of Divinity in Man, of Heaven upon earth. But what is true of Life is fundamentally true of Art tooat least true of the Art as it was conceived by the ancient seers and as it found expression at their hands.32
   Rig Veda, X. 124. 7

0.00a - Introduction, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
  It is ironic that a period of the most tremendous technological advancement known to recorded history should also be labeled the Age of Anxiety. Reams have been written about modern Man's frenzied search for his soul-and, indeed, his doubt that he even has one at a time when, like castles built on sand, so Many of his cherished theories, long mistaken for verities, are crumbling about his bewildered brain.
  The age-old advice, "Know thyself," is more imperative than ever. The tempo of science has accelerated to such a degree that today's discoveries frequently make yesterday's equations obsolescent almost before they can be chalked up on a blackboard. Small wonder, then that every other hospital bed is occupied by a mental patient. Man was not constructed to spend his life at a crossroads, one of which leads he knows not where, and the other to threatened annihilation of his species.
  In view of this situation it is doubly reassuring to know that, even in the midst of chaotic concepts and conditions there still remains a door through which Man, individually, can enter into a vast store-house of knowledge, knowledge as dependable and immutable as the measured tread of Eternity.
  For this reason I am especially pleased to be writing an introduction to a new edition of A Garden of Pomegranates. I feel that never, perhaps, was the need more urgent for just such a roadmap as the Qabalistic system provides. It should be equally useful to any who chooses to follow it, whether he be Jew, Christian or Buddhist, Deist, Theosophist, agnostic or atheist.
  The Qabalah is a trustworthy guide, leading to a comprehension both of the Universe and one's own Self. Sages have long taught that Man is a miniature of the Universe, containing within himself the diverse elements of that macrocosm of which he is the microcosm. Within the Qabalah is a glyph called the Tree of Life which is at once a symbolic map of the Universe in its major aspects, and also of its smaller counterpart, Man.
  Manly P. Hall, in The Secret Teachings of All Ages, deplores the failure of modern science to "sense the profundity of these philosophical deductions of the ancients." Were they to do so, he says, they "would realize those who fabricated the structure of the Qabalah possessed a knowledge of the celestial plan comparable in every respect with that of the modern savant."
  Fortunately Many scientists in the field of psycho therapy are beginning to sense this correlation. In Francis G. Wickes' The Inner World of Choice reference is made to "the existence in every person of a galaxy of potentialities for growth marked by a succession of personalogical evolution and interaction with environments." She points out that Man is not only an individual particle but "also a part of the huMan stream, governed by a Self greater than his own individual self."
  The Book of the Law states simply, "Every Man and every woMan is a star." This is a startling thought for those who considered a star a heavenly body, but a declaration subject to proof by anyone who will venture into the realm of his own Unconscious. This realm, he will learn if he persists, is not hemmed in by the boundaries of his physical body but is one with the boundless reaches of outer space.
  Those who, armed with the tools provided by the Qabalah, have made the journey within and crossed beyond the barriers of illusion, have returned with an impressive quantity of knowledge which conforms strictly to the definition of "science" in Winston's College Dictionary: "Science: a body of knowledge, general truths of particular facts, obtained and shown to be correct by accurate observation and thinking; knowledge condensed, arranged and systematized with reference to general truths and laws."
  --
  Each letter of the Qabalistic alphabet has a number, color, Many symbols and a Tarot card attributed to it. The Qabalah not only aids in an understanding of the Tarot, but teaches the student how to classify and organize all such ideas, numbers and symbols. Just as a knowledge of Latin will give insight into the meaning of an unfamiliar English word with a Latin root, so the knowledge of the Qabalah with the various attri butions to each character in its alphabet will enable the student to understand and correlate ideas and concepts which otherwise would have no apparent relation.
  A simple example is the concept of the Trinity in the Christian religion. The student is frequently amazed to learn through a study of the Qabalah that Egyptian mythology followed a similar concept with its trinity of gods, Osiris the father, Isis the virgin-mother, and Horus the son. The Qabalah indicates similar correspondences in the pantheon of RoMan and Greek deities, proving the father-mother (Holy Spirit) - son principles of deity are primordial archetypes of Man's psyche, rather than being, as is frequently and erroneously supposed a development peculiar to the Christian era.
  At this juncture let me call attention to one set of attri butions by Rittangelius usually found as an appendix attached to the Sepher Yetzirah. It lists a series of "Intelligences" for each one of the ten Sephiros and the twenty-two Paths of the Tree of Life. It seems to me, after prolonged meditation, that the common attri butions of these Intelligences is altogether arbitrary and lacking in serious meaning.
  For example, Keser is called "The Admirable or the Hidden Intelligence; it is the Primal Glory, for no created being can attain to its essence." This seems perfectly all right; the meaning at first sight seems to fit the significance of Keser as the first eManation from Ain Soph. But there are half a dozen other similar attri butions that would have served equally well. For instance, it could have been called the "Occult Intelligence" usually attri buted to the seventh Path or Sephirah, for surely Keser is secret in a way to be said of no other Sephirah. And what about the "Absolute or Perfect Intelligence." That would have been even more explicit and appropriate, being applicable to Keser far more than to any other of the Paths. Similarly, there is one attri buted to the 16th Path and called "The Eternal or Triumphant Intelligence," so-called because it is the pleasure of the Glory, beyond which is no Glory like to it, and it is called also the Paradise prepared for the Righteous." Any of these several would have done equally well. Much is true of so Many of the other attri butions in this particular area-that is the so-called Intelligences of the Sepher Yetzirah. I do not think that their use or current arbitrary usage stands up to serious examination or criticism.
  A good Many attri butions in other symbolic areas, I feel are subject to the same criticism. The Egyptian Gods have been used with a good deal of carelessness, and without sufficient explanation of motives in assigning them as I did. In a recent edition of Crowley's masterpiece Liber 777 (which au fond is less a reflection of Crowley's mind as a recent critic claimed than a tabulation of some of the material given piecemeal in the Golden Dawn knowledge lectures), he gives for the first time brief explanations of the motives for his attri butions. I too should have been far more explicit in the explanations I used in the case of some of the Gods whose names were used Many times, most inadequately, where several paths were concerned. While it is true that the religious coloring of the Egyptian Gods differed from time to time during Egypt's turbulent history, nonetheless a word or two about just that one single point could have served a useful purpose.
  Some of the passages in the book force me today to emphasize that so far as the Qabalah is concerned, it could and should be employed without binding to it the partisan qualities of any one particular religious faith. This goes as much for Judaism as it does for Christianity. Neither has much intrinsic usefulness where this scientific scheme is concerned. If some students feel hurt by this statement, that cannot be helped. The day of most contemporary faiths is over; they have been more of a curse than a boon to Mankind. Nothing that I say here, however, should reflect on the peoples concerned, those who accept these religions. They are merely unfortunate. The religion itself is worn out and indeed is dying.
  The Qabalah has nothing to do with any of them. Attempts on the part of cultish-partisans to impart higher mystical meanings, through the Qabalah, etc., to their now sterile faiths is futile, and will be seen as such by the younger generation. They, the flower and love children, will have none of this nonsense.
  I felt this a long time ago, as I still do, but even more so. The only way to explain the partisan Jewish attitude demonstrated in some small sections of the book can readily be explained. I had been reading some writings of Arthur Edward Waite, and some of his pomposity and turgidity stuck to my Mantle. I disliked his patronising Christian attitude, and so swung all the way over to the other side of the pendulum. Actually, neither faith is particularly important in this day and age. I must be careful never to read Waite again before embarking upon literary work of my own.
  Much knowledge obtained by the ancients through the use of the Qabalah has been supported by discoveries of modern scientists- anthropologists, astronomers, psychiatrists, et al. Learned Qabalists for hundreds of years have been aware of what the psychiatrist has only discovered in the last few decades-that Man's concept of himself, his deities and the Universe is a constantly evolving process, changing as Man himself evolves on a higher spiral. But the roots of his concepts are buried in a race-consciousness that antedated Neanderthal Man by uncounted aeons of time.
  What Jung calls archetypal images constantly rise to the surface of Man's awareness from the vast unconscious that is the common heritage of all Mankind.
  The tragedy of civilized Man is that he is cut off from awareness of his own instincts. The Qabalah can help him achieve the necessary understanding to effect a reunion with them, so that rather than being driven by forces he does not understand, he can harness for his conscious use the same power that guides the homing pigeon, teaches the beaver to build a dam and keeps the planets revolving in their appointed orbits about the sun.
  I began the study of the Qabalah at an early age. Two books I read then have played unconsciously a prominent part in the writing of my own book. One of these was "Q.B.L. or the Bride's Reception" by Frater Achad (Charles Stansfeld Jones), which I must have first read around 1926. The other was "An Introduction to the Tarot" by Paul Foster Case, published in the early 1920's. It is now out of print, superseded by later versions of the same topic. But as I now glance through this slender book, I perceive how profoundly even the format of his book had influenced me, though in these two instances there was not a trace of plagiarism. It had not consciously occurred to me until recently that I owed so much to them. Since Paul Case passed away about a decade or so ago, this gives me the opportunity to thank him, overtly, wherever he may now be.
  By the middle of 1926 I had become aware of the work of Aleister Crowley, for whom I have a tremendous respect. I studied as Many of his writings as I could gain access to, making copious notes, and later acted for several years as his secretary, having joined him in Paris on October 12, 1928, a memorable day in my life.
  All sorts of books have been written on the Qabalah, some poor, some few others extremely good. But I came to feel the need for what might be called a sort of Berlitz handbook, a concise but comprehensive introduction, studded with diagrams and tables of easily understood definitions and correspondences to simplify the student's grasp of so complicated and abstruse a subject.
  During a short retirement in North Devon in 1931, I began to amalgamate my notes. It was out of these that A Garden of Pomegranates gradually emerged. I unashamedly admit that my book contains Many direct plagiarisms from Crowley, Waite, Eliphas Levi, and D. H. Lawrence. I had incorporated numerous fragments from their works into my notebooks without citing individual references to the various sources from which I condensed my notes.
  Prior to the closing down of the Mandrake Press in London about 1930-31, I was employed as company secretary for a while. Along with several Crowley books, the Mandrake Press published a lovely little monogram by D. H. Lawrence entitled "Apropos of Lady Chatterley's Lover." My own copy accompanied me on my travels for long years. Only recently did I discover that it had been lost. I hope that any one of my former patients who had borrowed it will see fit to return it to me forthwith.
  The last chapter of A Garden deals with the Way of Return. It used almost entirely Crowley's concept of the Path as described in his superb essay "One Star in Sight." In addition to this, I borrowed extensively from Lawrence's Apropos. Somehow, they all fitted together very nicely. In time, all these variegated notes were incorporated into the text without acknowledgment, an oversight which I now feel sure would be forgiven, since I was only twenty-four at the time.
  --
  In 1932, at the suggestion of Thomas Burke, the novelist, I submitted my Manuscript to one of his publishers, Messrs. Constable in London. They were unable to use it, but made some encouraging comments and advised me to submit it to Riders. To my delight and surprise, Riders published it, and throughout the years the reaction it has had indicated other students found it also fulfilled their need for a condensed and simplified survey of such a vast subject as the Qabalah.
  The importance of the book to me was and is five-fold. 1) It provided a yardstick by which to measure my personal progress in the understanding of the Qabalah. 2) Therefore it can have an equivalent value to the modern student. 3) It serves as a theoretical introduction to the Qabalistic foundation of the magical work of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. 4) It throws considerable light on the occasionally obscure writings of Aleister Crowley. 5) It is dedicated to Crowley, who was the Ankh-af-na-Khonsu mentioned in The Book of the Law -a dedication which served both as a token of personal loyalty and devotion to Crowley, but was also a gesture of my spiritual independence from him.
  In his profound investigation into the origins and basic nature of Man, Robert Ardrey in African Genesis recently made a shocking statement. Although Man has begun the conquest of outer space, the ignorance of his own nature, says Ardrey, "has become institutionalized, universalized and sanctified." He further states that were a brotherhood of Man to be formed today, "its only possible common bond would be ignorance of what Man is."
  Such a condition is both deplorable and appalling when the means are readily available for Man to acquire a thorough understanding of himself-and in so doing, an understanding of his neighbor and the world in which he lives as well as the greater Universe of which each is a part.
  May everyone who reads this new edition of A Garden of Pomegranates be encouraged and inspired to light his own candle of inner vision and begin his journey into the boundless space that lies within himself. Then, through realization of his true identity, each student can become a lamp unto his own path. And more. Awareness of the Truth of his being will rip asunder the veil of unknowing that has heretofore enshrouded the star he already is, permitting the brilliance of his light to illumine the darkness of that part of the Universe in which he abides.

0.00a - Participants in the Evening Talks, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Nirodbaran Dr. Manilal Parekh
   Champaklal Dr. Srinivasa Rao

000 - Humans in Universe, #Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, #R Buckminster Fuller, #Science
  object:000 - HuMans in Universe
  author class:R Buckminster Fuller
  --
  algebra, and calculation. Then about 2,000 years ago the RoMan Empire all but
  obliterated mathematics. A little more than 1,000 years ago Arabs and Hindus
  --
  RoMan numerals . . . impossible! The Renaissance began with the new calculating
  facility introduced by the cipher. The cipher was not only an essential tool in the
  --
  great ships. With more powerfully engineered ships, huMans emerged westward
  through Gibraltar to explore the Atlantic, to sail around Africa, to reach the Orient
  --
  comManded the line of most efficient high seas supply would become the masters
  of world wealth. Ships could carry cargoes that overland caravans could not.
  --
  century Malthus published his documented thesis that huManity was multiplying its
  numbers at a geometric (exponential) rate of gain while increasing life-support
  --
  closed-system sphere, it apparently became scientifically Manifest that there is a
  fundamental inadequacy of life support on our planet. Until then all opinions on
  --
  science and technology. The military took comMand of all the highest perforMance
  materials, brains, instruments, and tools of production.
  --
  000.111 Up until the 20th century reality consisted of everything that huMans
  could see, smell, touch, and hear. Then at the entry into the 20th century the
  --
  chemical structuring produces ever more powerful and incisive perforMances perpound of physical matter employed.
  000.112 Structures are complexes of visible or invisible physical events
  --
  000.115 Throughout the three million known years of the Stone Age huMans
  relied on gravity to hold their vertical stone walls together until (as often happened)
  --
  cohering resistance. Gravity pushed huManity's stone structures inward toward the
  Earth's center. HuMans had to build their structures on bedrock "shoes" to prevent
  them from sinking vertically into Earth's center. Stone buildings could not float on
  --
  huMans but not for floating heavy cargoes. Thus the high tensile strength of wood,
  combined with the huMan discovery of the intertrussing principles of structuring
  and the low overall displacement weights involved, made possible for huMans to
  design and fabricate air-enclosing wooden vessels whose structure and space
  --
  could carry great cargoes.000.116 In the 1850s huMans arrived at the mass production of steel, an alloy of
  iron, carbon, and Manganese having a tensile strength of 50,000 p.s.i. as well as a
  compression-resisting capability of 50.000 p.s.i. Steel has the same compression-
  --
  Steel brought Mankind a structural-tension capability to match stone's previous
  millions of years of exclusive compressional supremacy. With far higher tensile
  --
  and faster. Finally huMans developed so much strength per weight of materials
  capability that they accomplished "vertol" jet plane flight and vertical space-vehicle
  blastoffs. Since then huMan scientists developing ever greater strength per weight
  of material have gone on to carry ever greater useful loads in vertical takeoff
  --
  000.118 As of the 1970s the huMan mind has developed a practical tensile
  structuring capability of 600,000 p.s.i. The means of accomplishing this new and
  --
  huManity has as yet no idea that this increase in tensile capability has come about or
  how it came about or why it works. While huMans cannot see the ever-lessening
  interatomic proximity of atoms and electrons of electromagnetic events, they can
  witness the ever more vertical takeoff-angle capabilities Manifesting huMan
  comprehension of the fundamental structuring principles and their military
  --
  000.119 Before the airplane huMans said, "You cannot lift yourself by your
  bootstraps." Today we are lifting ever lighter and stronger structural vessel "selves"by ever less effort of our scientific know-how bootstraps. No economist knows this.
  --
  feasible to retool and redirect world industry in such a Manner that within 10 years
  we can have all of huManity enjoying a sustainably higher standard of living-with
  vastly increased degrees of freedom than has ever been enjoyed by anyone in all
  --
  world-huMans by single-family, air-deliverable, energy harvesting, only-rentable
  dwelling machines. When huMans are convergent, they will dwell in domed-over
  moon-crater cities that will be energy-harvesting and -exporting centers rather than
  --
  huManity is all cosmically prepaid.
  000.123 Why don't we exercise our epochal option? Governments are financed
  --
  structures-political, religious, or capitalist-would find their interests disastrouslythreatened by total huMan success. They are founded upon assumption of scarcity;
  they are organized for and sustained by the problems imposed by the assumption of
  --
  000.124 Why does not the public itself deMand realization of its option for a
  revolution by design science? Less than one percent of huManity now knows that
  the option exists; 99 percent of huManity cannot understand the mathematical
  language of science. The people who make up that 99 percent do not know that all
  --
  for their life-sustaining opportunities to "earn a living." Ergo, huManity thinks it is
  against technology and thinks itself averse to exercising its option.
  000.125 The fact that 99 percent of huManity does not understand nature is the
  prime reason for huManity's failure to exercise its option to attain universally
  sustainable physical success on this planet. The prime barrier to huManity's
  discovery and comprehension of nature is the obscurity of the mathematical
  --
  coordinating system-and can do so in time to make it possible for all huManity to
  favorably comprehend and to exercise its option to attain universal physical
  --
  separately. The eternally regenerative Universe is synergetic. HuMans have been
  included in this cosmic design as local Universe information-gatherers and local
  --
  regenerative system of Universe. In support of their cosmic functioning huMans
  were given their minds with which to discover and employ the generalized laws
  --
  000.130 At present 99 percent of huManity is misinformed in believing in the
  Malthusian concept of the fundamental inadequacy of life support, and so they have
  --
  into supreme power within a decade, huManity will exercise its option of a design
  revolution and will enter a new and-lasting epoch of physical success for all. If not,
  it will be curtains for all huManity within this century.
  000.131 In complement with Synergetics 1 and 2 the posters at color plates 1-10

0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  THE BRAHManI
  TANTRA
  --
  RAM AND ManOMOHAN
  SURENDRA
  --
  WOMan DEVOTEES
  GOPAL MA
  --
  SRI RAMAKRISHNA, the God-Man of modern India, was born at Kamarpukur. This village in the Hooghly District preserved during the last century the idyllic simplicity of the rural areas of Bengal. Situated far from the railway, it was untouched by the glamour of the city. It contained rice-fields, tall palms, royal banyans, a few lakes, and two cremation grounds. South of the village a stream took its leisurely course. A Mango orchard dedicated by a neighbouring zemindar to the public use was frequented by the boys for their noonday sports. A highway passed through the village to the great temple of Jagannath at Puri, and the villagers, most of whom were farmers and craftsmen, entertained Many passing holy men and pilgrims. The dull round of the rural life was broken by lively festivals, the observance of sacred days, religious singing, and other innocent pleasures.
  About his parents Sri Ramakrishna once said: "My mother was the personification of rectitude and gentleness. She did not know much about the ways of the world; innocent of the art of concealment, she would say what was in her mind. People loved her for her open-heartedness. My father, an orthodox brahmin, never accepted gifts from the sudras. He spent much of his time in worship and meditation, and in repeating God's name and chanting His glories. Whenever in his daily prayers he invoked the Goddess Gayatri, his chest flushed and tears rolled down his cheeks. He spent his leisure hours making garlands for the Family Deity, Raghuvir."
  --
   Gadadhar was seven years old when his father died. This incident profoundly affected him. For the first time the boy realized that life on earth was imperManent. Unobserved by others, he began to slip into the Mango orchard or into one of the cremation grounds, and he spent hours absorbed in his own thoughts. He also became more helpful to his mother in the discharge of her household duties. He gave more attention to reading and hearing the religious stories recorded in the Puranas. And he became interested in the wandering monks and pious pilgrims who would stop at Kamarpukur on their way to Puri. These holy men, the custodians of India's spiritual heritage and the living witnesses of the ideal of renunciation of the world and all-absorbing love of God, entertained the little boy with stories from the Hindu epics, stories of saints and prophets, and also stories of their own adventures. He, on his part, fetched their water and fuel and
   served them in various ways. Meanwhile, he was observing their meditation and worship.
   At the age of nine Gadadhar was invested with the sacred thread. This ceremony conferred upon him the privileges of his brahmin lineage, including the worship of the Family Deity, Raghuvir, and imposed upon him the Many strict disciplines of a brahmin's life. During the ceremony of investiture he shocked his relatives by accepting a meal cooked by his nurse, a sudra woMan. His father would never have dreamt of doing such a thing But in a playful mood Gadadhar had once promised this woMan that he would eat her food, and now he fulfilled his plighted word. The woMan had piety and religious sincerity, and these were more important to the boy than the conventions of society.
   Gadadhar was now permitted to worship Raghuvir. Thus began his first training in meditation. He so gave his heart and soul to the worship that the stone image very soon appeared to him as the living Lord of the Universe. His tendency to lose himself in contemplation was first noticed at this time. Behind his boyish light-heartedness was seen a deepening of his spiritual nature.
   About this time, on the Sivaratri night, consecrated to the worship of Siva, a dramatic perforMance was arranged. The principal actor, who was to play the part of Siva, suddenly fell ill, and Gadadhar was persuaded to act in his place. While friends were dressing him for the role of Siva — smearing his body with ashes, matting his locks, placing a trident in his hand and a string of rudraksha beads around his neck — the boy appeared to become absent-minded. He approached the stage with slow and measured step, supported by his friends. He looked the living image of Siva. The audience loudly applauded what it took to be his skill as an actor, but it was soon discovered that he was really lost in meditation. His countenance was radiant and tears flowed from his eyes. He was lost to the outer world. The effect of this scene on the audience was tremendous. The people felt blessed as by a vision of Siva Himself. The perforMance had to be stopped, and the boy's mood lasted till the following morning.
   Gadadhar himself now organized a dramatic company with his young friends. The stage was set in the Mango orchard. The themes were selected from the stories of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Gadadhar knew by heart almost all the roles, having heard them from professional actors. His favourite theme was the Vrindavan episode of Krishna's life, depicting those exquisite love-stories of Krishna and the milkmaids and the cowherd boys. Gadadhar would play the parts of Radha or Krishna and would often lose himself in the character he was portraying. His natural feminine grace heightened the dramatic effect. The Mango orchard would ring with the loud kirtan of the boys. Lost in song and merry-making, Gadadhar became indifferent to the routine of school.
   In 1849 Ramkumar, the eldest son, went to Calcutta to improve the financial condition of the family.
   Gadadhar was on the threshold of youth. He had become the pet of the women of the village. They loved to hear him talk, sing, or recite from the holy books. They enjoyed his knack of imitating voices. Their woMan's instinct recognized the innate purity and guilelessness of this boy of clear skin, flowing hair, beaming eyes, smiling face, and inexhaustible fun. The pious elderly women looked upon him as Gopala, the Baby Krishna, and the younger ones saw in him the youthful Krishna of Vrindavan. He himself so idealized the love of the gopis for Krishna that he sometimes yearned to be born as a woMan, if he must be born again, in order to be able to love Sri Krishna with all his heart and soul.
   --- COMING TO CALCUTTA
  --
   Ramkumar did not at first oppose the ways of his temperamental brother. He wanted Gadadhar to become used to the conditions of city life. But one day he decided to warn the boy about his indifference to the world. After all, in the near future Gadadhar must, as a householder, earn his livelihood through the perforMance of his brahminical duties; and these required a thorough knowledge of Hindu law, astrology, and kindred subjects. He gently admonished Gadadhar and asked him to pay more attention to his studies. But the boy replied spiritedly: "Brother, what shall I do with a mere bread-winning education? I would rather acquire that wisdom which will illumine my heart and give me satisfaction for ever."
   --- BREAD-WINNING EDUCATION
  --
   When Ramkumar repriManded Gadadhar for neglecting a "bread-winning education", the inner voice of the boy reminded him that the legacy of his ancestors — the legacy of Rama, Krishna, Buddha, Sankara, RaManuja, Chaitanya — was not worldly security but the Knowledge of God. And these noble sages were the true representatives of Hindu society. Each of them was seated, as it were, on the crest of the wave that followed each successive trough in the tumultuous course of Indian national life. All demonstrated that the life current of India is spirituality. This truth was revealed to Gadadhar through that inner vision which scans past and future in one sweep, unobstructed by the barriers of time and space. But he was unaware of the history of the profound change that had taken place in the land of his birth during the previous one hundred years.
   Hindu society during the eighteenth century had been passing through a period of decadence. It was the twilight of the MussalMan rule. There were anarchy and confusion in all spheres. Superstitious practices dominated the religious life of the people. Rites and rituals passed for the essence of spirituality. Greedy priests became the custodians of heaven. True philosophy was supplanted by dogmatic opinions. The pundits took delight in vain polemics.
   In 1757 English traders laid the foundation of British rule in India. Gradually the Government was systematized and lawlessness suppressed. The Hindus were much impressed by the military power and political acumen of the new rulers. In the wake of the merchants came the English educators, and social reformers, and Christian missionaries — all bearing a culture completely alien to the Hindu mind. In different parts of the country educational institutions were set up and Christian churches established. Hindu young men were offered the heady wine of the Western culture of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and they drank it to the very dregs.
  --
   The Christian missionaries gave the finishing touch to the process of transformation. They ridiculed as relics of a barbarous age the images and rituals of the Hindu religion. They tried to persuade India that the teachings of her saints and seers were the cause of her downfall, that her Vedas, Puranas, and other scriptures were filled with superstition. Christianity, they maintained, had given the white races position and power in this world and assurance of happiness in the next; therefore Christianity was the best of all religions. Many intelligent young Hindus became converted. The Man in the street was confused. The majority of the educated grew materialistic in their mental outlook. Everyone living near Calcutta or the other strong-holds of Western culture, even those who attempted to cling to the orthodox traditions of Hindu society, became infected by the new uncertainties and the new beliefs.
   But the soul of India was to be resuscitated through a spiritual awakening. We hear the first call of this renascence in the spirited retort of the young Gadadhar: "Brother, what shall I do with a mere bread-winning education?"
   Ramkumar could hardly understand the import of his young brother's reply. He described in bright colours the happy and easy life of scholars in Calcutta society. But Gadadhar intuitively felt that the scholars, to use one of his own vivid illustrations, were like so Many vultures, soaring high on the wings of their uninspired intellect, with their eyes fixed on the charnel-pit of greed and lust. So he stood firm and Ramkumar had to give way.
   --- KALI TEMPLE AT DAKSHINESWAR
   At that time there lived in Calcutta a rich widow named Rani RasMani, belonging to the sudra caste, and known far and wide not only for her business ability, courage, and intelligence, but also for her largeness of heart, piety, and devotion to God. She was assisted in the Management of her vast property by her son-in-law Mathur Mohan.
   In 1847 the Rani purchased twenty acres of land at Dakshineswar, a village about four miles north of Calcutta. Here she created a temple garden and constructed several temples. Her Ishta, or Chosen Ideal, was the Divine Mother, Kali.
   The temple garden stands directly on the east bank of the Ganges. The northern section of the land and a portion to the east contain an orchard, flower gardens, and two small reservoirs. The southern section is paved with brick and mortar. The visitor arriving by boat ascends the steps of an imposing bathing-ghat which leads to the chandni, a roofed terrace, on either side of which stand in a row six temples of Siva. East of the terrace and the Siva temples is a large court, paved, rectangular in shape, and running north and south. Two temples stand in the centre of this court, the larger one, to the south and facing south, being dedicated to Kali, and the smaller one, facing the Ganges, to Radhakanta, that is, Krishna, the Consort of Radha. Nine domes with spires surmount the temple of Kali, and before it stands the spacious natMandir, or music hall, the terrace of which is sup- ported by stately pillars. At the northwest and southwest
   corners of the temple compound are two nahabats, or music towers, from which music flows at different times of day, especially at sunup, noon, and sundown, when the worship is performed in the temples. Three sides of the paved courtyard — all except the west — are lined with rooms set apart for kitchens, store-rooms, dining-rooms, and quarters for the temple staff and guests. The chamber in the northwest angle, just beyond the last of the Siva temples, is of special interest to us; for here Sri Ramakrishna was to spend a considerable part of his life. To the west of this chamber is a semicircular porch overlooking the river. In front of the porch runs a foot-path, north and south, and beyond the path is a large garden and, below the garden, the Ganges. The orchard to the north of the buildings contains the Panchavati, the banyan, and the bel-tree, associated with Sri Ramakrishna's spiritual practices. Outside and to the north of the temple compound proper is the kuthi, or bungalow, used by members of Rani RasMani's family visiting the garden. And north of the temple garden, separated from it by a high wall, is a powder-magazine belonging to the British Government.
   --- SIVA
  --
   The main temple is dedicated to Kali, the Divine Mother, here worshipped as Bhavatarini, the Saviour of the Universe. The floor of this temple also is paved with marble. The basalt image of the Mother, dressed in gorgeous gold brocade, stands on a white marble image of the prostrate body of Her Divine Consort, Siva, the symbol of the Absolute. On the feet of the Goddess are, among other ornaments, anklets of gold. Her arms are decked with jewelled ornaments of gold. She wears necklaces of gold and pearls, a golden garland of huMan heads, and a girdle of huMan arms. She wears a golden crown, golden ear-rings, and a golden nose-ring with a pearl-drop. She has four arms. The lower left hand holds a severed huMan head and the upper grips a blood-stained sabre. One right hand offers boons to Her children; the other allays their fear. The majesty of Her posture can hardly be described. It combines the terror of destruction with the reassurance of motherly tenderness. For She is the Cosmic Power, the totality of the universe, a glorious harmony of the pairs of opposites. She deals out death, as She creates and preserves. She has three eyes, the third being the symbol of Divine Wisdom; they strike dismay into the wicked, yet pour out affection for Her devotees.
   The whole symbolic world is represented in the temple garden — the Trinity of the Nature Mother (Kali), the Absolute (Siva), and Love (Radhakanta), the Arch spanning heaven and earth. The terrific Goddess of the Tantra, the soul-enthralling Flute-Player of the Bhagavata, and the Self-absorbed Absolute of the Vedas live together, creating the greatest synthesis of religions. All aspects of Reality are represented there. But of this divine household, Kali is the pivot, the sovereign Mistress. She is Prakriti, the Procreatrix, Nature, the Destroyer, the Creator. Nay, She is something greater and deeper still for those who have eyes to see. She is the Universal Mother, "my Mother" as Ramakrishna would say, the All-powerful, who reveals Herself to Her children under different aspects and Divine Incarnations, the Visible God, who leads the elect to the Invisible Reality; and if it so pleases Her, She takes away the last trace of ego from created beings and merges it in the consciousness of the Absolute, the undifferentiated God. Through Her grace "the finite ego loses itself in the illimitable Ego — AtMan — BrahMan". (Romain Holland, Prophets of the New India, p. 11.)
   Rani RasMani spent a fortune for the construction of the temple garden and another fortune for its dedication ceremony, which took place on May 31, 1855.
   Sri Ramakrishna — henceforth we shall call Gadadhar by this familiar name —1 came to the temple garden with his elder brother Ramkumar, who was appointed priest of the Kali temple. Sri Ramakrishna did not at first approve of Ramkumar's working for the sudra RasMani. The example of their orthodox father was still fresh in Sri Ramakrishna's mind. He objected also to the eating of the cooked offerings of the temple, since, according to orthodox Hindu custom, such food can be offered to the Deity only in the house of a brahmin. But the holy atmosphere of the temple grounds, the solitude of the surrounding wood, the loving care of his brother, the respect shown him by Rani RasMani and Mathur Babu, the living presence of the Goddess Kali in the temple, and; above all, the proximity of the sacred Ganges, which Sri Ramakrishna always held in the highest respect, gradually overcame his disapproval, and he began to feel at home.
   Within a very short time Sri Ramakrishna attracted the notice of Mathur Babu, who was impressed by the young Man's religious fervour and wanted him to participate in the worship in the Kali temple. But Sri Ramakrishna loved his freedom and was indifferent to any worldly career. The profession of the priesthood in a temple founded by a rich woMan did not appeal to his mind. Further, he hesitated to take upon himself the responsibility for the ornaments and jewelry of the temple. Mathur had to wait for a suitable occasion.
   At this time there came to Dakshineswar a youth of sixteen, destined to play an important role in Sri Ramakrishna's life. Hriday, a distant nephew2 of Sri Ramakrishna, hailed from Sihore, a village not far from Kamarpukur, and had been his boyhood friend. Clever, exceptionally energetic, and endowed with great presence of mind, he moved, as will be seen later, like a shadow about his uncle and was always ready to help him, even at the sacrifice of his personal comfort. He was destined to be a mute witness of Many of the spiritual experiences of Sri Ramakrishna and the caretaker of his body during the stormy days of his spiritual practice. Hriday came to Dakshineswar in search of a job, and Sri Ramakrishna was glad to see him.
   Unable to resist the persuasion of Mathur Babu, Sri Ramakrishna at last entered the temple service, on condition that Hriday should be asked to assist him. His first duty was to dress and decorate the image of Kali.
  --
   Born in an orthodox brahmin family, Sri Ramakrishna knew the formalities of worship, its rites and rituals. The innumerable gods and goddesses of the Hindu religion are the huMan aspects of the indescribable and incomprehensible Spirit, as conceived by the finite huMan mind. They understand and appreciate huMan love and emotion, help men to realize their secular and spiritual ideals, and ultimately enable men to attain liberation from the miseries of phenomenal life. The Source of light, intelligence, wisdom, and strength is the One alone from whom comes the fulfilment of desire. Yet, as long as a Man is bound by his huMan limitations, he cannot but worship God through huMan forms. He must use huMan symbols. Therefore Hinduism asks the devotees to look on God as the ideal father, the ideal mother, the ideal husband, the ideal son, or the ideal friend. But the name ultimately leads to the Nameless, the form to the Formless, the word to the Silence, the emotion to the serene realization of Peace in Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute. The gods gradually merge in the one God. But until that realization is achieved, the devotee cannot dissociate huMan factors from his worship. Therefore the Deity is bathed and clothed and decked with ornaments. He is fed and put to sleep. He is propitiated with hymns, songs, and prayers. And there are appropriate rites connected with all these functions. For instance, to secure for himself external purity, the priest bathes himself in holy water and puts on a holy cloth. He purifies the mind and the sense-organs by appropriate meditations. He fortifies the place of worship against evil forces by drawing around it circles of fire and water. He awakens the different spiritual centres of the body and invokes the Supreme Spirit in his heart. Then he transfers the Supreme Spirit to the image before him and worships the image, regarding it no longer as clay or stone, but as the embodiment of Spirit, throbbing with Life and Consciousness. After the worship the Supreme Spirit is recalled from the image to Its true sanctuary, the heart of the priest. The real devotee knows the absurdity of worshipping the Transcendental Reality with material articles — clothing That which pervades the whole universe and the beyond, putting on a pedestal That which cannot be limited by space, feeding That which is disembodied and incorporeal, singing before That whose glory the music of the spheres tries vainly to proclaim. But through these rites the devotee aspires to go ultimately beyond rites and rituals, forms and names, words and praise, and to realize God as the All-pervading Consciousness.
   Hindu priests are thoroughly acquainted with the rites of worship, but few of them are aware of their underlying significance. They move their hands and limbs mechanically, in obedience to the letter of the scriptures, and repeat the holy Mantras like parrots. But from the very beginning the inner meaning of these rites was revealed to Sri Ramakrishna. As he sat facing the image, a strange transformation came over his mind. While going through the prescribed ceremonies, he would actually find himself encircled by a wall of fire protecting him and the place of worship from unspiritual vibrations, or he would feel the rising of the mystic Kundalini through the different centres of the body. The glow on his face, his deep absorption, and the intense atmosphere of the temple impressed everyone who saw him worship the Deity.
   Ramkumar wanted Sri Ramakrishna to learn the intricate rituals of the worship of Kali. To become a priest of Kali one must undergo a special form of initiation from a qualified guru, and for Sri Ramakrishna a suitable brahmin was found. But no sooner did the brahmin speak the holy word in his ear than Sri Ramakrishna, overwhelmed with emotion, uttered a loud cry and plunged into deep concentration.
   Mathur begged Sri Ramakrishna to take charge of the worship in the Kali temple. The young priest pleaded his incompetence and his ignorance of the scriptures. Mathur insisted that devotion and sincerity would more than compensate for any lack of formal knowledge and make the Divine Mother Manifest Herself through the image. In the end, Sri Ramakrishna had to yield to Mathur's request. He became the priest of Kali.
   In 1856 Ramkumar breathed his last. Sri Ramakrishna had already witnessed more than one death in the family. He had come to realize how imperManent is life on earth. The more he was convinced of the transitory nature of worldly things, the more eager he became to realize God, the Fountain of Immortality.
   --- THE FIRST VISION OF KALI
   And, indeed, he soon discovered what a strange Goddess he had chosen to serve. He became gradually enmeshed in the web of Her all-pervading presence. To the ignorant She is, to be sure, the image of destruction; but he found in Her the benign, all-loving Mother. Her neck is encircled with a garland of heads, and Her waist with a girdle of huMan arms, and two of Her hands hold weapons of death, and Her eyes dart a glance of fire; but, strangely enough, Ramakrishna felt in Her breath the soothing touch of tender love and saw in Her the Seed of Immortality. She stands on the bosom of Her Consort, Siva; it is because She is the Sakti, the Power, inseparable from the Absolute. She is surrounded by jackals and other unholy creatures, the denizens of the cremation ground. But is not the Ultimate Reality above holiness and unholiness? She appears to be reeling under the spell of wine. But who would create this mad world unless under the influence of a divine drunkenness? She is the highest symbol of all the forces of nature, the synthesis of their antinomies, the Ultimate Divine in the form of woMan. She now became to Sri Ramakrishna the only Reality, and the world became an unsubstantial shadow. Into Her worship he poured his soul. Before him She stood as the transparent portal to the shrine of Ineffable Reality.
   The worship in the temple intensified Sri Ramakrishna's yearning for a living vision of the Mother of the Universe. He began to spend in meditation the time not actually employed in the temple service; and for this purpose he selected an extremely solitary place. A deep jungle, thick with underbrush and prickly plants, lay to the north of the temples. Used at one time as a burial ground, it was shunned by people even during the day-time for fear of ghosts. There Sri Ramakrishna began to spend the whole night in meditation, returning to his room only in the morning with eyes swollen as though from much weeping. While meditating, he would lay aside his cloth and his brahminical thread. Explaining this strange conduct, he once said to Hriday: "Don't you know that when one thinks of God one should be freed from all ties? From our very birth we have the eight fetters of hatred, shame, lineage, pride of good conduct, fear, secretiveness, caste, and grief. The sacred thread reminds me that I am a brahmin and therefore superior to all. When calling on the Mother one has to set aside all such ideas." Hriday thought his uncle was becoming insane.
   As his love for God deepened, he began either to forget or to drop the formalities of worship. Sitting before the image, he would spend hours singing the devotional songs of great devotees of the Mother, such as Kamalakanta and Ramprasad. Those rhapsodical songs, describing the direct vision of God, only intensified Sri Ramakrishna's longing. He felt the pangs of a child separated from its mother. Sometimes, in agony, he would rub his face against the ground and weep so bitterly that people, thinking he had lost his earthly mother, would sympathize with him in his grief. Sometimes, in moments of scepticism, he would cry: "Art Thou true, Mother, or is it all fiction — mere poetry without any reality? If Thou dost exist, why do I not see Thee? Is religion a mere fantasy and art Thou only a figment of Man's imagination?" Sometimes he would sit on the prayer carpet for two hours like an inert object. He began to behave in an abnormal Manner
  , most of the time unconscious of the world. He almost gave up food; and sleep left him altogether.
   But he did not have to wait very long. He has thus described his first vision of the Mother: "I felt as if my heart were being squeezed like a wet towel. I was overpowered with a great restlessness and a fear that it might not be my lot to realize Her in this life. I could not bear the separation from Her any longer. Life seemed to be not worth living. Suddenly my glance fell on the sword that was kept in the Mother's temple. I determined to put an end to my life. When I jumped up like a madMan and seized it, suddenly the blessed Mother revealed Herself. The buildings with their different parts, the temple, and everything else vanished from my sight, leaving no trace whatsoever, and in their stead I saw a limitless, infinite, effulgent Ocean of Consciousness. As far as the eye could see, the shining billows were madly rushing at me from all sides with a terrific noise, to swallow me up! I was panting for breath. I was caught in the rush
   and collapsed, unconscious. What was happening in the outside world I did not know; but within me there was a steady flow of undiluted bliss, altogether new, and I felt the presence of the Divine Mother." On his lips when he regained consciousness of the world was the word "Mother".
  --
   Yet this was only a foretaste of the intense experiences to come. The first glimpse of the Divine Mother made him the more eager for Her uninterrupted vision. He wanted to see Her both in meditation and with eyes open. But the Mother began to play a teasing game of hide-and-seek with him, intensifying both his joy and his suffering. Weeping bitterly during the moments of separation from Her, he would pass into a trance and then find Her standing before him, smiling, talking, consoling, bidding him be of good cheer, and instructing him. During this period of spiritual practice he had Many uncommon experiences. When he sat to meditate, he would hear strange clicking sounds in the joints of his legs, as if someone were locking them up, one after the other, to keep him motionless; and at the conclusion of his meditation he would again hear the same sounds, this time unlocking them and leaving him free to move about. He would see flashes like a swarm of fire-flies floating before his eyes, or a sea of deep mist around him, with luminous waves of molten silver. Again, from a sea of translucent mist he would behold the Mother rising, first Her feet, then Her waist, body, face, and head, finally Her whole person; he would feel Her breath and hear Her voice. Worshipping in the temple, sometimes he would become exalted, sometimes he would remain motionless as stone, sometimes he would almost collapse from excessive emotion. Many of his actions, contrary to all tradition, seemed sacrilegious to the people. He would take a flower and touch it to his own head, body, and feet, and then offer it to the Goddess. Or, like a drunkard, he would reel to the throne of the Mother, touch Her chin by way of showing his affection for Her, and sing, talk, joke, laugh, and dance. Or he would take a morsel of food from the plate and hold it to Her mouth, begging Her to eat it, and would not be satisfied till he was convinced that She had really eaten. After the Mother had been put to sleep at night, from his own room he would hear Her ascending to the upper storey of the temple with the light steps of a happy girl, Her anklets jingling. Then he would discover Her standing with flowing hair. Her black form silhouetted against the sky of the night, looking at the Ganges or at the distant lights of Calcutta.
   Naturally the temple officials took him for an insane person. His worldly well-wishers brought him to skilled physicians; but no-medicine could cure his malady. Many a time he doubted his sanity himself. For he had been sailing across an uncharted sea, with no earthly guide to direct him. His only haven of security was the Divine Mother Herself. To Her he would pray: "I do not know what these things are. I am ignorant of Mantras and the scriptures. Teach me, Mother, how to realize Thee. Who else can help me? Art Thou not my only refuge and guide?" And the sustaining presence of the Mother never failed him in his distress or doubt. Even those who criticized his conduct were greatly impressed with his purity, guilelessness, truthfulness, integrity, and holiness. They felt an uplifting influence in his presence.
   It is said that samadhi, or trance, no more than opens the portal of the spiritual realm. Sri Ramakrishna felt an unquenchable desire to enjoy God in various ways. For his meditation he built a place in the northern wooded section of the temple garden. With Hriday's help he planted there five sacred trees. The spot, known as the Panchavati, became the scene of Many of his visions.
   As his spiritual mood deepened he more and more felt himself to be a child of the Divine Mother. He learnt to surrender himself completely to Her will and let Her direct him.
  --
   Sri Ramakrishna one day fed a cat with the food that was to be offered to Kali. This was too much for the Manager of the temple garden, who considered himself responsible for the proper conduct of the worship. He reported Sri Ramakrishna's insane behaviour to Mathur Babu.
   Sri Ramakrishna has described the incident: "The Divine Mother revealed to me in the Kali temple that it was She who had become everything. She showed me that everything was full of Consciousness. The image was Consciousness, the altar was Consciousness, the water-vessels were Consciousness, the door-sill was Consciousness, the marble floor was Consciousness — all was Consciousness. I found everything inside the room soaked, as it were, in Bliss — the Bliss of God. I saw a wicked Man in front of the Kali temple; but in him also I saw the power of the Divine Mother vibrating. That was why I fed a cat with the food that was to be offered to the Divine Mother. I clearly perceived that all this was the Divine Mother — even the cat. The Manager of the temple garden wrote to Mathur Babu saying that I was feeding the cat with the offering intended for the Divine Mother. But Mathur Babu had insight into the state of my mind. He wrote back to the Manager: 'Let him do whatever he likes. You must not say anything to him.'"
   One of the painful ailments from which Sri Ramakrishna suffered at this time was a burning sensation in his body, and he was cured by a strange vision. During worship in the temple, following the scriptural injunctions, he would imagine the presence of the "sinner" in himself and the destruction of this "sinner". One day he was meditating in the Panchavati, when he saw come out of him a red-eyed Man of black complexion, reeling like a drunkard. Soon there emerged from him another person, of serene countenance, wearing the ochre cloth of a sannyasi and carrying in his hand a trident. The second person attacked the first and killed him with the trident. Thereafter Sri Ramakrishna was free of his pain.
   About this time he began to worship God by assuming the attitude of a servant toward his master. He imitated the mood of HanuMan, the monkey chieftain of the Ramayana, the ideal servant of Rama and traditional model for this self-effacing form of devotion. When he meditated on HanuMan his movements and his way of life began to resemble those of a monkey. His eyes became restless. He lived on fruits and roots. With his cloth tied around his waist, a portion of it hanging in the form of a tail, he jumped from place to place instead of walking. And after a short while he was blessed with a vision of Sita, the divine consort of Rama, who entered his body and disappeared there with the words, "I bequeath to you my smile."
   Mathur had faith in the sincerity of Sri Ramakrishna's spiritual zeal, but began now to doubt his sanity. He had watched him jumping about like a monkey. One day, when Rani RasMani was listening to Sri Ramakrishna's singing in the temple, the young priest abruptly turned and slapped her. Apparently listening to his song, she had actually been thinking of a law-suit. She accepted the punishment as though the Divine Mother Herself had imposed it; but Mathur was distressed. He begged Sri Ramakrishna to keep his feelings under control and to heed the conventions of society. God Himself, he argued, follows laws. God never permitted, for instance, flowers of two colours to grow on the same stalk. The following day Sri Ramakrishna presented Mathur Babu with two hibiscus flowers growing on the same stalk, one red and one white.
   Mathur and Rani RasMani began to ascribe the mental ailment of Sri Ramakrishna in part, at least, to his observance of rigid continence. Thinking that a natural life would relax the tension of his nerves, they engineered a plan with two women of ill fame. But as soon as the women entered his room, Sri Ramakrishna beheld in them the Manifestation of the Divine Mother of the Universe and went into samadhi uttering Her name.
   --- HALADHARI
   In 1858 there came to Dakshineswar a cousin of Sri Ramakrishna, Haladhari by name, who was to remain there about eight years. On account of Sri Ramakrishna's indifferent health, Mathur appointed this Man to the office of priest in the Kali temple. He was a complex character, versed in the letter of the scriptures, but hardly aware of their spirit. He loved to participate in hair-splitting theological discussions and, by the measure of his own erudition, he proceeded to gauge Sri Ramakrishna. An orthodox brahmin, he thoroughly disapproved of his cousin's unorthodox actions, but he was not unimpressed by Sri Ramakrishna's purity of life, ecstatic love of God, and yearning for realization.
   One day Haladhari upset Sri Ramakrishna with the statement that God is incomprehensible to the huMan mind. Sri Ramakrishna has described the great moment of doubt when he wondered whether his visions had really misled him: "With sobs I prayed to the Mother, 'Canst Thou have the heart to deceive me like this because I am a fool?' A stream of tears flowed from my eyes. Shortly afterwards I saw a volume of mist rising from the floor and filling the space before me. In the midst of it there appeared a face with flowing beard, calm, highly expressive, and fair. Fixing its gaze steadily upon me, it said solemnly, 'Remain in bhavamukha, on the threshold of relative consciousness.' This it repeated three times and then it gently disappeared in the mist, which itself dissolved. This vision reassured me."
   A garbled report of Sri Ramakrishna's failing health, indifference to worldly life, and various abnormal activities reached Kamarpukur and filled the heart of his poor mother with anguish. At her repeated request he returned to his village for a change of air. But his boyhood friends did not interest him any more. A divine fever was consuming him. He spent a great part of the day and night in one of the cremation grounds, in meditation. The place reminded him of the imperManence of the huMan body, of huMan hopes and achievements. It also reminded him of Kali, the Goddess of destruction.
   --- MARRIAGE AND AFTER
  --
   SaradaMani, a little girl of five, lived in the neighbouring village of Jayrambati. Even at this age she had been praying to God to make her character as stainless and fragrant as the white tuberose. Looking at the full moon, she would say: "O God, there are dark spots even on the moon. But make my character spotless." It was she who was selected as the bride for Sri Ramakrishna.
   The marriage ceremony was duly performed. Such early marriage in India is in the nature of a betrothal, the marriage being consummated when the girl attains puberty. But in this case the marriage remained for ever unconsummated. Sri Ramakrishna lived at Kamarpukur about a year and a half and then returned to Dakshineswar.
   Hardly had he crossed the threshold of the Kali temple when he found himself again in the whirlwind. His madness reappeared tenfold. The same meditation and prayer, the same ecstatic moods, the same burning sensation, the same weeping, the same sleeplessness, the same indifference to the body and the outside world, the same divine delirium. He subjected himself to fresh disciplines in order to eradicate greed and lust, the two great impediments to spiritual progress. With a rupee in one hand and some earth in the other, he would reflect on the comparative value of these two for the realization of God, and finding them equally worthless he would toss them, with equal indifference, into the Ganges. Women he regarded as the Manifestations of the Divine Mother. Never even in a dream did he feel the impulses of lust. And to root out of his mind the idea of caste superiority, he cleaned a pariahs house with his long and neglected hair. When he would sit in meditation, birds would perch on his head and peck in his hair for grains of food. Snakes would crawl over his body, and neither would be aware of the other. Sleep left him altogether. Day and night, visions flitted before him. He saw the sannyasi who had previously killed the "sinner" in him again coming out of his body, threatening him with the trident, and ordering him to concentrate on God. Or the same sannyasi would visit distant places, following a luminous path, and bring him reports of what was happening there. Sri Ramakrishna used to say later that in the case of an advanced devotee the mind itself becomes the guru, living and moving like an embodied being.
   Rani RasMani, the foundress of the temple garden, passed away in 1861. After her death her son-in-law Mathur became the sole executor of the estate. He placed himself and his resources at the disposal of Sri Ramakrishna and began to look after his physical comfort. Sri Ramakrishna later spoke of him as one of his five "suppliers of stores" appointed by the Divine Mother. Whenever a desire arose in his mind, Mathur fulfilled it without hesitation.
   --- THE BRAHManI
   There came to Dakshineswar at this time a brahmin woMan who was to play an important part in Sri Ramakrishna's spiritual unfoldment. Born in East Bengal, she was an adept in the Tantrik and Vaishnava methods of worship. She was slightly over fifty years of age, handsome, and garbed in the orange robe of a nun. Her sole possessions were a few books and two pieces of wearing-cloth.
   Sri Ramakrishna welcomed the visitor with great respect, described to her his experiences and visions, and told her of people's belief that these were symptoms of madness. She listened to him attentively and said: "My son, everyone in this world is mad. Some are mad for money, some for creature comforts, some for name and fame; and you are mad for God." She assured him that he was passing through the almost unknown spiritual experience described in the scriptures as mahabhava, the most exalted rapture of divine love. She told him that this extreme exaltation had been described as Manifesting itself through nineteen physical symptoms, including the shedding of tears, a tremor of the body, horripilation, perspiration, and a burning sensation. The Bhakti scriptures, she declared, had recorded only two instances of the experience, namely, those of Sri Radha and Sri Chaitanya.
   Very soon a tender relationship sprang up between Sri Ramakrishna and the BrahMani, she looking upon him as the Baby Krishna, and he upon her as mother. Day after day she watched his ecstasy during the kirtan and meditation, his samadhi, his mad yearning; and she recognized in him a power to transmit spirituality to others. She came to the conclusion that such things were not possible for an ordinary devotee, not even for a highly developed soul. Only an Incarnation of God was capable of such spiritual Manifestations. She proclaimed openly that Sri Ramakrishna, like Sri Chaitanya, was an Incarnation of God.
   When Sri Ramakrishna told Mathur what the BrahMani had said about him, Mathur shook his head in doubt. He was reluctant to accept him as an Incarnation of God, an Avatar comparable to Rama, Krishna, Buddha, and Chaitanya, though he admitted Sri Ramakrishna's extraordinary spirituality. Whereupon the BrahMani asked Mathur to arrange a conference of scholars who should discuss the matter with her. He agreed to the proposal and the meeting was arranged. It was to be held in the natMandir in front of the Kali temple.
   Two famous pundits of the time were invited: Vaishnavcharan, the leader of the Vaishnava society, and Gauri. The first to arrive was Vaishnavcharan, with a distinguished company of scholars and devotees. The BrahMani, like a proud mother, proclaimed her view before him and supported it with quotations from the scriptures. As the pundits discussed the deep theological question, Sri Ramakrishna, perfectly indifferent to everything happening around him, sat in their midst like a child, immersed in his own thoughts, sometimes smiling, sometimes chewing a pinch of spices from a pouch, or again saying to Vaishnavcharan with a nudge: "Look here. Sometimes I feel like this, too." Presently Vaishnavcharan arose to declare himself in total agreement with the view of the BrahMani. He declared that Sri Ramakrishna had undoubtedly experienced mahabhava and that this was the certain sign of the rare Manifestation of God in a Man. The people assembled
   there, especially the officers of the temple garden, were struck dumb. Sri Rama- krishna said to Mathur, like a boy: "Just fancy, he too says so! Well, I am glad to learn that after all it is not a disease."
   When, a few days later, Pundit Gauri arrived, another meeting was held, and he agreed with the view of the BrahMani and Vaishnavcharan. To Sri Ramakrishna's remark that Vaishnavcharan had declared him to be an Avatar, Gauri replied: "Is that all he has to say about you? Then he has said very little. I am fully convinced that you are that Mine of Spiritual Power, only a small fraction of which descends on earth, from time to time, in the form of an Incarnation."
   "Ah!" said Sri Ramakrishna with a smile, "you seem to have quite outbid Vaishnavcharan in this matter. What have you found in me that makes you entertain such an idea?"
  --
   Sri Ramakrishna was a learner all his life. He often used to quote a proverb to his disciples: "Friend, the more I live the more I learn." When the excitement created by the BrahMani's declaration was over, he set himself to the task of practising spiritual disciplines according to the traditional methods laid down in the Tantra and Vaishnava scriptures. Hitherto he had pursued his spiritual ideal according to the promptings of his own mind and heart. Now he accepted the BrahMani as his guru and set foot on the traditional highways.
   --- TANTRA
   According to the Tantra, the Ultimate Reality is Chit, or Consciousness, which is identical with Sat, or Being, and with Ananda, or Bliss. This Ultimate Reality, Satchidananda, Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute, is identical with the Reality preached in the Vedas. And Man is identical with this Reality; but under the influence of maya, or illusion, he has forgotten his true nature. He takes to be real a merely apparent world of subject and object, and this error is the cause of his bondage and suffering. The goal of spiritual discipline is the rediscovery of his true identity with the divine Reality.
   For the achievement of this goal the Vedanta prescribes an austere negative method of discrimination and renunciation, which can be followed by only a few individuals endowed with sharp intelligence and unshakable will-power. But Tantra takes into consideration the natural weakness of huMan beings, their lower appetites, and their love for the concrete. It combines philosophy with rituals, meditation with ceremonies, renunciation with enjoyment. The underlying purpose is gradually to train the aspirant to meditate on his identity with the Ultimate.
   The average Man wishes to enjoy the material objects of the world. Tantra bids him enjoy these, but at the same time discover in them the presence of God. Mystical rites are prescribed by which, slowly, the sense-objects become spiritualized and sense attraction is transformed into a love of God. So the very "bonds" of Man are turned into "releasers". The very poison that kills is transmuted into the elixir of life. Outward renunciation is not necessary. Thus the aim of Tantra is to sublimate bhoga, or enjoyment into yoga, or union with Consciousness. For, according to this philosophy, the world with all its Manifestations is nothing but the sport of Siva and Sakti, the Absolute and Its inscrutable Power.
   The disciplines of Tantra are graded to suit aspirants of all degrees. Exercises are prescribed for people with "animal", "heroic", and "divine" outlooks. Certain of the rites require the presence of members of the opposite sex. Here the aspirant learns to look on woMan as the embodiment of the Goddess Kali, the Mother of the Universe. The very basis of Tantra is the Motherhood of God and the glorification of woMan. Every part of a woMan's body is to be regarded as incarnate Divinity. But the rites are extremely dangerous. The help of a qualified guru is absolutely necessary. An unwary devotee may lose his foothold and fall into a pit of depravity.
   According to the Tantra, Sakti is the active creative force in the universe. Siva, the Absolute, is a more or less passive principle. Further, Sakti is as inseparable from Siva as fire's power to burn is from fire itself. Sakti, the Creative Power, contains in Its womb the universe, and therefore is the Divine Mother. All women are Her symbols. Kali is one of Her several forms. The meditation on Kali, the Creative Power, is the central discipline of the Tantra. While meditating, the aspirant at first regards himself as one with the Absolute and then thinks that out of that Impersonal Consciousness emerge two entities, namely, his own self and the living form of the Goddess. He then projects the Goddess into the tangible image before him and worships it as the Divine Mother.
   Sri Ramakrishna set himself to the task of practising the disciplines of Tantra; and at the bidding of the Divine Mother Herself he accepted the BrahMani as his guru. He performed profound and delicate ceremonies in the Panchavati and under the bel-tree at the northern extremity of the temple compound. He practised all the disciplines of the sixty-four principal Tantra books, and it took him never more than three days to achieve the result promised in any one of them. After the observance of a few preliminary rites, he would be overwhelmed with a strange divine fervour and would go into samadhi, where his mind would dwell in exaltation. Evil ceased to exist for him. The word "carnal" lost its meaning. The whole world and everything in it appeared as the lila, the sport, of Siva and Sakti. He beheld held everywhere Manifest the power and beauty of the Mother; the whole world, animate and inanimate, appeared to him as pervaded with Chit, Consciousness, and with Ananda, Bliss.
   He saw in a vision the Ultimate Cause of the universe as a huge luminous triangle giving birth every moment to an infinite number of worlds. He heard the Anahata Sabda, the great sound Om, of which the innumerable sounds of the universe are only so Many echoes. He acquired the eight supernatural powers of yoga, which make a Man almost omnipotent, and these he spurned as of no value whatsoever to the Spirit. He had a vision of the divine Maya, the inscrutable Power of God, by which the universe is created and sustained, and into which it is finally absorbed. In this vision he saw a woMan of exquisite beauty, about to become a mother, emerging from the Ganges and slowly approaching the Panchavati. Presently she gave birth to a child and began to nurse it tenderly. A moment later she assumed a terrible aspect, seized the child with her grim jaws, and crushed it. Swallowing it, she re-entered the waters of the Ganges.
   But the most remarkable experience during this period was the awakening of the Kundalini Sakti, the "Serpent Power". He actually saw the Power, at first lying asleep at the bottom of the spinal column, then waking up and ascending along the mystic Sushumna canal and through its six centres, or lotuses, to the Sahasrara, the thousand-petalled lotus in the top of the head. He further saw that as the Kundalini went upward the different lotuses bloomed. And this phenomenon was accompanied by visions and trances. Later on he described to his disciples and devotees the various movements of the Kundalini: the fishlike, birdlike, monkeylike, and so on. The awaken- ing of the Kundalini is the beginning of spiritual consciousness, and its union with Siva in the Sahasrara, ending in samadhi, is the consummation of the Tantrik disciplines.
   About this time it was revealed to him that in a short while Many devotees would seek his guidance.
   --- VAISHNAVA DISCIPLINES
   After completing the Tantrik sadhana Sri Ramakrishna followed the BrahMani in the disciplines of Vaishnavism. The Vaishnavas are worshippers of Vishnu, the "All-pervading", the Supreme God, who is also known as Hari and Narayana. Of Vishnu's various Incarnations the two with the largest number of followers are Rama and Krishna.
   Vaishnavism is exclusively a religion of bhakti. Bhakti is intense love of God, attachment to Him alone; it is of the nature of bliss and bestows upon the lover immortality and liberation. God, according to Vaishnavism, cannot be realized through logic or reason; and, without bhakti, all penances, austerities and rites are futile. Man cannot realize God by self-exertion alone. For the vision of God His grace is absolutely necessary, and this grace is felt by the pure of heart. The mind is to be purified through bhakti. The pure mind then remains for ever immersed in the ecstasy of God-vision. It is the cultivation of this divine love that is the chief concern of the Vaishnava religion.
   There are three kinds of formal devotion: tamasic, rajasic, and sattvic. If a person, while showing devotion, to God, is actuated by malevolence, arrogance, jealousy, or anger, then his devotion is tamasic, since it is influenced by tamas, the quality of inertia. If he worships God from a desire for fame or wealth, or from any other worldly ambition, then his devotion is rajasic, since it is influenced by rajas, the quality of activity. But if a person loves God without any thought of material gain, if he performs his duties to please God alone and maintains toward all created beings the attitude of friendship, then his devotion is called sattvic, since it is influenced by sattva, the quality of harmony. But the highest devotion transcends the three gunas, or qualities, being a spontaneous, uninterrupted inclination of the mind toward God, the Inner Soul of all beings; and it wells up in the heart of a true devotee as soon as he hears the name of God or mention of God's attributes. A devotee possessed of this love would not accept the happiness of heaven if it were offered him. His one desire is to love God under all conditions — in pleasure and pain, life and death, honour and dishonour, prosperity and adversity.
   There are two stages of bhakti. The first is known as vaidhi-bhakti, or love of God qualified by scriptural injunctions. For the devotees of this stage are prescribed regular and methodical worship, hymns, prayers, the repetition of God's name, and the chanting of His glories. This lower bhakti in course of time matures into para-bhakti, or supreme devotion, known also as prema, the most intense form of divine love. Divine love is an end in itself. It exists potentially in all huMan hearts, but in the case of bound creatures it is misdirected to earthly objects.
   To develop the devotee's love for God, Vaishnavism huManizes God. God is to be regarded as the devotee's Parent, Master, Friend, Child, Husband, or Sweetheart, each succeeding relationship representing an intensification of love. These bhavas, or attitudes toward God, are known as santa, dasya, sakhya, vatsalya, and madhur. The rishis of the Vedas, HanuMan, the cow-herd boys of Vrindavan, Rama's mother Kausalya, and Radhika, Krishna's sweetheart, exhibited, respectively, the most perfect examples of these forms. In the ascending scale the-glories of God are gradually forgotten and the devotee realizes more and more the intimacy of divine communion. Finally he regards himself as the mistress of his Beloved, and no artificial barrier remains to separate him from his Ideal. No social or moral obligation can bind to the earth his soaring spirit. He experiences perfect union with the Godhead. Unlike the Vedantist, who strives to transcend all varieties of the subject-object relationship, a devotee of the Vaishnava path wishes to retain both his own individuality and the personality of God. To him God is not an intangible Absolute, but the Purushottama, the Supreme Person.
   While practising the discipline of the madhur bhava, the male devotee often regards himself as a woMan, in order to develop the most intense form of love for Sri Krishna, the only purusha, or Man, in the universe. This assumption of the attitude of the opposite sex has a deep psychological significance. It is a matter of common experience that an idea may be cultivated to such an intense degree that every idea alien to it is driven from the mind. This peculiarity of the mind may be utilized for the subjugation of the lower desires and the development of the spiritual nature. Now, the idea which is the basis of all desires and passions in a Man is the conviction of his indissoluble association with a male body. If he can inoculate himself thoroughly with the idea that he is a woMan, he can get rid of the desires peculiar to his male body. Again, the idea that he is a woMan may in turn be made to give way to another higher idea, namely, that he is neither Man nor woMan, but the Impersonal Spirit. The Impersonal Spirit alone can enjoy real communion with the Impersonal God. Hence the highest est realization of the Vaishnava draws close to the transcendental experience of the Vedantist.
   A beautiful expression of the Vaishnava worship of God through love is to be found in the Vrindavan episode of the Bhagavata. The gopis, or milk-maids, of Vrindavan regarded the six-year-old Krishna as their Beloved. They sought no personal gain or happiness from this love. They surrendered to Krishna their bodies, minds, and souls. Of all the gopis, Radhika, or Radha, because of her intense love for Him, was the closest to Krishna. She Manifested mahabhava and was united with her Beloved. This union represents, through sensuous language, a supersensuous experience.
   Sri Chaitanya, also known as Gauranga, Gora, or Nimai, born in Bengal in 1485 and regarded as an Incarnation of God, is a great prophet of the Vaishnava religion. Chaitanya declared the chanting of God's name to be the most efficacious spiritual discipline for the Kaliyuga.
   Sri Ramakrishna, as the monkey HanuMan, had already worshipped God as his Master. Through his devotion to Kali he had worshipped God as his Mother. He was now to take up the other relationships prescribed by the Vaishnava scriptures.
   --- RAMLALA
  --
   One day Jatadhari requested Sri Ramakrishna to keep the image and bade him adieu with tearful eyes. He declared that Ramlala had fulfilled his innermost prayer and that he now had no more need of formal worship. A few days later Sri Ramakrishna was blessed through Ramlala with a vision of Ramachandra, whereby he realized that the Rama of the Ramayana, the son of Dasaratha, pervades the whole universe as Spirit and Consciousness; that He is its Creator, Sustainer, and Destroyer; that, in still another aspect, He is the transcendental BrahMan, without form, attribute, or name.
   While worshipping Ramlala as the Divine Child, Sri Ramakrishna's heart became filled with motherly tenderness, and he began to regard himself as a woMan. His speech and gestures changed. He began to move freely with the ladies of Mathur's family, who now looked upon him as one of their own sex. During this time he worshipped the Divine Mother as Her companion or handmaid.
   --- IN COMMUNION WITH THE DIVINE BELOVED
   Sri Ramakrishna now devoted himself to scaling the most inaccessible and dizzy heights of dualistic worship, namely, the complete union with Sri Krishna as the Beloved of the heart. He regarded himself as one of the gopis of Vrindavan, mad with longing for her divine Sweetheart. At his request Mathur provided him with woMan's dress and jewelry. In this love-pursuit, food and drink were forgotten. Day and night he wept bitterly. The yearning turned into a mad frenzy; for the divine Krishna began to play with him the old tricks He had played with the gopis. He would tease and taunt, now and then revealing Himself, but always keeping at a distance. Sri Ramakrishna's anguish brought on a return of the old physical symptoms: the burning sensation, an oozing of blood through the pores, a loosening of the joints, and the stopping of physiological functions.
   The Vaishnava scriptures advise one to propitiate Radha and obtain her grace in order to realize Sri Krishna. So the tortured devotee now turned his prayer to her. Within a short time he enjoyed her blessed vision. He saw and felt the figure of Radha disappearing into his own body.
  --
   Now one with Radha, he Manifested the great ecstatic love, the mahabhava, which had found in her its fullest expression. Later Sri Ramakrishna said: "The Manifestation in the same individual of the nineteen different kinds of emotion for God is called, in the books on bhakti, mahabhava. An ordinary Man takes a whole lifetime to express even a single one of these. But in this body [meaning himself] there has been a complete Manifestation of all nineteen."
   The love of Radha is the precursor of the resplendent vision of Sri Krishna, and Sri Ramakrishna soon experienced that vision. The enchanting ing form of Krishna appeared to him and merged in his person. He became Krishna; he totally forgot his own individuality and the world; he saw Krishna in himself and in the universe. Thus he attained to the fulfilment of the worship of the Personal God. He drank from the fountain of Immortal Bliss. The agony of his heart vanished forever. He realized Amrita, Immortality, beyond the shadow of death.
  --
   The BrahMani was the enthusiastic teacher and astonished beholder of Sri Ramakrishna in his spiritual progress. She became proud of the achievements of her unique pupil. But the pupil himself was not permitted to rest; his destiny beckoned him forward. His Divine Mother would allow him no respite till he had left behind the entire realm of duality with its visions, experiences, and ecstatic dreams. But for the new ascent the old tender guides would not suffice. The BrahMani, on whom he had depended for, three years, saw her son escape from her to follow the comMand of a teacher with masculine strength, a sterner mien, a gnarled physique, and a virile voice. The new guru was a wandering monk, the sturdy Totapuri, whom Sri Ramakrishna learnt to address affectionately as Nangta, the "Naked One", because of his total renunciation of all earthly objects and attachments, including even a piece of wearing cloth.
   Totapuri was the bearer of a philosophy new to Sri Ramakrishna, the non-dualistic Vedanta philosophy, whose conclusions Totapuri had experienced in his own life. This ancient Hindu system designates the Ultimate Reality as BrahMan, also described as Satchidananda, Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute. BrahMan is the only Real Existence. In It there is no time, no space, no causality, no multiplicity. But through maya, Its inscrutable Power, time, space, and causality are created and the One appears to break into the Many. The eternal Spirit appears as a Manifold of individuals endowed with form and subject to the conditions of time. The Immortal becomes a victim of birth and death. The Changeless undergoes change. The sinless Pure Soul, hypnotized by Its own maya, experiences the joys of heaven and the pains of hell. But these experiences based on the duality of the subject-object relationship are unreal. Even the vision of a Personal God
   is, ultimately speaking, as illusory as the experience of any other object. Man attains his liberation, therefore, by piercing the veil of maya and rediscovering his total identity with BrahMan. Knowing himself to be one with the Universal Spirit, he realizes ineffable Peace. Only then does he go beyond the fiction of birth and death; only then does he become immortal. 'And this is the ultimate goal of all religions — to dehypnotize the soul now hypnotized by its own ignorance.
   The path of the Vedantic discipline is the path of negation, "neti", in which, by stern determination, all that is unreal is both negated and renounced. It is the path of jnana, knowledge, the direct method of realizing the Absolute. After the negation of everything relative, including the discriminating ego itself, the aspirant merges in the One without a Second, in the bliss of nirvikalpa samadhi, where subject and object are alike dissolved. The soul goes beyond the realm of thought. The domain of duality is transcended. Maya is left behind with all its changes and modifications. The Real Man towers above the delusions of creation, preservation, and destruction. An avalanche of indescribable Bliss sweeps away all relative ideas of pain and pleasure, good and evil. There shines in the heart the glory of the Eternal BrahMan, Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute. Knower, knowledge, and known are dissolved in the Ocean of one eternal Consciousness; love, lover, and beloved merge in the unbounded Sea of supreme Felicity; birth, growth, and death vanish in infinite Existence. All doubts and misgivings are quelled for ever; the oscillations of the mind are stopped; the momentum of past actions is exhausted. Breaking down the ridge-pole of the tabernacle in which the soul has made its abode for untold ages, stilling the body, calming the mind, drowning the ego, the sweet joy of BrahMan wells up in that superconscious state. Space disappears into nothingness, time is swallowed in eternity, and causation becomes a dream of the past. Only Existence is. Ah! Who can describe what the soul then feels in its communion with the Self?
   Even when Man descends from this dizzy height, he is devoid of ideas of "I" and "mine"; he looks on the body as a mere shadow, an outer sheath encasing the soul. He does not dwell on the past, takes no thought for the future, and looks with indifference on the present. He surveys everything in the world with an eye of equality; he is no longer touched by the infinite variety of phenomena; he no longer reacts to pleasure and pain. He remains unmoved whether he — that is to say, his body — is worshipped by the good or tormented by the wicked; for he realizes that it is the one BrahMan that Manifests Itself through everything. The impact of such an experience devastates the body and mind. Consciousness becomes blasted, as it were, with an excess of Light. In the Vedanta books it is said that after the experience of nirvikalpa samadhi the body drops off like a dry leaf. Only those who are born with a special mission for the world can return
   from this height to the valleys of normal life. They live and move in the world for the welfare of Mankind. They are invested with a supreme spiritual power. A divine glory shines through them.
   --- TOTAPURI
  --
   On the appointed day, in the small hours of the morning, a fire was lighted in the Panchavati. Totapuri and Sri Ramakrishna sat before it. The flame played on their faces. "Ramakrishna was a small brown Man with a short beard and beautiful eyes, long dark eyes, full of light, obliquely set and slightly veiled, never very wide open, but seeing half-closed a great distance both outwardly and inwardly. His mouth was open over his white teeth in a bewitching smile, at once affectionate and mischievous. Of medium height, he was thin to emaciation and extremely delicate. His temperament was high-strung, for he was supersensitive to all the winds of joy and sorrow, both moral and physical. He was indeed a living reflection of all that happened before the mirror of his eyes, a two-sided mirror, turned both out and in." (Romain Rolland, Prophets of the New India, pp. 38-9.) Facing him, the other rose like a rock. He was very tall and robust, a sturdy and tough oak. His constitution and mind were of iron. He was the strong leader of men.
   In the burning flame before him Sri Ramakrishna performed the rituals of destroying his attachment to relatives, friends, body, mind, sense-organs, ego, and the world. The leaping flame swallowed it all, making the initiate free and pure. The sacred thread and the tuft of hair were consigned to the fire, completing his severance from caste, sex, and society. Last of all he burnt in that fire, with all that is holy as his witness, his desire for enjoyment here and hereafter. He uttered the sacred Mantras giving assurance of safety and fearlessness to all beings, who were only Manifestations of his own Self. The rites completed, the disciple received from the guru the loin-cloth and ochre robe, the emblems of his new life.
   The teacher and the disciple repaired to the meditation room near by. Totapuri began to impart to Sri Ramakrishna the great truths of Vedanta.
   "BrahMan", he said, "is the only Reality, ever pure, ever illumined, ever free, beyond the limits of time, space, and causation. Though apparently divided by names and forms through the inscrutable power of maya, that enchantress who makes the impossible possible, BrahMan is really One and undivided. When a seeker merges in the beatitude of samadhi, he does not perceive time and space or name and form, the offspring of maya. Whatever is within the domain of maya is unreal. Give it up. Destroy the prison-house of name and form and rush out of it with the strength of a lion. Dive deep in search of the Self and realize It through samadhi. You will find the world of name and form vanishing into void, and the puny ego dissolving in BrahMan-Consciousness. You will realize your identity with BrahMan, Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute." Quoting the Upanishad, Totapuri said: "That knowledge is shallow by which one sees or hears or knows another
  . What is shallow is worthless and can never give real felicity. But the Knowledge by which one does not see another or hear another or know another, which is beyond duality, is great, and through such Knowledge one attains the Infinite Bliss. How can the mind and senses grasp That which shines in the heart of all as the Eternal Subject?"
   Totapuri asked the disciple to withdraw his mind from all objects of the relative world, including the gods and goddesses, and to concentrate on the Absolute. But the task was not easy even for Sri Ramakrishna. He found it impossible to take his mind beyond Kali, the Divine Mother of the Universe. "After the initiation", Sri Ramakrishna once said, describing the event, "Nangta began to teach me the various conclusions of the Advaita Vedanta and asked me to withdraw the mind completely from all objects and dive deep into the AtMan. But in spite of all my attempts I could not altogether cross the realm of name and form and bring my mind to the unconditioned state. I had no difficulty in taking the mind from all the objects of the world. But the radiant and too familiar figure of the Blissful Mother, the Embodiment of the essence of Pure Consciousness, appeared before me as a living reality. Her bewitching smile prevented me from passing into the Great Beyond. Again and again I tried, but She stood in my way every time. In despair I said to Nangta: 'It is hopeless. I cannot raise my mind to the unconditioned state and come face to face with AtMan.' He grew excited and sharply said: 'What? You can't do it? But you have to.' He cast his eyes around. Finding a piece of glass he took it up and stuck it between my eyebrows. 'Concentrate the mind on this point!' he thundered. Then with stern determination I again sat to meditate. As soon as the gracious form of the Divine Mother appeared before me, I used my discrimination as a sword and with it clove Her in two. The last barrier fell. My spirit at once soared beyond the relative plane and I lost myself in samadhi."
   Sri Ramakrishna remained completely absorbed in samadhi for three days. "Is it really true?" Totapuri cried out in astonishment. "Is it possible that he has attained in a single day what it took me forty years of strenuous practice to achieve? Great God! It is nothing short of a miracle!" With the help of Totapuri, Sri Ramakrishna's mind finally came down to the relative plane.
  --
   Totapuri had no idea of the struggles of ordinary men in the toils of passion and desire. Having maintained all through life the guilelessness of a child, he laughed at the idea of a Man's being led astray by the senses. He was convinced that the world was maya and had only to be denounced to vanish for ever. A born non-dualist, he had no faith in a Personal God. He did not believe in the terrible aspect of Kali, much less in Her benign aspect. Music and the chanting of God's holy name were to him only so much nonsense. He ridiculed the spending of emotion on the worship of a Personal God.
   --- KALI AND MAYA
   Sri Ramakrishna, on the other hand, though fully aware, like his guru, that the world is an illusory appearance, instead of slighting maya, like an orthodox monist, acknowledged its power in the relative life. He was all love and reverence for maya, perceiving in it a mysterious and majestic expression of Divinity. To him maya itself was God, for everything was God. It was one of the faces of BrahMan. What he had realized on the heights of the transcendental plane, he also found here below, everywhere about him, under the mysterious garb of names and forms. And this garb was a perfectly transparent sheath, through which he recognized the glory of the Divine ImManence. Maya, the mighty weaver of the garb, is none other than Kali, the Divine Mother. She is the primordial Divine Energy, Sakti, and She can no more be distinguished from the Supreme BrahMan than can the power of burning be distinguished from fire. She projects the world and again withdraws it. She spins it as the spider spins its web. She is the Mother of the Universe, identical with the BrahMan of Vedanta, and with the AtMan of Yoga. As eternal Lawgiver, She makes and unmakes laws; it is by Her imperious will that karma yields its fruit. She ensnares men with illusion and again releases them from bondage with a look of Her benign eyes. She is the supreme Mistress of the cosmic play, and all objects, animate and inanimate, dance by Her will. Even those who realize the Absolute in nirvikalpa samadhi are under Her jurisdiction as long as they still live on the relative plane.
   Thus, after nirvikalpa samadhi, Sri Ramakrishna realized maya in an altogether new role. The binding aspect of Kali vanished from before his vision. She no longer obscured his understanding. The world became the glorious Manifestation of the Divine Mother. Maya became BrahMan. The Transcendental Itself broke through the ImManent. Sri Ramakrishna discovered that maya operates in the relative world in two ways, and he termed these "avidyamaya" and "vidyamaya". Avidyamaya represents the dark forces of creation: sensuous desires, evil passions, greed, lust, cruelty, and so on. It sustains the world system on the lower planes. It is responsible for the round of Man's birth and death. It must be fought and vanquished. But vidyamaya is the higher force of creation: the spiritual virtues, the enlightening qualities, kindness, purity, love, devotion. Vidyamaya elevates Man to the higher planes of consciousness. With the help of vidyamaya the devotee rids himself of avidyamaya; he then becomes mayatita, free of maya. The two aspects of maya are the two forces of creation, the two powers of Kali; and She stands beyond them both. She is like the effulgent sun, bringing into existence and shining through and standing behind the clouds of different colours and shapes, conjuring up wonderful forms in the blue autumn heaven.
   The Divine Mother asked Sri Ramakrishna not to be lost in the featureless Absolute but to remain, in bhavamukha, on the threshold of relative consciousness, the border line between the Absolute and the Relative. He was to keep himself at the "sixth centre" of Tantra, from which he could see not only the glory of the seventh, but also the divine Manifestations of the Kundalini in the lower centres. He gently oscillated back and forth across the dividing line. Ecstatic devotion to the Divine Mother alternated with serene absorption in the Ocean of Absolute Unity. He thus bridged the gulf between the Personal and the Impersonal, the imManent and the transcendent aspects of Reality. This is a unique experience in the recorded spiritual history of the world.
   --- TOTAPURI'S LESSON
  --
   One day, when guru and disciple were engaged in an animated discussion about Vedanta, a servant of the temple garden came there and took a coal from the sacred fire that had been lighted by the great ascetic. He wanted it to light his tobacco. Totapuri flew into a rage and was about to beat the Man. Sri Ramakrishna rocked with laughter. "What a shame!" he cried. "You are explaining to me the reality of BrahMan and the illusoriness of the world; yet now you have so far forgotten yourself as to be about to beat a Man in a fit of passion. The power of maya is indeed inscrutable!" Totapuri was embarrassed.
   About this time Totapuri was suddenly laid up with a severe attack of dysentery. On account of this miserable illness he found it impossible to meditate. One night the pain became excruciating. He could no longer concentrate on BrahMan. The body stood in the way. He became incensed with its deMands. A free soul, he did not at all care for the body. So he determined to drown it in the Ganges. Thereupon he walked into the river. But, lo! He walks to the other bank." (This version of the incident is taken from the biography of Sri Ramakrishna by Swami Saradananda, one of the Master's direct disciples.) Is there not enough water in the Ganges? Standing dumbfounded on the other bank he looks back across the water. The trees, the temples, the houses, are silhouetted against the sky. Suddenly, in one dazzling moment, he sees on all sides the presence of the Divine Mother. She is in everything; She is everything. She is in the water; She is on land. She is the body; She is the mind. She is pain; She is comfort. She is knowledge; She is ignorance. She is life; She is death. She is everything that one sees, hears, or imagines. She turns "yea" into "nay", and "nay" into "yea". Without Her grace no embodied being can go beyond Her realm. Man has no free will. He is not even free to die. Yet, again, beyond the body and mind She resides in Her Transcendental, Absolute aspect. She is the BrahMan that Totapuri had been worshipping all his life.
   Totapuri returned to Dakshineswar and spent the remaining hours of the night meditating on the Divine Mother. In the morning he went to the Kali temple with Sri Ramakrishna and prostrated himself before the image of the Mother. He now realized why he had spent eleven months at Dakshineswar. Bidding farewell to the disciple, he continued on his way, enlightened.
  --
   "When I think of the Supreme Being as inactive — neither creating nor preserving nor destroying —, I call Him BrahMan or Purusha, the Impersonal God. When I think of Him as active — creating, preserving, and destroying —, I call Him Sakti or Maya or Prakriti, the Personal God. But the distinction between them does not mean a difference. The Personal and the Impersonal are the same thing, like milk and its whiteness, the diamond and its lustre, the snake and its wriggling motion. It is impossible to conceive of the one without the other. The Divine Mother and BrahMan are one."
   After the departure of Totapuri, Sri Ramakrishna remained for six months in a state of absolute identity with BrahMan. "For six months at a stretch", he said, "I remained in that state from which ordinary men can never return; generally the body falls off, after three weeks, like a sere leaf. I was not conscious of day and night. Flies would enter my mouth and nostrils just as they do a dead body's, but I did not feel them. My hair became matted with dust."
   His body would not have survived but for the kindly attention of a monk who happened to be at Dakshineswar at that time and who somehow realized that for the good of huManity Sri Ramakrishna's body must be preserved. He tried various means, even physical violence, to recall the fleeing soul to the prison-house of the body, and during the resultant fleeting moments of consciousness he would push a few morsels of food down Sri Ramakrishna's throat. Presently Sri Ramakrishna received the comMand of the Divine Mother to remain on the threshold of relative consciousness. Soon there-after after he was afflicted with a serious attack of dysentery. Day and night the pain tortured him, and his mind gradually came down to the physical plane.
   --- COMPANY OF HOLY MEN AND DEVOTEES
   From now on Sri Ramakrishna began to seek the company of devotees and holy men. He had gone through the storm and stress of spiritual disciplines and visions. Now he realized an inner calmness and appeared to others as a normal person. But he could not bear the company of worldly people or listen to their talk. Fortunately the holy atmosphere of Dakshineswar and the liberality of Mathur attracted monks and holy men from all parts of the country. Sadhus of all denominations — monists and dualists, Vaishnavas and Vedantists, Saktas and worshippers of Rama — flocked there in ever increasing numbers. Ascetics and visionaries came to seek Sri Ramakrishna's advice. Vaishnavas had come during the period of his Vaishnava sadhana, and Tantriks when he practised the disciplines of Tantra. Vedantists began to arrive after the departure of Totapuri. In the room of Sri Ramakrishna, who was then in bed with dysentery, the Vedantists engaged in scriptural discussions, and, forgetting his own physical suffering, he solved their doubts by referring directly to his own experiences. Many of the visitors were genuine spiritual souls, the unseen pillars of Hinduism, and their spiritual lives were quickened in no small measure by the sage of Dakshineswar. Sri Ramakrishna in turn learnt from them anecdotes concerning the ways and the conduct of holy men, which he subsequently narrated to his devotees and disciples. At his request Mathur provided him with large stores of food-stuffs, clothes, and so forth, for distribution among the wandering monks.
   "Sri Ramakrishna had not read books, yet he possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of religions and religious philosophies. This he acquired from his contacts with innumerable holy men and scholars. He had a unique power of assimilation; through meditation he made this knowledge a part of his being. Once, when he was asked by a disciple about the source of his seemingly inexhaustible knowledge, he replied; "I have not read; but I have heard the learned. I have made a garland of their knowledge, wearing it round my neck, and I have given it as an offering at the feet of the Mother."
   Sri Ramakrishna used to say that when the flower blooms the bees come to it for honey of their own accord. Now Many souls began to visit Dakshineswar to satisfy their spiritual hunger. He, the devotee and aspirant, became the Master. Gauri, the great scholar who had been one of the first to proclaim Sri Ramakrishna an Incarnation of God, paid the Master a visit in 1870 and with the Master's blessings renounced the world. Narayan Shastri, another great pundit, who had mastered the six systems of Hindu philosophy and had been offered a lucrative post by the Maharaja of Jaipur, met the Master and recognized in him one who had realized in life those ideals which he himself had encountered merely in books. Sri Ramakrishna initiated Narayan Shastri, at his earnest request, into the life of sannyas. Pundit Padmalochan, the court pundit of the Maharaja of Burdwan, well known for his scholarship in both the Vedanta and the Nyaya systems of philosophy, accepted the Master as an Incarnation of God. Krishnakishore, a Vedantist scholar, became devoted to the Master. And there arrived Viswanath Upadhyaya, who was to become a favourite devotee; Sri Ramakrishna always addressed him as "Captain". He was a high officer of the King of Nepal and had received the title of Colonel in recognition of his merit. A scholar of the Gita, the Bhagavata, and the Vedanta philosophy, he daily performed the worship of his Chosen Deity with great devotion. "I have read the Vedas and the other scriptures", he said. "I have also met a good Many monks and devotees in different places. But it is in Sri Ramakrishna's presence that my spiritual yearnings have been fulfilled. To me he seems to be the embodiment of the truths of the scriptures."
   The Knowledge of BrahMan in nirvikalpa samadhi had convinced Sri Ramakrishna that the gods of the different religions are but so Many readings of the Absolute, and that the Ultimate Reality could never be expressed by huMan tongue. He understood that all religions lead their devotees by differing paths to one and the same goal. Now he became eager to explore some of the alien religions; for with him understanding meant actual experience.
   --- ISLAM
   Toward the end of 1866 he began to practise the disciplines of Islam. Under the direction of his MussalMan guru he abandoned himself to his new sadhana. He dressed as a MussalMan and repeated the name of Allah. His prayers took the form of the Islamic devotions. He forgot the Hindu gods and goddesses — even Kali — and gave up visiting the temples. He took up his residence outside the temple precincts. After three days he saw the vision of a radiant figure, perhaps Mohammed. This figure gently approached him and finally lost himself in Sri Ramakrishna. Thus he realized the MussalMan God. Thence he passed into communion with BrahMan. The mighty river of Islam also led him back to the Ocean of the Absolute.
   --- CHRISTIANITY
   Eight years later, some time in November 1874, Sri Ramakrishna was seized with an irresistible desire to learn the truth of the Christian religion. He began to listen to readings from the Bible, by Sambhu Charan Mallick, a gentleMan of Calcutta and a devotee of the Master. Sri Ramakrishna became fascinated by the life and teachings of Jesus. One day he was seated in the parlour of Jadu Mallick's garden house (This expression is used throughout to translate the Bengali word denoting a rich Man's country house set in a garden.) at Dakshineswar, when his eyes became fixed on a painting of the Madonna and Child. Intently watching it, he became gradually overwhelmed with divine emotion. The figures in the picture took on life, and the rays of light eManating from them entered his soul. The effect of this experience was stronger than that of the vision of Mohammed. In dismay he cried out, "O Mother! What are You doing to me?" And, breaking through the barriers of creed and religion, he entered a new realm of ecstasy. Christ possessed his soul. For three days he did not set foot in the Kali temple. On the fourth day, in the afternoon, as he was walking in the Panchavati, he saw coming toward him a person with beautiful large eyes, serene countenance, and fair skin. As the two faced each other, a voice rang out in the depths of Sri Ramakrishna's soul: "Behold the Christ, who shed His heart's blood for the redemption of the world, who suffered a sea of anguish for love of men. It is He, the Master Yogi, who is in eternal union with God. It is Jesus, Love Incarnate." The Son of Man embraced the Son of the Divine Mother and merged in him. Sri Ramakrishna krishna realized his identity with Christ, as he had already realized his identity with Kali, Rama, HanuMan, Radha, Krishna, BrahMan, and Mohammed. The Master went into samadhi and communed with the BrahMan with attributes. Thus he experienced the truth that Christianity, too, was a path leading to God-Consciousness. Till the last moment of his life he believed that Christ was an Incarnation of God. But Christ, for him, was not the only Incarnation; there were others — Buddha, for instance, and Krishna.
   --- ATTITUDE TOWARD DIFFERENT RELIGIONS
  --
   Without being formally initiated into their doctrines, Sri Ramakrishna thus realized the ideals of religions other than Hinduism. He did not need to follow any doctrine. All barriers were removed by his overwhelming love of God. So he became a Master who could speak with authority regarding the ideas and ideals of the various religions of the world. "I have practised", said he, "all religions — Hinduism, Islam, Christianity — and I have also followed the paths of the different Hindu sects. I have found that it is the same God toward whom all are directing their steps, though along different paths. You must try all beliefs and traverse all the different ways once. Wherever I look, I see men quarrelling in the name of religion — Hindus, Mohammedans, Brahmos, Vaishnavas, and the rest. But they never reflect that He who is called Krishna is also called Siva, and bears the name of the Primal Energy, Jesus, and Allah as well — the same Rama with a thousand names. A lake has several ghats. At one the Hindus take water in pitchers and call it 'jal'; at another the MussalMans take water in leather bags and call it pani'. At a third the Christians call it 'water'. Can we imagine that it is not 'jal', but only 'pani' or 'water'? How ridiculous! The substance is One under different names, and everyone is seeking the same substance; only climate, temperament, and name create differences. Let each Man follow his own path. If he sincerely and ardently wishes to know God, peace be unto him! He will surely realize Him."
   In 1867 Sri Ramakrishna returned to Kamarpukur to recuperate from the effect of his austerities. The peaceful countryside, the simple and artless companions of his boyhood, and the pure air did him much good. The villagers were happy to get back their playful, frank, witty, kind-hearted, and truthful Gadadhar, though they did not fail to notice the great change that had come over him during his years in Calcutta. His wife, Sarada Devi, now fourteen years old, soon arrived at Kamarpukur. Her spiritual development was much beyond her age and she was able to understand immediately her husband's state of mind. She became eager to learn from him about God and to live with him as his attendant. The Master accepted her cheerfully both as his disciple and as his spiritual companion. Referring to the experiences of these few days, she once said: "I used to feel always as if a pitcher full of bliss were placed in my heart. The joy was indescribable."
  --
   On January 27, 1868, Mathur Babu with a party of some one hundred and twenty-five persons set out on a pilgrimage to the sacred places of northern India. At Vaidyanath in Behar, when the Master saw the inhabitants of a village reduced by poverty and starvation to mere skeletons, he requested his rich patron to feed the people and give each a piece of cloth. Mathur demurred at the added expense. The Master declared bitterly that he would not go on to Benares, but would live with the poor and share their miseries. He actually left Mathur and sat down with the villagers. Whereupon Mathur had to yield. On another occasion, two years later, Sri Ramakrishna showed a similar sentiment for the poor and needy. He accompanied Mathur on a tour to one of the latter's estates at the time of the collection of rents. For two years the harvests had failed and the tenants were in a state of extreme poverty. The Master asked Mathur to remit their rents, distribute help to them, and in addition give the hungry people a sumptuous feast. When Mathur grumbled, the Master said: "You are only the steward of the Divine Mother. They are the Mother's tenants. You must spend the Mother's money. When they are suffering, how can you refuse to help them? You must help them." Again Mathur had to give in. Sri Ramakrishna's sympathy for the poor sprang from his perception of God in all created beings. His sentiment was not that of the huManist or philanthropist. To him the service of Man was the same as the worship of God.
   The party entered holy Benares by boat along the Ganges. When Sri Ramakrishna's eyes fell on this city of Siva, where had accumulated for ages the devotion and piety of countless worshippers, he saw it to be made of gold, as the scriptures declare. He was visibly moved. During his stay in the city he treated every particle of its earth with utmost respect. At the Manikarnika Ghat, the great cremation ground of the city, he actually saw Siva, with ash-covered body and tawny matted hair, serenely approaching each funeral pyre and breathing into the ears of the corpses the Mantra of liberation; and then the Divine Mother removing from the dead their bonds. Thus he realized the significance of the scriptural statement that anyone dying in Benares attains salvation through the grace of Siva. He paid a visit to Trailanga Swami, the celebrated monk, whom he later declared to be a real paramahamsa, a veritable image of Siva.
   Sri Ramakrishna visited Allahabad, at the confluence of the Ganges and the Jamuna, and then proceeded to Vrindavan and Mathura, hallowed by the legends, songs, and dramas about Krishna and the gopis. Here he had numerous visions and his heart overflowed with divine emotion. He wept and said: "O Krishna! Everything here is as it was in the olden days. You alone are absent." He visited the great woMan saint, Gangamayi, regarded by Vaishnava devotees as the reincarnation of an intimate attendant of Radha. She was sixty years old and had frequent trances. She spoke of Sri Ramakrishna as an incarnation of Radha. With great difficulty he was persuaded to leave her.
   On the return journey Mathur wanted to visit Gaya, but Sri Ramakrishna declined to go. He recalled his father's vision at Gaya before his own birth and felt that in the temple of Vishnu he would become perManently absorbed in God. Mathur, honouring the Master's wish, returned with his party to Calcutta.
   From Vrindavan the Master had brought a handful of dust. Part of this he scattered in the Panchavati; the rest he buried in the little hut where he had practised meditation. "Now this place", he said, "is as sacred as Vrindavan."
  --
   In 1872 Sarada Devi paid her first visit to her husband at Dakshineswar. Four years earlier she had seen him at Kamarpukur and had tasted the bliss of his divine company. Since then she had become even more gentle, tender, introspective, serious, and unselfish. She had heard Many rumours about her husband's insanity. People had shown her pity in her misfortune. The more she thought, the more she felt that her duty was to be with him, giving him, in whatever measure she could, a wife's devoted service. She was now eighteen years old. Accompanied by her father, she arrived at Dakshineswar, having come on foot the distance of eighty miles. She had had an attack of fever on the way. When she arrived at the temple garden the Master said sorrowfully: "Ah! You have come too late. My Mathur is no longer here to look after you." Mathur had passed away the previous year.
   The Master took up the duty of instructing his young wife, and this included everything from housekeeping to the Knowledge of BrahMan. He taught her how to trim a lamp, how to behave toward people according to their differing temperaments, and how to conduct herself before visitors. He instructed her in the mysteries of spiritual life — prayer, meditation, japa, deep contemplation, and samadhi. The first lesson that Sarada Devi received was: "God is everybody's Beloved, just as the moon is dear to every child. Everyone has the same right to pray to Him. Out of His grace He reveals Himself to all who call upon Him. You too will see Him if you but pray to Him."
   Totapuri, coming to know of the Master's marriage, had once remarked: "What does it matter? He alone is firmly established in the Knowledge of BrahMan who can adhere to his spirit of discrimination and renunciation even while living with his wife. He alone has attained the supreme illumination who can look on Man and woMan alike as BrahMan. A Man with the idea of sex may be a good aspirant, but he is still far from the goal." Sri Ramakrishna and his wife lived together at Dakshineswar, but their minds always soared above the worldly plane. A few months after Sarada Devi's arrival Sri Ramakrishna arranged, on an auspicious day, a special worship of Kali, the Divine Mother. Instead of an image of the Deity, he placed on the seat the living image, Sarada Devi herself. The worshipper and the worshipped went into deep samadhi and in the transcendental plane their souls were united. After several hours Sri Ramakrishna came down again to the relative plane, sang a hymn to the Great Goddess, and surrendered, at the feet of the living image, himself, his rosary, and the fruit of his life-long sadhana. This is known in Tantra as the Shorasi Puja, the "Adoration of WoMan". Sri Ramakrishna realized the significance of the great statement of the Upanishad: "O Lord, Thou art the woMan. Thou art the Man; Thou art the boy. Thou art the girl; Thou art the old, tottering on their crutches. Thou pervadest the universe in its multiple forms."
   By his marriage Sri Ramakrishna admitted the great value of marriage in Man's spiritual evolution, and by adhering to his monastic vows he demonstrated the imperative necessity of self-control, purity, and continence, in the realization of God. By this unique spiritual relationship with his wife he proved that husband and wife can live together as spiritual companions. Thus his life is a synthesis of the ways of life of the householder and the monk.
   --- THE "EGO" OF THE MASTER
   In the nirvikalpa samadhi Sri Ramakrishna had realized that BrahMan alone is real and the world illusory. By keeping his mind six months on the plane of the non-dual BrahMan, he had attained to the state of the vijnani, the knower of Truth in a special and very rich sense, who sees BrahMan not only in himself and in the transcendental Absolute, but in everything of the world. In this state of vijnana, sometimes, bereft of body-consciousness, he would regard himself as one with BrahMan; sometimes, conscious of the dual world, he would regard himself as God's devotee, servant, or child. In order to enable the Master to work for the welfare of huManity, the Divine Mother had kept in him a trace of ego, which he described — according to his mood — as the "ego of Knowledge", the "ego of Devotion", the "ego of a child", or the "ego of a servant". In any case this ego of the Master, consumed by the fire of the Knowledge of BrahMan, was an appearance only, like a burnt string. He often referred to this ego as the "ripe ego" in contrast with the ego of the bound soul, which he described as the "unripe" or "green" ego. The ego of the bound soul identifies itself with the body, relatives, possessions, and the world; but the "ripe ego", illumined by Divine Knowledge, knows the body, relatives, possessions, and the world to be unreal and establishes a relationship of love with God alone. Through this "ripe ego" Sri Ramakrishna dealt with the world and his wife. One day, while stroking his feet, Sarada Devi asked the Master, "What do you think of me?" Quick came the answer: "The Mother who is worshipped in the temple is the mother who has given birth to my body and is now living in the nahabat, and it is She again who is stroking my feet at this moment. Indeed, I always look on you as the personification of the Blissful Mother Kali."
   Sarada Devi, in the company of her husband, had rare spiritual experiences. She said: "I have no words to describe my wonderful exaltation of spirit as I watched him in his different moods. Under the influence of divine emotion he would sometimes talk on abstruse subjects, sometimes laugh, sometimes weep, and sometimes become perfectly motionless in samadhi. This would continue throughout the night. There was such an extraordinary divine presence in him that now and then I would shake with fear and wonder how the night would pass. Months went by in this way. Then one day he discovered that I had to keep awake the whole night lest, during my sleep, he should go into samadhi — for it might happen at any moment —, and so he asked me to sleep in the nahabat."
  --
   First, he was an Incarnation of God, a specially commissioned person, whose spiritual experiences were for the benefit of huManity. Whereas it takes an ordinary Man a whole life's struggle to realize one or two phases of God, he had in a few years realized God in all His phases.
   Second, he knew that he had always been a free soul, that the various disciplines through which he had passed were really not necessary for his own liberation but were solely for the benefit of others. Thus the terms liberation and bondage were not applicable to him. As long as there are beings who consider themselves bound. God must come down to earth as an Incarnation to free them from bondage, just as a magistrate must visit any part of his district in which there is trouble.
  --
   Second, the three great systems of thought known as Dualism, Qualified Non-dualism, and Absolute Non-dualism — Dvaita, Visishtadvaita, and Advaita — he perceived to represent three stages in Man's progress toward the Ultimate Reality. They were not contradictory but complementary and suited to different temperaments. For the ordinary Man with strong attachment to the senses, a dualistic form of religion, prescribing a certain amount of material support, such as music and other symbols, is useful. A Man of God-realization transcends the idea of worldly duties, but the ordinary mortal must perform his duties, striving to be unattached and to surrender the results to God. The mind can comprehend and describe the range of thought and experience up to the Visishtadvaita, and no further. The Advaita, the last word in spiritual experience, is something to be felt in samadhi. for it transcends mind and speech. From the highest standpoint, the Absolute and Its Manifestation are equally real — the Lord's Name, His Abode, and the Lord Himself are of the same spiritual Essence. Everything is Spirit, the difference being only in form.
   Third, Sri Ramakrishna realized the wish of the Divine Mother that through him She should found a new Order, consisting of those who would uphold the universal doctrines illustrated in his life.
  --
   During this period Sri Ramakrishna suffered several bereavements. The first was the death of a nephew named Akshay. After the young Man's death Sri Ramakrishna said: "Akshay died before my very eyes. But it did not affect me in the least. I stood by and watched a Man die. It was like a sword being drawn from its scabbard. I enjoyed the scene, and laughed and sang and danced over it. They removed the body and cremated it. But the next day as I stood there (pointing to the southeast verandah of his room), I felt a racking pain for the loss of Akshay, as if somebody were squeezing my heart like a wet towel. I wondered at it and thought that the Mother was teaching me a lesson. I was not much concerned even with my own body — much less with a relative. But if such was my pain at the loss of a nephew, how much more must be the grief of the householders at the loss of their near and dear ones!" In 1871 Mathur died, and some five years later Sambhu Mallick — who, after Mathur's passing away, had taken care of the Master's comfort. In 1873 died his elder brother Rameswar, and in 1876, his beloved mother. These bereavements left their imprint on the tender huMan heart of Sri Ramakrishna, albeit he had realized the immortality of the soul and the illusoriness of birth and death.
   In March 1875, about a year before the death of his mother, the Master met Keshab Chandra Sen. The meeting was a momentous event for both Sri Ramakrishna and Keshab. Here the Master for the first time came into actual, contact with a worthy representative of modern India.
  --
   The real organizer of the Samaj was Devendranath Tagore (1817-1905), the father of the poet Rabindranath. His physical and spiritual beauty, aristocratic aloofness, penetrating intellect, and poetic sensibility made him the foremost leader of the educated Bengalis. These addressed him by the respectful epithet of Maharshi, the "Great Seer". The Maharshi was a Sanskrit scholar and, unlike Raja Rammohan Roy, drew his inspiration entirely from the Upanishads. He was an implacable enemy of image worship ship and also fought to stop the infiltration of Christian ideas into the Samaj. He gave the movement its faith and ritual. Under his influence the Brahmo Samaj professed One Self-existent Supreme Being who had created the universe out of nothing, the God of Truth, Infinite Wisdom, Goodness, and Power, the Eternal and Omnipotent, the One without a Second. Man should love Him and do His will, believe in Him and worship Him, and thus merit salvation in the world to come.
   By far the ablest leader of the Brahmo movement was Keshab Chandra Sen (1838-1884). Unlike Raja Rammohan Roy and Devendranath Tagore, Keshab was born of a middle-class Bengali family and had been brought up in an English school. He did not know Sanskrit and very soon broke away from the popular Hindu religion. Even at an early age he came under the spell of Christ and professed to have experienced the special favour of John the Baptist, Christ, and St. Paul. When he strove to introduce Christ to the Brahmo Samaj, a rupture became inevitable with Devendranath. In 1868 Keshab broke with the older leader and founded the Brahmo Samaj of India, Devendra retaining leadership of the first Brahmo Samaj, now called the Adi Samaj.
  --
   In 1878 a schism divided Keshab's Samaj. Some of his influential followers accused him of infringing the Brahmo principles by marrying his daughter to a wealthy Man before she had attained the marriageable age approved by the Samaj. This group seceded and established the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj, Keshab remaining the leader of the Navavidhan. Keshab now began to be drawn more and more toward the Christ ideal, though under the influence of Sri Ramakrishna his devotion to the Divine Mother also deepened. His mental oscillation between Christ and the Divine Mother of Hinduism found no position of rest. In Bengal and some other parts of India the Brahmo movement took the form of unitarian Christianity, scoffed at Hindu rituals, and preached a crusade against image worship. Influenced by Western culture, it declared the supremacy of reason, advocated the ideals of the French Revolution, abolished the caste-system among its own members, stood for the eMancipation of women, agitated for the abolition of early marriage, sanctioned the remarriage of widows, and encouraged various educational and social-reform movements. The immediate effect of the Brahmo movement in Bengal was the checking of the proselytizing activities of the Christian missionaries. It also raised Indian culture in the estimation of its English masters. But it was an intellectual and eclectic religious ferment born of the necessity of the time. Unlike Hinduism, it was not founded on the deep inner experiences of sages and prophets. Its influence was confined to a comparatively few educated men and women of the country, and the vast masses of the Hindus remained outside it. It sounded monotonously only one of the notes in the rich gamut of the Eternal Religion of the Hindus.
   --- ARYA SAMAJ
   The other movement playing an important part in the nineteenth-century religious revival of India was the Arya Samaj. The Brahmo Samaj, essentially a movement of compromise with European culture, tacitly admitted the superiority of the West. But the founder of the Arya Samaj was a ' pugnacious Hindu sannyasi who accepted the challenge of Islam and Christianity and was resolved to combat all foreign influence in India. Swami Dayananda (1824-1883) launched this movement in Bombay in 1875, and soon its influence was felt throughout western India. The Swami was a great scholar of the Vedas, which he explained as being strictly monotheistic. He preached against the worship of images and re-established the ancient Vedic sacrificial rites. According to him the Vedas were the ultimate authority on religion, and he accepted every word of them as literally true. The Arya Samaj became a bulwark against the encroachments of Islam and Christianity, and its orthodox flavour appealed to Many Hindu minds. It also assumed leadership in Many movements of social reform. The caste-system became a target of its attack. Women it liberated from Many of their social disabilities. The cause of education received from it a great impetus. It started agitation against early marriage and advocated the remarriage of Hindu widows. Its influence was strongest in the Punjab, the battle-ground of the Hindu and Islamic cultures. A new fighting attitude was introduced into the slumbering Hindu society. Unlike the Brahmo Samaj, the influence of the Arya Samaj was not confined to the intellectuals. It was a force that spread to the masses. It was a dogmatic movement intolerant of those who disagreed with its views, and it emphasized only one way, the Arya Samaj way, to the realization of Truth. Sri Ramakrishna met Swami Dayananda when the latter visited Bengal.
   --- KESHAB CHANDRA SEN
   Keshab Chandra Sen and Sri Ramakrishna met for the first time in the garden house of Jaygopal Sen at Belgharia, a few miles from Dakshineswar, where the great Brahmo leader was staying with some of his disciples. In Many respects the two were poles apart, though an irresistible inner attraction was to make them intimate friends. The Master had realized God as Pure Spirit and Consciousness, but he believed in the various forms of God as well. Keshab, on the other hand, regarded image worship as idolatry and gave allegorical explanations of the Hindu deities. Keshab was an orator and a writer of books and magazine articles; Sri Ramakrishna had a horror of lecturing and hardly knew how to write his own name, Keshab's fame spread far and wide, even reaching the distant shores of England; the Master still led a secluded life in the village of Dakshineswar. Keshab emphasized social reforms for India's regeneration; to Sri Ramakrishna God-realization was the only goal of life. Keshab considered himself a disciple of Christ and accepted in a diluted form the Christian sacraments and Trinity; Sri Ramakrishna was the simple child of Kali, the Divine Mother, though he too, in a different way, acknowledged Christ's divinity. Keshab was a householder holder and took a real interest in the welfare of his children, whereas Sri Ramakrishna was a paramahamsa and completely indifferent to the life of the world. Yet, as their acquaintance ripened into friendship, Sri Ramakrishna and Keshab held each other in great love and respect. Years later, at the news of Keshab's death, the Master felt as if half his body had become paralyzed. Keshab's concepts of the harmony of religions and the Motherhood of God were deepened and enriched by his contact with Sri Ramakrishna.
   Sri Ramakrishna, dressed in a red-bordered dhoti, one end of which was carelessly thrown over his left shoulder, came to Jaygopal's garden house accompanied by Hriday. No one took notice of the unostentatious visitor. Finally the Master said to Keshab, "People tell me you have seen God; so I have come to hear from you about God." A magnificent conversation followed. The Master sang a thrilling song about Kali and forthwith went into samadhi. When Hriday uttered the sacred "Om" in his ears, he gradually came back to consciousness of the world, his face still radiating a divine brilliance. Keshab and his followers were amazed. The contrast between Sri Ramakrishna and the Brahmo devotees was very interesting. There sat this small Man, thin and extremely delicate. His eyes were illumined with an inner light. Good humour gleamed in his eyes and lurked in the corners of his mouth. His speech was Bengali of a homely kind with a slight, delightful stammer, and his words held men enthralled by their wealth of spiritual experience, their inexhaustible store of simile and metaphor, their power of observation, their bright and subtle humour, their wonderful catholicity, their ceaseless flow of wisdom. And around him now were the sophisticated men of Bengal, the best products of Western education, with Keshab, the idol of young Bengal, as their leader.
   Keshab's sincerity was enough for Sri Ramakrishna. Henceforth the two saw each other frequently, either at Dakshineswar or at the temple of the Brahmo Samaj. Whenever the Master was in the temple at the time of divine service, Keshab would request him to speak to the congregation. And Keshab would visit the saint, in his turn, with offerings of flowers and fruits.
  --
   Gradually other Brahmo leaders began to feel Sri Ramakrishna's influence. But they were by no means uncritical admirers of the Master. They particularly disapproved of his ascetic renunciation and condemnation of "woMan and gold".1 They measured him according to their own ideals of the householder's life. Some could not understand his samadhi and described it as a nervous malady. Yet they could not resist his magnetic personality.
   Among the Brahmo leaders who knew the Master closely were Pratap Chandra Mazumdar, Vijaykrishna Goswami, Trailokyanath Sannyal, and Shivanath Shastri.
   Shivanath, one day, was greatly impressed by the Master's utter simplicity and abhorrence of praise. He was seated with Sri Ramakrishna in the latter's room when several rich men of Calcutta arrived. The Master left the room for a few minutes. In the mean time Hriday, his nephew, began to describe his samadhi to the visitors. The last few words caught the Master's ear as he entered the room. He said to Hriday: "What a mean-spirited fellow you must be to extol me thus before these rich men! You have seen their costly apparel and their gold watches and chains, and your object is to get from them as much money as you can. What do I care about what they think of me? (Turning to the gentlemen) No, my friends, what he has told you about me is not true. It was not love of God that made me absorbed in God and indifferent to external life. I became positively insane for some time. The sadhus who frequented this temple told me to practise Many things. I tried to follow them, and the consequence was that my austerities drove me to insanity." This is a quotation from one of Shivanath's books. He took the Master's words literally and failed to see their real import.
   Shivanath vehemently criticized the Master for his other-worldly attitude toward his wife. He writes: "Ramakrishna was practically separated from his wife, who lived in her village home. One day when I was complaining to some friends about the virtual widowhood of his wife, he drew me to one side and whispered in my ear: 'Why do you complain? It is no longer possible; it is all dead and gone.' Another day as I was inveighing against this part of his teaching, and also declaring that our program of work in the Brahmo Samaj includes women, that ours is a social and domestic religion, and that we want to give education and social liberty to women, the saint became very much excited, as was his way when anything against his settled conviction was asserted — a trait we so much liked in him — and exclaimed, 'Go, thou fool, go and perish in the pit that your women will dig for you.' Then he glared at me and said: 'What does a gardener do with a young plant? Does he not surround it with a fence, to protect it from goats and cattle? And when the young plant has grown up into a tree and it can no longer be injured by cattle, does he not remove the fence and let the tree grow freely?' I replied, 'Yes, that is the custom with gardeners.' Then he remarked, 'Do the same in your spiritual life; become strong, be full-grown; then you may seek them.' To which I replied, 'I don't agree with you in thinking that women's work is like that of cattle, destructive; they are our associates and helpers in our spiritual struggles and social progress' — a view with which he could not agree, and he marked his dissent by shaking his head. Then referring to the lateness of the hour he jocularly remarked, 'It is time for you to depart; take care, do not be late; otherwise your woMan will not admit you into her room.' This evoked hearty laughter."
   Pratap Chandra Mazumdar, the right-hand Man of Keshab and an accomplished Brahmo preacher in Europe and America, bitterly criticized Sri Ramakrishna's use of uncultured language and also his austere attitude toward his wife. But he could not escape the spell of the Master's personality. In the course of an article about Sri Ramakrishna, Pratap wrote in the "Theistic Quarterly Review": "What is there in common between him and me? I, a Europeanized, civilized, self-centred, semi-sceptical, so-called educated reasoner, and he, a poor, illiterate, unpolished, half-idolatrous, friendless Hindu devotee? Why should I sit long hours to attend to him, I, who have listened to Disraeli and Fawcett, Stanley and Max Muller, and a whole host of European scholars and divines? . . . And it is not I only, but dozens like me, who do the same. . . . He worships Siva, he worships Kali, he worships Rama, he worships Krishna, and is a confirmed advocate of Vedantic doctrines. . . . He is an idolater, yet is a faithful and most devoted meditator on the perfections of the One Formless, Absolute, Infinite Deity. . . . His religion is ecstasy, his worship means transcendental insight, his whole nature burns day and night with a perManent fire and fever of a strange faith and feeling. . . . So long as he is spared to us, gladly shall we sit at his feet to learn from him the sublime precepts of purity, unworldliness, spirituality, and inebriation in the love of God. . . . He, by his childlike bhakti, by his strong conceptions of an ever-ready Motherhood, helped to unfold it [God as our Mother] in our minds wonderfully. . . . By associating with him we learnt to realize better the divine attributes as scattered over the three hundred and thirty millions of deities of mythological India, the gods of the Puranas."
   The Brahmo leaders received much inspiration from their contact with Sri Ramakrishna. It broadened their religious views and kindled in their hearts the yearning for God-realization; it made them understand and appreciate the rituals and symbols of Hindu religion, convinced them of the Manifestation of God in diverse forms, and deepened their thoughts about the harmony of religions. The Master, too, was impressed by the sincerity of Many of the Brahmo devotees. He told them about his own realizations and explained to them the essence of his teachings, such as the necessity of renunciation, sincerity in the pursuit of one's own course of discipline, faith in God, the perforMance of one's duties without thought of results, and discrimination between the Real and the unreal.
   This contact with the educated and progressive Bengalis opened Sri Ramakrishna's eyes to a new realm of thought. Born and brought up in a simple village, without any formal education, and taught by the orthodox holy men of India in religious life, he had had no opportunity to study the influence of modernism on the thoughts and lives of the Hindus. He could not properly estimate the result of the impact of Western education on Indian culture. He was a Hindu of the Hindus, renunciation being to him the only means to the realization of God in life. From the Brahmos he learnt that the new generation of India made a compromise between God and the world. Educated young men were influenced more by the Western philosophers than by their own prophets. But Sri Ramakrishna was not dismayed, for he saw in this, too, the hand of God. And though he expounded to the Brahmos all his ideas about God and austere religious disciplines, yet he bade them accept from his teachings only as much as suited their tastes and temperaments.
   ^The term "woMan and gold", which has been used throughout in a collective sense, occurs again and again in the teachings of Sri Ramakrishna to designate the chief impediments to spiritual progress. This favourite expression of the Master, "kaminikanchan", has often been misconstrued. By it he meant only "lust and greed", the baneful influence of which retards the aspirant's spiritual growth. He used the word "kamini", or "woMan", as a concrete term for the sex instinct when addressing his Man devotees. He advised women, on the other hand, to shun "Man". "Kanchan", or "gold", symbolizes greed, which is the other obstacle to spiritual life.
   Sri Ramakrishna never taught his disciples to hate any woMan, or woMankind in general. This can be seen clearly by going through all his teachings under this head and judging them collectively. The Master looked on all women as so Many images of the Divine Mother of the Universe. He paid the highest homage to woMankind by accepting a woMan as his guide while practising the very profound spiritual disciplines of Tantra. His wife, known and revered as the Holy Mother, was his constant companion and first disciple. At the end of his spiritual practice he literally worshipped his wife as the embodiment of the Goddess Kali, the Divine Mother. After his passing away the Holy Mother became the spiritual guide not only of a large number of householders, but also of Many monastic members of the Ramakrishna Order.
   --- THE MASTER'S YEARNING FOR HIS OWN DEVOTEES
   Contact with the Brahmos increased Sri Ramakrishna's longing to encounter aspirants who would be able to follow his teachings in their purest form. "There was no limit", he once declared, "to the longing I felt at that time. During the day-time I somehow Managed to control it. The secular talk of the worldly-minded was galling to me, and I would look wistfully to the day when my own beloved companions would come. I hoped to find solace in conversing with them and relating to them my own realizations. Every little incident would remind me of them, and thoughts of them wholly engrossed me. I was already arranging in my mind what I should say to one and give to another, and so on. But when the day would come to a close I would not be able to curb my feelings. The thought that another day had gone by, and they had not come, oppressed me. When, during the evening service, the temples rang with the sound of bells and conch-shells, I would climb to the roof of the kuthi in the garden and, writhing in anguish of heart, cry at the top of my voice: 'Come, my children! Oh, where are you? I cannot bear to live without you.' A mother never longed so intensely for the sight of her child, nor a friend for his companions, nor a lover for his sweetheart, as I longed for them. Oh, it was indescribable! Shortly after this period of yearning the devotees1 began to come."
   In the year 1879 occasional writings about Sri Ramakrishna by the Brahmos, in the Brahmo magazines, began to attract his future disciples from the educated middle-class Bengalis, and they continued to come till 1884. But others, too, came, feeling the subtle power of his attraction. They were an ever shifting crowd of people of all castes and creeds: Hindus and Brahmos, Vaishnavas and Saktas, the educated with university degrees and the illiterate, old and young, maharajas and beggars, journalists and artists, pundits and devotees, philosophers and the worldly-minded, jnanis and yogis, men of action and men of faith, virtuous women and prostitutes, office-holders and vagabonds, philanthropists and self-seekers, dramatists and drunkards, builders-up and pullers-down. He gave to them all, without stint, from his illimitable store of realization. No one went away empty-handed. He taught them the lofty .knowledge of the Vedanta and the soul
  --
   But to the young men destined to be monks he pointed out the steep path of renunciation, both external and internal. They must take the vow of absolute continence and eschew all thought of greed and lust. By the practice of continence, aspirants develop a subtle nerve through which they understand the deeper mysteries of God. For them self-control is final, imperative, and absolute. The sannyasis are teachers of men, and their lives should be totally free from blemish. They must not even look at a picture which may awaken their animal passions. The Master selected his future monks from young men untouched by "woMan and gold" and plastic enough to be cast in his spiritual mould. When teaching them the path of renunciation and discrimination, he would not allow the householders to be anywhere near them.
   --- RAM AND ManOMOHAN
   The first two householder devotees to come to Dakshineswar were Ramchandra Dutta and Manomohan Mitra. A medical practitioner and chemist, Ram was sceptical about God and religion and never enjoyed peace of soul. He wanted tangible proof of God's existence. The Master said to him: "God really" exists. You don't see the stars in the day-time, but that doesn't mean that the stars do not exist. There is butter in milk. But can anybody see it by merely looking at the milk? To get butter you must churn milk in a quiet and cool place. You cannot realize God by a mere wish; you must go through some mental disciplines." By degrees the Master awakened Ram's spirituality and the latter became one of his foremost lay disciples. It was Ram who introduced Narendranath to Sri Ramakrishna. Narendra was a relative of Ram.
   Manomohan at first met with considerable opposition from his wife and other relatives, who resented his visits to Dakshineswar. But in the end the unselfish love of the Master triumphed over worldly affection. It was Manomohan who brought Rakhal to the Master.
   --- SURENDRA
   Suresh Mitra, a beloved disciple whom the Master often addressed as Surendra, had received an English education and held an important post in an English firm. Like Many other educated young men of the time, he prided himself on his atheism and led a Bohemian life. He was addicted to drinking. He cherished an exaggerated notion about Man's free will. A victim of mental depression, he was brought to Sri Ramakrishna by Ramchandra chandra Dutta. When he heard the Master asking a disciple to practise the virtue of self-surrender to God, he was impressed. But though he tried thenceforth to do so, he was unable to give up his old associates and his drinking. One day the Master said in his presence, "Well, when a Man goes to an undesirable place, why doesn't he take the Divine Mother with him?" And to Surendra himself Sri Ramakrishna said: "Why should you drink wine as wine? Offer it to Kali, and then take it as Her prasad, as consecrated drink
  . But see that you don't become intoxicated; you must not reel and your thoughts must not wander. At first you will feel ordinary excitement, but soon you will experience spiritual exaltation." Gradually Surendra's entire life was changed. The Master designated him as one of those commissioned by the Divine Mother to defray a great part of his expenses. Surendra's purse was always open for the Master's comfort.
  --
   Harish, a young Man in affluent circumstances, renounced his family and took shelter with the Master, who loved him for his sincerity, singleness of purpose, and quiet nature. He spent his leisure time in prayer and meditation, turning a deaf ear to the entreaties and threats of his relatives. Referring to his undisturbed peace of mind, the Master would say: "Real men are dead to the world though living. Look at Harish. He is an example." When one day the Master asked him to be a little kind to his wife, Harish said: "You must excuse me on this point. This is not the place to show kindness. If I try to be sympathetic to her, there is a possibility of my forgetting the ideal and becoming entangled in the world."
   --- BHAVANATH
  --
   Balaram Bose came of a wealthy Vaishnava family. From his youth he had shown a deep religious temperament and had devoted his time to meditation, prayer, and the study of the Vaishnava scriptures. He was very much impressed by Sri Ramakrishna even at their first meeting. He asked Sri Ramakrishna whether God really existed and, if so, whether a Man could realize Him. The Master said: "God reveals Himself to the devotee who thinks of Him as his nearest and dearest. Because you do not draw response by praying to Him once, you must not conclude that He does not exist. Pray to God, thinking of Him as dearer than your very self. He is much attached to His devotees. He comes to a Man even before He is sought. There is none more intimate and affectionate than God." Balaram had never before heard God spoken of in such forceful words; every one of the words seemed true to him. Under the Master's influence he outgrew the conventions of the Vaishnava worship and became one of the most beloved of the disciples. It was at his home that the Master slept whenever he spent a night in Calcutta.
   --- MAHENDRA OR M.
   Mahendranath Gupta, better known as "M.", arrived at Dakshineswar in March 1882. He belonged to the Brahmo Samaj and was headmaster of the Vidyasagar High School at Syambazar, Calcutta. At the very first sight the Master recognized him as one of his "marked" disciples. Mahendra recorded in his diary Sri Ramakrishna's conversations with his devotees. These are the first directly recorded words, in the spiritual history of the world, of a Man recognized as belonging in the class of Buddha and Christ. The present volume is a translation of this diary. Mahendra was instrumental, through his personal contacts, in spreading the Master's message among Many young and aspiring souls.
   --- NAG MAHASHAY
   Durgacharan Nag, also known as Nag Mahashay, was the ideal householder among the lay disciples of Sri Ramakrishna. He was the embodiment of the Master's ideal of life in the world, unstained by worldliness. In spite of his intense desire to become a sannyasi, Sri Ramakrishna asked him to live in the world in the spirit of a monk, and the disciple truly carried out this injunction. He was born of a poor family and even during his boyhood often sacrificed everything to lessen the sufferings of the needy. He had married at an early age and after his wife's death had married a second time to obey his father's comMand. But he once said to his wife: "Love on the physical level never lasts. He is indeed blessed who can give his love to God with his whole heart. Even a little attachment to the body endures for several births. So do not be attached to this cage of bone and flesh. Take shelter at the feet of the Mother and think of Her alone. Thus your life here and hereafter will be ennobled." The Master spoke of him as a "blazing light". He received every word of Sri Ramakrishna in dead earnest. One day he heard the Master saying that it was difficult for doctors, lawyers, and brokers to make much progress in spirituality. Of doctors he said, "If the mind clings to the tiny drops of medicine, how can it conceive of the Infinite?" That was the end of Durgacharan's medical practice and he threw his chest of medicines into the Ganges. Sri Ramakrishna assured him that he would not lack simple food and clothing. He bade him serve holy men. On being asked where he would find real holy men, the Master said that the sadhus themselves would seek his company. No sannyasi could have lived a more austere life than Durgacharan.
   --- GIRISH GHOSH
   Girish Chandra Ghosh was a born rebel against God, a sceptic, a Bohemian, a drunkard. He was the greatest Bengali dramatist of his time, the father of the modem Bengali stage. Like other young men he had imbibed all the vices of the West. He had plunged into a life of dissipation and had become convinced that religion was only a fraud. Materialistic philosophy he justified as enabling one to get at least a little fun out of life. But a series of reverses shocked him and he became eager to solve the riddle of life. He had heard people say that in spiritual life the help of a guru was imperative and that the guru was to be regarded as God Himself. But Girish was too well acquainted with huMan nature to see perfection in a Man. His first meeting with Sri Ramakrishna did not impress him at all. He returned home feeling as if he had seen a freak at a circus; for the Master, in a semi-conscious mood, had inquired whether it was evening, though the lamps were burning in the room. But their paths often crossed, and Girish could not avoid further encounters. The Master attended a perforMance in Girish's Star Theatre. On this occasion, too, Girish found nothing impressive about him. One day, however, Girish happened to see the Master dancing and singing with the devotees. He felt the contagion and wanted to join them, but restrained himself for fear of ridicule. Another day Sri Ramakrishna was about to give him spiritual instruction, when Girish said: "I don't want to listen to instructions. I have myself written Many instructions. They are of no use to me. Please help me in a more tangible way If you can." This pleased the Master and he asked Girish to cultivate faith.
   As time passed, Girish began to learn that the guru is the one who silently unfolds the disciple's inner life. He became a steadfast devotee of the Master. He often loaded the Master with insults, drank in his presence, and took liberties which astounded the other devotees. But the Master knew that at heart Girish was tender, faithful, and sincere. He would not allow Girish to give up the theatre. And when a devotee asked him to tell Girish to give up drinking, he sternly replied: "That is none of your business. He who has taken charge of him will look after him. Girish is a devotee of heroic type. I tell you, drinking will not affect him." The Master knew that mere words could not induce a Man to break deep-rooted habits, but that the silent influence of love worked miracles. Therefore he never asked him to give up alcohol, with the result that Girish himself eventually broke the habit. Sri Ramakrishna had strengthened Girish's resolution by allowing him to feel that he was absolutely free.
   One day Girish felt depressed because he was unable to submit to any routine of spiritual discipline. In an exalted mood the Master said to him: "All right, give me your power of attorney. Henceforth I assume responsibility for you. You need not do anything." Girish heaved a sigh of relief. He felt happy to think that Sri Ramakrishna had assumed his spiritual responsibilities. But poor Girish could not then realize that He also, on his part, had to give up his freedom and make of himself a puppet in Sri Ramakrishna's hands. The Master began to discipline him according to this new attitude. One day Girish said about a trifling matter, "Yes, I shall do this." "No, no!" the Master corrected him. "You must not speak in that egotistic Manner. You should say, 'God willing, I shall do it.'" Girish understood. Thenceforth he tried to give up all idea of personal responsibility and surrender himself to the Divine Will. His mind began to dwell constantly on Sri Ramakrishna. This unconscious meditation in time chastened his turbulent spirit.
   The householder devotees generally visited Sri Ramakrishna on Sunday afternoons and other holidays. Thus a brotherhood was gradually formed, and the Master encouraged their fraternal feeling. Now and then he would accept an invitation to a devotee's home, where other devotees would also be invited. Kirtan would be arranged and they would spend hours in dance and devotional music. The Master would go into trances or open his heart in religious discourses and in the narration of his own spiritual experiences. Many people who could not go to Dakshineswar participated in these meetings and felt blessed. Such an occasion would be concluded with a sumptuous feast.
   But it was in the company of his younger devotees, pure souls yet unstained by the touch of worldliness, that Sri Ramakrishna took greatest joy. Among the young men who later embraced the householder's life were Narayan, Paitu, the younger Naren, Tejchandra, and Purna. These visited the Master sometimes against strong opposition from home.
  --
   Pratap Hazra, a middle-aged Man, hailed from a village near Kamarpukur. He was not altogether unresponsive to religious feelings. On a moment's impulse he had left his home, aged mother, wife, and children, and had found shelter in the temple garden at Dakshineswar, where he intended to lead a spiritual life. He loved to argue, and the Master often pointed him out as an example of barren argumentation. He was hypercritical of others and cherished an exaggerated notion of his own spiritual advancement. He was mischievous and often tried to upset the minds of the Master's young disciples, criticizing them for their happy and joyous life and asking them to devote their time to meditation. The Master teasingly compared Hazra to Jatila and Kutila, the two women who always created obstructions in Krishna's sport with the gopis, and said that Hazra lived at Dakshineswar to "thicken the plot" by adding complications.
   --- SOME NOTED MEN
   Sri Ramakrishna also became acquainted with a number of people whose scholarship or wealth entitled them everywhere to respect. He had met, a few years before, Devendranath Tagore, famous all over Bengal for his wealth, scholarship, saintly character, and social position. But the Master found him disappointing; for, whereas Sri Ramakrishna expected of a saint complete renunciation of the world, Devendranath combined with his saintliness a life of enjoyment. Sri Ramakrishna met the great poet Michael Madhusudan, who had embraced Christianity "for the sake of his stomach". To him the Master could not impart instruction, for the Divine Mother "pressed his tongue". In addition he met Maharaja Jatindra Mohan Tagore, a titled aristocrat of Bengal; Kristodas Pal, the editor, social reformer, and patriot; Iswar Vidyasagar, the noted philanthropist and educator; Pundit Shashadhar, a great champion of Hindu orthodoxy; Aswini Kumar Dutta, a headmaster, moralist, and leader of Indian Nationalism; and Bankim Chatterji, a deputy magistrate, novelist, and essayist, and one of the fashioners of modern Bengali prose. Sri Ramakrishna was not the Man to be dazzled by outward show, glory, or eloquence. A pundit without discrimination he regarded as a mere straw. He would search people's hearts for the light of God, and if that was missing he would have nothing to do with them.
   --- KRISTODAS PAL
   The Europeanized Kristodas Pal did not approve of the Master's emphasis on renunciation and said; "Sir, this cant of renunciation has almost ruined the country. It is for this reason that the Indians are a subject nation today. Doing good to others, bringing education to the door of the ignorant, and above all, improving the material conditions of the country — these should be our duty now. The cry of religion and renunciation would, on the contrary, only weaken us. You should advise the young men of Bengal to resort only to such acts as will uplift the country." Sri Ramakrishna gave him a searching look and found no divine light within, "You Man of poor understanding!" Sri Ramakrishna said sharply. "You dare to slight in these terms renunciation and piety, which our scriptures describe as the greatest of all virtues! After reading two pages of English you think you have come to know the world! You appear to think you are omniscient. Well, have you seen those tiny crabs that are born in the Ganges just when the rains set in? In this big universe you are even less significant than one of those small creatures. How dare you talk of helping the world? The Lord will look to that. You haven't the power in you to do it." After a pause the Master continued: "Can you explain to me how you can work for others? I know what you mean by helping them. To feed a number of persons, to treat them when they are sick, to construct a road or dig a well — isn't that all? These, are good deeds, no doubt, but how trifling in comparison with the vastness of the universe! How far can a Man advance in this line? How Many people can you save from famine? Malaria has ruined a whole province; what could you do to stop its onslaught? God alone looks after the world. Let a Man first realize Him. Let a Man get the authority from God and be endowed with His power; then, and then alone, may he think of doing good to others. A Man should first be purged of all egotism. Then alone will the Blissful Mother ask him to work for the world." Sri Ramakrishna mistrusted philanthropy that presumed to pose as charity. He warned people against it. He saw in most acts of philanthropy nothing but egotism, vanity, a desire for glory, a barren excitement to kill the boredom of life, or an attempt to soothe a guilty conscience. True charity, he taught, is the result of love of God — service to Man in a spirit of worship.
   --- MONASTIC DISCIPLES
  --
   Rakhal Chandra Ghosh (Swami BrahMananda)
   Gopal Sur (Swami Advaitananda)
   Baburam Ghosh (Swami PreMananda)
   Taraknath Ghoshal (Swami Shivananda)
  --
   The first of these young men to come to the Master was Latu. Born of obscure parents, in Behar, he came to Calcutta in search of work and was engaged by Ramchandra Dutta as house-boy. Learning of the saintly Sri Ramakrishna, he visited the Master at Dakshineswar and was deeply touched by his cordiality. When he was about to leave, the Master asked him to take some money and return home in a boat or carriage. But Latu declared he had a few pennies and jingled the coins in his pocket. Sri Ramakrishna later requested Ram to allow Latu to stay with him perManently. Under Sri Ramakrishna's guidance Latu made great progress in meditation and was blessed with ecstatic visions, but all the efforts of the Master to give him a smattering of education failed. Latu was very fond of kirtan and other devotional songs but remained all his life illiterate.
   --- RAKHAL
   Even before Rakhal's coming to Dakshineswar, the Master had had visions of him as his spiritual son and as a playmate of Krishna at Vrindavan. Rakhal was born of wealthy parents. During his childhood he developed wonderful spiritual traits and used to play at worshipping gods and goddesses. In his teens he was married to a sister of Manomohan Mitra, from whom he first heard of the Master. His father objected to his association with Sri Ramakrishna but afterwards was reassured to find that Many celebrated people were visitors at Dakshineswar. The relationship between the Master and this beloved disciple was that of mother and child. Sri Ramakrishna allowed Rakhal Many liberties denied to others. But he would not hesitate to chastise the boy for improper actions. At one time Rakhal felt a childlike jealousy because he found that other boys were receiving the Master's affection. He soon got over it and realized his guru as the Guru of the whole universe. The Master was worried to hear of his marriage, but was relieved to find that his wife was a spiritual soul who would not be a hindrance to his progress.
   --- THE ELDER GOPAL
  --
   To spread his message to the four corners of the earth Sri Ramakrishna needed a strong instrument. With his frail body and delicate limbs he could not make great journeys across wide spaces. And such an instrument was found in Narendranath Dutta, his beloved Naren, later known to the world as Swami Vivekananda. Even before meeting Narendranath, the Master had seen him in a vision as a sage, immersed in the meditation of the Absolute, who at Sri Ramakrishna's request had agreed to take huMan birth to assist him in his work.
   Narendra was born in Calcutta on January 12, 1863, of an aristocratic kayastha family. His mother was steeped in the great Hindu epics, and his father, a distinguished attorney of the Calcutta High Court, was an agnostic about religion, a friend of the poor, and a mocker at social conventions. Even in his boyhood and youth Narendra possessed great physical courage and presence of mind, a vivid imagination, deep power of thought, keen intelligence, an extraordinary memory, a love of truth, a passion for purity, a spirit of independence, and a tender heart. An expert musician, he also acquired proficiency in physics, astronomy, mathematics, philosophy, history, and literature. He grew up into an extremely handsome young Man. Even as a child he practised meditation and showed great power of concentration. Though free and passionate in word and action, he took the vow of austere religious chastity and never allowed the fire of purity to be extinguished by the slightest defilement of body or soul.
   As he read in college the rationalistic Western philosophers of the nineteenth century, his boyhood faith in God and religion was unsettled. He would not accept religion on mere faith; he wanted demonstration of God. But very soon his passionate nature discovered that mere Universal Reason was cold and bloodless. His emotional nature, dissatisfied with a mere abstraction, required a concrete support to help him in the hours of temptation. He wanted an external power, a guru, who by embodying perfection in the flesh would still the commotion of his soul. Attracted by the magnetic personality of Keshab, he joined the Brahmo Samaj and became a singer in its choir. But in the Samaj he did not find the guru who could say that he had seen God.
   In a state of mental conflict and torture of soul, Narendra came to Sri Ramakrishna at Dakshineswar. He was then eighteen years of age and had been in college two years. He entered the Master's room accompanied by some light-hearted friends. At Sri Ramakrishna's request he sang a few songs, pouring his whole soul into them, and the Master went into samadhi. A few minutes later Sri Ramakrishna suddenly left his seat, took Narendra by the hand, and led him to the screened verandah north of his room. They were alone. Addressing Narendra most tenderly, as if he were a friend of long acquaintance, the Master said: "Ah! You have come very late. Why have you been so unkind as to make me wait all these days? My ears are tired of hearing the futile words of worldly men. Oh, how I have longed to pour my spirit into the heart of someone fitted to receive my message!" He talked thus, sobbing all the time. Then, standing before Narendra with folded hands, he addressed him as Narayana, born on earth to remove the misery of huManity. Grasping Narendra's hand, he asked him to come again, alone, and very soon. Narendra was startled. "What is this I have come to see?" he said to himself. "He must be stark mad. Why, I am the son of Viswanath Dutta. How dare he speak this way to me?"
   When they returned to the room and Narendra heard the Master speaking to others, he was surprised to find in his words an inner logic, a striking sincerity, and a convincing proof of his spiritual nature. In answer to Narendra's question, "Sir, have you seen God?" the Master said: "Yes, I have seen God. I have seen Him more tangibly than I see you. I have talked to Him more intimately than I am talking to you." Continuing, the Master said: "But, my child, who wants to see God? People shed jugs of tears for money, wife, and children. But if they would weep for God for only one day they would surely see Him." Narendra was amazed. These words he could not doubt. This was the first time he had ever heard a Man saying that he had seen God. But he could not reconcile these words of the Master with the scene that had taken place on the verandah only a few minutes before. He concluded that Sri Ramakrishna was a monoManiac, and returned home rather puzzled in mind.
   During his second visit, about a month later, suddenly, at the touch of the Master, Narendra felt overwhelmed and saw the walls of the room and everything around him whirling and vanishing. "What are you doing to me?" he cried in terror. "I have my father and mother at home." He saw his own ego and the whole universe almost swallowed in a nameless void. With a laugh the Master easily restored him. Narendra thought he might have been hypnotized, but he could not understand how a monoManiac could cast a spell over the mind of a strong person like himself. He returned home more confused than ever, resolved to be henceforth on his guard before this strange Man.
   But during his third visit Narendra fared no better. This time, at the Master's touch, he lost consciousness entirely. While he was still in that state, Sri Ramakrishna questioned him concerning his spiritual antecedents and whereabouts, his mission in this world, and the duration of his mortal life. The answers confirmed what the Master himself had known and inferred. Among other things, he came to know that Narendra was a sage who had already attained perfection, and that the day he learnt his real nature he would give up his body in yoga, by an act of will.
   A few more meetings completely removed from Narendra's mind the last traces of the notion that Sri Ramakrishna might be a monoManiac or wily hypnotist. His integrity, purity, renunciation, and unselfishness were beyond question. But Narendra could not accept a Man, an imperfect mortal, as his guru. As a member of the Brahmo Samaj, he could not believe that a huMan intermediary was necessary between Man and God. Moreover, he openly laughed at Sri Ramakrishna's visions as hallucinations. Yet in the secret chamber of his heart he bore a great love for the Master.
   Sri Ramakrishna was grateful to the Divine Mother for sending him one who doubted his own realizations. Often he asked Narendra to test him as the money-changers test their coins. He laughed at Narendra's biting criticism of his spiritual experiences and samadhi. When at times Narendra's sharp words distressed him, the Divine Mother Herself would console him, saying: "Why do you listen to him? In a few days he will believe your every word." He could hardly bear Narendra's absences. Often he would weep bitterly for the sight of him. Sometimes Narendra would find the Master's love embarrassing; and one day he sharply scolded him, warning him that such infatuation would soon draw him down to the level of its object. The Master was distressed and prayed to the Divine Mother. Then he said to Narendra: "You rogue, I won't listen to you any more. Mother says that I love you because I see God in you, and the day I no longer see God in you I shall not be able to bear even the sight of you."
   The Master wanted to train Narendra in the teachings of the non-dualistic Vedanta philosophy. But Narendra, because of his Brahmo upbringing, considered it wholly blasphemous to look on Man as one with his Creator. One day at the temple garden he laughingly said to a friend: "How silly! This jug is God! This cup is God! Whatever we see is God! And we too are God! Nothing could be more absurd." Sri Ramakrishna came out of his room and gently touched him. Spellbound, he immediately perceived that everything in the world was indeed God. A new universe opened around him. Returning home in a dazed state, he found there too that the food, the plate, the eater himself, the people around him, were all God. When he walked in the street, he saw that the cabs, the horses, the streams of people, the buildings, were all BrahMan. He could hardly go about his day's business. His parents became anxious about him and thought him ill. And when the intensity of the experience abated a little, he saw the world as a dream. Walking in the public square, he would strike his head against the iron railings to know whether they were real. It took him a number of days to recover his normal self. He had a foretaste of the great experiences yet to come and realized that the words of the Vedanta were true.
   At the beginning of 1884 Narendra's father suddenly died of heart-failure, leaving the family in a state of utmost poverty. There were six or seven mouths to feed at home. Creditors were knocking at the door. Relatives who had accepted his father's unstinted kindness now became enemies, some even bringing suit to deprive Narendra of his ancestral home. Actually starving and barefoot, Narendra searched for a job, but without success. He began to doubt whether anywhere in the world there was such a thing as unselfish sympathy. Two rich women made evil proposals to him and promised to put an end to his distress; but he refused them with contempt.
   Narendra began to talk of his doubt of the very existence of God. His friends thought he had become an atheist, and piously circulated gossip adducing unmentionable motives for his unbelief. His moral character was maligned. Even some of the Master's disciples partly believed the gossip, and Narendra told these to their faces that only a coward believed in God through fear of suffering or hell. But he was distressed to think that Sri Ramakrishna, too, might believe these false reports. His pride revolted. He said to himself: "What does it matter? If a Man's good name rests on such slender foundations, I don't care." But later on he was amazed to learn that the Master had never lost faith in him. To a disciple who complained about Narendra's degradation, Sri Ramakrishna replied: "Hush, you fool! The Mother has told me it can never be so. I won't look at you if you speak that way again."
   The moment came when Narendra's distress reached its climax. He had gone the whole day without food. As he was returning home in the evening he could hardly lift his tired limbs. He sat down in front of a house in sheer exhaustion, too weak even to think. His mind began to wander. Then, suddenly, a divine power lifted the veil over his soul. He found the solution of the problem of the coexistence of divine justice and misery, the presence of suffering in the creation of a blissful Providence. He felt bodily refreshed, his soul was bathed in peace, and he slept serenely.
  --
   Others destined to be monastic disciples of Sri Ramakrishna came to Dakshineswar. Taraknath Ghoshal had felt from his boyhood the noble desire to realize God. Keshab and the Brahmo Samaj had attracted him but proved inadequate. In 1882 he first met the Master at Ramchandra's house and was astonished to hear him talk about samadhi, a subject which always fascinated his mind. And that evening he actually saw a Manifestation of that superconscious state in the Master. Tarak became a frequent visitor at Dakshineswar and received the Master's grace in abundance. The young boy often felt ecstatic fervour in meditation. He also wept profusely while meditating on God. Sri Ramakrishna said to him: "God favours those who can weep for Him. Tears shed for God wash away the sins of former births."
   --- BABURAM
  --
   Nitya Niranjan Sen was a disciple of heroic type. He came to the Master when he was eighteen years old. He was a medium for a group of spiritualists. During his first visit the Master said to him: "My boy, if you think always of ghosts you will become a ghost, and if you think of God you will become God. Now, which do you prefer?" Niranjan severed all connexions with the spiritualists. During his second visit the Master embraced him and said warmly: "Niranjan, my boy, the days are flitting away. When will you realize God? This life will be in vain if you do not realize Him. When will you devote your mind wholly to God?" Niranjan was surprised to see the Master's great anxiety for his spiritual welfare. He was a young Man endowed with unusual spiritual parts. He felt disdain for worldly pleasures and was totally guileless, like a child. But he had a violent temper. One day, as he was coming in a country boat to Dakshineswar, some of his fellow passengers began to speak ill of the Master. Finding his protest futile, Niranjan began to rock the boat, threatening to sink it in mid stream. That silenced the offenders. When he reported the incident to the Master, he was rebuked for his inability to curb his anger.
   --- JOGINDRA
  --
   Sri Ramakrishna employed a ruse to bring Jogindra to him. As soon as the disciple entered the room, the Master rushed forward to meet the young Man. Catching hold of the disciple's hand, he said: "What if you have married? Haven't I too married? What is there to be afraid of in that?" Touching his own chest he said: "If this [meaning himself] is propitious, then even a hundred thousand marriages cannot injure you. If you desire to lead a householder's life, then bring your wife here one day, and I shall see that she becomes a real companion in your spiritual progress. But if you want to lead a monastic life, then I shall eat up your attachment to the world." Jogin was dumbfounded at these words. He received new strength, and his spirit of renunciation was re-established.
   --- SASHI AND SARAT
   Sashi and Sarat were two cousins who came from a pious brahmin family of Calcutta. At an early age they had joined the Brahmo Samaj and had come under the influence of Keshab Sen. The Master said to them at their first meeting: "If bricks and tiles are burnt after the trade-mark has been stamped on them, they retain the mark for ever. Similarly, Man should be stamped with God before entering the world. Then he will not become attached to worldliness." Fully aware of the future course of their life, he asked them not to marry. The Master asked Sashi whether he believed in God with form or in God without form. Sashi replied that he was not even sure about the existence of God; so he could not speak one way or the other. This frank answer very much pleased the Master.
   Sarat's soul longed for the all-embracing realization of the Godhead. When the Master inquired whether there was any particular form of God he wished to see, the boy replied that he would like to see God in all the living beings of the world. "But", the Master demurred, "that is the last word in realization. One cannot have it at the very outset." Sarat stated calmly: "I won't be satisfied with anything short of that. I shall trudge on along the path till I attain that blessed state." Sri Ramakrishna was very much pleased.
  --
   Harinath had led the austere life of a brahmachari even from his early boyhood — bathing in the Ganges every day, cooking his own meals, waking before sunrise, and reciting the Gita from memory before leaving bed. He found in the Master the embodiment of the Vedanta scriptures. Aspiring to be a follower of the ascetic Sankara, he cherished a great hatred for women. One day he said to the Master that he could not allow even small girls to come near him. The Master scolded him and said: "You are talking like a fool. Why should you hate women? They are the Manifestations of the Divine Mother. Regard them as your own mother and you will never feel their evil influence. The more you hate them, the more you will fall into their snares." Hari said later that these words completely changed his attitude toward women.
   The Master knew Hari's passion for Vedanta. But he did not wish any of his disciples to become a dry ascetic or a mere bookworm. So he asked Hari to practise Vedanta in life by giving up the unreal and following the Real. "But it is not so easy", Sri Ramakrishna said, "to realize the illusoriness of the world. Study alone does not help one very much. The grace of God is required. Mere personal effort is futile. A Man is a tiny creature after all, with very limited powers. But he can achieve the impossible if he prays to God for His grace." Whereupon the Master sang a song in praise of grace. Hari was profoundly moved and shed tears. Later in life Hari achieved a wonderful synthesis of the ideals of the Personal God and the Impersonal Truth.
   --- GANGADHAR
  --
   Hariprasanna, a college student, visited the Master in the company of his friends Sashi and Sarat. Sri Ramakrishna showed him great favour by initiating him into spiritual life. As long as he lived, Hariprasanna remembered and observed the following drastic advice of the Master: "Even if a woMan is pure as gold and rolls on the ground for love of God, it is dangerous for a monk ever to look at her."
   --- KALI
   Kaliprasad visited the Master toward the end of 1883. Given to the practice of meditation and the study of the scriptures. Kali was particularly interested in yoga. Feeling the need of a guru in spiritual life, he came to the Master and was accepted as a disciple. The young boy possessed a rational mind and often felt sceptical about the Personal God. The Master said to him: "Your doubts will soon disappear. Others, too, have passed through such a state of mind. Look at Naren. He now weeps at the names of Radha and Krishna." Kali began to see visions of gods and goddesses. Very soon these disappeared and in meditation he experienced vastness, infinity, and the other attributes of the Impersonal BrahMan.
   --- SUBODH
  --
   --- WOMan DEVOTEES
   With his woMan devotees Sri Ramakrishna established a very sweet relationship. He himself embodied the tender traits of a woMan: he had dwelt on the highest plane of Truth, where there is not even the slightest trace of sex; and his innate purity evoked only the noblest emotion in men and women alike. His woMan devotees often said: "We seldom looked on Sri Ramakrishna as a member of the male sex. We regarded him as one of us. We never felt any constraint before him. He was our best confidant." They loved him as their child, their friend, and their teacher. In spiritual discipline he advised them to renounce lust and greed and especially warned them not to fall into the snares of men.
   --- GOPAL MA
   Unsurpassed among the woMan devotees of the Master in the richness of her devotion and spiritual experiences was AghoreMani Devi, an orthodox brahmin woMan. Widowed at an early age, she had dedicated herself completely to spiritual pursuits. Gopala, the Baby Krishna, was her Ideal Deity, whom she worshipped following the vatsalya attitude of the Vaishnava religion, regarding Him as her own child. Through Him she satisfied her unassuaged maternal love, cooking for Him, feeding Him, bathing Him, and putting Him to bed. This sweet intimacy with Gopala won her the sobriquet of Gopal Ma, or Gopala's Mother. For forty years she had lived on the bank of the Ganges in a small, bare room, her only companions being a threadbare copy of the Ramayana and a bag containing her rosary. At the age of sixty, in 1884, she visited Sri Ramakrishna at Dakshineswar. During the second visit, as soon as the Master saw her, he said: "Oh, you have come! Give me something to eat." With great hesitation she gave him some ordinary sweets that she had purchased for him on the way. The Master ate them with relish and asked her to bring him simple curries or sweets prepared by her own hands. Gopal Ma thought him a queer kind of monk, for, instead of talking of God, he always asked for food. She did not want to visit him again, but an irresistible attraction brought her back to the temple garden; She carried with her some simple curries that she had cooked herself.
   One early morning at three o'clock, about a year later, Gopal Ma was about to finish her daily devotions, when she was startled to find Sri Ramakrishna sitting on her left, with his right hand clenched, like the hand of the image of Gopala. She was amazed and caught hold of the hand, whereupon the figure vanished and in its place appeared the real Gopala, her Ideal Deity. She cried aloud with joy. Gopala begged her for butter. She pleaded her poverty and gave Him some dry coconut candies. Gopala, sat on her lap, snatched away her rosary, jumped on her shoulders, and moved all about the room. As soon as the day broke she hastened to Dakshineswar like an insane woMan. Of course Gopala accompanied her, resting His head on her shoulder. She clearly saw His tiny ruddy feet hanging over her breast. She entered Sri Ramakrishna's room. The Master had fallen into samadhi. Like a child, he sat on her lap, and she began to feed him with butter, cream, and other delicacies. After some time he regained consciousness and returned to his bed. But the mind of Gopala's Mother was still roaming in another plane. She was steeped in bliss. She saw Gopala frequently entering the Master's body and again coming out of it. When she returned to her hut, still in a dazed condition, Gopala accompanied her.
   She spent about two months in uninterrupted communion with God, the Baby Gopala never leaving her for a moment. Then the intensity of her vision was lessened; had it not been, her body would have perished. The Master spoke highly of her exalted spiritual condition and said that such vision of God was a rare thing for ordinary mortals. The fun-loving Master one day confronted the critical Narendranath with this simple-minded woMan. No two could have presented a more striking contrast. The Master knew of Narendra's lofty contempt for all visions, and he asked the old lady to narrate her experiences to Narendra. With great hesitation she told him her story. Now and then she interrupted her maternal chatter to ask Narendra: "My son, I am a poor ignorant woMan. I don't understand anything. You are so learned. Now tell me if these visions of Gopala are true." As Narendra listened to the story he was profoundly moved. He said, "Yes, mother, they are quite true." Behind his cynicism Narendra, too, possessed a heart full of love and tenderness.
   --- THE MARCH OF EVENTS
  --
   One day, in January 1884, the Master was going toward the pine-grove when he went into a trance. He was alone. There was no one to support him or guide his footsteps. He fell to the ground and dislocated a bone in his left arm. This accident had a significant influence on his mind, the natural inclination of which was to soar above the consciousness of the body. The acute pain in the arm forced his mind to dwell on the body and on the world outside. But he saw even in this a divine purpose; for, with his mind compelled to dwell on the physical plane, he realized more than ever that he was an instrument in the hand of the Divine Mother, who had a mission to fulfil through his huMan body and mind. He also distinctly found that in the phenomenal world God Manifests Himself, in an inscrutable way, through diverse huMan beings, both good and evil. Thus he would speak of God in the guise of the wicked, God in the guise of the pious. God in the guise of the hypocrite, God in the guise of the lewd. He began to take a special delight in watching the divine play in the relative world. Sometimes the sweet huMan relationship with God would appear to him more appealing than the all-effacing Knowledge of BrahMan. Many a time he would pray: "Mother, don't make me unconscious through the Knowledge of BrahMan. Don't give me Brahmajnana, Mother. Am I not Your child, and naturally timid? I must have my Mother. A million salutations to the Knowledge of BrahMan! Give it to those who want it." Again he prayed: "O Mother let me remain in contact with men! Don't make me a dried-up ascetic. I want to enjoy Your sport in the world." He was able to taste this very rich divine experience and enjoy the love of God and the company of His devotees because his mind, on account of the injury to his arm, was forced to come down to the consciousness of the body. Again, he would make fun of people who proclaimed him as a Divine Incarnation, by pointing to his broken arm. He would say, "Have you ever heard of God breaking His arm?" It took the arm about five months to heal.
   --- BEGINNING OF HIS ILLNESS
   In April 1885 the Master's throat became inflamed. Prolonged conversation or absorption in samadhi, making the blood flow into the throat, would aggravate the pain. Yet when the annual Vaishnava festival was celebrated at Panihati, Sri Ramakrishna attended it against the doctor's advice. With a group of disciples he spent himself in music, dance, and ecstasy. The illness took a turn for the worse and was diagnosed as "clergyMan's sore throat". The patient was cautioned against conversation and ecstasies. Though he followed the physician's directions regarding medicine and diet, he could neither control his trances nor withhold from seekers the solace of his advice. Sometimes, like a sulky child, he would complain to the Mother about the crowds, who gave him no rest day or night. He was overheard to say to Her; "Why do You bring here all these worthless people, who are like milk diluted with five times its own quantity of water? My eyes are almost destroyed with blowing the fire to dry up the water. My health is gone. It is beyond my strength. Do it Yourself, if You want it done. This (pointing to his own body) is but a perforated drum, and if you go on beating it day in and day out, how long will it last?"
   But his large heart never turned anyone away. He said, "Let me be condemned to be born over and over again, even in the form of a dog, if I can be of help to a single soul." And he bore the pain, singing cheerfully, "Let the body be preoccupied with illness, but, O mind, dwell for ever in God's Bliss!"
  --
   In the beginning of September 1885 Sri Ramakrishna was moved to Syampukur. Here Narendra organized the young disciples to attend the Master day and night. At first they concealed the Master's illness from their guardians; but when it became more serious they remained with him almost constantly, sweeping aside the objections of their relatives and devoting themselves whole-heartedly to the nursing of their beloved guru. These young men, under the watchful eyes of the Master and the leadership of Narendra, became the antaranga bhaktas, the devotees of Sri Ramakrishna's inner circle. They were privileged to witness Many Manifestations of the Master's divine powers. Narendra received instructions regarding the propagation of his message after his death.
   The Holy Mother — so Sarada Devi had come to be affectionately known by Sri Ramakrishna's devotees — was brought from Dakshineswar to look after the general cooking and to prepare the special diet of the patient. The dwelling space being extremely limited, she had to adapt herself to cramped conditions. At three o'clock in the morning she would finish her bath in the Ganges and then enter a small covered place on the roof, where she spent the whole day cooking and praying. After eleven at night, when the visitors went away, she would come down to her small bedroom on the first floor to enjoy a few hours' sleep. Thus she spent three months, working hard, sleeping little, and praying constantly for the Master's recovery.
  --
   The more the body was devastated by illness, the more it became the habitation of the Divine Spirit. Through its transparency the gods and goddesses began to shine with ever increasing luminosity. On the day of the Kali Puja the devotees clearly saw in him the Manifestation of the Divine Mother.
   It was noticed at this time that some of the devotees were making an unbridled display of their emotions. A number of them, particularly among the householders, began to cultivate, though at first unconsciously, the art of shedding tears, shaking the body, contorting the face, and going into trances, attempting thereby to imitate the Master. They began openly to declare Sri Ramakrishna a Divine Incarnation and to regard themselves as his chosen people, who could neglect religious disciplines with impunity. Narendra's penetrating eye soon sized up the situation. He found out that some of these external Manifestations were being carefully practised at home, while some were the outcome of malnutrition, mental weakness, or nervous debility. He mercilessly exposed the devotees who were pretending to have visions, and asked all to develop a healthy religious spirit. Narendra sang inspiring songs for the younger devotees, read with them the Imitation of Christ and the Gita, and held before them the positive ideals of spirituality.
   --- LAST DAYS AT COSSIPORE
  --
   It was at Cossipore that the curtain fell on the varied activities of the Master's life on the physical plane. His soul lingered in the body eight months more. It was the period of his great Passion, a constant crucifixion of the body and the triumphant revelation of the Soul. Here one sees the huManity and divinity of the Master passing and repassing across a thin border line. Every minute of those eight months was suffused with touching tenderness of heart and breath-taking elevation of spirit. Every word he uttered was full of pathos and sublimity.
   It took the group only a few days to become adjusted to the new environment. The Holy Mother, assisted by Sri Ramakrishna's niece, Lakshmi Devi, and a few woMan devotees, took charge of the cooking for the Master and his attendants. Surendra willingly bore the major portion of the expenses, other householders contributing according to their means. Twelve disciples were constant attendants of the Master: Narendra, Rakhal, Baburam, Niranjan, Jogin, Latu, Tarak, the-elder Gopal, Kali, Sashi, Sarat, and the younger Gopal. Sarada, Harish, Hari, Gangadhar, and Tulasi visited the Master from time to time and practised sadhana at home. Narendra, preparing for his law examination, brought his books to the garden house in order to continue his studies during the infrequent spare moments. He encouraged his brother disciples to intensify their meditation, scriptural studies, and other spiritual disciplines. They all forgot their relatives and their
   worldly duties.
  --
   "I shall make the whole thing public before I go", the Master had said some time before. On January 1, 1886, he felt better and came down to the garden for a little stroll. It was about three o'clock in the afternoon. Some thirty lay disciples were in the hall or sitting about under the trees. Sri Ramakrishna said to Girish, "Well, Girish, what have you seen in me, that you proclaim me before everybody as an Incarnation of God?" Girish was not the Man to be taken by surprise. He knelt before the Master and said, with folded hands, "What can an insignificant person like myself say about the One whose glory even sages like Vyasa and Valmiki could not adequately measure?" The Master was profoundly moved. He said: "What more shall I say? I bless you all. Be illumined!" He fell into a spiritual mood. Hearing these words the devotees, one and all, became overwhelmed with emotion. They rushed to him and fell at his feet. He touched them all, and each received an appropriate benediction. Each of them, at the touch of the Master, experienced ineffable bliss. Some laughed, some wept, some sat down to meditate, some began to pray. Some saw light, some had visions of their Chosen Ideals, and some felt within their bodies the rush of spiritual power.
   Narendra, consumed with a terrific fever for realization, complained to the Master that all the others had attained peace and that he alone was dissatisfied. The Master asked what he wanted. Narendra begged for samadhi, so that he might altogether forget the world for three or four days at a time. "You are a fool", the Master rebuked him. "There is a state even higher than that. Isn't it you who sing, 'All that exists art Thou'? First of all settle your family affairs and then come to me. You will experience a state even higher than samadhi."
  --
   The words were tender and touching. Like a mother he caressed Narendra and Rakhal, gently stroking their faces. He said in a half whisper to M., "Had this body been allowed to last a little longer, Many more souls would have been illumined." He paused a moment and then said: "But Mother has ordained otherwise. She will take me away lest, finding me guileless and foolish, people should take advantage of me and persuade me to bestow on them the rare gifts of spirituality." A few minutes later he touched his chest and said: "Here are two beings. One is She and the other is Her devotee. It is the latter who broke his arm, and it is he again who is now ill. Do you understand me?" After a pause he added: "Alas! To whom shall I tell all this? Who will understand me?" "Pain", he consoled them again, 'is unavoidable as long as there is a body. The Lord takes on the body for the sake of His devotees."
   Yet one is not sure whether the Master's soul actually was tortured by this agonizing disease. At least during his moments of spiritual exaltation — which became almost constant during the closing days of his life on earth — he lost all consciousness of the body, of illness and suffering. One of his attendants (Latu, later known as Swami Adbhutananda.) said later on: "While Sri Ramakrishna lay sick he never actually suffered pain. He would often say: 'O mind! Forget the body, forget the sickness, and remain merged in Bliss.' No, he did not really suffer. At times he would be in a state when the thrill of joy was clearly Manifested in his body. Even when he could not speak he would let us know in some way that there was no suffering, and this fact was clearly evident to all who watched him. People who did not understand him thought that his suffering was very great. What spiritual joy he transmitted to us at that time! Could such a thing have been possible if he had 'been suffering physically? It was during this period that he taught us again these truths: 'BrahMan is always unattached. The three gunas are in It, but It is unaffected by them, just as the wind carries odour yet remains odourless.' 'BrahMan is Infinite Being, Infinite Wisdom, Infinite Bliss. In It there exist no delusion, no misery, no disease, no death, no growth, no decay.' 'The Transcendental Being and the being within are one and the same. There is one indivisible Absolute Existence.'"
   The Holy Mother secretly went to a Siva temple across the Ganges to intercede with the Deity for the Master's recovery. In a revelation she was told to prepare herself for the inevitable end.

0.00 - The Book of Lies Text, #The Book of Lies, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
     true as is possible to huMan language.
     The verse from Tennyson is inserted partly because
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    deMand deep knowledge of the Qabalah for inter-
    pretation, others contain obscure allusions, play
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    only of Free Masonry but of Many other traditions
    blazed upon my spiritual vision. From that moment
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    to the future progress of huManity...."
     The Commentary was written by Crowley prob-
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    helpful for the light it throws on Many of its passages.
                     The Editors
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           The broken Manifests Light. (2)
            The Second Triad which is GOD
  --
       GOD is Manifest in gathering: harmony: considera-
         tion: the Mirror of the Sun and of the Heart.
  --
               The Tenth EManation
            The world.
  --
    Yesod in the Third Triad, and Malkuth in the Tenth EManation.
     It will be noticed that this cosmogony is very complete; the
    Manifestation even of God does not appear until Tiphareth; and
    the universe itself not until Malkuth.
     The chapter Many therefore be considered as the most complete
    treatise on existence ever written.
  --
       Four Words: Naught-One-Many-All.
             Thou-Child!
  --
    The Many is as adorable to the One as the One is to
     the Many. This is the Love of These; creation-
     parturition is the Bliss of the One; coition-
     dissolution is the Bliss of the Many.
    The All, thus interwoven of These, is Bliss.
  --
    The Man delights in uniting with the WoMan; the
     WoMan in parting from the Child.
    The Brothers of A.'.A.'. are Women: the Aspirants
  --
    it is the formula of the Scarlet woMan; but no impression
    must be allowed to dominate you, only to fructify you;
  --
    being the Holy Ghost, the semen; the huMan form is a
    non-essential accretion of this quintessence.
  --
    Compare the doctrine of the higher and lower Manas in
    Theosophy.
  --
    Each star contained a Many thousand million things.
    Of these the reasoner took six, and, preening, said:
  --
    that substance is composed of Many spheres.
     The account given of Creation is the same as that
  --
    Logos transforming the unity into the Many.
     We then see what different classes of people do with
    the Many.
     The Rationalist takes the six Sephiroth of Micro-
  --
    All that a Man is or may be is hidden therein.
    Bodily functions are parts of the machine; silent,
  --
    Therefore is Man only himself when lost to himself
     in The Charioting.
  --
     Therefore, except in the case of an Adept, Man only
    rises to a glimmer of the universal consciousness, while,
  --
    Wherefore hath Matter Manifested itself in Motion?
    Answer not, O silent one! For THERE is no "where-
  --
     Teth is the Tarot trump, Strength, in which a woMan
    is represented closing the mouth of a lion.
  --
    apparatus for closing the mouth of a woMan.
     The chapter is formally an attack upon the parts of
  --
    This Abyss is also called "Hell", and "The Many".
     Its name is "Consciousness", and "The Universe",
  --
    thus identified with consciousness, the Many, and both;
    but within this is a secret unity which rejoices; this
  --
     for all that is, what is it but a Manifestation, that is,
     a part, that is, a falsehood, of THAT which is not?
  --
     illusions; let me play the Man, and thrust it from
     me! Amen.
  --
    of its Manifested side. Those which are above the Abyss
    are therefore said to live in the Night of Pan; they are
  --
     Now, below the Abyss, the Manifested part of the
    Master of the temple, also reaches Samadhi, as the
  --
    unity Manifested as the Many, for {Sigma} (1-13) gives the
    whole course of numbers from the simple unity of 1
  --
     As Man loses his personality in physical love, so
    does the magician annihilate his divine personality in
  --
    Modern Greek peasants, in Many cases, cling to Pagan
    belief, and suppose that in death they are united to the
  --
    even Aum is imperManent. There is no meaning in the
    word, stillness, so long as motion exists.
  --
    the Adept to Mankind. Their hate and contempt are
    necessary steps to his acquisition of sovereignty over
  --
    Man returneth not again; the stream floweth not
     uphill; the old life is no more; there is a new life
  --
    than that of the Man who is its guardian and servant.
                   [47]
  --
    and refers to the letter Tau, the Phallus in Manifesta-
    tion; hence the title, "The Blind Webster".
  --
    But no Man is strong enough to have no interest.
     Therefore the best king would be Pure Chance.
  --
    What Man is at ease in his Inn?
    Get out.
  --
    Work under the figure of a Man ridding himself of all
    his accidents.
  --
     (13) T, Manhood, the sign of the cross or phallus.
    UT, the Holy Guardian Angel; UT, the first syllable
  --
    Explain thou snow to them of AndaMan.
    The slaves of reason call this book Abuse-of-
  --
    These six and four are ten, 10, the One Manifested
     that returns into the Naught unManifest.
    The All-Mighty, the All-Ruler, the All-Knower, the
  --
    grammaton, the Manifest creator, Jehovah.
     He is called the Second in relation to that which is
  --
    Strain forth thine Intelligence, O Man, O worthy
     one, O chosen of IT, to apprehend the discourse
  --
    IT, I being the secret, and T being the Manifested,
    phallus.
  --
    the the throat in huMan anatomy. Hence the title of the
    chapter, "The Garotte".
  --
    descend upon Tiphareth, where the huMan will is
    situated, and flood it with the ineffable light.
  --
    of Mantra-Yoga.
     A Mantra is not being properly said as long as the
    Man knows he is saying it. The same applies to all other
    forms of Magick.
  --
    Each act of Man is the twist and double of an hare.
    Love and death are the greyhounds that course him.
  --
    This is the Comedy of Pan, that Man should think
     he hunteth, while those hounds hunt him.
    This is the Tragedy of Man when facing Love and
     Death he turns to bay. He is no more hare, but
  --
    All that we know of Man, Nature, God, is just that
     which they are not; it is that which they throw off
  --
     HIMOG from the inglorious Man of earth?
    Distinguish not!
  --
     Classing in this Manner all things as illusions, the
    question arises as to the distinguishing between illusions;
    how are we to tell whether a Holy Illuminated Man of
    God is really so, since we can see nothing of him but
  --
    Illuminated Man of God.
                   [91]
  --
    In any may he Manifest; yet in one hath he chosen
     to Manifest; and this one hath given His ring as a
     Seal of Authority to the Work of the A.'.A.'.
  --
     Mand.
    Also, since below the Abyss Reason is Lord, let men
  --
    Manifestation of magical force, the spermatozoon in the
    conical phallus. For wheels, see Chapter 78.
  --
    woMan is superior to Man, and that all men are born
    equal.
  --
     Many, or of the Many to the One. This also is the
     cause of joy.
  --
    Hunger thou, O Man, for the infinite: be insatiable
     even for the finite; thus at The End shalt thou
  --
    Makes a Man healthy and wealthy and wise:
    But late to watch and early to pray
  --
     Man may come nigh unto Her.
    In Her wine-cup are seven streams of the blood of
  --
     of a Poet: the head of An Adulterous WoMan: the
     head of a Man of Valour: the head of a Satyr:
     and the head of a Lion-Serpent.
  --
     Number of a WoMan; and Her Number is
      An Hundred and Fifty and Six.
  --
     In paragraph 3 NO Man is of course NEMO, the
    Master of the Temple, Liber 418 will explain most of the
  --
    Many names: of those names BABALON is the holiest.
    It is the name referred to in Liber Legis, 1, 22.
  --
     jewel between his eyes-Aum Mani Padmen
     Hum! (Keep us from Evil!)
  --
     In the Spring a young Man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts
       of love."
  --
    this jewel being the divine spark in Man, and indeed in all
    that "lives and moves and has its being". Note this phrase,
  --
    woMan.
     This "toad" and "jewel" are further identified with the
  --
    Manual signs in each of these degrees.
     The moral of the chapter is apparently that the
  --
    woMan, playing by a stream, surrounded by birds and
    butterflies. The pole-axe is recommended instead of
  --
    God! in what prism may any Man analyse my Light?
    Immortal are the adepts; and ye hey die-They
  --
    GethseMane and Golgotha must appear like whitlows.
     In paragraph 7 the agony is broken up by the
  --
    Man that has spine, and hopes of heaven-to-be,
    Lacks the Amoeba's immortality.
  --
    The qualities which have made a Man, a race, a city,
     a caste, must be thrown off; death is the penalty
  --
    The EnglishMan lives upon the excrement of his
     forefathers.
  --
    O if everyMan did No Matter What, provided that it
     is the one thing that he will not and cannot do!
  --
     The word virtus means "the quality of Manhood".
    Modern "virtue" is the negation of all such qualities.
  --
    Who told thee, Man, that LAYLAH is not Nuit, nd
     I hadit?
  --
    opposite rules apply. His unity seeks the Many, and
    the Many is again transmuted to the one. Solve et
    Coagula.
  --
    "An Man of spunk," they urged, "would hardly
     choose
  --
               THE PRAYING ManTIS
    "Say: God is One." This I obeyed: for a thousand
  --
     66 is the number of Allah; the praying Mantis is a
    blasphemous grasshopper which caricatures the pious.
  --
                  ManNA
    At four o'clock there is hardly anybody in Rumpel-
  --
     in GethseMane?
    These prophets were sad at heart; but the chocolate
  --
     Manna was a heavenly cake which, in the legend, fed
    the Children of Israel in the Wilderness.
  --
    Mankind, but comforts himself with the following
    reflections:
  --
     Man!
    Plunge from the height, O Man, and interlock with
     Beast!
  --
    to the confessions made by Many witches.
     I paragraph 7 is seen the meaning of the chapter;
  --
    and practice; and the whole of Mantra-Yoga has been
    built on this foundation.
  --
     O Hanged Man, O Camel-Termination-of-the-
     third-person-plural for thy multiplicity, thou
  --
  Man, has a close affinity for Gimel, as will be seen by a study of Liber 418.
   Unt is not only the Hindustani for Camel, but the usual termination of the
  --
    woMan.
                  [159]
  --
    With this gift a Man can spend his seventy years in
     peace.
  --
    Emphasise gift, then Man, then spend, then seventy
     years, and lastly peace, and change the intonations
  --
    of Many most worthy brethren that we have yielded up
    that time and thought which gold could not have bought,
  --
     Laylah is again the mere woMan.
                   NOTE
  --
  criticism of metaphysics as such, and this is doubtless one of its Many sub-
  meanings.
  --
     IN ITS MATURE MAGICAL ManIFESTATION
     THROUGH MATTER: AS IT IS WRITTEN: AN
  --
     7, the septenary; 11, the magical number; 77, the Mani-
    festation, therefore, of the septenary.
  --
    veils) of truth are obscure and Many, the Truth itself plain
    and one; but that the latter must be reached through the
  --
    Meditate long and broad and deep, O Man, upon this
     Wheel, revolving it in thy mind
  --
    These then proclaim "The Good Law" unto Mankind.
    These preach renunciation, "virtue", cowardice in
  --
    Speaking as an IrishMan, I prefer to say: The price
     of eternal warfare is existence.
  --
    rowdy IrishMan. he is no thin-lipped prude, to seek
    salvation in unManly self-abnegation; no Creeping
    Jesus, to slink through existence to the tune of the Dead
  --
     fancy a PoliceMan let loose on Society!
    While there exists the burgess, the hunting Man, or
     any Man with ideals less than Shelley's and self-
     discipline less than Loyola's-in short, any Man
     who falls far short of MYSELF-I am against
  --
    Every "eMancipator" has enslaved the free.
                  [172]
  --
    the EnglishMan. The latest Radical devices for
    securing freedom have turned nine out of ten English-
  --
    the government like so Many ticket-of-leave men.
     The only solution of the Social Problem is the
  --
    and the Manners and obligations of chivalry.
                  [173]
  --
    "There is no I, no joy, no perManence"?
    Witch-moon of blood, eternal ebb and flow
  --
    Many becomes two: two one: one Naught. What
     comes to Naught?
  --
    Ay! shall he not do so? he knows that the Many is
     Naught; and having Naught, enjoys that Naught
     even in the enjoyment of the Many.
    For when Naught becomes Absolute Naught, it
     becomes again the Many.
    Any this Many and this Naught are identical; they
     are not correlatives or phases of some one deeper
  --
    reduced the Many to Naught; as a consequence, he
    is no longer afraid of the Many.
     Paragraph 4. See berashith.
  --
    I distrust any thoughts uttered by any Man whose
     health is not robust.
  --
  for another analysis of the elements; but after a different Manner.
  Alpha ({Alpha}) is Air; Rho ({Rho}) the Sun; these are the Spirit and the
  --
                ManDARIN-MEALS
    There is a dish of sharks' fins and of sea-slug, well set
  --
     The Sigil is taken from a Gnostic talisMan, and
    refers to the Sacrament.
  --
     A Man advertises that he could tell anyone how to
    make four hundred a year certain, and would do so
  --
    Behold! I have lived Many years, and I have travelled
     in every land that is under the dominion of the
  --
     vanity on earth, except the love of a good woMan,
     and that good woMan LAYLAH. And I testify
     that in heaven all is vanity (for I have journeyed
  --
    66. The Praying Mantis.
    67. Sodom-Apples.
    68. Manna.
                  [195]
  --
       ARY IN ITS MATURE MAGICAL ManI-
       FESTATION THROUGH MATTER: AS IT
  --
    87. Mandarin-Meals.
    88. Gold Bricks.

0.00 - THE GOSPEL PREFACE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  IN THE HISTORY of the arts, genius is a thing of very rare occurrence. Rarer still, however, are the competent reporters and recorders of that genius. The world has had Many hundreds of admirable poets and philosophers; but of these hundreds only a very few have had the fortune to attract a Boswell or an EckerMann.
  When we leave the field of art for that of spiritual religion, the scarcity of competent reporters becomes even more strongly marked. Of the day-to-day life of the great theocentric saints and contemplatives we know, in the great majority of cases, nothing whatever. Many, it is true, have recorded their doctrines in writing, and a few, such as St. Augustine, Suso and St. Teresa, have left us autobiographies of the greatest value.
  But, all doctrinal writing is in some measure formal and impersonal, while the autobiographer tends to omit what he regards as trifling matters and suffers from the further disadvantage of being unable to say how he strikes other people and in what way he affects their lives. Moreover, most saints have left neither writings nor self-portraits, and for knowledge of their lives, their characters and their teachings, we are forced to rely upon the records made by their disciples who, in most cases, have proved themselves singularly incompetent as reporters and biographers. Hence the special interest attaching to this enormously detailed account of the daily life and conversations of Sri Ramakrishna.
  "M", as the author modestly styles himself, was peculiarly qualified for his task. To a reverent love for his master, to a deep and experiential knowledge of that master's teaching, he added a prodigious memory for the small happenings of each day and a happy gift for recording them in an interesting and realistic way. Making good use of his natural gifts and of the circumstances in which he found himself, "M" produced a book unique, so far as my knowledge goes, in the literature of hagiography. No other saint has had so able and indefatigable a Boswell. Never have the small events of a contemplative's daily life been described with such a wealth of intimate detail. Never have the casual and unstudied utterances of a great religious teacher been set down with so minute a fidelity. To Western readers, it is true, this fidelity and this wealth of detail are sometimes a trifle disconcerting; for the social, religious and intellectual frames of reference within which Sri Ramakrishna did his thinking and expressed his feelings were entirely Indian. But after the first few surprises and bewilderments, we begin to find something peculiarly stimulating and instructive about the very strangeness and, to our eyes, the eccentricity of the Man revealed to us in "M's" narrative. What a scholastic philosopher would call the "accidents" of Ramakrishna's life were intensely Hindu and therefore, so far as we in the West are concerned, unfamiliar and hard to understand; its "essence", however, was intensely mystical and therefore universal. To read through these conversations in which mystical doctrine alternates with an unfamiliar kind of humour, and where discussions of the oddest aspects of Hindu mythology give place to the most profound and subtle utterances about the nature of Ultimate Reality, is in itself a liberal, education in humility, tolerance and suspense of judgment. We must be grateful to the translator for his excellent version of a book so curious and delightful as a biographical document, so precious, at the same time, for what it teaches us of the life of the spirit.
  --------------------
  --
  I have made a literal translation, omitting only a few pages of no particular interest to English-speaking readers. Often literary grace has been sacrificed for the sake of literal translation. No translation can do full justice to the original. This difficulty is all the more felt in the present work, whose contents are of a deep mystical nature and describe the inner experiences of a great seer. HuMan language is an altogether inadequate vehicle to express supersensuous perception. Sri Ramakrishna was almost illiterate. He never clothed his thoughts in formal language. His words sought to convey his direct realization of Truth. His conversation was in a village patois. Therein lies its charm. In order to explain to his listeners an abstruse philosophy, he, like Christ before him, used with telling effect homely parables and illustrations, culled from his observation of the daily life around him.
  The reader will find mentioned in this work Many visions and experiences that fall outside the ken of physical science and even psychology. With the development of modern knowledge the border line between the natural and the supernatural is ever shifting its position. Genuine mystical experiences are not as suspect now as they were half a century ago. The words of Sri Ramakrishna have already exerted a tremendous influence in the land of his birth. Savants of Europe have found in his words the ring of universal truth.
  But these words were not the product of intellectual cogitation; they were rooted in direct experience. Hence, to students of religion, psychology, and physical science, these experiences of the Master are of immense value for the understanding of religious phenomena in general. No doubt Sri Ramakrishna was a Hindu of the Hindus; yet his experiences transcended the limits of the dogmas and creeds of Hinduism. Mystics of religions other than Hinduism will find in Sri Ramakrishna's experiences a corroboration of the experiences of their own prophets and seers. And this is very important today for the resuscitation of religious values. The sceptical reader may pass by the supernatural experiences; he will yet find in the book enough material to provoke his serious thought and solve Many of his spiritual problems.
  There are repetitions of teachings and parables in the book. I have kept them purposely. They have their charm and usefulness, repeated as they were in different settings. Repetition is unavoidable in a work of this kind. In the first place, different seekers come to a religious teacher with questions of more or less identical nature; hence the answers will be of more or less identical pattern. Besides, religious teachers of all times and climes have tried, by means of repetition, to hammer truths into the stony soil of the recalcitrant huMan mind. Finally, repetition does not seem tedious if the ideas repeated are dear to a Man's heart.
  I have thought it necessary to write a rather lengthy Introduction to the book. In it I have given the biography of the Master, descriptions of people who came in contact with him, short explanations of several systems of Indian religious thought intimately connected with Sri Ramakrishna's life, and other relevant matters which, I hope, will enable the reader better to understand and appreciate the unusual contents of this book. It is particularly important that the Western reader, unacquainted with Hindu religious thought, should first read carefully the introductory chapter, in order that he may fully enjoy these conversations. Many Indian terms and names have been retained in the book for want of suitable English equivalents. Their meaning is given either in the Glossary or in the foot-notes. The Glossary also gives explanations of a number of expressions unfamiliar to Western readers. The diacritical marks are explained under Notes on Pronunciation.
  In the Introduction I have drawn much material from the Life of Sri Ramakrishna, published by the Advaita Ashrama, Myvati, India. I have also consulted the excellent article on Sri Ramakrishna by Swami Nirvednanda, in the second volume of the Cultural Heritage of India.
  The book contains Many songs sung either by the Master or by the devotees. These form an important feature of the spiritual tradition of Bengal and were for the most part written by men of mystical experience. For giving the songs their present form I am grateful to Mr. John Moffitt, Jr.
  In the preparation of this Manuscript I have received ungrudging help from several friends. Miss Margaret Woodrow Wilson and Mr.Joseph Campbell have worked hard in editing my translation. Mrs.Elizabeth Davidson has typed, more than once, the entire Manuscript and rendered other valuable help. Mr.Aldous Huxley has laid me under a debt of gratitude by writing the Foreword. I sincerely thank them all.
  In the spiritual firmament Sri Ramakrishna is a waxing crescent. Within one hundred years of his birth and fifty years of his death his message has spread across land and sea. Romain Rolland has described him as the fulfilment of the spiritual aspirations of the three hundred millions of Hindus for the last two thousand years. Mahatma Gandhi has written: "His life enables us to see God face to face. . . . Ramakrishna was a living embodiment of godliness." He is being recognized as a compeer of Krishna, Buddha, and Christ.
  --
  May this translation of the first book of its kind in the religious history of the world, being the record of the direct words of a prophet, help stricken huManity to come nearer to the Eternal Verity of life and remove dissension and quarrel from among the different faiths!
  May it enable seekers of Truth to grasp the subtle laws of the supersensuous realm, and unfold before Man's restricted vision the spiritual foundation of the universe, the unity of existence, and the divinity of the soul!
  - Sw mi Nikhilnanda
  --
  He was an educationist all his life both in a spiritual and in a secular sense. After he passed out of College, he took up work as headmaster in a number of schools in succession Narail High School, City School, Ripon College School, Metropolitan School, Aryan School, Oriental School, Oriental Seminary and Model School. The causes of his migration from school to school were that he could not get on with some of the Managements on grounds of principles and that often his spiritual mood drew him away to places of pilgrimage for long periods. He worked with some of the most noted public men of the time like Iswar Chandra Vidysgar and Surendranath Banerjee. The latter appointed him as a professor in the City and Ripon Colleges where he taught subjects like English, philosophy, history and economics. In his later days he took over the Morton School, and he spent his time in the staircase room of the third floor of it, administering the school and preaching the message of the Master. He was much respected in educational circles where he was usually referred to as Rector Mahashay. A teacher who had worked under him writes thus in warm appreciation of his teaching methods: "Only when I worked with him in school could I appreciate what a great educationist he was. He would come down to the level of his students when teaching, though he himself was so learned, so talented. Ordinarily teachers confine their instruction to what is given in books without much thought as to whether the student can accept it or not. But M., would first of all gauge how much the student could take in and by what means. He would employ aids to teaching like maps, pictures and diagrams, so that his students could learn by seeing. Thirty years ago (from 1953) when the question of imparting education through the medium of the mother tongue was being discussed, M. had already employed Bengali as the medium of instruction in the Morton School." (M The Apostle and the Evangelist by Swami NityatMananda Part I. P. 15.)
  Imparting secular education was, however, only his profession ; his main concern was with the spiritual regeneration of Man a calling for which Destiny seems to have chosen him. From his childhood he was deeply pious, and he used to be moved very much by Sdhus, temples and Durga Puja celebrations. The piety and eloquence of the great Brahmo leader of the times, Keshab Chander Sen, elicited a powerful response from the impressionable mind of Mahendra Nath, as it did in the case of Many an idealistic young Man of Calcutta, and prepared him to receive the great Light that was to dawn on him with the coming of Sri Ramakrishna into his life.
  This epoch-making event of his life came about in a very strange way. M. belonged to a joint family with several collateral members. Some ten years after he began his career as an educationist, bitter quarrels broke out among the members of the family, driving the sensitive M. to despair and utter despondency. He lost all interest in life and left home one night to go into the wide world with the idea of ending his life. At dead of night he took rest in his sister's house at Baranagar, and in the morning, accompanied by a nephew Siddheswar, he wandered from one garden to another in Calcutta until Siddheswar brought him to the Temple Garden of Dakshineswar where Sri Ramakrishna was then living. After spending some time in the beautiful rose gardens there, he was directed to the room of the Paramahamsa, where the eventful meeting of the Master and the disciple took place on a blessed evening (the exact date is not on record) on a Sunday in March 1882. As regards what took place on the occasion, the reader is referred to the opening section of the first chapter of the Gospel.
  The Master, who divined the mood of desperation in M, his resolve to take leave of this 'play-field of deception', put new faith and hope into him by his gracious words of assurance: "God forbid! Why should you take leave of this world? Do you not feel blessed by discovering your Guru? By His grace, what is beyond all imagination or dreams can be easily achieved!" At these words the clouds of despair moved away from the horizon of M.'s mind, and the sunshine of a new hope revealed to him fresh vistas of meaning in life. Referring to this phase of his life, M. used to say, "Behold! where is the resolve to end life, and where, the discovery of God! That is, sorrow should be looked upon as a friend of Man. God is all good." ( Ibid P.33.)
  After this re-settlement, M's life revolved around the Master, though he continued his professional work as an educationist. During all holidays, including Sundays, he spent his time at Dakshineswar in the Master's company, and at times extended his stay to several days.
  --
  There was an urge in M. to abandon the household life and become a Sannysin. When he communicated this idea to the Master, he forbade him saying," Mother has told me that you have to do a little of Her work you will have to teach Bhagavata, the word of God to huManity. The Mother keeps a Bhagavata Pandit with a bondage in the world!"
  ( Ibid P.36.)
  An appropriate allusion indeed! Bhagavata, the great scripture that has given the word of Sri Krishna to Mankind, was composed by the Sage Vysa under similar circumstances. When caught up in a mood of depression like that of M, Vysa was advised by the sage Nrada that he would gain peace of mind only qn composing a work exclusively devoted to the depiction of the Lord's glorious attributes and His teachings on Knowledge and Devotion, and the result was that the world got from Vysa the invaluable gift of the Bhagavata Purana depicting the life and teachings of Sri Krishna.
  From the mental depression of the modem Vysa, the world has obtained the Kathmrita (Bengali Edition) the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna in English.
  Sri Ramakrishna was a teacher for both the Orders of Mankind, Sannysins and householders. His own life offered an ideal example for both, and he left behind disciples who followed the highest traditions he had set in respect of both these ways of life. M., along with Nag Mahashay, exemplified how a householder can rise to the highest level of sagehood. M. was married to Nikunja Devi, a distant relative of Keshab Chander Sen, even when he was reading at College, and he had four children, two sons and two daughters. The responsibility of the family, no doubt, made him dependent on his professional income, but the great devotee that he was, he never compromised with ideals and principles for this reason. Once when he was working as the headmaster in a school Managed by the great Vidysgar, the results of the school at the public examination happened to be rather poor, and Vidysgar attri buted it to M's preoccupation with the Master and his consequent failure to attend adequately to the school work. M. at once resigned his post without any thought of the morrow. Within a fortnight the family was in poverty, and M. was one day pacing up and down the verandah of his house, musing how he would feed his children the next day. Just then a Man came with a letter addressed to 'Mahendra Babu', and on opening it, M. found that it was a letter from his friend Sri Surendra Nath Banerjee, asking whether he would like to take up a professorship in the Ripon College. In this way three or four times he gave up the job that gave him the wherewithal to support the family, either for upholding principles or for practising spiritual Sadhanas in holy places, without any consideration of the possible dire worldly consequences; but he was always able to get over these difficulties somehow, and the interests of his family never suffered. In spite of his disregard for worldly goods, he was, towards the latter part of his life, in a fairly flourishing condition as the proprietor of the Morton School which he developed into a noted educational institution in the city. The Lord has said in the Bhagavad Git that in the case of those who think of nothing except Him, He Himself would take up all their material and spiritual responsibilities. M. was an example of the truth of the Lord's promise.
  Though his children received proper attention from him, his real family, both during the Master's lifetime and after, consisted of saints, devotees, Sannysins and spiritual aspirants. His life exemplifies the Master's teaching that an ideal householder must be like a good maidservant of a family, loving and caring properly for the children of the house, but knowing always that her real home and children are elsewhere. During the Master's lifetime he spent all his Sundays and other holidays with him and his devotees, and besides listening to the holy talks and devotional music, practised meditation both on the Personal and the Impersonal aspects of God under the direct guidance of the Master. In the pages of the Gospel the reader gets a picture of M.'s spiritual relationship with the Master how from a hazy belief in the Impersonal God of the Brahmos, he was step by step brought to accept both Personality and Impersonality as the two aspects of the same Non-dual Being, how he was convinced of the Manifestation of that Being as Gods, Goddesses and as Incarnations, and how he was established in a life that was both of a Jnni and of a Bhakta. This Jnni-Bhakta outlook and way of living became so dominant a feature of his life that Swami Raghavananda, who was very closely associated with him during his last six years, remarks: "Among those who lived with M. in latter days, some felt that he always lived in this constant and conscious union with God even with open eyes (i.e., even in waking consciousness)." (Swami Raghavananda's article on M. in Prabuddha Bharata vol. XXXVII. P. 442.)
  Besides undergoing spiritual disciplines at the feet of the Master, M. used to go to holy places during the Master's lifetime itself and afterwards too as a part of his Sdhan.
  He was one of the earliest of the disciples to visit Kamarpukur, the birthplace of the Master, in the latter's lifetime itself; for he wished to practise contemplation on the Master's early life in its true original setting. His experience there is described as follows by Swami NityatMananda: "By the grace of the Master, he saw the entire Kamarpukur as a holy place bathed in an effulgent Light. Trees and creepers, beasts and birds and men all were made of effulgence. So he prostrated to all on the road. He saw a torn cat, which appeared to him luminous with the Light of Consciousness. Immediately he fell to the ground and saluted it" (M The Apostle and the Evangelist by Swami NityatMananda vol. I. P. 40.) He had similar experience in Dakshineswar also. At the instance of the Master he also visited Puri, and in the words of Swami NityatMananda, "with indomitable courage, M. embraced the image of Jagannath out of season."
  The life of Sdhan and holy association that he started on at the feet of the Master, he continued all through his life. He has for this reason been most appropriately described as a Grihastha-Sannysi (householder-Sannysin). Though he was forbidden by the Master to become a Sannysin, his reverence for the Sannysa ideal was whole-hearted and was without any reservation. So after Sri Ramakrishna's passing away, while several of the Master's householder devotees considered the young Sannysin disciples of the Master as inexperienced and inconsequential, M. stood by them with the firm faith that the Master's life and message were going to be perpetuated only through them. Swami Vivekananda wrote from America in a letter to the inmates of the Math: "When Sri Thkur (Master) left the body, every one gave us up as a few unripe urchins. But M. and a few others did not leave us in the lurch. We cannot repay our debt to them." (Swami Raghavananda's article on M. in Prabuddha Bharata vol. XXX P. 442.)
  M. spent his weekends and holidays with the monastic brethren who, after the Master's demise, had formed themselves into an Order with a Math at Baranagore, and participated in the intense life of devotion and meditation that they followed. At other times he would retire to Dakshineswar or some garden in the city and spend several days in spiritual practice taking simple self-cooked food. In order to feel that he was one with all Mankind he often used to go out of his home at dead of night, and like a wandering Sannysin, sleep with the waifs on some open verandah or footpath on the road.
  After the Master's demise, M. went on pilgrimage several times. He visited Banras, Vrindvan, Ayodhy and other places. At Banras he visited the famous Trailinga Swmi and fed him with sweets, and he had long conversations with Swami Bhaskarananda, one of the noted saintly and scholarly Sannysins of the time. In 1912 he went with the Holy Mother to Banras, and spent about a year in the company of Sannysins at Banras, Vrindvan, Hardwar, Hrishikesh and Swargashram. But he returned to Calcutta, as that city offered him the unique opportunity of associating himself with the places hallowed by the Master in his lifetime. Afterwards he does not seem to have gone to any far-off place, but stayed on in his room in the Morton School carrying on his spiritual ministry, speaking on the Master and his teachings to the large number of people who flocked to him after having read his famous Kathmrita known to English readers as The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna.
  --
  While Many educated people heard Sri Ramakrishna's talks, it was given to this illustrious personage alone to leave a graphic and exact account of them for posterity, with details like date, hour, place, names and particulars about participants. HuManity owes this great book to the ingrained habit of diary-keeping with which M. was endowed.
  Even as a boy of about thirteen, while he was a student in the 3rd class of the Hare School, he was in the habit of keeping a diary. "Today on rising," he wrote in his diary, "I greeted my father and mother, prostrating on the ground before them" (Swami NityatMananda's 'M The Apostle and the Evangelist' Part I. P 29.) At another place he wrote, "Today, while on my way to school, I visited, as usual, the temples of Kli, the Mother at Tharitharia, and of Mother Sitala, and paid my obeisance to them." About twenty-five years after, when he met the Great Master in the spring of 1882, it was the same instinct of a born diary-writer that made him begin his book, 'unique in the literature of hagiography', with the memorable words: "When hearing the name of Hari or Rma once, you shed tears and your hair stands on end, then you may know for certain that you do not have to perform devotions such as Sandhya any more."
  In addition to this instinct for diary-keeping, M. had great endowments contri buting to success in this line. Writes Swami NityatMananda who lived in close association with M., in his book entitled M - The Apostle and Evangelist: "M.'s prodigious memory combined with his extraordinary power of imagination completely annihilated the distance of time and place for him. Even after the lapse of half a century he could always visualise vividly, scenes from the life of Sri Ramakrishna. Superb too was his power to portray pictures by words."
  Besides the prompting of his inherent instinct, the main inducement for M. to keep this diary of his experiences at Dakshineswar was his desire to provide himself with a means for living in holy company at all times. Being a school teacher, he could be with the Master only on Sundays and other holidays, and it was on his diary that he depended for 'holy company' on other days. The devotional scriptures like the Bhagavata say that holy company is the first and most important means for the generation and growth of devotion. For, in such company Man could hear talks on spiritual matters and listen to the glorification of Divine attri butes, charged with the fervour and conviction eManating from the hearts of great lovers of God. Such company is therefore the one certain means through which Sraddha (Faith), Rati (attachment to God) and Bhakti (loving devotion) are generated. The diary of his visits to Dakshineswar provided M. with material for re-living, through reading and contemplation, the holy company he had had earlier, even on days when he was not able to visit Dakshineswar. The wealth of details and the vivid description of men and things in the midst of which the sublime conversations are set, provide excellent material to re-live those experiences for any one with imaginative powers. It was observed by M.'s disciples and admirers that in later life also whenever he was free or alone, he would be pouring over his diary, transporting himself on the wings of imagination to the glorious days he spent at the feet of the Master.
  During the Master's lifetime M. does not seem to have revealed the contents of his diary to any one. There is an unconfirmed tradition that when the Master saw him taking notes, he expressed apprehension at the possibility of his utilising these to publicise him like Keshab Sen; for the Great Master was so full of the spirit of renunciation and humility that he disliked being lionised. It must be for this reason that no one knew about this precious diary of M. for a decade until he brought out selections from it as a pamphlet in English in 1897 with the Holy Mother's blessings and permission. The Holy Mother, being very much pleased to hear parts of the diary read to her in Bengali, wrote to M.: "When I heard the Kathmrita, (Bengali name of the book) I felt as if it was he, the Master, who was saying all that." ( Ibid Part I. P 37.)
  The two pamphlets in English entitled the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna appeared in October and November 1897. They drew the spontaneous acclamation of Swami Vivekananda, who wrote on 24th November of that year from Dehra Dun to M.:"Many Many thanks for your second leaflet. It is indeed wonderful. The move is quite original, and never was the life of a Great Teacher brought before the public untarnished by the writer's mind, as you are doing. The language also is beyond all praise, so fresh, so pointed, and withal so plain and easy. I cannot express in adequate terms how I have enjoyed them. I am really in a transport when I read them. Strange, isn't it? Our Teacher and Lord was so original, and each one of us will have to be original or nothing.
  I now understand why none of us attempted His life before. It has been reserved for you, this great work. He is with you evidently." ( Vednta Kesari Vol. XIX P. 141. Also given in the first edition of the Gospel published from Ramakrishna Math, Madras in 1911.)
  And Swamiji added a post script to the letter: "Socratic dialogues are Plato all over you are entirely hidden. Moreover, the dramatic part is infinitely beautiful. Everybody likes it here or in the West." Indeed, in order to be unknown, Mahendranath had used the pen-name M., under which the book has been appearing till now. But so great a book cannot remain obscure for long, nor can its author remain unrecognised by the large public in these modern times. M. and his book came to be widely known very soon and to meet the growing deMand, a full-sized book, Vol. I of the Gospel, translated by the author himself, was published in 1907 by the Brahmavadin Office, Madras. A second edition of it, revised by the author, was brought out by the Ramakrishna Math, Madras in December 1911, and subsequently a second part, containing new chapters from the original Bengali, was published by the same Math in 1922. The full English translation of the Gospel by Swami Nikhilananda appeared first in 1942.
  In Bengali the book is published in five volumes, the first part having appeared in 1902
  --
  The Apostle and the Evangelist by Swami NityatMananda Part I, P 37.)
  In 1905 he retired from the active life of a Professor and devoted his remaining twenty-seven years exclusively to the preaching of the life and message of the Great Master. He bought the Morton Institution from its original proprietors and shifted it to a commodious four-storeyed house at 50 Amherst Street, where it flourished under his Management as one of the most efficient educational institutions in Calcutta. He generally occupied a staircase room at the top of it, cooking his own meal which consisted only of milk and rice without variation, and attended to all his personal needs himself. His dress also was the simplest possible. It was his conviction that limitation of personal wants to the minimum is an important aid to holy living. About one hour in the morning he would spend in inspecting the classes of the school, and then retire to his staircase room to pour over his diary and live in the divine atmosphere of the earthly days of the Great Master, unless devotees and admirers had already gathered in his room seeking his holy company.
  In appearance, M. looked a Vedic Rishi. Tall and stately in bearing, he had a strong and well-built body, an unusually broad chest, high forehead and arms extending to the knees. His complexion was fair and his prominent eyes were always tinged with the expression of the divine love that filled his heart. Adorned with a silvery beard that flowed luxuriantly down his chest, and a shining face radiating the serenity and gravity of holiness, M. was as imposing and majestic as he was handsome and engaging in appearance. Humorous, sweet-tongued and eloquent when situations required, this great Maharishi of our age lived only to sing the glory of Sri Ramakrishna day and night.
  --
  Though a much-sought-after spiritual guide, an educationist of repute, and a contemporary and close associate of illustrious personages like Sri Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda, Keshab Chander Sen and Iswar Chander Vidysgar, he was always moved by the noble huManity of a lover of God, which consists in respecting the personalities of all as receptacles of the Divine Spirit. So he taught without the consciousness of a teacher, and no bar of superiority stood in the way of his doing the humblest service to his students and devotees. "He was a commission of love," writes his close devotee, Swami Raghavananda, "and yet his soft and sweet words would pierce the stoniest heart, make the worldly-minded weep and repent and turn Godwards."
  ( Prabuddha Bharata Vol. XXXVII P 499.)
  As time went on and the number of devotees increased, the staircase room and terrace of the 3rd floor of the Morton Institution became a veritable Naimisaranya of modern times, resounding during all hours of the day, and sometimes of night, too, with the word of God coming from the Rishi-like face of M. addressed to the eager God-seekers sitting around. To the devotees who helped him in preparing the text of the Gospel, he would dictate the conversations of the Master in a meditative mood, referring now and then to his diary. At times in the stillness of midnight he would awaken a nearby devotee and tell him: "Let us listen to the words of the Master in the depths of the night as he explains the truth of the Pranava." ( Vednta Kesari XIX P. 142.) Swami Raghavananda, an intimate devotee of M., writes as follows about these devotional sittings: "In the sweet and warm months of April and May, sitting under the canopy of heaven on the roof-garden of 50 Amherst Street, surrounded by shrubs and plants, himself sitting in their midst like a Rishi of old, the stars and planets in their courses beckoning us to things infinite and sublime, he would speak to us of the mysteries of God and His love and of the yearning that would rise in the huMan heart to solve the Eternal Riddle, as exemplified in the life of his Master. The mind, melting under the influence of his soft sweet words of light, would almost transcend the frontiers of limited existence and dare to peep into the infinite. He himself would take the influence of the setting and say,'What a blessed privilege it is to sit in such a setting (pointing to the starry heavens), in the company of the devotees discoursing on God and His love!' These unforgettable scenes will long remain imprinted on the minds of his hearers." (Prabuddha Bharata Vol XXXVII P 497.)
  About twenty-seven years of his life he spent in this way in the heart of the great city of Calcutta, radiating the Master's thoughts and ideals to countless devotees who flocked to him, and to still larger numbers who read his Kathmrita (English Edition : The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna), the last part of which he had completed before June 1932 and given to the press. And miraculously, as it were, his end also came immediately after he had completed his life's mission. About three months earlier he had come to stay at his home at 13/2 Gurdasprasad Chaudhuary Lane at Thakur Bari, where the Holy Mother had herself installed the Master and where His regular worship was being conducted for the previous 40 years. The night of 3rd June being the Phalahrini Kli Pooja day, M.

0.00 - The Wellspring of Reality, #Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, #R Buckminster Fuller, #Science
  We are in an age that assumes the narrowing trends of specialization to be logical, natural, and desirable. Consequently, society expects all earnestly responsible communication to be crisply brief. Advancing science has now discovered that all the known cases of biological extinction have been caused by overspecialization, whose concentration of only selected genes sacrifices general adaptability. Thus the specialist's brief for pinpointing brevity is dubious. In the meantime, huManity has been deprived of comprehensive understanding. Specialization has bred feelings of isolation, futility, and confusion in individuals. It has also resulted in the individual's leaving responsibility for thinking and social action to others.
  Specialization breeds biases that ultimately aggregate as international and ideological discord, which, in turn, leads to war.
  We are not seeking a license to ramble wordily. We are intent only upon being adequately concise. General systems science discloses the existence of minimum sets of variable factors that uniquely govern each and every system. Lack of knowledge concerning all the factors and the failure to include them in our integral imposes false conclusions. Let us not make the error of inadequacy in examining our most comprehensive inventory of experience and thoughts regarding the evoluting affairs of all huManity.
  There is an inherently minimum set of essential concepts and current information, cognizance of which could lead to our operating our planet Earth to the lasting satisfaction and health of all huManity. With this objective, we set out on our review of the spectrum of significant experiences and seek therein for the greatest meanings as well as for the family of generalized principles governing the realization of their optimum significance to huManity aboard our Sun circling planet Earth.
  We must start with scientific fundamentals, and that means with the data of experiments and not with assumed axioms predicated only upon the misleading nature of that which only superficially seems to be obvious. It is the consensus of great scientists that science is the attempt to set in order the facts of experience.
  Holding within their definition, we define Universe as the aggregate of allhuManity's consciously apprehended and communicated, nonsimultaneous, and only partially overlapping experiences. An aggregate of finites is finite. Universe is a finite but nonsimultaneously conceptual scenario.
  The huMan brain is a physical mechanism for storing, retrieving, and re-storing again, each special-case experience. The experience is often a packaged concept.
  Such packages consist of complexedly interrelated and not as-yet differentially analyzed phenomena which, as initially unit cognitions, are potentially re-experienceable. A rose, for instance, grows. has thorns, blossoms, and fragrance, but often is stored in the brain only under the single word-rose.
  As Korzybski, the founder of general seMantics, pointed out, the consequence of its single-tagging is that the rose becomes reflexively considered by Man only as a red, white, or pink device for paying tribute to a beautiful girl, a thoughtful hostess, or last night's deceased acquaintance. The tagging of the complex biological process under the single title rose tends to detour huMan curiosity from further differentiation of its integral organic operations as well as from consideration of its interecological functionings aboard our planet. We don't know what a rose is, nor what may be its essential and unique cosmic function. Thus for long have we inadvertently deferred potential discovery of the essential roles in Universe that are performed complementarily by Many, if not most, of the phenomena we experience.
  But, goaded by youth, we older ones are now taking second looks at almost everything. And that promises Many ultimately favorable surprises. The oldsters do have vast experience banks not available to the youth. Their memory banks, integrated and reviewed, may readily disclose generalized principles of eminent importance.
  The word generalization in literature usually means covering too much territory too thinly to be persuasive, let alone convincing. In science, however, a generalization means a principle that has been found to hold true in every special case.
  --
  Mind is the weightless and uniquely huMan faculty that surveys the ever larger inventory of special-case experiences stored in the brain bank and, seeking to identify their intercomplementary significance, from time to time discovers one of the rare scientifically generalizable principles running consistently through all the relevant experience set. The thoughts that discover these principles are weightless and tentative and may also be eternal. They suggest eternity but do not prove it, even though there have been no experiences thus far that imply exceptions to their persistence. It seems also to follow that the more experiences we have, the more chances there are that the mind may discover, on the one hand, additional generalized principles or, on the other hand, exceptions that disqualify one or another of the already catalogued principles that, having heretofore held "true" without contradiction for a long time, had been tentatively conceded to be demonstrating eternal persistence of behavior. Mind's relentless reviewing of the comprehensive brain bank's storage of all our special-case experiences tends both to progressive enlargement and definitive refinement of the catalogue of generalized principles that interaccommodatively govern all transactions of Universe.
  It follows that the more specialized society becomes, the less attention does it pay to the discoveries of the mind, which are intuitively beamed toward the brain, there to be received only if the switches are "on." Specialization tends to shut off the wide-band tuning searches and thus to preclude further discovery of the all-powerful generalized principles. Again we see how society's perverse fixation on specialization leads to its extinction. We are so specialized that one Man discovers empirically how to release the energy of the atom, while another, unbeknownst to him, is ordered by his political factotum to make an atomic bomb by use of the secretly and anonymously published data. That gives much expedient employment, which solves the politician's momentary problem, but requires that the politicians keep on preparing for further warring with other political states to keep their respective peoples employed. It is also mistakenly assumed that employment is the only means by which huMans can earn the right to live, for politicians have yet to discover how much wealth is available for distribution. All this is rationalized on the now scientifically discredited premise that there can never be enough life support for all. Thus huManity's specialization leads only toward warring and such devastating tools, both, visible and invisible, as ultimately to destroy all Earthians.
  Only a comprehensive switch from the narrowing specialization and toward an evermore inclusive and refining comprehension by all huManity-regarding all the factors governing omnicontinuing life aboard our spaceship Earth-can bring about reorientation from the self-extinction-bound huMan trending, and do so within the critical time remaining before we have passed the point of chemical process irretrievability.
  Quite clearly, our task is predominantly metaphysical, for it is how to get all of huManity to educate itself swiftly enough to generate spontaneous social behaviors that will avoid extinction.
  Living upon the threshold between yesterday and tomorrow, which threshold we reflexively assumed in some long ago yesterday to constitute an eternal now, we are aware of the daily-occurring, vast multiplication of experience generated information by which we potentially may improve our understanding of our yesterdays' experiences and therefrom derive our most farsighted preparedness for successive tomorrows.
  Anticipating, cooperating with, and employing the forces of nature can be accomplished only by the mind. The wisdom Manifest in the omni-interorderliness of the family of generalized principles operative in Universe can be employed only by the highest integrity of engagement of the mind's metaphysical intuiting and formulating capabilities.
  We are able to assert that this rationally coordinating system bridge has been established between science and the huManities because we have made adequate experimental testing of it in a computerized world-resource-use-exploration system, which by virtue of the proper inclusion of all the parameters-as guaranteed by the synergetic start with Universe and the progressive differentiation out of all the parts-has demonstrated a number of alternate ways in which it is eminently feasible not only to provide full life support for all huMans but also to permit all huMans' individual enjoyment of all the Earth without anyone profiting at the expense of another and without any individuals interfering with others.
  While it takes but meager search to discover that Many well-known concepts are false, it takes considerable search and even more careful examination of one's own personal experiences and inadvertently spontaneous reflexing to discover that there are Many popularly and even professionally unknown, yet nonetheless fundamental, concepts to hold true in all cases and that already have been discovered by other as yet obscure individuals. That is to say that Many scientific generalizations have been discovered but have not come to the attention of what we call the educated world at large, thereafter to be incorporated tardily within the formal education processes, and even more tardily, in the ongoing political-economic affairs of everyday life. Knowledge of the existence and comprehensive significance of these as yet popularly unrecognized natural laws often is requisite to the solution of Many of the as yet unsolved problems now confronting society. Lack of knowledge of the solution's existence often leaves huManity confounded when it need not be.
  Intellectually advantaged with no more than the child's facile, lucid eagerness to understand constructively and usefully the major transformational events of our own times, it probably is synergetically advantageous to review swiftly the most comprehensive inventory of the most powerful huMan environment transforming events of our totally known and reasonably extended history. This is especially useful in winnowing out and understanding the most significant of the metaphysical revolutions now recognized as swiftly tending to reconstitute history. By such a comprehensively schematic review, we might identify also the unprecedented and possibly heretofore overlooked pivotal revolutionary events not only of today but also of those trending to be central to tomorrow's most cataclysmic changes.
  It is synergetically reasonable to assume that relativistic evaluation of any of the separate drives of art, science, education, economics, and ideology, and their complexedly interacting trends within our own times, may be had only through the most comprehensive historical sweep of which we are capable.
  There could be produced a synergetic understanding of huManity's cosmic functioning, which, until now, had been both undiscovered and unpredictable due to our deliberate and exclusive preoccupation only with the separate statistics of separate events. As a typical consequence of the latter, we observe our society's persistent increase of educational and employment specialization despite the already mentioned, well-documented scientific disclosure that the extinctions of biological species are always occasioned by overspecialization. Specialization's preoccupation with parts deliberately forfeits the opportunity to apprehend and comprehend what is provided exclusively by synergy.
  Today's news consists of aggregates of fragments. Anyone who has taken part in any event that has subsequently appeared in the news is aware of the gross disparity between the actual and the reported events. The insistence by reporters upon having advance "releases" of what, for instance, convocation speakers are supposedly going to say but in fact have not yet said, automatically discredits the value of the largely prefabricated news. We also learn frequently of prefabricated and prevaricated events of a complex nature purportedly undertaken for purposes either of suppressing or rigging the news, which in turn perverts huManity's tactical information resources. All history becomes suspect. Probably our most polluted resource is the tactical information to which huManity spontaneously reflexes.
  Furthermore, today's hyperspecialization in socioeconomic functioning has come to preclude important popular philosophic considerations of the synergetic significance of, for instance, such historically important events as the discovery within the general region of experimental inquiry known as virology that the as-yet popularly assumed validity of the concepts of animate and inanimate phenomena have been experimentally invalidated. Atoms and crystal complexes of atoms were held to be obviously inanimate; the protoplasmic cells of biological phenomena were held to be obviously animate. It was deemed to be common sense that warm- blooded, moist, and soft-skinned huMans were clearly not to be confused with hard, cold granite or steel objects. A clear-cut threshold between animate and inanimate was therefore assumed to exist as a fundamental dichotomy of all physical phenomena. This seemingly placed life exclusively within the bounds of the physical.
  The supposed location of the threshold between animate and inanimate was methodically narrowed down by experimental science until it was confined specifically within the domain of virology. Virologists have been too busy, for instance, with their DNA-RNA genetic code isolatings, to find time to see the synergetic significance to society of the fact that they have found that no physical threshold does in fact exist between animate and inanimate. The possibility of its existence vanished because the supposedly unique physical qualities of both animate and inanimate have persisted right across yesterday's supposed threshold in both directions to permeate one another's-previously perceived to be exclusive- domains. Subsequently, what was animate has become foggier and foggier, and what is inanimate clearer and clearer. All organisms consist physically and in entirety of inherently inanimate atoms. The inanimate alone is not only omnipresent but is alone experimentally demonstrable. Belated news of the elimination of this threshold must be interpreted to mean that whatever life may be, it has not been isolated and thereby identified as residual in the biological cell, as had been supposed by the false assumption that there was a separate physical phenomenoncalled animate within which life existed. No life per se has been isolated. The threshold between animate and inanimate has vanished. Those chemists who are preoccupied in synthesizing the particular atomically structured molecules identified as the prime constituents of huManly employed organisms will, even if they are chemically successful, be as remote from creating life as are automobile Manufacturers from creating the huMan drivers of their automobiles. Only the physical connections and development complexes of distinctly "nonlife" atoms into molecules, into cells, into animals, has been and will be discovered. The genetic coding of the design controls of organic systems offers no more explanation of life than did the specifications of the designs of the telephone system's apparatus and operation explain the nature of the life that communicates weightlessly to life over the only physically ponderable telephone system. Whatever else life may be, we know it is weightless. At the moment of death, no weight is lost. All the chemicals, including the chemist's life ingredients, are present, but life has vanished. The physical is inherently entropic, giving off energy in ever more disorderly ways. The metaphysical is antientropic, methodically marshalling energy. Life is antientropic.
  It is spontaneously inquisitive. It sorts out and endeavors to understand.
  The overconcentration on details of hyperspecialization has also been responsible for the lack of recognition by science of its inherently Mandatory responsibility to reorient all our educational curricula because of the synergetically disclosed, but popularly uncomprehended, significance of the 1956 Nobel Prize-winning discovery in physics of the experimental invalidation of the concept of "parity" by which science previously had misassumed that positive-negative complementations consisted exclusively of mirror-imaged behaviors of physical phenomena.
  Science's self-assumed responsibility has been self-limited to disclosure to society only of the separate, supposedly physical (because separately weighable) atomic component isolations data. Synergetic integrity would require the scientists to announce that in reality what had been identified heretofore as physical is entirely metaphysical-because synergetically weightless. Metaphysical has been science's designation for all weightless phenomena such as thought. But science has made no experimental finding of any phenomena that can be described as a solid, or as continuous, or as a straight surface plane, or as a straight line, or as infinite anything. We are now synergetically forced to conclude that all phenomena are metaphysical; wherefore, as Many have long suspected-like it or not-life is but a dream.Science has found no up or down directions of Universe, yet scientists are personally so ill-coordinated that they all still personally and sensorially see "solids" going up or down-as, for instance, they see the Sun "going down." Sensorially disconnected from their theoretically evolved information, scientists discern no need on their part to suggest any educational reforms to correct the misconceiving that science has tolerated for half a millennium.
  Society depends upon its scientists for just such educational reform guidance.
  --
  It is essential to release huManity from the false fixations of yesterday, which seem now to bind it to a rationale of action leading only to extinction.
  The youth of huManity all around our planet are intuitively revolting from all sovereignties and political ideologies. The youth of Earth are moving intuitively toward an utterly classless, raceless, omnicooperative, omniworld huManity.
  Children freed of the ignorantly founded educational traditions and exposed only to their spontaneously summoned, computer-stored and -distributed outflow of reliable-opinion-purged, experimentally verified data, shall indeed lead society to its happy egress from all misinformedly conceived, fearfully and legally imposed, and physically enforced customs of yesterday. They can lead all huManity into omnisuccessful survival as well as entrance into an utterly new era of huMan experience in an as-yet and ever-will-be fundamentally mysterious Universe.
  And whence will come the wealth with which we may undertake to lead world Man into his new and validly hopeful life? From the wealth of the minds of world Man-whence comes all wealth. Only mind can discover how to do so much with so little as forever to be able to sustain and physically satisfy all huManity.

0.00 - To the Reader, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   The reader is requested to note that Sri Aurobindo is not responsible for these records as he had no opportunity to see them. So, it is not as if Sri Aurobindo said exactly these things but that I remember him to have said them. All I can say is that I have tried to be as faithful in recording them as I was huManly capable. That does not minimise my personal responsibility which I fully accept.
   A. B. PURANI

0.01f - FOREWARD, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  others see what happens to Man, and what conclusions are forced
  upon us, when he is placed fairly and squarely within the frame-
  --
  single out Man as our object ?
  Seeing. We might say that the whole of life lies in that verb
  --
  gift of existence. And this, in superior measure, is Man's condition.
  But if it is true that it is so vital and so blessed to know, let us
  ask again why we are turning our attention particularly to Man.
  Has Man not been adequately described already, and is he not a
  tedious subject ? Is it not precisely one of the attractions of science
  that it rests our eyes by turning them away from Man ?
  Man has a double title, as the twofold centre of the world, to
  impose himself on our effort to sec, as the key to the universe.
  --
  Man willy-nilly fmds his own image stamped on all he looks at.
  This is indeed a form of bondage, for which, however, a
  --
  That seems to be the privilege of Man's knowledge.
  It is not necessary to be a Man to perceive surrounding things
  and forces ' in the round '. All the animals have reached this point
  as well as us. But it is peculiar to Man to occupy a position in
  32
  --
  singular point, at a ganglion which comMands the whole fraction
  of the cosmos that is at present within reach of our experience.
  Man, the centre of perspective, is at the same time the centre of
  construction of the universe. And by expediency no less than by
  --
  should look closely at Man in order to increase our capacity to
  live.
  --
  From the dawn of his existence, Man has been held up as a
  spectacle to himself. Indeed for tens of centuries he has looked at
  --
  the newly-opened retina. For Man to discover Man and take his
  measure, a whole series of ' senses ' have been necessary, whose
  --
  Without these qualities to illuminate our vision, Man will
  remain indefinitely for us whatever is done to make us see
  what he still represents to so Many minds : an erratic object in a
  disjointed world. Conversely, we have only to rid our vision of
  --
  Man effordessly to take the central position we prophesied the
  momentary summit of an anthropogenesis which is itself the
  --
  Man is unable to see himself entirely unrelated to Mankind,
  neither is he able to see Mankind unrelated to life, nor life un-
  related to the universe.
  --
  of the phenomenon of Man.
  The phenomenon of Man I stress this.
  This phrase is not chosen at random, but for three reasons.
  First to assert that Man, in nature, is a genuine fact falling (at
  least partially) within the scope of the requirements and methods
  --
  experience of Man. A whole which unfolds.
  So please do not expect a final explanation of things here, nor
  --
  there would be a cosmic contradiction in imagining a Man as
  spectator of those phases which ran their course before the
  --
  one example, of the way in which the problem of Man presents
  itself in science today.
  --
  jurists, Man is a tiny, even a shrinking, creature. His over-
  pronounced individuality conceals from our eyes the whole to
  --
  to consider Man as an object of scientific scrutiny except through
  his body.
  --
  the inclusion of Man in his wholeness in a coherent picture of the
  world.
  --
  In such a vision Man is seen not as a static centre of the world
   as he for long believed himself to be but as the axis and

0.01 - I - Sri Aurobindos personality, his outer retirement - outside contacts after 1910 - spiritual personalities- Vibhutis and Avatars - transformtion of human personality, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
  object:0.01 - I - Sri Aurobindos personality, his outer retirement - outside contacts after 1910 - spiritual personalities- Vibhutis and Avatars - transformtion of huMan personality
  author class:A B Purani
  --
   The question which Arjuna asks Sri Krishna in the Gita (second chapter) occurs pertinently to Many about all spiritual personalities: "What is the language of one whose understanding is poised? How does he speak, how sit, how walk?" Men want to know the outer signs of the inner attainment, the way in which a spiritual person differs outwardly from other men. But all the tests which the Gita enumerates are inner and therefore invisible to the outer view. It is true also that the inner or the spiritual is the essential and the outer derives its value and form from the inner. But the transformation about which Sri Aurobindo writes in his books has to take place in nature, because according to him the divine Reality has to Manifest itself in nature. So, all the parts of nature including the physical and the external are to be transformed. In his own case the very physical became the transparent mould of the Spirit as a result of his intense Sadhana. This is borne out by the impression created on the minds of sensitive outsiders like Sj. K. M. Munshi who was deeply impressed by his radiating presence when he met him after nearly forty years.
   The Evening Talks collected here may afford to the outside world a glimpse of his external personality and give the seeker some idea of its richness, its Many-sidedness, its uniqueness. One can also form some notion of Sri Aurobindo's personality from the books in which the height, the universal sweep and clear vision of his integral ideal and thought can be seen. His writings are, in a sense, the best representative of his mental personality. The versatile nature of his genius, the penetrating power of his intellect, his extraordinary power of expression, his intense sincerity, his utter singleness of purpose all these can be easily felt by any earnest student of his works. He may discover even in the realm of mind that Sri Aurobindo brings the unlimited into the limited. Another side of his dynamic personality is represented by the Ashram as an institution. But the outer, if one may use the phrase, the huMan side of his personality, is unknown to the outside world because from 1910 to 1950 a span of forty years he led a life of outer retirement. No doubt, Many knew about his staying at Pondicherry and practising some kind of very special Yoga to the mystery of which they had no access. To some, perhaps, he was living a life of enviable solitude enjoying the luxury of a spiritual endeavour. Many regretted his retirement as a great loss to the world because they could not see any external activity on his part which could be regarded as 'public', 'altruistic' or 'beneficial'. Even some of his admirers thought that he was after some kind of personal salvation which would have very little significance for Mankind in general. His outward non-participation in public life was construed by Many as lack of love for huManity.
   But those who knew him during the days of the national awakening from 1900 to 1910 could not have these doubts. And even these initial misunderstandings and false notions of others began to evaporate with the growth of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram from 1927 onwards. The large number of books published by the Ashram also tended to remove the idea of the other-worldliness of his Yoga and the absence of any good by it to Mankind.
   This period of outer retirement was one of intense Sadhana and of intellectual activity it was also one during which he acted on external events, though he was not dedicated outwardly to a public cause. About his own retirement he writes: "But this did not mean, as most people supposed, that he [Sri Aurobindo] had retired into some height of spiritual experience devoid of any further interest in the world or in the fate of India. It could not mean that, for the very principle of his Yoga was not only to realise the Divine and attain to a complete spiritual consciousness, but also to take all life and all world activity into the scope of this spiritual consciousness and action and to base life on the Spirit and give it a spiritual meaning. In his retirement Sri Aurobindo kept a close watch on all that was happening in the world and in India and actively intervened, whenever necessary, but solely with a spiritual force and silent spiritual action; for it is part of the experience of those who have advanced in yoga that besides the ordinary forces and activities of the mind and life and body in Matter, there are other forces and powers that can and do act from behind and from above; there is also a spiritual dynamic power which can be possessed by those who are advanced in spiritual consciousness, though all do not care to possess or, possessing, to use it and this power is greater than any other and more effective. It was this force which, as soon as he attained to it, he used at first only in a limited field of personal work, but afterwards in a constant action upon the world forces."[1]
  --
   Over and above Sadhana, writing work and rendering spiritual help to the world during his apparent retirement there were plenty of other activities of which the outside world has no knowledge. Many prominent as well as less known persons sought and obtained interviews with him during these years. Thus, among well-known persons may be mentioned C.R. Das, Lala Lajpat Rai, Sarala Devi, Dr. Munje, Khasirao Jadhav, Tagore, Sylvain Levy. The great national poet of Tamil Nadu, S. SubraManya Bharati, was in contact with Sri Aurobindo for some years during his stay at Pondicherry; so was V.V.S. Aiyar. The famous V. Ramaswamy Aiyangar Va Ra of Tamil literature[3] stayed with Sri Aurobindo for nearly three years and was influenced by him. Some of these facts have been already mentioned in The Life of Sri Aurobindo.
   Jung has admitted that there is an element of mystery, something that baffles the reason, in huMan personality. One finds that the greater the personality the greater is the complexity. And this is especially so with regard to spiritual personalities whom the Gita calls Vibhutis and Avatars.
   Sri Aurobindo has explained the mystery of personality in some of his writings. Ordinarily by personality we mean something which can be described as "a pattern of being marked out by a settled combination of fixed qualities, a determined character.... In one view personality is regarded as a fixed structure of recognisable qualities expressing a power of being"; another idea regards "personality as a flux of self-expressive or sensitive and responsive being.... But flux of nature and fixity of nature" which some call character "are two aspects of being neither of which, nor indeed both together, can be a definition of personality.... But besides this flux and this fixity there is also a third and occult element, the Person behind of whom the personality is a self-expression; the Person puts forward the personality as his role, character, persona, in the present act of his long drama of Manifested existence. But the Person is larger than his personality, and it may happen that this inner largeness overflows into the surface formation; the result is a self-expression of being which can no longer be described by fixed qualities, normalities of mood, exact lineaments, or marked out by structural limits."[4]
   The gospel of the Supermind which Sri Aurobindo brought to Man envisages a new level of consciousness beyond Mind. When this level is attained it imposes a complete and radical reintegration of the huMan personality. Sri Aurobindo was not merely the exponent but the embodiment of the new, dynamic truth of the Supermind. While exploring and sounding the tremendous possibilities of huMan personality in his intense spiritual Sadhana, he has shown us that practically there are no limits to its expansion and ascent. It can reach in its growth what appears to Man at present as a 'divine' status. It goes without saying that this attainment is not an easy task; there are conditions to be fulfilled for the transformation from the huMan to the divine.
   The Gita in its chapters on the Vibhuti and the Avatar takes in general the same position. It shows that the present formula of our nature, and therefore the mental personality of Man, is not final. A Vibhuti embodies in a huMan Manifestation a certain divine quality and thus demonstrates the possibility of overcoming the limits of ordinary huMan personality. The Vibhuti the embodiment of a divine quality or power, and the Avatar the divine incarnation, are not to be looked upon as supraphysical miracles thrown at huManity without regard to the process of evolution; they are, in fact, indications of huMan possibility, a sign that points to the goal of evolution.
   In his Essays on the Gita, Sri Aurobindo says about the Avatar: "He may, on the other hand, descend as an incarnation of divine life, the divine personality and power in its characteristic action, for a mission ostensibly social, ethical and political, as is represented in the story of Rama or Krishna; but always then this descent becomes in the soul of the race a perManent power for the inner living and the spiritual rebirth."[5]
   "He comes as the divine power and love which calls men to itself, so that they may take refuge in that and no longer in the insufficiency of their huMan wills and the strife of their huMan fear, wrath and passion, and liberated from all this unquiet and suffering may live in the calm and bliss of the Divine."[6]
   "The Avatar comes to reveal the divine nature in Man above this lower nature and to show what are the divine works, free, unegoistic, disinterested, impersonal, universal, full of the divine light, the divine power and the divine love. He comes as the divine personality which shall fill the consciousness of the huMan being and replace the limited egoistic personality, so that it shall be liberated out of ego into infinity and universality, out of birth into immortality."[7]
   It is clear that Sri Aurobindo interpreted the traditional idea of the Vibhuti and the Avatar in terms of the evolutionary possibilities of Man. But more directly he has worked out the idea of the 'gnostic individual' in his masterpiece The Life Divine. He says: "A supramental gnostic individual will be a spiritual Person, but not a personality in the sense of a pattern of being marked out by a settled combination of fixed qualities, a determined character; he cannot be that since he is a conscious expression of the universal and the transcendent." Describing the gnostic individual he says: "We feel ourselves in the presence of a light of consciousness, a potency, a sea of energy, can distinguish and describe its free waves of action and quality, but not fix itself; and yet there is an impression of personality, the presence of a powerful being, a strong, high or beautiful recognisable Someone, a Person, not a limited creature of Nature but a Self or Soul, a Purusha."[8]
   One feels that he was describing the feeling of some of us, his disciples, with regard to him in his inimitable way.
   This transformation of the huMan personality into the Divine perhaps even the mere connection of the huMan with the Divine is probably regarded as a chimera by the modern mind. To the modern mind it would appear as the apotheosis of a huMan personality which is against its idea of equality of men. Its difficulty is partly due to the notion that the Divine is unlimited and illimitable while a 'personality', however high and grand, seems to deMand imposition, or assumption, of limitation. In this connection Sri Aurobindo said during an evening talk that no huMan Manifestation can be illimitable and unlimited, but the Manifestation in the limited should reflect the unlimited, the Transcendent Beyond.
   This possibility of the huMan touching and Manifesting the Divine has been realised during the course of huMan history whenever a great spiritual Light has appeared on earth. One of the purposes of this book is to show how Sri Aurobindo himself reflected the unlimited Beyond in his own self.
   Greatness is magnetic and in a sense contagious. Wherever Manifested, greatness is claimed by huManity as something that reveals the possibility of the race. The highest utility of greatness is not merely to attract us but to inspire us to follow it and rise to our own highest spiritual stature. To the majority of men Truth remains abstract, impersonal and far unless it is seen and felt concretely in a huMan personality. A Man never knows a truth actively except through a person and by embodying it in his own personality. Some glimpse of the Truth-Consciousness which Sri Aurobindo embodied may be caught in these Evening Talks.
   ***

0.01 - Letters from the Mother to Her Son, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  true that in my answers Many aspects of the question have been
  neglected which could have been examined with interest - that
  --
  machines, a dozen typewriters, Many garages, an automobile
  repair workshop, an electrical service, a building service, sewing
  --
  But the Mukerjee quoted there must have lived for Many years
  A literary monthly published in France until 1939.
  --
  way to perpetuate the huMan race. I have never denied this, but
  I wish to add that there is nothing to fear in this respect; if it is
  Nature's plan to perpetuate the huMan race, she will always find
  as Many people as she needs to carry out her plan. The earth
  will surely never suffer from a dearth of men.
  --
  the life of declining civilisations and huMan societies in delirium.
  Do not start thinking I am a pessimist. I certainly do not
  --
  worse than they have been Many times before. But I want them
  to be different, I want them to be more harmonious and more
  --
  "Manage" everything, but not because I really own them. You
  will readily understand why I am telling you all this; it is so you
  --
  huMan will there are forces at work whose origin is not huMan
  and which move consciously towards certain ends. The play of
  these forces is very complex and generally eludes the huMan
  consciousness; but for ease of explanation and understanding,
  --
  anti-divine forces they have only too Many to choose from, and
  always they find wills which they enslave and individuals whom
  --
  disaster was very close even though no huMan government consciously wanted it. But at any cost there was to be no war and
  that is why war has been avoided - for the time being.

0.01 - Life and Yoga, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  HERE are two necessities of Nature's workings which seem always to intervene in the greater forms of huMan activity, whether these belong to our ordinary fields of movement or seek those exceptional spheres and fulfilments which appear to us high and divine. Every such form tends towards a harmonised complexity and totality which again breaks apart into various channels of special effort and tendency, only to unite once more in a larger and more puissant synthesis. Secondly, development into forms is an imperative rule of effective Manifestation; yet all truth and practice too strictly formulated becomes old and loses much, if not all, of its virtue; it must be constantly renovated by fresh streams of the spirit revivifying the dead or dying vehicle and changing it, if it is to acquire a new life. To be perpetually reborn is the condition of a material immortality. We are in an age, full of the throes of travail, when all forms of thought and activity that have in themselves any strong power of utility or any secret virtue of persistence are being subjected to a supreme test and given their opportunity of rebirth. The world today presents the aspect of a huge cauldron of Medea in which all things are being cast, shredded into pieces, experimented on, combined and recombined either to perish and provide the scattered material of new forms or to emerge rejuvenated and changed for a fresh term of existence. Indian Yoga, in its essence a special action or formulation of certain great powers of Nature, itself specialised, divided and variously formulated, is potentially one of these dynamic elements of the future life of huManity. The child of immemorial ages, preserved by its vitality and truth into our modern times, it is now emerging from the secret schools and ascetic retreats in which it had taken refuge and is seeking its place in the future sum of living huMan powers and utilities. But it has first to rediscover itself, bring to the surface
  The Conditions of the Synthesis
  --
  In the right view both of life and of Yoga all life is either consciously or subconsciously a Yoga. For we mean by this term a methodised effort towards self-perfection by the expression of the secret potentialities latent in the being and - highest condition of victory in that effort - a union of the huMan individual with the universal and transcendent Existence we see partially expressed in Man and in the Cosmos. But all life, when we look behind its appearances, is a vast Yoga of Nature who attempts in the conscious and the subconscious to realise her perfection in an ever-increasing expression of her yet unrealised potentialities and to unite herself with her own divine reality. In Man, her thinker, she for the first time upon this Earth devises selfconscious means and willed arrangements of activity by which this great purpose may be more swiftly and puissantly attained.
  Yoga, as Swami Vivekananda has said, may be regarded as a means of compressing one's evolution into a single life or a few years or even a few months of bodily existence. A given system of Yoga, then, can be no more than a selection or a compression, into narrower but more energetic forms of intensity, of the general methods which are already being used loosely, largely, in a leisurely movement, with a profuser apparent waste of material and energy but with a more complete combination by the great
  Mother in her vast upward labour. It is this view of Yoga that can alone form the basis for a sound and rational synthesis of Yogic methods. For then Yoga ceases to appear something mystic and abnormal which has no relation to the ordinary processes of the World-Energy or the purpose she keeps in view in her two great movements of subjective and objective selffulfilment; it reveals itself rather as an intense and exceptional use of powers that she has already Manifested or is progressively
  Life and Yoga
  --
  Yogic methods have something of the same relation to the customary psychological workings of Man as has the scientific handling of the force of electricity or of steam to their normal operations in Nature. And they, too, like the operations of Science, are formed upon a knowledge developed and confirmed by regular experiment, practical analysis and constant result. All
  Rajayoga, for instance, depends on this perception and experience that our inner elements, combinations, functions, forces, can be separated or dissolved, can be new-combined and set to novel and formerly impossible workings or can be transformed and resolved into a new general synthesis by fixed internal processes. Hathayoga similarly depends on this perception and experience that the vital forces and functions to which our life is normally subjected and whose ordinary operations seem set and indispensable, can be mastered and the operations changed or suspended with results that would otherwise be impossible and that seem miraculous to those who have not seized the rationale of their process. And if in some other of its forms this character of Yoga is less apparent, because they are more intuitive and less mechanical, nearer, like the Yoga of Devotion, to a supernal ecstasy or, like the Yoga of Knowledge, to a supernal infinity of consciousness and being, yet they too start from the use of some principal faculty in us by ways and for ends not contemplated in its everyday spontaneous workings. All methods grouped under the common name of Yoga are special psychological processes founded on a fixed truth of Nature and developing, out of normal functions, powers and results which were always latent but which her ordinary movements do not easily or do not often Manifest.
  But as in physical knowledge the multiplication of scientific processes has its disadvantages, as that tends, for instance, to develop a victorious artificiality which overwhelms our natural huMan life under a load of machinery and to purchase certain forms of freedom and mastery at the price of an increased servitude, so the preoccupation with Yogic processes and their exceptional results may have its disadvantages and losses. The
  The Conditions of the Synthesis
  Yogin tends to draw away from the common existence and lose his hold upon it; he tends to purchase wealth of spirit by an impoverishment of his huMan activities, the inner freedom by an outer death. If he gains God, he loses life, or if he turns his efforts outward to conquer life, he is in danger of losing
  God. Therefore we see in India that a sharp incompatibility has been created between life in the world and spiritual growth and perfection, and although the tradition and ideal of a victorious harmony between the inner attraction and the outer deMand remains, it is little or else very imperfectly exemplified. In fact, when a Man turns his vision and energy inward and enters on the path of Yoga, he is popularly supposed to be lost inevitably to the great stream of our collective existence and the secular effort of huManity. So strongly has the idea prevailed, so much has it been emphasised by prevalent philosophies and religions that to escape from life is now commonly considered as not only the necessary condition, but the general object of Yoga. No synthesis of Yoga can be satisfying which does not, in its aim, reunite God and Nature in a liberated and perfected huMan life or, in its method, not only permit but favour the harmony of our inner and outer activities and experiences in the divine consummation of both. For Man is precisely that term and symbol of a higher Existence descended into the material world in which it is possible for the lower to transfigure itself and put on the nature of the higher and the higher to reveal itself in the forms of the lower. To avoid the life which is given him for the realisation of that possibility, can never be either the indispensable condition or the whole and ultimate object of his supreme endeavour or of his most powerful means of self-fulfilment. It can only be a temporary necessity under certain conditions or a specialised extreme effort imposed on the individual so as to prepare a greater general possibility for the race. The true and full object and utility of Yoga can only be accomplished when the conscious
  Yoga in Man becomes, like the subconscious Yoga in Nature, outwardly conterminous with life itself and we can once more, looking out both on the path and the achievement, say in a more perfect and luminous sense: "All life is Yoga."
  

0.02 - II - The Home of the Guru, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Guru-griha-vsa staying in the home of the Guru is a very old Indian ideal maintained by seekers through the ages. The Aranyakas the ancient teachings in the forest-groves are perhaps the oldest records of the institution. It was not for education in the modern sense of the term that men went to live with the Guru; for the Guru is not a 'teacher'. The Guru is one who is 'enlightened', who is a seer, a Rishi, one who has the vision of and has lived the Truth. He has, thus, the knowledge of the goal of huMan life and has learnt true values in life by living the Truth. He can impart both these to the willing seeker. In ancient times seekers went to the Guru with Many questions, difficulties and doubts but also with earnestness. Their questions were preliminary to the quest.
   The Master, the Guru, set at rest the puzzled huMan mind by his illuminating answers, perhaps even more by his silent consciousness, so that it might be able to pursue unhampered the path of realisation of the Truth. Those ancient discourses answer the mind of Man today even across the ages. They have rightly acquired as everything of the past does a certain sanctity. But sometimes that very reverence prevents men from properly evaluating, and living in, the present. This happens when the mind instead of seeking the Spirit looks at the form. For instance, it is not necessary for such discourses that they take place in forest-groves in order to be highly spiritual. Wherever the Master is, there is Light. And guru-griha the house of the Master can be his private dwelling place. So much was this feeling a part of Sri Aurobindo's nature and so particular was he to maintain the personal character of his work that during the first few years after 1923 he did not like his house to be called an 'Ashram', as the word had acquired the sense of a public institution to the modern mind. But there was no doubt that the flower of Divinity had blossomed in him; and disciples, like bees seeking honey, came to him. It is no exaggeration to say that these Evening Talks were to the small company of disciples what the Aranyakas were to the ancient seekers. Seeking the Light, they came to the dwelling place of their Guru, the greatest seer of the age, and found it their spiritual home the home of their parents, for the Mother, his companion in the great mission, had come. And these spiritual parents bestowed upon the disciples freely of their Light, their Consciousness, their Power and their Grace. The modern reader may find that the form of these discourses differs from those of the past but it was bound to be so for the simple reason that the times have changed and the problems that puzzle the modern mind are so different. Even though the disciples may be very imperfect representations of what he aimed at in them, still they are his creations. It is in order to repay, in however infinitesimal a degree, the debt which we owe to him that the effort is made to partake of the joy of his company the Evening Talks with a larger public.
   ***

0.02 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  By his way of thinking, feeling, acting, each one eManates vibrations which constitute his own atmosphere and quite naturally
  attract vibrations of similar nature and quality.
  --
  of desires. If he expresses all his deMands - which he
  believes to be needs - he will be disillusioned. He prefers
  --
  I could give Many explanations; the how and the why can easily
  he described - but is it really necessary? This is not what heals.
  --
  I prayed with concentration that each workMan might
  become conscious that he was working for Mother and
  --
  should be gone. So I replied, "Yes, Mother, the last Man
  has gone." And lo, there he is, arranging the polishing
  --
  The explanation of Many events may be found along this line -
  although, of course, it is not the only explanation!
  --
  All that you say is quite true and there are still Many other
  things you have not said, but which I know. The trouble might
  --
  1) Too Many workers.
  2) Too Many different projects undertaken at the same time.
  3) Lack of consciousness in some of the supervisors.
  --
  that is why there are Many things I do not say, because to me they
  are so obvious that it would be utterly pointless to mention them.
  --
  One really cannot dismiss a Man because he laughed. He should
  be given some other work and advised to be polite in the future.
  --
  It is only by long experience, tested Many times very carefully,
  that one can discriminate between various types of suggestions
  --
  did not have the power to dominate the other Man's will.
  So you should have the nails removed.
  --
  This is not right. When I ask a question, I ask it in order to get exact and objective information. I have said this Many times. I have
  no preconceived idea, no preference, no opinion about things.
  --
  to dominate the other Man's will. So you should get the
  nails removed." This is the sentence that upset me. Why

0.02 - The Three Steps of Nature, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The progressive self-Manifestation of Nature in Man, termed in modern language his evolution, must necessarily depend upon three successive elements. There is that which is already evolved; there is that which, still imperfect, still partly fluid, is persistently in the stage of conscious evolution; and there is that which is to be evolved and may perhaps be already
  10
  --
   displayed, if not constantly, then occasionally or with some regularity of recurrence, in primary formations or in others more developed and, it may well be, even in some, however rare, that are near to the highest possible realisation of our present huManity. For the march of Nature is not drilled to a regular and mechanical forward stepping. She reaches constantly beyond herself even at the cost of subsequent deplorable retreats.
  She has rushes; she has splendid and mighty outbursts; she has immense realisations. She storms sometimes passionately forward hoping to take the kingdom of heaven by violence.
  --
  Matter, which, however the too ethereally spiritual may despise it, is our foundation and the first condition of all our energies and realisations, and the Life-Energy which is our means of existence in a material body and the basis there even of our mental and spiritual activities. She has successfully achieved a certain stability of her constant material movement which is at once sufficiently steady and durable and sufficiently pliable and mutable to provide a fit dwelling-place and instrument for the progressively Manifesting god in huManity. This is what is meant by the fable in the Aitareya Upanishad which tells us that the gods rejected the animal forms successively offered to them by the Divine Self and only when Man was produced, cried out, "This indeed is perfectly made," and consented to enter in. She has effected also a working compromise between the inertia of matter and the active Life that lives in and feeds on it, by which not only is vital existence sustained, but the fullest developments of mentality are rendered possible. This equilibrium constitutes the basic status of Nature in Man and is termed in the language of Yoga his gross body composed
  The Three Steps of Nature
  --
  If, then, this inferior equilibrium is the basis and first means of the higher movements which the universal Power contemplates and if it constitutes the vehicle in which the Divine here seeks to reveal Itself, if the Indian saying is true that the body is the instrument provided for the fulfilment of the right law of our nature, then any final recoil from the physical life must be a turning away from the completeness of the divine Wisdom and a renunciation of its aim in earthly Manifestation. Such a refusal may be, owing to some secret law of their development, the right attitude for certain individuals, but never the aim intended for Mankind. It can be, therefore, no integral Yoga which ignores the body or makes its annulment or its rejection indispensable to a perfect spirituality. Rather, the perfecting of the body also should be the last triumph of the Spirit and to make the bodily life also divine must be God's final seal upon His work in the universe. The obstacle which the physical presents to the spiritual is no argument for the rejection of the physical; for in the unseen providence of things our greatest difficulties are our best opportunities. A supreme difficulty is Nature's indication to us of a supreme conquest to be won and an ultimate problem to be solved; it is not a warning of an inextricable snare to be shunned or of an enemy too strong for us from whom we must flee.
  Equally, the vital and nervous energies in us are there for a great utility; they too deMand the divine realisation of their possibilities in our ultimate fulfilment. The great part assigned to this element in the universal scheme is powerfully emphasised by the catholic wisdom of the Upanishads. "As the spokes of a wheel in its nave, so in the Life-Energy is all established, the triple knowledge and the Sacrifice and the power of the strong and the purity of the wise. Under the control of the LifeEnergy is all this that is established in the triple heaven."2 It is therefore no integral Yoga that kills these vital energies, forces them into a nerveless quiescence or roots them out as the source
   annakos.a and pran.akos.a.
  --
  If the bodily life is what Nature has firmly evolved for us as her base and first instrument, it is our mental life that she is evolving as her immediate next aim and superior instrument. This in her ordinary exaltations is the lofty preoccupying thought in her; this, except in her periods of exhaustion and recoil into a reposeful and recuperating obscurity, is her constant pursuit wherever she can get free from the trammels of her first vital and physical realisations. For here in Man we have a distinction which is of the utmost importance. He has in him not a single mentality, but a double and a triple, the mind material and nervous, the pure intellectual mind which liberates itself from the illusions of the body and the senses, and a divine mind above intellect which in its turn liberates itself from the imperfect modes of the logically discriminative and imaginative reason. Mind in Man is first emmeshed in the life of the body, where in the plant it is entirely involved and in animals always imprisoned. It accepts this life as not only the first but the whole condition of its activities and serves its needs as if they were the entire aim of existence. But the bodily life in Man is a base, not the aim, his first condition and not his last determinant. In the just idea of the ancients Man is essentially the thinker, the Manu, the mental being who leads the life and the body,3 not the animal who is led by them. The true huMan existence, therefore, only begins when the intellectual mentality emerges out of the material and we begin more and more to live in the mind independent of the nervous and physical obsession and in the measure of that liberty are able to accept rightly and rightly to use the life of the body. For freedom and not a skilful subjection is the true means of mastery. A free, not a compulsory acceptance of the conditions, the enlarged and sublimated conditions of our physical being, is the high huMan ideal. But beyond this intellectual mentality is the divine.
  The mental life thus evolving in Man is not, indeed, a
   Manomayah. pran.asarraneta. Mundaka Upanishad II. 2. 8.
  The Three Steps of Nature
  --
  Certainly, the mental life is not a finished evolution of Nature; it is not yet firmly founded in the huMan animal. The sign is that the fine and full equilibrium of vitality and matter, the sane, robust, long-lived huMan body is ordinarily found only in races or classes of men who reject the effort of thought, its disturbances, its tensions, or think only with the material mind.
  Civilised Man has yet to establish an equilibrium between the fully active mind and the body; he does not normally possess it.
  Indeed, the increasing effort towards a more intense mental life seems to create, frequently, an increasing disequilibrium of the huMan elements, so that it is possible for eminent scientists to describe genius as a form of insanity, a result of degeneration, a pathological morbidity of Nature. The phenomena which are used to justify this exaggeration, when taken not separately, but in connection with all other relevant data, point to a different truth. Genius is one attempt of the universal Energy to so quicken and intensify our intellectual powers that they shall be prepared for those more puissant, direct and rapid faculties which constitute the play of the supra-intellectual or divine mind. It is not, then, a freak, an inexplicable phenomenon, but a perfectly natural next step in the right line of her evolution.
  She has harmonised the bodily life with the material mind, she is harmonising it with the play of the intellectual mentality; for that, although it tends to a depression of the full animal and vital vigour, need not produce active disturbances. And she is shooting yet beyond in the attempt to reach a still higher level.
  Nor are the disturbances created by her process as great as is often represented. Some of them are the crude beginnings of new Manifestations; others are an easily corrected movement of disintegration, often fruitful of fresh activities and always a small price to pay for the far-reaching results that she has in view.
  We may perhaps, if we consider all the circumstances, come
  --
   to this conclusion that mental life, far from being a recent appearance in Man, is the swift repetition in him of a previous achievement from which the Energy in the race had undergone one of her deplorable recoils. The savage is perhaps not so much the first forefa ther of civilised Man as the degenerate descendant of a previous civilisation. For if the actuality of intellectual achievement is unevenly distributed, the capacity is spread everywhere. It has been seen that in individual cases even the racial type considered by us the lowest, the negro fresh from the perennial barbarism of Central Africa, is capable, without admixture of blood, without waiting for future generations, of the intellectual culture, if not yet of the intellectual accomplishment of the dominant European. Even in the mass men seem to need, in favourable circumstances, only a few generations to cover ground that ought apparently to be measured in the terms of millenniums. Either, then, Man by his privilege as a mental being is exempt from the full burden of the tardy laws of evolution or else he already represents and with helpful conditions and in the right stimulating atmosphere can always display a high level of material capacity for the activities of the intellectual life.
  It is not mental incapacity, but the long rejection or seclusion from opportunity and withdrawal of the awakening impulse that creates the savage. Barbarism is an intermediate sleep, not an original darkness.
  Moreover the whole trend of modern thought and modern endeavour reveals itself to the observant eye as a large conscious effort of Nature in Man to effect a general level of intellectual equipment, capacity and farther possibility by universalising the opportunities which modern civilisation affords for the mental life. Even the preoccupation of the European intellect, the protagonist of this tendency, with material Nature and the externalities of existence is a necessary part of the effort. It seeks to prepare a sufficient basis in Man's physical being and vital energies and in his material environment for his full mental possibilities. By the spread of education, by the advance of the backward races, by the elevation of depressed classes, by the multiplication of labour-saving appliances, by the movement
  The Three Steps of Nature
  --
   towards ideal social and economic conditions, by the labour of Science towards an improved health, longevity and sound physique in civilised huManity, the sense and drift of this vast movement translates itself in easily intelligible signs. The right or at least the ultimate means may not always be employed, but their aim is the right preliminary aim, - a sound individual and social body and the satisfaction of the legitimate needs and deMands of the material mind, sufficient ease, leisure, equal opportunity, so that the whole of Mankind and no longer only the favoured race, class or individual may be free to develop the emotional and intellectual being to its full capacity. At present the material and economic aim may predominate, but always, behind, there works or there waits in reserve the higher and major impulse.
  And when the preliminary conditions are satisfied, when the great endeavour has found its base, what will be the nature of that farther possibility which the activities of the intellectual life must serve? If Mind is indeed Nature's highest term, then the entire development of the rational and imaginative intellect and the harmonious satisfaction of the emotions and sensibilities must be to themselves sufficient. But if, on the contrary, Man is more than a reasoning and emotional animal, if beyond that which is being evolved, there is something that has to be evolved, then it may well be that the fullness of the mental life, the suppleness, flexibility and wide capacity of the intellect, the ordered richness of emotion and sensibility may be only a passage towards the development of a higher life and of more powerful faculties which are yet to Manifest and to take possession of the lower instrument, just as mind itself has so taken possession of the body that the physical being no longer lives only for its own satisfaction but provides the foundation and the materials for a superior activity.
  The assertion of a higher than the mental life is the whole foundation of Indian philosophy and its acquisition and organisation is the veritable object served by the methods of Yoga.
  --
  Yoga, the inner instrument.4 And Indian tradition asserts that this which is to be Manifested is not a new term in huMan experience, but has been developed before and has even governed huManity in certain periods of its development. In any case, in order to be known it must at one time have been partly developed.
  And if since then Nature has sunk back from her achievement, the reason must always be found in some unrealised harmony, some insufficiency of the intellectual and material basis to which she has now returned, some over-specialisation of the higher to the detriment of the lower existence.
  --
  The only approximate terms in the English language have other associations and their use may lead to Many and even serious inaccuracies. The terminology of Yoga recognises besides the status of our physical and vital being, termed the gross body and doubly composed of the food sheath and the vital vehicle, besides the status of our mental being, termed the subtle body and singly composed of the mind sheath or mental vehicle,5 a third, supreme and divine status of supra-mental being, termed the causal body and composed of a fourth and a fifth vehicle6 which are described as those of knowledge and bliss. But this knowledge is not a systematised result of mental questionings and reasonings, not a temporary arrangement of conclusions and opinions in the terms of the highest probability, but rather a pure self-existent and self-luminous Truth. And this bliss is not a supreme pleasure of the heart and sensations with the experience of pain and sorrow as its background, but a delight also selfexistent and independent of objects and particular experiences, a self-delight which is the very nature, the very stuff, as it were, of a transcendent and infinite existence.
   antah.karan.a.
   Manah.-kos.a.
   vijnanakos.a and anandakos.a.
  --
  Do such psychological conceptions correspond to anything real and possible? All Yoga asserts them as its ultimate experience and supreme aim. They form the governing principles of our highest possible state of consciousness, our widest possible range of existence. There is, we say, a harmony of supreme faculties, corresponding roughly to the psychological faculties of revelation, inspiration and intuition, yet acting not in the intuitive reason or the divine mind, but on a still higher plane, which see Truth directly face to face, or rather live in the truth of things both universal and transcendent and are its formulation and luminous activity. And these faculties are the light of a conscious existence superseding the egoistic and itself both cosmic and transcendent, the nature of which is Bliss. These are obviously divine and, as Man is at present apparently constituted, superhuMan states of consciousness and activity. A trinity of transcendent existence, self-awareness and self-delight7 is, indeed, the metaphysical description of the supreme AtMan, the self-formulation, to our awakened knowledge, of the Unknowable whether conceived as a pure Impersonality or as a cosmic Personality Manifesting the universe. But in Yoga they are regarded also in their psychological aspects as states of subjective existence to which our waking consciousness is now alien, but which dwell in us in a superconscious plane and to which, therefore, we may always ascend.
  For, as is indicated by the name, causal body (karan.a), as opposed to the two others which are instruments (karan.a), this crowning Manifestation is also the source and effective power of all that in the actual evolution has preceded it. Our mental activities are, indeed, a derivation, selection and, so long as they are divided from the truth that is secretly their source, a deformation of the divine knowledge. Our sensations and emotions have the same relation to the Bliss, our vital forces and actions to the aspect of Will or Force assumed by the divine consciousness, our physical being to the pure essence of that Bliss and
  Consciousness. The evolution which we observe and of which
  --
   we are the terrestrial summit may be considered, in a sense, as an inverse Manifestation, by which these supreme Powers in their unity and their diversity use, develop and perfect the imperfect substance and activities of Matter, of Life and of Mind so that they, the inferior modes, may express in mutable relativity an increasing harmony of the divine and eternal states from which they are born. If this be the truth of the universe, then the goal of evolution is also its cause, it is that which is imManent in its elements and out of them is liberated. But the liberation is surely imperfect if it is only an escape and there is no return upon the containing substance and activities to exalt and transform them.
  The imManence itself would have no credible reason for being if it did not end in such a transfiguration. But if huMan mind can become capable of the glories of the divine Light, huMan emotion and sensibility can be transformed into the mould and assume the measure and movement of the supreme Bliss, huMan action not only represent but feel itself to be the motion of a divine and non-egoistic Force and the physical substance of our being sufficiently partake of the purity of the supernal essence, sufficiently unify plasticity and durable constancy to support and prolong these highest experiences and agencies, then all the long labour of Nature will end in a crowning justification and her evolutions reveal their profound significance.
  So dazzling is even a glimpse of this supreme existence and so absorbing its attraction that, once seen, we feel readily justified in neglecting all else for its pursuit. Even, by an opposite exaggeration to that which sees all things in Mind and the mental life as an exclusive ideal, Mind comes to be regarded as an unworthy deformation and a supreme obstacle, the source of an illusory universe, a negation of the Truth and itself to be denied and all its works and results annulled if we desire the final liberation. But this is a half-truth which errs by regarding only the actual limitations of Mind and ignores its divine intention.

0.03 - III - The Evening Sittings, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Sri Aurobindo was never a social Man in the current sense of the term and definitely he was not a Man of the crowd. This was due to his grave temperament, not to any feeling of superiority or to repulsion for men. At Baroda there was an Officers' Club which was patronised by the Maharajah and though Sri Aurobindo enrolled himself as a member he hardly went to the Club even on special occasions. He rather liked a small congenial circle of friends and spent most of his evenings with them whenever he was free and not occupied with his studies or other works. After Baroda when he went to Calcutta there was hardly any time in the storm and stress of revolutionary politics to permit him to lead a 'social life'. What little time he could spare from his incessant activities was spent in the house of Raja Subodh Mallick or at the Grey Street house. In the Karmayogin office he used to sit after the office hours till late chatting with a few persons or trying automatic writing. Strange dictations used to be received sometimes: one of them was the following: "Moni [Suresh Chakravarty] will bomb Sir Edward Grey when he will come as the Viceroy of India." In later years at Pondicherry there used to be a joke that Sir Edward took such a fright at the prospect of Moni's bombing him that he never came to India!
   After Sri Aurobindo had come to Pondicherry from Chandernagore, he entered upon an intense period of Sadhana and for a few months he refused to receive anyone. After a time he used to sit down to talk in the evening and on some days tried automatic writing. Yogic Sadhan, a small book, was the result. In 1913 Sri Aurobindo moved to Rue Franois Martin No. 41 where he used to receive visitors at fixed times. This was generally in the morning between 9 and 10.30.
  --
   These sittings, in fact, furnished Sri Aurobindo with an occasion to admit and feel the outer atmosphere and that of the group living with him. It brought to him the much-needed direct contact of the mental and vital make-up of the disciples, enabling him to act on the atmosphere in general and on the individual in particular. He could thus help to remould their mental make-up by removing the limitations of their minds and opinions, and correct temperamental tendencies and formations. Thus, these sittings contributed at least partly to the creation of an atmosphere amenable to the working of the Higher Consciousness. Far more important than the actual talk and its content was the personal contact, the influence of the Master, and the divine atmosphere he eManated; for through his outer personality it was the Divine Consciousness that he allowed to act. All along behind the outer Manifestation that appeared huMan, there was the influence and presence of the Divine.
   What was talked in the small group informally was not intended by Sri Aurobindo to be the independent expression of his views on the subjects, events or the persons discussed. Very often what he said was in answer to the spiritual need of the individual or of the collective atmosphere. It was like a spiritual remedy meant to produce certain spiritual results, not a philosophical or metaphysical pronouncement on questions, events or movements. The net result of some talks very often was to point out to the disciple the inherent incapacity of the huMan intellect and its secondary place in the search for the ultimate Reality.
   But there were occasions when he did give his independent, personal views on some problems, on events or other subjects. Even then it was never an authoritarian pronouncement. Most often it appeared to be a logically worked out and almost inevitable conclusion expressed quite impersonally though with firm and sincere conviction. This impersonality was such a prominent trait of his personality! Even in such matters as dispatching a letter or a telegram it would not be a comMand from him to a disciple to carry out the task. Most often during his usual passage to the dining room he would stop on the way, drop in on the company of four or five disciples and, holding out the letter or the telegram, would say in the most amiable and yet the most impersonal way: "I suppose this has to be sent." And it would be for someone in the group instantly to volunteer and take it. The expression he very often used was "It was done" or "It happened", not "I did."
   From 1918 to 1922, we gathered at No. 41, Rue Franois Martin, called the Guest House, upstairs, on a broad verandah into which four rooms opened and whose main piece of furniture was a small table 3' x 1' covered with a blue cotton cloth. That is where Sri Aurobindo used to sit in a hard wooden chair behind the table with a few chairs in front for the visitors or for the disciples.
  --
   The long period of the Second World War with all its vicissitudes passed through these years. It was a priceless experience to see how he devoted his energies to the task of saving huManity from the threatened reign of Nazism. It was a practical lesson of solid work done for huManity without any thought of return or reward, without even letting huManity know what he was doing for it! Thus he lived the Divine and showed us how the Divine cares for the world, how He comes down and works for Man. I shall never forget how he who was at one time in his own words "not merely a non-co-operator but an enemy of British Imperialism" bestowed such anxious care on the health of Churchill, listening carefully to the health-bulletins! It was the work of the Divine, it was the Divine's work for the world.
   There were no formal evening sittings during these years, but what appeared to me important in our informal talks was recorded and has been incorporated in this book.
  --
   [3] His initials, in the Tamil Manner, by which he was widely known.
   [4]The Life Divine, Centenary Edition, pp. 994-5.

0.03 - Letters to My little smile, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  worked for Many years embroidering clothes for the Mother and
  later became one of her personal attendants. She began writing
  --
  my blessings, my congratulations for the Manner in which she
  has passed her French test.
  --
  Many times I have found that if I don't imagine
  stories, as they are called, I feel a sort of dullness; then
  --
  and runs here and there like a madMan.
  The mind always runs about like a madMan. The first step is to
  detach one's consciousness from it and let it run by itself without
  --
  receive Many such things to read. But if You become
  serious, as You were this morning, I would rather put an
  --
  So Many times I have resolved to work regularly and so
  Many times I have failed! So I thought that if I told You,
  I would have Your help and become regular in my work,
  --
  there is a kind of noise in my head, as if Many people
  were talking at once and I can understand nothing of
  --
  feelings as carefully as a prudent Man bolts the doors of his
  house.
  --
  at such and such a time after having slept for so Many hours; I
  got up, washed and dressed, then I ate my breakfast and started
  --
  No, all that is only the Manifestation of a universal harmony
  which lies, as it were, at the very heart of creation. But the
  --
  to Manifest, this perfect beauty will express itself quite naturally
  and spontaneously in all forms.
  --
  work all day every day, how can I make so Many big
  and beautiful things such as I want to make for my dear,
  --
  have Managed to give you a few minutes. It is nice of you to
  think of not increasing my work unnecessarily; there are not
  Many like you.
  13 November 1933
  --
  won't tell You how Many hours I work because if I
  write "I worked for ten hours", You write to me, "It is
  --
  January - at that time there are Many visitors because of the
  vacations and I shall then wear the embroidered saris with the

0.03 - The Threefold Life, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  NATURE, then, is an evolution or progressive self-Manifestation of an eternal and secret existence, with three successive forms as her three steps of ascent. And we have consequently as the condition of all our activities these three mutually interdependent possibilities, the bodily life, the mental existence and the veiled spiritual being which is in the involution the cause of the others and in the evolution their result. Preserving and perfecting the physical, fulfilling the mental, it is Nature's aim and it should be ours to unveil in the perfected body and mind the transcendent activities of the Spirit. As the mental life does not abrogate but works for the elevation and better utilisation of the bodily existence, so too the spiritual should not abrogate but transfigure our intellectual, emotional, aesthetic and vital activities.
  For Man, the head of terrestrial Nature, the sole earthly frame in which her full evolution is possible, is a triple birth. He has been given a living frame in which the body is the vessel and life the dynamic means of a divine Manifestation. His activity is centred in a progressive mind which aims at perfecting itself as well as the house in which it dwells and the means of life that it uses, and is capable of awaking by a progressive self-realisation to its own true nature as a form of the Spirit. He culminates in what he always really was, the illumined and beatific spirit which is intended at last to irradiate life and mind with its now concealed splendours.
  Since this is the plan of the divine Energy in huManity, the whole method and aim of our existence must work by the interaction of these three elements in the being. As a result of their separate formulation in Nature, Man has open to him a choice between three kinds of life, the ordinary material existence, a life of mental activity and progress and the unchanging spiritual beatitude. But he can, as he progresses, combine these three forms, resolve their discords into a harmonious rhythm and so create in himself the whole godhead, the perfect Man.
  In ordinary Nature they have each their own characteristic and governing impulse.
  The characteristic energy of bodily Life is not so much in progress as in persistence, not so much in individual selfenlargement as in self-repetition. There is, indeed, in physical Nature a progression from type to type, from the vegetable to the animal, from the animal to Man; for even in inanimate Matter Mind is at work. But once a type is marked off physically, the chief immediate preoccupation of the terrestrial Mother seems to be to keep it in being by a constant reproduction. For Life always seeks immortality; but since individual form is imperManent and only the idea of a form is perManent in the consciousness that creates the universe, - for there it does not perish, - such constant reproduction is the only possible material immortality.
  Self-preservation, self-repetition, self-multiplication are necessarily, then, the predominant instincts of all material existence.
  --
  In each of these forms Nature acts both individually and collectively; for the Eternal affirms Himself equally in the single form and in the group-existence, whether family, clan and nation or groupings dependent on less physical principles or the supreme group of all, our collective huManity. Man also may seek his own individual good from any or all of these spheres of activity, or identify himself in them with the collectivity and live for it, or, rising to a truer perception of this complex universe, harmonise the individual realisation with the collective aim. For as it is the right relation of the soul with the Supreme, while it is in the universe, neither to assert egoistically its separate being nor to blot itself out in the Indefinable, but to realise its unity with the Divine and the world and unite them in the individual, so the right relation of the individual with the collectivity is neither to pursue egoistically his own material or mental progress or spiritual salvation without regard to his fellows, nor for the sake of the community to suppress or maim his proper development, but to sum up in himself all its best and completest possibilities and pour them out by thought, action and all other means on his surroundings so that the whole race may approach nearer to the attainment of its supreme personalities.
  It follows that the object of the material life must be to fulfil, above all things, the vital aim of Nature. The whole aim of the material Man is to live, to pass from birth to death with as much comfort or enjoyment as may be on the way, but anyhow to live.
  He can subordinate this aim, but only to physical Nature's other instincts, the reproduction of the individual and the conservation of the type in the family, class or community. Self, domesticity, the accustomed order of the society and of the nation are the constituents of the material existence. Its immense importance in the economy of Nature is self-evident, and commensurate is the importance of the huMan type which represents it. He assures her of the safety of the framework she has made and of the orderly continuance and conservation of her past gains.
  But by that very utility such men and the life they lead are condemned to be limited, irrationally conservative and earthbound. The customary routine, the customary institutions, the inherited or habitual forms of thought, - these things are the life-breath of their nostrils. They admit and jealously defend the changes compelled by the progressive mind in the past, but combat with equal zeal the changes that are being made by it in the present. For to the material Man the living progressive thinker is an ideologue, dreamer or madMan. The old Semites who stoned the living prophets and adored their memories when dead, were the very incarnation of this instinctive and unintelligent principle in Nature. In the ancient Indian distinction between the once born and the twice born, it is to this material Man that the former description can be applied. He does Nature's inferior works; he assures the basis for her higher activities; but not to him easily are opened the glories of her second birth.
  Yet he admits so much of spirituality as has been enforced on his customary ideas by the great religious outbursts of the past and he makes in his scheme of society a place, venerable though not often effective, for the priest or the learned theologian who can be trusted to provide him with a safe and ordinary spiritual pabulum. But to the Man who would assert for himself the liberty of spiritual experience and the spiritual life, he assigns, if he admits him at all, not the vestment of the priest but the robe of the Sannyasin. Outside society let him exercise his dangerous freedom. So he may even serve as a huMan lightning-rod receiving the electricity of the Spirit and turning it away from the social edifice.
  Nevertheless it is possible to make the material Man and his life moderately progressive by imprinting on the material mind the custom of progress, the habit of conscious change, the fixed idea of progression as a law of life. The creation by this means of progressive societies in Europe is one of the greatest triumphs of Mind over Matter. But the physical nature has its revenge; for the progress made tends to be of the grosser and more outward kind and its attempts at a higher or a more rapid movement bring about great wearinesses, swift exhaustions, startling recoils.
  It is possible also to give the material Man and his life a moderate spirituality by accustoming him to regard in a religious spirit all the institutions of life and its customary activities. The creation of such spiritualised communities in the East has been one of the greatest triumphs of Spirit over Matter. Yet here, too, there is a defect; for this often tends only to the creation of a religious temperament, the most outward form of spirituality.
  Its higher Manifestations, even the most splendid and puissant, either merely increase the number of souls drawn out of social life and so impoverish it or disturb the society for a while by a momentary elevation. The truth is that neither the mental effort nor the spiritual impulse can suffice, divorced from each other, to overcome the immense resistance of material Nature.
  She deMands their alliance in a complete effort before she will suffer a complete change in huManity. But, usually, these two great agents are unwilling to make to each other the necessary concessions.
  The mental life concentrates on the aesthetic, the ethical and the intellectual activities. Essential mentality is idealistic and a seeker after perfection. The subtle self, the brilliant AtMan,1 is ever a dreamer. A dream of perfect beauty, perfect conduct, perfect Truth, whether seeking new forms of the Eternal or revitalising the old, is the very soul of pure mentality. But it knows not how to deal with the resistance of Matter. There it is hampered and inefficient, works by bungling experiments and has either to withdraw from the struggle or submit to the grey actuality. Or else, by studying the material life and accepting the conditions of the contest, it may succeed, but only in imposing temporarily some artificial system which infinite Nature either rends and casts aside or disfigures out of recognition or by withdrawing her assent leaves as the corpse of a dead ideal. Few and far between have been those realisations of the dreamer in Man which the world has gladly accepted, looks back to with a fond memory and seeks, in its elements, to cherish.
  1 Who dwells in Dream, the inly conscious, the enjoyer of abstractions, the Brilliant.
  Mandukya Upanishad 4.
  When the gulf between actual life and the temperament of the thinker is too great, we see as the result a sort of withdrawing of the Mind from life in order to act with a greater freedom in its own sphere. The poet living among his brilliant visions, the artist absorbed in his art, the philosopher thinking out the problems of the intellect in his solitary chamber, the scientist, the scholar caring only for their studies and their experiments, were often in former days, are even now not unoften the Sannyasins of the intellect. To the work they have done for huManity, all its past bears record.
  But such seclusion is justified only by some special activity.
  --
  This mixing with life may, however, be pursued for the sake of the individual mind and with an entire indifference to the forms of the material existence or the uplifting of the race. This indifference is seen at its highest in the Epicurean discipline and is not entirely absent from the Stoic; and even altruism does the works of compassion more often for its own sake than for the sake of the world it helps. But this too is a limited fulfilment. The progressive mind is seen at its noblest when it strives to elevate the whole race to its own level whether by sowing broadcast the image of its own thought and fulfilment or by changing the material life of the race into fresh forms, religious, intellectual, social or political, intended to represent more nearly that ideal of truth, beauty, justice, righteousness with which the Man's own soul is illumined. Failure in such a field matters little; for the mere attempt is dynamic and creative. The struggle of Mind to elevate life is the promise and condition of the conquest of life by that which is higher even than Mind.
  That highest thing, the spiritual existence, is concerned with what is eternal but not therefore entirely aloof from the transient. For the spiritual Man the mind's dream of perfect beauty is realised in an eternal love, beauty and delight that has no dependence and is equal behind all objective appearances; its dream of perfect Truth in the supreme, self-existent, self-apparent and eternal Verity which never varies, but explains and is the secret of all variations and the goal of all progress; its dream of perfect action in the omnipotent and self-guiding Law that is inherent for ever in all things and translates itself here in the rhythm of the worlds. What is fugitive vision or constant effort of creation in the brilliant Self is an eternally existing Reality in the Self that knows2 and is the Lord.
  But if it is often difficult for the mental life to accommodate itself to the dully resistant material activity, how much more difficult must it seem for the spiritual existence to live on in a world that appears full not of the Truth but of every lie and illusion, not of Love and Beauty but of an encompassing discord and ugliness, not of the Law of Truth but of victorious selfishness and sin? Therefore the spiritual life tends easily in the saint and Sannyasin to withdraw from the material existence and reject it either wholly and physically or in the spirit. It sees this world as the kingdom of evil or of ignorance and the eternal and divine either in a far-off heaven or beyond where there is no world and no life. It separates itself inwardly, if not also physically, from the world's impurities; it asserts the spiritual reality in a spotless isolation. This withdrawal renders an invaluable service to the material life itself by forcing it to regard and even to bow down to something that is the direct negation of its own petty ideals, sordid cares and egoistic self-content.
  --
  Mandukya Upanishad 5, 6.
  But the spiritual life, like the mental, may thus make use of this outward existence for the benefit of the individual with a perfect indifference to any collective uplifting of the merely symbolic world which it uses. Since the Eternal is for ever the same in all things and all things the same to the Eternal, since the exact mode of action and the result are of no importance compared with the working out in oneself of the one great realisation, this spiritual indifference accepts no matter what environment, no matter what action, dispassionately, prepared to retire as soon as its own supreme end is realised. It is so that Many have understood the ideal of the Gita. Or else the inner love and bliss may pour itself out on the world in good deeds, in service, in compassion, the inner Truth in the giving of knowledge, without therefore attempting the transformation of a world which must by its inalienable nature remain a battlefield of the dualities, of sin and virtue, of truth and error, of joy and suffering.
  But if Progress also is one of the chief terms of worldexistence and a progressive Manifestation of the Divine the true sense of Nature, this limitation also is invalid. It is possible for the spiritual life in the world, and it is its real mission, to change the material life into its own image, the image of the Divine. Therefore, besides the great solitaries who have sought and attained their self-liberation, we have the great spiritual teachers who have also liberated others and, supreme of all, the great dynamic souls who, feeling themselves stronger in the might of the Spirit than all the forces of the material life banded together, have thrown themselves upon the world, grappled with it in a loving wrestle and striven to compel its consent to its own transfiguration. Ordinarily, the effort is concentrated on a mental and moral change in huManity, but it may extend itself also to the alteration of the forms of our life and its institutions so that they too may be a better mould for the inpourings of the Spirit. These attempts have been the supreme landmarks in the progressive development of huMan ideals and the divine preparation of the race. Every one of them, whatever its outward results, has left Earth more capable of Heaven and quickened in its tardy movements the evolutionary Yoga of Nature.
  In India, for the last thousand years and more, the spiritual life and the material have existed side by side to the exclusion of the progressive mind. Spirituality has made terms for itself with Matter by renouncing the attempt at general progress. It has obtained from society the right of free spiritual development for all who assume some distinctive symbol, such as the garb of the Sannyasin, the recognition of that life as Man's goal and those who live it as worthy of an absolute reverence, and the casting of society itself into such a religious mould that its most customary acts should be accompanied by a formal reminder of the spiritual symbolism of life and its ultimate destination. On the other hand, there was conceded to society the right of inertia and immobile self-conservation. The concession destroyed much of the value of the terms. The religious mould being fixed, the formal reminder tended to become a routine and to lose its living sense. The constant attempts to change the mould by new sects and religions ended only in a new routine or a modification of the old; for the saving element of the free and active mind had been exiled. The material life, handed over to the Ignorance, the purposeless and endless duality, became a leaden and dolorous yoke from which flight was the only escape.
  The schools of Indian Yoga lent themselves to the compromise. Individual perfection or liberation was made the aim, seclusion of some kind from the ordinary activities the condition, the renunciation of life the culmination. The teacher gave his knowledge only to a small circle of disciples. Or if a wider movement was attempted, it was still the release of the individual soul that remained the aim. The pact with an immobile society was, for the most part, observed.
  --
  We have to recognise once more that the individual exists not in himself alone but in the collectivity and that individual perfection and liberation are not the whole sense of God's intention in the world. The free use of our liberty includes also the liberation of others and of Mankind; the perfect utility of our perfection is, having realised in ourselves the divine symbol, to reproduce, multiply and ultimately universalise it in others.
  Therefore from a concrete view of huMan life in its threefold potentialities we come to the same conclusion that we had drawn from an observation of Nature in her general workings and the three steps of her evolution. And we begin to perceive a complete aim for our synthesis of Yoga.
  Spirit is the crown of universal existence; Matter is its basis; Mind is the link between the two. Spirit is that which is eternal; Mind and Matter are its workings. Spirit is that which is concealed and has to be revealed; mind and body are the means by which it seeks to reveal itself. Spirit is the image of the Lord of the Yoga; mind and body are the means He has provided for reproducing that image in phenomenal existence. All Nature is an attempt at a progressive revelation of the concealed Truth, a more and more successful reproduction of the divine image.
  --
  But their aim is one in the end. The generalisation of Yoga in huManity must be the last victory of Nature over her own delays and concealments. Even as now by the progressive mind in Science she seeks to make all Mankind fit for the full development of the mental life, so by Yoga must she inevitably seek to make all Mankind fit for the higher evolution, the second birth, the spiritual existence. And as the mental life uses and perfects the material, so will the spiritual use and perfect the material and the mental existence as the instruments of a divine self-expression.
  The ages when that is accomplished, are the legendary Satya or Krita3 Yugas, the ages of the Truth Manifested in the symbol, of the great work done when Nature in Mankind, illumined, satisfied and blissful, rests in the culmination of her endeavour.
  It is for Man to know her meaning, no longer misunderstanding, vilifying or misusing the universal Mother and to aspire always by her mightiest means to her highest ideal.
  3 Satya means Truth; Krita, effected or completed.

0.04 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  by the milkMan. When the bullocks are working, it may
  be safer to use those ropes. As soon as the work is over,
  --
  As there is no better Man I am trying to get on with
  him.
  The bullocks seem to like this Man and this is the most important
  point.
  --
  Man is not an expert and moreover he has something of a brute
  around him. You will have to look carefully after him, for I do
  --
  the Man and to find a better one.
  The proposal to frighten them in order to master them is
  --
  act like the ignorant ordinary Man?
  I can tell you this to finish with the subject, that from the
  --
  I do not find the new Man better than the previous one. He is far
  too nervous and restless. If he could be a little more quiet and
  --
  the places, Many things are observed on that day. Horns
  are painted in red and blue colour, no work is given and
  --
  What is this? If the cart-Man made a mistake or misbehaved
  with the bullocks, I must know and will tolerate none of THESE
  --
  A Man who is cruel with beasts is worse than a beast.
  2 April 1934

0.04 - The Systems of Yoga, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  HESE relations between the different psychological divisions of the huMan being and these various utilities and objects of effort founded on them, such as we have seen them in our brief survey of the natural evolution, we shall find repeated in the fundamental principles and methods of the different schools of Yoga. And if we seek to combine and harmonise their central practices and their predominant aims, we shall find that the basis provided by Nature is still our natural basis and the condition of their synthesis.
  In one respect Yoga exceeds the normal operation of cosmic
  --
  In practice three conceptions are necessary before there can be any possibility of Yoga; there must be, as it were, three consenting parties to the effort, - God, Nature and the huMan soul or, in more abstract language, the Transcendental, the Universal
  32
  --
  Bhakta seeks and yearns after Bhagavan, Bhagavan also seeks and yearns after the Bhakta.1 There can be no Yoga of knowledge without a huMan seeker of the knowledge, the supreme subject of knowledge and the divine use by the individual of the universal faculties of knowledge; no Yoga of devotion without the huMan God-lover, the supreme object of love and delight and the divine use by the individual of the universal faculties of spiritual, emotional and aesthetic enjoyment; no Yoga of works without the huMan worker, the supreme Will, Master of all works and sacrifices, and the divine use by the individual of the universal faculties of power and action. However Monistic may be our intellectual conception of the highest truth of things, in practice we are compelled to accept this omnipresent Trinity.
  For the contact of the huMan and individual consciousness with the divine is the very essence of Yoga. Yoga is the union of that which has become separated in the play of the universe with its own true self, origin and universality. The contact may take place at any point of the complex and intricately organised consciousness which we call our personality. It may be effected in the physical through the body; in the vital through the action of
  Bhakta, the devotee or lover of God; Bhagavan, God, the Lord of Love and Delight.
  --
  Its method is a direct commerce between the huMan Purusha in the individual body and the divine Purusha who dwells in every body and yet transcends all form and name.
  Hathayoga aims at the conquest of the life and the body whose combination in the food sheath and the vital vehicle constitutes, as we have seen, the gross body and whose equilibrium is the foundation of all Nature's workings in the huMan being. The equilibrium established by Nature is sufficient for the normal egoistic life; it is insufficient for the purpose of the Hathayogin.
  For it is calculated on the amount of vital or dynamic force necessary to drive the physical engine during the normal span of huMan life and to perform more or less adequately the various workings deManded of it by the individual life inhabiting this frame and the world-environment by which it is conditioned.
  34
  --
  Nature and kept within the narrow bounds of her normal operations. In the ancient tradition of Hathayoga it has always been supposed that this conquest could be pushed so far even as to conquer to a great extent the force of gravitation. By various subsidiary but elaborate processes the Hathayogin next contrives to keep the body free from all impurities and the nervous system unclogged for those exercises of respiration which are his most important instruments. These are called pran.ayama, the control of the breath or vital power; for breathing is the chief physical functioning of the vital forces. Pranayama, for the Hathayogin, serves a double purpose. First, it completes the perfection of the body. The vitality is liberated from Many of the ordinary necessities of physical Nature; robust health, prolonged youth, often an extraordinary longevity are attained.
  On the other hand, Pranayama awakens the coiled-up serpent of the Pranic dynamism in the vital sheath and opens to the Yogin fields of consciousness, ranges of experience, abnormal faculties denied to the ordinary huMan life while it puissantly intensifies such normal powers and faculties as he already possesses.
  The Systems of Yoga
  --
  The results of Hathayoga are thus striking to the eye and impose easily on the vulgar or physical mind. And yet at the end we may ask what we have gained at the end of all this stupendous labour. The object of physical Nature, the preservation of the mere physical life, its highest perfection, even in a certain sense the capacity of a greater enjoyment of physical living have been carried out on an abnormal scale. But the weakness of Hathayoga is that its laborious and difficult processes make so great a deMand on the time and energy and impose so complete a severance from the ordinary life of men that the utilisation of its results for the life of the world becomes either impracticable or is extraordinarily restricted. If in return for this loss we gain another life in another world within, the mental, the dynamic, these results could have been acquired through other systems, through Rajayoga, through Tantra, by much less laborious methods and held on much less exacting terms. On the other hand the physical results, increased vitality, prolonged youth, health, longevity are of small avail if they must be held by us as misers of ourselves, apart from the common life, for their own sake, not utilised, not thrown into the common sum of the world's activities. Hathayoga attains large results, but at an exorbitant price and to very little purpose.
  Rajayoga takes a higher flight. It aims at the liberation and perfection not of the bodily, but of the mental being, the control of the emotional and sensational life, the mastery of the whole apparatus of thought and consciousness. It fixes its eyes on the citta, that stuff of mental consciousness in which all these activities arise, and it seeks, even as Hathayoga with its physical material, first to purify and to tranquillise. The normal state of Man is a condition of trouble and disorder, a kingdom either at war with itself or badly governed; for the lord, the Purusha, is subjected to his ministers, the faculties, subjected even to his subjects, the instruments of sensation, emotion, action, enjoyment. Swarajya, self-rule, must be substituted for this subjection.
  First, therefore, the powers of order must be helped to overcome
  --
  But this exclusive consummation is not the sole or inevitable result of the Path of Knowledge. For, followed more largely and with a less individual aim, the method of Knowledge may lead to an active conquest of the cosmic existence for the Divine no less than to a transcendence. The point of this departure is the realisation of the supreme Self not only in one's own being but in all beings and, finally, the realisation of even the phenomenal aspects of the world as a play of the divine consciousness and not something entirely alien to its true nature. And on the basis of this realisation a yet further enlargement is possible, the conversion of all forms of knowledge, however mundane, into activities of the divine consciousness utilisable for the perception of the one and unique Object of knowledge both in itself and through the play of its forms and symbols. Such a method might well lead to the elevation of the whole range of huMan intellect
  The Systems of Yoga
  --
   and perception to the divine level, to its spiritualisation and to the justification of the cosmic travail of knowledge in huManity.
  The Path of Devotion aims at the enjoyment of the supreme
  --
  Lord, with our huMan life as its final stage, pursued through the different phases of self-concealment and self-revelation. The principle of Bhakti Yoga is to utilise all the normal relations of huMan life into which emotion enters and apply them no longer to transient worldly relations, but to the joy of the All-Loving, the All-Beautiful and the All-Blissful. Worship and meditation are used only for the preparation and increase of intensity of the divine relationship. And this Yoga is catholic in its use of all emotional relations, so that even enmity and opposition to God, considered as an intense, impatient and perverse form of Love, is conceived as a possible means of realisation and salvation.
  This path, too, as ordinarily practised, leads away from worldexistence to an absorption, of another kind than the Monist's, in the Transcendent and Supra-cosmic.
  But, here too, the exclusive result is not inevitable. The Yoga itself provides a first corrective by not confining the play of divine love to the relation between the supreme Soul and the individual, but extending it to a common feeling and mutual worship between the devotees themselves united in the same realisation of the supreme Love and Bliss. It provides a yet more general corrective in the realisation of the divine object of Love in all beings not only huMan but animal, easily extended to all forms whatsoever. We can see how this larger application of the Yoga of
  Devotion may be so used as to lead to the elevation of the whole range of huMan emotion, sensation and aesthetic perception to the divine level, its spiritualisation and the justification of the cosmic labour towards love and joy in our huManity.
  The Path of Works aims at the dedication of every huMan activity to the supreme Will. It begins by the renunciation of all egoistic aim for our works, all pursuit of action for an interested aim or for the sake of a worldly result. By this renunciation it so
  40
  --
  But here too the exclusive result is not inevitable. The end of the path may be, equally, a perception of the Divine in all energies, in all happenings, in all activities, and a free and unegoistic participation of the soul in the cosmic action. So followed it will lead to the elevation of all huMan will and activity to the divine level, its spiritualisation and the justification of the cosmic labour towards freedom, power and perfection in the huMan being.
  We can see also that in the integral view of things these three paths are one. Divine Love should normally lead to the perfect knowledge of the Beloved by perfect intimacy, thus becoming a path of Knowledge, and to divine service, thus becoming a path of Works. So also should perfect Knowledge lead to perfect
  Love and Joy and a full acceptance of the works of That which is known; dedicated Works to the entire love of the Master of the Sacrifice and the deepest knowledge of His ways and His being. It is in this triple path that we come most readily to the absolute knowledge, love and service of the One in all beings and in the entire cosmic Manifestation.
  

0.05 - Letters to a Child, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  to make you a strong and conscious Man who is master of
  himself - that is, in control of his lower nature and capable of
  --
  Man realises his true being, the more he will become my very
  dear child.
  --
  No obscurity must be allowed to Manifest through you.
  12 April 1934
  --
  HuMan contact has done me much harm, but I
  cannot give up this habit. I have made Many efforts to
  stop all huMan contacts, but I cannot. I don't know
  what to do.
  --
  Many mistakes.
  I send you much patience and all my love.
  --
  of knowledge which are indispensable to a Man if he does not
  want to be ignorant and uncultured.
  --
  withdraw, though it is always there, behind, ready to Manifest
  again. But above all you must not believe the suggestions of incapacity and failure; they come from an adverse source and ought
  --
  multiple in its Manifestation. There is only one moon and yet
  each reflection of the moon is different. This is what I wanted
  --
  opened to Many influences and that is why it is difficult for them
  to be steady.
  --
  I feel completely suffocated. The struggle has become fiercer. How Many days must I go on like this?
  My dear child,
  --
  Sincerity deMands of each one that he express only the truth
  of his being.
  --
  please pardon them for I am huMan. Please pardon me
  for what I have done and let me know what mistakes I

0.05 - The Synthesis of the Systems, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Y THE very nature of the principal Yogic schools, each covering in its operations a part of the complex huMan integer and attempting to bring out its highest possibilities, it will appear that a synthesis of all of them largely conceived and applied might well result in an integral Yoga. But they are so disparate in their tendencies, so highly specialised and elaborated in their forms, so long confirmed in the mutual opposition of their ideas and methods that we do not easily find how we can arrive at their right union.
  An undiscriminating combination in block would not be a synthesis, but a confusion. Nor would a successive practice of each of them in turn be easy in the short span of our huMan life and with our limited energies, to say nothing of the waste of labour implied in so cumbrous a process. Sometimes, indeed,
  Hathayoga and Rajayoga are thus successively practised. And in a recent unique example, in the life of Ramakrishna Paramhansa, we see a colossal spiritual capacity first driving straight to the divine realisation, taking, as it were, the kingdom of heaven by violence, and then seizing upon one Yogic method after another and extracting the substance out of it with an incredible rapidity, always to return to the heart of the whole matter, the realisation and possession of God by the power of love, by the extension of inborn spirituality into various experience and by the spontaneous play of an intuitive knowledge. Such an example cannot be generalised. Its object also was special and temporal, to exemplify in the great and decisive experience of a master-soul the truth, now most necessary to huManity, towards which a world long divided into jarring sects and schools is with difficulty labouring, that all sects are forms and fragments of a single integral truth and all disciplines labour in their different ways towards one supreme experience. To know, be and possess
  42
  --
   the Divine is the one thing needful and it includes or leads up to all the rest; towards this sole good we have to drive and this attained, all the rest that the divine Will chooses for us, all necessary form and Manifestation, will be added.
  The synthesis we propose cannot, then, be arrived at either by combination in mass or by successive practice. It must therefore be effected by neglecting the forms and outsides of the
  --
  This system is the way of the Tantra. Owing to certain of its developments Tantra has fallen into discredit with those who are not Tantrics; and especially owing to the developments of its left-hand path, the Vama Marga, which not content with exceeding the duality of virtue and sin and instead of replacing them by spontaneous rightness of action seemed, sometimes, to make a method of self-indulgence, a method of unrestrained social immorality. Nevertheless, in its origin, Tantra was a great and puissant system founded upon ideas which were at least partially true. Even its twofold division into the right-hand and left-hand paths, Dakshina Marga and Vama Marga, started from a certain profound perception. In the ancient symbolic sense of the words Dakshina and Vama, it was the distinction between the way of Knowledge and the way of Ananda, - Nature in Man liberating itself by right discrimination in power and practice of its own energies, elements and potentialities and Nature in Man
  The Synthesis of the Systems
  --
  Will-in-Power executive in the universe. It was by learning and applying the intimate secrets of this Will-in-Power, its method, its Tantra, that the Tantric Yogin pursued the aims of his discipline, - mastery, perfection, liberation, beatitude. Instead of drawing back from Manifested Nature and its difficulties, he confronted them, seized and conquered. But in the end, as is the general tendency of Prakriti, Tantric Yoga largely lost its principle in its machinery and became a thing of formulae and occult mechanism still powerful when rightly used but fallen from the clarity of their original intention.
  We have in this central Tantric conception one side of the truth, the worship of the Energy, the Shakti, as the sole effective force for all attainment. We get the other extreme in the Vedantic conception of the Shakti as a power of Illusion and in the search after the silent inactive Purusha as the means of liberation from the deceptions created by the active Energy. But in the integral conception the Conscious Soul is the Lord, the Nature-Soul is his executive Energy. Purusha is of the nature of Sat, the being of conscious self-existence pure and infinite; Shakti or Prakriti is of the nature of Chit, - it is power of the Purusha's self-conscious existence, pure and infinite. The relation of the two exists between the poles of rest and action. When the Energy is absorbed
  --
  Yoga. In Man we render these terms by Will and Faith, - a will that is eventually self-effective because it is of the substance of
  Knowledge and a faith that is the reflex in the lower consciousness of a Truth or real Idea yet unrealised in the Manifestation.
  It is this self-certainty of the Idea which is meant by the Gita when it says, yo yac-chraddhah. sa eva sah., "whatever is a Man's faith or the sure Idea in him, that he becomes."
  We see, then, what from the psychological point of view,
  --
  Yoga that we seek must also be an integral action of Nature, and the whole difference between the Yogin and the natural Man will be this, that the Yogin seeks to substitute in himself for the integral action of the lower Nature working in and by ego and division the integral action of the higher Nature working in and by God and unity. If indeed our aim be only an escape from the world to God, synthesis is unnecessary and a waste of time; for then our sole practical aim must be to find out one path out of the thousand that lead to God, one shortest possible of short cuts, and not to linger exploring different paths that end in the same goal. But if our aim be a transformation of our integral being into the terms of God-existence, it is then that a synthesis becomes necessary.
  The method we have to pursue, then, is to put our whole conscious being into relation and contact with the Divine and to call Him in to transform our entire being into His. Thus in a sense
  --
   its own realisation. The divine and all-knowing and all-effecting descends upon the limited and obscure, progressively illumines and energises the whole lower nature and substitutes its own action for all the terms of the inferior huMan light and mortal activity.
  In psychological fact this method translates itself into the progressive surrender of the ego with its whole field and all its apparatus to the Beyond-ego with its vast and incalculable but always inevitable workings. Certainly, this is no short cut or easy sadhana. It requires a colossal faith, an absolute courage and above all an unflinching patience. For it implies three stages of which only the last can be wholly blissful or rapid, - the attempt of the ego to enter into contact with the Divine, the wide, full and therefore laborious preparation of the whole lower Nature by the divine working to receive and become the higher Nature, and the eventual transformation. In fact, however, the divine
  Strength, often unobserved and behind the veil, substitutes itself for our weakness and supports us through all our failings of faith, courage and patience. It "makes the blind to see and the lame to stride over the hills." The intellect becomes aware of a Law that beneficently insists and a succour that upholds; the heart speaks of a Master of all things and Friend of Man or a universal Mother who upholds through all stumblings. Therefore this path is at once the most difficult imaginable and yet, in comparison with the magnitude of its effort and object, the most easy and sure of all.
  There are three outstanding features of this action of the higher when it works integrally on the lower nature. In the first place it does not act according to a fixed system and succession as in the specialised methods of Yoga, but with a sort of free, scattered and yet gradually intensive and purposeful working determined by the temperament of the individual in whom it operates, the helpful materials which his nature offers and the obstacles which it presents to purification and perfection. In a sense, therefore, each Man in this path has his own method of
  Yoga. Yet are there certain broad lines of working common to all which enable us to construct not indeed a routine system, but
  --
  Everything in us is seized by the hands of a mighty Artificer and transformed into a clear image of that which it now seeks confusedly to present. In that ever-progressive experience we begin to perceive how this lower Manifestation is constituted and that everything in it, however seemingly deformed or petty or vile, is the more or less distorted or imperfect figure of some element or action in the harmony of the divine Nature. We begin to understand what the Vedic Rishis meant when they spoke of the huMan forefa thers fashioning the gods as a smith forges the crude material in his smithy.
  Thirdly, the divine Power in us uses all life as the means of this integral Yoga. Every experience and outer contact with our world-environment, however trifling or however disastrous, is used for the work, and every inner experience, even to the most repellent suffering or the most humiliating fall, becomes a step on the path to perfection. And we recognise in ourselves with opened eyes the method of God in the world, His purpose of light in the obscure, of might in the weak and fallen, of delight in what is grievous and miserable. We see the divine method to be the same in the lower and in the higher working; only in the one it is pursued tardily and obscurely through the subconscious in
  Nature, in the other it becomes swift and self-conscious and the instrument confesses the hand of the Master. All life is a Yoga of Nature seeking to Manifest God within itself. Yoga marks the stage at which this effort becomes capable of self-awareness and therefore of right completion in the individual. It is a gathering up and concentration of the movements dispersed and loosely combined in the lower evolution.
  An integral method and an integral result. First, an integral realisation of Divine Being; not only a realisation of the One in its indistinguishable unity, but also in its multitude of aspects which are also necessary to the complete knowledge of it by
  --
  Sachchidananda; but also the acquisition of the divine nature by the transformation of this lower being into the huMan image of the Divine, sadharmya-mukti, and the complete and final release of all, the liberation of the consciousness from the transitory mould of the ego and its unification with the One Being, universal both in the world and the individual and transcendentally one both in the world and beyond all universe.
  By this integral realisation and liberation, the perfect harmony of the results of Knowledge, Love and Works. For there is attained the complete release from ego and identification in being with the One in all and beyond all. But since the attaining consciousness is not limited by its attainment, we win also the unity in Beatitude and the harmonised diversity in Love, so that all relations of the play remain possible to us even while we retain on the heights of our being the eternal oneness with the
  --
   functioning of the complex instrument we are in our outer parts, is the condition of an integral liberty. Its result is an integral beatitude, in which there becomes possible at once the Ananda of all that is in the world seen as symbols of the Divine and the Ananda of that which is not-world. And it prepares the integral perfection of our huManity as a type of the Divine in the conditions of the huMan Manifestation, a perfection founded on a certain free universality of being, of love and joy, of play of knowledge and of play of will in power and will in unegoistic action. This integrality also can be attained by the integral Yoga.
  Perfection includes perfection of mind and body, so that the highest results of Rajayoga and Hathayoga should be contained in the widest formula of the synthesis finally to be effected by Mankind. At any rate a full development of the general mental and physical faculties and experiences attainable by huManity through Yoga must be included in the scope of the integral method. Nor would these have any raison d'etre unless employed for an integral mental and physical life. Such a mental and physical life would be in its nature a translation of the spiritual existence into its right mental and physical values. Thus we would arrive at a synthesis of the three degrees of Nature and of the three modes of huMan existence which she has evolved or is evolving. We would include in the scope of our liberated being and perfected modes of activity the material life, our base, and the mental life, our intermediate instrument.
  Nor would the integrality to which we aspire be real or even possible, if it were confined to the individual. Since our divine perfection embraces the realisation of ourselves in being, in life and in love through others as well as through ourselves, the extension of our liberty and of its results in others would be the inevitable outcome as well as the broadest utility of our liberation and perfection. And the constant and inherent attempt of such an extension would be towards its increasing and ultimately complete generalisation in Mankind.
  The divinising of the normal material life of Man and of his great secular attempt of mental and moral self-culture in the individual and the race by this integralisation of a widely perfect
  50
  --
  The widest synthesis of perfection possible to thought is the sole effort entirely worthy of those whose dedicated vision perceives that God dwells concealed in huManity.
  

0.06 - INTRODUCTION, #Dark Night of the Soul, #Saint John of the Cross, #Christianity
  that by himself, and with the ordinary aid of grace, Man cannot attain to that
  degree of purgation which is essential to his transformation in God. He needs
  --
  Sense, we are told, is 'common' and 'comes to Many,' whereas that of Spirit 'is the
  portion of very few.'5 The one is 'bitter and terrible' but 'the second bears no
  --
  and draw it gradually nearer to God; we have here, as it were, so Many stages of the
  ascent of the Mount on whose summit the soul attains to transforming union.
  --
  before doing so,10 for they still have Many imperfections, both habitual and actual
  (Chapter ii). After a brief introduction (Chapter iii), the Saint describes with some
  --
  quite so appealingly huMan; for, though he is huMan even in his loftiest and
  sublimest passages, this intermingling of philosophy with mystical theology makes
  --
  between the principles of sound reason and the sublimest Manifestations of Divine
  grace.

0.06 - Letters to a Young Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  huMan beings.
  No, it does not depend at all upon huMan beings. What has to
  be done will be done despite all possible resistances.
  --
  an aim as to be united with the Divine and to Manifest Him, how
  can he be affected by all the futilities and foolishnesses of life?
  --
  Manifested world so effectively conceals.
  I don't think this is true; union with the outer nature brings more
  --
  If you were a Man of the world as you say, you would not be
  here; you would be in the world. These are certain elements in
  --
  My physical mind is not yet convinced that huMan life
  is capable of overcoming all suffering and even death.
  It may be that huMan life is indeed incapable of it; but for the
  divine life nothing is impossible.
  --
  may call huMan beings grains of dust if one likes, or compare
  them to the stars; in either case they are all alike in size and
  --
  would be worthless words behind which a Man seeks
  shelter and protection. But even so, I am always Your
  --
  At no moment do I forget you. Don't you rather allow too Many
  other influences to come between you and me?
  --
  It is impossible to cease to be; nothing that belongs to the Manifested universe can go out of it except through the door of
  spiritual liberation, that is, transformation.
  --
  why does the huMan being cry and lament the lack of
  this Presence?
  --
  and the ordinary consciousness of ignorant Man.
  Series Six - To a Young Sadhak
  --
  and on the Manner of one's approach to the Divine depends
  what he receives and knows of the Divine. The bhakta meets
  a Divine full of affection and sweetness, the wise Man will find
  a Divine full of wisdom and knowledge. He who fears meets a
  --
  True love is something very deep and very calm in its intensity; it may very well not Manifest itself through outer effusiveness.
  To love is not to possess, but to give oneself.
  --
  that I told You I was losing all huMan feelings.
  This can hardly be called a loss; I consider it an inestimable gain.
  --
  else except that red rose which signifies "HuMan passions changed into love for the Divine". I want to know
  precisely what the huMan passions are.
  By "passion" we mean all the violent desires which take possession of a Man and finally govern his life - the drunkard has
  the passion for drink, the debauchee the passion for women,
  the gambler the passion for dice, etc. If one huMan being feels
  a violent and uncontrollable love for another, this is called a
  --
  love which huMan beings feel for one another that must be
  changed into love for the Divine.
  --
  to me Many things. There is a jealousy in me which blinds
  me; another part in me is very vain, it gives me the idea
  --
  It is when one feels like a blind Man that one begins to be ready
  for the illumination.
  --
  than by mixing with Many people and doing much work.
  I have had the experience myself that one can be fully concentrated and be in union with the Divine even while working
  --
  It is absolutely false that anything huMan can heal a huMan evil.
  Only the Divine can heal. It is in Him alone that one must
  --
  all and do all through the huMan instruments which are open to
  His influence.
  --
  against the terrestrial evolution without using a huMan
  being as an intermediary?
  It is not impossible, but it is easier for them to find a huMan
  instrument.

0.07 - DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL, #Dark Night of the Soul, #Saint John of the Cross, #Christianity
  IN this book are first set down all the stanzas which are to be expounded; afterwards, each of the stanzas is expounded separately, being set down before its exposition; and then each line is expounded separately and in turn, the line itself also being set down before the exposition. In the first two stanzas are expounded the effects of the two spiritual purgations: of the sensual part of Man and of the spiritual part. In the other six are expounded various and wondrous effects of the spiritual illumination and union of love with God.
  STANZAS OF THE SOUL
  --
  Begins the exposition of the stanzas which treat of the way and Manner which the soul follows upon the road of the union of love with God. Before we enter upon the exposition of these stanzas, it is well to understand here that the soul that utters them is now in the state of perfection, which is the union of love with God, having already passed through severe trials and straits, by means of spiritual exercise in the narrow way of eternal life whereof Our Saviour speaks in the Gospel, along which way the soul ordinarily passes in order to reach this high and happy union with God. Since this road (as the Lord Himself says likewise) is so strait, and since there are so few that enter by it,19 the soul considers it a great happiness and good chance to have passed along it to the said perfection of love, as it sings in this first stanza, calling this strait road with full propriety 'dark night,' as will be explained hereafter in the lines of the said stanza. The soul, then, rejoicing at having passed along this narrow road whence so Many blessings have come to it, speaks after this Manner.
  BOOK THE FIRST
  --
  IN this first stanza the soul relates the way and Manner which it followed in going forth, as to its affection, from itself and from all things, and in dying to them all and to itself, by means of true mortification, in order to attain to living the sweet and delectable life of love with God; and it says that this going forth from itself and from all things was a 'dark night,' by which, as will be explained hereafter, is here understood purgative contemplation, which causes passively in the soul the negation of itself and of all things referred to above.
  2. And this going forth it says here that it was able to accomplish in the strength and ardour which love for its Spouse gave to it for that purpose in the dark contemplation aforementioned. Herein it extols the great happiness which it found in journeying to God through this night with such signal success that none of the three enemies, which are world, devil and flesh (who are they that ever impede this road), could hinder it; inasmuch as the aforementioned night of purgative20 contemplation lulled to sleep and mortified, in the house of its sensuality, all the passions and desires with respect to their mischievous desires and motions. The line, then, says:

0.07 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  There are Many things wrong with me, I know. But
  there must be something fundamentally wrong. What is
  --
  huMan beings: the pride and blindness of the physical mind.
  8 July 1935
  --
  Many things have been said on the subject but, as far as my own
  experience goes, I do not attach much importance to that belief.
  --
  of all your creation and Many are your children. But
  your Grace is our sole refuge and to whom shall we
  --
  satisfy my huMan existence. I have yet to know my soul
  and my Self, to know and love the Divine Godhead and
  --
  heart may I have your lotus feet perManently installed
  on a throne of love.
  --
  truly and genuinely in spite of my poor huManity or
  is it all an experiment? I feel ashamed to pose such
  --
  people say; it would save you from Many falls of consciousness.
  This afternoon when I looked at you in silence I told you, "Be
  --
  have been doing for so Many years. I expect these moods
  will come and go. But may I never lose sight of your

0.08 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  the imManent Divine, the Divine who is at the centre of each
  being and of whom the psychic being is the sheath and the
  --
  But there are Many other kinds of energies, or rather Many
  other forms of Energy, which is one and universal.
  --
  by yoga that one can do it. There have been, throughout the spiritual history of huManity, Many methods of yoga - which Sri
  Aurobindo has described and explained for us in The Synthesis
  --
  creation of huMan ignorance, and that as soon as one gets out
  of this ignorance one also gets out of the difficulties, to say
  --
  There are Many ways to attain self-realisation, and each one
  must choose the way that comes to him most naturally.
  But each way has its deMands in order to be truly effective.
  In thinking of me, you must think not only of the outer
  --
  Manifestation. And until then, it is through it that you must find
  the Truth.
  --
  Manifest.
  The soul is the Divine made individual without ceasing to
  --
  true being of Man.
  29 September 1959
  --
  appearance of mind in Man, culminates in consciousness. This
  consciousness likewise is progressive, and in proportion as Man
  evolves, it will change into superconscience.
  --
  vital, mental, overmental, deMands assiduous effort and a great
  Series Eight - To a Young Captain
  --
  On 29 February 1956 there took place, in the Mother's words, "the Manifestation of the Supramental upon earth"; "Then the supramental Light and Force and
  Consciousness rushed down upon earth in an uninterrupted flow."
  --
  who do not belong to the ordinary huManity, have a conscious
  and organised overmind being and overmind life, and still fewer
  --
  "supreme faculties" are being referred to here? Those of Man on
  the way to becoming superMan, or those that the supramental
  being will possess when he appears on earth?
  In the first case, they are the faculties that develop in Man as
  he opens to the higher mind and overmind, and through those
  --
  Manifested on earth.
  23 April 1960
  --
  the huMan being"?
  These divisions are merely arbitrary. They have been established
  in order to facilitate the study of huMan nature and especially
  to constitute a definite basis for the various methods of selfdevelopment and self-discipline. That is why each philosophic,
  --
  mental activities, and no mental activity is fit to Manifest the
  Divine.

0.09 - Letters to a Young Teacher, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  The two are equally true and they ought to be felt simultaneously. But huMan egoism always has the tendency to take rather
  than to give. This is where that impression comes from.
  --
  Man.
  The psychic being is formed progressively around this divine
  --
  other words, to rise above ordinary huManity, free oneself from
  all egoism and become a conscious instrument of the Divine
  --
  Manifests it, but it can truly govern the whole being only when
  the ego has been dissolved.
  --
  it. But there are Many persons who, without giving anything,
  Words of the Mother - I, CWM, Vol. 13, p. 29.
  --
  the Divine comMand to take up the path, it waits patiently,
  The Hour of God and Other Writings, SABCL, Vol. 17, p. 39.
  --
  of Many different entities which are sometimes even contrary to
  one another: some want the spiritual life, others are attached to
  --
  ImManent Divine. And if one knows truly how to love, without
  desire or egoism, one finds Him very soon, for always He comes
  --
  and they can be reproduced among huMan beings only by a
  widening of the consciousness, understanding and feelings - a
  --
  But as it would be unreasonable to deMand that children
  should do sadhana, this rigidity had to disappear the moment
  --
  In terrestrial Man, it is only the psychic being that knows true
  love. As for perfect love, it exists only in the Divine.

01.01 - A Yoga of the Art of Life, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   When Sri Aurobindo said, Our Yoga is not for ourselves but for huManity, Many heaved a sigh of relief and thought that the great soul was after all not entirely lost to the world, his was not one more name added to the long list of Sannyasins that India has been producing age after age without much profit either to herself or to the huMan society (or even perhaps to their own selves). People understood his Yoga to be a modern one, dedicated to the service of huManity. If service to huManity was not the very sum and substance of his spirituality, it was, at least, the fruitful end and consummation. His Yoga was a sort of art to explore and harness certain unseen powers that can better and ameliorate huMan life in a more successful way than mere rational scientific methods can hope to do.
   Sri Aurobindo saw that the very core of his teaching was being missed by this common interpretation of his saying. So he changed his words and said, Our Yoga is not for huManity but for the Divine. But I am afraid this change of front, this volte-face, as it seemed, was not welcomed in Many quarters; for thereby all hope of having him back for the work of the country or the world appeared to be totally lost and he came to be looked upon again as an irrevocable metaphysical dreamer, aloof from physical things and barren, even like the Immutable BrahMan.
   II
   In order to get a nearer approach to the ideal for which Sri Aurobindo has been labouring, we may combine with advantage the two mottoes he has given us and say that his mission is to find and express the Divine in huManity. This is the service he means to render to huManity, viz, to Manifest and embody in it the Divine: his goal is not merely an amelioration, but a total change and transformation, the divinisation of huMan life.
   Here also one must guard against certain misconceptions that are likely to occur. The transformation of huMan life does not necessarily mean that the entire huManity will be changed into a race of gods or divine beings; it means the evolution or appearance on earth of a superior type of huManity, even as Man evolved out of animality as a superior type of animality, not that the entire animal kingdom was changed into huManity.
   As regards the possibility of such a consummation,Sri Aurobindo says it is not a possibility but an inevitabilityone must remember that the force that will bring about the result and is already at work is not any individual huMan power, however great it may be, but the Divine himself, it is the Divine's own Shakti that is labouring for the destined end.
   Here is the very heart of the mystery, the master-key to the problem. The advent of the superhuMan or divine race, however stupendous or miraculous the phenomenon may appear to be, can become a thing of practical actuality, precisely because it is no huMan agency that has undertaken it but the Divine himself in his supreme potency and wisdom and love. The descent of the Divine into the ordinary huMan nature in order to purify and transform it and be lodged there is the whole secret of the sadhana in Sri Aurobindo's Yoga. The sadhaka has only to be quiet and silent, calmly aspiring, open and acquiescent and receptive to the one Force; he need not and should not try to do things by his independent personal effort, but get them done or let them be done for him in the dedicated consciousness by the Divine Master and Guide. All other Yogas or spiritual disciplines in the past envisaged an ascent of the consciousness, its sublimation into the consciousness of the Spirit and its fusion and dissolution there in the end. The descent of the Divine Consciousness to prepare its definitive home in the dynamic and pragmatic huMan nature, if considered at all, was not the main theme of the past efforts and achievements. Furthermore, the descent spoken of here is the descent, not of a divine consciousness for there are Many varieties of divine consciousness but of the Divine's own consciousness, of the Divine himself with his Shakti. For it is that that is directly working out this evolutionary transformation of the age.
   It is not my purpose here to enter into details as to the exact meaning of the descent, how it happens and what are its lines of activity and the results brought about. For it is indeed an actual descent that happens: the Divine Light leans down first into the mind and begins its purificatory work therealthough it is always the inner heart which first recognises the Divine Presence and gives its assent to the Divine action for the mind, the higher mind that is to say, is the summit of the ordinary huMan consciousness and receives more easily and readily the Radiances that descend. From the Mind the Light filters into the denser regions of the emotions and desires, of life activity and vital dynamism; finally, it gets into brute Matter itself, the hard and obscure rock of the physical body, for that too has to be illumined and made the very form and figure of the Light supernal. The Divine in his descending Grace is the Master-Architect who is building slowly and surely the Many-chambered and Many-storeyed edifice that is huMan nature and huMan life into the mould of the Divine Truth in its perfect play and supreme expression. But this is a matter which can be closely considered when one is already well within the mystery of the path and has acquired the elementary essentials of an initiate.
   Another question that troubles and perplexes the ordinary huMan mind is as to the time when the thing will be done. Is it now or a millennium hence or at some astronomical distance in future, like the cooling of the sun, as someone has suggested for an analogy. In view of the magnitude of the work one might with reason say that the whole eternity is there before us, and a century or even a millennium should not be grudged to such a labour for it is nothing less than an undoing of untold millenniums in the past and the building of a far-flung futurity. However, as we have said, since it is the Divine's own work and since Yoga means a concentrated and involved process of action, effectuating in a minute what would perhaps take years to accomplish in the natural course, one can expect the work to be done sooner rather than later. Indeed, the ideal is one of here and nowhere upon this earth of material existence and now in this life, in this very bodynot hereafter or elsewhere. How long exactly that will mean, depends on Many factors, but a few decades on this side or the other do not matter very much.
   As to the extent of realisation, we say again that that is not a matter of primary consideration. It is not the quantity but the substance that counts. Even if it were a small nucleus it would be sufficient, at least for the beginning, provided it is the real, the genuine thing

01.01 - Sri Aurobindo - The Age of Sri Aurobindo, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Someone has written to this effect: "This is not the age of Sri Aurobindo. His ideal of a divine life upon earth mayor may not be true; at any rate it is not of today or even of tomorrow. HuManity will take some time before it reaches that stage or its possibility. What we are concerned with here and now is something perhaps less great, less spiritual, but more urgent and more practical. The problem is not to run away with one's soul, but to maintain its earthly tenement, to keep body and soul together: one has to live first, live materially before one can hope to live spiritually."
   Well, the view expressed in these words is not a new revelation. It has been the cry of suffering huManity through the ages. Man has borne his cross since the beginning of his creation through want and privation, through disease and bereavement, through all Manner of turmoil and tribulation, and yetmirabile dictuat the same time, in the very midst of those conditions, he has been aspiring and yearning for something else, ignoring the present, looking into the beyond. It is not the prosperous and the more happily placed in life who find it more easy to turn to the higher life, it is not the wealthiest who has the greatest opportunity to pursue a spiritual idea. On the contrary, spiritual leaders have thought and experienced otherwise.
   Apart from the well-recognised fact that only in distress does the normal Man think of God and non-worldly things, the real matter, however, is that the inner life is a thing apart and follows its own line of movement, does not depend upon, is not subservient to, the kind of outer life that one may happen to live under. The Bible says indeed, "Blessed are the poor, blessed are they that mourn"... But the Upanishad declares, on the other hand, that even as one lies happily on a royal couch, bathes and anoints himself with all the perfumes of the world, has attendants all around and always to serve him, even so, one can be full of the divine consciousness from the crown of the head to the tip of his toe-nail. In fact, a poor or a prosperous life is in no direct or even indirect ratio to a spiritual life. All the miseries and immediate needs of a physical life do not and cannot detain or delay one from following the path of the ideal; nor can all your riches be a burden to your soul and overwhelm it, if it chooses to walk onit can not only walk, but soar and fly with all that knapsack on its back.
   If one were to be busy about reforming the world and when that was done then alone to turn to other-worldly things, in that case, one would never take the turn, for the world will never be reformed totally or even considerably in that way. It is not that reformers have for the first time appeared on the earth in the present age. Men have attempted social, political, economic and moral reforms from times immemorial. But that has not barred the spiritual attempt or minimised its importance. To say that because an ideal is apparently too high or too great for the present age, it must be kept in cold storage is to set a premium on the present nature of huManity arid eternise it: that would bind the world to its old moorings and never give it the opportunity to be free and go out into the high seas of larger and greater realisations.
   The ideal or perhaps one should say the policy of Real-politick is the thing needed in this world. To achieve something actually in the physical and material field, even a lesser something, is worth much more than speculating on high flaunting chimeras and indulging in day-dreams. Yes, but what is this something that has to be achieved in the material world? It is always an ideal. Even procuring food for each and every person, clothing and housing all is not less an ideal for all its concern about actuality. Only there are ideals and ideals; some are nearer to the earth, some seem to be in the background. But the mystery is that it is not always the ideal nearest to the earth which is the easiest to achieve or the first thing to be done first. Do we not see before our very eye show some very simple innocent social and economic changes are difficult to carry outthey bring in their train quite disproportionately gestures and movements of violence and revolution? That is because we seek to cure the symptoms and not touch the root of the disease. For even the most innocent-looking social, economic or political abuse has at its base far-reaching attitudes and life-urgeseven a spiritual outlook that have to be sought out and tackled first, if the attempt at reform is to be perManently and wholly successful. Even in mundane matters we do not dig deep enough, or rise high enough.
   Indeed, looking from a standpoint that views the working of the forces that act and achieve and not the external facts and events and arrangements aloneone finds that things that are achieved on the material plane are first developed and matured and made ready behind the veil and at a given moment burst out and Manifest themselves often unexpectedly and suddenly like a chick out of the shell or the young butterfly out of the cocoon. The Gita points to that truth of Nature when it says: "These beings have already been killed by Me." It is not that a long or strenuous physical planning and preparation alone or in the largest measure brings about a physical realisation. The deeper we go within, the farther we are away from the surface, the nearer we come to the roots and sources of things even most superficial. The spiritual view sees and declares that it is the Brahmic consciousness that holds, inspires, builds up Matter, the physical body and form of BrahMan.
   The highest ideal, the very highest which God and Nature and Man have in view, is not and cannot be kept in cold storage: it is being worked out even here and now, and it has to be worked out here and now. The ideal of the Life Divine embodies a central truth of existence, and however difficult or chimerical it may appear to be to the normal mind, it is the preoccupation of the inner being of Manall other ways or attempts of curing huMan ills are faint echoes, masks, diversions of this secret urge at the source and heart of things. That ideal is a norm and a force that is ever dynamic and has become doubly so since it has entered the earth atmosphere and the waking huMan consciousness and is labouring there. It is always safer and wiser to recognise that fact, to help in the realisation of that truth and be profited by it.
   ***

01.01 - The New Humanity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
  object:01.01 - The New HuManity
  author class:Nolini Kanta Gupta
  --
   The New HuManity
   The world is in the throes of a new creation and the pangs of that new birth have made mother Earth restless. It is no longer a far-off ideal that our imagination struggles to visualise, nor a prophecy that yet remains to be fulfilled. It is Here and Now.
   Although we may not know it, the New Man the divine race of huManity is already among us. It may be in our next neighbour, in our nearest brother, even in myself. Only a thin veil covers it. It marches just behind the line. It waits for an occasion to throw off the veil and place itself in the forefront. We are living in strenuous times in which age-long institutions are going down and new-forces rearing their heads, old habits are being cast off and new impulsions acquired. In every sphere of life, we see the urgent deMand for a recasting, a fresh valuation of things. From the base to the summit, from the economic and political life to the artistic and spiritual, huManity is being shaken to bring out a new expression and articulation. There is the hidden surge of a Power, the secret stress of a Spirit that can no longer suffer to remain in the shade and behind the mask, but wills to come out in the broad daylight and be recognised in its plenary virtues.
   That Power, that Spirit has been growing and gathering its strength during all the millenniums that huManity has lived through. On the momentous day when Man appeared on earth, the Higher Man also took his birth. Since the hour the Spirit refused to be imprisoned in its animal sheath and came out as Man, it approached by that very uplift a greater freedom and a vaster movement. It was the crest of that underground wave which peered over the surface from age to age, from clime to clime through the experiences of poets and prophets and sages the Head of the Sacrificial Horse galloping towards the Dawn.
   And now the days of captivity or rather of inner preparation are at an end. The voice in the wilderness was necessary, for it was a call and a communion in the silence of the soul. Today the silence seeks utterance. Today the shell is ripe enough to break and to bring out the mature and full-grown being. The king that was in hiding comes in glory and triumph, in his complete regalia.
   Another huManity is rising out of the present huMan species. The beings of the new order are everywhere and it is they who will soon hold sway over earth, be the head and front of the terrestrial evolution in the cycle that is approaching as it was with Man in the cycle that is passing away. What will this new order of being be like? It will be what Man is not, also what Man is. It will not be Man, because it will overstep the limitations and incapacities inherent in Man; and it will be Man by the realisation of those fundamental aspirations and yearnings that have troubled and consoled the deeper strata the soulin him throughout the varied experiences of his terrestrial life.
   The New Man will be Master and not slave. He will be master, first, of himself and then of the world. Man as he actually is, is but a slave. He has no personal voice or choice; the determining soul, the Ishwara, in him is sleep-bound and hushed. He is a mere plaything in the hands of nature and circumstances. Therefore it is that Science has become his supreme Dharmashastra; for science seeks to teach us the moods of Nature and the methods of propitiating her. Our actual ideal of Man is that of the cleverest slave. But the New Man will have found himself and by and according to his inner will, mould and create his world. He will not be in awe of Nature and in an attitude of perpetual apprehension and hesitation, but will ground himself on a secret harmony and union that will declare him as the lord. We will recognise the New Man by his very gait and Manner, by a certain kingly ease and dominion in every shade of his expression.
   Not that this sovereign power will have anything to do with aggression or over-bearingness. It will not be a power that feels itself only by creating an eternal opponentErbfeindby coming in constant clash with a rival that seeks to gain victory by subjugating. It will not be Nietzschean "will to power," which is, at best, a supreme Asuric power. It will rather be a Divine Power, for the strength it will exert and the victory it will achieve will not come from the egoit is the ego which requires an object outside and against to feel and affirm itself but it will come from a higher personal self which is one with the cosmic soul and therefore with other personal souls. The Asura, in spite of, or rather, because of his aggressive vehemence betrays a lack of the sovereign power that is calm and at ease and self-sufficient. The Devic power does not assert hut simply accomplishes; the forces of the world act not as its opponent but as its instrument. Thus the New Man shall affirm his individual sovereignty and do so to perfection by expressing through it his unity with the cosmic powers, with the infinite godhead. And by being Swarat, Self-Master, he will become Samrat, world-master.
   This mastery will be effected not merely in will, but in mind and heart also. For the New Man will know not by the intellect which is egocentric and therefore limited, not by ratiocination which is an indirect and doubtful process, but by direct vision, an inner communion, a soul revelation. The new knowledge will be vast and profound and creative, based as it will be upon the reality of things and not upon their shadows. Truth will shine through every experience and every utterance"a truth shall have its seat on our speech and mind and hearing", so have the Vedas said. The mind and intellect will not be active and constructive agents but the luminous channel of a self-luminous knowledge. And the heart too which is now the field of passion and egoism will be cleared of its noise and obscurity; a serener sky will shed its pure warmth and translucent glow. The knot will be rent asunderbhidyate hridaya granthih and the vast and mighty streams of another ocean will flow through. We will love not merely those to whom we are akin but God's creatures, one and all; we will love not with the yearning and hunger of a mortal but with the wide and intense Rasa that lies in the divine identity of souls.
   And the new society will be based not upon competition, nor even upon co-operation. It will not be an open conflict, neither will it be a convenient compromise of rival individual interests. It will be the organic expression of the collective soul of huManity, working and achieving through each and every individual soul its most wide-winging freedom, Manifesting the godhead that is, proper to each and every one. It will be an organisation, most delicate and subtle and supple, the members of which will have no need to live upon one another but in and through one another. It will be, if you like, a henotheistic hierarchy in which everyone will be the greatest, since everyone is all and all everyone simultaneously.
   The New HuManity will be something in the mould that we give to the gods. It will supply the link that we see missing between gods and men; it will be the race of embodied gods. Man will attain that thing which has been his first desire and earliest dream, for which he coveted the gods Immortality, amritatwam. The mortalities that cut and divide, limit and bind Man make him the sorrowful being he is. These are due to his ignorance and weakness and egoism. These are due to his soul itself. It is the soul that requires change, a new birth, as Christ deManded. Ours is a little soul that has severed itself from the larger and mightier self that it is. And therefore does it die every moment and even while living is afraid to live and so lives poorly and miserably. But the age is now upon us when the god-like soul anointed with its immortal royalties is ready to emerge and claim our salutation.
   The breath and the surge of the new creation cannot be mistaken. The question that confronts us today is no longer whether the New Man, the Super-huManity, will come or if at all, when; but the question we have to answer is who among us are ready to be its receptacle, its instrument and embodiment.
   ***

01.01 - The One Thing Needful, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  It is the lesson of life that always in this world everything fails a Man - only the Divine does not fail him, if he turns entirely towards the Divine. It is not because there is something bad in you that blows fall on you - blows fall on all huMan beings because they are full of desire for things that cannot last and they lose them or, even if they get, it brings disappointment and cannot satisfy them. To turn to the Divine is the only truth in life.
  To find the Divine is indeed the first reason for seeking the spiritual Truth and the spiritual life; it is the one thing indispensable and all the resit is nothing without it. The Divine once found, to Manifest Him, - that is, first of all to transform one's own limited consciousness into the Divine Consciousness, to live in the infinite Peace, Light, Love, Strength, Bliss, to become that in one's essential nature and, as a consequence, to be its vessel, channel, instrument in one's active nature. To bring into activity the principle of oneness on the material plane or to work for huManity is a mental mistranslation of the Truth - these things cannot be the first true object of spiritual seeking. We must find the Self, the Divine, then only can we know what is the work the Self or the Divine deMands from us. Until then our life and action can only be a help or a means towards finding the Divine and it ought not to have any other purpose. As we grow in inner consciousness, or as the spiritual Truth of the Divine grows in us, our life and action must indeed more and more flow from that, be one with that. But to decide beforeh and by our limited mental conceptions what they must be is to hamper the growth of the spiritual Truth within. As that grows we shall feel the Divine Light and Truth, the Divine Power and Force, the Divine Purity and Peace working within us, dealing with our actions as well as our consciousness, making use of them to reshape us into the Divine Image, removing the dross, substituting the pure Gold of the Spirit. Only when the Divine Presence is there in us always and the consciousness transformed, can we have the right to say that we are ready to Manifest the Divine on the material plane. To hold up a mental ideal or principle and impose that on the inner working brings the danger of limiting ourselves to a mental realisation or of impeding or even falsifying by a halfway formation the truth growth into the full communion and union with the Divine and the free and intimate outflowing of His will in our life. This is a mistake of orientation to which the mind of today is especially prone. It is far better to approach the Divine for the Peace or Light or Bliss that the realisation of Him gives than to bring in these minor things which can divert us from the one thing needful. The divinisation of the material life also as well as the inner life is part of what we see as the Divine Plan, but it can only be fulfilled by an ourflowing of the inner realisation, something that grows from within outwards, not by the working out of a mental principle.
  The realisation of the Divine is the one thing needful and the rest is desirable only in so far as it helps or leads towards that or when it is realised, extends and Manifests the realisation. Manifestation and organisation of the whole life for the divine work, - first, the sadhana personal and collective necessary for the realisation and a common life of God-realised men, secondly, for help to the world to move towards that, and to live in the Light - is the whole meaning and purpose of my Yoga. But the realisation is the first need and it is that round which all the rest moves, for apart from it all the rest would have no meaning.
  Yoga is directed towards God, not towards Man. If a divine supramental consciousness and power can be brought down and established in the material world, that obviously would mean an immense change for the earth including huManity and its life. But the effect on huManity would only be one result of the change; it cannot be the object of the sadhana. The object of the sadhana can only be to live in the divine consciousness and to Manifest it in life.
  Sadhana must be the main thing and sadhana means the purification of the nature, the consecration of the being, the opening of the psychic and the inner mind and vital, the contact and presence of the Divine, the realisation of the Divine in all things, surrender, devotion, the widening of the consciousness into the cosmic Consciousness, the Self one in all, the psychic and the spiritual transformation of the nature.
  ... the principle of this Yoga is not perfection of the huMan nature as it is but a psychic and spiritual transformation of all the parts of the being through the action of an inner consciousness and then of a higher consciousness which works on them, throws out the old movements or changes them into the image of its own and so transmutes lower into higher nature. It is not so much the perfection of the intellect as a transcendence of it, a transformation of the mind, the substitution of a larger greater principle of knowledge - and so with all the rest of the being.
    This is a slow and difficult process; the road is long and it is hard to establish even the necessary basis. The old existing nature resists and obstructs and difficulties rise one after another and repeatedly till they are overcome. It is therefore necessary to be sure that this is the path to which one is called before one finally decides to tread it.

01.01 - The Symbol Dawn, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Spiritual beauty illumining huMan sight
  Lines with its passion and mystery Matter's mask
  --
  Man lifted up the burden of his fate.
  

  --
  A mighty stranger in the huMan field,
  The embodied Guest within made no response.
  --
  The call that wakes the leap of huMan mind,
  Its chequered eager motion of pursuit,
  --
  Imprisoned in our transient huMan mould,
  The deathless conquered by the death of things.
  --
  She had brought with her into the huMan form,
  The calm delight that weds one soul to all,
  --
  The godhead greater by a huMan fate.
  2.18
  --
  Man only marks and God's all-seeing eyes.
  2.22
  --
  Even her huManity was half divine:
  Her spirit opened to the Spirit in all,
  --
  All the fierce question of Man's hours relived.
  2.38

01.02 - Natures Own Yoga, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   This process of a developing consciousness in Nature is precisely what is known as Evolution. It is the bringing out and fixing of a higher and higher principle of consciousness, hitherto involved and concealed behind the veil, in the earth consciousness as a dynamic factor in Nature's Manifest working. Thus, the first stage of evolution is the status of inconscient Matter, of the lifeless physical elements; the second stage is that of the semi-conscious life in the plant, the third that of the conscious life in the animal, and finally the fourth stage, where we stand at present, is that of the embodied self-conscious life in Man.
   The course of evolution has not come to a stop with Man and the next stage, Sri Aurobindo says, which Nature envisages and is labouring to bring out and establish is the life now superconscious to us, embodied in a still higher type of created being, that of the superMan or god-Man. The principle of consciousness which will determine the nature and build of this new, being is a spiritual principle beyond the mental principle which Man now incarnates: it may be called the Supermind or Gnosis.
   For, till now Mind has been the last term of the evolutionary consciousness Mind as developed in Man is the highest instrument built up and organised by Nature through which the self-conscious being can express itself. That is why the Buddha said: Mind is the first of all principles, Mind is the highest of all principles: indeed Mind is the constituent of all principlesMana puvvangam dhamm1. The consciousness beyond mind has not yet been made a patent and dynamic element in the life upon earth; it has been glimpsed or entered into in varying degrees and modes by saints and seers; it has cast its derivative illuminations in the creative activities of poets and artists, in the finer and nobler urges of heroes and great men of action. But the utmost that has been achieved, the summit reached in that direction, as exampled in spiritual disciplines, involves a withdrawal from the evolutionary cycle, a merging and an absorption into the static status that is altogether beyond it, that lies, as it were, at the other extreme the Spirit in itself, AtMan, BrahMan, Sachchidananda, Nirvana, the One without a second, the Zero without a first.
   The first contact that one has with this static supra-reality is through the higher ranges of the mind: a direct and closer communion is established through a plane which is just above the mind the Overmind, as Sri Aurobindo calls it. The Overmind dissolves or transcends the ego-consciousness which limits the being to its individualised formation bounded by an outward and narrow frame or sheath of mind, life and body; it reveals the universal Self and Spirit, the cosmic godhead and its myriad forces throwing up myriad forms; the world-existence there appears as a play of ever-shifting veils upon the face of one ineffable reality, as a mysterious cycle of perpetual creation and destructionit is the overwhelming vision given by Sri Krishna to Arjuna in the Gita. At the same time, the initial and most intense experience which this cosmic consciousness brings is the extreme relativity, contingency and transitoriness of the whole flux, and a necessity seems logically and psychologically imperative to escape into the abiding substratum, the ineffable Absoluteness.
   This has been the highest consummation, the supreme goal which the purest spiritual experience and the deepest aspiration of the huMan consciousness generally sought to attain. But in this view, the world or creation or Nature came in the end to be looked upon as fundamentally a product of Ignorance: ignorance and suffering and incapacity and death were declared to be the very hallmark of things terrestrial. The Light that dwells above and beyond can be made to shed for a while some kind of lustre upon the mortal darkness but never altogether to remove or change itto live in the full light, to be in and of the Light means to pass beyond. Not that there have not been other strands and types of spiritual experiences and aspirations, but the one we are considering has always struck the major chord and dominated and drowned all the rest.
   But the initial illusory consciousness of the Overmind need not at all lead to the static Brahmic consciousness or Sunyam alone. As a matter of fact, there is in this particular processes of consciousness a hiatus between the two, between Maya and BrahMan, as though one has to leap from the one into the other somehow. This hiatus is filled up in Sri Aurobindo's Yoga by the principle of Supermind, not synthetic-analytic2 in knowledge like Overmind and the highest mental intelligence, but inescapably unitarian even in the utmost diversity. Supermind is the Truth-consciousness at once static and dynamic, self-existent and creative: in Supermind the Brahmic consciousness Sachchidanandais ever self-aware and ever Manifested and embodied in fundamental truth-powers and truth-forms for the play of creation; it is the plane where the One breaks out into the Many and the Many still remain one, being and knowing themselves to be but various self-expressions of the One; it develops the spiritual archetypes, the divine names and forms of all individualisations of an evolving existence.
   SRI AUROBINDO
  --
   In the Supermind things exist in their perfect spiritual reality; each is consciously the divine reality in its transcendent essence, its cosmic extension, its, spiritual individuality; the diversity of a Manifested existence is there, but the mutually exclusive separativeness has not yet arisen. The ego, the knot of separativity, appears at a later and lower stage of involution; what is here is indivisible nexus of individualising centres of the one eternal truth of being. Where Supermind and Overmind meet, one can see the multiple godheads, each distinct in his own truth and beauty and power and yet all together forming the one supreme consciousness infinitely composite and inalienably integral. But stepping back into Supermind one sees something moreOneness gathering into itself all diversity, not destroying it, but annulling and forbidding the separative consciousness that is the beginning of Ignorance. The first shadow of the Illusory Consciousness, the initial possibility of the movement of Ignorance comes in when the supramental light enters the penumbra of the mental sphere. The movement of Supermind is the movement of light without obscurity, straight, unwavering, unswerving, absolute. The Force here contains and holds in their oneness of Reality the Manifold but not separated lines of essential and unalloyed truth: its march is the inevitable progression of each one assured truth entering into and upholding every other and therefore its creation, play or action admits of no trial or stumble or groping or deviation; for each truth rests on all others and on that which harmonises them all and does not act as a Power diverging from and even competing with other Powers of being. In the Overmind commences the play of divergent possibilities the simple, direct, united and absolute certainties of the supramental consciousness retire, as it were, a step behind and begin to work themselves out through the interaction first of separately individualised and then of contrary and contradictory forces. In the Overmind there is a conscious underlying Unity but yet each Power, Truth, Aspect of that Unity is encouraged to work out its possibilities as if it were sufficient to itself and the others are used by it for its own enhancement until in the denser and darker reaches below Overmind this turns out a thing of blind conflict and battle and, as it would appear, of chance survival. Creation or Manifestation originally means the concretisation or devolution of the powers of Conscious Being into a play of united diversity; but on the line which ends in Matter it enters into more and more obscure forms and forces and finally the virtual eclipse of the supreme light of the Divine Consciousness. Creation as it descends' towards the Ignorance becomes an involution of the Spirit through Mind and Life into Matter; evolution is a movement backward, a return journey from Matter towards the Spirit: it is the unravelling, the gradual disclosure and deliverance of the Spirit, the ascension and revelation of the involved consciousness through a series of awakeningsMatter awakening into Life, Life awakening into Mind and Mind now seeking to awaken into something beyond the Mind, into a power of conscious Spirit.
   The apparent or actual result of the movement of Nescienceof Involutionhas been an increasing negation of the Spirit, but its hidden purpose is ultimately to embody the Spirit in Matter, to express here below in cosmic Time-Space the splendours of the timeless Reality. The material body came into existence bringing with it inevitably, as it seemed, mortality; it appeared even to be fashioned out of mortality, in order that in this very frame and field of mortality, Immortality, the eternal Spirit Consciousness which is the secret truth and reality in Time itself as well as behind it, might be established and that the Divine might be possessed, or rather, possess itself not in one unvarying mode of the static consciousness, as it does even now behind the cosmic play, but in the play itself and in the multiple mode of the terrestrial existence.
  --
   The secret of evolution, I have said, is an urge towards the release and unfoldment of consciousness out of an apparent unconsciousness. In the early stages the movement is very slow and gradual; there it is Nature's original unconscious process. In Man it acquires the possibility of a conscious and therefore swifter and concentrated process. And this is in fact the function of Yoga proper, viz, to bring about the evolution of consciousness by hastening the process of Nature through the self-conscious will of Man.
   An organ in the huMan being has been especially developed to become the effective instrument of this accelerated Yogic process the self-consciousness which I referred to as being the distinctive characteristic of Man is a function of this organ. It is his soul, his psychic being; originally it is the spark of the Divine Consciousness which came down and became involved in Matter and has been endeavouring ever since to release itself through the upward march of evolution. It is this which presses on continually as the stimulus to the evolutionary movement; and in Man it has attained sufficient growth and power and has come so far to the front from behind the veil that it can now lead and mould his external consciousness. It is also the channel through which the Divine Consciousness can flow down into the inferior levels of huMan nature. It is the being no bigger than the thumb ever seated within the heart, spoken of in the Upanishads. It is likewise the basis of true individuality and personal identity. It is again the reflection or expression in evolutionary Nature of one's essential selfjivtMan that is above, an eternal portion of the Divine, one with the Divine and yet not dissolved and lost in it. The psychic being is thus on the one hand in direct contact with the Divine and the higher consciousness, and on the other it is the secret upholder and controller' (bhart, antarymin) of the inferior consciousness, the hidden nucleus round which the body and the life and the mind of the individual are built up and organised.
   The first decisive step in Yoga is taken when one becomes conscious of the psychic being, or, looked at from the other side, when the psychic being comes forward and takes possession of the external being, begins to initiate and influence the movements of the mind and life and body and gradually free them from the ordinary round of ignorant nature. The awakening of the psychic being means, as I have said, not only a deepening and heightening of the consciousness and its release from the obscurity and limitation of the inferior Prakriti, confined to the lower threefold status, into what is behind and beyond; it means also a return of the deeper and higher consciousness upon the lower hemisphere and a consequent purification and illumination and regeneration of the latter. Finally, when the psychic being is in full self-possession and power, it can be the vehicle of the direct supramental consciousness which will then be able to act freely and absolutely for the entire transformation of the external nature, its transfiguration into a perfect body of the Truth-consciousness in a word, its divinisation.
   This then is the supreme secret, not the renunciation and annulment, but the transformation of the ordinary huMan nature : first of all, its psychicisation, that is to say, making it move and live and be in communion and identification with the light of the psychic being, and, secondly, through the soul and the ensouled mind and life and body, to open out into the supramental consciousness and let it come down here below and work and achieve.
   The soul or the true being in Man uplifted in the supramental consciousness and at the same time coming forward to possess a divinised mind and life and body as an instrument and channel of its self-expression and an embodiment of the Divine Will and Purposesuch is the goal that Nature is seeking to realise at present through her evolutionary lan. It is to this labour that Man has been called so that in and through him the destined transcendence and transformation can take place.
   It is not easy, however, nor is it necessary for the moment to envisage in detail what this divinised Man would be like, externallyhis mode of outward being and living, kimsita vrajeta kim, as Arjuna queriedor how the collective life of the new huManity would function or what would be the composition of its social fabric. For what is happening is a living process, an organic growth; it is being elaborated through the actions and reactions of multitudinous forces and conditions, known and unknown; the precise configuration of the final outcome cannot be predicted with exactitude. But the Power that is at work is omniscient; it is selecting, rejecting, correcting, fashioning, creating, co-ordinating elements in accordance with and by the drive of the inviolable law of Truth and Harmony that reigns in Light's own homeswe dame the Supermind.
   It is also to be noted that as mind is not the last limit of the march of evolution, even so the progress of evolution will not stop with the Manifestation and embodiment of the Supermind. There are other still higher principles beyond and they too presumably await Manifestation and embodiment on earth. Creation has no beginning in time (andi) nor has it an end (ananta). It is an eternal process of the unravelling of the mysteries of the Infinite. Only, it may be said that with the Supermind the creation here enters into a different order of existence. Before it there was the domain of Ignorance, after it will come the reign of Light and Knowledge. Mortality has been the governing principle of life on earth till now; it will be replaced by the consciousness of immortality. Evolution has proceeded through struggle and pain; hereafter it will be a spontaneous, harmonious and happy flowering.
   Now, with regard to the time that the present stage of evolution is likely to take for its fulfilment, one can presume that since or if the specific urge and stress has Manifested and come up to the front, this very fact would show that the problem has become a problem of actuality, and even that it can be dealt with as if it had to be solved now or never. We have said that in Man, with Man's self-consciousness or the consciousness of the psychic being as the instrument, evolution has attained the capacity of a swift and concentrated process, which is the process of Yoga; the process will become swifter and more concentrated, the more that instrument grows and gathers power and is infused with the divine afflatus. In fact, evolution has been such a process of gradual acceleration in tempo from the very beginning. The earliest stage, for example, the stage of dead Matter, of the play of the mere chemical forces was a very, very long one; it took millions and millions of years to come to the point when the Manifestation of life became possible. But the period of elementary life, as Manifested in the plant world that followed, although it too lasted a good Many millions of years, was much briefer than the preceding periodit ended with the advent of the first animal form. The age of animal life, again, has been very much shorter than that of the plant life before Man came upon earth. And Man is already more than a million or two years oldit is fully time that a higher order of being should be created out of him.
   The Dhammapada, I. 1
   The Supermind is not merely synthetic. The Supermind is synthetic only on the lowest spaces of itself, where it has to prepare the principles of Overmind,synthesis is necessary only where analysis has taken place, one has dissected everything, put in pieces (analysis), so one has to piece together. But Supermind is unitarian, has never divided up, so it does not need to add and piece together the parts and fragments. It has always held the conscious Many together in the conscious One.
   ***

01.02 - Sri Aurobindo - Ahana and Other Poems, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   What is the world that Sri Aurobindo sees and creates? Poetry is after all passion. By passion I do not mean the fury of emotion nor the fume of sentimentalism, but what lies behind at their source, what lends them the force they have the sense of the "grandly real," the vivid and pulsating truth. What then is the thing that Sri Aurobindo has visualised, has endowed with a throbbing life and made a poignant reality? Victor Hugo said: Attachez Dieu au gibet, vous avez la croixTie God to the gibbet, you have the cross. Even so, infuse passion into a thing most prosaic, you create sublime poetry out of it. What is the dead matter that has found life and glows and vibrates in Sri Aurobindo's passion? It is something which appears to Many poetically intractable, not amenable to aesthetic treatment, not usually, that is to say, nor in the supreme Manner. Sri Aurobindo has thrown such a material into his poetic fervour and created a sheer beauty, a stupendous reality out of it. Herein lies the greatness of his achievement. Philosophy, however divine, and in spite of Milton, has been regarded by poets as "harsh and crabbed" and as such unfit for poetic delineation. Not a few poets indeed foundered upon this rock. A poet in his own way is a philosopher, but a philosopher chanting out his philosophy in sheer poetry has been one of the rarest spectacles.1 I can think of only one instance just now where a philosopher has almost succeeded being a great poet I am referring to Lucretius and his De Rerum Natura. Neither Shakespeare nor Homer had anything like philosophy in their poetic creation. And in spite of some inclination to philosophy and philosophical ideas Virgil and Milton were not philosophers either. Dante sought perhaps consciously and deliberately to philosophise in his Paradiso I Did he? The less Dante then is he. For it is his Inferno, where he is a passionate visionary, and not his Paradiso (where he has put in more thought-power) that marks the nee plus ultra of his poetic achievement.
   And yet what can be more poetic in essence than philosophy, if by philosophy we mean, as it should mean, spiritual truth and spiritual realisation? What else can give the full breath, the integral force to poetic inspiration if it is not the problem of existence itself, of God, Soul and Immortality, things that touch, that are at the very root of life and reality? What can most concern Man, what can strike the deepest fount in him, unless it is the mystery of his own being, the why and the whither of it all? But Mankind has been taught and trained to live merely or mostly on earth, and poetry has been treated as the expression of huMan joys and sorrows the tears in mortal things of which Virgil spoke. The savour of earth, the thrill of the flesh has been too sweet for us and we have forgotten other sweetnesses. It is always the huMan element that we seek in poetry, but we fail to recognise that what we obtain in this way is huManity in its lower degrees, its surface formulations, at its minimum magnitude.
   We do not say that poets have never sung of God and Soul and things transcendent. Poets have always done that. But what I say is this that presentation of spiritual truths, as they are in their own home, in other words, treated philosophically and yet in a supreme poetic Manner, has always been a rarity. We have, indeed, in India the Gita and the Upanishads, great philosophical poems, if there were any. But for one thing they are on dizzy heights out of the reach of common Man and for another they are idolised more as philosophy than as poetry. Doubtless, our Vaishnava poets sang of God and Love Divine; and Rabindranath, in one sense, a typical modern Vaishnava, did the same. And their songs are masterpieces. But are they not all huMan, too huMan, as the mad prophet would say? In them it is the huMan significance, the huMan Manner that touches and moves us the spiritual significance remains esoteric, is suggested, is a matter of deduction. Sri Aurobindo has dealt with spiritual experiences in a different way. He has not clothed them in huMan symbols and allegories, in images and figures of the mere earthly and secular life: he presents them in their nakedness, just as they are seen and realised. He has not sought to tone down the rigour of truth with contrivances that easily charm and captivate the common huMan mind and heart. Nor has he indulged like so Many poet philosophers in vague generalisations and colourless or too colourful truisms that do not embody a clear thought or rounded idea, a radiant judgment. Sri Aurobindo has given us in his poetry thoughts that are clear-cut, ideas beautifully chiselledhe is always luminously forceful.
   Take these Vedantic lines that in their limpidity and harmonious flow beat anything found in the fine French poet Lamartine:
  --
   To huManise the Divine, that is what we all wish to do; for the Divine is too lofty for us and we cannot look full into his face. We cry and supplicate to Rudra, "O dire Lord, show us that other form of thine that is benign and huMane". All earthly imageries we lavish upon the Divine so that he may appear to us not as something far and distant and foreign, but, quite near, among us, as one of us. We take recourse to huMan symbolism often, because we wish to palliate or hide the rigours of a supreme experience, not because we have no adequate terms for it. The same huMan or earthly terms could be used differently if we had a different consciousness. Thus the Vedic Rishis sought not to huManise the Divine, their purpose was rather to divinise the huMan. And their allegorical language, although rich in terrestrial figures, does not carry the impress and atmosphere of mere huManity and earthliness. For in reality the symbol is not merely the symbol. It is mere symbol in regard to the truth so long as we take our stand on the lower plane when we have to look at the truth through the symbol; but if we view it from the higher plane, from truth itself, it is no longer mere symbol but the very truth bodied forth. Whatever there is of symbolism on earth and its beauties, in sense and its enjoyments, is then transfigured into the expression of the truth, of the divinity itself. We then no longer speak in huMan language but in the language of the gods.
   We have been speaking of philosophy and the philosophic Manner. But what are the exact implications of the words, let us ask again. They mean nothing more and nothing lessthan the force of thought and the mass of thought content. After all, that seems to be almost the whole difference between the past and the present huMan consciousness in so far at least as it has found expression in poetry. That element, we wish to point out, is precisely what the old-world poets lacked or did not care to possess or express or stress. A poet meant above all, if not all in all, emotion, passion, sensuousness, sensibility, nervous enthusiasm and imagination and fancy: remember the classic definition given by Shakespeare of the poet
   Of imagination all compact.. . .
  --
   The heart and its urges, the vital and its surges, the physical impulsesit is these of which the poets sang in their infinite variations. But the mind proper, that is to say, the higher reflective ideative mind, was not given the right of citizenship in the domain of poetry. I am not forgetting the so-called Metaphysicals. The element of metaphysics among the Metaphysicals has already been called into question. There is here, no doubt, some theology, a good dose of mental cleverness or conceit, but a modern intellectual or rather rational intelligence is something other, something more than that. Even the metaphysics that was comMandeered here had more or less a decorative value, it could not be taken into the pith and substance of poetic truth and beauty. It was a decoration, but not unoften a drag. I referred to the Upanishads, but these strike quite a different, almost an opposite line in this connection. They are in a sense truly metaphysical: they bypass the mind and the mental powers, get hold of a higher mode of consciousness, make a direct contact with truth and beauty and reality. It was Buddha's credit to have forged this missing link in Man's spiritual consciousness, to have brought into play the power of the rational intellect and used it in support of the spiritual experience. That is not to say that he was the very first person, the originator who initiated the movement; but at least this seems to be true that in him and his au thentic followers the movement came to the forefront of huMan consciousness and attained the proportions of a major member of Man's psychological constitution. We may remember here that Socrates, who started a similar movement of rationalisation in his own way in Europe, was almost a contemporary of the Buddha.
   Poetry as an expression of thought-power, poetry weighted with intelligence and rationalised knowledge that seems to me to be the end and drive, the secret sense of all the mystery of modern technique. The combination is risky, but not impossible. In the spiritual domain the Gita achieved this miracle to a considerable degree. Still, the power of intelligence and reason shown by Vyasa is of a special order: it is a sublimated function of the faculty, something aloof and other-worldly"introvert", a modern mind would term it that is to say, something a priori, standing in its own au thenticity and self-sufficiency. A modern intelligence would be more scientific, let us use the word, more matter-of-fact and sense-based: the mental light should not be confined in its ivory tower, however high that may be, but brought down and placed at the service of our perception and appreciation and explanation of things huMan and terrestrial; made imManent in the mundane and the ephemeral, as they are commonly called. This is not an impossibility. Sri Aurobindo seems to have done the thing. In him we find the three terms of huMan consciousness arriving at an absolute fusion and his poetry is a wonderful example of that fusion. The three terms are the spiritual, the intellectual or philosophical and the physical or sensational. The intellectual, or more generally, the mental, is the intermediary, the Paraclete, as he himself will call it later on in a poem9 magnificently exemplifying the point we are trying to make out the agent who negotiates, bridges and harmonises the two other firmaments usually supposed to be antagonistic and incompatible.
   Indeed it would be wrong to associate any cold ascetic nudity to the spiritual body of Sri Aurobindo. His poetry is philosophic, abstract, no doubt, but every philosophy has its practice, every abstract thing its concrete application,even as the soul has its body; and the fusion, not mere union, of the two is very characteristic in him. The deepest and unseizable flights of thought he knows how to clo the with a Kalidasian richness of imagery, or a Keatsean gusto of sensuousness:
  --
   And it would be wrong too to suppose that there is want of sympathy in Sri Aurobindo for ordinary huManity, that he is not susceptible to sentiments, to the weaknesses, that stir the natural Man. Take for example this line so instinct with a haunting melancholy strain:
   Cold are your rivers of peace and their banks are leafless and lonely.
  --
   All the tragedy, the entire pathos of huMan life is concentrated in this line so simple, yet so grand:
   Son of Man, thou hast crowned the life with the flowers that are scentless,
   And the whole aspiration of striving mortality finds its echo in:
  --
   And yet, I should say, in all this it is not mere the huMan that is of supreme interest, but something which even in being huMan yet transcends it.
   And here, let me point out, the capital difference between the European or rather the Hellenic spirit and the Indian spirit. It is the Indian spirit to take stand upon divinity and thence to embrace and mould what is earthly and huMan. The Greek spirit took its stand pre-eminently on earth and what belongs to earth. In Europe Dante's was a soul spiritualised more than perhaps any other and yet his is not a Hindu soul. The utmost that he could say after all the experience of the tragedy of mortality was:
   Io no piangeva, sidentro impietrai13
  --
   The Greek sings of the huManity of Man, the Indian the divinity of Man. It is the Hellenic spirit that has very largely moulded our taste and we have forgotten that an equally poetic world exists in the domain of spiritual life, even in its very severity, as in that of earthly life and its sweetness. And as we are passionate about the earthly life, even so Sri Aurobindo has made a passion of the spiritual life. Poetry after all has a mission; the phrase "Art for Art's sake" may be made to mean anything. Poetry is not merely what is pleasing, not even what is merely touching and moving but what is at the same time, inspiring, invigorating, elevating. Truth is indeed beauty but it is not always the beauty that captivates the eye or the mere aesthetic sense.
   And because our Vedic poets always looked beyond huManity, beyond earth, therefore could they make divine poetry of huManity and what is of earth. Therefore it was that they were pervadingly so grandiose and sublime and puissant. The heroic, the epic was their natural element and they could not but express themselves in the grand Manner Sri Aurobindo has the same outlook and it is why we find in him the ring of the old-world Manner.
   Mark the stately march, the fullness of voice, the wealth of imagery, the vigour of movement of these lines:
  --
   brought from its Manger
   Arching its neck as it paces grand to the gorges
  --
   And if there is something in the creative spirit of Sri Aurobindo which tends more towards the strenuous than the genial, the arduous than the mellifluous, and which has more of the austerity of Vyasa than the easy felicity of Valmiki, however it might have affected the ultimate value of his creation, according to certain standards,14 it has illustrated once more that poetry is not merely beauty but power, it is not merely sweet imagination but creative visionit is even the Rik, the Mantra that impels the gods to Manifest upon earth, that fashions divinity in Man.
   James H. Cousins in his New Ways in English Literature describes Sri Aurobindo as "the philosopher as poet."
  --
   "ParabrahMan".
   "The Rishi".
   ParabrahMan.
   ParabrahMan.
   A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act V, Sc 1.

01.02 - The Creative Soul, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   So the problem that concerns Man, the riddle that huManity has to solve is how to find out and follow the path of creativity. If we are not to be dead matter nor mere shadowy illusions we must be creative. A misconception that has vitiated our outlook in general and has been the most potent cause of a sterilising atavism in the moral evolution of huManity is that creativity is an aristocratic virtue, that it belongs only to the chosen few. A great poet or a mighty Man of action creates indeed, but such a creator does not appear very frequently. A Shakespeare or a Napoleon is a rare phenomenon; they are, in reality, an exception to the general run of Mankind. It is enough if we others can understand and follow themMahajano yena gatahlet the great souls initiate and create, the common souls have only to repeat and imitate.
   But this is not as it should be, nor is it the truth of the matter. Every individual soul, however placed it may be, is by nature creative; every individual being lives to discover and to create.
   The inmost reality of Man is not a passive receptacle, a mere responsive medium but it is a dynamoa power-station generating and throwing out energy that produces and creates.
   Now the centre of this energy, the matrix of creativity is the soul itself, one's own soul. If you want to createlive, grow and be real-find yourself, be yourself. The simple old wisdom still remains the eternal wisdom. It is because we fall off from our soul that we wander into side-paths, paths that do not belong to our real nature and hence that lead to imitation and repetition, decay and death. This is what happens to what we call common souls. The force of circumstances, the pressure of environment or simply the momentum of custom or habit compel them to choose the easiest and the readiest way that may lie before them. They do not consult the deMand of the inner being but the requirement of the moment. Our bodily needs, our vital hungers and our mental prejudices obsess and obscure the impulsions that thrill the hidden spirit. We hasten to gratify the immediate and forget the eternal, we clutch at the shadow and let go the substance. We are carried away in the flux and tumult of life. It is a mixed and collective whirla Weltgeist that moves and governs us. We are helpless straws drifting in the current. But Manhood deMands that we stop and pause, pull ourselves out of the Maelstrom and be what we are. We must shape things as we want and not allow things to shape us as they want.
   Let each take cognisance of the godhead that is within him for self is Godand in the strength of the soul-divinity create his universe. It does not matter what sort of universe he- creates, so long as he creates it. The world created by a Buddha is not the same as that created by a Napoleon, nor should they be the same. It does not prove anything that I cannot become a Kalidasa; for that matter Kalidasa cannot become what I am. If you have not the genius of a Shankara it does not mean that you have no genius at all. Be and become yourselfma gridhah kasyachit dhanam, says the Upanishad. The fountain-head of creative genius lies there, in the free choice and the particular delight the self-determination of the spirit within you and not in the desire for your neighbours riches. The world has become dull and uniform and mechanical, since everybody endeavours to become not himself, but always somebody else. Imitation is servitude and servitude brings in grief.
   In one's own soul lies the very height and profundity of a god-head. Each soul by bringing out the note that is his, makes for the most wondrous symphony. Once a Man knows what he is and holds fast to it, refusing to be drawn away by any necessity or temptation, he begins to uncover himself, to do what his inmost nature deMands and takes joy in, that is to say, begins to create. Indeed there may be much difference in the forms that different souls take. But because each is itself, therefore each is grounded upon the fundamental equality of things. All our valuations are in reference to some standard or other set up with a particular end in view, but that is a question of the practical world which in no way takes away from the intrinsic value of the greatness of the soul. So long as the thing is there, the how of it does not matter. Infinite are the ways of Manifestation and all of them the very highest and the most sublime, provided they are a Manifestation of the soul itself, provided they rise and flow from the same level. Whether it is Agni or Indra, Varuna, Mitra or the Aswins, it is the same supreme and divine inflatus.
   The cosmic soul is true. But that truth is borne out, effectuated only by the truth of the individual soul. When the individual soul becomes itself fully and integrally, by that very fact it becomes also the cosmic soul. The individuals are the channels through which flows the Universal and the Infinite in its multiple emphasis. Each is a particular figure, aspectBhava, a particular angle of vision of All. The vision is entire and the figure perfect if it is not refracted by the lower and denser parts of our being. And for that the individual must first come to itself and shine in its opal clarity and translucency.
  --
   The New HuManity Rationalism

01.02 - The Issue, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Her mind moved in a Many-imaged past
  That lived again and saw its end approach:
  --
  As in a Many-hued flaming inner dawn,
  Her life's broad highways and its sweet bypaths
  --
  On Man sometimes when he draws near to God:
  An hour arrives when fail all Nature's means;
  --
  Alone amid the Many faces loved,
  Aware among unknowing happy hearts,
  --
  In the closed beauty of the inhuMan wilds.
  3.19
  --
  Its solitude greatened her huMan hours
  With a background of the eternal and unique.
  --
  Reduced the heavy framework of Man's days
  And his overburdening mass of outward needs
  --
  Although she leaned to bear the huMan load,
  Her walk kept still the measures of the gods.
  --
  He made her heart kin to the striving huMan heart
  And forced her strength to its appointed road.
  --
  And must confront the riddle of Man's birth
  And life's brief struggle in dumb Matter's night.
  --
  To win or lose the godlike game for Man,
  Was her soul's issue thrown with Destiny's dice.
  --
  Such is the huMan figure drawn by Time.
  4.18
  --
  To the afflicting penalty of Man's hopes,
  Her head she bowed not to the stark decree
  --
  So bows and must the mind-born will in Man
  Obedient to the statutes fixed of old,
  --
  In her the superhuMan cast its seed.
  4.29
  --
  Can link Man's strength to a transcendent Force.
  4.39
  --
  Annul the claim of Man's free huMan will.
  4.41
  --
  A victory was won for God in Man,
  The deity revealed its hidden face.

01.02 - The Object of the Integral Yoga, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  ... the object of the Yoga is to enter into and be possessed by the Divine Presence and Consciousness, to love the Divine for the Divine's sake alone, to be turned in our nature into nature of the Divine and in our will and works and life to be the instrument of the Divine. Its object is not to be a great Yogi or a superMan (although that may come) or to grab at the Divine for the sake of the ego's power, pride or pleasure.
  It is not for salvation though liberation comes by it and all else may come; but these must not be our objects. The Divine alone is our object.
  To come to this Yoga merely with the idea of being a superMan would be an act of vital egoism which would defeat its own object. Those who put this object in the front of their preoccupations invariably come to grief, spiritually and otherwise. The aim of this Yoga is, first, to enter into the divine consciousness by merging into it the separative ego (incidentally, in doing so one finds one's true individual self which is not the limited, vain and selfish huMan ego but a portion of the Divine) and, secondly, to bring down the supramental consciousness on earth to transform mind, life and body. All else can be only a result of these two aims, not the primary object of the Yoga.
  The only creation for which there is any place here is the supramental, the bringing of the divine Truth down on the earth, not only into the mind and vital but into the body and into
  Matter. Our object is not to remove all "limitations" on the expansion of the ego or to give a free field and make unlimited room for the fulfilment of the ideas of the huMan mind or the desires of the ego-centred life-force. None of us are here to "do as we like", or to create a world in which we shall at last be able to do as we like; we are here to do what the Divine wills and to create a world in which the Divine Will can Manifest its truth no longer deformed by huMan ignorance or perverted and mistranslated by vital desire. The work which the sadhak of the supramental Yoga has to do is not his own work for which he can lay down his own conditions, but the work of the Divine which he has to do according to the conditions laid down by the Divine. Our Yoga is not for our own sake but for the sake of the Divine. It is not our own personal Manifestation that we are to seek, the Manifestation of the individual ego freed from all bounds and from all bonds, but the Manifestation of the Divine. Of that Manifestation our own spiritual liberation, perfection, fullness is to be a result and a part, but not in any egoistic sense or for any ego-centred or self-seeking purpose.
  This liberation, perfection, fullness too must not be pursued for our own sake, but for the sake of the Divine.
  This Yoga deMands a total dedication of the life to the aspiration for the discovery and embodiment of the Divine Truth and to nothing else whatever. To divide your life between the Divine and some outward aim and activity that has nothing to do with the search for the Truth is inadmissible. The least thing of that kind would make success in the Yoga impossible.
  You must go inside yourself and enter into a complete dedication to the spiritual life. All clinging to mental preferences must fall away from you, all insistence on vital aims and interests and attachments must be put away, all egoistic clinging to family, friends, country must disappear if you want to succeed in Yoga. Whatever has to come as outgoing energy or action, must proceed from the Truth once discovered and not from the lower mental or vital motives, from the Divine Will and not from personal choice or the preferences of the ego.

01.03 - Mystic Poetry, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   When the Spirit speaks its own language in its own name, we have spiritual poetry. If, however, the Spirit speaksfrom choice or necessity-an alien language and Manner, e.g., that of a profane consciousness, or of the consciousness of another domain, idealistic or philosophical or even occult, puts on or imitates spirit's language and Manner, we have what we propose to call mystic poetry proper. When Samain sings of the body of the dancer:
   Et Pannyre deviant fleur, flamme, papillon! ...
  --
   both so idealise, etherealize, almost spiritualise the earth and the flesh that they seem ostensibly only a vesture of something else behind, something mysterious and other-worldly, something other than, even just opposite to what they actually are or appear to be. That is the mystique of the senses which is a very characteristic feature of some of the best poetic inspirations of France. Baudelaire too, the Satanic poet, by the sheer intensity of sympathy and sincerity, pierces as it were into the soul of things and makes the ugly, the unclean, the diseased, the sordid throb and glow with an almost celestial light. Here is the Baudelairean Manner:
   Tout casss
  --
   It is not merely by addressing the beloved as your goddess that you can attain this mysticism; the Elizabethan did that in merry abundance,ad nauseam.A finer temper, a more delicate touch, a more subtle sensitiveness and a kind of artistic wizardry are necessary to tune the body into a rhythm of the spirit. The other line of mysticism is common enough, viz., to express the spirit in terms and rhythms of the flesh. Tagore did that liberally, the Vaishnava poets did nothing but that, the Song of Solomon is an exquisite example of that procedure. There is here, however, a difference in degrees which is an interesting feature worth noting. Thus in Tagore the reference to the spirit is evident, that is the major or central chord; the earthly and the sensuous are meant as the name and form, as the body to render concrete, living and vibrant, near and intimate what otherwise would perhaps be vague and abstract, afar, aloof. But this mundane or huMan appearance has a value in so far as it is a support, a pointer or symbol of the spiritual import. And the mysticism lies precisely in the play of the two, a hide-and-seek between them. On the other hand, as I said, the greater portion of Vaishnava poetry, like a precious and beautiful casket, no doubt, hides the spiritual import: not the pure significance but the sign and symbol are luxuriously elaborated, they are placed in the foreground in all magnificence: as if it was their very purpose to conceal the real meaning. When the Vaishnava poet says,
   O love, what more shall I, shall Radha speak,
  --
   there is nothing in the matter or Manner which can indicate, to the uninitiated, any reference to the Spirit or the Divine. Or this again,
   I have gazed upon beauty from my very birth
  --
   they all give a very beautiful, a very poignant experience of love, but one does not know if it is love huMan or divine, if it is soul's love or mere bodily love.
   The famous Song of Solomon too is not on a different footing, when the poet cries:
  --
   one can explain that it is the Christ calling the Church or God appealing to the huMan soul or one can simply find in it nothing more than a Man pining for his woMan. Anyhow I would not call it spiritual poetry or even mystic poetry. For in itself it does not carry any double or oblique meaning, there is no suggestion that it is applicable to other fields or domains of consciousness: it is, as it were, monovalent. An allegory is never mysticism. There is more mysticism in Wordsworth, even in Shelley and Keats, than in Spenser, for example, who stands in this respect on the same ground as Bunyan in his The Pilgrim's Progress. Take Wordsworth as a Nature-worshipper,
   Breaking the silence of the seas
  --
   This is spiritual matter and spiritual Manner that can never be improved upon. This is spiritual poetry in its quintessence. I am referring naturally here to the original and not to the translation which can never do full justice, even at its very best, to the poetic value in question. For apart from the individual genius of the poet, the greatness of the language, the instrument used by the poet, is also involved. It may well be what is comparatively easy and natural in the language of the gods (devabhasha) would mean a tour de force, if not altogether an impossibility, in a huMan language. The Sanskrit language was moulded and fashioned in the hands of the Rishis, that is to say, those who lived and moved and had their being in the spiritual consciousness. The Hebrew or even the Zend does not seem to have reached that peak, that absoluteness of the spiritual tone which seems inherent in the Indian tongue, although those too breathed and grew in a spiritual atmosphere. The later languages, however, Greek or Latin or their modern descendants, have gone still farther from the source, they are much nearer to the earth and are suffused with the smell and effluvia of this vale of tears.
   Among the ancients, strictly speaking, the later classical Lucretius was a remarkable phenomenon. By nature he was a poet, but his mental interest lay in metaphysical speculation, in philosophy, and unpoetical business. He turned away from arms and heroes, wrath and love and, like Seneca and Aurelius, gave himself up to moralising and philosophising, delving 'into the mystery, the why and the how and the whither of it all. He chose a dangerous subject for his poetic inspiration and yet it cannot be said that his attempt was a failure. Lucretius was not a religious or spiritual poet; he was rather Marxian,atheistic, materialistic. The dialectical materialism of today could find in him a lot of nourishment and support. But whatever the content, the Manner has made a whole difference. There was an idealism, a clarity of vision and an intensity of perception, which however scientific apparently, gave his creation a note, an accent, an atmosphere high, tense, aloof, ascetic, at times bordering on the supra-sensual. It was a high light, a force of consciousness that at its highest pitch had the ring and vibration of something almost spiritual. For the basic principle of Lucretius' inspiration is a large thought-force, a tense perception, a taut nervous reactionit is not, of course, the identity in being with the inner realities which is the hallmark of a spiritual consciousness, yet it is something on the way towards that.
   There have been other philosophical poets, a good number of them since thennot merely rationally philosophical, as was the vogue in the eighteenth century, but metaphysically philosophical, that is to say, inquiring not merely into the phenomenal but also into the labyrinths of the noumenal, investigating not only what meets the senses, but also things that are behind or beyond. Amidst the earlier efflorescence of this movement the most outstanding philosopher poet is of course Dante, the Dante of Paradiso, a philosopher in the mediaeval Manner and to the extent a lesser poet, according to some. Goe the is another, almost in the grand modern Manner. Wordsworth is full of metaphysics from the crown of his head to the tip of his toe although his poetry, perhaps the major portion of it, had to undergo some kind of martyrdom because of it. And Shelley, the supremely lyric singer, has had a very rich undertone of thought-content genuinely metaphysical. And Browning and Arnold and Hardyindeed, if we come to the more moderns, we have to cite the whole host of them, none can be excepted.
   We left out the Metaphysicals, for they can be grouped as a set apart. They are not so much metaphysical as theological, religious. They have a brain-content stirring with theological problems and speculations, replete with scintillating conceits and intricate fancies. Perhaps it is because of this philosophical burden, this intellectual bias that the Metaphysicals went into obscurity for about two centuries and it is precisely because of that that they are slowly coming out to the forefront and assuming a special value with the moderns. For the modern mind is characteristically thoughtful, introspective"introvert"and philosophical; even the exact physical sciences of today are rounded off in the end with metaphysics.
   The growth of a philosophical thought-content in poetry has been inevitable. For Man's consciousness in its evolutionary march is driving towards a consummation which includes and presupposes a development along that line. The mot d'ordre in old-world poetry was "fancy", imaginationremember the famous lines of Shakespeare characterising a poet; in modern times it is Thought, even or perhaps particularly abstract metaphysical thought. Perceptions, experiences, realisationsof whatever order or world they may beexpressed in sensitive and aesthetic terms and figures, that is poetry known and appreciated familiarly. But a new turn has been coming on with an increasing insistencea definite time has been given to that, since the Renaissance, it is said: it is the growing importance of Thought or brain-power as a medium or atmosphere in which poetic experiences find a sober and clear articulation, a definite and strong formulation. Rationalisation of all experiences and realisations is the keynote of the modern mentality. Even when it is said that reason and rationality are not ultimate or final or significant realities, that the irrational or the submental plays a greater role in our consciousness and that art and poetry likewise should be the expression of such a mentality, even then, all this is said and done in and through a strong rational and intellectual stress and frame the like of which cannot be found in the old-world frankly non-intellectual creations.
   The religious, the mystic or the spiritual Man was, in the past, more or Jess methodically and absolutely non-intellectual and anti-intellectual: but the modern age, the age of scientific culture, is tending to make him as strongly intellectual: he has to explain, not only present the object but show up its mechanism alsoexplain to himself so that he may have a total understanding and a firmer grasp of the thing which he presents and explains to others as well who deMand a similar approach. He feels the necessity of explaining, giving the rationality the rationale the science, of his art; for without that, it appears to him, a solid ground is not given to the structure of his experience: analytic power, preoccupation with methodology seems inherent in the modern creative consciousness.
   The philosophical trend in poetry has an interesting history with a significant role: it has acted as a force of purification, of sublimation, of katharsis. As Man has risen from his exclusively or predominantly vital nature into an increasing mental poise, in the same way his creative activities too have taken this new turn and status. In the earlier stages of evolution the mental life is secondary, subordinate to the physico-vital life; it is only subsequently that the mental finds an independent and self-sufficient reality. A similar movement is reflected in poetic and artistic creation too: the thinker, the philosopher remains in the background at the outset, he looks out; peers through chinks and holes from time to time; later he comes to the forefront, assumes a major role in Man's creative activity.
   Man's consciousness is further to rise from the mental to over-mental regions. Accordingly, his life and activities and along with that his artistic creations too will take on a new tone and rhythm, a new mould and constitution even. For this transition, the higher mentalwhich is normally the field of philosophical and idealistic activitiesserves as the Paraclete, the Intercessor; it takes up the lower functionings of the consciousness, which are intense in their own way, but narrow and turbid, and gives, by purifying and enlarging, a wider frame, a more luminous pattern, a more subtly articulated , form for the higher, vaster and deeper realities, truths and harmonies to express and Manifest. In the old-world spiritual and mystic poets, this intervening medium was overlooked for evident reasons, for huMan reason or even intelligence is a double-edged instrument, it can make as well as mar, it has a light that most often and naturally shuts off other higher lights beyond it. So it was bypassed, some kind of direct and immediate contact was sought to be established between the normal and the transcendental. The result was, as I have pointed out, a pure spiritual poetry, on the one hand, as in the Upanishads, or, on the other, religious poetry of various grades and denominations that spoke of the spiritual but in the terms and in the Manner of the mundane, at least very much coloured and dominated by the latter. Vyasa was the great legendary figure in India who, as is shown in his Mahabharata, seems to have been one of the pioneers, if not the pioneer, to forge and build the missing link of Thought Power. The exemplar of the Manner is the Gita. Valmiki's represented a more ancient and primary inspiration, of a vast vital sensibility, something of the kind that was at the basis of Homer's genius. In Greece it was Socrates who initiated the movement of speculative philosophy and the emphasis of intellectual power slowly began to find expression in the later poets, Sophocles and Euripides. But all these were very simple beginnings. The moderns go in for something more radical and totalitarian. The rationalising element instead of being an additional or subordinate or contri buting factor, must itself give its norm and form, its own substance and Manner to the creative activity. Such is the present-day deMand.
   The earliest preoccupation of Man was religious; even when he concerned himself with the world and worldly things, he referred all that to the other world, thought of gods and goddesses, of after-death and other where. That also will be his last and ultimate preoccupation though in a somewhat different way, when he has passed through a process of purification and growth, a "sea-change". For although religion is an aspiration towards the truth and reality beyond or behind the world, it is married too much to Man's actual worldly nature and carries always with it the shadow of profanity.
   The religious poet seeks to tone down or cover up the mundane taint, since he does not know how to transcend it totally, in two ways: (1) by a strong thought-element, the metaphysical way, as it may be called and (2) by a strong symbolism, the occult way. Donne takes to the first course, Blake the second. And it is the alchemy brought to bear in either of these processes that transforms the merely religious into the mystic poet. The truly spiritual, as I have said, is still a higher grade of consciousness: what I call Spirit's own poetry has its own matter and Mannerswabhava and swadharma. A nearest approach to it is echoed in those famous lines of Blake:
   To see a World in a grain of Sand,
  --
   And mould Thy love into a huMan face.17
   Something of the fullness of spiritual matter and Manner overflows in these epic lines:
   His spirit mingles with eternity's heart
  --
   Naked of its vesture of huManity. ||21.1||
   or this simple single line pregnant no less with the self-same fullness:
  --
   This, I say, is something different from the religious and even from the mystic. It is away from the merely religious, because it is naked of the vesture of huManity (in spite of a huMan face that masks it at times) ; it is something more than the merely mystic, for it does not stop being a signpost or an indication to the Beyond, but is itself the presence and embodiment of the Beyond. The mystic gives us, we can say, the magic of the Infinite; what I term the spiritual, the spiritual proper, gives in addition the logic of the Infinite. At least this is what distinguishes modern spiritual consciousness from the ancient, that is, Upanishadic spiritual consciousness. The Upanishad gives expression to the spiritual consciousness in its original and pristine purity and perfection, in its essential simplicity. It did not buttress itself with any logic. It is the record of fundamental experiences and there was no question of any logical exposition. But, as I have said, the modern mind requires and deMands a logical element in its perceptions and presentations. Also it must needs be a different kind of logic that can satisfy and satisfy wholly the deeper and subtler movements of a modern consciousness. For the philosophical poet of an earlier age, when he had recourse to logic, it was the logic of the finite that always gave him the frame, unless he threw the whole thing overboard and leaped straight into the occult, the illogical and the a logical, like Blake, for instance. Let me illustrate and compare a little. When the older poet explains indriyani hayan ahuh, it is an allegory he resorts to, it is the logic of the finite he marshals to point to the infinite and the beyond. The stress of reason is apparent and effective too, but the pattern is what we are normally familiar with the movement, we can say, is almost Aristotelian in its rigour. Now let us turn to the following:
   Our life is a holocaust of the Supreme. ||26.15||
  --
   The Many-patterned ground of all we are. ||26.16||
   An idol of self is our mortality. ||26.17||
  --
   This is what I was trying to make out as the distinguishing trait of the real spiritual consciousness that seems to be developing in the poetic creation of tomorrow, e.g., it has the same rationality, clarity, concreteness of perception as the scientific spirit has in its own domain and still it is rounded off with a halo of magic and miracle. That is the nature of the logic of the infinite proper to the spiritual consciousness. We can have a Science of the Spirit as well as a Science of Matter. This is the Thought element or what corresponds to it, of which I was speaking, the philosophical factor, that which gives form to the formless or definition to that which is vague, a nearness and familiarity to that which is far and alien. The fullness of the spiritual consciousness means such a thing, the presentation of a divine name and form. And this distinguishes it from the mystic consciousness which is not the supreme solar consciousness but the nearest approach to it. Or, perhaps, the mystic dwells in the domain of the Divine, he may even be suffused with a sense of unity but would not like to acquire the Divine's nature and function. Normally and generally he embodies all the aspiration and yearning moved by intimations and suggestions belonging to the huMan mentality, the divine urge retaining still the huMan flavour. We can say also, using a Vedantic terminology, that the mystic consciousness gives us the tatastha lakshana, the nearest approximative attribute of the attri buteless; or otherwise, it is the hiranyagarbha consciousness which englobes the multiple play, the coruscated possibilities of the Reality: while the spiritual proper may be considered as prajghana, the solid mass, the essential lineaments of revelatory knowledge, the typal "wave-particles" of the Reality. In the former there is a play of imagination, even of fancy, a decorative aesthesis, while in the latter it is vision pure and simple. If the spiritual poetry is solar in its nature, we can say, by extending the analogy, that mystic poetry is characteristically lunarMoon representing the delight and the magic that Mind and mental imagination, suffused, no doubt, with a light or a reflection of some light from beyond, is capable of (the Upanishad speaks of the Moon being born of the Mind).
   To sum up and recapitulate. The evolution of the poetic expression in Man has ever been an attempt at a return and a progressive approach to the spiritual source of poetic inspiration, which was also the original, though somewhat veiled, source from the very beginning. The movement has followed devious waysstrongly negative at timeseven like Man's life and consciousness in general of which it is an organic member; but the ultimate end and drift seems to have been always that ideal and principle even when fallen on evil days and evil tongues. The poet's ideal in the dawn of the world was, as the Vedic Rishi sang, to raise things of beauty in heaven by his poetic power,kavi kavitv divi rpam sajat. Even a Satanic poet, the inaugurator, in a way, of modernism and modernistic consciousness, Charles Baudelaire, thus admonishes his spirit:
   "Flyaway, far from these morbid miasmas, go and purify yourself in the higher air and drink, like a pure and divine liquor, the clear fire that fills the limpid spaces."18
  --
   Poetry, actually however, has been, by and large, a profane and mundane affair: for it expresses the normal Man's perceptions and feelings and experiences, huMan loves and hates and desires and ambitions. True. And yet there has also always been an attempt, a tendency to deal with them in such a way as can bring calm and puritykatharsisnot trouble and confusion. That has been the purpose of all Art from the ancient days. Besides, there has been a growth and development in the historic process of this katharsis. As by the sublimation of his bodily and vital instincts and impulses., Man is gradually growing into the mental, moral and finally spiritual consciousness, even so the artistic expression of his creative activity has followed a similar line of transformation. The first and original transformation happened with religious poetry. The religious, one may say, is the profane inside out; that is to say, the religious Man has almost the same tone and temper, the same urges and passions, only turned Godward. Religious poetry too marks a new turn and development of huMan speech, in taking the name of God huMan tongue acquires a new plasticity and flavour that transform or give a new modulation even to things profane and mundane it speaks of. Religious means at bottom the colouring of mental and moral idealism. A parallel process of katharsis is found in another class of poetic creation, viz., the allegory. Allegory or parable is the stage when the higher and inner realities are expressed wholly in the modes and Manner, in the form and character of the normal and external, when moral, religious or spiritual truths are expressed in the terms and figures of the profane life. The higher or the inner ideal is like a loose clothing upon the ordinary consciousness, it does not fit closely or fuse. In the religious, however, the first step is taken for a mingling and fusion. The mystic is the beginning of a real fusion and a considerable ascension of the lower into the higher. The philosopher poet follows another line for the same katharsisinstead of uplifting emotions and sensibility, he proceeds by thought-power, by the ideas and principles that lie behind all movements and give a pattern to all things existing. The mystic can be of either type, the religious mystic or the philosopher mystic, although often the two are welded together and cannot be very well separated. Let us illustrate a little:
   The spacious firmament on high,
  --
   This is religious poetry, pure and simple, expressing Man's earliest and most elementary feeling, marked by a broad candour, a rather shallow monotone. But that feeling is raised to a pitch of fervour and scintillating sensibility in Vaughan's
   They are all gone into the world of light
  --
   For though through Many streights, and lands I roame,
   I launch at paradise, and saile towards home,23
  --
   But all that is left far behind, when we hear a new voice announcing an altogether new Manner, revelatory of the truly and supremely spiritual consciousness, not simply mystic or religious but magically occult and carved out of the highest if recondite philosophia:
   A finite movement of the Infinite

01.03 - Rationalism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   What is Reason, the faculty that is said to be the proud privilege of Man, the sovereign instrument he alone possesses for the purpose of knowing? What is the value of knowledge that Reason gives? For it is the Manner of knowing, the particular faculty or instrument by which we know, that determines the nature and content of knowledge. Reason is the collecting of available sense-perceptions and a certain mode of working upon them. It has three component elements that have been defined as observation, classification and deduction. Now, the very composition of Reason shows that it cannot be a perfect instrument of knowledge; the limitations are the inherent limitations of the component elements. As regards observation there is a two-fold limitation. First, observation is a relative term and variable quantity. One observes through the prism of one's own observing faculty, through the bias of one's own personality and no two persons can have absolutely the same Manner of observation. So Science has recognised the necessity of personal equation and has created an imaginary observer, a "mean Man" as the standard of reference. And this already takes us far away from the truth, from the reality. Secondly, observation is limited by its scope. All the facts of the world, all sense-perceptions possible and actual cannot be included within any observation however large, however collective it may be. We have to go always upon a limited amount of data, we are able to construct only a partial and sketchy view of the surface of existence. And then it is these few and doubtful facts that Reason seeks to arrange and classify. That classification may hold good for certain immediate ends, for a temporary understanding of the world and its forces, either in order to satisfy our curiosity or to gain some practical utility. For when we want to consider the world only in its immediate relation to us, a few and even doubtful facts are sufficient the more immediate the relation, the more immaterial the doubtfulness and insufficiency of facts. We may quite confidently go a step in darkness, but to walk a mile we do require light and certainty. Our scientific classification has a background of uncertainty, if not, of falsity; and our deduction also, even while correct within a very narrow range of space and time, cannot escape the fundamental vices of observation and classification upon which it is based.
   It might be said, however, that the guarantee or sanction of Reason does not lie in the extent of its application, nor can its subjective nature (or ego-centric predication, as philosophers would term it) vitiate the validity of its conclusions. There is, in fact, an inherent unity and harmony between Reason and Reality. If we know a little of Reality, we know the whole; if we know the subjective, we know also the objective. As in the part, so in the whole; as it is within, so it is without. If you say that I will die, you need not wait for my actual death to have the proof of your statement. The generalising power inherent in Reason is the guarantee of the certitude to which it leads. Reason is valid, as it does not betray us. If it were such as anti-intellectuals make it out to be, we would be making nothing but false steps, would always remain entangled in contradictions. The very success of Reason is proof of its being a reliable and perfect instrument for the knowledge of Truth and Reality. It is beside the mark to prove otherwise, simply by analysing the nature of Reason and showing the fundamental deficiencies of that nature. It is rather to the credit of Reason that being as it is, it is none the less a successful and trustworthy agent.
  --
   But in knowledge it is precisely finality that we seek for and no mere progressive, asymptotic, rapprochement ad infinitum. No less than the Practical Reason, the Theoretical Reason also deMands a categorical imperative, a clean affirmation or denial. If Reason cannot do that, it must be regarded as inefficient. It is poor consolation to Man that Reason is gradually finding out the truth or that it is trying to grapple with the problems of God, Soul and Immortality and will one day pronounce its verdict. Whether we have or have not any other instrument of knowledge is a different question altogether. But in the meanwhile Reason stands condemned by the evidence of its own limitation.
   It may be retorted that if Reason is condemned, it is condemned by itself and by no other authority. All argumentation against Reason is a function of Reason itself. The deficiencies of Reason we find out by the rational faculty alone. If Reason was to die, it is because it consents to commit suicide; there is no other power that kills it. But to this our answer is that Reason has this miraculous power of self-destruction; or, to put it philosophically, Reason is, at best, an organ of self-criticism and perhaps the organ par excellence for that purpose. But criticism is one thing and creation another. And whether we know or act, it is fundamentally a process of creation; at least, without this element of creation there can be no knowledge, no act. In knowledge there is a luminous creativity, Revelation or Categorical Imperative which Reason does not and cannot supply but vaguely strains to seize. For that element we have to search elsewhere, not in Reason.
  --
   The fact is that Reason is a lower Manifestation of knowledge, it is an attempt to express on the mental level a power that exceeds it. It is the section of a vast and unitarian Consciousness-Power; the section may be necessary under certain conditions and circumstances, but unless it is viewed in its relation to the ensemble, unless it gives up its exclusive absolutism, it will be perforce arbitrary and misleading. It would still remain helpful and useful, but its help and use would be always limited in scope and temporary in effectivity.
   ***

01.03 - Sri Aurobindo and his School, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   This much as regards what Sri Aurobindo is not doing; let us now turn and try to understand what he is doing. The distinguished Man of action speaks of conquering Nature and fighting her. Adopting this war-like imagery, we can affirm that Sri Aurobindo's work is just such a battle and conquest. But the question is, what is nature and what is the kind of conquest that is sought, how are we to fight and what are the required arms and implements? A good general should foresee all this, frame his plan of campaign accordingly and then only take the field. The above-mentioned leader proposes ceaseless and unselfish action as the way to fight and conquer Nature. He who speaks thus does not know and cannot mean what he says.
   European science is conquering Nature in a way. It has attained to a certain kind and measure, in some fields a great measure, of control and conquest; but however great or striking it may be in its own province, it does not touch Man in his more intimate reality and does not bring about any true change in his destiny or his being. For the most vital part of nature is the region of the life-forces, the powers of disease and age and death, of strife and greed and lustall the instincts of the brute in Man, all the dark aboriginal forces, the forces of ignorance that form the very groundwork of Man's nature and his society. And then, as we rise next to the world of the mind, we find a twilight region where falsehood masquerades as truth, where prejudices move as realities, where notions rule as ideals.
   This is the present nature of Man, with its threefold nexus of mind and life and body, that stands there to be fought and conquered. This is the inferior nature, of which the ancients spoke, that holds Man down inexorably to a lower dharma, imperfect mode of life the life that is and has been the huMan order till today. No amount of ceaseless action, however selflessly done, can move this wheel of Nature even by a hair's breadth away from the path that it has carved out from of old. HuMan nature and huMan society have been built up and are run by the forces of this inferior nature, and whatever shuffling and reshuffling we may make in its apparent factors and elements, the general scheme and fundamental form of life will never change. To displace earth (and to conquer nature means nothing less than that) and give it another orbit, one must find a fulcrum outside earth.
   Sri Aurobindo does not preach flight from life and a retreat into the silent and passive Infinite; the goal of life is not, in his view, the extinction of life. Neither is he satisfied on that account to hold that life is best lived in the ordinary round of its unregenerate dharma. If the first is a blind alley, the second is a vicious circle,both lead nowhere.
   Sri Aurobindo's sadhana starts from the perception of a Power that is beyond the ordinary nature yet is its inevitable master, a fulcrum, as we have said, outside the earth. For what is required first is the discovery and Manifestation of a new soul-consciousness in Man which will bring about by the very pressure and working out of its self-rule an absolute reversal of Man's nature. It is the Asuras who are now holding sway over huManity, for Man has allowed himself so long to be built in the image of the Asura; to dislodge the Asuras, the Gods in their sovereign might have to be forged in the huMan being and brought into play. It is a stupendous task, some would say impossible; but it is very far removed from quietism or passivism. Sri Aurobindo is in retirement, but it is a retirement only from the outward field of present physical activities and their apparent actualities, not from the true forces and action of life. It is the retreat necessary to one who has to go back into himself to conquer a new plane of creative power,an entrance right into the world of basic forces, of fundamental realities, into the flaming heart of things where all actualities are born and take their first shape. It is the discovery of a power-house of tremendous energism and of the means of putting it at the service of earthly life.
   And, properly speaking, it is not at all a school, least of all a mere school of thought, that is growing round Sri Aurobindo. It is rather the nucleus of a new life that is to come. Quite naturally it has almost insignificant proportions at present to the outward eye, for the work is still of the nature of experiment and trial in very restricted limits, something in the nature of what is done in a laboratory when a new power has been discovered, but has still to be perfectly formulated in its process. And it is quite a mistake to suppose that there is a vigorous propaganda carried on in its behalf or that there is a large deMand for recruits. Only the few, who possess the call within and are impelled by the spirit of the future, have a chance of serving this high attempt and great realisation and standing among its first instruments and pioneer workers.
   ***

01.03 - The Yoga of the King - The Yoga of the Souls Release, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  His huMan self like a translucent cloak
  Covered the All-Wise who leads the unseeing world.
  --
  And paying here God's debt to earth and Man
  A greater sonship was his divine right.
  --
  A strength of the original PerManence
  Entangled in the moment and its flow,
  --
  A treasurer of superhuMan dreams,
  He bore the stamp of mighty memories
  And shed their grandiose ray on huMan life.
  His days were a long growth to the Supreme.
  --
  Hid deep in Man celestial powers can dwell.
  His fragile ship conveys through the sea of years
  --
  In the transient symbol of huManity draped,
  He feels his substance of undying self
  --
  Then is revealed in Man the overt Divine.
  A static Oneness and dynamic Power
  --
  A long dim preparation is Man's life,
  A circle of toil and hope and war and peace
  --
  Original and supernal ImManence
  Of which all Nature's process is the art,
  --
  The CraftsMan of the magic stuff of self
  Who labours at his high and difficult plan
  --
  HuManity framed his movements less and less;
  A greater being saw a greater world.
  --
  The powers that sleep unused in Man within.
  He made of miracle a normal act
  --
  Lit with its grace Man's outward earthliness;
  The soul's experience of its deeper sheaths
  --
  Acts vibrant with a superhuMan light
  And movements pushed by a superconscient force,
  --
  It voiced the unfulfilled deMand of earth
  And the song of promise of unrealised heavens
  --
  And beings of Many kingdoms neared and spoke:
  The ever-living whom we name as dead
  --
  Each day was a spiritual roMance,
  As if he was born into a bright new world;
  --
  The Supreme's gaze looked out through huMan eyes
  And saw all things and creatures as itself
  --
  Dim and eclipsed, his huMan outside strove
  To feel again the old sublimities,
  --
  Bridging the gap between Man's force and Fate
  Made whole the fragment-being we are here.
  --
  To check the claiMants crowding through mind's gates
  Covered by the forged signatures of the gods,
  --
  SpokesMan of the silent seeings of the Supreme,
  She brought immortal words to mortal men.
  --
  Managed in the deep perspectives of the soul,
  And the realism of its illusive art,
  --
  Than what the slow labour of huMan mind can bring,
  A secret sense awoke that could perceive
  --
  Let in a glow of the UnManifest:
  The formless Everlasting moved in it
  --
  Of a blind Power on huMan littleness,
  Life now became a sure approach to God,
  --
  And felt the occult impulse behind Man's will.
  Time's secrets were to him an oft-read book;
  --
  The huMan in him paced with the divine;
  His acts betrayed not the interior flame.
  --
  His walk through Time outstripped the huMan stride.
  Lonely his days and splendid like the sun's.

01.03 - Yoga and the Ordinary Life, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Mental quiet and happiness they can get, but it can never be perManent or secure. But the spiritual consciousness is all light, peace, power and bliss. If one can live entirely in it, there is no question; these things become naturally and securely his.
  But even if he can live partly in it or keep himself constantly open to it, he receives enough of this spiritual light and peace and strength and happiness to carry him securely through all the shocks of life. What one gains by opening to this spiritual consciousness, depends on what one seeks from it; if it is peace, one gets peace; if it is light or knowledge, one lives in a great light and receives a knowledge deeper and truer than any the normal mind of Man can acquire; if it [is] strength or power, one gets a spiritual strength for the inner life or Yogic power to govern the outer work and action; if it is happiness, one enters into a beatitude far greater than any joy or happiness that the ordinary huMan life can give.
  There are Many ways of opening to this Divine consciousness or entering into it. My way which I show to others is by a constant practice to go inward into oneself, to open by aspiration to the Divine and once one is conscious of it and its action to give oneself to It entirely. This self-giving means not to ask for anything but the constant contact or union with the Divine Consciousness, to aspire for its peace, power, light and felicity, but to ask nothing else and in life and action to be its instrument only for whatever work it gives one to do in the world. If one can once open and feel the Divine Force, the
  Power of the Spirit working in the mind and heart and body, the rest is a matter of remaining faithful to It, calling for it always, allowing it to do its work when it comes and rejecting every other and inferior Force that belongs to the lower consciousness and the lower nature.
  Apart from external things there are two possible inner ideals which a Man can follow. The first is the highest ideal of ordinary huMan life and the other the divine ideal of Yoga.
  I must say in view of something you seem to have said to your father that it is not the object of the one to be a great Man or the object of the other to be a great Yogin. The ideal of huMan life is to establish over the whole being the control of a clear, strong and rational mind and a right and rational will, to master the emotional, vital and physical being, create a harmony of the whole and develop the capacities whatever they are and fulfil them in life. In the terms of Hindu thought, it is to enthrone the rule of the purified and sattwic buddhi, follow the dharma, fulfilling one's own svadharma and doing the work proper to one's capacities, and satisfy kama and artha under the control of the buddhi and the dharma. The object of the divine life, on the other hand, is to realise one's highest self or to realise
  God and to put the whole being into harmony with the truth of the highest self or the law of the divine nature, to find one's own divine capacities great or small and fulfil them in life as a sacrifice to the highest or as a true instrument of the divine
  --
  The spiritual life (adhyatma jvana), the religious life (dharma jvana) and the ordinary huMan life of which morality is a part are three quite different things and one must know which one desires and not confuse the three together. The ordinary life is that of the average huMan consciousness separated from its own true self and from the Divine and led by the common habits of the mind, life and body which are the laws of the Ignorance.
  The religious life is a movement of the same ignorant huMan consciousness, turning or trying to turn away from the earth towards the Divine but as yet without knowledge and led by the dogmatic tenets and rules of some sect or creed which claims to have found the way out of the bonds of the earth-consciousness into some beatific Beyond. The religious life may be the first approach to the spiritual, but very often it is only a turning about in a round of rites, ceremonies and practices or set ideas and forms without any issue. The spiritual life, on the contrary, proceeds directly by a change of consciousness, a change from the ordinary consciousness, ignorant and separated from its true self and from God, to a greater consciousness in which one finds one's true being and comes first into direct and living contact and then into union with the Divine. For the spiritual seeker this change of consciousness is the one thing he seeks and nothing else matters.
  Morality is a part of the ordinary life; it is an attempt to govern the outward conduct by certain mental rules or to form the character by these rules in the image of a certain mental ideal. The spiritual life goes beyond the mind; it enters into the deeper consciousness of the Spirit and acts out of the truth of the Spirit.
  --
  Morality is a question of Man's mind and vital, it belongs to a lower plane of consciousness. A spiritual life therefore cannot be founded on a moral basis, it must be founded on a spiritual basis. This does not mean that the spiritual Man must be immoral - as if there were no other law of conduct than the moral. The law of action of the spiritual consciousness is higher, not lower than the moral - it is founded on union with the Divine and living in the Divine Consciousness and its action is founded on obedience to the Divine Will.

01.04 - Motives for Seeking the Divine, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  But of course that is not the spiritual life, it is only a sort of elementary religious approach. For the spiritual life to give and not to deMand is the rule. The sadhak however can ask for the
  Divine Force to aid him in keeping his health or recovering it if he does that as part of his sadhana so that his body may be able and fit for the spiritual life and a capable instrument for the
  --
  Let us first put aside the quite foreign consideration of what we would do if the union with the Divine brought eternal joylessness, Nirananda or torture. Such a thing does not exist and to drag it in only clouds the issue. The Divine is Anandamaya and one can seek him for the Ananda he gives; but he has also in him Many other things and one may seek him for any of them, for peace, for liberation, for knowledge, for power, for anything else of which one may feel the pull or the impulse. It is quite possible for someone to say: "Let me have Power from the
  Divine and do His work or His will and I am satisfied, even if the use of Power entails suffering also." It is possible to shun bliss as a thing too tremendous or ecstatic and ask only or rather for peace, for liberation, for Nirvana. You speak of self-fulfilment,
  --
  That means what? That men, country, Truth and other things besides can be loved for their own sake and not for anything else, not for any circumstance or attendant quality or resulting enjoyment, but for something absolute that is either in them or behind their appearance and circumstance. The Divine is more than a Man or woMan, a stretch of land or a creed, opinion, discovery or principle. He is the Person beyond all persons, the
  Home and Country of all souls, the Truth of which truths are only imperfect figures. And can He then not be loved and sought for his own sake, as and more than these have been by men even in their lesser selves and nature?
  What your reasoning ignores is that which is absolute or tends towards the absolute in Man and his seeking as well as in the Divine - something not to be explained by mental reasoning or vital motive. A motive, but a motive of the soul, not of vital desire; a reason not of the mind, but of the self and spirit. An asking too, but the asking that is the soul's inherent aspiration, not a vital longing. That is what comes up when there is the sheer self-giving, when "I seek you for this, I seek you for that" changes to a sheer "I seek you for you." It is that marvellous and ineffable absolute in the Divine that Krishnaprem means when he says, "Not knowledge nor this nor that, but Krishna."
  The pull of that is indeed a categorical imperative, the self in us drawn to the Divine because of the imperative call of its greater Self, the soul ineffably drawn towards the object of its adoration, because it cannot be otherwise, because it is it and

01.04 - Sri Aurobindos Gita, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The supreme secret of the Gita, rahasyam uttamam, has presented itself to diverse minds in diverse forms. All these however fall, roughly speaking, into two broad groups of which one may be termed the orthodox school and the other the modem school. The orthodox school as represented, for example, by Shankara or Sridhara, viewed the Gita in the light of the spiritual discipline more or less current in those ages, when the purpose of life was held out to be eMancipation from life, whether through desireless work or knowledge or devotion or even a combination of the three. The Modern School, on the other hand, represented by Bankim in Bengal and more thoroughly developed and systematised in recent times by Tilak, is inspired by its own Time-Spirit and finds in the Gita a gospel of life-fulfilment. The older interpretation laid stress upon a spiritual and religious, which meant therefore in the end an other-worldly discipline; the newer interpretation seeks to dynamise the more or less quietistic spirituality which held the ground in India of later ages, to set a premium upon action, upon duty that is to be done in our workaday life, though with a spiritual intent and motive.
   This neo-spirituality which might claim its sanction and authority from the real old-world Indian disciplinesay, of Janaka and Yajnavalkyalabours, however, in reality, under the influence of European activism and ethicism. It was this which served as the immediate incentive to our spiritual revival and revaluation and its impress has not been thoroughly obliterated even in the best of our modern exponents. The bias of the vital urge and of the moral imperative is apparent enough in the modernist conception of a dynamic spirituality. Fundamentally the dynamism is made to reside in the lan of the ethical Man,the spiritual element, as a consciousness of supreme unity in the Absolute (BrahMan) or of love and delight in God, serving only as an atmosphere for the mortal activity.
   Sri Aurobindo has raised action completely out of the mental and moral plane and has given it an absolute spiritual life. Action has been spiritualised by being carried back to its very source and origin, for it is the expression in life of God's own Consciousness-Energy (Chit-Shakti).
   The Supreme Spirit, Purushottama, who holds in himself the dual reality of BrahMan and the world, is the master of action who acts but in actionlessness, the Lord in whom and through whom the universes and their creatures live and move and have their being. Karmayoga is union in mind and soul and body with the Lord of action in the execution of his cosmic purpose. And this union is effected through a transformation of the huMan nature, through the revelation of the Divine Prakriti and its descent upon and possession of the inferior huMan vehicle.
   Arrived so far, we now find, if we look back, a change in the whole perspective. Karma and even Karmayoga, which hitherto seemed to be the pivot of the Gita's teaching, retire somewhat into the background and present a diminished stature and value. The centre of gravity has shifted to the conception of the Divine Nature, to the Lord's own status, to the consciousness above the three Gunas, to absolute consecration of each limb of Man's huManity to the Supreme Purusha for his descent and incarnation and play in and upon this huMan world.
   The higher secret of the Gita lies really in the later chapters, the earlier chapters being a preparation and passage to it orpartial and practical application. This has to be pointed out, since there is a notion current which seeks to limit the Gita's effective teaching to the earlier part, neglecting or even discarding the later portion.
   The style and Manner of Sri Aurobindo's interpretation1 is also supremely characteristic: it does not carry the impress of a mere metaphysical dissertation-although in matter it clothes throughout a profound philosophy; it is throbbing with the luminous life of a prophet's message, it is instinct with something of the Gita's own Mantraakti.
   Essays on the Gita, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry

01.04 - The Intuition of the Age, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Now, what is the intuition that lies behind the movements of the new age? What is the intimate realisation, the underlying view-point which is guiding and modelling all our efforts and achievementsour science and art, our poetry and philosophy, our religion and society? For, there is such a common and fundamental note which is being voiced forth by the huMan spirit through all the multitude of its present-day activities.
   A new impulse is there, no one can deny, and it has vast possibilities before it, that also one need not hesitate to accept. But in order that we may best fructuate what has been spontaneously sown, we must first recognise it, be luminously conscious of it and develop it along its proper line of growth. For, also certain it is that this new impulse or intuition, however true and strong in itself, is still groping and erring and miscarrying; it is still wasting much of its energy in tentative things, in mere experiments, in even clear failures. The fact is that the intuition has not yet become an enlightened one, it is still moving, as we shall presently explain, in the dark vital regions of Man. And vitalism is naturally and closely affianced to pragmatism, that is to say, the mere vital impulse seeks immediately to execute itself, it looks for external effects, for changes in the form, in the machinery only. Thus it is that we see in art and literature discussions centred upon the scheme of composition, as whether the new poetry should be lyrical or dramatic, popular or aristocratic, metrical or free of metre, and in practical life we talk of remodelling the state by new methods of representation and governance, of purging society by bills and legislation, of reforming huManity by a business pact.
   All this may be good and necessary, but there is the danger of leaving altogether out of account the one thing needful. We must then pause and turn back, look behind the apparent impulsion that effectuates to the Will that drives, behind the ideas and ideals of the mind to the soul that informs and inspires; we must carry ourselves up the stream and concentrate upon the original source, the creative intuition that lies hidden somewhere. And then only all the new stirrings that we feel in our heartour urges and ideals and visions will attain an effective clarity, an unshaken purpose and an inevitable achievement.
   That is to say, the change has been in the soul of Man himself, the being has veered round and taken a new orientation. It is this which one must envisage, recognise and consciously possess, in order that one may best fulfil the call of the age. But what we are doing instead is to observe the mere external signs and symbols and symptoms, to fix upon the distant quiverings, the echoes on the outermost rim, which are not always faithful representations, but very often distorted images of the truth and life at the centre and source and matrix. We must know that if there has been going on a redistribution and new-marshalling of forces, it is because the fiat has come from the Etat Major.
   Now, in order to understand the new orientation of the spirit of the present age, we may profitably ask what was the inspiration of the past age, the characteristic note which has failed to satisfy us and which we are endeavouring to transform. We know that that age was the Scientific age or the age of Reason. Its great prophets were Voltaire and the Encyclopaedists or if you mount further up in time, we may begin from Bacon and the huManists. Its motto was first, "The proper study of Mankind is Man" and secondly, Reason is the supreme organon of knowledge, the highest deity in Manla Desse Raison. And it is precisely against these two basic principles that the new age has entered its protest. In face of HuManism, Nietzsche has posited the SuperMan and in face of Reason Bergson has posited Intuition.
   The worship of Man as something essentially and exclusively huMan necessitates as a corollary, the other doctrine, viz the deification of Reason; and vice versa. HuManism and Scientism go together and the whole spirit and mentality of the age that is passing may be summed up in those two words. So Nietzsche says, "All our modern world is captured in the net of the Alexandrine culture and has, for its ideal, the theoretical Man, armed with the most powerful instruments of knowledge, toiling in the service of science and whose prototype and original ancestor is Socrates." Indeed, it may be generally asserted that the nation whose prophet and sage claimed to have brought down Philosophia from heaven to dwell upon earth among men was precisely the nation, endowed with a clear and logical intellect, that was the very embodiment of rationality and reasonableness. As a matter of fact, it would not be far, wrong to say that it is the Hellenic culture which has been moulding huManity for ages; at least, it is this which has been the predominating factor, the vital and dynamic element in Man's nature. Greece when it died was reborn in Rome; Rome, in its return, found new life in France; and France means Europe. What Europe has been and still is for the world and huManity one knows only too much. And yet, the Hellenic genius has not been the sole motive power and constituent element; there has been another leaven which worked constantly within, if intermittently without. If Europe represented mind and Man and this side of existence, Asia always reflected that which transcends the mind the spirit, the Gods and the Beyonds.
   However, we are concerned more with the immediate past, the mentality that laid its supreme stress upon the huMan rationality. What that epoch did not understand was that Reason could be overstepped, that there was something higher, something greater than Reason; Reason being the sovereign faculty, it was thought there could be nothing beyond, unless it were draison. The huMan attribute par excellence is Reason. Exactly so. But the fact is that Man is not bound by his huManity and that reason can be transformed and sublimated into other more powerful faculties.
   Now, the question is, what is the insufficiency of Reason? How does it limit Man? And what is the SuperMan into which Man is asked or is being impelled to grow?
   Reason is insufficient and unsatisfactory because, as Bergson explains, it does not and cannot embrace life as a whole, seize Man and the world in an integral realisation. The greater part of the vast mystery of existence escapes its envergure. Reason is that faculty which is for analysing, defining, classifying and fixing things. It is a power that has grown in Man in order that he may best Manipulate the things of the world. It is utilitarian, practical in its nature and outlook. And as practical dealing requires that things should be stable and separate entities, therefore Reason cannot but see things in solid and in the fragments of a solid. It cuts up existence into distinct parts and diverse elements; and these again it seeks to relate and aggregate, in accordance with what it calls "laws". Such a process has been necessary for Man in conducting life and action successfully. Originally a bye-product of active life, Reason gradually separated itself and came finally to have an independent status and function, became or sought to become the instrument of knowledge, of Truth.
   But although Reason has been and is useful for the practical, we may say almost, the Manual aspect of life, life itself it leaves unexplained and uncomprehended. For life is mobility, a continuous flow that has nowhere any gap or stop and things have in reality no isolated or separate existence, they merge and mingle into one another and form an indissoluble whole. Therefore the forms and categories that Reason imposes upon existence are more or less arbitrary; they are shackles that seek to bind up and limit life, but are often rent asunder in the very effort. So the civilisation that has its origin in Reason and progresses with discoveries and inventionsdevices for artfully Manipulating naturehas been essentially and pre-eminently mechanical in its structure and outlook. It has become more and more efficient perhaps, but less and less soul-inspired, less and less-endowed with the free-flowing sap of organic growth and vitality.
   So instead of the rational principle, the new age wants the principle of Nature or Life. Even as regards knowledge Reason is not the only, nor the best instrument. For animals have properly no reason; the nature-principle of knowledge in the animal is Instinct the faculty that acts so faultlessly, so marvellously where Reason can only pause and be perplexed. This is not to say that Man is to or can go back to this primitive and animal function; but certainly he can replace it by something akin which is as natural and yet purified and self-consciousillumined instinct, we may say or Intuition, as Bergson terms it. And Nietzsche's definition of the SuperMan has also a similar orientation and significance; for, according to him, the SuperMan is Man who has outgrown his Reason, who is not bound by the standards and the conventions determined by Reason for a special purpose. The SuperMan is one who has gone beyond "good and evil," who has shaken off from his nature and character elements that are "huMan, all too huMan"who is the embodiment of life-force in its absolute purity and strength and freedom.
   This then is the Mantra of the new ageLife with Intuition as its guide and not Reason and mechanical efficiency, not Man but SuperMan. The right Mantra has been found, the principle itself is irreproachable. But the interpretation, the application, does not seem to have been always happy. For, Nietzsche's conception of the SuperMan is full of obvious lacunae. If we have so long been adoring the intellectual Man, Nietzsche asks us, on the other hand, to deify the vital Man. According to him the superMan is he who has (1) the supreme sense of the ego, (2) the sovereign will to power and (3) who lives dangerously. All this means an Asura, that is to say, one who has, it may be, dominion over his animal and vital impulsions in order, of course, that he may best gratify them but who has not purified them. Purification does not necessarily mean, annihilation but it does mean sublimation and transformation. So if you have to transcend Man, you have to transcend egoism also. For a conscious egoism is the very characteristic of Man and by increasing your sense of egoism you do not supersede Man but simply aggrandise your huManity, fashion it on a larger, a titanic scale. And then the will to power is not the only will that requires fulfilment, there is also the will to knowledge and the will to love. In Man these three fundamental constitutive elements coexist, although they do it, more often than not, at the expense of each other and in a state of continual disharmony. The superMan, if he is to be the Man "who has surmounted himself", must embody a poise of being in which all the three find a fusion and harmonya perfect synthesis. Again, to live dangerously may be heroic, but it is not divine. To live dangerously means to have eternal opponents, that is to say, to live ever on the same level with the forces you want to dominate. To have the sense that one has to fight and control means that one is not as yet the sovereign lord, for one has to strive and strain and attain. The supreme lord is he who is perfectly equanimous with himself and with the world. He has not to batter things into a shape in order to create. He creates means, he Manifests. He wills and he achieves"God said 'let there be light' and there was light."
   As a matter of fact, the superMan is not, as Nietzsche thinks him to be, the highest embodiment of the biological force of Nature, not even as modified and refined by the aesthetic and aristocratic virtues of which the higher reaches of huManity seem capable. For that is after all huManity only accentuated in certain other fundamentally huMan modes of existence. It does not carry far enough the process of surmounting. In reality it is not a surmounting but a new channelling. Instead of the ethical and intellectual Man, we get the vital and aesthetic Man. It may be a change but not a transfiguration.
   And the faculty of Intuition said to be the characteristic of the New Man does not mean all that it should, if we confine ourselves to Bergson's definition of it. Bergson says that Intuition is a sort of sympathy, a community of feeling or sensibility with the urge of the life-reality. The difference between the sympathy of Instinct and the sympathy of Intuition being that while the former is an unconscious or semi-conscious power, the latter is illumined and self-conscious. Now this view emphasises only the feeling-tone of Intuition, the vital sensibility that attends the direct communion with the life movement. But Intuition is not only purified feeling and sensibility, it is also purified vision and knowledge. It unites us not only with the movement of life, but also opens out to our sight the Truths, the fundamental realities behind that movement. Bergson does not, of course, point to any existence behind the continuous flux of life-power the elan vital. He seems to deny any static truth or truths to be seen and seized in any scheme of knowledge. To him the dynamic flow the Heraclitian panta reei is the ultimate reality. It is precisely to this view of things that Bergson owes his conception of Intuition. Since existence is a continuum of Mind-Energy, the only way to know it is to be in harmony or unison with it, to move along its current. The conception of knowledge as a fixing and delimiting of things is necessarily an anomaly in this scheme. But the question is, is matter the only static and separative reality? Is the flux of vital Mind-Energy the ultimate truth?
   Matter forms the lowest level of reality. Above it is the elan vital. Above the elan vital there is yet the domain of the Spirit. And the Spirit is a static substance and at the same a dynamic creative power. It is Being (Sat) that realises or expresses itself through certain typal nuclei or nodi of consciousness (chit) in a continuous becoming, in a flow of creative activity (ananda). The dynamism of the vital energy is only a refraction or precipitation of the dynamism of the spirit; and so also static matter is only the substance of the spirit concretised and solidified. It is in an uplift both of matter and vital force to their prototypesswarupa and swabhavain the Spirit that lies the real transformation and transfiguration of the huManity of Man.
   This is the truth that is trying to dawn upon the new age. Not matter but that which forms the substance of matter, not intellect but a vaster consciousness that informs the intellect, not Man as he is, an aberration in the cosmic order, but as he may and shall be the embodiment and fulfilment of that orderthis is the secret Intuition which, as yet dimly envisaged, nevertheless secretly inspires all the huMan activities of today. Only, the truth is being interpreted, as we have said, in terms of vital life. The intellectual and physical Man gave us one aspect of the reality, but neither is the vital and psychical Man the complete reality. The one acquisition of this shifting of the viewpoint has been that we are now in touch with the natural and deeper movement of huManity and not as before merely with its artificial scaffolding. The Alexandrine civilisation of huManity, in Nietzsche's phrase, was a sort of divagation from nature, it was following a loop away from the direct path of natural evolution. And the new Renaissance of today has precisely corrected this aberration of huManity and brought it again in a line with the natural cosmic order.
   Certainly this does not go far enough into the motive of the change. The cosmic order does not mean mentalised vitalism which is also in its turn a section of the integral reality. It means the order of the spirit, it means the transfiguration of the physical, the vital and the intellectual into the supernal Substance, Power and Light of that Spirit. The real transcendence of huManity is not the transcendence of one or other of its levels but the total transcendence to an altogether different status and the transmutation of huManity in the mould of that statusnot a Nietzschean Titan nor a Bergsonian Dionysus but the tranquil vision and delight and dynamism of the Spirit the incarnation of a god-head.
   ***

01.04 - The Poetry in the Making, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Mystic Poetry Rabindranath Tagore: A Great Poet, a Great Man
   Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Poets and Mystics The Poetry in the Making
  --
   When we say one is conscious, we usually mean that one is conscious with the mental consciousness, with the rational intelligence, with the light of the brain. But this need not be always so. For one can be conscious with other forms of consciousness or in other planes of consciousness. In the average or normal Man the consciousness is linked to or identified with the brain function, the rational intelligence and so we conclude that without this wakeful brain activity there can be no consciousness. But the fact is otherwise. The experiences of the mystic prove the point. The mystic is conscious on a level which we describe as higher than the mind and reason, he has what may be called the overhead consciousness. (Apart from the normal consciousness, which is named jagrat, waking, the Upanishad speaks of three other increasingly subtler states of consciousness, swapna, sushupti and turiya.)And then one can be quite unconscious, as in samadhi that can be sushupti or turiyaorpartially consciousin swapna, for example, the external behaviour may be like that of a child or a lunatic or even a goblin. One can also remain normally conscious and still be in the superconscience. Not only so, the mystic the Yogican be conscious on infraconscious levels also; that is to say, he can enter into and identify with the consciousness involved in life and even in Matter; he can feel and realise his oneness with the animal world, the plant world and finally the world of dead earth, of "stocks and stones" too. For all these strands of existence have each its own type of consciousness and all different from the mode of mind which is normally known as consciousness. When St. Francis addresses himself to the brother Sun or the sister Moon, or when the Upanishad speaks of the tree silhouetted against the sky, as if stilled in trance, we feel there is something of this fusion and identification of consciousness with an infra-conscient existence.
   I said that the supreme artist is superconscious: his consciousness withdraws from the normal mental consciousness and becomes awake and alive in another order of consciousness. To that superior consciousness the artist's mentalityhis ideas and dispositions, his judgments and valuations and acquisitions, in other words, his normal psychological make-upserves as a channel, an instrument, a medium for transcription. Now, there are two stages, or rather two lines of activity in the processus, for they may be overlapping and practically simultaneous. First, there is the withdrawal and the in-gathering of consciousness and then its reappearance into expression. The consciousness retires into a secret or subtle worldWords-worth's "recollected in tranquillity"and comes back with the riches gathered or transmuted there. But the purity of the gold thus garnered and stalled in the artistry of words and sounds or lines and colours depends altogether upon the purity of the channel through which it has to pass. The mental vehicle receives and records and it can do so to perfection if it is perfectly in tune with what it has to receive and record; otherwise the transcription becomes mixed and blurred, a faint or confused echo, a poor show. The supreme creators are precisely those in whom the receptacle, the instrumental faculties offer the least resistance and record with absolute fidelity the experiences of the over or inner consciousness. In Shakespeare, in Homer, in Valmiki the inflatus of the secret consciousness, the inspiration, as it is usually termed, bears down, sweeps away all obscurity or contrariety in the recording mentality, suffuses it with its own glow and puissance, indeed resolves it into its own substance, as it were. And the difference between the two, the secret norm and the recording form, determines the scale of the artist's creative value. It happens often that the obstruction of a too critically observant and self-conscious brain-mind successfully blocks up the flow of something supremely beautiful that wanted to come down and waited for an opportunity.
  --
   The three or four major orders I speak of in reference to conscious artistry are exampled characteristically in the history of the evolution of Greek poetry. It must be remembered, however, at the very outset that the Greeks as a race were nothing if not rational and intellectual. It was an element of strong self-consciousness that they brought into huMan culture that was their special gift. Leaving out of account Homer who was, as I said, a primitive, their classical age began with Aeschylus who was the first and the most spontaneous and intuitive of the Great Three. Sophocles, who comes next, is more balanced and self-controlled and pregnant with a reasoned thought-content clothed in polished phrasing. We feel here that the artist knew what he was about and was exercising a conscious control over his instruments and materials, unlike his predecessor who seemed to be completely carried away by the onrush of the poetic enthousiasmos. Sophocles, in spite of his artistic perfection or perhaps because of it, appears to be just a little, one remove, away from the purity of the central inspiration there is a veil, although a thin transparent veil, yet a veil between which intervenes. With the third of the Brotherhood, Euripides, we slide lower downwe arrive at a predominantly mental transcription of an experience or inner conception; but something of the major breath continues, an aura, a rhythm that maintains the inner contact and thus saves the poetry. In a subsequent age, in Theocritus, for example, poetry became truly very much 'sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought', so much of virtuosity and precocity entered into it; in other words, the poet then was an excessively self-conscious artist. That seems to be the general trend of all literature.
   But should there be an inherent incompatibility between spontaneous creation and self-consciousness? As we have seen, a harmony and fusion can and do happen of the superconscious and the normally conscious in the Yogi. Likewise, an artist also can be wakeful and transparent enough so that he is conscious on both the levels simultaneouslyabove, he is conscious of the source and origin of his inspiration, and on the level plain he is conscious of the working of the instrument, how the vehicle transcribes and embodies what comes from elsewhere. The poet's consciousness becomes then divalent as it werethere is a sense of absolute passivity in respect of the receiving apparatus and coupled and immisced with it there is also the sense of dynamism, of conscious agency as in his secret being he is the master of his apparatus and one with the Inspirerin other words, the poet is both a seer (kavih) and a creator or doer (poits).
   Not only so, the future development of the poetic consciousness seems inevitably to lead to such a consummation in which the creative and the critical faculties will not be separate but form part of one and indivisible movement. Historically, huMan consciousness has grown from unconsciousness to consciousness and from consciousness to self-consciousness; Man's creative and artistic genius too has moved pari passu in the same direction. The earliest and primitive poets were mostly unconscious, that is to say, they wrote or said things as they came to them spontaneously, without effort, without reflection, they do not seem to know the whence and wherefore and whither of it all, they know only that the wind bloweth as it listeth. That was when Man had not yet eaten the fruit of knowledge, was still in the innocence of childhood. But as he grew up and progressed, he became more and more conscious, capable of exerting and exercising a deliberate will and initiating a purposive action, not only in the external practical field but also in the psychological domain. If the earlier group is called "primitives", the later one, that of conscious artists, usually goes by the name of "classicists." Modern creators have gone one step farther in the direction of self-consciousness, a return upon oneself, an inlook of full awareness and a free and alert activity of the critical faculties. An unconscious artist in the sense of the "primitives" is almost an impossible phenomenon in the modern world. All are scientists: an artist cannot but be consciously critical, deliberate, purposive in what he creates and how he creates. Evidently, this has cost something of the old-world spontaneity and supremacy of utterance; but it cannot be helped, we cannot comm and the tide to roll back, Canute-like. The feature has to be accepted and a remedy and new orientation discovered.
   The modern critical self-consciousness in the artist originated with the RoMantics. The very essence of RoManticism is curiosity the scientist's pleasure in analysing, observing, experimenting, changing the conditions of our reactions, mental or sentimental or even nervous and physical by way of discovery of new and unforeseen or unexpected modes of "psychoses" or psychological states. Goethe, Wordsworth, Stendhal represented a mentality and initiated a movement which led logically to the age of Hardy, HousMan and Bridges and in the end to that of Lawrence and Joyce, Ezra Pound and Eliot and Auden. On the Continent we can consider Flaubert as the last of the classicists married to the very quintessence of RoManticism. A hard, self-regarding, self-critical mentality, a cold scalpel-like gaze that penetrates and upturns the reverse side of things is intimately associated with the poetic genius of Mallarm and constitutes almost the whole of Valry's. The impassioned lines of a very modern poet like Aragon are also characterised by a consummate virtuosity in chiselled artistry, conscious and deliberate and willed at every step and turn.
   The consciously purposive activity of the poetic consciousness in fact, of all artistic consciousness has shown itself with a clear and unambiguous emphasis in two directions. First of all with regard to the subject-matter: the old-world poets took things as they were, as they were obvious to the eye, things of huMan nature and things of physical Nature, and without questioning dealt with them in the beauty of their normal form and function. The modern mentality has turned away from the normal and the obvious: it does not accept and admit the "given" as the final and definitive norm of things. It wishes to discover and establish other norms, it strives to bring about changes in the nature and condition of things, envisage the shape of things to come, work for a brave new world. The poet of today, in spite of all his effort to remain a pure poet, in spite of HousMan's advocacy of nonsense and not-sense being the essence of true Art, is almost invariably at heart an incorrigible prophet. In revolt against the old and established order of truths and customs, against all that is normally considered as beautiful,ideals and emotions and activities of Man or aspects and scenes and movements of Natureagainst God or spiritual life, the modern poet turns deliberately to the ugly and the macabre, the meaningless, the insignificant and the triflingtins and teas, bone and dust and dustbin, hammer and sicklehe is still a prophet, a violent one, an iconoclast, but one who has his own icon, a terribly jealous being, that seeks to pull down the past, erase it, to break and batter and knead the elements in order to fashion out of them something conforming to his heart's desire. There is also the class who have the vision and found the truth and its solace, who are prophets, angelic and divine, messengers and harbingers of a new beauty that is to dawn upon earth. And yet there are others in whom the two strains mingle or approach in a strange way. All this means that the artist is far from being a mere receiver, a mechanical executor, a passive unconscious instrument, but that he is supremely' conscious and master of his faculties and implements. This fact is doubly reinforced when we find how much he is preoccupied with the technical aspect of his craft. The richness and variety of patterns that can be given to the poetic form know no bounds today. A few major rhythms were sufficient for the ancients to give full expression to their poetic inflatus. For they cared more for some major virtues, the basic and fundamental qualitiessuch as truth, sublimity, nobility, forcefulness, purity, simplicity, clarity, straightforwardness; they were more preoccupied with what they had to say and they wanted, no doubt, to say it beautifully and powerfully; but the modus operandi was not such a passion or obsession with them, it had not attained that almost absolute value for itself which modern craftsManship gives it. As technology in practical life has become a thing of overwhelming importance to Man today, become, in the Shakespearean phrase, his "be-all and end-all", even so the same spirit has invaded and pervaded his aesthetics too. The subtleties, variations and refinements, the revolutions, reversals and inventions which the modern poet has ushered and takes delight in, for their own sake, I repeat, for their intrinsic interest, not for the sake of the subject which they have to embody and clothe, have never been dream by Aristotle, the supreme legislator among the ancients, nor by Horace, the almost incomparable craftsMan among the ancients in the domain of poetry. Man has become, to be sure, a self-conscious creator to the pith of his bone.
   Such a stage in huMan evolution, the advent of Homo Faber, has been a necessity; it has to serve a purpose and it has done admirably its work. Only we have to put it in its proper place. The salvation of an extremely self-conscious age lies in an exceeding and not in a further enhancement or an exclusive concentration of the self-consciousness, nor, of course, in a falling back into the original unconsciousness. It is this shift in the poise of consciousness that has been presaged and prepared by the conscious, the scientific artists of today. Their task is to forge an instrument for a type of poetic or artistic creation completely new, unfamiliar, almost revolutionary which the older mould would find it impossible to render adequately. The yearning of the huMan consciousness was not to rest satisfied with the familiar and the ordinary, the pressure was for the discovery of other strands, secret stores of truth and reality and beauty. The first discovery was that of the great Unconscious, the dark and mysterious and all-powerful subconscient. Many of our poets and artists have been influenced by this power, some even sought to enter into that region and become its denizens. But artistic inspiration is an eManation of Light; whatever may be the field of its play, it can have its origin only in the higher spheres, if it is to be truly beautiful and not merely curious and scientific.
   That is what is wanted at present in the artistic world the true inspiration, the breath from higher altitudes. And here comes the role of the mystic, the Yogi. The sense of evolution, the march of huMan consciousness deMands and prophesies that the future poet has to be a mysticin him will be fulfilled the travail of Man's conscious working. The self-conscious craftsMan, the tireless experimenter with his adventurous analytic mind has sharpened his instrument, made it supple and elastic, tempered, refined and enriched it; that is comparable to what we call the aspiration or call from below. Now the Grace must descend and fulfil. And when one rises into this higher consciousness beyond the brain and mind, when one lives there habitually, one knows the why and the how of things, one becomes a perfectly conscious operator and still retains all spontaneity and freshness and wonder and magic that are usually associated with inconscience and irreflection. As there is a spontaneity of instinct, there is likewise also a spontaneity of vision: a child is spontaneous in its movements, even so a seer. Not only so, the higher spontaneity is more spontaneous, for the higher consciousness means not only awareness but the free and untrammelled activity and expression of the truth and reality it is.
   Genius had to be generally more or less unconscious in the past, because the instrument was not ready, was clogged as it were with its own lower grade movements; the higher inspiration had very often to bypass it, or rob it of its serviceable materials without its knowledge, in an almost clandestine way. Wherever it was awake and vigilant, we have seen it causing a diminution in the poetic potential. And yet even so, it was being prepared for a greater role, a higher destiny it is to fulfil in the future. A conscious and full participation of a refined and transparent and enriched instrument in the delivery of superconscious truth and beauty will surely mean not only a new but the very acme of aesthetic creation. We thus foresee the age of spiritual art in which the sense of creative beauty in Man will find its culmination. Such an art was only an exception, something secondary or even tertiary, kept in the background, suggested here and there as a novel strain, called "mystic" to express its unfamiliar nature-unless, of course, it was openly and obviously scriptural and religious.
   I have spoken of the source of inspiration as essentially and originally being a super-consciousness or over-consciousness. But to be more precise and accurate I should add another source, an inner consciousness. As the super-consciousness is imaged as lying above the normal consciousness, so the inner consciousness may be described as lying behind or within it. The movement of the inner consciousness has found expression more often and more largely than that of over-consciousness in the artistic creation of the past : and that was in keeping with the nature of the old-world inspiration, for the inspiration that comes from the inner consciousness, which can be considered as the lyrical inspiration, tends to be naturally more "spontaneous", less conscious, since it does not at all go by the path of the head, it evades that as much as possible and goes by the path of the heart.
  --
   Whether the original and true source of the poet's inspiration lies deep within or high above, all depends upon the mediating instrument the mind (in its most general sense) and speech for a successful transcription. Man's ever-growing consciousness deManded also a conscious development and remoulding of these two factors. A growth, a heightening and deepening of the consciousness meant inevitably a movement towards the spiritual element in things. And that means, we have said, a twofold change in the future poet's make-up. First as regards the substance. The revolutionary shift that we notice in modern poets towards a completely new domain of subject-matter is a signpost that more is meant than what is expressed. The superficialities and futilities that are dealt with do not in their outward form give the real trend of things. In and through all these major and constant preoccupation of our poets is "the pain of the present and the passion for the future": they are, as already stated, more prophets than poets, but prophets for the moment crying in the wildernessalthough some have chosen the path of denial and revolt. They are all looking ahead or beyond or deep down, always yearning for another truth and reality which will explain, justify and transmute the present calvary of huMan living. Such an acute tension of consciousness has necessitated an overhauling of the vehicle of expression too, the creation of a mode of expressing the inexpressible. For that is indeed what huMan consciousness and craft are aiming at in the present stage of Man's evolution. For everything, almost everything that can be normally expressed has been expressed and in a variety of ways as much as is possible: that is the history of Man's aesthetic creativity. Now the eye probes into the unexpressed world; for the artist too the Upanishadic problem has cropped up:
   By whom impelled does the mind fall to its target, what is the agent that is behind the eye and sees through the eyes, what is the hearing and what the speech that their respective sense organs do not and cannot convey and record adequately or at all?
   Like the modern scientist the artist or craftsMan too of today has become a philosopher, even a mystic philosopher. The subtler and higher ranges of consciousness are now the object of inquiry and investigation and expression and revelation for the scientist as well as for the artist. The external sense-objects, the phenomenal movements are symbols and signposts, graphs and pointer-readings of facts and realities that lie hidden, behind or beyond. The artist and the scientist are occult alchemists. What to make of this, for example:
   Beyond the shapes of empire, the capes of Carbonek, over
  --
   and the imaginative idealist, the roMantically spiritual poet says that these or
   The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak of a lumbering cart,
   The heavy steps of the ploughMan, splashing the wintry mould,
   all, all the dark spots and blotches on the fair face of earth and huManity
   Are wronging your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.
  --
   But the more truly modern mind looks at the thing in a slightly different way. The good and the evil are not, to it, contrary to each other: one does not deny or negate the other. They are intermixed, fused in a mysterious identity. The best and the worst are but two conditions, two potentials of the same entity. Baudelaire, who can be considered as the first of the real moderns in Many ways, saw and experienced this intimate polarity or identity of opposites in huMan nature and consciousness. What is Evil, who is the Evil One:
   Une Ide, uneForme, Un tre
  --
   Heaven and Earth are not incommensurables, divinity and huManity function as one reality, towards one purpose and end: cruel heaven, miserable huManity? Well, this is how they appear to the poet's eye:
   Le Ciel! Couvercle noir de la grande marmite
   O bout l'imperceptible et vasteHuManit5
   (Le Couvercle)
   In other words, the tension in the huMan consciousness has been raised to the nth power, the heat of a brooding consciousness is about to lead it to an outburst of new creationsah tapastaptva. HuMan self-consciousness, the turning of oneself upon oneself, the probing and projecting of oneself into oneselfself-consciousness raised so often to the degree of self-torture, marks the acute travail of the spirit. The thousand "isms" and "logies" that pullulate in all fields of life, from the political to the artistic or even the religious and the spiritual indicate how the huMan laboratory is working at white heat. They are breaches in the circuit of the consciousness, volcanic eruptions from below or cosmic-ray irruptions from above, tearing open the normal limit and boundaryBaudelaire's couvercle or the "golden lid" of the Upanishads-disclosing and bringing into the light of common day realities beyond and unseen till now.
   Ifso long the poet was more or less a passive, a half-conscious or unconscious intermediary between the higher and the lower lights and delights, his role in the future will be better fulfilled when he becomes fully aware of it and consciously moulds and directs his creative energies. The poet is and has to be the harbinger and minstrel of unheard-of melodies: he is the fashioner of the creative word that brings down and embodies the deepest aspirations and experiences of the huMan consciousness. The poet is a missionary: he is missioned by Divine Beauty to radiate upon earth something of her charm and wizardry. The fullness of his role he can only play up when he is fully conscious for it is under that condition that all obstructing and obscuring elements lying across the path of inspiration can be completely and wholly eradicated: the instrument purified and tempered and transmuted can hold and express golden truths and beauties and puissances that otherwise escape the too huMan mould.
   "The Last Voyage" by Charles Williams-A Little Book of Modern Verse, (Faber and Faber).
  --
   Heaven! it is the dark lid upon the huge cauldron in which the imperceptible and vast huManity is boiling. Les Fleurs du Mal.
   ***
   Mystic Poetry Rabindranath Tagore: A Great Poet, a Great Man

01.04 - The Secret Knowledge, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Of huMan soul from its flat earthly state
  To the discovery of a greater self
  --
  Elects a huMan vessel of descent.
  A breath comes down from a supernal air,
  --
  The dim reply in Man's unknowing heart
  And meets, not understanding why it came
  --
  Man, still a child in Nature's mighty hands,
  In the succession of the moments lives;
  --
  Come Maned with light from undiscovered worlds,
  Hear, while the world toils on with its deep blind heart,
  --
  Bearing the superhuMan Rider, near
  And, impassive to earth's din and startled cry,
  --
  Unheard mid the clamour of the huMan plane.
  Attentive to an unseen Truth they seize
  --
  And Man's corporeal mind is the only lamp,
  As a thief's in the night shall be the covert tread
  --
  For Man shall not know the coming till its hour
  And belief shall be not till the work is done.
  --
  Their aloofness drives Man to surpass himself.
  Our passion heaves to wed the Eternal's calm,
  --
  And Nature hews her way through adaMant
  A divine intervention thrones above.
  --
  When first Man's heart dared death and suffered life.
  One who has shaped this world is ever its lord:
  --
  There are Two who are One and play in Many worlds;
  In Knowledge and Ignorance they have spoken and met
  --
  He leaves to her the cosmic Management
  And watches all, the Witness of her scene.
  --
  His acts are her comMandment's registers.
  Happy, inert, he lies beneath her feet:
  --
  His deeds obey her heart's unspoken deMands:
  Passive, he bears the impacts of the world
  --
  His face of huMan thought puts on a crown.
  Held in her leash, bound to her veiled caprice,
  --
  The Godhead breaks out through the huMan mould:
  Her highest heights she unmasks and is his mate.
  --
  The ImManent lives in Man as in his house;
  He has made the universe his pastime's field,
  --
  Divine, wears shapes of animal or Man;
  Eternal, he assents to Fate and Time,
  --
  His image in the huMan measure cast
  That to his divine measure we might rise;
  --
  A mutual debt binds Man to the Supreme:
  His nature we must put on as he put ours;
  --
  His huMan portion, we must grow divine.
  Our life is a paradox with God for key.
  --
  He is the Many who was the silent One.
  In the symbol figures of the cosmic Force
  --
  A trafficker in small imperManent wares,
  At first he hugs the shore and shuns the breadths,
  --
  Till the nescient dusk is lifted from Man's soul
  And the morns of God have overtaken his night.
  --
  And the world Manifest the unveiled Divine.
  For this he left his white infinity

01.05 - Rabindranath Tagore: A Great Poet, a Great Man, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
  object:01.05 - Rabindranath Tagore: A Great Poet, a Great Man
  author class:Nolini Kanta Gupta
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   Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Poets and MysticsRabindranath Tagore: A Great Poet, a Great Man
   Rabindranath Tagore: A Great Poet, a Great Man
   Tagore is a great poet: he will be remembered as one of the I greatest world-poets. But huManity owes him anotherperhaps a greaterdebt of gratitude: his name has a higher value, a more significant potency for the future.
   In an age when Reason was considered as the highest light given to Man, Tagore pointed to the Vision of the mystics as always the still greater light; when Man was elated with undreamt-of worldly success, puffed up with incomparable material possessions and powers, Tagore's voice rang clear and emphatic in tune with the cry of the ancients: "What shall I do with all this mass of things, if I am not made immortal by that?" When men, in their individual as well as collective egoism, were scrambling for earthly gains and hoards, he held before them vaster and cleaner horizons, higher and deeper ways of being and living, maintained the sacred sense of huMan solidarity, the living consciousness of the Divine, one and indivisible. When the Gospel of Power had all but hypnotised men's minds, and SuperMan or God-Man came to be equated with the Titan, Tagore saw through the falsehood and placed in front and above all the old-world eternal verities of love and self-giving, harmony and mutuality, sweetness and light. When pessimism, cynicism, agnosticism struck the major chord of huMan temperament, and grief and frustration and death and decay were taken as a matter of course to be the inevitable order of earthlylifebhasMantam idam shariramhe continued to sing the song of the Rishis that Ananda and Immortality are the breath of things, the birth right of huMan beings. When Modernism declared with a certitude never tobe contested that Matter is BrahMan, Tagore said with the voice of one who knows that Spirit is BrahMan.
   Tagore is in direct line with those bards who have sung of the Spirit, who always soared high above the falsehoods and uglinesses of a merely mundane life and lived in the undecaying delights and beauties of a diviner consciousness. Spiritual reality was the central theme of his poetic creation: only and naturally he viewed it in a special way and endowed it with a special grace. We know of another God-intoxicated Man, the Jewish philosopher Spinoza, who saw things sub specie aeternitatis, under the figure or mode of eternity. Well, Tagore can be said to see things, in their essential spiritual reality, under the figure or mode of beauty. Keats indeed spoke of truth being beauty and beauty truth. But there is a great difference in the outlook and inner experience. A worshipper of beauty, unless he rises to the Upanishadic norm, is prone to become sensuous and pagan. Keats was that, Kalidasa was that, even Shelley was not far different. The spiritual vein in all these poets remains secondary. In the old Indian master, it is part of his intellectual equipment, no doubt, but nothing much more than that. In the other two it comes in as strange flashes from an unknown country, as a sort of irruption or on the peak of the poetic afflatus or enthousiasmos.
   The world being nothing but Spirit made visible is, according to Tagore, fundamentally a thing of beauty. The scars and spots that are on the surface have to be removed and Mankind has to repossess and clo the itself with that Mantle of beauty. The world is beautiful, because it is the image of the Beautiful, because it harbours, expresses and embodies the Divine who is Beauty supreme. Now by a strange alchemy, a wonderful effect of polarisation, the very spiritual element in Tagore has made him almost a pagan and even a profane. For what are these glories of Nature and the still more exquisite glories that the huMan body has captured? They are but vibrations and modulations of beauty the delightful names and forms of the supreme Lover and Beloved.
   Socrates is said to have brought down Philosophy from Heaven to live among men upon earth. A similar exploit can be ascribed to Tagore. The Spirit, the bare transcendental Reality contemplated by the orthodox Vedantins, has been brought nearer to our planet, close to huMan consciousness in Tagore's vision, being clothed in earth and flesh and blood, made vivid with the colours and contours of the physical existence. The Spirit, yes and by all means, but not necessarily asceticism and monasticism. So Tagore boldly declared in those famous lines of his:
   Mine is not the deliverance achieved through mere renunciation. Mine rather the freedom that tastes itself in a thousand associations.1
   The spirit of the age deMands this new gospel. Mankind needs and awaits a fresh revelation. The world and life are not an illusion or a lesser reality: they are, if taken rightly, as real as the pure Spirit itself. Indeed, Spirit and Flesh, Consciousness and Matter are not antinomies; to consider them as such is itself an illusion. In fact, they are only two poles or modes or aspects of the same reality. To separate or divide them is a one-sided concentration or abstraction on the part of the huMan mind. The fulfilment of the Spirit is in its expression through Matter; huMan life too reaches its highest term, its summum bonum, in embodying the spiritual consciousness here on earth and not dissolving itself in the Transcendence. That is the new Dispensation which answers to the deepest aspiration in Man and towards which he has been travelling through the ages in the course of the evolution of his consciousness. Many, however, are the prophets and sages who have set this ideal before huManity and more and more insistently and clearly as we come nearer to the age we live in. But none or very few have expressed it with such beauty and charm and compelling persuasion. It would be carping criticism to point out-as some, purists one may call them, have done-that in poetising and aesthetising the spiritual truth and reality, in trying to make it huMan and terrestrial, he has diminished and diluted the original substance, in endeavouring to render the diamond iridescent, he has turned it into a baser alloy. Tagore's is a poetic soul, it must be admitted; and it is not necessary that one should find in his ideas and experiences and utterances the cent per cent accuracy and inevitability of a Yogic consciousness. Still his major perceptions, those that count, stand and are borne out by the highest spiritual realisation.
   Tagore is no inventor or innovator when he posits Spirit as Beauty, the spiritual consciousness as the ardent rhythm of ecstasy. This experience is the very core of Vaishnavism and for which Tagore is sometimes called a Neo-Vaishnava. The Vaishnava sees the world pulsating in glamorous beauty as the Lila (Play) of the Lord, and the Lord, God himself, is nothing but Love and Beauty. Still Tagore is not all Vaishnava or merely a Vaishnava; he is in addition a modern (the carping voice will say, there comes the dilution and adulteration)in the sense that problems exist for himsocial, political, economic, national, huManitarianwhich have to be faced and solved: these are not merely mundane, but woven into the texture of the fundamental problem of huMan destiny, of Soul and Spirit and God. A Vaishnava was, in spite of his acceptance of the world, an introvert, to use a modern psychological phrase, not necessarily in the pejorative sense, but in the neutral scientific sense. He looks upon the universe' and huMan life as the play of the Lord, as an actuality and not mere illusion indeed; but he does not participate or even take interest in the dynamic working out of the world process, he does not care to know, has no need of knowing that there is a terrestrial purpose and a diviner fulfilment of the mortal life upon earth. The Vaishnava dwells more or less absorbed in the Vaikuntha of his inner consciousness; the outer world, although real, is only a symbolic shadowplay to which he can but be a witness-real, is only a nothing more.
   A modern idealist of the type of a reformer would not be satisfied with that role. If he is merely a moralist reformer, he will revolt against the "witness business", calling it a laissez-faire mentality of bygone days. A spiritual reformer would ask for morea dynamic union with the Divine Will and Consciousness, not merely a passive enjoyment in the Bliss, so that he may be a luminous power or agent for the expression of divine values in things mundane.
   Not the acceptance of the world as it is, not even a joyous acceptance, viewing it as an inexplicable and mysterious and magic play of, God, but the asp ration and endeavour to change it, mould it in the pattern of its inner divine realities for there are such realities which seek expression and embodiment in earthly life that is the great mission and labour of huManity and that is all the meaning of Man's existence here below. And Tagore is one of the great prophets and labourers who had the vision of the shape of things to come and worked for it. Only it must be noted, as I have already said, that unlike mere moral reformists or scientific planners, Tagore grounded himself upon the eternal ancient truths that "age cannot wither nor custom stale"the divine truths of the Spirit.
   Tagore was a poet; this poetic power of his he put in the service of the great cause for the divine uplift of huManity. Naturally, it goes without saying, his poetry did not preach or propagandize the truths for which he stoodhe had a fine and powerful weapon in his prose to do the work, even then in a poetic way but to sing them. And he sang them not in their philosophical bareness, like a Lucretius, or in their sheer transcendental austerity like some of the Upanishadic Rishis, but in and through huMan values and earthly norms. The especial aroma of Tagore's poetry lies exactly here, as he himself says, in the note of unboundedness in things bounded that it describes. A mundane, profane sensuousness, Kalidasian in richness and sweetness, is matched or counterpointed by a simple haunting note imbedded or trailing somewhere behind, a lyric cry persevering into eternity, the nostalgic cry of the still small voice.2
   Thus, on the one hand, the Eternity, the Infinity, the Spirit is brought nearer home to us in its embodied symbols and living vehicles and vivid formulations, it becomes easily available to mortals, even like the father to his son, to use a Vedic phrase; on the other hand, earthly things, mere huManities are uplifted and suffused with a "light that never was, on sea or land."
   Another great poet of the spirit says also, almost like Tagore:
  --
   Tagore the poet reminds one often and anon of Kalidasa. He was so much in love, had such kinship with the great old master that Many of his poems, Many passages and lines are reminiscences, echoes, modulations or a paraphrase of the original classic. Tagore himself refers in his memoirs to one Kalidasian line that haunted his juvenile brain because of its exquisite music and enchanting imagery:
   Mandki nirjharikarm vodh muhuh-kamPita-deva-druh
   Winds carrying spray from the falls of Mandakini, making deodars all astir.
   Both the poets were worshippers, idolaters, of beauty, especially of natural physical beauty, of beauty heaped on beauty, of beauty gathered, like honey from all places and stored and ranged and stalled with the utmost decorative skill. Yet the difference between the two is not less pronounced. A philosopher is reminded of Bergson, the great exponent of movement as reality, in connection with certain aspects of Tagore. Indeed, Beauty in Tagore is something moving, flowing, dancing, rippling; it is especially the beauty which music embodies and expresses. A Kalidasian beauty, on the contrary, is statuesque and plastic, it is to be appreciated in situ. This is, however, by the way.

01.05 - The Nietzschean Antichrist, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Nietzsche as the apostle of force is a name now familiar to all the world. The hero, the warrior who never tamely accepts suffering and submission and defeat under any condition but fights always and fights to conquersuch is the ideal Man, according to Nietzsche,the champion of strength, of greatness, of mightiness. The dominating personality infused with the supreme "will to power"he is Ubermensch, the SuperMan. Sentiment does not move the mountains, emotion diffuses itself only in vague aspiration. The motive power, the creative fiat does not dwell in the heart but somewhere higher. The way of the Cross, the path of love and charity and pity does not lead to the kingdom of Heaven. The world has tried it for the last twenty centuries of its Christian civilisation and the result is that we are still living in a luxuriant abundance of misery and sordidness and littleness. This is how Nietzsche thinks and feels. He finds no virtue in the old rgimes and he revolts from them. He wants a speedy and radical remedy and teaches that by violence only the Kingdom of Heaven can be seized. For, to Nietzsche the world is only a clash of forces and the SuperMan therefore is one who is the embodiment of the greatest force. Nietzsche does not care for the good, it is the great that moves him. The good, the moral is of Man, conventional and has only a fictitious value. The great, the non-moral is, on the other hand, divine. That only has a value of its own. The good is nothing but a sort of makeshift arrangement which Man makes for himself in order to live commodiously and which changes according to his temperament. But the great is one with the Supreme Wisdom and is absolute and imperative. The good cannot create the great; it is the great that makes for the good. This is what he really means when he says, "They say that a good cause sanctifies war but I tell thee it is a good war that sanctifies all cause." For the goodness of your cause you judge by your personal predilections, by your false conventionalities, by a standard that you set up in your ignoranceBut a good war, the output of strength in any cause is in itself a cause of salvation. For thereby you are the champion of that ultimate verity which conduces to the ultimate good. Do not shrink, he would say, to be even like the cyclone and the avalanche, destructive, indeed, but grand and puissant and therefore truer emblems of the BeyondJenseitsthan the weak, the little, the pitiful that do not dare to destroy and by that very fact cannot hope to create.
   This is the Nietzsche we all know. But there is another aspect of his which the world has yet been slow to recognise. For, at bottom, Nietzsche is not all storm and fury. If his SuperMan is a Destroying Angel, he is none the less an angel. If he is endowed with a supreme sense of strength and power, there is also secreted in the core of his heart a sense of the beautiful that illumines his somewhat sombre aspect. For although Nietzsche is by birth a Slavo-Teuton, by culture and education he is pre-eminently Hellenic. His earliest works are on the subject of Greek tragedy and form what he describes as an "Apollonian dream." And to this dream, to this Greek aesthetic sense more than to any thing else he sacrifices justice and pity and charity. To him the weak and the miserable, the sick and the maimed are a sort of blot, a kind of ulcer on the beautiful face of huManity. The herd that wallow in suffering and relish suffering disfigure the aspect of the world and should therefore be relentlessly mowed out of existence. By being pitiful to them we give our tacit assent to their persistence. And it is precisely because of this that Nietzsche has a horror of Christianity. For compassion gives indulgence to all the ugliness of the world and thus renders that ugliness a necessary and indispensable element of existence. To protect the weak, to sympathise with the lowly brings about more of weakness and more of lowliness. Nietzsche has an aristocratic taste par excellencewhat he aims at is health and vigour and beauty. But above all it is an aristocracy of the spirit, an aristocracy endowed with all the richness and beauty of the soul that Nietzsche wants to establish. The beggar of the street is the symbol of ugliness, of the poverty of the spirit. And the so-called aristocrat, die millionaire of today is as poor and ugly as any helpless leper. The soul of either of them is made of the same dirty, sickly stuff. The tattered rags, the crouching heart, the effeminate nerve, the unenlightened soul are the standing ugliness of the world and they have no place in the ideal, the perfect huManity. HuManity, according to Nietzsche, is made in order to be beautiful, to conceive the beautiful, to create the beautiful. Nietzsche's SuperMan has its perfect image in a Grecian statue of Zeus cut out in white marble-Olympian grandeur shedding in every lineament Apollonian beauty and Dionysian vigour.
   The real secret of Nietzsche's philosophy is not an adoration of brute force, of blind irrational joy in fighting and killing. Far from it, Nietzsche has no kinship with Treitschke or Bernhard. What Nietzsche wanted was a world purged of littleness and ugliness, a huManity, not of saints, perhaps, but of heroes, lofty in their ideal, great in their achievement, majestic in their empirea race of titanic gods breathing the glory of heaven itself.
   ***

01.05 - The Yoga of the King - The Yoga of the Spirits Freedom and Greatness, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  And to discern the superhuMan's form
  He raised his eyes to unseen spiritual heights,
  --
  The incertitude of Man's proud confident thought,
  The transience of the achievements of his force.
  --
  Hushed was the futile din of huMan toil,
  Forsaken wheeled the circle of the days;
  --
  One among Many thousands never touched,
  Engrossed in the external world's design,
  --
  And left the little lane of huMan Time.
  In the hushed precincts of a vaster plan
  --
  Naked of its vesture of huManity.
  As thus it rose, to meet him bare and pure
  --
  Yet make one huMan breast its passionate shrine,
  Drew him out of his seeking loneliness
  --
  His mind the Many-frescoed outer court
  Of an imperishable Inhabitant:
  His spirit breathed a superhuMan air.
  The imprisoned deity rent its magic fence.
  --
  The old adaMantine vetoes stood no more:
  Overpowered were earth and Nature's obsolete rule;
  --
  Whose alien will touches our huMan life,
  Imitating the World-Magician's ways
  --
  Paces of the Many-visaged Wonderful,
  Predestined stadia of the evolving Way,
  --
  And took the confused refrain of huMan hopes
  And made of them a sweet and happy call;
  --
  A Many-miracled Consciousness unrolled
  Vast aim and process and unfettered norms,
  --
  Homelands of beauty shut to huMan eyes,
  Half-seen at first through wonder's gleaming lids,

01.06 - On Communism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Against this tyranny of the group, this absolute rule of the collective will, the huMan mind rose in revolt and the result was Individualism. For whatever may be the truth and necessity of the Collective, the Individual is no less true and necessary. The individual has his own law and urge of being and his own secret godhead. The collective godhead derides the individual godhead at its peril. The first movement of the reaction, however, was a run to the other extremity; a stern collectivism gave birth to an intransigent individualism. The individual is sacred and inviolable, cost what it may. It does not matter what sort of individuality one seeks, it is enough if the thing is there. So the doctrine of individualism has come to set a premium on egoism and on forces that are disruptive of all social bonds. Each and every individual has the inherent right, which is also a duty, to follow his own impetus and impulse. Society is nothing but the battle ground for competing individualities the strongest survive and the weakest go to the wall. Association and co-operation are instruments that the individual may use and utilise for his own growth and development but in the main they act as deterrents rather than as aids to the expression and expansion of his characteristic being. In reality, however, if we probe sufficiently deep into the matter we find that there is no such thing as corporate life and activity; what appears as such is only a camouflage for rigorous competition; at the best, there maybe only an offensive and defensive alliancehuManity fights against nature, and within huManity itself group fights against group and in the last analysis, within the group, the individual fights against the individual. This is the ultimate Law-the Dharma of creation.
   Now, what such an uncompromising individualism fails to recognise is that individuality and ego are not the same thing, that the individual may have his individuality intact and entire and yet sacrifice his ego, that the soul of Man is a much greater thing than his vital being. It is simply ignoring the fact and denying the truth to say that Man is only a fighting animal and not a loving god, that the self within the individual realises itself only through competition and not co-operation. It is an error to conceive of society as a mere parallelogram of forces, to suppose that it has risen simply out of the struggle of individual interests and continues to remain by that struggle. Struggle is only one aspect of the thing, a particular form at a particular stage, a temporary Manifestation due to a particular system and a particular habit and training. It would be nearer the truth to say that society came into being with the deMand of the individual soul to unite with the individual soul, with the stress of an Over-soul to express itself in a multitude of forms, diverse yet linked together and organised in perfect harmony. Only, the stress for union Manifested itself first on the material plane as struggle: but this is meant to be corrected and transcended and is being continually corrected and transcended by a secret harmony, a real commonality and brotherhood and unity. The individual is not so self-centred as the individualists make him to be, his individuality has a much vaster orbit and fulfils itself only by fulfilling others. The scientists have begun to discover other instincts in Man than those of struggle and competition; they now place at the origin of social grouping an instinct which they name the herd-instinct: but this is only a formulation in lower terms, a translation on the vital plane of a higher truth and reality the fundamental oneness and accord of individuals and their spiritual impulsion to unite.
   However, individualism has given us a truth and a formula which collectivism ignored. Self-determination is a thing which has come to stay. Each and every individual is free, absolutely free and shall freely follow his own line of growth and development and fulfilment. No extraneous power shall choose and fix what is good or evil for him, nor coerce and exploit him for its own benefit. But that does not necessarily mean that collectivism has no truth in it; collectivism also, as much as individualism, has a lesson for us and we should see whether we can harmonise the two. Collectivism signifies that the individual should not look to himself alone, should not be shut up in his freedom but expand himself and envelop others in a wider freedom, see other creatures in himself and himself in other creatures, as the Gita says. Collectivism deMands that the individual need not and should not exhaust himself entirely in securing and enjoying his personal freedom, but that he can and should work for the salvation of others; the truth it upholds is this that the individual is from a certain point of view only a part of the group and by ignoring the latter it ignores itself in the end.
   Now, a spiritual communism embraces individualism and collectivism, fuses them in a higher truth, establishes them in an intimate and absolute harmony. The individual is the centre, the group is the circumference and the two form one whore circle. The individual by fulfilling the truth of his real individuality fulfils also the truth of a commonality. There are no different laws for the two. The individuals do not stand apart from and against one another, the dharma of one does not clash with the dharma of the other. The ripples in the bosom of the sea, however distinct and discrete in appearance, form but a single mass, all follow the same law of hydrodynamics that the mother sea incarnates. Stars and planets and nebulae, each separate heavenly body has its characteristic form and nature and function and yet all fulfil the same law of gravitation and beat the measure of the silent symphony of spaces. Individualities are the freedoms of the collective being and collectivity the concentration of individual beings. The same soul looking inward appears as the individual being and looking outward appears as the collective being.
   Communism takes Man not as ego or the vital creature; it turns him upside downurdhomulo' vaksakhah and establishes him upon his soul, his inner godhead. Thus established the individual soul finds and fulfils the divine law that by increasing itself it increases others and by increasing others it increases itself and thus by increasing one another they attain the supreme good. Unless Man goes beyond himself and reaches this self, this godhead above, he will not find any real poise, will always swing between individualism and collectivism, he will remain always boundbound either in his freedom or in his bondage.
   A commune is a group of individuals having a common self and a common life-intuition. A common self presupposes the realisation by each individual of his deepest being the self which is at once distinct from and instinct with other selves; a common life-intuition presupposes the awakening of each individual to his inmost creative urge, which, pure and true and vast as it is, fulfils itself in and through other creative urges.
  --
   The individual must find himself and establish his secret god-head, and then only, when such free and integral individualities meet and reciprocate and coalesce, can the community they form have a living reality and a perManent potency. On the other hand, unless individuals come together and through the interchange of each other's soul and substance' enhance the communal Godhead, the separate individual godheads also will not Manifest in their supreme and sovereign powers.
   If society, that is to say, community, be the fieldkshetra for the individual to live, move and have its being, then we must begin at the very outset with the community itself, at least, with a nucleus that will go to form such a thing. The fear that the untimely grouping together of immature souls may crush out individuality and dig its own grave has, no doubt, sufficient justification behind it to deter one from the attempt; but neither can we be certain that souls nursed and nourished in solitary cells, absolutely apart from any mellowing and broadening influence of the outside world will ever reach to that stage of perfect maturity when they will suddenly and spontaneously break open their cells and recognise in one another the communal brother-self.
  --
   The individual who leads a severely individual life from the very beginning, whose outlook of the world has been fashioned by that conception, can hardly, if at all, enter at the end the communal life. He must perforce be either a vagabond or a recluse: But the recluse is not an integral Man, nor the vagabond an ideal personality. The individual need not be too chaste and shy to associate with others and to give and take as freely and fully as he can. Individuality is not necessarily curtailed or mutilated in this process, but there is this other greater possibility of its getting enlarged and enhanced. Rather it is when you shut yourself up in your own self, that you stick to only one line of your personality, to a single phase of your self and thus limit and diminish yourself; the breadth and height and depth of your self, the cubic completeness of your personality you can attain only through a multiple and variegated stress by which you come in contact with the world and things.
   So first the individual and then the commune is not the natural nor the ideal principle. On the other hand, first the commune and then the individual would appear to be an equally defective principle. For first a commune means an organisation, its laws and rules and regulations, its injunctions and prohibitions; all which signifies or comes to signify that every individual is not free to enter its fold and that whoever enters must know how to dovetail himself therein and thus crush down the very life-power whose enhancement and efflorescence is sought. First a commune means necessarily a creed, a dogma, a set form of being and living indelibly marked out from beforehand. The individual has there no choice of finding and developing the particular creed or dogma or mode of being and living, from out of his own self, along his particular line of natural growth; all that is imposed upon him and he has to accept and make it his own by trial and effort and self-torture. Even if the commune be a contractual association, the members having joined together in a common cause to a common end, by voluntarily sacrificing a portion of their personal choice and freedom, even then it is not the ideal thing; the collective soul will be diminished in exact proportion as each individual soul has had to be diminished, be that voluntary or otherwise. That commune is plenary and entire which ensures plenitude and entirety to each of its individuals.

01.06 - Vivekananda, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Rabindranath Tagore: A Great Poet, a Great Man Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
   Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Poets and MysticsVivekananda
  --
   A personal reminiscence. A young Man in prison, accused of conspiracy and waging war against the British Empire. If convicted he might have to suffer the extreme penalty, at least, transportation to the AndaMans. The case is dragging on for long months. And the young Man is in a solitary cell. He cannot always keep up his spirits high. Moments of sadness and gloom and despair come and almost overwhelm him. Who was there to console and cheer him up? Vivekananda. Vivekananda's speeches, From Colombo to Almora, came, as a godsend, into the hands of the young Man. Invariably, when the period of despondency came he used to open the book, read a few pages, read them over again, and the cloud was there no longer. Instead there was hope and courage and faith and future and light and air.
   Such is Vivekananda, the embodiment of Fearlessnessabh, the Upanishadic word, the Mantra, he was so fond of. The life and vision of Vivekananda can be indeed summed up in the mighty phrase of the Upanishads, nyam tm balahnena labhya. 'This soul no weakling can attain.' Strength! More strength! Strength evermore! One remembers the motto of Danton, the famous leader in the French Revolution:De l'audance, encore de l'audace, toujours de l'audace!
   The gospel of strength that Vivekananda spread was very characteristic of the Man. For it is not mere physical or nervous bravery, although that too is indispensable, and it is something more than moral courage. In the speeches referred to, the subject-matter (as well as the Manner to a large extent) is philosophical, metaphysical, even abstract in outlook and treatment: they are not a call to arms, like the French National Anthem, for example; they are not merely an ethical exhortation, a moral lesson either. They speak of the inner spirit, the divine in Man, the supreme realities that lie beyond. And yet the words are permeated through and through with a vibration life-giving and heroic-not so much in the explicit and apparent meaning as in the style and Manner and atmosphere: it is catching, even or precisely when he refers, for example, to these passages in the Vedas and the Upanishads, magnificent in their poetic beauty, sublime in their spiritual truth,nec plus ultra, one can say, in the grand style supreme:
   Yasyaite himavanto mahitv
  --
   The consciousness that breathed out these mighty words, these heavenly sounds was in itself mighty and heavenly and it is that that touches you, penetrates you, vibrates in you a kindred chord, "awakening in you someone dead" till thenmrtam kcana bodhayant. More than the matter, the thing that was said, was the personality, the being who embodied the truth expressed, the living consciousness behind the words and the speech that set fire to your soul. Indeed it was the soul that Vivekananda could awaken and stir in you. Any orator, any speaker with some kind of belief, even if it is for the moment, in what he says, by the sheer force of assertion, can convince your mind and draw your acquiescence and adhesion. A leader of men, self-confident and bold and fiery, can carry you off your feet and make you do brave things. But that is a lower degree of character and nature, ephemeral and superficial, that is touched in you thereby. The spiritual leader, the Guide, goes straight to the spirit in youit is the call of the deep unto the deep. That was what Vivekananda meant when he said that BrahMan is asleep in you, awaken it, you are the BrahMan, awaken it, you are free and almighty. It is the spirit consciousness Sachchidananda that is the real Man in you and that is supremely mighty and invincible and free absolutely. The courage and fearlessness that Vivekananda gave you was the natural attribute of the lordship of your spiritual reality. Vivekananda spoke and roused the AtMan in Man.
   Vivekananda spoke to the AtMan in Man, he spoke to the AtMan of the world, and he spoke specially to the AtMan of India. India had a large place in Vivekananda's consciousness: for the future of huManity and the world is wedded to India's future. India has a great mission, it has a spiritual, rather the spiritual work to do. Here is India's work as Vivekananda conceived it in a nutshell:
   "Shall India die? Then from the world all spirituality will be extinct." And wherefore is this call for the life spiritual? Thus the aspiring soul would answer:
  --
   The answer is as old as that of Nachiketas: "These horses and these songs and dances of yours, let them remain yours, Man is not appeased with riches"; or that of Maitreyi, "What am I to do with that which will not bring me immortality?" This is then Man's mission upon earth:
   "Man is higher than all animals, than all angels: none is greater than Man. Even the Devas will have to come down again and attain to salvation though a huMan body. Man alone attains to perfection, not even the Devas." Indeed, men are gods upon earth, come down here below to perfect themselves and perfect the worldonly, they have to be conscious of themselves. They do not know what they are, they have to be actually and sovereignly what they are really and potentially. This then is the life-work of everyone:
   "First, let us be Gods, and then help others to be Gods.
  --
   perfected huManity:
   "Manifest the divinity within you, and everything will be
   harmoniously arranged around it."
  --
   and not conformity to nature that makes Man what he is."
   Work and not abstention from work is the way, but not work for ignorant enjoyment:
   "The dwelling-place of the JivatMan, this body, is a veritable means of work, and he who converts this into an infernal den is guilty, and he who neglects it is also to blame."
   "No work is petty ... He who can properly prepare a chilam (pipe of tobacco) can also properly meditate."
   These are luminous life-giving Mantras and the world and huManity of today, sore distressed and utterly confounded, have great need of them to live them by and be saved.
   ***
   Rabindranath Tagore: A Great Poet, a Great Man Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

01.07 - Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   "The zeal for the Lord hath eaten me up." Such has indeed been the case with Pascal, almost literally. The fire that burned in him was too ardent and vehement for the vehicle, the material instrument, which was very soon used up and reduced to ashes. At twenty-four he was already a broken Man, being struck with paralysis and neuras thenia; he died at the comparatively early age of 39, emulating, as it were, the life career of his Lord the Christ who died at 33. The Fire martyrised the body, but kindled and brought forth experiences and realisations that save and truths that abide. It was the Divine Fire whose vision and experience he had on the famous night of 23 November 1654 which brought about his final and definitive conversion. It was the same fire that had blazed up in his brain, while yet a boy, and made him a precocious genius, a marvel of intellectual power in the exact sciences. At 12 this prodigy discovered by himself the 32nd proposition of Euclid, Book I. At sixteen he wrote a treatise on conic sections. At nineteen he invented a calculating machine which, without the help of any mathematical rule or process, gave absolutely accurate results. At twenty-three he published his experiments with vacuum. At twenty-five he conducted the well-known experiment from the tower of St. Jacques, proving the existence of atmospheric pressure. His studies in infinitesimal calculus were remarkably creative and original. And it might be said he was a pioneer in quite a new branch of mathematics, viz., the mathematical theory of probability. We shall see presently how his preoccupation with the mathematics of chance and probability coloured and reinforced his metaphysics and theology.
   But the pressure upon his dynamic and heated brain the fiery zeal in his mindwas already proving too much and he was advised medically to take complete rest. Thereupon followed what was known as Pascal's mundane lifea period of distraction and dissipation; but this did not last long nor was it of a serious nature. The inner fire could brook no delay, it was eager and impatient to englobe other fields and domains. Indeed, it turned to its own field the heart. Pascal became initiated into the mystery of Faith and Grace. Still he had to pass through a terrible period of dejection and despair: the life of the world had given him no rest or relaxation, it served only to fill his cup of misery to the brim. But the hour of final relief was not long postponed: the Grace came to him, even as it came to Moses or St. Paul as a sudden flare of fire which burnt up the Dark Night and opened out the portals of Morning Glory.
   Pascal's place in the evolution of European culture and consciousness is of considerable significance and importance. He came at a critical time, on the mounting tide of rationalism and scepticism, in an age when the tone and temper of huMan mentality were influenced and fashioned by Montaigne and Rochefoucauld, by Bacon and Hobbes. Pascal himself, born in such an atmosphere of doubt and disbelief and disillusionment, had sucked in a full dose of that poison; yet he survived and found the Rock of Ages, became the clarion of Faith against Denial. What a spectacle it was! This is what one wrote just a quarter of a century after the death of Pascal:
   "They can no longer tell us that it is only small minds that have piety. They are shown how it has grown best in one of the the greatest geometricians, one of the subtlest metaphysicians, one of the most penetrating minds that ever existed on earth. The piety of such a philosopher should make the unbeliever and the libertine declare what a certain Diocles said one day on seeing Epicurus in a temple: 'What a feast, what a spectacle for me to see Epicurus in a temple! All my doubts vainsh, piety takes its place again. I never saw Jupiter's greatness so well as now when I behold Epicurus kneeling down!"1
  --
   The process of conversion of the doubting mind, of the dry intellectual reason as propounded and perhaps practised by Pascal is also a characteristic mark of his nature and genius. It is explained in his famous letter on "bet" or "game of chance" (Le Pari). Here is how he puts the issue to the doubting mind (I am giving the substance, not his words): let us say then that in the world we are playing a game of chance. How do the chances stand? What are the gains and losses if God does not exist? What 'are the gains and losses if God does exist? If God exists, by accepting and reaching him what do we gain? All that Man cares forhappiness, felicity. And what do we lose? We lose the world of misery. If, on the other 'hand, God does not exist, by believing him to exist, we lose nothing, we are not more miserable than what we are. If, however, God exists and we do not believe him, we gain this world of misery but we lose all that is worth having. Thus Pascal concludes that even from the standpoint of mere gain and loss, belief in God is more advantageous than unbelief. This is how he applied to metaphysics the mathematics of probability.
   One is not sure if such reasoning is convincing to the intellect; but perhaps it is a necessary stage in conversion. At least we can conclude that Pascal had to pass through such a stage; and it indicates the difficulty his brain had to undergo, the tension or even the torture he made it pass through. It is true, from Reason Pascal went over to Faith, even while giving Reason its due. Still it seems the two were not perfectly synthetised or fused in him. There was a gap between that was not thoroughly bridged. Pascal did not possess the higher, intuitive, luminous mind that mediates successfully between the physical discursive ratiocinative brain-mind and the vision of faith: it is because deep in his consciousness there lay this chasm. Indeed,Pascal's abyss (l' abme de Pascal) is a well-known legend. Pascal, it appears, used to have very often the vision of an abyss about to open before him and he shuddered at the prospect of falling into it. It seems to us to be an experience of the Infinity the Infinity to which he was so much attracted and of which he wrote so beautifully (L'infiniment grand et l'infiniment petit)but into which he could not evidently jump overboard unreservedly. This produced a dichotomy, a lack of integration of personality, Jung would say. Pascal's brain was cold, firm, almost rigid; his heart was volcanic, the faith he had was a fire: it lacked something of the pure light and burned with a lurid glare.
   And the reason is his metaphysics. It is the Jansenist conception of God and huMan nature that inspired and coloured all his experience and consciousness. According to it, as according to the Calvinist conception, Man is a corrupt being, corroded to the core, original sin has branded his very soul. Only Grace saves him and releases him. The order of sin and the order of Grace are distinct and disparate worlds and yet they complement each other and need each other. Greatness and misery are intertwined, united, unified with each other in him. Here is an echo of the Manichean position which also involves an abyss. But even then God's grace is not a free agent, as Jesuits declare; there is a predestination that guides and controls it. This was one of the main subjects he treated in his famous open letters (Les Provinciales) that brought him renown almost overnight. Eternal hell is a possible prospect that faces the Jansenist. That was why a Night always over-shadowed the Day in Pascal's soul.
   Man then, according to Pascal, is by nature a sinful thing. He can lay no claim to noble virtue as his own: all in him is vile, he is a lump of dirt and filth. Even the greatest has his full share of this taint. The greatest, the saintliest, and the meanest, the most sinful, all meet, all are equal on this common platform; all have the same feet of clay. Man is as miserable a creature as a beast, as much a part and product of Nature as a plant. Only there is this difference that an animal or a tree is unconscious, while Man knows that he is miserable. This knowledge or perception makes him more miserable, but that is his real and only greatness there is no other. His thought, his self-consciousness, and his sorrow and repentance and contrition for what he is that is the only good partMary's part that has been given to him. Here are Pascal's own words on the subject:
   "The greatness of Man is great in this that he knows he is miserable. A tree does not know that it is miserable.
   It is misery indeed to know oneself miserable. But one is great when one knows thus that he is miserable.
   Thought is Man's greatness.
   Man is a mere reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed."7
   Pascal's faith had not the calm, tranquil, serene, luminous and happy self-possession of an Indian Rishi. It was ardent and impatient, fiery and vehement. It had to be so perhaps, since it was to stand against his steely brain (and a gloomy vital or life force) as a counterpoise, even as an antidote. This tension and schism brought about, at least contri buted to his neuras thenia and physical infirmity. But whatever the effect upon his inner consciousness and spiritual achievement, his power of expression, his literary style acquired by that a special quality which is his great gift to the French language. If one speaks of Pascal, one has to speak of his language also; for he was one of the great masters who created the French prose. His prose was a wonderful blend of clarity, precision, serried logic and warmth, colour, life, movement, plasticity.
  --
   "Know then, a you proud one, what a paradox you are to yourself. Humble yourself, impotent Reason. Learn, Man surpasses Man infinitely. Hear from your Master your true state which you do not know. Listen to God."11
   "Ils ne peuvent plus nous dire qu'il n'y a que de petits esprits qui aient de la pit: car on leur en fait voir de la mieux pouss dans run des plus grands go-mtres, l'un des plus subtils mtaphysiciens, et des plus pntrants esprits que aient jamais t au monde. La pit d'un tel philosophe devrait faire dire aux indvots et awe libertins ce que dit un jour un certain Diocls, en voyant Epicure dans un temple: 'Quelle fte,' s'criait-il, 'quelle spectacle pour moi, de voir Epicure dans un temple! Tous mes soupons s'vanouissent: la pit reprend sa place; et je ne vis jamais mieux la grandeur de Jupiter que depuis que je vois Epicure genoux!' " aBayle: Nouvelle de la Rpublique des Lettres.

01.07 - The Bases of Social Reconstruction, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Any real reconstruction of society, any perManent reformation of the world presupposes a real reconstruction, a perManent reformation of huMan nature. Otherwise any amount of casting and recasting the mere machineries would not bring about any appreciable result, but leave the thing as it is. Change the laws as much as you like, but if you do not change the nature of Man, the world will not change. For it is Man that makes laws and not laws that make Man. Laws express at best the deMand which Man feels within himself. A truth must realise itself in huMan nature before it can be codified. You may certainly legalise an ideal, but that does not necessarily mean realising it. The realisation must come first in nature and character, then it is naturally translated into laws and institutions. A Man lives the laws of his soul and being and not the law given him by the shastras. He violates the shastras, modifies them, utilises them according to the greater imperative of his Swabhava.
   The French Revolution wanted to remould huMan society and its ideal was liberty, equality and fraternity. It pulled down the old machinery and set up a new one in its stead. And the result? "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" remained always in effect a cry in the wilderness. Another wave of idealism is now running over the earth and the Bolshevists are its most fiercely practical exponents. Instead of dealing merely with the political machinery, the Socialistic Revolution tries to break and remake, above all, the social machinery. But judged from the results as yet attained and the tendencies at work, few are the reasons to hope but Many to fear the worst. Even education does not seem to promise us anything better. Which nation was better educatedin the sense we understood and still commonly understand the wordthan GerMany?
   And yet we have no hesitation today to call them Huns and Barbarians. That education is not giving us the right thing is proved further by the fact that we are constantly changing our programmes and curriculums, everyday remodelling old institutions and founding new ones. Even a revolution in the educational system will not bring about the desired millennium, so long as we lay so much stress upon the system and not upon Man himself. And finally, look to all the religions of the worldwe have enough of creeds and dogmas, of sermons and Mantras, of churches and templesand yet huMan life and society do not seem to be any the more worthy for it.
   Are we then to say that huMan nature is irrevocably vitiated by an original sin and that all our efforts at reformation and regeneration are, as the Indian saying goes, like trying to straighten out the crooked tail of a dog?
   It is this persuasion which, has led Many spiritual souls, siddhas, to declare that theirs is not the kingdom upon this earth, but that the kingdom of Heaven is within. And it is why great lovers of huManity have sought not to eradicate but only to mitigate, as far as possible, the ills of life. Earth and life, it is said, contain in their last analysis certain ugly and loathsome realities which are an inevitable and inexorable part of their substance and to eliminate one means to annihilate the other. What can be done is to throw a veil over the nether regions in huMan nature, to put a ban on their urges and velleities and to create opportunities to make social arrangements so that the higher impulses only find free play while the lower impulses, for want of scope and indulgence, may fall down to a harmless level. This is what the Reformists hope and want and no more. Life is based upon animality, the soul is encased in an earth-sheathMan needs must procreate, Man needs must seek food. But what huMan effort can achieve is to set up barriers and limitations and form channels and openings, which will restrain these impulses, allow them a necessary modicum of play and which for the greater part will serve to encourage and enhance the nobler urges in Man. Of course, there will remain always the possibility of the whole scaffolding coming down with a crash and the aboriginal in Man running riot in his nudity. But we have to accept the chance and make the best of what materials we have in hand.
   No doubt this is a most dismal kind of pessimism. But it is the logical conclusion of all optimism that bases itself upon a particular view of huMan nature. If we question that pessimism, we have to question the very grounds of our optimism also. As a matter of fact, all our idealism has been so long infructuous and will be so in the future, if we do not shift our foundation and start from a different IntuitionWeltanschauung.
   Our ideals have been mental constructions, rather than spiritual realitiesrealities of the deepest and highest being. And the power by which we sought to realise those ideals was mainly the insistence of our emotional urges, rather than Nature's Truth-Power. For this must be understood that the mental, the vital and the physical form a nexus of reality which works in its own inexorable law and so long as we are within them we cannot but obey the laws that guide them. Of these three strata which form the huMan adhara, it is the vital which holds the key to Man's nature. It is the executive power, the force that fashions the realities on the physical plane; it is what creates the character. The power of thought and sentiment is often much too exaggerated, even so the power of the body, that of physical and external rules and regulations. The mental or the physical or both together can mould the vital only to a limited extent, to the extent which is allowed by the inherent law of the vital. If the deMands of the mental and the physical are stretched too far and are not suffered by the vital, a crash and catastrophe is bound to come in the end.
   This is the meaning of the Reformist's pessimism. So long as we remain within the domain of the triple nexus, we must always take account of an original sin, an aboriginal irredeemability in huMan nature. And it, is this fact which a too hasty optimistic idealism is apt to ignore. The point, however, is that Man need not be necessarily bound to this triple chord of life. He can go beyond, transcend himself and find a reality which is the basis of even this lower poise of the mental and vital and physical. Only in order to get into that higher poise we must really transcend the lower, that is to say, we must not be satisfied with experiencing or envisaging it through the mind and heart but must directly commune with it, be it. There is a higher law that rules there, a power that is the truth-substance of even the vital and hence can remould it with a sovereign inevitability, according to a pattern which may not and is not the pattern of mental and emotional idealism, but the pattern of a supreme spiritual realism.
   What then is required is a complete spiritual regeneration in Man, a new structure of his soul and substancenot merely the realisation of the highest and supreme Truth in mental and emotional consciousness, but the translation and application of the law of that truth in the power of the vital. It is here that failed all the great spiritual or rather religious movements of the past. They were content with evoking the divine in the mental being, but left the vital becoming to be governed by the habitual un-divine or at the most to be just illumined by a distant and faint glow which served, however, more to distort than express the Divine.
   The Divine Nature only can perManently reform the vital nature that is ours. Neither laws and institutions, which are the results of that vital nature, nor ideas and ideals which are often a mere revolt from and more often an auxiliary to it, can comm and the power to regenerate society. If it is thought improbable for any group of men to attain to that God Nature, then there is hardly any hope for Mankind. But improbable or probable, that is the only way which Man has to try and test, and there is none other.
   ***

01.08 - A Theory of Yoga, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Yoga is another form of a normal function in Man, it is the consciously regulated and heightened process of a habitual activity of the mind.
   The recent science of Psycho-analysis has brought to light certain hidden springs and undercurrents of the mind; it has familiarised us with a mode of viewing the entire psychical life of Man which will be fruitful for our present enquiry. Mind, it has been found, is a house divided, against itself, that is to say it is an arena where different and divergent forces continually battle against one another. There must be, however, at the same time, some sort of a resolution of these forces, some equation that holds them in balance, otherwise the mind the huMan being itselfwould cease to exist as an entity. What is the mechanism of this balance of power in the huMan mind? In order to ascertain that we must first of all know the fundamental nature of the struggle and also the character of the more elemental forces that are engaged in it.
   There are some primary desires that seek satisfaction in Man. They are the vital urges of life, the most prominent among them being the instinct of self-preservation and that of self-reproduction or the desire to preserve one's body by defensive as well as by offensive means and the desire to multiply oneself by mating. These are the two biological necessities that are inevitable to Man's existence as a physical being. They give the minimum conditions required to be fulfilled by Man in order that he may live and hence they are the strongest and the most fundamental elements that enter into his structure and composition.
   It would have been an easy matter if these vital urges could flow on unhindered in their way. There would have been no problem at all, if they met satisfaction easily and smoothly, without having to look to other factors and forces. As a matter of fact, Man does not and cannot gratify his instincts whenever and wherever he chooses and in an open and direct Manner. Even in his most primitive and barbarous condition, he has often to check himself and throw a veil, in so Many ways, over his sheer animality. In the civilised society the check is Manifold and is frankly recognised. We do not go straight as our sexual impulsion leads, but seek to hide and camouflage it under the institution of marriage; we do not pounce upon the food directly we happen to meet it and snatch and appropriate whatever portion we get but we secure it through an elaborate process, which is known as the economic system. The machinery of the state, the cult of the kshatriya are roundabout ways to meet our fighting instincts.
   What is the reason of this elaboration, this check and constraint upon the natural and direct outflow of the animal instincts in Man? It has been said that the social life of Man, the fact that he has to live and move as member of a group or aggregate has imposed upon him these restrictions. The free and unbridled indulgence of one's bare aboriginal impulses may be possible to creatures that live a separate, solitary and individual life but is disruptive of all bonds necessary for a corporate and group life. It is even a biological necessity again which has evolved in Man a third and collateral primary instinct that of the herd. And it is this herd-instinct which naturally and spontaneously restrains, diverts and even metamorphoses the other instincts of the mere animal life. However, leaving aside for the moment the question whether Man's ethical and spiritual ideals are a mere dissimulation of his animal instincts or whether they correspond to certain actual realities apart from and co-existent with these latter, we will recognise the simple fact of control and try to have a glimpse into its mechanism.
   There are three lines, as the Psycho-analysts point out along which this control or censuring of the primary instincts acts. First, there is the line of Defence Reaction. That is to say, the mind automatically takes up an attitude directly contrary to the impulse, tries to shut it out and deny altogether its existence and the measure of the insistence of the impulse is also the measure of the vehemence of the denial. It is the case of the lady protesting too much. So it happens that where subconsciously there is a strong current of a particular impulse, consciously the mind is obliged to take up a counteracting opposite impulse. Thus in presence of a strong sexual craving the mind as if to guard and save itself engenders by a reflex movement an ascetic and puritanic mood. Similarly a strong unthinking physical attraction translates itself on the conscious plane as an equally strong repulsion.
   Secondly, there is the line of Substitution. Here the mind does not stand in an antagonistic and protestant mood to combat and repress the impulse, but seeks to divert it into other channels, use it to other purposes which do not deMand equal sacrifice, may even, on the other hand, be considered by the conscious mind as worthy of huMan pursuit. Thus the energy that normally would seek sexual gratification might find its outlet in the cultivation of art and literature. It is a common thing in novels to find the heroine disappointed in love taking finally to works of charity and beneficence and thus forgetting her disappointment. Another variety of this is what is known as "drowning one's sorrow in drinking."
   Thirdly, there is the line of Sublimationit is when the natural impulse is neither repressed nor diverted but lifted up into a higher modality. The thing is given a new sense and a new value which serve to remove the stigma usually attached to it and thus allow its free indulgence. Instances of carnal love sublimated into spiritual union, of passion transmuted into devotion (Bhakti) are common enough to illustrate the point.
   The huMan mind naturally, without any effort on its part, takes to one or more of these devices to control and conceal the aboriginal impulses. But this spontaneous process can be organised and consciously regulated and made to serve better the purpose and urge of Nature. And this is the beginning of yoga the conscious fulfilment of Nature. The Psycho-analysts have given us the first and elementary stage of this process of yoga. It is, we may say, the fourth line of control. With this Man enters a new level of being, develops a new mode of life. It is when the automatism of Nature is replaced by the power of Conscious Control. Man is not here, a blind instrument of forces, his activities (both indulging and controlling) are not guided according to an ignorant submission to the laws of almost subconscious impulsions. Conscious control means that the mind does not fight shy of or seek to elude the aboriginal insistences, but allows them to come up freely, meets them squarely, recognises them and establishes an easy mastery over them.
   The method of unconscious or subconscious nature is fundamentally that of repression. Apart from Defence Reaction which is a thing of pure coercion, even in Substitution and Sublimation there always remains in the background a large amount of repressed complexes in all their primitive strength. The system is never entirely purified but remains secretly pregnant with those urges; a part only is deflected and camouflaged, the surface only assumes a transformed appearance. And there is always the danger of the superstructure coming down helplessly by a sudden upheaval of the nether forces. The whole system feels, although not in a conscious Manner, the tension of the repression and suffers from something that is unhealthy and ill-balanced. Dante's spiritualised passion is a supreme instance of control by Sublimation, but the Divina Comedia hardly bears the impress of a serene and tranquil soul, sovereignly above the turmoils of the tragedy of life and absolutely at peace with itself.
   In conscious control, the mind is for the first time aware of the presence of the repressed impulses, it seeks to release them from the pressure to which they are habitually and normally subjected. It knows and recognises them, however ugly and revolting they might appear to be when they present themselves in their natural nakedness. Then it becomes easy for the conscious determination to eliminate or regulate or transform them and thus to establish a healthy harmony in the huMan vehicle. The very recognition itself, as implied in conscious control, means purification.
   Yet even here the process of control and transformation does not end. And we now come to the Fifth Line, the real and intimate path of yoga. Conscious control gives us a natural mastery over the instinctive impulses which are relieved of their dark tamas and attain a purified rhythm. We do not seek to hide or repress or combat them, but surpass them and play with them as the artist does with his material. Something of this katharsis, this aestheticism of the primitive impulses was achieved by the ancient Greeks. Even then the primitive impulses remain primitive all the same; they fulfil, no doubt, a real and healthy function in the scheme of life, but still in their fundamental nature they continue the animal in Man. And even when Conscious Control means the utter elimination and annihilation of the primal instinctswhich, however, does not seem to be a probable eventualityeven then, we say, the basic problem remains unsolved; for the urge of nature towards the release and a transformation of the instincts does not find satisfaction, the question is merely put aside.
   Yoga, then, comes at this stage and offers the solution in its power of what we may call Transubstantiation. That is to say, here the mere form is not changed, nor the functions restrained, regulated and purified, but the very substance of the instincts is transmuted. The power of conscious control is a power of the huMan will, i.e. of an individual personal will and therefore necessarily limited both in intent and extent. It is a power complementary to the power of Nature, it may guide and fashion the latter according to a new pattern, but cannot change the basic substance, the stuff of Nature. To that end yoga seeks a power that transcends the huMan will, brings into play the supernal puissance of a Divine Will.
   This is the real meaning and sense of the moral struggle in Man, the continuous endeavour towards a transvaluation of the primary and aboriginal instincts and impulses. Looked at from one end, from below up the ascending line, Man's ethical and spiritual ideals are a dissimulation and sublimation of the animal impulsions. But this is becauseas we see, if we look from the other end, from above down the descending lineMan is not all instinct, he is not a mere blind instrument in the hands of Nature forces. He has in him another source, an opposite pole of being from which other impulsions flow and continually modify the structure of the lower levels. If the animal is the foundation of his nature, the divine is its summit. If the bodily deMands form his Manifest reality, the deMands of the spirit enshrine his higher reality. And if as regards the former he is a slave, as regards the latter he is the Master. It is by the interaction of these double forces that his whole nature has been and is being fashioned. Man does not and cannot give carte blanche to his vital, inclinations, since there is a pressure upon them of higher forces coming down from his mental and spiritual levels. It is these latter which have deviated him from the direct line of the pure animal life.
   Thus then we may distinguish three types of control on three levels. First, the natural control, secondly the conscious, i.e. to say the mental the ethical and religious control, and thirdly the spiritual or divine control. Now the spirit is the ultimate truth and reality, behind the forces that act in the mind and in the body, so that the natural control and the ethical control are mere attempts to establish and realise the spiritual control. The animal impulses feel the hidden stress of the divine urges that are their real essence and thus there rises first an unconscious conflict in the natural life and then a conscious conflict in the higher ethical life. But when both of these are transcended and the conflict is carried on to a still higher level, then do we find their real significance and arrive at the consummation to which they move. Yoga is the ultimate transvaluation of physical (and of moral) values, it is the trans-substantiation of life-power into its spiritual substance.

01.08 - Walter Hilton: The Scale of Perfection, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   From the twentieth century back to the fourteenth is a far cry: a far cry indeed from the modern scientific illumination to mediaeval superstition, from logical positivists and mathematical rationalists to visionary mystics, from Russell and Huxley to Ruysbroeck and Hilton. The mystic lore, the Holy Writ, the mediaeval sage says, echoing almost the very words of the Eastern Masters, "may not be got by study nor through Man's travail only, but principally by the grace of the Holy Ghost." As for the men living and moving in the worldly way, there are "so mickle din and crying in their heart and vain thoughts and fleshly desires" that it is impossible for them to listen or understand the still small voice. It is the pure soul touched by the Grace that alone "seeth soothfastness of Holy Writ wonderly shewed and opened, above study and travail and reason of Man's kindly (i.e. natural) wit."
   What is day to us is night to the mystics and what is day to the mystics is night for us. The first thing the mystic asks is to close precisely those doors and windows which we, on the contrary, feel obliged to keep always open in order to know and to live and move. The Gita says: "The sage is wakeful when it is night for all creatures and when all creatures are wakeful, that is night for the sage." Even so this sage from the West says: "The more I sleep from outward things, the more wakeful am I in knowing of Jhesu and of inward things. I may not wake to Jhesu, but if I sleep to the world."
   Close the senses. Turn within. And then go forward, that is to say, more and more inward. In that direction lies your itinerary, the journey of your consciousness. The sense-ridden secular Man, who goes by his physical eye, has marked in his own way the steps of his forward march and progress. His knowledge and his power grew as he proceeded in his survey from larger masses of physical objects to their component molecules and from molecules to their component atoms and from atoms once more into electrons and protons or energy-points pure and simple, or otherwise as, in another direction, he extended his gaze from earth to the solar system, from the solar system to other starry systems, to far-off galaxies and I from galaxies to spaces beyond. The record of this double-track march to infinityas perceived or conceived by the physical sensesis marvellous, no doubt. The mystic offers the spectacle of a still more marvellous march to another kind of infinity.
   Here is the Augustinian Mantra taken as the motto of The Scale of Perfection: We ascend the ascending grades in our heart and we sing the song of ascension1. The journey's end is heavenly Jerusalem, the House of the Lord. The steps of this inner ascension are easily visible, not surely to the outer eye of the sense-burdened Man, but to the "ghostly seeing" of the aspirant which is hazy in the beginning but slowly clears as he advances. The first step is the withdrawal from the outer senses and looking and seeing within. "Turn home again in thyself, and hold thee within and beg no more without." The immediate result is a darkness and a restless darknessit is a painful night. The outer objects of attraction and interest have been discarded, but the inner attachments and passions surge there still. If, however, one continues and persists, refuses to be drawn out, the turmoil settles down and the darkness begins to thin and wear away. One must not lose heart, one must have patience and perseverance. So when the outward world is no more-there and its call also no longer awakes any echo in us, then comes the stage of "restful darkness" or "light-some darkness". But it is still the dark Night of the soul. The outer light is gone and the inner light is not yet visible: the night, the desert, the great Nought, stretches between these two lights. But the true seeker goes through and comes out of the tunnel. And there is happiness at the end. "The seeking is travaillous, but the finding is blissful." When one steps out of the Night, enters into the deepest layer of the being, one stands face to face to one's soul, the very image of God, the perfect God-Man, the Christ within. That is the third degree of our inner ascension, the entry into the deepest, purest and happiest statein which one becomes what he truly is; one finds the Christ there and dwells in love and union with him. But there is still a further step to take, and that is real ascension. For till now it has been a going within, from the outward to the inner and the inmost; now one has to go upward, transcend. Within the body, in life, however deep you may go, even if you find your soul and your union with Jesus whose tabernacle is your soul, still there is bound to remain a shadow of the sinful prison-house; the perfect bliss and purity without any earthly taint, the completeness and the crowning of the purgation and transfiguration can come only when you go beyond, leaving altogether the earthly form and worldly vesture and soar into Heaven itself and be in the company of the Trinity. "Into myself, and after... above myself by overpassing only into Him." At the same time it is pointed out, this mediaeval mystic has the common sense to see that the going in and going above of which one speaks must not be understood in a literal way, it is a figure of speech. The movement of the mystic is psychological"ghostly", it is saidnot physical or carnal.
   This spiritual march or progress can also be described as a growing into the likeness of the Lord. His true self, his own image is implanted within us; he is there in the profoundest depth of our being as Jesus, our beloved and our soul rests in him in utmost bliss. We are aware neither of Jesus nor of his spouse, our soul, because of the obsession of the flesh, the turmoil raised by the senses, the blindness of pride and egoism. All that constitutes the first or old Adam, the image of Nought, the body of death which means at bottom the "false misruled love in to thyself." This self-love is the mother of sin, is sin itself. What it has to be replaced by is charity that is the true meaning of Christian charity, forgetfulness of self. "What is sin but a wanting and a forbearing of God." And the whole task, the discipline consists in "the shaping of Christ in you, the casting of sin through Christ." Who then is Christ, what is he? This knowledge you get as you advance from your sense-bound perception towards the inner and inmost seeing. As your outer nature gets purified, you approach gradually your soul, the scales fall off from your eyes too and you have the knowledge and "ghostly vision." Here too there are three degrees; first, you start with faith the senses can do nothing better than have faith; next, you rise to imagination which gives a sort of indirect touch or inkling of the truth; finally, you have the "understanding", the direct vision. "If he first trow it, he shall afterwards through grace feel it, and finally understand it."
   It is never possible for Man, weak and bound as he is, to reject the thraldom of his flesh, he can never purify himself wholly by his own unaided strength. God in his infinite mercy sent his own son, an eManation created out of his substancehis embodied loveas a huMan being to suffer along with men and take upon himself the burden of their sins. God the Son lived upon earth as Man and died as Man. Sin therefore has no longer its final or definitive hold upon Mankind. Man has been made potentially free, pure and worthy of salvation. This is the mystery of Christ, of God the Son. But there is a further mystery. Christ not only lived for all men for all time, whether they know him, recognise him or not; but he still lives, he still chooses his beloved and his beloved chooses him, there is a conscious acceptance on either side. This is the function of the Holy Ghost, the redeeming power of Love active in him who accepts it and who is accepted by it, the dynamic Christ-Consciousness in the true Christian.
   Indeed, the kernel of the mystic discipline and its whole bearingconsists in one and only one principle: to love Jhesu. All roads lead to Rome: all preparations, all trials lead to one realisation, love of God, God as a living person close to us, our friend and lover and master. The Christian mystic speaks almost in the terms of the Gita: Rise above your senses, give up your ego-hood, be meek and humble, it is Jesus within you, who embraces your soul: it is he who does everything for you and in you, give yourself up wholly into his hands. He will deliver you.
   The characteristic then of the path is a one-pointed concentration. Great stress is laid upon "oneliness", "onedness":that is to say, a perfect and complete withdrawal from the outside and the world; an unmixed solitude is required for the true experience and realisation to come. "A full forsaking in will of the soul for the love of Him, and a living of the heart to Him. This asks He, for this gave He." The rigorous exclusion, the uncompromising asceticism, the voluntary self-torture, the cruel dark night and the arid desert are necessary conditions that lead to the "onlyness of soul", what another prophet (Isaiah, XXIV, 16) describes as "My privity to me". In that secreted solitude, the "onlistead"the graphic language of the author calls itis found "that dignity and that ghostly fairness which a soul had by kind and shall have by grace." The utter beauty of the soul and its absolute love for her deity within her (which has the fair name of Jhesu), the exclusive concentration of the whole of the being upon one point, the divine core, the Manifest Grace of God, justifies the annihilation of the world and life's Manifold existence. Indeed, the image of the Beloved is always within, from the beginning to the end. It is that that keeps one up in the terrible struggle with one's nature and the world. The image depends upon the consciousness which we have at the moment, that is to say, upon the stage or the degree we have ascended to. At the outset, when we can only look through the senses, when the flesh is our master, we give the image a crude form and character; but even that helps. Gradually, as we rise, with the clearing of our nature, the image too slowly regains its original and true shape. Finally, in the inmost soul we find Jesus as he truly is: "an unchangeable being, a sovereign might, a sovereign soothfastness, sovereign goodness, a blessed life and endless bliss." Does not the Gita too say: "As one approaches Me, so do I appear to him."Ye yath mm prapadyante.
   Indeed, it would be interesting to compare and contrast the Eastern and Western approach to Divine Love, the Christian and the Vaishnava, for example. Indian spirituality, whatever its outer form or credal formulation, has always a background of utter unity. This unity, again, is threefold or triune and is expressed in those great Upanishadic phrases,mahvkyas,(1) the transcendental unity: the One alone exists, there is nothing else than theOneekamevdvityam; (2) the cosmic unity: all existence is one, whatever exists is that One, thereare no separate existences:sarvam khalvidam brahma neha nnsti kincaa; (3) That One is I, you too are that One:so' ham, tattvamasi; this may be called the individual unity. As I have said, all spiritual experiences in India, of whatever school or line, take for granted or are fundamentally based upon this sense of absolute unity or identity. Schools of dualism or pluralism, who do not apparently admit in their tenets this extreme monism, are still permeated in Many ways with that sense and in some form or other take cognizance of the truth of it. The Christian doctrine too says indeed, 'I and my Father in Heaven are one', but this is not identity, but union; besides, the huMan soul is not admitted into this identity, nor the world soul. The world, we have seen, according to the Christian discipline has to be altogether abandoned, negatived, as we go inward and upward towards our spiritual status reflecting the divine image in the divine company. It is a complete rejection, a cutting off and casting away of world and life. One extreme Vedantic path seems to follow a similar line, but there it is not really rejection, but a resolution, not the rejection of what is totally foreign and extraneous, but a resolution of the external into its inner and inmost substance, of the effect into its original cause. BrahMan is in the world, BrahMan is the world: the world has unrolled itself out of the BrahMansi, pravttiit has to be rolled back into its, cause and substance if it is to regain its pure nature (that is the process of nivitti). Likewise, the individual being in the world, "I", is the transcendent being itself and when it withdraws, it withdraws itself and the whole world with it and merges into the Absolute. Even the Maya of the Mayavadin, although it is viewed as something not inherent in BrahMan but superimposed upon BrahMan, still, has been accepted as a peculiar power of BrahMan itself. The Christian doctrine keeps the individual being separate practically, as an associate or at the most as an image of God. The love for one's neighbour, charity, which the Christian discipline enjoins is one's love for one's kind, because of affinity of nature and quality: it does not dissolve the two into an integral unity and absolute identity, where we love because we are one, because we are the One. The highest culmination of love, the very basis of love, according to the Indian conception, is a transcendence of love, love trans-muted into Bliss. The Upanishad says, where one has become the utter unity, who loves whom? To explain further our point, we take two examples referred to in the book we are considering. The true Christian, it is said, loves the sinner too, he is permitted to dislike sin, for he has to reject it, but he must separate from sin the sinner and love him. Why? Because the sinner too can change and become his brother in spirit, one loves the sinner because there is the possibility of his changing and becoming a true Christian. It is why the orthodox Christian, even such an enlightened and holy person as this mediaeval Canon, considers the non-Christian, the non-baptised as impure and potentially and fundamentally sinners. That is also why the Church, the physical organisation, is worshipped as Christ's very body and outside the Church lies the pagan world which has neither religion nor true spirituality nor salvation. Of course, all this may be symbolic and it is symbolic in a sense. If Christianity is taken to mean true spirituality, and the Church is equated with the collective embodiment of that spirituality, all that is claimed on their behalf stands justified. But that is an ideal, a hypothetical standpoint and can hardly be borne out by facts. However, to come back to our subject, let us ow take the second example. Of Christ himself, it is said, he not only did not dislike or had any aversion for Judas, but that he positively loved the traitor with a true and sincere love. He knew that the Man would betray him and even when he was betraying and had betrayed, the Son of Man continued to love him. It was no make-believe or sham or pretence. It was genuine, as genuine as anything can be. Now, why did he love his enemy? Because, it is said, the enemy is suffered by God to do the misdeed: he has been allowed to test the faith of the faithful, he too has his utility, he too is God's servant. And who knows even a Judas would not change in the end? Many who come to scoff do remain to pray. But it can be asked, 'Does God love Satan too in the same way?' The Indian conception which is basically Vedantic is different. There is only one reality, one truth which is viewed differently. Whether a thing is considered good or evil or neutral, essentially and truly, it is that One and nothing else. God's own self is everywhere and the sage makes no difference between the Brahmin and the cow and the elephant. It is his own self he finds in every person and every objectsarvabhtsthitam yo mm bhajati ekatvamsthitah"he has taken his stand upon oneness and loves Me in all beings."2
   This will elucidate another point of difference between the Christian's and the Vaishnava's love of God, for both are characterised by an extreme intensity and sweetness and exquisiteness of that divine feeling. This Christian's, however, is the union of the soul in its absolute purity and simplicity and "privacy" with her lord and master; the soul is shred here of all earthly vesture and goes innocent and naked into the embrace of her Beloved. The Vaishnava feeling is richer and seems to possess more amplitude; it is more concrete and less ethereal. The Vaishnava in his passionate yearning seeks to carry as it were the whole world with him to his Lord: for he sees and feels Him not only in the inmost chamber of his soul, but meets Him also in and I through his senses and in and through the world and its objects around. In psychological terms one can say that the Christian realisation, at its very source, is that of the inmost soul, what we call the "psychic being" pure and simple, referred to in the book we are considering; as: "His sweet privy voice... stirreth thine heart full stilly." Whereas the Vaishnava reaches out to his Lord with his outer heart too aflame with passion; not only his inmost being but his vital being also seeks the Divine. This bears upon the occult story of Man's spiritual evolution upon earth. The Divine Grace descends from the highest into the deepest and from the deepest to the outer ranges of huMan nature, so that the whole of it may be illumined and transformed and one day Man can embody in his earthly life the integral Manifestation of God, the perfect Epiphany. Each religion, each line of spiritual discipline takes up one limb of Manone level or mode of his being and consciousness purifies it and suffuses it with the spiritual and divine consciousness, so that in the end the whole of Man, in his integral living, is recast and remoulded: each discipline is in charge of one thread as it were, all together weave the warp and woof in the evolution of the perfect pattern of a spiritualised and divinised huManity.
   The conception of original sin is a cardinal factor in Christian discipline. The conception, of sinfulness is the very motive-power that drives the aspirant. "Seek tensely," it is said, "sorrow and sigh deep, mourn still, and stoop low till thine eye water for anguish and for pain." Remorse and grief are necessary attendants; the way of the cross is naturally the calvary strewn with pain and sorrow. It is the very opposite of what is termed the "sunlit path" in spiritual ascension. Christian mystics have made a glorious spectacle of the process of "dying to the world." Evidently, all do not go the whole length. There are less gloomy and happier temperaments, like the present one, for example, who show an unusual balance, a sturdy common sense even in the midst of their darkest nights, who have chalked out as much of the sunlit path as is possible in this line. Thus this old-world mystic says: it is true one must see and admit one's sinfulness, the grosser and apparent and more violent ones as well as all the subtle varieties of it that are in you or rise up in you or come from the Enemy. They pursue you till the very end of your journey. Still you need not feel overwhelmed or completely desperate. Once you recognise the sin in you, even the bare fact of recognition means for you half the victory. The mystic says, "It is no sin as thou feelest them." The day Jesus gave himself away on the Cross, since that very day you are free, potentially free from the bondage of sin. Once you give your adherence to Him, the Enemies are rendered powerless. "They tease the soul, but they harm not the soul". Or again, as the mystic graphically phrases it: "This soul is not borne in this image of sin as a sick Man, though he feel it; but he beareth it." The best way of dealing with one's enemies is not to struggle and "strive with them." The aspirant, the lover of Jesus, must remember: "He is through grace reformed to the likeness of God ('in the privy substance of his soul within') though he neither feel it nor see it."
   If you are told you are still full of sins and you are not worthy to follow the path, that you must go and work out your sins first, here is your answer: "Go shrive thee better: trow not this saying, for it is false, for thou art shriven. Trust securely that thou art on the way, and thee needeth no ransacking of shrift for that that is passed, hold forth thy way and think on Jerusalem." That is to say, do not be too busy with the difficulties of the moment, but look ahead, as far as possible, fix your attention upon the goal, the intermediate steps will become easy. Jerusalem is another name of the Love of Jesus or the Bliss in Heaven. Grow in this love, your sins will fade away of themselves. "Though thou be thrust in an house with thy body, nevertheless in thine heart, where the stead of love is, thou shouldst be able to have part of that love... " What exquisite utterance, what a deep truth!
  --
   The ultimate truth is that God is the sole doer and the best we can do is to let him do freely without let or hindrance. "He that through Grace may see Jhesu, how that He doth all and himself doth right nought but suffereth Jhesu work in him what him liketh, he is meek." And yet one does not arrive at that condition from the beginning or all at once. "The work is not of the hour nor of a day, but of Many days and years." And for a long time one has to take up one's burden and work, co-operate with the Divine working. In the process there is this double movement necessary for the full achievement. "Neither Grace only without full working of a soul that in it is nor working done without grace bringeth a soul to reforming but that one joined to that other." Mysticism is not all eccentricity and irrationality: on the contrary, sanity seems to be the very character of the higher mysticism. And it is this sanity, and even a happy sense of humour accompanying it, that makes the genuine mystic teacher say: "It is no mastery to me for to say it, but for to do it there is mastery." Amen.
   Ascendimus ascensiones in corde et cantamus canticum graduum." Confessions of St. Augustine XIII. 9.

01.09 - The Parting of the Way, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   To be divine or to remain huManthis is the one choice that is now before Nature in her upward march of evolution. What is the exact significance of this choice?
   To remain huMan means to continue the fundamental nature of Man. In what consists the huManity of Man? We can ascertain it by distinguishing what forms the animality of the animal, since that will give us the differentia that nature has evolved to raise Man over the animal. The animal, again, has a characteristic differentiating it from the vegetable world, which latter, in its turn, has something to mark it off from the inorganic world. The inorganic, the vegetable, the animal and finally Manthese are the four great steps of Nature's evolutionary course.
   The differentia, in each case, lies in the degree and nature of consciousness, since it is consciousness that forms the substance and determines the mode of being. Now, the inorganic is characterised by un-consciousness, the vegetable by sub-consciousness, the animal by consciousness and Man by self-consciousness. Man knows that he knows, an animal only knows; a plant does not even know, it merely feels or senses; matter cannot do that even, it simply acts or rather is acted upon. We are not concerned here, however, with the last two forms of being; we will speak of the first two only.
   We say, then, that Man is distinguished from the animal by his having consciousness as it has, but added to it the consciousness of self. Man acts and feels and knows as much as the animal does; but also he knows that he acts, he knows that he feels, he knows that he knowsand this is a thing the animal cannot do. It is the awakening of the sense of self in every mode of being that characterises Man, and it is owing to this consciousness of an ego behind, of a perManent unit of reference, which has modified even the functions of knowing and feeling and acting, has refashioned them in a mould which is not quite that of the animal, in spite of a general similarity.
   So the huManity of Man consists in his consciousness of the self or ego. Is there no other higher mode of consciousness? Or is self-consciousness the acme, the utmost limit to which consciousness can raise itself? If it is so, then we are bound to conclude that huManity will remain eternally huMan in its fundamental nature; the only progress, if progress at all we choose to call it, will consist perhaps in accentuating this consciousness of the self and in expressing it through a greater variety of stresses, through a richer combination of its colour and light and shade and rhythm. But also, this may not be sothere may be the possibility of a further step, a transcending of the consciousness of the self. It seems unnatural and improbable that having risen from un-consciousness to self-consciousness through a series of continuous marches, Nature should suddenly stop and consider what she had achieved to be her final end. Has Nature become bankrupt of her creative genius, exhausted of her upward drive? Has she to remain content with only a clever Manipulation, a mere shuffling and re-arranging of the materials already produced?
   As a matter of fact it is not so. The glimpses of a higher form of consciousness we can see even now present in self-consciousness. We have spoken of the different stages of evolution as if they were separate and distinct and incommensurate entities. They may be described as such for the purpose of a logical understanding, but in reality they form a single progressive continuum in which one level gradually fuses into another. And as the higher level takes up the law of the lower and evolves out of it a characteristic function, even so the law of the higher level with its characteristic function is already involved and envisaged in the law of the lower level and its characteristic function. It cannot be asserted positively that because Man's special virtue is self-consciousness, animals cannot have that quality on any account. We do see, if we care to observe closely and dispassionately, that animals of the higher order, as they approach the level of huManity, show more and more evident signs of something which is very much akin to, if not identical with the huMan characteristic of self-consciousness.
   So, in Man also, especially of that order which forms the crown of huManityin poets and artists and seers and great men of actioncan be observed a certain characteristic form of consciousness, which is something other than, greater than the consciousness of the mere self. It is difficult as yet to characterise definitely what that thing is. It is the awakening of the self to something which is beyond itselfit is the cosmic self, the oversoul, the universal being; it is God, it is Turiya, it is sachchidanandain so Many ways the thing has been sought to be envisaged and expressed. The consciousness of that level has also a great variety of names given to it Intuition, Revelation, cosmic consciousness, God-consciousness. It is to be noted here, however, that the thing we are referring to, is not the Absolute, the Infinite, the One without a second. It is not, that is to say, the supreme Reality the BrahManin its static being, in its undivided and indivisible unity; it is the dynamic BrahMan, that status of the supreme Reality where creation, the diversity of Becoming takes rise, it is the Truth-worldRitam the domain of typal realities. The distinction is necessary, as there does seem to be such a level of consciousness intermediary, again, between Man and the Absolute, between self-consciousness and the supreme consciousness. The simplest thing would be to give that intermediate level of consciousness a negative namesince being as yet huMan we cannot foresee exactly its composition and function the super-consciousness.
   The inflatus of something vast and transcendent, something which escapes all our familiar schemes of cognisance and yet is insistent with a translucent reality of its own, we do feel sometimes within us invading and enveloping our individuality, lifting up our sense of self and transmuting our personality into a reality which can hardly be called merely huMan. All this life of ego-bound rationality then melts away and opens out the passage for a life of vision and power. Thus it is the poet has felt when he says, "there is this incalculable element in huMan life influencing us from the mystery which envelops our being, and when reason is satisfied, there is something deeper than Reason which makes us still uncertain of truth. Above the huMan reason there is a transcendental sphere to which the spirit of men sometimes rises, and the will may be forged there at a lordly smithy and made the unbreakable pivot."(A.E.)
   This passage from the self-conscient to the super-conscient does not imply merely a shifting of the focus of consciousness. The transmutation of consciousness involves a purer illumination, a surer power and a wider compass; it involves also a fundamental change in the very mode of being and living. It gives quite a different life-intuition and a different life-power. The change in the motif brings about a new form altogether, a re-casting and re-shaping and re-energising of the external materials as well. As the lift from mere consciousness to self-consciousness meant all the difference between an animal and a Man, so the lift again from self-consciousness to super-consciousness will mean the difference of a whole world between Man and the divine creature that is to be.
   Indeed it is a divine creature that should be envisaged on the next level of evolution. The mental and the moral, the psychical and the physical transfigurations which must follow the change in the basic substratum do imply such a mutation, the birth of a new species, as it were, fashioned in the nature of the gods. The vision of angels and Siddhas, which Man is having ceaselessly since his birth, may be but a prophecy of the future actuality.
   This then, it seems to us, is the immediate problem that Nature has set before herself. She is now at the parting of the ways. She has done with Man as an essentially huMan being, she has brought out the fundamental possibilities of huManity and perfected it, so far as perfection may be attained within the cadre by which she chose to limit herself; she is now looking forward to another kind of experiment the evolving of another life, another being out of her entrails, that will be greater than the huManity we know today, that will be superior even to the supreme that has yet been actualised.
   Nature has marched from the unconscious to the sub-conscious, from the sub-conscious to the conscious and from the conscious to the self-conscious; she has to rise yet again from the self-conscious to the super-conscious. The mineral gave place to the plant, the plant gave place to the animal and the animal gave place to Man; let Man give place to and bring out the divine.
   ***

01.09 - William Blake: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Walter Hilton: The Scale of Perfection Nicholas Berdyaev: God Made HuMan
   Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Poets and MysticsWilliam Blake: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
  --
   The ideal was Blake's. It will not sound so revolting if we understand what the poet meant by Hell. Hell, he explains, is simply the body, the Energy of Lifehell, because body and life on earth were so considered by the orthodox Christianity. The Christian ideal deMands an absolute denial and rejection of life. Fulfilment is elsewhere, in heaven alone. That is, as we know, the ideal of the ascetic. The life of the spirit (in heaven) is a thing away from and stands against the life of the flesh (on earth). In the face of this discipline, countering it, Blake posited a union, a marriage of the two, considered incompatibles and incommensurables. Enfant terrible that he was, he took an infinite delight in a spirit of contradiction and went on expatiating on the glory of the misalliance. He declared a new apocalypse and said that Lucifer, the one called Satan, was the real God, the so-called Messiah the fake one: the apparent Milton spoke in praise of God and in dispraise of Satan, but the real, the esoteric Milton glorified Satan, who is the true God and minimised or caricatured the counterfeit or shadow God. Here is Blakean Bible in a nutshell:
   But first the notion that Man has a body distinct from his soul is to be expunged.. . . If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to Man as it is, infinite.
   The eyes of fire, the nostrils of air, the mouth of water, the beard of earth.
   Such is to be the ideal, the perfect, the spiritual Man. Have we here the progenitor of the Nietzschean SuperMan? Both smell almost the same sulphurous atmosphere. But that also seems to lie in the direction to which the whole world is galloping in its evolutionary course. HuManity in its agelong travail has passed through the agony, one might say, of two extreme and opposite experiences, which are epitomised in the classic phrasing of Sri Aurobindo as: (1) the Denial of the Materialist and (2) the Refusal of the Ascetic.1 Neither, however, the Spirit alone nor the body alone is Man's reality; neither only the earth here nor only the heaven there embodies Man's destiny. Both have to be claimed, both have to belivedubhayameva samrt, as the old sage, Yajnavalkya, declared.
   The earliest dream of huManity is also the last fulfilment. The Vedic Rishis sang of the marriage of heaven and earthHeaven is my father and this Earth my mother. And Blake and Nietzsche are fiery apostles of that dream and ideal in an age crippled with doubt, falsehood, smallness, crookedness, impotence, colossal ignorance.
   We welcome voices that speak of this ancient tradition, this occult Knowledge of a high Future. Recently we have come across one aspirant in the line, and being a contemporary, his views and reviews in the matter will be all the more interesting to us.2 He is Gustave Thibon, a FrenchMan-not a priest or even a religious Man in the orthodox sense in any way, but a country farmer, a wholly self-educated laque. Of late he has attracted a good deal of attention from intellectuals as well as religious people, especially the Catholics, because of his remarkable conceptions which are so often unorthodox and yet so often ringing true with an old-world au thenticity.
   Touching the very core of the malady of our age he says that our modern enlightenment seeks to cancel altogether the higher values and install instead the lower alone as true. Thus, for example, Marx and Freud, its twin arch priests, are brothers. Both declare that it is the lower, the under layer alone that matters: to one "the masses", to the other "the instincts". Their wild imperative roars: "Sweep away this pseudo-higher; let the instincts rule, let the pro-letariat dictate!" But more characteristic, Monsieur Thibon has made another discovery which gives the whole value and speciality to his outlook. He says the moderns stress the lower, no doubt; but the old world stressed only the higher and neglected the lower. Therefore the revolt and wrath of the lower, the rage of Revanche in the heart of the dispossessed in the modern world. Enlightenment meant till now the cultivation and embellishment of the Mind, the conscious Mind, the rational and nobler faculties, the height and the depth: and Mankind meant the princes and the great ones. In the individual, in the scheme of his culture and education, the senses were neglected, left to go their own way as they pleased; and in the collective field, the toiling masses in the same way lived and moved as best as they could under the economics of laissez-faire. So Monsieur Thibon concludes: "Salvation has never come from below. To look for it from above only is equally vain. No doubt salvation must come from the higher, but on condition that the higher completely adopts and protects the lower." Here is a vision luminous and revealing, full of great import, if we follow the right track, prophetic of Man's true destiny. It is through this infiltration of the higher into the lower and the integration of the lower into the higher that Mankind will reach the goal of its evolution, both individually and collectively.
   But the process, Monsieur Thibon rightly asserts, must begin with the individual and within the individual. Man must "turn within, feel alive within himself", re-establish his living contact with God, the source and origin from which he has cut himself off. Man must learn to subordinate having to being. Each individual must be himself, a free and spontaneous expression. Upon such individual , upon individuals grouped naturally in smaller collectivities and not upon unformed or ill-formed wholesale masses can a perfect huMan society be raised and will be raised. Monsieur Thibon insistsand very rightlyupon the variety and diversity of individual and local growths in a unified huManity and not a dead uniformity of regimented oneness. He declares, as the reviewer of the London Times succinctly puts it: "Let us abolish our insensate worship of number. Let us repeal the law of majorities. Let us work for the unity that draws together instead of idolizing the multiplicity that disintegrates. Let us understand that it is not enough for each to have a place; what matters is that each should be in his right place. For the atomized society let us substitute an organic society, one in which every Man will be free to do what he alone is qualified and able to do."
   So far so good. For it is not far enough. The being or becoming that is deManded in fulfilment of the divine advent in huManity must go to the very roots of life and nature, must seize God in his highest and sovereign status. No prejudice of the past, no notion of our mental habits must seek to impose its law. Thus, for example, in the matter of redeeming the senses by the influx of the higher light, our author seems to consider that the senses will remain more or less as they are, only they will be controlled, guided, used by the higher light. And he seems to think that even the sex relation (even the institution of marriage) may continue to remain, but sublimated, submitted to the laws of the Higher Order. This, according to us, is a dangerous compromise and is simply the imposition of the lower law upon the higher. Our view of the total transformation and divinisation of the Lower is altogether different. The Highest must come down wholly and inhabit in the Lowest, the Lowest must give up altogether its own norms and lift itself into the substance and form too of the Highest.
   Viewed in this light, Blake's memorable Mantra attains a deeper and more momentous significance. For it is not merely Earth the senses and life and Matter that are to be uplifted and affianced to Heaven, but all that remains hidden within the bowels of the Earth, the subterranean regions of Man's consciousness, the slimy viscous undergrowths, the darkest horrors and monstrosities that Man and nature hide in their subconscient and inconscient dungeons of material existence, all these have to be laid bare to the solar gaze of Heaven, burnt or transmuted as deManded by the law of that Supreme Will. That is the Hell that has to be recognised, not rejected and thrown away, but taken up purified and transubstantiated into the body of Heaven itself. The hand of the Highest Heaven must extend and touch the Lowest of the lowest elements, transmute it and set it in its rightful place of honour. A mortal body reconstituted into an immemorial fossil, a lump of coal revivified into a flashing carat of diamond-that shows something of the process underlying the nuptials of which we are speaking.
   The Life Divine
  --
   Walter Hilton: The Scale of Perfection Nicholas Berdyaev: God Made HuMan

0.10 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  attack that can Manifest as an illness. But, as you clearly experienced in your dream, if you are not frightened and go on your
  way unperturbed, nothing bad will happen to you.
  --
  dangerous, for is it possible to satisfy Man's desire?
  Elsewhere he says explicitly that it is useless to try to satisfy
  --
  it is that we take part in as Many items as possible in the
  2nd December programme.3 Would it not be better to
  --
  thinks it will be the opposite. It is true that our perforMance is not up to the mark. I hope and I pray to You
  that the perforMance this evening may be at its best.
  Sweet Mother, take our actions and guide us. You told
  --
  be better) and I have heard a great Many compliments about
  the 2nd December perforMance. You should not listen to people
  who only know how to criticise. Exaggerated criticism is not an
  --
  which is dorMant. Sri Aurobindo also says that it is only
  in the Kaliyuga9 that the Divine Manifests fully because
  Man is in great danger in this age. And here he is! He
  himself reveals the great secret: the Divine has fully Manifested in India. But he has the modesty not to say that
  he himself is this Manifestation!
  Those who accomplish the work are not in the habit of boasting.
  --
  There are too Many tight knots in the immense organisation of this Ashram. When will the promised day
  come when there will be nothing but unmixed harmony,
  --
  Many activities and maintains a fairly high standard -
  one single person in the whole world?"
  --
  We see too Many films these days and I fail to see
  how they educate us!
  --
  What is the best relationship between two huMan
  beings? Mother and son? Brother, friend or lover, etc?
  --
  bad due to the selfish falsehood of huMan nature which prevents
  the vibrations of love from Manifesting in their purity.
  4 June 1963
  --
  would continue his career as a pilot. He is a Man of
  fantastic vitality, full of energy...
  --
  Man is so weak that he is influenced even by the
  wind that blows about him, by a book he reads or a
  --
  idea that woMan is a dangerous being who entices you into sin.
  In children, all this is still subconscious, but it influences their
  --
  huMan difficulty, and that this difficulty will be mastered
  and transformed in him in his lifetime.10
  --
  thought) against the very little discipline that is deManded when
  it is utterly indispensable, as in physical education, for example.
  --
  This morning I saw a Man with protruding ribs,
  deeply depressed hips and twisted legs. It was a pitiful
  --
  What does "Yoga" mean and how Many among us
  are practising it?
  --
  Everything people say is of little importance, because huMan
  judgments are always partial and therefore ignorant.
  --
  Yes, that is what Sri Aurobindo has written Many times; Man
  clings to his misery, his pettiness, his weakness, his ignorance
  --
  perforMance,11 and, what is more, I don't feel at all
  enthusiastic.
  --
  "Law cannot save the world, therefore Moses' ordinances are dead for huManity
  and the Shastra of the Brahmins is corrupt and dying. Law released into freedom is the
  --
  and conjugation which I have corrected Many times.
  One would think that even if you read your notebook when
  --
  which will be huManity's guide towards its future realisation.
  27 November 1963
  --
  Manifested in a constant and effective will.
  29 April 1964
  --
  Joy belongs to the desireless Man.
  Pleasure is within the reach of all living beings, but with its
  --
  desireless Man a sincere sadhak?
  My answers are given in order to open your mind and to make
  --
  (Regarding love) How can one direct this huMan love
  towards the ideal love, the true love?
  --
  immense majority of huMan beings.
  One must live in the consciousness of the Divine Unity to
  --
  does not seem to be evident at all. Moreover, there are Many
  different kinds of sensitivity: some stem from weakness, others
  --
  huMan being is made up of Many different parts, and generally
  one part or another progresses in its turn while the other parts
  --
  in the Government will follow. After that, a young Man
  will appear on the scene who will be guided by a divine
  force coming from a woMan of great spiritual power.
  What do You think about it?
  People say Many things - especially astrologers!
  We have only to wait; we shall surely see what happens.
  --
  Japa: continuous repetition of a Mantra.
  Series Ten - To a Young Captain
  --
  What Man in his ignorance calls "pardon" is the effacement, the
  dissolution of errors committed.
  --
  We see Many people leaving the Ashram, either to
  seek a career or to study; and they are mostly those
  --
  reach the goal. Few are ready for a total consecration. Many
  children who have studied here need to come to grips with life
  --
  you that your question is an ignorant one. There are Many others
  which you could read to advantage and which will make your
  --
  attraction of Man for woMan and of woMan for Man?
  The relationship between Purusha and Prakriti.
  --
  loss for huMan society if persons endowed with an exceptional capacity to serve Mankind, such as a gifted
  doctor or barrister, come to stay here in the Ashram
  --
  On the evening of February 11, Many Ashram buildings were stoned, burned or
  looted, ostensibly as part of an anti-Hindi agitation.
  --
  my teaching to find it in your relations with huMan beings or in
  the nobility of the huMan character or an idea that we are here
  to establish mental and moral and social Truth and justice on
  huMan and egoistic lines. I have never promised to do anything
  of the kind. HuMan nature is made up of imperfections, even
  its righteousness and virtue are pretensions, imperfections and
  --
  an ignorant and imperfect huMan being struggling with the evils
  of the lower nature.... What is created by spiritual progress is an
  --
  towards Man and towards the Divine?
  Why do you put Man and the Divine together?
  It is true that Man is essentially divine, but at present, apart
  from a few very rare exceptions, Man is quite unconscious of the
  Divine he carries within him; and it is just this unconsciousness
  --
  But the shades of difference are subtle and Many, and it is
  by a very attentive and sincere observation (that is to say, free
  --
  The Divine often advises or tries to guide Man,
  knowing very well that His help will be refused. Why
  --
  that only the Divine exists. But the Manifestation is progressive,
  and in order to have the strength to advance by rejecting what
  --
  but they act as separate beings in the Manifestation.
  The individual must make decisions in order to live, but it
  --
  huMan beings to become conscious of it is a fact which can in
  no way affect the fact of the advent of these forces and powers
  --
  body at will"? For example, will a hundred-year old Man
  be able to renew his body and become a young Man of
  twenty-five?
  --
  "No real peace can be till the heart of Man deserves peace;
  the law of Vishnu cannot prevail till the debt to Rudra is paid.
  To turn aside then and preach to a still unevolved Mankind
  the law of love and oneness? Teachers of the law of love and
  --
  salvation. But not till the Time-Spirit in Man is ready, can the
  inner and ultimate prevail over the outer and immediate reality.
  --
  fierce forward labour of Mankind tormented and oppressed by
  the powers that are profiteers of egoistic force and their servants
  --
  it is preparing for the Manifestation of a new force, for
  the descent of the Truth, or is it the result of the action
  --
  comes down to Manifest upon earth, some change is
  effected in the earth's atmosphere."29
  --
  is the resistance in the huMan consciousness to the New Force.
  When the resistance is less, everything takes place harmoniously.
  --
  Not necessarily. HuMan folly takes advantage of the slightest
  cause to Manifest itself.
  17 November 1965
  --
  Manage to enter into the heart. I feel during meditation
  that my consciousness is flying around an impenetrable
  --
  engaged in safeguarding the freedom of Man? Is that the
  Divine Will?
  --
  of a large number of huMan beings who think like them.
  But the Communists and all those who have faith in the
  --
  all the Many and varied opinions on social and political subjects. All these are only OPINIONS and have no value at all
  from the Divine point of view - the Divine who does not
  --
  Are there Many people - I am not speaking of those who
  have a religion: they learn a catechism when they are young and
  --
  - are there Many who believe in the Divine? Not in Europe
  anyway. But even here, there are quite a number who by tradition have a "family deity", yet it doesn't bother them at all
  --
  one has an aspiration that Mankind should become better, or
  less unhappy, less miserable; all sorts of things like that. One
  --
  - not Man-made: spontaneous, a blossoming; one has only to
  see it to be sure that there is a Divine. It is a certainty. One
  --
  There is room for Many other activities which have their
  purpose in an integral Yoga.
  --
  Divine Compassion acting on as Many as it can reach through the nets of the Law and
  giving them their chance; (3) the Divine Grace which acts more incalculably but also
  --
  The ordinary Man is often guided in life by his conscience, isn't he? So what becomes of one who has no
  conscience, who has lost it by having disregarded it too
  --
  People are saying Many things about the 4th of
  May33 - sometimes You too are quoted. But in spite
  --
  Sri Aurobindo wrote: "1.2.34. It is supposed to be always a year of Manifestation.
  2.3.45 is the year of power - when the thing Manifested gets full force. 4.5.67 is the
  year of complete realisation." (Letter of 2 February 1934)
  --
  existence, a moment when, upon earth, everything is being prepared for a new creation, or rather, for a new Manifestation in
  the eternal creation.

01.10 - Nicholas Berdyaev: God Made Human, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
  object:01.10 - Nicholas Berdyaev: God Made HuMan
  author class:Nolini Kanta Gupta
  --
   Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Poets and MysticsNicholas Berdyaev: God Made HuMan
   Nicholas Berdyaev: God Made HuMan
   Nicholas Berdyaev is an ardent worker, as a Russian is naturally expected to be, in the cause of the spiritual rehabilitation of Mankind. He is a Christian, a neo-Christian: some of his conclusions are old-world truths and bear repetition and insistence; others are of a more limited, conditional and even doubtful nature. His conception of the value of huMan person, the dignity and the high reality he gives to it, can never be too welcome in a world where the individual seems to have gone the way of vanished empires and kings and princes. But even more important and interesting is the view he underlines that the true person is a spiritual being, that is to say, it is quite other than the empirical ego that Man normally is"not this that one worships" as the Upanishads too declare. Further, in his spiritual being Man, the individual, is not simply a portion or a fraction; he is, on the contrary, an integer, a complete whole, a creative focus; the true individual is a microcosm yet holding in it and imaging the macrocosm. Only perhaps greater stress is laid upon the aspect of creativity or activism. An Eastern sage, a Vedantin, would look for the true spiritual reality behind the flux of forces: Prakriti or Energy is only the executive will of the Purusha, the Conscious Being. The personality in Nature is a formulation and eManation of the transcendent impersonality.
   There is another aspect of personality as viewed by Berdyaev which involves a bias of the more orthodox Christian faith: the Christ is inseparable from the Cross. So he says: "There is no such thing as personality if there is no capacity for suffering. Suffering is inherent in God too, if he is a personality, and not merely an abstract idea. God shares in the sufferings of men. He yearns for responsive love. There are divine as well as huMan passions and therefore divine or creative personality must always suffer to the end of time. A condition of anguish and distress is inherent in it." The view is logically enforced upon the Christian, it is said, if he is to accept incarnation, God becoming flesh. Flesh cannot but be weak. This very weakness, so huMan, is and must be specially characteristic of God also, if he is one with Man and his lover and saviour.
   Eastern spirituality does not view sorrow and sufferingevilas an integral part of the Divine Consciousness. It is born out of the Divine, no doubt, as nothing can be outside the Divine, but it is a local and temporal formation; it is a disposition consequent upon certain conditions and with the absence or elimination of those conditions, this disposition too disappears. God and the Divine Consciousness can only be purity, light, immortality and delight. The compassion that a Buddha feels for the suffering huManity is not at all a feeling of suffering; pain or any such normal huMan reaction does not enter into its composition; it is the movement of a transcendent consciousness which is beyond and purified of the normal reactions, yet overarching them and entering into them as a soothing and illumining and vivifying presence. The healer knows and understands the pain and suffering of his patient but is not touched by them; he need not contract the illness of his patient in order to be in sympathy with him. The Divine the Soulcan be in flesh and yet not smirched with its mire; the flesh is not essentially or irrevocably the ooze it is under certain given conditions. The divine physical body is composed of radiant matter and one can speak of it even as of the soul that weapons cannot pierce it nor can fire burn it.
   ***

01.10 - Principle and Personality, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   It is asked of us why do we preach a Man and not purely and solely a principle. Our ideal being avowedly the establishment and reign of a new principle of world-order and not gathering recruits for the camp of a sectarian teacher, it seems all the more inconsistent, if not thoroughly ruinous for our cause, that we should lay stress upon a particular individual and incur the danger of overshadowing the universal truths upon which we seek to build huMan society. Now, it is not that we are unconscious or oblivious of the Many evils attendant upon the system of preaching a Man the history of the rise and decay of Many sects and societies is there to give us sufficient warning; and yet if we cannot entirely give the go-by to personalities and stick to mere and bare principles, it is because we have clear reasons for it, because we are not unconscious or oblivious either of the evils that beset the system of preaching the principle alone.
   Religious bodies that are formed through the bhakti and puja for one Man, social reconstructions forced by the will and power of a single individual, have already in the inception this grain of incapacity and disease and death that they are not an integrally self-conscious creation, they are not, as a whole, intelligent and wide awake and therefore constantly responsive to the truths and ideals and realities for which they exist, for which at least, their founder intended them to exist. The light at the apex is the only light and the entire structure is but the shadow of that light; the whole thing has the aspect of a dark mass galvanised into red-hot activity by the passing touch of a dynamo. Immediately however the solitary light fails and the dynamo stops, there is nothing but the original darkness and inertiatoma asit tamasa gudham agre.
   Man, however great and puissant he may be, is a perishable thing. People who gather or are gathered round a Man and cling to him through the tie of a personal relation must fall off and scatter when the Man passes away and the personal tie loses its hold. What remains is a memory, a gradually fading memory. But memory is hardly a creative force, it is a dead, at best, a moribund thing; the real creative power is Presence. So when the great Man's presence, the power that crystallises is gone, the whole edifice crumbles and vanishes into air or remains a mere name.
   Love and admiration for a mahapurusha is not enough, even faith in his gospel is of little avail, nor can actual participation, consecrated work and labour in his cause save the situation; it is only when the principles, the bare realities for which the mahapurusha stands are in the open forum and men have the full and free opportunity of testing and assimilating them, it is only when individuals thus become living embodiments of those principles and realities that we do create a thing universal and perManent, as universal and perManent as earthly things may be. Principles only can embrace and unify the whole of huManity; a particular personality shall always create division and limitation. By placing the Man in front, we erect a wall between the Principle and men at large. It is the principles, on the contrary, that should be given the place of honour: our attempt should be to keep back personalities and make as little use of them as possible. Let the principles work and create in their freedom and power, untrammelled by the limitations of any mere huMan vessel.
   We are quite familiar with this cry so rampant in our democratic ageprinciples and no personalities! And although we admit the justice of it, yet we cannot ignore the trenchant one-sidedness which it involves. It is perhaps only a reaction, a swing to the opposite extreme of a mentality given too much to personalities, as the case generally has been in the past. It may be necessary, as a corrective, but it belongs only to a temporary stage. Since, however, we are after a universal ideal, we must also have an integral method. We shall have to curb Many of our susceptibilities, diminish Many of our apprehensions and soberly strike a balance between opposite extremes.
   We do not speak like politicians or banias; but the very truth of the matter deMands such a policy or line of action. It is very well to talk of principles and principles alone, but what are principles unless they take life and form in a particular individual? They are airy nothings, notions in the brain of logicians and metaphysicians, fit subjects for discussion in the academy, but they are devoid of that vital urge which makes them creative agencies. We have long lines of philosophers, especially European, who most scrupulously avoided all touch of personalities, whose utmost care was to keep principles pure and unsullied; and the upshot was that those principles remained principles only, barren and infructuous, some thing like, in the strong and puissant phrase of BaudelaireLa froide majest de la femme strile. And on the contrary, we have had other peoples, much addicted to personalitiesespecially in Asiawho did not care so much for abstract principles as for concrete embodiments; and what has been the result here? None can say that they did not produce anything or produced only still-born things. They produced living creaturesephemeral, some might say, but creatures that lived and moved and had their days.
   But, it may be asked, what is the necessity, what is the purpose in making it all a one Man show? Granting that principles require personalities for their fructuation and vital functioning, what remains to be envisaged is not one personality but a plural personality, the people at large, as Many individuals of the huMan race as can be consciously imbued with those principles. When principles are made part and parcel of, are concentrated in a single solitary personality, they get "cribbed and cabined," they are vitiated by the idiosyncrasies of the Man, they come to have a narrower field of application; they are emptied of the general verities they contain and finally cease to have any effect.
   The thing, however, is that what you call principles do not drop from heaven in their virgin purity and all at once lay hold of Mankind en masse. It is always through a particular individual that a great principle Manifests itself. Principles do not live in the general mind of Man and even if they live, they live secreted and unconscious; it is only a puissant personality, who has lived the principle, that can bring it forward into life and action, can awaken, like the Vedic Dawn, what was dead in allmritam kanchana bodhayanti. Men in general are by themselves 'inert and indifferent; they have little leisure or inclination to seek, from any inner urge of their own, for principles and primal truths; they become conscious of these only when expressed and embodied in some great and rare soul. An Avatar, a Messiah or a Prophet is the centre, the focus through which a Truth and Law first dawns and then radiates and spreads abroad. The little lamps are all lighted by the sparks that the great torch scatters.
   And yet we yield to none in our deMand for holding forth the principles always and ever before the wide open gaze of all. The principle is there to make people self-knowing and self-guiding; and the Man is also there to illustrate that principle, to serve as the hope and prophecy of achievement. The living soul is there to touch your soul, if you require the touch; and the principle is there by which to test and testify. For, we do not ask anybody to be a mere automaton, a blind devotee, a soul without individual choice and initiative. On the contrary, we insist on each and every individual to find his own soul and stand on his own Truththis is the fundamental principle we declare, the only creedif creed it be that we ask people to note and freely follow. We ask all people to be fully self-dependent and self-illumined, for only thus can a real and solid reconstruction of huMan nature and society be possible; we do not wish that they should bow down ungrudgingly to anything, be it a principle or a personality. In this respect we claim the very first rank of iconoclasts and anarchists. And along with that, if we still choose to remain an idol-lover and a hero-worshipper, it is because we recognise that our mind, huMan as it is, being not a simple equation but a complex paradox, the idol or the hero symbolises for us and for those who so will, the very iconoclasm and anarchism and perhaps other more positive things as wellwhich we behold within and seek to Manifest.
   The world is full of ikons and archons; we cannot escape them, even if we try the world itself being a great ikon and as great an archon. Those who swear by principles, swear always by some personality or other, if not by a living creature then by a lifeless book, if not by Religion then by Science, if not by the East then by the West, if not by Buddha or Christ then by Bentham or Voltaire. Only they do it unwittingly they change one set of personalities for another and believe they have rejected them all. The veils of Maya are a thousand-fold tangle and you think you have entirely escaped her when you have only run away from one fold to fall into another. The wise do not attempt to reject and negate Maya, but consciously accept herfreedom lies in a knowing affirmation. So we too have accepted and affirmed an icon, but we have done it consciously and knowingly; we are not bound by our idol, we see the truth of it, and we serve and utilise it as best as we may.

01.11 - Aldous Huxley: The Perennial Philosophy, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Nicholas Berdyaev: God Made HuMan Goethe
   Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Poets and MysticsAldous Huxley: The Perennial Philosophy
  --
   "The touch of Earth is always reinvigorating to the son of Earth, even when he seeks a supraphysical Knowledge. It may even be said that the supraphysical can only be really mastered in its fullnessto its heights we can always reachwhen we keep our feet firmly on the physical. 'Earth is His footing' says the Upanishad, whenever it images the Self that Manifests in the universe." Huxley's commentary is as follows:
   "To its heights we can always come. For those of us who are still splashing about in the lower ooze, the phrase has a rather ironical ring. Nevertheless, in the light of even the most distant acquaintance with the heights and the fullness, it is possible to understand what its author means. To discover the Kingdom of God exclusively within oneself is easier than to discover it, not only there, but also in the outer worlds of minds and things and living creatures. It is easier because the heights within reveal themselves to those who are ready to exclude from their purview all that lies without. And though this exclusion may be a painful and mortificatory process, the fact remains that it is less arduous than the process of inclusion, by which we come to know the fullness as well as the heights of spiritual life. Where there is exclusive concentration on the heights within, temptations and distractions are avoided and there is a general denial and suppression. But when the hope is to know God inclusivelyto realise the divine Ground in the world as well as in the soul, temptations and distractions must not be avoided, but submitted to and used as opportunities for advance; there must be no suppression of outward-turning activities, but a transformation of them so that they become sacramental."
   The neatness of the commentary cannot be improved upon. Only with regard to the "ironical ring" of which Huxley speaks, it has just to be pointed out, as he himself seems to understand, that the "we" referred to in the phrase does not mean huManity in general that 'splashes about in the lower ooze' but those who have a sufficiently developed inner spiritual life.
   There is a quotation from Lao Tzu put under the heading "Grace and Free Will": "It was when the Great Way declined that huMan kindness and morality arose".
   We fear Mr. Huxley has completely missed the point of the cryptic sentence. He seems to take it as meaning that huMan kindness and morality are a means to the recovery of the Lost Way-although codes of ethics and deliberate choices are not sufficient in themselves, they are only a second best, yet they mark the rise of self-consciousness and have to be utilised to pass on into the unitive knowledge that is Tao. This explanation or amplification seems to us somewhat confused and irrelevant to the idea expressed in the apophthegm. What is stated here is much simpler and transparent. It is this that when the Divine is absent and the divine Knowledge, then comes in Man with his huMan mental knowledge: it is Man's huManity that clouds the Divine and to reach the' Divine one must reject the huMan values, all the moralities, sarva dharmn, seek only the Divine. The lesser way lies through the dualities, good and evil, the Great Way is beyond them and cannot be limited or measured by the relative standards. Especially in the modern age we see the decline and almost the disappearance of the Greater Light and instead a thousand smaller lights are lighted which vainly strive to dispel the gathering darkness. These do not help, they are false lights and men are apt to cling to them, shutting their eyes to the true one which is not that that one worships here and now, nedam yadidam upsate.
   There is a beautiful quotation from the Chinese sage, Wu Ch'ng-n, regarding the doubtful utility of written Scriptures:
  --
   A sage can smile and smile delightfully! The parable illustrates the well-known Biblical phrase, 'the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life'. The monkey is symbolical of the ignorant, arrogant, fussy huMan mind. There is another Buddhistic story about the monkey quoted in the book and it is as delightful; but being somewhat long, we cannot reproduce it here. It tells how the mind-monkey is terribly agile, quick, clever, competent, moving lightning-fast, imagining that it can easily go to the end of the world, to Paradise itself, to Brahmic status. But alas! when he thought he was speeding straight like a rocket or an arrow and arrive right at the target, he found that he was spinning like a top at the same spot, and what he very likely took to be the very fragrance of the topmost supreme heaven was nothing but the aroma of his own urine.
   ***
   Nicholas Berdyaev: God Made HuMan Goethe

01.11 - The Basis of Unity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   A modern society or people cannot have religion, that is to say, credal religion, as the basis of its organized collective life. It was mediaeval society and people that were organized on that line. Indeed mediaevalism means nothing more and nothing lessthan that. But whatever the need and justification in the past, the principle is an anachronism under modern conditions. It was needed, perhaps, to keep alive a truth which goes into the very roots of huMan life and its deepest aspiration; and it was needed also for a dynamic application of that truth on a larger scale and in smaller details, on the mass of Mankind and in its day to day life. That was the aim of the Church Militant and the Khilafat; that was the spirit, although in a more Sattwic way, behind the Buddhistic evangelism or even Hindu colonization.
   The truth behind a credal religion is the aspiration towards the realization of the Divine, some ultimate reality that gives a perManent meaning and value to the huMan life, to the existence lodged in this 'sphere of sorrow' here below. Credal paraphernalia were necessary to express or buttress this core of spiritual truth when Mankind, in the mass, had not attained a certain level of enlightenment in the mind and a certain degree of development in its life-relations. The modern age is modern precisely because it had attained to a necessary extent this mental enlightenment and this life development. So the scheme or scaffolding that was required in the past is no longer unavoidable and can have either no reality at all or only a modified utility.
   A modern people is a composite entity, especially with regard to its religious affiliation. Not religion, but culture is the basis of modern collective life, national or social. Culture includes in its grain that fineness of temperament which appreciates all truths behind all forms, even when there is a personal allegiance to one particular form.
  --
   The rise of this spirit in modern times and conditions is a phenomenon that has to be explained and faced: it is a ghost that has come out of the past and has got to be laid and laid for good. First of all, it is a reaction from modernism; it is a reaction from the modernist denial of certain fundamental and eternal truths, of God, soul, and immortality: it is a reaction from the modernist affirmation of the mere economic Man. And it is also a defensive gesture of a particular complex of consciousness that has grown and lives powerfully and now apprehends expurgation and elimination.
   In Europe such a contingency did not arise, because the religious spirit, rampant in the days of Inquisitions and St. Bartholomews, died away: it died, and (or, because) it was replaced by a spirit that was felt as being equally, if not more, au thentic and, which for the moment, suffused the whole consciousness with a large and high afflatus, commensurate with the amplitude of Man's aspiration. I refer, of course, to the spirit of the Renaissance. It was a spirit profane and secular, no doubt, but on that level it brought a catholicity of temper and a richness in varied interesta huManistic culture, as it is calledwhich constituted a living and unifying ideal for Europe. That spirit culminated in the great French Revolution which was the final coup de grace to all that still remained of mediaevalism, even in its outer structure, political and economical.
   In India the spirit of renascence came very late, late almost by three centuries; and even then it could not flood the whole of the continent in all its nooks and corners, psychological and physical. There were any number of pockets (to use a current military phrase) left behind which guarded the spirit of the past and offered persistent and obdurate resistance. Perhaps, such a dispensation was needed in India and inevitable also; inevitable, because the religious spirit is closest to India's soul and is its most direct expression and cannot be uprooted so easily; needed, because India's and the world's future deMands it and depends upon it.
   Only, the religious spirit has to be bathed and purified and enlightened by the spirit of the renascence: that is to say, one must learn and understand and realize that Spirit is the thing the one thing needfulTamevaikam jnatha; 'religions' are its names and forms, appliances and decorations. Let us have by all means the religious spirit, the fundamental experience that is the inmost truth of all religions, that is the matter of our soul; but in our mind and life and body let there be a luminous catholicity, let these organs and instruments be trained to see and compare and appreciate the variety, the numberless facets which the one Spirit naturally presents to the huMan consciousness. Ekam sat viprh bahudh vadanti. It is an ancient truth that Man discovered even in his earliest seekings; but it still awaits an adequate expression and application in life.
   II
   India's historical development is marked by a special characteristic which is at once the expression of her inmost nature and the setting of a problem which she has to solve for herself and for the whole huMan race. I have spoken of the diversity and divergence of affiliations in a modern social unit. But what distinguishes India from all other peoples is that the diversity and divergence have culminated here in contradictoriness and mutual exclusion.
   The first extremes that met in India and fought and gradually coalesced to form a single cultural and social whole were, as is well known, the Aryan and the non-Aryan. Indeed, the geologists tell us, the land itself is divided into two parts structurally quite different and distinct, the Deccan plateau and the Himalayan ranges with the Indo-Gangetic plain: the former is formed out of the most ancient and stable and, on the whole, horizontally bedded rocks of the earth, while the latter is of comparatively recent origin, formed out of a more flexible and weaker belt (the Himalayan region consisting of a colossal flexing and crumpling of strata). The disparity is so much that a certain group of geologists hold that the Deccan plateau did not at all form part of the Asiatic continent, but had drifted and dashed into it:in fact the Himalayas are the result of this mighty impact. The usual division of an Aryan and a Dravidian race may be due to a memory of the clash of the two continents and their races.
  --
   Unlike the previous irruptions that merged and were lost in the general life and consciousness, Islam entered as a leaven that maintained its integrity and revolutionized Indian life and culture by infusing into its tone a Semitic accent. After the Islamic impact India could not be what she was beforea change became inevitable even in the major note. It was a psychological cataclysm almost on a par with the geological one that formed her body; but the spirit behind which created the body was working automatically, inexorably towards the greater and more difficult synthesis deManded by the situation. Only the thing is to be done now consciously, not through an unconscious process of laissez-faire as on the inferior stages of evolution in the past. And that is the true genesis of the present conflict.
   History abounds in instances of racial and cultural immixture. Indeed, all major huMan groupings of today are invariably composite formations. Excepting, perhaps, some primitiveaboriginal tribes there are no pure races existent. The Briton, the Dane, the Anglo-Saxon, and the NorMan have combined to form the British; a FrenchMan has a Gaul, a RoMan, a Frank in him; and a Spaniard's blood would show an Iberian, a Latin, a Gothic, a Moorish element in it. And much more than a people, a culture in modern times has been a veritable cockpit of multifarious and even incongruous elements. There are instances also in which a perfect fusion could not be accomplished, and one element had to be rejected or crushed out. The complete disappearance of the Aztecs and Mayas in South America, the decadence of the Red Indians in North America, of the Negroes in Africa as a result of a fierce clash with European peoples and European culture illustrate the point.
   Nature, on the whole, has solved the problem of blood fusion and mental fusion of different peoples, although on a smaller scale. India today presents the problem on a larger scale and on a higher or deeper level. The deMand is for a spiritual fusion and unity. Strange to say, although the Spirit is the true bed-rock of unitysince, at bottom, it means identityit is on this plane that Mankind has not yet been able to really meet and coalesce. India's genius has been precisely working in the line of a perfect solution of this supreme problem.
   Islam comes with a full-fledged spiritual soul and a mental and vital formation commensurable with that inner being and consciousness. It comes with a dynamic spirit, a warrior mood, that aims at conquering the physical world for the Lord, a temperament which Indian spirituality had not, or had lost long before, if she had anything of it. This was, perhaps, what Vivekananda meant when he spoke graphically of a Hindu soul with a Muslim body. The Islamic dispensation, however, brings with it not only something complementary, but also something contradictory, if not for anything else, at least for the strong individuality which does not easily yield to assimilation. Still, in spite of great odds, the process of assimilation was going on slowly and surely. But of late it appears to have come to a dead halt; difficulties have been presented which seem insuperable.
   If religious toleration were enough, if that made up Man's highest and largest achievement, then Nature need not have attempted to go beyond cultural fusion; a liberal culture is the surest basis for a catholic religious spirit. But such a spirit of toleration and catholicity, although it bespeaks a widened consciousness, does not always enshrine a profundity of being. Nobody is more tolerant and catholic than a dilettante, but an ardent spiritual soul is different.
   To be loyal to one's line of self-fulfilment, to follow one's self-law, swadharma, wholly and absolutelywithout this no spiritual life is possible and yet not to come into clash with other lines and loyalties, nay more, to be in positive harmony with them, is a problem which has not been really solved. It was solved, perhaps, in the consciousness of a Ramakrishna, a few individuals here and there, but it has always remained a source of conflict and disharmony in the general mind even in the field of spirituality. The clash of spiritual or religious loyalties has taken such an acute form in India today, they have been carried to the bitter extreme, in order, we venture to say, that the final synthesis might be absolute and irrevocable. This is India's mission to work out, and this is the lesson which she brings to the world.
  --
   It is precisely strong nuclei that are needed (even, perhaps, one strong nucleus is sufficient) where the single and integrated spiritual consciousness is an accomplished and established fact: that acts inevitably as a solvent drawing in and assimilating or transforming and re-creating as much, of the surroundings as its own degree and nature of achievement inevitably deMand.
   India did not and could not stop at mere cultural fusionwhich was a supreme gift of the Moguls. She did not and could not stop at another momentous cultural fusion brought about by the European impact. She aimed at something more. Nature deManded of her that she should discover a greater secret of huMan unity and through progressive experiments apply and establish it in fact. Christianity did not raise this problem of the greater synthesis, for the Christian peoples were more culture-minded than religious-minded. It was left for an Asiatic people to set the problem and for India to work out the solution.
   ***

01.12 - Goethe, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   GerMan obscured the spirit of a Greek.
   Sri Aurobindo
   The year 1949 has just celebrated the 200th anniversary of the birth of the great force of light that was Goethe. We too remember him on the occasion, and will try to present in a few words, as we see it, the fundamental experience, the major Intuition that stirred this huMan soul, the lesson he brought to Mankind. Goe the was a great poet. He showed how a language, perhaps least poetical by nature, can be moulded to embody the great beauty of great poetry. He made the GerMan language sing, even as the sun's ray made the stone of Memnon sing when falling upon it. Goe the was a Man of consummate culture. Truly and almost literally it could be said of him that nothing huMan he considered foreign to his inquiring mind. And Goe the was a Man of great wisdom. His observation and judgment on thingsno matter to whatever realm they belonghave an arresting appropriateness, a happy and revealing insight. But above all, he was an aspiring soulaspiring to know and be in touch with the hidden Divinity in Man and the world.
   Goe the and the Problem of Evil
   No problem is so vital to the huMan consciousness as the problem of Evilits why and wherefore It is verily the Sphinx Riddle. In all ages and in all climes Man has tried to answer; the answers are of an immense variety, but none seems to be sure and certain. Goethe's was an ardent soul seeking to embrace the living truth whole and entire; the problem was not merely of philosophical interest to him, but a burning question of life and deathlife and death of the body and even of the soul.
   One view considers Evil as coeval with Good: the Prince of Evil is God's peer, equal to him in all ways, absolutely separate, independent and self-existent. Light and Darkness are eternal principles living side by side, possessing equal reality. For, although it is permissible to the individual to pass out of the Darkness and enter into Light, the Darkness itself does not disappear: it remains and maintains its domain, and even it is said that some huMan beings are meant eternally for this domain. That is the Manichean principle and that also is fundamentally the dualistic conception of chit-achit in some Indian systems (although the principle of chit or light is usually given a higher position and priority of excellence).
   The Christian too accepts the dual principle, but does not give equal status to the two. Satan is there, an eternal reality: it is anti-God, it seeks to oppose God, frustrate his work. It is the great tempter whose task it is to persuade, to inspire Man to remain always an earthly creature and never turn to know or live in God. Now the crucial question that arises is, what is the necessity of this Antagonist in God's scheme of creation? What is the meaning of this struggle and battle? God could have created, if he had chosen, a world without Evil. The orthodox Christi an answer is that in that case one could not have fully appreciated the true value and glory of God's presence. It is to Manifest and proclaim the great victory that the strife and combat has been arranged in which Man triumphs in the end and God's work stands vindicated. The place of Satan is always Hell, but he cannot drag down a soul into his pit to hold it there eternally (although according to one doctrine there are or may be certain eternally damned souls).
   Goe the carries the process of convergence and even harmony of the two powers a little further and shows that although they are contrary apparently, they are not contradictory principles in essence. For, Satan is, after all, God's servant, even a very obedient servant; he is an instrument in the hand of the Almighty to work out His purpose. The purpose is to help and lead Man, although in a devious way, towards a greater understanding, a nearer approach to Himself.
   The Challenge and the Pact
   There is on the earthly stage the play of a challenge, a twofold challenge, one between God and Satan and another, as a consequence, between Man and Satan.
   Satan is jealous of Man who is God's favourite. He tells God that his partiality to Man is misplaced. God has put into Man a little of his light (reason and intelligence and something more perhaps), but to what purpose? Man tries to soar, he thinks he flies high and wide, but in fact he is and will be an insect that "lies always in the grass and sings its old song in the grass." God answers that whatever the perplexity in which Man now is, in the end he will come out and reach the Light with a greater and richer experience of it. Satan smiles in return and says he will prove otherwise. Given a free hand, he can do whatever he likes with Man: "Dust shall he eat and with a relish." God willingly agrees to the challenge: there is no harm in Satan's trying his hand. Indeed, Satan will prove to be a good companion to Man; for Man is normally prone to inertia and sinks into repose and rest and stagnation. Satan will be the goad, the force that drives towards ceaseless activity. For activity is life, and without activity no progress.
   Thus, as sanctioned by God, there is a competition, a wager between Man and Satan. The pact between the parties is this that, on the one hand, Satan will serve Man here in life upon earth, and on the other hand, in return, Man will have to serve Satan there, on the other side of life. That is to say, Satan will give the whole world to Man to enjoy, Man will have to give Satan only his soul. Man in his ignorance says he does not care for his soul, does not know of a there or elsewhere: he will be satisfied if he gets what he wants upon earth. That, evidently, is the deMand of what is familiarly known as life-force (lan vital): the utmost fulfilment of the life-force is what Man stands for, although the full significance of the movement may not be clear to him or even to Satan at the moment. For life-force does not necessarily drag Man down, as its grand finale as it were, into hellhowever much Satan might wish it to be so. In what way, we shall see presently. Now Satan promises Man all that he would desire and even more: he would give him his fill so' that he will ask for no more. Man takes up the challenge and declares that his hunger is insatiable, whatever Satan can bring to it, it will take in and press on: satisfaction and satiety will never come in his way. Satan thinks he knows better, for he is armed with a master weapon to lay Man low and make him cry halt!
   Love HuMan and Love Divine
   Satan proposes to lead Man down into hell through a sure means, nothing more sure, according to him, viz., love for a woMan and a woMan's love in return. Nothing like that to make Man earth-bound or hell-bound and force out of him the nostalgic cry, "Time must have a stop." A most simple, primal and primeval lyric love will most suit Satan's purpose. Hence the Margaret episode. Love=Passion=Lust=Hell; that is the inevitable equation sequence, and through which runs the magic thread of infatuation. And that charm is invincible. Satan did succeed and was within an ace, as they say, of the final and definitive triumph: but that was not to be, for he left out of account an incalculable element. Love, even huMan love has, at least can have, a wonderful power, the potency of reversing the natural decree and bring about a supernatural intervention. HuMan love can at a crucial momentin extremiscall down the Divine Grace, which means God's love for Man. And the soul meant for perdition and about to be seized and carried away by Satan finds itself suddenly free and lifted up and borne by Heaven's messengers. HuMan Jove is divine love itself in earthly form and figure and whatever its apparent aberrations it is in soul and substance that thing. Satan is hoisted with his own petard. That is God's irony.
   But Goethe's Satan seems to know or feel something of his fate. He knows his function and the limit too of his function. He speaks of the doomsday for people, but it is his doomsday also, he says in mystic terms. Yes, it is his doomsday, for it is the day of Man's liberation. Satan has to release Man from the pact that stands cancelled. The soul of Man cannot be sold, even if he wanted it.
   The Cosmic Rhythm
   The angels weave the symphony that is creation. They represent the various notes and rhythmsin their higher and purer degrees that make up the grand harmony of the spheres. It is magnificent, this music that moves the cosmos, and wonderful the glory of God Manifest therein. But is it absolutely perfect? Is there nowhere any flaw in it? There is a doubting voice that enters a dissenting note. That is Satan, the Antagonist, the Evil One. Man is the weakest link in the chain of the apparently all-perfect harmony. And Satan boldly proposes to snap it if God only let him do so. He can prove to God that the true nature of his creation is not cosmos but chaos not a harmony in peace and light, but a confusion, a Walpurgis Night. God acquiesces in the play of this apparent breach and proves in the end that it is part of a wider scheme, a vaster harmony. Evil is rounded off by Grace.
   The total eradication of Evil from the world and huMan nature and the remoulding of a terrestrial life in the substance and pattern of the Highest Good that is beyond all dualities is a conception which it was not for Goe the to envisage. In the order of reality or existence, first there is the consciousness of division, of trenchant separation in which Good is equated with not-evil and evil with not-good. This is the outlook of individualised consciousness. Next, as the consciousness grows and envelops the whole existence, good and evil are both embraced and are found to form a secret and magic harmony. That is the universal or cosmic consciousness. And Goethe's genius seems to be an outflowering of something of this status of consciousness. But there is still a higher status, the status of transcendence in which evil is not simply embraced but dissolved and even transmuted into a supreme reality of which it is an aberration, a reflection or projection, a lower formulation. That is the mystery of a spiritual realisation to which Goe the aspired perhaps, but had not the necessary initiation to enter into.
   ***

01.12 - Three Degrees of Social Organisation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Declaration of Rights is a characteristic modern phenomenon. It is a message of liberty and freedom,no doubt of secular liberty and freedomthings not very common in the old world; and yet at the same time it is a clarion that calls for and prepares strife and battle. If the conception of Right has sanctified the individual or a unit collectivity, it has also pari passu developed a fissiparous tendency in huMan organisation. Society based on or living by the principle of Right becomes naturally and inevitably a competitive society. Where Man is regarded as nothing moreand, of course, nothing lessthan a bundle of rights, huMan aggregation is bound to be an exact image of Darwinian Naturered in tooth and claw.
   But Right is not the only term on which an ideal or even a decent society can be based. There is another term which can serve equally well, if not better. I am obviously referring to the conception of duty. I tis an old world conception; it isa conception particularly familiar to the East. The Indian term for Right is also the term for dutyadhikara means both. In Europe too, in more recent times, when after the frustration of the dream of a new world envisaged by the French Revolution, Man was called upon again to rise and hope, it was Mazzini who brought forward the new or discarded principle as a Mantra replacing the other more dangerous one. A hierarchy of duties was given by him as the pattern of a fulfilled ideal life. In India, in our days the distinction between the two attitudes was very strongly insisted upon by the great Vivekananda.
   Vivekananda said that if huMan society is to be remodelled, one must first of all learn not to think and act in terms of claims and rights but in terms of duties and obligations. Fulfil your duties conscientiously, the rights will take care of themselves; it is such an attitude that can give Man the right poise, the right impetus, the right outlook with regard to a collective living. If instead of each one deManding what one considers as one's dues and consequently scrambling and battling for them, and most often not getting them or getting at a ruinous pricewhat made Arjuna cry, "What shall I do with all this kingdom if in regaining it I lose all my kith and kin dear to me?"if, indeed, instead of claiming one's right, one were content to know one's duty and do it as it should be done, then not only there would be peace and amity upon earth, but also each one far from losing anything would find miraculously all that one most needs and must have,the necessary, the right rights and all.
   It might be objected here however that actually in the history of huManity the conception of Duty has been no less pugnacious than that of Right. In certain ages and among certain peoples, for example, it was considered the imperative duty of the faithful to kill or convert by force or otherwise as Many as possible belonging to other faiths: it was the mission of the good shepherd to burn the impious and the heretic. In recent times, it was a sense of high and solemn duty that perpetrated what has been termed "purges"brutalities undertaken, it appears, to purify and preserve the integrity of a particular ideological, social or racial aggregate. But the real name of such a spirit is not duty but fanaticism. And there is a considerable difference between the two. Fanaticism may be defined as duty running away with itself; but what we are concerned with here is not the aberration of duty, but duty proper self-poised.
   One might claim also on behalf of the doctrine of Right that the right kind of Right brings no harm, it is as already stated another name for liberty, for the privilege of living and it includes the obligation to let live. One can do what one likes provided one does not infringe on an equal right of others to do the same. The measure of one's liberty is equal to the measure of others' liberty.
  --
   Indian wisdom has found this other, a fairer terma tertium quid,the mystic factor, sought for by so Many philosophers on so Many counts. That is the very well- known, the very familiar termDharma. What is Dharma then? How does it accomplish the miracle which to others seems to have proved an impossibility? Dharma is self-law, that is to say, the law of the Self; it is the rhythm and movement of our inner or inmost being, the spontaneous working out of our truth-conscious nature.
   We may perhaps view the three terms Right, Duty and Dharma as degrees of an ascending consciousness. Consciousness at Its origin and in its primitive formulation is dominated by the principle of inertia (tamas); in that state things have mostly an undifferentiated collective existence, they helplessly move about acted upon by forces outside them. A rise in growth and evolution brings about differentiation, specialisation, organisation. And this means consciousness of oneself of the distinct and separate existence of each and everyone, in other words, self-assertion, the claim, the right of each individual unit to be itself, to become itself first and foremost. It is a necessary development; for it signifies the growth of self consciousness in the units out of a mass unconsciousness or semi-consciousness. It is the expression of rajas, the mode of dynamism, of strife and struggle, it is the corrective of tamas.
  --
   The conception of Right had to appear in order to bring out the principle of individuality, of personal freedom and fulfilment. For, a true healthy collectivity is the association and organisation of free and self-determinate units. The growth of independent individuality naturally means at first clash and rivalry, and a violently competitive society is the result. It is only at this stage that the conception of duty can fruitfully come in and develop in Man and his society the mode of Sattwa, which is that of light and wisdom, of toleration and harmony. Then only a society is sought to be moulded on the principle of co-ordination and co-operation.
   Still, the conception of duty cannot finally and definitively solve the problem. It cannot arrive at a perfect harmonisation of the conflicting claims of individual units; for, duty, as I have already said, is a child of mental idealism, and although the mind can exercise some kind of control over life-forces, it cannot altogether eliminate the seeds of conflict that lie imbedded in the very nature of life. It is for this reason that there is an element of constraint in duty; it is, as the poet says, the "stern daughter of the Voice of God". One has to compel oneself, one has to use force on oneself to carry out one's dutythere is a feeling somehow of its being a bitter pill. The cult of duty means rajas controlled and coerced by Sattwa, not the transcendence of rajas. This leads us to the high and supreme conception of Dharma, which is a transcendence of the gunas. Dharma is not an ideal, a standard or a rule that one has to obey: it is the law of self-nature that one inevitably follows, it is easy, spontaneous, delightful. The path of duty is heroic, the path of Dharma is of the gods, godly (cf. Virabhava and Divyabhava of the Tantras).
   The principle of Dharma then inculcates that each individual must, in order to act, find out his truth of being, his true soul and inmost consciousness: one must entirely and integrally merge oneself into that, be identified with it in such a Manner that all acts and feelings and thoughts, in fact all movements, inner and outerspontaneously and irrepressibly well out of that fount and origin. The individual souls, being made of one truth-nature in its multiple modalities, when they live, move and have their being in its essential law and dynamism, there cannot but be absolute harmony and perfect synthesis between all the units, even as the sun and moon and stars, as the Veda says, each following its specific orbit according to its specific nature, never collide or haltna me thate na tas thatuh but weave out a faultless pattern of symphony.
   The future society of Man is envisaged as something of like nature. When the mortal being will have found his immortal soul and divine self, then each one will be able to give full and free expression to his self-nature (swabhava); then indeed the utmost sweep of dynamism in each and all will not cause clash or conflict; on the contrary, each will increase the other and there will be a global increment and fulfilmentparasparam bhavayantah. The division and conflict, the stress and strain that belong to the very nature of the inferior level of being and consciousness will then have been transcended. It is only thus that a diviner huManity can be born and replace all the other moulds and types that can never lead to anything final and absolutely satisfactory.
   ***

01.13 - T. S. Eliot: Four Quartets, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   It is the song of redemption, of salvation achieved, of Paradise regained. The full story of the purgatory, of Man's calvary is beautifully hymned in these exquisite lines of a haunting poetic beauty married to a real mystic sense:
   The dove descending breaks the air
  --
   The Divine Love is a greater fire than the low smouldering fire that our secular unregenerate life is. One has to choose and declare his adhesion. Indeed, the stage of conversion, the crucial turn from the ordinary life to the spiritual life Eliot has characterised in a very striking Manner. We usually say, sometimes in an outburst of grief, sometimes in a spirit of sudden disgust and renunciation that the world is dark and dismal and lonesome, the only thing to do here is to be done with it. The true renunciation, that which is deep and abiding, is not, however, so simple a thing, such a short cut. So our poet says, but the world is not dark enough, it is not lonesome enough: the world lives and moves in a superficial half-light, it is neither real death nor real life, it is death in life. It is this miserable mediocrity, the shallow uncertainty of consciousness that spells danger and ruin for the soul. Hence the poet exclaims:
   . . . . Not here
  --
   Yes, that is the condition deManded, an entire vacuity in which nothing moves. That is the real Dark Night of the Soul. It is then only that the Grace leans down and descends, then only beams in the sweet Light of lights. Eliot has expressed the experience in these lines of rare beauty and sincerity :
   Time and the bell have buried the day,
  --
   But Thompson was not an intellectual, his doubts and despondencies were not of the mental order, he was a boiling, swelling life-surge, a geyser, a volcano. He, too, crossed the Night and saw the light of Day, but in a different way. Well, I he did not march into the day, it was the Day that marched I into him! Yes, the Divine Grace came and seized him from behind with violence. A modern, a modernist consciousness cannot expect that indulgence. God meets him only halfway, he has to work up himself the other half. He has laid so Many deMands and conditions: the knots in his case are not cut asunder but slowly disengaged.
   The modern temper is especially partial to harmony: it cannot assert and reject unilaterally and categorically, it wishes to go round an object and view all its sides; it asks for a synthesis and reconciliation of differences and contraries. Two major chords of life-experience that deMand accord are Life and Death, Time and Eternity. Indeed, the problem of Time hangs heavy on the huMan consciousness. It has touched to the quick philosophers and sages in all ages and climes; it is the great question that confronts the spiritual seeker, the riddle that the Sphinx of life puts to the journeying soul for solution.
   A modern Neo-Brahmin, Aldous Huxley, has given a solution of the problem in his now famous Shakespearean apothegm, "Time must have a stop". That is an old-world solution rediscovered by the modern mind in and through the ravages of Time's storm and stress. It means, salvation lies, after all, beyond the flow of Time, one must free oneself from the vicious and unending circle of mortal and mundane life. As the Rajayogi controls and holds his breath, stills all life-movement and realises a dead-stop of consciousness (Samadhi), even so one must control and stop all secular movements in oneself and attain a timeless stillness and vacancy in which alone the true spiritual light and life can descend and Manifest. That is the age-long and ancient solution to which the Neo-Brahmin as well the Neo-Christian adheres.
   Eliot seems to demur, however, and does not go to that extreme length. He wishes to go beyond, but to find out the source and matrix of the here below. As I said, he seeks a synthesis and not a mere transcendence: the transcendence is indeed a part of the synthesis, the other part is furnished by an imManence. He does not cut away altogether from Time, but reaches its outermost limit, its rim, its summit, where it stops, not altogether annihilated, but held in suspended animation. That is the "still point" to which he refers in the following lines:
   At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
  --
   All Manner of thing shall be well. 12
   Nothing can be clearer with regard to the ultimate end the poet has in view. Listen once more to the hymn of the higher reconciliation:
  --
   Our poet is too self-conscious, he himself feels that he has not the perfect voice. A Homer, even a Milton possesses a unity of tone and a wholeness of perception which are denied to the modern. To the modern, however, the old masters are not subtle enough, broad enough, psychological enough, let us say the word, spiritual enough. And yet the poetic inspiration, more than the religious urge, needs the injunction not to be busy with too Many things, but to be centred upon the one thing needful, viz., to create poetically and not to discourse philosophically or preach prophetically. Not that it is impossible for the poet to swallow the philosopher and the prophet, metabolising them into the substance of his bone and marrow, of "the trilling wire in his blood", as Eliot graphically expresses. That perhaps is the consummation towards which poetry is tending. But at present, in Eliot, at least, the strands remain distinct, each with its own temper and rhythm, not fused and moulded into a single streamlined form of beauty. Our poet flies high, very high indeed at times, often or often he flies low, not disdaining the perilous limit of bathos. Perhaps it is all wilful, it is a Mannerism which he cherishes. The Mannerism may explain his psychology and enshrine his philosophy. But the poet, the magician is to be looked for elsewhere. In the present collection of poems it is the philosophical, exegetical, discursive Eliot who dominates: although the high lights of the subject-matter may be its justification. Still even if we have here doldrums like
   That the past has another pattern, and ceases to be a mere sequence

01.14 - Nicholas Roerich, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The call that stirred a Western soul, made him a wanderer over the world in quest of the Holy Grail and finally lodged him in the Home of the Snows is symbolic of a more than individual destiny. It is representative of the secret history of a whole culture and civilisation that have been ruling huManity for some centuries, its inner want and need and hankering and fulfilment. The West shall come to the East and be reborn. That is the prophecy of occult seers and sages.
   I speak of Roerich as a Western soul, but more precisely perhaps he is a soul of the mid-region (as also in another sense we shall see subsequently) intermediary between the East and the West. His external make-up had all the characteristic elements of the Western culture, but his mind and temperament, his inner soul was oriental. And yet it was not the calm luminous staticancientsoul that an Indian or a Chinese sage is; it is a nomad soul, newly awakened, young and fresh and ardent, something primitive, pulsating with the unspoilt green sap of life something in the Manner of WhitMan. And that makes him all the more representative of the young and ardent West yearning for the light that was never on sea or land.
   Is it not strange that one should look to the East for the light? There is a light indeed that dwells in the setting suns, but that is the inferior light, the light that moves level with the earth, pins us down to the normal and ordinary life and consciousness: it" leads into the Night, into Nihil, pralaya. It is the light of the morning sun that Man looks up to in his forward march, the sun that rises in the East whom the Vedic Rishi invoked in these magnificent lines:
   Lo, the supreme light of all lights is come, a vast and varied consciousness is born in us. . . .
  --
   Indeed, Roerich considers the Himalayas as the very abode, the tabernacle itself thesanctum sanctorumof the Spirit, the Light Divine. Many of Roerich's paintings have mountain ranges, especially snow-bound mountain ranges, as their theme. There is a strange kinship between this yearning artistic soul, which seems solitary in spite of its ardent huManism, and the silent heights, rising white tier upon tier reflecting prism like the fiery glowing colours, the vast horizons, the wide vistas vanishing beyond.
   Roerich is one of the prophets and seers who have ever been acclaiming and preparing the Golden Age, the dream that huManity has been dreaming continuously since its very childhood, that is to say, when there will be peace and harmony on earth, when racial, cultural or ideological egoism will no longer divide Man and Mana thing that seems today a chimera and a hallucinationwhen there will be one culture, one civilisation, one spiritual life welding all huManity into a single unit of life luminous and beautiful. Roerich believes that such a consummation can arrive only or chiefly through the growth of the sense of beauty, of the aesthetic temperament, of creative labour leading to a wider and higher consciousness. Beauty, Harmony, Light, Knowledge, Culture, Love, Delight are cardinal terms in his vision of the deeper and higher life of the future.
   The stress of the inner urge to the heights and depths of spiritual values and realities found special and significant expression in his paintings. It is a difficult problem, a problem which artists and poets are tackling today with all their skill and talent. Man's consciousness is no longer satisfied with the customary and the ordinary actions and reactions of life (or thought), with the old-world and time-worn modes and Manners. It is no more turned to the apparent and the obvious, to the surface forms and movements of things. It yearns to look behind and beyond, for the secret mechanism, the hidden agency that really drives things. Poets and artists are the vanguards of the age to come, prophets and pioneers preparing the way for the Lord.
   Roerich discovered and elaborated his own technique to reveal that which is secret, express that which is not expressed or expressible. First of all, he is symbolical and allegorical: secondly, the choice of his symbols and allegories is hieratic, that is to say, the subject-matter refers to objects and events connected with saints and legends, shrines and enchanted places, hidden treasures, spirits and angels, etc. etc.; thirdly, the Manner or style of execution is what we may term pantomimic, in other words, concrete, graphic, dramatic, even melodramatic. He has a special predilection for geometrical patterns the artistic effect of whichbalance, regularity, fixity, soliditywas greatly utilised by the French painter Czanne and poet Mallarm who seem to have influenced Roerich to a considerable degree. But this Northerner had not the reticence, the suavity, the tonic unity of the classicist, nor the normality and clarity of the Latin temperament. The prophet, the priest in him was the stronger element and made use of the artist as the rites andceremoniesmudras and chakrasof his vocation deManded. Indeed, he stands as the hierophant of a new cultural religion and his paintings and utterances are, as it were, gestures that accompany a holy ceremonial.
   A Russian artist (Monsieur Benois) has stressed upon the primitivealmost aboriginalelement in Roerich and was not happy over it. Well, as has been pointed out by other prophets and thinkers, Man today happens to be so sophisticated, artificial, material, cerebral that a [all-back seems to be necessary for him to take a new leap forward on to a higher ground. The pure aesthete is a closed system, with a consciousness immured in an ivory tower; but Man is something more. A curious paradox. Man can reach the highest, realise the integral truth when he takes his leap, not from the relatively higher levels of his consciousness his intellectual and aesthetic and even moral status but when he can do so from his lower levels, when the physico-vital element in him serves as the springing-board. The decent and the beautiful the classic grace and aristocracyform one aspect of Man, the aspect of "light"; but the aspect of energy and power lies precisely in him where the aboriginal and the barbarian find also a lodging. Man as a mental being is naturally sattwic, but prone to passivity and weakness; his physico-vital reactions, on the other hand, are obscure and crude, simple and vehement, but they have life and energy and creative power, they are there to be trained and transfigured, made effective instruments of a higher illumination.
   All elemental personalities have something of the unconventional and irrational in them. And Roerich is one such in his own way. The truths and realities that he envisages and seeks to realise on earth are elemental and fundamental, although apparently simple and commonplace.

0.11 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  In the huMan being, is the psychic being the entire soul
  or do both the soul (in its essence as a divine spark in all
  --
  The soul is in fact like a divine spark which puts on Many states
  of being of increasing density, down to the most material; it is
  --
  and perfected in the course of Many earthly lives and form the
  psychic being. When the psychic being is fully formed, it is aware
  of the consciousness of the soul and Manifests it perfectly.
  1 February 1967
  --
  The AtMan is the universal Purusha.
  The JivatMan is the individual Purusha, and the
  physical Purusha, the vital Purusha, the mental Purusha
  --
  is not on the huMan scale.
  One moment of the Lord probably means Many years for
  us!
  --
  We are made up of Many different parts which have to be unified
  around the psychic being, if we are conscious of it or at least
  --
  impulse, each reaction, as it Manifests, must be presented in the
  consciousness to the central being or its aspiration. What is in
  --
  It is a long endeavour which may take Many years - but
  once it is done, the unification is achieved and the path becomes
  --
  slower - Man or the Divine Himself?
  To Man the Divine seems slow.
  In the eyes of the Divine Man is slow indeed!
  But perhaps in these two cases, the slowness is not the same.
  --
  Man very often returns in his daughter's child?
  First the dead Man must have a daughter in order to be reborn
  in her child.
  --
  Spontaneity in feelings and action comes from a perManent contact with the psychic, which brings order into the thoughts and
  automatically controls the vital impulses.
  --
  slipped away, saying that to make a stupid Man intelligent is an
  impossibility.
  To make a dishonest Man honest is an even more impossible
  miracle.
  --
  Which came first in the Manifestation, the god or the
  Asura?
  The oldest tradition says that the first four eManations of
  the Mahashakti - Consciousness, Love, Truth and Life - cut
  --
  Then a second eManation was made to repair the damage.
  They are the Gods.
  --
  Transformation deMands a very high degree of aspiration, surrender and receptivity, doesn't it?
  Transformation deMands a total and integral consecration. But
  isn't that the aspiration of every sincere sadhak?
  --
  money according to the Divine comMand within, from
  time to time?
  --
  Yes, it is a very conscious flower - I have had Many proofs of
  it.
  --
  contains duality since the Mahashakti will Manifest for the needs
  of the creation.
  --
  The One is both one and two; the Manifested and the
  unManifested, everything exists at the same time. When
  Series Eleven - To a Sadhak
  It is objectified in the creation, in the Manifestation, there
  is a succession: one, two... But this is only a way of
  --
  What is the difference between an eManation and a
  formation?
  --
  say that the eManation is made up of the very substance of
  the eManator, whereas the formation is made up of a substance
  external to the formator.
  To make a comparison, one could say that the eManation is
  like a child made from the substance of its mother and that the
  --
  Today You have shown me the basic incompatibility between huMan law and the Truth. But this is a problem
  that confronts me very often.
  Politics and so-called justice are still, in huManity, what is most
  closed to the Truth. But their turn for conversion will also come,
  --
  In theory, it applies to everyone. But the vast majority of huMan beings fall into unconsciousness, and if there is a contact
  with pure Being it is quite unconscious. Very few persons are
  --
  and calls for its release from the covering that conceals it in Manifested Nature."
  Sri Aurobindo
  --
  Many virtues lead away from the Divine by making men
  satisfied with what they are.
  --
  What is the origin of Man's love for his own ignorance?
  It is inconscience.
  --
  Can one say that such determination is deManded of the
  sadhak who aspires for transformation?
  --
  into the Manifestation the spark that extinguishes itself
  in Him?
  --
  Oneness means identity in origin; but in the Manifestation each
  entity follows its own path of conscious return to the Oneness.
  --
  Essence and in the Manifestation.
  16 October 1968
  --
  One has to cut off all connection with the Manifested world
  in order to be immune.
  --
  Is the Divine Love equal for all even in the Manifestation?
  Yes, equal and immutable.
  --
  "Each day was a spiritual roMance,...
  Each happening was a deep experience."12
  --
  of Many lives of preparation.
  17 November 1968
  --
  It seems to me, Mother, that when Man does not accept the Divine, it is more out of ignorance than out of
  wickedness. Isn't it so?
  --
  It is the huMan mind that has the conception of success and
  failure. It is the huMan mind that wants one thing and does not
  want another. In the divine plan each thing has its place and its
  --
  They are ONE in essence and Manifestation.
  5 December 1968
  --
  The huMan pleasure of possessing is a perversion of
  what, Mother?
  --
  which is the purpose of the universal Manifestation.
  11 December 1968
  --
  Can Man delay or hasten the coming of this hour?
  Neither the one nor the other in their apparent contradiction
  --
  In the present state of huMan consciousness, it is good for it
  to think that aspiration and huMan effort can hasten the advent
  of the divine transformation, because effort and aspiration are

0.12 - Letters to a Student, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  certain that this consciousness has Manifested in bodies other
  than their present one and that it will survive the disappearance
  --
  The possibilities are different for each person: there are as Many
  cases as there are persons. But each one can learn which conditions are best for his rest.
  --
  Passing from the general ignorant huMan consciousness to the
  yogic consciousness founded on the knowledge of the Divine
  --
  HuMan incapacity is necessarily behind all that men do. Only
  he who has become conscious of the Divine and become His
  --
  the divine comMand and to add nothing personal to it.
  It must be said that this is not easy. Only he who no longer
  --
  Knowledge and intelligence are precisely the higher mental qualities in Man, those that differentiate him from the animal.
  Series Twelve - To a Student
  Without knowledge and intelligence, one is not a Man but
  an animal in huMan form.
  Blessings.
  --
  Man, there will surely be a difference comparable to that which
  exists between Man and the most advanced ape; but what this
  difference will be we can hardly know until the new species
  --
  because huMan beings, especially in their childhood, still need a
  certain excitement in order to make effort.
  --
  Why has the Creator made this world and huMan
  beings? Does He expect something of us?

0.13 - Letters to a Student, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  Only, for some it will take Many, Many lives, whereas there are
  others who will do it in this very lifetime. It is a question of will.
  --
  It is Man (the huMan being) who calls all kinds of feelings
  "love": all the desires, attractions, vital exchanges, sexual relations, attachments, even friendships, and Many other things
  besides.
  --
  and Manifests the physical being.
  Ordinarily, one becomes aware of the presence of this consciousness only when one has to face some danger or an unexpected event or a great sorrow.
  --
  we are here in the Ashram to Manifest the Divine upon
  earth. But there remains one question: if everything is
  --
  themselves whether huMan beings, who are so small and limited,
  could see things as they really are; and in the hope of understanding better, they have sought for a diviner vision, a global and true
  --
  To visit one's parents is to return to an influence which is generally stronger than any other; and there are not Many cases where
  the parents help you in your spiritual progress, because they are
  --
  others remain half conscious like the vast majority of huMan
  beings.
  --
  have learned to be conscious. Now they are ready to Manifest
  a far higher consciousness, the consciousness that will act fully
  in the superMan; and that is why this consciousness has come
  down on earth to work in all who are ready to receive it.
  --
  will be to Man what Man is to the animal. The consciousness of
  this new race is already at work on earth to give light to all who

0.14 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  compared to huMan life. Matter is changing in order to prepare
  itself for the new Manifestation, but the huMan body is not
  plastic enough and offers resistance; this is why the number of
  --
  Our huMan consciousness has windows that open upon the
  Infinite. But generally men keep these windows carefully closed.
  --
  The endeavour is difficult and deMands an absolute and
  steadfast sincerity, but for those who have a strong will, an
  --
  Feeling alone in the midst of huMan beings is the sign that you
  are beginning to feel the need to find in your own being contact
  --
  Total union and the perfect Manifestation of the Divine are the
  sole means of putting an end to the suffering and misery of the
  --
  The best thing we can do to express our gratitude is to overcome all egoism in ourselves and make a constant effort towards this transformation. HuMan egoism refuses to abdicate
  on the grounds that others are not transformed. But that is
  --
  HuMan beings could be classified under four principal categories
  according to the attitude they take in life:
  --
  (2) Those who give their love to another huMan being and
  live for him. As for the result, everything naturally depends on
  --
  (3) Those who consecrate their life to the service of huManity through some activity done not for personal satisfaction
  but truly to be useful to others without calculation and without
  --
  We are at a decisive hour in the history of the earth. It is preparing for the coming of the superMan and because of this the old
  way of life is losing its value. We must strike out boldly on the
  path of the future despite its new deMands. The pettinesses once
  tolerable, are tolerable no longer. We must widen ourselves to
  --
  In time and space no two huMan beings have the same consciousness, and the sum of all these consciousnesses is but a partial
  and diminished Manifestation of the Divine Consciousness.
  That is why I said "progressive perfection", because the
  Manifestation of the consciousness of detail is infinite and unending.
  9 January 1972
  --
  be able to Manifest Him.
  Persevere, and what you cannot do today you will be able
  --
  goal of life, Many difficulties would find their solution.
  The best way to avoid growing old is to make progress the
  --
  Sri Aurobindo came upon earth to announce the Manifestation
  of the supramental world. And not only did he announce this
  Manifestation but he also embodied in part the supramental
  force and gave us the example of what we must do to prepare
  ourselves for this Manifestation. The best thing we can do is to
  study all he has told us, strive to follow his example and prepare
  ourselves for the new Manifestation.
  This gives life its true meaning and will help us to overcome
  --
  The energies that huMan beings use for reproduction and that
  occupy such a predominant place in their lives, should on the
  --
  condition for peace and joy in life. Almost all huMan miseries
  come from the fact that men are nearly always convinced that
  --
  life ought to give them. Most huMan beings want other huMan
  beings to conform to their expectations and circumstances to
  --
  When huManity was first created, the ego was the unifying
  element. It was around the ego that the different states of being
  were grouped; but now that the birth of superhuManity is being
  prepared, the ego has to disappear and give way to the psychic
  --
  order to Manifest the Divine in the huMan being.
  It is under the psychic influence that the Divine Manifests in
  Man and thus prepares the coming of superhuManity.
  The psychic is immortal and it is through the psychic that
  immortality can be Manifested on earth.
  So the important thing now is to find one's psychic, unite
  --
  HuMan consciousness is so corrupted that men prefer the miseries of the ego and its ignorance to the luminous joy that comes
  from a sincere surrender to the Divine. So great is their blindness
  --
  we must Manifest.
  This body lives by You alone and goes on repeating to You:
  --
  This truth that Man has vainly sought to know will be the
  birthright of the new race, the race of tomorrow, the superMan.
  To live according to Truth will be his birthright.

0 1954-08-25 - what is this personality? and when will she come?, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   (A disciple:) Sweet Mother, what is this Personality and when will It Manifest?
   My answer is ready.
  --
   But if She is ever to reside and act here, She has to find at least a minimal receptivity, at least one huMan being with the required vital and physical qualities, a kind of super-Parsifal gifted with an innate and integral purity, yet possessing at the same time a body strong enough and poised enough to bear unwaveringly the intensity of the Ananda She brings.
   Thus far, She has not found what is needed. Men remain obstinately men and do not want to or are unable to become supermen. All they can receive and express is a love at their own dimension: a huMan lovewhereas the supreme bliss of divine Ananda eludes their perception.
   At times, finding the world unready to receive Her, She contemplates withdrawing. But how cruel a loss this would be!
   It is true that at present, her presence is more rhetorical than factual, since so far She has had no chance to Manifest. Yet even so, She is a powerful instrument in the Work, for of all the Mothers aspects, She holds the greatest power to transform the body. Indeed, those cells which can vibrate at the touch of the divine Joy, receive it and bear it, are cells reborn, on their way to becoming immortal.
   But the vibrations of divine Bliss and those of pleasure cannot cohabit in the same vital and physical house. We must therefore TOTALLY renounce all feelings of pleasure to be ready to receive the divine Ananda. But rare are those who can renounce pleasure without thereby renouncing all active participation in life or sinking into a stern asceticism. And among those who realize that the transformation is to be wrought in active life, some pretend that pleasure is a form of Ananda gone more or less astray and legitimize their search for self-satisfaction, thereby creating a virtually insuperable obstacle to their own transformation.
  --
   I think it was in 1946, Mother, because you told us so Many things at that time.
   Right.
  --
   Mother, there is not even one single Man?
   I dont know.
  --
   But actually, to tell you the truth, I think your lives are so easy that you dont exert yourselves very much! How Many among you have truly an INTENSE need to find their psychic beings? To find out truly who they are? To find out what their roles are, why they are here? You just let yourselves drift. You even complain when things arent easy enough! You just take things as they come. And sometimes, should an aspiration arise in you and you encounter some difficulty in yourself, you say, Oh, Mother is there! Shell take care of it for me! And you think about something else.
   Mother, previously things were very strict in the Ashram, but not now. Why?
   Yes, I have always said that it changed when we had to take the very little children. How can you envision an ascetic life with little sprouts no bigger than that? Its impossible! But thats the little surprise package the war left on our doorstep. When it was found that Pondicherry was the safest place on earth, naturally people came wheeling in here with all their baby carriages filled and asked us if we could shelter them, so we couldnt very well turn them away, could we?! Thats how it happened, and in no other way But, in the beginning, the first condition for coming here was that you would have nothing more to do with your family! If a Man was married, then he had to completely overlook the fact that he had a wife and childrencompletely sever all ties, have nothing further to do with them. And if ever a wife asked to come just because her husb and happened to be here, we told her, You have no business coming here!
   In the beginning, it was very, very strict for a long time.
  --
   But as I said, bit by bit things changed. However, this had one advantage: we were too much outside of life. So there were a number of problems which had never arisen but which would have suddenly surged up the moment we wanted a complete Manifestation. We took on all these problems a little prematurely, but it gave us the opportunity to solve them. In this way we learned Many things and surmounted Many difficulties, only it complicated things considerably. And in the present situation, given such a large number of elements who havent even the slightest idea why theyre here (!) well, it deMands a far greater effort on the disciples part than before.
   Before, when there were we started with 35 or 36 people but even when it got up to 150, even with 150it was as if they were all nestled in a cocoon in my consciousness: they were so near to me that I could constantly guide ALL their inner or outer movements. Day and night, at each moment, everything was totally under my control. And naturally, I think they made a great deal of progress at that time: it is a fact that I was CONSTANTLY doing the sadhana2 for them. But then, with this baby boom The sadhana cant be done for little sprouts who are 3 or 4 or 5 years old! Its out of the question. The only thing I can do is wrap them in the Consciousness and try to see that they grow up in the best of all possible conditions. However, the one advantage to all this is that instead of there being such a COMPLETE and PASSIVE dependence on the disciples part, each one has to make his own little effort. Truly, thats excellent.
  --
   I met a Man (I was perhaps 20 or 21 at the time), an Indian who had come to Europe and who told me of the Gita. There was a French translation of it (a rather poor one, I must say) which he advised me to read, and then he gave me the key (HIS key, it was his key). He said, Read the Gita (this translation of the Gita which really wasnt worth much but it was the only one available at the timein those days I wouldnt have understood anything in other languages; and besides, the English translations were just as bad and well, Sri Aurobindo hadnt done his yet!). He said, Read the Gita knowing that Krishna is the symbol of the imManent God, the God within. That was all. Read it with THAT knowledgewith the knowledge that Krishna represents the imManent God, the God within you. Well, within a month, the whole thing was done!
   So some of you people have been here since the time you were toddlerseverything has been explained to you, the whole thing has been served to you on a silver platter (not only with words, but through psychic aid and in every possible way), you have been put on the path of this inner discovery and then you just go on drifting along: When it comes, it will come.If you even spare it that much thought!
  --
   But Im not at all discouraged, I just find it rather laughable. Only there are other far more serious things; for example, when you try to deceive yourselves that is not so pretty. One should not mix up cats and kings. You should call a cat a cat and a king a king and huMan instinct, huMan instinctand not speak about things divine when they are utterly huMan, nor pretend to have supramental experiences when you are living in a blatantly ordinary consciousness.
   If you look at yourselves straight in the face and you see what you are, then if by chance you should resolve to But what really astounds me is that you dont even seem to feel an intense NEED to do this! But how can we know? Because you DO know, you have been told over and over again, it has been drummed into your heads. You KNOW that you have a divine consciousness within you. And yet you can go on sleeping night after night, playing day after day, doing your lessons ad infinitum and still not be not have a BURNING desire and will to come into contact with yourselves!With yourselves, yes, the you just there, inside (motion towards the center of the chest) Really, its beyond me!
  --
   And how Many years have you all been here, half-asleep? Naturally, youre happy to think about it now and thenespecially when I speak to you about it or sometimes when you read. But THATthat fire, that will which plows through all barriers, that concentration which can triumph over EVERYTHING
   Now who was it that asked me what you should do?
  --
   For Her, this body is but one instrument among so Many others in an eternity of ages to come, and for Her its only importance is that attributed to it by the Earth and Mankind the extent to which it can be used as a channel to further Her Manifestation. If I find myself surrounded by people who are incapable of receiving Her, then for Her, I am quite useless.
   It is very clear. So it is not I who can make Her stay. And I certainly cannot ask Her to stay for egotistical reasons. Moreover, all these Aspects, all these Personalities Manifest constantly but they never Manifest for personal reason. Not one of them has ever thought of helping my bodybesides, I dont ask them to because that is not their purpose. But it is more than obvious that if the people around me were receptive, She could perManently Manifest since they could receive Herand this would help my body enormously because all these vibrations would run through it. But She never gets even a chance to Manifestnot a single one. She only meets people who dont even feel Her when Shes there! They dont even notice Her, theyre not even aware of her presence. So how can She Manifest in these conditions? Im not going to ask Her, Please come and change my body. We dont have that kind of relationship! Furthermore, the body itself wouldnt agree. It never thinks of itself, it never pays attention to itself, and besides, it is only through the work that it can be transformed.
   Yes, certainly had there been any receptivity when She came down and had She been able to Manifest with the power with which She came But I can tell you one thing: even before Her coming, when, with Sri Aurobindo, I had begun going down (for the Yoga) from the mental plane to the vital plane, when we brought our yoga down from the mental plane into the vital plane, in less than a month (I was forty years old at the time I didnt seem very old, I looked less than forty, but I was forty anyway), after no more than a month of this yoga, I looked exactly like an 18 year old! And someone who knew me and had stayed with me in Japan5 came here, and when he saw me, he could scarcely believe his eyes! He said, But my god, is it you? I said, Of course!
   Only when we went down from the vital plane into the physical plane, all this went awaybecause on the physical plane, the work is much harder and we had so much to do, so Many things to change.
   But if a force like Hers could Manifest and be received here, it would have INESTIMABLE results!
   Well, I am only telling you all this because I thought someone might ask me about it, but otherwise I dont have that kind of relationship with Her. You see, if you consider this body, this poor body, it is very innocent: it in no way tries to draw attention to itself nor to attract forces nor to do anything at all except its workas best it can. And thats how it stands: its importance is proportionate to its usefulness and to the significance the world attri butes to itsince its action is for the world.

0 1955-03-26, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   Such was our old, meaningless name (except for its GerManic root: 'hard bear') until a certain March 3, 1957, when Mother named us Sat-prem ('the one who loves truly').
   ***

0 1955-09-15, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   Mother suddenly everything seems to have crystallizedall the little revolts, the little tensions, the ill will and petty vital deMandsforming a single block of open, determined resistance. I have become conscious that from the beginning of my sadhana, the mind has led the gamewith the psychic behind and has held me in leash, helped muzzle all contrary movements, but at no time, or only rarely, has the vital submitted or opened to the higher influence. The rare times when the vital participated, I felt a great progress. But now, I find myself in front of this solid mass that says No and is not at all convinced of what the mind has been imposing upon it for almost two years now.
   Mother, I am sufficiently awakened not to rebel against your Light and to understand that the vital is but one part of my being, but I have come to the conclusion that the only way of convincing this vital is not to force or stifle it, but to let it go through its own experience so it may understand by itself that it cannot be satisfied in this way. I feel the need to leave the Ashram for a while to see how I can get along away from here and to realize, no doubt, that one can really brea the only here.

0 1956-02-29 - First Supramental Manifestation - The Golden Hammer, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
  object:0_1956-02-29 - First Supramental Manifestation - The Golden Hammer
  author class:The Mother
  --
   FIRST SUPRAMENTAL ManIFESTATION
   (During the common meditation on Wednesday the 29th February 1956)

0 1956-03-19, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   Note written by Mother in French. At this period, Mother's back was already bent. This straightening of her back seems to be the first physiological effect of the 'Supramental Manifestation' of February 29, which is perhaps the reason why Mother noted down the experience under the name 'Agenda of the Supramental Action on Earth.' It was the first time Mother gave a title to what would become this fabulous document of 13 volumes. The experience took place during a 'translation class' when, twice a week, Mother would translate the works of Sri Aurobindo into French before a group of disciples.
   AGENDA OF THE SUPRAMENTAL ACTION ON EARTH

0 1956-04-20, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   The difficulties of the past weeks have taught me that as soon as one strays from the true consciousness, in however trifling a way, anything may happen, any excess, any aberration, any imbalance and I have felt very dangerous things prowling about me. Mother, you told me in regard to Patrick1 that the law of the Manifestation was a law of freedom, even the freedom to choose wrongly. This evening, it has been my very deep perception that this freedom is virtually always a freedom to choose wrongly. I harbor a great fear of losing the true consciousness once again. I have become aware of how fragile everything in me is and that very little would be enough to carry me away.
   Therefore, Sweet Mother, I come to ask a great grace of you, from the depths of my heart: take my freedom into your hands. Prevent me from falling back, far away from you. I place this freedom in your hands. Keep me safe, Mother, protect me. Grant me the grace of watching over me and of taking me in your hands completely, like a child whose steps are unsure. I no longer want this Freedom. It is you I want, the Truth of my being. Mother, as a grace, I implore you to free me from my freedom to choose wrongly.

0 1956-04-24, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   The Manifestation of the Supramental upon earth is no more a promise but a living fact, a reality.
   It is at work here, and one day will come when the most blind, the most unconscious, even the most unwilling shall be obliged to recognize it.

0 1956-05-02, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   When the mind came down upon earth, something like a million years went by between the Manifestation of the mind in the earth atmosphere and the appearance of the first Man. But it will go faster this time because Man is waiting for something, he has a vague idea: he is awaiting in some way or another the advent of the superMan. Whereas the apes were certainly not awaiting the birth of Man, they never thought of it for the excellent reason that they probably dont think very much! But Man has thought about it and is waiting, so it will go faster. But faster probably still means thousands of years. We shall speak of this again in a few thousand years!
   (silence)
  --
   But we do not call a miracle the constant miracle of the forces that intervene to change circumstances and huMan natures and which have very far-reaching consequences, for we see only the appearance, and this appearance seems quite natural. But in truth, if you were to reflect upon the least thing that happens, you would be forced to acknowledge that it is miraculous.
   It is simply because you do not reflect upon it and assume things to be as they are, what they are, unquestioningly; otherwise you would have quite a number of opportunities everyday to say to yourself, But look! That is absolutely amazing! How did it happen?
  --
   Will we benefit collectively or individually from this new Manifestation?
   Why are you asking this question?
  --
   Its the same with those who ask for an interview. I tell them, Look, you have come in large numbers, and if each one asks me for an interview, how could I possibly find enough minutes in so few days to see everyone? While youre here, I wouldnt have even a single minute. Then they retort, Oh, I have taken so MUCH trouble, I have come from so FAR away, I have come from way in the North, I have travelled for so Many hoursand I have no right to an interview? I reply, Im sorry, but you are not the only one in that situation.
   And thats how it isswapping, bargaining. We are not a commercial enterprise, we have made it clear that we are not doing business.
  --
   Mother, when the mind came down into the earth atmosphere, the ape did not make any effort to convert himself into a Man, did he? It was Nature that supplied the effort. But in our case
   But its not Man who is going to convert himself into a superMan!
   No?
  --
   Onlyyes, there is an only, I dont want to be so cruel: NOW Man CAN COLLABORATE. That is, he can lend himself to the process, with good will, with aspiration, and help to his utmost. Which is why I said it will go faster. I hope it will go MUCH faster.
   But even if it does go much faster, it will still take some time!
  --
   Individually, each ones goal was to make himself ready, to enter into a more or less intimate individual relationship with this Force, so as to help the process; or else, if he could not help, at least be ready to recognize and be open to the Force when it would Manifest. Then instead of being an alien element in a world in which your OWN inner capacity remains unManifest, you suddenly become THAT, you enter directly, fully, into the very atmosphere: the Force is there, all around you, permeating you.
   If you had had a little inner contact, you would have recognized it immediately, dont you think so?
   Well, in any event, that was the case for those who had a little inner contact; they recognized it, they felt it, and they said, Ah, there it is! It has come! But how is it that so Many hundreds of peoplenot to mention the handful of those who really wanted only that, thought only of that, had staked their whole lives on thathow is it that they felt nothing? What can this mean?
   It is well known that only like knows like. It is an obvious fact.
  --
   Thats how the universal movement works (I read this to you a few days ago): through their inner effort and inner progress, certain individuals, who are the pioneers, the forerunners, enter into communication with the new Force which is to Manifest, and they receive it in themselves. And because a number of calls like this surge forth, the thing becomes possible, and the era, the time, the moment for the Manifestation comes. This is how it happened and the Manifestation took place.
   But then, all those who were ready should have recognized it.
  --
   Mother, very recently a text has been circulating which says, What has just now happened, with this Victory, is not a descent but a Manifestation. And it is no longer merely an individual event: the Supermind has sprung forth into the universal play.
   Yes, yes, yes! I indeed said all that. I acknowledge it. And so?
  --
   When this individual event has taken place sufficiently to allow a more general possibility to emerge, it is no longer a descent but a Manifestation.
   What I call a descent is the individual movement in an individual consciousness. But when a new world is Manifesting in an old worldas when similarly the mind spread over the earth I call it a Manifestation.
   You may call it whatever you like, it makes no difference to me, but we must understand each other.
   What I call a descent takes place in the individual consciousness. In the same way, we speak of ascent (there is no ascent really, there is no high or low, no direction: its all a Manner of speaking)we speak of ascent when we feel ourselves rising up towards something, and we call it a descent when, after having caught this thing, we bring it down into ourselves.
   But when the doors are opened and the flood pours in, it can no longer be called a descent: it is a Force that spreads everywhere. Understood? Ah!

0 1956-08-10, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   In fact, following the 'Supramental Manifestation' of February 29, 1956, all of Mother's physical difficulties increased, as though all the obscurities in the physical consciousness were surging forth beneath the pressure of the new light. The same observation applies to the disciples who were around Mother and undoubtedly to the world as a whole. A strange 'mysterious acceleration' was beginning to take hold of the world.
   ***

0 1956-09-12, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   This text was noted down by a disciple from memory. On the original Manuscript submitted for her approval, Mother wrote, 'This account is quite correct,' and She signed the text. Words added or corrected by Mother are in italics.
   (During the Wednesday class)

0 1956-09-14, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   My friends keep telling me that I am not ready and that, like R,1 whom they knew, I should go and spend some time in society. They say that my idea of going to the Himalayas is absurd, and they advise me to return to Brazil for a few years to stay with W W is an elderly American millionaire the only good rich Man I knowwho wanted to make me an heir, as it were, to his financial affairs and who treats me rather like a son. He was quite disappointed when I came back to India. My friends tell me that if I have to go through a period in the outside world, the best way to do it is to remain near someone who is fond of me, while at the same time ensuring a material independence for the future.
   These questions of money do not interest me. In fact, nothing interests me except this something I feel within me. The only question for me is to know whether I am truly ready for the Yoga, or if my failings are not the sign of some immaturity. Mother, you alone can tell me what is right.
  --
   This possibility appeared to me while reading what you wrote about your sojourn in Brazil with W, the only good rich Man you have known. Here is my proposal, which I express to you quite plainly, spontaneously, as it presented itself to me.
   Just now, the work is being delayed, curtailed, limited, almost endangered for want of money.
  --
   Go to Brazil, to this good rich Man, make him understand the importance of our work, the extent to which his fortune would be used to the utmost for the good of all and for the earths salvation were he to put it, even partially, at the disposal of our action. Win this victory over the power of money, and by so doing you will be freed from all your personal difficulties. Then you can return here with no apprehension, and you will be ready for the transformation.
   Reflect upon this, take your time, tell me very frankly how you feel about it and whether it appears to you, as it does to me, to be a door opening onto a path that will bring you back, free and strong at last to me.

0 1956-10-07, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   As Sri Aurobindo says, people see God as a magnified Man: he is the Demiurge, Jehovahwhat I call the Lord of Falsehood.
   Arbitrariness. But the Divine is not like that!
  --
   What comes to replace this huMan will?
   A consciousness and a vision. And one is filled with joy and

0 1956-10-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   One is never anything but a divine apprentice: the Divine of yesterday is only an apprentice to the Divine of tomorrow No, I am not speaking of a progressive Manifestation that is much farther below.
   When I am at my highest, I am already too high for the Manifestation.
   I have gone far beyond what I wrote this morning.
   What if the huMan is too heavy, too narrow, too obscure to follow you?
   No, it is exactly the opposite of what you are saying. It is not that the Divine in his divinity is opposed to his own Manifested selfHe is very far beyond, beyond the necessity for Grace; He perceives his unique and exclusive responsibility, and that it is He and He alone who must change in His Manifestation so that all may change.
   ***
  --
   I wanted to take this little rose (Tenderness for the Divine), for I consider it to be the Manifestation nearest to divine Love. Its disinterested, spontaneous, intimate.
   This is what I wanted to take with me to my super-heaven, as the most precious thing in the huMan heart.
   ***

0 1957-07-03, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   She clearly remembered where her room was, but each time she set out to go there, either the staircase disappeared or things were so changed that she could no longer find her way! So she went here and there, up and down, searched, went in and out but it was impossible to find the way to her room! Since all of this assumed a physical appearanceas I said, a very familiar and very common appearance, as is always the case in these symbolic visions there was somewhere (how shall I put it?) the hotels administrative office and a woMan who seemed to be the Manager, who had all the keys and who knew where everyone was staying. So the daughter went to this person and asked her, Could you show me the way to my room?But of course! Easily! Everyone around the Manager looked at her as if to say, How can you say that? However, she got up, and with authority asked for a key the key to the daughters roomsaying, I shall take you there. And off she went along all kinds of paths, but all so complicated, so bizarre! The daughter was following along behind her very attentively, you see, so as not to lose sight of her. But just as they should have come to the place where the daughters room was supposed to be, suddenly the Manageress (let us call her the Manageress), both the Manageress and her key vanished! And the sense of this vanishing was so acute that at the same time, everything vanished!
   So to help you understand this enigma, let me tell you that the mother is physical Nature as she is, and the daughter is the new creation. The Manageress is the worlds organizing mental consciousness as Nature has developed it thus far, that is, the most advanced organizing sense to have Manifested in the present state of material Nature. This is the key to the vision.
   Naturally, when I awoke, I immediately knew what could resolve this problem which appeared so absolutely insoluble. The vanishing of the Manageress and her key was an obvious sign that she was altogether incapable of leading what could be called the creative consciousness of the new world to its true place.
   I knew this, but I did not have a vision of the solution, which means it has yet to Manifest; this thing had not yet Manifested in the building, this fantastic construction, although it is the very mode of consciousness which could transform this incoherent creation into something real, truly conceived, willed and materialized, with a center in its proper place, a recognized place, and with a REAL effective power.
   (silence)
  --
   It is certainly not an arbitrary construction of the type built by men, where everything is put pell-mell, without any order, without reality, and which is held together by only illusory ties. Here, these ties were symbolized by the hotels walls, while actually in ordinary huMan constructions (if we take a religious community, for example), they are symbolized by the building of a monastery, an identity of clothing, an identity of activities, an identity even of movementor to put it more precisely: everyone wears the same uniform, everyone gets up at the same time, everyone eats the same thing, everyone says his prayers together, etc.; there is an overall identity. But naturally, on the inside there remains the chaos of Many disparate consciousnesses, each one following its own mode, for this kind of group identification, which extends right up to an identity of beliefs and dogma, is absolutely illusory.
   Yet it is one of the most common types of huMan collectivityto group together, band together, unite around a common ideal, a common action, a common realization but in an absolutely artificial way. In contrast to this, Sri Aurobindo tells us that a true communitywhat he terms a gnostic or supramental communitycan be based only upon the INNER REALIZATION of each one of its members, each realizing his real, concrete oneness and identity with all the other members of the community; that is, each one should not feel himself a member connected to all the others in an arbitrary way, but that all are one within himself. For each one, the others should be as much himself as his own bodynot in a mental and artificial way, but through a fact of consciousness, by an inner realization.
   (silence)
   This means that before hoping to realize such a gnostic collectivity, each one must first of all become (or at least start to become) a gnostic being. It is obvious that the individual work must take the lead and the collective work follow; but the fact remains that spontaneously, without any arbitrary intervention of will the individual progress IS restrained or CHECKED, as It were, by the collective state. Between the collectivity and the individual, there exists an interdependence from which one cannot be totally free, even if one tries. And even he who might try, in his yoga, to free himself totally from the huMan and terrestrial state of consciousness, would be at least subconsciously bound by the state of the whole, which impedes and PULLS BACKWARDS. One can attempt to go much faster, one can attempt to let all the weight of attachments and responsibilities fall off, but in spite of everything, the realization of even the most advanced or the leader in the march of evolution is dependent upon the realization of the whole, dependent upon the state in which the terrestrial collectivity happens to be. And this PULLS backwards to such an extent that sometimes one has to wait centuries for the earth to be ready before being able to realize what is to be realized.
   This is why Sri Aurobindo has also written somewhere else that a double movement is necessary: the effort for individual progress and realization must be combined with the effort of trying to uplift the whole so as to enable it to make a progress indispensable for the greater progress of the individual: a mass progress, if you will, that allows the individual to take a further step forward.
  --
   The Supramental Manifestation, (Cent. Ed. XVI, pp. 33-36.)
   ***

0 1957-10-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   I shall soon have completed the revision1 of The Life Divine and The HuMan Cycle, so I believe I shall have done the best I could, at present, to serve you. October 30th is my birthday. Could I leave immediately thereafter?
   It is not because I am unhappy with the Ashram that I want to leave, but because I am unhappy with myself and because I want to master myself through other means.

0 1957-10-17, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   There are all kinds of freedommental freedom, vital freedom, spiritual freedomwhich are the fruits of successive masteries. But a completely new freedom has become possible with the Supramental Manifestation: it is the freedom of the body.
   One of the very first results of the supramental Manifestation was to give the body a freedom and an autonomy it has never before known. And when I say freedom, I dont mean some psychological perception or an inner state of consciousness, but something else and far betterit is a new phenomenon in the body, in the cells of the body. For the first time, the cells themselves have felt that they are free, that they have the power to decide. When the new vibrations came and combined with the old ones, I felt it at once and it showed me that a new world was really taking birth.
   In its normal state, the body always feels that it is not its own master: illnesses invade it without its really being able to resist thema thousand factors impose themselves or exert pressure upon it. Its sole power is the power to defend itself, to react. Once the illness has got in, it can fight and overcome iteven modern medicine has acknowledged that the body is cured only when it decides to get cured; it is not the drugs per se that heal, for if the ailment is temporarily suppressed by a drug without the bodys will, it grows up again elsewhere in some other form until the body itself has decided to be cured. But this implies only a defensive power, the power to react against an invading enemyit is not true freedom.
   But with the supramental Manifestation, something new has taken place in the body: it feels it is its own master, autonomous, with its two feet solidly on the ground, as it were. This gives a physical impression of the whole being suddenly drawing itself up, with its head lifted high I am my own master.
   We live perennially with a burden on our shoulders, something that bows our heads down, and we feel pulled, led by all kinds of external forces, we dont know by whom or what, nor where tothis is what men call Fate, Destiny. When you do yoga, one of the first experiences the experience of the kundalini, as it is called here in Indiais precisely one in which the consciousness rises, breaks through this hard lid, here, at the crown of the head, and at last you emerge into the Light. Then you see, you know, you decide and you realizedifficulties may still remain, but truly speaking one is above them. Well, as a result of the supramental Manifestation, it is THIS experience that came into the body. The body straightened its head up and felt its freedom, its independence.
   During the flu epidemic, for example, I spent every day in the midst of people who were germ carriers. And one day, I clearly felt that the body had decided not to catch this flu. It asserted its autonomy. You see, it was not a question of the higher Will deciding, no. It didnt take place in the highest consciousness: the body itself decided. When you are way above in your consciousness, you see things, you know things; but in actual fact, once you descend again into matter, it is like water running through sand. In this respect, things have changed, the body has a DIRECT power, independent of any outer intervention. Even though it is barely visible, I consider this to be a very important result.
   And this new vibration in the body has allowed me to understand the mechanism of the transformation. It is not something that comes from a higher Will, not a higher consciousness that imposes itself upon the body: it is the body itself awakening in its cells, a freedom of the cells themselves, an absolutely new vibration that sets disorders righteven disorders that existed prior to the supramental Manifestation.
   Naturally, all this is a gradual process, but I am hopeful that little by little this new consciousness will grow, gain ground and victoriously resist the old forces of destruction and annihilation, and this Fatality we believed to be so inexorable.

0 1957-10-18, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   This unique method was to be the Mantra, as Mother herself would discover.
   ***

0 1957-11-12, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   To conclude, a final recommendation: never pose as an examiner. For while it is good to remember constantly that perhaps one is passing a very important test, it is, on the other hand, extremely dangerous to imagine oneself entrusted with applying tests to others, for that is an open door to the most absurd and harmful vanities. It is not an ignorant huMan will that decides these things but the Supreme Wisdom.
   ***

0 1957-12-21, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   This physical consciousness records all it sees, all your reactions, your thoughts, all the factswithout preference, without prejudice, without personal will. Nothing escapes it. Its work is almost mechanical. Therefore I know what to tell or to ask you according to the integral truth of your being and its present possibilities. Ordinarily, in the normal Man, the physical consciousness does not see things as they are, for three reasons: because of ignorance, because of preference, and because of an egoistic will. You color what you see, eliminate what displeases you. In short, you see only what you desire to see.
   Now, I recently had a very striking experience: a discrepancy occurred between my physical consciousness and the consciousness of the world. In some instances decisions made in the Light and the Truth produced unexpected results, upheavals in the consciousness of others that were neither foreseen nor desired, and I did not understand. No matter how hard I tried, I could not understand and I emphasize this word understand. At last, I had to leave my highest consciousness and pull myself down into the physical consciousness to find out what was happening. And there, in my head, I saw what appeared to be a little cell bursting, and suddenly I understood: the recording had been defective. The physical consciousness had neglected to register certain of your lower reactions. It could not have been through preference or through personal will (these things were eliminated from my consciousness long, long ago). But I saw that this most material consciousness was already completely permeated with the transforming supramental truth, and it could no longer follow the rhythm of normal life. It was much more attuned to the true consciousness than to the world! I couldnt possibly blame it for lagging behind; on the contrary, it was in front, too far ahead! There was a discrepancy between the rhythm of the transformation of my being and the worlds own rhythm. The supramental action on the world is slow, it does not act directlyit acts by infiltration, by traversing the successive layers, and the results are slow to come about. So I had to pull myself violently down in order to wait for the others.

0 1958-01-01, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   Then, from the supreme Reality came this comMand: Awaken, O Nature, to the joy of collaboration. And suddenly, all Nature rushed forth in an immense bounding of joy, saying, I accept! I will collaborate! And at the same time, there came a calm, an absolute tranquillity, to allow this receptacle, this body, to receive and contain without breaking and without losing anything of the Joy of Nature that was rushing forth in a movement of grateful recognition like an overwhelming flood. She accepted, she sawwith all eternity before her that this supramental consciousness would fulfill her more perfectly and impart a still greater force to her movement and more richness, more possibilities to her play.
   And suddenly, as if resounding from every corner of the earth, I heard these great notes which are sometimes heard in the subtle physicalra ther like those of Beethovens Concerto in Dwhich come at moments of great progress, as though fifty orchestras were bursting forth all at once without a single discordant note, to sound the joy of this new communion of Nature and Spirit, the meeting of old friends who, after a long separation, find each other once more.
  --
   I have one thing to add: we must not misinterpret the meaning of this experience and imagine that henceforth everything will take place without difficulties or always in accordance with our personal desires. It is not at this level. It does not mean that when we do not want it to rain, it will not rain! Or when we want some event to take place in the world, it will immediately take place, or that all difficulties will be abolished and everything will be like a fairy tale. It is not like that. It is something more profound. Nature has accepted into her play of forces the newly Manifested Force and has included it in her movements. But as always, the movements of Nature take place on a scale infinitely surpassing the huMan scale and invisible to the ordinary huMan consciousness. It is more of an inner, psychological possibility that has been born in the world than a spectacular change in earthly events.
   I mention this because you might be tempted to believe that fairy tales are going to be realized upon earth. The time has not yet come.

0 1958-02-03b - The Supramental Ship, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   Between the beings of the supramental world and men, there exists approximately the same gap as between men and animals. Sometime ago, I had the experience of identification with animal life, and it is a fact that animals do not understand us; their consciousness is so constituted that we elude them almost entirely. And yet I have known domestic animalscats and dogs, but especially catswho made an almost yogic effort of consciousness to understand us. But generally, when they watch us living and acting, they dont understand, they dont SEE US as we are and they suffer because of us. We are a constant enigma to them Only a very tiny part of their consciousness is linked to us. And it is the same for us when we try to look at the supramental world. Only when the link of consciousness has been built shall we see itand even then, only that part of our being which has undergone the transformation will be capable of seeing it as it isotherwise the two worlds would remain as separate as the animal world and the huMan world.
   The experience I had on February 3 proves this. Before, I had had an individual, subjective contact with the supramental world, whereas on February 3, I went strolling there in a concrete wayas concretely as I used to go strolling in Paris in times pastin a world that EXISTS IN ITSELF, beyond all subjectivity.
  --
   The supramental world exists in a perManent way, and I am there perManently in a supramental body. I had proof of this today when my earthly consciousness went there and consciously remained there between two and three oclock in the afternoon: I now know that for the two worlds to join in a constant and conscious relationship what is missing is an intermediate zone between the existing physical world and the supramental world as it exists. This zone has yet to be built, both in the individual consciousness and in the objective world, and it is being built. When formerly I used to speak of the new world that is being created, I was speaking of this intermediate zone. And similarly, when I am on this side that is, in the realm of the physical consciousness and I see the supramental power, the supramental light and substance constantly permeating matter, I am seeing and participating in the construction of this zone.
   I found myself upon an immense ship, which is the symbolic representation of the place where this work is being carried out. This ship, as big as a city, is thoroughly organized, and it had certainly already been functioning for quite some time, for its organization was fully developed. It is the place where people destined for the supramental life are being trained. These people (or at least a part of their being) had already undergone a supramental transformation because the ship itself and all that was aboard was neither material nor subtle-physical, neither vital nor mental: it was a supramental substance. This substance itself was of the most material supramental, the supramental substance nearest the physical world, the first to Manifest. The light was a blend of red and gold, forming a uniform substance of luminous orange. Everything was like that the light was like that, the people were like thateverything had this color, in varying shades, however, which enabled things to be distinguished from one another. The overall impression was of a shadowless world: there were shades, but no shadows. The atmosphere was full of joy, calm, order; everything worked smoothly and silently. At the same time, I could see all the details of the education, the training in all domains by which the people on board were being prepared.
   This immense ship had just arrived at the shore of the supramental world, and a first batch of people destined to become the future inhabitants of the supramental world were about to disembark. Everything was arranged for this first landing. A certain number of very tall beings were posted on the wharf. They were not huMan beings and never before had they been men. Nor were they perManent inhabitants of the supramental world. They had been delegated from above and posted there to control and supervise the landing. I was in charge of all this since the beginning and throughout. I myself had prepared all the groups. I was standing on the bridge of the ship, calling the groups forward one by one and having them disembark on the shore. The tall beings posted there seemed to be reviewing those who were disembarking, allowing those who were ready to go ashore and sending back those who were not and who had to continue their training aboard the ship. While standing there watching everyone, that part of my consciousness coming from here became extremely interested: it wanted to see, to identify all the people, to see how they had changed and to find out who had been taken immediately as well as those who had to remain and continue their training. After awhile, as I was observing, I began to feel pulled backwards and that my body was being awakened by a consciousness or a person from here1and in my consciousness, I protested: No, no, not yet! Not yet! I want to see whos there! I was watching all this and noting it with intense interest It went on like that until, suddenly, the clock here began striking three, which violently jerked me back. There was the sensation of a sudden fall into my body. I came back with a shock, but since I had been called back very suddenly, all my memory was still intact. I remained quiet and still until I could bring back the whole experience and preserve it.
   The nature of objects on this ship was not that which we know upon earth; for example, the clothes were not made of cloth, and this thing that resembled cloth was not Manufacturedit was a part of the body, made of the same substance that took on different forms. It had a kind of plasticity. When a change had to be made, it was done not by artificial and outer means but by an inner working, by a working of the consciousness that gave the substance its form or appearance. Life created its own forms. There was ONE SINGLE substance in all things; it changed the nature of its vibration according to the needs or uses.
   Those who were sent back for more training were not of a uniform color; their bodies seemed to have patches of a grayish opacity, a substance resembling the earth substance. They were dull, as though they had not been wholly permeated by the light or wholly transformed. They were not like this all over, but in places.
   The tall beings on the shore were not of the same color, at least they did not have this orange tint; they were paler, more transparent. Except for a part of their bodies, only the outline of their forms could be seen. They were very tall, they did not seem to have a skeletal structure, and they could take on any form according to their needs. Only from their waists to their feet did they have a perManent density, which was not felt in the rest of their body. Their color was much more pallid and contained very little red, it verged rather on gold or even white. The parts of whitish light were translucid; they were not absolutely transparent, but less dense, more subtle than the orange substance.
   Just as I was called back, when I was saying, Not yet , I had a quick glimpse of myself, of my form in the supramental world. I was a mixture of what these tall beings were and the beings aboard the ship. The top part of myself, especially my head, was a mere silhouette of a whitish color with an orange fringe. The more it approached the feet, the more the color resembled that of the people on the ship, or in other words, orange; the more it went up towards the top, the more translucid and white it was, and the red faded. The head was only a silhouette with a brilliant sun at its center; from it issued rays of light which were the action of the will.
  --
   When I came back, along with the memory of the experience, I knew that the supramental world was perManent, that my presence there is perManent, and that only a missing link is needed to allow the consciousness and the substance to connectand it is this link that is being built. At that time, my impression (an impression which remained rather long, almost the whole day) was of an extreme relativityno, not exactly that, but an impression that the relationship between this world and the other completely changes the criterion by which things are to be evaluated or judged. This criterion had nothing mental about it, and it gave the strange inner feeling that so Many things we consider good or bad are not really so. It was very clear that everything depended upon the capacity of things and upon their ability to express the supramental world or be in relationship with it. It was so completely different, at times even so opposite to our ordinary way of looking at things! I recall one little thing that we usually consider bad actually how funny it was to see that it is something excellent! And other things that we consider important were really quite unimportant there! Whether it was like this or like that made no difference. What is very obvious is that our appreciation of what is divine or not divine is incorrect. I even laughed at certain things Our usual feeling about what is anti-divine seems artificial, based upon something untrue, unliving (besides, what we call life here appeared lifeless in comparison with that world); in any event, this feeling should be based upon our relationship between the two worlds and according to whether things make this relationship easier or more difficult. This would thus completely change our evaluation of what brings us nearer to the Divine or what takes us away from Him. With people, too, I saw that what helps them or prevents them from becoming supramental is very different from what our ordinary moral notions imagine. I felt just how ridiculous we are.
   (Then Mother speaks to the children)
  --
   In ordinary life, EVERYTHING is artificial. Depending upon the chance of your birth or circumstances, you have a more or less high position or a more or less comfortable life, not because it is the spontaneous, natural and sincere expression of your way of being and of your inner need, but because the fortuity of lifes circumstances has placed you in contact with these things. An absolutely worthless Man may be in a very high position, and a Man who might have marvelous capacities of creation and organization may find himself toiling in a quite limited and inferior position, whereas he would be a wholly useful individual if the world were sincere.
   It is this artificiality, this insincerity, this complete lack of truth that appeared so shocking to me that one wonders how, in a world as false as this one, we can arrive at any truthful evaluation of things.

0 1958-03-07, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   On the way, I stopped at J and Es place. They are living like native fishermen, in loincloths, in a coconut grove by the sea. The place is exceedingly beautiful, and the sea full of rainbow-hued coral. And suddenly, within twenty-four hours, I realized an old dreamor rather, I purged myself of an old and tenacious dream: that of living on a Pacific island as a simple fisherMan. And all at once, I saw, in a flash, that this kind of life totally lacks a center. You float in a nowhere. It plunges you into some kind of higher inertia, an illumined inertia, and you lose all true substance.
   As for me, I am totally out of my element in this new life, as though I were uprooted from myself. I am living in the temple, in the midst of pujas,1 with white ashes on my forehead, barefoot dressed like a Hindu, sleeping on cement at night, eating impossible curries, with some good sunburns to complete the cooking. And there I am, clinging to you, for if you were not there I would collapse, so absurd would it all be. You are the only realityhow Many times have I repeated this to myself, like a litany! Apart from this, I am holding up quite well physically. But inside and outside, nothing is left but you. I need you, thats all. Mother, this world is so horrifyingly empty. I really feel that I would evaporate if you werent there. Well, no doubt I had to go through this experience Perhaps I will be able to extract some book from it that will be of use to you. We are like children who need a lot of pictures in order to understand, and a few good kicks to realize our complete stupidity.
   Swami must soon take to the road again, through Ceylon, towards March 20 or 25. So I shall go wandering with him until May; towards the beginning of May, he will return to India. I hope to have learned my lesson by then, and to have learned it well. Inwardly, I have understood that there is only you but its these problem children on the surface who must be made to toe the line once and for all.

0 1958-05-01, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   Only now am I beginning to understand what Sri Aurobindo has written in The Synthesis of Yoga! And the huMan mind, the physical mind, appears so stupid, so stupid!
   ***

0 1958-05-10, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   It is as yet only an apprentice in superManhood.
   That is all it is trying to be.
  --
   But in a way, absolute calm implies withdrawal from action, so a choice had to be made between one or the other. I said to myself, I am neither exclusively this nor exclusively that. And actually, to do Sri Aurobindos work is to realize the Supramental on earth. So I began that work and, as a matter of fact, this was the only thing I asked of my body. I told it, Now you shall set right everything which is out of order and gradually realize this intermediate superManhood between Man and the supramental being or, in other words, what I call the superMan.
   And this is what I have been doing for the last eight years, and even much more during the past two years, since 1956. Now it is the work of each day, each minute.
   Thats where I am. I have renounced the uncontested authority of a god, I have renounced the unshakable calm of the sage in order to become the superMan. I have concentrated everything upon that.
   We shall see.

0 1958-05-11 - the ship that said OM, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   Something quite curious took place during a recent meditation. I no longer recall when exactly, but it was at a time when there were Many visitors, for the courtyard was full. After perhaps no more than a few minutes, I suddenly heard a distinct voice, coming from my right, say OM, like that. And then a second time, OM. What an impact it had upon me! I felt an emotion here (gesture towards the heart) as I have not felt for years and years and years. And all, all, all was filled with light, with forceit was absolutely marvelous. It was an invocation, and during the whole meditation the Presence was resplendent.
   I said to myself, Who could have done that? I was not sure if only I had heard it, so I asked. The reply was, But it was the ship leaving! There was actually a ship which had left during the night3that is in support of those who said it was a ship. But for me, it was SOMEONE because I felt someone there and I thought, Oh! If someone, in the ardor of his soul, said that in this what I could call an atheistic silence. Because people here are so afraid of following tradition, of being the slaves of the old things, that they cast out anything closely or remotely resembling religion.
  --
   In any event, if it wasnt a Man, if it was a ship, then the ship said it! Because it was THATit was that, it was nothing other than an invocation. And the result was fantastic!
   People immediately thought, Oh, its the ship! Well, even if it was a ship, it was the ship that said OM!
   And then I wondered, If we were to repeat the Mantra we heard the other day4 (Om Namo Bhagavateh) during the half-hour meditation, what would happen?
   What would happen?
  --
   During an Indian film on Dhruva in which this Manna was chanted for a long time. This film was shown at the Ashram Playground on April 29, 1958.
   In the same film.

0 1958-05-17, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   Actually, when I myself am perfect, I believe that all the rest will become perfect automatically. But it does not seem possible to become perfect without there being a beginning of realization from the other side. So it proceeds like that, bumping from one side to the other, and we go stumbling along like a drunken Man!
   ***

0 1958-06-06 - Supramental Ship, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   Its all the same thing, but the word realization can be reserved for something that is durable, that does not wear off. Because everything on earth fades awayeverything fades away, nothing remains. In this sense, there has never been any realization, for everything fades away. Nothing is ever perManent. And I know for myself: I am doing the sadhana at a gallop, as it were; never are two experiences identical nor do they recur in the same way. As soon as something is established, the next thing begins immediately. It may appear to fade away, but it doesnt fade away; rather, it is the basis upon which the next thing is built.
   ***
   This morning while I was on the balcony, I had an interesting experience: the experience of Mans effort, in all its forms and through all the ages, to approach the Divine. And I seemed to be growing wider and wider so that all the forms and all the ways of approaching the Divine attempted by Man would be contained in the present Work.
   It was represented by a kind of image in which I was as vast as the Universe, and each way of approaching the Divine was like a tiny image containing the characteristic form of this approach. And my impression was this: Why do people always limit, limit themselves? Narrow, narrow, narrow! They understand only when it is narrow.
  --
   As for the latest experience,1 I cant say for sure that no one has ever had it, because someone like Ramakrishna, individuals like that, could have had it. But I am not sure, for when I had this experience (not of the divine Presence, which I had already felt in the cells for a long time, but the experience that the Divine ALONE is acting in the body, that He has BECOME the body, yet all the while retaining his character of divine omniscience and omnipotence) well, the whole time it remained actively like that, it was absolutely impossible to have the LEAST disorder in the body, and not only in the body, but IN ALL THE SURROUNDING MATTER. It was as if every object obeyed without even needing to decide to obey: it was automatic. There was a divine harmony in EVERYTHING (it took place in my bathroom upstairs, certainly to demonstrate that it exists in the most trivial things), in everything, constantly. So if that is established in a perManent way, there CAN NO LONGER be illness it is impossible. There can no longer be accidents, there can no longer be illness, there can no longer be disorders, and everything should harmonize (probably in a progressive way) just as that was harmonized: all the objects in the bathroom were full of a joyful enthusiasmeverything obeyed, everything!
   As it was the first experience, it started to fade slightly when I began having contact with people; but I really had the feeling that it was a first experience, new upon earth. For I have experienced an absolute identity of the will with the divine Will ever since 1910, it has never left me. It isnt that, its SOMETHING ELSE. It is MATTER BECOMING THE DIVINE. And it really came with the feeling that this thing was happening for the first time upon earth. It is difficult to say for sure, but Ramakrishna died of cancer, and now that I have had the experience, I know in an ABSOLUTE way that this is impossible. If he had decided to go because the Divine wanted him to go, it would have been an orderly departure, in total harmony and with a total will, whereas this illness is a means of disorder.
   Is this experience of May 1 related to the Supramental Manifestation of 1956? Is it a supramental experience?
   It is the result of the descent of the supramental substance into Matter. Only this substancewhat it has put into physical Mattercould have made it possible. It is a new ferment. From the material standpoint, it removes from physical Matter its tamas, the heaviness of its unconsciousness, and from the psychological standpoint, its ignorance and its falsehood. Matter is subtilized. But it has surely come only as a first experience to show how it will be.
  --
   Its action will be somewhat similar to what is described in the Last Judgment, which is an entirely symbolic expression of something that makes us discern between what belongs to the world of falsehood which is destined to disappear and what belongs to this same world of ignorance and inertia but is transformable. One will go to one side and the other to the other side. All that is transformable will be permeated more and more with this new substance and this new consciousness to such an extent that it will rise towards it and serve as a link between the two but all that belongs incorrigibly to falsehood and ignorance will disappear. This was also prophesied in the Gita: among what we call the hostile or anti-divine forces, those capable of being transformed will be uplifted and go off towards the new consciousness, whereas all that is irrevocably in darkness or belongs to an evil will shall be destroyed and vanish from the Universe. And a whole part of huManity that has responded to these forces rather too zealously will certainly vanish with them. And this is what was expressed in this concept of the Last Judgment.
   May 1, 1958.

0 1958-07-06, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   You see, this is how it happened: theres this Ganesh2 We had a meditation (this was more than thirty years ago) in the room where Prosperity3 is now distributed. There were eight or ten of us, I believe. We used to make sentences with flowers; I arranged the flowers, and each one made a sentence with the different flowers I had put there. And one day when the subject of prosperity or wealth came up, I thought (they always say that Ganesh is the god of money, of fortune, of the worlds wealth), I thought, Isnt this whole story of the god with an elephant trunk merely a lot of huMan imagination? Thereupon, we meditated. And who should I see walk in and park himself in front of me but a living being, absolutely alive and luminous, with a trunk that long and smiling! So then, in my meditation, I said, Ah! So its true that you exist!Of course I exist! And you may ask me for whatever you wish, from a monetary standpoint, of course, and I will give it to you!
   So I asked. And for about ten years, it poured in, like this (gesture of torrents). It was incredible. I would ask, and at the next Darshan, or a month or several days later, depending, there it was.
  --
   For the last, for money, he told me, I still dont know exactly what it depends on. Then one day I entered into trance with this idea in mind, and after a certain journey I came to a place like a subterranean grotto (which means that it is in the subconscient, or perhaps even in the inconscient) which was the source, the place and the power over money. I was about to enter into this grotto (a kind of inner cave) when I saw, coiled and upright, an immense serpent, like an all black python, formidable, as big as a seven-story house, who said, You cannot pass!Why not? Let me pass!Myself, I would let you pass, but if I did, they would immediately destroy me.Who, then, is this they?They are the asuric4 powers who rule over money. They have put me here to guard the entrance, precisely so that you may not enter.And what is it that would give one the power to enter? Then he told me something like this: I heard (that is, he himself had no special knowledge, but it was something he had heard from his masters, those who ruled over him), I heard that he who will have a total power over the huMan sexual impulses (not merely in himself, but a universal power that is, a power enabling him to control this everywhere, among all men) will have the right to enter. In other words, these forces would not be able to prevent him from entering.
   A personal realization is very easy, it is nothing at all; a personal realization is one thing, but the power to control it among all men that is, to control or master such movements at will, everywhereis quite another. I dont believe that this condition has been fulfilled. If what the serpent said is true and if this is really what will vanquish these hostile forces that rule over money, well then, it has not been fulfilled.
  --
   Therefore, its an affair between the asuras and the huMan species. To transform itself is the only solution left to the huMan speciesin other words, to tear from the asuric forces the power of ruling over the huMan species.
   You see, the huMan species is a part of Nature, but as Sri Aurobindo has explained, from the moment mind expressed itself in Man, it put him into a relationship with Nature very different from the relationship all the lower species have with her. All the lower species right up to Man are completely under the rule of Nature; she makes them do whatever she wants, and they can do nothing without her consent. Whereas Man begins to act and to live as an equal; not as an equal in terms of power, but from the standpoint of consciousness (he is beginning to do so since he has the capacity to study and to find out Natures secrets). He is not superior to her, far from it, but he is on an equal footing. And so he has acquiredthis is a fac the has acquired a certain power of independence that he immediately used to put himself under the influence of the hostile forces, which are not terrestrial but extra-terrestrial.
   I am speaking of terrestrial Nature. Through their mental power, men had the choice and the freedom to make pacts with these extraterrestrial vital forces. There is a whole vital world that has nothing to do with the earth, it is entirely independent or prior to earths existence, it is self-existentwell, they have brought that down here! They have made what we see! And such being the case This is what terrestrial Nature told me: It is beyond my control.
  --
   Perhaps it would not be necessary to have this power over all men, but in any event, it should be great enough to act upon the mass. It is likely that once a certain movement has been mastered to some degree, what the mass does or doesnt do (this whole huMan mass that has barely, barely emerged into even the mental consciousness) will become quite irrelevant. You see, the mass is still under the great rule of Nature. I am referring to mental huManity, predominantly mental, which developed the mind but misused it and immediately set out on the wrong pathfirst thing.
   There is nothing to say since the first thing done by the divine forces which eManated for the Creation was to take the wrong path!6 That is the origin, the seed of this marvelous spirit of independence the negation of surrender, in other words. Man said, I have the power to think; I will do with it what I want, and no one has the right to intervene. I am free, I am an independent being, IN-DE-PEN-DENT! So thats how things stand: we are all independent beings!
   But yesterday, in fact, I was looking (with all these Mantras and these prayers and this whole vibration that has descended into the atmosphere, creating a state of constant calling in the atmosphere), and I remembered the old movements and how everything now has changed! I was also thinking of the old disciplines, one of which is to say, I am That.7 People were told to sit in meditation and repeat, I am That, to reach an identification. And it all seemed to me so obsolete, so childish, but at the same time a part of the whole. I looked, and it seemed so absurd to sit in meditation and say, I am That! I, what is this I who is That; what is this I, where is it? I was trying to find it, and I saw a tiny, microscopic point (to see it would almost require some gigantic instrument), a tiny, obscure point in an im-men-sity of Light, and that little point was the body. At the same timeit was absolutely simultaneous I saw the Presence of the Supreme as a very, very, very, VERY immense Being, within which was I in an attitude of (I was only a sensation, you see), an attitude (gesture of surrender) like this. There were no limits, yet at the same time, one felt the joy of being permeated, enveloped and of being able to widen, widen, widen indefinitelyto widen the whole being, from the highest consciousness to the most material consciousness. And then, at the same time, to look at this body and to see every cell, every atom vibrating with a divine, radiant Presence with all its Consciousness, all its Power, all its Will, all its Loveall, all, really and a joy! An extraordinary joy. And one did not disturb the other, nothing was contradictory and everything was felt at the same time. That was when I said, But truly! This body had to have the training it has had for more than seventy years to be able to bear all that without starting to cry out or dance or leap up or whatever it might be! No, it was calm (it was exultant, but it was very calm), and it remained in control of its movements and its words. In spite of the fact that it was really living in another world, it could apparently act normal due to this strenuous training in self-control by the REASONby the reasonover the whole being, which has tamed it and given it such a great cohesive power that I can BE in the experience, I can LIVE this experience, and at the same time respond with the most amiable of smiles to the most idiotic questions!
   And then, it always ends in the same way, by a canticle to the action of the grace: O, Lord! You are truly marvelous! All the experiences I have needed to pass through You have given to me, all the things I needed to do to make this body ready You have made me do, and always with the feeling that it was You who was making me do itand with the universal disapproval of all the right-minded huManity!
   About one million dollars.
  --
   In effect, according to tradition, the first divine forces that eManated for the creation were the Asuras, who turned into demons. The gods were created later to repair the disorder engendered by the demons.
   So'ham, the traditional Mantra of the Vedantic path, which declares that the world is an illusion.
   ***

0 1958-07-19, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   It is Mans mental consciousness that has filled all Nature with the idea of sin and all the misery it brings. Animals are not at all unhappy in the way we are. Not at all, not at all, exceptas Sri Aurobindo saysthose that are corrupted. Those that are corrupted are those that live with men. Dogs have the sense of sin and guilt, for their whole aspiration is to resemble Man. Man is the god. Hence there is dissimulation, hypocrisy: dogs lie. But men admire that. They say, Oh! How intelligent they are!
   They have lost their divinity.
   Truly, the huMan species is at a point in the spiral which is not very pretty.
   But isnt a dog more conscious, more evolved than a tiger, or higher in the spiral that is, nearer the Divine?
   Its not a question of being conscious. There is no doubt that Man is more evolved than the tiger, but the tiger is more divine than Man. One shouldnt confuse things. These are two entirely different things.
   The Divine is everywhere, in everything. We should never forget itnot for a second should we forget it. He is everywhere, in everything; and in an unconscious but spontaneous, therefore sincere, way, all that exists below the mental Manifestation is divine, without mixture; in other words, it exists spontaneously and in harmony with its nature. It is Man with his mind who has introduced the idea of guilt. Naturally, he is much more conscious! Theres no question about it, its a fact, although what we call consciousness (what we call it, that is, what Man calls consciousness) is the power to objectify and mentalize things. It is not the true consciousness, but its what men call consciousness. So according to the huMan mode, it is obvious that Man is much more conscious than the animal, but the huMan brings in sin and perversion which do not exist outside of this state we call consciouswhich in fact is not conscious but merely consists in mentalizing things and in having the ability to objectify them.
   It is an ascending curve, but a curve that swerves away from the Divine. So naturally, one has to climb much higher to find a higher Divine, since it is a conscious Divine, whereas the others are divine spontaneously and instinctively, without being conscious of it. All our moral notions of good and evil, all of that, are what we have thrown over the creation with our distorted and perverted consciousness. It is we who have invented it.

0 1958-07-21, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   HuMan beings dont know how to keep energy. When something happensan accident or an illness, for example and they ask for help, a double or a triple dose of energy is sent. If they happen to be receptive, they receive it. This energy is given for two reasons: to restore order out of the disorder caused by the accident or illness, and to impart a transformative force to repair or change the source of the illness or accident.
   But instead of using the energy in this way, they immediately throw it out. They start stirring about, reacting, working, speaking They feel full of energy and they throw it all out! They cant keep anything. So naturally, since the energy was not sent to be wasted like that but for an inner use, they feel absolutely flat, run down. And it is universal. They dont know, they do not know how to make this movementto turn within, to use the energy (not to keep it, it doesnt keep), to use it to repair the damage done to the body and to go deeply within to find the reason for this accident or illness, and there to change it by an aspiration, an inner transformation. Instead of that, right away they start speaking, stirring about, reacting, doing this or that!
   In fact, the immense majority of huMan beings feel they are living only when they waste their energy. Otherwise, it does not seem to them to be life.
   Not to waste energy means to utilize it towards the ends for which it was given. If energy is given for the transformation, for the sublimation of the being, it must be used for that; if energy is given to restore something that has been disrupted in the body, it must be used for that.
  --
   But as soon as a Man feels energetic, he immediately rushes into action. Or else, those who dont have the sense of doing something useful start gossiping. And still worse, those who have no control over themselves become intolerant and start arguing! If someone contradicts their will, they feel full of energy and they mistake that for a godlike wrath!
   ***

0 1958-07-23, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   In the final analysis, seeing the world such as it is and seems meant to be irremediably, huMan intellect has decided that this universe must be an error of God and that the Manifestation or creation is certainly the result of a desire, the desire to Manifest, know oneself, enjoy oneself. So the only thing to do is to put an end to this error as soon as possible by refusing to cling to desire and its fatal consequences.
   But the Supreme Lord answers that the comedy is not entirely played out, and He adds: Wait for the last act; undoubtedly you will change your mind.

0 1958-08-07, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   It is very difficult to Manage both at the same time: the transformation of the body and taking care of people. But what can I do? I told Sri Aurobindo I would do the work, and I am doing it I cannot just abandon everything.
   When I think of the time the hatha yogis devote to the work on the bodythey do nothing but that; they do nothing but that all the time, until they have attained a certain point. This is in fact the reason why Sri Aurobindo wanted none of it: he found that it took a lot of time for a rather meager result.
  --
   Last night, I had Many dreams (not really dreams, but ); I used to find them very interesting because they gave me certain indications, all kinds of things, but when I saw it all now, I said to myself, Good Lord! What a waste of time! Instead, I could be living in a supramental consciousness and seeing things. So during the night, I made a resolution to change all this too. My nights have to change. I am already changing my days; now my nights have to change. But then all this subconscious in Matter, all this, it all has to change! Theres no choice, it has to be seen to.
   Once you set to this work, it is such a formidable task! But what can I do?

0 1958-08-09, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   If huMan love came forth unalloyed, it would be all-powerful. Unfortunately, in huMan love, there is as much SELF love as love for the beloved; it is not a love that makes you forget yourself.
   Evidently the gods of the Puranas are a good deal worse than huMan beings, as we saw in that film the other day1 (and that story was absolutely true). The gods of the Overmind are infinitely more egocentric the only thing that counts for them is their power, the extent of their power. Man has in addition a psychic being, so consequently he has true love and compassionwherein lies his superiority over the gods. It was very, very clearly expressed in this film, and its very true.
   The gods are faultless, for they live according to their own nature, spontaneously and without constraint; it is their godly way. But if one looks at it from a higher point of view, if one has a higher vision, a vision of the whole, they have fewer qualities than Man. In this film, it was proved that through their capacity for love and self-giving, men can have as much power as the gods, and even morewhen they are not egoists, when they can overcome their egoism.
   Certainly Man is nearer the Supreme than the gods. Provided he fulfills the necessary conditions, he can be nearerhe isnt so automatically, but he can be, he has the power, the potentiality to be.
   Anusuya: wife of the rishi Atri and endowed with a great inner force. In her husband's absence, three gods came (Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva) disguised as brahmins and asked her for something to eat. Then they refused to eat unless she served them naked. Since they were brahmins, she could not send them away without feeding them, so by her inner power, she changed them into babies and served them naked. This film was shown at the Ashram Playground on August 5, 1958.

0 1958-08-29, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   The Mantra written upon each of the souvenirs1 from the Himalayas has a strong power of evoking the Supreme Mother.
   At the Thursday evening meditation, he appeared as the Guru of Tantric Initiation, magnified and seated upon a symbolic representation of the forces and riches of material Nature (in the middle of the playground, to my left), and he put into my hand something sufficiently material for me to feel the vibrations physically, and it had a great realizing power. It was a kind of luminous and very vibrant globe which I held in my hands during the whole meditation.

0 1958-08-30, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   [The disciple who Managed the Ashram 'Atelier': mechanical workshop, maintenance garage, automobile service, etc.]
   It was just at four oclock in the morning, and it woke me up. It was exactly like this I was apparently in my bathroom, and I had to open the door between the bathroom and Sri Aurobindos room; the moment I put my hand on the doorknob, I knew with an absolute certainty that destruction was awaiting me behind the door. It had the form or image of those great invaders of India, those who had swooped down upon India and destroyed everything in their wake But it was only an impression.

0 1958-09-16 - OM NAMO BHAGAVATEH, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   I would very much like to have a true Mantra.
   I have a whole stock of Mantras; they have all come spontaneously, never from the head. They sprang forth spontaneously, as the Veda is said to have sprung forth.
   I dont know when it begana very long time ago, before I came here, although some of them came while I was here. But in my case, they were always very short. For example, when Sri Aurobindo was here in his body, at any moment, in any difficulty, for anything, it always came like this: My Lord!simply and spontaneouslyMy Lord! And instantly, the contact was established. But since He left, it has stopped. I can no longer say it, for it would be like saying My Lord, My Lord! to myself.
   I had a Mantra in French before coming to Pondicherry. It was Dieu de bont et de misricorde [God of kindness and mercy], but what it means is usually not understoodit is an entire program, a universal program. I have been repeating this Mantra since the beginning of the century; it was the Mantra of ascension, of realization. At present, it no longer comes in the same way, it comes rather as a memory. But it was deliberate, you see; I always said Dieu de bont et de misricorde, because even then I understood that everything is the Divine and the Divine is in all things and that it is only we who make a distinction between what is or what is not the Divine.
   My experience is that, individually, we are in relationship with that aspect of the Divine which is not necessarily the most in conformity with our natures, but which is the most essential for our development or the most necessary for our action. For me, it was always a question of action because, personally, individually, each aspiration for personal development had its own form, its own spontaneous expression, so I did not use any formula. But as soon as there was the least little difficulty in action, it sprang forth. Only long afterwards did I notice that it was formulated in a certain way I would utter it without even knowing what the words were. But it came like this: Dieu de bont et de misricorde. It was as if I wanted to eliminate from action all aspects that were not this one. And it lasted for I dont know, more than twenty or twenty-five years of my life. It came spontaneously.
  --
   The words came afterwards, as if they had been superimposed upon the states of consciousness, grafted onto them. Some of the associations seem unexpected, but they were the exact expression of the states of consciousness in their order of unfolding. They came one after another, as if the contact was trying to become more complete. And the last was like a triumph. As soon as I finished writing (in writing, all this becomes rather flat), the impetus within was still alive and it gave me the sense of an all-conquering Truth. And the last Mantra sprang forth:
   Seigneur, Dieu de la Vrit victorieuse!
  --
   Of course, these things should not be published. We can file them in this Agenda of the Supramental Manifestation for later on. Later on, when the Victory is won, we shall say, If you want to see the curve
   But what is going to come now? I constantly hear the Sanskrit Mantra:
   OM NAMO BHAGAVATEH1
   It is there, all around me; it takes hold of all the cells and at once they spring forth in an ascension. And Naradas Mantra, too:
   Narayana, Narayana
   (it is actually a ComMand which means: now you shall do as I wish), but it doesnt come from the heart.
   What will it be?
  --
   When I have this Mantra, instead of saying hello, good-bye, I shall say that. When I say hello, good-bye, it means Hello: the Presence is here, the Light is here. Good-bye: I am not going away, I am staying here.
   But when I have this Mantra, I believe something will happen.
   (silence)
   For the moment, of all the formulas or Mantras, the one that acts most directly on this body, that seizes all the cells and immediately does this (vibrating motion) is the Sanskrit Mantra: OM NAMO BHAGAVATEH.
   As soon as I sit for meditation, as soon as I have a quiet minute to concentrate, it always begins with this Mantra, and there is a response in the body, in the cells of the body: they all start vibrating.
   This is how it happened: Y had just returned, and he brought back a trunk full of things which he then proceeded to show me, and his excitement made tight, tight little waves in the atmosphere, making my head ache; it made anyway, it was unpleasant. When I left, just after that had happened, I sat down and went like this (gesture of sweeping out) to make it stop, and immediately the Mantra began.
   It rose up from here (Mother indicates the solar plexus), like this: Om Namo Bhagavateh OM NAMO BHAGAVATEH OM NAMO BHAGAVATEH. It was formidable. For the entire quarter of an hour that the meditation lasted, everything was filled with Light! In the deeper tones it was of golden bronze (at the throat level it was almost red) and in the higher tones it was a kind of opaline white light: OM NAMO BHAGAVATEH, OM NAMO BHAGAVATEH, OM NAMO BHAGAVATEH.
  --
   Unfortunately, I was unable to continue, because I dont have the time; it was just before the balcony darshan and I was going to be late. Something told me, That is for people who have nothing to do. Then I said, I belong to my work, and I slowly withdrew. I put on the brakes, and the action was cut short. But what remains is that whenever I repeat this Mantra everything starts vibrating.
   So each one must find something that acts on himself, individually. I am only speaking of the action on the physical plane, because mentally, vitally, in all the inner parts of the being, the aspiration is always, always spontaneous. I am referring only to the physical plane.
   The physical seems to be more open to something that is repetitious for example, the music we play on Sundays, which has three series of combined Mantras. The first is that of Chandi, addressed to the universal Mother:
   Ya devi sarvabhuteshu matrirupena sansthita
  --
   The second is addressed to Sri Aurobindo (and I believe they have put my name at the end). It incorporates the Mantra I was speaking of:
   Om namo namah shrimirambikayai
  --
   So for these Mantras, everything depends upon what you want to do with them. I am in favor of a short Mantra, especially if you want to make both numerous and spontaneous repetitionsone or two words, three at most. Because you must be able to use them in all cases, when an accident is about to happen, for example. It has to spring up without thinking, without calling: it should issue forth from the being spontaneously, like a reflex, exactly like a reflex. Then the Mantra has its full force.
   For me, on the days when I have no special preoccupations or difficulties (days I could call normal, when I am normal), everything I do, all the movements of this body, all, all the words I utter, all the gestures I make, are accompanied and upheld by or lined, as it were, with this Mantra:
   OM NAMO BHAGAVATEH OM NAMO BHAGAVATEH
  --
   You have no Mantras that have come to you, that give you a more living feeling? Are their Mantras long?
   Yes, they are long. And he2 has not given me any Mantra of the Mother, so They exist, but he has not given me any I dont know, they dont have much effect on me. It is something very mental.
   Thats why it should spring forth from you.
  --
   This one, this Mantra, OM NAMO BHAGAVATEH, came to me after some time, for I felt well, I saw that I needed to have a Mantra of my own, that is, a Mantra consonant with what this body has to do in the world. And it was just then that it came.3 It was truly an answer to a need that had made itself felt. So if you feel the neednot there, not in your head, but here (Mother points to the center of her heart), it will come. One day, either you will hear the words, or they will spring forth from your heart And when that happens, you must hold onto it.
   The first syllable of NAMO is pronounced with a short 'a,' as in nahmo. The final word is pronounced BHA-GAH-VA-TEH.
  --
   The different Mantras or prayers that came to Mother and which She grouped under the heading Prayers of the Consciousness of the Cells, are included as an addendum to the Agenda of 1959.
   ***

0 1958-10-04, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   For people here in the Ashram, my work is not the same. It is more like a kind of atmosphere that extends everywherea very conscious atmospherewhich I let work for each one according to his need. I dont have a special action for each person, unless something requires my special attention. When I would tune into you while you were travelling, I clearly saw your image appear before me, as though you were looking at me, but now that you have returned here, I no longer see it. Rather, I receive a sensation or an impression; and as these sensations and impressions are innumerable, its rather like one element among Many. It no longer imposes itself in such an entirely distinct way nor does it appear before me in the same Manner, as a clear image of yourself, as though you wanted to know something.
   As soon as I am alone, I enter into a very deep concentration,a state of consciousness, a kind of universal activity. Is it deep? What is it? It is far beyond all the mental regions, far, far beyond, and it is constant. As soon as I am alone or resting somewhere, thats how it is.
   The other day when I was in this state of concentration, I had the vision that I mentioned to you. I felt I was being pulled, that something was pulling me and trying to draw my attention. I felt it very strongly. So I opened my eyes, my mental eyes (the physical eyes may remain opened or closed, it makes no difference either way; when I am concentrated, things on the physical plane no longer exist), I deliberately opened the minds eyes, for that is where I felt myself being pulled, and then I had this vision I told you of. Someone was trying to draw my attention, to tell me something. It takes someone really quite powerful, with a very great power of concentration, to do thatthere are certainly a great Many people here and elsewhere who try to do this, yet I dont feel a thing.3
   In the outer, practical domain, I might suddenly think of someone, so I know that this person is calling or thinking of me. When you left on your trip, I created a special link-up so that if ever, at any moment, you called me for anything, I would know it instantly, and I remained attentive and alert. But I do that only in exceptional cases. Generally speaking, when I havent made this special link-up, things keep coming in and coming in and coming in and coming in, and the answer goes out automatically, here or there or there or therehundreds and hundreds of things that I dont keep in my memory because then it would really be frightful. I dont keep these things in my consciousness; it is rather a work that is done automatically.
   When you asked me if X4 were thinking of me, I consulted my atmosphere and saw that it was true, that even Many times a day Xs thoughts were coming. So I know that he is concentrating on me, or something: it simply passes through me, and I answer automatically. But I dont particularly pay attention to X, unless you ask me a question about him, in which case I deliberately tune into him, then observe and determine whether its like this or like that. Whereas this vision the other day was something that thrust itself on me; I was in another region altogether, in my inner contemplation, my concentrationa very strong concentrationwhen I was forced to enter into contact with this being whose vision I had and who was obviously a very powerful being. After telling me what he had to tell me, he went away in a very peculiar way, not at all suddenly as most people appear and disappear, not at all like that. When I first saw him, there was a living form the being himself was there but upon leaving (probably to see the effect, to find out whether he had truly succeeded in making himself understood), he left behind a kind of image of himself. Afterwards, this image blurred and it left only a silhouette, an outline, then it disappeared altogether leaving only an impression. That was the last thing I saw. So I kept the impression and analyzed it to find out exactly what was involved; all this was filed away, and then it was over. I began my concentration once again.
   I intentionally carry everybody in my active consciousness for the work, and I do the work consciously; but the extent to which people in the world, or those who are here in the Ashram, are conscious of this or receive the results depends upon them, though not exclusively.
   The other day, for example, though I no longer recall exactly when (I forget everything on purpose)but it was in the last part of the night I had a rather long activity concerning the whole realization of the Ashram, notably in the fields of education and art. I was apparently inspecting this area to see how things were there, so naturally I saw a certain number of people, their work and their inner states. Some saw me and, at that moment, had a vision of me. It is likely that Many were asleep and didnt notice anything, but some actually saw me. The next morning, for example, someone who works at the theater told me that she had had a splendid vision of me in which I had spoken to her, blessed her, etc. This was her way of receiving the work I had done. And this kind of thing is happening more and more, in that my action is awakening the consciousness in others more and more strongly.
   Naturally, the reception is always incomplete or partially modified; when it passes through the individuality, it becomes narrowed, a personal thing. It seems impossible for each one to have a consciousness vast enough to see the thing in its entirety.
  --
   Before, I always had the negative experience of the disappearance of the ego, of the oneness of Creation, where everything implying separation disappearedan experience that, personally, I would call negative. Last Wednesday, while I was speaking (and thats why at the end I could no longer find my words), I seemed suddenly to have left this negative phenomenon and entered into the positive experience: the experience of BEING the Supreme Lord, the experience that nothing exists but the Supreme Lordall is the Supreme Lord, there is nothing else. And at that moment, the feeling of this infinite power that has no limit, that nothing can limit, was so overwhelming that all the functions of the body, of this mental machine that summons up words, all this was I could no longer speak French. Perhaps the words could have come to me in Englishprobably, because it was easier for Sri Aurobindo to express himself in English, and thats how it must have happened: it was the part embodied in Sri Aurobindo (the part of the Supreme that was embodied in Sri Aurobindo for its Manifestation) that had the experience. This is what joined back with the Origin and caused the experience I was well aware of it. And that is probably why its transcription through English words would have been easier than through French words (for at these moments, such activities are purely mechanical, rather like automatic machines). And naturally the experience left something behind. It left the sense of a power that can no longer be qualified,5 really. And it was there yesterday evening.
   The difficultyits not even a difficulty, its just a kind of precaution that is taken (automatically, in fact) in order to For example, the volume of Force that was to be expressed in the voice was too great for the speech organ. So I had to be a little attentive that is, there had to be a kind of filtering in the outermost expression, otherwise the voice would have cracked. But this isnt done through the will and reason, its automatic. Yet I feel that the capacity of Matter to contain and express is increasing with phenomenal speed. But its progressive, it cant be done instantly. There have often been people whose outer form broke because the Force was too strong; well, I clearly see that it is being dosed out. After all, this is exclusively the concern of the Supreme Lord, I dont bother about itits not my concern and I dont bother about itHe makes the necessary adjustments. Thus it comes progressively, little by little, so that no fundamental disequilibrium occurs. It gives the impression that ones head is swelling so tremendously it will burst! But then if there is a moment of stillness, it adapts; gradually, it adapts.
   Only, one must be careful to keep the sense of the UnManifest sufficiently present so that the various things the elements, the cells and all thathave time to adapt. The sense of the UnManifest, or in other words, to step back into the UnManifest.6 This is what all those who have had experiences have done; they always believed that there was no possibility of adaptation, so they left their bodies and went off.
   ***
  --
   Money is not meant to generate money; money should generate an increase in production, an improvement in the conditions of life and a progress in huMan consciousness. This is its true use. What I call an improvement in consciousness, a progress in consciousness, is everything that education in all its forms can providenot as its generally understood, but as we understand it here: education in art, education in from the education of the body, from the most material progress, to the spiritual education and progress through yoga; the whole spectrum, everything that leads huManity towards its future realization. Money should serve to augment that and to augment the material base for the earths progress, the best use of what the earth can giveits intelligent utilization, not the utilization that wastes and loses energies. The use that allows energies to be replenished.
   In the universe there is an inexhaustible source of energy that asks only to be replenished; if you know how to go about it, it is replenished. Instead of draining life and the energies of our earth and making of it something parched and inert, we must know the practical exercise for replenishing the energy constantly. And these are not just words; I know how its to be done, and science is in the process of thoroughly finding outit has found out most admirably. But instead of using it to satisfy huMan passions, instead of using what science has found so that men may destroy each other more effectively than they are presently doing, it must be used to enrich the earth: to enrich the earth, to make the earth richer and richer, more active, generous, productive and to make all life grow towards its maximum efficiency. This is the true use of money. And if its not used like that, its a vicea short circuit and a vice.
   But how Many people know how to use it in this way? Very few, which is why they have to be taught. What I call teach is to show, to give the example. We want to be the example of true living in the world. Its a challenge I am placing before the whole financial world: I am telling them that they are in the process of withering and ruining the earth with their idiotic system; and with even less than they are now spending for useless thingsmerely for inflating something that has no inherent life, that should be only an instrument at the service of life, that has no reality in itself, that is only a means and not an end (they make an end of something that is only a means)well then, instead of making of it an end, they should make it the means. With what they have at their disposal they could oh, transform the earth so quickly! Transform it, put it into contact, truly into contact, with the supramental forces that would make life bountiful and, indeed, constantly renewedinstead of becoming withered, stagnant, shrivelled up: a future moon. A dead moon.
   We are told that in a few millions or billions of years, the earth will become some kind of moon. The movement should be the opposite: the earth should become more and more a resplendent sun, but a sun of life. Not a sun that burns, but a sun that illuminesa radiant glory.
  --
   The vastness beyond the creation or the cosmic Manifestation, the solid base upon which all the rest can unfold.
   ***

0 1958-10-06, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   Certain relationships are entirely within me, entirely. It is not a relationship between individuals, but a relationship between states of beingwhich means that with the same individual there may be Many different relationships. If it were a single whole but I am still not sure if there is a single person with whom the relationship is global.
   So there are parts which are entirely within me, entirely there is no difference; they are myself. There are other parts with which I am conscious of an exchangea very familiar, very intimate exchange. And there are parts outside of me with which I still have relationships, not exactly as with strangers but merely as acquaintances; it is still necessary to observe their reactions in order to do the correct thing. And the ratio between these different parts is naturally different depending upon the different individuals.

0 1958-10-10, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   (The disciple asks to know what he must do and what his place is in the universal Manifestation)
   In all religious and especially occult initiations, the ritual of the different ceremonies is prescribed in every detail; all the words pronounced, all the gestures made have their importance, and the least infraction of the rule, the least fault committed can have fatal consequences. It is the same in material lifeif one had the initiation into the true way of living, one could transform physical existence.
  --
   The same can be said of physical culture and of all the sciences that are concerned with the body and its workings. If the material universe is considered as the outer sheath and the Manifestation of the Supreme, then it can generally be said that all the physical sciences are the rituals of worship.
   We always come back to the same thing: the absolute necessity for perfect sincerity, perfect honesty and a sense of the dignity of all we do so that we may do it as it should be done.
  --
   There is ones position in the universal hierarchy, which is something ineluctableit is the eternal lawand there is the development in the Manifestation, which is an education; it is progressive and done from within the being. What is remarkable is that to become a perfect being, this positionwhatever it is, decreed since all eternity, a part of the eternal Truthmust Manifest with the greatest possible perfection as a result of evolutionary growth. It is the junction, the union of the two, the eternal position and the evolutionary realization, that will make the total and perfect being, and the Manifestation as the Lord has willed it since the beginning of all eternity (which has no beginning at all! ).
   And for the cycle to be complete, one cannot stop on the way at any plane, not even the highest spiritual plane nor the plane closest to matter (like the occult plane in the vital, for example). One must descend right into matter, and this perfection in Manifestation must be a material perfection, or otherwise the cycle is not completewhich explains why those who want to flee in order to realize the divine Will are in error. What must be done is exactly the opposite! The two must be combined in a perfect way. This is why all the honest sciences, the sciences that are practiced sincerely, honestly, exclusively with a will to know, are difficult pathsyet such sure paths for the total realization.
   It brings up very interesting things. (What I am going to say now is very personal and consequently cannot be used, but it may be kept anyway:)
  --
   Then and this becomes rather amusing like lifes play Depending upon each ones nature and position and bias, and because huMan beings are very limited, very partial and incapable of a global vision, there are those who believe, who have faith, or to whom the eternal Mother is revealed through Grace, who have this kind of relationship with the eternal Mother and there are those who themselves are plunged in sadhana, who have the consciousness of a developed sadhak, and thereby have the same relationship with me as one has with what they generally call a realized soul. Such persons consider me the prototype of the Guru teaching a new way, but the others dont have this relationship of sadhak to Guru (I am taking the two extremes, but of course there are all the possibilities in between), they are only in contact with the eternal Mother and, in the simplicity of their hearts, they expect Her to do everything for them. If they were perfect in this attitude, the eternal Mother would do everything for themas a matter of fact, She does do everything, but as they arent perfect, they cannot receive it totally. But the two paths are very different, the two kinds of relationships are very different; and as we all live according to the law of external things, in a material body, there is a kind of annoyance, an almost irritated misunderstanding, between those who follow this path (not consciously and intentionally, but spontaneously), who have this relationship of the child to the Mother, and those who have this other relationship of the sadhak to the Guru. So it creates a whole play, with an infinite diversity of shades.
   But all this is still in suspense, on the way to realization, moving forward progressively; therefore, unless we are able to see the outcome, we cant understand a thing. We get confused. Only when we see the outcome, the final realization, only when we have TOUCHED there, will everything be understood then it will be as clear and as simple as can be. But meanwhile, my relationships with different people are very funny, utterly amusing!
  --
   It opens up extraordinary horizons; once you have understood this, you have the keyyou have the key to Many, Many things: the different positions of each of the different saints, the different realizations and it resolves all the incoherencies of the various Manifestations on earth.
   For example, this question of PowerTHE Powerover Matter. Those who perceive me as the eternal, universal Mother and Sri Aurobindo as the Avatar are surprised that our power is not absolute. They are surprised that we have not merely to say, Let it be thus for it to be thus. This is because, in the integral realization, the union of the two is essential: a union of the power that proceeds from the eternal position and the power that proceeds from the sadhana through evolutionary growth. Similarly, how is it that those who have reached even the summits of yogic knowledge (I was thinking of Swami) need to resort to beings like gods or demigods to be able to realize things?Because they have indeed united with certain higher forces and entities, but it was not decreed since the beginning of time that they were this particular being. They were not born as this or that, but through evolution they united with a latent possibility in themselves. Each one carries the Eternal within himself, but one can join Him only when one has realized the complete union of the latent Eternal with the eternal Eternal.

0 1958-10-17, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   'If Mankind only caught a glimpse of what infinite enjoyments, what perfect forces, what luminous reaches of spontaneous knowledge, what wide calms of our being lie waiting for us in the tracts which our animal evolution has not yet conquered, they would leave all and never rest till they had gained these treasures. But the way is narrow, the doors are hard to force, and fear, distrust and scepticism are there, sentinels of Nature to forbid the turning away of our feet from less ordinary pastures.'
   Cent. Ed. Vol. XVII, p. 79

0 1958-11-04 - Myths are True and Gods exist - mental formation and occult faculties - exteriorization - work in dreams, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   The gods of the Puranas are merciless gods who respect only power and have nothing of the true love, charity or profound goodness that the Divine has put into the huMan consciousness and which compensate psychically for all the outer defects. They themselves have nothing of this, they have no psychic.1 The Puranic gods have no psychic, so they act according to their power. They are restrained only when their power is not all-powerful, thats all.
   But what does Anusuya represent?2
   She is a portrait of the ideal woMan according to the Hindu conception, the woMan who worships her husb and as a god, which means that she sees the Supreme in her husband. And so this woMan was much more powerful than all the gods of the Puranas precisely because she had this psychic capacity for total self-giving; and her faith in the Supremes presence in her husb and gave her a much greater power than that of all the gods.
   The story narrated in the film went like this: Narada, as usual, was having fun. (Narada is a demigod with a divine position that is, he can communicate with Man and with the gods as he pleases, and he serves as an intermediary, but then he likes to have fun!) So he was quarrelling with one of the goddesses, I no longer recall which one, and he told her (Ah, yes! The quarrel was with Saraswati.) Saraswati was telling him that knowledge is much greater than love (much greater in that it is much more powerful than love), and he replied to her, You dont know what youre talking about! (Mother laughs) Love is much more powerful than knowledge. So she challenged him, saying, Well then, prove it to me.I shall prove it to you, he replied. And the whole story starts there. He began creating a whole imbroglio on earth just to prove his point.
   It was only a film story, but anyway, the goddesses, the three wives of the Trimurti that is, the consort of Brahma, the consort of Vishnu and the consort of Shivajoined forces (!) and tried all kinds of things to foil Narada. I no longer recall the details of the story Oh yes, the story begins like this: one of the three I believe it was Shivas consort, Parvati (she was the worst one, by the way!)was doing her puja. Shiva was in meditation, and she began doing her puja in front of him; she was using an oil lamp for the puja, and the lamp fell down and burned her foot. She cried out because she had burned her foot. So Shiva at once came out of his meditation and said to her, What is it, Devi? (laughter) She answered, I burned my foot! Then Narada said, Arent you ashamed of what you have done?to make Shiva come out of his meditation simply because you have a little burn on your foot, which cannot even hurt you since you are immortal! She became furious and snapped at him, Show me that it can be otherwise! Narada replied, I am going to show you what it is to really love ones husbandyou dont know anything about it!
   Then comes the story of Anusuya and her husb and (who is truly a husb and a very good Man, but well, not a god, after all!), who was sleeping with his head resting upon Anusuyas knees. They had finished their puja (both of them were worshippers of Shiva), and after their puja he was resting, sleeping, with his head on Anusuyas knees. Meanwhile, the gods had descended upon earth, particularly this Parvati, and they saw Anusuya like that. Then Parvati exclaimed, This is a good occasion! Not very far away a cooking fire was burning. With her power, she sent the fire rolling down onto Anusuyas feetwhich startled her because it hurt. It began to burn; not one cry, not one movement, nothing because she didnt want to awaken her husband. But she began invoking Shiva (Shiva was there). And because she invoked Shiva (it is lovely in the story), because she invoked Shiva, Shivas foot began burning! (Mother laughs) Then Narada showed Shiva to Parvati: Look what you are doing; you are burning your husbands foot! So Parvati made the opposite gesture and the fire was put out.
   Thats how it went.
  --
   (Shortly afterwards, the disciple again brings up the topic of August 9, where Mother had said that the gods are a good deal worse than huMan beings)
   It should be said that we are speaking of the Puranic gods, because the Christians, for example, do not understand what this can mean. They have an entirely different conception of the gods.
  --
   No, not uniquely. It could apply in Many other eases. Even if the Christians dont understand, there are Many others who will!
   Those who have read a little and who know something other than their little rut will understand.
  --
   In Europe and in the modern Western world, it is thought that all these gods the Greek gods and the pagan gods, as they are calledare huMan fancies, that they are not real beings. To understand, one must know that they are real beings. That is the difference. For Westerners, they are only a figment of the huMan imagination and dont correspond to anything real in the universe. But that is a gross mistake.
   To understand the workings of universal life, and even those of terrestrial life, one must know that in their own realms these are all living beings, each with his own independent reality. They would exist even if men did not exist! Most of these gods existed before Man.
   They are beings who belong to the progressive creation of the universe and who have themselves presided over its formation from the most etheric or subtle regions to the most material regions. They are a descent of the divine creative Spirit that came to repair the mischief in short, to repair what the Asuras had done. The first makers created disorder and darkness, an unconsciousness, and then it is said that there was a second lineage of makers to repair that evil, and the gods gradually descended through realities that were ever moreone cant say dense because it isnt really dense, nor can one even say material, since matter as we know it does not exist on these planesthrough more and more concrete substances.
   All these zones, these planes of reality, received different names and were classified in different ways according to the occult schools, according to the different traditions, but there is an essential similarity, and if we go back far enough into the various traditions, hardly anything but words differ, depending upon the country and the language. The descriptions are quite similar. Moreover, those who climb back up the ladderor in other words, a huMan being who, through his occult knowledge, goes out of one of his bodies (they are called sheaths in English) and enters into a more subtle bodyin order to ACT in a more subtle body and so forth, twelve times (you make each body come out from a more material body, leaving the more material body in its corresponding zone, and then go off through successive exteriorizations), what they have seen, what they have discovered and seen through their ascensionwhe ther they are occultists from the Occident or occultists from the Orientis for the most part analogous in description. They have put different words on it, but the experience is very analogous.
   There is the whole Chaldean tradition, and there is also the Vedic tradition, and there was very certainly a tradition anterior to both that split into two branches. Well, all these occult experiences have been the same. Only the description differs depending upon the country and the language. The story of creation is not told from a metaphysical or psychological point of view, but from an objective point of view, and this story is as real as our stories of historical periods. Of course, its not the only way of seeing, but it is just as legitimate a way as the others, and in any event, it recognizes the concrete reality of all these divine beings. Even now, the experiences of Western occultists and those of Eastern occultists exhibit great similarities. The only difference is in the way they are expressed, but the Manipulation of the forces is the same.
   I learned all this through Theon. Probably, he was I dont know if he was Russian or Polish (a Russian or Polish Jew), he never said who he really was or where he was born, nor his age nor anything.
  --
   He said he had received initiation in India (he knew a little Sanskrit and the Rig-Veda thoroughly), and then he formulated a tradition which he called the cosmic tradition and which he claimed to have received I dont know howfrom a tradition anterior to that of the Cabala and the Vedas. But there were Many things (Madame Theon was the clairvoyant one, and she received visions; oh, she was wonderful!), Many things that I myself had seen and known before knowing them which were then substantiated.
   So personally, I am convinced that there was indeed a tradition anterior to both these traditions containing a knowledge very close to an integral knowledge. Certainly, there is a similarity in the experiences. When I came here and told Sri Aurobindo certain things I knew from the occult standpoint, he always said that it conformed to the Vedic tradition. And as for certain occult practices, he told me that they were entirely tantric and I knew nothing at that time, absolutely nothing, neither the Vedas nor the Tantras.
  --
   However, you must have at least a little experience of these things to understand them. Otherwise, if you are convinced that all this is just huMan fancy or mental formations, if you believe that these gods have such and such a form because men have imagined them to be like that, or that they have such and such defects or qualities because men have envisioned it that wayas with all those who say God is created in the image of Man and exists only in huMan thoughtall such people wont understand, it will seem absolutely ridiculous to them, a kind of madness. You must live a little, touch the subject a little to know how concrete it is.
   Naturally, children know a great dealif they have not been spoiled. There are Many children who return to the same place night after night and continue living a life they have begun there. When these faculties are not spoiled with age, they can be preserved within one. There was a time when I was especially interested in dreams, and I could return exactly to the same place and continue some work I had begun there, visit something, for example, or see to something, some work of organization or some discovery or exploration; you go to a certain place, just as you go somewhere in life, then you rest a while, then you go back and begin againyou take up your work just where you left it, and you continue. You also notice that there are things entirely independent of you, certain variations which were not at all created by you and which occurred automatically during your absence.
   But then, you must LIVE these experiences yourself; you yourself must see, you must live them with enough sincerity to see (by being sincere and spontaneous) that they are independent of any mental formations. Because one can take the opposite line and make an intensive study of the way mental formations act upon eventswhich is very interesting. But thats another field. And this study makes you very careful, very prudent, because you start noticing to what extent you can delude yourself. Therefore, both one and the other, the mental formation and the occult reality, must be studied to see what the ESSENTIAL difference is between them. The one exists in itself, entirely independent of what we think about it, and the other
  --
   In Sri Aurobindo's and Mother's terminology, 'psychic' or 'psychic being' means the soul or the portion of the Supreme in Man which evolves from life to life until it becomes a fully self-conscious being. The soul is a special capacity or grace of huMan beings on earth.
   The film on August 5.

0 1958-11-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   And I followed all this without objectifying it in the least; I was not aware of what it was nor of what was happening, nor of any explanation at all, nothing: it was like that. I was living it, thats all. The experience was absolutely spontaneous. And after this rather painful descent, phew!there was a kind of super-comfort. I cant explain it otherwise, an ease,4 but an ease to the utmost. A perfect immobility in a sense of eternity but with an extraordinary INTENSITY of movement and life! An inner intensity, unManifested; it was within, self-contained. And motionless (had there been an outside, it would have been motionless in relation to that) and it was in a life so immeasurable that it can only be expressed metaphorically as infinite. And with an intensity, a POWER, a force and a peace the peace of eternity. A silence, a calm. A POWER capable of of EVERYTHING. Everything.
   And I was not imagining nor objectifying it; I was living it with easewith a great ease. And it lasted until the end of the meditation. When it gradually began fading, I stopped the meditation and left.

0 1958-11-11, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   So in fact, only the final wording is correct, but from the point of view of the historical unfolding, it is interesting to observe the passage. It was exactly the same phenomenon for the experience of the Supramental Manifestation. Both these things, the experience of November 7 and of the Supramental, occurred in the same way, identically: I WAS the experience, and nothing else. Nothing but the experience at the time it was occurring. And only slowly, while coming out of it, did the previous knowledge, the previous experiences, all the accumulation of what had come before, examine it and put it in its place.
   This is why I arrive at a verbal expression progressively, gropingly; these are not literary gropingsit is aimed at being precise, specific and concise at the same time.
  --
   This vision of the Inconscient (Mother remains gazing for a moment) it was the MENTAL Inconscient. Because the starting point was mental. A special Inconscientrigid, hard, resistantwith all that the mind has brought into our consciousness. But it was far worse, far worse than a purely material Inconscient! A mentalized Inconscient, as it were. All this rigidity, this hardness, this narrowness, this fixitya FIXITYcomes from the presence of the mind in creation. When the mind was not Manifested, the Inconscient was not like that! It was formless and had the plasticity of something that is formless the plasticity has gone.
   It is a terrible image of the Minds action in the Inconscient.

0 1958-11-14, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   I feel disguised.1 And I detest hypocrisy I have Many faults, but not that one.
   So I believe it would be better for me to leave.
  --
   But there is always this wretched question of money. I need it to leave and to pay for the journey. Afterwards, I will Manage. Anyway, it is all the same to me; I am not afraid of anything any longer.
   It seems to me that the sooner I leave the better, because of this hypocrisy I detest.2

0 1958-11-15, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   Truly speaking, perhaps one is never rid of the hostile forces as long as one has not perManently emerged into the Light, above the lower hemisphere. There, the term hostile forces loses its meaning; they become only forces of progress, they force you to progress. But to see things in this way, you have to get out of the lower hemisphere, for below, they are very real in their opposition to the divine plan.
   It was said in the ancient traditions that one could not live for more than twenty days in this higher state without leaving ones body and returning to the supreme Origin. Now this is no longer true.
  --
   There is night and sun, night and sun, and night again, Many nights, but one must cling to this will for surrender, cling as through a storm, and put everything into the hands of the Supreme Lord. Until the day when the Sun shall shine forever, the day of total Victory.
   The Supramental Ship.

0 1958-11-20, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   I was VERY HAPPY with the vision, for there was a great POWER, though it was rather terrible. But it was magnificent. When I saw that, I This vision was given to me because I had concentrated with a will to find the solution, a true solution, an enduring and perManent solution that is, I had this spontaneous gratitude which goes out to the Grace when it brings some effective help. Only, what followed was interrupted by someone who came to call me and that cut it short, but it will return.
   But now I KNOWbefore I did not know. The other morning I saw, and I was told very clearly that it was a karma1 to be worked out; so then I told you, but at the time I didnt know what it was.

0 1958-11-22, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   And ifit can happenif the second attempt also miscarries, if the conditions make the experience the soul is seeking still more difficult for example, if one is in a body with an inadequate will or some distortion in the thought, or an egoism too too hardened, and it ends in suicide, it is dreadful. I have seen this Many times, it creates a dreadful karma that can be repeated for lifetimes on end before the soul can conquer it and Manage to do what it wants. And each time, the conditions become more difficult, each time it requires a still greater effort. And people who know this say, You cannot get out! In fact, it is this kind of desire to escape which pushes you into more foolish things3 that result in a still greater accumulation of difficulty. There are momentsmoments and circumstanceswhen no one is there to help you, and then things become so horrible, the circumstances become so abominable.
   But if the soul has had but ONE call, but ONE contact with the Grace, then in your next life you are put in the conditions, once, whereby EVERYTHING can be swept away at one stroke. And at this present moment on earth, you cannot imagine the number of people I have met that is, the number of soulswho had reached out towards this possibility with such an intensity and they have all found themselves on my path.
  --
   Oh, the most terrible of all is when one does not have the strength, the courage, something indomitable! How Many times do they come to tell me, I want to die, I want to flee, I want to die.I say, But die, then, die to yourself! No one is asking you to let your ego survive! Die to yourself since you want to die! Have that courage, the true courage, to die to your egoism.
   But because it is karma, one must, one must DO something oneself. Karma is the construction of the ego; the ego MUST DO something, everything cannot be done for it. This is it, THIS is the thing: karma is the result of the egos actions, and only when the ego abdicates is the karma dissolved. One can help it along, one can assist it, give it strength, bestow courage upon it, but the ego must then make use of it.
  --
   And then, more and more, I felt that if what I saw, as I saw it, could be realized I saw two things: a journeynot at all a pilgrimage as it is commonly understooda journey towards solitude in arduous conditions, and a sojourn in a very severe solitude, facing the mountains, in arduous physical conditions. The contact with this majesty of Nature has a great influence upon the ego at certain moments: it has the power to dissolve it. But all this complication, all these organized pilgrimages, all that it brings in the whole petty side of huMan life which spoils everything
   Yes, that whole journey was odious
  --
   As soon as you had left, and since I was following you, I saw that nothing of the kind was going to happen, but rather something very superficial which would not be of much use. And when I received your letters and saw that you were in difficulty, I did something. There are places that are favorable for occult experiences. Benares is one of these places, the atmosphere there is filled with vibrations of occult forces, and if one has the slightest capacity, it spontaneously develops there, in the same way that a spiritual aspiration develops very strongly and spontaneously as soon as one lands in India. These are Graces. Graces, because it is the destiny of the country, it has been so throughout its history, and because India has always been turned much more towards the heights and the inner depths than towards the outer world. Now, it is in the process of losing all that and wallowing in the mud, but thats another story it was like that and it is still like that. And in fact, when you returned from Rameswaram with your robes, I saw with much satisfaction that there was still a GREAT dignity and a GREAT sincerity in this endeavor of the Sannyasis towards the higher life and in the self-giving of a certain number of people to realize this higher life. When you returned, it had become a very concrete and a very real thing that immediately comManded respect. Before, I had seen only a copy, an imitation, an hypocrisy, a pretentionnothing that was really lived. But then, I saw that it was true, that it was lived, that it was real and that it was still Indias great heritage. I dont believe it is very prevalent now, but in any case, it is still there, and as I told you, it comMands respect. And then, as I felt you in difficulty and as the outer conditions were not only veiling but spoiling the inner, well, on that day I wrote you a short note I no longer recall when it was exactly, but I wrote you just a word or two, which I put in an envelope and sent you I concentrated very strongly upon those few words and sent you something. I didnt note the date, I dont remember when it was, but its likely that it happened as I wished when you were in Benares; and then you had this experience.
   But when you returned the second time, from the Himalayas, you didnt have the same flame as when you returned the first time. And I understood that this kind of difficult karma still clung to you, that it had not been dissolved. I had hoped that your contact with the mountains but in a true solitude (I dont mean that your body had to be all alone, but there should not have been all kinds of outer, superficial things) Anyway, it didnt happen. So it means that the time had not come.

0 1958-11-27 - Intermediaries and Immediacy, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   It is like the story X told me of his guru2 who could comm and the coming of Kali (something which seems quite natural to me when one is sufficiently developed); well, not only could he commend the coming of Kali, but Kali with I dont know how Many crores of her warriors! For me, Kali was Kali, after all, and she did her work; but in the universal organization, her action, the innumerable multiplicity of her action, is expressed by an innumerable multitude of conscious entities at work. It is this individualization, as it were, that gives to these forces a consciousness and a certain play of freedom, and this is what makes all the difference in action. It is in this respect that the occult system is an absolutely indispensable complement to spiritual action.
   The spiritual action is direct, but it may not be immediate (anyway, thats my experience). Sri Aurobindo said that with the supramental presence, it becomes immediate and I have experienced this. But this would then mean that the supramental Power automatically comMands all these intermediaries, whereas if its not present, even the highest spiritual power would need a specialized knowledge to act in this realm, a knowledge equivalent to an occult or initiatory knowledge of all these realms. This is why I told X, Well, you taught me Many things while you were here. There is always something to learn.
   Of course, when the Supramental is here, it will be very different. I see it clearly: in moments when it is there, everything is turned inside out, and all this belongs to a world to the world of preparation. It is like a preparation, a long preparation.
   It remains to be seen if all this has first to be mastered before there is even the possibility of holding the Supramental, of FIXING it in the Manifestation. That is the great difference. For example, those with the power to materialize forces or beings lack the capacity to fix them, for these are fluid things which act and are then dissolved. That is the difference with the physical world where it is this condensation of energy that makes things (Mother strikes the arms of her chair) stable. All the things in the extraphysical realms are not stable, they are fluidfluid and consequently uncertain.3
   The disciple's tantric guru.

0 1958-11-28, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   As it is, the physical body is really only a very disfigured shadow of the eternal life of the Self, but this physical body is capable of a progressive development; the physical substance progresses through each individual formation, and one day it will be able to build a bridge between physical life as we know it and the supramental life that is to Manifest.
   ***

0 1958-12-04, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   Mother, I have made Many mistakes, I have often been rebellious and fallen into Many holes. Help me to pick myself up, give me nonetheless a little of your Love. This has to change.
   I do not want to remain in Hyderabad. This is not the atmosphere I need, although everything is very quiet here.

0 1958-12-15 - tantric mantra - 125,000, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
  object:0_1958-12-15 - tantric Mantra - 125,000
  author class:The Mother
  --
   Swami received me warmly and is doing all he can with all his heart. I am following his instructions to the letter for I believe that your grace is acting through him. Furthermore, he is totally devoted to you and spoke of you as no one ever hashe understands Many things. I was unfair in my reactions towards him.
   At the new moon, when I felt very down, he gave me the first tantric Mantraa Mantra to Durga. For a period of 41 days, I must repeat it 125,000 times and go every morning to the Temple, stand before Parvati and recite this Mantra within me for at least one hour. Then I must go to the sanctuary of Shiva and recite another Mantra for half an hour. Practically speaking, I have to repeat constantly within me the Mantra to Durga in a silent concentration, whatever I may be doing on the outside. In these conditions, it is difficult to think of you and this has created a slight conflict in me, but I believe that your Grace is acting through Swami and through Durga, whom I am invoking all the time I remember what you told me about the necessity for intermediaries and I am obeying Swami unreservedly.
   Mother, things are far from being what they were the first time in Rameswaram, and I am living through certain moments that are hell the enemy seems to have been unleashed with an extraordinary violence. It comes in waves, and after it recedes, I am literally SHATTEREDphysically, mentally and vitally drained. This morning, while going to the temple, I lived through one of these moments. All this suffering that suddenly sweeps down upon me is horrible. Yes, I had the feeling of being BACKED UP AGAINST A WALL, exactly as in your vision I was up against a wall. I was walking among these immense arcades of sculptured granite and I could see myself walking, very small, all alone, alone, ravaged with pain, filled with a nameless despair, for nowhere was there a way out. The sea was nearby and I could have thrown myself into it; otherwise, there was only the sanctuary of Parvati but there was no more Africa to flee to, everything closed in all around me, and I kept repeating, Why? Why? This much suffering was truly inhuMan, as if my last twenty years of nightmare were crashing down upon me. I gritted my teeth and went to the sanctuary to say my Mantra. The pain in me was so strong that I broke into a cold sweat and almost fainted. Then it subsided. Yet even now I feel completely battered.
   I clearly see that the hour has come: either I will perish right here, or else I will emerge from this COMPLETELY changed. But something has to change. Mother, you are with me, I know, and you are protecting me, you love me I have only you, only you, you are my Mother. If these moments of utter darkness return and they are bound to return for everything to be exorcised and conqueredprotect me in spite of myself. Mother, may your Grace not abandon me. I want to be done with all these old phantoms, I want to be born anew in your Light; it has to beotherwise I can no longer go on.
  --
   When you invoke Durga, it is I you invoke through her, when you invoke Shiva, it is I you invoke through hiMand in the final analysis, to the Supreme Lord go all prayers.
   With all my love.

0 1958-12-24, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   Your last letter was a great comfort to me. If you were not there, with me, everything would be so absurd and impossible. I am again disturbing you because Swami tells me that you are worried and that I should write to you. Not much has changed, except that I am holding on and am confident. Yesterday, I again suffered an agonizing wave, in the temple, and I found just enough strength to repeat your name with each beat of my heart, like someone drowning. I remained as motionless as a pillar of stone before the sanctuary, with only your name (my Mantra would not come out), then it cleared. It was brutal. I am confident that with each wave I am gaining in strength, and I know you are there. But I am aware that if the enemy is so violent it is because something in me responds, or has responded, something that has not made its surrender that is the critical point. Mother, may your grace help me to place everything in your hands, everything, without any shadow. I want so much to emerge into the Light, to be rid of all this once and for all.
   I am following Swamis instructions to the letter. Sometimes it all seems to lack warmth and spontaneity, but I am holding on. I might add that we are living right next to the bazaar, amidst a great racket 20 hours a day, which does not make things easier. So I repeat my Mantra as one pounds his fists against the walls of a prison. Sometimes it opens a little, you send me a little joy, and then everything becomes better again.
   Swami told me that the Mantra to Durga is intended to pierce through into the subconscient. To complement this work, he does his pujas to Kali, and finally one of his friends, X, the High Priest of the temple in Rameswaram (who presided over my initiation and has great occult powers), has undertaken to say a very powerful Mantra over me daily, for a period of eight days, to extirpate the dark forces from my subconscious. The operation already began four days ago. While reciting his Mantra, he holds a glass of water in his hand, then he makes me drink it. It seems that on the eighth day, if the enemy has been trapped, this water turns yellow then the operation is over and the poisoned water is thrown out. (I tell you all this because I prefer that you know.) In any event, I like X very much, he is a very luminous, very good Man. If I am not delivered after all this!
   In truth, I believe only in the Grace. My Mantra and all the rest seem to me only little tricks to try to win over your Grace.
   Mother, love me. I have only you, I want to belong to you alone.
  --
   I have received your letter of the 24th. You did well to write, not because I was worried, but I like to receive news for it fixes my work by giving me useful material details. I am glad that X is doing something for you. I like this Man and I was counting upon him. I hope he will succeed. Perhaps his work will be useful here, too for I have serious reasons to believe that this time occult and even definite magic practices aimed directly against my body have been mixed in with the attacks. This has complicated things somewhat, so as yet I have not resumed any of my usual activities I am still upstairs resting, but in reality fighting. Yesterday, the Christmas distribution took place without me, and it is likely that it will be the same for January 1st. The work, too, has been completely interrupted. And I do not yet know how long this will last.
   Keep me posted on the result of Xs action; it interests me very much

0 1958-12-28, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   If you wish, two things can be done to help your action: either X can undertake certain Mantric operations upon you here in Rameswaram, or better still, he can immediately come to Pondicherry with Swami and do what is needed in front of you.
   Sweet Mother, I indeed suspect that you want to endure, to bear this struggle all alone. Oh, I think I understand a number of things about the mechanism of these attacks and their connection with me, about the Divine Love that embraces all and takes into itself the suffering and the evil of menall this overwhelms me with a sudden understanding. It seems to me that I am seeing and feeling all that you are facing, all that you are taking upon yourself for us. The suffering of the Divine in Matter has been an overwhelming revelation to meAh! I see, I want to fight, I want to be totally on your side; I am now and forever determined.

0 1958 12 - Floor 1, young girl, we shall kill the young princess - black tent, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   Two or three days after I retired to my room upstairs,1 early in the night I fell into a very heavy sleep and found myself out of the body much more materially than I do usually. This degree of density in which you can see the material surroundings exactly as they are. The part that was out seemed to be under a spell and only half conscious. When I found myself at the first floor where everything was absolutely black, I wanted to go up again, but then I discovered that my hand was held by a young girl whom I could not see in the darkness but whose contact was very familiar. She pulled me by the hand telling me laughingly, No, come, come down with me, we shall kill the young princess. I could not understand what she meant by this young princess and, rather unwillingly, I followed her to see what it was. Arriving in the anteroom which is at the top of the staircase leading to the ground floor, my attention was drawn in the midst of all this total obscurity to the white figure of Kamala2 standing in the middle of the passage between the hall and Sri Aurobindos room. She was as it were in full light while everything else was black. Then I saw on her face such an expression of intense anxiety that to comfort her I said, I am coming back. The sound of my voice shook off from me the semi-trance in which I was before and suddenly I thought, Where am I going? and I pushed away from me the dark figure who was pulling me and in whom, while she was running down the steps, I recognized a young girl who lived with Sri Aurobindo and me for Many years and died five years back. This girl during her life was under the most diabolical influence. And then I saw very distinctly (as through the walls of the staircase) down below a small black tent which could scarcely be perceived in the surrounding darkness and standing in the middle of the tent the figure of a Man, head and face shaved (like the sannyasin or the Buddhist monks) covered from head to foot with a knitted outfit following tightly the form of his body which was tall and slim. No other cloth or garment could give an indication as to who he could be. He was standing in front of a black pot placed on a dark red fire which was throwing its reddish glow on him. He had his right arm stretched over the pot, holding between two fingers a thin gold chain which looked like one of mine and was unnaturally visible and bright. Shaking gently the chain he was chanting some words which translated in my mind, She must die the young princess, she must pay for all she has done, she must die the young princess.
   Then I suddenly realized that it was I the young Princess and as I burst into laughter, I found myself awake in my bed.

0 1959-01-06, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   And it happened just as I was despairing of ever getting out of it. I seemed to be touching a kind of fundamental bedrock, so painful, so suffering, and full of revolt because of too much suffering. And I saw that all my efforts, all the meditations, aspirations, Mantras, were only covering up this suffering bedrock without touching it. I saw this fundamental thing in me very clearly, a poignant knot, ever ready for an absolute negation. I saw it and I said to you, Mother, only your grace can remove this. I said this to you in the temple that morning, in total despair. And then, the knot was undone. Xs action contri buted a lot, with your grace acting through him. But truly, I have traversed a veritable hell this last while.
   X continues his work on me daily; it is to last 41 days in all. He told me that he wants to undo the things of several births. When it is over, he will explain it all to me. I do not know how to tell you how luminous and good this Man is, he is a very great soul. He is also giving me Sanskrit lessons, and little by little, each evening, speaks to me of the Tantra.
   His action upon you is to continue for another five days, after which he is positive that you will be entirely saved. According to him, it is indeed a magic attack originating in Pondicherry, and perhaps even from someone in the Ashram!! He told me that this evil person would finally be forced to appear before you I am learning Many interesting things from him.
   Mother, by way of expressing to you my gratitude, I want to work now to open myself totally to your Light and become truly an egoless instrument, your conscious instrument. Mother, you are the sole Reality.
  --
   His action here has been very effective and really very interesting. I still do not know whether someone has really done black magic, and the villain has yet to appear before me. But already several days ago the malefic influence completely disappeared without leaving any trace in the atmosphere. Also their Mantric intervention did not stop at that, for it has had another most interesting result. I am preparing a long letter for Swami to explain all this to him
   The pain on the left side has not entirely gone and there have been some complications which have delayed things. But I feel much better. In fact, I am rebuilding my health, and I am in no hurry to resume the exhausting days as before. It is quiet upstairs for working, and I am going to take advantage of this to prepare the Bulletin1 at leisure. As I had not read over the pages on the message that we had prepared for the 31st, I have revised and transformed them into an article. It will be the first one in the February issue. I am now going to choose the others. I will tell you which ones I have chosen and in what order I will put them.

0 1959-01-14, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   Your last letter gave us great pleasure, knowing that you have finally recovered physically. But we deeply hope that you will not again take up the countless activities that formerly consumed all your timeso Many people come to you egoistically, for prestige, to be able to say that they are on familiar terms with you. You know this, of course
   As for myself, a step has definitely been taken, and I am no longer swept away by this painful torrent. Depressions and attacks still come, but no longer with the same violence as before. X told me that 2/3 of the work has been done and that everything would be purged in twelve days or so, then the thing will be enclosed in a jar and buried somewhere or thrown into the sea, and he will explain it all to me. I will write and tell you about it.
   As for the true tantric initiation, this is what X told me: I will give you initiation. You are fit. You belong to that line. It will come soon, some months or some years. Shortly you shall reach the junction. When the time has come, you yourself will come and open a door in me and I shall give you initiation.1 And he made me understand that an important divine work was reserved for me in the future, a work for the Mother. The important practical point is that I have rapidly to develop my knowledge of Sanskrit. The Mantra given to me seems to grow in power as I repeat it.
   Sweet Mother, by what Grace have you guided and protected me through all these years? There are moments when I have the vision of this Grace, bringing me to the verge of tears. I see so clearly that you are doing everything, that you are all that is good in me, my aspiration and my strength. Me is all that is bad, all that resists, me is horribly false and falsifying. If your Grace withdraws for one second, I collapse, I am helpless.2 You alone are my strength, the source of my life, the joy and fulfillment to which I aspire.
  --
   I am taking advantage of this situation to work. I have chosen the articles for the Bulletin. They are as follows: 1) Message. 2) To keep silent. 3) Can there be intermediary states between Man and super-Man? 4) The Anti-Divine. 5) What is the role of the spirit? 6) Karma (I have touched this one up to make it less personal). 7) The Worship of the Supreme in Matter. Now I would like to prepare the first twelve Aphorisms3 for printing. But as you have not yet revised the last two, I am sending them to you. Could you do them when you have finished what you are doing for the Bulletin? It is not urgent, take your time. Do not disturb your real work for this in any way. For, in my eyes, this work of inner liberation is much more important.
   You will find in this letter a little money. I thought you might need it for your stamps, etc.

0 1959-01-21, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   I will therefore give you initiation this Friday or Saturday, on the day of the full moon or the day before. This first stage will last three months during which you will have to repeat 1 lakh2 times the Mantra that I will give you. At the end of three months, I will come to see you in Pondicherryor you will come here for a fortnight, and as soon as I have received the message from my guru, I will give you the second stage that will last three months as well. At the end of these three months, you will receive the full initiation. X warned me that the first stage I am to receive provokes attacks and tests but that all this disappears with the second stage. Forewarned is forearmed. For what reason I do not know, but X told me that the particular nature of my initiation should remain secret and that he will say nothing about it to Swami, and he added (in speaking of the speed of the process), But you will not be less than the Swami. (!!) There, I wanted you to knowbesides, you were present in Xs vision. All this happened at a time when I was in the most desperate crisis I have ever known. Sweet Mother, there is no end to expressing my gratitude to you, and yet with the least trial, I am reduced to nothing. Why have you so much grace for me?
   I would like very much to return to Pondicherry for the February Darshan and once again begin working for you. Today I am sending a second lot to Pavitra and tomorrow I will start on the Aphorisms, for I do not want to make you wait any longer. I will send a third and final lot to Pavitra by the end of the month, in time for printing. I am very touched, sweet Mother, by your attention and the money you are sending me.
  --
   Sweet Mother, do not waste time writing to me; you have so Many things to do and I feel a little awkward disturbing you so often.
   ***

0 1959-01-27, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   By a special grace, X gave me both stages of the tantric initiation at the same time, although they are normally separated by several years; then if all goes well, he will give me the full initiation in 6 months. I have thus received a Mantra, along with the power of realizing it. X told me that a realization should come at the beginning of the fifth month if I repeat the Mantra strictly according to his instructions, but he again told me that the hostile forces would do all they could to prevent me from saying my Mantra: mental suggestions and even illness. X has understood that I have work at the Ashram, and he has exempted me from the outer forms (pujas and other rituals), but nevertheless I must repeat my Mantra very accurately every day (3,333 times, that is, a little more than 3 hours uninterrupted in the mornings, and more than 2 hours in the evening). I must therefore organize myself in such a way as to get up very early in the morning in Pondicherry, for in no case will your work suffer.
   Apart from this, he has not yet entirely finished the work of purging that he has been doing on me for over a month, but I believe that everything will be completed in a short time from now.
   Sweet Mother, I have a kind of fear that all these Mantras are not bringing me nearer to you I mean you in your physical body, for it is not upon you physically that I was told to concentrate. Also, I almost never see you in my dreams any longer, or else only very vaguely. Last night, I dreamed that I was offering you flowers (not very pretty ones), one of which was called Mantra, but I did not see you in my dream. Mother, I would like to be true, to do the right thing, to be as you want me to be.
   I am your child. I belong to you alone.
  --
   My body would also like to have a Mantra to repeat. Those it has are not enough for it anymore. It would like to have one to hasten its transformation. It is ready to repeat it as Many times as needed, provided that it does not have to be out loud, for it is very rarely alone and does not want to speak of this to anyone. Truly, the Ashram atmosphere is not very favorable for this kind of thing. You will have to take precautions so as not to be disturbed or interrupted in an inopportune way. Domestic servants, curious people, so-called friends can all serve as instruments of the hostile forces to put a spoke in the wheels. I will do my best to protect you, but you will have a lot to do yourself and will have to be as firm as an iron rod.
   I am not writing you all this to discourage you from coming. But I want you to succeed; for me that is more important than anything else, no matter what the price. So, know for certain that I am with you all the time and more so especially when you repeat your Mantra
   In constant communion in the effort towards victory; my love and my force never leave you.

0 1959-01-31, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   I have reflected for a long time on that passage in your letter where you say that your body needs a Mantra to hasten its transformation. Certainly X can do something in this realm, but I have not yet spoken to him (and I shall not speak of this to Swami).
   X knows very little about your true work and what Swami has been able to explain to him is rather inadequate, for I do not believe that he himself understands it very well. So I shall have to try to make myself understood quite clearly to X and tell him exactly and simply what it is you need. The word transformation is too abstract. Each Mantra has a very specific actionat least I believe soand I must be able to tell X in a concrete way the exact powers or capacities you are now seeking, and the general goal or the particular results required. Then he will find the Mantra or Mantras that apply.
   My explanations will have to be simple, for X speaks English with difficulty, thus subtleties are out of the question. (I am teaching him a little English while he is teaching me Sanskrit, and we Manage to understand each other rather well all the same. He understands more than he can speak.)
   I do not want to mention this to Swami, as X is not very happy about the way Swami seizes upon every occasion to appropriate things, and particularly Mantras (I will explain this to you when we meet again). It is especially the way he says I. Nothing very seriousit is Swamis bad side, though he has good ones too. You know that, however.
   So I would like to speak to X knowledgeably, in a very precise way, and I am waiting only for you to tell me what I should say. The thing is too important to be approached lightly and vaguely.
  --
   As for my Mantra, I say it only partially now, but X will fix an auspicious day to begin it really according to the rules when I am in Pondicherry, for theoretically, one should not move once the work has begun. The 12th of February is an auspicious day, if you decide that I should return by then (or a little before to get things ready); otherwise another date may be fixed later on.
   Your letter, Sweet Mother, has filled me with strength and resolution. I want to be victorious and I want to serve you. I see very well that gradually I can be taught Many useful things by X. The essential thing is first of all to lose this ego which falsifies everything. Finally, through your grace, I believe that I have passed a decisive turning point and that there is a beginning of real consecration and I feel your Love, your Presence. Things are opening a little.
   Sweet Mother, I love you and I want to serve you truly.
  --
   I have reflected a great deal on a possible Mantra, and I have also seen the difficulty of receiving something that does not have a narrowing effect One must at least have an idea of the possibility (at least) of the supermind to understand what I need
   As for your arrival here, the day you mentioned is the Saraswati Puja I will go downstairs to give blessings. If you arrive on the previous day, the 11th I will arrange to see you at 10 oclock, and then you can begin your Mantra on the 12th.
   Simply send me word to let me know if this is all right. Tell me also if you need money for your return, and how much, in time for me to send it.

0 1959-03-10 - vital dagger, vital mass, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   (The disciple returned to the Ashram, but as he was very quickly seized again by his Mania for the road, the Agenda of 1959, alas, is strewn with great gaps and is almost nonexistent. The following conversation is in regard to one of Mother's commentaries on the Dhammapada: 'Evil')
   I spent a nighta night of battlewhen, for some reason or other, a multitude of vital formations of all kinds entered into the room: beings, things, embryos of beings, residues of beingsall kinds of things And it was a frightful assault, absolutely disgusting.
   In this swarming mass, I noticed the presence of some slightly more conscious willswills of the vital plane and I saw how they try to awaken a reaction in the consciousness of huMan beings to make them think or want, or if possible, do certain things.
   For example, I saw one of them trying to incite anger in someone so that this person would deliver a blowa spiritual blow. And this formation had a dagger in his hand (a vital dagger, you see, it was a vital being: gray and slimy, horrible), he was holding a very sharp dagger which he was flaunting, saying, When a person has done something like that (pretending that someone had done an unforgivable thing), this is what he deserves and the scenario was complete: the being rushed forward, vitally, with his dagger.
  --
   And I express this in my own way when I say1 that thoughts come and go, flow in and out. But thoughts concerning material things are formations originating in that world, they are kinds of wills coming from the vital plane which try to express themselves, and most often they are truly deadly. If you are annoyed, for example, if someone says something unpleasant to you and you react It always happens in the same way; these little entities are there waiting, and when they feel its the right moment, they introduce their influence and their suggestions. This is what is vitally symbolized by the being with his dagger rushing forward to stab youand in the back, at that! Not even face to face! This then expresses itself in the huMan consciousness by a movement of anger or rage or indignation: How intolerable! How ! And the other fellow says, Yes! We shall put an end to it!
   It is quite interesting to watch it once, but it isnt very pleasant.

0 1959-03-26 - Lord of Death, Lord of Falsehood, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   This Asura of Falsehood is the one who delegated the Titan that is always near me. He chose the most powerful Titan there is on earth and sent him specially to attack this body. So even if one Manages to enchain or kill this Titan, it is likely that the Lord of Falsehood will delegate another form, and still another, and still another, in order to achieve his aim.
   In the end, only the Supramental will have the power to destroy it. When the hour comes, all this will disappear, without any need to do anything.

0 1959-04-07, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   Henceforth I refuse to be an accomplice to this force. It is my enemy. Whatever form it may take, or whatever supports it may find in my nature, I will refuse to yield to it and will cling to you. You are the only reality: that is my Mantra. Anything that seeks to make me doubt you is my enemy. You are the only Reality.
   And each time I feel the shadow approach, I will call to you, immediately.

0 1959-04-24, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   The divine perfection is always there above us; but for Man to become divine in consciousness and act and to live inwardly and outwardly the divine life is what is meant by spirituality; all lesser meanings given to the word are inadequate fumblings or impostures.1
   This text by Sri Aurobindo (The HuMan Cycle, Cent. Ed. Vol. XV p. 247) was translated into French by Mother on the occasion of writing to Satprem.
   ***

0 1959-05-19 - Ascending and Descending paths, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   I have also come to realize that for this sadhana of the body, the Mantra is essential. Sri Aurobindo gave none; he said that one should be able to do all the work without having to resort to external means. Had he reached the point where we are now, he would have seen that the purely psychological method is inadequate and that a japa is necessary, because only japa has a direct action on the body. So I had to find the method all alone, to find my Mantra by myself. But now that things are ready, I have done ten years of work in a few months. That is the difficulty, it requires time
   And I repeat my Mantra constantlywhen I am awake and even when I sleep. I say it even when I am getting dressed, when I eat, when I work, when I speak with others; it is there, just behind in the background, all the time, all the time.
   In fact, you can immediately see the difference between those who have a Mantra and those who dont. With those who have no Mantra, even if they have a strong habit of meditation or concentration, something around them remains hazy and vague. Whereas the japa imparts to those who practice it a kind of precision, a kind of solidity: an armature. They become galvanized, as it were.
   Original English.

0 1959-05-25, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   May Your Will be done in all things and at every moment. And may Your Love Manifest.
   As for you, I received your promise made very solemnly at a moment of clear consciousness, and I am sure you will not fail in it.
  --
   I can easily understand that your task on this earth is not particularly encouraging and you must find our huMan matter stupid and rebellious. I do not wish to throw upon you more bad things than you already receive, but I wish you could also understand certain things. I am not made for this withered life, not made for putting sentences together all day long, not made for living alone in my holefriendless, loveless, with nothing but Mantras, and waiting for a better that never comes. For three years I have wanted to leave and each time I yielded out of scruples that you needed me, though also because I am attached to you. But after the [book on] Sri Aurobindo, there will be something else, there will always be something else that will make my departure look like a betrayal. I am fed up with living in my head, always in my head, with paper and ink. It was not of this that I dreamed when I was ten years old and ran with the wind over the untamed heaths. I am suffocating. You ask too much of me; or rather, I am not worth your expectation.
   A love for you might have held me here. And indeed, for you I have devotion, veneration, respect, an attachment, but there has never been this marvelous thing, warm and full, that links one to a being in the same beating of a heart. Through love, I could do all, accept all, endure all, sacrifice all but I do not feel this love. You cannot give yourself with your head, through a mental decision, yet that is what I have been doing for five years. I have tried to serve you as best I could. But I am at the end of my rope. I am suffocating.

0 1959-05-28, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   1) There is the destiny of the adventurer: it is the one in me that needs the sea or the forest and wide open spaces and struggles. This was the best part of my childhood. I can sit on it and tell myself that the adventure is within, and it might work for a while. But this untamed child in me continues to live all the same, and it is something very valuable in me. I cannot kill it through reasoning, even spiritual reasoning. And if I tell it that everything lies within, not without, it replies, Then why was I born, why this Manifestation in the outer world? In the end, it is not a question of reasoning. It is a fact, like the wind upon the heaths.
   2) There is the destiny of the writer in me. And this too is linked to the best of my soul. It is also a profound need, like adventuring upon the heaths, because when I write certain things, I brea the in a certain way. But during the five years I have been here, I have had to bow to the fact that, materially, there is no time to write what I would like (I recall how I had to wrench out this Orpailleur, which I have not even had time to revise). This is not a reproach, Mother, for you do all you can to help me. But I realize that to write, one must have leisure, and there are too Many less personal and more serious things to do. So I can also sit on this and tell myself that I am going to write a Sri Aurobindo but this will not satisfy that other need in me, and periodically it awakens and sprouts up to tell me that it too needs to breathe.
   3) There is also the destiny that feels huMan love as something divine, something that can be transfigured and become a very powerful driving force. I did not believe it possible, except in dreams, until the day I met someone here. But you do not believe in these things, so I shall not speak of it further. I can gag this also and tell myself that one day all will be filled in the inner divine love. But that does not prevent this other need in me from living and from finding that life is dry and from saying, Why this outer Manifestation if all life is in the inner realms? But neither can I stifle this with reasoning.
   So there remains the pure spiritual destiny, pure interiorization. That is what I have been trying to do for the last five years, without much success. There are good periods of collaboration, because one part of my being can be happy in any condition. But in a certain way this achievement remains truncated, especially when you base spiritual life on a principle of integrality. And these three destinies in me have their own good reasons, which are true: they are not inferior, they are not incidental, they are woven from the very threads that created the spiritual life in me. My error is to open the door to revolt when I feel too poignantly one or the other being stifled.

0 1959-06-03, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   Also, I explained to him that a Mantra had come to you which you were repeating between 5 and 6 in particular, and I told him about this culminating point where you wanted to express your gratitude, enthusiasm, etc., and about the French Mantra. After explaining, I gave him your French and Sanskrit texts. He felt and understood very well what you wanted. His first reaction after reading it was to say, Great meaning, great power is there. It is all right. I told him that apart from the meaning of the Mantra, you wanted to know if it was all right from the vibrational standpoint. He told me that he would take your text to his next puja and would repeat it himself to see. He should have done that this morning, but he has a fever (since his return from Madurai, he has not been well because of a cold and sunstroke). I will write you as soon as I know the result of his test.
   Regarding me, this is more or less what he said: First of all, I want an agreement from you so that under any circumstances you never leave the Ashram. Whatever happens, even if Yama1 comes to dance at your door, you should never leave the Ashram. At the critical moment, when the attack is the strongest, you should throw everything into His hands, then and then only the thing can be removed (I no longer know whether he said removed or destroyed ). It is the only way. SARVAM MAMA BRAHMan [Thou art my sole refuge]. Here in Rameswaram, we are going to meditate together for 45 days, and the Asuric-Shakti may come with full strength to attack, and I shall try my best not only to protect but to destroy, but for that, I need your determination. It is only by your own determination that I can get strength. If the force comes to make suggestions: lack of adventure, lack of Nature, lack of love, then think that I am the forest, think that I am the sea, think that I am the wife (!!) Meanwhile, X has nearly doubled the number of repetitions of the Mantra that I have to say every day (it is the same Mantra he gave me in Pondicherry). X repeated to me again and again that I am not merely a disciple to him, like the others, but as if his son.
   This was a first, hasty conversation, and we did not discuss things at length. I said nothing. I have no confidence in my reactions when I am in the midst of my crises of complete negation. And truly speaking, at the time of my last crisis in Pondicherry, I do not know if it was really Xs occult working that set things right, for personally (but perhaps it is an ignorant impression), I felt that it was thanks to Sujata and her childlike simplicity that I was able to get out of it.
  --
   As for the Sanskrit text and the Mantra, I await your next letter.
   For you, I fully approve of what he told you. Fervently, and with all my love, I pray that he will succeed in what he wants to do during these 45 days of meditation. This is really what I was counting on.
  --
   Certainly his political rage is not only understandable but justified. However, when one begins looking at things from the external viewpoint of the Manifestation, they are not as simple as that. I cannot speak of all this in detail, but as an example I can tell you that here in Pondicherry, those who are Maneuvering (and not without some hope) to oust the Congress are our worst enemies, the enemy of all that is disinterested and spiritual, and if they come to power, they would be capable of anything in their hate.
   For all these world events, I always leave it to the Divine vision and wisdom, and I say to the Supreme: Lord, may Thy Will be done.

0 1959-06-04, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   Regarding my Mantra, I began repeating it yesterday before receiving your letter, and I felt that it was all right. So if X makes no alterations, it is not necessary to send it back to me. I receive the force X gives me without paper.
   I do not know if it is an illusion, but on several occasions I felt that if X says this Mantra, it will cure his fever.
   As for the predictions, I am extremely interested. Tell this to X, and also that details of this kind are a great help in my work, for they give physical clues enabling a greater precision in the action. Needless to say, I will be very grateful for any indications he may wish to give me.

0 1959-06-07, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   3) X has not yet begun his work with me nor for you, as he has been unwell until today. One evening, he made a very beautiful reflection concerning you and your Mantra, but it is inexpressible in words, it was above all the tone in which he said, Who, who, is there a single person in the world who can repeat like that TRIOMPHE TOI MAHIMA MAHIMA? etc. And three or four times he repeated your Mantra with such an expression
   He has not yet done what he plans to do with your Mantra in his puja, for he has been unwell and had to interrupt his pujas. But now he is better.
   I have no other details to give you, except that I am not happy. The fact is that these last three years I have been tied down by my penury, otherwise I would be travelling along other roads, far from herewith no greater hope in my heart, but with space before me, at least. I am only here to render you service, but I do not know if I shall be able to repress my need for space much longerit has already been going on too long. This is the undisguised truth. But what can I do?I am tied down. If I truly loved, things would be different, but it seems I love no one, not even myself, and the only love of which I am capable, huMan love, is forbidden to me. So I can do nothing, not on any plane, and I have no hope in anything. Forgive me, I do not wish to pain you, but neither can I pretend any longer to be happy with my lot.
   Signed: Satprem

0 1959-06-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   Even before receiving your second letter in which you say that the Mantra is all right, X told me this morning that he had repeated your Mantra during his puja and that it was very good, that there is nothing to be changed: The vibration is good.
   Here are a few additional indications regarding the forthcoming events.
  --
   As for the Mantra, since two days I am sure about it, and all is well.
   I am extremely interested in everything X has revealed to you. But I cannot write about this either.
   If X told you to go see your mother in August and return m early September, you must go. We shall Manage. My finances are in an almost desperate state, but that cannot last. For what has to be done will be done.
   You are constantly with me, and I am following all your inner movements with love and concern.

0 1959-06-11, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   As of yesterday evening I am a Man delivered. It took only a very little word from X, and suddenly a weight seemed to have been lifted from me, and I knew at last that I would be fulfilled. All this is still so new, so improbable that I can scarcely believe it, and I wonder if by chance some evil blow is not still lurking in wait for me behind this promise of happiness; thus I shall be reassured only when I have told you everything, recounted all. But X has asked, me to wait a few more days before telling you this story, for he wants to give me certain additional details so that you may have all the elements, as accurately as possible.
   But I did not want to wait any longer to express my gratitude. I am still not so sure how all this will turn out nor how this destiny that he predicts for me can be realized, but I want to repeat to you, with all my confidence: I am your child, may your will be done now and forever.

0 1959-06-25, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   To begin with, I must tell you a dream that I had here in Rameswaram a few days after my arrival. I was being pursued and I fled like an assassinit is a dream I have had hundreds of times for years, but in this dream, there was a new element: while being pursued, I climbed a kind of stairway to try to escape when suddenly, in a flash, I saw a feminine form hurtling into a void. I saw only the lower half of her body (with a kind of mauve-colored saree), because she was already falling. And I had the horrible sensation of having pushed this woMan into the void, and I fled. I climbed, I climbed these stairs with my pursuers close at my heels, and the image of this falling woMan gave me a horrible feeling. When I reached the top of the stairs, I tried to close a door behind me to stop my pursuers, but there they were, it was too late and I woke up.
   The last time I was in Rameswaram, I had two other very poignant dreams, but I could not make out what they meant. In one dream I was strangling someone with my bare hands; it was an abominable feeling. And in the other, I saw, in a kind of nocturnal setting, a hanged Man being taken down, with all kinds of people bustling about the corpse with lamps, and suddenly I knew that this hanged Man was me.
   I had said nothing to X about these various dreams before he told me the story of my last three existences: three times I committed suicide the first by fire, the second by hanging, and the third by throwing myself into the void. During the first of these last three existences, I was married to a very good woMan, but for some reason I abandoned my wife and I was wandering here and there in search of something. Then I met a sannyasi who wanted to make me his disciple, but I could not make up my mind, I was neither this side nor that side, whereupon my wife came to me and pleaded with me to take her back. Apparently I rejected herso she threw herself into the fire. Horror-stricken, I followed her, throwing myself into the fire in turn. That was when I created a connection with certain beings [of the other worlds] and I fell under their power. For two other lives, under the influence of these beings, the same drama was repeated with a few variations.
   During the second of these last three existences, I was married to the same woMan whom I again abandoned under the influence of the same monk, and I again remained between two worlds wandering here and there. Again my wife came to plead with me and again I pushed her away. She hung herself, and I hung myself in turn.
   During my last existence, the monk succeeded in making me a sannyasi, and when my wife came to plead with me, I told her, Too late, now I am a sannyasi. So she threw herself into the void, and horror-stricken by the sudden revelation of all these dramas and of my wifes goodness (for it seems she was a great soul), I threw myself in turn into the void.
  --
   X gave me a new Mantra. My body is exhausted from too much nervous tension. I am living in a kind of cellar with four inches of filth on the floor and walls, and two openings, one onto the street of the bazaar the other onto a dilapidated courtyard with a well. On my right lives a madwoMan who screams half the day. There is only my Mantra which burns almost constantly in my heart, and who knows what hope that some day the future will be happy and reconciled. There is also Sujata and you.
   Your child,

0 1959-07-10, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   A moment ago I barely found the strength not to kill myself. Destiny has repeated itself once again, but this time it was not I who rejected her, as in past existences, it is she who rejected me: Too late. For a moment, I thought I was going to go crazy too, so much pain did I have then finally I said, May Thy Will be done, (that of the Supreme Lord) and I kept repeating, Thy Grace is there, even in the greatest suffering. But I am broken, rather like a living dead Man. So be happy, for I will never wear the white robe that Guruji gave me.
   You will understand that I do not have the strength to come to see you. My only strength is not to rebel, my only strength is to believe in the Grace in the face of everything. I believe I have too much grief in my heart to rebel against anything at all. I seem to have a kind of great pity for this world.

0 1959-07-14, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   This is what I should have told you this morning, but I was afraid. For the last month I have been afraid of you, afraid that you might not understand. But I cannot leave with this weight on me. I beg of you to understand, Sweet Mother. I want nothing bad, nothing impure. I feel I have something to create with Sujata, I feel she is absolutely a part of something I have to achieve, that we have something to achieve together. For the five years we have known each other I have never had a single wrong thought but suddenly she opened my heart, which had been so completely walled-off, and this was like a wonder in me and at the same time a fear. A fear, perhaps because this love has been thwarted for so Many lives.
   Mother, I need Sujata like my very soul. It seems to me that she is a part of me, that she alone can help me break with this horrible past, that she alone can help me to love truly at last. I need peace so much, a quiet, PEACEFUL happinessa base of happiness upon which I could use my strength to build, instead of always fighting, always destroying. Mother, I am not at all sure of what must be, but I know that Sujata is part of this realization.

0 1959-11-25, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   The deathless state is what can be envisaged for the huMan physical body in the future: it is constant rebirth. Instead of again tumbling backwards and falling apart due to a lack of plasticity and an incapacity to adapt to the universal movement, the body is undone futurewards, as it were.
   There is one element that remains fixed: for each type of atom, the inner organization of the elements is different, which is what creates the difference in their substance. So perhaps similarly, each individual has a different, particular way of organizing the cells of his body, and it is this particular way that persists through all the outer changes. All the rest is undone and redone, but undone in a forward thrust towards the new instead of collapsing backwards into death, and redone in a constant aspiration to follow the progressive movement of the divine Truth.

0 1960-01-28, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   All these repetitions of the Mantra, these hours of japa I have to do every day, seem to have increased the difficulties, as if they were raising up or aggravating all the resistances.
   To the most stubborn goes the victory.
   When I started my japa one year ago, I had to struggle with every possible difficulty, every contradiction, prejudice and opposition that fills the air. And even when this poor body began walking back and forth for japa, it used to knock against things, it would start breathing all wrong, coughing; it was attacked from all sides until the day I caught the Enemy and said, Listen carefully. You can do whatever you want, but Im going right to the end and nothing will stop me, even if I have to repeat this Mantra ten crore1 times. The result was really miraculous, like a cloud of bats flying up into the light all at once. From that moment on, things started going better.
   You have no idea what an irresistible effect a well-determined will can have.

0 1960-03-03, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   Experiences are coming at a furious pacefabulous experiences. If I were to speak now, its certain that I would not at all speak as I used to. Thats why we must date all these Questions and Answers, at least all which come before the [Supramental] Manifestation of February 1956, so that there will be a clear cut between those before and those after.
   Only a few days ago, on the morning of the 29th, I had one of those experiences that mark ones life. It happened upstairs in my room. I was doing my japa, walking up and down with my eyes wide open, when suddenly Krishna camea gold Krishna, all golden, in a golden light that filled the whole room. I was walking, but I could not even see the windows or the rug any longer, for this golden light was everywhere with Krishna at its center. And it must have lasted at least fifteen minutes. He was dressed in those same clothes in which he is normally portrayed when he dances. He was all light, all dancing: You see, I will be there this evening during the Darshan.1 And suddenly, the chair I use for darshan came into the room! Krishna climbed up onto it, and his eyes twinkled mischievously, as if to say, I will be there, you see, and therell be no room for you.
  --
   And there are Many, Many experiences like this. It is only a small, a very small beginning. This one in particular came to mark the new stage: four years have elapsed, and now four years to come. Because everything has focused on this body to prepare it, everything has concentrated on itNature, the Master of the Yoga, the Supreme, everything So only when its over, not before, will it really be interesting to speak of all this. But maybe it will never be over, after all. Its a small beginning, very small.
   The Darshan on February 29, 1960, the first anniversary of the Supramental Manifestation.
   On this first anniversary of the Supramental Manifestation, Mother distributed medals commemorating the occasion to the disciples filing past.
   ***

0 1960-03-07, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   My words are a bit disjointed but Im not in the mood to give an articulate discourse. Which is a way of saying, once again, how happy I aMand grateful.
   With my warmest regards,

0 1960-04-07, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   I brought some work with me (revision of The HuMan Cycle), and that helps me to live. I still dont clearly see the meaning of this trip. Just before I left, I received word from the publisher in Paris that my book will come out in September.
   There are moments when I feel you so close to mecould you not help me be more conscious of your presence (not as an impersonal force, but you)?

0 1960-04-13, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   My friend here gave me the book Templier et Alchimiste [Templar and Alchemist] to read; its published by the group he is going to join in France. They too speak of the transmutation of matter and proclaim the end of homo sapiens and the birth of the superMan.
   I long to be with you and work on the book on Sri Aurobindo I want to put all my soul into it and, with your grace, create something inflaming.

0 1960-04-14, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   The following passage, taken from the Revue des Deux Mondes of March 1960, was part of a course taught by Dimitri Manowilski in 1931 at the Lenin School of Political Warfare in Moscow:
   Our turn will come in twenty to thirty years. To win, we need an element of surprise. The bourgeoisie should be lulled to sleep. Therefore, we must first launch the most spectacular peace movement that has ever existed, replete with inspiring proposals and extraordinary concessions. The stupid and decadent capitalist countries will cooperate joyfully in their own destruction. They will jump at this new opportunity for friendship. As soon as their guard is down, we shall crush them beneath our closed fist.

0 1960-04-26, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   It will be a joy to be with you again and resume the work. Here, I am sparing as Many hours as I can to correcting The HuMan Cycle I follow X perfectly in his inner life, unreservedly, but I have to force myself to follow him in his outer life.
   Mother, I am at your feet, with my love and my gratitude.

0 1960-05-21 - true purity - you have to be the Divine to overcome hostile forces, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   Him, not only because we have given Him everything and consecrated ourselves totally to Him (that is not enough), but Him because He has taken total possession of the huMan instrument.
   At times, I feel that Ill never get over the difficulty. We are besieged by this enormous world of hostile forcesoceans of forces, churning and combining and submerging each other in gigantic pralayas,1 then again regrouping and combining. When you see that, it feels as if you had to be the Divine Himself to get over the difficulty. Precisely so! (And its the hostile forces who help you to see this, its their role.) You have TO BE THE DIVINE, that is the solution, that is the true divine purity.
  --
   Formations, in occult language, refer to all the psychological movements and impulses, conscious or unconscious, constantly eManating from the disciples and others, and which leave an imprint in the subtle atmosphere or a wandering entity seeking to fulfill itself.
   ***

0 1960-05-24 - supramental flood, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   These experiences are always absolute, as long as they last; then, through certain signs that I know (I am accustomed to it), I notice that the body consciousness begins closing up again. Or rather, somethingevidently a Supreme Wisdomdecides its sufficient for this time and that the body has had enough. It ought not to break, which is why certain precautions are taken. So this comes in several little stages that I know quite well. The final one is always a bit unpleasant because my body gets into rather peculiar positions as a result of the work. As its only a sort of machine, towards the end I have some difficulty straightening my knees, for example, or opening my fingers I think they even make a noise, like something forced into one position whose life has become purely spontaneous and mechanical. There are plenty of people like that, plenty, who enter into trance and then can no longer get out by themselves; they get themselves into a certain position and someone has to free them. This has never happened to me; I have always Managed to extricate myself. But yesterday evening, the experience lasted a very long time. There was even a little cracking at the end, as when people have rheumatism.
   And during all this time, approximately three hours, the consciousness was completely, completely different. It was here, however; it was not outside the earth, it was on earth, but it was completely differenteven the body consciousness was different. And what remained was very mechanical; it was a body, but it could just as well have been anything. All this power of consciousness that for more than seventy years Ive gradually pushed into each of the bodys cells so that each cell could become conscious (and it goes on constantly, constantly), all this seemed to have withdrawn there only remained one almost lifeless thing. However, I could raise myself up from my bed and even drink a glass of water, but it was all so bizarre. And when I went back to bed, it took nearly forty-five minutes for the body to regain its normal state. Only after I had entered into another type of samadhi2 and again come out of it did my consciousness fully return. It is the first time I have had an experience of this kind.
   During those three hours, there was nothing but the Supreme Manifesting through the eternal Mother.
   But there was no consciousness of being Mother, neither eternal nor whatever: it was a continuous and all-powerful flood, and so extraordinarily varied, of the Lord Manifesting Himself.
   It was as vast as the universe, a continuous movement the movement of Manifestation of something which was EVERYTHING at once, a single whole. There was no division. And such a variety of colors, vibrations, powersextraordinary! It was one single thing, and everything was within it.
   The three Supreme Principles were very clearly there: Existence, Consciousness (an active, realizing consciousness) and Ananda. A universal vastness that kept going on and on and on
  --
   When I went back to bed, the transitional period lasted 45 minutes. During this time, I tried to locate the role of the individual consciousness on earth. In a flash, I understood its purpose. For you see, as long as the experience lasted, I did not feel any necessity at all of an individuality for this supreme flood to Manifest. Then I understood, precisely, that the individuality served to put into contact, in this flood, all that reached out towards what is called Ithis individualized representation of the Divinein order to receive help and support from it, and to be put into contact. I did not say put into contact WITH this flood but put into contact IN this flood, for it was not happening outsidenothing was outside this flood, nothing exists outside it.
   And what was really very lovely was the ACCURACY and the power which directed the forces. I watched this for three quarters of an hour: for each thing that presented itself (it could have been someone thinking, something taking place, anything at all), a special little concentration of this flood went exactly onto that point, like a special insistence.
  --
   This experience last night also enabled me to understand what X had felt during one of our meditations. He had explained his experience by way of saying that I was this mystic tree whose roots plunge into the Supreme and whose branches spread forth over the world,3 and he said that one of these branches had entered into hiMand it had been a unique experience. He had said, this is the Mother.
   And now I understand that what he had seen and translated by this Vedic image was that kind of perpetual flood.
  --
   I was reluctant to speak (because of this problem that remains hanging: to make it perManent, even in the active consciousness), and I said to myself that if I speak, it will create difficulties for me in finding the solution But its all right. I shall simply have to make a still greater effort, because something always evaporates when you speak.
   Sat-Chit-Ananda: the three Supreme Principles, Existence (Sat), Consciousness (Chit), and Bliss (Ananda).

0 1960-05-28 - death of K - the death process- the subtle physical, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   I know it. I know that this consciousness of the form exists since I have actually gone out of it. Once, long back, I was in a so-called cataleptic state, and after awhile, while still in this state, the body began living again2; that is, it was capable of speaking and even moving (it was Theon who gave me this training). The body Managed to get up and move. And yet, everything had gone out of it!
   Once everything had gone out, it naturally became cold, but the body consciousness Manages to draw a little energy from the air, from this or that And I spoke in that state. I spoke I spoke very well, and besides, I recounted all I was seeing elsewhere.
   So I dont like this habit of burning people very much.
  --
   I think that Many of these entities are dispersed by fire that creates havoc.
   I know one person, a boy who died here, who was burned before he had left! He had a weak heart, and not enough care was taken that is, they probably should not have operated on him. He was our engineer. He died in the hospital. Not a serious operation, an appendicitis, but his heart could not take up its natural movement.
  --
   He wanted to live again; I Managed to give him the opportunity. He was very conscious; the child isnt yet so.
   But people are such fools, they are so ignorant!
  --
   It was at Tlemcen, in Algeria. While Mother was in trance, Theon caused the thread which linked Mother to her body to break through a movement of anger. He was angry because Mother, who was in a region where she saw the 'Mantra of life,' refused to tell him the Mantra. Faced with the enormity of the result of his anger Theon got hold of himself, and it took all Mother's force and all Theon's occult science to get Mother back into her bodywhich created a kind of very painful friction at the moment of re-entry, perhaps the type of friction that makes new born children cry out.
   ***

0 1960-06-04, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   Once Im relaxed, I have developed the habit of repeating my Mantra. But its very strange with these Mantras I dont know how it is for others; Im speaking of my own Mantra, the one I myself foundit came spontaneously. Depending on the occasion, the time, depending on what I might call the purpose for repeating it, it has quite different results. For example, I use it to establish the contact while walking back and forth in my roommy Mantra is a Mantra of evocation; I evoke the Supreme and establish the contact with the body.
   This is the main reason for my japa. Theres a power in the sound itself, and by forcing the body to repeat the sound, you force it to receive the vibration at the same time. But Ive noticed that if something in the bodys working gets disturbed (a pain or disorder, the onset of some illness) and I repeat my Mantra in a certain waystill the same words, the same Mantra, but said with a certain purpose and above all in a movement of surrender, surrender of the pain, the disorder, and a call, like an openingit has a marvelous effect. The Mantra acts in just the right way, in this way and in no other. And after a while everything is put back in order. And simultaneously, of course, the precise knowledge of what lies behind the disorder and what I must do to set it right comes to me. But quite apart from this, the Mantra acts directly upon the pain itself.
   I also use my Mantra to go into trance. After relaxing on the bed and making as total a self-offering as possible of everything, from top to bottom, and after removing as fully as possible all resistance of the ego, I start repeating the Mantra.1 After repeating it two or three times, I am in trance (at the beginning it took longer). And from this trance I pass into sleep; the trance lasts as long as necessary and, quite naturally, spontaneously, I pass into sleep. And when I come back, I remember everything. The sleep was like a continuation of the trance. And essentially, the only reason for sleep is to allow the body to assimilate the results of the trance, then to allow these results to be accepted throughout and to let the body do its natural nights work of eliminating toxins. My periods of sleep practically dont exist sometimes they are as short as half an hour or 15 minutes. But in the beginning, I had long periods of sleep, one or even two hours in succession. And when I woke up, I did not feel this residue of heaviness which comes from sleep the effects of the trance continued.
   It is even good for people whove never been in trance to repeat a Mantra (or a word, a prayer) before going to sleep. But the words must have a life of their ownby this I dont mean an intellectual meaning, nothing of the kind, but rather a vibration. And this has an extraordinary effect on the body, it starts vibrating, vibrating, vibrating and so calm, you let yourself go, like falling off to sleep. And the body vibrates more and more, more and more, more and more, and you drift off.
   Such is the cure for tamas.
  --
   There would be Many interesting things to tell about sleep, because its one of the things Ive studied the mostto speak of how I became conscious of my nights, for instance. (I learned this with Theon, and now that I know all these things of India, I realize that he knew a GREAT deal.) But it bothers me a lot to say II this, I that. Id rather speak of these things in the form of a treatise or an essay on sleep, for example. Sri Aurobindo always spoke of his experiences but rarely did he say Iit always sounds like boasting.
   Sri Aurobindo said that the true or yogic reason for sleep is to put the consciousness back into contact with Sat-Chit-Ananda (I used to do this without knowing it). For some people the contact is established immediately, while for others it takes eight, nine, ten hours to do it. But really, normally you should not wake up till the contact has been established, and thats why its very bad to wake up in an artificial way (with an alarm clock, for example), because then the night is wasted.
  --
   Unfortunately, Mother had us cut Many things from this text. We regret the fact.
   ***

0 1960-06-07, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   They came to see their son (son, son-in-law, nephew anyway, its the same person) about some businesssome money matter. Then one of them asked to see me. I thought they would simply send some woMannot at all: the whole group, face to face and in a circle, and they began lecturing me on business! So I had some fun. Once they had their say (they werent moving, they were planted there), I told them, Listen, since you are here, it must be for SOMETHING! And then I gave them a lecture. But just imagine, one of them was so shaken that he asked to see me again this morning. The one who was shaken wore a handsome pink turban.
   So I said, All right, let him come.
  --
   It gives me the impression of something like Yes, thats it, like a caveManOh (Mother speaks mockingly), surely one of the cave artists or poets or writers! The intellectual life of the caves, I mean! But the cave happens to be low and when youre in it, you are like this (Mother stoops over), but the whole time you want to stand up straight. That makes you furious. Thats exactly the feeling it gives menot a cave meant for a Man standing on his two feet; its a cave for a lion or for for any four-legged animal.
   Its symbolic. Im speaking symbolically.

0 1960-06-Undated, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   I have been here seven years and I cant count a single concrete experience, not a single vision (the only things that have ever happened were in Ceylon or Rameswaram). I havent even Managed to have a few slightly conscious nights.
   Isnt this reason enough to be discouraged? In any case, these questions are stirring in meand the vital is not happy [nor the mental, nor the physical].

0 1960-07-12 - Mothers Vision - the Voice, the ashram a tiny part of myself, the Mothers Force, sparkling white light compressed - enormous formation of negative vibrations - light in evil, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   Last night something happened to me that I found quite amusing. I was awakened by a Voice, or rather it roused me from one trance to put me into another. It happened at about 11 oclock. Not a huMan Voice. I dont exactly recall its words any longer, but it had to do with the Ashramits protection, its success, its power. And what was interesting was that when I woke up, I was in a state in which this formation that is the Ashram and the Force that is condensed here to realize what this Voice wanted, seemed a very tiny, tiny part of myself.
   I heard the Voice and awoke with the feeling of this Power, this Light, this Force of realization concentrated here which sets everything in motion (as always, it is always the same, a Power in motion). It was a dazzling white light. But then, what I found funny was that there I was, quite in my natural state, and this, the Ashram, was a tiny, tiny part of myself. And throughout the whole experience, it remained like thata very tiny part of myself. Everything else was I cant say deconcentrated, but an entirely general, overall activity, as it normally is every night. And I saw the Ashram quite clearlyit was something special, made for special reasons, but whereas I seemed to have an immense body, that was very small, very small. It went on for an hour. Thats what I found amusing; the other things just happen, and they may be interesting, but this was so spontaneous; I was watching it (I dont know where my head was), I was looking down from above so tiny, so tiny.
  --
   The formation represented by the Ashram was located approximately here, at the height of the navel in relation to what I was but although the body was not delimited, it had certain attributes or undefined forms, each one of which was situated in relation to the other as though each represented one part of the body; each was symbolic of either an activity or a part of the world or a mode of Manifestation. So the formation started from about here, near the navel, and went down towards the appendix Here, Ill draw you a sketch:
   Image 1
  --
   It reminded me of tantric things. I have seen tantric formations and how forces are systematically separated by themeach vibration, each color. Its very interesting. They are all one, and yet each is distinct. That is, they are separated in order to be distinguished and for each one to be used individually. Each one represents a particular action for obtaining something in particular. This is the special knowledge the tantrics have, I believe. Or its the reflection of their knowledge. And my impression is that when they do their pujas or say their Mantras, what they are trying to do is recombine all that into the white light. Im not sure. I know they use each one separately for a separate purpose, but when they speak of their puja succeeding, it may mean that they have been able to recombine the light. But I say this very guardedly. For I would have to see X do his puja one day to really knowfrom afar Im not so sure. Its merely an impression.
   This is what I am constantly seeing now, but along with this Divine Force or this Divine Consciousness that Sri Aurobindo speaks of when he says, Mothers Force is with you. When it comes, it is sparkling white, perfectly white and perfectly luminous. And as it accumulates inside, it makes living vibrations of every color. And it goes on and on and on. Sometimes it lasts half an hour, three-quarters of an hour, an hournothing goes out. And it keeps constantly entering. And it piles up. Its as if it is all being accumulated or compressed together.
  --
   And there are hundreds and hundreds of little experiences like that, like so Many little stones marking the way. Then you see that the two things are ALWAYS together: the destructive and the constructive. You cant see one without seeing the other. A time comes when the effort is to conquer the negative parts of creation and death (as at the end of Savitri), and when you have conquered that, then youre above. And then if you look at all these things, even those which seem the most opposed to the Divine, even acts of cruelty done for the pleasure of cruelty, you see the Presence the Presence that annuls their effects. And its absolutely marvelous.
   I had a startling experience one day when X was doing his pujas to encircle the titans. He was in difficulty and I was about to intervene to help him when I was abruptly stopped. I was faced by a massive blackness (blacker than the blackest physical thing) and suddenly, right at its center, I saw the Divine Love shining with such a splendor I had never seen it so splendid.

0 1960-07-15, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   Well see what can be done for the Manuscripts on Sunday.
   With all my tender affection.

0 1960-07-23 - The Flood and the race - turning back to guide and save amongst the torrents - sadhana vs tamas and destruction - power of giving and offering - Japa, 7 lakhs, 140000 per day, 1 crore takes 20 years, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   The water was flowing off towards the right. From time to time there were these fissured dips or depressions along the vehicles path where the water rushed through, and in fact it must have rushed through each one just as soon as I had sped past. It was most dangerous, for if you had reached there a second too late, the water would already have flooded in and you would no longer have been able to get across; it was such that with even only a few drops, you would no longer get across. Not that they were very wide, but And the water was pouring in (pouring in our words are very small), it was pouring in, and I could see it ahead, but then the vehicle would arrive at full speed and instead of stopping, in a wild roller coaster-like movement it would plunge through, vroom!just in time, exactly like a roller coaster. I always arrived just in time to get through. And then again the same thing, broken here and there (in this way there were Many fissures, though Ive only drawn two; there were quite a few, five or six at least), and again we would dart across, then race on until we would reach the spot where I have drawn the water turning.
   Right at the end, there was a place where the water had to turn to run downthis was the Great Passage. If you got caught in that, it was all over. You had to reach this spot and cross over before the water came. It was the only place you could get across. Then a last plunge, and like an arrow shot from a bow, full speed ahead, I crossed over and there I was.
  --
   I turned around and saw all this water rushing down, and I thought, Now lets see if we can do something here. There was someone behind who interested me, someone or somethingit was still something; it was very likable and had something of the blue color that was here on the other side. Not really individuals, but more like beings representative of something that was following me quite closely. When I was there, it also was there, but it could not keep up, it kept losing groundas my speed increased, its decreased. It could not keep up. But it interested me in a special way. Oh, hes so close (he or it); he might just make it, I thought. And at that moment, I saw that all this destructive will with its instrument of water, symbolically water, had rushed past and was spreading out everywhere. But there was still a chance of saving all those who were along this path. And thats immediately what I thought of, it was my first wish: Lets see if they can still get across, if I can Manage to get them across. I remembered some especially dangerous spots (while speeding past, I had remarked, Oh, here we might still be able to do this, there that could still be donemy consciousness moved at the same speed, and I noted everything along the way), and once I was firmly there on the other side, I started sending back messages.
   Down below, the water was having a grand time; it was it was hopeless. But here, along this path, there was still a hope, even even after the water had passed; I probably had a certain power at my disposal to help others cross these fissured places. But because I woke up, I didnt see what it was. So that stopped everything. Probably because I woke up rather abruptly, I could not see what it meant.
   All this is a translation in huMan language, actually, because really it was
   And it happened quite early in the nightat such an early hour, they are not visions or things you observe: they are things you do.
   Ive been seeing for a long time that nights are actions. They are no longer images or symbols or representations they are all actions. And they take place certainly not on a huMan scale.
   Does that indicate war?
  --
   You see, it didnt seem huMan.
   I remember wandering about one night some time ago. Its no longer very clear, but one thing has remained I had gone out of India, and then when I returned to India, I found huge elephants installed EVERYWHEREenormous elephants. At that time I was not at all aware that the Communists in India had adopted the elephant as their symbol; I only learned that later. What does this mean, I said to myself. Does it signify the Indian army? But they did not resemble war elephants. These elephants were like immense mammoths, and they looked like they were settling down with all the power of a tremendous inertia. That was the impression something heavy in an inert and very tamasic way, forever immovable. I did not like this occupation. When I came back, I had a rather painful feeling, and for several days I wondered if it did not mean war. Then by chance, in a conversation, I learned that the Communists had selected the elephant as their symbol whereas the Congress had chosen the bullock In my vision, I was moving (as I always do), I was moving among them, and nothing moved. And if I needed room, some of them even tried to stir a little.
   But when huMan beings are involved, I believe that visions take on a special formits a special image. Not an inundation like this. That was very, very impersonal. They were forces. A feeling of floodgates bursting open, of something being held back, retained or prevented, then suddenly
   The vehicle and the forward movement are the sadhana, beyond the shadow of a doubt. I understood that the speed of sadhana was greater than the speed of the forces of destruction. And it ended in certain victory, there is not a shadow of doubt. This feeling of POWER once I was firmly grounded there [in the square], enough power to help others.
   These were universal forces. I cant say it means war. Ive foreseen Many warswidespread wars, local wars, so Many warsand up to now they have never been presented to me in that form. Theyve always come as a fireflames, flames, the home burning. Not as an inundation.
   A cataclysm?

0 1960-07-26 - Mothers vision - looking up words in the subconscient, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   Coming at the end of the night as it did, it means that its an exploration in some part or another of a subconscious mental activity. And you can make so Many discoveries there it is unbelievable! But its lovely. And rarely unpleasant. There was a time when it was very unpleasant, oppressive, full of effort and resistance. I would want to go somewhere, but it would be impossible; I toiled and struggled, but everything would go wrong the straight paths would suddenly plunge into an abyss, and Id have to cross the abyss. For years it was like that. Just recently, I looked back over this whole period But now it is over. Now its something its lovely, its enjoyable, its a little it has a childlike simplicity.
   However, its not a personal subconscient, but a its more than the Ashram. For me, the Ashram is not a separate individualityexcept in that vision the other day,1 which is what surprised me. Its hardly that. Rather, it is still this Movement of everything, of everything that is included. So its like entering into the subconscient of the whole earth, and it takes on forms which are quite familiar images to me, but they are absolutely symbolic and very, very funny! It took a moment to see that vainquons is spelled q-u-o-n-s. And I wasnt sure! I meant to ask Pavitra for a dictionary which gives verb conjugations, for then if Im stuck on something while writing, I can look it up.
  --
   Oh, it depends. When I dont pay attention, its all right. I usually dont make mistakesnot too Many!
   Yes, yes; its quite automatic, a kind of convention somewhere. But if you have the misfortune to step out of that and to look at it, its finished, you dont know anything any more.

0 1960-08-10 - questions from center of Education - reading Sri Aurobindo, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   And finally, Sweet Mother, what I would really like to know is the purpose of our Center of Education. Is it to teach the works of Sri Aurobindo? And only these? All the works or some only? Or is it to prepare the students to read the works of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother? Is it to prepare them for the Ashram life or for outside occupations as well? So Many opinions are floating in the air, and even the old disciples from whom we expect some knowledge make so Many contradictory statements
   (Laughing, to Pavitra:) I suppose thats for you!
  --
   It is not a question of preparing students to read these or some other works. It is a question of drawing all those who are capable of it out of the usual huMan routine of thought, feelings, action; of giving those who are here every opportunity to reject the slavery of the huMan way of thinking and acting; of teaching all those who want to listen that there is another, truer way of living, and that Sri Aurobindo taught us to become and to live the true being and that the purpose of education here is to prepare the children for this life and to make them capable of it.
   As for all the others, all those who want the huMan way of thinking and living, the world is vast and there is place there for everyone.
   We do not want large numbers; we want a selection. We do not want brilliant students; we want living souls.
  --
   Yes, there are Many things.
   What is so interesting in it is this insistence on the divinity of Man If thatthis feeling of the inner divinitycould be established in oneself in a constant way (Ive seen this for most people I know), so ManY things would There is no need for any effort at all, things fall away from you like dust.
   There is no need to react against difficulties; you are immediately pulled out of them, as if you were taken out like this (gesture of pulling someone out of a difficulty with her two fingers).

0 1960-08-20, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   Its at the lake. The property belonged to the mission and at that time its Manager was a very good friend of ours, even though he was a missionary. He said that he would arrange for us to have it. Everything was arranged, and I was to receive the money to buy it (they asked for more than fifty or sixty thousand rupees1). But then the money didnt come and our missionary friend left. Hes no longer there; hes been replaced by someone else.
   (Mother looks at a piece of paper) Calling Antonin Raymond2. The architect for the construction.
  --
   But L has enlarged the program. (Mother indicates the plan) This is only a small part of his extensive total program. He is planning to have a school of agriculture, a modern dairy with grazing landtheres a lot of agriculture, really a lotfruit orchards, large rice fields, Many things. And then a ceramics factory. My ceramics factory will be at the far end of the lake, so as to utilize the clay the government has agreed; as they have to dig out the lake one day, we shall use the top soil for the fields. First well remove all the pebbles (you know, there are hills over there), which can be used for constructionits a mine of pebbles. After removing the pebbles, there will be holes which then well fill with earth from the lake. And below this earth is a thick and compact layer of clay which is so hard it cant be used for farmingits impossible but its wonderful for making ceramics. So right at the very end, in Indian territory,4 well have a large ceramics industry. On the other side, well have a little factory for firing clay.
   All this is huge. A tremendous program.5
  --
   There are plenty of them! (Mother indicates a pile of various papers) In another pile there must be as Many again! It is a Mania for collecting papers.
   Oh no, sweet Mother! Fortunately they have been kept.
   Oh! I have plenty of them, plenty. There must be Many more boxes full.
   ***

0 1960-08-27, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   The little basket I put them in can no longer close! I take 45 minutes every morning upstairs to write letters. And I receive six, seven, eight, ten letters a day, so how can I Manage? In the end, Sri Aurobindo spent the whole night writing letterstill he went blind.
   Myself, I cant afford to do that, I have other things to do. And Im not keen on going blind either. I need my eyes, they are my work instruments.
  --
   So dont let yourself be upset I often think of you, for I know how very sensitive you are to all this. It is it is really ugly. A whole realm of huMan intelligence (its too great a compliment to call that intelligence), of the huMan mind, that is very, very repugnant. We must come out of that. It doesnt touch us. WE are elsewhereelsewhere. We are NOT in that rut! We are elsewhere, automatically.
   Our head is above.

0 1960-09-20, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   When Sri Aurobindo was here, I never bothered about all this; I was constantly up above and I did what the Gita and the traditional writings advise I left it to Natures care. In fact I left it to Sri Aurobindos care. He is making the best use of it, I would say. He will Manage it, he will do with it what he wants. And I was constantly up above. And from up there I worked, leaving the instrument as it was because I knew that he would see to it.
   Actually, it was very different at that time because I was not even aware of any resistance or any difficulty in the outer being; it was automatic, the work was done automatically. Later on, when I had to do both thingswhat he had been doing as well as what I was doingit became rather complicated and I realized there were Many what we could call gapsthings which had to be worked out, transformed, set right before the total work could be done without hindrance. So then I began. And several times I thought how unfortunate it was that I had never studied or pursued certain ancient Indian disciplines. Because, for example, when Sri Aurobindo and I were working to bring down the supramental forces, a descent from the mental plane to the vital plane, he was always telling me that everything I did (when we meditated together, when we worked)all my movements, all my gestures, all my postures, all my reactionswas absolutely tantric, as if I had pursued a tantric discipline. But it was spontaneous, it did not correspond to any knowledge, any idea, any will, nothing, and I thought it was like that simply because, as He knew, naturally I followed.
   Later on, when Sri Aurobindo left his body, I said to myself, If only I knew what he had known, it would be easier! So when Swami and later X came, I thought, I am going to take advantage of this opportunity. I had written to Swami that I was working on transforming the cells of the body and that I had noticed the work was going faster with Xs influence. So it was understood that X would help when he came thats how things began, and this idea has remained with X. But I have raced on I dont wait. Ive raced on, Ive gone like wildfire. And now the situation is reversed. What I wanted to find out, I found out. I experienced what I wanted to experience, but he is still He is very kind, actually, he wants really to help me. So, when I identified with him the other day during our meditation, I realized that he wanted to give silence, control and perfect peace to the physical mind. My own trick, if you will, is to have as little relationship with the physical mind as possible, to go up above and stay therethis (Mother indicates her forehead), silent, motionless, turned upwards, while That (gesture above the head) sees, acts, knows, decidesall is done from there. Only there can you feel at ease.
  --
   When I got there, I felt a moment of anguish; my feeling was that nothing could be done. Not for him in particular, but universally, for all those in his categoryit seemed hopeless.6 If that was perfection, then nothing more could be done. This lasted only a second, but it was painful. And then I tried that is, I wanted to bring my consciousness down into the highest cubethis eternal, universal and infinite consciousness which is the first and foremost expression of the Manifestation but nothing doing. It was impossible. I tried for several minutes and saw that it was absolutely impossible. So I had to make a curious movement (I couldnt get through it, it was impassable), I had to come back down into the so-called lower consciousness (not lower, actuallyit was vast and impersonal), and from there I came out and regained my equilibrium. This is what gave me that splitting headache I told you about. I came out of there as if I were carrying the weight the weight of an irreducible absoluteit was dreadful. Unfortunately, I was unable to rest afterwards, and as people were waiting to see me, I had to talkwhich is very tiring for me. And this produced a bubbling in my head, like a this dark blue light of power in matter was there, shot through with streaks of white and gold, and all this was flashing back and forth in my head, this way and that way I thought I was going to have a stroke! (Mother laughs)
   This lasted a good half hour before I could calm it down, make it quiet, quiet. And I saw that this came from the fact that he wanted to bring the Power down, to transmit the Power into the physical mind! But as soon as Im put in contact with the Power, you understand, it makes everything explode! (Mother laughs) It felt exactly like my head was going to explode!
  --
   And he isnt aware of this, actually, he isnt aware at all. If he were told, he would absolutely deny it for him, its an opening onto Infinity! But in fact, its always like that, we are always shut in, each of useach one is enclosed inside certain limits which he doesnt feel, for should he feel it, he would get out! Oh, I know this feeling very well, for when I was with Sri Aurobindo I was open in this way (gesture towards the heights), and I always had this feeling of Yes, my child He tolerated me the way I was and waited for it to change. Thats truly how things are, you know. And now I feel my limits, which are the limits of the world as it is at present, but beyond that theres an unManifested immensity, eternity and infinityto which we are closed. It merely seeps init is not the great opening. What I am trying to bring about is the great opening. Only when it has opened wide will there really be the (how should I put it?) the irreducible thing, and all the worlds resistance, all its inertia, even its obscurity will be unable to swallow it up the determining and transforming thing I dont know when it will come.
   But this experience with X was really interesting. I learned Many things that day, Many things If you concentrate long enough on any one point, you discover the Infinite (and in his own experience he found the infinite), what could be called your own Infinite. But this is not what WE want, not this; what we want is the direct and integral contact between the Manifested universe and the Infinite out of which this universe has emerged. So then it is no longer an individual or personal contact with the Infinite, its a total contact. And Sri Aurobindo insists on this, he says that its absolutely impossible to have the transformation (not the contact, but the supramental transformation) without becoming universalized that is the first condition. You cannot become supramental before being universal. And to be universal means to accept everything, be everything, become everythingreally to accept everything. And as for all those who are shut up in a system, even if it belongs to the highest regions of thought, it is not THAT.
   But to each his destiny, to each his work, to each his realization, and to want to change someones destiny or someones realization is very wrong. For it simply throws him off balance thats all it does.
   But for us who want an integral realization, are all these Mantras and this daily japa really a help, or do they also shut us in?
   It gives discipline. Its an almost subconscious discipline of the character more than of thought.
  --
   After that, I made a kind of pact with them the trouble, you see, is that there are constantly new ones. If only they were the same! They are constantly coming in new floods, so there was the need of a perManent formation over there. Ive tried to make this perManent formation, to take and absorb them, to calm them down and scatter them a little so they dont accumulate in one spot, which in the end could be dangerous.
   I found this quite amusing.
  --
   Things can be done in this way. In truth, a lot can be doneits Mans ignorance that gets him in trouble.
   With the Supramental World.
  --
   The disciple who Manages the sugar factory.
   ***

0 1960-10-02a, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   My nights contain so Many things that I dont always do the necessary work to remember that takes up a lot of time. Sometimes I get up during the night and sit there recalling precisely everything that has already happened, but that sometimes takes half an hour!and as urgent work still calls, I dont take the time to remember and it gets erased. But then, you know, with all thats coming you could write volumes!
   From a documentary standpoint, my nights are getting quite interesting. In the Yoga of Self-Perfection, Sri Aurobindo describes precisely this state you reach in which all things assume meaning and a quality of inner significance, clarification of various points, and help. From this point of view, my nights have become extraordinary. I see infinitely more things than I saw before. Before, it was very limited to a personal contact with people. Now In my nights, each thing and each person has the appearance, the gesture, the word or the action that describes EXACTLY his condition. Its becoming quite interesting.

0 1960-10-11, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   Im just now finishing the Yoga of Self-Perfection When we see what huMan life is and, even in the best of cases, what it represents in the way of imbecility, stupidity, narrowness, meanness (not to mention ignorance because that is too flagrant) and even those who believe themselves to have generous heart, for example, or liberal ideas, a desire to do good! Each time the consciousness orients itself in one direction to attain some result, everything that was in existence (not just ones personal existence, but this sort of collectivity of existences that each being represents), everything that is contrary to this effort immediately presents itself in its crudest light.
   It happened this morning while I was walking back and forth in my room. I had finished my japa I had to stop and hold my head in my hands to keep from bursting into tears. No, it is too dreadful, I said to myself; and to think that we want Perfection!
  --
   There are still Many hundreds of years to go before it becomes entirely what Sri Aurobindo describes theres no hurry!
   The mental silence Sri Aurobindo gave you in 1914, about which you were speaking the other day
  --
   I myself use it for a very special reason, because You see, I invoke (the words are a bit strange) the Lord of Tomorrow. Not the unManifest Lord, but the Lord as he will Manifest tomorrow, or in Sri Aurobindos words, the divine Manifestation in its supramental form.
   So the first sound of my Mantra is the call to that, the evocation. With the second sound, the bodys cells make their surrender, they give themselves. And with the third sound comes the identification of this [the body] with That, which produces the divine life. These are my three sounds.
   And in the beginning, during the first months that I was doing the japa, I felt them I had an almost detailed awareness of these myriads of cells opening to this vibration; the vibration of the first sound is an absolutely special vibration (you see, above, there is the light and all that, but beyond this light there is the original vibration), and this vibration was entering into all the cells and was reproduced in them. It went on for months in this way.
   Even now, when something or other is not all right, I have only to reproduce the thing with the same type of concentration as at the beginning for, when I say the japa, the sound and the words together the way the words are understood, the feel of the wordscreate a certain totality. I have to reproduce that. And the way its repeated is evolving all the time. The words are the same, however, the original sound is the same, but its all constantly evolving towards a more comprehensive realization and a more and more complete STATE. So when I want to obtain a certain result, I reproduce a certain type of this state. For example, if something in the body is not functioning right (it cant really be called an illness, but when somethings out of order), or if I wish to do some specific work on a specific person for a specific reason, then I go back to a certain state of repetition of my Mantra, which acts directly on the bodys cells. And then the same phenomenon is reproducedexactly the same extraordinary vibration which I recognized when the supramental world descended. It comes in and vibrates like a pulsation in the cells.
   But as I told you, now my japa is different. It is as if I were taking the whole world to lift it up; no longer is it a concentration on the body, but rather a taking of the whole world the entire world sometimes in its details, sometimes as a whole, but constantly, constantlyto establish the Contact (with the supramental world).
  --
   I am just finishing The Synthesis of Yoga, and what Sri Aurobindo says is exactly what has happened to me throughout my life. And he explains how you can still make mistakes as long as you are not supramentalized. Sri Aurobindo describes all the ways by which images are sent to youand they are not always images or reflections of the truth of things past, present or future; there are also all the images that come from huMan mental formations and all the various things that want to be considered. It is very, very interesting. And interestingly enough, in these few pages I have found a description of the work I have spent my whole life doing, trying to SIFT out all we see.
   I can only be sure of something once a certain type of picture comes, and then the whole world could tell me, But things didnt happen like that; I would reply, Sorry, but I see it. And that type of picture is certain, for I have studied it, I have studied their differences in quality and the texture of the pictures. It is very interesting.
  --
   Chakra: center of consciousness. 1) The crown of the head (sahasradala), 2) between the eyebrows (ajna), 3) the throat (vishuddha), 4) the heart (anahata) 5) the navel (Manipura), 6) the abdomen (svadhishthana), 7) the base of the spine (muladhara).
   Rue Lemercier.

0 1960-10-19, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   But for huMans, this is something UNTHINKABLE.
   He wanted to go.
  --
   Its its absolutely superhuMan. Theres not one huMan being capable of doing such a thing. And what what a mastery of his bodyabsolute, absolute!
   And when it came to others he could remove an illness like that (gesture, as if Mother were calmly extracting an illness from the body with her fingertips). That happened to you once, didnt it? You said that I had done this for you but it wasnt me; he was the one who did it He could give you peace in the mind in the same way (Mother brushes her hand across her forehead). You see, his actions were absolutely On others, it had all the characteristics of a total mastery Absolutely superhuMan.
   One day, hell tell you all this himself.1

0 1960-10-22, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   Theons wife dictated it in English while she was in trance. Another English lady who was there claimed to know French like a FrenchMan. Myself, I never use a dictionary, she would say, I dont need a dictionary. But then she would turn out such translations! She made all the classic mistakes of English words that mustnt be translated like that. Then it was sent to me in Paris for correcting. It was literally impossible.
   There was this TheManlys, my brothers schoolmate; he wrote books, but he was lazy-minded and didnt want to work! So he had passed that job on to me. But it was impossible, you couldnt do a thing with it. And what words! Theon would invent words for the subtle organs, the inner senses; he had found a word for each thinga frightful barbarism! And I took care of everything: I found the printer, corrected the proofsall the work for a long time.
   They were stories, narratives, an entire initiation in the form of stories. There was a lot in it, really a lot. She knew Many things. But it was presented in such a way that it was unreadable.
   I also wrote one or two things, experiences I had noted down; they were rather interesting, which is why Id like to get them back. I had described some of my visions to Madame Theon, and then she explained their meaning to me. So I would narrate the vision and give its explanation. That was readable and interesting, because there was some symbolism.
  --
   It wasnt Ki but Chi, for he was the founder of China!those things were fantastic! The story was almost childish, but there was a whole world of knowledge in it. Madame Theon was an extraordinary occultist. That woMan had incredible faculties, incredible.
   She was a small woMan, fat, almost flabbyshe gave you the feeling that if you leaned against her, it would melt! Once, I remember I was there in Tlemcen with Andres father, who had come to join usa painter, an artist. Theon was wearing a dark purple robe. Theon said to him, This robe is purple. No, its not purple, the other answered, its violet. Theon went rigid: When I say purple, its purple! And they started arguing over this foolishness. Suddenly there flashed from my head, No, this is too ridiculous!I didnt say a word, but it went out from my head (I even saw the flash), and then Madame Theon got up and came over to me, stood behind me (neither of us uttered a word the other two were staring at each other like two angry cocks), then she laid my head against her breastabsolutely the feeling of sinking into eiderdown!
   And never in my life, never, had I felt such peaceit was absolutely luminous and soft a peace, such a soft, tender, luminous peace. After a moment, she bent down and whispered in my ear, One must never question ones master! It wasnt I who was questioning!
   She was a wonderful woMan, wonderful. But as for him well
   Its funny I dont know why, but a short while ago this house on Val de Grce suddenly came to me (to Pavitra) When did this photograph come?
  --
   But I wasnt speaking to you with words Everything I see at night has a special color and a special vibration. Its strange, but it looks sketched When I said that to you, for example, there was a kind of patch,1 a white patch, as I recallwhite, exactly like a piece of white papera patch with a pink border around it, then this same blue light I keep telling you aboutdeep blueencircling the rest, as it were. And beyond that, it was swarminga swarming of black and dark gray vibrations in a terrible agitation. When I saw this, I said to you, You must repeat your Mantra once in my presence so that I may see if there is anything I can do about this swarming. And then I dont know whyyou objected, and this objection was red, like a tongue of fire lashing out from the white, like this (Mother draws an arabesque). So I said, No, dont worry, it doesnt matter, I wont disturb a thing2! (Mother laughs mischievously)
   All this took place in a realm which is constantly active, everywhere; it is like a perManent mental transcription of everything that physically takes place They arent actually thoughts; when I see this, I dont really get the impression of thinking, but its a transcription its the result of thoughts on a certain mental atmosphere which records things.
   And I see it all the time now. If someone is speaking or if Im doing something, I see the two things at the same time I see the physical thing, his words or my action, and then this colored, luminous transcription at the same time. The two things are superimposed. For example, when someone speaks to me, it gets translated into some kind of picture, a play of light or color (which is not always so luminous!)this is why most of the time, in fact, I dont even know what has been said to me. I recall the first time this phenomenon happened, I said to myself, Ah, so thats what these modern artists see! Only, as they themselves arent very coherent, what they see is not very coherent either!
  --
   But how Many letters I receive from people telling me, I feel listless, all I want to do is sleep, to rest, not do anything. They go on complaining.
   The experience I havewhat I mean by I is this aggregate here (Mother indicates her body), this particular individualityis that the more quiet and calm it is, the more work it can do and the faster the work can be done. What is most disturbing and time consuming are all these agitated vibrations that fall on me (truly speaking, each person who comes throws them on me). And this is what makes the work difficultit stirs up a whirlwind. And you cant do anything in this whirlwind, its impossible. If you try to do something material, your fingers stumble; if you try to do something intellectual, your thoughts get all entangled and you no longer see clearly. Ive had the experience, for example, of wanting to look up a word in the dictionary while this agitation was in the atmosphere, and everything jumps up and down (yet the lighting is the same and Im using the same magnifying glass), I no longer see a thing, its all jumping! I go page by page, but the word simply doesnt exist in the dictionary! Then I remain quiet, I do this (Mother makes a gesture of bringing down the Peace) and after half a minute I open the dictionary: the very spot, and the word leaps out at me! And I see clearly and distinctly. Consequently I have now the indisputable proof that if you want to do anything properly, you must FIRST be calm but not only be calm yourself; you must either isolate yourself or be capable of imposing a calm on this whirlwind of forces that comes upon you all the time from all around.
  --
   Im going to tell you what I sawits very interesting. First, eManating from here (Mother indicates the chest), a florescence of every color like a peacocks tail spread wide; but it was made of light, and it was very, very delicate, very fine, like this (gesture). Then it rose up and formed what truly seemed like a luminous peacock, up above, and it remained like that. Then, from here (the chest), what looked like a sword of white light climbed straight up. It went up very high and formed a kind of expanse, a very vast expanse, which was like a callthis lasted the longest. And then, in response, a veritable rain, like (no, it was much finer than drops) a golden lightwhite and goldenwith various shades, at times more towards white, at times more golden, at times with a tinge of pink. And all this was descending, descending into you. And here (the chest), it changed into this same deep blue light, with a powdering of green light inside itemerald green. And at that moment, when it reached here (the level of the heart), a number of little divinities of living golda deep, living goldcame, like this, and then looked at you. And just as they looked at you, there was the image of the Mother right at the very center of younot as she is commonly portrayed but as she is in the Indian consciousness Very serene and pure and luminous. And then that changed into a temple, and inside the temple there seemed to be an image of Sri Aurobindo and an image of me but living images in a powdering of light. Then it grew into a magnificent edifice and settled in with an extraordinary power. And it remained motionless.
   That is the representation of your japa.
  --
   Traditionally, one's Mantra is never to be repeated before anyone except the guru.
   Tamas: inertia.

0 1960-10-25, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   After running for an hour and a half, he found himself back at the Poona station, he doesnt know how. He caught a train back to Bombay, scarcely knowing how he Managed it.
   When I found this out, I immediately thought, Good, this boy caught the formation2 X had made for the other one, and it got him back. For its really miraculous that he succeeded. But the other one, the nephew, was left stranded, nowhere to be found. It was obviously the same gang and the same method.
  --
   But then there came a frightful reaction. For one day I was nearly as sicknot quiteas two years ago5 (they must have used the same Mantra). And, you see, I who never vomit terrible vomitingeverything inside came out! Only now Im a bit more experienced than two years ago (!), so I set it right It happened here, downstairs, in the afternoon. I went right back up to my room (I didnt see anyone that afternoon), and I remained concentrated to try to find out what had happened. I saw that it came from therea backlash of those people trying to defend themselves.
   I did what had to be done.
  --
   I found out the details: this boy had to go to the station, but on his way, he went into a shoe store just next to the station to buy a pair of sandals. As he entered, he saw a Man there choosing a pair of womens shoes for himself! This seemed strange to him: Whats this Man doing buying and he WATCHEDsuddenly, nothing more. He lost consciousness and no longer knew what happened to him. And thats how the story begana Man selecting womens shoes in a shop! He must do strange thingsprobably intentionallyto attract peoples attention. Naturally, out of curiosity, the boy started watching, and that was thatall of a sudden, blank, nothing more! And long afterwards he found himself far away in a train with this Man. Hes here now with his mother they came to thank me. Its he who gave me the details. Hes a nice boy, but all this has left him with some anxiety, especially when he speaks of it. Hes trying to forget. He told me hed like to join the army and asked my permission. The boy feels a need for force and he has the idea that to be part of such a force would be good for him. (Of course, he didnt tell me all this, hes not that conscious. But thats what he feels the need to be supported by an organization of force.) So I encouraged him. I told him it was a good idea. His mother wasnt very happy! She feared he was leaping from the frying pan into the fire!
   Another curious detail is that after having taken away all his appetite and having put him in the caf as a waiter, they told him, Now you must eat, so he tried to eat, and for four days he vomited up everything he put init was completely black! After that, he was able to start eating a little. Its a fantastic story!
  --
   I had X informed. But I didnt tell him my difficulty (this Mantra they threw on me to kill me), I didnt speak of that at all. For he had insisted, from the beginning he had said, Mother must see to it, only Mothers grace can save them. And I understood their attack came just at the time of Durga Puja, so I understood that Durga had to intervene. So thats the story.
   Things are not going so well for X either; everywhere its grating. It was probably very important I am hopeful that it can bring some change.
   But normally, shouldnt the Mantra bounce back on them?
   Obviously! Its boomeranging back on them. They must be having a rather hard time of it now, but too bad for them! They wont escape it.
  --
   During the last two years, Ive been accumulating experiences IN THEIR MINUTEST DETAILS, things that might seem most useless. You have to consent to that and not have a Mania for greatness; you must know that where the key is found is in the tiniest effort to create a true attitude in a few cells.
   The problem is that when you enter into the ordinary consciousness, these things become so subtle and require such a scrupulous observance that people are justified (they FEEL justified) in having the attitude, Oh, its Nature, its Fate, its the Divine Will! But with that conviction, the Yoga of Perfection is impossible and appears as a mere utopian fantasy but this is FALSE. The truth is something else entirely.

0 1960-10-30, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   And this lasted quite long (its what I saw most clearly and what I best remember). But there were Many, Many thingsold things that I know and certainly a VERY INTIMATE relationship which we had in the days of Egypt, at Thebes.
   Its the first time I saw this for youit was very, very
  --
   Then suddenly I went into a little trance. And in it I saw you, but you were physically, you were on one plane, and then I saw another Man on a different plane (I saw him quite concretely; he was rather tall, broad-shoulderednot so tall as broad, with a dark, European suit). And he took your hands and started shaking them enthusiastically!but you were quite indifferent, just as you are now, dressed in Indian fashion and sitting cross-legged. He took both your hands and started shaking them! And then I distinctly heard the words: Congratulations, its a great success!it had to do with your book.3 And at the same time, I saw all sorts of people and things who were touched by your bookall kinds of people, obviously French, or Westerners in any case women, men. There was even one woMan (she must have been an actress or a singer or anyway, someone whose life was she was even dressed for the stage, with some kind of tightsa beautiful girl!) and she said to someone, Ah, it has even given me a taste for the spiritual life! It was extremely interesting All kinds of things of this nature. And then once again I came out of this trance and In the end, I tried to do some certain thing for you and it turned out well. It turned out quite well.
   But then, just before that, there was this powdering of golden light coming down. And as it descended, it was white with a touch of gold (but it was white) and it came down in a column, with such POWER! And then, just at the end, this powdering of gold came and settled into this white light which had remained there the whole timeoh, it was so abundant. A great power of realization. I had a hard time coming out of it! At the start, I had decided to come out of it at half past, so I came out, but still not completely
  --
   But its still not luminous in the dark. What is normally luminous in the dark is something else I had that when I was working with Theon (after returning to France, we had group meditationsthough he didnt call it meditation, he called it repose, and we used to do this in a darkened room), and there was it was like phosphorescence, exactly the color of phosphorescent light, like certain fish in the water at night. It would come out [of the body], spread forth, move about. But that is the vital, it originates in the vital. It is a force from above, but what Manifests is vital. Whereas now it is absolutely, clearly the golden supramental light in an extraordinary pulsation, vibrant in intensity But probably it still lacks a what Theon used to call density, an agent that enables it to be seen in the dark and then it would be visibly gold, not phosphorescent.
   But it is very, very concrete, very material.
  --
   Oh, now I remember! It was PINK during the second phase, just afterwards, after Egypt! Oh, it was like like at the end of a sunrise when it gets very clear and luminous. A magnificent color. And it kept coming down and down, in a flood that part was new. Its something I see very rarely. It was not there at all the last time we meditated together. And it came filled with such a joy! Oh! It was absolutely ecstatic. It lasted quite a long time. And from there I went into this trance where I saw (laughing) that Man congratulating you! I heard him say (his voice is what roused me from my trance, and then I saw him), Congratulations, its a great success! (Mother laughs)
   Its good. Well have these little meditations from time to time. For me, its pleasant, for I have neither to restrict nor contain nor veil myself. Its nice.
  --
   So, I wont see you again? No, too Many people come in the afternoon, its not pleasant
   Horus, the sun god, child of Isis and Osiris.
  --
   L'Orpailleur, which had just been published. The Man's description, as a matter of fact, bears a striking resemblance to the publisher.
   The terrestrial work to be accomplished through the Agenda.

0 1960-11-05, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   I went down into a place a place simply in the huMan consciousness, thus necessarily in my body I have never seen anything more timorous, fearful, feeble and mean! Its it must be a part of the cells, part of the consciousness, something that lives in apprehension, fear, dread, anxiety It was truly, truly dreadful.
   And we carry that within us! We arent aware of it, its almost subconscious for you see, the consciousness is there to prevent us from yielding to thatits cowardly, and it can make you fall sick IN A MINUTE. I saw it, I saw things that had been cured and overcome in myself (cured in the true Manner, not in an outer way), and then they return! Its cured, but then it begins again.
   So then I went in search of its origin. Its something in the subconscientin the cells subconscient. Its roots are there, and on the least occasion And its so very, very ingrained that For example, you can be feeling very good, the body can be perfectly harmonious (and when the body is perfectly harmonious, its motions are harmonious, things are in their true places, everything works exactly as it should without needing the least attentiona general harmony), when suddenly the clock strikes, for example, or someone utters a word, and you have just the faint impression Oh, its late, Im not going to be on timea second, a split second, and the whole working of the body falls apart. You suddenly feel feeble, drained, uneasy. And you have to intervene. Its terrible. And were at the mercy of such things!

0 1960-11-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   He lives in a region which is largely a kind of vital vibration which penetrates the mind and makes use of the imagination (essentially its the same region most so-called cultured men live in). I dont mean to be severe or critical, but its a world that likes to play to itself. Its not really what we could call histrionics, not thatits rather a need to dramatize to oneself. So it can be an heroic drama, it can be a musical drama, it can be a tragic drama, or quite simply a poetic drama and ninety-nine times out of a hundred, its a roMantic drama. And then, these soul states (!) come replete with certain spoken expressions (laughing) Im holding myself back from saying certain things!You know, its like a theatricals store where you rent scenery and costumes. Its all ready and waitinga little call, and there it comes, ready-made. For a particular occasion, they say, Youre the woMan of my life (to be repeated as often as necessary), and for another they say Its a whole world, a whole mode of huMan life which I suddenly felt I was holding in my arms. Yes, like a decoration, an ornament, a nicetyan ornament of existence, to keep it from being flat and dull and the best means the huMan mind has found to get out of its tamas. Its a kind of artifice.
   So for persons who are severe and grave (there are two such examples here, but its not necessary to name them) There are beings who are grave, so serious, so sincere, who find it hypocritical; and when it borders on certain (how shall I put it?) vital excesses, they call it vice. There are others who have lived their entire lives in a yogic or religious discipline, and they see this as an obstacle, illusion, dirtyness (Mother makes a gesture of rejecting with disgust), but above all, its this terrible illusion that prevents you from nearing the Divine. And when I saw the way these two people here reacted, in fact, I said to myself, but you see, I FELT So strongly that this too is the Divine, it too is a way of getting out of something that has had its place in evolution, and still has a place, individually, for certain individuals. Naturally, if you remain there, you keep turning in circles; it will always be (not eternally, but indefinitely) the woMan of my life, to take that as a symbol. But once youre out of it, you see that this had its place, its utilityit made you emerge from a kind of very animal-like wisdom and quietude that of the herd or of the being who sees no further than his daily round. It was necessary. We mustnt condemn it, we mustnt use harsh words.
   The mistake we make is to remain there too long, for if you spend your whole life in that, well, youll probably need Many more lifetimes. But once the chance to get out of it comes, you can look at it with a smile and say, Yes, its really a sort of love for fiction!people love fiction, they want fiction, they need fiction! Otherwise its boring and all much too flat.
   All this came to me yesterday. I kept Z with me for more than half an hour, nearly 45 minutes. He told me some very interesting things. What he said was quite good and I encouraged him a great dealsome action on the right lines which will be quite useful, and then a book unfortunately mixed with an influence from that artificial world (but actually, even that can be used as a link to attract people). He must have spoken to you about this. He wants to write a kind of dialogue to introduce Sri Aurobindos ideasits a good idealike the conversations in Les Hommes de Bonne Volont by Jules Romain. He wants to do it, and I told him it was an excellent idea. And not only one typehe should take all types of people who for the moment are closed to this vision of life, from the Catholic, the fervent believer, right to the utmost materialist, men of science, etc. It could be very interesting.
  --
   Yes, but naturally without daring to criticize me openly. But Im aware of it. On the one hand, they see it as a kind of looseness on my part (oh, not only for thatMany things!). And on the other hand,1 you know well enough; it applies to other things, slightly different areas, its not exactly the same, but in this area theyre also severe. Im even told that there are some people who shouldnt be in the Ashram.
   My reply is that the whole world should be in the Ashram!
  --
   This is entirely another way of understandingits not an ascent, not even a descent nor an inspiration it must be what Sri Aurobindo calls a revelation. Its the meeting of this subconscious notationthis something which has remained buried within, held down so as not to Manifest, but which suddenly surges forth to meet the light streaming down from above, this very vast state of consciousness that excludes nothing and from it springs forth a lightoh, a resplendence of light!like a new explanation of the world, or of that part of the world not yet explained.
   And this is the true way of knowing.

0 1960-11-12, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   I listen, I answer. Its not satisfactory! I told them. But theyve kept to their idea, they like it. When that first storm came some time back (you remember, with those terrible bolts of lightning and that asuric being P.K. saw and sketched): Dont you want us to destroy something? I got angry. But it was This influence was so close and acute that it gave you goose bumps! The whole time the storm lasted, I had to hold on tight in my bed, like this (Mother closes her fists tight as in a trance or deep concentration), and I didnt movedidnt movelike a a rock during the entire storm, until he consented to go a bit further away. Then I moved. And even now, it comesfrom others (theres not just one, you see, there are Many): How about a good flood? A roof collapsed the other day with someone underneath, but he was able to escape. So roofs are collapsing, houses Arouse public sympathy, we must help the Ashram! Its no good, I said. But maybe thats whats responsible for this interminable rain. And they offer so Many other things oh, what they parade past me! You could write books on all this!
   But generally and this is something Theon had told me (Theon was very qualified on the subject of hostile forces and the workings of all that resists the divine influence, and he was a great fighteras you might imagine! He himself was an incarnation of an asura, so he knew how to tackle these things!); he was always saying, If you make a VERY SMALL concession or suffer a minor defeat, it gives you the right to a very great victory. Its a very good trick. And I have observed, in practice, that for all things, even for the very little things of everyday life, its trueif you yield on one point (if, even though you see what should be, you yield on a very secondary and unimportant point), it immediately gives you the power to impose your will for something much more important. I mentioned this to Sri Aurobindo and he said that it was true. It is true in the world as it is today, but its not what we want; we want it to change, really change.
  --
   Sri Aurobindo has explained it in Savitri. Only when Divine Love has Manifested in all its purity will everything yield, will it all yieldit will then be done.
   Its the only thing that can do it.
  --
   On a small scale, in very small details, I feel that of all the forces, this is the strongest. And its the only one with a power over hostile wills. Only for the world to change, it must Manifest here in all its fullness. We have to be up to it
   Sri Aurobindo had also written to the effect, If Divine Love were to Manifest now in all its fullness and totality, not a single material organism would but burst. So we must learn to widen, widen, widen not only the inner consciousness (that is relatively easyat least feasible), but even this conglomeration of cells. And Ive experienced this: you have to be able to widen this sort of crystallization if you want to be able to hold this Force. I know. Two or three times, upstairs (in Mothers room), I felt the body about to burst. Actually, I was on the verge of saying, burst and be done with. But Sri Aurobindo always intervenedall three times he intervened in an entirely tangible, living and concrete way and he arranged everything so that I was forced to wait.
   Then weeks go by, sometimes even months, between one thing and another, so that some elasticity may come into these stupid cells.
  --
   But that was really an experience, a decisive experience (it was Many months ago, perhaps more than a year ago).
   So I explained the problem to Sri Aurobindo, and he replied (by his expression, not with words, but it was clear), Patience, patiencepatience, it will come. And a few days after this experience, by chance I came upon something he had written where precisely he explained that we are much too rigid, coagulated, clenched for these things to be able to Manifestwe must widen, relax, become plastic.
   But this takes time.

0 1960-11-15, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   For me its different, because I KNOW that it can and must become something else. But then all this Consciousness which is there and in which I live and which has this world vision must come forward and Manifest in the vibration of EACH secondnot in a whole which looks interesting when seen from afar; it must enter the vibration of each second, the consciousness of each minute, otherwise
   (silence)
  --
   I had seen this earlier from another angle. In the beginning, when I started having the consciousness of immortality and when I brought together this true consciousness of immortality and the huMan conception of it (which is entirely different), I saw so clearly that when a huMan (even quite an ordinary huMan, one who is not a collectivity in himselfas is a writer, for example, or a philosopher or statesMan) projects himself through his imagination into what he calls immortality (meaning an indefinite duration of time) he doesnt project himself alone but rather, inevitably and always, what is projected along with himself is a whole agglomeration, a collectivity or totality of things which represent the life and the consciousness of his present existence. And then I made the following experiment on a number of people; I said to them, Excuse me, but lets say that through a special discipline or a special grace your life were to continue indefinitely. What you would most likely extend into this indefinite future are the circumstances of your life, this formation you have built around yourself that is made up of people, relationships, activities, a whole collection of more or less living or inert things.
   But that CANNOT be extended as it is, for everything is constantly changing! And to be immortal, you have to follow this perpetual change; otherwise, what will naturally happen is what now happensone day you will die because you can no longer follow the change. But if you can follow it, then all this will fall from you! Understand that what will survive in you is something you dont know very well, but its the only thing that can survive and all the rest will keep falling off all the time Do you still want to be immortal?Not one in ten said yes! Once you are able to make them feel the thing concretely, they tell you, Oh no! Oh no! Since everything else is changing, the body might as well change too! What difference would it make! But what remains is THAT; THAT is what you must truly hold on to but then you must BE THAT, not this whole agglomeration. What you now call you is not THAT, its a whole collection of things..
  --
   I often find leaving the balcony difficult. And its only this same gentleMan (you know, the censor) who starts telling me, Youre keeping them there in the rain just because youre in ecstasy; youre just letting them stand there drenched and getting a crick in the neck looking up in the air. Arent you going to let them go?When he insists too much, I go back inside.
   Maybe thats why hes still there. Otherwise, if I forgot (Mother laughs)

0 1960-11-26, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   Not last night but the night before, I touched at least one of the causes (at that time it felt like THE cause) of a certain powerlessness to act directly on Matter You see, when the Will and the Power come, they are extremely effective everywhere UP TO A CERTAIN REGION (in other words, whether people are receptive or not, open or not, makes no differencewhen the Will is applied it is all-powerful UP TO a certain region) but once it arrives here, at the most material material, its efficacy depends on Many thingsand a power which depends on something is no power! For a long, long time I have been searching for the reasons behind this powerlessness. Ive located a few, one after another, and upon these points there was an immediate effect. But some things resisted (oh, quite a number, in a number of ways), for example it had difficulty acting on illnesses, on the cells, on doubt (not mental doubt, but rather the doubt of the physical consciousness which cant accept certain things that seem impossible to itwhat Sri Aurobindo calls disbelief,1 not a mental doubt, but the disbelief of the physical consciousness which cant accept what is contrary to its own nature and its own working). And as for illnesses, sometimes it has an immediate effect, but sometimes it drags on and has to follow its so-called normal course. On all these three points, I clearly felt that something was hampering it. These are the Enemys strongholds; all that doesnt want the Divine seizes upon it and even the working of the Power coming from above is obstructed, for when it must work here in the body, it is stopped or deformed or altered or diminished.
   All this goes on in the subconscient; these are things that were pushed out of the physical consciousness down into the subconscient, so theyre there and they come back up whenever they please.
  --
   Its the very point where Nature (I mean the passive side of the force of Manifestation) is a slave to the hostile forces. There is a point where She is dominated by them. And this must be cured before the Power from above, the Power of the Shakti, can pass through everything, dominate everything, and be infallible
   I saw the thing, the experience took place, but sometimes it takes long for all the consequences to be worked out.2
  --
   Before I fell sick, I had a peculiar dream. I was here in the corridor, and someone quite dark came to tell me that Mother wanted me to change my work. And I recall trying with all my might to ask him, But why, why? Finally you arrived. You were there at a table with some others. I was quite annoyed because all these people upset me, they were hindering me from being with you. And you said to me very clearly, Its time this gentleMan goes. perhaps this gentleMan represented a part of my being which had to disappear or change, but anyway you asked me to do something extremely difficultl felt a very great difficulty doing it. I even remember, in my dream, having left you for an instant, as if I wanted to leave the Ashram, then I must have walked up and down for a while. Finally, I must have made an enormous effort to come back and sit next to you on a bench which symbolically was very hard The next morning I woke up with the flu.
   So, its very simple. The sickness was due to one part of your being going faster than the rest. A part of the physical consciousness probably remained behind, and that created this imbalance and triggered the sickness.
  --
   How Many more such experiences will be necessary? I dont know, you see, Im only building the path.
   (silence)

0 1960-12-13, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   Its fairly easy to Manage and control this in the realm of thought, but when it comes to those reactions that rise up from the very bottom theyre so petty that you can barely express them to yourself. For example, if someone mentions that so-and-so ate such-and-such a thing, immediately something somewhere starts stealing in: Ah, hes going to get a stomach-ache! Or you hear that someone is going somewhereOh, hes going to have an accident! And it applies to everything; its swarming down below. Nothing to do with thought as such!
   Its quite a nasty habit, for it keeps the most material state in a condition of disharmony, disorder, ugliness and difficulty.
  --
   For the last several days, Ive been at grips fighting with it. How can I stop this idiotic, coarse and above all defeatist automatism from constantly Manifesting? Its truly an automatism; it doesnt respond to any conscious will, nothing. So what will it take to ? And its QUITE INTIMATELY related to the bodys illnesses (the old habits the body has of coming out of its rhythmic movement, of entering into confusion)the two things are very intimately linked.
   Im deep in the problem.

0 1960-12-17, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   Nature is a marvelous inventoreverything She does is beautiful. I dont believe that Man has succeeded in producing anything so perfect. Later, its true, some new species were developed by him, but nevertheless Nature still remains the origin.
   Yes, ugliness seems to begin with Man.
   I think that even what seems to us ugly in animal and vegetal nature appears so only because of the limitations of our own understanding. But really, as soon as Man enters the scene phew!
   Yes, I have always felt that in Nature one can live in beauty, always. But then once Man shows up, something gets thrown out of joint. Its the mind, actually. What gives birth to ugliness is really the intrusion of the mind in life. I wonder if it was necessary, if it could not have been immediately harmonious. But it appears not.
   Even stones are beautiful; they are always beautiful in one way or another. When life appeared, there were some forms that were a little difficult, but not to that extent, not like certain huMan mental creations. Of course, there may have been some animal species which were rather but they were more monstrous than actually ugly. And most probably, it only seems like that to our consciousness. But the mind And its the same for all these ideas of sin, of wrong, of all thatits a falsehood. But it was Man who invented falsehood, wasnt it? The mind invented falsehood: to deceive! to deceive! And its a curious fact that animals domesticated by Man have also learned to lie!
   The curve
  --
   So Many people are satisfied with their falsehood, their ugliness, their narrowness, all of it. Theyre quite satisfied. When theyre asked to be something else
   This realm that Im now investigating, oh! I spend whole nights visiting certain places, and there I meet people I know here materially [in the Ashram]. So Many are PERFECTLY satisfied with their their infirmities, their incapacities, their ugliness, their powerlessness.
   And they protest when you want them to change!

0 1960-12-25, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   And I want also to tell you how grateful I am. You think of us even in the smallest huMan detailsgrateful is not even the word. Simply, may I serve you better, may I better give of myself.
   With love.

0 1960-12-31, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   Lets see How Many months has it been? I havent touched this instrument for at least eight months! And now tomorrow I have to playdont feel like it. Anyway, since I must, I must! Well meditate on it (the New Years Message1)you know what it is, for we worked on it together and then Ill see if something comes.
   (silence)
  --
   Oh, but you know, night after night, night after night, I SEE how things which in their truth are so simple become complicated here in the huMan atmosphere. Really, its so interesting; I have visions you see, the thing in its truth is so simple its stupefying, and then here it becomes so complicated, painful, exhausting, upsetting.
   But its enough to take one step behind to come out of it all.
  --
   As I approached the house, but still from some distance, I suddenly saw some men busy at work. Then instantly instantly this road which was so vast, sunlit and smoothso smooth to the feet oh, it became the top level of a scaffolding. And what is more, this scaffolding was not very well made, and the closer I came the more complicated it gotthere were planks jutting out, beams off balance. In short, you had to watch every single step to keep from breaking your neck. I began getting annoyed. Moreover, my packages were heavy. They were heavy and they so saddled my arms that I was unable to hold onto anything and had constantly to do a balancing act. Then I began thinking, My God, how complicated this world is! And just at that moment, I saw a young person coming along, like a young girl dressed in European clothes, with a hat on her head all black! This young person had white skin, but her clothes were black, and she wore black shoes on her small white feet. She was dressed all in blackblack, all in black. Like complete unconsciousness. She also came carrying packages (Many more than me), and she came hopping along the whole length of the scaffolding, putting her feet just anywhere! My God, I said to myself, shes going to break her neck!But not at all! She was totally unconscious; she wasnt even aware that it was dangerous or complicateda total unconsciousness. But her unconsciousness is what allowed her to go on like that! I watched it all. Well, sometimes its good to be unconscious! Then she disappeared; she had only come to give me a demonstration (she neither saw me nor looked at me). And looking down at the workers, I saw that everything was getting more and more complicated, more and more, more and more and there wasnt even any ladder by which to get down. In other words, it was getting unbearable. Then something in me rebelled: Ah, no! Ive had enough of all thisits too stupid!
   And IMMEDIATELY, I found myself down below, relieved of my packages. And everything was perfectly simple. (I had even brought the packages along without realizing it.) All, all was in order, very neat, very luminous, very simplesimply because I had said, Ah, no! Ive had enough of this business! Why all these stupid complications!5
  --
   Mala: a kind of necklace of wooden beads with which one repeats a Mantra.
   The room where Mother distributed to the disciples their needs (soap, paper, etc.) on the first of each month.
  --
   'It was his house, and it was rather complicated to enter. I was saying a Mantra or japa when X came along; he had a ... a terribly reproachful air! Then he smelled my hands: 'It's a bad habit to wear perfume. (Mother laughs) You cannot live a spiritual life when you wear perfume.' then I looked at him and thought, 'My God, does he have to be so backward!' But it annoyed me, so I said, 'Very well, I'm going.' When I got near the door, he started saying, 'Is it true you have been married several times, and that you've been divorced?' Then a kind of anger entered me (laughing) and I told him, 'No, not just once, but twice!' Thereupon, I left. All the old ideas...
   After that was when I saw the little squirrel.'

0 1961-01-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   The notebook in which a young woMan disciple asked questions on Sri Aurobindo's Thoughts and Aphorisms. Later, Mother preferred answering verbally Satprem's questions on the aphorisms. This allowed her to speak of her experiences freely without the restrictions imposed by a written reply. These 'Commentaries on the Aphorisms' were later partially published in the Bulletin under the title Propos. Here they are republished chronologically in their unabridged form.
   Where Sri Aurobindo's body lies, in the Ashram courtyard.

0 1961-01-10, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   How can one collaborate in curing the evil and ugliness seen everywhere? By loving? What is the power of love? What effect can an individual consciousness, acting alone, have on the rest of Mankind?
   How to collaborate in curing evil and ugliness? We can say that theres a kind of hierarchic scale of collaboration or action; a negative cooperation and a positive cooperation.
  --
   With this comes TRUE collaboration. For when you have this vision, this awareness, when you live in this consciousness, you also get the power to PULL That into the Manifestation on earth and put it into contact with what, for the time being, distorts and disguises; thus the deformation and disguise are gradually transformed by the influence of the Truth behind.
   Here we are at the top rung on the scale of collaboration.
  --
   Its easy to understand how someone who has this experience can spread it and act upon others, since to have it you must touch the unique, supreme Essence of the whole Manifestation the Origin and the Essence, the Source and the Reality of all that is; then you immediately enter the realm of Unity where there is no more separation among individuals: its a single vibration that can repeat itself endlessly in outer forms.2
   If you go high enough, you come to the Heart of everything. Whatever Manifests in this Heart can Manifest in all things. This is the great secret, the secret of divine incarnation in an individual form. For in the normal course of things, what Manifests at the center is only realized in the outer form with the awakening and RESPONSE Of the will within the individual form. But if the central Will is constantly, perManently represented in one individual, he can then serve as an intermediary between that Will and all beings, and will FOR THEM. Whatever this being perceives and consciously offers to the supreme Will is replied to as if it came from each individual being. And if individuals happen to be in a more or less conscious and voluntary relationship with this representative being, their relationship increases his efficacy and the supreme Action can work in Matter in a much more concrete and perManent way. This is the reason for these descents of what could be called polarized consciousnesses that always come to earth for a particular realization, with a definite purpose and missiona mission decided upon before the actual embodiment. These mark the great stages of the supreme incarnations upon earth.
   And when the day comes for the Manifestation of supreme Lovea crystalized, concentrated descent of supreme Love that will truly be the hour of Transformation, for nothing will be able to resist That.
   But as its all-powerful, a certain receptivity must be prepared on earth so its effects are not devastating. Sri Aurobindo has explained it in one of his letters. Someone asked him, Why doesnt this Love come now?, and he replied something like this: If divine Love in its essence were to Manifest on earth, it would be like an explosion; for the earth is not supple enough or receptive enough to widen to the measure of this Love. The earth must not only open itself but become wide and supple. Matternot just physical Matter, but the substance of the physical consciousness as wellis still much too rigid.
   ***
  --
   Oh no, my child, you dont see at all! To speak I must have a receptive atmosphere! The idea of talking aloud all alone in my room would never occur to me. Sound doesnt come: what comes is a direct transmission and if I Manage to connect it to my hand and write its transmitted, although it always gets somewhat pulled down. I can be doing anything at all, it doesnt matter, but it must be something that doesnt monopolize my attention, like brushing my hair in the morning for example: then it comes directly and nothing stops it! But I would never think of uttering a word! That only happens when I find some receptivity in front of me, something I can use.
   What I say to people depends entirely upon their inner state. Thats precisely why I had such enormous difficulty at the Playground3the atmosphere was so mixed! It was a STRUGGLE to find someone receptive so I could speak. And if Im in the presence of people who understand nothing, I cant say a word. On the other hand, some people come prepared to receive and then suddenly it all comes but usually theres no tape-recorder!
   I have replied endlessly, I have given all sorts of explanations about the organization of the School, about World Union,4 about the true way to organize industry (its true functioning)so Many things! If all that were compiled we could publish brochures! Sometimes Ive spoken three-quarters of an hour non-stop to people who listened with delight and were receptive but quite incapable of making a written report of it. At times like that we could have used one of your machines! But when things are organized in advance, it may well be that nothing comes out at allmentalizing stops the flow. If I is in front of me, I cant say anything to her because she doesnt understand. I already have trouble writing to herwhat I have to say is always brought down a bit; but if she were here in the room and I had to speak to her, nothing at all would come out!
   No, when we feel like it and when she doesnt raise any question about an aphorismat least not an impossible questionwell do this: I will speak here, its much easier for me. This way things come that I havent seen before; while when I write like that, they are usually things Ive seen on other occasions (not that I try to recall them, they are there and simply come back). But when theres a new contact, something new always comes.

0 1961-01-12, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   You have this experience when for some reason or other, depending on the case, you come into contact with the universal consciousness not in its limitless essence but on any level of Matter. There is an atomic consciousness, a purely material consciousness and an even more generally prevailing psychological consciousness. When, through interiorization or a sort of withdrawal from the ego you enter into contact with that zone of consciousness we can call psychological terrestrial or huMan collective (there is a difference: huMan collective is restricted, while terrestrial includes Many animal and even plant vibrations; but in the present case, since the moral notion of guilt, sin and evil belongs exclusively to huMan consciousness, let us simply say huMan collective psychological consciousness); when you contact that through identification, you naturally feel or see or know yourself capable of any huMan movement whatsoever. To some extent, this constitutes a Truth-Consciousness, or at such times the egoistical sense of what does or doesnt belong to you, of what you can or cannot do, disappears; you realize that the fundamental construction of huMan consciousness makes any huMan being capable of doing anything. And since you are in a truth-consciousness, you are aware at the same time that to feel judgmental or disgusted or revolted would be an absurdity, for EVERYTHING is potentially there inside you. And should you happen to be penetrated by certain currents of force (which we usually cant follow: we see them come and go but we are generally unaware of their origin and direction), if any one of these currents penetrates you, it can make you do anything.
   If one always remained in this state of consciousness, keeping alive the flame of Agni, the flame of purification and progress, then after some time, not only could one prevent these movements from taking an active form in oneself and becoming expressed physically, but one could act upon the very nature of the movement and transform it. Needless to say, however, that unless one has attained a very high degree of realization it is virtually impossible to keep this state of consciousness for long. Almost immediately one falls back into the egoistic consciousness of the separate self, and all the difficulties return: disgust, the revolt against certain things and the horror they create in us, and so on.
   It is probableeven certain that until one is completely transformed these movements of disgust and revolt are necessary to make one do WITHIN ONESELF what is needed to slam the door on them. For after all, the point is to not let them Manifest.
   In another aphorism, Sri Aurobindo says (I no longer recall his exact words) that sin is simply something no longer in its place. In this perpetual Becoming nothing is ever reproduced and some things disappear, so to speak, into the past; and when its time for them to disappear, they seemto our very limited consciousness evil and repulsive: we revolt against them because their time is past.
  --
   Consider the case of a woMan with Many friends, and these friends are very fond of her for her special capacities, her pleasant company, and because they feel they can always learn something from her. Then all of a sudden, through a quirk of circumstances, she finds herself socially ostracizedbecause she may have gone off with another Man, or may be living with someone out of wedlockall those social mores with no value in themselves. And all her friends (I dont speak of those who truly love her), all her social friends who welcomed her, who smiled so warmly when passing her on the street, suddenly look the other way and march by without a glance. This has happened right here in the Ashram! I wont give the details, but it has happened several times when something conflicted with accepted social norms: the people who had shown so much affection, so much kindness oh! Sometimes they even said, Shes a lost woMan!
   I must say that when this happens here. In the world at large it seems quite normal, but when this happens here it always gives me a bit of a shock, in the sense that I say to myself, So theyre still at that level!

0 1961-01-17, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   51When I hear of a righteous wrath, I wonder at Mans capacity for self-deception.
   What do you have to say?
   Our self-deception is always in good faith! We always act for the welfare of others or in the interests of huManity and to serve you (that goes without saying!). How exactly do we deceive ourselves?
   I would like to ask you a question in turnbecause there are two ways of understanding your question. It can be taken in the same ironic or humorous tone that Sri Aurobindo has used in his aphorism when he wonders at Mans capacity for self-deception. That is, you are putting yourself in the place of the self-deceiver and saying, But I am of good faith! I always want the welfare of others the interests of huManity, to serve the Divine (of course!). Then how can I be deceiving myself?
   But actually, there are really two quite different forms of self-deception. One can be very shocked by certain things, not for personal reasons but precisely because of ones goodwill and ardor to serve the Divine, when one sees people misconducting themselves, being egoistical, unfaithful, treacherous. There comes a stage when one has mastered these things and doesnt permit them to Manifest IN ONESELF; but to the extent that one is in contact with ordinary consciousness, ordinary viewpoints, ordinary life and thought, their possibility is still there, latent, because they are the inverse of the qualities one is striving for. And this opposition always exists until one has risen above and no longer has either the quality or the defect. As long as one has virtue, one always has its latent opposite. The opposition disappears only when one is beyond virtue and sin.
   But until then, there is this kind of indignation stemming from the fact that one is not entirely above: its a period when one totally disapproves of certain things and would be incapable of doing them. And up to this point, there is nothing to say, unless one gives an external, violent expression to his indignation. If anger interferes, it indicates an entire contradiction between the feeling one wants to have and this reaction towards others. Because anger is a deformation of vital power originating from an obscure and thoroughly unregenerate vital,1 a vital still subject to all the ordinary actions and reactions. When an ignorant, egoistic individual will exploits this vital power and encounters opposition from other individual wills around it, then under the pressure of opposition this power changes into anger and tries to obtain through violence what could not be achieved by the pressure of the Force alone.

0 1961-01-22, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   I saw it last night oof! It was a kind of artificial hurricane created by semi-huMan beings (that is, they have huMan forms but they arent men). They created the storm to cut me off from my home. But everything and everyone was disruptedit must have been going on for a rather long time. Finally last night it became quite amusing: I kept attempting to get to my home which was up above, but each time I tried to find a way everything was blocked by try to imagine, artificial, mechanical and electric thunderstorms, and then things made to cave in. All of it was artificial, nothing real, and yet terribly dangerous.
   At last I found myself in a big place down below where there was a row of houses, all kinds of things, and it was absolutely essential that I go back upwhen suddenly a somewhat indistinct form (rather dark, unluminous) came to me and said, Oh, dont go there, its very bad, very dangerous! Theyve set it all up in a terrifying way: none can withstand it! You mustnt go there, wait a bit. And if you need something, do come, you know I have everything you need! (Mother laughs) its a little old and dusty but youll Manage! Then she led me into a huge room filled with objects piled one on top of another, and in one corner she showed me a bathtubmy child, it was a marvel! A splendid pink marble bathtub! But it was unused, dusty and old. Well just wipe it off, she said, and youll be able to use it! She showed me other areas for washing and dressing, there was everything one could possibly need. You can use it all. Dont go up there! I looked at her closely. She struck me as having a tiny face, it was oddit wasnt a form, it was it was a form and yet it wasnt! As imprecise as that. Then I clasped her in my arms and cried out, Mother, you are nice! (Mother laughs) I knew then that she was material Mother Nature.
   After that I felt quite at ease. The battle was overit was over FOR THE MOMENT, because they werent finished: they continued their uproar on the other side; but I didnt have to go there anymore.
  --
   I simply consented to stay there. You will have all you need, stay here quietly. And what beautiful things she had, lovely things! They were unused and dusty. (It was surely the symbol of ancient realizationsrealizations of the ancient Rishis, things like that. Who knows?) They were first class, but completely neglected and thick with dust, like material objects left unusedwhich no one knew HOW to use. She put them at my disposal: Look, look, let me show you! There was a tremendous accumulation of things, piled in such great confusion that one couldnt see. Yet the marvel of it was that when she led me to a corner to show me something, everything immediately moved aside and order was restored, so that the object she wanted to show me stood out all by itself. And oh, a thing of beauty! Made of pink marble! A pink marble bathtub of a shape I didnt recognizenot RoMan, not antique (not modern, far from it!)how beautiful it was! And whenever she wanted to show me something in this untidy and cluttered room full of objects piled one on top of another, they would organize themselves, take their proper place, and all became neat. You will just have to dust them off a bit, she said. (Mother laughs)
   But Im not surprised it came down on you.
  --
   It will probably have to begin again, but in what Manner?
   Evidently all the vital forces who have taken the habit of ruling the earth (last night it had the proportions of the earth, it wasnt universal) are the very ones who refuse to listen; they dont at all like what I am doing.
   You see, personal surrender and devotion is an excellent solution for the individual, but it doesnt work for the collectivity. For example, as soon as I am alone and lying on my bedpeace! (Ah, I forgot! They had invented yet another thing: making my heartbeats irregular. Every three or four beats it would stop; then it would start up again, pounding as if I had been struck. Three, four beats, a faint little beat, then stop then, bang! Blow after blow. One more of their extraordinary inventions!) But, as soon as I stretch out and make a total surrender of all the cellsno more activity, nothingeverything goes well. But I am well aware that this surrender has an effect on the action only to the extent that the Supreme Lord has decided upon the action, and those movements stretch over long periods of time5: all sorts of things may happen before the final Victory is won. Because, for us, the scale is very small; even if it were of terrestrial proportions, it would be a very small scale; but on a universal scale. These forces have their place and their action, their universe, and as long as their place and their action are maintained, they will be here. So before their action can be exhausted or become useless, Many things can happen.
   Individually, however, there is almost instantaneous bliss. But this is not a true solution its a solution in the long run, by repercussion. To have true comm and here in this world, all of that must be mastered.
  --
   Savitri is really a condensation, a concentration of the universal Mother the eternal universal Mother, Mother of all universes from all eternityin an earthly personality for the Earths salvation. And Satyavan is the soul of the Earth, the Earths jiva. So when the Lord says, he whom you love and whom you have chosen, it means the earth. All the details are there! When she comes back down, when Death has yielded at last, when all has been settled and the Supreme tells her, Go, go with him, the one you have chosen, how does Sri Aurobindo describe it? He says that she very carefully takes the SOUL of Satyavan into her arms, like a little child, to pass through all the realms and come back down to earth. Everything is there! He hasnt forgotten a single detail to make it easy to understand for someone who knows how to understand. And it is when Savitri reaches the earth that Satyavan regains his full huMan stature.
   These seem to be the forces ruling the subconscious mechanisms or reactions of the body: all the automatism produced by evolution and atavismwhat might be termed evolutionary habits. This is the 'descending path,' which started forty years earlier, as Mother said (or the 'physical plunge' referred to by Sri Aurobindo), leading to the pure cellular consciousness.
   Japa: the continuous repetition of a Mantra. Mother's Mantra is a song of the cells, the sole material or physical process used by her for awakening the cells and stabilizing the Supramental Force in her body.
   Later, Mother specified: 'These are elements in the material substance entirely possessed by adverse forces and opposed to the transformation.'

0 1961-01-24, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   It lasted the remainder of the night and all day long I had considerable trouble containing an overwhelming power that spontaneously created reactions utterly disproportionate to a huMan body and made me speak in a way that. When something was not going well: wham! Such an instantaneous and strong reply that it looked like anger. And I found it difficult to control the movementit had happened already in the morning and it very nearly happened again in the afternoon. That last attack has weakened me terribly! I told myself, I dont have the strength to contain this Power; its difficult to remain calm and controlled. That was my first thought, so I insisted upon calm.
   Then yesterday afternoon, when I went upstairs to walk,1 a couple of things occurrednot personal, but of a general natureconcerning, for instance, certain old-fashioned conventions having to do with women and their particular nature (not psychological, physical)old ideas like that which had always seemed utterly stupid to me suddenly provoked a kind of reprobation completely out of proportion to the fact itself. Then one or two other things2 happened in regard to certain people, certain circumstances (nothing to do with me personally: it came from here and there). Then suddenly, I saw a Force coming (coming, well, Manifesting) which was the same as that thing I had felt within me but even bigger; it began whirling upon the earth and within circumstances oh, like a cyclone of compact power moving forward with the intention of changing all this! It had to change. At all costs, it must change!
   I was above, as usual (Mother points above her head, indicating the higher consciousness), and I looked at that (Mother bends over, as if looking down at the earth), and said to myself, Hmm, this is getting dangerous. If it continues like this, it will result in in a war or a revolution or some catastrophea tidal wave or an earthquake. So I tried to counteract it by applying the highest consciousness to it, that of a perfect serenity. And I saw especially that this consciousness has been missioned to transform the earth through the Supermind and by the supramental Force, avoiding all catastrophes as far as possible: the Work is to be done as luminously and harmoniously as the earth would allow, even by going at a slower pace if need be. That was the idea. And I tried to counteract that whirlwind power with this consciousness.
  --
   And it went on like that. After this, Slowly, Still WITHOUT MOVING, everything went back into each of the different centers of the being. (Ah, let me say parenthetically that it wasnt AT ALL the ascent of a force like the ascent of the Kundalini! It had absolutely nothing to do with the Kundalini movement and the centers, it wasnt that at all.) But while re-descending, it was as though WITHOUT LEAVING THIS STATE, without leaving this state which remained conscious ALL the time, this supreme Consciousness began to reactivate the different centers: first here (Mother points to the center above the head and then touches the crown of the head, the forehead, throat, chest, etc.) then there, there, there. At each there was a pause while this new realization organized everything. It organized and made the necessary decisions, sometimes down to the most minute details: what had to be done in this case or said in that case; and all of that TOGETHER, at once, not one by one but seen entirely as a whole. It kept on descending I noted Many things, it was extremely interestingdown and down, farther and farther, right to the depths. Everything went on at the same time,7 simultaneously, and at the same time this supreme Consciousness was organizing everything separately.8
   This descending reorganization ended exactly when the clock struck one. At that moment I knew that I had to go into trance for the work to be perfected, but until then I was wide awake.
  --
   When I got up today, I was going over all this to myself, and my first instinct was not to speak of it, to observe and see what would happen; but then I received a distinct and precise ComMand to tell it to you this morning. The experience had to be noted down just as it occurred, recorded in its exact form.
   In the body now, there is a very clear not only a certitude, but a feeling that a certain omnipotence is not far away, and that very soon when it sees (it sees it! There is only one It in this whole affair, which is neither he nor she nor), when it sees that something must be, it automatically will be.
  --
   I had a woMan here with me who was born among these people. She had been adopted by Thomas (the French musician who composed the comic-opera, Mignon). They had come to India and found this little girl who at the time was very young; she was only thirteen, quite pretty and nice. So they took her back to France with them as a nanny and treated her as one of their own children. She was cared for, educated, given everything, treated absolutely like one of the family; she remained there for twenty years. Moreover, she was gifted with clairvoyance and could tell fortunes by reading palms, which she did remarkably well. She even worked for a while in a caf, the Moulin-Rouge or a similar place, as a Hindu Fortune Teller! What a maharani she was, with her magnificent jewelsand beautiful, as well. In short, she had completely left all her old habits behind.
   Then she returned to India and I took her in with me. I continued to treat her almost as a friend and I helped her to develop her gifts. Mon petit,10 how dirty she started to get, lying, stealing, and absolutely needlesslyshe had money, she was well treated, she had everything she needed, she ate what we didthere was absolutely no reason! When I finally asked her, But why, why!? (she was no longer young at this point), she replied, When I came back here, it took hold of me again; its stronger than I am. That was a revelation for me! Those old habits had been impervious to education.
  --
   She lived in France from the age of thirteen, with all that those people did for her! (It was Ambroise Thomas, I remember now. They were so kind to her.) And naturally she had picked up very fine Manners the outer appearances were all there.
   All this is just to tell you that some contacts are not very favorable. And I understand full well: I could never tolerate people like that coming into my room sometimes it would take me hours and hours to put things right!
  --
   There was a time when we had only a minimum of servants here and they always remained apartwe never had an epidemic. I dont know for how Many years it wasyears and years while Sri Aurobindo was herewe never had a single case of an epidemic disease. It began when people started coming here with children; necessarily they brought their servants along with them, who went to the bazaar and even to the movies and here and there. Then everything came in.
   But now the situation is bad. There are something like thirty cases of measles, four or five of smallpox and some chickenpox as well. You must be careful. I need you in good health, otherwise well have to stop everything!
   There are places where it happens like that: suddenly everything stopsno more school, no more mail, no more trains. I remember a poor little village in Japan where they had a flu epidemic, the first of its kind. They didnt know what it was and the whole village fell ill. It was winter, the village was snowed in and there was no more communication with the outside (the mail came only once every fifteen days). The postMan arrived and everyone was dead, buried beneath the snow.
   I was there in Japan when it happened.
  --
   Satprem later asked Mother what she meant by these 'things,' and Mother replied: 'For example, there was a certain Man's attitude with respect to life and to the Divine, and what he thought of himself, and so forth. You see, what came was a whole range of characters and one particular action of one Man, and then something else came up.... How to explain? ... These are POINTS OF WORK which come to me, things that present themselves in the atmosphere for me to seethings I see and which have to be acted upon.'
   A few days later, Mother rectified: 'I have looked at the experience again and realized that it's not Vedic but pre-Vedic. The experience put me into contact with a civilization prior to the Vedas the Rishis and the Vedas are a kind of transition between that vanished civilization and the Indian civilization which grew out of the Vedic Age. It was yesterday [January 26] that I perceived this, and it was quite interesting.'

0 1961-01-31, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   I am translating it to make myself understoodit wasnt like that at the time of the experience. Suppose, for example, that there was a disorder here or there in the body, not actually an illness (because illness implies some important inner factor such as an attack or the necessity for some transformation, Many different things), but the outer expression of a disorder, such as swollen legs or a malfunctioning liver not an illness, a disorder, a functional disorder. Well, it was all utterly unimportant: IT IN NO WAY CHANGES THE BODYS TRUE CONSCIOUSNESS. Although we are in the habit of thinking that the body is very disturbed when its ill, when something is going wrong, its not so. It isnt disturbed in the way we understand it.
   Then what is disturbed if not the body?
  --
   It was there, it was clear; but its not yet perManent. Something is beginning. I hope its going to become established before too long and that there will be no more translating difficulties.
   Meanwhile, I am interested in seeing how it functions in your mind. I think that after some timeperhaps not too long from nowwe will be able to do this work together in an interesting way.
  --
   It is striking that Mother's body-experiences very often parallel recent theories of modern physics, as if mathematical equations were the means of formulating in huMan language certain complex phenomena, remote from our day to day reality, which Mother was living spontaneously in her bodyperhaps 'at the speed of light.'
   ***

0 1961-02-04, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Theon always told me that the true interpretation of the Biblical story of the serpent in the Garden of Eden is that huManity wanted to pass from a state of animal-like divinity to the state of conscious divinity by means of mental development, symbolized by eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. And this serpent, which Theon always said was iridescent, reflecting all the colors of the prism, was not at all the spirit of evil, but the power of evolution the force, the power of evolution. And it was natural that this power of evolution would make them taste the fruit of knowledge.
   Now, according to Theon, Jehovah was the chief of the Asuras,6 the supreme Asura, the egoistic God who wanted to dominate everything and keep everything under his control. And of course this act made him furious, for it enabled Mankind to become gods through the power of an evolution of consciousness. And thats why he banished them from Paradise.
   Although told in a childish Manner, theres a great deal of truth in this story, a great deal.
   (silence)
  --
   How Many, Many experiences there were during those days at Tlemcen! Surely youve heard them. Were you there when I told the story about the big toad? A huge toad, covered with warts. No? The sitting room was upstairs in Theons house (the house was built on a hillside) and it was connected by large open doors to a small terrace that sat almost on top of the hill. I played the piano in this room every day. And one day, what did I see hopping in through the open bay windows but an enormous black toadenormous! He sat down on his backside right in the entrance and puffed up his throat: poff! poff! And for the whole time I played, he stayed there going Poff! poff!, as though in a state of delight! When I finished, I turned around and he gave me one last Poff! and hopped away. It was comical!
   Theon also taught me how to turn aside lightning.
  --
   Oh, that Man was terriblehe had a terrible power. But quite a good external appearance!
   Have you seen his photo? No? Ill have to show it to you. He was a handsome Man, about sixty years oldbetween fifty and sixty.
   And do you know how he received me when I arrived there? It was the first time in my life I had traveled alone and the first time I had crossed the Mediterranean. Then there was a fairly long train ride between Oran and Tlemcenanyway, I Managed rather well: I got there. He met me at the station and we set off for his place by car (it was rather far away). Finally we reached his estatea wonder! It spread across the hillside overlooking the whole valley of Tlemcen. We arrived from below and had to climb up some wide pathways. I said nothingit was truly an experience from a material standpoint. When we came in sight of the house, he stopped: Thats my house. It was red! Painted red! And he added, When Barley came here, he asked me, Why did you paint your house red? (Barley was a French occultist who put Theon in touch with France and was his first disciple.) There was a mischievous gleam in Theons eyes and he smiled sardonically: I told Barley, Because red goes well with green! With that, I began to understand the gentleMan. We continued on our way uphill when suddenly, without warning, he spun around, planted himself in front of me, and said, Now you are at my mercy. Arent you afraid? Just like that. So I looked at him, smiled and replied, Im never afraid. I have the Divine here. (Mother touches her heart.)
   Well, he really went pale.
  --
   But Many things here will interest everyone!
   No. Besides, there are things. There are things I dont want to speak of because (and I havent said them, either) because, after all, he taught me a lot.
  --
   So, mon petit. Sri Aurobindo always said the greatest obstacle to true understanding and participation in the Work is common sense. He said thats why Nature creates madmen from time to time! They are people not strong enough to bear the disMantling of this petty stupidity called common sense.
   Its time to go now. Do you have anything to say?

0 1961-02-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   HuMan nature is such that when you concentrate on your body you fall ill; when you concentrate on your heart and feelings you become unhappy; when you concentrate on the mind you get bewildered.
   (Laughing) And its absolutely true!

0 1961-02-11, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   55Be wide in me, O Varuna; be mighty in me, O Indra; O Sun, be very bright and luminous; O Moon, be full of charm and sweetness. Be fierce and terrible, O Rudra; be impetuous and swift, O Maruts; be strong and bold, O Aryama; be voluptuous and pleasurable, O Bhaga; be tender and kind and loving and passionate, O Mitra. Be bright and revealing, O Dawn; O Night, be solemn and pregnant. O Life, be full, ready and buoyant; O Death, lead my steps from Mansion to Mansion. Harmonise all these, O BrahManaspati. Let me not be subject to these gods, O Kali.1
   He invokes all these Vedic gods and tells each one to take possession of him; and THEN he tells Kali to free him from their influence! It is very amusing!
  --
   For Sri Aurobindo, the important thing was always the Mother. As he explained it, the Mother has several aspects, and certain aspects are still unManifest. So if he has represented the Mother by Kali in particular, I believe its in relation to all those gods. Because, as he wrote in The Mother, the aspects to be Manifested depend upon the time, the need, the thing to be done. And he always said that unless one understands and profoundly feels the aspect of Kali, one can never really participate in the Work in the worldhe felt that a sort of timid weakness makes people recoil before this terrible aspect.
   ***
  --
   Last night I had a dream about you that made a vivid impression on me. Its probably absurd, but it was so real! You had called me because you were going to leave your body: you had decided to leave and you wanted somehow to say good-bye. It was so real! I came to you and for a moment you placed my head on your knees, and I was filled with light; it was very tender. But at the same time, I knew you were saying good-bye, you were going to leave your body, and I wept in my dream. Then I went to sit in a corner because there were other people who probably had come to see you as well. I remained in that corner, strickenit seemed so real, you understand! Just then, aMan I didnt know entered the room (I knew he was French), a stranger dressed all in black, and he started making a loud commotion. He was smoking a pipe,2 a very coarse Man, and he wanted to make all the people there, the disciples, get out of the room .3 It was so real! I awoke with a start and almost cried aloud, Ah, its a dream! Its only a dream!
   Oh, it was that real!
  --
   It all began with some extremely violent attacks. So if your dream is not premonitory, then it must be the result of their formation, by which they intend to disseminate the conviction everywhere, as much as possible, that this is the end. Two years ago, when I had to retire to my room, a formidable campaign was set into operation upon all the Ashram people; and all those who were a little receptive, either in dreams or through an openness to suggestions, heard it clearly announced: On the 9th of December of this year [1958], Mother will leave. Theres no doubt about it, its sure. It was said to me as well: This will be the end, you will leave. It was repeated to everybody, everybody, a great Many people heard itthey were virtually awaiting it. And this is why (you know how extremely ill I was at the time, I was really ill), this is why I didnt react, but all the same I didnt go to the lake [the lake estate where Mother was to have gone on the 9th of December], because I told myself, If anything happens there, it will be awkward I had better not go. But still I knew it wasnt true, I knew it.
   Now this kind of attack has stopped, it is no longer like that. But there are beings who send dreams. For example, some dreams were sent to Z (who, as you know, is quite clairvoyant), in which she was told I would be broken to pieces. She was very upset and I had to intervene. Is your dream of this nature, or are you being forewarned? I dont know, I cant say. If the doctor were asked, perhaps he would say that if it continues like this, obviously (you see, one thing after another is getting disorganized), if it continues in this way, how long can the body last?
   But this body feels so strongly that it exists ONLY because the divine Power is in it. And constantly, for the least thing, it has only one remedy (it doesnt think of resting, of not doing this or that, of taking medicine), its sole remedy is to call and call the Supremeit goes on repeating its Mantra. And as soon as it quietly repeats its Mantra, it is perfectly content. Perfectly content.
   (silence)
   Two nights ago, I saw a formation of illness over the entire Ashram, a kind of adverse formation trying to prevent me from leaving my room, and I had to hide to get out, leave clandestinely. Oh, what a terrible atmosphere, so heavy, so grayeverybody was ill. And this formation had some actual effects because Many people fell ill who normally never do. It is an adverse formation and theres no reason to concede its victory; its simply a force which doesnt want us to succeed, of courseso we need not pay attention.
   The trouble is, if I were thirty or forty years old, people wouldnt be affected. But unfortunately they think about how old I am all the time and it creates a bad atmosphere. After all, they keep saying, Mother is old and. All the usual nonsense.
   But I know differently and so does my bodyto me its all foolishness and has no importance. For instance, when Vinoba Bhave came to see me4 (the Man who takes care of poor people), he looked at me and said, Oh, youll live a hundred years! And I simply said, Yes, it all seemed so natural. At that moment, there wasnt even (how to put it?) the least intimation of a doubt. Of course its a clich, but nevertheless, he said it; afterwards he told people that this was what he had felt. And it seems completely natural I know if my body can last till its a hundred (a little less than twenty years more), then we will be on the other side the difficulty will be over.
   I rather feel that your dream is another part of this present mass attack, but.
  --
   When I am perfectly tranquil, I immediately live in a beatific joy where questions dont arisethere are no questions! One asks for nothingone LIVES! One lives happily, and thats all. Theres no, Will it be like this? Will it be like that?how childish! There are no questions, questions dont arise. One is a beatitude Manifesting, that is all.
   All the rest is unimportant.
  --
   Otherwise, concentration is very good, it doesnt tire mewhen my body is not drained, when it isnt constantly aware that it exists because it hurts here, hurts there, aches here, aches there (pain is what gives it a sense of existing), when the body is able to forget itself, things go well, its nothing. Now the Force passes through me without causing fatigue, while Many years ago, too much Force created tension; but its not like that now, not at allon the contrary, the body feels better when a lot of force has passed through it.
   I dont know. We shall see.
  --
   But perhaps there will have to be Many experiences of this nature before the work is done. It is possible.
   Something from that experiencean effect, a vibratory effect, so to speakhas not left. But the totality of the experience is not here the whole time, its not established. I had a reminder of it one night, but not for very long; all at once, for a brief moment, this same vibration came, and my entire body was nothing other than this Vibration.
  --
   This particular period was very bad last year too.6 There was a tremendous opposition because of February 29th [first anniversary of the supramental Manifestation]. But always a little before Darshans7 or days for special blessings there is a new outbreak of adverse attacksalways.
   Well, mon petit, we have done nothing but talk. Its time to go and we havent done anything!
  --
   (Mother gets up to leave when suddenly, turning upon the threshold, She looks at Satprem with her eyes like diamonds and, in a tone of voice he has never heard before, as if it were a ComMand from above, says:)
   In any case, one thing: never forget that what we have to do, we shall do; and we shall do it together because we have to do it together, that is alllike this, like that, in this way, in that way (Mother tilts her hand from right to left as though to indicate this side of the world or the other, life or death), it has no importance. But this is the true fact.
  --
   Since 'Bohr's atom' at the beginning of the century, which with its electrons orbiting around a central nucleus like planets around a sun was to have been the mathematical model representing the ultimate constituent of matter, nuclear physicists have discovered Many new elementary particles in the universe: from leptons to baryons, with neutrinos, pions, kaons, psi and khi particles in between!
   A recentand unifying (!)theory postulated by the American Nobel Laureate, Murray Gell-Mann, would reduce this somewhat startling enumeration to more reasonable proportions through the introduction of a unique sub-particle constituting all matter: the quark. Nevertheless, there would still exist several kinds of quarks (e.g., 'strange,' 'charmed,' 'colored' in red, yellow and blue) for accommodating the various qualities of matter. A proton, for example, would consist of three quarks: red, yellow and blue. However, it should be noted that quarks are basically mathematical intermediaries to facilitate the comprehension or interpretation of certain experiments thus far unexplained. Moreover, the simple question still remains, even if they do exist materially: 'What are quarks made of?'
   Nevertheless, a mathematical model resulting from a recent theory that attempts to represent our material universe strangely resembles Mother's perception, for it postulates a milieu consisting entirely of electromagnetic waves of very high frequency. According to this theory, Matter itself is the 'coagulation' of these waves at the moment they exceed a certain frequency threshold; our perception of emptiness, of fullness, of the hard or the transparent, being finally due only to the differences in vibratory frequencies'vibratory modes within the same thing.'

0 1961-02-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   One can even pose as a superMan! (Mother laughs) But it remains like that (gesture in the air), its not the real thing. Its not the new creation, its not the next step in terrestrial evolution.
   You might as well say, Why are you in a hurry? Wait for Nature to do it. But Nature would take a few million years and in the process squander away a host of people and things. A few million years are unimportant to hera passing breeze.
  --
   The worlds outer evolution is moving ahead so rapidlyin terms of scientific developments that this change CANNOT be put off for millions of years. Mans inner development needs to catch up with all that, doesnt it?
   Yes, surelyoh, yes!
  --
   If the experience remained perManently, it would be something very close to omnipotence. I felt at the time that there was no such thing as an impossibility: it was truly the sensation of omnipotence. It is not omnipotence, because there is always a greater Omnipotence (one knows this only in the higher realms). But in terms of the material world, it was clearly something very, very different from all that has ever been seen or heard or told by all extant traditionsit all seems like the babbling of a child in comparison. At that moment itself there was only the Something which sees, decidesand it is done.
   (silence)
  --
   It has given the physical consciousness a certain self-confidence in the sense that when I see something now, I am sure of it, there are no hesitations: Is this right or not? Is this true, is this.All that has vanishedwhen I see, there is certainty. That is, there has really been a great change in the material CONSCIOUSNESS; but that formidable power is not there. I tell you, had that power stayed here, had I remained constantly as I was during those hours that night, well, Many things would obviously have changed.
   All this must be a preparation; there is a lot to be cleared out before the experience can be firmly established. Thats logical, it is quite natural.
  --
   And part of The Secret of the Veda, as well as two other things because they contain Many of Sri Aurobindos letters: I re-read Zs book on Sri Aurobindo, since there are Many letters in it, and.
   Yes, only unfortunately he has tampered with it.

0 1961-02-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   The Darshan went rather well, much better than I was expecting; but the following two days it was difficult here [in the body]. Then one night (I dont remember which), I I cant say grumbled, but (it wasnt my body grumbling, it is very docile and doesnt protest), but I sometimes find that well, I found it a little exaggerated that day. All the same, I said, this may be deManding a bit too much of it! And then (Mother laughs) the whole night through, each time I awoke and looked (not with my physical eyes), I saw serpents! They were drawn up straight in a circlemagnificent cobras with white bellies, pearl gray backs and flecks of gold on their hoods! They surrounded me, watching, exactly as though they were saying, All the necessary energy is there! You neednt worry! So I concluded that this whole affair11 must have its utilityit cant be simply the bodys lack of plasticity and incapacity to receive. It must have a usefulness but what? I havent understood. Perhaps I will get the explanation later, once its over.
   And the next afternoon, I closed my eyes while I was bathing and what did I see but an enormous, magnificent cobra! It gazed at me, almost smiling, and stuck out its tongue! Good, I said, then everything is all right! (laughing) I have only to hold on.
  --
   Theres an American living in Madras, a rather important Man, it seems, and an intimate friend of Kennedy, the new President. He has read and reread all of Sri Aurobindos books and is extremely interested. He wrote to Kennedy that he would like him to come here so he can bring him to the Ashram. This Man has posed a very interesting question, drawing an analogy. Deep in a forest, a deer goes to quench its thirst; no one is aware of it, yet someone who has made a special study of deer hunting would know by the tracks that the deer had passed bynot only what particular type of deer, but its age, size, sex, etc. Similarly, there must be people with a spiritual knowledge analogous to that of hunters, who can detect, perceive, that a person is in touch with the Supermind, while ordinary people know nothing about it and wouldnt notice. So he asks, I would like to know by what signs such a person can be recognized?
   It is a very intelligent question.
  --
   The second sign is a sense of ABSOLUTENESS in knowledge. As I have already told you, I had this with my experience of January 24. This state CANNOT be obtained through any region of the mind, even the most illumined and exalted. Its not a certainty, its (Mother lowers both hands like an irresistible block descending), a kind of absoluteness, without even any possibility of hesitation (theres no question of doubt), or anything like that. Without (how to say it ?). All mental knowledge, even the highest, is a conclusive knowledge, as it were: it comes as a conclusion of something elsean intuition, for instance (an intuition gives you a particular knowledge, and this knowledge is like the conclusion of the intuition). Even revelations are conclusions. Theyre all conclusions the word conclusion comes to me, but I dont know how to express it. This isnt the case, however, with the supramental experiencea kind of absolute. The feeling it gives is altogether uniquefar beyond certainty, it is (Mother again makes the same irresistible gesture) it is a FACT, things are FACTS. It is very, very difficult to explain. But with that one naturally has a complete power the two things always go together. (In my reply to this Man I didnt speak of power because the power is almost a consequence and I didnt want to speak of consequences.) But the fact remains: a kind of absoluteness in knowledge springing from identityone is the thing one knows and experiences: one is it. One knows it because one is it.
   When these two signs are present (both are necessary, one is incomplete without the other), when a person possesses both, then you can be sure he has been in contact with the Supermind. So people who speak about receiving the Light well, (laughing) its a lot of hot air! But when both signs are present, you can be sure of your perception.12
  --
   Its like the extraordinary feeling I had in my experience that night [January 24]the individuality, even in its highest consciousness, even whats known as the atMan13 and the soul, had nothing to do with it. For it comes like this (same gesture), with an absoluteness. There is NO individual participationits a decision coming from the Supreme.
   Its the same thing for the rest: all your aspiration, all your tapasya, all your efforts, all that is individualabsolutely no effect. It comes, and there it is.
  --
   Obviously, the body needed a test, a VERY SEVERE test, because from a personal viewpoint, its the only explanation I can find for all these disorders. There are Many explanations from a general viewpoint, but. Anyway, I will know the day I am toldall these imaginings are useless. But from a personal viewpoint. You see, for a long time (more than a year now, probably almost two), this body hasnt felt its limits.14 It is not at all its former self; it is scarcely more than a concentration now, a kind of agglomeration of something; it is not a body in a skinnot at all. Its a sort of agglomeration, a concentration of vibrations. And even what is normally called illness (but it is not illness, these are not illnesses, they are functional disorders), even these functional disorders dont have the same meaning for the body as they have for the doctor, for instance, or for ordinary people. Its not like that, the body doesnt feel it like that. It feels it rather as as a kind of difficulty in adjusting to some new vibratory need.
   (silence)
  --
   All this [the world, the Ashram] is held in my consciousness with a kind of essential compassion applying equally to all things, all difficulties, all obstacles. I receive letters by the dozens, as you know, and each person comes to me with his own little misery or problem, inner or outer (a tiny pimple becomes a mountain). When people come to me, my inner consciousness always responds in the same way, with a kind of equality and compassion for all. But when people are talking to me or I am reading a letter and my body grows conscious of what it calls the to-do they make over their miseries, it has a kind of feeling (I mean there is a feeling in the cells): Why do they take things like that! They are making things much more difficult. The body understands. It understands that their way of taking the least little difficulty in such a blind, egotistical and self-centered Manner, increases its difficulties furiously!
   Its a rather amusing sensation, a combination of sensation and feeling, that the ordinary huMan attitude towards things multiplies and magnifies the difficulties to FANTASTIC proportions; while if they simply had the true attitudea NORMAL attitude, quite simple, uncomplicatedahh, all life would be much easier. For the body feels the vibrations (those very vibrations which concentrate to form a body), it feels their nature and sees that its normal reaction, a peaceful and confident reaction, makes things so much easier! But as soon as this agitation of anxiety, fear, discontent comes in, the reaction of a will that doesnt want any of it oh, right away it becomes like water boiling: pff! pff! pff! like a machine. While if the difficulty is accepted with confidence and simplicity, its reduced to its minimum, and I mean purely materially, in the material vibration itself.
   Almost (I say almost because the body hasnt had every experience), but almost all pains can be reduced to something absolutely negligible. (Of course, some pains it hasnt had, but it has had a sufficient number!) Its this anxiety resulting from a semi-mental vibration (the first stirrings of Mind) that complicates everything, everything! For example, take this difficulty I mentioned of climbing the stairs: in the doctors consciousness or anyone elses, pain causes it. According to their ordinary reasoning, pain is what tenses the nerves and muscles so one can no longer walk but this is absolutely FALSE. Pain does not prevent my body from doing anything at all. Pain isnt a factor, or rather its a factor that can be easily dealt with. Its not that: it is Matter; Matter (probably cellular matter, or) losing its capacity to respond to the will, to will-power. But why? I dont know! It depends upon the particular disorganization; but why is it like that? I dont know. Now each time I climb the stairs, I am trying to find the means of infusing Will in such a way that this lack of response doesnt last but I still havent found it. Although theres all this accumulated force and power and will (a tremendous accumulation, I am BATHED in it, the whole body is bathed in it!), yet for some reason it doesnt respond. Here and there, groups of cells fail to respond, and the Force cannot act. So what must be found is.
  --
   The following is the exact text of Mother's reply to this American gentleMan:
   Two irrefutable signs prove that one is in relation with the Supermind:
  --
   AtMan: the Self or Spirit.
   Here Mother gradually goes into trance and all the rest of this conversation will take place in a state of trance.

0 1961-03-04, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   I used to send him around to the various centers (because he had to do something!), and he would visit, speak to people I dont know about what. And during one of his trips to Delhi he happened to meet Z, who had been sent by the government of India to the Soviet Union, where it seems he delivered an extraordinary speech (it must have been extraordinary, because I have been receiving letters from everywhere, including America, asking for the text of this sensational speech in which he apparently spoke of huMan unity). So Z returned with the idea of forming a World Union, and J. and Z met. Furthermore, they were encouraged by S.M.7 and even by the Prime Minister,8 who probably had a special liking for Z and had given him a lot of encouragement. Thats how things began.
   I treated it as something altogether secondary and unimportantwhen people need to gallop, I let them gallop (but I hadnt met Z). Then J. and Z left together on a speaking-tour of Africa and there things began to go sour, because Z was working in one way and J. in another. Finally, they were at odds and came back here to tell me, World Union is off to a good startwith a quarrel! (Mother laughs) Z was saying, Nothing can be done unless we base ourselves EXCLUSIVELY on the teaching of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and they are behind us giving support. And J. said, No, no! We are not sectarian! We accept all ideas, all theories, etc. I replied, and as it happens, I said that Z was right, though with one corrective: he had been saying that people had to recognize us as their guru. No, I said, its absolutely uselessnot only useless, I refuse. I dont want to be anybodys guru. People should simply be told that things are to be done on the basis of Sri Aurobindos thought.9
   So they kept pulling in opposing directions. Eventually they tried to set something up (which still didnt hold together), and finally they wrote me a little more clearly. (There is one very nice Man involved, Y. He isnt particularly intellectual but has a lot of common sense and a very faithful hearta very good Man.) Y asked me some direct questions, without beating around the bush, and I replied directly: World Union is an entirely superficial thing, without any depth, based on the fact that Sri Aurobindo said the masses must be helped to follow the progress of the elitewell, let them go ahead! If they enjoy it, let them go right ahead! I didnt say it exactly like that (I was a bit more polite!), but that was the gist of it.
   Now it has all fallen flat. They are carrying on with their little activities, but its absolutely unimportant. They publish a small journal, and V, who writes for them, is far from stupid. She is rather intelligent and I have some control over her, so I will try to stop her from writing nonsense.
  --
   What shocked me was. You know I rarely leave my house, but each time I would come to the Ashram for darshan or to see you, always, as if by chance, I would find J. off in a corner with some European visitor. The repetition of this coincidence made me wonder, Whats he doing so systematically with ALL the European visitors?! And it shocked me to imagine myself in their place: just suppose, I said to myself, you are coming to the Ashram for the first time, very open, in search of a great truth, and you stumble upon this Man who tells you: Sri Aurobindo = World Union. Well, my first reaction would be, Im leaving, Im not interested!
   It serves as a test, my child, a very good test! There are Many things like that.
   For example, theres someone here, Mridou (you know her, shes as round as a barrel11), who gossips to everybody. She had quite a clientele for a long time because she used to make Indian sweets and the Europeans went to her place for snacks. She is a woMan who, when there isnt any gossip, invents it! She tells all the dirt imaginable to all her visitorsa fact which was brought to my attention. I recall that a long time ago Sir Akbar from Hyderabad warned me, You know, shes the second Mother of the Ashram, be careful! Its a good test, I replied, people who dont immediately sense what it is arent worthy of coming here!
   Well, with J. its the samefrom an intellectual viewpoint, its the very same thing: if people are taken in by what he says, it means theyre not ready AT ALL.
  --
   I told them. Because at World Union they asked me what their mistake had been (they didnt state it so candidly, but in a roundabout way), and I replied (not so candidly, eithernot exactly in a roundabout way, but in general terms). I told them their mistake was being unfaithful and I explained that to be unfaithful means to put everything on the same level (thats when I sent them those lines12). I told them, Your error was in saying: One teaching among Many teachingsso let us be broad-minded and accept all teachings. So along with all the teachings, you accept every stupidity possible.
   But if someone is taken in, it proves hes at an elementary stage and unready.
   Oh, Ive had all sorts of examples! All these errors serve as tests. Take the case of P.: for a long time, whenever someone arrived from the outside world and asked to be instructed, he was sent to P.s room. (I didnt send them, but they would be told, Go speak to P.!) And P. is the sectarian par excellence! He would tell people, Unless you acknowledge Sri Aurobindo as the ONLY one who knows the truth, you are good for nothing! Naturally (laughing), Many rebelled! (You see, out of lazinessso as not to be bothered with seeing people or answering their questionsone says, Go find so-and-so, go ask so-and-so, and passes off the work to another.) Well, it was finally understood that this wasnt very tactful, and perhaps it would be better not to send visitors to P., since so Many had been put off. But actually. I was told about it afterwards and I replied, Let people read and see for THEMSELVES whether or not it suits them! What difference does it make if theyre put off! If they are, it means they NEED to be put off! Well see later. Some of them have come full circle and returned. Others never came backbecause they werent meant to. Thats how it goes. Basically, all this has NO importance. Or we could put it in another way: everything is perfectly all right.
   (silence)
  --
   This is the text of Mother's reply to J.: 'I have read Z's account and your own letter on this subject. in the faith of his devotion, he must have been quite offended. The truth in what he says is that any idea, WHATEVER its degree of truth, is ineffective if it does not also carry the power acquired through realization, by a real change of consciousness. And if the proponent of this idea does not himself have the realization, he must seek the backing of those who have the power. On the other hand, what you say is true: an idea ought to be accepted on the basis of its inherent truth and not because of the personality expounding it, however great this personality may be. These two truths or aspects of the question are equally true but also equally incomplete: they are not the whole truth. Both of them must be accepted and combined with Many other aspects of the question if you want to even begin to approach the dynamic power of the realization. Don't you see how ridiculous this situation is? Three people of goodwill meet in the hope of teaching men the necessity for a "World Union" and they are not even able to keep a tolerant or tolerable union among themselves, because each sees a different angle of the procedure to be followed for implementing their plan.'
   Although it began as a fund-raising organization for the needs of the Ashram and Auroville, this 'strictly external thing,' which had 'nothing to do with working for an ideal,' would, after Mother's departure, coolly declare itself the 'owner' and guide of Auroville.

0 1961-03-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Its a rather difficult business and could last a long time: I dont want it to stay dorMant and then resurface with the next attack of this or that. So I am proceeding slowly and cautiously, which means it takes time: I concentrate and work on it for one hour after lunch every day. (I used to do my translation then, but since Im at least two or three years ahead of the Bulletin, it doesnt matter, I wont be delaying the work! I have almost finished The Yoga of Divine Love; now theres only The Yoga of Self-Perfection thats quite a job, oh! I miss itthis translation was my pleasure.) But the work on the body is useful something must be attempted in life; we are here to do something new, arent we?!
   But were you bitten like that by accident?
  --
   Yesterday I sent you something (there wasnt much of it, just a taste): its a bit of the pistachio puree they make for me. Concentrated food.6 Its funny I have got it into my head to make you a gourMand! (Mother laughs) Good-bye, mon petit.
   Gomphrena globosa (purple Amaranth).

0 1961-03-11, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Then I had to return here that is, to my home in India, to Sri Aurobindos home: I had to return to Sri Aurobindos home. Pavitra was also working there and he didnt want to let me leave; when he saw me going he came and tried to stop me. You, on the contrary, were helping. Shall I take anything with me or not? I asked myself Oh, I dont need anything, Ill go all alone. That worried you a little because of the journey ahead, and you said, There will be Many complications. It doesnt matter! I replied (laughing). But if you only knew how living and concrete it was! The impressions were so there was the feeling of making a long voyageit was a LONG voyage, as if I were crossing the sea (but not physically), a long voyage. I remember setting off (I was with you, you were there) and telling myself, At last hes here! At last I have found a reasonable being who doesnt try to stop me from doing what I must do! I had (laughing mischievously) a very high opinion of you, thats why I am telling you this!
   I was abruptly awakened by the clock striking (I didnt count), and my immediate feeling was, Well, he is really very nice! Now theres a good companion!
  --
   How fine! Many things could be said.
   What use are discussions? in general, those who like to discuss need the stimulation of contradiction to clarify their ideas.
  --
   58The animal, before he is corrupted, has not yet eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; the god has abandoned it for the tree of eternal life; Man stands between the upper heaven and the lower nature.
   Do you have a question?
   Was there actually an earthly paradise? Why was Man banished from it?
   From an historical viewpoint (not psychological, but historical), based on my memories (only I cant prove it, nothing can be proved, and I dont believe any truly historical proof has come down to usor in any case, it hasnt been found yet), but according to my memories. (Mother shuts her eyes as if she were going off in search of her memories; she will speak all the rest of the time with eyes closed.) Certainly at one period of the earths history there was a kind of earthly paradise, in the sense that there was a perfectly harmonious and perfectly natural life: the Manifestation of Mind was in accordwas STILL in complete accord and in total harmony with the ascending march of Nature, without perversion or deformation. This was the first stage of Minds Manifestation in material forms.
   How long did it last? Its hard to say. But for Man it was a life like a sort of flowering of animal life. My memory is of a life where the body was perfectly adapted to its natural surroundings. The climate was in harmony with the needs of the body, the body with the deMands of the climate. Life was wholly spontaneous and natural, as a more luminous and conscious animal life would be, with absolutely none of the complications and deformations brought in later by the mind as it developed.
   I have a recollection of this life, for I relived it when I first became conscious of the life of the entire earth; but I cant say how long it lasted or what area it covered I dont know. I only remember the conditions at that time, the state of material Nature and the huMan form and huMan consciousness, and this state of harmony with all the other elements of the earth: harmony with animal life and a great harmony with plant lifethere was a kind of spontaneous knowledge of how to use the things of Nature, the qualities of plants, fruits and all that vegetal nature could offer. There was no aggressiveness, no fear, no contradictions or frictions, and no perversion the mind was pure, simple, luminous, uncomplicated.
   It was certainly with the progress of evolution, the march of evolution, when the mind began to develop for and in itself, that ALL the complications, all the deformations began. Indeed, this story of Genesis that seems so childish does contain a truth. The old traditions like Genesis resembled the Vedas in that each letter6 was the symbol of a knowledge; it was the pictorial rsum of a traditional knowledge, just as the Veda contains a pictoral rsum of the knowledge of its time. But whats more, even the symbol had a reality in the sense that there was truly a period when life upon earth (the first Manifestation of mentalized Matter in huMan forms) was still in complete harmony with all that preceded it. It was only later that.
   The tree of knowledge symbolizes this kind of knowledge a material knowledge, no longer divine because its origin was the sense of division and this is what began to spoil everything. How long did this period last? I am unable to say. (Because my recollection is of an almost immortal life; it seems that it was through some sort of evolutionary accident that the destruction of forms became necessary for progress.) And where did it take place? From certain impressions (but these are only impressions), it would seem that it was in the vicinity of either this side of Ceylon and India or the other, I dont know exactly (Mother indicates the Indian Ocean either west of Ceylon and India or to the east between Ceylon and Java), although certainly the place no longer exists; it must have been swallowed up by the sea. I have a very clear vision of the place and a consciousness of that life and its forms, but I cant give precise material details. Did it last for centuries, was it ? I dont know. To tell the truth, when I was reliving those moments I wasnt curious about such details (for one is in another mental state where there is no curiosity about material details: all things turn into psychological facts). It was something so simple, luminous, harmonious, far removed from all our usual preoccupationsthose very preoccupations with time and space. It was a spontaneous life, extremely beautiful, and so close to Naturea natural flowering of animal life. There were no oppositions or contradictions, nothing of the kindeverything happened in the best way possible.
  --
   A similar memory has recurred several times under different circumstancesnot exactly the same scene and the same images, because it wasnt something I was seeing but A LIFE I was living. During a certain period, at any time, night or day, I would experience a particular state of trance in which I was rediscovering a life I had lived. I was fully conscious that this life had to do with the first flowering of the huMan form upon earth, the first huMan forms able to incarnate the divine being from above. This was the first time I could Manifest in a particular terrestrial form (not a general life but an individual form); that is, for the first time, through the mentalization of this material substance, the junction between the higher Being and the lower being was made. I have lived that several times, and always in a similar setting and with quite a similar feeling of such joyous simplicity, without complexity, without problems, without all these questions. It was the blossoming of a joy of lifenothing but that; love and harmony prevailed: flowers, minerals, animals all got along together perfectly.
   Things began to go wrong only a LONG time afterwards, long after (but this is a personal impression), probably because certain mental crystallizations were necessary, inevitable, for the general evolution, so that the mind might prepare itself to move on to something else. That was when oh, it seems like a fall into a pitinto ugliness, darkness! Everything became so dark, so ugly, so difficult, so painful. Really really the sense of a fall.
  --
   Theon used to say it wasnt (how to put it?) inevitable. In the total freedom of the Manifestation, this voluntary separation from the Origin is the cause of all the disorder. How to explain it? Words express these things so poorly. We can call it inevitable because it happened! But outside of this creation, a creation can be imagined (or could have been) where this disorder would not have occurred. Sri Aurobindo saw it in approximately the same way: a sort of accident, as it were but an accident allowing the Manifestation a far greater and more total perfection than if it had never occurred. But this is all still in the realm of speculation, and useless speculation at that. In any case, the experience, the feeling, is that all at once (Mother makes the gesture of a brutal fall) oh!
   For the earth it probably happened like that, all at once: a sort of ascent, then the fall. But the earth is a tiny concentrationuniversally, its something else.
  --
   Of course, these things can always be explained symbolically. Theon explained Mans exile like this: when the Being the hostile Beingassumed the position of the Lord Supreme in relation to the terrestrial realization, he didnt want huManity to progress mentally and gain a knowledge permitting it to stop obeying him! That is Theons occult explanation.
   According to Theon, the serpent wasnt the spirit of evil at all: it was the evolutionary Force. And Sri Aurobindo fully agreed; he used to tell me the same thing: the evolutionary power the mental evolutionary poweris what drove Man to gain knowledge, a knowledge of division. And its a fact that along with the sense of Good and Evil, Man became conscious of himself. Naturally, this ruined everything and he couldnt stay: it was his own consciousness that drove him out of Paradisehe could no longer stay.
   Then was Man banished by Jehovah or by his own consciousness?
   These are just two ways of seeing the same thing!
  --
   A time comes when all these disputesAh, no, this is like this, that is like thatseem so silly, so silly! And there is nothing more comical than this spontaneous reply so Many people give: Oh, thats impossible! Because with even the most rudimentary intellectual development, you would know you couldnt even think of something if it werent possible!
   (silence)
  --
   Probably no, not probably, its absolutely certain that this was necessary for kneading matter, churning it, to prepare it to receive THAT, the new thing yet to Manifest.
   Matter was very simple and very harmonious and very luminous not complex enough. This complexity is what ruined everything, but it will lead to an INFINITELY more conscious realizationinfinitely more conscious. And when the earth again becomes as harmonious, simple, luminous, puresimple, pure, purely divine then, with this complexity added, something can be achieved.
  --
   Ah, there were Many flowers just like that in the landscape of this earthly paradisered, and so beautiful!
   This enigmatic experience was actually very important, as Mother will later explain (on March 17): Mother was leaving behind the subjection to mental functioning, symbolized by this place where Pavitra was working.

0 1961-03-14, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   It comes and goes along the way, you dont keep it perManently; its like crossing a zone, a perfumed zone, and then its past for the moment, its over. A fleeting caress.
   ***
  --
   There is the sense of all things being organized, concentrated and arranged according to a rhythm, and if one Manages to maintain the equilibrium of this rhythm, something perManent results.
   (Mother remains absorbed within herself) The equilibrium of this rhythm the progressive, ascending equilibrium of this rhythmis what, for Matter, must constitute Immortality.

0 1961-03-17, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   What might be Mans true, natural state? Why does he question himself?
   Man on earth1 is a transitional being and as a consequence, in the course of his evolution, he has had several successive natures following an ascending curve which they will continue to follow until he touches the threshold of the supramental nature and is transformed into a superMan. This curve is the spiral of mental development.
   We tend to apply the word natural to all spontaneous Manifestation not resulting from a choice or a preconceived decision that is, with no intrusion of mental activity. Thats why a Man with an only slightly mentalized vital spontaneity seems more natural to us in his simplicity. But this naturalness bears a close resemblance to the animals and is quite low on the huMan evolutionary scale. Man will not recapture this spontaneity free of mental intrusion until he attains the supramental level, until he goes beyond the mind and emerges into the higher Truth.
   Up to that point, all his modes of being are naturally natural! But with the minds intrusion, evolution was, if not falsified, then deformed, because by its very nature the mind was open to perversion and it became perverted almost from the start (or to be more exact, it was perverted by the asuric forces). And what appears unnatural to us now is this state of perversion. At any rate, its a deformation.
   You ask why Man questions himself, but this is the nature of the mind!
   Along with the mind came individualization, an acute sense of separation and a more or less precise feeling of a freedom of choiceall of that, all these psychological states, are the natural consequences of mental life and open the door to everything we see now, from the worst aberrations to the most rigorous principles. Mans impression of being free to choose between one thing and another is the deformation of a true principle that will be totally realizable only when the soul or psychic being becomes conscious in him; were the soul to govern the being, Mans life would truly be a conscious expression of the supreme Will translated individually. But in the normal huMan state, such a case is still extremely rare and doesnt seem at all natural to ordinary huMan consciousness it seems almost supernatural!
   Man questions himself because the mental instrument is made for seeing all possibilities and because the huMan being feels he has freedom of choice and the immediate consequences are the notions of good and evil, right and wrong, and all the ensuing miseries. This cant be called a bad thing: its an intermediate stagenot a very pleasant stage, but nevertheless it was certainly inevitable for a total development.
   ***
  --
   To wind it all up, I went to Sri Aurobindos rooMan enormous, enormous room, but in the same state. And he appeared to be in an eternal consciousness, entirely detached from everything yet very clearly aware of our total incapacity.
   He hadnt eaten (probably because no one had given him anything to eat), and when I entered, he asked me if it was possible to have some breakfast. Yes, of course! I said, Ill go get it, expecting to find it ready. Then I had to hunt around to find something: everything was stuffed into cupboards (and misplaced at that), all disarrangeddisgusting, absolutely disgusting. I called someone (who had been napping and came in with sleep-swollen eyes) and told him to prepare Sri Aurobindos breakfast but he had his own fixed ideas and principles (exactly as he is in real life). Hurry up, I told him, Sri Aurobindo is waiting. But hurry? Impossible! He had to do things according to his own conceptions and with a terrible awkwardness and ineptitude. In short, it took an infinite amount of time to warm up a rather clumsy breakfast.
  --
   When I told you last time about that experience [of March 11, with Pavitra] the night I met you and was saying good-bye, I neglected to mention one very important point, the most important, in fact: I was leaving the subjection to mental functioning perManently behind That was the meaning of my departure.
   For a very long time now I have been watching all the phases of the subjection to mental functioning come undone, one after another for a very long time. That night was the end of it, the last phase: I was leaving this subjection behind and rising up into a realm of freedom. You had been very, very helpful, as I told you. Well, this latest experience was something else! It came to make me look squarely at the fact of our incapacity!
  --
   Yes and no in the sense that I do Manage to bring about a general progress. Some individuals are receptive, sometimes astonishingly so, receiving the exact suggestion exactly where its needed, but such a person is one in a hundred-even that is an exaggeration.
   A sort of power over circumstances does come to me, however, as if I could rise above it all and give the subconscient a bit of a work-over. Naturally this has some results: entire areas are brought under control. Thats the most important thing. Individuals get the repercussions later because they are very very coagulated, a bit hard! A lack of plasticity.
   Take the case of this Man Im not naming Ive been training him, working with him, for more than thirty years and I still havent Managed to get him to do things spontaneously, according to the needs of the moment, without all his preconceived ideas. Thats the point where he resists: when things have to be done quickly he follows his usual rule and it takes forever! This was illustrated strikingly that night. I told him, Just look: its there its THEREhurry up and warm it a little and Ill go. Ah! He didnt protest, didnt say anything, but he did things exactly according to his own preconceptions.
   Its a terrible slavery to the lower mind, and so widespread! Oh, all these goings-on at the School, my child, all the teaching, all the teachers.2 Terrible, terrible, terrible! I was trying to turn on the switches to give some light and not one of them worked!
   Of course, these scenes are slightly exaggerated because they are seen in isolation from the rest; within the whole Many things crisscross and complete each other, diminishing each others importance. But in an experience like last nights, things are taken singly and shown in isolation, as through a magnifying glass. And after all its a good lesson.
   Inefficiency. All right, then.
  --
   Satprem later asked if this 'on earth' wasn't superfluous and Mother replied: 'This precision is not superfluous; I said "on earth" meaning that Man does not belong only to the earth: in his essence, Man is a universal being, but he has a special Manifestation on earth.'
   Here, Mother had a passage deleted.

0 1961-03-21, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   First of all, on the mental plane (the physical-mind, the material mind) I saw an individual. I am not entirely certain of his identity (when I saw him last night I didnt associate him with anyone in particular) but from his outer appearance he is evidently a sannyasi. He was pursuing me, blocking my way and trying to stop me from doing my work (it was a long, long affair). But I was very conscious and could foresee everything he was about to do, so it had no effect. After a long while I emerged from this I had something else to do and I leftand on my way home he was everywhere, hiding and trying to catch me; but he didnt succeed in doing anything. And I knew he had been acting in this Manner for a long time.
   Then I woke up (I always wake up three or four times during the night) and when I went back to bed I had an attack of what the doctor and I have taken to be filariasis but a strange type of filariasis, for as soon as I master it in one spot it appears in another, and when I master it there it reappears somewhere else. Last night it was in the arms (it lasted quite a while, between 2:30 and 4 a.m.); but I was fully conscious, and each time the attack came, I went like this (gestures over the arms, to drive away the attack) and my arms were not affected at all. When it was over, I consciously entered the most material subtle physical, just beyond the body. I was sitting in my room there (an immense, cubic room) reading or writing something, when I heard the door open and close, but I was busy and didnt pay attention, presuming it was one of the people usually around me. Then suddenly I had such an unpleasant sensation in my body that I raised my head and looked, and I saw someone there. Do you know how the magicians in Europe dress, in short satin breeches and a shirt? He was wearing something like that. He was Indian, tall and rather dark, with slicked-down hairwhat you would normally call a handsome young Man. He seemed to have been drawn1 there becausehe was standing in front of me staring into space, not looking at me. And the moment I saw him, there was the same sensation in all my cells as I have with what Ive been calling filariasis (its a special, minute kind of pain) and simultaneously all the cells felt disgusta tremendous will of rejection. Then I sat up straight (I didnt stand up) and said to him as forcefully as possible, How do you dare to come in here! I said it so loudly that the noise woke me up! I dont know what happened then, but things went much better afterwards.
   The moment I saw this person I knew he was only an instrument, but a well-paid instrumentsomeone paid a great deal to have him do that! I would recognize him again among hundreds I can still see him I see him more clearly than with physical eyes. He is an unintelligent Man with no personal animosity, merely a very well-paid instrumentsomeone is hiding behind him, using him as a screen.
   Before that experience, as part of the attack, I also got a sore throat. I didnt believe it would Manifest, but around 9:30 this morning when I came downstairs for meditation with X,2 it did. Its nothing at all, though. The whole time I was with X (and even before, when I was waiting for him), it was halted completelyeverything in that room came to a halt. It started up again only after he left and I came here. But its nothing.
   X told me he has been doing something for me in his puja3since December, it seemsso this morning I thought he should know about the experience and I sent Amrita to tell him. He replied to Amrita that this confirmed his certainty that Z has been making black magic against me since December. He had been told that Z was practicing black magic in Kashmir. Could this be the same person I saw before [during the December 1958 attack]? Since it was someone who concealed his identity, I cant say but this form was robed as a sannyasi. Perhaps its he, I dont know. I reserve my judgment because I dont know personally. But this is what X said, and hes going to redouble his efforts.
  --
   Of course, there are certain symptoms which never appear with filariasis. And the doctor has been astounded at the control Ive had over it: it began in the feet, I checked it there; it went higher, I checked it there; then it went higher still and I continued to control it. Finally, the other day, it tried to get into the arms, but it couldnt hold outand last night there was a real riot! (Mother laughs) So perhaps its the deformation or transposition of some sort of Mantric effort, like last time in 58 when there was an attempt to make me throw up all my blood but only food came out! Its probably something similar. My impression (Ive had it from the start) is that they have made a try at thrombosis (you know, when something blocks the circulation). Besides, it seems that X asked the doctor if blood-poisoning might be involved, so he must have seen this possibility. There has been absolutely nothing of the kind, but there has been an effort to block the circulation in the veins, probably an adaptation of the magic attack. And along with this have come all the usual things: all the usual suggestions, all the usual prophecies [about Mothers departure]. But for me, these are the normal facts of life, thats all. I am used to it. It has no importance.
   Do you really believe Z could be behind this magician you saw?
  --
   Im a little overloaded by too Many things.
   Too much work.

0 1961-03-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Several times in my life I have met with the particular phenomenon of having an absolutely exceptional and unique experience and at the same time feeling that a part of my being was unaware of it! I would tell myself, if I hadnt been both here and there at the same moment (Mother indicates two different levels in her consciousness), I might have had all these experiences and never known it! And this happened not just once but Many times. Some were utterly unique, like certain ancient Vedic experiencesutterly unique. When I recounted them to Sri Aurobindo, he told me, Oh, its extremely rare! Some people try all their lives to attain that. And it happened to me not just once but often: the experience took place there (gesture above) and something up there knew, and yet there was something down here that would never have known if the other hadnt (same gesture). Nevertheless the total experience was there.
   Its very difficult to explain, its extremely subtle.

0 1961-03-27, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Its not that I was disappointed by his way of being, certainly not; but it has suddenly confronted me with a terrible problem: Is it impossible to live a truth in material consciousness? Is it really impossible? An absolute, I mean an absolute truthnot something entirely subjective and relative, each one living his own truth in his own Manner. Will one person always be like this and the other like that and the third like something else? So that only by putting all the pieces together do we actually amount to anything and yet to what?! Is it completely impossible for absolute truth to Manifest in the present state of Matter? This is the problem that has seized me.
   Why? Probably because I was ready to face it. But it has been posed so intensely. It was so intense that it was painful.
  --
   Its best to wait and see. I put a certain force into that note I wrote this morning (I wrote it at a very early hour) and you know that a formation4 is created when I write; I willed it to go to hiMand he may have received it. Well see what happens. Its better not to speak of it because it might speaking is too external.
   On other occasions (as I have told you) I had difficulties with X on the mental plane; now all that has cleared up, cleared up very well. But this present situation is on another plane, so lets wait. Perhaps probably it will clear up.
  --
   No, thats not it. Things go on. I dont know, I have no idea. I cant say exactly what it is, but. Its a. Dont know. In any case, it seems obvious that the NATURE of the contact must become very different. Because in proportion to this detachment, the reality of the Vibration and especially the vibration of divine Lovekeeps growing and growing (out of all proportion to the body, even) in a FORMIDABLE Manner, formidable! The body is beginning to feel nothing but that.
   Is this detachment necessary, then, for divine Love to be established? I dont know.
  --
   The following undated note (which could date from this or any number of other times!) was found among Mother's scattered papers: Now the situation has become very critical, all the reserves have been swallowed up, there are debts, Many important works remain unfinished and the daily life has become a problem. It is the subsistence of more than 1,200 people which is in question.
   ***

0 1961-04-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Each time X comes here, all the difficulties rise up to their maximum, they seem to become absolute. And I understand why: his power acts in a domain full of huMan pettiness. What a domain! Oh, awful! And were not out of it yet: quarrels, divisions, misunderstandings, bad will. I fully understand that it all has to come up in order to be healed. But it gives me a tremendous amount of work!
   Anyway.
  --
   The Vedas, after all, were written by people who remembered a radical experience, which must have taken place on earth at a given moment, as an example of what was to come. (This always happens in the yoga: a first radical experience comes like a herald of the future realization.) So in the terrestrial yogain the yoga of the earth, of the planet earththere was a moment when it came; they who are called the forefa thers must have created, through their effort and their yoga, at least an image of the supramental realization. And those who wrote the Vedas, who composed all these hymns, remembered or kept the tradition of that experience. And oh, mon petit, it had the same effect on me as when I read the Yoga of Self-Perfection in The Synthesis of Yoga (Mother catches her breath): there is such a gulf between what we are, what life on earth and huMan consciousness now are, even among the most enlightened, the most advanced, and THAT!
   I dont know if its because I have been so violently attackedbludgeonedby all these malevolent energies, but in any case, I sensed acutely the FORMIDABLE immensity of what has to be done in order for THAT to be realized.
  --
   When external difficulties subside, when the body becomes passive and quiet, when it is not constantly deManding attention, then you can LIVE in this supramental consciousness and it does not seem so difficult; you feel it is so victorious in its essence that it will end all difficulties.
   But for this to come about, you must remain for a while on those higher reaches and not be constantly, constantly dragged down below where you have to fight each minute simply to LASTto last in all ways: not just personally, but collectively.2 Its a minute-to-minute bout, simply to last. And how long do we have to last for the thing to be done?
  --
   And there has been a decline in everyones health. Many people are sick. The illnesses are of a more serious nature there has been a decline.
   You have to look at all this with a smile, of course (and I do), but I must say that the enthusiastic side (you know, that fire of enthusiasm) has been dampened. Well, theres no need to get excitedit will take time.
   We just have to keep on going, keep on moving: one step after another, one step after another, one step after another, without asking how Many steps its going to take, or recalling how Many weve taken.
   What we really have to do is come alive from minute to minute, living always in the present moment, stubbornly, like this (Mother puts a fist on the arm of her chair, then another, and so on, in a slow, dogged, unrelenting march).,
  --
   Its not something miraculous, you know. To be really satisfied, the huMan mind always needs some kind of miracle. In its thought, the miraculous is associated with the Divine. I know, because I was born like that. I felt like that when I was very young. And only because life has dealt me some extremely brutal denials have I come to this kind of sober and reasonable attitude. You know (I told you this the other day), its disgusting! (Mother laughs) All the bloom has gone banished by the hard knocks of life. For I was born with this feeling that yes, that Truth is something miraculous, which has only to show itself to prevail.
   It would be like thatwithout the adverse forces.
  --
   The adverse force is what keeps the Divine from blossoming miraculously whenever He appears. Because I know that wherever Matter is not under the influence of this adverse will to any degree, it blossoms immediately. And everything in the huMan heart, in huMan consciousness, in huMan thought, all that is slightly sheltered from this adverse influencesheltered by the psychic, the divine Presenceblossoms, becomes immediately becomes marvelous, without any obstacleall the obstacles come from that source. So its all very well to call it an accident, but.
   Its obviously reparable, theres no doubt about that, but at what price? And how it complicates things!
  --
   And to come to this experience I had to pass through a state of the most supreme indifference, where the whole terrestrial Manifestation is an illusion; I passed through that, I had my experience BEYOND that. And beyond that at the moment of supreme ecstasy came fiery tears of grief.
   (silence)
  --
   I have never written or spoken to X about this, but through mental contact I have told him I dont know how Many times: Satprem has a work to accomplish that is INFINITELY more important than reciting Mantras. If it can help him to discipline himself, fine, but its nothing more; he will not accomplish his work by reciting Mantras. He has something to do and he will do it. I have hammered that into his head (Mother laughs).
   So, petit, see you tomorrow.

0 1961-04-12, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   What do these animals represent in the terrestrial Manifestation? Theyre so strange.
   Cats are vital forces, incarnations of vital forces. The King of the Cats that is, the spirit of the speciesis a being of the vital world.
  --
   The first was with a boy who was a Sanskritist and had wanted to come to India with us. He was the son of a French ambassadoran old, noble family. But he learned that his lungs were bad, and so he joined the Army; he enlisted as an officer, just at the start of the 1914 war. And he had the courage of those who no longer cling to life; when he received the order to advance on the enemy trenches (it was incredibly stupid, simply sending people to be slaughtered!), he didnt hesitate. He went. And he was hit between the two lines. For a long time, it was a no Mans land; only after some days, when the other trench had been taken, could they go and collect the dead. All this came out in the newspapers AFTERWARDS. But on the day he was killed, of course, no one was aware of it.
   I had a nice photo of him with a Sanskrit dedication, placed on top of a kind of wardrobe in my bedroom. I open the door and the photo falls. (There was no draft or anything.) It fell and the glass broke into smithereens. Immediately I said, Oh! Something has happened to Fontenay. (That was his name: Charles de Fontenay.) After that I came back down from my room, and then I hear a miaowing at the door (the door opened onto a large garden courtyard1). I open the door: a cat bursts in and jumps on me, like that (Mother thumps her breast). I speak to him: What is it, whats the matter? He drops to the ground and looks at meFontenays eyes! Absolutely! No one elses. And he just stayed put, he didnt want to go. I said to myself, Fontenay is dead.
  --
   But I have had some cats. I had a cat who was the reincarnation of the mind of a Russian woMan. I had a vision of it one day, it was so strangethis woMan had been murdered at the time of the Russian Revolution, along with her two little children. And her mind entered a cat here. (How? I dont know.) But this cat, mon petit. I got her when she was very young. She would come and lie down, stretched out like a huMan being, with her head on my arm! (I used to sleep on a Japanese tatami on the floor.) And she would stay there, so well-behaved, didnt stir all night long! I was really amazed. Then she had kittens, and wanted to give birth to them lying stretched out, not at all like a cat. It was very difficult to make her understand that it couldnt be done that way! And one night after she had had her kittens, I saw her I saw a young woMan in furs, with a fur bonnetyou could just see a tiny huMan face; she had two little ones and she came to me and placed them at my feet. Her whole story was there in her consciousness: how she and the two children had been murdered. And then I realized she was the cat!
   The cat wouldnt leave her kittens for a moment! Not for anything. She wouldnt eat, wouldnt go outside to relieve herself, nothing: she stayed put. So I told her, Bring me your kittens. (If you know how to handle them, cats understand very well when theyre spoken to.) Bring me your little ones. She looked at me, went and brought one of her kittens, and placed it between my feet. Then she went to fetch the other one and placed it between my feet (not beside, between my feet). Now you can go out, I told her. And out she went.
  --
   Because later on he would go roaming about; he had become terribly strong and would prowl around everywhere. At that time I was living in the Library house, and he would go off as far as the Ashram street (the Ashram didnt belong to us yet, the house was owned by all kinds of people), but when I would go out on the terrace across from Champaklals kitchen and call, Big boy! Big Boy! although he couldnt hear it, he could sense it, and he would come back galloping, galloping. He always came back, unfailingly. The day he didnt come back, I got worried; the servant went looking for hiMand found him moaning, vomiting, poisoned. He brought him to me. Oh, really! it was. He was so nice! He wasnt a thief or anythinghe was a wonderful cat. Someone had laid out poison for god knows what cat, and he ate it. I showed him to Sri Aurobindo and said, He has been killed.
   Before that, I lost another one from that kind of typhoid cats get. He was called Browny and he was so beautiful, so nice, such a marvelous cat! Even when utterly sick, he wouldnt make a mess, except in a corner prepared just for that; he would call me to carry him to his box, with such a soft and mournful voice. He was so nice, with something sweeter and more trusting than a child. There is a trust in animals which doesnt exist in huMans (even children already have too much of a questioning mind). But with him, there was a kind of worship, an adoration, as soon as I took him in my armsif he could have smiled, he would have. As soon as I held him, he became blissful.
   That one too was beautiful, with such a color! Golden chestnut, I have never seen a cat like him. He is buried here beneath the tree I named Service. I put him beneath the roots myself. There had been an old Mango tree there that was withering away. We replaced it with a little copper pod tree with yellow flowers.
   These animals are so nice when you know how to handle them.
  --
   And extraordinary, extraordinary details! Showing such intelligence, oh! This woMan I mean this cat who had been a woManif you knew how she brought up her children, oh! With such patience, such intelligence and understanding! It was extraordinary. One could tell long, long stories: how she taught them not to be afraid, to walk along the edge of walls, to jump from a wall to a window. She showed them, encouraged them, and finally, after showing and encouraging them very often (some would jump, others were afraid), she would give them a push! So of course they would jump immediately.
   And she taught them everything. To eat, to. This cat would never eat before they had all eaten. She would show them what to do, give each one what it needed. And once they had grown up and she didnt have to look after them anymore, if they kept coming back she would send them away: Go away! Your turn is over, its finished. Go out into the world! And she would take care of the new ones.
  --
   And, an incredible thing this cat was very pretty, but she had a wretched tail, a tail like an ordinary cat; and one day when I was with her at the window, one of the neighbors cats wandered into the gardenan angora with three colors, three very prominent colors, and such a beautiful tail trailing behind! So I said (my cat was just beside me), Oh! Just see how beautiful she is! What a beautiful tail she has! And I could see my cat looking at her. My child, in her next litter she had one exactly like that! How did she Manage it? I dont know. Three prominent colors and a magnificent tail! Did she hunt up a male angora? Or did she just will for it intensely?
   They are really something, you cant imagine! Once, when she was due to give birth and was very heavy, she was walking along the window ledge and I dont know what happened, but she fell. She had wanted to jump from the ledge, but she lost her footing and fell. It must have injured something. The kittens didnt come right away, they came later, but three of them were deformed (there were six in all). Well, when she saw how they were, she simply sat on themkilled them as soon as they were born. Such incredible wisdom! (They were completely deformed: the hind paws were turned the wrong way roundthey would have had an impossible life.)
   And she used to count her little ones. She knew perfectly well how Many she had. I just had to tell her, Keep only two or threealthough the first time there were only three, which was still too Many, yet it was absolutely impossible not to let her keep them all. But later on I had to chide her. I didnt take them from her, but I would speak to her, convince her: Its too much, youll be ill. Just keep these. See how nice these two are. Take care of them.
   Oh, what lovely cat stories! That was a whole period for Many, Many years. Many years.
   Mind you, I would never have considered having any, but two cats were already there when I came to the house. They were not very interesting cats, but they became the parents of the one I just told you about (those boys who were living with Sri Aurobindo had already had some experience; they knew quite a few things about cats), and that was the origin of all the cats I had here. But people (you know how simplistic they always are!) believed I had some special attachment for cats, so then of course everybody started keeping cats! It was no use my telling them, No, its a particular study were making I wanted to see, to learn certain things, and I learned what I had to but now that I have moved to another house, the cat era is over; the old friends are gone, only the younger generation is left. I gave them all away and said) Thats enough. But its hard to make people understandsome people here have 25 cats! Thats unreasonable! Its not the way to deal with cats. You have to look after them as I did, and then it becomes interesting.
   There was one I know I SAW it: when he died there was already the embryo of a psychic being, ready for a huMan incarnation. I made them progress like wildfire.
   Well, petit.

0 1961-04-15, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   But you know, what seems to have gone is all this illusory enthusiasm we confuse with. Sri Aurobindo speaks of it very often, and each time I read that sentence of his its like an icy shower (Mother laughs). I no longer know the exact wording, but he uses two words: illusory hopes all the huMan illusory hopes. It goes plunk! Well, all that has entirely gone. When I saw it I deliberately rejected it. Yes, I said to myself, we are always trying to cheer ourselves up with hopes.
   (Mother turns towards the tape recorder) Dont keep all that. Its not worth it, dont keep it. Its quite useless. Take it out.

0 1961-04-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   I stumbled upon a sentence from Sri Aurobindo yesterday or the day before. From the occult standpoint it has to do with a rather important problem, and I would really like some light on this question: The Man who slays is only an occasion, the instrument by which the thing done behind the veil becomes the thing done on this side of it.
   It means exactly this (I am going back to the preceding sentence): Who can protect the one whom God has already slain?1 He has already been slain by God. When God has decided that someone is to be slain, nothing can protect him or keep him from being slain. And Sri Aurobindo adds: the Man who slays (because it is not God who slays directly, he uses a Man), the Man who slays is only a circumstance, the instrument through which the thing decided by God behind the veil is accomplished materially here.
   These are political texts from the revolutionary period, concerning bomb attacks against the English. And then he says that the Man God has protected can never be touched. However hard you try, you will never be able to slay him. But who can protect the Man God has already slain? He has already been slain by God. And Man is simply the instrument used by God to do here what has been done there (it has ALREADY been done there). Its very simple.
   Yes, I quite understand. But in general, does EVERYTHING that happens here first get played out on the other side in some way? Its an occult problem, and furthermore a problem of freedom.
  --
   In one chapter of The Synthesis of Yoga, Sri Aurobindo says that there is a state of consciousness in which all is from all eternityeverything, without exception, that is to be Manifested here.
   In detail?
  --
   Now I no longer have the experience of that state except as a memory, so I cant formulate it accurately. But what was very clear and comes very oftenvery oftenis the perception of a superimposition of falsehood over a real fact. This brings us back to what I was telling you some time ago,4 that everything is very simple in its truth, that huMan consciousness is what complicates everything. But the former was an even more total experience of it.
   It is very interesting from the standpoint of death. I saw it once so clearly when someone (I no longer remember whom) had left his body. The word death and all these huMan reactions seemed so foolish! So senseless, ignorant, stupidfalse, without reality. There was simply something that shifted, like this (Mother draws a curve showing a shift of consciousness from one mode of being to another), and then we, in our false consciousness, made a drama out of it. But it was simply something evolving (same gesture).
   Let me tell you about a recent occurrence. E. had sent a telegram saying that she had a perforated intestine (but it must have been something else because they operated on her only after several days, and when you are not operated on immediately in such cases, you die). Anyway, it was very serious and she was on the threshold of death that much is certain. She wrote me a letter the day before the operation (what is interesting is that now she doesnt even remember what she wrote). It was a magnificent letter saying that she was conscious of the Divine Presence and of the Divine Plan. Tomorrow they will operate on me, she said. And I am entirely aware that this operation has ALREADY been done, that it is a fact accomplished by the Divine Will; otherwise it could be a fatal ordeal. And she said she was conscious of the supreme Wills action, in a perfect peace. It was a magnificent letter. And the whole thing went off almost miraculously; she recovered in such a miraculous way that the surgeon himself said, I must congratulate you, to which she replied, How surprising! You did the operation! Yes, he said, we did the operation, but it is your body that willed to be healed, and I congratulate you for your bodys willpower. Of course she wrote to me that she knew who had been there to see that all went well. And this feeling of the thing being already accomplished is a beginning of the consciousness Sri Aurobindo speaks of in the Yoga of Self-Perfection, where one is simultaneously both here and there. Because, as Sri Aurobindo says, some people have Managed to be entirely there, but what he has called the realization is to be both there and here simultaneously.
   Of course, one might wonder what the meaning of everything here is, if it has all been already accomplished above, on an occult plane, and we are merely re-enacting it.
  --
   When I used to speak at the Playground, I tried to explain this one day I was facing the same problem: what really is? And clearly, it is utterly impossible to understand with the mind. But I had a vision of a kind of infinite Eternity through which the Supreme Consciousness voyages7; and the path this Consciousness travels is what we call the Manifestation. And this vision explained absolute freedom, it explained how both thingsabsolute freedom and absolute determinismcould coexist in an absolute way. The image in my vision was of an eternal Infinity in which that Consciousness voyagesone cant even say freely, because freely would imply that it could be otherwise.
   All who experience this say that the first movement of the Manifestation, or the creation (creation, Manifestation, objectification: all these words are imperfect) is CHIT, Consciousness that becomes Power. Consequently, Consciousness goes voyaging along in SAT, in Beingstatic, eternal, infinite and necessarily outside time and space and this movement of Consciousness is what produces time and space within this Infinity and Eternity.8 This leads to the understanding that things can simultaneously be absolutely free and absolutely determined.
   This vision I had is of no value to anyone else, but it gave me a kind of satisfaction, a kind of peace (for a while).
  --
   Yet for a time I was in contact with all these gods and all these things, and they had an entirely concrete reality for me; but now I read and I understand, but I cannot live it. And I dont know why. It still hasnt triggered the experience. You see, experience for me the constant, total and perManent Experienceis that there is nothing other than the Supremeonly the Supreme that the Supreme alone exists. So when they speak of Agni or Varuna or Indra it doesnt strike a chord. However, what the Vedas succeed in doing very well is to give you the perception of your infirmity and ineptitude, of the dismal state we are in now; it succeeds wonderfully in doing that!
   Yesterday, this ardor of the Flame was thereburning all to offer all. It was absolutely concrete, an intensity of vibrations; I could see the vibrationsall the movements of obscurity and ignorance were cast into that. And I recall a time when I was translating these hymns to Agni with Sri Aurobindo, and Agni was real for me. Well, yesterday it wasnt that, it wasnt the god Agni, it was a STATE OF BEING. It was a state of the Supreme, and as such, it was intimate, clear, intense, vibrant and living.
  --
   Well, obviously to establish contact with and Manifest what the people of the Vedas called the Truth, I still have a lot of things to change a lot.
   And yet its a fact that I am in the state where nothing exists any longer but the Divine, the Supreme the Supreme in every vibration, in everything I do, everything I feel. But in some way it must still be conditioned by my consciousness, since since its not yet THE Truth.
  --
   An illustration of this is the well-known story about the Man who refused to move out of the path of an elephant on the pretext that he was BrahMan and that BrahMan had told him to stay put. And the mahout replied, 'But BrahMan has told me that you should get out of the way and let the elephant BrahMan pass.' Although childishly simplified, it's the same thing. It's because we look 'in this way' yet not , in that way' at the same time, and above all, because we don't look at EVERYTHING at the same time. From the minute we could be integral in our perception, all relationships would remain the same, but instead of being in a state of ignorance, we would experience them in a state of knowledge.
   Would remain the same? You mean they would physically be the same as they are now, but would be seen in a different way?
  --
   Once again, Mother's experience coincides with modern science, which is beginning to discover that time and space are not fixed and INDEPENDENT quantitiesas, from the Greeks right up to Newton, we had been accustomed to believe but a four-dimensional system, with three coordinates of space and one of time, DEPENDENT UPON THE PHYSICAL PHENOMENA DEVELOPING THEREIN. Such is 'RieMann's Space,' used by Einstein in his General Theory of Relativity. Thus, a trajectoryi.e., in principle, a fixed distance, a quantity of space to be traversed-is a function of the time taken to traverse it: there is no straight line between two points, or rather the I straight' line is a function of the rate of speed. There is no 'fixed' quantity of space, but rather rates of speed which determine their own space (or their own measure of space). Space-time is thus no longer a fixed quantity, but, according to science, the PRODUCT ... of what? Of a certain rate of unfolding? But what is unfolding? A rocket, a train, muscles?... Or a certain brain which has generated increasingly perfected instruments adapted to its own mode of being, like a flying fish flying farther and farther (and faster and faster) but finally failing back into its own oceanic fishbowl. Yet what would this space-time be for another kind of fishbowl, another kind of consciousness: a supramental consciousness, for example, which can be instantaneously at any point in 'space'there is no more space! And no more time. There is no more 'trajectory': the trajectory is within itself. The fishbowl is shattered, and the whole evolutionary succession of little fishbowls as well. Thus, as Mother tells it, space and time are a 'PRODUCT Of the movement of consciousness.' A variable space-time, which not only changes according to our mechanical equipment, but according to the consciousness utilizing the equipment, and which ultimately utilizes only itself; consciousness, at the end of the evolutionary curve, has become its own equipment and the sole mechanism of the universe.
   ***

0 1961-04-22, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   I never Manage to finish my mornings program. Things just keep piling up.
   (Soon afterwards, concerning X, who had stated that the most recent attacks against Mother, and even those of two years earlier when she had been forced to withdraw to her room, were the result of black magic, and that certain members of the Ashram were DIRECTLY responsible for them, or in any case, had served as intermediariesas a switchboard, to quote himin connection with an outside magician.)
  --
   There are ManyManywho think I am going to die and are making preparations so as not to be left completely out on the street when I go. I am aware of all this. But its childishnessif I leave, they are right; if I dont, it doesnt matter!
   (silence)

0 1961-04-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Look here, theres a muddle in all this. The Sri Aurobindo Society people had ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with the spiritual life when they began; they didnt at all present themselves as a spiritual groupnothing of the kind; they were people of good will who volunteered to collect money to help the Ashram. So I said, Very well, excellent and as long as its like that, Im behind it. Leaflets can be handed outwhatever people like; its enough if their interest is aroused, if they know there is an Ashram and that it needs some help to go on. But thats all. It has nothing to do with yoga or spiritual progress or anything of the kindit was a strictly practical organization. It was not the same thing as World Union. World Union wanted to do a spiritual work on earth and to create huMan unity. I told them, You are taking something of an inward nature and you want to externalize it, so naturally it immediately goes rotten.(But its almost over now, Ive pulled the rug out from under them.)
   Anyway.
  --
   Its a question of contagion. Spiritual vibrations are quite clearly contagious. Mental vibrations are contagious, and to a certain extent even vital vibrations are contagious (not often in their finer effects, but anyway, its cleara Mans anger, for instance, spreads very easily). Well then, the quality of cellular vibrations should also be contagious.
   But the difficulty. You see, so far as Mind is concerned, the whole yoga has been donelike a path blazed through the virgin forest. And since it has been done, its relatively simple: the landmarks are there and one follows them. But here, nothing has been done! One doesnt know which end to take hold ofno one has ever done it! [186] You meet all the same obstacles before which others have simply said, Its impossible. Sri Aurobindo explains that its not impossible, but nothing more. And he himself hadnt done it.
  --
   But what can be translated is this kind of sensation that the sequence of cause and effect, of purpose, of goal, all seems to be very far below, very, very DISTANT, very huManperhaps divine, too (from the viewpoint of the gods it may be like this also, I dont know), because in the consciousness of the universal Mother it is still there, there is still this ardent love to serve: To do Your Will. That is still there, so its there with the gods also.
   (silence)
  --
   It came last night. It came slowly, but last night it was very strong: no more sequence, no more linking of cause and effect, no more goal, no more purpose, no more intentiona kind of Absolute which does not exclude the creation. It is not Nirvana, it has nothing to do with Nirvana (I know Nirvana very well, Ive had itjust yesterday evening, for instance, while walking for japa, and even this morning. You see, I begin by an invocation to the Supreme under his three aspects, and no sooner have I uttered the sound, TAT when all is abolished: Nirvana. And the last few days I have noticed that its instantaneous, so easy! Oh, a delight! Bah!). But its not Nirvana, its beyond that; it contains Nirvana and it contains the Manifested world and it contains everything else; all the appearances and disappearances13all of that is contained in it.
   Something.
  --
   This 'secret' is no doubt part of the Secret which this entire Agenda seeks to track down. So where to stop? And if we are indiscreet, who knows whether the secret of Man is not some simian indiscretion!
   ***

0 1961-04-29, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Poor T.! She asked me, What does it mean (laughing) to give God a satisfactory beating? How is this possible? I still havent answered. And then she added another question: Many people say that Sri Aurobindos teachings are a new religion. Would you call it a religion? You understand, I began to fume!
   I wrote (Mother reads her answer):
  --
   Religion always has a tendency to huManize, to create a God in the image of Mana magnified and glorified image, but essentially always a god with huMan attributes. And this (laughing) creates a sort of intimacy, a sense of kinship!
   T. has taken it literally, but its true that even the Spanish, when their god doesnt do what they want, take the statue and throw it in the river!
  --
   Creating a god in the image of Man gives you the possibility of treating it as you would treat a huMan enemy.
   There could be Many things to say.
   But these idols arent merely huMan creations they are self-existent, arent they?
   Oh, Ive had some very interesting revelations on this point, on the way people think and feel about it. I remember someone once made a little statue of Sri Aurobindo; he gave it a potbelly and anyway, to me it was ridiculous. So I said, How could you make such a thing?! He explained that even if its a caricature for the ordinary eye, since its an image of the one you consider God, or a god, or an Avatar, since its the image of the one you worship, even if only a guru, it contains the spirit and the force of his presence, and this is what you worship, even in a crude form, even if the form is a caricature to the physical eye.
  --
   I remember once going into a church (which I wont name) and I found it a very beautiful place. It wasnt a feast or ceremony day, so it was empty. There were just one or two people at prayer. I went in and sat down in a little chapel off to the side. Someone was praying there, someone who must have been in distressshe was crying and praying. And there was a statue, I no longer know of whom: Christ or the Virgin or a Saint I have no idea. And, oh! Suddenly, in place of the statue, I saw an enormous spider like a tarantula, you know, but (gesture) huge! It covered the entire wall of the chapel and was just waiting there to swallow all the vital force of the people who came. It was heart-rending. I said to myself, Oh, these people There was this miserable woMan who had come seeking solace, who was praying there, weeping, hoping to find solace; and instead of reaching a consciousness that was at least compassionate, her supplications were feeding this monster!
   I have seen other things but I have rarely seen anything favorable in churches. Here, I remember going to M I was taken inside and received there in quite an unusual waya highly respected person introduced me as a great saint! They led me up to the main altar where people are not usually allowed to go, and what did I see there! An asura (oh, not a very high-ranking one, more like a rakshasa4), but such a monster! Hideous. So I went wham! (gesture of giving a blow) I thought something was going to happen. But this being left the altar and came over to try to intimidate me; of course, he saw it was useless, so he offered to make an alliance: If you just keep quiet and dont do anything, I will share all I get with you. Well, I sent him packing! The head of this Math5. It was a Math with a monastery and temple, which means a substantial fortune; the head of the Math has it all at his disposal for as long as he holds the position and he is appointed for life. But he has to name his successor and as a rule, his own life is considerably shortened by the successorthis is how it works. Everyone knew that the present head had considerably shortened the life of his predecessor. And what a creature! As asuric as the god he worshipped! I saw some poor fellows throw themselves at his feet (he must have been squeezing them pitilessly), to beg forgiveness and mercyan absolutely ruthless Man. But he received meyou should have seen it! I said nothing, not a word about their god; I gave no sign that I knew anything. But I thought to myself, So thats how it is!
   Another thing happened to me in a fishing village near A., on the seashore, where there is a temple dedicated to Kalia terrible Kali. I dont know what happened to her, but she had been buried with only her head sticking out! A fantastic story I knew nothing about it at all. I was going by car from A. to this temple and halfway there a black form, in great agitation, came rushing towards me, asking for my help: Ill give you everything I haveall my power, all the peoples worshipif you help me to become omnipotent! Of course, I answered her as she deserved! I later asked who this was, and they told me that some sort of misfortune had befallen her and she had been buried with only her head above ground. And every year this fishing village has a festival and slaughters thousands of chickensshe likes chicken! Thousands of chickens. They pluck them on the spot (the whole place gets covered with feathers), and then, after offering the blood and making the sacrifice, the people, naturally, eat them all up. The day I came this had taken place that very morningfea thers littered everywhere! It was disgusting. And she was asking for my help!
  --
   But I have rarely had an experience in churches. Rather the opposite: I have very often had the painful experience of the huMan effort to find solace, a divine compassion falling into very bad hands.
   One of my most terrible experiences took place in Venice (the cathedrals there are so beautifulmagnificent!). I remember I was painting they had let me settle down in a corner to paintand nearby there was a (what do they call it?) a confessional. And a poor woMan was kneeling there in distresswith such a dreadful sense of sin! So piteous! She wept and wept. Then I saw the priest coming, oh, like a monster, a hard-hearted monster! He went inside; he was like an iron bar. And there was this poor woMan sobbing, sobbing; and the voice of the other one, hard, curt. I could barely contain myself.
   I dont know why, but I have had this kind of experience so very often: either a hostile force lurking behind and swallowing up everything, or else Manruthless Man abusing the Power.
   In fact, I have seen this all over the world. I have never been on very good terms with religions, neither in Europe, nor Africa, nor Japan, nor even here.
  --
   I remember a good-hearted priest in Pau [Southern France] who was an artist and wanted to have his church decorateda tiny cathedral. He consulted a local anarchist (a great artist) about it. The anarchist was acquainted with Andrs father and me. He told the priest, I recommend these people to do the paintings they are true artists. He was doing the mural decorationsome eight panels in all, I believe. So I set to work on one of the panels. (The church was dedicated to San Juan de Compostello, a hero of Spanish history; he had appeared in a battle between the Christians and the Moors and his apparition vanquished the Moors. And he was magnificent! He appeared in golden light on a white horse, almost like Kalki.6) All the slaughtered and struggling Moors were depicted at the bottom of the painting, and it was I who painted them; it was too hard for me to climb high up on a ladder to paint, so I did the things at the bottom! But anyway, it all went quite well. Then, naturally, the priest received us and invited us to dinner with the anarchist. And he was so nicereally a kind-hearted Man! I was already a vegetarian and didnt drink, so he scolded me very gently, saying, But its Our Lord who gives us all this, so why shouldnt you take it? I found him charming. And when he looked at the paintings, he tapped Morisset on the shoulder (Morisset was an unbeliever), and said, with the accent of Southern France, Say what you like, but you know Our Lord; otherwise you could never have painted like that!
   Well.
  --
   I could say Many other things which would be almost the opposite of all Ive just said! It all depends on the orientation. If I really started talking, you know, I would seem like I dont know what, something like a lunatic, because with equal sincerity and equal truth, I could say the most opposing things.
   And experiences! I have had the most contradictory experiences! Only one thing has been continuous from my childhood on (and the more I look, the more I see how continuous it has been): this divine Presence and in someone who, in her EXTERNAL LIFE, might very well have said, God? What is this foolishness! God doesnt exist! So you understand, you see the picture.

0 1961-05-02, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   When Sri Aurobindo was here, the work was done in another way; there was such an impression of hovering above difficulties, of acting on them from above. It was so strong that even rebellious elements, even things which were not going well, even they were dominated from above and they could not Manifest they stayed like that. And as they could not Manifest, they faded quietly away.
   I have seen people (people from outside) who were enemiesall their enmity was pacified, pacified, pacified. They were unable to do any harm, even when they wanted to. Everything was made innocuous in that way. And it was the same thing here in the Ashram; as always, people had wrong movements and wrong thoughts, but all this, too, was dominatedit was pacified, pacified.
  --
   And I dont see, I really do not see why all that needs to Manifest in order to disappear. Because before, when it didnt Manifest, it faded away by itself; but now it creates problems and problems and problems. (For me they are not problems but stupidities; they are problems and complications for others.) And its so useless! So much time is lost, so much time coping with stupid reactions. I dont know why.
   And nothing can be done until its over.

0 1961-05-12, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   I have finished my reading of the Veda. I have really tried my best, but I cannot Manage to recapture that consciousness; do what I will, it seems childish to me, I dont know why. Or else I am in the presence of a realization so far removed from what we are capable of now but to enter into that we have to go behind the words, which requires a mighty effort.
   If they really had that experience, it is admirable.

0 1961-05-19, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   But all the rest of the time. From morning to evening, letters to read, things to organize, people to see. And at night, every time I come out of my trance there is a swarm of things here (gesture around the head) waiting to be heard, deManding attention.
   Sometimes there are amusing thingsif I were to note down all I see! There are things things which dont appear as they are in ordinary life, but as they ARE when seen with a slightly more clairvoyant eyeits rather amusing. But it amounts to nothing-a sort of distraction.
  --
   Thats my reproach to itwhy does it struggle? Why, suddenly, do I have a terrible fatigue falling over me and have to brace myself? The body, naturally, does only one thingit automatically repeats the Mantra; then all becomes quiet, all is set in order. But why is this effort necessary? It should be done automatically [the sweeping away of bad vibrations]. Why is there a need to remember or to put up a struggle? Oh, a battle!
   Its not the body complaining, it doesnt complain at all I am the one who complains! I think that its doing its best, but its thwarted by this type of (one can scarcely speak of a mind) this kind of mind-like activity in matter3 interfering. t is sordid. I havent yet been able to eliminate it completely.
  --
   But then the difficulty is that for the ordinary consciousness and unfortunately I am surrounded by a lot of people who have a very ordinary consciousness (at least it seems very ordinary to me, although from the huMan standpoint they are probably rather remarkable people)for the ordinary consciousness I seem to be in a stupor, a coma, a state of imbecility, of yes, of torpor. It has all those appearances. Something which becomes immobile, unresponsive, stopped short (same gesture as before); one can no longer think, one can no longer observe, one can no longer react, one can no longer do anything, one is like that (same gesture). But all these things keep coming from outside, all the time, coming and trying to interrupt that state; yet if I Manage to prevent this, if I can keep this condition, after a while it becomes something so MASSIVE! So concrete in its power, so massive in its immobility, ohh! It must lead somewhere.
   But I could not remain in that state long enough (it would have to go on for HOURS), I could not, due to all these constant interruptions. And then, when the body is pulled brusquely out of it, it seems to lose its balanceit has a few difficult moments.
  --
   This refers to the Ashram dispensary, Managed by Dr. Nripendra.
   The physical mind.

0 1961-06-02, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Many things will change,
   a great victory will be won.
  --
   After that experience the decision was taken to come back to Indiaonly then could I Manage to return. There were all sorts of projects and things we were even on the point of going to China and, oh! But after that it was decided to come back to India.
   ***
  --
   These are small details. I myself am unable to do it at fixed hours; I had always hoped to do it between 5 and 6 in the afternoon, but I usually cant Manage to go upstairs before ten to six! So so I do it from 6 to 7.
   Fundamentally, I have noticed one thing: if you yourself are in the right state, the right atmosphere is immediately created. And in addition, I am always in a sort of not even a convictionan ABSOLUTE perception that all that happens is the Lords doing. When He makes me late going upstairs its because He wants me to be late, and consequently, if I take it wellif instead of closing myself and getting annoyed I say, Good, thats fineimmediately a very interesting atmosphere is created, because at the same time I see all the advantages of this change. But this movement must not be mentalit has to be spontaneous.

0 1961-06-06, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   So Many question marks!
   The more one goes into it in detail, the more mysterious it becomes. One always thinks one has grasped it; when one talks about such things3 one is being very nice, one seems to know something, one talks but when it comes to putting it into practice!

0 1961-06-17, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Whenever there was a special force descending, or an opening, or a supramental Manifestation, we would know it at the same time, in the same Manner. And we didnt even need to talk about it; we would sometimes exchange a word or two concerning the consequences, the practical effects on the work, but thats all. I never had this with anyone except Sri Aurobindo.
   There have been times when I did things for people and they sensed exactly what I had done. It has happened. It is rather rare, but still it has happened.

0 1961-06-20, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   I truly have the impression of a kind of abyss between the X I can sense, who attracts me, and the outer Man.
   I dont know the outer X, I have been very careful not to enter into contact with him! But from the first day I sensed a gap.
  --
   Sri Aurobindo was completely against it. Somewhere he makes fun of a Man who said he was the Supreme and that whatever he did, it wasnt he himself doing itand then he was angry when his meal was late! But of course it wasnt him: the stomach-nature was angry!2
   Its one of the most ironic things Sri Aurobindo has written.

0 1961-06-24, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   There have been very, very few cases, a quite minimal number, when people have called (not very sincerely) and their call hasnt had much effect. But even these people have a protection. There was a woMan here, an old woMan who was not very sincere (she didnt live hereshe only came to visit) and the last time she visited she fell ill and died. Then I saw that she was completely dispersed into all her desires, all her memories, all her attachments and it had all been scattered here and there, into all sorts of things (one part of her was seeking, seeking where to go and what to do); anyway, it was rather pitiful. Afterwards I was asked, How did it happen? She was calling all the time. I replied that I had not heard her callit must not have been very sincere, only a formula.4
   But its very rare that people get no response.
  --
   But there are all sorts of cases. Take N.D., for example, a Man who lived his whole life with the idea of serving Sri Aurobindohe died clasping my photo to his breast. This was a consecrated Man, very conscious, with an unfailing dedication, and all the parts of his being well organized around the psychic.6 The day he was going to leave his body little M. was meditating next to the Samadhi when suddenly she had a vision: she saw all the flowers of the tree next to the Samadhi (those yellow flowers I have called Service) gathering themselves together to form a big bouquet, and rising, rising straight up. And in her vision these flowers were linked with the image of N.D. She ran quickly to their house andhe was dead.
   I only knew about this vision later, but on my side, when he left, I saw his whole being gathered together, well united, thoroughly homogenous, in a great aspiration, and rising, rising without dispersing, without deviating, straight up to the frontier of what Sri Aurobindo has called the higher hemisphere, there where Sri Aurobindo in his supramental action presides over earth. And he melted into that light.
  --
   I have to goa high-priest is waiting for me! Yes, the Man in charge of all the temples of Gujarat, thoroughly orthodoxhe has come to the Ashram for some mysterious reason and he wants to see me. Is it really necessary? I asked. He wanted an interview, he wants to speak to me (naturally hell be speaking god knows whatGujarati!). I had him told, I cant hear, Im deaf! Its very convenient Im deaf, I cant hear. If he wants to receive a flower from me (I didnt say make a pranam,8 because that would be scandalous!), he can come and Ill give him a flower. I told him eleven oclockits that time now.
   This is all Xs work. The most unexpected people, people youd think would rather be cursed than come to a place like this, are coming from everywhere, from the most diverse milieus the most materialistic materialists, fanatical communists, as well as all sorts of sannyasis, bhikkus, swamis, priestsoh! People who previously were not at all they werent so much disinterested as actually displeased with the Ashram.
  --
   Things like that, everywhere and PRECISE! Something quite precise. Of course, to say that I work consciously is almost silly, its commonplace. But in Many cases one may work consciously for long years without getting that precision in the result the action enters a hazy atmosphere and makes a kind of stir, and out of it comes the best that can, but no more than that. But now its exact, preciseits becoming interesting.
   And now I know why this sort of impersonalization of the material individuality is so important. It is very important for the exactness of this action, so that it is onlyONLY the purest divine Will (if it can be put that way), expressing itself with a minimum of admixture. Any individualization or personalization results in admixture. But the divine Will acts like this (direct gesture).
  --
   In Sri Aurobindo's and Mother's terminology, 'psychic' or 'psychic being' means the soul or the portion of the Supreme in Man which evolves from life to life until it becomes a fully self-conscious being. The soul is a capacity or grace particular to huMan beings on earth.
   Experience of July 24, 1959.

0 1961-06-27, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Of course, one can conceive of a universe being thrown out of the present Manifestation that, yes; one can conceive of successive universes, with what was in the first universes no longer being in the othersits even obvious. One can imagine how a whole sum of falsity and untruth (what for us, NOW, is falsity and untruth) may come to no longer belong to the world in its future unfolding; one can comprehend all that. But destroy? Where can it go to be destroyed? When we say something is destroyed, its only a form which is destroyed (it may be a form of consciousness, it may not be a material form, but its always a form). But how can the formless be destroyed?
   Therefore, to speak of an absolute falsehood disappearing would simply mean that a whole set of things will live eternally in the past but not belong to the coming Manifestations, thats all.
   You cant get out of THAT, can you? There you are!
  --
   Naturally, when you come back down here you canoh, you can say Many things!
   Jokingly you can say (you can always joke, although I hesitate to do so, because people take my jokes so seriously) but you can very well say, without being totally in error, that you sometimes learn much more listening to a madMan or a fool than to a reasonable person. Personally, Im convinced of it! There is nothing more deadening than reasonable people.
   At any rate, this simultaneity of past, present and future cant be a physical simultaneity, can it?
  --
   This, too, is a Manner of speaking.
   Reincarnate? No. One can relive the past; that, yesvery well, very well.
   I have had an oft repeated experience of reliving the past1 (its a phenomenon of consciousness, possible because everything is preserved and continues to exist somewhere), with a kind of willwhich would be the sign of a powerto change it. I dont know, but at the moment of reliving it, instead of reliving the past just as it had been preserved, a power to make it different was introduced. I am not speaking of the power to change the consequences of the past (that is obvious and functions all the time)it wasnt that; it was the power to change the circumstances themselves (circumstances not quite material but of the subtle physical, with a predominantly psychological content). And since the will was there, from the standpoint of consciousness it actually happened that is, instead of circumstances developing in one direction, they developed in another. So it must correspond to something real, otherwise I would not have had the experience. It wasnt a product of the imagination; it wasnt something one thinks of and would really like to be differentit wasnt that; it was a phenomenon of consciousness: my consciousness was reliving certain circumstances (which are still quite living and obviously continue to exist within their own domain), but reliving them with the power and the knowledge acquired between that past moment and the present, and with a power to change the past moment. A new power entered the scene and turned the circumstance being relived in a new direction. I have had this experience Many times and it has always surprised meits not a phenomenon of mental imagination, which is something else entirely.
   It opens the door to everything.
  --
   Does the past? We know it remains present somewhere. Does this fact enable the past to participate in the progressive movement (progressive for us) of universal change within the Manifestation? There is no reason why not.
   But it remains present through its consequences.
  --
   Actually, as soon as one is not totally, totally tied down by the physical sense organs. For example, I am more and more frequently experiencing changes in the quality of vision. Quite recently, yesterday or the day before, I was sitting in the bathroom drying my face before going out and I raised my eyes (I was sitting before a mirror, although I dont usually look at myself); I raised my eyes and looked, and I saw Many things (Mother laughs, greatly amused). At that moment, I had an experience which made me say to myself, Ah! Thats why, from the physical, purely material standpoint, my vision seems to be a bit blurred. Because what I was seeing was MUCH clearer and infinitely more expressive than normal physical sight. And I recalled that it is with these clearer eyes that I see and recognize all my people at balcony darshan. (From the balcony I recognize all my people.) And its that vision (but with open eyes!) which. It is of another order.
   I am going to study what Sri Aurobindo says when I come to it in The Yoga of Self-Perfection. He says there comes a time when the senses changeits not that you employ the senses proper to another plane (we have always known we had senses on all the different planes); its quite different from that: the senses THEMSELVES change. He foretells this changehe says it will occur. And I believe it begins in the way I am experiencing it now.

0 1961-07-04, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   O lucky Man! What joy!
   You know, Savitri is an exact descriptionnot literature, not poetry (although the form is very poetical)an exact description, step by step, paragraph by paragraph, page by page; as I read, I relived it all. Besides, Many of my own experiences that I recounted to Sri Aurobindo seem to have been incorporated into Savitri. He has included Many of themNolini says so; he was familiar with the first version Sri Aurobindo wrote long ago, and he said that an enormous number of experiences were added when it was taken up again. This explained to me why suddenly, as I read it, I live the experienceline by line, page by page. The realism of it is astounding.
   As for me, Im now on the second part of On Himself ; I am beginning to enjoy myself.

0 1961-07-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   (Mother gives Satprem a white zinnia she has named 'Integral Endurance,' then an allaManda or 'Victory,' and finally a flower of 'Supramental Victory.')
   Here is an Integral Endurance. But victory. Victory. And this one is Supramental Victory that is, victory in ALL details.
   It grows in huge clusters of Many, Many flowers. There.
   And I go on reading.
  --
   Sri Aurobindo also had to struggle against this because he too received a Christian education. And these Aphorisms are the result the floweringof the necessity to struggle against the subconscious formation which has produced such questions (Mother takes on a scandalized tone): How can God be weak? How can God be foolish? How. But there is nothing but God! He alone exists, there is nothing outside of Him. And whatever seems repugnant to us is something He no longer wishes to existHe is preparing the world so that this no longer Manifests, so that the Manifestation can pass beyond this state to something else. So of course we violently reject everything in us that is destined to leave the active Manifestation. There is a movement of rejection.
   Yet it is He. There is nothing other than He! This should be repeated from morning to night, from night to morning, because we forget it every minute.
  --
   68The sense of sin was necessary in order that Man might become disgusted with his own imperfections. It was Gods corrective for egoism. But Mans egoism meets Gods device by being very dully alive to its own sins and very keenly alive to the sins of others.
   (Mother laughs) Marvelous!
  --
   Perfection is one way to approach the Divine; Unity is another. But Perfection is a global approach: all is there and all is as it should be that is to say, the perfect expression of the Divine (you cant even say of His Will, because that still implies something apart, something eManating from Him!).
   It could be put like this (but it brings it down considerably): He is what He is and exactly as He wants to be. The exactly as He wants to be takes us down quite a few steps, but it still gives an idea of what I mean by perfection!
  --
   While walking in my room, a series of invocations or prayers have come to me2 (I didnt choose themthey were dictated to me) in which I implore the Lord to Manifest his Perfection (and I am quite aware of how foolish this expression is, but it does correspond to an aspiration).3 When I say Manifest, I mean to Manifest in our physical, material world Im asking for the transformation of this world. And the moment I utter one of these invocations, the sense of the particular approach it represents is there; thats why I am now able to give such a lecture on PerfectionPerfection is one of these approaches. Manifest this, I tell Him, Manifest that, Manifest Your Perfection. (The series is very long and it takes me quite a while to go through it all.) Well, each time I say Manifest Your Perfection, I have an awareness of what constitutes Perfectionit is something global.
   Its like the word purityone could lecture endlessly on the difference between divine purity and what people call purity. Divine purity (at the lowest level) is to admit but one influence the divine Influence (but this is at the lowest level, and already terribly distorted). Divine purity means that only the Divine existsnothing else. It is perfectly pureonly the Divine exists, nothing other than He.
  --
   Lucky Man! I would love to read it again.
   And the more you read, the more marvelous it becomes.
   Mother later clarified this point: 'It is impossible for anything to be missing because it is impossible for anything not to be part of the whole. Nothing can exist apart from the whole. But I am taking this now to its extreme limit of meaningnot down-to-earth, but to the heights, to the extreme limits of meaning. I will explain: everything is not necessarily contained within a given universe, because one universe is only one mode of Manifestation but all possible universes exist. And so I always come back to the same thing: nothing can exist apart from the whole. If we give the whole the name of "God," for example, then we say that nothing can exist apart from Him. But words are so earthbound, aren't they?' (Mother makes a down-to-earth gesture.)
   See 'Prayers of the Consciousness of the Cells,' Agenda I, pp. 337-350.
   As Mother had previously said that 'all is as it should be ... the Divine is what He is and exactly as He wants to be,' one shouldn't need to 'implore' Him to Manifest his Perfection.
   ***

0 1961-07-12, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   (Regarding the last conversation, where Mother spoke of divine Perfection and of the series of invocations in her japa imploring the Lord to Manifest his various aspects:)
   But Perfection is only one side, one special way of approaching the Divine. There are innumerable sides, angles, aspectsinnumerable ways to approach the Divine. When I am walking, for example, doing japa, I have the sense of Unity (I have spoken to you of all the things I mention when I am upstairs walking: will, truth, purity, perfection, unity, immortality, eternity, infinity, silence, peace, existence, consciousness the list goes on). And when one follows a particular tack and does succeed in reaching or approaching or contacting the Divine, one realizes through experience that these Many approaches differ only in their most external forms the contact itself is identical. Its like looking through a kaleidoscopeyou revolve around a center, a globe, and see it under various aspects; but as soon as the contact is established, its identical.
   The number of approaches is practically infinite. Each one senses the path which accords with his temperament.
  --
   Manifest Your Love.
   This is the highest summit of the possibility of Manifestation.
   Thats what I wanted to say.

0 1961-07-15, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   And it has become acute since.1 No, I dont read these days, because Ive had a hemorrhage in this eye. There have been too Many letters, and its difficult for me to decipher handwriting the result is this hemorrhage. So I have gone on strike. All right, I said, I wont read any letters for a week. People can write as much as they please, its all the same to me Im not reading any more. But just before stopping (I stopped reading for only three days), I read a passage where Sri Aurobindo speaks of his own experience and his own work and explains in full what he means by the supramental transformation. This passage confirmed and made me understand Many experiences I had after that experience of the bodys ascent [January 24, 1961] (the ascent of the body-consciousness, followed by the descent of the supramental force into the body); immediately afterwards, everything (how to put it?) outwardly, according to ordinary consciousness, I fell ill; but its stupid to speak this way I did not fall ill! All possible difficulties in the bodys subconscient rose up en masseit had to happen, and it surely happened to Sri Aurobindo, too. How well I understood! How well, indeed. And its no joke, you know! I had wondered why these difficulties had hounded him so ferociouslynow I understand, because I am being attacked in the same relentless fashion.
   Actually, it springs from everything in material consciousness that can still be touched by the adverse forces; that is, not exactly the body-consciousness itself but, one could say, material substance as it has been organized by the mind the initial mentalization of matter, the first stirrings of mind in life making the passage from animal to huMan. (The same complications would probably exist in animals, but as there is no question of trying to supramentalize animals, all goes well for them.) Well, something in there protests, and naturally this protest creates disorder. These past few days I have been seeing. No one has ever followed this path! Sri Aurobindo was the first, and he left without telling us what he was doing. I am literally hewing a path through a virgin forestits worse than a virgin forest.
   For the past two days there has been the feeling of not knowing anythingNOTHING at all. I have had this feeling for a very long time, but now it has become extremely acute, as it always does at times of crisis, at times when things are on the verge of changingor of getting clarified, or of exploding, or. From the purely material standpointchemically, biologically, medically, therapeutically speaking I dont believe Many people do know (there may be some). But it doesnt seem very clear to mein any case, I dont know. Yogically (I dont mean spiritually: that was the first stage of my sadhana), its very easy to be a saint! Oh, even to be a sage is very easy. I feel I was born with itits spontaneous and natural for me, and so simple! You know all that has to be done, and doing it is as easy as knowing it. Its nothing. But this transformation of Matter! What has to be done? How is it to be done? What is the path?
   Is there a path? Is there a procedure? Probably not.
  --
   After my interview with Nature, when she told me that she would collaborate,2 I thought this difficulty would cease; Many things have improved considerably (ONE part of Nature is collaborating), but not this. Plainly and clearly, it comes from the subconscient and the inconscient (wherever there is consciousness, all is well); its rising up all the time, all the time, and withoh, disgusting persistence!
   And then of course its accompanied by all the usual suggestions (but thats nothing, it comes from a domain which is easily controlled). Suggestions of this type: Well, but Sri Aurobindo himself didnt do it! (I know why he didnt. but people in general dont know.) And every adverse vibration naturally takes advantage of this: How do you expect to succeed where he didnt! But my answer is always the same: When the Lord says its all over with, I will know its all over with; that will be the end of it, and so what! This stops them short.
  --
   More accurately, they represent the unconsciousness of Matter. Hostilewe say hostile, but of course this is just a Manner of speaking.
   You see (Mother is about to say something, then decides not to). Now is not the time to speak of these things.
  --
   That was the basic problembecause the identification of the two [Sri Aurobindo and Mother] was almost childs play, it was nothing: for me to merge into him or him to merge into me was no problem, it wasnt difficult. We had some conversations on precisely this subject, because we saw that (there were Many other things, too, but this isnt the time to speak of them) the prevailing conditions were such that I told him I would leave this body and melt into him with no regret or difficulty; I told him this in words, not just in thought. And he also replied to me in words: Your body is indispensable for the Work. Without your body the Work cannot be done. After that, I said no more. It was no longer my concern, and that was the end of it.
   This was said in 1949, just a little more than a year before he left.
  --
   In the final analysis, everything obviously depends upon the Supremes Will because, if one looks deeply enough into the question, even physical laws and resistances are nothing for Him. But this kind of direct intervention takes place only at the extreme limit; if His Will is to be expressed in opposition, as it were, to the whole set of laws governing the Manifestationwell, that only comes at the very last second. Sri Aurobindo has expressed this so well in Savitri, so well! At least three times in the book he has expressed this Will that abolishes all established laws, all of them, and all the consequences of these laws, the whole formidable colossus of the Manifestation, so that in the face of it all, That can express itself and this takes place at the very last second, so to speak, at the extreme limit of possibility.
   I must say that there was a time when, as Sri Aurobindo had entrusted his work to me, there was a kind of tension to do it (it cant be called an anxiety); a tension in the will. This too has now ended (Mother stretches her arms into the Infinite). Its finished. But there MAY still be something tense lurking somewhere in the subconscient or the inconscient I dont know, its possible. Why? I dont know. I mean I have never been told, at any time, neither through Sri Aurobindo nor directly, whether or not I would go right to the end. I have never been told the contrary, either. I have been told nothing at all. And if at times I turn towards Thatnot to question, but simply to know the answer is always the same: Carry on, its not your problem; dont worry about it. So now I have learned not to worry about it; I am consciously not worried about it.
  --
   But there has evidently been some rather considerable progress, because lately the enormity of the thing has been shown to me far more concretely, oh! I tell you, it has reached the point where all spiritual life, all these peoples and races who have been trying since the beginning of the earth, who have made so Many efforts to realize somethingit all seems like nothing, like childs play. Its nothing: you smile and then you are joyous. Its nothing at all, nothing at all!
   To put things in ordinary terms, mon petit, this work is without glory! You get no results, no experiences filling you with ecstasy or joy or wondernone of that. It is hideous, a hideous labor.
  --
   And that was when I received the ComMand from the Supreme, who was right here, this close (Mother presses her face). He told me, This is what is promised. Now the Work must be done.
   And not individual but collective work was meant. So naturally, because of the way it came, it was joyously accepted and immediately implemented.

0 1961-07-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Yes. When I read that book (it was very well written), I understood the problem, and my understanding was confirmed when I went to Japan. Many Japanese also have a blunted sensibility (blunted in the sense that to feel anything they need extremely violent stimuli). Perhaps an explanation could be found along these lines.
   But behind it all, the original problem remains unresolved: Why has it become like this? Why this deformation? Why has it all been deformed? There are some very beautiful things behind, very intense, infinitely more powerful than we ourselves can even bear, marvelous things. But why has it all become so dreadful here? Thats what comes up immediatelyits why I told you I had no inspiration.
  --
   In his cosmogony, Theon accounted for the successive pralayas2 of the different universes by saying that each universe was an aspect of the Supreme Manifesting itself: each universe was built upon one aspect of the Supreme, and all, one after the other, were withdrawn into the Supreme. He enumerated all the successively Manifested aspects, and what an extraordinarily logical sequence it was! I have kept it some place, but I no longer know where. Nor do I remember exactly what number this universe has in the sequence, but this time it was supposed to be the universe which would not be withdrawn, which would, so to speak, follow an indefinite progression of Becoming. And this universe is to Manifest Equilibrium, not a static but a progressive equilibrium.3 Equilibrium, as he explains it, is each thing exactly in its place: each vibration, each movement, each and so on down the lineeach form, each activity, each element exactly in its place in relation to the whole.
   This is quite interesting to me because Sri Aurobindo says the same thing: that nothing is bad, simply things are not in their placetheir place not only in space but in time, their place in the universe, beginning with the planets and stars, each thing exactly in its place. Then when each thing, from the most colossal to the most microscopic, is exactly in place, the whole Will PROGRESSIVELY express the Supreme, without having to be withdrawn and eManated anew. On this also, Sri Aurobindo based the fact that this present creation, this present universe, will be able to Manifest the perfection of a divine worldwhat Sri Aurobindo calls the Supermind.
   Equilibrium is the essential law of this creationit is what permits perfection to be realized in the Manifestation.
   In line with this idea of things in their place, another question comes to me: with the descent of the Supermind, what exactly are the very first things that the supramental force will want to or is trying to dislodge?
  --
   What would it be like, for instance, to have a small supramental creation as a nucleus of action and influence radiating upon earth (to limit it to the earth)? Is it possible? Its easy to conceive of a superhuMan nucleusa creation of supermen, that is, of men who by virtue of evolution and transformation (in the true sense of the word) have succeeded in Manifesting the supramental forces; yet since their origin is huMan, there is inevitably a contact; even if everything is transformed, even if their organs are transformed into centers of force, a sort of huMan coloration still remains. These are the beings who, according to tradition, will discover the secret of direct, supramental creation, bypassing the process of ordinary Nature. Then through them the true supramental beings will be born, who will necessarily have to live in a supramental world. But how would contact be made between these beings and the ordinary world? How to conceive of a transformation of nature sufficient to enable this supramental creation to take place on earth? I dont know.
   Of course, we know that such a thing will require a considerable amount of time to be done, and it will probably go by stages, by degrees, with faculties appearing that at the moment we cant know or imagine, and which will change the conditions of the earththis is looking ahead a few thousand years.
  --
   What I myself have seen was a plan that came complete in all details, but that doesnt at all conform in spirit and consciousness with what is possible on earth now (although, in its most material Manifestation, the plan was based on existing terrestrial conditions). It was the idea of an ideal city, the nucleus of a small ideal country, having only superficial and extremely limited contacts with the old world. One would already have to conceive (its possible) of a Power sufficient to be at once a protection against aggression or bad will (this would not be the most difficult protection to provide) and a protection (which can just barely be imagined) against infiltration and admixture. From the social or organizational standpoint, these problems are not difficult, nor from the standpoint of inner life; the problem is the relationship with what is not supramentalizedpreventing infiltration or admixture, keeping the nucleus from falling back into an inferior creation during the transitional period.
   (silence)
   All who have considered the problem have always imagined some place like a Himalayan gorge, unknown to the rest of huManity, but this is no solution. No solution at all.
   No, the only solution is occult power. But that. Before anything at all can be done, it already deMands a certain number of individuals who have reached a great perfection of realization. Granting this, a place is conceivable (set apart from the outside worldno actual contacts) where each thing is exactly in its place, setting an example. Each thing exactly in its place, each person exactly in his place, each movement in its place, and all in its place in an ascending, progressive movement without relapse (that is, the very opposite of what goes on in ordinary life). Naturally, this also means a sort of perfection, it means a sort of unity; it means that the different aspects of the Supreme can be Manifested; and, necessarily, an exceptional beauty, a total harmony; and a power sufficient to keep the forces of Nature obedient: even if this place were encircled by destructive forces, for example, these forces would be powerless to act the protection would be sufficient.
   It would all require the utmost perfection in the individuals organizing such a thing.
  --
   Have we ever really known how the first huMans were formed, the first mental realization? Were they isolated individuals, or were they in groupsdid the phenomenon take place in a collective milieu or in isolation? I dont know. It may be analogous to the case of the coming supramental creation.
   It isnt difficult to conceive of an individual in the solitude of the Himalayas or in a virgin forest beginning to create around himself his miniature supramental worldthis is easy to imagine. But the same thing would be necessary: he would need to have attained such perfection that his power would act automatically to prevent any outside intrusion.
  --
   The realization under community or group conditions would clearly be far more complete, integral, total and probably more perfect than any individual realization, which is always, necessarilynecessarilyextremely limited on the external material level, because its only one way of being, one mode of Manifestation, one microscopic set of vibrations that is touched.
   But for the facility of the work, I believe theres no comparison!
  --
   Anyway, at the moment I have no choice and I am not looking for any. Things are what they are and as they are; and taking them as they are, the work has to be done. The Manner of working depends on the way things are.
   But its so lovely when this Harmony comes. You know, puttering about, arranging papers, setting a drawer in order. It all sings, its lovely, so joyous and luminous so delightful! And all, all, all. All material things, all activities, eating, dressing, everything becomes delightful when this harmony is there, delightful. Everything works out smoothly, its so harmonious, theres no friction. You see you see a joyous, luminous Grace Manifesting in all things, ALL things, even those we normally regard as utterly unimportant. But then, if this Harmony withdraws, everythingexactly the SAME conditions, the SAME things, the SAME circumstancesbecomes painful, tiresome, drawn out, difficult, laborious, oh! Its like this, and like that (Mother tilts her hand from side to side as on a narrow frontier) like this, like that.
   It makes you sense so clearly that things in themselves dont count. What we call things in themselves are of no true importance! What really counts is the relationship of consciousness to these things. And theres a formidable power in this, since in one instance you touch something and drop or mishandle it, while in the other its so lovely, it works so smoothly. Even the most difficult movements are made without difficulty. Its an unheard-of power! We dont give it importance because it has no grandiose effects, its not spectacular. Yes, there are indeed states of grace when one is in the presence of a great difficulty and suddenly has all the power needed to face ityes, but thats something else. I am speaking of a power active in ordinary life.
  --
   Pralaya: The destruction of a universe at the end of a cycle. According to Hindu cosmology, the formation of each universe begins with an 'age of truth' (satya-yuga) which slowly degenerates, like the stars, till there is no truth left at all; it becomes a 'dark age'(kali-yuga) like ours, and ends with a cataclysm. Then a new universe is reborn out of this cataclysm and the cycle begins again. There is a correspondence here with a modern cosmological theory according to which a phase of contraction, of galaxies collapsing upon themselves, follows a phase of expansion and precedes a new explosion ('Big Bang') of the 'primal egg'and so on, in a recurring and apparently endless and aimless series of cosmic births which, like our own huMan births, develop, attain some sort of 'summit,' then collapse, always to begin again. According to Theon, our present universe is the seventh but where is the 'beginning'?
   Note that modern astronomy is divided between the theory of endless phases of contraction-explosion-expansion, and the theory of a universe in infinite expansion starting with a 'Big Bang,' which seems quite as catastrophic, since the universe is then plunging at vertiginous speed into an increasingly cold, empty, and fatal infinity, like a bullet released from all restraints of gravity, until... until what? According to astronomers, an exact measurement of the quantity of matter in a cubic meter of the present universe (one atom for every 400 liters of space) should enable us to decide between these two theories and learn which way it will be best for us to die. If there is more than one atom per 400 liters of space, this quantity of matter will create sufficient gravitation to halt the present expansion of galaxies and induce a contraction, ending with an explosion within an infinitesimal space. If there is less than one atom per 400 liters of space, the quantity of matter and thus the gravitational effect will be insufficient to retain the galaxies within their invisible net, and everything will spin off endlesslyunless we discover, with Mother, a third position, that of a 'progressive equilibrium,' in which the quantity of matter in the universe proves in fact to be a quantity of consciousness, whose contraction or expansion will be regulated by the laws of consciousness.

0 1961-07-28, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   I have had the experience of being missioned, so to speak, in a form of Love and Consciousness combineddivine Love in its supreme purity, divine Consciousness in its supreme purity and eManated DIRECTLY, without passing through all the intermediate states, directly into the nethermost depths of the Inconscient. And there I had the impression of being, or rather of finding a symbolic Being in deep sleep so veiled that he was almost invisible. Then, at my contact, the veil seemed to be rent and, without his awakening, there was a sort of radiation spreading out. I can still see my vision.2
   (silence)
   There is always what could almost be called a popular way of presenting things. Take the whole Story of the Creation, of how things have come about: it can be told as an unfolding story (this is what Theon did in a book he called The Traditionhe told the whole story in the Biblical Manner, with psychological knowledge hidden in symbols and forms). There is a psychological Manner of telling things and a metaphysical Manner. The metaphysical, for me, is almost incomprehensible; its uninteresting (or interesting only to minds that are made that way). An almost childish, illustrative way of telling things seems more evocative to me than any metaphysical theory (but this is a personal opinion and of no great moment!). The psychological approach is more dynamic for transformation, and Sri Aurobindo usually adopted it. He doesnt tell us stories (I was the one who told him stories! Images are very evocative for me). But if one combines the two approaches. Actually, to be philosophical, one would have to combine the three. But I have always found the metaphysical approach ineffective; it doesnt lead to realization but only gives people the IDEA that they know, when they really know nothing at all. From the standpoint of push, of a dynamic urge towards transformation, the psychological approach is obviously the most powerful. But the other [the symbolic approach] is lovelier!
   In The Hour of God, theres a whole diagram of the Manifestation made by Sri Aurobindo3: first comes this, then comes that, then comes the other, and so fortha whole sequence. They published this in the book in all seriousness, but I must say that Sri Aurobindo did it for fun (I saw him do it). Someone had spoken to him about different religions, different philosophical methods Theosophy, Madame Blavatski, all those people (there was Theon, too). Well, each one had made his diagram. So Sri Aurobindo said, I can make a diagram, too, and mine will be much more complete! When he finished it, he laughed and said, But its only a diagram, its just for fun. They published it very solemnly, as if he had made a very serious proclamation. Oh, its a very complicated diagram!
   But the trouble is that people will say: whats the need for a descent if all is involved and then evolves? Why a descent? Why should there be an intervention from a higher plane?
  --
   The way Theon told it, there was first the universal Mother (he didnt call her the universal Mother, but Sri Aurobindo used that name), the universal Mother in charge of creation. For creating she made four eManations: Consciousness or Light; Life; Love or Beatitude and (Mother tries in vain to remember the fourth) I must have cerebral anemia today! In India they speak only of three: Sat-Chit-Ananda (Sat is Existence, expressed by Life; Chit is Consciousness, expressed by Power; Ananda is Bliss, synonymous with Love). But according to Theon, there were four (I knew them by heart). Well, these eManations (Theon narrated it in such a way that someone not a philosopher, someone with a childlike mind, could understand), these eManations, conscious of their own power, separated themselves from their Origin; that is, instead of being entirely surrendered to the supreme Will and expressing only. Ah, the fourth eManation is Truth! Instead of carrying out only the supreme Will, they seem to have acquired a sense of personal power. (They were personalities of sorts, universal personalities, each representing a mode of being.) Instead of remaining connected, they cut the linkeach acted on his own, to put it simply. Then, naturally, Light became darkness, Life became death, Bliss became suffering and Truth became falsehood. And these are the four great Asuras: the Asura of Inconscience, the Asura of Falsehood, the Asura of Suffering and the Asura of Death.
   Once this had occurred, the divine Consciousness turned towards the Supreme and said (Mother laughs): Well, heres what has happened. Whats to be done? Then from the Divine came an eManation of Love (in the first eManation it wasnt Love, it was Ananda, Bliss, the Delight of being which became Suffering), and from the Supreme came Love; and Love descended into this domain of Inconscience, the result of the creation of the first eManation, Consciousness Consciousness and Light had become Inconscience and Darkness. Love descended straight from the Supreme into this Inconscience; the Supreme, that is, created a new eManation, which didnt pass through the intermediate worlds (because, according to the story, the universal Mother first created all the gods who, when they descended, remained in contact with the Supreme and created all the intermediate worlds to counterbalance this fallits the old story of the Fall, this fall into the Inconscient. But that wasnt enough). Simultaneously with the creation of the gods, then, came this direct Descent of Love into Matter, without passing through all the intermediate worlds. Thats the story of the first Descent. But youre speaking of the descent heralded by Sri Aurobindo, the Supramental Descent, arent you?
   Not only that. For example, Sri Aurobindo says that when Life appeared there was a pressure from below, from evolution, to make Life emerge from Matter, and simultaneously a descent of Life from its own plane. Then, when Mind emerged out of Life, the same thing from above happened again. Why this intervention from above each time? Why dont things emerge normally, one after another, without needing a descent?
  --
   Take the experience of Mind, for example: Mind, in the evolution of Nature, gradually emerging from its involution; well and this is a very concrete experience these initial mentalized forms, if we can call them that, were necessarily incomplete and imperfect, because Natures evolution is slow and hesitant and complicated. Thus these forms inevitably had an aspiration towards a sort of perfection and a truly perfect mental state, and this aspiration brought the descent of already fully conscious beings from the mental world who united with terrestrial formsthis is a very, very concrete experience. What emerges from the Inconscient in this way is an almost impersonal possibility (yes, an impersonal possibility, and perhaps not altogether universal, since its connected with the history of the earth); but anyway its a general possibility, not personal. And the Response from above is what makes it concrete, so to speak, bringing in a sort of perfection of the state and an individual mastery of the new creation. These beings in corresponding worlds (like the gods of the overmind,4 or the beings of higher regions) came upon earth as soon as the corresponding element began to evolve out of its involution. This accelerates the action, first of all, but also makes it more perfectmore perfect, more powerful, more conscious. It gives a sort of sanction to the realization. Sri Aurobindo writes of this in SavitriSavitri lives always on earth, with the soul of the earth, to make the whole earth progress as quickly as possible. Well, when the time comes and things on earth are ready, then the divine Mother incarnates with her full powerwhen things are ready. Then will come the perfection of the realization. A splendor of creation exceeding all logic! It brings in a fullness and a power completely beyond the petty shallow logic of huMan mentality.
   People cant understand! To put oneself at the level of the general public may be all very well5 (personally I have never found it so, although its probably inevitable), but to hope that they will ever understand the splendor of the Thing. They have to live it first!
  --
   Lets take Savitri, which is very explicit on this: the universal Mother is universally present and at work in the universe, but the earth is where concrete form is given to all the work to be done to bring evolution to its perfection, its goal. Well, at first theres a sort of eManation representative of the universal Mother, which is always on earth to help it prepare itself; then, when the preparation is complete, the universal Mother herself will descend upon earth to finish her work. And this She does with SatyavanSatyavan is the soul of the earth. She lives in close union with the soul of the earth and together they do the work; She has chosen the soul of the earth for her work, saying, HERE is where I will do my work. Elsewhere (Mother indicates regions of higher Consciousness), its enough just to BE and things Simply ARE. Here on earth you have to work.
   There are clearly universal repercussions and effects, of course, but the thing is WORKED OUT here, the place of work is HERE. So instead of living beatifically in Her universal state and beyond, in the extra-universal eternity outside of time, She says, No, I am going to do my work HERE, I choose to work HERE. The Supreme then tells her, What you have expressed is My Will.. I want to work HERE, and when all is ready, when the earth is ready, when huManity is ready (even if no one is aware of it), when the Great Moment comes, well I will descend to finish my work.
   Thats the story.
   So if people ask why, we can tell them, I dont know, but thats how it is. Why? (Mother shrugs her shoulders) How can a small huMan brain understand why! When you live it, you know! Theres no problem, its clear; its like that because its like that. It had to be that way thats how it is.
   You can find all sorts of explanations for it: consciousness would never have been so complete, joy would never have been so full, the realization would never have been so total, if one had not passed through all that. But these explanations are just to satisfy the mind. When you live in it, theres no need for explanations.
  --
   Standing there between two iridescent pillars is a very tall figure; his face, framed in short blond curls, is that of a very young Man; his eyes are sea-green; he is clad in a pale blue tunic, and like wings upon his shoulders are great, snow-white fins. Beholding me, he steps aside against a pillar to let me pass. Scarcely have I crossed the threshold when an exquisite melody strikes my ears. The waters are all iridescent here, the ground aglow with glossy pearls; the portico and the vault, hung gracefully with stalactites, are opaline; delectable perfumes hover everywhere; galleries, niches and alcoves open out on all sides; but directly ahead of me I perceive a great light and towards it I turn my steps. There are great rays of gold, silver, sapphire, emerald and ruby, radiating outward in all directions, born from a center too distant for me to discern; to this center I feel drawn by a powerful attraction.
   Now I see that these rays eManate from a recumbent oval of white light encircled by a superb rainbow, and I sense that the one whom the light hides from my view is plunged into a profound repose. For long I remain at the outer edge of the rainbow, trying to pierce through the light and see the one who is sleeping encircled by such splendor. Unable to discern anything, I enter the rainbow, and thence into the white and shining oval. Here I see a marvelous being: stretched on what seems to be a mass of white eiderdown, his supple body, of incomparable beauty, is garbed in a long, white robe. His head rests on his folded arm, but of that I can see only his long hair, the hue of ripened wheat, flowing over his shoulders. A great and gentle emotion sweeps through me at this magnificent spectacle, and a deep reverence as well.
   Has the sleeper sensed my presence? For now he awakens and rises in all his grace and beauty. He turns towards me and his eyes meet mine, mauve and luminous eyes with a gentle, an infinitely tender expression. Wordlessly he bids me a sublime welcome and my whole being joyously responds. Taking my hand, he leads me to the couch he has just left. I stretch out on this downy whiteness, and his harmonious visage bends over me; a sweet current of force enters wholly into me, invigorating, revitalizing each cell.
   Then, wreathed by the splendid colors of the rainbow, enveloped by lulling melodies and exquisite perfumes, beneath his gaze so powerful, so tender, I drift into a beatific repose. And during my sleep I learn Many beautiful and useful things.
   Of all these marvelous things, understood without the noise of words, I mention only one.
   Wherever there is beauty, wherever there is radiance, wherever there is progress towards perfection, whether in the Heaven of the heights or of the depths, there, assuredly, is found the form and similitude of Man-Man, the supreme terrestrial evolutor.6
   Sachchidananda is the Supreme Consciousness in its triple aspect of Existence (Sat), Consciousness (Chit) and Bliss (Ananda).
  --
   In Sri Aurobindo's terminology, the 'Overmind' represents the highest level of the mind, the world of the gods and origin of all the revelations and highest artistic creations the world that has ruled mental Man till now. in his gradations of the worlds, Sri Aurobindo speaks of two hemispheres, the upper hemisphere and the lower. The Overmind is the line between these two hemispheres, 'This line is the intermediary overmind which, though luminous itself, keeps from us the full indivisible supramental Light, but in receiving it divides, distributes, breaks up into separated aspects, powers, multiplicities of all kinds.' In the words of the Upanishad, 'The face of the Truth is covered by a golden lid.'
   Mother is referring to the book Satprem will write on Sri Aurobindo, which prompted the questions posed in this conversation.

0 1961-08-02, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   In fact, we are the first possible instruments for making the world progress. For example (this is one way of putting it), the transformation of the Inconscient into the Subconscient is probably far more rapid and complete now than it was before Man appeared upon earth; Man is one of the first transformative elements. Animals are obviously more conscious than plants, but WILLED (and thus more rapid) progress belongs to huManity. Likewise, what one hopes (more than hopes!), what one expects is that when the new supramental race comes upon earth, the work will go much more swiftly; and Man will necessarily benefit from this. And since things will be done in true order instead of in mental disorder, animals and everything else will probably benefit from it also. In other words, the whole earth, taken as one entity, will progress more and more rapidly. The Inconscient (oh, all this comes to me in English, thats the difficulty!) is meant to go and necessarily the Subconscient will go too.
   Broadly speaking, does this mean that physical Matter will become conscious?
  --
   Its quite obvious that the Inconscient, the Subconscient and the semi-conscient are accidental; they are not a perManent part of the creation, so are bound to disappear, to be transformed.
   Years ago, when Sri Aurobindo and I descended together from plane to plane (or from mode of life to mode of life) and reached the Subconscient, we saw that it was no longer individual: it was terrestrial. The rest the mind, the vital and of course the bodyis individualized; but when you descend below this level, thats no longer the case. There is indeed something between the conscious life of the body and this subconscious terrestrial lifeelements are thrown out1 as a result of the action of individual consciousness upon the subconscious substance; this creates a kind of semiconsciousness, and that stays. For example, when people are told, You have pushed your difficulty down into the subconscient and it will resurface, this does not refer to the general Subconscient, but to something individualized out of the Subconscient through the action of individual consciousness and remaining down there until it resurfaces. The process is, so to speak, interminable, even the personal part of it.
  --
   In fact, this is what legitimizes the ego; because if we had never formed an ego, we would have lived all mixed up (laughing), now this person, now another! Oh, it was so comical, seeing this the other day! At first it was a bit bewildering, but when I looked closely, it became utterly amusing: two little people with no physical resemblance, yet of a similar typesmall and in short, a similarity. Its like the four men I used to see in Japan: there was an EnglishMan, a FrenchMan, a Japanese and one more, each from a different country; well, at night they were all the same, as if viewed one through the other, all intermingledvery amusing!
   But individualization is a slow and difficult process. Thats why you have an ego, otherwise you would never become individualized, but always be (Mother laughs) a kind of public place!
  --
   Individual in action, in Manifestation.
   This is where the problem arises. Sri Aurobindo says its perManent, while all the ancient traditions say it disappears with the body.
   A perManent individual self?
   Otherwise there could be no perManent material life for this [individuality] is the very nature of materialization. Were it destined to disappear, then the phenomenon of physical dissolution would become perManent, and there would never be physical immortality; because, after exhausting a certain basically, a certain number of illusions or disorders or falsehoods, one would return to the Truth. But according to Sri Aurobindo, it isnt like that: this individualization, this individual personalization is the Truth, a real, au thentic divine phenomenon the only falsehood is the deformation of consciousness. Well, when we rediscover the true consciousness of Unity that Unity which is both in and above the Manifest and the non-Manifest (above in that it contains both the Manifest and non-Manifest equally), well, this Truth includes material personalization, otherwise that2 could not exist.
   But each individual has a different personality.
  --
   A mode of being, yes, in a way, in its essencein its essence, because in the Manifestation all this is destined to disappear. Yes, they are modes of beinglike those first four modes of being3 created at the first Manifestation.
   But in our case, would there be innumerable modes of being, each representing one particular aspect?
  --
   But Theon had no idea of the path of bhakti,5 none whatsoever. The idea of surrender to the Divine was absolutely alien to him. Yet he did have the idea of the Divine Presence here (Mother indicates the heart center), of the imManent Divine and of union with That. And he said that by uniting with That and letting That transform the being one could arrive at the divine creation and the transformation of the earth.
   Theon was the first one to give me the idea that the earth is symbolic, representativesymbolic of concentrated universal action allowing divine forces to incarnate and work concretely. I learned all this from him.
  --
   I had a VERY interesting experienceit was last year or the year before, I dont recall, but after I retired to my room upstairs.6 You know that during pujas these goddesses come all the timethey dont enter the body and tie themselves to it, but they do come and Manifest. Well, this time I think it must have been for last years pujaDurga came (she always arrives a few days in advance and remains in the atmosphere; she is present, like thisgesture as if Durga were walking up and down with Mother). I was in touch with her during my meditations upstairs, and this new Power in the body was in me then as it is in me now, and (how to put it?) I made her participate in this concept of surrender. What an experience she had, mon petit! An extraordinary experience of the joy of being connected with That. And she declared, From now on, I am a bhakta of the Lord.
   It was beautiful.
   This formidable Power, you seea universal Power, an eternal and formidable Powerwell, she had never had such an experience before, she had only experienced her OWN power. She was used to receiving and obeying ComMands, but in an automatic way. Then all at once, she felt the ECSTASY of being a conscious instrument.
   Truly it was truly beautiful.
  --
   It was this: Krishna consented to descend into Sri Aurobindos bodyto be FIXED there; there is a great difference, you understand, between incarnating, being fixed in a body, and simply acting as an influence that comes and goes and moves about. The gods are always moving about, and its plain that we ourselves, in our inner beings, come and go and act in a hundred or a thousand places at once. There is a difference between just coming occasionally and accepting to be perManently tied to a bodybetween a perManent influence and a perManent presence.
   These things have to be experienced.
  --
   These people had always been very intimate with Sri Aurobindo, so they asked: Why, why, Why? He replied, It will be explained to you. I had no intention of explaining anything, and I left the room with him, but Datta began speaking. (She was an EnglishwoMan who had left Europe with me; she stayed here until her deatha person who received inspirations.) She said she felt Sri Aurobindo speaking through her and she explained everything: that Krishna had incarnated and that Sri Aurobindo was now going to do an intensive sadhana for the descent of the Supermind; that it meant Krishnas adherence to the Supramental Descent upon earth and that, as Sri Aurobindo would now be too occupied to deal with people, he had put me in charge and I would be doing all the work.
   This was in 1926.
   It was only (how can I put it?) a participation from Krishna. It made no difference for Sri Aurobindo personally: it was a formation from the past that accepted to participate in the present creation, nothing more. It was a descent of the Supreme, from some time back, now consenting to participate in the new Manifestation.
   Shiva, on the other hand, refused. No, he said, I will come only when you have finished your work. I will not come into the world as it is now, but I am ready to help. He was standing in my room that day, so tall (laughing) that his head touched the ceiling! He was bathed in his own special light, a play of red and gold magnificent! Just as he is when he Manifests his supreme consciousnessa formidable being! So I stood up and (I too must have become quite tall, because my head was resting on his shoulder, just slightly below his head) then he told me, No, Im not tying myself to a body, but I will give you ANYTHING you want. The only thing I said (it was all done wordlessly, of course) was: I want to be rid of the physical ego.
   Well, mon petit (laughing), it happened! It was extraordinary! After a while, I went to find Sri Aurobindo and said, See what has happened! I have a funny sensation (Mother laughs) of the cells no longer being clustered together! Theyre going to scatter! He looked at me, smiled and said, Not yet. And the effect vanished.
  --
   See Thoughts and Glimpses: 'What then was the commencement of the whole matter? Existence that multiplied itself for sheer delight of being and plunged into numberless trillions of forms so that it might find itself innumerably.... And what is the end of the whole matter? As if honey could taste itself and all its drops together and all its drops could taste each other and each the whole honeycomb as itself, so should the end be with God and the soul of Man and the universe.'
   Cent. Ed. Vol. XVI, p. 384

0 1961-08-05, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Not Many more. Some small details.3
   Could you hand me a fan? The mosquitoes are a nuisance. Well then?
  --
   I remember once (I must have been ten or twelve years old at the time), there was a luncheon at my parents house for a dozen or so people, all decked out in their Sunday bestthey were family but all the same it was a luncheon and there was a certain protocol; in short, one had to behave properly. I was at one end of the table next to a first-cousin of mine who later became director of the Louvre for a while (he had an artistic intelligence, a rather capable young Man). So there we were, and I remember I was observing something rather interesting in his atmosphere (mind you, although the faculties were already there, I knew nothing about occult things; if someone had spoken to me of auras and all that. I knew nothing). I was observing a kind of sensation I had felt in his atmosphere and then, just as I was putting the fork into my mouth, I took off! What a scolding I got! I was told that if I didnt know how to behave, I shouldnt come to the table! (Mother goes into peals of laughter)
   It was during this period that I used to go out of my body every night and do the work Ive spoken of in Prayers and Meditations (I only mentioned it in passing).8 Every night at the same hour, when the whole house was very quiet, I would go out of my body and have all kinds of experiences. And then my body gradually became a sleepwalker (that is, the consciousness of the form became more and more conscious, while the link remained very solidly established). I got into the habit of getting up but not like an ordinary sleepwalker: I would get up, open my desk, take out a piece of paper and write poems. Yes, poems I, who had nothing of the poet in me! I would jot things down, then very consciously put everything back into the drawer, lock everything up again very carefully and go back to bed. One night, for some reason or other, I forgot and left it open. My mother came in (in France the windows are covered with heavy curtains and in the morning my mother would come in and violently throw open the curtains, waking me up, brrm!, without any warning; but I was used to it and would already be prepared to wake upotherwise it would have been most unpleasant!). Anyway, my mother came in, calling me with unquestionable authority, and then she found the open desk and the piece of paper: Whats that?! She grabbed it. What have you been up to? I dont know what I replied, but she went to the doctor: My daughter has become a sleepwalker! You have to give her a drug.
  --
   I remember once. She scolded me quite often (but it was very good, a very good lesson), she scolded me very, very often for things I hadnt even done! Once she came down on me for something I had done but which she hadnt understood (I had done it with the best of intentions); I had given something to someone without her permission, and she reproached me for it as though it were a crime! At first I stiffened and said, I didnt do it. She started to say I was lying. Then all at once, mutely, I looked at her and felt I felt all this huMan misery and all this huMan falsehood, and soundlessly the tears began to fall. What! Now youre crying! she said. At that, I became a bit fed up. Oh, Im not crying about myself, I told her, but about the worlds misery.
   Youre going mad! She really believed I was going mad.
  --
   Did I tell you what happened to my brother? No? My brother was a terribly serious boy, and frightfully studiousoh, it was awful! But he also had a very strong character, a strong will, and there was something interesting about him. When he was studying to enter the Polytechnique, I studied with himit interested me. We were very intimate (there were only eighteen months between us). He was quite violent, but with an extraordinary strength of character. He almost killed me three times,9 but when my mother told him, Next time, you will kill her, he resolved that it wouldnt happen again and it never did. But what I wanted to tell you is that one day when he was eighteen, just before the Polytechnique exams, as he was crossing the Seine (I think it was the Pont des Arts), suddenly in the middle of the bridge he felt something descend into him with such force that he became immobilized, petrified; then, although he didnt exactly hear a voice, a very clear message came to him: If you want, you can become a godit was translated like that in his consciousness. He told me that it took hold of him entirely, immobilized hima formidable and extremely luminous power: If you want, you can become a god. Then, in the thick of the experience itself, he replied, No, I want to serve huManity. And it was gone. Of course, he took great care to say nothing to my mother, but we were intimate enough for him to tell me about it. I told him, Well (laughing), what an idiot you are!
   Thats the story.
  --
   There was another reason. My father was wonderfully healthy and strongwell-balanced. He wasnt very tall, but stocky. He did all his studies in Austria (at that time French was widely spoken in Austria, but he knew GerMan, he knew English, Italian, Turkish), and there he had learned to ride horses in an extraordinary Manner: he was so strong that he could bring a horse to the ground simply by pressing his knees. He could break anything at all with a blow of his fist, even one of those big silver five-franc pieces they had in those daysone blow and it was broken in two. Curiously enough, he looked Russian. I dont know why. They used to call him Barine. What an equilibriuMan extraordinary physical poise! And not only did this Man know all those languages, but I never saw such a brain for arithmetic. Never. He made a game of calculationsnot the slightest effortcalculations with hundreds of digits! And on top of it, he loved birds. He had a room to himself in our apartment (because my mother could never much tolerate him), he had his separate room, and in it he kept a big cage full of canaries! During the day he would close the windows and let all the canaries loose.
   And could he tell stories! I think he read every novel available, all the stories he could findextraordinary adventure stories, for he loved adventures. When we were kids he used to let us come into his room very early in the morning and, while still sitting in bed, tell us stories from the books he had read but he told them as if they were his own, as if hed had extraordinary adventures with outlaws, with wild animals. Every story he picked up he told as his own. We enjoyed it tremendously!
  --
   Satprem remembers that a few years earlier Mother had told him about the circumstances of this incident: during her work in trance, Mother discovered the location of the 'Mantra of life'the Mantra that has the power to create life (and to withdraw it, as well). Theon, an incarnation of the Asura of Death, was of course quite interested and told Mother to repeat this Mantra to him. Mother refused. Theon became violently angry and the link was cut (the link that connected Mother to her body). When he realized the catastrophe his anger had caused, Theon grew afraid (for he knew who Mother was) and he then, as Mother recounts, made use of all his power to help her re-enter her body. Later, Mother gave this Mantra to Sri Aurobindo... who let it quietly sink into oblivion. For it is not through a Mantra that the secret of life (or death) is to be mastered, but through knowledge of the true Powerin other words, ultimately, knowledge of the reality of Matter and the mechanism of death: it is the whole cellular yoga of Sri Aurobindo and Mother.
   Tamas: inertia, obscurity.

0 1961-08-11, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Oh no, nothing doing! Whats marvelous is that I havent a single idea in my headnothing. Not idea; I never have Many of them! (laughing) No words, mon petit, nothing. I have two of T.s notebooks here I read them, said Ah!, and put them away. Theyve already stayed there for two weeks or I dont know how long. NOTHING, completely blank. But on the lowest plane, some interesting things: suddenly (not from time to time, but all the time, or almost all the time), all the bodys cells suddenly seem to participate in a movement of force, a sort of circular movement containing all the vibrationsphysical vibrationsright from the most material sensation (Mother touches the skin of her hands) to all the feelings of strength, power and comprehension (especially from an active standpoint, the standpoint of actions, movements, influences). Its not at all limited to the body; its like that, like that, like that (Mother makes a gesture stretching to infinity). It has neither beginning nor end. The body itself is starting to feel how Energy behaves.
   Its very interesting.
  --
   Because this kind of creative Power coming from on high, from up, up, up on the highest heights, beyond all forms of Manifestation, mon petit, its like something tremendous held behind a floodgate. And sometimes (Mother smiles) theres a temptation to open the floodgate a little.
   When it pours out that will be something.

0 1961-08-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   It was very interesting. However, the experience could not last because after a while I wasnt alone anymore. Actually, it was dinner time. Not that I couldnt eat in that stateit makes no difference (I can eat very easily through others, for instance: it has happened quite frequently that someone else eats and I am satisfied; theres no need to put anything inside, its very convenient! These are experiments.) But this was it was the almost total annihilation of the center. It didnt last because of the people (four, as always) bringing in dinner, serving the plates, etc.their concentration weakened the experience: it faded. The feeling of Im eating returned a littlenot I! That notion disappeared a long time ago! Not my true Imy true I has been settled up above for a very long time, and it doesnt move from there. But this body is eating; this body which has been put at the disposal of the work is eating (it didnt come in so Many words and sentences, but still!). In short, the experience faded with the sensation of eating and I was unable to know its effect.
   But I would like to know the effect it must have on the bodys functioning. It would be interesting to know if the functioning becomes wholly harmonious or what? We will probably see. But the experience must last; it must last for at least one day, or even two or three then the result would be interesting to see.

0 1961-08-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Nowadays I always spend a part of the night in the realm of expression, a realm where generally I never used to go at all. Its a very lovely place, very huMan in the sense that its not a scene from Nature: there are huge rooms and great, highly intellectual arrangements; yet its very lovely, with such a clear and limpid atmosphereall in clear shades (Mother gives up trying to describe it). Oh, its so luminous and lovely, very well organized, as far as the eye can see; it seems as big as the earth. The rooms are roofless, just imagine! Huge roofless rooms flooded with light, and transparent partitions. And the people inside seem very, very awarenot a lot of people, but extremely studious and attentive, and they are creating arrangements of things. They must be people writing books. They are making compositionsoh, if you knew how lovely it was! Its as if they were taking colors and more or less geometrical forms and placing them in relation to one another. There are huge pigeonholes where everything is in order, and yet without doors, not closed upwide open and still completely protected. An interesting place. I dont usually go there Ive gone maybe two or three times in my life, without paying much attention but lately, because of this book you are writing, Sri Aurobindo is taking me there all the time.
   And there are people with no countryhe takes me to a place where the people have no country, no race, no special costume they seem very universal. And they move around harmoniously, silently, as though they were gliding and with precision, everything is extremely precise. Some of them have even shown me things: there were some lovely colored papers! But these colors are unearthly, somehow transparent. They were arranging it all, demonstrating and explaining to me how it has to be arranged to give the maximum effect.

0 1961-09-16, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Whats terrible is this organizing mind. Its terrible! It has us so convinced that we cant do without it that its very difficult to resist. Indeed, it has convinced all huManity. The whole so-called elite of huManity has been convinced that nothing worthwhile can be achieved without this mental organizing power.
   But Sri Aurobindo wants us to have the same simple joy as a blossoming rose: Be simple, be simple, be simple. And when I hear it or see it, its like a rivulet of golden light, like a fragrant gardenall, all, all is open. Be simple.
  --
   Yes, but you are besieged by so Many people who really dont
   Oh, mon petit, its disgraceful.

0 1961-09-23, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Mother had asked Sri Aurobindo to write something for the Ashram 'Bulletin.' It was later published as The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth.
   The third section, 'The Yoga of Self-Perfection,' which was never completed.

0 1961-09-30, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   It greatly interested me when I read your letter. I was looking at why you have so Many difficulties; twice in your note you wrote that it [writing] is a suffering. You have very often written this word, very often spoken it, and it seems dominant in one aspect of your beingwhile in the other is the glory of a supreme joy, the very stuff of the future realization.
   These are what could be called the two modes, not of your character, but of your soul.1
  --
  1. This letter to Mother is, with a few others, the sole survivor of thirteen years of correspondence. All the rest, all Satprem's correspondence with Mother since 1960, was confiscated by the Ashram after the Mother's departure, for its own reasons. His letters of 1960, already published in Volume I, escaped the destruction because Mother herself had kept them. It makes a big hole in this Agenda, not only for himbecause he had poured out his heart, his questions and doubts and difficulties into these letters but also from an historical point of view, for Many of these conversations with Mother were invisibly oriented by his own condition. In fact, he was intimately linked with the flow of this Agenda, which thus stands mutilated. Need we add that we had to prepare the first two volumes as fugitives, and it required Mother's miraculous help to avert even more serious mutilations than the auto-da-f of Satprem's correspondence.
   ***

0 1961-10-02, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   And I was giving him the example of BEING the thing you Manipulate and sosince you ARE the thinghaving not only the joy of perfect knowledge of Manipulation, but the joy of collaboration as well (not collaboration: rather a participation from the thing being utilized). And this from the smallest thing (objects you put in order, for example) right up to the universal transformation that comes with the new Creation and its all the same movement of abolishing limits, the movement of expansion, of a generosity that abolishes limits. It begins with self-giving, it ends in identification.
   (silence)
  --
   I must add that the experience came after I had been concentrating for three days (concentrating almost constantly) on finding an explanation for this: why has it become this way? It is impossible to find the why because its the reason asking and this goes beyond reason but what is the MECHANISM? Finding the mechanism would already be somethingto have the experience of the mechanism. And then came this CONCRETE superposition of the vibration of Love and the reception of hate. But this is exactly what happens! I said. The Lord is All-Love, All-Truth, All-Bliss, All-Deligh tHe is CONSTANTLY like thatand the world, especially the huMan world, constantly receives him in the other way. And the two things are superposed (Mother covers her left hand with her right).
   Words dont convey anything; it was the experience. I made contact. It was very interesting. It lasted a long time, some two or three days. Since it was also linked to a state of healtha headache that had to be curedit bore its consequences: a crystal clear explanation of illness came. But I must again add something that preceded this.
   This concentration on finding the mechanism sprang from the fact that there were disorders in the body which were vanishing and then reappearingperManent cure seemed impossible. So I told myself, Somewhere, probably in the subconscient, something must be justifying their presence. Then, after concentrating and searching and concentrating some more, suddenly a memory rose up from the subconscient (a memory which is a kind of continued existence under a certain form), the memory of a particular set of movements and actions (not physical movements, but attitudes) that go back Many years and had never attracted my attention. None of it had ever been included in the general clearing-out because, like so Many other things, it all seemed to be due to normal, ongoing circumstances. But thats just where I saw (what to call it?) the hue, the taint of Falsehood. Its very subtle. These are very subtle things. But suddenly, oh! It caught hold of me and created a revolution in the whole being. All those vibrations were cast up and transformedan extraordinary thing. It stirred up much more commotion and revolution than I had ever expected. And ah! A relief. Something was clarified, bringing a brilliant, new comprehension, and then quite interesting physical results. Before this, I was really feeling rather poorly, extremely tired, with the impression of a decline into decrepituderelatively speaking! (It was in a very superficial part of the being, but it was enough to be disagreeable.) And all of itpfft! Gone in a single stroke.
   And that very day, I had this experience with the possessed personit all came together. And then afterwards, a sort of mastery over the problem and the impression of a breakthroughan opening up of the WAY to change, which is this enlargement. First, the movement of generosity (not that shriveling movement, but its exact opposite the movement of expansion), and from there you go on to universality, and from universality to Totality.
  --
   Then there is a doctor, V., who comes here twice a year to give a check-up to all who take part in the physical education program and all the children. He is an extremely honest and sincere Man who believes in the mission of medical science. Each time he comes, I write something in his diary on the day of his departure (his whole diary is full of things Ive written they usually appear in the Bulletin or somewhere). On that very same day I learned that V. was leaving, and it suddenly came to meso clearly! Falsehood in the body that sort of juxtaposition of contraries, the inversion of the Vibration (only it doesnt really invertits a curious phenomenon: the vibration remains what it is but its received inverted)this falsehood in the body is a falsehood in the CONSCIOUSNESS. The falsity of the consciousness naturally has material consequences and thats what illness is! I immediately made an experiment on my body to see if this held, if it actually works that way. And I realized that its true! When you are open and in contact with the Divine, the Vibration gives you strength, energy; and if you are quiet enough, it fills you with great joyand all of this in the cells of the body. You fall back into the ordinary consciousness and straightaway, without anything changing, the SAME thing, the SAME vibration coming from the SAME source turns into a pain, a malaise, a feeling of uncertainty, instability and decrepitude. To be sure of this, I repeated the experiment three or four times, and it was absolutely automatic, like the operation of a chemical formula: same conditions, same results.
   This interested me greatly.
  --
   (Towards the end of the conversation, Satprem once again complains of his difficulties in writing his book. Mother proposes that he try to unblock the way by reading his Manuscript to her.)
   You know, it [Mothers consciousness] is an immobile mirror that projects things from below upwards and receives things from above to transmit them below. This mirror is two-surfaced, and absolutely immobile, not adding any vibration to what is received or transmitted: a perfect neutrality. In this mirror, therefore, you would be able to see your book a little more impersonally, outside yourself and your own creative power.
  --
   Yes, you can find out if its consistent with your state of consciousness and your Manner of working!
   If you give it to me to read when its all finished, as you did with the other one [LOrpailleur], thats how it will be received; it wont pass through the mind at all. It will be reflected in the mirror and from the mirror it will go above. Thats the way I saw the other book, and I was shown Many things about you I hadnt known. So you can do it either way; I mean you can use the mirror before finishing the booknot for what I may think of it, because that has no importance at all, but for the effect it might have on your work. Its up to you.
   Its not quite ready. I still have a lot to correct.
   Correct? Many doors are open, and through these open doors things immeasurable for you can act through what you have written, bringing infinitely more to the reading than you think you have put there. People will be brought into contact with the thing, and each one, according to his receptivity, will catch hold of something. And this is very importantit must not be touched.4
   I dont mind reading it, but it will take up your time

0 1961-10-15, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   (During the two preceding meetings, Satprem read to Mother several fragments of his Manuscript on Sri Aurobindo.)
   You have brought me a very strange experience.
   The first time you read your Manuscript, I called Sri Aurobindo to hear it. He was in the subtle physical and he listened. Yesterday when I sat down to listen, I thought, It would be much better if he entered my brain because that way. In fact, I called him; he entered my brain. It took some time; all through the beginning of the reading we were still two; then he came in more and more, more and more, more and more. My headmy physical headseemed to be swelling up! There was no longer space for anyone but him. It was the light that dark blue light of mental power (but true mental power) in the physical the tantrics use it, you always see it with Xs action, but Ive never seen it this way before! My head was full, you knowfull, full, not an atom of space to spare I could feel it swelling up!
   And this light was absolutely immobilevibrationless, totally compact and coherent. When I see Xs light, for example, there are always vibrations in it; it vibrates, vibrates, things are shifting about; out with this, not a single vibration, not one movement: a MASS that seemed eternally immobile but which was (how to put it?) attentive, listening. It was a volume with the form of the head, as if that had wholly taken over the head. It was full, so full, yet with no feeling of tension or of anything resisting, none at all; there was only a kind of immobile eternity and COMPACT, compact, absolutely coherent, no vibrations. And it increased, increased more and more, it became heavy, but with a very particular heavinessnot a weight, the feeling of a mass.
   And within all this, I no longer existed. I seemed to vanish into a kind of trance, yet I was consciousnot I: the consciousness was conscious of what Sri Aurobindo was conscious of. And he was following the reading. But I couldnt remember anything; at the time, it was impossible to observe. I can only describe it all to you now because the experience remained for at least an hour and a half afterwards; when I left here, I began to objectify it, to see what it wasaside from that, it was merely a STATE I found myself in. But in this state there was an awareness of what he was hearing, and at two or three places in your reading he seemed to be saying (I cant be exact, I can only give the impression), Not necessary. In fact, thats what made me call this passage too philosophical (although when you first asked my opinion I was in a peculiar condition, nothing was active in me). With him, it was very clear, it was almost as if there were a certain number of words about which he said, That, not necessary. That, not necessary. Not Many, not often, but once in a while. Especially at the end (he was still there inside my head while you were talking), when you were saying that its necessary to explain to people; there he very clearly said, No, not necessary.
   But I was incapable of remembering or of registering anything the only head present there was his.
  --
   Afterwards, I tried to understand (I tried to identify enough to be able to understand) and I got the feeling that he finds it will be much more powerful if you dont follow normal logical lines (Im elaborating a bitit wasnt quite like this); rather, if you like, it is better to be prophetic than didacticfling abroad the ideas, ploff! Then let people do what they can with them. I felt he was viewing this not only from the essential standpoint, but from the standpoint of the public, and he wanted to ensure that it doesnt become tiresomeat all costs, dont let it be tiresome. It can be bewildering, but not tiresome. Let them be hurled right into things strange and unknown things, perhaps, but. For instance (this is my own style, you can take it for what its worth), it would be better for people to say, Hes a madMan, than to say, Hes a boring sermonizer. And all this was coming with his sense of humor, the way he has of saying, for example, that folly is closer to the Divine than reason!
   I dont know, I didnt hear the beginning, but certainly everything dealing with physical events [of Sri Aurobindos life] will be expressed in a very reasonable and normal style so that there will be no danger of people saying, Hes a half-cracked visionary! I dont know, the first part of what you read to me was so good! Gusts of golden light kept coming. Perhaps you wanted to explain too much. You dont know what happened?
  --
   And precisely because a large part of the book is reasonable enough, artistic, well-expressed and well-presented, it can afford a few pages (there need not be Many), a few pages that are like a leap into sheer madness!
   I SEE, I am looking at all that, sparkling.

0 1961-10-30, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   (The day before and at the beginning of this conversation, Satprem read aloud some passages of his Manuscript relating to the Veda. Then Mother chose the photograph of Sri Aurobindo for the frontispiece. She speaks slowly, as though from a great distance, in a semi-trance.)
   Thats how I first saw him, at the head of the staircase.
  --
   And the photo adopted by the legend is this full-face one of him as a young Man. It was made in France from an old snapshot (a poor one, and only the bust was kept); that photo of me wearing a veil was done at the same time.
   A strange impression.
  --
   Curious, this impression the feeling of the body and the atmosphere when I was propelled into the future. Its something more more compact, denser than the physical: the New Creation. One always tends to think of it as something more ethereal, but its not! Theon spoke of it, but he didnt express himself very well; his way of speaking didnt have the power of revelation (it was based on experience, but the experience wasnt his, it was Madame Theons. She was a marvelous woMan from the standpoint of experienceunique but with no real intelligence oh, she was intelligent and cultivated, but no more than that, and it didnt amount to much). But they really had come as forerunners, and Theon always insisted, It will have a greater density. Scientifically, this seems like heresy, for density is not used in that sense but this was what he said, A greater density. And the impression I get of this atmosphere is of something more compactmore compact and at the same time without heaviness or thickness. All this is evidently absurd scientificallyyet there is a feeling of compactness.
   It was like that yesterday something so solid was with me (Mother touches her head); how to put it? Its solid, but not in the way we usually speak of solidity! Its not like that.
  --
   (Extracts from the passage in Sri Aurobindo and the Transformation of the World read to Mother by Satprem. This unpublished Manuscript would become the first rough draft of The Adventure of Consciousness)
   Since the time of Adam, it seems we have been choosing to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, and there can be no half-measures or regrets along this way, for if we remain prostrate in a false humility, our noses in the dust, the titans or the djinns among us will know all too well how to snatch the Power left unclaimed; this is in fact what they are doingthey would crush the god within us. It is a question of knowingyes or nowhether we want to escape once again into our various paradises, abandoning the earth to the hands of Darkness, or find and seize hold of the Power to refashion this earth into a diviner imagein the words of the Rishis, make earth and heaven equal and one.
  --
   When he first read the Vedastranslated by Western Sanskritists or Indian pandits they appeared to Sri Aurobindo as an important document of [Indian] history, but seemed of scant value or importance for the history of thought or for a living spiritual experience.2 Fifteen years later, however, Sri Aurobindo would reread the Vedas in the original Sanskrit and find there a constant vein of the richest gold of thought and spiritual experience.3 Meanwhile, Sri Aurobindo had had certain psychological experiences of my own for which I had found no sufficient explanation either in European psychology or in the teachings of Yoga or of Vedanta, and which the Mantras of the Veda illuminated with a clear and exact light.4 And it was through these experiences of his own that Sri Aurobindo came to discover, from within, the true meaning of the Vedas (and especially the most ancient of the four, the Rig-veda, which he studied with special care). What the Vedas brought him was no more than a confirmation of what he had received directly. But didnt the Rishis themselves speak of Secret words, clairvoyant wisdoms, that reveal their inner meaning to the seer (Rig-veda IV, 3.16)?
   It is not surprising, therefore, that exegetes have seen the Vedas primarily as a collection of propitiatory rites centered around sacrificial fires and obscure incantations to Nature divinities (water, fire, dawn, the moon, the sun, etc.), for bringing rain and rich harvests to the tribes, male progeny, blessings upon their journeys or protection against the thieves of the sunas though these shepherds were barbarous enough to fear that one inauspicious day their sun might no longer rise, stolen away once and for all. Only here and there, in a few of the more modern hymns, was there the apparently inadvertent intrusion of a few luminous passages that might have justifiedjust barely the respect which the Upanishads, at the beginning of recorded history, accorded to the Veda. In Indian tradition, the Upanishads had become the real Veda, the Book of Knowledge, while the Veda, product of a still stammering huManity, was a Book of Worksacclaimed by everyone, to be sure, as the venerable Authority, but no longer listened to. With Sri Aurobindo we might ask why the Upanishads, whose depth of wisdom the whole world has acknowledged, could claim to take inspiration from the Veda if the latter contained no more than a tapestry of primitive rites; or how it happened that huManity could pass so abruptly from these so-called stammerings to the Manifold richness of the Upanishadic Age; or how we in the West were able to evolve from the simplicity of Arcadian shepherds to the wisdom of Greek philosophers. We cannot assume that there was nothing between the early savage and Plato or the Upanishads.5
   ***
   Nor was it insignificant that fire, Agni, was the core of the Vedic mysteries: Agni, the inner flame, the soul within us (for who can deny that the soul is fire?), the innate aspiration drawing Man towards the heights; Agni, the ardent will within us that sees, always and forever, and remembers; Agni, the priest of the sacrifice, the divine worker, the envoy between earth and heaven (Rig-veda III, 3.2) he is there in the middle of his house (I.70.2). The Fathers who have divine vision set him within as a child that is to be born (IX.83.3). He is the boy suppressed in the secret cavern (V.2.1). He is as if life and the breath of our existence, he is as if our eternal child (I.66.1). O Son of the body (III.4.2), O Fire, thou art the son of heaven by the body of the earth (III.25.1). Immortal in mortals (IV.2. 1), old and outworn he grows young again and again (II.4.5). When he is born he becomes one who voices the godhead: when as life who grows in the mother he has been fashioned in the mother he becomes a gallop of wind in his movement (III.29.11). O Fire, when thou art well borne by us thou becomest the supreme growth and expansion of our being, all glory and beauty are in thy desirable hue and thy perfect vision. O Vastness, thou art the plenitude that carries us to the end of our way; thou art a multitude of riches spread out on every side (II.1.12). O Fire brilliant ocean of light in which is divine vision (III.22.2), the Flame with his hundred treasures O knower of all things born(I.59).
   But the divine fire is not our exclusive privilegeAgni exists not only in Man: He is the child of the waters, the child of the forests, the child of things stable and the child of things that move. Even in the stone he is there (I.70.2).
   ***
   But we have not yet reached the heart of the Vedic secret. The birth of Agni, the soul (and so Many men are still unborn) is merely the start of the voyage. This inner flame seeks, it is the seeker within us, for it is a spark of the great primordial Fire and will never be satisfied until it has recovered its solar totality, the lost sun of which the Veda incessantly speaks. Yet even when we have risen from plane to plane and the Flame has taken successive births in the triple world of our lower existence (the physical, vital and mental world), it will still remain unsatisfiedit wants to ascend, ascend further. And soon we reach a mental frontier where there seems to be nothing to grasp any longer, nor even to see, and nothing remains but to abolish everything and leap into the ecstasy of a great Light. At this point, we feel almost painfully the imprisoning carapace of matter all around us, preventing that apotheosis of the Flame; then we understand the cry, My kingdom is not of this world, and the insistence of Indias Vedantic sagesand perhaps the sages of all worlds and all religions that we must abandon this body to embrace the Eternal. Will our flame thus forever be truncated here below and our quest always end in disappointment? Shall we always have to choose one or the other, to renounce earth to gain heaven?
   Yet beyond the lower triple world, the Rishis had discovered a certain fourth, touryam svid; they found the vast dwelling place, the solar world, Swar: I have arisen from earth to the mid-world [life], I have arisen from the mid-world to heaven [mind], from the level of the firmament of heaven I have gone to the Sun-world, the Light (Yajur-veda 17.67). And it is said, Mortals, they achieved immortality (Rig-veda I.110.4). What then was their secret? How did they pass from a heaven of mind to the great heaven without leaving the body, without, as it were, going off into ecstasies?
   The secret lies in matter. Because Agni is imprisoned in matter and we ourselves are imprisoned there. It is said that Agni is without head or feet, that it conceals its two extremities: above, it disappears into the great heaven of the supraconscient (which the Rishis also called the great ocean), and below, it sinks into the formless ocean of the inconscient (which they also called the rock). We are truncated. But the Rishis were men of a solid realism, a true realism resting upon the Spirit; and since the summits of mind opened out upon a lacuna of lightecstatic, to be sure, but with no hold over the worldthey set upon the downward way.6 Thus begins the quest for the lost sun, the long pilgrimage of descent into the inconscient and the merciless fight against the dark forces, the thieves of the sun, the panis and vritras, pythons and giants, hidden in the dark lair with the whole cohort of usurpers: the dualizers, the confiners, the tearers, the COVERERS. But the divine worker, Agni, is helped by the gods, and in his quest he is led by the intuitive ray, Sarama, the heavenly hound with the subtle sense of smell who sets Agni on the track of the stolen herds (strange, shining herds). Now and again there comes the sudden glimmer of a fugitive dawn then all grows dim. One must advance step by step, digging, digging, fighting every inch of the way against the wolves whose savage fury increases the nearer one draws to their denAgni is a warrior. Agni grows through his difficulties, his flame burns more brilliantly with each blow from the Adversary; for, as the Rishis said, Night and Day both suckled the divine Child; they even said that Night and Day are the two sisters, Immortal, with a common lover [the sun] common they, though different their forms (I.113.2,3). These alternations of night and brightness accelerate until Day breaks at last and the herds of Dawn7 surge upward awakening someone who was dead (I.113.8). The infinite rock of the inconscient is shattered, the seeker uncovers the Sun dwelling in the darkness (III.39.5), the divine consciousness in the heart of Matter. In the very depths of Matter, that is to say, in the body, on earth, the Rishis found themselves cast up into Light that same Light which others sought on the heights, without their bodies and without the earth, in ecstasy. And this is what the Rishis would call the Great Passage. Without abandoning the earth they found the vast dwelling place, that dwelling place of the gods, Swar, the original Sun-world that Sri Aurobindo calls the Supramental World: HuMan beings [the Rishis emphasize that they are indeed men] slaying the Coverer have crossed beyond both earth and heaven [matter and mind] and made the wide world their dwelling place (I.36.8). They have entered the True, the Right, the Vast, Satyam, Ritam, Brihat, the unbroken light, the fearless light, where there is no longer suffering nor falsehood nor death: it is immortality, amritam.
   ***
   All is reconciled. The Rishi is the son of two mothers: son of Aditi, the luminous cow, Mother of infinite Light, creatrix of the worlds; and son as well of Diti, the black cow, Mother of the tenebrous infinite and divided existence for when Diti at last reaches the end of her apparent Night, she gives us divine birth and the milk of heaven. All is fulfilled, The Rishi sets flowing in one movement huMan strengths and things divine (IX.70.3), he has realized the universal in the individual, become the Infinite in the finite: Then shall thy huManity become as if the workings of these gods; it is as if the visible heaven of light were founded in thee (V.66.2). Far from spurning the earth, he prays: O Godhead, guard for us the Infinite and lavish the finite(IV.2.11).
   The voyage draws to its close. Agni has recovered its solar totality, its two concealed extremities. The inviolable work is fulfilled. For Agni is the place where high meets lowand in truth, there is no longer high nor low, but a single Sun everywhere: O Flame, thou goest to the ocean of Heaven, towards the gods; thou makest to meet together the godheads of the planes, the waters that are in the realm of light above the sun and the waters that abide below (III.22.3). O Fire O universal Godhead, thou art the navel-knot of the earths and their inhabitants; all men born thou controllest and supportest like a pillar (I.59.1). O Flame, thou foundest the mortal in a supreme immortality thou createst divine bliss and huMan joy (I.31.7). For the worlds heart is Joy, Joy dwells in the depths of all things, the well of honey covered by the rock (II.24.4).
   The day before, Mother had listened to the passage of the Manuscript concerning 'The Secret of the Veda.' Several extracts from it are included in the Addendum to this conversation.
   The Secret of the Veda, Cent. Ed., Vol. X, p. 34.

0 1961-11-05, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   It was not by choice that I met all the four Asurasit was a decision of the Supreme. The first one, whom religions call Satan, the Asura of Consciousness, was converted and is still at work. The second [the Asura of Suffering] annulled himself in the Supreme. The third was the Lord of Death (that was Theon). And the fourth, the Master of the world, was the Lord of Falsehood; Richard was an eManation, a vibhuti,1 as they say in India, of this Asura.
   Theon was the vibhuti of the Lord of Death.
  --
   Anyway, it was because of Theon that I first found the Mantra of Life, the Mantra that gives life, and he wanted me to give it to him, he wanted to possess itit was something formidable! It was the Mantra that gives life (it can make anyone at all come back into life, but thats only a small part of its power). And it was shut away in a particular place,2 sealed up, with my name in Sanskrit on it. I didnt know Sanskrit at that time, but he did, and when he led me to that place, I told him what I saw: Theres a sort of design, it must be Sanskrit. (I could recognize the characters as Sanskrit). He told me to reproduce what I was seeing, and I did so. It was my name, Mirra, written in Sanskrit the Mantra was for me and I alone could open it. Open it and tell me whats there, he said. (All this was going on while I was in a cataleptic trance.) Then immediately something in me KNEW, and I answered, No, and did not read it.
   I found it again when I was with Sri Aurobindo and I gave it to Sri Aurobindo.
  --
   He was a pastor at Lille, in France, for perhaps ten years; he was quite a practicing Christian, but he dropped it all as soon as he began to study occultism. He had first specialized in theological philosophy in order to pass the pastoral examinations, studying all the modem philosophy of Europe (he had a rather remarkable metaphysical brain). Then I met him in connection with Theon and the Cosmic Review, and I led him into occult knowledge. Afterwards, there were all sorts of uninteresting stories. He became a lawyer during the early period of our relationship and I learned Law along with him I could even have passed the exam! Then the divorce stories began: he divorced his wife; they had three children and he wanted to keep them, but to do so he had to be legally married, so he asked me to marry hiMand I said yes. I have always been totally indifferent to these things. Anyway, when I met him I knew who he was and I decided to convert him the whole story revolves around that.
   As a matter of fact, the books he wrote (especially the first one, The Living Ether) were based on my knowledge; he put my knowledge into French and beautiful French, I must say! I would tell him my experiences and he would write them down. Later he wrote The Gods (it was incomplete, one-sided). Then he became a lawyer and entered politics (he was a first-class orator and fired his audiences with enthusiasm) and was sent to Pondicherry to help a certain candidate who couldnt Manage his election campaign single-handed. And since Richard was interested in occultism and spirituality, he took this opportunity to seek a Master, a yogi. When he arrived, instead of involving himself in politics, the first thing he did was announce, I am seeking a yogi. Someone said to him, Youre incredibly lucky! The yogi has just arrived. It was Sri Aurobindo, who was told, Theres a FrenchMan asking to see you. Sri Aurobindo wasnt particularly pleased but he found the coincidence rather interesting and received him. This was in 1910.
   When Richard had finished his work, he returned to France with a poor photograph of Sri Aurobindo and a completely superficial impression of him, yet with the feeling that Sri Aurobindo KNEW (he hadnt at all understood the Man that Sri Aurobindo was, he hadnt felt the presence of an Avatar, but he had sensed that he had knowledge). Moreover, I think he always held this opinion, because he used to say that Sri Aurobindo was a unique intellectual giant without Many spiritual realizations! (The same type of stupidity as Romain Rollands.) Well, my relationship with Richard was on an occult plane, you see, and its difficult to touch upon. What happened was far more exciting than any novel imaginable.
   But he was a Man who.
   He isnt dead and hes still terribly dangerous because of whats behind him [the Lord of Falsehood].
  --
   The first issue began with The Wherefore of the Worlds (the English following the French), and in it Richard attributed the origin of the world to Desire. They were in perpetual disagreement on this subject, Richard saying, It is Desire, and Sri Aurobindo, The initial force of the Manifestation is Joy. Then Richard would say, God DESIRED to know Himself, and Sri Aurobindo, No, God had the Joy of knowing Himself. And it went on and on like that!
   When Richard went to Japan, he sent his Manuscripts to Sri Aurobindo, including The Wherefore of the Worlds and The Eternal Wisdom, and Sri Aurobindo continued to translate them into English.
   Frankly, it was a relief for Sri Aurobindo when we left; he even wrote to someone or other (but in a totally superficial way) that Richards departure was a great relief for him.
   When we returned to France, Richard got himself declared unfit for military service on health groundsa yogic heart ailment! But life in France was impossible; and my presence there was dangerous because monstrous things were going on, monstrous; as Sri Aurobindo said, my sitting at home all alone was generating revolutionsarmies were revolting.6 I saw that happening and I didnt want the GerMans to win, which would have been even worse, so I said, I had better go. Then Richard Managed to have himself sent to Japan on business (an admirable feat!), representing certain companies. People didnt want to travel because it was dangerousyou risked being sunk to the bottom of the sea; so they were pleased when we offered and sent us to Japan.
   Once there (this would also make a great novel), Richard continued writing and sending his Manuscripts to Sri Aurobindo. Finally, when the Peace Treaty was signed and it was possible to travel, the English said that if we tried to return to India they would throw us in jail! But it all worked out miraculously, almost becoming a diplomatic incident: the Japanese government decided that if we were put in prison they would protest to the British government! (What a story I could write novels!) In short, Richard returned here with me. And thats when the tragi-comedy began.
   I will tell you about it one dayfantastic!
  --
   This Man clearly led a rather loose life. Right after he left here he spent some time in the Himalayas and became a Sannyasi. Then he went to France and from France to England. In England he married againbigamy! I didnt care, of course (the less he showed up in my life, the better), but he was in a fix! One day I suddenly received some official letters from a lawyer telling me I had initiated divorce proceedings against Richard. it seems I had a lawyer over there! A lawyer I had never asked for, whose name I didnt know, a lawyer I didnt even know existedmy lawyer! The trial was taking place at Nice, and I was accusing Richard of abandoning me without any means of support! (That was nothing new I had paid all the expenses from the first day we met! But anyway.) Naturally, he couldnt plead that he was a bigamist; nor could he have me accuse him of being a bigamist, because it was true! So it seemed he hadnt been paying my expenses; but then I wasnt claiming anything from him in the case, no alimonya little incoherent, all that. After a few months I was finally informed that I was divorced, which was rather convenient for me as far as the bank was concerned. I had a marriage contract stipulating that our properties were separate; since I was the one with the money (he had nothing), I wanted to be free to do with it as I pleased. But the French were impossible in such matters: the woMan was considered the minor party, so even if the money was the wifes and not the husbands, she couldnt withdraw it without his authorization. I dont know if its still like that, but in those days the husb and always had to countersignan annoying situation! I got around this in Japan (the banker there found the rule stupid and told me to ignore it), but the bank here can be a pain in the neck, so it was good to get this cleared up.
   He remarried two or three more times. By now (I believe) he is the father of quite a large family, with grandchildren and perhaps great-grandchildren. He lives in America. Someone once told me he was dead, but I could sense that he wasnt. Then, out of the blue, E. arrived, full of admiration, telling me she had met Richard and how stunningly he could preach to people.
  --
   And you understand, it wasnt the struggle of a Man against a god, but the struggle of a god against a god. And when he was like that, he clearly had a formidable, formidable Power! He forced everybody to obey him but it was Falsehood. And he preached an ascetic spirituality,7 you cant imagine! He was incredibly convincing, but he couldnt see a petticoat without. Boys, girls, nothing got by him!
   Fantastic.8
  --
   According to what Sri Aurobindo saw and what I saw as well, the Rishis had the contact, the experiencehow to put it? A kind of lived knowledge of the thing, coming like a promise, saying, THAT is what will be. But its not perManent. Theres a big difference between their experience and the DESCENTwhat Sri Aurobindo calls the descent of the Supermind: something that comes and establishes itself.
   Even when I had that experience [the first supramental Manifestation of February 29, 1956], when the Lord said, The time has come, well, it was not a complete descent; it was the descent of the Consciousness, the Light, and a part, an aspect of the Power. It was immediately absorbed and swallowed up by the world of Inconscience, and from that moment on it began to work in the atmosphere. But it was not THE thing that comes and gets perManently established; when that happens, we wont need to speak of itit will be obvious!
   Although the experience of 56 was one more forward step, its not. Its not final.
  --
   Indian tradition makes a distinction between a direct 'incarnation' (avatar) and a simple 'eManation' (vibhuti) coming from the consciousness of a godor a devil.
   Not a physical place. See conversation of November 7, p. 380.
  --
   It is remarkable that throughout Indian tradition Asuras are depicted as great ascetics. They try to wrest Power by dint of asceticism and austerities. But in fact, huMan beings are incapable of perceiving and seizing true powertrue power is transparent.
   According to Mother's wishes, the tape was erased up to this point. But years passed and circumstances changed, and when Satprem found the transcription of this conversation among his papers, he deemed it worthwhile to preserve the major portion of it for its historical interest. Mother's difficulties are always the difficulties of the 'Terrestrial Work'; and this particular Asura, who disturbed the earth in such a particular way, could hardly be passed over in silence.

0 1961-11-06, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   But GENERALLY it is by REDESCENDING through the levels of the being with a supramentalized consciousness that one can accomplish the perManent transformation of physical nature.
   There is no proof that the Rishis used another method, although, to effect this transformation (if they ever did), they must necessarily have fought their way through the powers of inconscience and obscurity.

0 1961-11-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   There is also what Theon and Madame Theon used to say. They never spoke of Supermind, but they said the same thing as the Vedas, that the world of Truth must incarnate on earth and create a new world. They even picked up the old phrase from the Gospels, new heavens and a new earth,1 which is the same thing the Vedas speak of. Madame Theon had this experience and she gave me the indication (she didnt actually teach me) of how it was to be done. She would go out of her body and become conscious in the vital world (there were Many intermediary states, too, if one cared to explore them). After the vital came the mental: you consciously went out of the vital body, you left it behind (you could see it) and you entered the mental world. Then you left the mental body and entered into. They used different words, another classification (I dont remember it), but even so, the experience was identical. And like that, she successively left twelve different bodies, one after another. She was extremely developed, you seeindividualized, organized. She could leave one body and enter the consciousness of the next plane, fully experience the surroundings and all that was there, describe it and so on, twelve times.
   I learned to do the same thing, and with great dexterity; I could halt on any plane, do what I had to do there, move around freely, see, observe, and then speak about what I had seen. And my last stage, which Theon called pathtisme,2 a very barbaric but very expressive word, bordered on the Formlesshe sometimes used the Jewish terminology, calling the Supreme The Formless. (From this last stage one passed to the Formless there was no further body to leave behind, one was beyond all possible forms, even all thoughtforms.) In this domain [the last stage before the Formless] one experienced total unityunity in something that was the essence of Love; Love was a Manifestation more dense, he would always say (there were all sorts of different densities); and Love was a denser expression of That, the sense of perfect Unityperfect unity, identitywith no longer any forms corresponding to those of the lower worlds. It was a Light! An almost immaculate white light, yet with something of a golden-rose in it (words are crude). This Light and this Experience were truly wonderful, inexpressible in words.
   Well, one time I was there (Theon used to warn against going beyond this domain, because he said you wouldnt come back), but there I was, wanting to pass over to the other side, whenin a quite unexpected and astounding way I found myself in the presence of the principle, a principle of the huMan form. It didnt resemble Man as we are used to seeing him, but it was an upright form, standing just on the border between the world of forms and the Formless, like a kind of standard.3 At that time nobody had ever spoken to me about it and Madame Theon had never seen itno one had ever seen or said anything. But I felt I was on the verge of discovering a secret.
   Afterwards, when I met Sri Aurobindo and talked to him about it, he told me, It is surely the prototype of the supramental form. I saw it several times again, later on, and this proved to be true.
  --
   When I returned from Japan and we began to work together, Sri Aurobindo had already brought the supramental light into the mental world and was trying to transform the Mind. Its strange, he said to me, its an endless work! Nothing seems to get doneeverything is done and then constantly has to be done all over again. Then I gave him my personal impression, which went back to the old days with Theon: It will be like that until we touch bottom. So instead of continuing to work in the Mind, both of us (I was the one who went through the experience how to put it? practically, objectively; he experienced it only in his consciousness, not in the body but my body has always participated), both of us descended almost immediately (it was done in a day or two) from the Mind into the Vital, and so on quite rapidly, leaving the Mind as it was, fully in the light but not perManently transformed.
   Then a strange thing happened. When we were in the Vital, my body suddenly became young again, as it had been when I was eighteen years old! There was a young Man named Pearson, a disciple of Tagore, who had lived with me in Japan for four years; he returned to India, and when he came to see me in Pondicherry, he was stupefied.4 What has happened to you! he exclaimed. He hardly recognized me. During that same period (it didnt last very long, only a few months), I received some old photographs from France and Sri Aurobindo saw one of me at the age of eighteen. There! he said, Thats how you are now! I wore my hair differently, but otherwise I was eighteen all over again.
   This lasted for a few months. Then we descended into the Physical and all the trouble began.5 But we didnt stay in the Physical, we descended into the Subconscient and from the Subconscient to the Inconscient. That was how we worked. And it was only when I descended into the Inconscient that I found the Divine Presence there, in the midst of Darkness.
   It wasnt the first time; when I was working with Theon at Tlemcen (the second time I was there), I descended into the total, unindividualized that is, general Inconscient (it was the time he wanted me to find the Mantra of Life). And there I suddenly found myself in front of something like a vault or a grotto (of course, it was only something like that), and when it opened, I saw a Being of iridescent light reclining with his head on his hand, fast asleep. All the light around him was iridescent. When I told Theon what I was seeing, he said it was the imManent God in the depths of the Inconscient, who through his radiations was slowly waking the Inconscient to Consciousness.
   But then a rather remarkable phenomenon occurred: when I looked at him, he woke up and opened his eyes, expressing the beginning of conscious, wakeful action.
   I have experienced the descent into the Inconscient Many times (you remember, once you were there the day it happenedit had to do with divine Love6); this experience of descending to the very bottom of the Inconscient and finding there the Divine Consciousness, the Divine Presence, under one form or another. It has happened quite frequently.
   But I cant say that my process is to descend there first, as you write. Rather, this can be the process only when you are ALREADY conscious and identified; then YOU DRAW DOWN the Force (as Sri Aurobindo says, one makes it descend) in order to transform. Then, with this action of transformation, one pushes [the Force into the depths, like a drill]. The Rishis description of what happens next is absolutely true: a formidable battle at each step. And it would seem impossible to wage that battle without having first experienced the junction above.
  --
   It is by rising to the summit of consciousness through a progressive ascent (thats what I meant just now by leaving the body, but without going into details), that one unites with the Supermind. But as soon as the union is achieved, one knows and one sees that the Supermind exists in the heart of the Inconscient as well. When one is in that state, there is neither high nor low. But GENERALLY, (I emphasized this to make it clear that I am not making an absolute assertion) it is by REDESCENDING through the levels of the being with a supramentalized consciousness that one can accomplish the perManent transformation of physical nature. (This can be experienced in all sorts of ways, but what WE want and what Sri Aurobindo spoke of is a change that will never be revoked, that will persist, that will be as durable as the present terrestrial conditions. That is why I put perManent.) There is no proof that the Rishis used another method, although, to effect this transformation (if they ever did) they must necessarily have fought their way through the powers of inconscience and obscurity.
   Yes, the Rishis give an absolutely living description of what you experience and experience continuallyas soon as you descend into the Subconscient: all these battles with the beings who conceal the Light and so on. I experienced these things continually at Tlemcen and again with Sri Aurobindo when we were doing the Workits raging quite merrily even now!
  --
   When one has these experiences, like the ones Ive had in the subtle physical, for example, the body is certainly in trance but the part having the experience doesnt AT ALL feel deprived or lacking in anything. The experience comes with a fullness of life, consciousness, independence, individuality. Its not like going out in trance to accomplish a work and feeling linked to the body its not that: the body no longer exists nor has any reason to! Its simply not there. And its a nuisance to go back into itwhat is this useless burden! you wonder. As a result, if this experience becomes perManent, you live in a world thats just as concrete, just as real and just as TANGIBLE as our physical world, with the same qualities of duration, perManence and stability.
   Its very difficult to express, because as soon as we notice it.

0 1961-11-12, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Yet in Vedic times they spoke of The Word the creative Word [Vak]. This is the idea behind the Mantra. Too bad a book cant be written using Mantras!
   ???
  --
   So I wonder, after all, if there arent Many revelations in your book which MUST NOT be explained; then its left up to each ones capacity to muse over it, to fill in the gaps with his imagination.
   In the end, it would be a very interesting attempt: a stimulant for peoples intuitive capacities, instead of taking them all for donkeys and spoon-feeding them, going yum-yum-yum-yum-yum so that theyll digest it!

0 1961-11-16b, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   (Letter from Mother to Satprem on the occasion of his Manuscript being sent to Paris:)
   11-16-61

0 1961-12-16, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Heres my original Manuscriptalthough its not very original.
   Its a message for the first of January.
  --
   So to calm the body I took a pencil and wrote: My being thirsts. (to tell the truth, I wanted to write this body thirsts) for perfection, not this huMan perfection(I should tell you that all the things I am translating are simultaneously accompanied by a set of external circumstances OBVIOUSLY arranged in detail to illustrate the translation: a whole set of quite unpleasant circumstances, besides, serving simultaneously as backdrop and illustration. Thats what brought on the anguish). This body thirsts for perfection, not this huMan perfection which is the perfection of the ego (it was so clear to me that everything huMan beings conceive of as perfection is simply the ego wanting to magnify itself for its own greater glory) not this huMan perfection which is the perfection of the ego and bars the way to the divine Perfection, but that one perfection (these repeated perfections are deliberate: its like a litany) but that one perfection which has the POWER to Manifest upon earth the eternal Truth.
   It was this need, this need. All the bodys cells began to vibrate with a more and more intense vibrationit was much more than a need; it was a necessity, a necessity to vibrate in unison with Truth. The cells seemed to be sensing the vibration of Truth, and so the entire body was in a state of total tensionnot tension in the ordinary sense, but it was like trying to find a note that rings true. Thats what it was: to make the cells vibration ring true to the Vibration of Truth.
  --
   The experience was extremely intense, so I didnt do anything with my note, I put it aside. Then recently someone mentioned the first of January. What the devil am I going to read to them? I wondered (I usually read them a message). And I thought of this text: Ill change this scribble a bit, huManize it and bring it down a few rungs (smiling); then it will do. So I wrote: WE thirst for perfection, etc. In the experience it was only the BODY, you understand (the other part of the being is quite all right)the body is in this state. All the rest is very happyvery happy, in perpetual joy and eurythmy (gesture of great waves), feeling divine Love (not Love as such I dont know how to say it): this Love without object, this Love which is neither originated nor receivedwithout object, without cause or origin. Its the feeling of floating in something.
   Thats all very fine. But the body remains miserable.
  --
   We thirst for perfection, not this huMan perfection which is the perfection of the ego and bars the way to the divine Perfection, but that ONE perfection which has the power to Manifest upon Earth the eternal Truth.1
   The English version is stronger than the French. Thats because it first came in English and then I made a patch-up job in French!

0 1961-12-20, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Dear Sir I must begin by telling you that although this text is an excellent essay, it is not, in its present form, a book for the Spiritual Masters series. Let us enumerate the reasons for this. First of all, the general impression is of an ABSTRACT text. I can straight-away imagine your reaction to this and I dread misunderstandings! But putting myself in the readers place, since, once again, it does involve a collection intended for a wide public that we are beginning to know well, I can assure you that this public will not be able to follow page after page of reflections upon what one is bound to call a philosophical and spiritual system. Obviously this impression is caused primarily by the fact that you have begun with twenty-one pages where the reader is assumed to already know of Sri Aurobindos historical existence and the content of the Vedas and the Upanishads, plus I dont know how Many other notions of rite, truth, divinity, wisdom, etc., etc. In my view, and the solution is going to appear cruel to you, for you certainly value these twenty-one pages [on the Secret of the Veda], they should purely and simply be deleted, for everything you say there, which is very rich in meaning, can only become clear when one has read what follows. There are Many books in which readers can be asked to make the effort entailed in not understanding the beginning until they have read the end: but not books of popular culture. One could envisage an introduction of three or four pages to situate the spiritual climate and cultural world in which Sri Aurobindos thought has taken place, provided, however, that it is sufficiently descriptive, and not a pre-synthesis of everything to be expounded upon in what follows. In a general way you are going to smile, finding me quite Cartesian! But the readership we address is more or less permeated by a widespread Cartesianism, and you can help them, if you like, to reverse their methodology, but on the condition that you make yourself understood right from the start. Generally, you dont make enough use of analysis and, even before analysis, of a description of the realities being analyzed. That is why the sections of pure philosophical analysis seem much too long to us, and, even apart from the abstract character of the chapter on evolution (which should certainly be shorter), one feels at a positive standstill! After having waited patiently, and sometimes impatiently, for some light to be thrown on Sri Aurobindos own experience, one reads with genuine amazement that one can draw on energies from above instead of drawing on them from the material nature around oneself, or from an animal sleep, or that one can modify his sleep and render it conscious master illnesses before they enter the body. All of that in less than a page; and you conclude that the spirit that was the slave of matter becomes again the master of evolution. But how Sri Aurobindo was led to think this, the experiences that permitted him to verify it, those that permit other men to consider the method transmittable, the difficulties, the obstacles, the realizationsdoesnt this constitute the essence of what must be said to make the reader understand? Once again, it is the question of a pedagogy intimately tied in with the spirit of the collection. Let me add as well that I always find it deplorable when a thought is not expressed purely for its own sake, but is accompanied by an aggressive irony towards concepts which the author does not share. This is pointless and harms the ideas being presented, all the more so because they are expressed in contrast with caricatured notions: the allusions you make to such concepts as you think yourself capable of evoking the soul, creation, virtue, sin, salvationwould only hold some interest if the reader could find those very concepts within himself. But, as they are caricatured by your pen, the reader is given the impression of an all too easily obtained contrast between certain ideas admired and others despised. Whereas it would be far more to the point if they corresponded to something real in the religious consciousness of the West. I have too much esteem for you and the spiritual world in which you live to avoid saying this through fear of upsetting you.
   Amen.
  --
   They cant take iteven those who are very intelligent (and this Man is very intelligent): they immediately close up.
   I feel that this Man himself is the obstacle and that if the book came out, it would be understoodnot everywhere, but it would be understood. Not by those shut up in Catholicism (theres nothing to do for them), but Im sure its accessible to all who couldnt care less about that, who dont have Christian prejudices.
   But I know that if we publish it here it will have a wide public in Europe and America swallowing it down like holy bread, and it will do a magnificent work. IF it comes from here. Not because of what they think of us [the Ashram], but because of what will be in it.
  --
   From the practical standpoint, I would much prefer the book to be printed here and for us to make the necessary effort for it to go out and touch as Many people as possible. The publisher may be a handy and less troublesome channel, but hes not at all the best onefar from it. THAT I know, because I am constantly seeing your book with Sri Aurobindos perception, and I am absolutely positive that he likes it very much; he has put a lot into it and he sees that it can be an enormous help but not in the short run. There is always the sense of it needing a hundred years to have its full effect. With your publisher, on the other hand, the effects are far more violent, more external and noisy, but they fade far more quickly.
   And I feel its rather essential to change all the emphasis on pictures. I let them go because there was nothing else to do, but I must say I wasnt too happy about it.1 it was not a deep understanding, a soul-understanding, that chose the pictures, but a very developed intellect.
  --
   Here, just to give you an example: when I first began to work (not with Theon personally but with an acquaintance of his in France, a boy4 who was a friend of my brother), well, I had a series of visions (I knew nothing about India, mind you, nothing, just as most Europeans know nothing about it: a country full of people with certain customs and religions, a confused and hazy history, where a lot of extraordinary things are said to have happened. I knew nothing.) Well, in several of these visions I saw Sri Aurobindo just as he looked physically, but glorified; that is, the same Man I would see on my first visit, almost thin, with that golden-bronze hue and rather sharp profile, an unruly beard and long hair, dressed in a dhoti with one end of it thrown over his shoulder, arms and chest bare, and bare feet. At the time I thought it was vision attire! I mean I really knew nothing about India; I had never seen Indians dressed in the Indian way.
   Well, I saw him. I experienced what were at once symbolic visions and spiritual FACTS: absolutely decisive spiritual experiences and facts of meeting and having a united perception of the Work to be accomplished. And in these visions I did something I had never done physically: I prostrated before him in the Hindu Manner. All this without any comprehension in the little brain (I mean I really didnt know what I was doing or how I was doing itnothing at all). I did it, and at the same time the outer being was asking, What is all this?!
   I wrote the vision down (or perhaps that was later on) but I never spoke of it to anyone (one doesnt talk about such things, naturally). But my impression was that it was premonitory, that one day something like it would happen. And it remained in the background of the consciousness, not active, but constantly present.
   As for Theon, he was European and wore a long purple robe that wasnt at all like the one in my vision. (Im not sure, but I think he was either Polish or Russian, but more probably Russian, of Jewish descent, and that he was forced to leave his country; he never said anything about this to anyone, its only an impression.) When I saw him I recognized him as a being of great power. And he bore a certain likeness to Sri Aurobindo: Theon was about the same size (not a tall Man, of medium height) and thin, slim, with quite a similar profile. But when I met Theon I saw (or rather I felt) that he was not the Man I saw in my vision because he didnt have that vibration. Yet it was he who first taught me things, and I went and worked at Tlemcen for two years in a row. But this other thing was always there in the background of the consciousness.
   Then when Richard came here he met Sri Aurobindo (he was haunted by the idea of meeting the Master, the Guru, the Great Teacher). Sri Aurobindo was in hiding, seeing no one, but when Richard insisted, he met him, and Richard returned with a photograph. It was one of those early photos, with nothing in it. It was empty, the remnants of the political Man, not at all resembling what I had seen I didnt recognize him. Its strange, I said to myself, thats not it (for I saw only his external appearance, there was no inner contact). But still, I was curious to meet him. At any rate, I cant say that when I saw this photograph I felt, Hes the one! Not at all. He impressed me as being a very interesting Man, but no more.
   I came here. But something in me wanted to meet Sri Aurobindo all alone the first time. Richard went to him in the morning and I had an appointment for the afternoon. He was living in the house thats now part of the second dormitory, the old Guest House.5 I climbed up the stairway and he was standing there, waiting for me at the top of the stairs. EXACTLY my vision! Dressed the same way, in the same position, in profile, his head held high. He turned his head towards me and I saw in his eyes that it was He. The two things clicked (gesture of instantaneous shock), the inner experience immediately became one with the outer experience and there was a fusion the decisive shock.
  --
   But between these two meetings he participated in a whole series of experiences, experiences of gradually growing awareness. This is partly noted in Prayers and Meditations (I have cut out all the personal segments). But there was one experience I didnt speak of there (that is, I didnt describe it, I put only the conclusion)the experience where I say Since the Man refused I was offering participation in the universal work and the new creation and the Man didnt want it, he refused, and so I now offer it to God.6
   I dont know, Im putting it poorly, but this experience was concrete to the point of being physical. It happened in a Japanese country-house where we were living, near a lake. There was a whole series of circumstances, events, all kinds of thingsa long, long story, like a novel. But one day I was alone in meditation (I have never had very profound meditations, only concentrations of consciousness Mother makes an abrupt gesture showing a sudden ingathering of the entire being); and I was seeing. You know that I had taken on the conversion of the Lord of Falsehood: I tried to do it through an eManation incarnated in a physical being [Richard]7, and the greatest effort was made during those four years in Japan. The four years were coming to an end with an absolute inner certainty that there was nothing to be done that it was impossible, impossible to do it this way. There was nothing to be done. And I was intensely concentrated, asking the Lord, Well, I made You a vow to do this, I had said, Even if its necessary to descend into hell, I will descend into hell to do it. Now tell me, what must I do?The Power was plainly there: suddenly everything in me became still; the whole external being was completely immobilized and I had a vision of the Supreme more beautiful than that of the Gita. A vision of the Supreme.8 And this vision literally gathered me into its arms; it turned towards the West, towards India, and offered meand there at the other end I saw Sri Aurobindo. It was I felt it physically. I saw, sawmy eyes were closed but I saw (twice I have had this vision of the Supremeonce here, much later but this was the first time) ineffable. It was as if this Immensity had reduced itself to a rather gigantic Being who lifted me up like a wisp of straw and offered me. Not a word, nothing else, only that.
   Then everything vanished.
  --
   I still dont know. The day I do it will probably be done. Because it will come in the same Manner, like a massive fact: it will be LIKE THAT. And only much later will the understanding say, Ah! So thats what it is!
   First it comes, afterwards we know it.
  --
   Think it over. I would like us to publish your book exactly as it is, with its full force, with all that Sri Aurobindo has put into it; and we will give it a bit of help to go and do its work. And you should come to an understanding with these people. But first you should write just a simple book, quite simple and quite positive: the constructive aspectvery constructive, very simple. No attempt to convince, no big problemsno, no, no! Sri Aurobindo has come to tell the world that Man is not the final creation, that there is another creation; and he said this not because he knew it but because he felt it. And he began to do it. And thats all.
   It neednt be long.
  --
   Yes if its not too much trouble! (Mother laughs) Spontaneously, simplyif you want to, if you feel like it. You know what I mean: a book that is TRUE, in the sense that you wont say anything not perfectly true, but accessible not only accessible to the superior Man, but to the honest Man who finds that life really isnt good or pleasant and is wondering if there isnt some way to make it better.
   Without without great speculations.
   There are Many things like that in Sri Aurobindos book, On Himself, Many things.
   Just see if you feel like it, mon petit.
  --
   Write it in a relaxed way, spontaneously. And we will give them some pretty little photos magazine photos! It would be a very fine way to reply: Ah, thats what you want! Well, by all means! But I retain the right to publish my original Manuscript I wont be competing with you since we will publish it here in India. So please return my Manuscript and we will prepare something very nice for you.
   And mind you, it can be very beautiful in its simplicity, a beauty sorrowful people can feel, people who are tired of life, people whose heads are sick of all these arguments and dogmaspeople who are tired of thinking too Many great thoughts.
   And I am the first among them! Nothing tires me more than philosophers.
  --
   TheManlys.
   Rue Franois Martin.
   Mother is probably alluding to this passage in Prayers and Meditations (September 3, 1919): 'Since the Man refused the meal I had prepared with so much love and care, I invoke the God to take it.'
   See conversation of November 5, 1961.

0 1961-12-23, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   (Concerning the Sri Aurobindo Manuscript, Mother advises against replying to the publisher too hastily, because she sees a possibility that could change the situation.)
   There is something deeper. And within this deeper thing there was: quiet, quiet, quiet, we will wait; and the impression (but vague, distant and uncertain) of some attempt being made to introduce a very good possibility into the atmosphere. I never see on the purely physical plane, you know (its always on the subtle physical, the plane of possibilities thats more real to me; the purely physical generally eludes me, but I see the subtle physical clearly), and I was seeing I dont know, it was like something higher, from above, trying to make someone enter the field of possibilities, a brain that would suddenly be touched by the book and reverse the situation. I dont know who, I dont know what, I dont know how. Ah, you know that yellow rose I just gave you? Its fringed in pink. Well, what came was like a slender pink fringe winding through the atmosphere of this situation.
  --
   Because there comes a time when one perceives the entire universe in such a total and comprehensive way that, in truth, it is impossible to remove anything from it without disturbing everything. And going a couple of steps further, one knows for certain that things which shock us as contradictions of the Divine are simply things out of place. Each thing must be exactly in its place, and whats more, be supple enough, plastic enough, to admit into a harmonious, progressive organization all the new elements constantly being added to the Manifest universe. The universe is in a perpetual movement of internal reorganization, and at the same time its growing: its becoming more and more complex, more and more complete, more and more integralindefinitely. And as the new elements Manifest, the whole reorganization must be built on a new basis, and thus there isnt a second when ALL is not in perpetual movement. And when the movement is in accord with the divine order, its harmonious, so perfectly harmonious that its almost imperceptible. Now, if you descend from this consciousness towards a more external consciousness, you begin naturally to have a very precise feeling of what helps you attain the true consciousness and what bars the way or pulls you backwards or even fights against your progress. And so the perspective changes and you are obliged to say: this is divine or a help towards the Divine; and that goes against the Divine, its the Divines enemy. But this is a pragmatic standpoint, geared to action, to movement in material lifebecause you havent yet attained the consciousness surpassing all that; because you havent reached that inner perfection where you no longer have to fight, since you have gone beyond the field or the time or the utility of struggle. But before reaching that state in your consciousness and action, there is necessarily struggle; and if there is struggle, there is choice; and to choose, you need discrimination.
   (Mother remains silent)
  --
   You know, I can say one thing about this. Theres a type of woMan I have met more or less periodically throughout my life. These beings are under the influence, or are incarnations of, or in any case are responsive to forces which Theon called passivenot exactly feminine forces, but on the Prakriti2 side of the universe: the dark Prakriti side (there is an active dark side, the asuric forces, and a passive dark side). And these are terrible beings, terrible! They have wreaked havoc in life. They represent one of the creations biggest difficulties. And they are attracted to me! Mon petit, they adore me, they detest me, they would like to destroy meand individually they CANNOT do without me! They come to me like like fireflies to light. And they hate me! They would like to crush me. Thats how it is.
   I have met five women like that, the last two here (they were the most terrible). Its a phenomenon of hate and rage mixed with loves greatest power of attractionno sweetness, of course, no tenderness, nothing like that but NEED, loves greatest power of attraction, mixed with hate. And they cling, you know, and then what fun!
   I had a session like that some days agoits a work Im pursuing. (Likewise, I have constantly been with the adverse force I once told you about,3 who keeps incarnating especially to harass meso theres also this phenomenon, amiably passing from one being to another!) Anyway, not long ago I had given an appointment to this woMan and had decided not to say anythingbecause there was nothing to be done (the most beautiful things go rotten, theres nothing to do). So I remained silent, indrawn, fully in contact with the Supreme Presence, with the external personality annulled (this experience, in fact, lasting almost one hour, is what gave me the key to everything that has been happening lately). There was only the Supreme, nothing else the Supreme THERE, in that very body, mon petit, in that whole agglomeration and in that apparently absolutely anti-divine influenceHIS Presence was there!
   It was a truly stupendous experience, petty though the object is (she is insignificant, without any great substance or powera very minor incarnation; she does have certain not quite huMan capacities, but they are so veiled by a tiny huMan personality that scarcely anyone but I can see them).
   And in the experience there was no difference between my physical and my inner being (actually, its that way more and more for me); even physically, externally, there was a kind of love full of adoration, and so spontaneousnot even any sense of wonder! And there was such a formidable Power in it, formidable from the standpoint of the entire earth. It lasted one hour. After an hour, the experience slowly began to fade (it had to fade for purely practical reasons). But it left me so confident of a radical changenot a total change, for it wasnt perManent but so radical that even outwardly, way down below in me, something was saying, Ah, how will the meditations with X be now? I caught Myself not thinking, not myself: someone thought like that, somewhere way down below. This pulled me out of the experience and I wondered, Thats strange, whos thinking like that? It was one of the personalities4 (in terms of work, its the one that gives each action its proper place), someone way down below, spontaneously feeling: But thats going to change the meditations! What will they be like now? When I returned and began to look at things with the usual discernment, I told myself that perhaps there actually will be a change.
   But truly, EVERYTHING was changed at that moment: something was achieved. It was the perception of Power the Power that comes from Love (what Love is to the Supreme Consciousness, which has nothing to do with what we usually mean by the word love). And it was it was simple! None of those complications resulting from thought, intellect, understandingall that was gone, all gone. A formidable Power! And it made me understand one thing, that the state I had been put in (by the Lord of Yoga, in fact) was for obtaining the particular power that comes through an identity with all material things, a power possessed by certain personsnot always yogis, certain mediums, for instance. I saw it with Madame Theon: she would will a thing to come to her instead of going to the thing herself; instead of going to get her sandals when she wanted them, she made the sandals come to her. She did this through a capacity to radiate her mattershe exercised a will over her matterher central will acted upon matter anywhere, since she WAS THERE. With her, then, I saw this power in a methodical, organized way, not as something accidental or spasmodic (as it is with mediums), but as an organization of Matter. And so I began to understand: With this comes the power to put each thing in its place! provided one is universal enough.
  --
   And when it becomes perManent, people will have to watch out when theyre with me! (Mother laughs)
   This Power is it Love?
  --
   It translates itself into Love. And of course I am not at all speaking of the huMan, physical quagmire; I am speaking of the most wonderfully beautiful and pure Love imaginable. This Power is the origin of that Love, and it is in the Supreme.
   (Mother sits at the organ)

0 1962-01-09, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   So thats why I am resting. Am I better or not? Things are always the same. Were I to start doing what I was doing before, which I KNEW all along was absolutely unreasonable. Its not that I didnt know it; I did know and I wasnt happy about it, because I knew I was doing something I shouldnt. I have no intention of starting again, but if I had said, I am withdrawing for good, it would have been. If you knew how ManY things have gone slack [in the Ashram]! And how Many people I am telling off: Well, you wouldnt have done that a week ago! Oh, thats an experience in itselfto see what peoples so-called faithfulness depends on.
   You have to constantly keep a firm grip on themconstantly, constantly.
  --
   Later, when he withdrew and put me in front, there was naturally a bit more activity, as well as the semblance of responsibility but it was only a semblance. What security! A sense of total, total security for thirty years. Not once. There was just a single scratch, so to speak, when he had that accident and broke his leg. There was a formation at work (an adverse force) and he wasnt taking sufficient precautions for himself because it was directed against both of us, and more especially against me (it had tried once or twice to fracture my skull, things like that). Well, he was so intent on keeping it from seriously touching my body that it Managed to sneak in and break his leg. That was a shock. But he straightened everything out again almost immediatelyit all fell back into place and went on like that till the end.
   And the feeling was so strong that even during his illness (which lasted for months, you know), I had a sense of perfect security; so much so that the idea of his life being really affected in the least by this illness couldnt even occur to me! I didnt want to believe it when the doctor said, Its over. I didnt want to believe it. And as long as I stayed in the room with me in the room he couldnt leave his body. And so there was a terrible tension in himon the one hand the inner will to depart, and then this thing holding him there in his body: the fact that I knew he was alive and could only be alive. He had to signal me to go to my room, supposedly to rest (I didnt rest); and no sooner had I left his room than he was gone.
  --
   That in itself was a miracle. If I hadnt done it I would have followed hiMand there would have been no one to do the Work. I would have followed him automatically, without even thinking about it. But when he entered into me, he said, You will do the work; one of us had to go, and I am going, but you will do the work.
   And that door was opened again only ten years later, in 1960. Even then, it was done with great careit was one of last years major difficulties.
  --
   Yes, at one point I wondered (I dont remember when, a few days ago): How could people have lived here, so near (but the same thing is still happening), how could huMan beings on earth who had an aspiration, who had their consciousness turned towards those things, have lived that possibility, have HAD that possibility at their fingertips, without being able to take advantage of it! How could something so wonderful and unique have taken place here, and yet people had such a small and childish and superficial image of it!
   Truly, I wondered, Has the time really come? Is it possible? Or will it once again be postponed?
  --
   It was a unique kind of grace, an absolutely miraculous power, which did what I just mentioned, which locked up the part of my consciousness that was CONSCIOUSLY living that miracle, locked it all up tight, padlocked it: Youre locked in, dont stir; no Manifestation for youyoure going out of Time and Manifestation until everything else is ready to follow.
   That, more than anything else, may be why I needed a bit of solitude: to reactivate that part of the psychic being which was the individual intermediary between true Consciousness and the body-consciousness: the part which had lived THAT, was aware of THAT, knew THATknew that wondrous miracle.
  --
   67There is no sin in Man, but a great deal of disease, ignorance and misapplication.
   68The sense of sin was necessary in order that Man might become disgusted with his own imperfections. It was Gods corrective for egoism. But Mans egoism meets Gods device by being very dully alive to its own sins and very keenly alive to the sins of others.
   69Sin and virtue are a game of resistance we play with God in His efforts to draw us towards perfection. The sense of virtue helps us to cherish our sins in secret.
  --
   Thats not something ordinary huMan thought can easily grasp.
   Helps us to cherish in secret the sense of sin.
  --
   This was counterbalanced by a terrible censor which never left me.11 It took Sri Aurobindo to clear it from my path. But I didnt have the sense of sin, of Good and Evil, sin and virtuedefinitely not! My consciousness was centered around right action and wrong action12this should have been done, that shouldnt havewith no question of Good or Evil, from the standpoint of work, of action alone. My consciousness has always been centered on action. It was a vision, a perception of the line to be followedor the Many lines to be followed for the action to be accomplished. And any deviation from what to me was the luminous line, the straight line (not geometrically straight: the luminous line, the line expressing the divine Will), the slightest deviation from that, and oh, it was the only thing that tormented me.
   And the torment didnt come from me, it came from that character hooked on to my consciousness and constantly whipping me, hounding me, ill-treating mewhat people call their conscience, which has nothing whatsoever to do with consciousness!13 Its an adverse being, and whatever it can change, it changes for the worse; whatever is susceptible to being changed into something antidivine, it changes. And it is constantly repeating the same thing: This is wrong, that is wrong, this is wrong.
  --
   This criterion had nothing mental about it, and it gave the strange inner feeling that so Many things we consider good or bad are not really so. It was very clear that everything depended upon the CAPACITY of things and upon their ABILITY to express the supramental world or be in relationship with it. It was so completely different, at times even so opposite to our ordinary way of looking at things!
   Yes.
  --
   The soul or portion of the Supreme in Man which evolves from life to life until it becomes a fully conscious being.
   Sri Aurobindo on Himself.

0 1962-01-12 - supramental ship, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Ive said something on the subject somewhere. Do you remember that gentleMan from Madras who had asked a question?1 There was an indication there.
   Because I followed the thread, I put myself back in contact with the experience of the supramental ship, and I noticed that it had a DECISIVE effect on my position: the required conditions were established quite clearly, precisely, and definitively by that experience. In that respect, it was interesting.
  --
   And, over and above this, for the realization to be total, there are two other conditions, which arent easy either. Intellectually, theyre not too difficult; in fact, for someone who has practiced yoga, followed a discipline (I am not speaking here of just anyone), theyre relatively easy. Psychologically too, given this equality, theres no great difficulty. But as soon as you come to the material plane the physical plane and then to the body, it isnt easy. These two conditions are first, the power to expand, to widen almost indefinitely, enabling you to widen to the dimensions of the supramental consciousness which is total. The supramental consciousness is the consciousness of the Supreme in his totality. By totality, I mean the Supreme in his aspect of Manifestation. Naturally, from a higher point of view, from the viewpoint of the essence the essence of that which in Manifestation becomes the Supermindwhats necessary is a capacity for total identification with the Supreme, not only in his aspect of Manifestation, but in his static or nirvanic aspect, outside of the Manifestation: Nonbeing. But in addition, one must be capable of identifying with the Supreme in the Becoming. And that implies both these things: an expansion that is nothing less than indefinite, and that should simultaneously be a total plasticity enabling one to follow the Supreme in his Becoming. You dont merely have to be as vast as the universe at one point in time, but indefinitely in the Becoming. These are the two conditions. They must be potentially present.
   Down to the vital, we are still in the realm of things that are more than feasible they are done. But on the material level it results in my misadventures of the other day.2
  --
   Not that the problem hasnt been partially solved: hatha yogis have solved it, partiallyprovided you do nothing else (thats the trouble). Yet having the knowledge, we should have the power to do whats necessary without making it our exclusive preoccupation. At any rate, this possibility is certainly not altogether unknown; for the first few months after I retired to my room,4 when I had cut all contact with the outside, it was working very well even extraordinarily so! Lots of disorders in my body were surmounted, and I had Many fairly precise indications that if I continued like that long enough I would regain everything that had been lost, and with an even better equilibrium. I mean that the functional equilibrium was far superior. Only when I came back into contact with the world did it all come to a halt and begin to deteriorateall the more so as it was aggravated by this discipline of expansion making me constantlyCONSTANTLYabsorb mountains of difficulties to be resolved. And so.
   With the mind, its rather easyyou can put things back in order in five minutes, its not difficult. With the vital its already a bit more troublesome, it takes a little longer. But when you come to the material level, well. Theres a CONTAGION of wrong cellular functioning and a kind of internal disorganizationthings not staying in their proper places. Each vibration absorbed from the outside instantly creates a disorder, dislocates everything, creates wrong contacts and disrupts the organization; it sometimes takes HOURS to put it all back in order. Consequently, if I really want to make use of this bodys possibility without having to face the necessity of changing it because it cant follow along, then, materially, I would really need, as much as possible, to stop having to gulp down all sorts of things that drag me years backwards.
  --
   So we can say that the Supermind can express itself through a terrestrial consciousness only when there is a constant state of perfect equalityequality arising out of spiritual identification with the Supreme: all becomes the Supreme in perfect equality. And it must be automatic, not an equality obtained through conscious will or intellectual effort or an understanding preceding the state itselfnone of that. It has to be spontaneous and automatic; one must no longer react to what comes from outside as though it were coming from outside. That pattern of reception and reaction must be replaced by a state of constant perception and (I dont mean identical in all cases, because each thing necessarily calls forth its own particular reaction) but practically free from all rebound, you might say. Its the difference between something coming from outside and striking you, making you react, and something freely circulating and quite naturally generating the vibrations needed for the overall action. I dont know if I am making myself clear. Its the difference between a vibratory movement circulating within an IDENTICAL field of action, and a movement from an outside source, touching you and getting a reaction (this is the usual state of huMan consciousness). But once the consciousness is identified with the Supreme, all movements are, so to speak, innerinner in the sense that nothing comes from outside; there are only things circulating, which, through similarity or necessity, naturally generate or change the vibrations within the circulatory milieu.
   I am very familiar with this, because I am now constantly in that state. I never have the feeling of something coming from outside and bumping into me; theres rather the sense of multiple and sometimes contradictory inner movements, and of a constant circulation generating the inner changes necessary to the movement.
  --
   For thought, its elementary, very simple. Its not difficult for the feelings either; for the heart, the emotional being, to expand to the dimensions of the Supreme is relatively easy. But this body! Its very difficult, very difficult to do without the body losing its center (how can I put it?) its center of coagulationwithout it dissolving into the surrounding mass. Although, if one were in a natural environment, with mountains and forests and rivers, with lots of space and lots of natural beauty, it could be rather pleasant! But its physically impossible to take a single step outside ones body without meeting unpleasant, painful things. At times you come in contact with a pleasant substance, something harmonious, warm, vibrating with a higher light; it happens. But its rare. Flowers, yes, sometimes flowers sometimes, not always. But this material world, oh! It batters you from all sides; it claws you, mauls youyou get clawed and scraped and battered by all sorts of things which which just dont blossom. How hard it all is! Oh, how closed huMan life is! How shriveled, hardened, without light, without warmth let alone joy.
   While sometimes, when you see water flowing along, or a ray of sunlight in the treesoh, how it sings! The cells sing, they are happy.
  --
   I once told you I put a body on a vital being7but I couldnt have made that body material; it would have been impossible: something is lacking. Something is lacking. Even if it were made visible, it would probably not be possible to make it perManentat the slightest opportunity, it would dematerialize. What we cant get is that perManence.
   Its something Sri Aurobindo and I have discussed (discussed is one way of putting it), something we spoke about, and his view was the same as mine: there is a power, yes, to FIX the form here on earth, a power we dont have. Even people with the ability to materialize things (like Madame Thon, for instance) cant make their materializations last; it cant be done, they dont lastthey dont have the quality of physical things.
  --
   I knew the whole occult procedure in detail, but I would never have been able to make that being more material, even if I had triedvisible, yes, but not perManent and progressive.
   And mind you (this is my personal case), I dont think I have wasted any time. Because you might say that had I known forty years ago what I know nowat the age of forty instead of eightywell, there would have been the sense of a lot more time to work with. But I havent been wasting time. I havent wasted any time. All that time was necessary to get me where I am today.
  --
   "How can the Supermind be detected, in the way a huntsMan would detect a deer in the forest? By which signs can it be recognized?"
   See Agenda II, February 25, 1961, p. 96 ff
  --
   Mother later clarified the meaning of this sentence: "I saw that to follow the Supreme in the Becoming one has to be able to expand, because the universe expands in the Becoming the amount of expansion in the universe is not matched by an equal amount of dissolution. So it is really necessary to be able to grow, as a child grows, to expand; but at the same time, for things to progress, this process of expansion deMands a constant inner reorganization. As the quantity is increased (if we can speak of quantity here), so must the quality be simultaneously maintained by an ongoing internal reorganization of intercellular relationships."
   In December 1958.

0 1962-01-15, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   He stopped at the subtle physicalhe refused to go any farther. It was Satan, the Asura1 of Light who, in cutting himself off from the Supreme, fell into Unconsciousness and Darkness (Ive told the story Many times). But anyway, when I was with Thon, I summoned that being and asked him if he wanted to enter into contact with the earth. Its worth mentioning that Thon himself was an incarnation of the Lord of Death Ive had good company in my life! And the other one [Richard] was an incarnation of the Lord of Falsehood but it was only partial. With Thon too it was partial. But with Satan it was the central being; of course, he had millions of eManations in the world, but this was the central being in person. The others lets keep that for another time.
   He agreed to take on a body. Theon wanted to keep him there: Dont let him go, he told me. I didnt answer. This being told me he didnt want to be more material than that, it was sufficientyou could feel him move the way you feel a draft, it was that concrete.
  --
   Two things were stolen: that note and the Mantra of life (I have told you about that). And I have a suspicion that it was an occult theft, not an ordinary one, because no one even suspected the value of those papers for most people they had no interest at all.
   Wellau revoir, mon petit.
  --
   The reader will remember the formation of the Kuo-min-tang and the troubles in the Yangtze Valley which took place in October 1911 and led to the fall of the Manchu Dynasty in 1912. Thus it was in October 1906, at Tlemcen, that Mother had the encounter she relates here. It was also in 1906 that Mao Tse-tung, at the age of fourteen, came into conflict with his father, a prelude to his revolutionary career.
   ***

0 1962-01-21, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Actually, people have always taken themselves for victims hounded by adverse forces the courageous fight back, the rest lament. But increasingly there has been a very concrete vision of the role the adverse forces play in the creation, of their almost absolute necessity as goads to make the creation progress and become its Origin again. And there was such a clear vision that one should accomplish ones own transformation thats what we must pray for, what we must work outrather than deMand the conversion or abolition of the adverse forces.
   And this is all from the terrestrial, not the individual standpoint (for the individual standpoint, its quite clear): I am speaking from the terrestrial standpoint.
  --
   Thats essentially what this aphorism says, seen from the other end. So long as a single huMan consciousness carries the possibility of feeling, acting, thinking or being in opposition to the great divine Becoming, it is impossible to blame anyone else for it; it is impossible to blame the adverse forces, which are kept in the creation as a means of making you see and feel how far you still have to go.
   (silence)
   It was like a memory,1 an eternally present memory of that consciousness of supreme Love eManated by the Lord onto earth INTO earthto draw it back again to Him. And truly it was the descent of the very essence of the divine nature into the most total divine negation, and thus the abandonment of the divine condition to take on terrestrial darkness, so as to bring Earth back to the divine state. And unless That, that supreme Love, becomes all-powerfully conscious here on Earth, the return can never be definitive.
   It came after the vision of the great divine Becoming.2 Since this world is progressive, I was wondering, since it is increasingly becoming the Divine, wont there always be this deeply painful sense of the nondivine, of the state that, compared with the one to come, is not divine? Wont there always be what we call adverse forces, in other words, things that dont harmoniously follow the movement? Then came the answer, the vision of That: No, the moment of this very Possibility is drawing near, the moment for the Manifestation of the essence of perfect Love, which can transform this unconsciousness, this ignorance and this ill will that goes with it into a luminous and joyous progression, wholly progressive, wholly comprehensive, thirsting for perfection.
   It was very concrete.
  --
   Because the time has come to Manifest this Power, which is a power of Loveof LOVE, not merely of identityof Love, of perfect Love; for perfect Love alone can offer.
   It happened this morning, with great simplicity, but at the same time it had something so vast and almighty in it, as if the Universal Mother were turning towards the Lord and saying, At last! We are ready.
  --
   In those realms, you know, now sometimes stretches over Many years. I wont say its going to be instantaneous; that, I dont know I dont know. I will probably know in a few days.
   Its like opening a door just a crack and catching a glimpse of whats beyond.
  --
   The first rather tangible Manifestation was this vision of the boat; with that, things became more concrete, it radically changed something in the attitude.
   Were at another stage now.
  --
   Looking at things externally, in terms of present material reality, there is still a lot of ground to be covered before the new Manifestation becomes an actual fact. What we have now is probably the seed of the thinglike the seed of Indias freedom, which later blossomed.
   ***
  --
   Your practice of psycho-analysis was a mistake. It has, for the time at least, made the work of purification more complicated, not easier. The psycho-analysis of Freud is the last thing that one should associate with yoga. It takes up a certain part, the darkest, the most perilous, the unhealthiest part of the nature, the lower vital subconscious layer, isolates some of its most morbid phenomena and attributes to it and them an action out of all proportion to its true role in the nature. Modern psychology is an infant science, at once rash, fumbling and crude. As in all infant sciences, the universal habit of the huMan mindto take a partial or local truth, generalise it unduly and try to explain a whole field of Nature in its narrow termsruns riot here. Moreover, the exaggeration of the importance of suppressed sexual complexes is a dangerous falsehood and it can have a nasty influence and tend to make the mind and vital more and not less fundamentally impure than before.
   It is true that the subliminal in Man is the largest part of his nature and has in it the secret of the unseen dynamisms which explain his surface activities. But the lower vital subconscious which is all that this psycho-analysis of Freud seems to know, and even of that it knows only a few ill-lit corners,is no more than a restricted and very inferior portion of the subliminal whole. The subliminal self stands behind and supports the whole superficial Man; it has in it a larger and more efficient mind behind the surface mind, a larger and more powerful vital behind the surface vital, a subtler and freer physical consciousness behind the surface bodily existence. And above them it opens to higher superconscient as well as below them to lower subconscient ranges. If one wishes to purify and transform the nature, it is the power of these higher ranges to which one must open and raise to them and change by them both the subliminal and the surface being. Even this should be done with care, not prematurely or rashly, following a higher guidance, keeping always the right attitude; for otherwise the force that is drawn down may be too strong for an obscure and weak frame of nature. But to begin by opening up the lower subconscious, risking to raise up all that is foul or obscure in it, is to go out of ones way to invite trouble. First, one should make the higher mind and vital strong and firm and full of light and peace from above; afterwards one can open up or even dive into the subconscious with more safety and some chance of a rapid and successful change.
   The system of getting rid of things by anubhava [experience] can also be a dangerous one; for on this way one can easily become more entangled instead of arriving at freedom. This method has behind it two well-known psychological motives. One, the motive of purposeful exhaustion, is valid only in some cases, especially when some natural tendency has too strong a hold or too strong a drive in it to be got rid of by vicra [intellectual reflection] or by the process of rejection and the substitution of the true movement in its place; when that happens in excess, the sadhak has sometimes even to go back to the ordinary action of the ordinary life, get the true experience of it with a new mind and will behind and then return to the spiritual life with the obstacle eliminated or else ready for elimination. But this method of purposive indulgence is always dangerous, though sometimes inevitable. It succeeds only when there is a very strong will in the being towards realisation; for then indulgence brings a strong dissatisfaction and reaction, vairagya, and the will towards perfection can be carried down into the recalcitrant part of the nature.
   The other motive for anubhava is of a more general applicability; for in order to reject anything from the being one has first to become conscious of it, to have the clear inner experience of its action and to discover its actual place in the workings of the nature. One can then work upon it to eliminate it, if it is an entirely wrong movement, or to transform it if it is only the degradation of a higher and true movement. It is this or something like it that is attempted crudely and improperly with a rudimentary and insufficient knowledge in the system of psycho-analysis. The process of raising up the lower movements into the full light of consciousness in order to know and deal with them is inevitable; for there can be no complete change without it. But it can truly succeed only when a higher light and force are sufficiently at work to overcome, sooner or later, the force of the tendency that is held up for change. Many, under the pretext of anubhava, not only raise up the adverse movement, but support it with their consent instead of rejecting it, find justifications for continuing or repeating it and so go on playing with it, indulging its return, eternising it; afterwards when they want to get rid of it, it has got such a hold that they find themselves helpless in its clutch and only a terrible struggle or an intervention of divine grace can liberate them.Some do this out of a vital twist or perversity, others out of sheer ignorance; but in yoga, as in life, ignorance is not accepted by Nature as a justifying excuse. This danger is there in all improper dealings with the ignorant parts of the nature; but none is more ignorant, more perilous, more unreasoning and obstinate in recurrence than the lower vital subconscious and its movements. To raise it up prematurely or improperly for anubhava is to risk suffusing the conscious parts also with its dark and dirty stuff and thus poisoning the whole vital and even the mental nature. Always therefore one should begin by a positive, not a negative experience, by bringing down something of the divine nature, calm, light, equanimity, purity, divine strength into the parts of the conscious being that have to be changed; only when that has been sufficiently done and there is a firm positive basis, is it safe to raise up the concealed subconscious adverse elements in order to destroy and eliminate them by the strength of the divine calm, light, force and knowledge. Even so, there will be enough of the lower stuff rising up of itself to give you as much of the anubhava as you will need for getting rid of the obstacles; but then they can be dealt with with much less danger and under a higher internal guidance.
   ***

0 1962-01-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   But I also remember reading The Tradition, before I met Sri Aurobindo (it was like a novel, a serialized roMance of the worlds creation, but it was very evocative; Theon called it The Tradition). That was where I first learned of the universal Mothers first four eManations, when the Lord delegated his creative power to the Mother. And it was identical to the ancient Indian tradition, but told like a nursery story; anyone could understandit was an image, like a movie, and very vivid.
   So She made her first four eManations. The first was Consciousness and Light (arising from Sachchidananda); the second was Ananda and Love; the third was Life; and Truth was the fourth. Then, so the story goes, conscious of their infinite power, instead of keeping their connection with the supreme Mother and, through Her, with the Supreme, instead of receiving indications for action from Him and doing things in proper order, they were conscious of their own power and each one took off independently to do as he pleased they had power and they used it. They forgot their Origin. And because of this initial oblivion, Consciousness became unconsciousness, and Light became darkness; Ananda became suffering, Love became hate; Life became Death; and Truth became Falsehood. And they were instantly thrown headlong into what became Matter. According to Theon, the world as we know it is the result of that. And that was the Supreme himself in his first Manifestation.
   But the story is easy to understand, and quite evocative. On the surface, for intellectuals, its very childish; but once you have the experience you understand it very well I understood and felt the thing immediately.
   And once the world has become like that, has become the vital world in all its darkness, and they, from this vital world, have created Matter, the supreme Mother sees (laughing) the result of her first four eManations and She turns towards the Supreme in a great entreaty: Now that this world is in such a dreadful state, it has to be saved! We cant just leave it this way, can we? It has to be saved, the divine consciousness must be given back to it. What to do? And the Supreme says, Thrust yourself into a new eManation, an eManation of the ESSENCE of Love, down into the most material Matter. That meant plunging into the earth (the earth had become a symbol and a representation of the whole drama). Plunge into Matter. So She plunged into Matter, and that became the primordial source of the Divine within material substance. And from there (as is so well described in Savitri), She begins to act as a leaven in Matter, raising it up from within.
   And as She plunged into the earth, a second series of eManations was sent forth the godsto inhabit the intermediary zones between Sachchidananda and the earth. And these gods (laughing) well, great care was taken to make them perfect, so they wouldnt give any trouble! But they are a bit a bit too perfect, arent they? Yes, a bit too perfect: they never make mistakes, they always do exactly as theyre told. In short, rather lacking in initiative. They do have some, but.
   In fact, they were not surrendered in the way a psychic being can be, because they had no psychic in them. The psychic being is the result of that descent. Only huMan beings have it. And thats what makes huManity so superior to the gods. Theon insisted greatly on this: throughout his story, huMans are far superior to gods and should not obey themthey should only be in contact with the Supreme in his aspect of perfect Love.
   I dont know how to put it. To me, those gods always seemed (not those described in the Puranas, theyre different well, not so very different!) but the way Theon presented them, they seemed just like a bunch of marshmallows! Its not that they had no powerthey had a lot of power, but they lacked that psychic flame.
  --
   Buddhism and all similar lines of thought took the shortest path: The desire to exist is what has caused all the trouble. If the Lord had refrained from having this desire, there would have been no world! Its childish, very childish, really a much too huMan way of looking at the problem.
   To see it from the angle of delight of being is qualitatively far superior, but then theres still the problem of why it all became the way it is. The usual reply is: because all things were possible, and this is ONE possibility. But its not a very satisfying feeling: Yes, all right, thats just the way it is, its a fact. People used to ask Theon too, Why did it happen like this? Why? Wait till you get to the other side, then you will know. And meanwhile do whats necessary to get there thats the most urgent thing.
   But there is one advantage: without those beings, without the worlds distortion, Many things would be lacking. Those beings potentially embodied certain absolutely unique elementsunderstandably so, since they were the first wave. And precisely because they still WERE the Supreme to such a great extent, each one felt he was the Supreme, and that was that. Only it wasnt quite sufficient, for the simple reason that they were already divided into four, and one single division is enough to make everything go wrong. Its readily understandable: its not something essentially evil, but a question of wrong FUNCTIONING; its not the substance, not the essence. The essence isnt evil, but the functioning is faulty.
   But if you understand.
  --
   It was written in English and I am the one who translated it into Frenchinto horrible French, perfectly ghastly, because I put in all the new words Theon had dreamed up. He had made a detailed description of all the faculties latent in Man, and it was remarkable but with such barbarous words! You can make up new words in English and get away with it, but in French its utterly ridiculous. And there I was, very conscientiously putting them all in! Yet in terms of experience, it was splendid. It really was an experienceit came from Madame Theons experiences in exteriorization. She had learned what Theon also taught me, to speak while youre in the seventh heaven (the body goes on speaking, rather slowly, in a rather low voice, but it works quite well). She would speak and a friend of hers, another English woMan who was their secretary, would note it all down as she went along (I think she knew shorthand). And afterwards it was made into stories, told as stories. It was all shown to Sri Aurobindo and it greatly interested him. He even adopted some of the words into his own terminology.
   The divisions and subdivisions of the being were described down to the slightest detail and with perfect precision. I went through the experience again on my own, without any preconceived ideas, just like that: leaving one body after the other, one body after the other, and so on twelve times. And my experienceapart from certain quite negligible differences, doubtless due to differences in the receiving brainwas exactly the same.
  --
   He came to France and asked me. He absolutely insisted. He had read all Theons stuff and was well up on everything and very anxious to try. So I taught him how to do it; and whats more, I was there, he did it in my presence. And, mon petit, the moment he went out of his body, he was thrown into a panic! The Man was no cowardhe was very courageous but it absolutely terrified him! Sheer panic. So I said no, no, no.
   But for instance, I do exteriorize at night.
  --
   Considering it to be of no interest, Satprem unfortunately did not keep a record of his answer. The P. in question died insane, in a so-called "Japanese hospital," and one night (this is most likely the story he was telling Mother here) Satprem found him being held prisoner in a kind of hell. His body was covered with wounds which Satprem treated with balm. He then told P., "But go on, say Mother's Mantra!" And the moment Satprem began to recite the Mantra, the whole place explodedblown to smithereens. An instantaneous deliverance. A few months later (or it may have been a few years), P. came to see Satprem at night with a bouquet of flowers and a smile, as if to announce that he was taking on a new body.
   ***

0 1962-02-03, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   This woMan a collective karma! What rubbishabsolute humbug.
   It may be true for some people, but not for her. If I hadnt seen her I might have been intrigued and tried to find out, but. A collective karma. Of course, there are all the links you have with people youve known in past lives; in that sense, yes, there is a collective karma! But really, people use such big words and big ideas for things that are actually quite natural.
  --
   The image is lovely. Its perfect for people who imagine they have found Truth. Its a good thing to tell those who think they have found the truth simply because theyve Managed to touch one point.
   Yet how Many times have we said that thats not enough!
   One might ask this: the day one is able to take in the whole target, in other words to know all viewpoints and the usefulness of each thing, then, seeing that everything is useful and has its place, how can one act? Doesnt action require one to be somehow exclusive or combative?
  --
   Did you ever hear the story of the philosopher who lived in the South of France? I dont recall his name, a very well-known Man.
   He was a professor at Montpellier University and lived nearby. And there were several roads leading to his house. This Man would leave the university and come to the crossing where all those roads branched out, all eventually leading to his house, one this way, one that way, one from this side. So he himself used to explain how every day he would stop there at the crossroads and deliberate, Which one shall I take? Each had its advantages and disadvantages. So all this would go through his head, the advantages and disadvantages and this and that, and he would waste half an hour choosing which road to take home!
   He gave this as an example of thoughts inadequacy for action: if you begin to think, you cant act.
  --
   For some time now I have been running into difficulties with my morning japa. Its complex. I wont go into details, but certain things seemed to be trying to interfere, either preventing me from going on to the end, or plunging me into a kind of trance that brought everything to a halt. So I began wondering what it was and why. A very, very long curve was involved, but the result of my observations is the following. (All this is purely from the bodys standpoint; I mean it doesnt concern the conscious, living, independent being that would remain the same even without the bodyto be exact, the being whose life, consciousness, freedom and action do not depend on the body. I am speaking here of that which needs the body for its Manifestation; that alone was in question.)
   There has been a kind of perception of a variety of bodily activities, a whole series of them, having to do exclusively (or so it seems) with the maintenance of the body. Some are on the borderlinesleep, for instance: one portion of it is necessary for good maintenance of the body, and another portion puts it in contact with other parts and activities of the being; but one portion of sleep is exclusively for maintaining the bodys balance. Then there is food, keeping clean, a whole range of things. And according to Sri Aurobindo, spiritual life shouldnt suppress those things; whatever is indispensable for the bodys well-being must be kept up. For ordinary people, all other bodily activities are used for personal pleasure and benefit. The spiritual Man, on the other hand, has given his body to serve the Divine, so that the Divine may use it for His work and perhaps, as Sri Aurobindo said, for His joyalthough given the present state of Matter and the body, that seems to me unlikely or at best very intermittent and partial, because this body is much more a field of misery than a field of joy. (None of this is based on speculation, but on personal experience I am relating my personal experience.) But with work, its different: when the body is at work, its in full swing. Thats its joy, its needto exist only to serve Him. To exist only to serve. And of course, to reduce maintenance to a bare minimum while trying to find a way for the Divine to participate in the very restricted, limited and meager possibilities of joy this maintenance may give. To associate the Divine with all those movements and things, like keeping clean, sleeping (although sleep is different, its already a lot more interesting); but especially with personal hygiene, eating and other absolutely indispensable things, the attempt is to associate them with the Divine Presence so that they may be as much an expression of divine joy as possible. (This is realized to a certain extent.)
   Now where does japa fit into all this?
  --
   And if one adds to this, as I do, a Mantric program, that is, a sort of prayer or invocation, a program for both personal development and helping the collective, then it becomes a truly active work. Then theres also what I call external work: contact with others, reading and answering letters, seeing and speaking to people, and finally all the activities having to do with the organization and running of the Ashram (in meditation this work becomes worldwide, but physically, materially, it is limited for the moment to the Ashram).
   In the course of my observation, I also saw the position of X and people like him, who practically spend their lives doing japa, plus meditation, puja,4 ceremonies (I am talking only about sincere people, not fakers). Well, thats their way of working for the world, of serving the Divine, and it seems the best way to themperhaps even the only way but its a question of mental belief. In any case, its obvious that even a bit of not exactly puja, but some sort of ceremony that you set yourself to dohabitual gestures symbolizing and expressing a particular inner statecan also be a help and a way of offering yourself and relating to the Divine and thus serving the Divine. I feel its important looked at in this waynot from the traditional viewpoint, I cant stand that traditional viewpoint; I understand it, but it seems to me like putting a brake on true self-giving to the Divine. I am speaking of SELF-IMPOSED japa and rules (or, if someone gives you the japa, rules you accept with all your heart and adhere to). These self-imposed rules should be followed as a gesture of love, as a way of saying to the Divine, I love You. Do you see what I mean? Like arranging flowers in a certain way, burning incense, dozens of little things like that, made beautiful because of what is put into themit is a form of self-giving.
  --
   Let it be your own Manner of serving the Divine, of relating to Him, loving Him, of joining Him to your physical life, being close to Him and drawing Him close to you that way its beautiful. Each time you say the Word, let it be an invocation, let it be like the recitation of a word of love; then its beautiful.
   Thats how I see it.
  --
   Japa: the continuous repetition of a Mantra.
   Puja: a ritual or ceremony to invoke or evoke a deity.

0 1962-02-06, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Automatically, everything that exists is a natural expression of divine Joy, even the things huMan consciousness finds most horrifyingthis is understandable. But at the same time there is this aspiration, so intense that its almost anguish, for a perfection of creation to come. And it does seem that this intense aspiration and anguish in the material world is a necessary preparation for this perfection to come. Yet at the same time, whatever exists is perfect at each moment, since it is ENTIRELY the Divine. There is nothing other than the Divine. So there is simultaneously this plenitude of Divine Joy in each second, in whatever exists, and the aspiration, the anguish and the difficulty lies in joining the two, there you have it.
   Practically, you go from one to the other, or one is in front and the other behind, one active and the other passive. With the feeling of perfect joy comes an almost static state (certainly the joy of movement is also there, but all anticipation of the goal stays in the background). Then, when the aspiration of the Becoming is there, the joy of divine perfection at each moment withdraws into a static state.
  --
   I can have that experience at any moment whatsoever: one second of concentration, stepping back from action, and its Bliss. And when I dont step back, then its something like an eternal omnipotence geared to action and entirely upheld and englobed by That. This power geared to action is the first Manifestation of That thats what Manifests first when That begins to exist consciously. (Mother places her palms together and, without separating them, turns her hands from side to side, as if to show two faces of the same thing.) So its indissoluble: its not two things, not even two aspects, because it isnt an aspect at all (words are idiotic, imbecilic, meaningless). The experience is renewable at will: one single thing in its essence, innumerable in its expression, and apparently increasing in power. I have experienced this at will, in every possible circumstance, including physically fainting (I told you the other day). Its called fainting, but I didnt lose consciousness for a minute! Not for one minute did I PHYSICALLY lose consciousness and behind it all, witnessing everything, was this experience.
   (Pavitra enters the room to ask Mother an urgent question)
  --
   In Sri Aurobindo's play, Andromeda, daughter of the King of Syria, is condemned by her own people to be devoured by Poseidon, the Sea-god, for some impiety she had committed against him. The story is actually about the passage of a half-primitive tribe, living in terror of the old dark and cruel gods, to a more evolved and sunlit stage. Perseus, son of Diana and Zeus, and protected by Pallas Athene, goddess of wisdom and intelligence, comes to deliver Andromeda from the rock she is chained to (the rock symbolizes the Inconscient for the Rishis), and founds the religion of Athene, "... the Omnipotent / Made from His being to lead and discipline / The immortal spirit of Man, till it attain / To order and magnificent mastery / Of all his outward world" (in the words of Sri Aurobindo). It is the force of progress pitted against the old priests of the old religions, symbolized by the cruel and ambitious Polydaon. Here Mother is scrutinizing an old problem"Always the same problem"that she must have encountered in Many existences (Egypt included) and would encounter again eleven years later: the acceptance of the death she is forced into as the Supreme's Will, and then this "love of Life" she twice mentions here.
   ***

0 1962-02-09, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   (Concerning a European disciple who praises the merits of a certain pseudo-spiritual book, which Mother calls "spiritual roManticism":)
   Its very European theyre like that.
  --
   HuManity seems so miserable to me, so miserable! Why do I always feel this way?
   I wish I had a more comforting vision.

0 1962-02-13, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Theres nothing, its like a no-Mans-land. Youre no longer on this side and.
   And you arent yet on the other. Yes, thats it.
  --
   It was so lovely last night! We had come upon a region all Mantled in snow, pure white, and all the arctic animals were there. He wore a white robe. I walked by his side, and he began to repeat my Mantra, saying, See how it is. Glorious!
   And the animals the animals and all the things receiving the Influence [of the Mantra] and changing.6
   What remains is an impression, not the precise knowledge.
  --
   In fact, in the Agenda conversations of 1958 and '59 (never noted by Satprem because he believed them too "personal"), Mother mentioned this as one of the main reasons for encouraging his tantric discipline. He even set out for the Himalayas, like a knight of yore, with the idea of bringing back to Mother the secrets of transformation; and Mother indicated to him the spot where one of her former bodies lay in a Himalayan cave, petrified by a mineral spring. But the secret of the new species can Manifestly not be found through any "trick" tantric or otherwiseone's very nature must change. No one could help Mother because if someone "knew," it would already be done.
   Mother means that it wasn't possible for Sri Aurobindo to continue.

0 1962-02-17, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   A line from Savitri constantly haunts or assails meits when the Lord proposes that she come live a blissful life above, and she replies, No, there are still too Many battles to wage on earth.2
   That went deep into me, and it returns each time difficulties arise, as if to say, Dont complain.

0 1962-02-24, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   And in the afternoon, I had a funny experience at the Playground.3 When I got down from the car to go inside, I felt. For close to a year now I have been saddled with (I mean it was imposed on me) a useless pair of legs: weak, awkward, old, worn outworthless. I constantly had to will them to walk, and even then they were more than clumsy. And it was all swept away in the same Manner (sweeping gesture). I literally almost danced! Imagine, getting rid of a pair of legs just like that! INSTANTLY my legs felt the way they used to (I have always had strong legs)that alert, solid, agile strength and I had to restrain myself from cavorting about! Ah, now we can walk! Keep calm, I had to tell them, or they would have started skipping and prancing!
   And they stayed that way, there was no relapse. I was waiting to see if it would lastit did. Something seems to be over with now.
  --
   But is it necessary? Is all this disorganization necessary? Perhaps I call it disorganization when it isnt. You know, we are totally ignorant in that realm. We have our old huMan ways of seeing, but when it comes to the bodys functioning, we know nothing about whats good or not. Or even whats painful or not: the bodys initial impulse is to feel the pain, but upon reflection and attentive observation, we see it is simply an intensity of sensation were not used to. So it could well have been that. And if we were used to it (and especially if we didnt think of it as something troublesome), we would feel quite differently about it. In any case, its not something unbearablewe can bear a lot of things, much more than we imagine.
   I am not sure, you see. We keep going on with old notions, old routines and old habitswhat can we possibly know!
  --
   I had trouble breathing in slowly enough thats a bit hard. I began with 4 and eventually Managed to do 12. I did 12-12-12-12. It took me months to reach that, it cant be done quickly. To brea the in very slowly and hold all that air isnt easy.
   Now I have lost the knack, I can barely do more than 6 (Mother demonstrates). I count: 1-2-3-4 no quicker.
  --
   The Manifestation is always said to begin with Sachchidananda: first Sat, pure Existence; then Chit, the awareness of this Existence; and then Ananda, the Delight of Existence which makes it go on. But between Chit and Ananda there is Tapas that is, Chit realizing itself. And when you become this tapas, this tapas of things, you have the knowledge that gives the power to change.9 The tapas of things is what governs their existence in the Manifestation.
   You see, I am expressing this for the first time, but I began to live it a while back. When you are THERE, you have a feeling of (what shall I say?) of such formidable power! The universal power, really. You have the sense of total mastery over the universe.
  --
   On the afternoon of the 21st, Mother went to watch a perforMance given by the children.
   Since the black-magic attack in December 1958.

0 1962-02-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   This approach to the problem is rather new and can provide the key to Many things.
   Take the case of someone you know well and are used to seeing materially: seeing him in the subtle physical, certain aspects become more prominent, more visible, more marked; physically they went unseen because in the material grayness they had blended with Many other things. Certain character traits that never showed up physically now become so marked as to be quite visible. When you look at someone physically, you see the color of his complexion, the shape of his features, his expression. Seeing him at the same moment in the subtle physical, you suddenly notice different colors on different parts of the face, in the eyes an expression or a particular light you hadnt seen beforea strong impression of a very different overall appearance, which to our physical eyes would seem rather outlandish. But for the subtle vision its all very expressive and revealing of the persons character, or even of the influences hes under (what I am talking about is something I observed a few days ago).
   So, according to the plane where you are conscious and can see, you perceive images and see events from varying distances and with varying degrees of accuracy. The only true and sure vision is the vision of the Divine Consciousness. The problem, therefore, is to become conscious of the Divine Consciousness and constantly maintain it in all lifes details.
  --
   Ultimately, absolute sincerity is the great deciding factor for those who predict or foresee. Unfortunately, because of peoples curiosity, their insistence and the pressure they exert (which very few can resist), an almost involuntary mechanism of inner imagination comes to add just that small missing element to something not seen with precision or exactness. Thats what causes flaws in prediction. Very few have the courage to say, Ah no, I dont know this, I dont see that, this eludes me. They dont even have the courage to say it to themselves! So then, with a tiny drop of imagination, which acts almost subconsciously, the vision or information gets rounded outit can turn out to be anything at all! Very few people can resist this tendency. I have known Many, Many psychics, Many extraordinarily gifted beings, and only a handful were able to stop just at the point where their knowledge stopped. Or else they embellish. Thats what gives these faculties their slightly dubious quality. One would have to be a great saint, a great sage, and completely free from other peoples influences (I dont speak of those who seek fame: they fall into the most flagrant traps); because even goodwillwanting to satisfy people, please them, help themis enough to distort the vision.
   (Smiling) Are you satisfied? Have I answered everything?
  --
   Theres one very interesting example I always give. The Man involved told me about it himself. A long time ago (you must have been a baby), every day the newspaper Le Matin published a small cartoon of a boy dressed like a lift attendant (he told me the story in English), or a sort of bellboy, pointing with his finger to the date or whatever. This Man was traveling and staying at a big hotel in some city (I dont remember which), a big city. And he told me that one night or early one morning he had a dream: he saw this bellboy showing him a hearse (you know, what they use in Europe for taking people to the cemetery) and inviting him to step inside! He saw that. And when he got ready that morning and left his room (which was on the top floor) there on the landing was the same boy, identically dressed, inviting him to go down in the elevator. It gave him a shock. He refused: No, thanks! The elevator fell to the ground. It was smashed to pieces, and the people inside were all killed.
   After this, he said, he believed in dreams!
  --
   He asked me about it and my explanation was that an entity had forewarned him. The image of the bellboy indicates an intelligent, conscious intermediaryit doesnt seem to come from the Mans subconscient.1 Or else he had seen it in the subtle physical and his subconscient knew but then why did it present him with such an image? I dont know. Perhaps something in his subconscient knew, because the accident already existed in the subtle physical. Before it occurred here, the accident the law of the accidentexisted.
   Of course, in every case there is invariably a time-lag, sometimes a few hours (thats the maximum), sometimes a few seconds. Quite frequently things announce their presence, but to come in contact with your consciousness, it may take them a couple of minutes or just seconds. I am constantly, constantly aware of whats going to happenutterly uninteresting things, as a matter of fact; knowing them in advance changes nothing. But they exist all around us, and with a wide enough consciousness we can know it all. For example, I know that so and so is going to bring me a parcel, that someone is about to come, and so forth. And its like this every day. Because my consciousness is spread far and wideit comes into contact with things.
  --
   Ive had Many such experiences. Once I was walking along a mountain path wide enough only for one: on one side, a precipice, on the other, sheer rock. Three children were behind me and a fourth person brought up the rear. I was in the lead. The path skirted the rock so you couldnt see what lay ahead. It was quite dangerous, besides: one slip and you fell off the cliff. I was walking in front when suddenly, with other eyes than these (yet I was carefully watching my steps), I saw a snake lying on the rocks around the bend. Waiting. I took one soft step and a snake was actually there! This spared me the shock of surprise (because I had seen it and was advancing cautiously), and as there was no shock of surprise, I could say to the children without scaring them, Stop, be quiet, dont move. A shock might have caused a mishap the snake had heard us and was already on the defensive, coiled before his hole, head swayinga viper. It was in France. Nothing happened, but with confusion and commotion, who knows?
   This type of thing has happened to me very, very oftenfour times with snakes. There was one incident here near the fishing village of Ariankuppam, a place where a river empties into the sea. Night had fallen swiftly, it was pitch dark, and I was walking along a road when right in the middle of a step (I had already lifted my foot and was about to lower it), I distinctly heard a voice in my ear: Watch out! Yet no one had spoken. So I looked, and just as my foot was about to touch the ground, I saw an enormous black cobra right where I was casually going to put my foot. Those fellows dont like that sort of thing! It slithered away and swam across the waterwhat a beauty, mon petit! Hood wide open, head held high, he swam across like a king. I would certainly have been punished for my impertinence!
  --
   It depends. Each thing has its method. But the primary method is to want it, to make a decision. Then you are given a description of all these senses and how they function thats a lengthy process. You choose one sense (or several), perhaps the one for which you have the greatest initial aptitude, and you decide. Then you follow the discipline. Its similar to doing exercises for developing muscles. You can even Manage to create willpower in yourself.
   For the subtler senses, the method is to create an exact image of what you want, make contact with the corresponding vibration and then concentrate and practice. For instance, you practice seeing through an object, or hearing through a sound2 or seeing at a distance. As an example, I was once bedridden for several months, which I found quite boring I wanted to see. I was staying in one room and beyond that room was another little room and after that a sort of bridge; in the middle of the garden the bridge changed into a stairway going down into a very spacious and beautiful studio built in the middle of the garden.3 I wanted to go see what was happening in the studio I was bored stiff in my room! So I stayed very still, shut my eyes and gradually, gradually sent out my consciousness. I did the exercise regularly, day after day, at a set hour. You begin with your imagination, and then it becomes a fact. After a while, I distinctly sensed my vision physically moving: I followed it and saw things going on downstairs I knew absolutely nothing about. I would verify it in the evening, asking, Did it happen like this? Was that how it was?
  --
   Its easier with the mind because we are more used to concentrating there. When you want to reflect and find a solution to something, instead of using mental deduction, you stop everything, focus on the idea or problem, and then concentrate, concentrate, intensifying the crux of the problem. You stop everything and wait until, through sheer intensity of concentration, a response comes. Learning that also deMands a little time; but if you were ever a good student you have something of the aptitudeits not so very difficult.
   Theres a kind of extension of the physical senses. In American Indians, for instance, the senses of hearing and smell are far more extended than ours (in dogs too!). When I was eight or ten years old, I had an Indian friend who came with Buffalo Bill in the days of the Hippodrome that was a long time ago, I was around eight. He was so sharp that he could put his ear to the ground and tell, from the intensity of the vibrations, how far the sound of footsteps was coming from. All the children immediately said, Id really like to know how to do that! And so you try.

0 1962-03-06, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   This in itself has to be conquered; I mean, the state in itself represents something to be conquered. Because you remember, I told you the other day about having such a tremendous experience in the body-consciousness1this this dull consciousness in the material world, which really gives the feeling of something inert, unchanging, incapable of responding; you could wait millions and millions of years and nothing would budge. And that experience came at the end of a rather critical passageit takes catastrophes to get it moving, thats whats so strange! And not only that, but the wisp of imagination it does have (if you can call it imagination) is invariably catastrophic. Whatever it anticipates is always for the worst the pettiest, meanest, nastiest kind of worstalways the worst. Its really, its the most sickening condition huMan consciousness and matter can be in. Well, I have been swimming in it for months, and my way of being in it is to go through every possible illness and to have every possible physical aggravation, one after another.
   Just recently, as I told you, things truly became a little disgusting, dangerous, and for an hour or an hour and a half I did a sadhana like this (Mother clenches her fists), keeping hold of this body and body-consciousness. And the whole time the Force was at work there (it was like kneading a very resistant dough), something was saying to me, Look, you cant deny miracles any longer. It was being said to this consciousness (not to me, of course), this body-consciousness: Now you cant deny it miracles do happen. It was forced to see; there it was, gaping like an idiot being shown the skyAh! And its so stupid that it didnt even have any joy of discovery! But it was forced to see, the thing was right under its nosethere was no escaping it, it had to be admitted. But you know what, mon petit, as soon as I let up on the pressureforgotten!
  --
   Whats annoying, though, is that in order to shake it all up, I have to go through some pretty bad moments physically. So dont worry, I understand how it is for others! I myself never lose either consciousness or contact with not with Knowledge, but with the total EXPERIENCE of identification. Only here in Matter does the work have this particular nature. So l understand how it is for people who live heedlessly from day to day, from minute to minute, for whom its not a constant, perManent work of each second, totally conscious and deliberate. And besides, this body is so willing the poor thing, sometimes I have found it crying like a child, imploring, How do you get out of this mess? Thats exactly why all the people who have achieved the inner realization have called this work impossible. Its their own impossibility! I know its not impossible, I know it will come, but how long will it take? That I dont know.
   My feeling is that if you try to hurry, to rush, to speed things up a little, it jams, it becomes like stoneit turns to stone again. It took the stone a long time to become a Man. So I dont want that. You cant get too impatientits not even impatience, but pressure. Beyond a certain pressure, it turns to stone. So I understand people who attain realization and, blissfully enjoying it, kick the whole thing out: Fine, Ill do without it!
   Thats what has always happened.
  --
   You know, all those little rules were enjoined to follow: Above all, dont do that; and be sure to do this, dont forget that. Like ablutions, for instance, or attitudes, or what to eattheres no dearth of them. A mountain of dos and dontsall completely swept away! And swept away to the point where sometimes a rule, something highly recommended (Be sure to do this, be careful to do thatan attitude or an action) becomes an obstacle. I hardly dare say it, but one example is having a regular schedulealways making ablutions at the same hour, always doing japa in the same Manner and so on. And I am perfectly aware that Sri Aurobindo himself puts all sorts of trivial obstacles in my wayobstacles I could hurdle with a single second of reflection; he sets them up as if in play. Do you remember the aphorism where he says he was quarreling with the Lord and the Lord made him fall in the mud?2 Thats just what I feel. He puts a stick in my spokes and laughs. So I say, All right, thats enough, I dont give a hoot! Ill do whatever You want, its not my problem; I can do it or not do it, do it this way or that. It has all gone up in smoke now.
   What has become constant, though. I shouldnt say it, because its going to get me into trouble again! But anyway, whats trying to be constant is DISCRIMINATION: taking all circumstances, vibrations, relationships, what comes from the people around me, what responds, and putting each in its proper place. A second-to-second discrimination. I know where things are coming from, why they come, their effect, where theyre going to lead me, and so on. Its growing more and more frequent, constant, automaticlike a state of being.

0 1962-03-11, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   To begin with, I said that the vital is peopled by small entities, small formations, the remnants of huMan beings who have died. But there is a whole vital world which has nothing to do with that one, a world peopled by beings of the vital proper, beings of great power and even great beauty. Most people who dabble in occultism without having a deep enough spiritual life are immediately deluded by themsome even take them as the supreme God and worship them. Thats generally how religions are created. They are a great success. They are the supreme God of Many a religion they are beings of the vital world, and can assume an appearance of overwhelming beauty. They are the biggest impostors in the world, and dangerous at that; it takes the spiritual instinct, the instinct of true spiritual purity, not to be deceived by them. Many religions and sects are founded on revelations and miracles, and every bit of it comes from vital beings.
   Its one of the greatest problems in huMan life; I dont mean spiritual life, but the life of people who deal with the beyond.
   There are skies (not heavens) in the vital world that are truly paradises. Naturally the real divine element is lacking, but only spiritual purity and the true spiritual sense can show you the difference. All who remain within the vital or mental worlds are completely deluded. They see marvelous things, miracles in profusion (thats where you find the most miracles!).
  --
   Only its perfectly true that to deal with those realms one must either be fully protected by a guru, a real guru, a Man with knowledge, or else have purity (not saintliness), an unmixed vital and mental purity. Very, very often, bhaktas [devotees] of Sri Aurobindo or mewhen they are sincere, truly sincere, that is, people of great spiritual purityhave dozens of beings appear to them, saying, I am Sri Aurobindo. It happens all the time, with all the right external appearancesits very easy for such beings to put on a disguise. It takes the inner psychic purity not to be deceivedyou invariably FEEL something that makes it impossible for you to be duped. But otherwise, Many, Many people are taken in.
   I dont like to talk about this because people here have no discrimination; they would be left with nothing but fear and would no longer believe in anything, forever asking me, Oh, isnt this a trick? Which paralyzes everything. Thats why I didnt speak about that in this Talk.
  --
   The great ones know (I am not speaking of the multitude of minor beings, but the others; there are millions of eManationseManations by the truckload!but only a few great ones), they know enough to be aware of their own position in the universe and that they will come to an end. They know there is such a thing as the Supreme (although they deny it), and that they are cut off from the Supreme, and that they will come to an end. But they have taken a stand against the Work, the Action, the Progress, and are intent on destroying as much as they can.
   Some of them get converted. Their conversion means a great entity joining the divine Work but that seldom happens.
  --
   Ah, they arent from the vital at all! Not at all! They are Manifestations of Overmind2 beings, projected into the vital world for a specific action. But they arent vital beings: they have an Origin, they are still linked to a being from another world. Oh, no, not at all!
   The same goes for all those beings the Tantrics deal withtheir origin is not vital, they belong to Nature. They are personified natural forces obedient to the laws of Nature. In other words, they originate from below, not from the vital but the physical world. They are vital forces in the physical, but not of vital origin.
  --
   Certain stages of your development even require the gurus physical presence: you must no longer go into trance unless he is there, sitting beside you. Out of the question! Cant you just imagine me saddled with loads of people! Its impossible; I couldnt even do the job properly. No, its impossible, it would simply mean exposing a lot of people to perManent danger and I dont want to.
   So well put this Talk aside.
  --
   In Sri Aurobindo's terminology, the Overmind represents the highest level of the mind, the world of the gods and origin of all the revelations and highest artistic creations the world that has ruled mental Man till now.
   ***

0 1962-03-13, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   What I can bring to the world are flashes something that goes beyond, above and through everything that is presently Manifested. But I dont have the patience for the concrete, fixed, material form. I could have been a scholar, I could have been a writer, just as I could have been a painter and I have never had the patience for any of it. There was always something moving on too swiftly, too high and too far.
   So I greatly appreciate beautiful written form. I love it. There were periods in my life when I read ever so much I am quite a library! But its not my job.

0 1962-04-03, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   There is in that group a Man whom I must have seen once or twice, who is not with them in spirit, but only in appearance, but without knowledge. He does not know what kind of being it is. And he always hopes to make him accept me, believing it is truly Sri Aurobindo. I saw this being last night. I wont tell you all the details of the vision. It is not necessary. But I must say that I was fully conscious, aware of everything, knowing that there was an Asuric Force there, but not rejecting it, because of the infinity of Sri Aurobindo. I knew that everything is part of him and I do not want to reject anything. I met this being last night three times, even apologized for sins that I have not committed, and in full love and surrender.
   I woke up at twelve, remembering everything.
  --
   I woke up at two and noticed that the heart had been affected by the attack of this group that is wanting to take my life away from this body, because they know that as long as I am in a body upon earth their purpose cannot succeed. Their first attack was Many years ago in vision and action. It happened during the night and I spoke of it to no one. I noted the date, and if I can come out of this crisis, I will find it and give it out. They would have liked me dead years ago. It is they who are responsible for these attacks on my life. Until now I am alive because the Lord wants me to be alive, otherwise I would have gone long ago.
   I am no more in my body. I have left the Lord to take care of it, if it is to have the Supramental or not. I know, and I have also said, that now is the last fight. If the purpose for which this body is alive is to be fulfilled, that is to say, the first steps towards the Supramental transformation, then it will continue today. It is the Lords decision. I am not even asking what He has decided. If the body is incapable of bearing the fight, if it has to be dissolved, then huManity will pass through a critical time. What the Asuric Force that has succeeded in taking the appearance of Sri Aurobindo will create is a new religion or thought, perhaps cruel and merciless, in the name of the Supramental Realisation. But everybody must know that it is not true, it is not Sri Aurobindos teaching, not the truth of his teaching. The truth of Sri Aurobindo is a truth of love and light and mercy. He is good and great and compassionate and divine. Et cest Lui qui aura la victoire finale.1
   Now, individually, if you want to help, you have only to pray. What the Lord wants will be done. Whatever He wills, He will do with this body, which is a poor thing.

0 1962-04-13, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Suddenly in the night I woke up with the full awareness of what we could call the Yoga of the world. The Supreme Love was Manifesting through big pulsations, and each pulsation was bringing the world further in its Manifestation. It was the formidable pulsations of the eternal, stupendous Love, only Love: each pulsation of the Love was carrying the universe further in its Manifestation.
   And the certitude that what is to be done is done and the Supramental Manifestation is realized.
   Everything was Personal, nothing was individual.
  --
   Truth alone exists; Truth alone shall Manifest. Onward! Onward!
   Gloire Toi, Seigneur, Triomphateur suprme!3
  --
   There are Many things I will speak of later.
   Mother gives the first part of this message in English.

0 1962-04-28, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Later on, there will be Many things to tell for the Agenda.
   ***

0 1962-05-13, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   The first sign of the return to individuality was a prick of pain, a tiny point (Mother holds between her fingers a minuscule point in the space of her being). Yes, because I have a sore, a sore in a rather awkward place, and it hurts2 (Mother laughs). So I felt the pain: it was the sign of individuality coming back. Other than that, there was nothing any moreno body, no individual, no limits. But its strange, I have made a strange discovery3: I used to think it was the individual (Mother touches her body) who experienced pain and disabilities and all the misfortunes of huMan life; well, I perceived that what experiences misfortunes is not the individual not my body, but that each misfortune, each pain, each disability has its own individuality as it were, and each one represents a battle.
   And my body is a world of battles.
  --
   It was something expressing itself, Manifesting itself through these gusts. Something that was EVERYTHING. There was nothing else, there was really nothing but THAT. So to speak of high, low, descent wont do at all.
   If you like, we could put the process of return.

0 1962-05-15, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   (During the night of April 3, Mother had encountered an asuric being who had Managed to assume Sri Aurobindo's appearance, as well as a group of people wanting to found a Nietzschean-type religion. Following this encounter, a heart attack had gravely endangered Mother's life. But this was not the first such meeting.)
   I had said [on April 3] I would find the date of my first encounter with that fake Sri Aurobindo. What I found was the date of another experience that followed that encounter by perhaps three or four weeks, so that pins it down (Mother holds up an old desk-calendar page on which she had written:)
   Night of July 24-25, 59: first penetration of the supramental force into the body. Sri Aurobindo alive in a concrete and perManent subtle physical body.
   I told you about that experience of meeting Sri Aurobindo (the true Sri Aurobindo) in the subtle physical. This is the exact dateearly that morning I jotted it down on this paper. And it gives me the approximate date of the other vision: that is, I must have had my first experience with those people somewhere around the end of June or the beginning of July, 1959.
  --
   Once again, with Mother, we find ourselves deep into modern physics. All theories of physics attempting to describe the structure of our universe and the composition of matter, whether they eManate from official scientific laboratories or from the work of independent researchers, point to the wavelike or sinusoidal movement as the constituent and dynamic foundation of physical reality. Indeed, whether in electromagnetic or gravitational fields, or in atomic interactions, everything, from the heart of the atom to the farthest reaches of the universe, moves or is propagated as waves. With striking succinctness Mother says, The wave movement is the movement of life.
   A movement of waves without beginning or end, with a condensation like this (gesture from above down), with a condensation like that (horizontal gesture). We cannot fail to be reminded of the electromagnetic field with its two perpendicular components, the electric and magnetic fields, which are propagated along an infinite sinusoidal wave. And then again: A movement of expansion a sort of contraction, concentration, and then expansion, diffusion. Unmistakably, this is an exact description of the propagation in space of a sinusoidal wave.
   Striking though the parallel may be, there is still a fundamental difference between these mathematical concepts and Mothers experience. In the first case, we are dealing with conceptual instruments used by the huMan mind to better explain and master the world: no one has actually seen electromagnetic wavesnot to speak of gravitational ones! They are images, convenient models, invisible and nonexistent in themselves. They exist only through their effects: a beam of sunlight, which is an electromagnetic wave, strikes our retina and enables us to distinguish a flower; by means of gravitational waves, Newtons apple falls from the tree but no one has lived the reality of those waves. The way Mother grasps reality, on the contrary, is first and foremost through lived experience. She is the movement, she is the wave: I walk around the room, and that is what is walking. Here we touch upon a stupendous mystery and a formidable question: How is it possible for a material and cellular body to be the wave that at once constitutes and carries the worlds along in its infinite undulating movement and governs the existence of atoms and galaxies? How is it possible to be an infinite and ubiquitous electromagnetic wave while remaining within the narrow confines of a huMan body?
   In being THAT, it might be said, Mother thus resolves the famous question of the unified-field theory, the theory to which Einstein devoted the last years of his life in vain, that would describe the movements of both planets and atoms in a single mathematical equation. Mothers body-consciousness is one with the movement of the universe, Mother lives the unified-field theory in her body. In so doing she opens up to us not merely one more physical theory, but the very path to a new species on earth, a species that will physically and materially live on the scale of the universe. The posthuMan species might not simply be one with a few organs more or less, but rather one capable of being at every point in the universe. A sort of material ubiquity. It may not be so much a new as an ubiquitous species, a species that embraces everything, from the blade of grass under our feet to the far galaxies. A multifarious, undulating existence. A resume or epitome of evolution, really, which at the end of its course again becomes each point and each species and each movement of its own evolution.
   There was, in fact, a whole group of Ashram people (they might be called the Ashram "intelligentsia") who, influenced by Subhas Bose, were strongly in favor of the Nazis and the Japanese against the British. (It should be recalled that the British were the invaders of India, and thus Many people considered Britain's enemies to be automatically India's friends.) It reached the point where Sri Aurobindo had to intervene forcefully and write: "I affirm again to you most strongly that this is the Mother's war.... The victory of one side (the Allies) would keep the path open for the evolutionary forces: the victory of the other side would drag back huManity, degrade it horribly and might lead even, at the worst, to its eventual failure as a race, as others in the past evolution failed and perished.... The Allies at least have stood for huMan values, though they may often act against their own best ideals (huMan beings always do that); Hitler stands for diabolical values or for huMan values exaggerated in the wrong way until they become diabolical.... That does not make the English or Americans nations of spotless angels nor the GerMans a wicked and sinful race, but...." (July 29, 1942 and Sept. 3, 1943, Cent. Ed., Vol. XXVI.394 ff.) And on her side also, Mother had to publicly declare: "It has become necessary to state emphatically and clearly that all who by their thoughts and wishes are supporting and calling for the victory of the Nazis are by that very fact collaborating with the Asura against the Divine and helping to bring about the victory of the Asura.... Those, therefore, who wish for the victory of the Nazis and their associates should now understand that it is a wish for the destruction of our work and an act of treachery against Sri Aurobindo." (May 6, 1941, original English.)
   See note at the end of this conversation

0 1962-05-18, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   There was a relation, I kept a link with it, but it took some days to get established (I dont know how Many, because for a long time I couldnt keep track of anything). After some days (say ten days, twenty days, I dont know), the will began to function, the body was again under the control of the will. But that didnt happen right away for some days, the will that deals with the body was annulled (I was entirely conscious and alive, but not in my body). The body was merely something moved around by the people looking after me. Not that it was separate, but I couldnt even say, its a body it wasnt anything any more! Something. Having undergone so much preparation, the universalization of the body-consciousness and all that, the experience didnt even seem strange to me (in fact, it was certainly the result of all that preparation). The body was something like a mass of substance being driven by the will of the three people looking after it. Not that I was unaware of it but. I wasnt much concerned with it, to tell the truth; but as far as my attention was turned to it, it was a corporeal mass being moved around by a few wills. The supreme Will was in full agreement; the body had been entrusted, in a way (I dont know how to express this) yes, it was like something entrusted, and I was simply looking on I watched it all for I dont know how Many days, with hardly any interest.
   The one really concrete link was pain. Thats how the contact was kept.
  --
   It was a bit violent! (Mother laughs) And yet not so violent, because. Theres something I have never told anyone, but when the doctor was called. I was constantly fainting, you know: I would take a step andplop! So the doctor was called and they began watching over me (everything was supposedly going wrong, all the organs, everything breaking down), and he declared I was sick and wasnt to stir from my bed (for a while I wasnt even supposed to talk!). Well, at that point, something (not exactly what you would call my consciousness; it was far, far more eternal than my consciousness my consciousness is the consciousness of one form of the Manifestationwell, it was far more than that, beyond that) something said YES. And if That had not agreed, I could have gone on living almost as usual. That decreed, That decided I have never said anything about it.
   Otherwise, you know, I would not have consented. If That had not agreed, I would have said to my body, Go on, keep going, move and it would have gone on. It stopped because That said yes. And then I understood that that whole so-called illness was necessary for the Work. So I let myself go. And then what I told you about happened: this body was consigned to the care of three people, who looked after it marvelously, by the wayreally, it filled me with constant admirationa selflessness, a care oh, it was wonderful! I was saying to the Lord the whole time, Truly, Lord, You have arranged all the material conditions in an absolutely marvelous, incredible way, bringing together whatever is necessary, and placing around me people beyond all praise. For at least two weeks they had a hard time of itquite hard. The body was a wreck, you know! (Mother laughs) They had to think of everything, decide everything, take care of everything. And they looked after it very, very wellreally very well.

0 1962-05-22, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   (The beginning of this conversation, unfortunately not kept, dealt with certain instances of huMan ugliness. The topic, in fact, was Satprem's break with X who had been his guru for the past few years. The reasons for this rupture may one day be told, but it should be stressed right now that the fault did not really lie with X, whom Satprem continued to respect, but with a group of schemers at the Ashram who fastened onto X in the hope of god knows what "powers." It is perhaps just as well that the huMan "ugliness" here in question has vanished from Satprem's records, foralthough it did come up again immediately after Mother's departureit concerned only the Ashram disciples. All the details and all Mother's reflections on the subject have thus been lost, with the exception of this last fragment:)
   What a world!

0 1962-05-24, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   We are being made use of in the Manifestation of this something.
   Something none can yet imagine, for so far it hasnt come into being. It is an expression yet to come.
  --
   And as for expressing what the other, the true position is like. It is so far beyond any intellectual state that I cant Manage to put it into words.
   I know the words will come, but they will come through a series of lived experiences, experiences I havent had yet.
  --
   What we should actually do is make a selection and only talk about aphorisms that give us an opportunity to explain a few things. But these two. People arent ready to understand. And besides, they dont fit the style of the Bulletin. What we need is a combat magazine, a journal that combats all the ordinary ideas; then all these aphorisms (the ones on doctors, for instance) would be like yes, like comManders in the battle. A journal with the goal of demolishing the old idols. Something along those lines. It would be very interesting to do such a magazinea combat magazine.
   But it cant be an Ashram organ. It should look like a literary review (it cant be politicalyoud be thrown in jail the day after it came out!). It shouldnt be presented as something practical, but merely as literary or philosophical speculation; that wouldnt matter at all, but it would give the journal a certain security which, as a combat magazine, it would need.
   Its something that could very well be planned and prepared for 65 or 67. It could probably be done in 67. And then, for each issue (I dont know how Many issues a year there would be) we could take one of these aphorisms (like the one on Europe, for example) and go into it all the way.
   It would be very interesting. Its worth looking into.

0 1962-05-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   From the collective viewpoint, of course, the work would be greatly inconvenienced: even if we could just Manage to finish the Bulletin for August, the November Bulletin would be in real jeopardy.
   And as for the Agenda, well it would simply stop, thats all, for the whole time youre away. I might also have nothing to say, I dont know. It could be that I wont have anything to say for two or three months, or even longer. I cant say. I dont know whats going to happen to me I mean happen to this whole collection (Mother indicates her body), this collection of bodily experiences and research. I havent been told anything I dont try to know and I dont know. So I will probably have nothing to say. On the whole, thats how it looks to me.
  --
   But there are a certain number of beingsnot Manywho have come back on earth ONLY to take part in a particular work, in a particular way. And outer things, personal and individual things, are virtually sacrificed to that. Certain faculties, for instance, whose source is the higher entity, faculties that in an ordinary life would result in a measure of power or fame or success or realization, are placed under conditions where their outer effect is subordinated to the needs of a particular work.
   Let me put it to you more clearly: your physical body, for example, should have been either stronger or more supple or endowed with certain very strong vital compensations, so that you wouldnt suffer from your working conditions. Of course, for someone following a yogic ascent, whose soul is in the process of formation, the external conditions of life are normally what is best for inner development, whatever that may beeven if, on the surface, those conditions arent good. So the only advice you can give such a person is, Well, either renounce the spiritual life or else putup with it. But thats not your case. There is a Mission, a work, and a kind of gap between a certain physical formation and that Mission. So if you ask me plainly what I see, I can tell you plainly, instead of saying as I would to certain sadhaks or anyone sincerely wanting to do yoga, Take it or leave it; you must learn to transform yourself inwardly to the point where you can master the body and its needs. I cant tell you that, because thats not how it is for you.
  --
   With the work on the Bulletin and other Ashram publications, translating Sri Aurobindo, working on this Agenda, writing his own books and doing Many hours of japa, plus other tasks besides, Satprem had been working something like fifteen hours a day (except when he ran off somewhere and even then ...) for eight years nonstop.
   ***

0 1962-05-29, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   HuMan beings arent that limited, after all! It is rather yes, its a matter of atavism, of education, of all sorts of things; and above all, I think the main reason is that you have no desire toits no fun for you!
   (Satprem laughs in complete agreement)
   I was brought up by an ascetic, a stoic; my mother was a woMan like an iron bar, you know. When my brother and I were small she spent her time telling us over and over that we werent on earth to have fun; that its constant hell, but you have to put up with it, and the only possible satisfaction lies in doing your duty!
   A splendid education, mon petit!
  --
   Theres a little American boy here (I dont know if his mother is completely helpless or just idolizes him, but anyway she lets him run wildshes always defending him, she wont allow anyone to scold or punish him), and this child wont take any classes or accept any teacher, but just runs around the school from one classroom to anothermaking noise, hitting people, calling the teacher nameslike a whirlwind; and then off he goes! And one day he went into the Playground; hes such a Maniac that hes not allowed there, but he sneaked in, and there were some girls and women doing exercises on the groundhe started running around on their stomachs! (Laughter) It was a scandal.
   Oh, what a circus! But thats the atmosphere.
  --
   If I could give you such a gift. I am trying, but so far I cant do it I dont know why. I have done Many things for Many people, as you well know. So why not this? Havent yet found the way.
   But when you have the experience, you know, its completecomplete, total, physical, concrete.

0 1962-05-31, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Several times (because I am almost never alone in my room, though there may be Many other reasons), I have noticed a slight change, a small movement in the consciousness of the person or persons in the room. But I always hesitate to throw the responsibility onto something external, because that takes three-quarters of the possibility of control away from you.
   If only the mechanism could be found!
  --
   That, in any event, is how whats speaking to you here Manages to get to the true room.
   It seems to take time, the way I am telling it now, but actually a minute or two of silence and its done.
  --
   In ordinary language, the vibration of the Mantra is what helps the body to enter a certain state but it is not particularly THIS Mantra: it is the particular relationship established between a Mantra (it has to be a true one, a Mantra endowed with power) and the body. It surges up spontaneously: as soon as the body starts walking, it walks to the rhythm of those Words. And the rhythm of the Words quite naturally brings about a certain vibration, which in turn brings about the state.
   But to say its these particular Words exclusively would be ridiculous. What counts is the sincerity of the aspiration, the exactness of the expression and the power; that is, the power that comes from the Mantra being accepted. This is something very interesting: the Mantra has been ACCEPTED by the supreme Power as an effective tool, and so it automatically contains a certain force and power.5 But it is a purely personal phenomenon (the expression is the same, but the vibrations are personal). A Mantra leading one person straight to divine realization will leave another person cold and flat.
   What is your experience when you say your Mantra? You once told me you felt good saying it.
   I generally find it restful.
  --
   And yet I have noticed that to associate a certain state and a certain aspiration with a certain sound helps the body. No one told me the Mantra; I had begun doing japa before we met X (it had come to me when I was trying to find a means of getting the body to take part in the experience the body itself, you know: THIS). And this help was certainly given to me, because the method imposed itself very, very imperiouslywhen I heard certain Words it was like an electric shock. And then, disregarding all Sanskrit rules, I made myself a sentence; it isnt really a Sanskrit sentence, or any kind of sentence at alla phrase made up of three Words. And these three Words are full of meaning for me. (I wouldnt mention it to a Sanskritist!) They have a full, living meaning. And they have been repeated literally millions and millions of times, I am not exaggerating they surge up from the body spontaneously.
   It was the first sound that came from the body when I had that last experience [April 13]. Along with the first pain, came that first soundso it must be quite well rooted.6 And it brings in exactly that vibration of eternal Life: the first thing I felt, all of a sudden, was a kind of strong calm, confident and smiling.
  --
   Mother is not speaking here of only her Mantra but of all Mantras. As she later added: "No Mantra has any effect unless it is ACCEPTED by the Power being addressed. When (like the Tantrics, for example) you do a Mantra for a certain deity, if this deity accepts the Mantra, that gives it power; but if the deity doesn't accept your Mantra, it has no power at all. This isn't something I got out of a book, I know it from my own experience but I believe it has been explained in Tantric texts."
   In the substance of the body.

0 1962-06-02, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Last night I spent almost all my time in such a building. And all the people who help the work were symbolized there but its always a material help, either work or money or. I remember being particularly struck by one character last night. (Again, there were a lot of aggravations, but someone or something was always on the scene when I arrived and it all sorted itself outit was the exact opposite of the dreams I was talking about the other day: all the difficulties sorted themselves out when I arrived.) Then I came to a rather difficult place to cross (you had to flounder about on slippery scaffoldings) and suddenly, facing me, there was a Man (of course, it was probably a symbol rather than a Man, but it might really be someone physical). He was one of the workers, a master mason (when I woke up this morning, I thought of the symbolism of Freemasonry and wondered if it might give a clue to the experience). Nearby, people were coming to supervise, observe, direct, people who thought themselves highly superior but they were never any help in solving practical problems! They were creating more problems than they were helping to solve. Anyway, this master mason appeared to be around fifty, with a beautiful facea workers face, beautiful and concentrated. There was a difficult place to cross, and he had worked the thing out very efficiently, with a lot of care. Then, when it was all done and I was able to go on my way, I felt a great surge of love go out to him, with neither gesture nor word and he received it, he felt and received it. His face lit up and he implored me, with wonderful humility, Never let me forget this moment, the most beautiful moment of my life. (I dont know what language he used because it didnt come to me in words.) It was such an intense experience. His humility, his receptivity, his response were all so beautiful and pure that when I woke upwhen I came out of the experience, at any rate I was left with a most delightful impression.
   What he represents might be partly Manifested by somebody here. A beautiful face a Man around fifty. Or it may be symbolic: such characters are sometimes put together with features from several people, to make it very clear that they represent a state of consciousness and not an individual. Its far more often a state of consciousness than an individual.
   But this experience left me with a true sense of satisfaction, of fullness: his work had been perfect and his response to the divine Force, to the Grace that came to him, was magnificent. It may be several people,3 it may be one particular person I dont know. It happened just last night.

0 1962-06-06, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   As for the head, it has learned to keep still. I walk in the mornings and afternoons, saying the Mantra as I did before; but while before I had to drive thoughts away, concentrate and make an effort, now this state comes and takes over everything the head, the body, everything and then I walk in that woolly dream (woolly isnt the right word, but its all I can find!). Its smooth, soft, without angles and supple! No resistance, no resistance. Oh, that peace!
   Very well, petit.
  --
   Two or three times, like a flash, I have seen something Manifest, change place. But it was over in less time than it takes to tell, so it might be entirely subjective. To make sure, I would have to check it with someone else, wouldnt I?
   We will see. Patience.

0 1962-06-09, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   And power is what makes the difference. The greater the power, you might say (these words are all very clumsy), the farther the experience spreads. How great the power is depends on its starting point. If its starting point is the Origin, the power is lets say universal (we wont consider more than one universe for the moment); it is universal. As this Power Manifests from plane to plane, it becomes more concrete and limited; on each plane, the field of action becomes more limited. If your power is vital (or pranic, as its called here in India), the field of action is terrestrial, and sometimes limited to just a few individuals, sometimes its a power capable of acting on just one small being. But originally its the SAME power, acting on the SAME substance I cant express it, words are impossible; but I sense very clearly what I mean.
   I can affirm that this notion of subjective and objective still belongs to the world of illusion. The CONTENT of the experience is what may be either microscopic or universal, depending on the specific quality of the power being expressed, or its field of action. The limitation of power can be voluntary and deliberate; it can be a willed, and not an imposed limitation, which means that the Will-Force may come from the Origin but deliberately limit itself, limit its field of action. But it is the same power and the same substance.
  --
   In fact, physicists today unanimously admit that the mathematical "models" explaining the corpuscular structure of matter have become excessively complex: "There are too Many kinds of quarks [theoretical elementary particles and 'ultimate' constituents of matter] and far too Many of their aspects are unobservable." There is a call for a simpler working hypothesis, a new idea, simplifying and unifying, that would explain matter without recourse to "unobservables."
   And it may well be that the seed of this "idea" is concealed in Mother's simple but enigmatic words: "Everything has one and the same constituent element; and everything lies IN the interrelations."

0 1962-06-12, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   (Unexpectedly, this conversation led into the subject of Satprem's break with X, who had been his guru for the past few years. Here then, briefly, is the story behind the rupture: No sooner had Satprem brought X to the Ashram than a swarm of disciples threw themselves at him. Conspicuous among these were the moneymen, the same wheelerdealers who, eleven years later, after Mother's departure, were to reveal their ambitions in Auroville as well as Pondicherry. Satprem's somewhat straightforward Manner soon got in the way of their schemes. He had a deep affection for X and when he repeatedly saw that these peoplespiritual scoundrels is the only word for themwere, in the hope of sowing confusion (for they always prosper best in confusion), bringing false reports to Mother of things X had supposedly said, he tried in all innocence to put X on his guard against the false reports and dishonest people who were wronging him. But instead of listening to Satprem and understanding that he spoke out of love, Xwith all his Tantric power behindflew into a violent rage against him, as if he had been casting a slur on X's prestige. Satprem then broke with X, but not without sorrow.)
   Anything new?
  --
   When I spoke to him, you know, when I went to see him, it was just after my japa and I was in a state of absolute inner calmabsolute, with not a. I simply felt he had to be helped, because he was saying things that were going against him. So I had this feeling, a very strong feeling of affection, but an affection that states things clearly and unemotionally. I was very calm when I said all that. I did get upset afterwards, but I was upset mainly because he immediately had such an incredible reaction! So then I was at a loss. But the way I put things to him. Really, if he had the least. But even a Man who has never done any yoga would have felt I was speaking from my heart, candidly. Even a Man with no spiritual culture would have felt that. So how could he take it in such a way!
   I am not sure he did.
  --
   You see, the trouble is hes a Man whose principles and education prevent him from believing in progress and transformation. He believes that if you fulfill the conditions you get the siddhi,3 and thats the end of it the goal is reached. He had already attained his goal before meeting us, and then he could have kept his distance, but he became intimately connected with something full of all kinds of difficulties (which we neither ignore nor call for), but its essentially a Power for progressan awesome force for progress. Well, when I saw that, I wondered, How can he possibly bear it? I thought he would keep his distance and not enter the atmosphere, but he did try to enterhe linked up with certain people, and particularly when he started meditating with me (he asked for it, not me), suddenly something responded. And that triggered the conflict in him. One part of his being has gone along with the Movement, while the other is left strandeddoesnt budge. That created a gap.
   Of course, one has to be in a terribly superficial consciousness to react the way he did. He had a rather deep contact with you, and there were moments when he understood very well who you arehe knows, he told me so. Consequently, had he truly been in a yogic state, then even if you had done something tactless or wrong, he would have just smiled! He would have said, Oh, hes just impetuous, but I dont mind.
  --
   A Man in his position, with such a rudimentary degree of culture, CANNOT be helped. Especially since all his learning is based on a knowledge that denies progress. So how can he be helped to progress?
   Anyway, what will happen will happen, and it will certainly be whats best for everyone, including him!4
  --
   No, the Grace has made him an object of special attention, thrusting him into a world which, externally, was not his own. In a matter of a few years he has made a journey of several lifetimes, so it has been a little bit difficult. Truly, in a few years he has inwardly traveled Many lifetimes. And he has had to face the necessity of an enormous progress, all the more difficult because he hadnt mentally accepted or foreseen it. So he doesnt understand any more, poor Man! If I could only take him in my arms like a baby and say to him, My poor little dear, my dear little child and make him feel good, then all would be well. But its not possible theres a whole spiritual construction. So I do it from a distance, wordlessly, in silence. But what gets through all that crust? I dont know! Over and over, I keep saying one thing: To divine Love, all huMan confusions and misunderstandings are unknown. There. Well, we will see. Wherever divine Love is present, huMan confusions and misunderstandings cannot exist, cannot enter.
   Thats the only solution.
  --
   There is a way of looking at thingsan all too huMan waywhich sees me as VERY dangerous, very dangerous. It has been said time and time again. There was an EnglishwoMan who came here after an unhappy love affair. She had come to India seeking consolation, and stumbled onto Pondicherry. It was right at the beginning (those English Conversations5 are things I said to her; I spoke in English and then translated itor rather said it all over again in French). And at the end of a years stay, this woMan said to me (with such despair!), When I came here I was still able to love and feel goodwill towards people; but now that Ive become conscious, I am full of contempt and hatred! So I answered her, Go a bit farther on. Oh, no! she replied. Its enough for me as it is! And she added, You are a very dangerous person. Because I was making people conscious! (Mother laughs) But its true! Once you start, you have to go right to the end; you mustnt stop on the wayon the way, it gets to be hard going.
   I dont do it on purpose.
  --
   This tranquillity is simply the starting point for me. Something should Manifest within this silence, shouldnt it?
   My constant complaint is that something does Manifestit interrupts the tranquillity.
   If within that immobility I had a vision of the Mother, for instancea vision of the Motherif She were here well, yes, as though She knew me, was near me, was aware of my existence! A relationship, something. Well, that would change everything! If I could say to myself: close your eyes and you will see Herlike Ramakrishna, for example, he had that kind of relationship. I dont know, my whole life would be changed, I would feel linked to SOMETHING. It wouldnt just be silence, silence, silence.
  --
   A flash, yes (you had it once at Brindaban,6 you had an experience there); a flash is possible. But you want something perManent.
   All right
  --
   Oh! You want Her to tell you She knows you? But Shes telling you! She has told you Many a time!
   You want Her to say: You are mine, my very own?

0 1962-06-23, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   I cant say I find it terribly interesting (!) but I am clearly meant to know about it. Not that I am seeking to see or know (my focus is rather on preparing the body and making it receptive; thats what I am actively doing), but what probably happens is that, in my contemplation, I suddenly exteriorize (or something of the sort) and then I see all kinds of things. But I DONT sleep, you see (I dont know how to explain it). I go from a state of conscious concentration to a more passive state in which I am made to take part in all kinds of scenes and visions, involving Many people and Many things, as if to complete my knowledge. Some of these visions are amusing, new and interesting, and I dont know, but I suspect Sri Aurobindo has something to do with it, because theres such a sense of humor running through it all! (Mother laughs) Things that make me laugh, comical things due mainly to the tremendous earnestness with which people take the most unimportant things; yes, the disproportionate importance people give to absolutely unimportant events!
   (silence)

0 1962-06-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   I have been given certain promisesgreat promises. Not promises, but what comes is: This is how it will be. Great thingsconcrete Manifestations of the divine Power, the divine Consciousness, the divine Action. And spontaneous, natural, inevitable.
   This is obviously being prepared (Mother touches her body) so that it wont put the usual obstacles in the way of expression.
  --
   Many things could happen. But how much time will it take? I dont know.
   (silence)
  --
   In the end, thats how you Manage to hold on. Its a great thing.
   ***
  --
   What was standing there was a Manifestation of one of my states of being, a part of my vital being, or rather one of my innumerable vital beingsbecause I have quite a few! And this one is particularly interested in things on earth.
   A projection of yoursan eManation?
   You know, mon petit, I said one day that in the history of earth, wherever there was a possibility for the Consciousness to Manifest, I was there1; this is a fact. Its like the story of Savitri: always there, always there, always there, in this one, that oneat certain times there were four eManations simultaneously! At the time of the Italian and French Renaissance. And again at the time of Christ, then too. Oh, you know, I have remembered so Many, Many things! It would take volumes to tell it all. And then, more often than not (not always, but more often than not), what took part in this or that life was a particular yogic formation of the vital beingin other words something immortal.2 And when I came this time, as soon as I took up the yoga, they came back again from all sides, they were waiting. Some were simply waiting, others were working (they led their own independent lives) and they all gathered together again. Thats how I got those memories. One after the other, those vital beings camea deluge! I had barely enough time to assimilate one, to see, situate and integrate it, and another would come. They are quite independent, of course, they do their own work, but they are very centralized all the same. And there are all kindsall kinds, anything you can imagine! Some of them have even been in men: they are not exclusively feminine.
   At first, I used to think they were fantasies.
  --
   But this one [the tall white Being] is not of huMan origin; it was not formed in a huMan life: it is a being that had already incarnated, and is one of those who presided over the formation of this present being [Mother]. But, as I said, I saw it: it was sexless, neither male nor female, and as intrepid as the vital can be, with a calm but absolute power. Ah, I found a very good description of it in one of Sri Aurobindos plays, when he speaks of the goddess Athena (I think its in Perseus, but I am not sure); she has that kind of its an almighty calm, and with such authority! Yes, its in Perseuswhen she appears to the Sea-God and forces him to retreat to his own domain. Theres a description there that fits this Being quite well.3
   Besides, all the Greek gods are various aspects of a single thing: you see it this way, that way, that way, this way (turning her hand, Mother seems to show several facets of a single prism). But its simply one and the same thing.4
  --
   Everything that happened prior to the experience of April 13 has disappeared, as it were, and the usual functioning of the consciousness has been totally annulled; it is trying little by little to create a new mode of operationnot merely trying: it is in the PROCESS of doing so on a truer foundation; a truer foundation, or truer relations, or vibrations, or functionings (I dont know the right word for it: all these things at once). That presence the other day [the tall white Being] was nothing essentially newit had already intervened a good Many times; and yet it was new, because the whole functioning was new. Its like my experience two nights ago [the recharging of batteries], I had it for months on end; well, it was new because it was based on a new functioning. And each time (is it out of habit, or to make me understand, to make me see the difference?), each time the old functioning starts up, first of all I really feel I am losing the true contact, that the TRUE thing is escaping, and then I wonder how anybody can function like that without going insane! Thats what strikes me nowthis feeling of going insane! I mean it grates, it scrapes, it makes no senseit misses the point. It is not the TRUE thing, its beside the point. It tries to imitate something inimitable. And so I ask myself, What is this? Am I going crazy? Am I losing my faculties? And then I realize its not that at all! Above theres a state of immutable and UNSHAKABLE concentration, constant and almighty, and with but a drop of That, a spark of That, all problems are solved. Then I see clearly that its only a demonstration to make me see the inadequacy of the old, habitual functioningto really and truly convince me that its inadequate. Its rather hard to bear, actually. Last night I had it, I have seen it again in recent days: it lasts a few secondsjust enough for a satisfactory lesson! It may also happen to make me understand, but afterwards I wonder, Well, if everybody is in this state they dont know it, but its just terrible! And I realize that the LEAST thing, the slightest circumstance, is COMPLETELY distorted, instantly distorted by the way people work it out, the way they cause events to develop.
   Thats an ever-present experience.
  --
   I wrote a letter like that yesterday; I took a piece of paper and wrote in my habitual way, my old way. While I was writing, the feeling that it wasnt right came in; then I added a comment, written in the same Manner, with the vision from above (a comment on a letter written by the person I was writing to). When that was done, the feeling of inadequacy lingered, so I took another piece of paperit was blue and wrote something and that still wasnt it. So I ended up taking yet another piece of paper and writing something else again then I put all three in one envelope! I hope that person has a solid head! But at the same time something was telling me, It will do him good; so I let it go.
   It happened yesterday I dont yet know the outcome!
  --
   Even I, when I see myself, I am very tallwhat has happened? It is the new being. I tell you, since the 12th [of April] there is. When is it going to Manifest in the physical? I dont know.
   It is a subtle-physical beingnot a vital but a subtle-physical being, and I am tall and strong.
   Tell her shes not the only one who sees me this wayMany do. When I see myself at night, thats how I see myself. Perhaps well, this (Mother touches her body) would have to yield. But when? I dont know.
   Ageless something neither young nor old nor something totally different. And tall, strong.
  --
   Yes, something has come and wants to Manifest here, so I am being prepared, I see plainly that I am being. How to adapt this (the body)? Thats the question.
   They are experimenting! Well see whats going to happen. This work is fairly new! (Mother laughs.)
  --
   "Since the beginning of the earth, wherever and whenever there was the possibility of Manifesting a ray of the Consciousness, I was there."
   March 14, 1952.

0 1962-06-30, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   (Mother gives Satprem an old note to keepunfortunately, he does not recall exactly what it wasone of those little scraps of paper, scattered about almost everywhere, on which Mother would jot down notations of her experiences; or, to be more exact, on which she concretized in material words the Force then Manifesting. As a comment on this note, Mother adds:)
   I have experienced this hundreds and hundreds of times: one has a deep, true experience, but the mind, even the higher mind, immediately latches onto it (usually its the higher mind) and very actively makes its OWN thing out of the experience, thus bringing in its own distortion.
  --
   I found out Many, Many things about Joan of ArcMany things. And with stunning precision, which made it extremely interesting. I wont repeat them because I dont remember with exactness, and these things have no value unless they are exact. And then, for the Italian Renaissance: Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa; and for the French Renaissance: Franois I, Marguerite de Valois,2 and so forth.
   Twice I knew that it wasnt just images but something that had happened to ME, but it took another form. Once (when I was older, around twenty) it happened at Versailles. I had been invited to dinner by a cousin who, with no warning, served me dry champagne during dinner and I drank it unsuspectingly (I who never drank at all, neither wine nor liquor!). When I had to get up and cross the crowded room, oh, how very difficult it became, so difficult! Then we went to a place near the chateau, with a view of the whole park. And I was staring at the park, when I saw I saw the park filling up with lights (the electric lights had vanished), with all kinds of lights, torches, lanterns and then crowds of people walking about in Louis XIV dress! I was staring at this with my eyes wide open, holding on to the balustrade to keep from falling down (I wasnt too sure of myself!). I was seeing it all, then I saw myself there, engrossed in conversation with some people (I dont remember now, but there were certain corrections here too). I mean I was a certain person (I dont remember who) and there were those two brothers who were sculptors (Mother vainly tries to recollect the names3) anyhow, all kinds of people were there and I saw myself talking, chatting. And I seem to have been sufficiently in control of myself, because when I related all that I had seen, there were some quite interesting details and corrections. That was one time.
  --
   Four at once. And, in general, they were the different states of being of the Mother the four aspects. Generally one aspect in each embodiment (when there were four). Or else this or that aspect might have been less present in one embodiment and more present in another. Sometimes there was a fairly central presence and then at the same time less central, less important eManations. But that has happened several timesseveral times. On two occasions it was particularly clear.
   But I have often sensed that there wasnt merely ONE embodiment, that the course of history may have crystallized around this or that person, but there were other embodiments less (how to put it?) less conspicuous, somewhere else.
  --
   None of those beings, those gods and deities of various pantheons, have the same rapport with the Supreme that Man has; for Man has a psychic being, in other words, the Supremes presence within him. These gods are eManationsindependent eManationscreated for a special purpose and a particular action which they fulfill SPONTANEOUSLY; they do it not with a sense of constant surrender to the Divine but simply because thats what they are, and why they are, and all they know is what they are. They dont have the conscious link with the Supreme that Man hasMan carries the Supreme within himself.
   That makes a considerable difference.
   But with this present incarnation of the Mahashakti. She is the Supremes first Manifestation, creations first stride, and it was She who first gave form to all those beings. Now, since her incarnation in the physical world, and through the position She has taken here in relation to the Supreme by incarnating in a huMan body, all the other worlds have been influenced, and influenced in an extremely interesting way.8 I have been in contact with all those gods, all those great beings, and for the most part their attitude has changed. And even with those who didnt want to change, it has nonetheless influenced their way of being.
   HuMan experience, with this direct incarnation of the Supreme,9 is ultimately a UNIQUE experience, which has given a new orientation to universal history. Sri Aurobindo speaks of thishe speaks of the difference between the Vedic era, the Vedic way of relating to the Supreme, and the advent of Vedanta (I think its Vedanta): devotion, adoration, bhakti, the God within.10 Well, this aspect of rapport with the Supreme could exist ONLY WITH Man, because Man is a special being in universal History the divine Presence is in him. And several of those great gods have taken huMan bodies JUST TO HAVE THAT.11 But not Many of themthey were so fully aware of their own perfect independence and their almightiness that they didnt NEED anything (unlike Man, you see, struggling to escape his slavery): they were absolutely free.
   And thats why. How Many times Durga came! She would always come, and I had my eye on her (!), because in her presence I could clearly sense that there wasnt that rapport with the Supreme (she just didnt need it, she didnt need anything). And it wasnt that something acted on her consciously, deliberately, to obtain that result: it has been a contagion. I remember how she used to come, and my aspiration would be so intense, my inner attitude so concentrated and one day there was such a sense of power, of immensity, of ineffable bliss in the contact with the Supreme (it was a day when Durga was there), and she seemed to be taken and absorbed in it. And through that bliss she made her surrender.
   Most interesting.
  --
   Somewhat in the Manner of Tantric yantrams, but using words charged with force instead of geometric symbols. Mother once told Satprem that from time to time she would "recharge" these little scraps of paper by looking at them or simply keeping them on the table next to her.
   Of whom Clement Marot said: "Body of a woMan, heart of a Man, and face of an angel."
   Mother later tried to recall the names again, without success: "Those sculptor brothers did a lot of work on the palace at Versailles.... And I am not sure if it wasn't Mme de Montespan. I don't remember any more. This kind of thing should not be talked about vaguely. At the time it was precise, exact: I knew all the names, all the details, all the words but I never wrote it down and now it's gone. And these things shouldn't be told approximately.
  --
   Here we have a choice between several chilling faces. Of the five portraits of doges by Titian, that of the doge Antonio CriMani, painted between 1555 and 1576, is one of the few that have remained in the Palazzo Ducale in Venice. Might this be the one?
   Is the battle in question here that of Eylau (February 8, 1807) or Friedl and (June 14, 1807)?
  --
   Some days later, Satprem again brought up the above passage, asking whether the Mother hadn't been active on earth since the beginning of time and not merely "with this present incarnation of the Mahashakti." The reply: "It was always through EManATIONS, while now it's as Sri Aurobindo writes in Savitri the Supreme tells Savitri that a day will come when the earth is ready and 'The Mighty Mother shall take birth'.... But Savitri was already on earthshe was an eManation.
   So they were all eManations?
   "They were all eManations, right from the beginning. So we have to say: 'With the PRESENT incarnation.'"
   I.e., with the psychic being or soul IN Man, the direct incarnation of the Supreme in Man: "This has come with huMankind."
   Satprem subsequently asked Mother:
   You almost seem to be saying that during the Vedic era there was no divine presence in Man!
   No, there wasn't! They discovered it.
   HuManity has undergone a spiritual evolution.
   Vedism is in contact with the gods and, THROUGH THE GODS, with the Supreme; but it is not in direct contact with the Supreme there is no inner, psychic contact. That's what Sri Aurobindo says (I myself know nothing about it!). But with the Vedanta and the devotees of Krishna, it is the god within: they had a direct contact with the god within (as in the Gita).
  --
   When a god takes a huMan body it must be terrible for him. Or does his divinity become quite veiled to him?
   Yes, quite veiled.
  --
   But Krishna had a huMan body, Shiva had a huMan body.
   But supposing one of those gods were to incarnate in the present world ... well, it wouldn't be much funhe would suffocate.

0 1962-07-04, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Once again it made me realize that this last experience [of April 13] may in reality have come to free me from ALL past knowledge, and that to live the Truth none of it is needed. I need neither all this terminology nor Sri Aurobindos terminology nor, of course, anyone elses; I dont need all these classifications, I dont need all sorts of experiences I need ONE experience, the one I have. And I have it in all things and in all circumstances: the experience of eternal, infinite, absolute Oneness Manifesting in the finite, the relative and the temporal. And the process of change I am pursuing seems less and less of a problem; after looking like the ultimate problem, it doesnt seem to be one any more, because but that that cant be utteredit pleases Him to be that way, so He is that way.
   And the secret is simply to be in this It pleases Him.
  --
   Ultimately, nothing but omnipotence could convert the world, convince the world. The world isnt ready to experience supreme Love. Supreme Love eliminates all problems, even the problem of creation: there are no more problems, I know it since that experience [of April 13]. But the world isnt ready yet, it may take a few thousand years. Although it is beginning to be ready for the Manifestation of supreme Power (which seems to indicate that this will Manifest first). And this supreme Power would result from a CONSTANT identification.
   But this constancy isnt yet established: one is identified and then one isnt, is and then isnt, so things get delayed indefinitely. You wind up doing exactly what you tell others not to doone foot here and one foot there! It just wont do.
  --
   In ordinary consciousness, what really gets in the way of the experience is our excessive attachment to the physical form as we see it, which looks to us like a perManent reality of the being.
   I try to make people understand this through a practical demonstration. You know, I very rarely appear to people in a form even vaguely similar to the one I physically I was about to say had! It always depends on what they are akin to, what theyre most intimate withall sorts of forms. And I try to make them comprehend that THAT form is just as much mine as this one (Mother touches her body). To tell the truth, it is much more truly mine. As for the true form the TRUE Formto bear the sight of it, one must be able to relate directly to the Supreme. So when people say, I want to see you, or I see you, they mean the aspect of mine they know. But these torrents of forms are ALL true, and most of them truer than this body has ever been. To my consciousness it was always, oh, so pitiably approximatea caricature! Not even a caricature: no resemblance at all.
   It had its good qualities (I seem bent on speaking in the past tenseits spontaneous), qualities it was built and chosen for. For practical purposes, this body was very necessary, but when it comes to Manifesting!
   But had it been truly expressive, something really eloquent, probably there would have been more reluctance to to give it free rein.
  --
   People say, He has lost consciousness. They made this assumption in N.S.s case because there were no vital signs and the consciousness in the body was reduced to a minimum; there was still some left (because it did react!), but it was a bare minimum, without much reacting powerhe wasnt an accomplished yogi, after all, only an apprentice yogi. It would have been entirely different, for instance, and far more serious, for someone who had practiced hatha yoga. But I mean to say that N.S. was here beside me, fully conscious, and could have moved on to another mode of Manifestation without having to go through the throes of death thats not at all indispensable! Such is my experience, and I find it very important, tremendously important.
   Besides, this is the first time it has happened. All those (like I.B., for example) who were hurled violently out of their bodies through an accident have, after a time, become conscious again the consciousness gathers itself back together. But N.S.s consciousness never scattered, he never lost consciousness.

0 1962-07-07, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Thats good. From the standpoint of the Work, of what you create, of course its very good, very interesting; it needs to be said, it MUST be said. But is the gentleMan who wrote you that letter capable of understanding anything of it? Thats where I put a question mark.
   Well see.
  --
   The Ashram began with two houses and so Many peoplein America thats all they ever wanted to know from me. When I asked for money from America, thats what they asked about, and thats what I had to send them: on such and such a date we started off with two houses and then little by little, like this and like that, it became what it is today. And now we have so Many houses (Mother laughs), there are so Many people, so Many visitors per year, and the Samadhi has become a place of pilgrimage, and. In short, newspaper stories thats what I wrote to America! I put together papers, documents, statistics they were quite satisfied. If I had told them even a quarter of what you say, they would have replied, Oh, for heavens sake, be practical!
   Being practical means understanding no more than they do.
  --
   This is what I am doing (gesture of applying pressure with the thumb). Who knows, anything can happen! Some rather interesting things are happening in the world, showing me that after all, there is a response there is a little response. I do this (same gesture with the thumb), and the effort isnt completely wasted. The events in Algeria2 and certain things in America too. Theres a response. And then (I think Ive told you this), some people are suddenly having experiences out of all proportion to their inner state, as though theyd been projected into a curve absorbing several lifetimes. This seems to be whats happening individually. People with the least bit of trust are gaining lifetimes perhaps Many lifetimesand the world as well.
   The work is getting done in double timeeven a lot more than double.

0 1962-07-14, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Except that gradually the consciousness is regaining control, but not in the same Manner. And when I tried to understand this dying unto death, I found myself over there again (gesture to the left), and I seemed to be told, That was your experience.
   I felt MUCH more alive there than here! Much more. And even now when I want to feel that power and intensity of life, when I want to recapture my experience [of April 13], I always go off there, to the left.
  --
   From time to time, one touches the vibration of the Supremes Love, the creative Love, Love that creates, upholds, maintains, fuels progress and is the Manifestations very reason for being (these great pulsations were the expression of That), and That is something so stupendous and marvelous for the material frame, the body, that it seems to be dosed out. From time to time, you are given a trickle of it to make you realize that the end (or anyway, the end of the beginning!) is That.
   But you mustnt rush; and above all, no desire. Be very calm. The calmer you are, the longer it lasts. If youre in too much of a hurry, it goes away.
  --
   Theyve Managed to stay very childlike.
   Very childlike. But its charming. Charming.
  --
   No, I am not speaking of what one is when one has died unto death, not that. I mean normally, physicallyhow Many years before 2000?
   Umm.
   Not Many, forty years.
   Thirty-seven years.

0 1962-07-21, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   I have your letter, but have not succeeded in writing an answer till now. That I have even sat down to write now is a miracle; for me to write a letter is an event that takes place once in a blue moonespecially to write in Bengali, a thing I have not done for five or six years. If I can Manage to finish this letter and put it in the post, the miracle will be complete!
   First, about your yoga. You wish to give me the charge of your yoga and I am willing to take it, but that means to give its charge to Him who is moving by His divine Shakti [Energy], whether secretly or openly, both you and me. But you must know that the necessary result of this will be that you will have to walk in the special path which He has given to me, the path which I call the path of the Integral Yoga. What I began with, what Lele1 gave me, was a seeking for the path, a circling in Many directionsa first touch, a taking up, a handling and scrutiny of this or that in all the old partial yogas, some sort of complete experience of one and then the pursuit of another.
   Afterwards, when I came to Pondicherry, this unsteady condition came to an end. The Guru of the world who is within us then gave me complete directions for my pathits complete theory, the ten limbs of the body of this Yoga. These past ten years He has been making me develop it in experience, and this is not yet finished. It may take another two years, and as long as it is not finished I doubt if I shall be able to return to Bengal. Pondicherry is the appointed place for my yoga siddhi [realization], except indeed one part of it, and that is action. The centre of my work is Bengal, although I hope that its circumference will be all India and the whole earth.
   I shall write and tell you afterwards what this way of yoga is. Or if you come here I shall speak to you about it. In this matter the spoken word is better than the written. At present I can only say that its root-principle is to make a harmony and unity of complete knowledge, complete works and complete Bhakti [Devotion], to raise all this above the mind and give it its complete perfection on the supramental level of Vijnana [Gnosis]. This was the defect of the old yoga the mind and the Spirit it knew, and it was satisfied with the experience of the Spirit in the mind. But the mind can grasp only the divided and partial; it cannot wholly seize the infinite and indivisible. The minds means to reach the infinite are Sannyasa [Renunciation], Moksha [Liberation] and Nirvana, and it has no others. One Man or another may indeed attain this featureless Moksha, but what is the gain? The BrahMan, the Self, God are ever present. What God wants in Man is to embody Himself here in the individual and in the community, to realize God in life.
   The old way of yoga failed to bring about the harmony or unity of Spirit and life: it instead dismissed the world as Maya [Illusion] or a transient Play. The result has been loss of life-power and the degeneration of India. As was said in the Gita, These peoples would perish if I did not do worksthese peoples of India have truly gone down to ruin. A few sannyasins and bairagis [renunciants] to be saintly and perfect and liberated, a few bhaktas [lovers of God] to dance in a mad ecstasy of love and sweet emotion and Ananda [Bliss], and a whole race to become lifeless, void of intelligence, sunk in deep tamas [inertia]is this the effect of true spirituality? No, we must first attain all the partial experiences possible on the mental level and flood the mind with spiritual delight and illumine it with spiritual light, but afterwards we must rise above. If we cannot rise above, to the supramental level, that is, it is hardly possible to know the worlds final secret and the problem it raises remains unsolved. There, the ignorance which creates a duality of opposition between the Spirit and Matter, between truth of spirit and truth of life, disappears. There one need no longer call the world Maya. The world is the eternal Play of God, the eternal Manifestation of the Self. Then it becomes possible to fully know and fully realize Godto do what is said in the Gita, To know Me integrally. The physical body, the life, the mind and understanding, the supermind and the Ananda these are the spirits five levels. The higher Man rises on this ascent the nearer he comes to the state of that highest perfection open to his spiritual evolution. Rising to the Supermind, it becomes easy to rise to the Ananda. One attains a firm foundation in the condition of the indivisible and infinite Ananda, not only in the timeless ParabrahMan [Absolute] but in the body, in life, in the world. The integral being, the integral consciousness, the integral Ananda blossoms out and takes form in life. This is the central clue of my yoga, its fundamental principle.
   This is no easy change to make. After these fifteen years I am only now rising into the lowest of the three levels of the Supermind and trying to draw up into it all the lower activities. But when this siddhi will be complete, then I am absolutely certain that through me God will give to others the siddhi of the Supermind with less effort. Then my real work will begin. I am not impatient for success in the work. What is to happen will happen in Gods appointed time. I have no hasty or disorderly impulse to rush into the field of work in the strength of the little ego. Even if I did not succeed in my work I would not be shaken. This work is not mine but Gods. I will listen to no other call; when God moves me then I will move.
   I know very well that Bengal is not really ready. The spiritual flood which has come is for the most part a new form of the old. It is not the real transformation. However this too was needed. Bengal has been awakening in itself the old yogas and exhausting their samskaras [old habitual tendencies], extracting their essence and with it fertilizing the soil. At first it was the time of VedantaAdwaita, Sannyasa, Shankaras Maya and the rest. It is now the turn of Vaishnava DharmaLila, love, the intoxication of emotional experience. All this is very old, unfitted for the new age and will not endure for such excitement has no capacity to last. But the merit of the Vaishnava Bhava [emotional enthusiasm] is that it keeps a connexion between God and the world and gives a meaning to life; but since it is a partial bhava the whole connexion, the full meaning is not there. The tendency to create sects which you have noticed was inevitable. The nature of the mind is to take a part and call it the whole and exclude all other parts. The Siddha [illuminated being] who brings the bhava, although he leans on its partial aspect, yet keeps some knowledge of the integral whole, even though he may not be able to give it form. But his disciples do not get that knowledge precisely because it is not in a form. They are tying up their little bundles, let them. The bundles will open of themselves when God Manifests himself fully. These things are the signs of incompleteness and immaturity. I am not disturbed by them. Let the force of spirituality play in the country in whatever way and in as Many sects as may be. Afterwards we shall see. This is the infancy or the embryonic condition of the new age. It is a first hint, not even the beginning.
   The peculiarity of this yoga is that until there is siddhi above the foundation does not become perfect. Those who have been following my course had kept Many of the old samskaras; some of them have dropped away, but others still remain. There was the samskara of Sannyasa, even the wish to create an Aravinda Math [Sri Aurobindo monastery]. Now the intellect has recognized that Sannyasa is not what is wanted, but the stamp of the old idea has not yet been effaced from the prana [breath, life energy]. And so there was next this talk of remaining in the midst of the world, as a Man of worldly activities and yet a Man of renunciation. The necessity of renouncing desire has been understood, but the harmony of renunciation of desire with enjoyment of Ananda has not been rightly seized by the mind. And they took up my Yoga because it was very natural to the Bengali temperament, not so much from the side of Knowledge as from the side of Bhakti and Karma [Works]. A little knowledge has come in, but the greater part has escaped; the mist of sentimentalism has not been dissipated, the groove of the sattwic bhava [religious fervor] has not been broken. There is still the ego. I am not in haste, I allow each to develop according to his nature. I do not want to fashion all in the same mould. That which is fundamental will indeed be one in all, but it will express itself in Many forms. Everybody grows, forms from within. I do not want to build from outside. The basis is there, the rest will come.
   What I am aiming at is not a society like the present rooted in division. What I have in view is a Samgha [community] founded in the spirit and in the image of its oneness. It is with this idea that the name Deva Samgha has been given the commune of those who want the divine life is the Deva Samgha. Such a Samgha will have to be established in one place at first and then spread all over the country. But if any shadow of egoism falls over this endeavor, then the Samgha will change into a sect. The idea may very naturally creep in that such and such a body is the one true Samgha of the future, the one and only centre, that all else must be its circumference, and that those outside its limits are not of the fold or even if they are, have gone astray, because they think differently.
  --
   People now talk of spiritualizing politics. Its result will be, if there be any perManent result, some kind of Indianized Bolshevism. Even to that kind of work I have no objection. Let each Man do according to his inspiration. But that is not the real thing. If one pours the spiritual power into all these impure forms the water of the Causal ocean into raw vesselsei ther the raw vessels will break and the water will be spilt and lost or the spiritual power will evaporate and only the impure form remain. In all fields it is the same. I can give the spiritual power but that power will be expended in making the image of an ape and setting it up in the temple of Shiva. If the ape is endowed with life and made powerful, he may play the part of the devotee HanuMan and do much work for Rama,2 so long as that life and that power remain. But what we want in the Temple of India is not HanuMan, but the god, the avatar, Rama himself.
   We can mix with all, but in order to draw all into the true path, keeping intact the spirit and form of our ideal. If we do not do that we shall lose our direction and the real work will not be done. If we remain individually everywhere, something will be done indeed; but if we remain everywhere as parts of a Samgha, a hundred times more will be done. As yet that time has not come. If we try to give a form hastily, it may not be the exact thing we want. The Samgha will at first be in unconcentrated form. Those who have the ideal will be united but work in different places. Afterwards, they will form something like a spiritual commune and make a compact Samgha. They will then give all their work a shape according to the deMand of the spirit and the need of the agenot a bound and rigid form, not an achalayatana3, but a free form which will spread out like the sea, mould itself into Many waves and surround a thing here, overflood a thing there and finally take all into itself. As we go on doing this there will be established a spiritual community. This is my present idea. As yet it has not been fully developed. All is in Gods hands; whatever He makes us do, that we shall do.
   Now let me discuss some particular points of your letter. I do not want to say much in this letter about what you have written as regards your yoga. We shall have better occasion when we meet. To look upon the body as a corpse is a sign of Sannyasa, of the path of Nirvana. You cannot be of the world with this idea. You must have delight in all thingsin the Spirit as well as in the body. The body has consciousness, it is Gods form. When you see God in everything that is in the world, when you have this vision that all this is BrahMan, Sarvamidam Brahma, that Vasudeva is all thisVasudevah sarvamiti then you have the universal delight. The flow of that delight precipitates and courses even through the body. When you are in such a state, full of the spiritual consciousness, you can lead a married life, a life in the world. In all your works you find the expression of Gods delight. So far I have been transforming all the objects and perceptions of the mind and the senses into delight on the mental level. Now they are taking the form of the supramental delight. In this condition is the perfect vision and perception of Sachchidananda.
   You write about the Deva Samgha and say, I am not a god, I am only a piece of much hammered and tempered iron. No one is a God but in each Man there is a God and to make Him Manifest is the aim of divine life. That we can all do. I recognize that there are great and small adharas [vessels]. I do not accept, however, your description of yourself as accurate. Still whatever the nature of the vessel, once the touch of God is upon it, once the spirit is awake, great and small and all that does not make much difference. There may be more difficulties, more time may be taken, there may be a difference in the Manifestation, but even about that there is no certainty. The God within takes no account of these hindrances and deficiencies. He breaks his way out. Was the amount of my failings a small one? Were there less obstacles in my mind and heart and vital being and body? Did it not take time? Has God hammered me less? Day after day, minute after minute, I have been fashioned into I know not whether a god or what. But I have become or am becoming something. That is sufficient, since God wanted to build it. It is the same as regards everyone. Not our strength but the Shakti of God is the sadhaka [worker] of this yoga.
   Let me tell you in brief one or two things about what I have long seen. My idea is that the chief cause of the weakness of India is not subjection nor poverty, nor the lack of spirituality or dharma [ethics] but the decline of thought-power, the growth of ignorance in the motherl and of Knowledge. Everywhere I see inability or unwillingness to thinkthought-incapacity or thought-phobia. Whatever may have been in the middle ages, this state of things is now the sign of a terrible degeneration. The middle age was the night, the time of the victory of ignorance. The modern world is the age of the victory of Knowledge. Whoever thinks most, seeks most, labors most, can fathom and learn the truth of the world, and gets so much more Shakti. If you look at Europe, you will see two things: a vast sea of thought and the play of a huge and fast-moving and yet disciplined force. The whole Shakti of Europe is in that. And in the strength of that Shakti it has been swallowing up the world, like the tapaswins [ascetics] of our ancient times, by whose power even the gods of the world were terrified, held in suspense and subjection. People say Europe is running into the jaws of destruction. I do not think so. All these revolutions and upsettings are the preconditions of a new creation.
   Then look at India. Except for some solitary giants, everywhere there is your simple Man, that is, the average Man who does not want to think and cannot think, who has not the least Shakti but only a temporary excitement. In India, you want the simple thought, the easy word. In Europe they want the deep thought, the deep word; there even an ordinary laborer or artisan thinks, wants to know, is not satisfied with surface things but wants to go behind. But there is still this difference: there is a fatal limitation in the strength and thought of Europe. When it comes into the spiritual field, its thought-power can no longer move ahead. There Europe sees everything as riddlenebulous metaphysics, yogic hallucination. They rub their eyes as in smoke and can see nothing clear. Still, some effort is being made in Europe to surmount even this limitation. We already have the spiritual sensewe owe it to our forefa thersand whoever has that sense has at his disposal such Knowledge and Shakti as with one breath might blow away all the huge power of Europe like a blade of grass. But to get that Shakti one must be a worshiper of Shakti. We are not worshipers of Shakti. We are worshipers of the easy way. But Shakti is not to be had by the easy way. Our forefa thers dived into a sea of vast thought and gained a vast Knowledge and established a mighty civilization. As they went on in their way, fatigue and weariness came upon them. The force of thought diminished and with it also the strong current of Shakti. Our civilization has become an achalayatana [prison], our religion a bigotry of externals, our spirituality a faint glimmer of light or a momentary wave of religious intoxication. And so long as this sort of thing continues, any perManent resurgence of India is improbable
   In Bengal this weakness has gone to the extreme. The Bengali has a quick intelligence, emotional capacity and intuition. He is foremost in India in all these qualities. All of them are necessary but they do not suffice. If to these there were added depth of thought, calm strength, heroic courage and a capacity for and pleasure in prolonged labor, the Bengali might be a leader not only of India, but of Mankind. But he does not want that, he wants to get things done easily, to get knowledge without thinking, the fruits without labor, siddhi by an easy sadhana [discipline]. His stock is the excitement of the emotional mind. But excess of emotion, empty of knowledge, is the very symptom of the malady. In the end it brings about fatigue and inertia. The country has been constantly and gradually going down. The life-power has ebbed away. What has the Bengali come to in his own country? He cannot get enough food to eat or clothes to wear, there is lamentation on all sides, his wealth, his trade and commerce, his lands, his very agriculture have begun to pass into the hands of others. We have abandoned the sadhana of Shakti and Shakti has abandoned us. We do the sadhana of Love, but where Knowledge and Shakti are not, there Love does not remain, there narrowness and littleness come, and in a little and narrow mind there is no place for Love. Where is Love in Bengal? There is more quarreling, jealousy, mutual dislike, misunderstanding and faction there than anywhere else even in India which is so much afflicted by division.
   In the noble heroic age of the Aryan people4 there was not so much shouting and gesticulating, but the endeavor they undertook remained steadfast through Many centuries. The Bengalis endeavor lasts only for a day or two.
   You say that what is needed is maddening enthusiasm, to fill the country with emotional excitement. In the time of the Swadeshi [fight for independence, boycott of English goods] we did all that in the field of politics, but what we did is all now in the dust. Will there be a more favorable result in the spiritual field? I do not say there has been no result. There has been. Any movement will produce some result, but for the most part in terms of an increase of possibility. This is not the right method, however, to steadily actualize the thing. Therefore I no longer wish to make emotional excitement or any intoxication of the mind the base. I wish to make a large and strong equanimity the foundation of the yoga. I want established on that equality a full, firm and undisturbed Shakti in the system and in all its movements. I want the wide display of the light of Knowledge in the ocean of Shakti. And I want in that luminous vastness the tranquil ecstasy of infinite Love, Delight and Oneness. I do not want hundreds of thousands of disciples. It will be enough if I can get a hundred complete men, purified of petty egoism, who will be the instruments of God. I have no faith in the customary trade of the guru. I do not wish to be a guru. If anybody wakes and Manifests from within his slumbering godhead and gets the divine lifebe it at my touch or at anothersthis is what I want. It is such men that will raise the country.
   You must not think from all this lecture that I despair of the future of Bengal. I too hope, as they say, that this time a great light will Manifest itself in Bengal. Still I have tried to show the other side of the shield, where the fault is, the error, the deficiency. If these remain, the light will not be a great light and it will not be perManent.
   The meaning of this extraordinarily long talk is that I too am packing my bag. But I believe that this bundle is like the net of St. Peter, only crammed with the catch of the Infinite. I am not going to open the bag now. If I do that before its time, all would escape. Neither am I going back to Bengal now, not because Bengal is not ready, but because I am not ready. If the unripe goes amidst the unripe what work can he do?5
  --
   Rama, the divine Avatar who killed the demon Ravana with the help of HanuMan and the other monkeys.
   A prison; a place where everything is regimented down to the last detail.

0 1962-07-25, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   (Mother listens to Satprem read a passage on mental silence from his Manuscript on Sri Aurobindo.)
   Its very good.
  --
   But there was another side to this someone: it was watching me more and more, and as soon as I said one word or made one gesture too Many, had one little bad thought, teased my brother or whatever, the smallest thing, it would say (Mother takes on a severe tone), Look out, be careful! At first I used to moan about it, but by and by it taught me: Dont lamentput right, mend. And when things could be mendedas they almost always could I would do so. All that on a five to seven-year-old childs scale of intelligence.
   So it was consciousness.
  --
   Is it different for men? I dont know. Sri Aurobindos case was quite special, and apart from him I dont see any convincing example. But generally speaking, what is most developed in a Man, along with the mind, is the physical consciousness; the vital is very impulsive, practically ungoverned. Thats my experience of the hundreds and hundreds of men I have met. Theres normally a physical strength built up through games and exercises, and side by side a more or less advanced, but primarily mental development, very mental. The vital is terribly impulsive and barely organized, except in artists, and even there. I lived among artists for ten years and found this ground to be mostly fallow. I mingled with all the great artists of the time, I was like a kid sister to them (it was at the turn of the century, with the Universal Exposition in 1900; and these were the leading artists of the epoch); so I was by far the youngest, much younger than any of themthey were all thirty, thirty-five, forty years old, while I was nineteen or twenty. Well I was much more advanced in their own fieldnot in what I was producing (I was a perfectly ordinary artist), but from the viewpoint of consciousness: observations, experiences, studies.
   I am not sure, but it seems to me that the problem of consciousness ought to come first.
  --
   It is the individual consciousness. Aspiration is almost always an expression of the psychic being the part of us thats organized around the divine center, the small divine flame deep within huMan beings. You see, this divine flame exists inside each huMan being, and little by little, through all the incarnations and karma and so on, a being takes shape around it, which Thon called the psychic being. And when the psychic being reaches its full development, it becomes a kind of bodily or at any rate individual raiment of the soul. The soul is a portion of the Supreme the jiva is the Supreme in individual form. And since there is only one Supreme, there is only one jiva, but with millions of individual forms. This jiva begins as a divine sparkimmutable, eternal and infinite too (infinite in possibility rather than dimension). And through all the incarnations, whatever has received and responded to the divine Influence progressively crystallizes around the jiva, which becomes more and more conscious as well as more and more organized. Ultimately it becomes a completely conscious individual being, master of itself and moved exclusively by the divine Will. That is to say, an individual expression of the Supreme. This is what we call the psychic being.
   Generally speaking, those who practice yoga have either a fully developed, independent psychic being which has taken birth again to do the Divines work, or else a psychic being in its last incarnation wanting to complete its development and realize itself.
  --
   So, when youre told become conscious of your psychic being, its for the being formed by external Nature to contact the divine Presence through the psychic being. Then the psychic takes charge of the whole being; in fact, it is the inner Guide. Well, when I was a little child, this person (which wasnt a person, but an expression of a certain consciousness and will) was actually the psychic presence; there was something else behind, but thats a rather special case. And what happened to me happens to everyone whose psychic being has deliberately incarnated: the psychic being guides your life, and if you let it act freely, it arranges ALL circumstancesits truly wonderful! I have seennot only for myself but for so Many people who also had conscious psychic beings that everything is arranged with a view to not at all your personal egoistic satisfaction, but your ultimate progress and realization. And all circumstances of life, even those you call disastrous, are there to lead you where you have to go as swiftly as possible.
   Yours is more than a psychic being. As I have told you, your psychic being is accompanied by something which has come for a special purpose, with a particular intellectual powera luminous, conscious powerwhich has come from regions higher than the mind, regions Sri Aurobindo calls the Overmind, to do a special work. It is here (gesture enveloping the chest and head) and, along with the psychic, its trying to organize everything. This, in your psychic, is what you are feeling. It must have great power. Dont you feel a kind of luminous force?
  --
   I have wondered: if a huMan being developed an exceptionally powerful vocal organ and could consciously connect what he wanted to say or what had to be expressed with this organ, with the voice, and then simply let it flow out under this Influence, that might come nearest to the real thing.
   I have had a few brief moments of this kind of experience; but even then it seemed rather paltry. Paltry, a whole realm eludes you. I remember the period when I used to sit down at the organ at midnight on December 31, without the least notion of what I was going to play or sing, and I would let the Force comeit would play, then the sound, the voice came, and then in the voice, the words. I never wrote anything in advance. And its because people began noting down what I was saying (of course they got it all mixed up) that I started writing it down beforehand; that was much later, when I stopped coming at midnight. But in the early days, long, long ago when Sri Aurobindo was here, thats how it was; I didnt know what I was going to play or what I would say. And the sound came first, then the voice, and then in the voice, the wordslike something condensing, concretizing.
  --
   The conscious and deliberate Manipulation of certain luminous vibrations in addition to sound.
   Thought, by comparison (thought as we now know it), is much more material. Thoughtformulation in wordsis much lower down on the scale.
  --
   But the huMan mind latches on to everything and copies it!
   It makes a copy: all these light shows, everything theyre making nowadays. Like this taste for theater and cinema. It has its effect, though, doesnt it? But its a copy.
  --
   Many, Many things in my life have completely vanished I dont remember them any more, theyre gone from my consciousness everything that was useless. But there is a very clear vision of everything that was preparing the jiva for its action here. Even before coming and meeting Sri Aurobindo, I had realized everything needed to begin his yoga. It was all ready, classified, organized. Magnificent! A superb mental construction which he demolished within five minutes!
   How happy I was! Aah! It was really the reward for all my efforts.
   Nothing! I knew nothing any more, understood nothing at allnot a single idea left in my head! Everything I had carefully built up over so Many years (I was past thirty-five, I think), through all my experiences: conscious yoga, non-conscious yoga, life, experiences lived, classified and organized (oh, what a monument!) crash! It all came tumbling down. Magnificent. I hadnt even asked him.
   I had tried to get complete mental silenceyou know, what you just described,3 this kind of mental stillness he speaks of (when you have it, anything can pass through your head without causing the least ripple), but I had never succeeded. I had tried, but couldnt do it. I could be silent when I wanted to, but as soon as I stopped thinking solely of that, stopped wanting only that, the invasion resumed and the work had to be done all over again.
  --
   Mother is referring to a letter of Sri Aurobindo's which Satprem had quoted in his Manuscript: "... in the calm mind, it is the substance of the mental being that is still, so still that nothing disturbs it. If thoughts or activities come, they do not rise at all out of the mind, but they come from outside and cross the mind as a flight of birds crosses the sky in a windless air. It passes, disturbs nothing, leaving no trace. Even if a thousand images or the most violent events pass across it, the calm stillness remains as if the very texture of the mind were a substance of eternal and indestructible peace. A mind that has achieved this calmness can begin to act, even intensely and powerfully, but it will keep its fundamental stillnessoriginating nothing from itself but receiving from Above and giving it a mental form without adding anything of its own, calmly, dispassionately, though with the joy of the Truth and the happy power and light of its passage."
   Cent. Ed., XXIII. 637.

0 1962-07-31, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   I have the feeling that, consciously or unconsciously (I dont know which), this gentleMan has become a tool of Catholic resistance. It is very strong in the Old World and in America as well, although there its more Christian than specifically Catholic. But its terribly strong in France: it tries to take advantage of every opening and to block whatever might take a new turn.
   It will give way.
  --
   I cant say this gentleMan knows it (he probably doesntwhat goes on in the huMan brain is very incoherent). But in any case, something in him is wary: Whats to tell me this book wont lead me just where I dont want to go?
   Their main complaint was, You are abstract. So if we want to be concrete, we have to speak of experiences.
  --
   Psychology: thats abstract. What they want is: on such and such a date he went to this place, saw these people and did thisall the most external and banal sorts of things. Even yoga boils down to: he sat down and stayed there for so Many hours, he had this vision, he tried out that method, he did asanas and breathing exercises. That, for them, is concrete. That and that alone. Psychology is thoroughly abstractthoroughly. Its unreal to them.
   But Ive tried to be as concrete as possible! Like cutting up a rat on a dissecting table to see whats inside it.
  --
   And then, it may well be that one day someone will put the pressure on this gentleMan, and he will say, Ahh! Well, all rightlets try.
   Keep on.

0 1962-08-04, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   (Mother listens to a passage from Satprems Manuscript concerning the vital and the mechanism by which vibrations enter ones being.)
   What you say about all those things entering through the centers is perfectly correct.
  --
   These vibrations have various qualities; if they were expressed through a mental observation, it would be done through such things as taste, color, and so forth, everything Ive just mentioned1but thats not how theyre expressed. They come almost exclusively as sensations, but those sensations some, I mean some vibrations, have rounded edges. Some come horizontally (I was in fact studying everything that comes horizontally), others result from the state of consciousness (vertical gesture from top to bottom). While at the same time, others are. Yes, its like looking through a high-powered microscope: some are rounded, others pointed; some are darker, some brighter. Some are very upsetting to the body, and some even feel dangerous. On the other hand, certain ones make the body receptive to the vibration, which we might call the Lords Vibration, the supreme Vibration. You see, all this is the outcome of a discipline, a tapasya, for preparing the body to receive the Lords Vibrations (the first step is receiving, being able to receive them; afterwards you have to hold on to and then Manifest them). Those vibrations are unmistakable, they are something else entirely. But other vibrations are helpful, beneficial, while still others are disruptive, contradictory.
   And each one is beginning to reveal its own particular nature. There are those stemming from peoples thoughts (I sense them in my body, not in the mind: the material consequence of peoples psychological state, and even their state of health). Some things are general and last a bit longer; others are momentary, lasting only a few seconds. The first step is to study the different vibrational qualitiesyou could practically draw diagrams: if we had a machine sensitive enough to record these things, it would produce all kinds of zigs and zags.2 Certain vibrations immediately stop or change or are dissolved or repelled. Others are adopted, as it were, and transformed. The majority are simply pushed back and worked on from a distancequite a distance! I keep them at a fair distance (Mother laughs). Very few are let in. But some are let in for the sake of the experience, to see how much they upset the body. Theres also the effect of peoples perManent auras: I know a certain person is arriving by his auras effect on the body; because (laughing) each vibration has its particular effect on the bodyperfectly prosaic things, maybe, but by studying them you realize that each thing has its own law.
   The interchange of vibrations among people is something tremendous, and were swimming in it all, all, all the timeeven when were alone! Because these things travel: for instance, its enough for someones thought to come and strike against yours, and for you to think of him (which means responding)there is an immediate effect in the body. So to imagine that solitude would make yoga any easier is sheer childishness.

0 1962-08-08, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   (Mother listens to Satprem read a passage from his Manuscript.)
   Its very good.
  --
   What gives you that impression? Do you happen to have one of those criticizers in you? Sri Aurobindo says we always carry with us someone who criticizes everything we do. He classifies the gentleMan as an adverse force, one with an individual form. Yes, youre always saying it wont do, its no good.
   Because I feel that things should be said with another kind of force. It seems like all these sentences could just as well be put one way as another, you understandits not inevitable at all. I could say things this way, but I could just as well say them differently.
  --
   I am making some interesting discoveries. They arent really discoveries, but nowadays none of these things are theoretical, not the least bit mental (the mind is in a quiet ease)theyre essentially practical. And they take unexpected forms. The other day as I was walking, an old formation suddenly popped up, some. thing that had already tried to materialize when Sri Aurobindo was still here, but which he had stopped. It was one possibility among innumerable others, trying to Manifest in this bodys existence I wont say what it is.
   It was one of the very saddest things that could Manifest physically in association with a spiritual life.
   It came and tried to descend. I said absolutely nothing, but Sri Aurobindo knew (though he never mentioned anything to me, he had seen it), and he simply (gesture) did what had to be done, brushed it aside. I hadnt thought about it for more than ten years: with that gesture of his, it had vanished.
  --
   But I understand your question. You want to know if this has an effect on all identical vibratory modes in the world. In principle, yes. But the effects may not be immediately visible; in the first place, our field of observation is nothingmaterially, what do we know? Only our immediate surroundings thats nothing. In 1920, for example, I had an experience of that type, which resulted in a symbolic but terrestrial action. It was a vision (I dont remember enough details to make it interesting) where each nation was represented by a symbolic entity, and there was a certain type of horrorof terror, rather. A certain will of terror was trying to Manifest in that gathering of all nations. And I was witness to the whole thing. I remember it being a very conscious and rather long and detailed vision with a more intense reality than physical things have (it was in the subtle physical). And after it was over and I had done what needed to be done (I am not saying what because I dont remember all the details, and without accuracy it loses its value), when I came out of it I could say with TOTAL conviction: Terror has been overcome in the world. Of course, its not literally true, plenty of people still feel terror, but a certain type of terror was as if UNDERMINED at the foundations. What had already Manifested kept on and is gradually being exhausted, but the terror that was trying to increase and dominate the life of nations was stopped cold.
   I have had other similar experienceson Durgas day, for instance, when Sri Aurobindo was still here (you know, thats the day when Durga masters an asura; she doesnt kill him, she masters him). Well, each year one particular type of thing was undermined (and my experiences were never mental: the experience would suddenly come, and AFTERWARDS I would realize it was Durgas day), and each time I used to tell Sri Aurobindo, Looktoday this (or that) thing has been cut off at the roots. Thats how it works with the adverse forcesyes, like something being uprooted from the world. Whatever has already spread out keeps going and follows its karma, but the SOURCE is dried up. Thats also what happened (it was in 1904, I believe) when the Asura of Consciousness and Darkness made his surrender and was converted; he told me, I have millions and millions of eManations, and these will keep on living, but their source has now run dry.4 How much time will it take to exhaust it all? We cant say, but the source has dried up and that is something extremely important. In 1920, that terror was trying to spread all over the world and to become really catastrophic; and then in my inner vision I could see that a whole movement had dried up at its source. This means that little by little, little by little, little by little the karma is being exhausted.
   The same goes for these little physical movements. Things dont seem to be initiated any more, I mean theyre no longer being generated. But everything thats already present in the world has to be exhausted.
  --
   To change a karma, to stop a karma, to withdraw a certain number of vibrations from circulation, as it were, requires yet another movement, another movement altogether and that Power isnt yet at hand. Thats what will yield visible, tangible results. The other movement has very tangible and concrete results, but theyre invisible (to huMan observation, that is, which is much too limited and superficial). But it obviously does have results. That vision of terror clearly diverted the course of events that nations were being pushed into. But only someone with inner vision can see it.
   (silence)
  --
   It should be something like a Mantra.
   I understand. I understand full well. But you must learn how to wait. Were you to write in that way now, it would be perfectly useless to the reading public they wouldnt understand a thing.

0 1962-08-11, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   And its there all the time! I saw it the other day, I am seeing it nowit seems to be a perManent feature. And its the origin of all intellectual formulations (those closest to the Truth, of course, with no distortion). Very interesting.
   ***
  --
   I had the experience for several hours this morning. It started in the middle of the night and lasted through the morning until I was inundated with people. It began during the night in quite a powerful Manner (in the body, all this is in the body), with a formidable sensation of power (so much so that in the middle of the experience I suddenly thought, I have to tell this to Satprem tomorrowright in the midst of the experience!). And THE Vibration seemed so utterly present (present I have the feeling its always present, but it was perceived, which gives it a kind of efficacya kind we can grasp). It was like that all morning until eight or eight-thirty; after eight oclock the experience slowly faded. It began around eleven at night and lasted till then. And so yes, its exactly what I say there: it automatically puts each thing in its place.
   ***
  --
   Oh, during those hours the Presence lasted this morning, what I say here became so obvious, so obvious! You see (theres nothing but the Lord, of course), its exactly as if the Lord were seeing all things (and this body is part of what He sees!), seeing all things and laughing, laughingforever laughing at all the tragedy the tragedy of this existence! And I was seeing Him right here, you know, there was nothing but Himimmense, marvelous, yet at the same time scaled to the size of the earth, almost to the size of this room, you could say! He was here, in everythingin all the past, all the future, in all places, in everything. And He was smiling, smiling with the consciousness of that joyits not joy, joy sounds pallid. And there was no excitement, nothing of what huMan consciousness mixes into these things, only an eternal certitude, a crystal clear vision of the most MINUTE details. And all of this simultaneously, just like that, with a smile. And although I cant say what is He and what is me, I have the joy of perceiving Him (that isnt abolished), and yet I am nowhere in particular! Still I have the joy, I feel the joy of perceiving Him.
   Its difficult to describe. It lasted from around midnight until eight oclock.

0 1962-08-14, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   The curves of life go this way and that (meandering gesture), and only by being the supramental arrow can you go beyond. What happened [with X] was necessary. But theres a step that goes beyond holding a grudge against someone because you were mistaken about him. Thats such an ordinary huMan thingits nonsense. Thats how it is, though. He is what he is and has been all alonghe has never pretended to be anything else. But (with an ironic smile for Satprem) the imagination has done a lot of gilding where there was nothing to begin with, and then through circumstances (which always result from the influence of consciousness), the gilding disappeared! But whatever you sincerely felt for him that wasnt the product of an effervescent imaginationall sincere feelingsshould remain.1
   But they do!
  --
   One of our children, V., a courageous boy, went up there all by himself. In winter its completely isolated, theres nothing nearby. It was May and still frightfully cold, it seems, snow still covered the ground. And the Man was sitting there stark naked as though it were perfectly natural! He even asked the boy, Do you want to spend the night here? That was a bit too much!
   Anyway, V. went there, sat down next to him, and after a while the Man went into a sort of trance and began to tell V. about his life (the boys life, not his own!). So V. was interested and wanted to know more. Where do I come from? he asked. The Man answered, Oh, from an ashram by the sea the sea is there. Then he began to speak (I must mention that outwardly he knew nothing about Sri Aurobindo or me or the Ashram, absolutely nothing at all), and he told V. that a great sage and the Mother were there, and that they wanted to do something on earth that had never been done before something very difficult. Then, I dont know whether he mentioned I was alone now (I have no idea), but he said, Oh, she has had to withdraw2 because the people around her dont understand and life there has become very difficult. It will be very difficult until 1964.
   Perhaps he was reading the boys mind (I dont know), but not his conscious mind. And he said several times, They want to do something that has never been done before, its very difficultvery difficultand thats why they came, to do that.
  --
   There were Many other things, but it seems he speaks a particular Hindi which is very hard to understand. But this was quite clear, and he said it several times.
   It interested me.
  --
   It really amused me. If you asked if you asked people here, not too Many would have such a clear idea: They have come to do something entirely new and very difficult.
   Its lovely.
  --
   A few days later, Mother remarked with a kind of admiration: "It's almost a miracle for such people to admit that someone is doing something entirely new! That's the great problem with those who have attained some realization, they shut the door: 'Now we have realized what the Forefa thers said, and that's enough.' So to find a Man who knows nothing outwardly and who FELT that we wanted to do something never done before ... I found that extremely interesting. It means he has an opening, an opening above, higher than the ordinary spiritual atmosphere."
   ***

0 1962-08-18, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   (Concerning Satprem's new book on Sri Aurobindo, Mother foresees that again Many cuts will be necessary, and emphasizes that the main point is to prevent the publisher from entrusting the book's editing to some ignoramus. And she adds:)
   But its quite clear that these people cant grasp it; theyre a closed door! Not even a door of bronze, but of bricks and cementimpenetrable.
  --
   Mon petit, we had a meditation here on the 15th, at ten oclock.2 At a quarter to ten, I was sitting here at the table in a total silence. And then I cant say Sri Aurobindo came, for he is always here, but he Manifested in a special way. Concretely, in the subtle physical, he became so tall that, sitting cross-legged as they do here, he covered the whole compoundeven extended a bit beyond it! He was literally sitting upon the compound; so to the extent that the people meditating were not closed, they were all inside him. He was sitting like that (not on their heads!), and I could feel (I was here, you see) the FRICTION of his presence in the subtle physicalan utterly physical friction! And I saw him (as you well know, I am not shut up in here [the body]), I saw him sitting there, very tall and perfectly proportioned; and then he started gently, gently descendingthis descent is what caused the frictiongently, very gently, so as not to give people a shock. Then he settled there and stayed for a little more than half an hour, a few minutes more, like that, absolutely still, but fully concentrated on all the people they were inside him.
   I was sitting here smiling, almost almost laughing, really; you could feel him like that everywhere (Mother touches her whole body), everywhere. And with such peace! Such peace, such force, such power. And a sense of eternity, immensity, and absoluteness. A sense of absoluteness, as if all were fulfilled, so to speak, and one lived in Eternity.
  --
   Sri Aurobindo withdrew in 1926, but it was in 1927 that he moved from the Ashram's left wing and settled perManently in the right wing.
   There has been no darshan since Mother's "illness" in March 1962, and there will be none until February 1963.

0 1962-08-31, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Yesterday I told Pavitra that all those realizations, all those yes, these powers, gifts, constructions, Manifestations, it all reminded me of the life of a traveling juggler.
   He was shocked.
  --
   Because the other end is the new creation, so its clear that. How ManY steps will it take, how Many incomplete or imperfect things, approximations, attemptshow Many MINUSCULE realizations for you to simply acknowledge, Yes, indeed, were on the way? For how Many oh, you could practically say centuries will it be like this before the glorious body of a supramental being appears? Something came yesterday evening (it seemed like mere excitation to me); it was a power of creative imagination attempting to visualize supramental forms, beings that live in other worlds, and all sorts of things like that. I saw Many things. But it seemed so like champagne bubbles! Thats all very nice, I said, for widening my power of imagination so I can present these forms to the Lord. But its not necessary! (Mother laughs) It really seemed so. There was a time when I considered it a great creative power (and Many things that I saw in those moments of super-creativity, super-imagination, were actually realized years later on earth), and this time it came again (perhaps to give me a little fun, a little spectacle along the way), it came and I looked at it; I could see all its power, I could see it was something trying to materialize in the future, and I said, What histrionics! Why go through all these theatrics? Jugglers.
   And it was supramental light, it originated in supramental light. How beings from other worlds would relate with the future beings, and all sorts of similar thingsbedtime stories.
  --
   Its as if everything had to be to be the Action, the eternal Action at each second of the Manifestation THE thing. At each pulsationwhich corresponds to time in the ManifestationTHAT alone is THE thing. And the idea of something having a result is already a distortion.
   Uninterrupted, with one link the link of supreme Eternity. But the sense of consequences is false, it already implies a lowering of consciousness. So for meeven physically, in the midst of this whole hodgepodge of confusion, ignorance and stupidityit all translates into: I do things, and the results are none of my business. Thats how its expressed here in the body.
   Its a kind of liberation I dont mean from worry or preoccupation, theres no question of that but from the very IDEA of a consequence: its this way because thats the way it is; it has to be this way, so it is. Thats all. And at each second its this way because it has to be, and so it is. And That repeats itself eternally, and it is this eternal Pulsation which is expressed in time by those gusts I feel this very strongly, very strongly. Its a constant, spontaneous and very natural experience for me. The idea of something behind or ahead in time and so on is a Truth changing from immutable Eternity into Eternity of Manifestation. And it changes like this (Mother makes a pulsating gesture), exactly like gustspuff, puff, puff.
   Irresponsible gusts, like a childs soap bubbles, you might say. No sense of consequencesnone, none whatsoever: puff, puff, puff like that.

0 1962-09-05, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   (Before reading his Manuscript on Sri Aurobindo to Mother, Satprem asks her to correct any inaccuracies in the text, since he doesn't have the direct experience of everything he speaks of.)
   I dont have the experience of some of these things.
  --
   Of course, I am not speaking of what the universal Mother can know, thats quite another category! I am speaking of the experience of the psychic being, the purely terrestrial experience. Well, very few things seem in fact, none of them seem alien or unknown to me. The huMan state of mind, ah yes! Since my early childhood, I have been flabbergasted by the way people think and feelit seemed monstrous. But as for the circumstances and events of life, thats all more or less old hat.
   The experiences that left the most acute impressions on me (Mother makes a poignant gesture)you know, the kind of things that make you say, Oh, no, not that again, Ive had enough!are connected with my lives as a monarch: empress, queen and the like oh! Those are painful impressions, the most painful of all. And I have a keen memory of a resolution taken in my last life as an empress: Never again! I said. Ive had enough, I want no more of it! Id rather be not even Id rather be, I chose deliberately: I WANT to be an obscure being in an obscure family, free at last to do what I want! And thats the first thing I remembered this time: Yes, its an obscure family, an obscure being in an obscure milieu, so I may be free to do what I want; there isnt a horde of people watching me and spying on everything I do and plaguing me with rules about what I ought to be doing.
  --
   (Satprem reads a passage from his Manuscript in which he speaks of illnesses, including yogic illnesses, that can result from some inner discrepancy when the various parts of the consciousness are unevenly developed.)
   These illnesses are not of the same nature as the others, because GENERALLY (I am not making any absolute rule), generally their origin is not found to be viruses or bacteria, but a kind of disorder what is it called? They have a splendid word for it now. You know, an incapacity to bear something, a lack of harmony.
  --
   Ive never Managed to consciously leave my body.
   Its a gift.
  --
   I have already told you the reason (there are Many reasons): one tiny undeveloped level in the being is enough. It obviously has to do with atavism, with the way the body was built, the milieu one was born in, ones education, the life one has led. But its mainly how much one has been drawn to higher things. It is clear that your energies have been far more concentrated on breaking through that lid and touching the Source of Truth than on having mediumistic experiencesfar more. And for what you have come to do, that was INFINITELY more important. Minor experiences such as exteriorizing and the like are just diversions along the way thats how I have always seen them.
   Yes, Mother, thats all right. But theres no outer encouragement. I have the feeling that nothing is happening I wake up each morning and theres nothing. I meditate, theres nothing theres never anything! Just the certainty that its the only thing worth doing.
  --
   I never had an experience for the joy of itnever. They came only when it was necessary. Nothing ever happened in my life that wasnt absolutely indispensable for my work. But to know this, you understand, you must know exactly what your work is and be conscious of the divine Will; and Many years may go by before you reach that point.
   I remember that one of the first things I asked Sri Aurobindo when I came here, after innumerable experiences and innumerable realizations, was, Why am I so mediocre? Everything I do is mediocre, all my realizations are mediocre, theres never anything remarkable or exceptionalits just average. It isnt low, but its not high eithereverything is average. And thats really how I felt. I painted: it wasnt bad painting, but Many others could do as well. I played music: it wasnt bad music, but you couldnt say, Oh, what a musical genius! I wrote: it was perfectly ordinary. My thoughts slightly excelled those of my friends, but nothing exceptional; I had no special gift for philosophy or whatever. Everything I did was like that: my body had its skills, but nothing fantastic; I wasnt ugly, I wasnt beautiful you see, everything was mediocre, mediocre, mediocre, mediocre. Then he told me, It was indispensable.
   All right, so I kept quietand very quickly, within a few weeks, I understood.

0 1962-09-08, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   This would tend to show. I dont know if we can generalize or if this is just one special case being worked out (I cant say), but theres a very distinct impression that what ordinary huMan consciousness perceives as death might simply be that the consciousness hasnt been brought back to its true position fast enough.
   I am quite aware that all this must seem confusing; I can feel how inadequate the words and expression are for describing the experience. When you want to be literary, you say its a reversal of consciousness but it isnt! Thats just literature.
  --
   Outwardly, of course, these troubles (these apparent troubles) upset people, especially the doctor! Ive explained to him that it was all yoga and transformation, and he shouldnt worry, but evidently its upsetting to ordinary eyes. One fact in particular is bewildering to ordinary vision: I am very, very regularly losing weight. Its already down to a ridiculous figure I weigh only 85 pounds! With my height and bone structure, my normal weight should be 130 pounds; when I was twenty-five I weighed 130 or 135. Now I am down to only 85, and its going down quite regularly. I understand how disturbing this might be for people who see things in the ordinary way! I dont eat much (not a little, not a lot, just average), and I dont seem to benefit from what I eat thats how it looks on the surface. And then there are these strange phenomena; I dont usually talk about them (youre the only one I have explained them to, nobody else), I dont talk about them, but from time to time I appear to I must appear to be fainting. And not in the usual way, you know, thats the thing! Nothing happens in the usual way, so its very upsetting! (Mother laughs) The Energy is tremendous, more tremendous than it has ever been; and there is practically no physical strength. I can act, but only if I bring in the Energy: the least physical act deMands the Energy. I think the body is completely flimsy; it seems sometimes I touch it to see if its still if its hard or if its soft!
   (silence)
  --
   Dont let this visit ruffle you. Essentially, his approach has always seemed peripheral to me, just one part of an immense whole. It represents ONE aspect of the quest for the Divine on earth,2 and it is part of an entire line, like all the sannyasins, all the saddhus, and so on. X happens to have come closer because he has worshipped the Goddess of Love so much, the Shaktis aspect of Love, and that naturally led him here, brought him close, but. I see it as part of a whole worldamong Many other things. You know, theres that festival celebrated every ten years, I think, when all the saddhus go to ba the in the Ganges3; Ive seen all the photosits painful. Its its painful. It is no more beautiful or harmonious than a stampeding mob in a revolution. Its there is no special grace.
   Now, do you remember the story of that Man who has been living at the source of the Ganges for twenty-five years? Here he is (Mother shows his photo). He was in his cave and V. said to him, Id like to take your picture. All right, he answered, and came out and sat down in the snowstark naked.
   (Mother looks at the photo) There is something in his forehead, eyes and nose (why the nose?) thats very similar in all who have experienced the inner contact.
   Hes more like an example of what huMan beings can achieve: hes a forerunner more than a worker. He isnt a creative force on earth: hes an example.
   Yes, these are siddhis rather than evolutionary developments: things imposed on Nature.
  --
   Theres another Man whose disciples say has been living for a hundred and fifty-four years; Ill show you his photo (Mother goes to look for the photo). D. goes to see him twice a month, and yesterday or the day before, he said to D., You know, the greatest miracle I know of is having been able to gather more than a thousand people together for a spiritual undertaking! (Mother laughs wholeheartedly) Its funny! One thousand two hundred people is the Ashrams official figure. Having been able to draw together a group of more than one thousand two hundred people for a spiritual undertaking!
   He said he would come here when I called for him; I sent him word that I wouldnt call himbecause I cant disturb such an old Man and not even be able to see him!
   (Mother looks at the photo) He looks like a good Man.
   But there are Many like that.
   X scolded me for not putting kumkum4 on my forehead any more. I didnt reply, didnt say anything.

0 1962-09-15, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   (Satprem reads a passage from his Manuscript in which he mentions the difference in luminosity of the various planes of consciousness. Mother interrupts him to add:)
   Somewhere in the overmind (beyond the higher mind and from the overmind onwards), things are luminous IN THEMSELVES. Light doesnt have to strike them: things themselves are luminous. And this makes a considerable difference in vision. Things are no longer lit from outside, they are luminous in themselves. This is the main difference in the quality of the light.

WORDNET














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Wikipedia - Ballota undulata -- Species of flowering plants in the sage family Lamiaceae
Wikipedia - Ballota -- Genus of flowering plants in the sage family Lamiaceae
Wikipedia - Hathersage railway station -- Railway station in Derbyshire, England
Wikipedia - Hathersage Road (Sheffield) -- Road in South Yorkshire and Derbyshire, England
Wikipedia - IBM 728 -- Magnetic tape drive used on the SAGE AN/FSQ-7 computer
Wikipedia - Lamioideae -- Subfamily of flowering plants in the sage family Lamiaceae
Wikipedia - M-DM-^@dityas -- Offspring of the goddess Aditi and her husband the sage Kashyapa
Wikipedia - Mentheae -- Tribe of flowering plants in the sage family Lamiaceae
Wikipedia - Monardella -- Genus of flowering plants in the sage family Lamiaceae
Wikipedia - Nepetoideae -- Subfamily of flowering plants in the sage family Lamiaceae
Wikipedia - Orphan of the Sage -- 1928 film
Wikipedia - Phlomis bourgaei -- Species of flowering plants in the sage family Lamiaceae
Wikipedia - Phlomis chrysophylla -- Species of flowering plants in the sage family Lamiaceae
Wikipedia - Phlomis fruticosa -- Species of flowering plants in the sage family Lamiaceae
Wikipedia - Phlomis -- Genus of flowering plants in the sage family Lamiaceae
Wikipedia - Phlomoides -- Genus of flowering plants in the sage family Lamiaceae
Wikipedia - Prostantheroideae -- Subfamily of flowering plants in the sage family Lamiaceae
Wikipedia - Prunella (plant) -- Genus of flowering plants in the sage and mint family Lamiaceae
Wikipedia - Renegades of the Sage -- 1949 film by Ray Nazarro
Wikipedia - Scutellarioideae -- Subfamily of flowering plants in the sage family Lamiaceae
Wikipedia - Shadows on the Sage -- 1942 film
Wikipedia - Silver on the Sage -- 1939 film by Lesley Selander
Wikipedia - Stachys -- Genus of flowering plants in the sage family Lamiaceae
Wikipedia - Stardust on the Sage -- 1942 film by Betty Burbridge
Wikipedia - Symphorematoideae -- Subfamily of flowering plants in the sage family Lamiaceae
Wikipedia - Temple of Confucius -- A temple for the veneration of Confucius and the sages and philosophers of Confucianism in Chinese folk religion and other East Asian religions
Wikipedia - The Book of the Sage and Disciple
Wikipedia - The Sagebrusher -- 1920 film by Edward Sloman
Wikipedia - The Sagebrush Troubadour -- 1935 film by Joseph Kane
Wikipedia - The Sage Colleges -- Private educational institution in New York state, United States
Wikipedia - The Sage Hen -- 1921 film directed by Edgar Lewis
Wikipedia - Vitex agnus-castus -- Species of flowering plants in the sage family Lamiaceae
Wikipedia - Vitex -- Genus of flowering plants in the sage family Lamiaceae
Wikipedia - Viticoideae -- Subfamily of flowering plants in the sage family Lamiaceae
Wikipedia - Vyasa (title) -- Title given to the sage or Rishi who divides the Hindu holy scripture Vedas in every Dvapara Yuga of every Yuga cycle
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14484430-the-shrink-and-the-sage
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33154685-the-sage-stone-prophecy
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5449948-the-sage-learning-of-liu-zhi
Integral World - The Enchanted Land, The Sage: Ramana Maharshi, David Lane
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/The_Sage
https://fireemblem.fandom.com/wiki/Forest_of_the_Sage
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Secrets_of_the_Sages
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Vault_of_the_Sages
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Song_of_the_Sages
https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Reckoning_of_the_Sages_of_Minorad
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Hathersage_station
Log Horizon 2nd Season -- -- Studio Deen -- 25 eps -- Light novel -- Action Game Adventure Magic Fantasy -- Log Horizon 2nd Season Log Horizon 2nd Season -- After being trapped in the world of Elder Tale for six months, Shiroe and the other Adventurers have begun to get the hang of things in their new environment. The Adventurers are starting to gain the trust of the People of the Land, and Akiba has flourished thanks to the law and order established by Shiroe's Round Table Alliance, regaining its everyday liveliness. Despite this success, however, the Alliance faces a new crisis: they are running out of funds to govern Akiba, and spies from the Minami district have infiltrated the city. -- -- As formidable forces rise in other districts, there is also a need to discover more about the vast new world they are trapped in—leading Shiroe to decide that the time has come to venture outside the city. Accompanied by his friend Naotsugu and the Sage of Mirror Lake Regan, the calculative Shiroe makes his move, hoping to unravel new possibilities and eventually find a way home. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Sentai Filmworks -- 503,514 7.61
Tsuujou Kougeki ga Zentai Kougeki de Ni-kai Kougeki no Okaasan wa Suki Desu ka? -- -- J.C.Staff -- 12 eps -- Light novel -- Adventure Comedy Fantasy -- Tsuujou Kougeki ga Zentai Kougeki de Ni-kai Kougeki no Okaasan wa Suki Desu ka? Tsuujou Kougeki ga Zentai Kougeki de Ni-kai Kougeki no Okaasan wa Suki Desu ka? -- Forming a party with one's mother in an online game seems not only unlikely but also uncomfortable to most teenage gamers. -- -- Unfortunately, Masato Oosuki finds himself in that exact scenario. After completing a seemingly meaningless survey, he is thrown into the world of a fantasy MMORPG—and his mother Mamako actually tagged along with him! On top of all of that, Mamako turns out to be an overpowered swordswoman, possessing the power of two-hit multi-target attacks! After minor tension between the two, they search for party members, meeting the merchant Porta and the sage Wise, starting their journey to clear the game. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Aniplex of America -- 191,502 5.54
Yao Shen Ji -- -- Ruo Hong Culture -- 40 eps -- Novel -- Action Adventure Demons Romance Martial Arts Fantasy -- Yao Shen Ji Yao Shen Ji -- In his past life, although too weak to protect his home when it counted, out of grave determination Nie Li became the strongest Demon Spiritist and stood at the pinnacle of the martial world. However, he lost his life during the battle with the Sage Emperor and six deity-ranked beasts. -- -- His soul was then brought back to when he was still 13 years old. Although he's the weakest in his class with the lowest talent, having only a red soul realm and a weak one at that, with the aid of the vast knowledge which he accumulated from his previous life, he decided to train faster than anyone could expect. He also decided to help those who died nobly in his previous life to train faster as well. -- -- He aims to protect the city from the coming future of being devastated by demon beasts and the previous fate of ending up destroyed. He aims to protect his lover, friends, family and fellow citizens who died in the beast assault or its aftermath. And he aims to destroy the so-called Sacred family who arrogantly abandoned their duty and betrayed the city in his past life. -- -- (Source: Goodreads) -- ONA - May 9, 2017 -- 11,207 7.42
The Book of the Sage and Disciple
The Sage Colleges



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