TERMS STARTING WITH
heracleonite ::: n. --> A follower of Heracleon of Alexandria, a Judaizing Gnostic, in the early history of the Christian church.
herakline ::: n. --> A picrate compound, used as an explosive in blasting.
heralded ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Herald
heraldically ::: adv. --> In an heraldic manner; according to the rules of heraldry.
heraldic ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to heralds or heraldry; as, heraldic blazoning; heraldic language.
heralding ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Herald
herald ::: n. --> An officer whose business was to denounce or proclaim war, to challenge to battle, to proclaim peace, and to bear messages from the commander of an army. He was invested with a sacred and inviolable character.
In the Middle Ages, the officer charged with the above duties, and also with the care of genealogies, of the rights and privileges of noble families, and especially of armorial bearings. In modern times, some vestiges of this office remain, especially in
heraldry ::: n. --> The art or office of a herald; the art, practice, or science of recording genealogies, and blazoning arms or ensigns armorial; also, of marshaling cavalcades, processions, and public ceremonies.
heraldship ::: n. --> The office of a herald.
herald ::: Sri Aurobindo employs the word as an adjective pertaining to an aspect of heraldry, i.e. a heraldic emblazonment or device; armorial bearings; heraldic symbolism.
heralds ::: those who proclaim or announce.
herapathite ::: n. --> The sulphate of iodoquinine, a substance crystallizing in thin plates remarkable for their effects in polarizing light.
heraud ::: n. --> A herald.
herbaceous ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to herbs; having the nature, texture, or characteristics, of an herb; as, herbaceous plants; an herbaceous stem.
herbaged ::: a. --> Covered with grass.
herbage ::: n. --> Herbs collectively; green food beasts; grass; pasture.
The liberty or right of pasture in the forest or in the grounds of another man.
herbal ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to herbs. ::: n. --> A book containing the names and descriptions of plants.
A collection of specimens of plants, dried and preserved; a hortus siccus; an herbarium.
herbalism ::: n. --> The knowledge of herbs.
herbalist ::: n. --> One skilled in the knowledge of plants; a collector of, or dealer in, herbs, especially medicinal herbs.
herbarian ::: n. --> A herbalist.
herbaria ::: pl. --> of Herbarium
herbarist ::: n. --> A herbalist.
herbarium ::: n. --> A collection of dried specimens of plants, systematically arranged.
A book or case for preserving dried plants.
herbariums ::: pl. --> of Herbarium
herbarize ::: v. t. --> See Herborize.
herbar ::: n. --> An herb.
herbary ::: n. --> A garden of herbs; a cottage garden.
herbergage ::: n. --> Harborage; lodging; shelter; harbor.
herbergeour ::: n. --> A harbinger.
herbergh ::: n. --> Alt. of Herberwe
herber ::: n. --> A garden; a pleasure garden.
herberwe ::: n. --> A harbor.
herbescent ::: a. --> Growing into herbs.
herbid ::: a. --> Covered with herbs.
herbiferous ::: a. --> Bearing herbs or vegetation.
herbist ::: n. --> A herbalist.
herbivora ::: n. pl. --> An extensive division of Mammalia. It formerly included the Proboscidea, Hyracoidea, Perissodactyla, and Artiodactyla, but by later writers it is generally restricted to the two latter groups (Ungulata). They feed almost exclusively upon vegetation.
herbivore ::: n. --> One of the Herbivora.
herbivorous ::: a. --> Eating plants; of or pertaining to the Herbivora.
herbless ::: a. --> Destitute of herbs or of vegetation.
herblet ::: n. --> A small herb.
herb ::: n. --> A plant whose stem does not become woody and permanent, but dies, at least down to the ground, after flowering.
Grass; herbage.
herborist ::: n. --> A herbalist.
herborization ::: n. --> The act of herborizing.
The figure of plants in minerals or fossils.
herborized ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Herborize
herborize ::: v. i. --> To search for plants, or new species of plants, with a view to classifying them. ::: v. t. --> To form the figures of plants in; -- said in reference to minerals. See Arborized.
herborizing ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Herborize
herborough ::: n. --> A harbor.
herbose ::: a. --> Alt. of Herbous
herbous ::: a. --> Abounding with herbs.
herbs ::: a flowering plant whose stem above ground does not become woody.
herbs. In occultism, Arias is regarded as a demon
herb-woman ::: n. --> A woman that sells herbs.
herb-women ::: pl. --> of Herb-woman
herby ::: a. --> Having the nature of, pertaining to, or covered with, herbs or herbage.
hercogamous ::: a. --> Not capable of self-fertilization; -- said of hermaphrodite flowers in which some structural obstacle forbids autogamy.
herculean ::: a. --> Requiring the strength of Hercules; hence, very great, difficult, or dangerous; as, an Herculean task.
Having extraordinary strength or size; as, Herculean limbs.
herculean ::: requiring tremendous effort, strength, etc. (Sri Aurobindo capitalises the word.)
hercules ::: n. --> A hero, fabled to have been the son of Jupiter and Alcmena, and celebrated for great strength, esp. for the accomplishment of his twelve great tasks or "labors."
A constellation in the northern hemisphere, near Lyra.
hercynian ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to an extensive forest in Germany, of which there are still portions in Swabia and the Hartz mountains.
herd ::: 1. A number of animals kept, feeding, or travelling together; drove; flock. 2. The multitude, the common people, the masses. herds, sun-herds.
herd ::: a. --> Haired. ::: n. --> A number of beasts assembled together; as, a herd of horses, oxen, cattle, camels, elephants, deer, or swine; a particular stock or family of cattle.
A crowd of low people; a rabble.
herdbook ::: n. --> A book containing the list and pedigrees of one or more herds of choice breeds of cattle; -- also called herd record, or herd register.
herded ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Herd
herderite ::: n. --> A rare fluophosphate of glucina, in small white crystals.
herder ::: n. --> A herdsman.
herdess ::: n. --> A shepherdess; a female herder.
herdgroom ::: n. --> A herdsman.
herdic ::: n. --> A kind of low-hung cab.
herding ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Herd
herding ::: to gather together or be collected into or as if into a herd.
herdman ::: n. --> Alt. of Herdsman
herds ::: gold horned herds trooped into earth’s cave-heart:
herdsman ::: n. --> The owner or keeper of a herd or of herds; one employed in tending a herd of cattle.
herdsman ::: one who is the keeper of a herd or tends to it.
herdswoman ::: n. --> A woman who tends a herd.
herea-bout ::: adv. --> Alt. of Hereabouts
hereabouts ::: adv. --> About this place; in this vicinity.
Concerning this.
hereafter ::: adv. --> In time to come; in some future time or state. ::: n. --> A future existence or state.
hereafterward ::: adv. --> Hereafter.
here-at ::: adv. --> At, or by reason of, this; as, he was offended hereat.
hereby ::: adv. --> By means of this.
Close by; very near.
here deriving from Assyrian mythology), and in
hereditability ::: n. --> State of being hereditable.
hereditable ::: a. --> Capable of being inherited. See Inheritable.
Qualified to inherit; capable of inheriting.
hereditably ::: adv. --> By inheritance.
hereditament ::: n. --> Any species of property that may be inherited; lands, tenements, anything corporeal or incorporeal, real, personal, or mixed, that may descend to an heir.
hereditarily ::: adv. --> By inheritance; in an hereditary manner.
hereditary ::: a. --> Descended, or capable of descending, from an ancestor to an heir at law; received or passing by inheritance, or that must pass by inheritance; as, an hereditary estate or crown.
Transmitted, or capable of being transmitted, as a constitutional quality or condition from a parent to a child; as, hereditary pride, bravery, disease.
heredity ::: n. --> Hereditary transmission of the physical and psychical qualities of parents to their offspring; the biological law by which living beings tend to repeat their characteristics in their descendants. See Pangenesis.
here document "operating system" Data included in a {Unix} {shell script} or {Perl} script using the """" syntax. (1995-04-19)
hereford ::: n. --> One of a breed of cattle originating in Herefordshire, England. The Herefords are good working animals, and their beef-producing quality is excellent.
herehence ::: adv. --> From hence.
herein ::: adv. --> In this.
hereinafter ::: adv. --> In the following part of this (writing, document, speech, and the like).
hereinbefore ::: adv. --> In the preceding part of this (writing, document, book, etc.).
hereinto ::: adv. --> Into this.
heremite ::: n. --> A hermit.
heremitical ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to a hermit; solitary; secluded from society.
heremit ::: n. --> Alt. of Heremite
heren ::: a. --> Made of hair.
hereof ::: adv. --> Of this; concerning this; from this; hence.
hereon ::: adv. --> On or upon this; hereupon.
hereout ::: adv. --> Out of this.
here ::: pron. pl. --> Of them; their. ::: n. --> Hair. ::: pron.
heresiarch ::: n. --> A leader in heresy; the chief of a sect of heretics.
heresiarchy ::: n. --> A chief or great heresy.
heresies ::: pl. --> of Heresy
heresiographer ::: n. --> One who writes on heresies.
heresiography ::: n. --> A treatise on heresy.
heresy ::: n. --> An opinion held in opposition to the established or commonly received doctrine, and tending to promote a division or party, as in politics, literature, philosophy, etc.; -- usually, but not necessarily, said in reproach.
Religious opinion opposed to the authorized doctrinal standards of any particular church, especially when tending to promote schism or separation; lack of orthodox or sound belief; rejection of, or erroneous belief in regard to, some fundamental religious doctrine
heresy ::: opinion or doctrine at variance with the orthodox or accepted doctrine esp. of a church or religious system.
heretical ::: a. --> Containing heresy; of the nature of, or characterized by, heresy.
heretically ::: adv. --> In an heretical manner.
hereticate ::: v. t. --> To decide to be heresy or a heretic; to denounce as a heretic or heretical.
heretic ::: n. --> One who holds to a heresy; one who believes some doctrine contrary to the established faith or prevailing religion.
One who having made a profession of Christian belief, deliberately and pertinaciously refuses to believe one or more of the articles of faith "determined by the authority of the universal church."
heretification ::: n. --> The act of hereticating or pronouncing heretical.
hereto ::: adv. --> To this; hereunto.
heretoch ::: n. --> Alt. of Heretog
heretofore ::: adv. --> Up to this time; hitherto; before; in time past.
heretog ::: n. --> The leader or commander of an army; also, a marshal.
hereunto ::: adv. --> Unto this; up to this time; hereto.
hereupon ::: adv. --> On this; hereon.
herewith ::: adv. --> With this.
her home for many years until her recent death, she sent me rare books in practical cabala “for our
herie ::: v. t. --> To praise; to worship.
heriotable ::: a. --> Subject to the payment of a heriot.
heriot ::: n. --> Formerly, a payment or tribute of arms or military accouterments, or the best beast, or chattel, due to the lord on the death of a tenant; in modern use, a customary tribute of goods or chattels to the lord of the fee, paid on the decease of a tenant.
herisson ::: n. --> A beam or bar armed with iron spikes, and turning on a pivot; -- used to block up a passage.
heritability ::: n. --> The state of being heritable.
heritable ::: a. --> Capable of being inherited or of passing by inheritance; inheritable.
Capable of inheriting or receiving by inheritance.
heritage ::: a. --> That which is inherited, or passes from heir to heir; inheritance.
A possession; the Israelites, as God&
heritage ::: something inherited at birth, such as personal characteristics, status, and possessions.
heritance ::: n. --> Heritage; inheritance.
heritor ::: n. --> A proprietor or landholder in a parish.
her last in this manner.” A rabbi (ben Levi) out¬
herling ::: n. --> Alt. of Hirling
herl ::: n. --> Same as Harl, 2.
hermae ::: pl. --> of Herma
herma ::: n. --> See Hermes, 2.
hermaphrodeity ::: n. --> Hermaphrodism.
hermaphrodism ::: n. --> See Hermaphroditism.
hermaphrodite ::: n. --> An individual which has the attributes of both male and female, or which unites in itself the two sexes; an animal or plant having the parts of generation of both sexes, as when a flower contains both the stamens and pistil within the same calyx, or on the same receptacle. In some cases reproduction may take place without the union of the distinct individuals. In the animal kingdom true hermaphrodites are found only among the invertebrates. See Illust. in Appendix, under Helminths.
hermaphroditic ::: a. --> Alt. of Hermaphroditical
hermaphroditical ::: a. --> Partaking of the characteristics of both sexes; characterized by hermaphroditism.
hermaphroditism ::: n. --> The union of the two sexes in the same individual, or the combination of some of their characteristics or organs in one individual.
hermēneusis [Greek] ::: interpretation; "inspired interpretation", the hermeneusis distinguishing feature of the hermetic ideality and interpretative revelatory vijñana.
hermeneutic ::: a. --> Alt. of Hermeneutical
hermeneutical ::: a. --> Unfolding the signification; of or pertaining to interpretation; exegetical; explanatory; as, hermeneutic theology, or the art of expounding the Scriptures; a hermeneutic phrase.
hermeneutically ::: adv. --> According to the principles of interpretation; as, a verse of Scripture was examined hermeneutically.
hermeneutic ::: having the nature of hermēneusis; interpretative.
hermeneutics ::: n. --> The science of interpretation and explanation; exegesis; esp., that branch of theology which defines the laws whereby the meaning of the Scriptures is to be ascertained.
hermeneutics ::: Traditionally refers to the study of interpretation. In Integral Theory, it is the study of interpretation within the interior of a “We,” as exemplified by Hans-Georg Gadamer. A first-person approach to first-person plural realities. The inside view of the interior of a collective (i.e., the inside view of a holon in the Lower-Left quadrant). Exemplary of a zone-
hermesis ::: same as hermetic ideality.
hermes ::: n. --> See Mercury.
Originally, a boundary stone dedicated to Hermes as the god of boundaries, and therefore bearing in some cases a head, or head and shoulders, placed upon a quadrangular pillar whose height is that of the body belonging to the head, sometimes having feet or other parts of the body sculptured upon it. These figures, though often representing Hermes, were used for other divinities, and even, in later times, for portraits of human beings. Called also herma. See Terminal statue,
hermetic ::: 1. Having to do with the occult sciences, especially alchemy; magical. 2. Made airtight by fusion or sealing. 3. Not affected by outward influence or power; isolated.
hermetic ::: a. --> Alt. of Hermetical
hermetical ::: a. --> Of, pertaining to, or taught by, Hermes Trismegistus; as, hermetic philosophy. Hence: Alchemical; chemic.
Of or pertaining to the system which explains the causes of diseases and the operations of medicine on the principles of the hermetic philosophy, and which made much use, as a remedy, of an alkali and an acid; as, hermetic medicine.
Made perfectly close or air-tight by fusion, so that no gas or spirit can enter or escape; as, an hermetic seal. See Note under
hermetically ::: adv. --> In an hermetical manner; chemically.
By fusion, so as to form an air-tight closure.
hermetic ::: closed, sealed, esoteric; relating to hermetic ideality on its own plane or in a modified form as an element of some of the highest levels of logistic ideality.
hermetic gnosis ::: same as hermetic ideality.
hermetic ideality ::: (in 1919) the second of the three planes of ideality, the plane whose essence is sruti (inspiration), later called srauta vijñana. Whereas the logistic ideality "remembers at a second remove the knowledge secret in the being but lost by the mind in the oblivion of the ignorance", the hermetic ideality "divines at a first remove a greater power of that knowledge". The first "resembles the reason, is a divine reason", the second is said to be of the nature of "inspired interpretation".
hermetic logistic ideality ::: (in 1919) a high level of logistic ideality suffused by the light of the hermetic ideality; perhaps the same as the later interpretative revelatory vijñana.
hermetic logistis ::: same as hermetic logistic ideality. hermetic vij ñana
hermetised logistis ::: same as hermetic logistic ideality.
hermitage ::: 1. The habitation of a hermit or group of hermits. 2. A place where one can live in seclusion; a retreat.
hermitage ::: n. --> The habitation of a hermit; a secluded residence.
A celebrated French wine, both white and red, of the Department of Drome.
hermitary ::: n. --> A cell annexed to an abbey, for the use of a hermit.
hermitess ::: n. --> A female hermit.
hermitical ::: a. --> Pertaining to, or suited for, a hermit.
hermit ::: n. --> A person who retires from society and lives in solitude; a recluse; an anchoret; especially, one who so lives from religious motives.
A beadsman; one bound to pray for another.
hermit ::: one who has withdrawn to a solitary place for a life of religious seclusion; a recluse. hermits, hermit-life, hermit-roofs.
hermodactyl ::: n. --> A heart-shaped bulbous root, about the size of a finger, brought from Turkey, formerly used as a cathartic.
hermogenian ::: n. --> A disciple of Hermogenes, an heretical teacher who lived in Africa near the close of the second century. He held matter to be the fountain of all evil, and that souls and spirits are formed of corrupt matter.
hernani ::: n. --> A thin silk or woolen goods, for women&
herne ::: n. --> A corner.
herniae ::: pl. --> of Hernia
hernial ::: a. --> Of, or connected with, hernia.
hernia ::: n. --> A protrusion, consisting of an organ or part which has escaped from its natural cavity, and projects through some natural or accidental opening in the walls of the latter; as, hernia of the brain, of the lung, or of the bowels. Hernia of the abdominal viscera in most common. Called also rupture.
hernias ::: pl. --> of Hernia
herniotomy ::: n. --> A cutting for the cure or relief of hernia; celotomy.
hern ::: n. --> A heron; esp., the common European heron.
hernshaw ::: n. --> Heronshaw.
hero ::: 1. One who is distinguished by exceptional courage, nobility, fortitude, etc. 2. A person noted for feats of courage or nobility of purpose, especially one who has risked or sacrificed his or her life (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as an adj.) hero"s, heroes.
herodian ::: n. --> One of a party among the Jews, composed of partisans of Herod of Galilee. They joined with the Pharisees against Christ.
herodiones ::: n. pl. --> A division of wading birds, including the herons, storks, and allied forms. Called also Herodii.
heroes ::: pl. --> of Hero
heroess ::: n. --> A heroine.
heroical ::: a. --> Heroic.
heroic ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to, or like, a hero; of the nature of heroes; distinguished by the existence of heroes; as, the heroic age; an heroic people; heroic valor.
Worthy of a hero; bold; daring; brave; illustrious; as, heroic action; heroic enterprises.
Larger than life size, but smaller than colossal; -- said of the representation of a human figure.
heroic ::: having, displaying, or characteristic of the qualities appropriate to a hero, such as bravery and courageousness.
heroicness ::: n. --> Heroism.
heroicomic ::: a. --> Alt. of Heroicomical
heroicomical ::: a. --> Combining the heroic and the ludicrous; denoting high burlesque; as, a heroicomic poem.
heroine ::: n. --> A woman of an heroic spirit.
The principal female person who figures in a remarkable action, or as the subject of a poem or story.
heroism ::: n. --> The qualities characteristic of a hero, as courage, bravery, fortitude, unselfishness, etc.; the display of such qualities.
hero ::: n. --> An illustrious man, supposed to be exalted, after death, to a place among the gods; a demigod, as Hercules.
A man of distinguished valor or enterprise in danger, or fortitude in suffering; a prominent or central personage in any remarkable action or event; hence, a great or illustrious person.
The principal personage in a poem, story, and the like, or the person who has the principal share in the transactions related; as Achilles in the Iliad, Ulysses in the Odyssey, and Aeneas in the
heroner ::: n. --> A hawk used in hunting the heron.
heron ::: n. --> Any wading bird of the genus Ardea and allied genera, of the family Ardeidae. The herons have a long, sharp bill, and long legs and toes, with the claw of the middle toe toothed. The common European heron (Ardea cinerea) is remarkable for its directly ascending flight, and was formerly hunted with the larger falcons.
heronry ::: n. --> A place where herons breed.
heronsew ::: n. --> A heronshaw.
heronshaw ::: n. --> A heron.
heroologist ::: n. --> One who treats of heroes.
heroship ::: n. --> The character or personality of a hero.
hero :::
herpes ::: n. --> An eruption of the skin, taking various names, according to its form, or the part affected; especially, an eruption of vesicles in small distinct clusters, accompanied with itching or tingling, including shingles, ringworm, and the like; -- so called from its tendency to creep or spread from one part of the skin to another.
herpetic ::: a. --> Pertaining to, or resembling, the herpes; partaking of the nature of herpes; as, herpetic eruptions.
herpetism ::: n. --> See Dartrous diathesis, under Dartrous.
herpetologic ::: a. --> Alt. of Herpetological
herpetological ::: a. --> Pertaining to herpetology.
herpetologist ::: n. --> One versed in herpetology, or the natural history of reptiles.
herpetology ::: n. --> The natural history of reptiles; that branch of zoology which relates to reptiles, including their structure, classification, and habits.
herpetotomist ::: n. --> One who dissects, or studies the anatomy of, reptiles.
herpetotomy ::: n. --> The anatomy or dissection of reptiles.
her poem “Sagesse”) for Aniel or Anael (q.v.).
her ::: pron. & a. --> The form of the objective and the possessive case of the personal pronoun she; as, I saw her with her purse out. ::: pron. pl. --> Alt. of Here
herringbone ::: a. --> Pertaining to, or like, the spine of a herring; especially, characterized by an arrangement of work in rows of parallel lines, which in the alternate rows slope in different directions.
herring ::: n. --> One of various species of fishes of the genus Clupea, and allied genera, esp. the common round or English herring (C. harengus) of the North Atlantic. Herrings move in vast schools, coming in spring to the shores of Europe and America, where they are salted and smoked in great quantities.
herr ::: n. --> A title of respect given to gentlemen in Germany, equivalent to the English Mister.
herrnhuter ::: n. --> One of the Moravians; -- so called from the settlement of Herrnhut (the Lord&
hersal ::: n. --> Rehearsal.
herschelian ::: a. --> Of or relating to Sir William Herschel; as, the Herschelian telescope.
herschel ::: n. --> See Uranus.
herself ::: pron. --> An emphasized form of the third person feminine pronoun; -- used as a subject with she; as, she herself will bear the blame; also used alone in the predicate, either in the nominative or objective case; as, it is herself; she blames herself.
Her own proper, true, or real character; hence, her right, or sane, mind; as, the woman was deranged, but she is now herself again; she has come to herself.
herse ::: n. --> A kind of gate or portcullis, having iron bars, like a harrow, studded with iron spikes. It is hung above gateways so that it may be quickly lowered, to impede the advance of an enemy.
See Hearse, a carriage for the dead.
A funeral ceremonial. ::: v. t.
hersillon ::: n. --> A beam with projecting spikes, used to make a breach impassable.
her spouse Joseph by the “angel of the Lord”; in Luke it is Gabriel who does the announcing—
hers ::: pron. --> See the Note under Her, pron.
hertely ::: a. & adv. --> Hearty; heartily.
herte ::: n. --> A heart.
hert ::: n. --> A hart.
her was Mairya, evil harbinger of death, represented indiscriminately as male and female. She
hery ::: v. t. --> To worship; to glorify; to praise.
HERA An electron-proton collider at DESY, W. Germany.
Heracles (Greek) Herakles Hercules (Latin) [probably from heros free man, cf Latin herus lord of a household; or “renowned through Hera”] Son of Zeus and Alcmene, greatest of the Greek heroes. He delivers Prometheus from Zeus, and slays the two serpents representing the nodes of the moon. The passage of the sun through the zodiacal signs typifies the twelve labors of Heracles, in this case denoting the energies of the cosmic Logos working on various planes, and also in the microcosmic sphere the trials through which an initiant must pass before reaching adeptship. In one of his highest aspects he is a solar entity, self-born, and possibly equivalent to Thor of Scandinavia (SD 1:131-2). He is the first-begotten, in some ways equivalent to Bel of Asia Minor and to Siva in India (SD 2:492). He is one of the minor logoi who strive to endow humankind with higher faculties. Again, he appears as the sun god who descends to Hades (cave of initiation) in order to deliver the denizens there from their bonds, thus being equivalent to Mahasura and Lucifer.
Heraclitus Herakleitos (535-475 BC) Greek philosopher from Ephesus, known as “the obscure” because of difficult writing style. He held that knowledge is based on sense perceptions, and wisdom consists in recognizing the intelligence that guides the universe. Everything is in constant flux, everything being resolvable into the primordial element fire after cycling through all the elements. Nature is constantly dividing and uniting itself, so that all things are at once identical and not identical. ( )
Heraclitus: ("The Obscure") Of Ephesus, about 536-470 B.C. In opposition to the Milesians, from whom he is separated by a generation, he held that there is nothing abiding in the world. All things and the universe as a whole are in constant, ceaseless flux, nothing is, only change is real, all is a continuous passing away. For this reason the world appeared to him to be in ever-living fire, a consuming movement in which only the orderliness of the succession of things, or, as Heraclitus called it, the "reason"' or "destiny" of the world remains alway the same. Heraclitus thus foreshadowed the modern conception of the uniformity of natural law. Cf. Diels, Frag, d. Vor, I, ch. 12. -- M.F.
Hera corresponds to the personalized prakriti of the Hindus, as Zeus in so many respects is a Greek counterpart of Brahma. This explains why the functions, high and low, of Hera were generative and productive, in general the fecund producer of all things throughout the drama of manvantara.
Hera (Greek) Olympian divinity, sister and consort of Zeus, counterpart of the Roman Juno. According to the Homeric poems she was accorded the same honors by the other divinities as Zeus himself, who counseled with her and also shared with her secret things unknown to the other gods. She is represented as Queen of Heaven only at a later date. Like Zeus she had the power to confer the gift of prophecy. Mother of Ares, Hephaistos, and Hebe, she was the goddess of marriage and birth, patron divinity of woman from birth to death, and of domestic duties. Sanctuaries for the worship of Hera existed in many parts of Greece, the principal center being Argos.
Hera, however, poisoned the mind of Semele with suspicion when the new-forming body of Zagreus within her reached the seventh month of gestation, and Semele impelled Zeus to reveal himself to her in his true form, whereupon the mortal body of Semele was destroyed by the divine fire. The holy babe was saved from death by Zeus, who sewed the child up in his own thigh until “the life that formerly was Zagreus, was reborn as Dionysos,” the risen Savior, at Easter (the spring equinox), while as Zagreus he had been born at Semele’s death at the winter solstice. Here we see the myth’s solar significance.
Hera: In Greek mythology, the sister and wife of Zeus, queen of the gods, goddess of marriage.
Herakles. See HERACLES
HERAKLIT "language" A distributed {object-oriented} language. ["Definition einer objektorientierten Programmiersprache mit hierarchischem Typkonzept", B. Hindel, diss U Erlangen-Nuernberg, Dec 1987]. (1995-03-16)
Heranasikha (Singhalese) [from herana novice + sikha rule, precept] Manual of Precepts; a work written in Elu or the ancient Singhalese, for the use of young priests.
Herbartianism: The philosophical, but particularly the psychological and pedagogical doctrines of Johann Friedrich Herbart (q.v.) as expounded in modified and developed form by his disciples, notably M. Lazarus and H. Steinthal in psychology, T. Zillcr and W. Rein in pedagogy, M. Drobisch in religious philosophy and ethics. In America, the movement was vigorous and influential, but shortlived (about 1890-1910) and confined mainly to education (Charles De-Garmo and Charles A. McMurry). Like Herbart, his disciples strove for a clarification of concepts with special emphasis on scientific method, the doctrine of apperception, and the efficacy of a mathematical approach even in their psychology which was dominated by associational thinking; yet they discarded more or less the master's doctrine of reals. -- K.F.L.
Herbart, Johann Friedrich: (1776-1841) Best known as the "father" of scientific pedagogy centrally based upon psychology, a general tenet that still has weight today, Herbart occupies as educational philosophical theorist a position strikingly similar to that of John Dewey, the nestor of American philosophy.
Her beating heart a remembrancer of bliss.
Herbs The very large number of plants used as remedial agents in medicine are the natural remedies in treating disease, divine instructors having revealed to early humanity the great boon of agriculture and the medical use of plants. Echoes of the archaic wisdom appear in Vedic writings, but few can interpret the philosophy of the one Life which functions in the elements and forces of the human body, and their related action in the plants and minerals of the body of the earth.
Herculean ::: Herculean—after Hercules, one of the greatest heroes of classical mythology, he is supposed to have been the strongest man on earth. He was renowned for completing twelve seemingly impossible tasks—the Labors of Hercules.
Hercules. See HERACLES
Herder, Johann Gottfried: (1744-1803) A founder of modern religious humanism, he explained human history as a consequence of the nature of man and of man's physical environment. Held implicitly to the view that society is basically an organic whole. Accounted for the differences in culture and institutions of different peoples as being due to geographical conditions. Although history is a process of the education of the human species, it has no definite goal of perfection and development. The vehicle of living culture is a distinct Volk or Nation with its distinct language and traditions. As a child of the Enlightenment, Herder had a blind faith in nature, in man and in the ultimate development of reason and justice.
Here and there, wherever it suited his thesis or purpose, St. Paul found angels wicked (as in
Here are the names of the days of the week in the English, ancient Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian, Greek, and Latin systems as being sacred to their deities:
Hereditary property: See Recursion, proof by. Hermeneutics: The art and science of interpreting especially authoritative writings, mainly in application to sacred scripture, and equivalent to exegesis. -- K.F.L.
Heredity affects strongly the external being ; besides, all the effects of heredity are not accepted even there, only those .that are in consonance with what we arc to be or not preventive of it at least.
HEREDITY. ::: Hereditary influence creates an aflinity and affinity is a long thing. It is only when the hereditary past is changed that the affinity ceases.
Heredity The theosophical philosophy explains heredity as being the attraction of reimbodying monads to the respective families with which they have affinities of various kinds; and thus it is the reimbodying egos carrying such individual characteristics or attributes which perpetuate them in the family life-stream. It is the sutratman (life thread) which runs through successive generations.
Here is a formal definition:
Here is a very brief summary of the Mishnah according to its sedarim:
Here is Yeats’ great poem, Sailing to Byzantium using the word, artifice.
Here, it might be supposed, the whole action and aim of
Heresy of Separateness The belief that one’s self is or can be separate in essence from all other selves. Our apparent separation is functional, not organic or real. This heresy is the one fundamental error against which all theosophical students are warned, and is alluded to in Christian mystic thought as the sin against the Holy Ghost. See also BROTHERHOOD
Here, the living divine person in Aswapathy, finding earth too trifling, exceeds it and grows larger and larger, higher and higher, to encompass the unconquered worlds above.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Here these angels represent that higher class of pitris who deferred their own incarnation on earth until a later date, and had to suffer the karmic consequences thereof.
Here too the achievement of the spiritual consciousness and life is supposed to annul or give the power to annul karma. For we enter into union with the Will Divine, cosmic or transcendent, which can annul what it had created, the narrow fixed lines dis- appear, there is a more plastic freedom and wideness.
Here too the gracious mighty Angel poured
Her forms hide what they house and only mime
Herman Hollerith "person" The promulgator of the {punched card}. Hollerith was born on 1860-02-29 and died on 1929-11-17. He graduated from Columbia University, NewYork, NY, USA. He joined the US Census Bureau as a statistician where he used a punched card device to help analyse the 1880 US census data. This punched card system stored data in 80 columns. This "80-column" concept has carried forward in various forms into modern applications. In 1896, Hollerith founded the {Tabulating Machine Company} to exploit his invention and in 1924 his firm became part of {IBM}. The Hollerith system was used for the 1911 UK census. A correspondant writes: Wasn't Hollerith's original machine first used for the 1990 US census? And I think I am right in saying that the physical layout was a 20x12 grid of round holes. The one I have seen (picture only, unfortunately, not the real thing) did not use 'columns' as such but holes were grouped into irregularly-shaped fields, such that each hole had a more-or-less independent function. (2001-08-30)
Hermann Diels, Doxographi Graeci;
Hermanubis (Greek) Heru-em-Anpu (Egyptian) Ḥeru-em-Ȧnpu [Anubis in connection with Horus] The aspect of Anubis (Anpu) connected with the wisdom of the underworld, particularly in regard to its Mysteries, hence very little is known of this phase except what is mentioned mainly by Plutarch and Apuleius. In this aspect Anubis was “ ‘the revealer of the mysteries of the lower world’ — not of Hell or Hades as interpreted, but of our Earth (the lowest world of the septenary chain of worlds) — and also of the sexual mysteries. . . . The fact is that esoterically, Adam and Eve while representing the early third Root Race — those who, being still mindless, imitated the animals and degraded themselves with the latter — stand also as the dual symbol of the sexes. Hence Anubis, the Egyptian god of generation, is represented with the head of an animal, a dog or a jackal, and is also said to be the ‘Lord of the under world’ or ‘Hades’ into which he introduces the souls of the dead (the reincarnating entities), for Hades is in one sense the womb, as some of the writings of the Church Fathers fully show” (TG 139-40).
Hermaphrodite [from Greek Hermes + Aphrodite] The form and typical nature of both the god and goddess in one individual. Androgyne also relates to a dual-sexed human being. Thus, the hermaphrodite imbodies nature’s universal polarity on its lower planes, which polarity is an emanation from the non-dual or non-bipolar mental and spiritual realms. In an abstract sense, this is a personification of the universal polarity in nature on its lower planes, wherein the so-called masculine and feminine principles are the opposing but coordinating agencies, often called positive and negative, in their creative and generative aspects. “The ancients taught the, so to speak, auto-generation of the Gods: the one divine essence, unmanifested, perpetually begetting a second-self, manifested, which second-self, androgynous in its nature, gives birth in an immaculate way to everything macro- and micro-cosmical in this universe” (SD 1:398).
Hermas.
Hermas The Pastor of Hermas or The Shepherd of Hermas is an early Christian book, attributed to Hermas because that name occurs several times in it, though the authorship is doubtful. It was widely known in the East and regarded as inspired, receiving a respect approximating that paid to the canonical New Testament. It had wide vogue as early as the 2nd century. Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen quote it as scripture; and Origen identifies the author with the Hermas mentioned in Romans. Though it is impossible to assign to it a definite date of composition, conjecture points to the time of Hadrian and Antoninus Pius (117-161 AD). Full of legends and allegories, it presents in suggestive forms the gospel of love, but the name of Jesus Christ does not occur. It was thought by some to be Jewish in origin and contains passages from the Zohar. It has come down to us in several Latin translations, but only fragments of the Greek manuscript have yet come to hand.
Hermes-Fire Equivalent to St. Elmo’s fire, the brush-discharge of electricity seen at mastheads.
Hermes (Greek) Greek god, son of Zeus and Maia, the third person in a triad of Father-Mother-Son, hence the formative Logos or Word. He is equivalent to the Hindu Budha, the Zoroastrian Mithra, the Babylonian Nebo — son of Zarpa-Nitu (moon) and Merodach (sun) — and the Egyptian Thoth with the ibis for his emblem; also to Enoch and the Roman Mercurius, son of Coelus and Lux (heaven and light). Among his emblems are the cross, the cubical shape, the serpent, and especially his wand, the caduceus, which combines the serpent and cross. The name has been used generically for many adepts. To Hermes were attributed many functions, such as that of inspiring eloquence and healing, and he is the patron of intellectual, artistic, and productively agricultural pursuits. The nature and functions of this divinity express themselves to our mind as light, wisdom, intelligence, and quickness — especially in an intellectual sense. He was the messenger of the gods, and also the psychopomp or conductor of souls to the netherworld. In his lower aspects he is often made to serve as the inspirer of gross misuses of intelligence such as clever theft — thus illustrating that even the noblest qualities have their dark side.
Hermes "language" An experimental, very high level, integrated language and system from the {IBM} {Watson Research Centre}, produced in June 1990. It is designed for implementation of large systems and distributed applications, as well as for general-purpose programming. It is an {imperative language}, {strongly typed} and is a {process-oriented} successor to {NIL}. Hermes hides distribution and heterogeneity from the programmer. The programmer sees a single {abstract machine} containing processes that communicate using calls or sends. The {compiler}, not the programmer, deals with the complexity of data structure layout, local and remote communication, and interaction with the {operating system}. As a result, Hermes programs are portable and easy to write. Because the programming paradigm is simple and high level, there are many opportunities for optimisation which are not present in languages which give the programmer more direct control over the machine. Hermes features {threads}, {relational tables}Hermes is, {typestate} checking, {capability}-based access and {dynamic configuration}. Version 0.8alpha patchlevel 01 runs on {RS/6000}, {Sun-4}, {NeXT}, {IBM-RT}/{BSD4.3} and includes a {bytecode compiler}, a bytecode-"C compiler and {run-time support}. {0.7alpha for Unix (ftp://software.watson.ibm.com/pub/hermes)}. E-mail: "hermes-request@watson.ibm.com", Andy Lowry "lowry@watson.ibm.com". {Usenet} newsgroup: {news:comp.lang.hermes}. ["Hermes: A Language for Distributed Computing". Strom, Bacon, Goldberg, Lowry, Yellin, Yemini. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ. 1991. ISBN: O-13-389537-8]. (1992-03-22)
Hermes or Ormuzd. [Rf. Trachtenberg, Jewish
Hermes says that matter becomes; formerly it was — profound expressions indeed; and Fichte expresses the same idea in his distinction between Seyn and Daseyn. In this sense, matter or worlds may be said to be brought forth or created, with the significance of becoming. See also PRIMARY CREATION; SECONDARY CREATION
Hermes, Tablets of. See SMARAGDINE TABLET
Hermes: The ancient Greek god of herds, guardian of travellers, messenger of the gods, conductor of the dead to the underworld. The Romans identified him with Mercury. In Egypt, he was identified with Hermanubis, and chiefly with Thoth, the god of learning, and in the Roman imperial period he was worshipped as a revealer of divine wisdom by which men may become a new man, a Son of God.
Hermes, “the bringer of good, the angel standing
Hermes Trismegistus Hermes thrice-great; the name of Hermes or Thoth the divinity in his human aspect as a high initiate. A mythical name for adepts adopted by several writers on so-called Hermetic subjects, with which the early Christian Fathers and the Gnostics show that they were acquainted. See also PYMANDER
Hermes Trismegistus: The fabled author of Neo-Platonic, Judaic, Kabalistic, alchemical and astrological works, studied as sacred writings by the Egyptian priests. Identified with the Egyptian god Thoth.
Hermes was the Greek god of mystical thinking and interpretations, corresponding to the Egyptian Thoth, both divinities being overseers or hierophants of works of initiation concealing the archaic secrets of the god-wisdom. Thus the ascription to Hermes of profoundly mystical allegories is properly assigned, whoever their actual writers may have been.
Hermes was worshiped at Samothrace as the ancestral god under the name of Cadmus or Kadmilos.
Hermetic: An adjective originally meaning “originated by Hermes Trismegistus or based on his teachings.” Now used to mean occult or esoteric in general. (Also: hermetical.) Used also as a noun meaning a student or practitioner of alchemy or occultism or esoteric science.
Hermetic Axiom “As it is above, so it is below; as it is below, so it is above.” See also SMARAGDINE TABLET
Hermetic Chain ::: Among the ancient Greeks there existed a mystical tradition of a chain of living beings, one end of whichincluded the divinities in their various grades or stages of divine authority and activities, and the otherend of which ran downwards through inferior gods and heroes and sages to ordinary men, and to thebeings below man. Each link of this living chain of beings inspired and instructed the chain below itself,thus transmitting and communicating from link to link to the end of the marvelous living chain, love andwisdom and knowledge concerning the secrets of the universe, eventuating in mankind as the arts and thesciences necessary for human life and civilization. This was mystically called the Hermetic Chain or theGolden Chain.In the ancient Mysteries the teaching of the existence and nature of the Hermetic Chain was fullyexplained; it is a true teaching because it represents distinctly and clearly and faithfully true and actualoperations of nature. More or less faint and distorted copies of the teaching of this Hermetic Chain orGolden Chain or succession of teachers were taken over by various later formal and exoteric sects, suchas the Christian Church, wherein the doctrine was called the Apostolic Succession. In all the greatMystery schools of antiquity there was this succession of teacher following teacher, each one passing onthe light to his successor as he himself had received it from his predecessor; and as long as thistransmission of light was a reality, it worked enormous spiritual benefit among men. Therefore all suchmovements lived, flourished, and did great good in the world. These teachers were the messengers tomen from the Great Lodge of the Masters of Wisdom and Compassion. (See also Guru-parampara)
Hermetic chain: In occult teachings, a mystic chain of living entities, starting with the divine beings, and running through the demigods and sages to ordinary human beings, ending in the beings on the lower evolutionary levels.
Hermetic Chain or Great Chain of Being Greek expression found even in Homer, signifying the chain of beings from divinities reaching down to inferior gods, heroes, and sages, to ordinary human beings. Each link in this aggregate of hierarchies, of which each link is itself a hierarchy, transmitted its wisdom and power to the next below it; and it is thus that knowledge was originally communicated to early mankind. See GURUPARAMPARA
Hermetist: A follower and propagator of the teachings of Hermes Trismegistus.
Hermod (Icelandic) [from her host, army + mod might, courage] A son of Odin in Norse mythology, equivalent to Hermes or Mercury, messenger of the gods. Best known for his memorable journey to the kingdom of Hel on behalf of the gods, when he was sent to entreat the queen of death to give up the sun god Balder whose death at the hands of his blind brother Hoder had been brought about by Loki (in some versions Odin himself undertakes the errand).
Herodotus gives the Greek Artemis (or in Latin Diana) as an equivalent of Bast.
Heroes [from Greek heros free man, lord, great man] Classical antiquity speaks of heroes and demigods, of mingled divine and human parentage, who ruled over and instructed mankind in bygone ages. The mingled divine and human parentage has reference to the great human figures of the later third and early fourth root-races who imbodied as individuals the spiritual qualities of their divine ancestors as well as the human attributes which in those days were continuously becoming more dominant, and in time were destined to overshadow the diviner parts.
Herrenmoral: (German) A concept popularly used as a blanket term for any ruthless, non-Chnstian type of morality justly and unjustly linked with the ethical theories of Friedrich Nietzsche (q.v.) as laid down by him especially in the works of his last productive period fraught as it was with iconoclast vehemence against all plebeian ideals and a passionate desire to establish a new and more virile aristocratic morality, and debated by many writers, such as Kaftan, Kronenberg, Staudinger, and Hilbert. Such ideas as will to power, the conception of the superman, the apodictic primacy of those who with strong mind and unhindered by conventional interpretations of good and evil, yet with lordly lassitude, are born to leadership, have contributed to this picture of the morality of the masters (Herren) whom Nietzsche envisaged as bringing about the revaluation of all values and realizing the higher European culture upon the ruins of the fear-motivated, passion-shunning, narrowly moral world of his day. -- K.F.L.
Her sisters are Urd (origin), irrevocable causes set in motion in the past; and Skuld (debt), who is created by her two sisters, the past and present. She is the debt of karma owed to the future, the inevitable result of past and present causes.
Her splendour and her swiftness and her thrill,
Heru-amen. See HARPOCRATES; HORUS
Heru-pa-khart, Heru-sa-Ast. See HARPOCRATES; HORUS
Heru-ur. See AROERIS; HORUS
TERMS ANYWHERE
1. A distinctive and pervasive quality or character; air; atmosphere. 2. A subtle emanation from and enveloping living persons and things, viewed by mystics as consisting of the essence of the individual.
1. Anything whatever; any part. 2. A cypher, zero. Aught.
1. Suggested by fancy; imaginary, unreal. 2. Led by fancy rather than by reason and experience; whimsical.
1. That which is untrue; error, falsehood. 2. Untruthfulness, treachery. falsity"s.
1. The act, power or property of appealing, alluring, enticing or inviting. 2. A thing or feature which draws by appealing to desires, tastes, etc. 3. The action of a body or substance in drawing to itself, by some physical force, another to which it is not materially attached; the force thus exercised. attractions.
1. Where something originated or was nurtured in its early existence. 2. The place where something begins, where it springs into being.
"A basis can be created for a subjective illusion-consciousness which is yet part of Being, if we accept in the sense of an illusory subjective world-awareness the account of sleep and dream creation given to us in the Upanishads. For the affirmation there is that Brahman as Self is fourfold; the Self is Brahman and all that is is the Brahman, but all that is is the Self seen by the Self in four states of its being. In the pure self-status neither consciousness nor unconsciousness as we conceive it can be affirmed about Brahman; it is a state of superconscience absorbed in its self-existence, in a self-silence or a self-ecstasy, or else it is the status of a free Superconscient containing or basing everything but involved in nothing. But there is also a luminous status of sleep-self, a massed consciousness which is the origin of cosmic existence; this state of deep sleep in which yet there is the presence of an omnipotent Intelligence is the seed state or causal condition from which emerges the cosmos; — this and the dream-self which is the continent of all subtle, subjective or supraphysical experience, and the self of waking which is the support of all physical experience, can be taken as the whole field of Maya.” The Life Divine
A being of the lower vital plane who by the medium of a living human being or by some other means or agency is able to materialise itself sufficiently so as to appear and act in a visible form or speak with an audible voice or, without so appearing, to move about material things, e.g., furniture or to materialise objects or to shift them from place to place. This accounts for what are called poltergeists , phenomena of stone-throwing, tree-inhabiting Bhutas, and other well-known phenomena.
absolute ::: adj. 1. Free from all imperfection or deficiency; complete, finished; perfect, consummate. 2. Of degree: Complete, entire; in the fullest sense. 3. Having ultimate power, governing totally; unlimited by a constitution or the concurrent authority of a parliament; arbitrary, despotic. 4. Existing without relation to any other being; self-existent; self-sufficing. 5. Capable of being thought or conceived by itself alone; unconditioned. 6. Considered independently of its being subjective or objective. n. 7. Something that is not dependent upon external conditions for existence or for its specific nature, size, etc. (opposed to relative). Absolute, Absolute"s, absolutes, absoluteness.
accent ::: 1. The way in which anything is said; pronunciation, tone, voice; sound, modulation or modification of the voice expressing feeling. 2. A mark indicating stress or some other distinction in pronunciation or value. accents.
account ::: n. 1. A record of debts and credits, applied to other things than money or trade. 2. A particular statement or narrative of an event or thing; a relation, report, or description. v. 3. To render an account or reckoning of; to give a satisfactory reason for, to give an explanation.
"A cosmos or universe is always a harmony, otherwise it could not exist, it would fly to pieces. But as there are musical harmonies which are built out of discords partly or even predominantly, so this universe (the material) is disharmonious in its separate elements — the individual elements are at discord with each other to a large extent; it is only owing to the sustaining Divine Will behind that the whole is still a harmony to those who look at it with the cosmic vision. But it is a harmony in evolution in progress — that is, all is combined to strive towards a goal which is not yet reached, and the object of our yoga is to hasten the arrival to this goal. When it is reached, there will be a harmony of harmonies substituted for the present harmony built up on discords. This is the explanation of the present appearance of things.” Letters on Yoga
"Action is a resultant of the energy of the being, but this energy is not of one sole kind; the Consciousness-Force of the Spirit manifests itself in many kinds of energies: there are inner activities of mind, activities of life, of desire, passion, impulse, character, activities of the senses and the body, a pursuit of truth and knowledge, a pursuit of beauty, a pursuit of ethical good or evil, a pursuit of power, love, joy, happiness, fortune, success, pleasure, life-satisfactions of all kinds, life-enlargement, a pursuit of individual or collective objects, a pursuit of the health, strength, capacity, satisfaction of the body.” The Life Divine*
active ::: originating or communicating action, exerting action upon others; acting of its own accord, spontaneous.
"A divine Force is at work and will choose at each moment what has to be done or has not to be done, what has to be momentarily or permanently taken up, momentarily or permanently abandoned. For provided we do not substitute for that our desire or our ego, and to that end the soul must be always awake, always on guard, alive to the divine guidance, resistant to the undivine misleading from within or without us, that Force is sufficient and alone competent and she will lead us to the fulfilment along ways and by means too large, too inward, too complex for the mind to follow, much less to dictate. It is an arduous and difficult and dangerous way, but there is none other.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"A divine life must be first and foremost an inner life; for since the outward must be the expression of what is within, there can be no divinity in the outer existence if there is not the divinisation of the inner being.” The Life Divine*
adj. 1. Beautiful. 2. Fine, bright, sunny. 3. Free from blemish, imperfection, or anything that impairs the appearance, quality, or character. 4. Of pleasing form or appearance. 5. Neither excellent nor poor; moderately or tolerably good. fairer.* *n. 6.* That which is fair (in senses of the adj.*).
adj. 1. Having dropped or come down from a higher place, from an upright position, or from a higher level, degree, amount, quality, value, number. 2. Having sunk in reputation or honour; degraded. 3. Overthrown, destroyed or conquered, esp. of those who have died in battle. (Also, pp. of fall**.**)
adj. Brought together in one place; picked.
adjourned ::: deferred, postponed; held over to another time.
adored ::: the One who is worshipped, (referring here to Krishna).
adorer ::: the One who worships, (referring here to Radha).
aerial ::: 1. Having a light and graceful beauty; airy; ethereal; unsubstantial, intangible; hence, immaterial, ideal, imaginary. 2. Biol. Growing in the air.
"Aesthesis therefore is of the very essence of poetry, as it is of all art. But it is not the sole element and aesthesis too is not confined to a reception of poetry and art; it extends to everything in the world: there is nothing we can sense, think or in any way experience to which there cannot be an aesthetic reaction of our conscious being. Ordinarily, we suppose that aesthesis is concerned with beauty, and that indeed is its most prominent concern: but it is concerned with many other things also. It is the universal Ananda that is the parent of aesthesis and the universal Ananda takes three major and original forms, beauty, love and delight, the delight of all existence, the delight in things, in all things.” Letters on Savitri
affinity ::: 1. Causal relationship or connexion (as flowing the one from the other, or having a common source). 2. A psychical or spiritual attraction believed by some sects to exist between persons.
afflatus ::: the miraculous communication of supernatural knowledge; hence also, the imparting of an over-mastering impulse, poetic or otherwise; inspiration. A creative inspiration, as that of a poet; a divine imparting of knowledge, thus it is often called divine afflatus.
a flexible board from which a dive may be executed, secured at one end and projecting over water at the other. Also fig.
afloat ::: 1. Floating or borne on the water; in a floating condition. 2. From the state of a ship or other body floating on the sea, having liberty of motion and buoyancy.
a game in which a blindfolded player tries to catch and identify one of the other players. The game has been around for at least 2000 years and probably longer. It is known to have been played in Greece about the time of the Roman Conquest.
agent ::: n. **1. One who does the actual work of anything, as distinguished from the instigator or employer; hence, one who acts for another, a deputy, steward, factor, substitute, representative, or emissary. adj. 2. That which acts or exerts power. agents.**
*[Agni]. Sri Aurobindo: "Agni is the leader of the sacrifice and protects it in the great journey against the powers of darkness. The knowledge and purpose of this divine Puissance can be entirely trusted; he is the friend and lover of the soul and will not betray it to evil gods. Even for the man sitting far off in the night, enveloped by the darkness of the human ignorance, this flame[Agni] is a light which, when it is perfectly kindled and in proportion as it mounts higher and higher, enlarges itself into the vast light of the Truth. Flaming upward to heaven to meet the divine Dawn, it rises through the vital or nervous mid-world and through our mental skies and enters at last the Paradise of Light, its own supreme home above where joyous for ever in the eternal Truth that is the foundation of the sempiternal Bliss the shining Immortals sit in their celestial sessions and drink the wine of the infinite beatitude.” *The Secret of the Veda
agree ::: 1. To be in harmony or unison in opinions, feelings, conduct, etc.; to be in sympathy; to live or act together harmoniously; to have no causes of variance. 2. To give consent; assent (often followed by to). agreed.
agreement ::: a contract or other document delineating an arrangement that is accepted by all parties to a transaction. (Sri Aurobindo capitalizes the word.)
ajar ::: neither entirely open nor entirely shut; partly open.
algebra ::: the branch of mathematics that deals with general statements of relations, utilizing letters and other symbols to represent specific sets of numbers, values, vectors, etc., in the description of such relations. 2. Any special system of notation adapted to the study of a special system of relationship.
alien ::: 1. Unlike one"s own; strange; not belonging to one; belonging to another person, place, or family. 2. Adverse; hostile. aliens.
"All change must come from within with the felt or the secret support of the Divine Power; it is only by one"s own inner opening to that that one can receive help, not by mental, vital or physical contact with others.” Letters on Yoga
::: "All energies put into activity — thought, speech, feeling, act — go to constitute Karma. These things help to develop the nature in one direction or another, and the nature and its actions and reactions produce their consequences inward and outward: they also act on others and create movements in the general sum of forces which can return upon oneself sooner or later. Thoughts unexpressed can also go out as forces and produce their effects. It is a mistake to think that a thought or will can have effect only when it is expressed in speech or act: the unspoken thought, the unexpressed will are also active energies and can produce their own vibrations, effects or reactions.” Letters on Yoga*
all- ::: prefix: Wholly, altogether, infinitely. Since 1600, the number of these [combinations] has been enormously extended, all-** having become a possible prefix, in poetry at least, to almost any adjective of quality. all-affirming, All-Beautiful, All-Beautiful"s, All-Bliss, All-Blissful, All-causing, all-concealing, all-conquering, All-Conscient, All-Conscious, all-containing, All-containing, all-creating, all-defeating, All-Delight, all-discovering, all-embracing, all-fulfilling, all-harbouring, all-inhabiting, all-knowing, All-knowing, All-Knowledge, all-levelling, All-Life, All-love, All-Love, all-negating, all-powerful, all-revealing, All-ruler, all-ruling, all-seeing, All-seeing, all-seeking, all-shaping, all-supporting, all-sustaining, all-swallowing, All-Truth, All-vision, All-Wisdom, all-wise, All-Wise, all-witnessing, All-Wonderful, All-Wonderful"s.**
"All the limitlessly wise immortals desired and found the Child within us who is everywhere around us.” The Secret of the Veda
almighty ::: 1. *Orig. and in the strict sense used as an attribute of the Deity, and joined to God or other title. 2. Absol. The Almighty; a title of God. 3. All-powerful (in a general sense); omnipotent. Almighty"s, Almightiness, almightiness.
altar ::: 1. A block, pile, table, stand, mound, platform, or other elevated structure on which to place or sacrifice offerings to a deity. 2. With reference to the uses, customs, dedication, or peculiar sanctity of the altar. 3. A place consecrated to devotional observances. altar"s, altars, altar-burnings, mountain-altars.
alter ::: to make otherwise or different in some respect; to make some change in character, shape, condition, position, quantity, value, etc. without changing the thing itself for another; to modify, to change the appearance of. alters, altered, altering.
altruism ::: the principle or practice of unselfish concern for or devotion to the welfare of others (opposed to egoism ).
"Always keep in touch with the Divine Force. The best thing for you is to do that simply and allow it to do its own work; wherever necessary, it will take hold of the inferior energies and purify them; at other times it will empty you of them and fill you with itself. But if you let your mind take the lead and discuss and decide what is to be done, you will lose touch with the Divine Force and the lower energies will begin to act for themselves and all go into confusion and a wrong movement.” Letters on Yoga
amateur ::: a person who engages in a study, sport, or other activity for pleasure rather than for financial benefit or professional reasons.
ambience ::: 1. The mood, character, quality, tone, atmosphere, etc., particularly of an environment or milieu. 2. That which surrounds or encompasses.
ambit ::: a sphere of operation or influence; range, scope.
A mental formation stamped by the thoughts and feelings of a departed human being on the atmosphere of a place or locality, wandering about there or repeating itself, till that formation either exhausts itself or is dissolved by one means or another. This is the explanation of such phenomena as the haunted house in which the scenes attending or surrounding or preceding a murder are repeated over and over again and many other similar phenomena.
amethyst ::: a purple or violet quartz; having the clear colour as of the precious stone. Sri Aurobindo uses the word as an adj."for Amethyst (the Mother)she has revealed that it has a power of protection” Huta
amidst ::: in the middle of; surrounded by; among; amidst is often used of things scattered about, or in the midst of others.
anarch ::: a. Lawless, rebellious; n. An adherent of anarchy or a leader practicing it.
". . . an Avatar is not at all bound to be a spiritual prophet — he is never in fact merely a prophet, he is a realiser, an establisher — not of outward things only, though he does realise something in the outward also, but, as I have said, of something essential and radical needed for the terrestrial evolution which is the evolution of the embodied spirit through successive stages towards the Divine.” Letters on Yoga
anchor ::: 1. Any of various devices dropped by a chain, cable, or rope to the bottom of a body of water for preventing or restricting the motion of a vessel or other floating object, typically having broad, hooklike arms that bury themselves in the bottom to provide a firm hold. 2. A person or thing that can be relied on for support, stability, or security; mainstay.
anchorites ::: those who have retired to a solitary place for a life of religious seclusion; hermits, recluses.
::: "An executive cosmic force shapes us and dictates through our temperament and environment and mentality so shaped, through our individualised formulation of the cosmic energies, our actions and their results. Truly, we do not think, will or act but thought occurs in us, will occurs in us, impulse and act occur in us; our ego-sense gathers around itself, refers to itself all this flow of natural activities. It is cosmic Force, it is Nature that forms the thought, imposes the will, imparts the impulse. Our body, mind and ego are a wave of that sea of force in action and do not govern it, but by it are governed and directed.” The Synthesis of Yoga —**cosmic forces.**
**Angel of the Way *Sri Aurobindo: "Love fulfilled does not exclude knowledge, but itself brings knowledge; and the completer the knowledge, the richer the possibility of love. ‘By Bhakti" says the Lord in the Gita ‘shall a man know Me in all my extent and greatness and as I am in the principles of my being, and when he has known Me in the principles of my being, then he enters into Me." Love without knowledge is a passionate and intense, but blind, crude, often dangerous thing, a great power, but also a stumbling-block; love, limited in knowledge, condemns itself in its fervour and often by its very fervour to narrowness; but love leading to perfect knowledge brings the infinite and absolute union. Such love is not inconsistent with, but rather throws itself with joy into divine works; for it loves God and is one with him in all his being, and therefore in all beings, and to work for the world is then to feel and fulfil multitudinously one"s love for God. This is the trinity of our powers, [work, knowledge, love] the union of all three in God to which we arrive when we start on our journey by the path of devotion with Love for the Angel of the Way to find in the ecstasy of the divine delight of the All-Lover"s being the fulfilment of ours, its secure home and blissful abiding-place and the centre of its universal radiation.” The Synthesis of Yoga*
animal ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The animal is a living laboratory in which Nature has, it is said, worked out man. Man himself may well be a thinking and living laboratory in whom and with whose conscious co-operation she wills to work out the superman, the god. Or shall we not say, rather, to manifest God?” *The Life Divine
another ::: adj. 1. Being one more or more of the same; further; additional. 2. Very similar to; of the same kind or category as. 3. Different; distinct; of a different period, place, or kind. pron. **4. A person other than oneself or the one specified. 5. One more; an additional one. another"s**.
antagonist ::: one who is opposed to, struggles against, or competes with another; opponent, adversary. antagonists.
antechambers ::: 1. Chambers or rooms that serve as waiting rooms and entrances to larger rooms or apartments; anterooms. 2. Any areas that are entrances to other areas.
antinomy ::: opposition between one law, principle, rule, etc., and another.
antipodes ::: places diametrically opposite each other.
anything made to appear otherwise than it actually is; counterfeit.
"A philosophy of change?(1) But what is change? In ordinary parlance change means passage from one condition to another and that would seem to imply passage from one status to another status. The shoot changes into a tree, passes from the status of shoot to the status of tree and there it stops; man passes from the status of young man to the status of old man and the only farther change possible to him is death or dissolution of his status. So it would seem that change is not something isolated which is the sole original and eternal reality, but it is something dependent on status, and if status were non-existent, change also could not exist. For we have to ask, when you speak of change as alone real, change of what, from what, to what? Without this ‘what" change could not be. ::: —Change is evidently the change of some form or state of existence from one condition to another condition.” Essays Divine and Human
appeal ::: 1. An earnest request for aid, support, sympathy, mercy, etc.; entreaty; petition; plea. 2. An application or proceeding for review by a higher tribunal. 3. The power or ability to attract, interest; attraction. appealed, appealing, sense-appeal.
appellants ::: those who appeal to a higher tribunal; entreat.
apsaras ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Apsaras are the most beautiful and romantic conception on the lesser plane of Hindu mythology. From the moment that they arose out of the waters of the milky Ocean, robed in ethereal raiment and heavenly adornment, waking melody from a million lyres, the beauty and light of them has transformed the world. They crowd in the sunbeams, they flash and gleam over heaven in the lightnings, they make the azure beauty of the sky; they are the light of sunrise and sunset and the haunting voices of forest and field. They dwell too in the life of the soul; for they are the ideal pursued by the poet through his lines, by the artist shaping his soul on his canvas, by the sculptor seeking a form in the marble; for the joy of their embrace the hero flings his life into the rushing torrent of battle; the sage, musing upon God, sees the shining of their limbs and falls from his white ideal. The delight of life, the beauty of things, the attraction of sensuous beauty, this is what the mystic and romantic side of the Hindu temperament strove to express in the Apsara. The original meaning is everywhere felt as a shining background, but most in the older allegories, especially the strange and romantic legend of Pururavas as we first have it in the Brahmanas and the Vishnoupurana.
arc ::: 1. Any unbroken part of the circumference of a circle or other curved line. 2. A luminous bridge formed in a gap between two electrodes. arcs.
arch ::: 1. An upwardly curved construction, for spanning an opening, consisting of a number of wedgelike stones, bricks, or the like, set with the narrower side toward the opening in such a way that forces on the arch are transmitted as vertical or oblique stresses on either side of the opening, either capable of bearing weight or merely ornamental; 2. Something bowed or curved; any bowlike part: the arch of the foot. 3. An arched roof, door; gateway; vault; fig. the heavens. arches.
arch- ::: a combining form that represents the outcome of archi- in words borrowed through Latin from Greek in the Old English period; it subsequently became a productive form added to nouns of any origin, which thus denote individuals or institutions directing or having authority over others of their class (archbishop; archdiocese; archpriest): principal. More recently, arch-1 has developed the senses "principal” (archenemy; archrival) or "prototypical” and thus exemplary or extreme (archconservative); nouns so formed are almost always pejorative. Arch-intelligence.
archipelago ::: 1. Any sea, or body of water, in which there are numerous islands. 2. A large group or chain of islands.
architecture ::: 1. The profession of designing buildings and other artificial constructions and environments, usually with some regard to aesthetic effect. 2. The character or style of building. 3. Construction or structure generally. architectures.
archives ::: preserved historical records or documents, also the place where they are kept.
arcturus ::: a giant star in the constellation Boötes. It is the brightest star in the Northern Hemisphere and the fourth brightest star in the sky, with an apparent magnitude of 0.00; sometimes referring to the Great Bear itself.
arenas ::: central stages, rings, areas, or the like, used for sports or other forms of entertainment, surrounded by seats for spectators.
arm ::: power; might; strength. (All other references are to arm(s) as a part of the body.) arm"s, arms.
arraigned ::: called (an accused person) before a court to answer the charge made against him or her by indictment, information, or complaint, or brought before a court to answer to an indictment; accused, charged with fault.
arrogant ::: 1. Having or displaying a sense of overbearing self-worth or self-importance. 2. Marked by or arising from a feeling or assumption of one"s superiority toward others.
art ::: v. archaic** A second person singular present indicative of be, now only poet., not in modern usage. All other references are to art as the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance. Also, the class of objects subject to aesthetic criteria. art"s, arts, art-parades.
ascent ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The ascent or the upward movement takes place when there is a sufficient aspiration from the being, i.e., from the various mental, vital and physical planes.” *Letters on Yoga
ascetic ::: one who dedicates his or her life to a pursuit of contemplative ideals, whether by seclusion or by abstinence from creature comforts, and practices extreme self-denial, rigorous self-discipline or self-mortification. ascetic"s, ascetics.
aspirant ::: n. **1. One who seeks with eagerness and steady purpose. adj. 2. Aspiring, striving for a higher position; mounting up, ascending. aspirants.**
::: "Aspiration is to call the forces. When the forces have answered, there is a natural state of quiet receptivity concentrated but spontaneous.” Letters on Yoga
assemblage ::: a number of persons gathered together; a gathering, concourse. (Less formal than assembly.)
assembled ::: gathered together; brought together into one place, collected.
assembly ::: a group of people gathered together usually for a particular purpose. assemblies.
a star so distant from Earth that its position in relation to other stars appears not to change.
"As there is a cosmic Self and Spirit pervading and upholding the universe and its beings, so too there is a cosmic Force that moves all things, and on this original cosmic Force depend and act many cosmic Forces that are its powers or arise as forms of its universal action.” The Life Divine
aswapati ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Aswapati, the Lord of the Horse, her [Savitri"s] human father, is the Lord of Tapasya, the concentrated energy of spiritual endeavour that helps us to rise from the mortal to the immortal planes; . . . .” (From a letter written by Sri Aurobindo) Aswapati"s.
"A third step is to find out that there is something in him other than his instrumental mind, life and body, not only an immortal ever-developing individual soul that supports his nature but an eternal immutable self and spirit, and to learn what are the categories of his spiritual being, until he discovers that all in him is an expression of the spirit and distinguishes the link between his lower and his higher existence; thus he sets out to remove his constitutional self-ignorance. Discovering self and spirit he discovers God; he finds out that there is a Self beyond the temporal: he comes to the vision of that Self in the cosmic consciousness as the divine Reality behind Nature and this world of beings; his mind opens to the thought or the sense of the Absolute of whom self and the individual and the cosmos are so many faces; the cosmic, the egoistic, the original ignorance begin to lose the rigidness of their hold upon him.” The Life Divine
atmosphere ::: 1. A surrounding or pervading mood, environment, or influence. 2. The air.
attached firmly or securely in place; fixed or bolted together. breath-fastened.
autumn ::: the season of the year between summer and winter, lasting from the autumnal equinox to the winter solstice and from September to December in the Northern Hemisphere; fall.
babel ::: "The reference is to the mythological story of the construction of the Tower of Babel, which appears to be an attempt to explain the diversity of human languages. According to Genesis, the Babylonians wanted to make a name for themselves by building a mighty city and tower ‘with its top in the heavens". God disrupted the work by so confusing the language of the workers that they could no longer understand one another. The tower was never completed and the people were dispersed over the face of the earth.” (Encyclopaedia Britannica) Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works Sri Aurobindo: "The legend of the Tower of Babel speaks of the diversity of tongues as a curse laid on the race; but whatever its disadvantages, and they tend more and more to be minimised by the growth of civilisation and increasing intercourse, it has been rather a blessing than a curse, a gift to mankind rather than a disability laid upon it. The purposeless exaggeration of anything is always an evil, and an excessive pullulation of varying tongues that serve no purpose in the expression of a real diversity of spirit and culture is certainly a stumbling-block rather than a help: but this excess, though it existed in the past, is hardly a possibility of the future. The tendency is rather in the opposite direction. In former times diversity of language helped to create a barrier to knowledge and sympathy, was often made the pretext even of an actual antipathy and tended to a too rigid division. The lack of sufficient interpenetration kept up both a passive want of understanding and a fruitful crop of active misunderstandings. But this was an inevitable evil of a particular stage of growth, an exaggeration of the necessity that then existed for the vigorous development of strongly individualised group-souls in the human race. These disadvantages have not yet been abolished, but with closer intercourse and the growing desire of men and nations for the knowledge of each other"s thought and spirit and personality, they have diminished and tend to diminish more and more and there is no reason why in the end they should not become inoperative.” The Human Cycle
bacchanal ::: a wild gathering involving excessive drinking and promiscuity.
balance ::: n. **1. A state of equilibrium or equipoise; mental, psychological or emotional. 2. A weighing device, especially one consisting of a rigid beam horizontally suspended by a low-friction support at its center, with identical weighing pans hung at either end, one of which holds an unknown weight while the effective weight in the other is increased by known amounts until the beam is level and motionless. 3. An undecided or uncertain state in which issues are unresolved. v. 4. To have an equality or equivalence in weight, parts, etc.; be in equilibrium. adj. 5. Being in harmonious or proper arrangement or adjustment, proportion. 6. Mental steadiness or emotional stability; habit of calm behaviour, judgement. balanced, balancing.**
bards ::: an ancient Celtic order of minstrel poets who composed and recited verses celebrating the legendary exploits of chieftains and heroes. 2. Poets, especially lyric poets.
barrels ::: large cylindrical containers, usually made of staves bound together with hoops, with a flat top and bottom of equal diameter.
bathe ::: 1. To become immersed in or as if in liquid, as a bath or in other substances or elements. 2. To wash or pour over; suffuse or envelope, like sunshine. bathed, bathing.
battened ::: thrived and prospered, especially at another"s expense; grew fat. battening
beast ::: 1. An animal other than a human, especially a large four-footed mammal. 2. Fig. Animal nature as opposed to intellect or spirit. 3. A large wild animal. 4. A domesticated animal used by man. (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as an adj.) beast"s, Beast"s, beasts, wild-beast. ::: —the Beast. Applied to the devil and evil spirits.
beauty ::: the quality present in a thing or person that gives intense pleasure or deep satisfaction to the mind, whether arising from sensory manifestations (as shape, colour, sound, etc.), a meaningful design or pattern, or something else, (as a personality in which high spiritual qualities are manifest). Beauty, beauty"s, Beauty"s, beauty-drenched, earth-beauty"s.
bed-fellows ::: those who are closely associated or allied with one another.
::: ". . . behind visible events in the world there is always a mass of invisible forces at work unknown to the outward minds of men, and by yoga, (by going inward and establishing a conscious connection with the Cosmic Self and Force and forces,) one can become conscious of these forces, intervene consciously in the play, and to some extent at least determine things in the result of the play.” Letters on Yoga
belief ::: 1. Confidence in the truth or existence of something not immediately susceptible to rigorous proof. 2. Trust or confidence, faith. 3. Something believed; an opinion or conviction. beliefs.
Question: "Sweet Mother, l don"t understand very clearly the difference between faith, belief and confidence.”
Mother: "But Sri Aurobindo has given the full explanation here. If you don"t understand, then. . . He has written ‘Faith is a feeling in the whole being." The whole being, yes. Faith, that"s the whole being at once. He says that belief is something that occurs in the head, that is purely mental; and confidence is quite different. Confidence, one can have confidence in life, trust in the Divine, trust in others, trust in one"s own destiny, that is, one has the feeling that everything is going to help him, to do what he wants to do. Faith is a certitude without any proof. Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 6.
belongings ::: possessions; things owned, either tangible or intangible.
beyond ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The language of the Upanishad makes it strikingly clear that it is no metaphysical abstraction, no void Silence, no indeterminate Absolute which is offered to the soul that aspires, but rather the absolute of all that is possessed by it here in the relative world of its sojourning. All here in the mental is a growing light, consciousness and life; all there in the supramental is an infinite life, light and consciousness. That which is here shadowed, is there found; the incomplete here is there the fulfilled. The Beyond is not an annullation, but a transfiguration of all that we are here in our world of forms; it is sovran Mind of this mind, secret Life of this life, the absolute Sense which supports and justifies our limited senses.” The Upanishads *
bind ::: 1. To restrain or confine with or as if with ties. 2. To place (someone) under obligation; oblige. 3. To fasten together. Also fig. **binds, bound, binding.**
binding ::: n. **1. The covering within which the pages of a book are abound. adj. 2.* Fig.* Commanding adherence to a commitment, obligatory.
biography ::: an account of a person"s life written, composed, or produced by another.
bird ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Bird in the Veda is the symbol, very frequently, of the soul liberated and upsoaring, at other times of energies so liberated and upsoaring, winging upwards towards the heights of our being, winging widely with a free flight, no longer involved in the ordinary limited movement or labouring gallop of the Life-energy, the Horse, Ashwa.” *The Secret of the Veda
"Birth is an assumption of a body by the spirit, death is the casting off [of] the body; there is nothing original in this birth, nothing final in this death. Before birth we were; after death we shall be. Nor are our birth and death a single episode without continuous meaning or sequel; it is one episode out of many, scenes of our drama of existence with its denouement far away in time.” Essays Divine and Human*
blind alley ::: 1. A road, alley, etc. that is open only at one end. 2. A position or situation offering no hope of progress or improvement. 3. A situation in which no further progress can be made.
blinkers ::: leather side pieces attached to a horse"s bridle to prevent sideways vision.
board ::: a sheet of wood, cardboard, paper, or other material on which some games are played.
body ::: 1. The entire material or physical structure of an organism, especially of a human or animal as differentiated from the soul. 2. The entire physical structure of a human being. 3. A mass of matter that is distinct from other masses. 4. Substance. 5. An agent or entity. 6. The mass of a thing. 7. A mass of matter that is distinct from other masses. 8. The largest or main part of anything; the foundation; central part. body"s, bodies.
"Body is the outward sign and lowest basis of the apparent division which Nature plunging into ignorance and self-nescience makes the starting-point for the recovery of unity by the individual soul, unity even in the midst of the most exaggerated forms of her multiple consciousness.” The Life Divine
boldness or daring without regard for conventional thought or other restrictions.
bond ::: 1. Something, such as a fetter, cord, or band, that binds, ties, or fastens things together. Also fig. 2. A duty, promise, or other obligation by which one is bound. 3. Something that binds one to a certain circumstance or line of behaviour. 4. A uniting force or tie; a link. 5. A binding agreement; a covenant. bonds.
border ::: n. 1. A part that forms the outer edge of something. 2. The line or frontier area separating political divisions or geographic regions; a boundary. 3. A strip of ground, as that at the edge of a garden or walk, an edging. borders. v. 4. To form the boundary of; be contiguous to. fig. To confine. 5. To lie adjacent to another. bordered.
borrowed ::: taken from another source, appropriated; assumed; adopted or adapted for the present.
borrower ::: one who receives something or appropriates it from another source.
brief ::: a memorandum of points of fact or of law for use in conducting a case. (All other references are as: short lived, fleeting, transitory. briefer, brief-lived.)
broideries ::: embroidered needle-work designs in gold, silver, and other threads on cloth.
built ::: pt. and pp. of build. dream-built, high-built, low-built, mind-built, new-built. *adj. *built in. Constructed or included as an integral part of. adj. built-up. Built by the fastening together of several parts or enlarged by the addition of layers.
bundles ::: a group of objects held together, as by tying or wrapping; packages.
buried ::: v. 1. Deposited or hid under ground; covered up with earth or other material. Also fig. **2. Plunged or sunk deep in, so as to be covered from view; put out of sight. adj. 3. Put in the ground or in a tomb; interred. 4. Consigned to a position of obscurity, inaccessibility, or inaction. 5.* Fig.* Consigned to oblivion, put out of the way, abandoned and forgotten.
"But always the whole foundation of the gnostic life must be by its very nature inward and not outward. In the life of the Spirit it is the Spirit, the inner Reality, that has built up and uses the mind, vital being and body as its instrumentation; thought, feeling and action do not exist for themselves, they are not an object, but the means; they serve to express the manifested divine Reality within us: otherwise, without this inwardness, this spiritual origination, in a too externalised consciousness or by only external means, no greater or divine life is possible.” The Life Divine
"But in a higher than our present mental consciousness we find that this duality is only a phenomenal appearance. The highest and real truth of existence is the one Spirit, the supreme Soul, Purushottama, and it is the power of being of this Spirit which manifests itself in all that we experience as universe. This universal Nature is not a lifeless, inert or unconscious mechanism, but informed in all its movements by the universal Spirit. The mechanism of its process is only an outward appearance and the reality is the Spirit creating or manifesting its own being by its own power of being in all that is in Nature. Soul and Nature in us too are only a dual appearance of the one existence.” The Synthesis of Yoga*
"By Force I mean not mental or vital energy but the Divine Force from above — as peace comes from above and wideness also, so does this Force (Shakti). Nothing, not even thinking or meditating can be done without some action of Force. The Force I speak of is a Force for illumination, transformation, purification, all that has to be done in the yoga, for removal of hostile forces and the wrong movements — it is also of course for external work, whether great or small in appearance does not matter — if that is part of the Divine Will. I do not mean any personal force egoistic or rajasic.” Letters on Yoga
call ::: Sri Aurobindo: "All Yoga is in its nature a new birth; it is a birth out of the ordinary, the mentalised material life of man into a higher spiritual consciousness and a greater and diviner being. No Yoga can be successfully undertaken and followed unless there is a strong awakening to the necessity of that larger spiritual existence. The soul that is called to this deep and vast inward change, may arrive in different ways to the initial departure. It may come to it by its own natural development which has been leading it unconsciously towards the awakening; it may reach it through the influence of a religion or the attraction of a philosophy; it may approach it by a slow illumination or leap to it by a sudden touch or shock; it may be pushed or led to it by the pressure of outward circumstances or by an inward necessity, by a single word that breaks the seals of the mind or by long reflection, by the distant example of one who has trod the path or by contact and daily influence. According to the nature and the circumstances the call will come.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
calm ::: n. 1. Serenity; tranquillity; peace. 2. Nearly or completely motionless as a condition of no wind. Calm, Calm"s, calms, calmness. adj. 3. Not excited or agitated; composed; tranquil; 4. Without rough motion; still or nearly still. calmer, calm-lipped, stone-calm. *adv. calmly.
Sri Aurobindo: "Calm is a still unmoved condition which no disturbance can affect — it is a less negative condition than quiet.” Letters on Yoga*
"Calm is a positive tranquillity which can exist in spite of superficial disturbances.” *Letters on Yoga
"Calm is a strong and positive quietude, firm and solid — ordinary quietude is mere negation, simply the absence of disturbance.” *Letters on Yoga
"But more powerful still is the giving up of the fruit of one"s works, because that immediately destroys all causes of disturbance and brings and preserves automatically an inner calm and peace, and calm and peace are the foundation on which all else becomes perfect and secure in possession by the tranquil spirit.” Essays on the Gita
The Mother: "Calm is self-possessed strength, quiet and conscious energy, mastery of the impulses, control over the unconscious reflexes.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 14*.
calvary ::: a hill outside ancient Jerusalem where Jesus was crucified.
camp ::: n. 1. A place where tents, huts, or other temporary shelters are set up, as by soldiers, nomads, or travelers. 2. The people using such shelters. 3. Temporary living quarters for soldiers or prisoners. v. 4. To make or set up a camp. or to live temporarily in or as if in a camp or outdoors. 5. To settle down securely and comfortably; become ensconced. camps, camped.
cancel ::: 1. To annul, make void or invalidate. 2. To equalize or make up for; offset. 3. To cross out with lines or other markings, making something invalid. cancels, cancelled, cancelling, self-cancelling.
captain ::: 1. One who commands, leads, or guides others. 2. The officer in command of a ship, an aircraft, or a spacecraft.
caravan ::: a company of travelers journeying together, as across a desert or through hostile territory. 2. A procession or train likened to a caravan. caravans.
casket ::: a small and often ornate box for holding jewels or other valuables.
cherish ::: 1. To hold great love for someone; feel love for one. 2. To care for, protect and love —(a person). 3. To cling fondly to (a hope, idea, etc.); nurse. cherished.
cherished ::: treated with affection and tenderness; held dear.
cell ::: 1. A small humble abode, such as a hermit"s cave or hut. 2. A narrow confining room, as in a prison or convent.
cenotaphs ::: monuments erected in honour of dead persons whose remains lie elsewhere.
chain-work ::: handiwork in which parts are looped or woven together like the links of a chain.
chapter ::: an important portion or division of anything, esp. of a book, treatise, or other literary work. chapter"s, Chapters.
characters ::: 1. The combination of qualities, features and traits that distinguishes one person, group, or thing from another. 2. The marks or symbols used in writing systems such as the letters of the alphabet.
charity ::: benevolence or generosity toward others or toward humanity.
check ::: v. 1. To investigate, examine or verify as to correctness; examine carefully or in detail; to ascertain the truth about. 2. To inspect so as to determine accuracy, authenticity, quality, or other condition; test. checked.* n. *3. A person or thing that stops, limits, slows, or restrains.
child ::: 1. A person between birth and full growth. 2. A baby or infant. 3. A person who has not attained maturity. 4. One who is childish or immature. 5. An individual regarded as strongly affected by another or by a specified time, place, or circumstance. 6. Any person or thing regarded as the product or result of particular agencies, influences, etc. Child, child"s, children, Children, children"s, child-god, Child-Godhead, child-heart, child-heart"s, child-laughter, child-soul, child-sovereign, child-thought, flame-child, foster-child, God-child, King-children.
choked ::: interfered with the respiration of by compression or obstruction of the larynx or trachea by strangling, smothering; stifling.
chosen ::: n. 1. Having been selected by God; elect. adj. 2. Selected from or preferred above others. self-chosen. (Also pp. of choose.)
ciphered ::: written in a secret code.
cipher ::: n. 1. Something having no influence or value; a zero; a nonentity. 2. A secret method of writing, as by transposition or substitution of letters, specially formed symbols, or the like. unintelligible to all but those possessing the key; a cryptograph. ciphers. *v. 3. To put in secret writing; encode. *ciphers. Note: Sri Aurobindo also spelled the word as Cypher, the old English spelling.
circe ::: 1. In Classical Mythology. the enchantress represented by Homer as turning the companions of Odysseus into swine by means of a magic drink, therefore an alluring but dangerous temptress or temptation.
circean ::: relating to or resembling Circe, the fabled enchantress described by Homer. She was supposed to possess great knowledge of magic and venomous herbs which she offered as a drink to her charmed and fascinated victims who then changed into swine; hence, pleasing, but harmful; fascinating, but degrading.
clamped ::: 1. Fastened with or fixed in a clamp (a device for binding, holding, compressing or fastening objects together); hence, fig. Restricted, repressed, tightened down, restrained. 2. Established by authority; imposed clamps. (Sri Aurobindo also employs clamped as an adj.)
clauses, items, points, or particulars in a contract, treaty, or other formal agreement; conditions or stipulations in a contract.
cleave ::: 1. To adhere closely to; stick; cling. 2. To be faithful (usually fol. by to.)
climes ::: 1. Poetic: Regions or their climates; atmospheres. 2. The prevailing attitudes, standards or conditions of a group, period, or place.
cling ::: 1. To come or be in close contact with; stick or hold together and resist separation 2. To hold fast or adhere to as if by embracing. 3. To be emotionally or intellectually attached or remain close to. 4. To hold on tightly or tenaciously to. 5. To remain attached as to an idea, hope, memory, etc. clings, clung, clinging.
clod ::: a lump or mass that adheres together; esp. of earth or clay.
clustering ::: a number of things of the same kind, growing or held together; a bunch. 2. A group of things or persons close together.
clusters ::: a group of the same or similar elements gathered or occurring closely together.
coerce ::: 1. To compel or restrain by force or authority without regard to individual wishes or desires. 2. To dominate or control, esp. by exploiting fear, anxiety, etc. 3. To bring about through the use of force or other forms of compulsion. coerced, coercing.
coil ::: n. **1. A series of connected spirals or concentric rings formed by gathering or winding. 2. Such a series resembling a serpent or a vine. v. 3. To form concentric rings or spirals. 4. To move in a spiral course. coils, coiled, coiling, coilings.**
collaboration ::: co-operation; working together harmoniously, especially in a joint intellectual effort.
collapse ::: 1. To fall or cave in; crumble suddenly. 2. Fig. To break down suddenly in strength or health and thereby cease to function. collapsed, collapsing.
collected ::: brought or placed together; forming an aggregation from various sources.
columns ::: long, narrow formations of troops in which there are more members in line in the direction of movement than at right angles to the direction.—(distinguished from line).
combine ::: to integrate or cause to be integrated; join together. combined.
commingling ::: causing to blend together; mixing.
companion ::: 1. A person who accompanies or associates with another; a comrade. 2. Astronomy. The fainter of the two stars that constitute a double star. companions, companionless.
company ::: 1. A number of people gathered together; assembly. 2. A number of persons united or incorporated for joint action. companies.
compassion ::: a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is stricken by misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering. compassion"s.
competitors ::: those who strive to outdo others, engage in a contest, or seek an object in rivalry with others also seeking it.
complements ::: 1. Things that complete, make up a whole, or bring to perfection. 2. Things that complete each other when combined and complete the whole.
compose ::: to make or create by putting together parts or elements.
compressing ::: pressing together to force into less space; condensing.
compression ::: 1. The act or process of compressing. 2. The process or result of constricting; becoming smaller or pressed together.
conclaves ::: 1. Secret or confidential meetings. 2. Assemblies or gatherings, esp. those that have special authority, power, or influence.
conditions ::: circumstances that are indispensable to the appearance or occurrence of another; prerequisites.
conjunction ::: 1. The state of being joined. 2. Astronomy: The position of two celestial bodies on the celestial sphere when they have the same celestial longitude, especially a configuration in which a planet or the Moon lies on a straight line from Earth to or through the Sun.
*consciousforce. ::: Sri Aurobindo: "In actual fact Mind measures Time by event and Space by Matter; but it is possible in pure mentality to disregard the movement of event and the disposition of substance and realise the pure movement of Conscious-Force which constitutes Space and Time; these two are then merely two aspects of the universal force of Consciousness which in their intertwined interaction comprehend the warp and woof of its action upon itself. And to a consciousness higher than Mind which should regard our past, present and future in one view, containing and not contained in them, not situated at a particular moment of Time for its point of prospection, Time might well offer itself as an eternal present. And to the same consciousness not situated at any particular point of Space, but containing all points and regions in itself, Space also might well offer itself as a subjective and indivisible extension, — no less subjective than Time.” The Life Divine
::: "Consciousness is usually identified with mind, but mental consciousness is only the human range which no more exhausts all the possible ranges of consciousness than human sight exhausts all the gradations of colour or human hearing all the gradations of sound — for there is much above or below that is to man invisible and inaudible. So there are ranges of consciousness above and below the human range, with which the normal human has no contact and they seem to it unconscious, — supramental or overmental and submental ranges.” *Letters on Yoga
consigned ::: handed over or given into the care or charge of another; entrusted.
conspiracies ::: evil, unlawful, treacherous or surreptitious plans formulated in secret by two or more persons; plots.
conspire ::: to act or work together toward the same result or goal. conspires, conspired.
contact ::: 1. A coming together or touching, as of objects, surfaces or people. 2. The state or condition of touching or of immediate proximity. contact"s, contacts.
contraction (‘s) ::: the act of contracting, i.e. reducing in size by drawing together; shrinking, or the state of being contracted.
contract ::: to reduce in size by drawing together; shrink; concentrate. contracting.
control-room ::: a room housing control equipment where certain operations are conducted.
conversed ::: talked informally with another or others; exchanged views, opinions, etc.; communed with.
convey ::: 1. To take or carry from one place to another; transport. 2. To communicate or make known; impart. conveys, conveyed.
cord ::: 1. An influence, feeling, or force that binds or restrains; a bond or tie. 2. Fig. Like a thin rope made of several strands woven together to hold the parts of anything. cords, heart-cords.
cornices ::: prominent, continuous, horizontally projecting features surmounting a wall or other construction, or dividing it horizontally for compositional purposes; i.e. to crown or complete a building.
cosharers ::: those who receive, possess, or occupy (something) together with others.
cosmic mind ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Nevertheless, the fact of this intervention from above, the fact that behind all our original thinking or authentic perception of things there is a veiled, a half-veiled or a swift unveiled intuitive element is enough to establish a connection between mind and what is above it; it opens a passage of communication and of entry into the superior spirit-ranges. There is also the reaching out of mind to exceed the personal ego limitation, to see things in a certain impersonality and universality. Impersonality is the first character of cosmic self; universality, non-limitation by the single or limiting point of view, is the character of cosmic perception and knowledge: this tendency is therefore a widening, however rudimentary, of these restricted mind areas towards cosmicity, towards a quality which is the very character of the higher mental planes, — towards that superconscient cosmic Mind which, we have suggested, must in the nature of things be the original mind-action of which ours is only a derivative and inferior process.” *The Life Divine
"If we accept the Vedic image of the Sun of Truth, . . . we may compare the action of the Higher Mind to a composed and steady sunshine, the energy of the Illumined Mind beyond it to an outpouring of massive lightnings of flaming sun-stuff. Still beyond can be met a yet greater power of the Truth-Force, an intimate and exact Truth-vision, Truth-thought, Truth-sense, Truth-feeling, Truth-action, to which we can give in a special sense the name of Intuition; . . . At the source of this Intuition we discover a superconscient cosmic Mind in direct contact with the supramental Truth-Consciousness, an original intensity determinant of all movements below it and all mental energies, — not Mind as we know it, but an Overmind that covers as with the wide wings of some creative Oversoul this whole lower hemisphere of Knowledge-Ignorance, links it with that greater Truth-Consciousness while yet at the same time with its brilliant golden Lid it veils the face of the greater Truth from our sight, intervening with its flood of infinite possibilities as at once an obstacle and a passage in our seeking of the spiritual law of our existence, its highest aim, its secret Reality.” The Life Divine
"There is one cosmic Mind, one cosmic Life, one cosmic Body. All the attempt of man to arrive at universal sympathy, universal love and the understanding and knowledge of the inner soul of other existences is an attempt to beat thin, breach and eventually break down by the power of the enlarging mind and heart the walls of the ego and arrive nearer to a cosmic oneness.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
"[The results of the opening to the cosmic Mind:] One is aware of the cosmic Mind and the mental forces that move there and how they work on one"s mind and that of others and one is able to deal with one"s own mind with a greater knowledge and effective power. There are many other results, but this is the fundamental one.” Letters on Yoga
"The cosmic consciousness has many levels — the cosmic physical, the cosmic vital, the cosmic Mind, and above the higher planes of cosmic Mind there is the Intuition and above that the overmind and still above that the supermind where the Transcendental begins. In order to live in the Intuition plane (not merely to receive intuitions), one has to live in the cosmic consciousness because there the cosmic and individual run into each other as it were, and the mental separation between them is already broken down, so nobody can reach there who is still in the separative ego.” Letters on Yoga*
cosmic Self ::: Sri Aurobindo: "When one has the cosmic consciousness, one can feel the cosmic Self as one"s own self, one can feel one with other beings in the cosmos, one can feel all the forces of Nature as moving in oneself, all selves as one"s own self. There is no why except that it is so, since all is the One.” Letters on Yoga (See also Cosmic Spirit)
"Impersonality is the first character of cosmic self; . . . .” *The Life Divine
"An eternal infinite self-existence is the supreme reality, but the supreme transcendent eternal Being, Self and Spirit, — an infinite Person, we may say, because his being is the essence and source of all personality, — is the reality and meaning of self-existence: so too the cosmic Self, Spirit, Being, Person is the reality and meaning of cosmic existence; the same Self, Spirit, Being or Person manifesting its multiplicity is the reality and meaning of individual existence.” The Life Divine
"But this cosmic self is spiritual in essence and in experience; it must not be confused with the collective existence, with any group soul or the life and body of a human society or even of all mankind.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"It is the Cosmic Self and Spirit that is in and behind all things and beings, from which and in which all is manifested in the universe — although it is now a manifestation in the Ignorance.” Letters on Yoga*
cosmic Truth ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Cosmic Truth is the view on things of a cosmic consciousness in which things are seen in their true essence and their true relation to the Divine and to each other.” *Letters on Yoga
cosmic vision ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Cosmic vision is the seeing of the universal movements — it has nothing to do with the psychic necessarily. It can be in the universal mind, the universal vital, the universal physical or anywhere.” Letters on Yoga*
counterpart ::: one of two parts that fit and complete each another. counterparts.
count ::: n. 1. The act of counting; or calculating. v. 2. To take account of; reckon to another"s credit. 3. To have merit, importance, value, etc.; deserve consideration. counts, counted, counting.
courtier ::: a person who is often in attendance at the court of a king or other royal personage.
covet ::: 1. To desire wrongfully, inordinately, or without due regard for the rights of others. 2. To wish for, especially eagerly. coveted.
cradle ::: n. 1. A small low bed for an infant, often furnished with rockers. 2. Where something originated or was nurtured in its early existence. cradles v. 2.* *To hold gently and carefully as in a cradle. 3. To hold gently or protectively. cradles, cradled.**
craftsman ::: a person who practices or is highly skilled in a craft; artisan. (Here in reference to the Divine). craftsman** **(in general).
crawl ::: n. 1. The action of moving slowly on the hands or knees or dragging the body along the ground. 2. A very slow movement or progress. v. 3. To move slowly, either by dragging the body along the ground or on the hands and knees. 4. To advance slowly, feebly, laboriously, or with frequent stops. crawls, crawled, crawling.
creatrix ::: the Divine Mother, the creatress. creatrix. (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as an adj.)
creature ::: 1. Something created; a living being, esp. an animal. 2. A human. 3. A person who is dependent upon another; tool or puppet. creature"s, creatures, creatures".
crest ::: 1. The top, highest point, or highest stage of something. 2. The top line of a hill, mountain, or wave. 3. A tuft or other natural growth on the top of the head of an animal as the comb of a rooster. 4. The fan-like tail of a comet. crests.
cross ::: 1. A structure consisting essentially of an upright and a transverse piece, upon which persons were formerly put to a cruel and ignominious death by being nailed or otherwise fastened to it by their extremities. 2. A representation or delineation of a cross on any surface, varying in elaborateness from two lines crossing each other to an ornamental design painted, embroidered, carved, etc.; used as a sacred mark, symbol, badge, or the like. 3. A trouble, vexation, annoyance; misfortune, adversity; sometimes anything that thwarts or crosses. v. 4. To go or extend across; pass from one side of to the other: pass over. 5. To extend or pass through or over; intersect. 6. To encounter in passing. crosses, crossed, crossing.
crowded ::: 1. Filled near or to capacity. 2. Filled with a crowd. 3.* Fig.* packed closely together, as experiences, events; occurrences.
crowd ::: n. 1. A large number of persons gathered tightly together; a throng. 2. The masses. 3. A large number of things or people gathered or considered together; a multitude. crowds. v. 4. To press together into a confined space; assemble in large numbers. 5. To fill, occupy or cram things tightly together. 6. To advance by pressing or shoving. crowds, crowded, crowding.
crucified ::: 1. Afflicted with severe pain or distress; tormented. 2. In reference to being put to death by nailing or otherwise fastening to a cross.
cult ::: 1. Obsessive, especially faddish, devotion to or veneration for a person, principle, or thing. 2. A specific system of religious worship, esp. with reference to its rites and deity. 3. A group or sect bound together by veneration of the same thing, person, ideal. cults.
curse ::: n. 1. The expression of a wish that misfortune, evil, doom, etc., befall a person, group, etc. 2. A formula or charm intended to cause such misfortune to another. 3. An evil brought or inflicted upon one. 4. The cause of evil, misfortune, or trouble. 5. A profane or obscene expression or oath. curses. v. 6. To wish harm upon; invoke evil upon. 7. To invoke supernatural powers to bring harm to (someone or something). cursed.
customs-line ::: an area (or line) where a governmental agency checks baggage or merchandise for contraband and goods subject to duty.
cypher ::: see cipher.
dart ::: n. 1. A small, slender missile that is pointed at one end and usually feathered at the other and is propelled by hand, as in the game of darts, or by a blowgun when used as a weapon. 2. Something similar in function to such a missile, as the stinging member of an insect. *v. 2. To thrust or move suddenly or rapidly.* darts.
dear ::: 1. Precious in one"s regard; cherished. 2. Loved and cherished: Highly esteemed or regarded. 3. Heartfelt; earnest. dearer, dearest.
"Death has no reality except as a process of life. Disintegration of substance and renewal of substance, maintenance of form and change of form are the constant process of life; death is merely a rapid disintegration subservient to life"s necessity of change and variation of formal experience. Even in the death of the body there is no cessation of Life, only the material of one form of life is broken up to serve as material for other forms of life.” The Life Divine
"Death is there because the being in the body is not yet developed enough to go on growing in the same body without the need of change and the body itself is not sufficiently conscious. If the mind and vital and the body itself were more conscious and plastic, death would not be necessary.” Letters on Yoga
::: "Death is the question Nature puts continually to Life and her reminder to it that it has not yet found itself. If there were no siege of death, the creature would be bound for ever in the form of an imperfect living. Pursued by death he awakes to the idea of perfect life and seeks out its means and its possibility.” *Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
death ::: Sri Aurobindo: "For the spiritual seeker death is only a passage from one form of life to another, and none is dead but only departed.” *Letters on Yoga
deceitfully, treacherously.
deceive ::: 1. To mislead by a false appearance or statement; delude. 2. To mislead or falsely persuade others. deceives, deceived.
defeatist ::: marked by the attitude of one who admits, expects, or no longer resists defeat, as because of a conviction that further struggle or effort is futile.
delegate ::: a person authorised to act as representative for another. delegation.
deliver ::: 1. To give into another"s possession or keeping; surrender. 2. To set free or liberate; emancipate, release. 3. To rescue or save. 4. To assist (a female) in bringing forth young. 5. To disburden (oneself) of thoughts, opinions, etc. delivered, delivering, deliverers.
demiurges ::: 1. A Platonic deity who orders or fashions the material world out of chaos. 2. (in Gnostic and some other philosophies) The creator of the universe, supernatural but subordinate to the Supreme Being. ::: Demiurges.
dense ::: 1. Having the component parts closely compacted together; crowded or compact. 2. Relatively opaque; transmitting little light. 3. Intense; extreme. 4. Impenetrable. denser, dense-maned. (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as a n.)
deputy ::: a person appointed to act on behalf of or represent another; agent, representative, surrogate, envoy.
descend ::: to move or pass from a higher to a lower place; come down. Also fig. descends, descended.
despot ::: 1. A king or other ruler with absolute, unlimited power; autocrat. 2. Any tyrant or oppressor.
"Destruction is always a simultaneous or alternate element which keeps pace with creation and it is by destroying and renewing that the Master of Life does his long work of preservation. More, destruction is the first condition of progress. Inwardly, the man who does not destroy his lower self-formations, cannot rise to a greater existence. Outwardly also, the nation or community or race which shrinks too long from destroying and replacing its past forms of life, is itself destroyed, rots and perishes and out of its debris other nations, communities and races are formed. By destruction of the old giant occupants man made himself a place upon earth. By destruction of the Titans the gods maintain the continuity of the divine Law in the cosmos. Whoever prematurely attempts to get rid of this law of battle and destruction, strives vainly against the greater will of the World-Spirit.” Essays on the Gita
detached ::: 1. Impartial or objective; disinterested; unbiased. 2. Not involved or concerned; aloof. ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Detachment means that one stands back from [imperfections and weakness of the nature, etc.] , does not identify oneself with them or get upset or troubled because they are there, but rather looks on them as something foreign to one"s true consciousness and true self, rejects them and calls in the Mother"s Force into these movements to eliminate them and bring the true consciousness and its movements there.” Letters on Yoga
diameter ::: a straight line segment passing through the center of a figure, especially of a circle or sphere, and terminating at the periphery.
diligent ::: quietly and steadily persevering especially in detail or exactness while serving others.
dips ::: 1. Plunges briefly into water or another liquid and removes quickly. 2. Sinks or drops down, or below a particular level, as if dipping into water; goes down, sinks, sets. 3. Has a downward inclination; inclines or slopes downwards; is inclined to the horizon. dipped, dipping.
discern ::: to perceive by the sight or some other sense or by the intellect; see, recognize, distinguish, discriminate. discerned.
disciples ::: those who are pupils or adherents of the doctrines of another; followers.
discord ::: 1. An inharmonious combination of musical tones sounded together. 2. Lack of concord or harmony between persons or things. discords.
disjointed ::: lacking order or coherence; disconnected.
distinguishing ::: perceiving clearly by sight or other sense; discerning something as being different or distinct.
divine Force ::: Sri Aurobindo: "That there is a divine force asleep or veiled by Inconscience in Matter and that the Higher Force has to descend and awaken it with the Light and Truth is a thing that is well known; it is at the very base of this yoga.” *Letters on Yoga.
divine life ::: Sri Aurobindo: "A life of gnostic beings carrying the evolution to a higher supramental status might fitly be characterised as a divine life; for it would be a life in the Divine, a life of the beginnings of a spiritual divine light and power and joy manifested in material Nature.” *The Life Divine ::: "The ascent to the divine Life is the human journey, the Work of works, the acceptable Sacrifice. This alone is man"s real business in the world and the justification of his existence, without which he would be only an insect crawling among other ephemeral insects on a speck of surface mud and water which has managed to form itself amid the appalling immensities of the physical universe.” The Life Divine
"Divine Love is of two kinds — the divine Love for the creation and the souls that are part of itself, and the love of the seeker and love for the Divine Beloved; it has both a personal and impersonal element, but the personal is free here from all lower elements or bondage to the vital and physical instincts.” Letters on Yoga
divine love ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Divine Love, in my view of it, is again not something ethereal, cold and far, but a love absolutely intense, intimate and full of unity, closeness and rapture using all the nature for its expression.” *Letters on Yoga
divine Mother ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The One whom we adore as the Mother is the divine Conscious Force that dominates all existence, one and yet so many-sided that to follow her movement is impossible even for the quickest mind and for the freest and most vast intelligence. The Mother is the consciousness and force of the Supreme and far above all she creates.” *The Mother
divine Reality ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Divine Reality is infinite in its being; in this infinite being, we find limited being everywhere, — that is the apparent fact from which our existence here seems to start and to which our own narrow ego and its ego-centric activities bear constant witness. But, in reality, when we come to an integral self-knowledge, we find that we are not limited, for we also are infinite.” *The Life Divine
domain ::: 1. A sphere of activity, concern, or function; a field. 2. A region characterized by a specific feature, type of growth or wildlife, etc. domains.
dominations ::: the qualities or powers over others; authority; rule; control.
downward ::: adj. 1. Descending from a source or beginning. 2. Moving or tending to a lower place or condition. 3. Toward a lower amount, degree, or rank. adv. 4. Spatially or metaphorically from a higher to a lower level or position.
dragon of the dark foundation ::: Sri Aurobindo: "All this action and struggle and ascension is supported by Heaven our Father and Earth our Mother, Parents of the Gods, who sustain respectively the purely mental and psychic and the physical consciousness. Their large and free scope is the condition of our achievement. Vayu, Master of life, links them together by the mid-air, the region of vital force. And there are other deities, — Parjanya, giver of the rain of heaven; Dadhikravan, the divine war-horse, a power of Agni; the mystic Dragon of the Foundations; Trita Aptya who on the third plane of existence consummates our triple being; and more besides.” The Secret of the Veda
draw ::: 1. To cause to move in a given direction or to a given position, as by leading. 2. To bring towards oneself or itself, as by inherent force or influence; attract. 3. To cause to come by attracting; attract. 4. To cause to move in a particular direction by or as by a pulling force; pull; drag. 5. To get, take or obtain as from a source; to derive. 6. To bring, take, or pull out, as from a receptacle or source. 7. To draw a (or the) line (fig.) to determine or define the limit between two things or groups; in modern colloquial use (esp. with at), to lay down a definite limit of action beyond which one refuses to go. 8. To make, sketch (a picture or representation of someone or something) in lines or words; to design, trace out, delineate; depict; also, to mould, model. 9. To mark or lay out; trace. 10. To compose or write out in legal format. 11. To write out (a bill of exchange or promissory note). 12. To disembowel. 13. To move or pull so as to cover or uncover something. 14. To suck or take in (air, for example); inhale. 15. To extend, lengthen, prolong, protract. 16. To cause to move after or toward one by applying continuous force; drag. draws, drew, drawn, drawing, wide-drawn.
dreamy ::: resembling a dream; ethereal or vague.
drive ::: v. 1. To impel; constrain; urge; compel. 2. To manoeuvre, guide or steer the progress of. 3. To impel (matter) by physical force; to cause (something) to move along by direct application of physical force; to propel, carry along. 4. To send, expel, or otherwise cause to move away or out by force or compulsion. 5. To strive vigorously and with determination toward a goal or objective. 6. To cause and guide the movement of (a vehicle, an animal, etc.). n. 7. A strong organized effort to accomplish a purpose, with energy, push or aggressiveness. 8. Impulse; impulsive force. adj. 9. Urged onward, impelled. 10. Pertaining to an inner urge that stimulates activity or inhibition. drives, drove, drov"st, driving, driven.
drop ::: n. 1. A small quantity of liquid that forms or falls in a spherical or pear-shaped mass; globule. Also fig. of things immaterial. 2. The action or an act of dropping; fall, descent. drops. v. 3. To let or cause to fall (like a drop or drops). Also fig. **drops, dropped, dropping.**
drown ::: fig. To overwhelm or smother; to immerse, inundate, flood. drowned.
dupe ::: one who unquestioningly or unwittingly serves a cause or another person.
durga ::: "In Hindu religion, the goddess who is the Energy of Shiva and the conquering and protecting aspect of the Universal Mother. She is the slayer of many demons including Mahisasura. Durga is usually depicted in painting and sculpture riding a lion, having eight or ten arms, each holding the special weapon of one or another of the gods who gave them to her for her battles with demons. (A; Enc. Br.)” *Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works.
::: "Durga is the Mother"s power of Protection.” The Mother*
dyumatsena ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Dyumatsena, Lord of the Shining Hosts, father of Satyavan, is the Divine Mind here fallen blind, losing its celestial kingdom of vision, and through that loss its kingdom of glory.” Author"s note at beginning of Savitri.
"Each inner experience is perfectly real in its own way, although the values of different experiences differ greatly, but it is real with the reality of the inner self and the inner planes. It is a mistake to think that we live physically only, with the outer mind and life. We are all the time living and acting on other planes of consciousness, meeting others there and acting upon them, and what we do and feel and think there, the forces we gather, the results we prepare have an incalculable importance and effect, unknown to us, upon our outer life.” Letters on Yoga
"Each person follows in the world his own line of destiny which is determined by his own nature and actions — the meaning and necessity of what happens in a particular life cannot be understood except in the light of the whole course of many lives. But this can be seen by those who can get beyond the ordinary mind and feelings and see things as a whole, that even errors, misfortunes, calamities are steps in the journey, — the soul gathering experience as it passes through and beyond them until it is ripe for the transition which will carry it beyond these things to a higher consciousness and higher life.” Letters on Yoga*
earth-Mother ::: 1. A female spirit or deity serving as a symbol of earth or of life and fertility. 2. The earth conceived of as the female principle of fertility and the source of all life. earth-mother"s.
echo ::: n. **1. A repetition of sound produced by the reflexion of sound waves from a wall, mountain, or other obstructing surface. 2. A sound heard again near its source after being reflected. 3. A lingering trace or effect. echoes. v. 4. To resound with or as if with an echo; reverberate. echoes, echoing, re-echoed.**
effect and cause ::: cause and effect. Noting a relationship between actions or events such that one or more are the result of the other or others.
ego ::: the "I” or self of any person; a person as thinking, feeling, and willing, and distinguishing itself from the selves of others and from objects of its thought. **ego, ego"s, egos, egoless, world-egos.
element ::: 1. A component or constituent of a whole. 2. One of the substances, usually earth, water, air, and fire, formerly regarded as constituting the material universe. 3. A natural habitat, sphere of activity, environment, etc. elements.
elements ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The first ripple or vibration in causal matter creates a new and exceedingly fine and pervasive condition of matter called Akasha or Ether; more complex motion evolves out of Ether a somewhat intenser condition which is called Vayu, Air; and so by ever more complex motion with increasing intensity of condition for result, yet three other matter-states are successively developed, Agni or Fire, Apah or Water and Prithvi or Earth.” *Supplement to the Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library
elevation ::: a drawing of a building or other object made in projection on a vertical plane, as distinguished from a ground plan.
elfin ::: suggestive of an elf in strangeness and otherworldliness; in reference to legendary beings with magical powers, usually characterized as small, manlike, and mischievous.
else ::: adv. 1. In a different or additional time, place, or manner. adj. 2. Other than the persons or things mentioned or implied.
elsewhere ::: somewhere else; in or to some other place.
embrace ::: n. 1. The act of clasping another person in the arms. Also fig. **embraces. v. 2. To take or clasp in the arms; press to the bosom. 3. To take or receive gladly or eagerly; accept willingly. 4. To include or contain. 5. To surround; enclose; entwine. 6. To take up willingly or eagerly. embraced, embracing, all-embracing.**
emerge ::: 1. To come forth into view or notice, as from concealment, or obscurity. 2. To rise or come forth from or as if from water or other liquid. 3. To come into existence; develop. 4. To rise, as from an inferior or unfortunate state or condition. emerges, emerged, emerging.
emotion ::: 1. An affective state of consciousness in which joy, sorrow, fear, hate, or the like, is experienced, as distinguished from cognitive or volitional states of consciousness. Also abstract ‘feeling" as distinguished from the other classes of mental phenomena. 2. A state of mental agitation or disturbance. **emotion"s, emotions.
empire ::: 1. Imperial or imperialistic sovereignty, domination, or control. 2. A group of nations or peoples ruled over by an emperor, empress, or other powerful sovereign or government.
"Emptiness is not in itself a bad condition, only if it is a sad and restless emptiness of the dissatisfied vital. In sadhana emptiness is very usually a necessary transition from one state to another. When mind and vital fall quiet and their restless movements, thoughts and desires cease, then one feels empty. This is at first often a neutral emptiness with nothing in it, nothing in it either good or bad, happy or unhappy, no impulse or movement. This neutral state is often or even usually followed by the opening to inner experience. There is also an emptiness made of peace and silence, when the peace and silence come out from the psychic within or descend from the higher consciousness above. This is not neutral, for in it there is the sense of peace, often also of wideness and freedom. There is also a happy emptiness with the sense of something close or drawing near which is not yet there, e.g. the closeness of the Mother or some other preparing experience.” Letters on Yoga*
enclosed ::: 1. That is surrounded (with walls, fences, or other barriers) so as to prevent free ingress or egress. 2. That is shut up or hemmed in; secluded, imprisoned.
enemy ::: n. 1. A hostile person, power, force or nation. 2. One who feels hatred toward, intends injury to, or opposes the interests of another; a foe. enemy"s *adj. *3. Of, relating to, or being a hostile power or force.
engrafted ::: 1. Inserted (a scion) onto or into another plant. 2. Planted firmly; established.
engross ::: 1. To devote (oneself) fully to; consume all of one"s attention or time. 2. To acquire the entire use of, take altogether to itself; to occupy entirely, monopolise. engrossed, engrossing.
ensemble ::: all the parts of something considered together and in relation to the whole.
ensphering ::: enclosing in, or as in, a sphere; encircling.
envy ::: a feeling of discontent or covetousness with regard to another"s advantages, success, possessions, etc.; longing to possess something awarded to or achieved by another.
epic ::: adj. 1. An extended narrative poem in elevated or dignified language, celebrating the feats of a legendary or traditional hero. 2. Resembling or suggesting such poetry. 3. Heroic; majestic; impressively great. 4. Of unusually great size or extent. n. 5. An epic poem. 6. Any composition resembling an epic. epics.
equal ::: adj. 1. As great as; the same as (often followed by to or with). 2. Having the same quantity, value, or measure as another. 3. Evenly proportioned or balanced. 4. Tranquil; equable; undisturbed. 5. Impartial; just; equitable. n. 6. One who is equal to another in any specified quality. v. **7. To become equal or level with. equalled.**
escort ::: one or more persons accompanying another to guide, protect, or show honour.
ether ::: 1. The regions of space beyond the earth"s atmosphere; the heavens. 2. The element believed in ancient and medieval civilizations to fill all space above the sphere of the moon and to compose the stars and planets. 3. A hypothetical medium formerly believed to permeate all space, and through which light and other electromagnetic radiation were thought to move. ether"s.
ethereal ::: 1. Of the celestial spheres; heavenly. 2. Characterized by lightness and insubstantiality; as impalpable or intangible as air. 3. Characterized by unusual lightness and delicacy 4. Of heaven or the spirit. ethereal-tressed.
etheric ::: adj. Pertaining to ether, the medium supposed by the ancients to fill the upper regions of space.
evangelist ::: 1. A preacher of the Christian gospel. 2. Any zealous advocate of a cause. (Employed by Sri Aurobindo as an adjective.)
::: **"Even in failure there is a preparation for success: our nights carry in them the secret of a greater dawn.” The Renaissance in India*
::: "Even Science believes that one day death may be conquered by physical means and its reasonings are perfectly sound. There is no reason why the supramental Force should not do it. Forms on earth do not last (they do in other planes) because these forms are too rigid to grow expressing the progress of the spirit. If they become plastic enough to do that there is no reason why they should not last.” Letters on Yoga
"Everything here is not perfect but all works out the cosmic Will in the course of the ages.” Letters on Yoga*
"Evolution is an inverse action of the involution: what is an ultimate and last derivation in the involution is the first to appear in the evolution; what was original and primal in the involution is in the evolution the last and supreme emergence.” The Life Divine ::: "Evolution, as we see it in this world, is a slow and difficult process and, indeed, needs usually ages to reach abiding results; but this is because it is in its nature an emergence from inconscient beginnings, a start from nescience and a working in the ignorance of natural beings by what seems to be an unconscious force. There can be, on the contrary, an evolution in the light and no longer in the darkness, in which the evolving being is a conscious participant and cooperator, and this is precisely what must take place here.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
"Evolution takes place on the earth and therefore the earth is the proper field for progression. The beings of the other worlds do not progress from one world to another. They remain fixed to their own type.” Letters on Yoga
exact ::: 1. Capable of the greatest precision. 2. Precise, as opposed to approximate; neither more nor less. 3. Absolutely accurate or correct in every detail; the same in every detail; precise. 4. Admitting of no deviation, precise, rigorous; strictly regulated.
excess ::: 1. The amount or degree by which one thing exceeds another. 2. Superabundance.
exclusive ::: 1. Not admitting of something else. 2. Noting that in which no others have a share.
::: "Experiences are of all kinds and take all forms in the consciousness. When the consciousness undergoes, sees or feels anything spiritual or psychic or even occult, that is an experience — in the technical yogic sense, for there are of course all sorts of experiences that are not of that character.” Letters on Yoga
exploiting ::: advancing, furthering or utilizing for one"s own ends.
exploits ::: acts or deeds, especially brilliant or heroic ones.
extreme ::: n. 1. The greatest or utmost degree or point. 2. Either of the two things situated at opposite ends of a range; extremes. adj. 3. Being in or attaining the greatest or highest degree; very intense.
eyrie ::: the nest of an eagle or other bird of prey, built in a high inaccessible place.
::: **"Faith is a certitude in the soul which does not depend on reasoning, on this or that mental idea, on circumstances, on this or that passing condition of the mind or the vital or the body. It may be hidden, eclipsed, may even seem to be quenched, but it reappears again after the storm or the eclipse; it is seen burning still in the soul when one has thought that it was extinguished for ever. The mind may be a shifting sea of doubts and yet that faith may be there within and, if so, it will keep even the doubt-racked mind in the way so that it goes on in spite of itself towards its destined goal. Faith is a spiritual certitude of the spiritual, the divine, the soul"s ideal, something that clings to that even when it is not fulfilled in life, even when the immediate facts or the persistent circumstances seem to deny it.” Letters on Yoga
farther
father. ::: 1. The Supreme Being and Creator; God. 2. The First Person of the Trinity. Father"s.
father and Son. ::: first and Second Persons of the Trinity in Christianity.
father ::: n. 1. A male parent. father"s. v. 2. Fig. Create, found, originate, etc. fathers, fathering.
::: **"Fear and anxiety are perverse forms of will. What thou fearest & ponderest over, striking that note repeatedly in thy mind, thou helpest to bring about; for, if thy will above the surface of waking repels it, it is yet what thy mind underneath is all along willing, & the subconscious mind is mightier, wider, better equipped to fulfil than thy waking force & intellect. But the spirit is stronger than both together; from fear and hope take refuge in the grandiose calm and careless mastery of the spirit.” Essays Divine and Human
fear ::: n. 1. A distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, etc., whether the threat is real or imagined; the feeling or condition of being afraid. v. 2. To regard with fear; be afraid of. 3. To have reverential awe of.** fear"s, fears, feared, fearing, fear-filled.
fell ::: of an inhumanly cruel nature; fierce; destructive. (All other references to the word are as the past tense of fall.)
field ::: 1. A wide unbroken expanse, as of ice. 2. An area or sphere of activity. 3. A broad, level, open expanse of land; a stretch of open land, esp. one used for pasture or tillage; a plain. 4. The surface on which something is portrayed or enacted. An area of human activity or interest. 5. A piece of ground devoted to sports or contests; playing field. 6. A region of space characterized by a physical property, such as gravitational or electromagnetic force or fluid pressure. fields, field-paths, star-field, time-field, play-fields, race-fields.
fight ::: n. 1. Fig. A confrontation between opposing groups in which each attempts to harm or gain power over the other, as with bodily force or weapons. fights. v. 2. To contend with physically or in battle; attempt to defend oneself against or to subdue, defeat, or destroy an adversary. fighting, fought.
figure ::: n. 1. The form or shape of anything; appearance, aspect. 2. The human form, esp. as regards size or shape. 3. A representation or likeness of the human form.4. An emblem, type, symbol. 5. An amount or value expressed in numbers. 6. A written symbol other than a letter. v. 7. To compute or calculate. 8. To represent by a pictorial or sculptured figure, a diagram, or the like; picture or depict. 9. To shape to; symbolize; represent. figures, figured, figuring, figure-selves.**
files ::: a line of persons or things placed one behind another (distinguished from ‘rank").
"First, we affirm an Absolute as the origin and support and secret Reality of all things. The Absolute Reality is indefinable and ineffable by mental thought and mental language; it is self-existent and self-evident to itself, as all absolutes are self-evident, but our mental affirmatives and negatives, whether taken separatively or together, cannot limit or define it.” The Life Divine
floating ::: adj. 1. Being buoyed up on water or other liquid. 2. Having little or no attachment; moving from one place to another. 3. Continually changing especially as from one abode or occupation to another. 4. Being suspended in or as in a liquid with freedom to move; also, to move freely through (something).
-flocks ::: groups of animals or birds that live, travel, or feed together. moon-flocks.
flux ::: 1. Constant or frequent change; fluctuation; movement. 2. A flowing or flow: Also used with reference to other forms of matter and energy that can be regarded as flowing, such as radiant energy, particles, etc.
folded ::: 1. Enclosed, wrapped, enveloped. 2. Clasped as in prayer. 3. Brought (the arms, hands, etc.) together in an intertwined or crossed manner; clasped, crossed.
fold (s) ::: v. 1. To envelope or clasp; enfold. 2. To bring (the wings) close to the body, as a bird on alighting. folding. *n. 3. The doubling of any flexible substance, as cloth; one part turned or bent and laid on another. Also fig. *4. A coil of a serpent, string, etc.
follow ::: 1. To come or go after; proceed behind. 2. Lit. and fig. To move along the course of; take a path. 3. Fig. To come after in order, time, or position. 4. To occur or be evident as a consequence; result. 5. Fig. To accompany; attend. 6. To take (a person) as a guide, leader, or master; to accept the authority or example of, obey the dictates or guidance of; to adhere to, espouse the opinions, side, or cause of. 7. Fig. To go after in or as if in pursuit. 8. To accept and follow the leadership or command or guidance of. 9. To watch or trace the movements, progress, or course of. follows, followed, following. ::: following out. Proceeding; following; pursuing something to an end or conclusion.
follower ::: 1. Someone who travels behind or pursues another. 2. One who subscribes to the teachings or methods of another; an adherent. followers.
". . . Force is inherent in Existence. Shiva and Kali, Brahman and Shakti are one and not two who are separable. Force inherent in existence may be at rest or it may be in motion, but when it is at rest, it exists none the less and is not abolished, diminished or in any way essentially altered.” The Life Divine
force ::: n. 1. Strength; energy; power; intensity. 2. Fig. An agency, influence, or source of power likened to a physical force. Force, force"s, forces, Force-compelled, Conscious-Force, earth-force, God-Force, lion-forces, Mother-Force, Nature-force, Nature-Force, serpent-force, soul-force, Soul-Forces, world-force, World-Force, world-forces. *v. 3. To compel or cause (a person, group, etc.) to do something through effort, superior strength, etc.; coerce. 4. To propel or drive despite resistance. 5. To break open (a gate, door, etc.) *forces, forced, forcing.
force, universal ::: Sri Aurobindo: "This force that we feel is the universal Force of the Divine, which, veiled or unveiled, acting directly or permitting the use of its powers by beings in the cosmos, is the one Energy that alone exists and alone makes universal or individual action possible. For this force is the Divine itself in the body of its power; all is that, power of act, power of thought and knowledge, power of mastery and enjoyment, power of love. Conscious always and in everything, in ourselves and in others, of the Master of Works possessing, inhabiting, enjoying through this Force that is himself, becoming through it all existences and all happenings, we shall have arrived at the divine union through works and achieved by that fulfilment in works all that others have gained through absolute devotion or through pure knowledge.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
fordless ::: having no ford, i.e. a place where a river or other body of water is shallow enough to be crossed by wading.
". . . for doubt is the mind"s persistent assailant.” Letters on Yoga ::: "The enemy of faith is doubt, and yet doubt too is a utility and necessity, because man in his ignorance and in his progressive labour towards knowledge needs to be visited by doubt, otherwise he would remain obstinate in an ignorant belief and limited knowledge and unable to escape from his errors.” The Synthesis of Yoga*
forefathers ::: progenitors, patriarchs, ancestors, forerunners.
forerunner ::: a person or thing coming in advance to herald the arrival of someone or something; guide. forerunners.
"For if evolution is the progressive manifestation by Nature of that which slept or worked in her, involved, it is also the overt realisation of that which she secretly is. We cannot, then, bid her the right to condemn with the religionist as perverse and presumptuous or with the rationalist as a disease or hallucination any intention she may evince or effort she may make to go beyond. 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.” The Life Divine
"For it is only the few who can make the past Teacher and his teaching, the past Incarnation and his example and influence a living force in their lives. For this need also the Hindu discipline provides in the relation of the Guru and the disciple. The Guru may sometimes be the Incarnation or World-Teacher; but it is sufficient that he should represent to the disciple the divine wisdom, convey to him something of the divine ideal or make him feel the realised relation of the human soul with the Eternal.” The Synthesis of Yoga*
"Forms on earth do not last (they do in other planes) because these forms are too rigid to grow expressing the progress of the spirit. If they become plastic enough to do that there is no reason why they should not last.” Letters on Yoga
forsake ::: 1. To give up (something formerly held dear); renounce. 2. To leave altogether; abandon. forsaking.
" . . . for there is only one thing essential, needful, indispensable, to grow conscious of the Divine Reality and live in it and live it always.” Letters on Yoga
found ::: 1. To set up or establish on a firm basis or for enduring existence; to originate, create, initiate. 2. To establish or set up, especially with provision for continuing existence. Also fig. (All other references are to the word as the pp. or pt. of find. **half-found*.*) founds, founded.**
friction ::: a resistance encountered when one body moves relative to another body with which it is in contact. Surface resistance to relative motion.
fringe ::: 1. A decorative border of thread, cord, or the like, usually hanging loosely from a ravelled edge or strip. 2. Anything resembling or suggesting this. 3. An outer edge; margin; periphery. fringes, fringed.
fro ::: to and fro. Alternating from one place to another; back and forth.
fuse ::: to become mixed or united by or as if by melting together. fusing.
galleries ::: long narrow passages sometimes serving as a means of access to other parts of a house; corridors.
gang ::: a group that has banded together for mutual protection and profit. Also fig.
gathered
gather ::: v. 1. To accumulate something (things or people) gradually; amass. 2. To summon up; muster. 3. To come together around a single point; collect, assemble. 4. To accumulate; increase. 5. To draw and bring closer. 6. To draw around or close. gathers, gathered, gathering, fast-gathering.
gene ::: the basic physical unit of heredity which leads to the expression of hereditary character.
"Genius is Nature"s first attempt to liberate the imprisoned god out of her human mould; the mould has to suffer in the process. It is astonishing that the cracks are so few and unimportant.” Essays Divine and Human
"Here we live in an organisation of mortal consciousness which takes the form of a transient world; there we are liberated into the harmonies of an infinite self-seeing which knows all world in the light of the eternal and immortal. The Beyond is our reality; that is our plenitude; that is the absolute satisfaction of our self-existence. It is immortality and it is ‘That Delight".” The Upanishads *beyond
"High beyond the Intelligence is the Great Self, beyond the Great Self is the Unmanifest, beyond the Unmanifest is the Conscious Being. There is nothing beyond the Being, — that is the extreme ultimate, that the supreme goal.” — Katha Upanishad. (4) (Sri Aurobindo"s translation) The Life Divine
**"I certainly won"t have ‘attracted" [in place of ‘allured"] — there is an enormous difference between the force of the two words and merely ‘attracted by the Ecstasy" would take away all my ecstasy in the line — nothing so tepid can be admitted. Neither do I want ‘thrill" [in place of ‘joy"] which gives a false colour — precisely it would mean that the ecstasy was already touching him with its intensity which is far from my intention.Your statement that ‘joy" is just another word for ‘ecstasy" is surprising. ‘Comfort", ‘pleasure", ‘joy", ‘bliss", ‘rapture", ‘ecstasy" would then be all equal and exactly synonymous terms and all distinction of shades and colours of words would disappear from literature. As well say that ‘flashlight" is just another word for ‘lightning" — or that glow, gleam, glitter, sheen, blaze are all equivalents which can be employed indifferently in the same place. One can feel allured to the supreme omniscient Ecstasy and feel a nameless joy touching one without that Joy becoming itself the supreme Ecstasy. I see no loss of expressiveness by the joy coming in as a vague nameless hint of the immeasurable superior Ecstasy.” Letters on Savitri*
::: "Identity is the first truth of existence; division is the second truth; all division is a division in oneness. There is one Existence which looks at itself from many self-divided unities observing other similar and dissimilar self-divided unities by the device of division. Being is one; division is a device or a secondary condition of consciousness; but the primary truth of consciousness also is a truth of oneness and identity.” Essays Divine and Human
"If we take this fourfold status as a figure of the Self passing from its superconscient state, where there is no subject or object, into a luminous trance in which superconscience becomes a massed consciousness out of which the subjective status of being and the objective come into emergence, then we get according to our view of things either a possible process of illusionary creation or a process of creative Self-knowledge and All-knowledge.” The Life Divine
"I have said that the Avatar is one who comes to open the Way for humanity to a higher consciousness —. . . .” Letters on Yoga
"I have started writing about doubt, but even in doing so I am afflicted by the ‘doubt" whether any amount of writing or of anything else can ever persuade the eternal doubt in man which is the penalty of his native ignorance. In the first place, to write adequately would mean anything from 60 to 600 pages, but not even 6000 convincing pages would convince doubt. For doubt exists for its own sake; its very function is to doubt always and, even when convinced, to go on doubting still; it is only to persuade its entertainer to give it board and lodging that it pretends to be an honest truth-seeker. This is a lesson I have learnt from the experience both of my own mind and of the minds of others; the only way to get rid of doubt is to take discrimination as one"s detector of truth and falsehood and under its guard to open the door freely and courageously to experience.” Letters on Yoga
"I may say that the opening upwards, the ascent into the Light and the subsequent descent into the ordinary consciousness and normal human life is very common as the first decisive experience in the practice of yoga and may very well happen even without the practice of yoga in those who are destined for the spiritual change, especially if there is a dissatisfaction somewhere with the ordinary life and a seeking for something more, greater or better.” Letters on Yoga*
"Indian devotion has especially seized upon the most intimate human relations and made them stepping-stones to the supra-human. God the Guru, God the Master, God the Friend, God the Mother, God the Child, God the Self, each of these experiences — for to us they are more than merely ideas, — it has carried to its extreme possibilities.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
"In every particle, atom, molecule, cell of Matter there lives hidden and works unknown all the omniscience of the Eternal and all the omnipotence of the Infinite.” Essays Divine and Human*
"In God"s providence there is no evil, but only good or its preparation.” Essays Divine and Human
"In Greek mythology, a giant with a hundred arms, a son of Uranus and Ge, who fought against the gods. He was hurled down by Athene and imprisoned beneath Mt. Aetna in Sicily. When he stirs, the mountain shakes; when he breathes, there is an eruption. (M.I.; Web.)” Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works
"In our errors is the substance of a truth which labours to reveal its meaning to our groping intelligence. The human intellect cuts out the error and the truth with it and replaces it by another half-truth half-error; but the Divine Wisdom suffers our mistakes to continue until we are able to arrive at the truth hidden and protected under every false cover.” The Synthesis of Yoga
" . . . insincerity is always an open door for the adversary. That means there is some secret sympathy with what is perverse. And that is what is serious.” Questions and Answers 1957-58, MCW Vol. 9.
". . . in the Avatar there is the special manifestation, the divine birth from above, the eternal and universal Godhead descended into a form of individual humanity, âtmânam srjâmi, and conscious not only behind the veil but in the outward nature.” Essays on the Gita
"It [death] has no separate existence by itself, it is only a result of the principle of decay in the body and that principle is there already — it is part of the physical nature. At the same time it is not inevitable; if one could have the necessary consciousness and force, decay and death is not inevitable. But to bring that consciousness and force into the whole of the material nature is the most difficult thing of all — at any rate, in such a way as to annul the decay principle.” Letters on Yoga
"It is a call of the being for higher things — for the Divine, for all that belongs to the higher or Divine Consciousness.” Guidance
::: **"It is therefore necessary from the beginning to understand and accept the arduous difficulty of the path and to feel the need of a faith which to the intellect may seem blind, but yet is wiser than our reasoning intelligence. For this faith is a support from above; it is the brilliant shadow thrown by a secret light that exceeds the intellect and its data; it is the heart of a hidden knowledge that is not at the mercy of immediate appearances.” The Synthesis of Yoga
::: "It needs a quiet mind to know the Divine Will. In the quiet mind turned towards the Divine the intuition (higher mind) comes of the Divine"s Will and the right way to do it.” *Letters on Yoga
"It [the Cosmic Spirit] uses Truth and Falsehood, Knowledge and Ignorance and all the other dualities as elements in the manifestation and works out what has to be worked out till all is ready for a higher working.” Letters on Yoga*
"Moreover we see that this cosmic action or any cosmic action is impossible without the play of an infinite Force of Existence which produces and regulates all these forms and movements; and that Force equally presupposes or is the action of an infinite Consciousness, because it is in its nature a cosmic Will determining all relations and apprehending them by its own mode of awareness, and it could not so determine and apprehend them if there were no comprehensive Consciousness behind that mode of cosmic awareness to originate as well as to hold, fix and reflect through it the relations of Being in the developing formation or becoming of itself which we call a universe.” The Life Divine
n. 1. Acceptance or approval of what is planned or done by another; acquiescence. v. 2. To give assent, as to the proposal of another; agree. consents, consented, consenting.
n. 1. The point, axis, or pivot about which a body rotates. 2. A point, area, or part that is approximately in the middle of a larger area or volume. 3. A person or thing that is a focus of interest or attention. 4. A point of origin. centre"s, centres. v. 5. To focus or bring together. 6. To move towards, mark, put, or be concentrated at or as at a centre. 7. centred. Brought together to a centre, concentrated.
Navel — higher vital (proper).
::: "Not to be disturbed by either joy or grief, pleasure or displeasure by what people say or do or by any outward things is called in yoga a state of samata , equality to all things.” Letters on Yoga
"Of course, that is the real fact — death is only a shedding of the body, not a cessation of the personal existence. A man is not dead because he goes into another country and changes his clothes to suit that climate.” Letters on Yoga
". . . One Being and Consciousness is involved here in Matter. Evolution is the method by which it liberates itself; consciousness appears in what seems to be inconscient, and once having appeared is self-impelled to grow higher and higher and at the same time to enlarge and develop towards a greater and greater perfection. Life is the first step of this release of consciousness; mind is the second; but the evolution does not finish with mind, it awaits a release into something greater, a consciousness which is spiritual and supramental. The next step of the evolution must be towards the development of Supermind and Spirit as the dominant power in the conscious being. For only then will the involved Divinity in things release itself entirely and it become possible for life to manifest perfection.” On Himself
"Ordinarily we mean by it [consciousness] our first obvious idea of a mental waking consciousness such as is possessed by the human being during the major part of his bodily existence, when he is not asleep, stunned or otherwise deprived of his physical and superficial methods of sensation. In this sense it is plain enough that consciousness is the exception and not the rule in the order of the material universe. We ourselves do not always possess it. But this vulgar and shallow idea of the nature of consciousness, though it still colours our ordinary thought and associations, must now definitely disappear out of philosophical thinking. For we know that there is something in us which is conscious when we sleep, when we are stunned or drugged or in a swoon, in all apparently unconscious states of our physical being. Not only so, but we may now be sure that the old thinkers were right when they declared that even in our waking state what we call then our consciousness is only a small selection from our entire conscious being. It is a superficies, it is not even the whole of our mentality. Behind it, much vaster than it, there is a subliminal or subconscient mind which is the greater part of ourselves and contains heights and profundities which no man has yet measured or fathomed.” Letters on Yoga
"O son of Immortality, live not thou according to Nature, but according to God; and compel her also to live according to the deity within thee.” Essays Divine and Human*
::: "Our incapacity does not matter — there is no human being who is not in his parts of nature incapable — but the Divine Force also is there. If one puts one"s trust in that, incapacity will be changed into capacity. Difficulty and struggle themselves then become a means towards the achievement.” Letters on Yoga
"Our nature is not only mistaken in will and ignorant in knowledge but weak in power; but the Divine Force is there and will lead us if we trust in it and it will use our deficiencies and our powers for the divine purpose. If we fail in our immediate aim, it is because he has intended the failure; often our failure or ill-result is the right road to a truer issue than an immediate and complete success would have put in our reach. If we suffer, it is because something in us has to be prepared for a rarer possibility of delight. If we stumble, it is to learn in the end the secret of a more perfect walking.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"Practically, therefore, all form is only an operation of consciousness impressing itself with presentations of its own workings.” The Upanishads
"Pulling comes usually from a desire to get things for oneself — in aspiration there is a self-giving for the higher consciousness to descend and take possession — the more intense the call the greater the self-giving.” Letters on Yoga
"Remind yourself always that the Divine Force is there, that you have felt it and that, even if you seem to lose consciousness of it for a time or it seems something distant, still it is there and is sure to prevail. For those whom the Force has touched and taken up, belong thenceforth to the Divine.” Letters on Yoga
::: **"See God everywhere and be not frightened by masks. Believe that all falsehood is truth in the making or truth in the breaking, all failure an effectuality concealed, all weakness strength hiding itself from its own vision, all pain a secret & violent ecstasy.” Essays Divine and Human
"So long as one is not free from the ego sense, there can be no real freedom.” The Synthesis of Yoga*
"Soma is the Gandharva, the Lord of the hosts of delight, and guards the true seat of the Deva, the level or plane of the Ananda; gandharva itthâ padam asya rakshati. He is the Supreme, standing out from all other beings and over them, other than they and wonderful, adbhuta, and as the supreme and transcendent, present in the worlds but exceeding them, he protects in those worlds the births of the gods, pâti devânâm janimâni adbhutah. The ‘births of the gods" is a common phrase in the Veda by which is meant the manifestation of the divine principles in the cosmos and especially the formation of the godhead in its manifold forms in the human being.” The Secret of the Veda
*Sri Aurobindo: "Action is the first power of life. Nature begins with force and its works which, once conscious in man, become will and its achievements; therefore it is that by turning his action Godwards the life of man best and most surely begins to become divine.” The Synthesis of Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "As there are Powers of Knowledge or Forces of the Light, so there are Powers of Ignorance and tenebrous Forces of the Darkness whose work is to prolong the reign of Ignorance and Inconscience. As there are Forces of Truth, so there are Forces that live by the Falsehood and support it and work for its victory; as there are powers whose life is intimately bound up with the existence, the idea and the impulse of Good, so there are Forces whose life is bound up with the existence and the idea and the impulse of Evil. It is this truth of the cosmic Invisible that was symbolised in the ancient belief of a struggle between the powers of Light and Darkness, Good and Evil for the possession of the world and the government of the life of man; — this was the significance of the contest between the Vedic Gods and their opponents, sons of Darkness and Division, figured in a later tradition as Titan and Giant and Demon, Asura, Rakshasa, Pisacha; the same tradition is found in the Zoroastrian Double Principle and the later Semitic opposition of God and his Angels on the one side and Satan and his hosts on the other, — invisible Personalities and Powers that draw man to the divine Light and Truth and Good or lure him into subjection to the undivine principle of Darkness and Falsehood and Evil.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "Birth is the first spiritual mystery of the physical universe, death is the second which gives its double point of perplexity to the mystery of birth; for life, which would otherwise be a self-evident fact of existence, becomes itself a mystery by virtue of these two which seem to be its beginning and its end and yet in a thousand ways betray themselves as neither of these things, but rather intermediate stages in an occult processus of life.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "But when I speak of the Divine Will, I mean something different, — something that has descended here into an evolutionary world of Ignorance, standing at the back of things, pressing on the Darkness with its Light, leading things presently towards the best possible in the conditions of a world of Ignorance and leading it eventually towards a descent of a greater power of the Divine, which will be not an omnipotence held back and conditioned by the law of the world as it is, but in full action and therefore bringing the reign of light, peace, harmony, joy, love, beauty and Ananda, for these are the Divine Nature.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Chance is not *in this universe; the idea of illusion is itself an illusion. There was never illusion yet in the human mind that was not the concealing [?shape] and disfigurement of a truth.” Essays Divine and Human
Sri Aurobindo: "Concentration is a gathering together of the consciousness and either centralising at one point or turning on a single object, e.g., the Divine; there can also be a gathered condition throughout the whole being, not at a point. In meditation it is not indispensable to gather like this, one can simply remain with a quiet mind thinking of one subject or observing what comes in the consciousness and dealing with it.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Consecration becomes in its fullness a devoting of all our being to the Divine; therefore also of all our thoughts and our works.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
*Sri Aurobindo: "Creation is not a making of something out of nothing or of one thing out of another, but a self-projection of Brahman into the conditions of Space and Time. Creation is not a making, but a becoming in terms and forms of conscious existence.” The Upanishads*
*Sri Aurobindo: "Dawn always means an opening of some kind — the coming of something that is not yet fully there.” Letters on Yoga ::: "As the Sun is image and godhead of the golden Light of the divine Truth, so Dawn is image and godhead of the opening out of the supreme illumination on the night of our human ignorance. Dawn daughter of Heaven and Night her sister are obverse and reverse sides of the same eternal Infinite.” The Secret of the Veda
Sri Aurobindo: "Destiny in the rigid sense applies only to the outer being so long as it lives in the Ignorance. What we call destiny is only in fact the result of the present condition of the being and the nature and energies it has accumulated in the past acting on each other and determining the present attempts and their future results. But as soon as one enters the path of spiritual life, this old predetermined destiny begins to recede. There comes in a new factor, the Divine Grace, the help of a higher Divine Force other than the force of Karma, which can lift the sadhak beyond the present possibilities of his nature. One"s spiritual destiny is then the divine election which ensures the future.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Destruction in itself is neither good nor evil. It is a fact of Nature, a necessity in the play of forces, as things are in this world. The Light destroys the Darkness and the Powers of Darkness, and that is not a movement of Ignorance!” *Letters on Yoga
::: Sri Aurobindo: ". . . Durga, the conquering and protecting aspect of the Universal Mother.” *Letters on Yoga
*Sri Aurobindo: "Ego is only a faculty put forward by the discriminative mind to centralise round itself the experiences of the sense-mind and to serve as a sort of lynch-pin in the wheel which keeps together the movement. It is no more than an instrument, although it is true that so long as we are limited by our normal mentality, we are compelled by the nature of that mentality and the purpose of the instrument to mistake our ego-function for our very self.” The Upanishads
Sri Aurobindo: "Existence is an infinite and therefore indefinable and illimitable Reality which figures itself out in multiple values of life.” *Social and Political Thought
Sri Aurobindo: "Faith is a necessary means for arriving at realisation, because we are ignorant and do not yet know that which we are seeking to realise; faith is indeed knowledge giving the ignorance an intimation of itself previous to its own manifestation, it is the gleam sent before by the yet unrisen Sun. When the Sun shall rise, there will be no longer any need of the gleam.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Form is the basic means of manifestation and without it it may be said that the manifestation of anything is not complete. Even if the Formless logically precedes Form, yet it is not illogical to assume that in the Formless, Form is inherent and already existent in a mystic latency, otherwise how could it be manifested?” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Further, vision is of value because it is often a first key to inner planes of one"s own being and one"s own consciousness as distinguished from worlds or planes of the cosmic consciousness. Yoga-experience often begins with some opening of the third eye in the forehead (the centre of vision in the brows) or with some kind of beginning and extension of subtle seeing which may seem unimportant at first but is the vestibule to deeper experience.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "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 [Nature"s] evolution.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "God and Man, World and Beyond-world become one when they know each other. Their division is the cause of ignorance as ignorance is the cause of suffering.” *Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
*Sri Aurobindo: "If thou think defeat is the end of thee, then go not forth to fight, even though thou be the stronger. For Fate is not purchased by any man nor is Power bound over to her possessors. But defeat is not the end, it is only a gate or a beginning.” Essays Human and Divine*
*Sri Aurobindo: "In other words, ethics is a stage in evolution. That which is common to all stages is the urge of Sachchidananda towards self-expression. This urge is at first non-ethical, then infra-ethical in the animal, then in the intelligent animal even anti-ethical for it permits us to approve hurt done to others which we disapprove when done to ourselves. In this respect man even now is only half-ethical. And just as all below us is infra-ethical, so there may be that above us whither we shall eventually arrive, which is supra-ethical, has no need of ethics. The ethical impulse and attitude, so all-important to humanity, is a means by which it struggles out of the lower harmony and universality based upon inconscience and broken up by Life into individual discords towards a higher harmony and universality based upon conscient oneness with all existences. Arriving at that goal, this means will no longer be necessary or even possible, since the qualities and oppositions on which it depends will naturally dissolve and disappear in the final reconciliation.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "In the very atom there is a subconscious will and desire which must also be present in all atomic aggregates because they are present in the Force which constitutes the atom.” *Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "I suppose the golden child is the Truth-Soul which follows after the silver light of the spiritual. When it plunges into the black waters of the subconscient, it releases from it the spiritual light and the sevenfold streams of the Divine Energy and, clearing itself of the stains of the subconscient, it prepares its flight towards the supreme Divine (the Mother).” (Reply to a question in the chapter Visions and Symbols.) Letters on Yoga
*Sri Aurobindo: "It [falsehood] is created by an Asuric (hostile) power which intervenes in this creation and is not only separated from the Truth and therefore limited in knowledge and open to error, but in revolt against the Truth or in the habit of seizing the Truth only to pervert it. This Power, the dark Asuric Shakti or Rakshasic Maya, puts forward its own perverted consciousness as true knowledge and its wilful distortions or reversals of the Truth as the verity of things. It is the powers and personalities of this perverted and perverting consciousness that we call hostile beings, hostile forces. Whenever these perversions created by them out of the stuff of the Ignorance are put forward as the Truth of things, that is the Falsehood, in the yogic sense, . . . .” Letters on Yoga
"Sri Aurobindo: "It has been held that ecstasy is a lower and transient passage, the peace of the Supreme is the supreme realisation, the consummate abiding experience. This may be true on the spiritual-mind plane: there the first ecstasy felt is indeed a spiritual rapture, but it can be and is very usually mingled with a supreme happiness of the vital parts taken up by the Spirit; there is an exaltation, exultation, excitement, a highest intensity of the joy of the heart and the pure inner soul-sensation that can be a splendid passage or an uplifting force but is not the ultimate permanent foundation. But in the highest ascents of the spiritual bliss there is not this vehement exaltation and excitement; there is instead an illimitable intensity of participation in an eternal ecstasy which is founded on the eternal Existence and therefore on a beatific tranquillity of eternal peace. Peace and ecstasy cease to be different and become one. The Supermind, reconciling and fusing all differences as well as all contradictions, brings out this unity; a wide calm and a deep delight of all-existence are among its first steps of self-realisation, but this calm and this delight rise together, as one state, into an increasing intensity and culminate in the eternal ecstasy, the bliss that is the Infinite.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "It might be said again that, even so, in Sachchidananda itself at least, above all worlds of manifestation, there could be nothing but the self-awareness of pure existence and consciousness and a pure delight of existence. Or, indeed, this triune being itself might well be only a trinity of original spiritual self-determinations of the Infinite; these too, like all determinations, would cease to exist in the ineffable Absolute. But our position is that these must be inherent truths of the supreme being; their utmost reality must be pre-existent in the Absolute even if they are ineffably other there than what they are in the spiritual mind"s highest possible experience. The Absolute is not a mystery of infinite blankness nor a supreme sum of negations; nothing can manifest that is not justified by some self-power of the original and omnipresent Reality.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "Our sense by its incapacity has invented darkness. In truth there is nothing but Light, only it is a power of light either above or below our poor human vision"s limited range.” *Essays Divine and Human
Sri Aurobindo: ::: "O Wisdom-Splendour, Mother of the universe,
Sri Aurobindo: ” See God everywhere and be not frightened by masks. Believe that all falsehood is truth in the making or truth in the breaking, all failure an effectuality concealed, all weakness strength hiding itself from its own vision, all pain a secret & violent ecstasy. If thou believest firmly & unweariedly, in the end thou wilt see & experience the All-true, Almighty & All-blissful.” Essays Divine and Human*
::: Sri Aurobindo: "Spiritual force has its own concreteness; it can take a form (like a stream, for instance) of which one is aware and can send it quite concretely on whatever object one chooses. This is a statement of fact about the power inherent in spiritual consciousness. But there is also such a thing as a willed use of any subtle force — it may be spiritual, mental or vital — to secure a particular result at some point in the world. Just as there are waves of unseen physical forces (cosmic waves etc.) or currents of electricity, so there are mind-waves, thought-currents, waves of emotion, — for example, anger, sorrow, etc., — which go out and affect others without their knowing whence they come or that they come at all, they only feel the result. One who has the occult or inner senses awake can feel them coming and invading him.” Letters on Yoga
*Sri Aurobindo: "There are some who often or almost invariably have the contact whenever they worship, the Deity may become living to them in the picture or other image they worship, may move and act through it; others may feel him always present, outwardly, subtle-physically, abiding with them where they live or in the very room, but sometimes this is only for a period. Or they may feel the Presence with them, see it frequently in a body (but not materially except sometimes), feel its touch or embrace, converse with it constantly — that is also a kind of milana. The greatest milana is one in which one is constantly aware of the Deity abiding in oneself, in everything in the world, holding all the world in him, identical with existence and yet supremely beyond the world — but in the world too one sees, hears, feels nothing but him, so that the very senses bear witness to him alone — . . . .” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "There is no difference between the terms ‘universal" and ‘cosmic" except that ‘universal" can be used in a freer way than ‘cosmic". Universal may mean ‘of the universe", cosmic in that general sense. But it may also mean ‘common to all", e.g., ‘This is a universal weakness" — but you cannot say ‘This is a cosmic weakness".” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "There is no ignorance that is not part of the Cosmic Ignorance, only in the individual it becomes a limited formation and movement, while the Cosmic Ignorance is the whole movement of world consciousness separated from the supreme Truth and acting in an inferior motion in which the Truth is perverted, diminished, mixed and clouded with falsehood and error.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "There is no necessity in the essential nature of mind, sense, life that they should be so limited: for the physical sense-organs are not the creators of sense-perceptions, but themselves the creation, the instruments and here a necessary convenience of the cosmic sense; the nervous system and vital organs are not the creators of life"s action and reaction, but themselves the creation, the instruments and here a necessary convenience of the cosmic Life-force; the brain is not the creator of thought, but itself the creation, the instrument and here a necessary convenience of the cosmic Mind. The necessity then is not absolute, but teleological; it is the result of a divine cosmic Will in the material universe which intends to posit here a physical relation between sense and its object, establishes here a material formula and law of Conscious-Force and creates by it physical images of Conscious-Being to serve as the initial, dominating and determining fact of the world in which we live. It is not a fundamental law of being, but a constructive principle necessitated by the intention of the Spirit to evolve in a world of Matter.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "The cosmic consciousness is that of the universe, of the cosmic spirit and cosmic Nature with all the beings and forces within it. All that is as much conscious as a whole as the individual separately is, though in a different way. The consciousness of the individual is part of this, but a part feeling itself as a separate being. Yet all the time most of what he is comes into him from the cosmic consciousness. But there is a wall of separative ignorance between. Once it breaks down he becomes aware of the cosmic Self, of the consciousness of the cosmic Nature, of the forces playing in it, etc. He feels all that as he now feels physical things and impacts. He finds it all to be one with his larger or universal self.” *Letters on Yoga
*Sri Aurobindo: ". . . the divine Ananda, the principle of Bliss [is that] from which, in the Vedic conception, the existence of Man, this mental being, is drawn. A secret Delight is the base of existence, its sustaining atmosphere and almost its substance. This Ananda is spoken of in the Taittiriya Upanishad as the ethereal atmosphere of bliss without which nothing could remain in being. In the Aitareya Upanishad Soma, as the lunar deity, is born from the sense-mind in the universal Purusha and, when man is produced, expresses himself again as sense-mentality in the human being. For delight is the raison d"être of sensation, or, we may say, sensation is an attempt to translate the secret delight of existence into the terms of physical consciousness.” The Secret of the Veda
Sri Aurobindo: "The Divinity in man dwells veiled in his spiritual centre; there can be no such thing as self-exceeding for man or a higher issue for his existence if there is not in him the reality of an eternal Self and Spirit.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "The duality is a position taken up, a double status accepted for the operations of the self-manifestation of the being; but there is no eternal and fundamental separateness and dualism of Being and its Consciousness-Force, of the Soul and Nature.” *The Life Divine
*Sri Aurobindo: "The earth is a material field of evolution. Mind and life, supermind, Sachchidananda are in principle involved there in the earth-consciousness; but only Matter is at first organized; then life descends from the life plane and gives shape and organization and activity to the life principle in Matter, creates the plant and animal; then mind descends from the mind plane, creating man. Now supermind is to descend so as to create a supramental race.” Letters on Yoga
*Sri Aurobindo: "The Indian explanation of fate is Karma. We ourselves are our own fate through our actions, but the fate created by us binds us; for what we have sown, we must reap in this life or another. Still we are creating our fate for the future even while undergoing old fate from the past in the present. That gives a meaning to our will and action and does not, as European critics wrongly believe, constitute a rigid and sterilising fatalism. But again, our will and action can often annul or modify even the past Karma, it is only certain strong effects, called utkata karma, that are non-modifiable. Here too the achievement of the spiritual consciousness and life is supposed to annul or give the power to annul Karma. For we enter into union with the Will Divine, cosmic or transcendent, which can annul what it had sanctioned for certain conditions, new-create what it had created, the narrow fixed lines disappear, there is a more plastic freedom and wideness. Neither Karma nor Astrology therefore points to a rigid and for ever immutable fate.” Letters on Yoga
*Sri Aurobindo: "The superconscient, not the subconscient, is the true foundation of things. The significance of the lotus is not to be found by analysing the secrets of the mud from which it grows here; its secret is to be found in the heavenly archetype of the lotus that blooms for ever in the Light above.” Letters on Yoga*
*Sri Aurobindo: "The timeless Spirit is not necessarily a blank; it may hold all in itself, but in essence, without reference to time or form or relation or circumstance, perhaps in an eternal unity. Eternity is the common term between Time and the Timeless Spirit. What is in the Timeless unmanifested, implied, essential, appears in Time in movement, or at least in design and relation, in result and circumstance. These two then are the same Eternity or the same Eternal in a double status; they are a twofold status of being and consciousness, one an eternity of immobile status, the other an eternity of motion in status.” The Life Divine ::: "The spiritual fullness of the being is eternity; . . . ” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "The true soul secret in us, — subliminal, we have said, but the word is misleading, for this presence is not situated below the threshold of waking mind, but rather burns in the temple of the inmost heart behind the thick screen of an ignorant mind, life and body, not subliminal but behind the veil, — this veiled psychic entity is the flame of the Godhead always alight within us, inextinguishable even by that dense unconsciousness of any spiritual self within which obscures our outward nature. It is a flame born out of the Divine and, luminous inhabitant of the Ignorance, grows in it till it is able to turn it towards the Knowledge. It is the concealed Witness and Control, the hidden Guide, the Daemon of Socrates, the inner light or inner voice of the mystic. It is that which endures and is imperishable in us from birth to birth, untouched by death, decay or corruption, an indestructible spark of the Divine.” *The Life Divine
*Sri Aurobindo: "The typal worlds do not change. In his own world a god is always a god, the Asura always an Asura, the demon always a demon. To change they must either migrate into an evolutionary body or else die entirely to themselves that they may be new born into other Nature.” Essays Divine and Human*
Sri Aurobindo: "The word ‘descend" has various meanings according to the context — I used it here in the sense of the psychic being coming down into the human consciousness and body ready for it.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "The word ‘ghost" as used in popular parlance covers an enormous number of distinct phenomena which have no necessary connection with each other. To name a few only: ::: An actual contact with the soul of a human being in its subtle body and transcribed to our mind by the appearance of an image or the hearing of a voice.
Sri Aurobindo: "This descent is felt as a pouring in of calm and peace, of force and power, of light, of joy and ecstasy, of wideness and freedom and knowledge, of a Divine Being or a Presence — sometimes one of these, sometimes several of them or all together.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "This truth of Karma has been always recognised in the East in one form or else in another; but to the Buddhists belongs the credit of having given to it the clearest and fullest universal enunciation and the most insistent importance. In the West too the idea has constantly recurred, but in external, in fragmentary glimpses, as the recognition of a pragmatic truth of experience, and mostly as an ordered ethical law or fatality set over against the self-will and strength of man: but it was clouded over by other ideas inconsistent with any reign of law, vague ideas of some superior caprice or of some divine jealousy, — that was a notion of the Greeks, — a blind Fate or inscrutable Necessity, Ananke, or, later, the mysterious ways of an arbitrary, though no doubt an all-wise Providence.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga *Ananke"s.
*Sri Aurobindo: ". . . we live in a false relation with our environment, because we know neither the universe nor ourselves for what they really are . . .” The Synthesis of Yoga*
Sri Aurobindo: "What the "void" feels as a clutch is felt by the Mother only as a reminding finger laid on her cheek. It is one advantage of the expression ‘as if" that it leaves the field open for such variation. It is intended to suggest without saying it that behind the sombre void is the face of a mother. The two other ‘as if"s have the same motive and I do not find them jarring upon me. The second is at a sufficient distance from the first and it is not obtrusive enough to prejudice the third which more nearly follows. . . .” Letters on Savitri
*Sri Aurobindo: "When there is some lowering or diminution of the consciousness or some impairing of it at one place or another, the Adversary — or the Censor — who is always on the watch presses with all his might wherever there is a weak point lying covered from your own view, and suddenly a wrong movement leaps up with unexpected force. Become conscious and cast out the possibility of its renewal, that is all that is to be done.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: ". . . wrong will and falsehood of the steps, . . . separative egoism inflicting by its ignorance and separate contrary will harm on oneself or harm on others, self-driven to a wrong dealing with one"s own soul, mind, life or body or a wrong dealing with the soul, mind, life, body of others, . . . is the practical sense of all human evil.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "Yet all the time the universal forces are pouring into him without his knowing it. He is aware only of thoughts, feelings, etc., that rise to the surface and these he takes for his own. Really they come from outside in mind waves, vital waves, waves of feeling and sensation, etc., which take particular form in him and rise to the surface after they have got inside. But they do not get into his body at once. He carries about with him an environmental consciousness (called by the Theosophists the Aura) into which they first enter. If you can become conscious of this environmental self of yours, then you can catch the thought, passion, suggestion or force of illness and prevent it from entering into you. If things in you are thrown out, they often do not go altogether but take refuge in this environmental atmosphere and from there they try to get in again. Or they go to a distance outside but linger on the outskirts or even perhaps far off, waiting till they get an opportunity to attempt entrance.” *Letters on Yoga
::: *"Stevenson has a striking passage in "Kidnapped” where the hero notes that his fear is felt primarily not in the heart but the stomach.” Letters on Yoga
Strength is all right for the strong — but aspiration and the Grace answering to it are not altogether myths; they are great realities of the spiritual life.” Letters on Yoga*
"There are lesser & larger eternities, for eternity is a term of the soul & can exist in Time as well as exceeding it.” Essays Divine and Human*
::: **"There is no fear in the higher Nature. Fear is a creation of the vital plane, an instinct of the ignorance, a sense of danger with a violent vital reaction that replaces and usually prevents or distorts the intelligence of things.” Letters on Yoga
"There is no need of words in aspiration. It can be expressed or unexpressed in words.” Letters on Yoga
"There is no such thing as death, for it is the body that dies and the body is not the man. That which really is, cannot go out of existence, though it may change the forms through which it appears, just as that which is non-existent cannot come into being. The soul is and cannot cease to be. This opposition of is and is not, this balance of being and becoming which is the mind"s view of existence, finds its end in the realisation of the soul as the one imperishable self by whom all this universe has been extended. Finite bodies have an end, but that which possesses and uses the body, is infinite, illimitable, eternal, indestructible. It casts away old and takes up new bodies as a man changes worn-out raiment for new; and what is there in this to grieve at and recoil and shrink? This is not born, nor does it die, nor is it a thing that comes into being once and passing away will never come into being again. It is unborn, ancient, sempiternal; it is not slain with the slaying of the body. Who can slay the immortal spirit? Weapons cannot cleave it, nor the fire burn, nor do the waters drench it, nor the wind dry. Eternally stable, immobile, all-pervading, it is for ever and for ever. Not manifested like the body, but greater than all manifestation, not to be analysed by the thought, but greater than all mind, not capable of change and modification like the life and its organs and their objects, but beyond the changes of mind and life and body, it is yet the Reality which all these strive to figure.” Essays on the Gita
(Technically)** **Any of various birds of the family Paradisaeidae, native to New Guinea and adjacent islands, usually having brilliant plumage and long tail feathers in the male.
"That there is a divine force asleep or veiled by Inconscience in Matter and that the Higher Force has to descend and awaken it with the Light and Truth is a thing that is well known; it is at the very base of this yoga.” Letters on Yoga
". . . the Absolute is not a void or negation. It is all that is here in Time and beyond Time.” The Upanishads*
"The Absolute neither creates nor is created, — in the current sense of making or being made; we can speak of creation only in the sense of the Being becoming in form and movement what it already is in substance and status.” *The Life Divine
The Apsaras then are the divine Hetairae of Paradise, beautiful singers and actresses whose beauty and art relieve the arduous and world-long struggle of the Gods against the forces that tend towards disruption by the Titans who would restore Matter to its original atomic condition or of dissolution by the sages and hermits who would make phenomena dissolve prematurely into the One who is above phenomena. They rose from the Ocean, says Valmiki, seeking who should choose them as brides, but neither the Gods nor the Titans accepted them, therefore are they said to be common or universal. The Harmony of Virtue
"The Avatar does not come as a thaumaturgic magician, but as the divine leader of humanity and the exemplar of a divine humanity. Even human sorrow and physical suffering he must assume and use so as to show, first, how that suffering may be a means of redemption, — as did Christ, — secondly, to show how, having been assumed by the divine soul in the human nature, it can also be overcome in the same nature, — as did Buddha. The rationalist who would have cried to Christ, ‘If thou art the Son of God, come down from the cross," or points out sagely that the Avatar was not divine because he died and died too by disease, — as a dog dieth, — knows not what he is saying: for he has missed the root of the whole matter. Even, the Avatar of sorrow and suffering must come before there can be the Avatar of divine joy; the human limitation must be assumed in order to show how it can be overcome; and the way and the extent of the overcoming, whether internal only or external also, depends upon the stage of the human advance; it must not be done by a non-human miracle.” Essays on the Gita
"The call of God is imperative and cannot be weighed against any other considerations.” Essays on the Gita*
"The call, once decisive, stands; the thing that has been born cannot eventually be stifled. Even if the force of circumstances prevents a regular pursuit or a full practical self-consecration from the first, still the mind has taken its bent and persists and returns with an ever-increasing effect upon its leading preoccupation. There is an ineluctable persistence of the inner being, and against it circumstances are in the end powerless, and no weakness in the nature can for long be an obstacle.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"The cosmic consciousness is that in which the limits of ego, personal mind and body disappear and one becomes aware of a cosmic vastness which is or filled by a cosmic spirit and aware also of the direct play of cosmic forces, universal mind forces, universal life forces, universal energies of Matter, universal overmind forces. But one does not become aware of all these together; the opening of the cosmic consciousness is usually progressive. It is not that the ego, the body, the personal mind disappear, but one feels them as only a small part of oneself. One begins to feel others too as part of oneself or varied repetitions of oneself, the same self modified by Nature in other bodies. Or, at the least, as living in the larger universal self which is henceforth one"s own greater reality. All things in fact begin to change their nature and appearance; one"s whole experience of the world is radically different from that of those who are shut up in their personal selves. One begins to know things by a different kind of experience, more direct, not depending on the external mind and the senses. It is not that the possibility of error disappears, for that cannot be so long as mind of any kind is one"s instrument for transcribing knowledge, but there is a new, vast and deep way of experiencing, seeing, knowing, contacting things; and the confines of knowledge can be rolled back to an almost unmeasurable degree. The thing one has to be on guard against in the cosmic consciousness is the play of a magnified ego, the vaster attacks of the hostile forces — for they too are part of the cosmic consciousness — and the attempt of the cosmic Illusion (Ignorance, Avidya) to prevent the growth of the soul into the cosmic Truth. These are things that one has to learn from experience; mental teaching or explanation is quite insufficient. To enter safely into the cosmic consciousness and to pass safely through it, it is necessary to have a strong central unegoistic sincerity and to have the psychic being, with its divination of truth and unfaltering orientation towards the Divine, already in front in ::: —the nature.” Letters on Yoga*
". . . the cosmic Force, masked as a material Energy, hides from our view by its insistent materiality of process the occult fact that the working of the Inconscient is really the expression of a vast universal Life, a veiled universal Mind, a hooded Gnosis, and without these origins of itself it could have no power of action, no organising coherence.” The Life Divine
the cosmological theory holding that the universe is expanding, based on the interpretation of the color shift in the spectra of all the galaxies as being the result of the Doppler effect and indicating that all galaxies are moving away from one another.
::: "The Divine and no other is the flame of life that sustains the physical body of living creatures and turns its food into sustenance of their vital force.” Essays on the Gita
"The Divine Force concealed in the subconscient is that which has originated and built up the worlds. At the other end in the superconscient it reveals itself as the Divine Being, Lord and Knower who has manifested Himself out of the Brahman.” The Upanishads ::: See also divine Force for additional definitions.
"The Divine is the unborn Eternal who has no origin; there is and can be nothing before him from which he proceeds, because he is one and timeless and absolute.” Essays on the Gita
::: "The Divine Mother is the Consciousness and Force of the Divine — which is the Mother of all things.” *The Mother
". . . the ego is the lynch-pin invented to hold together the motion of our wheel of nature. The necessity of centralisation around the ego continues until there is no longer need of any such device or contrivance because there has emerged the true self, the spiritual being, which is at once wheel and motion and that which holds all together, the centre and the circumference.” The Life Divine
"The elementary state of material Force is, in the view of the old Indian physicists, a condition of pure material extension in Space of which the peculiar property is vibration typified to us by the phenomenon of sound. But vibration in this state of ether is not sufficient to create forms. There must first be some obstruction in the flow of the Force ocean, some contraction and expansion, some interplay of vibrations, some impinging of force upon force so as to create a beginning of fixed relations and mutual effects. Material Force modifying its first ethereal status assumes a second, called in the old language the aerial, of which the special property is contact between force and force, contact that is the basis of all material relations. Still we have not as yet real forms but only varying forces. A sustaining principle is needed. This is provided by a third self-modification of the primitive Force of which the principle of light, electricity, fire and heat is for us the characteristic manifestation. Even then, we can have forms of force preserving their own character and peculiar action, but not stable forms of Matter. A fourth state characterised by diffusion and a first medium of permanent attractions and repulsions, termed picturesquely water or the liquid state, and a fifth of cohesion, termed earth or the solid state, complete the necessary elements.” The Life Divine*
"The freedom of the Gita is that of the freeman, the true freedom of the birth into the higher nature, self-existent in its divinity. Whatever he does and however he lives, the free soul lives in the Divine; he is the privileged child of the mansion, bâlavat, who cannot err or fall because all he is and does is full of the Perfect, the All-blissful, the All-loving, the All-beautiful. The kingdom which he enjoys, râjyam samrddham, is a sweet and happy dominion of which it may be said, in the pregnant phrase of the Greek thinker, ``The kingdom is of the child."" Essays on the Gita
::: "The greater the destruction, the freer the chances of creation; but the destruction is often long, slow and oppressive, the creation tardy in its coming or interrupted in its triumph. The night returns again and again and the day lingers or seems even to have been a false dawning. Despair not therefore, but watch and work. Those who hope violently, despair swiftly: neither hope nor fear, but be sure of God"s purpose and thy will to accomplish.” *Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
"The Infinite creates and is Brahma.” The Renaissance in India ::: "Brahman is not only the cause and supporting power and indwelling principle of the universe, he is also its material and its sole material. Matter also is Brahman and it is nothing other than or different from Brahman.” The Life Divine*
"The message of the Gita is the gospel of the Divinity in man who by force of an increasing union unfolds himself out of the veil of the lower Nature, reveals to the human soul his cosmic spirit, reveals his absolute transcendences, reveals himself in man and in all beings. The potential outcome here of this union, this divine Yoga, man growing towards the Godhead, the Godhead manifest in the human soul and to the inner human vision, is our liberation from limited ego and our elevation to the higher nature of a divine humanity.” Essays on the Gita ::: *Divinity"s.
The Mother : "An Avatar is an emanation of the Supreme Lord who assumes a human body on earth.” Works of the Mother, "On Thoughts and Aphorisms” Vol.10
The Mother: "And this Vibration (which I feel and see) gives the feeling of a fire. That"s probably what the Vedic Rishis translated as the "Flame” – in the human consciousness, in man, in Matter. They always spoke of a "Flame.” It is indeed a vibration with the intensity of a higher fire. Mother"s Agenda 25 March 1964.
*The Mother: "And ultimately, all form is a symbol. All forms: our form is a symbol — not a very brilliant one, I admit!
The Mother: "An ‘entity" is a personality or an individuality.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.**
::: The Mother: "Consciousness is the faculty of becoming aware of anything through identification. The Divine Consciousness is not only aware but knows and effects.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol.15*. Consciousness.
The Mother: "In the physical world, of all things it is beauty that expresses best the Divine. the physical world is the world of form and the perfection of form is beauty. Beauty interprets, expresses, manifests the Eternal. Its role is to put all manifested nature in contact with the Eternal through the perfection of form, through harmony and a sense of the ideal which uplifts and leads towards something higher. On Education, MCW Vol. 12.
"The Mother is the consciousness and force of the Divine — or, it may be said, she is the Divine in its consciousness-force.” *The Mother
The Mother: "The Avatar: the supreme Divine manifested in an earthly form — generally a human form — for a definite purpose.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.*
The Mother (to a young person): "It is very simple, as you will see. 1) The Infinite is the inexhaustible storehouse of forces. The individual is a battery, a storage cell which runs down after use. Consecration is the wire that connects the individual battery to the infinite reserve of forces. Or 2) The Infinite is the river that flows without cease; the individual is the little pond that dries up slowly in the sun. Consecration is the canal that connects the river to the pond and prevents the pond from drying up.” Some Answers from the Mother, MCW *Vol. 16.
*The Mother: "To conquer the Adversary is not a small thing. One must have a greater power than his to vanquish him. But one can liberate oneself totally from his influence. And from the minute one is completely free from his influence, one"s self-giving can be total. And with the self-giving comes joy, long before the Adversary is truly vanquished and disappears.”
::: The Mother: "True art means the expression of beauty in the material world. In a world wholly converted, that is to say, expressing integrally the divine reality, art must serve as the revealer and teacher of this divine beauty in life.” On Education, MCW Vol. 12.
::: The Mother: "With the Divine"s Love is the power of Transformation. It has this power because it is for the sake of Transformation that it has given itself to the world and manifested everywhere. Not only into man but into all the atoms of Matter it has infused itself in order to bring the world back to the original Truth. The moment you open to it, you also receive its power of Transformation.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.
" The natural attitude of the psychic being is to feel itself as the Child, the Son of God, the Bhakta; it is a portion of the Divine, one in essence, but in the dynamics of the manifestation there is always even in identity a difference.” Letters on Yoga
"The one original transcendent Shakti, the Mother stands above all the worlds and bears in her eternal consciousness the Supreme Divine. Alone, she harbours the absolute Power and the ineffable Presence; containing or calling the Truths that have to be manifested, she brings them down from the Mystery in which they were hidden into the light of her infinite consciousness and gives them a form of force in her omnipotent power and her boundless life and a body in the universe.” The Mother
"The other parts of our natural composition are not only mutable but perishable; but the psychic entity in us persists and is fundamentally the same always: it contains all essential possibilities of our manifestation but is not constituted by them; it is not limited by what it manifests, not contained by the incomplete forms of the manifestation, not tarnished by the imperfections and impurities, the defects and depravations of the surface being. It is an ever-pure flame of the divinity in things and nothing that comes to it, nothing that enters into our experience can pollute its purity or extinguish the flame.” *The Life Divine
"The spiritual change is the established descent of the peace, light, knowledge, power, bliss from above, the awareness of the Self and the Divine and of a higher cosmic consciousness and the change of the whole consciousness to that.” Letters on Yoga
"This Divine may lead us often through darkness, because the darkness is there in us and around us, but it is to the Light he is leading and not to anything else.” Letters on Yoga*
"This universal aesthesis of beauty and delight does not ignore or fail to understand the differences and oppositions, the gradations, the harmony and disharmony obvious to the ordinary consciousness; but, first of all, it draws a Rasa from them and with that comes the enjoyment, Bhoga. and the touch or the mass of the Ananda. It sees that all things have their meaning, their value, their deeper or total significance which the mind does not see, for the mind is only concerned with a surface vision, surface contacts and its own surface reactions. When something expresses perfectly what it was meant to express, the completeness brings with it a sense of harmony, a sense of artistic perfection; it gives even to what is discordant a place in a system of cosmic concordances and the discords become part of a vast harmony, and wherever there is harmony, there is a sense of beauty. ” Letters on Savitri*
those who assist, guide, wait upon, accompany, give service or follow another to contribute to the fulfilment of a need or furtherance of an effort or purpose; subordinate companions.
"To me, for instance, consciousness is the very stuff of existence and I can feel it everywhere enveloping and penetrating the stone as much as man or the animal. A movement, a flow of consciousness is not to me an image but a fact. If I wrote "His anger climbed against me in a stream", it would be to the general reader a mere image, not something that was felt by me in a sensible experience; yet I would only be describing in exact terms what actually happened once, a stream of anger, a sensible and violent current of it rising up from downstairs and rushing upon me as I sat in the veranda of the Guest-House, the truth of it being confirmed afterwards by the confession of the person who had the movement. This is only one instance, but all that is spiritual or psychological in Savitri is of that character. What is to be done under these circumstances? The mystical poet can only describe what he has felt, seen in himself or others or in the world just as he has felt or seen it or experienced through exact vision, close contact or identity and leave it to the general reader to understand or not understand or misunderstand according to his capacity. A new kind of poetry demands a new mentality in the recipient as well as in the writer.” Letters on Savitri
transformed or transitioned from one state, condition, or phase to another.
::: "Two are joined together, powers of Truth, powers of Maya, — they have built the Child and given him birth and they nourish his growth.” The Life Divine
::: "Wherever thou seest a great end, be sure of a great beginning. Where a monstrous and painful destruction appals thy mind, console it with the certainty of a large and great creation. God is there not only in the still small voice, but in the fire and in the whirlwind.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
"We. . . become conscious, in our physical movements, in our nervous and vital reactions, in our mental workings, of a Force greater than body, mind and life which takes hold of our limited instruments and drives all their motion. There is no longer the sense of ourselves moving, thinking or feeling but of that moving, feeling and thinking in us. This force that we feel is the universal Force of the Divine, which, veiled or unveiled, acting directly or permitting the use of its powers by beings in the cosmos, is the one Energy that alone exists and alone makes universal or individual action possible. For this force is the Divine itself in the body of its power; all is that, power of act, power of thought and knowledge, power of mastery and enjoyment, power of love.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"We now begin to have reason for concluding that the Flame, which is only another aspect of Light, is the Vedic symbol for the Force of the divine consciousness, of the supramental Truth.” The Secret of the Veda
"We speak of the evolution of Life in Matter, the evolution of Mind in Matter; but evolution is a word which merely states the phenomenon without explaining it. For there seems to be no reason why Life should evolve out of material elements or Mind out of living form, unless we accept the Vedantic solution that Life is already involved in Matter and Mind in Life because in essence Matter is a form of veiled Life, Life a form of veiled Consciousness.” The Life Divine
"When the Peace is established, this higher or Divine Force from above can descend and work in us. It descends usually first into the head and liberates the inner mind centres, then into the heart centre and liberates fully the psychic and emotional being, then into the navel and other vital centres and liberates the inner vital, then into the Muladhara and below and liberates the inner physical being. It works at the same time for perfection as well as liberation; it takes up the whole nature part by part and deals with it, rejecting what has to be rejected, sublimating what has to be sublimated, creating what has to be created. It integrates, harmonises, establishes a new rhythm in the nature. It can bring down too a higher and yet higher force and range of the higher nature until, if that be the aim of the sadhana, it becomes possible to bring down the supramental force and existence. All this is prepared, assisted, farthered by the work of the psychic being in the heart centre; the more it is open, in front, active, the quicker, safer, easier the working of the Force can be. The more love and bhakti and surrender grow in the heart, the more rapid and perfect becomes the evolution of the sadhana. For the descent and transformation imply at the same time an increasing contact and union with the Divine.” Letters on Yoga
"When the Peace is established, this higher or Divine Force from above can descend and work in us. It descends usually first into the head and liberates the inner mind centres, then into the heart centre and liberates fully the psychic and emotional being, then into the navel and other vital centres and liberates the inner vital, then into the Muladhara and below and liberates the inner physical being. It works at the same time for perfection as well as liberation; it takes up the whole nature part by part and deals with it, rejecting what has to be rejected, sublimating what has to be sublimated, creating what has to be created.” Letters on Yoga
::: "Within us, there are two centres of the Purusha, the inner Soul through which he touches us to our awakening; there is the Purusha in the lotus of the heart which opens upward all our powers and the Purusha in the thousand-petalled lotus whence descend through the thought and will, opening the third eye in us, the lightnings of vision and the fire of the divine energy.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
" Yes. A third eye does open there [in the centre of the forehead] — it represents the occult vision and the occult power which goes with that vision — it is connected with the ajnacakra.” Letters on Yoga
"Yet there is still the unknown underlying Oneness which compels us to strive slowly towards some form of harmony, of interdependence, of concording of discords, of a difficult unity. But it is only by the evolution in us of the concealed superconscient powers of cosmic Truth and of the Reality in which they are one that the harmony and unity we strive for can be dynamically realised in the very fibre of our being and all its self-expression and not merely in imperfect attempts, incomplete constructions, ever-changing approximations.” The Life Divine*
You will see that in only one of these cases, the first, can a soul be posited and there no difficulty arises.” Letters on Yoga
KEYS (10k)
50 Heraclitus
23 Sri Ramana Maharshi
20 The Mother
14 Hermes
11 Saint Therese of Lisieux
8 Friedrich Nietzsche
8 Anonymous
7 Tao Te Ching
7 Epictetus
5 Sri Ramana Maharshi
5 Martin Luther King
5 Carl Jung
4 Voltaire
4 MOTHER MIRA
4 C S Lewis
4 Albert Einstein
4 Albert Camus
4 Santoka Taneda
4 Kobayashi Issa
3 Zen Proverb
3 The Mother?
3 Shunryu Suzuki
3 Our Lady to Father Stefano Gobbi
3 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
3 Hermann Hesse
3 Frank Herbert
3 Elon Musk
3 C.S. Lewis
3 Buddha
3 Walt Whitman
3 Lao Tzu
3 Chuang Tzu
3 ?
2 Yosa Buson
2 Vincent van Gogh
2 Thich Nhat Hanh
2 The Mother
2 Terry Pratchett
2 Sri Sarada Devi
2 Shakespeare
2 Saint Philip Neri
2 Rabindranath Tagore
2 Pema Chödrön
2 Neil Gaiman
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2 Li Po
2 Leonard Cohen
2 Koran
2 J R R Tolkien
2 JB
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2 George Harrison
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2 Georg C Lichtenberg
2 Erik Erikson
2 Edgar Allan Poe
2 Eckhart Tolle
2 Dante Alighieri
2 Chamtrul Rinpoche
2 Book of Wisdom
2 Bob Marley
2 Anon.
2 Sri Ramakrishna
2 Plato
2 Kabir
2 Confucius
2 Aristotle
2 Abraham Maslow
1 Zhuangzi
1 Zen Saying
1 Yunus Emre
1 Yogi Berra
1 Xunzi
1 Will Rogers
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1 Willa Cather
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1 Virginia Woolf
1 Venerable Bede
1 Venerable Anne Catherine Emmerich
1 Tseu-tse
1 T S Eliot
1 Tolstoy
1 Todd Crawshaw
1 Thubten Zopa Rinpoche
1 Thomas Jefferson
1 Thomas Carlyle
1 "The Rosicrucian Manuscripts."
1 Theodore Roosevelt
1 TheMidnightGospel
1 THE GOSPEL OF SRI RAMAKRISHNA
1 The Corpus Hermeticum
1 The Buddha
1 The Avadhuta Gita
1 The anagogy shows us where we end our strife.
1 Tantric Aphorism
1 Tanatric Buddhist Woman Song
1 Tagami Kikusha
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1 Stephen King
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1 Soyen Shaku
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1 SONG from GOSPEL OF SRI RAMAKRISHNA
1 Solon
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1 Simone Weil
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1 Saint Ignatius of Antioch
1 Saint Elizabeth
1 Saint Catherine of Sweden
1 Saint Catherine of Siena
1 Saint Cajetan
1 Saint Avitus of Vienna
1 Saint Ambrose of Milan
1 Saint Ambrose
1 R W Emerson
1 Robert Louis Stevenson
1 Robert
1 Rich Weaver
1 Revelation 18:4-5
1 René Descartes
1 Ramesh Balsekar
1 Ralph Waldo Emerson
1 Rajneesh
1 Rabia al-Adawiyya
1 Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
1 Quran
1 Proverb
1 Proclus
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1 Peter III. 8
1 Pema Chodron
1 Paul Washer
1 Paulo Coelho
1 Padampa Sangye
1 Pablo Neruda
1 Ovid
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1 Osho
1 Oscar Wilde
1 Og Mandino
1 Novalis
1 Nicene Creed
1 Natsume Soseki
1 Myths of the Iife
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1 Mitzu Suzuki
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1 Martin Heidegger
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1 Margaret Shepherd
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1 Lucretius
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1 Kamal Ravikant
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1 J. R. R. Tolkien
1 Josh Billings
1 John. XIII
1 John Milton
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1 John Lennon
1 John Dee
1 Joe DiMaggio
1 Job
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1 Jim Rohn
1 Jim Butcher
1 Jean-Paul Sartre
1 Japanese Proverb
1 James V. Schall
1 Isaac Newton
1 Isaac Asimov
1 Iris Murdoch
1 Ikkyu
1 id
1 Huineng
1 Huang Po
1 Hua Hu Ching: The Unknown Teachings of Lao Tzu
1 Hermes Trismegistus
1 Herman Melville
1 Herman Hesse
1 Herbert Spencer
1 Heraclitus 88
1 Heraclitus
1 Henry Ward Beecher
1 Henry Vaughan
1 Henry Ford
1 Henry David Thoreau
1 Helen Keller
1 Heinrich Heine
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1 Hafiz
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1 Gurdjieff
1 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
1 Goethe
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1 Gerald Jampolsky
1 Georges Danton
1 George Orwell
1 George MacDonald
1 George Herbert
1 George Gurdjieff -
1 George Gurdjieff
1 George F Burns
1 Galileo Galilei
1 Galen
1 Franklin D. Roosevelt
1 For source see: https://bit.ly/3cPHvYO
1 Etienne Gilson
1 Ernest Hemingway
1 Epicurus
1 Ella Fitzgerald
1 Elie Wiesel
1 Edward Schon
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1 Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche
1 Dolly Parton
1 Diogenes
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1 Den Sutejo 1633-1698
1 Deepak Chopra
1 David Hume
1 David
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1 Czeslaw Milosz
1 Cullavaga
1 C. S. Lewis
1 Colossians III. 9
1 Chuang Tzu.
1 Christopher Morley
1 Choshu
1 Charlotte Brontë
1 Charles Dickens
1 Catullus
1 Carl Sagan
1 Bukowski
1 Buddhist Proverb
1 Bruce Lee
1 Boethius
1 Blaise Pascal
1 Bill Hicks
1 Bhagavad Gita
1 be to other souls
1 Bertrand Russell
1 Benjamin Disraeli
1 Bauvard
1 Basho
1 Baruch Spinoza
1 Barry Diller
1 Baha-ullah
1 Baha-ulalh
1 Ayush Jaiswal
1 Averroes
1 Atisha
1 Archbishop Desmond Tutu
1 Arabien Nights
1 Anthony J. D'Angelo
1 Annie Proulx
1 Anandamayi Ma
1 Amir Khusrau
1 al-Razi?
1 Allen Klein
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1 Alexander the Great
1 Alan Watts
1 Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
1 Sri Aurobindo
1 Saint Thomas Aquinas
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1 Saadi
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1 Nichiren
1 Homer
1 Hafiz
1 Dogen Zenji
1 Aeschylus
1 A C Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada
1 A. A. Milne
1 2nd century sermon
1 1 John :2:22
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
131 Christian Winther
34 Anonymous
31 George Herbert
28 Jim Butcher
27 Tahereh Mafi
21 Heraclitus
16 Herman Melville
15 Frank Herbert
13 Anton Wildgans
12 Sherrilyn Kenyon
12 Rumi
11 Rick Riordan
11 Jeffrey Archer
11 Christopher Paolini
10 Mother Teresa
9 Tarryn Fisher
9 J K Rowling
8 Stephen King
8 Cecelia Ahern
7 The Mother
1:and God remembers her crimes." ~ Revelation 18:4-5, #KEYS
2:Nothing is left of me
Each time I see her ~ Catullus#KEYS
3:the final moment of her painful purification has come." ~ Our Lady , #KEYS
4:Wisdom is full of light and her beauty is not withered. ~ Book of Wisdom, #KEYS
5:The Earth would die
If the sun stopped kissing her. ~ Hafiz,#KEYS
6:And if she had appeared, would I have dared to speak to her?
~ Marcel Proust, [T5],#KEYS
7:A man is always devoted to something more tangible than a woman - the idea of her. ~ Bauvard, #KEYS
8:Those who love her discover her easily and those that seek her do find her. ~ Book of Wisdom, #KEYS
9:A person always doing his or her best becomes a natural leader - just by example." ~ Joe DiMaggio, #KEYS
10:Beauty is truth's smile when she beholds her own face in a perfect mirror.
~ Rabindranath Tagore,#KEYS
11:Wisdom is a thing vast and grand. She demands all the time that one can consecrate to her. ~ Seneca, #KEYS
12:you can't extort from her with levers and with screws. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust I.672-75, #KEYS
13:The biggest coward is a man who awakens a woman's love with no intention of loving her. ~ Bob Marley, #KEYS
14:Whenever you give your wife advice, always begin by telling her how much you love her. ~ Saint John Chrysostom, #KEYS
15:I am only an instrument in God's hands. I feel myself as Her child. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
16:No eyes demanded her replying eyes. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 4:2, #KEYS
17:Detect the magic bride in her disguise ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 1:3 #KEYS
18:And builds to hope her altars of despair, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 4:3, #KEYS
19:Her depths remember what she came to do, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 02:06 #KEYS
20:Her greatest progress is a deepened need. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, [T5], #KEYS
21:Let any amount of burden be laid on Him [Her], He will bear it all. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
22:Wisdom is full of light and her beauty is not withered. ~ Book of Wisdom, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
23:by the lamp
of the moon
she reads her letter
~ Buson, @BashoSociety#KEYS
24:Woman is disarmed, when you view her as the manifestation of the Divine Mother. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
25:God or Guru never forsakes the devotee who has surrendered him [her] self. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
26:Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways and be wise. ~ Proverbs XVII. 6, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
27:Pressed her body to his body, Laughed; and plunging down Forgot in cruel happiness That even lovers drown." ~ William Butler Yeats, #KEYS
28:Only after the last judgment will Mary get any rest; from now until then, she is much too busy with her children. ~ Saint John Vianney, #KEYS
29:Eternal wisdom builds: I shall be her palace when she finds repose in me and I in her. ~ Angelus Silesius, #KEYS
30:All doubts will cease only when the doubter and his [her] source have been found. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
31:And in her bosom nursed a greater dawn
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Return to Earth,#KEYS
32:Since He appears because of Her,
And She exists because of Her Lord,
The two cannot be distinguished at all. ~ Jnaneshwar, Hinduism,#KEYS
33:Who is the doubter? Who is the thinker? Find him [her]. These doubts will vanish. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
34:Love in Her was wider than the universe. The whole world could take refuge in Her single heart. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #KEYS
35:At play with him as with her child or slave, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Secret Knowledge, #KEYS
36:Her acts became gestures of sacrifice.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Growth of the Flame,#KEYS
37:It is not for me to bless. It is for the Divine Mother to do so. All blessings come from her. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
38:A saviour gesture stretched her lifted arm, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Finding of the Soul, #KEYS
39:It is on the bosom of dead divinity (Shiva) that the blissful Mother dances her celestial dance. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
40:Those who love her discover her easily and those that seek her do find her. ~ Book of Wisdom, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
41:a butterfly hovers
in front of her face
how long will she sleep?
~ Ikkyu, @BashoSociety#KEYS
42:Temporis filia veritas; cui me obstetricari non pudet. (Truth is the daughter of time, and I feel no shame in being her midwife.) ~ Johannes Kepler, #KEYS
43:The best discipline is to stay quiescent without ever forgetting Him [Her] (God, the Self). ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
44:her shadow walking
through the house
new moon
~ Ogawa, @BashoSociety#KEYS
45:On meeting with a young woman, you should salute her, addressing her at the same time as your mother ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
46:India must remain India if she is to fulfil her destiny. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - II, Indian Resurgence and Europe, #KEYS
47:Maya makes people so utterly blind that they cannot get out of her meshes even when the way lies open. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
48:Teishin :::
"When, when?" I sighed.
The one I longed for
Has finally come;
With her now,
I have all that I need. ~ Taigu Ryokan, [T5],#KEYS
49:Wisdom is a thing vast and grand. She demands all the time that one can consecrate to her. ~ Seneca, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
50:A great sign appeared in the sky, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. ~ Revelation 12:1, #KEYS
51:The Mother is our guide and whatever happens or will happen is under Her ordination. ~ Swami Vivekananda, (C.W. VI. 417), #KEYS
52:To feed death with her works is here life's doom. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Glory and Fall of Life, #KEYS
53:A great sign appeared in the sky, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars." ~ Revelation 12:1, #KEYS
54:Alone she is equal to her mighty task. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain, #KEYS
55:Woman is in her right and even fulfills a sort of obligation when she takes pains to appear as a magical and supernatural creature.
~ Charles Baudelaire,#KEYS
56:Nature creates and acts, the Soul enjoys her creation and action. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Field and its Knower, #KEYS
57:As a mother fulfills any desire of her crying babe, so God gives to his weeping child whatever it cries for. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
58:A witch ought never be frightened in the darkest forest, because she should be sure that the most terrifying thing in the forest was her.
~ Terry Pratchett,#KEYS
59:Eternal wisdom builds: I shall be her palace when she finds repose in me and I in her. ~ Angelus Silesius, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
60:The soul cannot act by itself, it can only act through Nature and her modes. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, Above the Gunas, #KEYS
61:When mind is still, then Truth gets her chance to be heard in the purity of the silence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, #KEYS
62:The Formless and the Formed were joined in her: ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Adoration of the Divine Mother, #KEYS
63:But let perseverance have her perfect work that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing. ~ James I. 4, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
64:You see, then, holy women, how fruitful a widow is in the offspring of virtues, and the results of her own merits, which cannot come to an end. ~ Saint Ambrose, #KEYS
65:Above her brows where will and knowledge meet ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Parable of the Search for the Soul, #KEYS
66:Arunachala! Thou blazing fire of Jnana! Deign to wrap my mother in Thy light and make her one with Thee. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
67:INDIA MUST BE REBORN, BECAUSE HER REBIRTH IS DEMANDED BY THE FUTURE OF THE WORLD. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - I, Bhawani Mandir, #KEYS
68:The Mother showed me that all this is verily maya. She alone is, real, and all else is the splendour of Her maya. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
69:Throw off thoughts of lust and gold. Cry for the Divine Mother, She will come to you and take you up in Her arms. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
70:Why should human frailty fear to go to Mary? In her there is no austerity, nothing terrible: she is all sweetness, offering milk and wool to all. ~ Saint Bernard, #KEYS
71:And when the benevolence of benevolences manifests itself, all things are in her light and in joy. ~ The Zohar, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
72:Bhakti can arise only when there is a wholehearted devotion to God, such as that of a chaste wife for her husband. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
73:His soul was freed and given to her alone.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Adoration of the Divine Mother, [T5],#KEYS
74:If the Angel deigns to come, it will be because you have convinced her, not by your tears, but by your humble resolve to be always beginning: to be a beginner. ~ ?, #KEYS
75:Should the divine mother grant your prayer, for she is omnipotent, you will realize Her impersonal Self in samadhi. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
76:When he says: 'Rejoice, O barren woman who never bore a child,' he is speaking of us, for our Church was barren until children were given her. ~ 2nd century sermon, #KEYS
77:Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so each small piece of her fabric reveals the organization of the entire tapestry.
~ Richard P Feynman,#KEYS
78:an owl happy
in her solitude
autumn evening
~ Kobayashi Issa, @BashoSociety#KEYS
79:It was right that she who had given her Creator, as a child, a place at her breast should be given a place in the dwelling-place of her God. ~ Saint John of Damascus, #KEYS
80:Rabia Basri (may Allah be pleased with her) was asked about Jannah, she replied:
The Owner of the house comes before the house. ~ Ihya Ulum al-Din, Book 36,#KEYS
81:Even his petty world man cannot rule.
We fear, we blame; life wantons her own way, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act II,#KEYS
82:Life pervades and animates everything; it gives its movement to Nature and subjects her to itself. ~ Giordano Bruno, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
83:Truth! Seldom with her bright and burning wand
She touches the unwilling lips of men ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act I,#KEYS
84:looking back
at her home
disappearing into mist
~ Kobayashi Issa, @BashoSociety#KEYS
85:She must change the rags of the past so that her beauty may be readorned. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - II, Swaraj and the Coming Anarchy, #KEYS
86:Compassion is the religion of the heart." ~ Ma Jaya Sati, (died 2012) Her outlook has been influenced by Jesus Christ and the Hindu saint Bhagawan Nityananda, Wikipedia., #KEYS
87:She builds, she breaks,
She thrones, she slays, as needed for her harmony. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Short Stories - I, Act One,#KEYS
88:Maya, the mythical goddess, sprang from the One, and her womb brought forth three acceptable disciples of the One: Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. ~ Hymns of Guru Nanak, eka mai, #KEYS
89:Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her: but once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game.
~ Voltaire,#KEYS
90:As a true wife loves her husband and as a miser his hoarded wealth, so must the devotee love God with all his heart and soul. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
91:There is nothing so simple as being the Self. It requires no effort. One has to be in his [her] eternal natural state. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
92:e should follow the law which Nature has engraved in our hearts. Wisdom lies in the perfect observation of her law. ~ Seneca, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
93:She made earth her home, for whom heaven was too small. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Mind, #KEYS
94: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, #KEYS
95:The Mother is the goal, everything is in her : if she is attained, all is attained. If you dwell in her consciousness, everything else unfolds of itself.
~ Sri Aurobindo?, [T1],#KEYS
96:Too often here the careless Mother leaves
Her chosen in the envious hands of Fate: ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Word of Fate,#KEYS
97:See everything in the true light. Whom to fear? God is our most loving Mother. Can that Mother do any harm to Her child? Be true, practice purity and patience. ~ SWAMI PARAMANANDA, #KEYS
98:She has her secret calls
And works divinely behind play and sleep,
Shaping her infant powers. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act I,#KEYS
99:A point she had reached where life must be in vain
Or, in her unborn element awake,
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue, [T5],#KEYS
100:How wonderful :::
How wonderful, that
Her heart
Should show me kindness;
And of all the numberless folk,
Grief should not touch me. ~ Saigyo, [T5],#KEYS
101:This cosmic Nature's balance is not ours
Nor the mystic measure of her need and use. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Word of Fate,#KEYS
102:If once you see the Divine Mother, you will have no more pleasure in wealth, fame, and honor. Leaving all these, you will run to Her. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
103:So she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, "You are a God of seeing," for she said, "Truly here I have seen him who looks after me." ~ Anonymous, The Bible, Genesis, 16:13, #KEYS
104:Bliss is her goal, but her road is through whirlwind and death-blast and storm-race. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ahana, #KEYS
105:In this state of pure felicity the soul is enlarged and the material substance that is subject to her profiteth also. ~ Tneng Tseu, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
106:A lying reality is falsehood's crown
And a perverted truth her richest gem. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Debate of Love and Death,#KEYS
107:Friends or foes, they are all instruments in Her hands to help us work out our own Karma, through pleasure or pain. ~ Swami Vivekananda, (C.W. VI. 435), #KEYS
108:If your prayer is sincere, my Mother will respond to it, if you will only wait. Pray to Her if you want to realize Her impersonal self. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
109:Life to us means only the way she affects our ego and the way our ego replies to her touches. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Gist of the Karmayoga, #KEYS
110:Love in her was wider than the universe,
The whole world could take refuge in her single heart. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue,#KEYS
111:Scattered on sealed depths, her luminous smile
Kindled to fire the silence of the worlds. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Symbol Dawn,#KEYS
112:Then an attempt is made to bring her to compromise with the spirit of the world, which thus enters into her and affects and paralyses her vitality." ~ Our Lady to Father Stefano Gobbi , #KEYS
113:Nature is so perfect that the Trinity couldn't have fashioned her any more perfect. She is an organ on which our Lord plays and the devil works the bellows. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #KEYS
114:The yogi's heart beats for God, as a mother's for her child. A Yogi has the intense feeling of renunciation and wants nothing except God. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
115:All she can do is marvellous in his sight:
He revels in her, a swimmer in her sea,
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Secret Knowledge,#KEYS
116:Our earth is a fragment and a residue;
Her power is packed with the stuff of greater worlds ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The World-Stair,#KEYS
117:The soul offers herself in sacrifice to God as the beginning of her creation and as the end of her beatification ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 2-2.85.2)., #KEYS
118:This is sure that he and she are one;
Even when he sleeps, he keeps her on his breast: ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Secret Knowledge,#KEYS
119:Beauty and happiness are her native right,
And endless Bliss is her eternal home. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Glory and Fall of Life,#KEYS
120:It entered the mystic lotus in her head,
A thousand-petalled home of power and light. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Towards the Black Void,#KEYS
121:Look upon all women as your own mother. Never look at the face of a woman, but look towards her feet. All evil thoughts will then fly away. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
122:Nature will not suffer human egoism to baffle for ever her fixed intention and necessity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Imperfection of Past Aggregates, #KEYS
123:In the lower actions of the mind the soul suffers Nature rather than possesses her. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Purification - Intelligence and Will, #KEYS
124:The philosopher's soul dwells in his head, the poet's soul is in his heart; the singer's soul lingers about his throat, but the soul of the dancer abides in all her body.
~ Khalil Gibran,#KEYS
125:Nature's vision climbs beyond her acts. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 02.06, #KEYS
126:When you have time, you can meditate on her with the thinking attitude that She is with you, She is sitting in front of you.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Mother India, [T1],#KEYS
127:All Nature is full of the secret Godhead and in labour to reveal him in her. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Vision of the World-Spirit - Time the Destroyer, #KEYS
128:Justice has her seat, and her fine balance
Disturbed too often spoils an unripe world
With ill-timed mercy. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act V,#KEYS
129:Life's contraries were lovers or natural friends
And her extremes keen edges of harmony: ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Glory and Fall of Life,#KEYS
130:A lamp of symbol lighting hidden truth
Imaged to her the world's significance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Parable of the Search for the Soul,#KEYS
131:Called back her thoughts from speech to sit within
In a deep room in meditation's house. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Debate of Love and Death,#KEYS
132:The blue sea dances like a girl
With sapphire and with pearl
Crowning her locks. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Songs to Myrtilla,#KEYS
133: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, #KEYS
134:All Nature dumbly calls to her alone
To heal with her feet the aching throb of life ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Adoration of the Divine Mother,#KEYS
135:Here where one knows not even the step in front
And Truth has her throne on the shadowy back of doubt, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Symbol Dawn,#KEYS
136:Her spirit, guilty of being, wandered doomed,
Moving for ever through eternal Night.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Dream Twilight of the Ideal,#KEYS
137:As long as the slightest trace of ego remains, one lives within the jurisdiction of the Ādyāśakti. One is under Her sway. One cannot go beyond Her. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
138:Her signs still covered more than they revealed; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 02.06, #KEYS
139:It glided into the lotus of her heart
And woke in it the Force that alters Fate. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real,#KEYS
140:Souls that do not aspire are God's failures; but Nature is pleased and loves to multiply them because they assure her of stability and prolong her empire. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #KEYS
141:The generalisation of Yoga in humanity must be the last victory of Nature over her own delays and concealments. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Threefold Life, #KEYS
142:Earth's eyes half-see, her forces half-create;
Her rarest works are copies of heaven's art. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdom of Subtle Matter,#KEYS
143:It is always through something which she has formed in her evolution that Nature thus overpasses her evolution. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Systems of Yoga, #KEYS
144:The aim of the Universal Mother is to embrace the Divine in her own play and creations and there to realise It. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Systems of Yoga, #KEYS
145:Autumn led in the glory of her moons
And dreamed in the splendour of her lotus pools ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Birth and Childhood of the Flame,#KEYS
146:A smile on her lips welcomed earth's bliss and grief,
A laugh was her return to pleasure and pain. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Finding of the Soul,#KEYS
147:The Twelve Powers of the Mother manifested for Her Work: Sincerity, Peace, Equality, Generosity, Goodness, Courage, Progress, Receptivity, Aspiration, Perserverance, Gratitude, Humility
~ The Mother?,#KEYS
148:Mary, a proper name is taken to mean star of the sea or enlightener and lady; hence in Rev ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (12:1) she is described with the moon under her feet., #KEYS
149:My I is God, nor is any other self known to me except my God." ~ Saint Catherine of Genoa, (1447-1510) Italian Roman Catholic saint and mystic, admired for her work among the sick and the poor, Wikipedia., #KEYS
150:Scripture records her giving birth, and says: She wrapped him in swaddling clothes. Her breasts, which fed him, were called blessed. Sacrifice was offered because the child was her firstborn. ~ Athanasius, #KEYS
151:Seek wisdom carefully and she shall be uncovered to thee, and when once thou hast seen her, leave her, not. ~ Anonymous, The Bible, Ecclesiastes, VI, 28, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
152:There was no act, no movement in its Vast:
Life's question met by its silence died on her lips, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Pursuit of the Unknowable,#KEYS
153:A million faces wears her knowledge here
And every face is turbaned with a doubt. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Little Mind,#KEYS
154:Came Reason, the squat godhead artisan,
To her narrow house upon a ridge in Time. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Little Mind,#KEYS
155:I want to be able to feel her constantly with me.
The Mother is always there with you. You have only to throw away the forces of Ignorance to feel her with you always. ~ Sri Aurobindo, TMWLOTM,#KEYS
156:The Power that from her being's summit reigned,
The Presence chambered in lotus secrecy, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real,#KEYS
157:If you treat your children at home in the same way you treat your animals in the lab, your wife will scratch your eyes out. My wife ferociously warned me against experimenting on her babies. ~ Abraham Maslow, #KEYS
158:Mother, What is the rationale of Divine Grace? Is not the Supreme Mother always ready with Her Grace for those who can call it down?
Yes.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS
159:Thou shalt invest thyself with her as with a raiment of glory and thou shalt put her on thy head as a crown of joy. Say unto wisdom, ... "Thou art my sister", and call understanding thy kinswoman. ~ Proverbs, #KEYS
160:Her smile could persuade a dead lacerated heart
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces, [T5],#KEYS
161:Out of our thoughts we must leap up to sight,
Breathe her divine illimitable air,
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Mind,#KEYS
162:The Mother does not act by the mind, so to judge her action with the mind is futile. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother with Letters on The Mother, The Mother's Way of Dealing with Sadhaks, #KEYS
163:Absolute her judgments seem but none is sure;
Time cancels all her verdicts in appeal. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Little Mind,#KEYS
164:Don't be afraid your life will end; be afraid it will never begin…." ~ Grace Hanson [Grace Hanson is one of the protagonists on "Grace and Frankie." She is portrayed by Jane Fonda. For more of her quotes see:, #KEYS
165:In Mary, Zion passes over into the church; in her, the word passes over and flesh; in her, the head passes over into the body. She is the place of super abundant fruitfulness. ~ Hans Urs von Balthasar GL I, 338, #KEYS
166:It stirred in the lotus of her throat of song,
And in her speech throbbed the immortal Word, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real,#KEYS
167:Liberty is a goddess who is exacting in her demands on her votaries, but, if they are faithful, she never disappoints them of their reward. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin, The Elections, #KEYS
168:O sinner, be not discouraged, but have recourse to Mary in all your necessities. Call her to your assistance, for such is the divine Will that she should help in every kind of necessity. ~ Saint Basil the Great, #KEYS
169:In Mary, Zion passes over into the church; in her, the word passes over into flesh; in her, the head passes over into the body. She is the place of super abundant fruitfulness. ~ Hans Urs von Balthasar GL I, 338, #KEYS
170:Unsatisfied forces in her bosom move;
They are partners of her greater growing fate
And her return to immortality; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The World-Stair,#KEYS
171:Earth and her strong winds move me, take me away, and my soul is swept up in joy." ~ Uvavnuk, 19th century Eskimo shaman woman, oral poet, Wikipedia. Trans. by Jane Hirshfield. For music see: http://bit.ly/2DPCu2U, #KEYS
172:Nature walks upon her mighty way
Unheeding when she breaks a soul, a life;
Leaving her slain behind she travels on: ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Symbol Dawn,#KEYS
173:One forward step is something gained,
Since little by little earth must open to heaven
Till her dim soul awakes into the Light. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act V,#KEYS
174:A Veda-knower of the unwritten book
Perusing the mystic scripture of her forms,
He had caught her hierophant significances, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Satyavan,#KEYS
175:Prudence or political science is the servant of Wisdom, for it leads to wisdom, preparing the way for her, as the doorkeeper for the king ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 1-2.66.5ad1)., #KEYS
176:Great Nature in her animal trance,
Her life of mighty instincts where no stir
Of the hedged restless mind has spoiled her vasts. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act II,#KEYS
177:The widow has, then, this excellent recommendation, that while she mourns her husband she also weeps for the world, and the redeeming tears are ready, which shed for the dead will benefit the living. ~ Saint Ambrose, #KEYS
178:Woe to those who despise devotion to Mary! ... The soul cannot live without having recourse to Mary and recommending itself to her. He falls and is lost who does not have recourse to Mary." ~ Saint Alphonsus Liguori, #KEYS
179:It met her as the uncaught inaudible Voice
That speaks for ever from the Unknowable. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Nirvana and the Discovery of the All-Negating Absolute#KEYS
180:Myth suckled knowledge with her lustrous milk;
The infant passed from dim to radiant breasts. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Little Mind,#KEYS
181:Our life is a holocaust of the Supreme.
The great World-Mother by her sacrifice
Has made her soul the body of our state; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The World-Stair,#KEYS
182:He props her dance upon a rigid base,
His timeless still immutability
Must standardise her creation's miracle. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Glory and Fall of Life,#KEYS
183:Nature takes us as we are and to some extent suits her movements to our need or our demands on her. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality, #KEYS
184:While a tardy Evolution's coils wind on
And Nature hews her way through adamant
A divine intervention thrones above. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Secret Knowledge,#KEYS
185:But thought nor word can seize eternal Truth:
The whole world lives in a lonely ray of her sun. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Mind,#KEYS
186:Her will must cancel her body's destiny.
For only the unborn spirit's timeless power
Can lift the yoke imposed by birth in Time. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue,#KEYS
187:Our Lady received through the ineffable kindness of Jesus the strength to endure the trials of her love until the end. May you also find the strength to endure with the Lord to Calvary! " ~ Saint Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, #KEYS
188:She is the flower of the field from whom bloomed the precious lily of the valley. Through her birth the nature inherited from our first parents is changed. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
189:Thou shalt invest thyself with her as with a raiment of glory and thou shalt put her on thy head as a crown of joy. Say unto wisdom, ~ Anonymous, The Bible, Ecclesiastes, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
190:Ablaze upon creation's quivering edge,
Dawn built her aura of magnificent hues
And buried its seed of grandeur in the hours. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Symbol Dawn,#KEYS
191:Death, the dire god, inflicted on her eyes
The immortal calm of his tremendous gaze: ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Journey in Eternal Night and the Voice of the Darkness,#KEYS
192:Whoever says 7 times "اللهم أجرني من النار" after Maghrib & Fajr before speaking, Allah will protect him/her from the Fire." ~ al-Habib Omar bin Hafiz, @Sufi_Path #KEYS
193:Knowledge without Revelation Is as the pain of Hell Revelation without death, Cannot be endured." ~ Mechthild of Magdeburg, (c. 1207 - c.1283), mystic, whose book "The Flowing Light of Divinity" described her visions of God., #KEYS
194:The more she plunged into love that anguish grew;
Her deepest grief from sweetest gulfs arose.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Joy of Union; the Ordeal of the Foreknowledge,#KEYS
195:True belief, which is known as faith, comes after direct experience. Faith born from direct experience becomes a part of the aspirant's being, and such faith protects the aspirant like a mother protects her child. ~ SWAMI RAMA, #KEYS
196:What most she needs, what most exceeds her scope,
A Mind unvisited by illusion's gleams,
A Will expressive of soul's deity, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Secret Knowledge,#KEYS
197:Christ's body was not brought down from heaven, as the heretic Valentine maintained, but was taken from the Virgin Mother, and formed from her purest blood ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 3.35.3)., #KEYS
198:God is the only Guru. My Divine Mother is the sole doer of actions, I am only an instrument in Her hands. I feel myself always to be Her child. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, Sayings of Ramakrishna Paramahasma, #KEYS
199:No more shut in by body's walls and gates
Her being, a circle without circumference. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Discovery of the Cosmic Spirit and the Cosmic Consciousness,#KEYS
200:There is a fullness of superabundant grace by which the Blessed Virgin excels all the saints because of the eminence and abundance of her merits ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (Commentary on John 1)., #KEYS
201:Wisdom attracts him with her luminous masks,
But never has he seen the face behind:
A giant Ignorance surrounds his lore. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon,#KEYS
202:An atavism of higher births is hers,
Her sleep is stirred by their buried memories
Recalling the lost spheres from which they fell. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The World-Stair,#KEYS
203:That which was revealed to Moses in the bush, we see accomplished here and strange manner. The Virgin bore Fire within her, yet was not consumed, when she gave birth to the Benefactor Who brings us light. ~ Saint John of Damascus, #KEYS
204:To the height of heights rose now their daily climb:
Truth leaned to them from her supernal realm;
Above them blazed eternity's mystic suns. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 4:4,#KEYS
205:Always remember the Mother. Call upon her. Then the difficulties will go away. Do not be afraid, do not be perturbed by the difficulties. Call upon the Mother steadily. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Annual, Issue 27, #KEYS
206:Divine love so penetrated and filled the soul of Mary that no part of her was left untouched, so that she loved with her whole heart, with her whole soul, and her whole strength, and was full of grace. ~ Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, #KEYS
207:Happy, inert, he lies beneath her feet:
His breast he offers for her cosmic dance
Of which our lives are the quivering theatre, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Secret Knowledge,#KEYS
208:It acted not but bore all thoughts and deeds,
The witness Lord of Nature's myriad acts
Consenting to the movements of her Force. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, In the Self of Mind,#KEYS
209:And symbol of some native cosmic strength,
A sacred beast lay prone below her feet,
A silent flame-eyed mass of living force. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Finding of the Soul,#KEYS
210:in her spaceless self released from bounds
Unnumbered years seemed moments long drawn out,
The brilliant time-flakes of eternity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Return to Earth,#KEYS
211: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)., #KEYS
212:Life with her wine-cup of longing under the purple of her tenture,
Death as her gate of escape and rebirth and renewal of venture. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ahana,#KEYS
213:Reason that scans and breaks, but cannot build
Or builds in vain because she doubts her work. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Journey in Eternal Night and the Voice of the Darkness,#KEYS
214:Jesus said to her, "Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’ ~ Anonymous, The Bible, John, 20:17, #KEYS
215:The builder Reason lost her confidence
In the successful sleight and turn of thought
That makes the soul the prisoner of a phrase. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, In the Self of Mind,#KEYS
216:Her patient paleness wore a pensive glow
Like evening's subdued gaze of gathered light
Departing, which foresees sunrise her child. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Return to Earth,#KEYS
217:How to remember the Mother during work?
One starts by a mental effort - afterwards it is an inner consciousness that is formed... it is always conscious of her.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Correspondences, 17,#KEYS
218:If India becomes an intellectual province of Europe, she will never attain to her natural greatness or fulfil the possibilities within her. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - II, Indian Resurgence and Europe, #KEYS
219:Kindness is twice blessed. It blesses the one who gives it with a sense of his or her own capacity to love, and the person who receives it with a sense of the beneficence of the universe." ~ Dawna Markova. See: https://bit.ly/3iZwmrI, #KEYS
220:What is Truth and who can find her form
Amid the specious images of sense,
Amid the crowding guesses of the mind ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real,#KEYS
221:A Thought that can conceive but hardly knows
Arises slowly in her and creates
The idea, the speech that labels more than it lights; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Secret Knowledge,#KEYS
222:Her mouth was seized to channel ineffable truths,
Knowledge unthinkable found an utterance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Discovery of the Cosmic Spirit and the Cosmic Consciousness,#KEYS
223:Nabhi-Padma (Navel-lotus)
Out of the dreadful press she dragged her will
And fixed her thought upon the saviour Name. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Entry into the Inner Countries,#KEYS
224:Now a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman, adorned with the sun, standing on the moon, and with the twelve stars on her head for a crown. She was pregnant, and in labour, crying aloud in the pangs of childbirth. ~ Revelation 12:1-2, #KEYS
225:Once in the vigil of a deathless gaze
These grades had marked her giant downward plunge,
The wide and prone leap of a godhead's fall. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The World-Stair,#KEYS
226:Having thought of these things, meditating on them in my heart and having considered that I shall find immortality in the union with wisdom, I went in search of her on all sides, that I might take her for my companion. ~ Book of Wisdom, #KEYS
227:The Mother - The power of the Divine Consciousness is the goal, everything is in her; if she is attained, all is attained. If you dwell in her consciousness, everything else unfolds itself.
~ Sri Aurobindo,#KEYS
228:Who loves her loves life and they that keep vigil to find her shall enjoy her peace. Whosoever possesses her, shall have life for his inheritance. ~ Anonymous, The Bible, Ecclesiastes, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
229:Her pragmatism of the transcendent Truth
Fills silence with the voices of the gods, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 02.06,#KEYS
230: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)., #KEYS
231:This is the nature of earth that to blows she responds and by scourgings
Travails excited; pain is the bed of her blossoms of pleasure. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
232:In her voyage across the ocean of this world, the Church is like a great ship being pounded by the waves of life's different stresses. Our duty is not to abandon ship but to keep her on her course. ~ Saint Boniface of Mainz, (675-754 AD), #KEYS
233:I pay homage to the Perfection of Wisdom. She is worthy of homage. She is unstained, and the entire world cannot stain her. She is a source of light, and from everyone in the triple world she removes darkness. ~ Ashta-sahasrika, VII, 170, #KEYS
234:All knowledge failed and the Idea's forms
And Wisdom screened in awe her lowly head
Feeling a Truth too great for thought or speech. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Finding of the Soul,#KEYS
235:In her voyage across the ocean of this world, the Church is like a great ship being pounded by the waves of life's different stresses. Our duty is not to abandon ship but to keep her on her course." ~ Saint Boniface of Mainz, (675-754 AD), #KEYS
236:The Church will almost seem abandoned and everywhere her ministers will desert her… even the churches will have to close! By his power the Lord will break all the bonds that now bind her to the earth and paralyze her!" ~ Mary Immaculate, #KEYS
237:His pains are her means to grow, to see and feel;
His death assists her immortality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
238:Life, the river of the Spirit, consenting to anguish and sorrow
If by her heart's toil a loan-light of joy from the heavens she can borrow. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ahana,#KEYS
239:Pain is the touch of our Mother teaching us how to bear and grow in rapture. She has three stages of her schooling, endurance first, next equality of soul, last ecstasy.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human,#KEYS
240:There our sun cannot shine and our moon has no place for her lustres,
There our lightnings flash not, nor fire of these spaces is suffered. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
241:Life that pursuing her boundless march to a goal which we know not,
Ever her own law obeys, not our hopes, who are slaves of her heart-beats. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
242:Since God has made earth, earth must make in her God;
What hides within her breast she must reveal. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Eternal Day, The Soul's Choice and the Supreme Consummation,#KEYS
243:Mary lived on the Word of God, she was imbued with the Word of God. And the fact that she was immersed in the Word of God and was totally familiar with the Word also endowed her later with the inner enlightenment of wisdom. ~ Pope Benedict XVI, #KEYS
244:A thinking animal, Nature's struggling lord,
Has made of her his nurse and tool and slave ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
245:She [St. Catherine of Siena] moves and touches me so deeply that every time I read her life, I have to hold the book in one hand and a handkerchief in the other to staunch the tears that it makes me shed continually. ~ Saint Anthony Mary Claret, #KEYS
246:There is nothing that is impossible to her who is the conscious Power and universal Goddess all-creative from eternity and armed with the Spirit's omnipotence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti, #KEYS
247:Her deepest grief from sweetest gulfs arose.
Remembrance was a poignant pang ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Joy of Union; the Ordeal of the Foreknowledge of Death and the Heart's Grief and Pain,#KEYS
248:Once more in the land of the saints and sages will burn up the fire of the ancient Yoga and the hearts of her people will be lifted up into the neighbourhood of the Eternal. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - II, Swaraj, #KEYS
249:When intellectual dishonesty (or gross incompetence) is discovered in one part-even a marginal part-of someone's writings, it is natural to want to examine more critically the rest of his or her work.
~ Sokal and Bricmont, Fashionable Nonsense,#KEYS
250:Earth lies unchanged beneath the circling sun;
She loves her fall and no omnipotence
Her mortal imperfections can erase. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Gospel of Death and Vanity of the Ideal,#KEYS
251:Keep yourself open to the Mother and in perfect union with her. Make yourself entirely plastic to her touch and let her mould you swiftly towards perfection. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother, [T2], #KEYS
252:Knowledge of God has entered into us and at once ignorance disappears. The knowledge of joy arrives and before her, my son, sorrow shall flee away to those who can still feel her sting. ~ Hermes, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
253:The Mother alone is your destination. She contains everything in herself. To have her is to have everything. If you live in her Consciousness, there will be an automatic flowering of every other thing.
~ Sri Aurobindo,#KEYS
254:God will use the powers of darkness to exterminate these sectarian, iniquitous and criminal men, who plot to eradicate the Catholic Church, our Holy Mother, by tearing Her up by Her deepest roots, and casting Her on the ground. ~ Blessed Elizabeth , #KEYS
255:On the ocean surface of vast Consciousness
Small thoughts in shoals are fished up into a net
But the great truths escape her narrow cast; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Debate of Love and Death,#KEYS
256: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,#KEYS
257:Imagination called her shining squads
That venture into undiscovered scenes
Where all the marvels lurk none yet has known: ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Little Mind,#KEYS
258:One will only speak about wars and revolutions. The elements of nature will be unchained and will cause anguish even among the best (the most courageous). The Church will bleed from all Her wounds." ~ Our Lady to priest Raymond Arnette (in May of 1994), #KEYS
259: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, #KEYS
260:In packets she ties up the Indivisible;
Finding her hands too small to hold vast Truth
She breaks up knowledge into alien parts ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Little Mind,#KEYS
261:An emanation or a part of her being and consciousness comes out of the Mother to each sadhak and as her image and representative remains with him to help him. In fact, it is the Mother who comes out in that form. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #KEYS
262:Here in Life's nether realms all contraries meet;
Truth stares and does her works with bandaged eyes
And Ignorance is Wisdom's patron here: ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Entry into the Inner Countries,#KEYS
263: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)., #KEYS
264:The Mother of God, the most pure Virgin, carried the true light in her arms and brought him to those who lay in darkness. We too should carry a light for all to see and reflect the radiance of the true light as we hasten to meet him. ~ Sophronius of Jerusalem, #KEYS
265:In the black night the wrath of storm swept by,
The thunder crashed above her, the rain hissed,
Its million footsteps pattered on the roof. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Parable of the Search for the Soul,#KEYS
266:Still, still we can hear them
Now, if we listen long in our souls, the bygone voices.
Earth in her fibres remembers, the breezes are stored with our echoes. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
267: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, #KEYS
268:He who has love for other people has God in his heart. To serve God's children is to serve God." ~ Ching Hai, (b. 1950) Vietnamese author, entrepreneur, and teacher of the Quan Yin Method of meditation. Her followers refer to her as "Supreme Master," Wikipedia., #KEYS
269:Sometimes I speak to men and women just as a little girl speaks to her doll. She knows, of course, that the doll does not understand her, but she creates for herself the joy of communication through a pleasant and conscious self-deception. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, #KEYS
270:All past persecutors of the Church are now no more, but the Church still lives on. The same fate awaits modern persecutors; they, too, will pass on, but the Church of Jesus Christ will always remain, for God has pledged His Word to protect Her. ~ Saint John Bosco, #KEYS
271:Appealing to the soul and not the eye
Beauty lived there at home in her own house,
There all was beautiful by its own right
And needed not the splendour of a robe. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The World-Soul,#KEYS
272:At the head she stands of birth and toil and fate,
In their slow round the cycles turn to her call;
Alone her hands can change Time's dragon base. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Adoration of the Divine Mother,#KEYS
273:He sees in all things strangely fashioned here
The unwelcome jest of a deceiving Force,
A parable of Maya and her might. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 02.05,#KEYS
274:At the beginning of each far-spread plane
Pervading with her power the cosmic suns
She reigns, inspirer of its multiple works
And thinker of the symbol of its scene. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The World-Soul,#KEYS
275:In a chance happening, fate's whims and the blind workings or dead drive of a brute Nature,
In her dire Titan caprice, strength that to death drifts and to doom, hidden a Will labours. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Lost Boat,#KEYS
276:Agatha, the name of our saint, means 'good.' She was truly good, for she lived as a child of God. She was also given as the gift of God, the source of all goodness to her bridegroom, Christ, and to us. For she grants us a share in her goodness. ~ Methodius of Sicily, #KEYS
277:In Nature there are no errors but only the deliberate measure of her paces traced and retraced in a prefigured rhythm. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Ancient Cycle of Prenational Empire-Building - The Modern Cycle of Nation-Building, #KEYS
278:Nor does she believe it loss of honour that she is soon to be the Mother of God. For why should she be in despair over the novelty of such conception, to whom the power of the most High has promised to effect it. Her implicit faith is confirmed. ~ Saint Leo the Great, #KEYS
279:It is not one's personal fitness and worthiness that makes one succeed, but the Mother's grace and power and the consent of the soul to her grace and the workings of her Force. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, The Call and the Capacity, #KEYS
280:In the last times the Lord will especially spread the renown of His Mother: Mary began salvation and by her intercession it will be concluded. Before the Second Coming of Christ, Mary must, more than ever, shine in mercy, ..." ~ Ven. Mary of Jesus of Ágreda (1602-1665), #KEYS
281:Beatrice is to be loved because she is beautiful; but she is beautiful because there is behind her a many-sided mystery of beauty, to be seen also in the grass and the sea, and even in the dead gods. There is a promise in and yet beyond all such pictures. ~ GK Chesterton, #KEYS
282:... He (Jesus) showed me all that He Himself had endured for her, what efficacy He had bestowed upon the merits and labors of the martyrs and He ended by saying that He would endure it all over again if it were possible for Him again to suffer." ~ Venerable Anna Emmerich, #KEYS
283:How can that which is invisible reveal itself in the night? By the fact that He gives the soul some sense of His presence, even while He eludes her clear apprehension, concealed as He is by the invisibility of His nature. ~ Saint Gregory of Nyssa, On the Song of Songs XI, #KEYS
284: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, #KEYS
285:Then suddenly there came on her the change
Which in tremendous moments of our lives
Can overtake sometimes the human soul
And hold it up towards its luminous source. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Towards the Black Void,#KEYS
286:There is a truth to know, a work to do;
Her play is real; a Mystery he fulfils:
There is a plan in the Mother's deep world-whim,
A purpose in her vast and random game. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Secret Knowledge,#KEYS
287:Ambassadress twixt eternity and change,
The omniscient Goddess leaned across the breadths
That wrap the fated journeyings of the stars
And saw the spaces ready for her feet. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Symbol Dawn,#KEYS
288:What comes, is called." ~ Ki Longfellow, (b. 1944) an American novelist, playwright, theatrical producer, and entrepreneur, best known in the United States for her novel "The Secret Magdalene", (2005). This is the first of her works exploring the divine feminine, Wikipedia., #KEYS
289:Whatever you do, see, or hear, think that to be God. It is all play, a game with Him. Know life to be a game, in which Mother Herself is the Player and you are Her playmate. The world will be quite different when you know that Mother is playing with you. ~ SWAMI VIRAJANANDA, #KEYS
290:An abyss yawned suddenly beneath her heart.
A vast and nameless fear dragged at her nerves
As drags a wild beast its half-slaughtered prey; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Nirvana and the Discovery of the All-Negating Absolute,#KEYS
291:Be resigned to the Mother. Pray to Her earnestly, crying like a child, and you will discover the Light. Whenever we asked the Master, he told us also: ''Pray sincerely to the Mother, and She will straighten the path". He gave us this advice again and again. ~ Swami Shivananda, #KEYS
292:In northwest India the bride holds a knife in her hand at the time of marriage. The meaning is that the bridegroom, with the help of the bride, who is the embodiment of the divine Power, will sever the bondage of illusion." ~ Ramakrishna, (1836-1886), Hindu mystic, Wikipedia., #KEYS
293:What most she needs, what most exceeds her scope,
A Mind unvisited by illusion's gleams,
A Will expressive of soul's deity,
A Strength not forced to stumble by its speed, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Secret Knowledge,#KEYS
294:When a woman rises up in glory, her energy is magnetic and her sense of possibility contagious." ~ Marianne Williamson, (b. 1952), an American spiritual teacher, author, and lecturer. She has published 12 books, including four New York Times number one bestsellers, Wikipedia., #KEYS
295:Within her presence, I had once been used to feeling-trembling-wonder, dissolution; but that was long ago. Still, though my soul, now she was veiled, could not see her directly, by way of hidden force that she could move, I felt the mighty power of old love. ~ Dante Alighieri, #KEYS
296:A Woman sat in gold and purple sheen,
Armed with the trident and the thunderbolt,
Her feet upon a couchant lion's back. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
297:I knew a child, close upon three years old and only then beginning to talk... "Is he in you?" The child asked when the mother came back [from communion]. "Yes," she said, and to her amazement the child prostrated itself before her. ~ Elizabeth Anscombe, 'On Transubstantiation', #KEYS
298: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, #KEYS
299:Behind her an ineffable Presence stood:
Her reign received their mystic influences,
Their lion-forces crouched beneath her feet. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Yoga of the King, The Yoga of the Spirit's Freedom and Greatness,#KEYS
300:O mortal, the enchantress sensuality is dragging thee like an untameable horse to the bottom of the tomb. Death will suddenly give the rein to thy courser and thou shalt not avail to hold her back from the fatal descent. ~ Sadi, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
301:"Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are continually before me. ~ Anonymous, The Bible, Isaiah, 49:15-16, #KEYS
302:Her body's thoughts climbed from her conscious limbs
And carried their yearnings to its mystic crown
Where Nature's murmurs meet the Ineffable. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Nirvana and the Discovery of the All-Negating Absolute,#KEYS
303:Mary looks back to the beginning of her song where she said: My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord. Only that soul for whom the Lord in his love does great things can proclaim his greatness with fitting praise and encourage those who share her desire and purpose. ~ Ven. Bede, #KEYS
304:My fellow Christians, our annual celebration of a martyr's feast has brought us together. She achieved renown in the early Church for her noble victory; she is well known now as well, for she continues to triumph through her divine miracles which occur daily. ~ Methodius of Sicily, #KEYS
305:The dragon ... pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child. But the woman was given the two wings of the great eagle so that she could fly from the serpent into the wilderness, to her place where she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time ~ Rev. 12:13-14)., #KEYS
306:The present festival, the birth of the Mother of God, is a prelude, while the final act is the foreordained union of the Word with flesh. Today the Virgin is born, tended and formed and prepared for her role as Mother of God, who is the universal King of the ages ~ Andrew of Crete, #KEYS
307:A life of intensities wide, immune
Floats behind the earth and her life-fret,
A magic of realms mastered by spell and rune,
Grandiose, blissful, coloured, increate. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Life Heavens,#KEYS
308:This sole is real in apparent things,
Even upon earth the spirit is life's key,
But her solid outsides nowhere bear its trace. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 02.06,#KEYS
309:Writer's block results from too much head. Cut off your head. Pegasus, poetry, was born of Medusa when her head was cut off. You have to be reckless when writing. Be as crazy as your conscience allows. ~ Joseph Campbell, A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living, #KEYS
310:Although defeated, life must struggle on;
Always she sees a crown she cannot grasp;
Her eyes are fixed beyond her fallen state. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 02.06,#KEYS
311:Happy is she who out of her treasure brings forth the perfect image of the King. Your treasure is wisdom, your treasure is chastity and righteousness, your treasure is a good understanding, such as was that treasure from which the Magi, when they worshipped the Lord. ~ Saint Ambrose, #KEYS
312:In obedience to Our Lord's institution, the Church extends her charity to all, not only to friends, but also to foes who persecute her, according to Mt. 5:44: "Love your enemies; do good to them that hate you" ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 2-2.11.4)., #KEYS
313:It was the hour before the Gods awake.
Across the path of the divine Event
The huge foreboding mind of Night, alone
In her unlit temple of eternity,
Lay stretched immobile upon Silence marge.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 01.01,#KEYS
314:Our fathers were under a cloud-a kindly cloud which cooled the heat of carnal passions. That kindly cloud overshadows those whom the Holy Spirit visits. Finally it came upon the Virgin Mary, and the Power of the Most High overshadowed her when she conceived Redemption ~ Saint Ambrose, #KEYS
315:This therefore is Mathematics: She reminds you of the invisible forms of the soul; She gives life to her own discoveraies; She awakens the mind and purifies the intellect; She brings light to our intrinsic ideas; She abolishes oblivion and ignorance which are ours by birth. ~ Proclus, #KEYS
316:When blessed Mary was to be called from the world, the Apostles gathered to her house from their different regions. And when they had heard that she was to be taken from the world, together they kept watch with her; and lo, the Lord Jesus came with His angels ~ Saint Gregory of Tours, #KEYS
317:Her eternal Lover is her action's cause;
For him she leaped forth from the unseen Vasts
To move here in a stark unconscious world. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 02.06,#KEYS
318:Science tears out Nature's occult powers,
Enormous djinns who serve a dwarf's small needs,
Exposes the sealed minutiae of her art
And conquers her by her own captive force. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Debate of Love and Death,#KEYS
319:Who is worthy or unworthy in front of the Divine Grace?
All are children of the one and the same Mother. Her love is equally spread over all of them. But to each one She gives according to his nature and receptivity.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS
320:But I tell you one thing-if you want peace of mind, do not find fault with others. Rather, see your own faults. Learn to make the whole world your own. No one is a stranger, my child: this whole world is your own!" ~ Sri Sarada Devi, [This is considered as her last message to the world.] #KEYS
321:Having thought of these things, meditating on them in my heart and having considered that I shall find immortality in the union with wisdom, I went in search of her on all sides, that I might take her for my companion. ~ Book of Wisdom, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
322:The Mothers Symbol ::: The central circle represents the Divine Consciousness.
The four petals represent the four powers of The Mother.
The twelve petals represent the twelve powers of the Mother manifested for Her work.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother I,#KEYS
323:Truth is wider, greater than her forms.
A thousand icons they have made of her
And find her in the idols they adore;
But she remains herself and infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Poetry and Art, Comments on Specific Lines and Passages of the Poem,#KEYS
324: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, #KEYS
325:How shall the mighty Mother her calm delight
Keep fragrant in this narrow fragile vase,
Or lodge her sweet unbroken ecstasy
In hearts which earthly sorrow can assail ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real,#KEYS
326:On his long way through Time and Circumstance
The grey-hued riddling nether shadow-Sphinx,
Her dreadful paws upon the swallowing sands,
Awaits him armed with the soul-slaying word: ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon,#KEYS
327:He watched in the alchemist radiance of her suns
The crimson outburst of one secular flower
On the tree-of-sacrifice of spiritual love. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 02.06,#KEYS
328: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, #KEYS
329:All sounds, all voices have become Thy voice,
Music and thunder and the cry of birds,
Life's babble of her sorrows and her joys,
Cadence of human speech and murmured words, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Divine Hearing,#KEYS
330:An inconclusive play is Reason's toil.
Each strong idea can use her as its tool;
Accepting every brief she pleads her case.
Open to every thought, she cannot know. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Little Mind,#KEYS
331:Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play on the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously by licensing and prohibiting misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter? ~ John Milton in Areopagitica, #KEYS
332:359. Men burrow after little details of knowledge and group them into bounded and ephemeral thought systems; meanwhile all infinite wisdom laughs above their heads and shakes wide the glory of her iridescent pinions.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Karma,#KEYS
333:My life is the life of village and continent,
I am earth's agony and her throbs of bliss;
I share all creatures' sorrow and content
And feel the passage of every stab and kiss. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Cosmic Spirit,#KEYS
334:This most beloved daughter (the Church) of mine must live the hours of her agony and of her sorrowful passion. She will be abandoned by many of her children. The impetuous wind of persecution will blow against her and much blood will be shed, even by my beloved sons." ~ Our Lady how this thread, #KEYS
335: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,#KEYS
336:Into thought's narrow limits she has come;
Her greatness she has suffered to be pressed
Into the little cabin of the Idea,
The closed room of a lonely thinker's grasp: ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Mind,#KEYS
337:Russell commented that the development of such gifted individuals (referring to polymaths) required a childhood period in which there was little or no pressure for conformity, a time in which the child could develop and pursue his or her own interests no matter how unusual or bizarre. ~ Carl Sagan, #KEYS
338:Heaven-fire laughed in the corners of her eyes;
Her body a mass of courage and heavenly strength,
She menaced the triumph of the nether gods. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
339:Nabhi-Padma (Navel-lotus)
Around her navel lotus clustering close
Her large sensations of the teeming worlds
Streamed their dumb movements of the unformed Idea. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Nirvana and the Discovery of the All-Negating Absolute,#KEYS
340:Nature seeks the Divine in her own symbols: Yoga goes beyond Nature to the Lord of Nature, beyond universe to the Transcendent and can return with the transcendent light and power, with the fiat of the Omnipotent. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Threefold Life, #KEYS
341:There Knowledge called him to her mystic peaks
Where thought is held in a vast internal sense
And feeling swims across a sea of peace
And vision climbs beyond the reach of Time. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdoms of the Greater Knowledge,#KEYS
342:In the happy days of La Ronde, a dashing but penniless young Austrian officer tried to obtain the favours of a fashionable courtesan. To shake off this unwanted suitor, she explained to him that her heart was, alas, no longer free. He replied politely: Mademoiselle, I never aimed as high as that. ~ ?, #KEYS
343:Two are the ends of existence, two are the dreams of the Mother:
Heaven unchanging, earth with her time-beats yearn to each other,—
Earth-souls needing the touch of the heavens peace to recapture ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ahana,#KEYS
344:We want not only a free India, but a great India, India taking worthily her place among the Nations and giving to the life of humanity what she alone can give. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Autobiographical Notes and Other Writings of Historical Interest, To the Editor of the New India, #KEYS
345:Behold the beginning of wisdom; therefore get wisdom; and with all thy getting, get understanding. Exalt her and she shall promote thee. She shall bring thee to honour, when thou dost embrace her. She shall give to thine head an ornament of grace; a crown of glory shall she deliver to thee. ~ Proverbs, #KEYS
346:Life renewed its ways which death and sleep cannot alter,
Life that pursuing her boundless march to a goal which we know not,
Ever her own law obeys, not our hopes, who are slaves of her heart-beats. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
347:(Joan,1941) She wrote me a letter asking,"How can I read it?,Its so hard." I told her to start at the beginning and read as far as you can get until you're lost. Then start again at the beginning and keep working through until you can understand the whole book. And thats what she did ~ Richard P Feynman, #KEYS
348:This bright perfection of her inner state
Poured overflowing into her outward scene,
Made beautiful dull common natural things
And action wonderful and time divine. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Nirvana and the Discovery of the All-Negating Absolute,#KEYS
349:Asked whether she did not dread leaving her body at such a distance from her own city, my mother replied, "Nothing is far to God; nor need I fear lest He should be ignorant at the end of the world of the place whence He is to raise me up." ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
350:All is not here a blinded Nature's task:
A Word, a Wisdom watches us from on high,
A Witness sanctioning her will and works,
An Eye unseen in the unseeing vast; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 02.05,#KEYS
351:A smile came rippling out in her wide eyes,
Its confident felicity's messenger
As if the first beam of the morning sun
Rippled along two wakened lotus-pools. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Eternal Day, The Soul's Choice and the Supreme Consummation,#KEYS
352:Where is Truth and when was her footfall heard
Amid the endless clamour of Time's mart
And which is her voice amid the thousand cries
That cross the listening brain and cheat the soul? ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real,#KEYS
353:Inspiration with her lightning feet,
A sudden messenger from the all-seeing tops,
Traversed the soundless corridors of his mind
Bringing her rhythmic sense of hidden things. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Yoga of the King, The Yoga of the Soul's Release,#KEYS
354:Nothing changes yet all changes, all her workings and creations would in this play collapse into disintegration and chaos; there would be nothing to hold her disparate movements and creations together. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti, #KEYS
355:The waking ear of Nature heard her steps
And wideness turned to her its limitless eye,
And, scattered on sealed depths, her luminous smile
Kindled to fire the silence of the worlds.
All grew a consecration and a rite.
Air was a vibrant link between earth and heaven; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 1:1,#KEYS
356:A human thing on earth,
A lump of Matter, a house of closed sight,
A mind compelled to think out ignorance,
A life-force pressed into a camp of works
And the material world her limiting field. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Entry into the Inner Countries,#KEYS
357:Day came, priest of a sacrifice of joy
Into the worshipping silence of her world;
He carried immortal lustre as his robe,
Trailed heaven like a purple scarf and wore
As his vermilion caste-mark a red sun. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Finding of the Soul,#KEYS
358:Thus was the dire antagonist Energy born
Who mimes the eternal Mother's mighty shape
And mocks her luminous infinity
With a grey distorted silhouette in the Night. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The World of Falsehood, the Mother of Evil and the Sons of Darkness,#KEYS
359:Tis Lilith.
Who?
Adam's first wife is she.
Beware the lure within her lovely tresses,
The splendid sole adornment of her hair;
When she succeeds therewith a youth to snare,
Not soon again she frees him from her jesses. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust,#KEYS
360:The Blessed Virgin is said to have merited to bear the Lord of all, not because she merited God to be incarnate, but because she merited, from the grace given to her, that grade of purity and holiness, which suited her to be the Mother of God ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 3.2.11ad3)., #KEYS
361:A wife endowed with spiritual wisdom is a real partner in life. She greatly helps her husband to follow the religious path. Both of them are devotees of God-His servant and His handmaid. Their family is a spiritual family. They are always happy with God and His devotees ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
362:Nude, unashamed, exulting she upraised.
Her evil face of perilous beauty and charm.
And, drawing panic to a shuddering kiss.
Twixt the magnificence of her fatal breasts.
Allured to their abyss the spirit's f ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Descent into Night,#KEYS
363:I found the spot where truth echoes and know each beauty mark by heart.
But I just can't keep her still enough to render perfect art.
'Cause the truth is ever changing and although she loves my touch,
I've had my way, but I when I pray, she kisses back too much. ~ Saul Williams, Surrender (A Second to Think),#KEYS
364:What most she needs, what most exceeds her scope,
A Mind unvisited by illusion's gleams,
A Will expressive of soul's deity,
A Strength not forced to stumble by its speed,
A Joy that drags not sorrow as its shade. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Secret Knowledge,#KEYS
365:Illusion lost her aggrandising lens;
As from her failing hand the measures fell,
Atomic looked the things that loomed so large.
The little ego's ring could join no more; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Yoga of the King: The Yoga of the Spirit's Freedom and Greatness#KEYS
366:Out and alas! earth's greatest are earth and they fail in the testing,
Conquered by sorrow and doubt, fate's hammerers, fires of her furnace.
God in their souls they renounce and submit to their clay and its promptings. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
367: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,#KEYS
368:Aug 6 The Divine Mother is the power of all causation. She energizes every cause unmistakably to produce the effect. Her will is the only law, and as She cannot make a mistake, nature's laws--Her will--can never be changed. She is the life of the law of karma, or causation.~ Swami Vivekananda, #KEYS
369:Dawn in her journey eternal compelling the labour of mortals,
Dawn the beginner of things with the night for their rest or their ending,
Pallid and bright-lipped arrived from the mists and the chill of the Euxine.
Earth in the dawn-fire delivered fr ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Ilion,#KEYS
370: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,#KEYS
371:Happy, inert, he lies beneath her feet:
His breast he offers for her cosmic dance
Of which our lives are the quivering theatre,
And none could bear but for his strength within,
Yet none would leave because of his delight.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Secret Knowledge,#KEYS
372:Nabhi-Padma (Navel-lotus)
It poured into her navel's lotus depth,
Lodged in the little life-nature's narrow home,
On the body's longings grew heaven-rapture's flower
And made desire a pure celestial flame. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real,#KEYS
373:Night, splendid with the moon dreaming in heaven
In silver peace, possessed her luminous reign.
She brooded through her stillness on a thought
Deep-guarded by her mystic folds of light,
And in her bosom nursed a greater dawn. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Return to Earth,#KEYS
374:The supermind shall claim the world for Light
And thrill with love of God the enamoured heart
And place Light's crown on Nature's lifted head
And found Light's reign on her unshaking base. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Eternal Day, The Soul's Choice and the Supreme Consummation,#KEYS
375:These thoughts were formed not in her listening brain,
Her vacant heart was like a stringless harp;
Impassive the body claimed not its own voice,
But let the luminous greatness through it pass. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Discovery of the Cosmic Spirit and the Cosmic Consciousness,#KEYS
376: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.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, 6,#KEYS
377:The Supreme demands your surrender to her, but does not impose it: you are free at every moment, till the irrevocable transformation comes, to deny and to reject the Divine or to recall your self-giving, if you are willing to suffer the spiritual consequence.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother,#KEYS
378:Heaven had unveiled its lustre in her eyes,
Her feet were moonbeams, her face was a bright sun,
Her smile could persuade a dead lacerated heart
To live again and feel the hands of calm. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
379:All things are subject to sweet pleasure,
But three things keep her richest measure,
The breeze that visits heaven
And knows the planets seven,
The green spring with its flowery truth
Creative and the luminous heart of youth. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Songs to Myrtilla,#KEYS
380:Above them all she stands supporting all,
The sole omnipotent Goddess ever-veiled
Of whom the world is the inscrutable mask;
The ages are the footfalls of her tread,
Their happenings the figure of her thoughts,
And all creation is her endless ac ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The World-Soul,#KEYS
381:Then all grew tranquil in her being's space,
Only sometimes small thoughts arose and fell
Like quiet waves upon a silent sea
Or ripples passing over a lonely pool
When a stray stone disturbs its dreaming rest. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Nirvana and the Discovery of the All-Negating Absolute,#KEYS
382:Behold the beginning of wisdom; therefore get wisdom; and with all thy getting, get understanding. Exalt her and she shall promote thee. She shall bring thee to honour, when thou dost embrace her. She shall give to thine head an ornament of grace; a crown of glory shall she deliver to thee. ~ Proverbs, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
383:Only one doom irreparable treads down the soul of a nation,
Only one downfall endures; 'tis the ruin of greatness and virtue,
Mourning when Freedom departs from the life and the heart of a people,
Into her room comes creeping the mind of the slave. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
384:Earth that was wakened by pain to life and by hunger to thinking
Left to her joys rests inert and content with her gains and her station.
But for the unbearable whips of the gods back soon to her matter
She would go glad and the goal would be missed ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
385: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,#KEYS
386:A flaming Serpent rose released from sleep.
It rose billowing its coils and stood erect
And climbing mightily, stormily on its way
It touched her centres with its flaming mouth;
As if a fiery kiss had broken their sleep,
They bloomed and laughed ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Finding of the Soul,#KEYS
387:Evil is worked, not justice, when into the mould of our thinkings
God we would force and enchain to the throb of our hearts the immortals,—
Justice and Virtue, her sister,—for where is justice mid creatures
Perfectly? Even the gods are betrayed by o ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
388:Stood visible, Titanic, scarlet-clad,
Dark as a thunder-cloud, with streaming hair
Obscuring heaven, and in her sovran grasp
The sword, the flower, the boon, the bleeding head,—
Bhavani. Then she vanished; the daylight
Was ordinary in a common w ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Baji Prabhou,#KEYS
389:The presence of a thought is like the presence of our beloved. We imagine we shall never forget this thought, and that this loved one could never be indifferent to us. But out of sight out of mind! The finest thought runs the risk of being irrevocably forgotten if it is not written down, and the dear one of being forsaken if we do not marry her. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, #KEYS
390:But the actual touch of her lingered, inside his heart. That remained. In all the years of his life ahead, the long years without her, with never seeing her or hearing from her or knowing anything about her, if she was alive or happy or dead or what, that touch stayed locked within him, sealed in himself, and never went away. That one touch of her hand. ~ Philip K Dick, #KEYS
391:Mother-Earth
Who but the fool and improvident, who but the dreamer and madman
Leaves for the far and ungrasped earth's close and provident labour?
Children of earth, our mother gives tokens, she lays down her signposts,
Step by step to advance on her bosom, to g ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
392:But for such vast spiritual change to be,
Out of the mystic cavern in man's heart
The heavenly Psyche must put off her veil
And step into common nature's crowded rooms
And stand uncovered in that nature's front
And rule its thoughts and fill the ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Parable of the Search for the Soul,#KEYS
393:In the realms of the immortal Supermind
Truth who hides here her head in mystery,
Her riddle deemed by reason impossible
In the stark structure of material form,
Unenigmaed lives, unmasked her face and there
Is Nature and the common law of things. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real,#KEYS
394:Perhaps some of you have had relations with that Mahakali. She does not avenge herself, she never does harm to those who love her, she does not strike with epidemics the countries which do not show her sufficient respect and consideration. But she likes violence, she likes war and her justice is crushing. ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #KEYS
395:Her lips endlessly clung to his,
Unwilling ever to separate again
Or lose that honeyed drain of lingering joy,
Unwilling to loose his body from her breast,
The warm inadequate signs that love must use. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Joy of Union; the Ordeal of the Foreknowledge of Death and the Heart's Grief and Pain,#KEYS
396:The Transcendent
This is what is termed the Adya Shakti; she is the Supreme Consciousness and Power above the universe and it is by her that all the Gods are manifested, and even the supramental Ishwara comes into manifestation through her - the supramental Purushottama of whom the Gods are Powers and Personalities. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga,#KEYS
397:Afflicted by his harsh divinity,
Bound to his throne, he waited unappeased
The daily oblation of her unwept tears.
All the fierce question of man's hours relived.
The sacrifice of suffering and desire
Earth offers to the immortal Ecstasy
Began again beneath the eternal Hand.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Symbol Dawn,#KEYS
398:It is no doubt as you say, [1] but that is always the difficulty of the physical consciousness until it has been enlightened from within.
[1] The correspondent wrote that although she wanted to get rid of her desires, confusions and wrong movements, the outward, physical part of her being wanted to hold on to them.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - IV,#KEYS
399:Alarmed for her rule and full of fear and rage
She prowls around each light that gleams through the dark
Casting its ray from the spirit's lonely tent,
Hoping to enter with fierce stealthy tread
And in the cradle slay the divine Child. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The World of Falsehood, the Mother of Evil and the Sons of Darkness,#KEYS
400:Mind looked on Nature with unknowing eyes,
Adored her boons and feared her monstrous strokes.
It pondered not on the magic of her laws,
It thirsted not for the secret wells of Truth,
But made a register of crowding facts
And strung sensations on ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 02.04#KEYS
401:And before thee she shall open wide the portals of her secret chambers and under thy eyes she shall lay bare the treasures hidden in the deeps of her bosom. But she shows not her treasures save to the eye of the spirit, the eve which is never closed, the eye which is met by no veil in any of the kingdoms of her empire. ~ Book of Golden Precepts, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
402:Here even the highest rapture Time can give
Is a mimicry of ungrasped beatitudes,
A mutilated statue of ecstasy,
A wounded happiness that cannot live,
A brief felicity of mind or sense
Thrown by the World-Power to her body-slave,
Or a simulacr ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Yoga of the King, The Yoga of the Spirit's Freedom and Greatness,#KEYS
403:All worshipped marvellingly, none dared to claim.
Her mind sat high pouring its golden beams,
Her heart was a crowded temple of delight.
A single lamp lit in perfection's house,
A bright pure image in a priestless shrine,
Midst those encircling lives her spirit dwelt,
Apart in herself until her hour of fate. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 4:2,#KEYS
404:... The undivine, therefore, is all that is unwilling to accept the light and force of the Mother. That is why I am always telling you to keep yourself in contact with the Mother and with her Light and Force, because it is only so that you can come out of this confusion and obscurity and receive the Truth that comes from above. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #KEYS
405:Accepting the universe as her body of woe,
The Mother of the seven sorrows bore
The seven stabs that pierced her bleeding heart:
The beauty of sadness lingered on her face,
Her eyes were dim with the ancient stain of tears.
Her heart was riven wi ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
406:As if in a long endless tossing street
One driven mid a trampling hurrying crowd
Hour after hour she trod without release
Holding by her will the senseless meute at bay;
Out of the dreadful press she dragged her will
And fixed her thought upon the saviour Name;
Then all grew still and empty; she was free. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 7.03,#KEYS
407:A writer - and, I believe, generally all persons - must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #KEYS
408:Remember that the Mother is always with you.
Address Her as follows and She will pull you out of all difficulties:
"O Mother, Thou art the light of my intelligence, the purity of my soul,
the quiet strength of my vital, the endurance of my body.
I rely on Thee alone and want to be entirely Thine.
Make me surmount all obstacles on the way."
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother III, [T1],#KEYS
409:The Mother guides, helps each according to his nature and need, and, where necessary, herself intervenes with her Power enabling the sadhak to withstand the rigours and demands of the Path. She has placed herself - with all the Love, Peace, Knowledge and Consciousness that she is - at the disposal of every aspiring soul that looks for help.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother, [T2],#KEYS
410:The priestess of Artemis took hold of her almost with the violence of a lover, and whisked her away into a languid ecstasy of reverie. She communicated her own enthusiasm to the girl, and kept her mind occupied with dreams, faery-fervid, of uncharted seas of glory on which her galleon might sail, undiscovered countries of spice and sweetness, Eldorado and Utopia and the City of God. ~ Aleister Crowley, #KEYS
411:But Indra does not turn back from the quest like Agni and Vayu; he pursues his way through the highest ether of the pure mentality and there he approaches the Woman, the manyshining, Uma Haimavati; from her he learns that this Daemon is the Brahman by whom alone the gods of mind and life and body conquer and affirm themselves, and in whom alone they are great. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Kena And Other Upanishads, 83, #KEYS
412:Even in what is suffering to our sense,
He feels the sweetness of her mastering touch,
In all experience meets her blissful hands;
On his heart he bears the happiness of her tread
And the surprise of her arrival's joy
In each event and every moment's chance.
All she can do is marvellous in his sight:
He revels in her, a swimmer in her sea, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 1:4,#KEYS
413:As comes a goddess to a mortal's breast
And fills his days with her celestial clasp,
She stooped to make her home in transient shapes;
In Matter's womb she cast the Immortal's fire,
In the unfeeling Vast woke thought and hope,
Smote with her charm and beauty flesh and nerve
And forced delight on earth's insensible frame.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Glory and the Fall of Life,#KEYS
414:All was abolished save her naked self
And the prostrate yearning of her surrendered heart:
There was no strength in her, no pride of force;
The lofty burning of desire had sunk
Ashamed, a vanity of separate self,
The hope of spiritual greatness fled,
Salvation she asked not nor a heavenly crown:
Humility seemed now too proud a state. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Finding of the Soul,#KEYS
415:BUT NOW the destined spot and hour were close;
Unknowing she had neared her nameless goal.
For though a dress of blind and devious chance
Is laid upon the work of all-wise Fate,
Our acts interpret an omniscient Force
That dwells in the compelling stuff of things,
And nothing happens in the cosmic play
But at its time and in its foreseen place.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Destined Meeting-Place,#KEYS
416:Her self was nothing, God alone was all,
Yet God she knew not but only knew he was.
A sacred darkness brooded now within,
The world was a deep darkness great and nude.
This void held more than all the teeming worlds,
This blank felt more than all that Time has borne,
This dark knew dumbly, immensely the Unknown.
But all was formless, voiceless, infinite.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Finding of the Soul,#KEYS
417:
The priest an ignorant mage who only makes
Futile mutations in the altar's plan
And casts blind hopes into a powerless flame.
A burden of transient gains weighs down her steps
And hardly under that load can she advance;
But the hours cry to her, she travels on
Passing from thought to thought, from want to want;
Her greatest progress is a deepened need.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Growth of the Flame,#KEYS
418:For arousing compassion, the nineteenth-century yogi Patrul Rinpoche suggested imagining beings in torment - an animal about to be slaughtered, a person awaiting execution. To make it more immediate, he recommended imagining ourselves in their place. Particularly painful is his image of a mother with no arms watching as a raging river sweeps her child away. To contact the suffering of another being fully and directly is as painful as being in the woman's shoes. ~ Pema Chodron, #KEYS
419:Q: I wrote to the Mother a prayer in French. Her answer to it was: "Ouvre ton cæur et tu me trouveras déjà là." ("Open your heart and you will find me already there.") What exactly does this signify?
A: What the Mother meant was this that when there is a certain opening of the heart, you find that there was always the eternal union there (the same that you experience always in the Self above).
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother, 2-7-1935,#KEYS
420:All knowledge is ultimately the knowledge of God, through himself, through Nature, through her works. Mankind has first to seek this knowledge through the external life; for until its mentality is sufficiently developed, spiritual knowledge is not really possible, and in proportion as it is developed, the possibilities of spiritual knowledge become richer and fuller.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Integral Knowledge, The Higher and the Lower Knowledge,#KEYS
421:Happy is the man that findeth wisdom and the man that getteth understanding. For the merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver and the gain thereof than fine gold. She is more precious than rubies and all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her. Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her, and happy is everyone that retaineth her. ~ Proverbs, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
422:... The sadhana of inner concentration consists in:
(1) Fixing the consciousness in the heart and concentrating there on the idea, image or name of the Divine Mother, whichever comes easiest to you.
(2) A gradual and progressive quieting of the mind by this concentration in the heart.
(3) An aspiration for the Mother's presence in the heart and the control by her of mind, life and action. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, Combining Work, Meditation and Bhakti,#KEYS
423:Detaching oneself from the ignorant actions of the mind and vital and from any kind of ambition, and allowing the Divine Mother to work according to Her own will, one can have inner as well as outer peace and happiness; and this, I think, is the way one can serve the Mother gratefully and sincerely. Is this not so?
Certainly, action without ambition and egoistic calculation is the condition of peace and felicity - both inner and outer.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS
424:Two seem his goals, yet ever are they one
And gaze at each other over bourneless Time;
Spirit and Matter are their end and source. ||16.9||
A seeker of hidden meanings in life’s forms,
Of the great Mother’s wide uncharted will
And the rude enigma of her terrestrial ways
He is the explorer and the mariner
On a secret inner ocean without bourne:
He is the adventurer and cosmologist
Of a magic earth’s obscure geography. ||16.10|| ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 1:3, || 16.9 - 16.10 ||,#KEYS
425:The three of them knew it. She was Kafka's mistress. Kafka had dreamt her. The three of them knew it. He was Kafka's friend. Kafka had dreamt him. The three of them knew it. The woman said to the friend, Tonight I want you to have me. The three of them knew it. The man replied: If we sin, Kafka will stop dreaming us. One of them knew it. There was no longer anyone on earth. Kafka said to himself Now the two of them have gone, I'm left alone. I'll stop dreaming myself. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #KEYS
426:I have learnt all that was hidden and all that was yet undiscovered because I was taught by wisdom herself that created everything. For there is in her a spirit of intelligence which is holy, unique, multiple in her effects, fine, copious, agile, spotless, dear, soft, friendly to good, penetrant, which nothing can prevent from acting, benevolent, friendly to men, kind, stable, infallible, calm, that achieves all, that sees all, that can comprehend all minds in itself, that is intelligible, pure and subtle. ~ Book of Wisdom, #KEYS
427:All of the various types of teachings and spiritual paths are related to the different capacities of understanding that different individuals have. There does not exist, from an absolute point of view, any teaching which is more perfect or effective than another. A teaching's value lies solely in the inner awakening which an individual can arrive at through it. If a person benefits from a given teaching, for that person that teaching is the supreme path, because it is suited to his or her nature and capacities. ~ Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche, #KEYS
428:I didn't learn until I was in college about all the other cultures, and I should have learned that in the first grade. A first grader should understand that his or her culture isn't a rational invention; that there are thousands of other cultures and they all work pretty well; that all cultures function on faith rather than truth; that there are lots of alternatives to our own society. Cultural relativism is defensible and attractive. It's also a source of hope. It means we don't have to continue this way if we don't like it. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #KEYS
429:Tell me, enigmatical man, whom do you love best, your father,
Your mother, your sister, or your brother?
I have neither father, nor mother, nor sister, nor brother.
Your friends?
Now you use a word whose meaning I have never known.
Your country?
I do not know in what latitude it lies.
Beauty?
I could indeed love her, Goddess and Immortal.
Gold?
I hate it as you hate God.
Then, what do you love, extraordinary stranger?
I love the clouds the clouds that pass up there
Up there the wonderful clouds!
~ Charles Baudelaire,#KEYS
430:Or, a courtier in her countless retinue,
Content to be with her and feel her near
He makes the most of the little that she gives
And all she does drapes with his own delight. ||13.24||
A glance can make his whole day wonderful,
A word from her lips with happiness wings the hours. ||13.25||
He leans on her for all he does and is:
He builds on her largesses his proud fortunate days
And trails his peacock-plumaged joy of life
And suns in the glory of her passing smile. ||13.25|| ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 1:3, || 13.24 - 13.25 ||,#KEYS
431:From the morning there has been a feeling of nearness to the Mother, almost as if there were no difference between us. But how can that be possible, as there is such a great gulf between her and me? I am on the mental plane and she is on the highest Supramental.
But the Mother is there not only on the Supramental but on all the planes. And especially she is close to everyone in the psychic part (the inner heart), so when that opens, the feeling of nearness naturally comes. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother, [T4],#KEYS
432:God must be seen and loved in the ignorant, the humble, the weak, the vile, the outcaste. In the Vibhuti himself it is not, except as a symbol, the outward individual that is to be thus recognised and set high, but the one Godhead who displays himself in the power But this does not abrogate the fact that there is an ascending scale in manifestation and that Nature mounts upward in her degrees of self-expression from her groping, dark or suppressed symbols to the first visible expressions of the Godhead.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays On The Gita,#KEYS
433:I have learnt all that was hidden and all that was yet undiscovered because I was taught by wisdom herself that created everything. For there is in her a spirit of intelligence which is holy, unique, multiple in her effects, fine, copious, agile, spotless, dear, soft, friendly to good, penetrant, which nothing can prevent from acting, benevolent, friendly to men, kind, stable, infallible, calm, that achieves all, that sees all, that can comprehend all minds in itself, that is intelligible, pure and subtle. ~ Book of Wisdom, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
434:She follows to the goal of those that are passing on beyond, she is the first in the eternal succession of the dawns that are coming, - Usha widens bringing out that which lives, awakening someone who was dead. . . . What is her scope when she harmonises with the dawns that shone out before and those that now must shine? She desires the ancient mornings and fulfils their light; projecting forwards her illumination she enters into communion with the rest that are to come.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, [Kutsu Angirasa - Rig Veda I. 113. 8, 10,#KEYS
435:These questionings and depressions are very foolish movements of the mind. If you were not open to the Grace, you would not have had these descents or experiences and there would have been no such progress as you have made. You have not to put such questions but to take it as a settled fact, and with full faith in the Mother and her working in you go on with your sadhana. Whatever difficulties there may be, will be solved in time by the natural progress of the sadhana. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - IV, Dealing with Depression and Despondency, #KEYS
436: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 her ordinary pastures.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Jnana, [6], [T5],#KEYS
437:The fundamental realisations of this yoga are: 1. The psychic change so that a compete devotion can be the main motive of the heart and the ruler of the thought, life and action in constant union with the Mother and in her Presence. 2. The descent of the Peace, Power, Light, etc. of the Higher Consciousness through the head and heart into the whole being, occupying the very cells of the body. 3. The perception of the One and Divine infinitely everywhere, the Mother everywhere and living in that infinite consciousness.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - IV,#KEYS
438:Across a luminous dream of spirit-space
She builds creation like a rainbow bridge
Between the original Silence and the Void.
A net is made of the mobile universe;
She weaves a snare for the conscious Infinite.
A knowledge is with her that conceals its steps
And seems a mute omnipotent Ignorance.
A might is with her that makes wonders true;
The incredible is her stuff of common fact.
Her purposes, her workings riddles prove;
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 02.06,#KEYS
439:...to quiet the mind and get the spiritual experience it is necessary first to purify and prepare the nature. This sometimes takes many years. Work done with the right attitude is the easiest means for that - i.e. work done without desire or ego, rejecting all movements of desire, demand or ego when the come, done as an offering to the Divine Mother, with the remembrance of her and prayer to her to manifest her force and take up the action so that there too and not only in inner silence you can feel her presence and working.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,#KEYS
440:This Magical Will is the wand in your hand by which the Great Work is accomplished, by which the Daughter is not merely set upon the throne of the Mother, but assumed into the Highest. : In one, the best, system of Magick, the Absolute is called the Crown, God is called the Father, the Pure Soul is called the Mother, the Holy Guardian Angel is called the Son, and the Natural Soul is called the Daughter. The Son purifies the Daughter by wedding her; she thus becomes the Mother, the uniting of whom with the Father absorbs all into the Crown. ~ Aleister Crowley, Book 4, #KEYS
441:In dangers, in doubts, in difficulties, think of Mary, call upon Mary. Let not her name depart from your lips, never suffer it to leave your heart. And that you may obtain the assistance of her prayer, neglect not to walk in her footsteps. With her for guide, you shall never go astray; while invoking her, you shall never lose heart; so long as she is in your mind, you are safe from deception; while she holds your hand, you cannot fall; under her protection you have nothing to fear; if she walks before you, you shall not grow weary; if she shows you favor, you shall reach the goal. ~ Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, #KEYS
442:Here first she crawled out from her cabin of mud
Where she had lain inconscient, rigid, mute:
Its narrowness and torpor held her still,
A darkness clung to her uneffaced by Light.
There neared no touch redeeming from above:
The upward look was alien to her sight,
Forgotten the fearless godhead of her walk;
Renounced was the glory and felicity,
The adventure in the dangerous fields of Time:
Hardly she availed, wallowing, to bear and live.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 02.04#KEYS
443:If you want to be a true doer of divine works, your first aim must be to be totally free from all desire and self-regarding ego. All your life must be an offering and a sacrifice to the Supreme; your only object in action shall be to serve, to receive, to fulfil, to become a manifesting instrument of the Divine Shakti in her works. You must grow in the divine consciousness till there is no difference between your will and hers, no motive except her impulsion in you, no action that is not her conscious action in you and through you.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother,#KEYS
444: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.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Life and Yoga, [6],#KEYS
445:Your love renders you impatient and disturbed.
With such sincerity you have placed your head at her feet that you are oblivious to the world.
When in the eyes of your beloved riches don't count, gold and dust are as one to you.
You say that she dwells in your eyes - if they be closed, she is in your mind.
If she demands your life, you place it in her hand; if she places a sword upon your head, you hold it forward.
When earthly love produces such confusion and demands such obedience, don't you wonder if travelers of the road of God remain engulfed in the Ocean of Reality? ~ Saadi,#KEYS
446:As in a mystic and dynamic dance
A priestess of immaculate ecstasies
Inspired and ruled from Truth's revealing vault
Moves in some prophet cavern of the gods
A heart of silence in the hands of joy
Inhabited with rich creative beats
A body like a parable of dawn
That seemed a niche for veiled divinity
Or golden temple-door to things beyond.
Immortal rhythms swayed in her time-born steps;
Her look, her smile awoke celestial sense
Even in earth-stuff, and their intense delight
Poured a supernal beauty on men's lives.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue,#KEYS
447:As a rule the only mantra used in this sadhana is that of the Mother or of my name and the Mother. The concentration in the heart and the concentration in the head can both be used - each has its own result. The first opens up the psychic being and brings bhakti, love and union with the Mother, her presence within the heart and the action of her Force in the nature. The other opens the mind to self-realisation, to the consciousness of what is above mind, to the ascent of the consciousness out of the body and the descent of the higher consciousness into the body. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, #KEYS
448:The One whom we adore as the Mother is the divine Conscious Force that dominates all existence, one and yet so many-sided that to follow her movement is impossible even for the quickest mind and for the freest and most vast intelligence. The Mother is the consciousness and force of the Supreme and far above all she creates. But something of her ways can be seen and felt through her embodiments and the more seizable because more defined and limited temperament and action of the goddess forms in whom she consents to be manifest to her creatures. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother, [T4], #KEYS
449:{3:13} Happy [is] the man [that] findeth wisdom, and the man [that] getteth understanding.
{3:14} For the merchandise of it [is] better than the merchandise of silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold.
{3:15} She [is] more precious than rubies: and all the things thou canst desire arenot to be compared unto her.
{3:16} Length of days [is] in her right hand; [and] in her left hand riches and honour.
{3:17} Her ways [are] ways of pleasantness, and all her paths [are] peace.
{3:18} She [is] a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her: and happy [is every one] that retaineth her. ~ Anonymous, The Bible, Proverbs, 3:13-18,#KEYS
450:Her mortal members fell back from her soul.
A moment of a secret body's sleep,
Her trance knew not of sun or earth or world;
Thought, time and death were absent from her grasp:
She knew not self, forgotten was Savitri.
All was the violent ocean of a will
Where lived captive to an immense caress,
Possessed in a supreme identity,
Her aim, joy, origin, Satyavan alone.
Her sovereign prisoned in her being's core,
He beat there like a rhythmic heart, - herself
But different still, one loved, enveloped, clasped,
A treasure saved from the collapse of space. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri,#KEYS
451:As Saraswati represents the truth-audition, sruti, which gives the inspired word, so Ila represents dr.s.t.i, the truthvision. If so, since dr.s.t.i and sruti are the two powers of the Rishi, the Kavi, the Seer of the Truth, we can understand the close connection of Ila and Saraswati. Bharati or Mahi is the largeness of the Truth-consciousness which, dawning on man's limited mind, brings with it the two sister Puissances. We can also understand how these fine and living distinctions came afterwards to be neglected as the Vedic knowledge declined and Bharati, Saraswati, Ila melted into one. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Secret Of The Veda, 1.09 - Saraswati and Her Consorts, #KEYS
452:ASTROLOGER. Greet reverentially this star-blest hour!
Let magic loose the tyranny of Reason
And Fantasy, fetched from afar, display her power, 6620 For it belongs to her, this great occasion.
What all here boldly asked to see, now see it!
A thing impossible-therefore believe it.
[Faust mounts the proscenium from the other side.]
In priestly robes, head wreathed, the wonder-working man
Now confidently consummates what he began.
A tripod from the depths accompanied his ascent,
Incense is burning in the bowl, I smell the scent,
Next comes the invocation, all's prepared; ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust,#KEYS
453: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 suffiently partake of the purity of the supernal essence, suffiently 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.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS
454:conditions of the psychic opening :::
For the opening of the psychic being, concentration on the Mother and self-offering to her are the direct way. The growth of Bhakti which you feel is the first sign of the psychic development. A sense of the Mother's presence or force or the remembrance of her supporting and strengthening you is the next sign. Eventually, the soul within begins to be active in aspiration and psychic perception guiding the mind to the right thoughts, the vital to the right movements and feelings, showing and rejecting all that has to be put away and turning the whole being in all its movements to the Divine alone. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - III,#KEYS
455:Krishna:::
At last I find a meaning of soul's birth
Into this universe terrible and sweet,
I who have felt the hungry heart of earth
Aspiring beyond heaven to Krishna's feet.
I have seen the beauty of immortal eyes,
And heard the passion of the Lover's flute,
And known a deathless ecstasy's surprise
And sorrow in my heart for ever mute.
Nearer and nearer now the music draws,
Life shudders with a strange felicity;
All Nature is a wide enamoured pause
Hoping her lord to touch, to clasp, to be.
For this one moment lived the ages past;
The world now throbs fulfilled in me at last. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems,#KEYS
456:The dream is evidently an indication of the difficulty you are experiencing. The sea is the sea of the vital nature whose flood is pursuing you (desires are the sea water) on your road of sadhana.
The Mother is there in your heart but sleeping - i.e. her power has not become conscious in your inner consciousness because she is surrounded by the thin curtain of skin (the obscurity of the physical nature). It is this (it is not thick any longer but still effective to veil her from you) which has to go so that she may awake. It is a matter of persistence in the will and the endeavour - the response from within, the awaking of the Mother in the heart will come. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - III,#KEYS
457:There is no method in this Yoga except to concentrate, preferably in the heart, and call the presence and power of the Mother to take up the being and by the workings of her force transform the consciousness; one can concentrate also in the head or between the eyebrows, but for many this is a too difficult opening. When the mind falls quiet and the concentration becomes strong and the aspiration intense, then there is a beginning of experience. The more the faith, the more rapid the result is likely to be. For the rest one must not depend on one's own efforts only, but succeed in establishing a contact with the Divine and a receptivity to the Mother's Power and Presence.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,#KEYS
458:Alas! I find no customers who want anything better than kalai pulse. No one wants to give up 'woman and gold'. Man, deluded by the beauty of woman and the power of money, forgets God. But to one who has seen the beauty of God, even the position of Brahma, the Creator, seems insignificant.
A man said to Ravana, 'You have been going to Sita in different disguises; why don't you go to her in the form of Rama?' 'But', Ravana replied, 'when I meditate on Rama in my heart, the most beautiful women - celestial maidens like Rambha and Tilottama - appear no better than ashes of the funeral pyre. Then even the position of Brahma appears trivial to me, not to speak of the beauty of another man's wife.' ~ Sri Ramakrishna,#KEYS
459:One memory alone was left: the thought of his beautiful wife. This thought possessed his mind with such intensity that he did not notice his loss of memory for the rest of the world. His whole nature became obsessed by her image, and like a madman, who losing his own identity becomes the being whose image possesses him, Puranjana found him self transformed into a lovely young girl like his wife.
"The young girl he had now become forgot her previous identity to such an extent that when she met with King Malayadhvaja, she fell in love with him and married him. When in the course of time the king passed away and she was left alone, lamenting his death and her bereavement, an unknown brahm in came to her and said:
~ Rishi Nityabodhananda, Ajna Chakra,#KEYS
460:Then miracle is made the common rule,
One mighty deed can change the course of things;
A lonely thought becomes omnipotent.
All now seems Nature's massed machinery;
An endless servitude to material rule
And long determination's rigid chain,
Her firm and changeless habits aping Law,
Her empire of unconscious deft device
Annul the claim of man's free human will.
He too is a machine amid machines;
A piston brain pumps out the shapes of thought,
A beating heart cuts out emotion's modes;
An insentient energy fabricates a soul.
Or the figure of the world reveals the signs
Of a tied Chance repeating her old steps
In circles around Matter's binding-posts.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue,#KEYS
461:Although our fallen minds forget to climb,
Although our human stuff resists or breaks,
She keeps her will that hopes to divinise clay;
Failure cannot repress, defeat o'erthrow;
Time cannot weary her nor the Void subdue,
The ages have not made her passion less;
No victory she admits of Death or Fate.
Always she drives the soul to new attempt;
Always her magical infinitude
Forces to aspire the inert brute elements;
As one who has all infinity to waste,
She scatters the seed of the Eternal's strength
On a half-animate and crumbling mould,
Plants heaven's delight in the heart's passionate mire,
Pours godhead's seekings into a bare beast frame,
Hides immortality in a mask of death.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri,#KEYS
462:all life is yoga.. :::
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 - 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.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, 6,#KEYS
463:Everyone who is turned to the Mother is doing my Yoga. It is a great mistake to suppose that one can 'do' the Purna Yoga - i.e. carry out and fulfil all the sides of the Yoga by one's own effort. No human being can do that. What one has to do is to put oneself in the Mother's hands and open oneself to her by service, by bhakti, by aspiration; then the Mother by her light and force works in him so that the sadhana is done. It is a mistake also to have the ambition to be a big Purna Yogi or a supramental being and ask oneself how far have I got towards that. The right attitude is to be devoted and given to the Mother and to wish to be whatever she wants you to be. The rest is for the Mother to decide and do in you.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother, 151 [T3],#KEYS
464:203. God and Nature are like a boy and girl at play and in love. They hide and run from each other when glimpsed so that they may be sought after and chased and captured.
Man is God hiding himself from Nature so that he may possess her by struggle, insistence, violence and surprise. God is universal and transcendent Man hiding himself from his own individuality in the human being.
The animal is Man disguised in a hairy skin and upon four legs; the worm is Man writhing and crawling towards the evolution of his Manhood. Even crude forms of Matter are Man in his inchoate body. All things are Man, the Purusha.
For what do we mean by Man? An uncreated and indestructible soul that has housed itself in a mind and body made of its own elements. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Thoughts And Aphorisms,#KEYS
465:O DIVINE Force, supreme Illuminator, hearken to our prayer, move not away from us, do not withdraw, help us to fight the good fight, make firm our strength for the struggle, give us the force to conquer!
O my sweet Master, Thou whom I adore without being able to know Thee, Thou who I am without being able to realise Thee, my entire conscious individuality prostrates itself before Thee and implores, in the name of the workers in their struggle, and of the earth in her agony, in the name of suffering humanity and of striving Nature;
O my sweet Master, O marvellous Unknowable, O Dispenser of all boons, Thou who makest light spring forth in the darkness and strength to arise out of weakness, support our effort, guide our steps, lead us to victory.
~ The Mother, Prayers And Meditations, 211,#KEYS
466:The full recognition of this inner Guide, Master of the Yoga, lord, light, enjoyer and goal of all sacrifice and effort, is of the utmost importance in the path of integral perfection. It is immaterial whether he is first seen as an impersonal Wisdom, Love and Power behind all things, as an Absolute manifesting in the relative and attracting it, as one's highest Self and the highest Self of all, as a Divine Person within us and in the world, in one of his-or her-numerous forms and names or as the ideal which the mind conceives. In the end we perceive that he is all and more than all these things together. The mind's door of entry to the conception of him must necessarily vary according to the past evolution and the present nature.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Four Aids, 62,#KEYS
467:But what Nature aims at for the mass in a slow evolution, Yoga effects for the individual by a rapid revolution. It works by a quickening of all her energies, a sublimation of all her faculties. While she develops the spiritual life with difficulty and has constantly to fall back from it for the sake of her lower realisations, the sublimated force, the concentrated method of Yoga can attain directly and carry with it the perfection of the mind and even, if she will, the perfection of the body. Nature seeks the Divine in her own symbols: Yoga goes beyond Nature to the Lord of Nature, beyond universe to the Transcendent and can return with the transcendent light and power, with the fiat of the Omnipotent.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Conditions Of The Synthesis, The Threefold Life, 29,#KEYS
468:Apotheosised, transfigured by wisdom's touch,
Her days became a luminous sacrifice;
An immortal moth in happy and endless fire,
She burned in his sweet intolerable blaze.
A captive Life wedded her conqueror.
In his wide sky she built her world anew;
She gave to mind's calm pace the motor's speed,
To thinking a need to live what the soul saw,
To living an impetus to know and see.
His splendour grasped her, her puissance to him clung;
She crowned the Idea a king in purple robes,
Put her magic serpent sceptre in Thought's grip,
Made forms his inward vision's rhythmic shapes
And her acts the living body of his will.
A flaming thunder, a creator flash,
His victor Light rode on her deathless Force;
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Glory and the Fall of Life,#KEYS
469:At her will the inscrutable Supermind leans down
To guide her force that feels but cannot know,
Its breath of power controls her restless seas
And life obeys the governing Idea.
At her will, led by a luminous Immanence
The hazardous experimenting Mind
Pushes its way through obscure possibles
Mid chance formations of an unknowing world.
Our human ignorance moves towards the Truth
That Nescience may become omniscient,
Transmuted instincts shape to divine thoughts,
Thoughts house infallible immortal sight
And Nature climb towards God's identity.
The Master of the worlds self-made her slave
Is the executor of her fantasies:
She has canalised the seas of omnipotence;
She has limited by her laws the Illimitable.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Glory and the Fall of Life,#KEYS
470:Driven by her breath across life's tossing deep,
Through the thunder's roar and through the windless hush,
Through fog and mist where nothing more is seen,
He carries her sealed orders in his breast.
Late will he know, opening the mystic script,
Whether to a blank port in the Unseen
He goes or, armed with her fiat, to discover
A new mind and body in the city of God
And enshrine the Immortal in his glory's house
And make the finite one with Infinity.
Across the salt waste of the endless years
Her ocean winds impel his errant boat,
The cosmic waters plashing as he goes,
A rumour around him and danger and a call.
Always he follows in her force's wake.
He sails through life and death and other life,
He travels on through waking and through sleep. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 1:4,#KEYS
471:The ship creaked and gravity shifted a degree to Miller's right. Course correction. Nothing interesting. Miller closed his eyes and tried to will himself to sleep. His mind was full of dead men and Julie and love and sex. There was something Holden had said about the war that was important, but he couldn't make the pieces fit. They kept changing. Miller sighed, shifted his weight so that he blocked one of his drainage tubes and had to shift back to stop the alarm.
When the blood pressure cuff fired off again, it was Julie holding him, pulling herself so close her lips brushed his ear. His eyes opened, his mind seeing both the imaginary girl and the monitors that she would have blocked if she'd really been there.
I love you too, she said, and I will take care of you.
He smiled at seeing the numbers change as his heart raced. ~ James S A Corey, Leviathan Wakes,#KEYS
472:There are periods in the history of the world when the unseen Power that guides its destinies seems to be filled with a consuming passion for change and a strong impatience of the old. The Great Mother, the Adya Shakti, has resolved to take the nations into Her hand and shape them anew. These are periods of rapid destruction and energetic creation, filled with the sound of cannon and the trampling of armies, the crash of great downfalls, and the turmoil of swift and violent revolutions; the world is thrown into the smelting pot and comes out in a new shape and with new features. They are periods when the wisdom of the wise is confounded and the prudence of the prudent turned into a laughing-stock.... ~ Sri Aurobindo, in a statement of 16 April 1907, as published in India's Rebirth : A Selection from Sri Aurobindo's Writings, Talks and Speeches 3rd Edition (2000) #KEYS
473:Dare to be wise! Energy and spirit is needed to overcome the obstacles which indolence of nature as well as cowardice of heart oppose to our instruction. It is not without significance that the old myth makes the goddess of Wisdom emerge fully armed from the head of Jupiter; for her very first function is warlike. Even in her birth she has to maintain a hard struggle with the senses, which do not want to be dragged from their sweet repose. The greater part of humanity is too much harassed and fatigued by the struggle with want, to rally itself for a new and sterner struggle with error. Content if they themselves escape the hard labor of thought, men gladly resign to others the guardianship of their ideas, and if it happens that higher needs are stirred in them, they embrace with a eager faith the formulas which State and priesthood hold in readiness for such an occasion. ~ Friedrich Schiller, #KEYS
474:Often he went to the workshop, to encourage the assistant Erich, who continued working at the altar and eagerly awaited his master's return. Sometimes the Abbot unlocked Goldmund's room, where the Mary figure stood, lifted the cloth from the figure carefully and stayed with her awhile. He knew nothing of the figure's origin; Goldmund had never told him Lydia's story. But he felt everything; he saw that the girl's form had long lived in Goldmund's heart. Perhaps he had seduced her, perhaps betrayed and left her. But, truer than the most faithful husband, he had taken her along in his soul, preserving her image until finally, perhaps after many years in which he had never seen her again, he had fashioned this beautiful, touching statue of a girl and captured in her face, her bearing, her hands all the tenderness, admiration, and longing of their love.
~ Hermann Hesse, Narcissus and Goldmund,#KEYS
475:Above her little finite steps she feels,
Careless of knot or pause, worlds which weave out
A strange perfection beyond law and rule,
A universe of self-found felicity,
An inexpressible rhythm of timeless beats,
The many-movemented heart-beats of the One,
Magic of the boundless harmonies of self,
Order of the freedom of the infinite,
The wonder-plastics of the Absolute.
There is the All-Truth and there the timeless bliss.
But hers are fragments of a star-lost gleam,
Hers are but careless visits of the gods.
They are a Light that fails, a Word soon hushed
And nothing they mean can stay for long on earth.
There are high glimpses, not the lasting sight.
A few can climb to an unperishing sun,
Or live on the edges of the mystic moon
And channel to earth-mind the wizard ray. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Eternal Day,#KEYS
476:Here where one knows not even the step in front
And Truth has her throne on the shadowy back of doubt,
On this anguished and precarious field of toil
Outspread beneath some large indifferent gaze,
Impartial witness of our joy and bale,
Our prostrate soil bore the awakening ray.
Here too the vision and prophetic gleam
Lit into miracles common meaningless shapes;
Then the divine afflatus, spent, withdrew,
Unwanted, fading from the mortal's range.
A sacred yearning lingered in its trace,
The worship of a Presence and a Power
Too perfect to be held by death-bound hearts,
The prescience of a marvellous birth to come.
Only a little the god-light can stay:
Spiritual beauty illumining human sight
Lines with its passion and mystery Matter's mask
And squanders eternity on a beat of Time.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Symbol Dawn,#KEYS
477:Maheshwari can appear too calm and great and distant for the littleness of earthly nature to approach or contain her, Mahakali too swift and formidable for its weakness to bear; but all turn with joy and longing to Mahalakshmi.
For she throws the spell of the intoxicating sweetness of the Divine: to be close to her is a profound happiness and to feel her within the heart is to make the existence a rapture and a marvel; grace and charm and tenderness flow from her like the light from the sun and wherever she fixes her wonderful gaze or lets fall of the loveliness of her smile, the soul is seized and made captive and plunged into the depths of an unfathomable bliss.
Magnetic is the touch of her hands and their occult and delicate influence refines the mind and life and body and where she presses her feet course miraculous streams of an entrancing Ananda.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother,#KEYS
478:Please explain to me what is meant by the Divine Mother.
The Divine Mother is the Consciousness and Force of the Divine - which is the Mother of all things.
24 June 1933
You have written in The Mother that the Mother is the consciousness and force of the Ishwara, but here my experience is that the Ishwara is the consciousness and force of the Supreme Mother. Could you please make it clear to me?
The Mother is the consciousness and force of the Divine - or, it may be said, she is the Divine in its consciousness-force. The Ishwara as Lord of the Cosmos does come out of the Mother who takes her place beside him as the cosmic Shakti - the cosmic Ishwara is one aspect of the Divine. The experience therefore is correct so far as it goes.
16 November 1934 ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother, The Mother, the Divine and the Lower Nature, The Consciousness and Force of the Divine,#KEYS
479:The way the dog trots out the front door
every morning
without a hat or an umbrella,
without any money
or the keys to her doghouse
never fails to fill the saucer of my heart
with milky admiration.
Who provides a finer example
of a life without encumbrance-
Thoreau in his curtainless hut
with a single plate, a single spoon?
Gandhi with his staff and his holy diapers?
Off she goes into the material world
with nothing but her brown coat
and her modest blue collar,
following only her wet nose,
the twin portals of her steady breathing,
followed only by the plume of her tail.
If only she did not shove the cat aside
every morning
and eat all his food
what a model of self-containment she
would be,
what a paragon of earthly detachment.
If only she were not so eager
for a rub behind the ears,
so acrobatic in her welcomes,
if only I were not her god. ~ Billy Collins, Dharma,#KEYS
480:Please initiate me into a tangible form of Yoga. I make this assurance that I shall follow your instructions to the very letter and refer to you my doubts and difficulties on the way.
There is no method in this Yoga except to concentrate, preferably in the heart, and call the presence and power of the Mother to take up the being and by the workings of her force transform the consciousness; one can concentrate also in the head or between the eyebrows, but for many this is a too difficult opening. When the mind falls quiet and the concentration becomes strong and the aspiration intense, then there is a beginning of experience. The more the faith, the more rapid the result is likely to be. For the rest one must not depend on one's own efforts only, but succeed in establishing a contact with the Divine and a receptivity to the Mother's Power and Presence. 30 November 1934 ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother,#KEYS
481:Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend, the cold, obscure shelter where moult the wings which will bear it farther than suns and stars. He who should inspire and lead his race must be defended from travelling with the souls of other men, from living, breathing, reading, and writing in the daily, time-worn yoke of their opinions. "In the morning, - solitude;" said Pythagoras; that Nature may speak to the imagination, as she does never in company, and that her favorite may make acquaintance with those divine strengths which disclose themselves to serious and abstracted thought. 'Tis very certain that Plato, Plotinus, Archimedes, Hermes, Newton, Milton, Wordsworth, did not live in a crowd, but descended into it from time to time as benefactors: and the wise instructor will press this point of securing to the young soul in the disposition of time and the arrangements of living, periods and habits of solitude. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #KEYS
482:The hell I won't talk that way! Peter, an eternity here without her is not an eternity of bliss; it is an eternity of boredom and loneliness and grief. You think this damned gaudy halo means anything to me when I know--yes, you've convinced me!--that my beloved is burning in the Pit? I didn't ask much. Just to be allowed to live with her. I was willing to wash dishes forever if only I could see her smile, hear her voice, touch her hand! She's been shipped on a technicality and you know it! Snobbish, bad-tempered angels get to live here without ever doing one lick to deserve it. But my Marga, who is a real angel if one ever lived, gets turned down and sent to Hell to everlasting torture on a childish twist in the rules. You can tell the Father and His sweet-talking Son and that sneaky Ghost that they can take their gaudy Holy City and shove it! If Margrethe has to be in Hell, that's where I want to be!
~ Robert Heinlein, Alexander Hergensheimer in Job: A Comedy of Justice, (1984).,#KEYS
483:Forgetful of her spirit and her fate.
The impassive skies were neutral, empty, still.
Then something in the inscrutable darkness stirred;
A nameless movement, an unthought Idea
Insistent, dissatisfied, without an aim,
Something that wished but knew not how to be,
Teased the Inconscient to wake Ignorance.
A throe that came and left a quivering trace,
Gave room for an old tired want unfilled,
At peace in its subconscient moonless cave
To raise its head and look for absent light,
Straining closed eyes of vanished memory,
Like one who searches for a bygone self
And only meets the corpse of his desire.
It was as though even in this Nought's profound,
Even in this ultimate dissolution's core,
There lurked an unremembering entity,
Survivor of a slain and buried past
Condemned to resume the effort and the pang,
Reviving in another frustrate world.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Symbol Dawn,#KEYS
484:Though I speak with the tongues of men and of an- gels and have not charity, I am as a sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. Charity suffereth long and is kind; charity envieth not ; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up doth not behave itself unseemly seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinlceth no evil, rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth, beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth...And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three: but the greatest of these is charity. Follow after charity. ~ I. Corinthians. 1. 8. 13-XIV. 8, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
485:She sets the hard inventions of her brain
In a pattern of eternal fixity:
Indifferent to the cosmic dumb demand,
Unconscious of too close realities,
Of the unspoken thought, the voiceless heart,
She leans to forge her credos and iron codes
And metal structures to imprison life
And mechanic models of all things that are.
For the world seen she weaves a world conceived:
She spins in stiff but unsubstantial lines
Her gossamer word-webs of abstract thought,
Her segment systems of the Infinite,
Her theodicies and cosmogonic charts
And myths by which she explains the inexplicable.
At will she spaces in thin air of mind
Like maps in the school-house of intellect hung,
Forcing wide Truth into a narrow scheme,
Her numberless warring strict philosophies;
Out of Nature's body of phenomenon
She carves with Thought's keen edge in rigid lines,
Like rails for the World-Magician's power to run, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri,#KEYS
486:7. The Meeting with the Goddess:The ultimate adventure, when all the barriers and ogres have been overcome, is commonly represented as a mystical marriage of the triumphant hero-soul with the Queen Goddess of the World. This is the crisis at the nadir, the zenith, or at the uttermost edge of the earth, at the central point of the cosmos, in the tabernacle of the temple, or within the darkness of the deepest chamber of the heart. The meeting with the goddess (who is incarnate in every woman) is the final test of the talent of the hero to win the boon of love (charity: amor fati), which is life itself enjoyed as the encasement of eternity. And when the adventurer, in this context, is not a youth but a maid, she is the one who, by her qualities, her beauty, or her yearning, is fit to become the consort of an immortal. Then the heavenly husband descends to her and conducts her to his bed-whether she will or not. And if she has shunned him, the scales fall from her eyes; if she has sought him, her desire finds its peace. ~ Joseph Campbell, #KEYS
487:8. The Woman As Temptress:The crux of the curious difficulty lies in the fact that our conscious views of what life ought to be seldom correspond to what life really is. Generally we refuse to admit within ourselves, or within our friends, the fullness of that pushing, self-protective, malodorous, carnivorous, lecherous fever which is the very nature of the organic cell. Rather, we tend to perfume, whitewash, and reinterpret; meanwhile imagining that all the flies in the ointment, all the hairs in the soup, are the faults of some unpleasant someone else. But when it suddenly dawns on us, or is forced to our attention that everything we think or do is necessarily tainted with the odor of the flesh, then, not uncommonly, there is experienced a moment of revulsion: life, the acts of life, the organs of life, woman in particular as the great symbol of life, become intolerable to the pure, the pure, pure soul. The seeker of the life beyond life must press beyond (the woman), surpass the temptations of her call, and soar to the immaculate ether beyond. ~ Joseph Campbell, #KEYS
488:The earth too, one with the surrounding mass of darkness and inconscience is asleep and insentient. She has to wake up and start on her journey moving forward, unveiling her secret mysteries towards the supreme revelation, the Divine incarnation in matter. The Gods are awake, in order to awaken the earth. A first ray is sent down and it touches as it were the sleeping Mother. The Divine Ray is just like a finger of a child touching her mother trying, as it were, to persuade her to open her eyes and look at her child. The first ray, however, comes not as a caress to the inert being of darkness, it is a sharp prick, even a hard blow. Such is the first impact of light upon dead matter; and the light is thrown back, as an unwelcome intruder, into what it came from; and the darkness grovels in its old groove. The second stage comes when the impact is not felt as a pain or something totally foreign and strange; its touch is felt as something soothing, something that heals an eternal sore. But this too was not suffered long and the light has to go back again. ~ Nolini Kanta Gupta, On Savitri, #KEYS
489:But a time will come when you will feel more and more that you are the instrument and not the worker. For first by the force of your devotion your contact with the Divine Mother will become so intimate that at all times you will have only to concentrate and to put everything into her hands to have her present guidance, her direct command or impulse, the sure indication of the thing to be done and the way to do it and the result. And afterwards you will realise that the divine Shakti not only inspires and guides, but initiates and carries out your works; all your movements are originated by her, all your powers are hers, mind, life and body are conscious and joyful instruments of her action, means for her play, moulds for her manifestation in the physical universe. There can be no more happy condition than this union and dependence; for this step carries you back beyond the border-line from the life of stress and suffering in the ignorance into the truth of your spiritual being, into its deep peace and its intense Ananda. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother, 12, #KEYS
490:Three things you must have, - consciousness, - plasticity and - unreserved surrender.
For you must be conscious in your mind and soul and heart and life and the very cells of your body, aware of the Mother and her Powers and their working; for although she can and does work in you even in your obscurity and your unconscious parts and moments, it is not the same thing as when you are in an awakened and living communion with her.
All your nature must be plastic to her touch, - not questioning as the self-sufficient ignorant mind questions and doubts and disputes and is the enemy of its enlightenment and change; not insisting on its own movements as the vital in the man insists and persistently opposes its refractory desires and ill-will to every divine influence; not obstructing and entrenched in incapacity, inertia and tamas as man's physical consciousness obstructs and clinging to the pleasure in smallness and darkness cries out against each touch that disturbs it soulless routine or it dull sloth or its torpid slumber.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother, [58],#KEYS
491:To know, possess and be the divine being in an animal and egoistic consciousness, to convert our twilit or obscure physical men- tality into the plenary supramental illumination, to build peace and a self-existent bliss where there is only a stress of transitory satisfactions besieged by physical pain and emotional suffering, to establish an infinite freedom in a world which presents itself as a group of mechanical necessities, to discover and realise the immortal life in a body subjected to death and constant mutation, - this is offered to us as the manifestation of God in Matter and the goal of Nature in her terrestrial evolution. To the ordinary material intellect which takes its present organisation of consciousness for the limit of its possibilities, the direct contradiction of the unrealised ideals with the realised fact is a final argument against their validity. But if we take a more deliberate view of the world's workings, that direct opposition appears rather as part of Nature's profoundest method and the seal of her completest sanction. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, 1.01, #KEYS
492:Four Powers Of The Mother
In talking about the four powers of the Mother, it helps to know that in India, traditionally, the evolutionary principle of creation is approached, and adored, as the great Mother. Sri Aurobindo distinguishes four main powers and personalities through which this evolutionary force manifests.
Maheshwari - One is her personality of calm wideness and comprehending wisdom and tranquil benignity and inexhaustible compassion and sovereign and surpassing majesty and all-ruling greatness.
Mahakali - Another embodies her power of splendid strength and irresistible passion, her warrior mood, her overwhelming will, her impetuous swiftness and world-shaking force.
Mahalakshmi - A third is vivid and sweet and wonderful with her deep secret of beauty and harmony and fine rhythm, her intricate and subtle opulence, her compelling attraction and captivating grace.
Mahasaraswati - The fourth is equipped with her close and profound capacity of intimate knowledge and careful flawless work and quiet and exact perfection in all things.
~ ?, https://www.auroville.com/silver-ring-mother-s-symbol.html,#KEYS
493:Sails across the sea of life in the twinkling of an eye.' One attains the vision of God if Mahamaya steps aside from the door. Mahamaya's grace is necessary: hence the worship of Sakti. You see, God is near us, but it is not possible to know Him because Mahamaya stands between. Rama, Lakshmana, and Sita were walking along. Rama walked ahead, Sita in the middle, and Lakshmana last. Lakshmana was only two and a half cubits away from Rama, but he couldn't see Rama because Sita - Mahamaya - was in the way.
"While worshipping God, one should assume a definite attitude. I have three attitudes: the attitude of a child, the attitude or a maidservant, and the attitude of a friend. For a long time I regarded myself as a maidservant and a woman companion of God; at that time I used to wear skirts and ornaments, like a woman. The attitude of a child is very good.
"The attitude of a 'hero' is not good. Some people cherish it. They regard themselves as Purusha and woman as Prakriti; they want to propitiate woman through intercourse with her. But this method often causes disaster. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,#KEYS
494:Kusanagi is a leading expert in fourth-generation warfare and cyberbrain combative warfare. As the most heavily mechanized member of Section 9, she is regarded amongst her peers as the best hand-to-hand melee fighter and the most skilled "hacker and net diver." Chief Aramaki described her abilities as "...rarer than 'ESP'; the kind of person that government agencies hire to assassinate without leaving a trace." Classified as "Wizard Class" grey hat, her computer security hacking skills allow her brain-computer interface consciousness to control two-external humanoid "drone"-robots remotely with the ability to move her "ghost" from host to host. Kusanagi repeatedly demonstrates uncanny ability to hack people's wetware protected with military-grade malware protection and counter-measures, allowing her to "see through their eyes," disable their vocal systems, or even take control of their bodies altogether. As a cyborg, Kusanagi is able to perform numerous superhuman feats, such as demonstrating superhuman strength, leaping between skyscrapers, advanced acrobatics, or shooting down a bullet after it was fired at mid-range. ~ Wikipedia, Motoko Kusangi, #KEYS
495:Yet not for tyrant wrong nor to serve as a sword for our passions
Zeus created our strength, but that earth might have help from her children.
Not of our moulding its gifts to our soul nor were formed by our labour!
When did we make them, where were ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems: Ilion
Mother-Earth
So when the Eye supreme perceives that we rise up too swiftly,
Drawn towards height but fullness contemning, called by the azure,
Life when we fail in, poor in our base and forgetting our mother,
Back we are hurled to our roots; we recover our sap f ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems: Ilion
Mother-Earth
Man, repelled by the gulfs within him and shrinking from vastness,
Form of the earth accepts and is glad of the lap of his mother. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems: Ilion
Mother-Earth
Man does not act, even most primitively, from fear alone, but from twin motives, fear and desire, fear of things unpleasant and maleficent and desire of things pleasant and beneficent. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Motives of Devotion,#KEYS
496:The Lord sees in his omniscience the thing that has to be done. This seeing is his Will, it is a form of creative Power, and that which he sees the all-conscious Mother, one with him, takes into her dynamic self and embodies, and executive Nature-Force carries it out as the mechanism of their omnipotent omniscience.
But this vision of what is to be and therefore of what is to be done arises out of the very being, pours directly out of the consciousness and delight of existence of the Lord, spontaneously, like light from the Sun. It is not our mortal attempt to see, our difficult arrival at truth of action and motive or just demand of Nature. When the individual soul is entirely at one in its being and knowledge with the Lord and directly in touch with the original Shakti, the transcendent Mother, the supreme Will can then arise in us too in the high divine manner as a thing that must be and is achieved by the spontaneous action of Nature. There is then no desire, no responsibility, no reaction; all takes place in the peace, calm, light, power of the supporting and enveloping and inhabiting Divine. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supreme Will, 218,#KEYS
497:Ishwara-Shakti is not quite the same as Purusha-Prakriti; for Purusha and Prakriti are separate powers, but Ishwara and Shakti contain each other. Ishwara is Purusha who contains Prakriti and rules by the power of the Shakti within him. Shakti is Prakriti ensouled by Purusha and acts by the will of the Ishwara which is her own will and whose presence in her movement she carries always with her. The Purusha-Prakriti realisation is of the first utility to the seeker on the Way of Works; for it is the separation of the conscient being and the Energy and the subjection of the being to the mechanism of the Energy that are the efficient cause of our ignorance and imperfection; by this realisation the being can liberate himself from the mechanical action of the nature and become free and arrive at a first spiritual control over the nature. Ishwara-Shakti stands behind the relation of Purusha-Prakriti and its ignorant action and turns it to an evolutionary purpose. The Ishwara-Shakti realisation can bring participation in a higher dynamism and a divine working and a total unity and harmony of the being in a spiritual nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supreme Will, 216, #KEYS
498:The Transcendent Mother and the Higher Hemisphere
"At the summit of this manifestation of which we are a part there are worlds of infinite existence, consciousness, force and bliss over which the Mother stands as the unveiled eternal Power."1 The Transcendent Mother thus stands above the Ananda plane.There are then four steps of the Divine Shakti:
(1) The Transcendent Mahashakti who stands above the Ananda plane and who bears the Supreme Divine in her eternal consciousness.
(2) The Mahashakti immanent in the worlds of SatChit-Ananda where all beings live and move in an ineffable completeness.
(3) The Supramental Mahashakti immanent in the worlds of Supermind.
(4) The Cosmic Mahashakti immanent in the lower hemisphere.
Yes; that is all right. One speaks often however of all above the lower hemisphere as part of the transcendence. This is because the Supermind and Ananda are not manifested in our universe at present, but are planes above it. For us the higher hemisphere is pr [para], the Supreme Transcendence is prA(pr [paratpara]. The Sanskrit terms are here clearer than the English.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother, Three Aspects of the Mother, 52,#KEYS
499:I have got three letters from you, but as I was busy with many things I couldn't answer them-today I am answering all the three together. It was known that it wouldn't be possible for you to come for darshan this time, it can't be easy to come twice within this short time. Don't be sorry, remain calm and remember the Mother, gather faith and strength within. You are a child of the Divine Mother, be tranquil, calm and full of force. There is no special procedure. To take the name of the Mother, to remember her within, to pray to her, all this may be described as calling the Mother. As it comes from within you, you have to call her accordingly. You can do also this - shutting your eyes you can imagine that the Mother is in front of you or you can sketch a picture of her in your mind and offer her your pranam, that obeissance will reach her. When you've time, you can meditate on her with the thinking attitude that she is with you, she's sitting in front of you. Doing these things people at last get to see her. Accept my blessings, I send the Mother's blessings also at the same time. From time to time Jyotirmoyee will take blessing flowers during pranam and send them to you. ~ The Mother, Nirodbaran Memorable contacts with the Mother, #KEYS
500:Philosophy, as defined by Fichte, is the "science of sciences." Its aim was to solve the problems of the world. In the past, when all exact sciences were in their infancy, philosophy had to be purely speculative, with little or no regard to realities. But if we regard philosophy as a Mother science, divided into many branches, we find that those branches have grown so large and various, that the Mother science looks like a hen with her little ducklings paddling in a pond, far beyond her reach; she is unable to follow her growing hatchlings. In the meantime, the progress of life and science goes on, irrespective of the cackling of metaphysics. Philosophy does not fulfill her initial aim to bring the results of experimental and exact sciences together and to solve world problems. Through endless, scientific specialization scientific branches multiply, and for want of coordination the great world-problems suffer. This failure of philosophy to fulfill her boasted mission of scientific coordination is responsible for the chaos in the world of general thought. The world has no collective or organized higher ideals and aims, nor even fixed general purposes. Life is an accidental game of private or collective ambitions and greeds. ~ Alfred Korzybski, Manhood of Humanity, #KEYS
501:the three successive elements :::
The progressive self-manifestation of Nature in man, termed in modern language his evolution, must necessarily depend upon three successive elements, that which is already evolved, that which is persistently in the stage of conscious evolution and that which is to be evolved and may perhaps be already 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. And these self-exceedings are the revelation of that in her which is most divine or else most diabolical, but in either case the most puissant to bring her rapidly forward towards her goal.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Introduction - The Conditions of the Synthesis, The Three Steps of Nature,#KEYS
502:`No. Stay, doesn't matter.' He settled the black terry sweatband across his forehead, careful not to disturb the flat Sendai dermatrodes [1]. He stared at the deck on his lap, not really seeing it, seeing instead the shop window on Ninsei, the chromed shuriken burning with reflected neon. He glanced up; on the wall, just above the Sony, he'd hung her gift, tacking it there with a yellow-headed drawing pin through the hole at its center.
He closed his eyes.
Found the ridged face of the power stud.
And in the bloodlit dark behind his eyes, silver phosphenes boiling in from the edge of space, hypnagogic images jerking past like film compiled from random frames.
Symbols, figures, faces, a blurred, fragmented mandala of visual information.
Please, he prayed, now --
A gray disk, the color of Chiba sky.
Now --
Disk beginning to rotate, faster, becoming a sphere of paler gray. Expanding --And flowed, flowered for him, fluid neon origami trick, the unfolding of his distanceless home, his country, transparent 3D chessboard extending to infinity. Inner eye opening to the stepped scarlet pyramid of the Eastern Seaboard Fission Authority burning beyond the green cubes of Mitsubishi Bank of America, and high and very far away he saw the spiral arms of military systems, forever beyond his reach. ~ William Gibson, Neuromancer,#KEYS
503:And the mighty wildness of the primitive earth
And the brooding multitude of patient trees
And the musing sapphire leisure of the sky
And the solemn weight of the slowly-passing months
Had left in her deep room for thought and God.
There was her drama's radiant prologue lived.
A spot for the eternal's tread on earth
Set in the cloistral yearning of the woods
And watched by the aspiration of the peaks
Appeared through an aureate opening in Time,
Where stillness listening felt the unspoken word
And the hours forgot to pass towards grief and change.
Here with the suddenness divine advents have,
Repeating the marvel of the first descent,
Changing to rapture the dull earthly round,
Love came to her hiding the shadow, Death.
Well might he find in her his perfect shrine.
Since first the earth-being's heavenward growth began,
Through all the long ordeal of the race,
Never a rarer creature bore his shaft,
That burning test of the godhead in our parts,
A lightning from the heights on our abyss.
All in her pointed to a nobler kind.
Near to earth's wideness, intimate with heaven,
Exalted and swift her young large-visioned spirit
Voyaging through worlds of splendour and of calm
Overflew the ways of Thought to unborn things.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue,#KEYS
504:Many are God's forms by which he grows in man;
They stamp his thoughts and deeds with divinity,
Uplift the stature of the human clay
Or slowly transmute it into heavens gold.
He is the Good for which men fight and die,
He is the war of Right with Titan wrong;
He is Freedom rising deathless from her pyre;
He is Valour guarding still the desperate pass
Or lone and erect on the shattered barricade
Or a sentinel in the dangerous echoing Night.
He is the crown of the martyr burned in flame
And the glad resignation of the saint
And courage indifferent to the wounds of Time
And the heros might wrestling with death and fate.
He is Wisdom incarnate on a glorious throne
And the calm autocracy of the sages rule.
He is the high and solitary Thought
Aloof above the ignorant multitude:
He is the prophets voice, the sight of the seer.
He is Beauty, nectar of the passionate soul,
He is the Truth by which the spirit lives.
He is the riches of the spiritual Vast
Poured out in healing streams on indigent Life;
He is Eternity lured from hour to hour,
He is infinity in a little space:
He is immortality in the arms of death.
These powers I am and at my call they come.
Thus slowly I lift mans soul nearer the Light.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
505:38 - Strange! The Germans have disproved the existence of Christ; yet his crucifixion remains still a greater historic fact than the death of Caesar. - Sri Aurobindo.
To what plane of consciousness did Christ belong?
In the Essays on the Gita Sri Aurobindo mentions the names of three Avatars, and Christ is one of them. An Avatar is an emanation of the Supreme Lord who assumes a human body on earth.
I heard Sri Aurobindo himself say that Christ was an emanation of the Lord's aspect of love.
The death of Caesar marked a decisive change in the history of Rome and the countries dependent on her. It was therefore an important event in the history of Europe.
But the death of Christ was the starting-point of a new stage in the evolution of human civilisation. This is why Sri Aurobindo tells us that the death of Christ was of greater historical significance, that is to say, it has had greater historical consequences than the death of Caesar. The story of Christ, as it has been told, is the concrete and dramatic enactment of the divine sacrifice: the Supreme Lord, who is All-Light, All-Knowledge, All-Power, All-Beauty, All-Love, All-Bliss, accepting to assume human ignorance and suffering in matter, in order to help men to emerge from the falsehood in which they live and because of which they die.
16 June 1960 ~ The Mother, On Thoughts And Aphorisms, volume-10, page no.61-62),#KEYS
506:
Mother, in your symbol the twelve petals signify the twelve inner planes, don't they?
It signifies anything one wants, you see. Twelve: that's the number of Aditi, of Mahashakti. So it applies to everything; all her action has twelve aspects. There are also her twelve virtues, her twelve powers, her twelve aspects, and then her twelve planes of manifestation and many other things that are twelve; and the symbol, the number twelve is in itself a symbol. It is the symbol of manifestation, double perfection, in essence and in manifestation, in the creation.
What are the twelve aspects, Sweet Mother?
Ah, my child, I have described this somewhere, but I don't remember now. For it is always a choice, you see; according to what one wants to say, one can choose these twelve aspects or twelve others, or give them different names. The same aspect can be named in different ways. This does not have the fixity of a mental theory. (Silence)
According to the angle from which one sees the creation, one day I may describe twelve aspects to you; and then another day, because I have shifted my centre of observation, I may describe twelve others, and they will be equally true.
(To Vishwanath) Is it the wind that's producing this storm? It is very good for a dramatic stage-effect.... The traitor is approaching in the night... yes? We are waiting for some terrible deed....
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1954, 395,#KEYS
507:But what has fixed the modes of Nature? Or who has originated and governs the movements of Force? There is a Consciousness - or a Conscient - behind that is the lord, witness, knower, enjoyer, upholder and source of sanction for her works; this consciousness is Soul or Purusha. Prakriti shapes the action in us; Purusha in her or behind her witnesses, assents, bears and upholds it. Prakriti forms the thought in our minds; Purusha in her or behind her knows the thought and the truth in it. Prakriti determines the result of the action; Purusha in her or behind her enjoys or suffers the consequence. Prakriti forms mind and body, labours over them, develops them; Purusha upholds the formation and evolution and sanctions each step of her works. Prakriti applies the Will-force which works in things and men; Purusha sets that Will-force to work by his vision of that which should be done. This Purusha is not the surface ego, but a silent Self, a source of Power, an originator and receiver of Knowledge behind the ego. Our mental "I" is only a false reflection of this Self, this Power, this Knowledge. This Purusha or supporting Consciousness is therefore the cause, recipient and support of all Nature's works, but he is not himself the doer. Prakriti, NatureForce, in front and Shakti, Conscious-Force, Soul-Force behind her, - for these two are the inner and outer faces of the universal Mother, - account for all that is done in the universe. The universal Mother, Prakriti-Shakti, is the one and only worker. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supreme Will, 214, #KEYS
508:This ego or "I" is not a lasting truth, much less our essential part; it is only a formation of Nature, a mental form of thought centralisation in the perceiving and discriminating mind, a vital form of the centralisation of feeling and sensation in our parts of life, a form of physical conscious reception centralising substance and function of substance in our bodies. All that we internally are is not ego, but consciousness, soul or spirit. All that we externally and superficiallyare and do is not ego but Nature. An executive cosmic force shapes us and dictates through our temperament and environment and mentality so shaped, through our individualised formulation of the cosmic energies, our actions and their results. Truly, we do not think, will or act but thought occurs in us, will occurs in us, impulse and act occur in us; our ego-sense gathers around itself, refers to itself all this flow of natural activities. It is cosmic Force, it is Nature that forms the thought, imposes the will, imparts the impulse. our body, mind and ego are a wave of that sea of force in action and do not govern it, but by it are governed and directed. The Sadhaka in his progress towards truth and self-knowledge must come to a point where the soul opens its eyes of vision and recognises this truth of ego and this truth of works. He gives up the idea of a mental, vital, physical, "I" that acts or governs action; he recognises that Prakriti, Force of cosmic nature following her fixed modes, is the one and only worker in him and in all things and creatures.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supreme Will, 214,#KEYS
509: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. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, Gospel, #KEYS
510:There is in her an overwhelming intensity, a mighty passion of force to achieve, a divine violence rushing to shatter every limit and obstacle. All her divinity leaps out in a splendour of tempestuous action; she is there for swiftness, for the immediately effective process, the rapid and direct stroke, the frontal assault that carries everything before it. Terrible is her face to the Asura, dangerous and ruthless her mood against the haters of the Divine; for she is the Warrior of the Worlds who never shrinks from the battle. Intolerant of imperfection, she deals roughly with all in man that is unwilling and she is severe to all that is obstinately ignorant and obscure; her wrath is immediate and dire against treachery and falsehood and malignity, ill-will is smitten at once by her scourge. Indifference, negligence and sloth in the divine work she cannot bear and she smites awake at once with sharp pain, if need be, the untimely slumberer and the loiterer. The impulses that are swift and straight and frank, the movements that are unreserved and absolute, the aspiration that mounts in flame are the motion of Mahakali. Her spirit is tameless, her vision and will are high and far-reaching like the flight of an eagle, her feet are rapid on the upward way and her hands are outstretched to strike and to succour. For she too is the Mother and her love is as intense as her wrath and she has a deep and passionate kindness. When she is allowed to intervene in her strength, then in one moment are broken like things without consistence the obstacles that immobilise or the enemies that assail the seeker
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother, [19],#KEYS
511:The Lord has veiled himself and his absolute wisdom and eternal consciousness in ignorant Nature-Force and suffers her to drive the individual being, with its complicity, as the ego; this lower action of Nature continues to prevail, often even in spite of man's half-lit imperfect efforts at a nobler motive and a purer self-knowledge. Our human effort at perfection fails, or progresses very incompletely, owing to the force of Nature's past actions in us, her past formations, her long-rooted associations; it turns towards a true and high-climbing success only when a greater Knowledge and Power than our own breaks through the lid of our ignorance and guides or takes up our personal will. For our human will is a misled and wandering ray that has parted from the supreme Puissance. The period of slow emergence out of this lower working into a higher light and purer force is the valley of the shadow of death for the striver after perfection; it is a dreadful passage full of trials, sufferings, sorrows, obscurations, stumblings, errors, pitfalls. To abridge and alleviate this ordeal or to penetrate it with the divine delight faith is necessary, an increasing surrender of the mind to the knowledge that imposes itself from within and, above all, a true aspiration and a right and unfaltering and sincere practice. "Practise unfalteringly," says the Gita, "with a heart free from despondency," the Yoga; for even though in the earlier stage of the path we drink deep of the bitter poison of internal discord and suffering, the last taste of this cup is the sweetness of the nectar of immortality and the honey-wine of an eternal Ananda. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supreme Will, 219, #KEYS
512:Received him in their deathless harmonies.
All things were perfect there that flower in Time;
Beauty was there creation's native mould,
Peace was a thrilled voluptuous purity.
There Love fulfilled her gold and roseate dreams
And Strength her crowned and mighty reveries;
Desire climbed up, a swift omnipotent flame,
And Pleasure had the stature of the gods;
Dream walked along the highways of the stars;
Sweet common things turned into miracles:
Overtaken by the spirit's sudden spell,
Smitten by a divine passion's alchemy,
Pain's self compelled transformed to potent joy
Curing the antithesis twixt heaven and hell.
All life's high visions are embodied there,
Her wandering hopes achieved, her aureate combs
Caught by the honey-eater's darting tongue,
Her burning guesses changed to ecstasied truths,
Her mighty pantings stilled in deathless calm
And liberated her immense desires.
In that paradise of perfect heart and sense
No lower note could break the endless charm
Of her sweetness ardent and immaculate;
Her steps are sure of their intuitive fall.
After the anguish of the soul's long strife
At length were found calm and celestial rest
And, lapped in a magic flood of sorrowless hours,
Healed were his warrior nature's wounded limbs
In the encircling arms of Energies
That brooked no stain and feared not their own bliss.
In scenes forbidden to our pallid sense
Amid miraculous scents and wonder-hues
He met the forms that divinise the sight,
To music that can immortalise the mind
And make the heart wide as infinity
Listened, and captured the inaudible
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Paradise of the Life-Gods,#KEYS
513:The sign of the immersion of the embodied soul in Prakriti is the limitation of consciousness to the ego. The vivid stamp of this limited consciousness can be seen in a constant inequality of the mind and heart and a confused conflict and disharmony in their varied reactions to the touches of experience. The human reactions sway perpetually between the dualities created by the soul's subjection to Nature and by its often intense but narrow struggle for mastery and enjoyment, a struggle for the most part ineffective. The soul circles in an unending round of Nature's alluring and distressing opposites, success and failure, good fortune and ill fortune, good and evil, sin and virtue, joy and grief, pain and pleasure. It is only when, awaking from its immersion in Prakriti, it perceives its oneness with the One and its oneness with all existences that it can become free from these things and found its right relation to this executive world-Nature. Then it becomes indifferent to her inferior modes, equal-minded to her dualities, capable of mastery and freedom; it is seated above her as the high-throned knower and witness filled with the calm intense unalloyed delight of his own eternal existence. The embodied spirit continues to express its powers in action, but it is no longer involved in ignorance, no longer bound by its works; its actions have no longer a consequence within it, but only a consequence outside in Prakriti. The whole movement of Nature becomes to its experience a rising and falling of waves on the surface that make no difference to its own unfathomable peace, its wide delight, its vast universal equality or its boundless God-existence.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS
514:She"
How shall I welcome not this light
Or, wakened by it, greet with doubt
This beam as palpable to sight
As visible to touch? How not,
Old as I am and (some say) wise,
Revive beneath her summer eyes?
How not have all my nights and days,
My spirit ranging far and wide,
By recollections of her grace
Enlightened and preoccupied?
Preoccupied: the Morning Star
How near the Sun and yet how far!
Enlightened: true, but more than true,
Or why must I discover there
The meaning in this taintless dew,
The dancing wave, this blessed air
Enchanting in its morning dress
And calm as everlastingness?
The flame that in the heart resides
Is parcel of that central Fire
Whose energy is winds and tides-
Is rooted deep in the Desire
That smilingly unseals its power
Each summer in each springing flower.
Oh Lady Nature-Proserpine,
Mistress of Gender, star-crowned Queen!
Ah Rose of Sharon-Mistress mine,
My teacher ere I turned fourteen,
When first I hallowed from afar
Your Beautyship in avatar!
I sense the hidden thing you say,
Your subtle whisper how the Word
From Alpha on to Omega
Made all things-you confide my Lord
Himself-all, all this potent Frame,
All save the riddle of your name.
Wisdom! I heard a voice that said:
"What riddle? What is that to you?
How! By my follower betrayed!
Look up-for shame! Now tell me true:
Where meet you light, with love and grace?
Still unacquainted with my face?"
Dear God, the erring heart must live-
Through strength and weakness, calm and glow-
That answer Wisdom scorns to give.
Much have I learned. One problem, though,
I never shall unlock: Who then,
Who made Sophia feminine?
~ Owen Barfield, 1978,#KEYS
515:In all that is done in the universe, the Divine through his Shakti is behind all action but he is veiled by his Yoga Maya and works through the ego of the Jiva in the lower nature.
In Yoga also it is the Divine who is the Sadhaka and the Sadhana; it is his Shakti with her light, power, knowledge, consciousness, Ananda, acting upon the adhara and, when it is opened to her, pouring into it with these divine forces that makes the Sadhana possible. But so long as the lower nature is active the personal effort of the Sadhaka remains necessary.
The personal effort required is a triple labour of aspiration, rejection and surrender, -
an aspiration vigilant, constant, unceasing - the mind's will, the heart's seeking, the assent of the vital being, the will to open and make plastic the physical consciousness and nature;
rejection of the movements of the lower nature - rejection of the mind's ideas, opinions, preferences, habits, constructions, so that the true knowledge may find free room in a silent mind, - rejection of the vital nature's desires, demands, cravings, sensations, passions, selfishness, pride, arrogance, lust, greed, jealousy, envy, hostility to the Truth, so that the true power and joy may pour from above into a calm, large, strong and consecrated vital being, - rejection of the physical nature's stupidity, doubt, disbelief, obscurity, obstinacy, pettiness, laziness, unwillingness to change, tamas, so that the true stability of Light, Power, Ananda may establish itself in a body growing always more divine;
surrender of oneself and all one is and has and every plane of the consciousness and every movement to the Divine and the Shakti.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother,#KEYS
516:We have all a ruling defect, which is for our soul as the umbilical cord of its birth in sin, and it is by this that the enemy can always lay hold upon us: for some it is vanity, for others idleness, for the majority egotism. Let a wicked and crafty mind avail itself of this means and we are lost; we may not go mad or turn idiots, but we become positively alienated, in all the force of the expression - that is, we are subjected to a foreign suggestion. In such a state one dreads instinctively everything that might bring us back to reason, and will not even listen to representations that are opposed to our obsession. Here is one of the most dangerous disorders which can affect the moral nature. The sole remedy for such a bewitchment is to make use of folly itself in order to cure folly, to provide the sufferer with imaginary satisfactions in the opposite order to that wherein he is now lost. Endeavour, for example, to cure an ambitious person by making him desire the glories of heaven - mystic remedy; cure one who is dissolute by true love - natural remedy; obtain honourable successes for a vain person; exhibit unselfishness to the avaricious and procure for them legitimate profit by honourable participation in generous enterprises, etc. Acting in this way upon the moral nature, we may succeed in curing a number of physical maladies, for the moral affects the physical in virtue of the magical axiom: "That which is above is like unto that which is below." This is why the Master said, when speaking of the paralyzed woman: "Satan has bound her." A disease invariably originates in a deficiency or an excess, and ever at the root of a physical evil we shall find a moral disorder. This is an unchanging law of Nature. ~ Eliphas Levi, Transcendental Magic, #KEYS
517:There is a story I would like to tell you about a woman who practices the invocation of the Buddha Amitabha's name. She is very tough, and she practices the invocation three times daily, using a wooden drum and a bell, reciting, "Namo Amitabha Buddha" for one hour each time. When she arrives at one thousand times, she invites the bell to sound. (In Vietnamese, we don't say "strike" or "hit" a bell.) Although she has been doing this for ten years, her personality has not changed. She is still quite mean, shouting at people all the time.
A friend wanted to teach her a lesson, so one afternoon when she had just lit the incense, invited the bell to sound three times, and was beginning to recite "Namo Amitabha Buddha," he came to her door, and said, "Mrs. Nguyen, Mrs. Nguyen!" She found it very annoying because this was her time of practice, but he just stood at the front gate shouting her name. She said to herself, "I have to struggle against my anger, so I will ignore that," and she went on, "Namo Amitabha Buddha, Namo Amitabha Buddha."
The gentleman continued to shout her name, and her anger became more and more oppressive. She struggled against it, wondering, "Should I stop my recitation and go and give him a piece of my mind?" But she continued chanting, and she struggled very hard. Fire mounted in her, but she still tried to chant "Namo Amitabha Buddha." The gentleman knew it, and he continued to shout, "Mrs. Nguyen! Mrs. Nguyen!"
She could not bear it any longer. She threw away the bell and the drum. She slammed the door, went out to the gate and said, "Why, why do you behave like that? Why do you call my name hundreds of times like that?" The gentleman smiled at her and said, "I just called your name for ten minutes, and you are so angry. You have been calling the Buddha's name for ten years. Think how angry he must be! ~ Thich Nhat Hanh,#KEYS
518:principle of Yogic methods :::
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 function 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 raionale 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.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Introduction - The Conditions of the Synthesis, Life and Yoga,#KEYS
519:Man's refusal of the Divine Grace has been depicted very beautifully and graphically in a perfect dramatic form by Sri Aurobindo in Savitri. The refusal comes one by one from the three constituent parts of the human being. First of all man is a material being, a bodily creature, as such he is a being of ignorance and misery, of brutish blindness . He does not know that there is something other than his present state of misfortune and dark fate. He is not even aware that there may be anything higher or nobler than the ugliness he is steeped in. He lives on earth-life with an earth-consciousness, moves mechanically and helplessly through vicissitudes over which he has no control. Even so the material life is not a mere despicable thing; behind its darkness, behind its sadness, behind all its infirmities, the Divine Mother is there upholding it and infusing into it her grace and beauty. Indeed, she is one with this world of sorrows, she has in effect become it in her infinite pity and love so that this material body of hers may become conscious of its divine substance and manifest her true form. But the human being individualised and separated in egoistic consciousness has lost the sense of its inner reality and is vocal only in regard to its outward formulation. It is natural for physical man therefore to reject and deny the physical Godhead in him, he even curses it and wants to continue as he is.
He yells therefore in ignorance and anguish:
I am the Man of Sorrows, I am he
Who is nailed on the wide cross of the Universe . . .
I toil like the animal, like the animal die.
I am man the rebel, man the helpless serf...
I know my fate will ever be the same.
It is my Nature' s work that cannot change . . .
I was made for evil, evil is my lot;
Evil I must be and by evil live;
Nought other can I do but be myself;
What Nature made, that I must remain.2' ~ Nolini Kanta Gupta, On Savitri, 13,#KEYS
520:A distinction has to be firmly seized in our consciousness, the capital distinction between mechanical Nature and the free Lord of Nature, between the Ishwara or single luminous divine Will and the many executive modes and forces of the universe. Nature, - not as she is in her divine Truth, the conscious Power of the Eternal, but as she appears to us in the Ignorance, - is executive Force, mechanical in her steps, not consciously intelligent to our experience of her, although all her works are instinct with an absolute intelligence. Not in herself master, she is full of a self-aware Power which has an infinite mastery and, because of this Power driving her, she rules all and exactly fulfils the work intended in her by the Ishwara. Not enjoying but enjoyed, she bears in herself the burden of all enjoyments. Nature as Prakriti is an inertly active Force, - for she works out a movement imposed upon her; but within her is One that knows,
- some Entity sits there that is aware of all her motion and process. Prakriti works containing the knowledge, the mastery, the delight of the Purusha, the Being associated with her or seated within her; but she can participate in them only by subjection and reflection of that which fills her. Purusha knows and is still and inactive; he contains the action of Prakriti within his consciousness and knowledge and enjoys it. He gives the sanction to Prakriti's works and she works out what is sanctioned by him for his pleasure. Purusha himself does not execute; he maintains Prakriti in her action and allows her to express in energy and process and formed result what he perceives in his knowledge. This is the distinction made by the Sankhyas; and although it is not all the true truth, not in any way the highest truth either of Purusha or of Prakriti, still it is a valid and indispensable practical knowledge in the lower hemisphere of existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS
521:A distinction has to be firmly seized in our consciousness, the capital distinction between mechanical Nature and the free Lord of Nature, between the Ishwara or single luminous divine Will and the many executive modes and forces of the universe. Nature, - not as she is in her divine Truth, the conscious Power of the Eternal, but as she appears to us in the Ignorance, - is executive Force, mechanical in her steps, not consciously intelligent to our experience of her, although all her works are instinct with an absolute intelligence. Not in herself master, she is full of a self-aware Power which has an infinite mastery and, because of this Power driving her, she rules all and exactly fulfils the work intended in her by the Ishwara. Not enjoying but enjoyed, she bears in herself the burden of all enjoyments. Nature as Prakriti is an inertly active Force, - for she works out a movement imposed upon her; but within her is One that knows, - some Entity sits there that is aware of all her motion and process. Prakriti works containing the knowledge, the mastery, the delight of the Purusha, the Being associated with her or seated within her; but she can participate in them only by subjection and reflection of that which fills her. Purusha knows and is still and inactive; he contains the action of Prakriti within his consciousness and knowledge and enjoys it. He gives the sanction to Prakriti's works and she works out what is sanctioned by him for his pleasure. Purusha himself does not execute; he maintains Prakriti in her action and allows her to express in energy and process and formed result what he perceives in his knowledge. This is the distinction made by the Sankhyas; and although it is not all the true truth, not in any way the highest truth either of Purusha or of Prakriti, still it is a valid and indispensable practical knowledge in the lower hemisphere of existence.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Self-Surrender in Works,#KEYS
522:WHEN THE GREAT YOGIN Padmasambhava, called by Tibetans Guru Rinpoche, "the precious teacher," embarks on his spiritual journey, he travels from place to place requesting teachings from yogins and yoginls. Guided by visions and dreams, his journey takes him to desolate forests populated with ferocious wild animals, to poison lakes with fortified islands, and to cremation grounds. Wherever he goes he performs miracles, receives empowerments, and ripens his own abilities to benefit others.
When he hears of the supreme queen of all dakinls, the greatly accomplished yogini called Secret Wisdom, he travels to the Sandal Grove cremation ground to the gates of her abode, the Palace of Skulls. He attempts to send a request to the queen with her maidservant Kumari. But the girl ignores him and continues to carry huge brass jugs of water suspended from a heavy yoke across her shoulders. When he presses his request, Kumari continues her labors, remaining silent. The great yogin becomes impatient and, through his yogic powers, magically nails the heavy jugs to the floor. No matter how hard Kumari struggles, she cannot lift them.
Removing the yoke and ropes from her shoulders, she steps before Padmasambhava, exclaiming, "You have developed great yogic powers. What of my powers, great one?" And so saying, she draws a sparkling crystal knife from the girdle at her waist and slices open her heart center, revealing the vivid and vast interior space of her body. Inside she displays to Guru Rinpoche the mandala of deities from the inner tantras: forty-two peaceful deities manifested in her upper torso and head and fifty-eight wrathful deities resting in her lower torso. Abashed that he did not realize with whom he was dealing, Guru Rinpoche bows before her and humbly renews his request for teachings. In response, she offers him her respect as well, adding, "I am only a maidservant," and ushers him in to meet the queen Secret Wisdom. ~ Judith Simmer-Brown, Dakini's Warm Breath: The Feminine Principle in Tibetan Buddhism, Introduction: Encountering the Dakini,#KEYS
523:the omnipresent Trinity :::
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 and the Individual. If the individual and Nature are left to themselves, the one is bound to the other and unable to exceed appreciably her lingering march. Something transcendent is needed, free from her and greater, which will act upon us and her, attracting us upward to Itself and securing from her by good grace or by force her consent to the individual ascension. It is this truth which makes necessary to every philosophy of Yoga the conception of the Ishwara, Lord, supreme Soul or supreme Self, towards whom the effort is directed and who gives the illuminating touch and the strength to attain. Equally true is the complementary idea so often enforced by the Yoga of devotion that as the Transcendent is necessary to the individual and sought after by him, so also the individual is necessary in a sense to the Transcendent and sought after by It. If the Bhakta seeks and yearns after Bhagavan, Bhagavan also seeks and yearns after the Bhakta. 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 maybe our intellectual conception of the highest truth of things, in practice we are compelled to accept this omnipresent Trinity.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Introduction - The Conditions of the Synthesis, The Systems of Yoga,#KEYS
524:The guiding law of spiritual experience can only come by an opening of human consciousness to the Divine Consciousness; there must be the power to receive in us the working and command and dynamic presence of the Divine Shakti and surrender ourselves to her control; it is that surrender and that control which bring the guidance. But the surrender is not sure, there is no absolute certitude of the guidance so long as we are besieged by mind formations and life impulses and instigations of ego which may easily betray us into the hands of a false experience. This danger can only be countered by the opening of a now nine-tenths concealed inmost soul or psychic being that is already there but not commonly active within us. That is the inner light we must liberate; for the light of this inmost soul is our one sure illumination so long as we walk still amidst the siege of the Ignorance and the Truth-consciousness has not taken up the entire control of our Godward endeavour. The working of the Divine Force in us under the conditions of the transition and the light of the psychic being turning us always towards a conscious and seeing obedience to that higher impulsion and away from the demands and instigations of the Forces of the Ignorance, these between them create an ever progressive inner law of our action which continues till the spiritual and supramental can be established in our nature. In the transition there may well be a period in which we take up all life and action and offer them to the Divine for purification, change and deliverance of the truth within them, another period in which we draw back and build a spiritual wall around us admitting through its gates only such activities as consent to undergo the law of the spiritual transformation, a third in which a free and all-embracing action, but with new forms fit for the utter truth of the Spirit, can again be made possible. These things, however, will be decided by no mental rule but in the light of the soul within us and by the ordaining force and progressive guidance of the Divine Power that secretly or overtly first impels, then begins clearly to control and order and finally takes up the whole burden of the Yoga. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 1, 138, #KEYS
525:There I waited day and night for the voice of God within me, to know what He had to say to me, to learn what I had to do. In this seclusion the earliest realisation, the first lesson came to me. I remembered then that a month or more before my arrest, a call had come to me to put aside all activity, to go in seclusion and to look into myself, so that I might enter into closer communion with Him. I was weak and could not accept the call. My work was very dear to me and in the pride of my heart I thought that unless I was there, it would suffer or even fail and cease; therefore I would not leave it. It seemed to me that He spoke to me again and said, The bonds you had not the strength to break, I have broken for you, because it is not my will nor was it ever my intention that that should continue. I have had another thing for you to do and it is for that I have brought you here, to teach you what you could not learn for yourself and to train you for my work. Then He placed the Gita in my hands. His strength entered into me and I was able to do the sadhana of the Gita. I was not only to understand intellectually but to realise what Sri Krishna demanded of Arjuna and what He demands of those who aspire to do His work, to be free from repulsion and desire, to do work for Him without the demand for fruit, to renounce self-will and become a passive and faithful instrument in His hands, to have an equal heart for high and low, friend and opponent, success andfailure, yet not to do His work negligently. I realised what the Hindu religion meant. We speak often of the Hindureligion, of the Sanatan Dharma, but few of us really know what that religion is. Other religions are preponderatingly religions of faith and profession, but the Sanatan Dharma is life itself; it is a thing that has not so much to be believed as lived. This is the Dharma that for the salvation of humanity was cherished in the seclusion of this peninsula from of old. It is to give this religion that India is rising. She does not rise as other countries do, for self or when she is strong, to trample on the weak. She is rising to shed the eternal light entrusted to her over the world. India has always existed for humanity and not for herself and it is for humanity and not for herself that she must be great.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin,#KEYS
526:Imperial Maheshwari is seated in the wideness above the thinking mind and will and sublimates and greatens them into wisdom and largeness or floods with a splendour beyond them. For she is the mighty and wise One who opens us to supramental infinities and the cosmic vastness, to the grandeur of the supreme Light, to a treasure-house of miraculous knowledge, to the measureless movement of the Mother's eternal forces. Tranquil is she and wonderful, great and calm for ever. Nothing can move her because all wisdom is in her; nothing is hidden from her that she chooses to know; she comprehends all things and all beings and their nature and what moves them and the law of the world and its times and how all was and is and must be. A strength is in her that meets everything and masters and none can prevail in the end against her vast intangible wisdom and high tranquil power. Equal, patient, unalterable in her will she deals with men according to their nature and with things and happenings according to their Force and truth that is in them. Partiality she has none, but she follows the decrees of the Supreme and some she raises up and some she casts down or puts away into the darkness. To the wise she gives a greater and more luminous wisdom; those that have vision she admits to her counsels; on the hostile she imposes the consequence of their hostility; the ignorant and foolish she leads them according to their blindness. In each man she answers and handles the different elements of his nature according to their need and their urge and the return they call for, puts on them the required pressure or leaves them to their cherished liberty to prosper in the ways of the Ignorance or to perish. For she is above all, bound by nothing, attached to nothing in the universe. Yet she has more than any other the heart of the universal Mother. For her compassion is endless and inexhaustible; all are to her eyes her children and portions of the One, even the Asura and Rakshasa and Pisacha and those that are revolted and hostile. Even her rejections are only a postponement, even her punishments are a grace. But her compassion does not blind her wisdom or turn her action from the course decreed; for the Truth of things is her one concern, knowledge her centre of power and to build our soul and our nature into the divine Truth her mission and her labour.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother, [39],#KEYS
527:Fundamentally, whatever be the path one follows - whe- ther the path of surrender, consecration, knowledge-if one wants it to be perfect, it is always equally difficult, and there is but one way, one only, I know of only one: that is perfect sincerity, but perfect sincerity!
Do you know what perfect sincerity is?...
Never to try to deceive oneself, never let any part of the being try to find out a way of convincing the others, never to explain favourably what one does in order to have an excuse for what one wants to do, never to close one's eyes when something is unpleasant, never to let anything pass, telling oneself, "That is not important, next time it will be better."
Oh! It is very difficult. Just try for one hour and you will see how very difficult it is. Only one hour, to be totally, absolutely sincere. To let nothing pass. That is, all one does, all one feels, all one thinks, all one wants, is exclusively the Divine.
"I want nothing but the Divine, I think of nothing but the Divine, I do nothing but what will lead me to the Divine, I love nothing but the Divine."
Try - try, just to see, try for half an hour, you will see how difficult it is! And during that time take great care that there isn't a part of the vital or a part of the mind or a part of the physical being nicely hidden there, at the back, so that you don't see it (Mother hides her hands behind her back) and don't notice that it is not collaborating - sitting quietly there so that you don't unearth it... it says nothing, but it does not change, it hides itself. How many such parts! How many parts hide themselves! You put them in your pocket because you don't want to see them or else they get behind your back and sit there well-hidden, right in the middle of your back, so as not to be seen. When you go there with your torch - your torch of sincerity - you ferret out all the corners, everywhere, all the small corners which do not consent, the things which say "No" or those which do not move: "I am not going to budge. I am glued to this place of mine and nothing will make me move."... You have a torch there with you, and you flash it upon the thing, upon everything. You will see there are many of them there, behind your back, well stuck.
Try, just for an hour, try!
No more questions?
Nobody has anything to say? Then, au revoir, my children! ~ The Mother, Question and Answers, Volume-6, page no.132-133),#KEYS
528:The poet-seer sees differently, thinks in another way, voices himself in quite another manner than the philosopher or the prophet. The prophet announces the Truth as the Word, the Law or the command of the Eternal, he is the giver of the message; the poet shows us Truth in its power of beauty, in its symbol or image, or reveals it to us in the workings of Nature or in the workings of life, and when he has done that, his whole work is done; he need not be its explicit spokesman or its official messenger. The philosopher's business is to discriminate Truth and put its parts and aspects into intellectual relation with each other; the poet's is to seize and embody aspects of Truth in their living relations, or rather - for that is too philosophical a language - to see her features and, excited by the vision, create in the beauty of her image.
No doubt, the prophet may have in him a poet who breaks out often into speech and surrounds with the vivid atmosphere of life the directness of his message; he may follow up his injunction "Take no thought for the morrow," by a revealing image of the beauty of the truth he enounces, in the life of Nature, in the figure of the lily, or link it to human life by apologue and parable. The philosopher may bring in the aid of colour and image to give some relief and hue to his dry light of reason and water his arid path of abstractions with some healing dew of poetry. But these are ornaments and not the substance of his work; and if the philosopher makes his thought substance of poetry, he ceases to be a philosophic thinker and becomes a poet-seer of Truth. Thus the more rigid metaphysicians are perhaps right in denying to Nietzsche the name of philosopher; for Nietzsche does not think, but always sees, turbidly or clearly, rightly or distortedly, but with the eye of the seer rather than with the brain of the thinker. On the other hand we may get great poetry which is full of a prophetic enthusiasm of utterance or is largely or even wholly philosophic in its matter; but this prophetic poetry gives us no direct message, only a mass of sublime inspirations of thought and image, and this philosophic poetry is poetry and lives as poetry only in so far as it departs from the method, the expression, the way of seeing proper to the philosophic mind. It must be vision pouring itself into thought-images and not thought trying to observe truth and distinguish its province and bounds and fences.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry,#KEYS
529:The Song Of Food And Dwelling :::
I bow down at the feet of the wish-fulfilling Guru.
Pray vouchsafe me your grace in bestowing beneficial food,
Pray make me realize my own body as the house of Buddha,
Pray grant me this knowledge.
I built the house through fear,
The house of Sunyata, the void nature of being;
Now I have no fear of its collapsing.
I, the Yogi with the wish-fulfilling gem,
Feel happiness and joy where'er I stay.
Because of the fear of cold, I sought for clothes;
The clothing I found is the Ah Shea Vital Heat.
Now I have no fear of coldness.
Because of the fear of poverty, I sought for riches;
The riches I found are the inexhaustible Seven Holy Jewels.
Now I have no fear of poverty.
Because of the fear of hunger, I sought for food;
The food I found is the Samadhi of Suchness.
Now I have no fear of hunger.
Because of the fear of thirst, I sought for drink;
The heavenly drink I found is the wine of mindfulness.
Now I have no fear of thirst.
Because of the fear of loneliness, I searched for a friend;
The friend I found is the bliss of perpetual Sunyata.
Now I have no fear of loneliness.
Because of the fear of going astray,
I sought for the right path to follow.
The wide path I found is the Path of Two-in-One.
Now I do not fear to lose my way.
I am a yogi with all desirable possessions,
A man always happy where'er he stays.
Here at Yolmo Tagpu Senge Tson,
The tigress howling with a pathetic, trembling cry,
Reminds me that her helpless cubs are innocently playing.
I cannot help but feel a great compassion for them,
I cannot help but practice more diligently,
I cannot help but augment thus my Bodhi-Mind.
The touching cry of the monkey,
So impressive and so moving,
Cannot help but raise in me deep pity.
The little monkey's chattering is amusing and pathetic;
As I hear it, I cannot but think of it with compassion.
The voice of the cuckoo is so moving,
And so tuneful is the lark's sweet singing,
That when I hear them I cannot help but listen
When I listen to them,
I cannot help but shed tears.
The varied cries and cawings of the crow,
Are a good and helpful friend unto the yogi.
Even without a single friend,
To remain here is a pleasure.
With joy flowing from my heart, I sing this happy song;
May the dark shadow of all men's sorrows
Be dispelled by my joyful singing. ~ Jetsun Milarepa,#KEYS
530:This is true in a general way; when those born scattered over the world at great distances from one another are driven by circumstances or by an impulsion to come and gather here, it is almost always because they have met in one life or another (not all in the same life) and because their psychic being has felt that they belonged to the same family; so they have taken an inner vow to continue to act together and collaborate. That is why even though they are born far from one another, there is something which compels them to come together; it is the psychic being, the psychic consciousness that is behind. And only to the extent the psychic consciousness is strong enough to order and organise the circumstances or the life, that is, strong enough not to allow itself to be opposed by outside forces, outside life movements, can people meet.
It is profoundly true in reality; there are large "families of beings" who work for the same cause, who have gathered in more or less large numbers and who come in groups as it were. It is as though at certain times there were awakenings in the psychic world, as though lots of little sleeping children were being called to wake up: "It is time, quick, quick, go down!" And they hurry down. And sometimes they do not drop at the same place, they are dispersed, yet there is something within which troubles them, pushes them; for one reason or another they are drawn close and that brings them together. But it is something deep in the being, something that is not at all on the surface; otherwise, even if people met they would not perhaps become aware of the bond. People meet and recognise each other only to the extent they become conscious of their psychic being, obey their psychic being, are guided by it; otherwise there is all that comes in to oppose it, all that veils, all that stupefies, all those obstacles to prevent you from finding yourself in your depths and being able to collaborate truly in the work. You are tossed about by the forces of Nature.
There is only one solution, to find your psychic being and once it is found to cling to it desperately, to let it guide you step by step whatever be the obstacle. That is the only solution. All this I did not write but I explained it to that lady. She had put to me the question: "How did I happen to come here?" I told her that it was certainly not for reasons of the external consciousness, it was something in her inner being that had pushed her. Only the awakening was not strong enough to overcome all the rest and she returned to the ordinary life for very ordinary reasons of living. ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1953,#KEYS
531:He continuously reflected on her image and attributes, day and night. His bhakti was such that he could not stop thinking of her. Eventually, he saw her everywhere and in everything. This was his path to illumination.
He was often asked by people: what is the way to the supreme? His answer was sharp and definite: bhakti yoga. He said time and time again that bhakti yoga is the best sadhana for the Kali Yuga (Dark Age) of the present.
His bhakti is illustrated by the following statement he made to a disciple:
To my divine mother I prayed only for pure love.
At her lotus feet I offered a few flowers and I prayed:
Mother! here is virtue and here is vice;
Take them both from me.
Grant me only love, pure love for Thee.
Mother! here is knowledge and here is ignorance;
Take them both from me.
Grant me only love, pure love for Thee.
Mother! here is purity and impurity;
Take them both from me.
Grant me only love, pure love for Thee.
Ramakrishna, like Kabir, was a practical man.
He said: "So long as passions are directed towards the world and its objects, they are enemies. But when they are directed towards a deity, then they become the best of friends to man, for they take him to illumination. The desire for worldly things must be changed into longing for the supreme; the anger which you feel for fellow man must be directed towards the supreme for not manifesting himself to you . . . and so on, with all other emotions. The passions cannot be eradicated, but they can be turned into new directions."
A disciple once asked him: "How can one conquer the weaknesses within us?" He answered: "When the fruit grows out of the flower, the petals drop off themselves. So when divinity in you increases, the weaknesses of human nature will vanish of their own accord." He emphasized that the aspirant should not give up his practices. "If a single dive into the sea does not bring you a pearl, do not conclude that there are no pearls in the sea. There are countless pearls hidden in the sea.
So if you fail to merge with the supreme during devotional practices, do not lose heart. Go on patiently with the practices, and in time you will invoke divine grace." It does not matter what form you care to worship. He said: "Many are the names of the supreme and infinite are the forms through which he may be approached. In whatever name and form you choose to worship him, through that he will be realized by you." He indicated the importance of surrender on the path of bhakti when he said:
~ Swami Satyananda Saraswati, A Systematic Course in the Ancient Tantric Techniques of Yoga and Kriya,#KEYS
532:Workshops, churches, and palaces were full of these fatal works of art; he had even helped with a few himself. They were deeply disappointing be cause they aroused the desire for the highest and did not fulfill it. They lacked the most essential thing-mystery. That was what dreams and truly great works of art had in common : mystery. Goldmund continued his thought: It is mystery I love and pursue. Several times I have seen it beginning to take shape; as an artist, I would like to capture and express it. Some day, perhaps, I'll be able to. The figure of the universal mother, the great birthgiver, for example. Unlike other fi gures, her mystery does not consist of this or that detail, of a particular voluptuousness or sparseness, coarseness or delicacy, power or gracefulness. It consists of a fusion of the greatest contrasts of the world, those that cannot otherwise be combined, that have made peace only in this figure. They live in it together: birth and death, tenderness and cruelty, life and destruction. If I only imagined this fi gure, and were she merely the play of my thoughts, it would not matter about her, I could dismiss her as a mistake and forget about her. But the universal mother is not an idea of mine; I did not think her up, I saw her! She lives inside me. I've met her again and again. She appeared to me one winter night in a village when I was asked to hold a light over the bed of a peasant woman giving birth: that's when the image came to life within me. I often lose it; for long periods it re mains remote; but suddenly it Hashes clear again, as it did today. The image of my own mother, whom I loved most of all, has transformed itself into this new image, and lies encased within the new one like the pit in the cherry.
As his present situation became clear to him, Goldmund was afraid to make a decision. It was as difficult as when he had said farewell to Narcissus and to the cloister. Once more he was on an impor tant road : the road to his mother. Would this mother-image one day take shape, a work of his hands, and become visible to all? Perhaps that was his goal, the hidden meaning of his life. Perhaps; he didn't know. But one thing he did know : it was good to travel toward his mother, to be drawn and called by her. He felt alive. Perhaps he'd never be able to shape her image, perhaps she'd always remain a dream, an intuition, a golden shimmer, a sacred mystery. At any rate, he had to follow her and submit his fate to her. She was his star.
And now the decision was at his fingertips; everything had become clear. Art was a beautiful thing, but it was no goddess, no goal-not for him. He was not to follow art, but only the call of his mother.
~ Hermann Hesse, Narcissus and Goldmund,#KEYS
533: Ekajaṭī or Ekajaṭā, (Sanskrit: "One Plait Woman"; Wylie: ral gcig ma: one who has one knot of hair),[1] also known as Māhacīnatārā,[2] is one of the 21 Taras. Ekajati is, along with Palden Lhamo deity, one of the most powerful and fierce goddesses of Vajrayana Buddhist mythology.[1][3] According to Tibetan legends, her right eye was pierced by the tantric master Padmasambhava so that she could much more effectively help him subjugate Tibetan demons.
Ekajati is also known as "Blue Tara", Vajra Tara or "Ugra Tara".[1][3] She is generally considered one of the three principal protectors of the Nyingma school along with Rāhula and Vajrasādhu (Wylie: rdo rje legs pa).
Often Ekajati appears as liberator in the mandala of the Green Tara. Along with that, her ascribed powers are removing the fear of enemies, spreading joy, and removing personal hindrances on the path to enlightenment.
Ekajati is the protector of secret mantras and "as the mother of the mothers of all the Buddhas" represents the ultimate unity. As such, her own mantra is also secret. She is the most important protector of the Vajrayana teachings, especially the Inner Tantras and termas. As the protector of mantra, she supports the practitioner in deciphering symbolic dakini codes and properly determines appropriate times and circumstances for revealing tantric teachings. Because she completely realizes the texts and mantras under her care, she reminds the practitioner of their preciousness and secrecy.[4] Düsum Khyenpa, 1st Karmapa Lama meditated upon her in early childhood.
According to Namkhai Norbu, Ekajati is the principal guardian of the Dzogchen teachings and is "a personification of the essentially non-dual nature of primordial energy."[5]
Dzogchen is the most closely guarded teaching in Tibetan Buddhism, of which Ekajati is a main guardian as mentioned above. It is said that Sri Singha (Sanskrit: Śrī Siṃha) himself entrusted the "Heart Essence" (Wylie: snying thig) teachings to her care. To the great master Longchenpa, who initiated the dissemination of certain Dzogchen teachings, Ekajati offered uncharacteristically personal guidance. In his thirty-second year, Ekajati appeared to Longchenpa, supervising every ritual detail of the Heart Essence of the Dakinis empowerment, insisting on the use of a peacock feather and removing unnecessary basin. When Longchenpa performed the ritual, she nodded her head in approval but corrected his pronunciation. When he recited the mantra, Ekajati admonished him, saying, "Imitate me," and sang it in a strange, harmonious melody in the dakini's language. Later she appeared at the gathering and joyously danced, proclaiming the approval of Padmasambhava and the dakinis.[6] ~ Wikipedia,#KEYS
534:One can learn how to identify oneself. One must learn. It is indispensable if one wants to get out of one's ego. For so long as one is shut up in one's ego, one can't make any progress.
How can it be done?
There are many ways. I'll tell you one.
When I was in Paris, I used to go to many places where there were gatherings of all kinds, people making all sorts of researches, spiritual (so-called spiritual), occult researches, etc. And once I was invited to meet a young lady (I believe she was Swedish) who had found a method of knowledge, exactly a method for learning. And so she explained it to us. We were three or four (her French was not very good but she was quite sure about what she was saying!); she said: "It's like this, you take an object or make a sign on a blackboard or take a drawing - that is not important - take whatever is most convenient for you. Suppose, for instance, that I draw for you... (she had a blackboard) I draw a design." She drew a kind of half-geometric design. "Now, you sit in front of the design and concentrate all your attention upon it - upon that design which is there. You concentrate, concentrate without letting anything else enter your consciousness - except that. Your eyes are fixed on the drawing and don't move at all. You are as it were hypnotised by the drawing. You look (and so she sat there, looking), you look, look, look.... I don't know, it takes more or less time, but still for one who is used to it, it goes pretty fast. You look, look, look, you become that drawing you are looking at. Nothing else exists in the world any longer except the drawing, and then, suddenly, you pass to the other side; and when you pass to the other side you enter a new consciousness, and you know."
We had a good laugh, for it was amusing. But it is quite true, it is an excellent method to practise. Naturally, instead of taking a drawing or any object, you may take, for instance, an idea, a few words. You have a problem preoccupying you, you don't know the solution of the problem; well, you objectify your problem in your mind, put it in the most precise, exact, succinct terms possible, and then concentrate, make an effort; you concentrate only on the words, and if possible on the idea they represent, that is, upon your problem - you concentrate, concentrate, concentrate until nothing else exists but that. And it is true that, all of a sudden, you have the feeling of something opening, and one is on the other side. The other side of what?... It means that you have opened a door of your consciousness, and instantaneously you have the solution of your problem. It is an excellent method of learning "how" to identify oneself.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1953, 217 [T1],#KEYS
535:The Mahashakti, the universal Mother, works out whatever is transmitted by her transcendent consciousness from the Supreme and enters into the worlds that she has made; her presence fills and supports them with the divine spirit and the divine all-sustaining force and delight without which they could not exist. That which we call Nature or Prakriti is only her most outward executive aspect; she marshals and arranges the harmony of her forces and processes, impels the operations of Nature and moves among them secret or manifest in all that can be seen or experienced or put into motion of life. Each of the worlds is nothing but one play of the Mahashakti of that system of worlds or universe, who is there as the cosmic Soul and Personality of the transcendent Mother. Each is something that she has seen in her vision, gathered into her heart of beauty and power and created in her Ananda.
But there are many planes of her creation, many steps of the Divine Shakti. At the summit of this manifestation of which we are a part there are worlds of infinite existence, consciousness, force and bliss over which the Mother stands as the unveiled eternal Power. All beings there live and move in an ineffable completeness and unalterable oneness, because she carries them safe in her arms for ever. Nearer to us are the worlds of a perfect supramental creation in which the Mother is the supramental Mahashakti, a Power of divine omniscient Will and omnipotent Knowledge always apparent in its unfailing works and spontaneously perfect in every process. There all movements are the steps of the Truth; there all beings are souls and powers and bodies of the divine Light; there all experiences are seas and floods and waves of an intense and absolute Ananda. But here where we dwell are the worlds of the Ignorance, worlds of mind and life and body separated in consciousness from their source, of which this earth is a significant centre and its evolution a crucial process. This too with all its obscurity and struggle and imperfection is upheld by the Universal Mother; this too is impelled and guided to its secret aim by the Mahashakti.
The Mother as the Mahashakti of this triple world of the Ignorance stands in an intermediate plane between the supramental Light, the Truth life, the Truth creation which has to be brought down here and this mounting and descending hierarchy of planes of consciousness that like a double ladder lapse into the nescience of Matter and climb back again through the flowering of life and soul and mind into the infinity of the Spirit. Determining all that shall be in this universe and in the terrestrial evolution by what she sees and feels and pours from her, she stands there... ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother,#KEYS
536:Worthy The Name Of Sir Knight
Sir Knight of the world's oldest order,
Sir Knight of the Army of God,
You have crossed the strange mystical border,
The ground floor of truth you have trod;
You have entered the sanctum sanctorum,
Which leads to the temple above,
Where you come as a stone, and a Christ-chosen one,
In the kingdom of Friendship and Love.
II
As you stand in this new realm of beauty,
Where each man you meet is your friend,
Think not that your promise of duty
In hall, or asylum, shall end;
Outside, in the great world of pleasure,
Beyond, in the clamor of trade,
In the battle of life and its coarse daily strife
Remember the vows you have made.
III
Your service, majestic and solemn,
Your symbols, suggestive and sweet,
Your uniformed phalanx in column
On gala days marching the street;
Your sword and your plume and your helmet,
Your 'secrets' hid from the world's sight;
These things are the small, lesser parts of the all
Which are needed to form the true Knight.
IV
The martyrs who perished rejoicing
In Templary's glorious laws,
Who died 'midst the fagots while voicing
The glory and worth of their cause-
935
They honored the title of 'Templar'
No more than the Knight of to-day
Who mars not the name with one blemish of shame,
But carries it clean through life's fray.
To live for a cause, to endeavor
To make your deeds grace it, to try
And uphold its precepts forever,
Is harder by far than to die.
For the battle of life is unending,
The enemy, Self, never tires,
And the true Knight must slay that sly foe every day
Ere he reaches the heights he desires.
VI
Sir Knight, have you pondered the meaning
Of all you have heard and been told?
Have you strengthened your heart for its weaning
From vices and faults loved of old?
Will you honor, in hours of temptation,
Your promises noble and grand?
Will your spirit be strong to do battle with wrong,
'And having done all, to stand?'
VII
Will you ever be true to a brother
In actions as well as in creed?
Will you stand by his side as no other
Could stand in the hour of his need?
Will you boldly defend him from peril,
And lift him from poverty's curseWill the promise of aid which you willingly made,
Reach down from your lips to your purse?
VIII
The world's battle field is before you!
Let Wisdom walk close by your side,
936
Let Faith spread her snowy wings o'er you,
Let Truth be your comrade and guide;
Let Fortitude, Justice and Mercy
Direct all your conduct aright,
And let each word and act tell to men the proud fact,
You are worthy the name of 'Sir Knight'.
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox,#KEYS
537:Mother, suffering comes from ignorance and pain, but what is the nature of the suffering and pain the Divine Mother feels for her children-the Divine Mother in Savitri?
It is because she participates in their nature. She has descended upon earth to participate in their nature. Because if she did not participate in their nature, she could not lead them farther. If she remained in her supreme consciousness where there is no suffering, in her supreme knowledge and consciousness, she could not have any contact with human beings. And it is for this that she is obliged to take on the human consciousness and form, it is to be able to enter into contact with them. Only, she does not forget: she has adopted their consciousness but she remains in relation with her own real, supreme consciousness. And thus, by joining the two, she can make those who are in that other consciousness progress. But if she did not adopt their consciousness, if she did not suffer with their sorrow, she could not help them. Hers is not a suffering of ignorance: it is a suffering through identity. It is because she has accepted to have the same vibrations as they, in order to be able to enter into contact with them and pull them out of the state they are in. If she did not enter into contact with them, she would not be felt at all or no one could bear her radiance.... This has been said in all kinds of forms, in all kinds of religions, and they have spoken very often of the divine Sacrifice, but from a certain point of view it is true. It is a voluntary sacrifice, but it is true: giving up a state of perfect consciousness, perfect bliss, perfect power in order to accept the state of ignorance of the outer world so as to pull it out of that ignorance. If this state were not accepted, there would be no contact with it. No relation would be possible. And this is the reason of the incarnations. Otherwise, there would be no necessity. If the divine consciousness and divine force could work directly from the place or state of their perfection, if they could work directly on matter and transform it, there would be no need to take a body like man's. It would have been enough to act from the world of Truth with the perfect consciousness and upon consciousness. In fact that acts perhaps but so slowly that when there is this effort to make the world progress, make it go forward more rapidly, well, it is necessary to take on human nature. By taking the human body, one is obliged to take on human nature, partially. Only, instead of losing one's consciousness and losing contact with the Truth, one keeps this consciousness and this Truth, and it is by joining the two that one can create exactly this kind of alchemy of transformation. But if one did not touch matter, one could do nothing for it. ~ The Mother, Question And Answers,#KEYS
538:O Death, thou lookst on an unfinished world
Assailed by thee and of its road unsure,
Peopled by imperfect minds and ignorant lives,
And sayest God is not and all is vain.
How shall the child already be the man?
Because he is infant, shall he never grow?
Because he is ignorant, shall he never learn?
In a small fragile seed a great tree lurks,
In a tiny gene a thinking being is shut;
A little element in a little sperm,
It grows and is a conqueror and a sage.
Then wilt thou spew out, Death, God's mystic truth,
Deny the occult spiritual miracle?
Still wilt thou say there is no spirit, no God?
A mute material Nature wakes and sees;
She has invented speech, unveiled a will.
Something there waits beyond towards which she strives,
Something surrounds her into which she grows:
To uncover the spirit, to change back into God,
To exceed herself is her transcendent task.
In God concealed the world began to be,
Tardily it travels towards manifest God:
Our imperfection towards perfection toils,
The body is the chrysalis of a soul:
The infinite holds the finite in its arms,
Time travels towards revealed eternity.
A miracle structure of the eternal Mage,
Matter its mystery hides from its own eyes,
A scripture written out in cryptic signs,
An occult document of the All-Wonderful's art.
All here bears witness to his secret might,
In all we feel his presence and his power.
A blaze of his sovereign glory is the sun,
A glory is the gold and glimmering moon,
A glory is his dream of purple sky.
A march of his greatness are the wheeling stars.
His laughter of beauty breaks out in green trees,
His moments of beauty triumph in a flower;
The blue sea's chant, the rivulet's wandering voice
Are murmurs falling from the Eternal's harp.
This world is God fulfilled in outwardness.
His ways challenge our reason and our sense;
By blind brute movements of an ignorant Force,
By means we slight as small, obscure or base,
A greatness founded upon little things,
He has built a world in the unknowing Void.
His forms he has massed from infinitesimal dust;
His marvels are built from insignificant things.
If mind is crippled, life untaught and crude,
If brutal masks are there and evil acts,
They are incidents of his vast and varied plot,
His great and dangerous drama's needed steps;
He makes with these and all his passion-play,
A play and yet no play but the deep scheme
Of a transcendent Wisdom finding ways
To meet her Lord in the shadow and the Night:
Above her is the vigil of the stars;
Watched by a solitary Infinitude
She embodies in dumb Matter the Divine,
In symbol minds and lives the Absolute.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Debate of Love and Death,#KEYS
539:- for every well-made and significant poem, picture, statue or building is an act of creative knowledge, a living discovery of the consciousness, a figure of Truth, a dynamic form of mental and vital self-expression or world-expression, - all that seeks, all that finds, all that voices or figures is a realisation of something of the play of the Infinite and to that extent can be made a means of God-realisation or of divine formation. But the Yogin has to see that it is no longer done as part of an ignorant mental life; it can be accepted by him only if by the feeling, the remembrance, the dedication within it, it is turned into a movement of the spiritual consciousness and becomes a part of its vast grasp of comprehensive illuminating knowledge.
For all must be done as a sacrifice, all activities must have the One Divine for their object and the heart of their meaning. The Yogin's aim in the sciences that make for knowledge should be to discover and understand the workings of the Divine Consciousness-Puissance in man and creatures and things and forces, her creative significances, her execution of the mysteries, the symbols in which she arranges the manifestation. The Yogin's aim in the practical sciences, whether mental and physical or occult and psychic, should be to enter into the ways of the Divine and his processes, to know the materials and means for the work given to us so that we may use that knowledge for a conscious and faultless expression of the spirit's mastery, joy and self-fulfilment. The Yogin's aim in the Arts should not be a mere aesthetic, mental or vital gratification, but, seeing the Divine everywhere, worshipping it with a revelation of the meaning of its own works, to express that One Divine in ideal forms, the One Divine in principles and forces, the One Divine in gods and men and creatures and objects. The theory that sees an intimate connection between religious aspiration and the truest and greatest Art is in essence right; but we must substitute for the mixed and doubtful religious motive a spiritual aspiration, vision, interpreting experience. For the wider and more comprehensive the seeing, the more it contains in itself the sense of the hidden Divine in humanity and in all things and rises beyond a superficial religiosity into the spiritual life, the more luminous, flexible, deep and powerful will the Art be that springs from that high motive. The Yogin's distinction from other men is this that he lives in a higher and vaster spiritual consciousness; all his work of knowledge or creation must then spring from there: it must not be made in the mind, - for it is a greater truth and vision than mental man's that he has to express or rather that presses to express itself through him and mould his works, not for his personal satisfaction, but for a divine purpose. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 1, 142 [T4],#KEYS
540:The modern distinction is that the poet appeals to the imagination and not to the intellect. But there are many kinds of imagination; the objective imagination which visualises strongly the outward aspects of life and things; the subjective imagination which visualises strongly the mental and emotional impressions they have the power to start in the mind; the imagination which deals in the play of mental fictions and to which we give the name of poetic fancy; the aesthetic imagination which delights in the beauty of words and images for their own sake and sees no farther. All these have their place in poetry, but they only give the poet his materials, they are only the first instruments in the creation of poetic style. The essential poetic imagination does not stop short with even the most subtle reproductions of things external or internal, with the richest or delicatest play of fancy or with the most beautiful colouring of word or image. It is creative, not of either the actual or the fictitious, but of the more and the most real; it sees the spiritual truth of things, - of this truth too there are many gradations, - which may take either the actual or the ideal for its starting-point. The aim of poetry, as of all true art, is neither a photographic or otherwise realistic imitation of Nature, nor a romantic furbishing and painting or idealistic improvement of her image, but an interpretation by the images she herself affords us, not on one but on many planes of her creation, of that which she conceals from us, but is ready, when rightly approached, to reveal.
This is the true, because the highest and essential aim of poetry; but the human mind arrives at it only by a succession of steps, the first of which seems far enough from its object. It begins by stringing its most obvious and external ideas, feelings and sensations of things on a thread of verse in a sufficient language of no very high quality. But even when it gets to a greater adequacy and effectiveness, it is often no more than a vital, an emotional or an intellectual adequacy and effectiveness. There is a strong vital poetry which powerfully appeals to our sensations and our sense of life, like much of Byron or the less inspired mass of the Elizabethan drama; a strong emotional poetry which stirs our feelings and gives us the sense and active image of the passions; a strong intellectual poetry which satisfies our curiosity about life and its mechanism, or deals with its psychological and other "problems", or shapes for us our thoughts in an effective, striking and often quite resistlessly quotable fashion. All this has its pleasures for the mind and the surface soul in us, and it is certainly quite legitimate to enjoy them and to enjoy them strongly and vividly on our way upward; but if we rest content with these only, we shall never get very high up the hill of the Muses.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry,#KEYS
541:The Mother once described the characteristics of the unity-body, of the future supramental body, to a young Ashramite: 'You know, if there is something on that window-sill and if I [in a supramental body] want to take it, I stretch out my hand and it becomes - wow! - long, and I have the thing in my hand without even having to get up from my chair ... Physically, I shall be able to be here and there at the same time. I shall be able to communicate with many people at the same time. To have something in my hand, I'll just have to wish for it. I think about something and I want it and it is already in my hand. With this transformed body I shall be free of the fetters of ignorance, pain, of mortality and unconsciousness. I shall be able to do many things at the same time. The transparent, luminous, strong, light, elastic body won't need any material things to subsist on ... The body can even be lengthened if one wants it to become tall, or shrunk when one wants it to be small, in any circumstances ... There will be all kinds of changes and there will be powers without limit. And it won't be something funny. Of course, I am giving you somewhat childish examples to tease you and to show the difference. 'It will be a true being, perfect in proportion, very, very beautiful and strong, light, luminous or else transparent. It will have a supple and malleable body endowed with extraordinary capacities and able to do everything; a body without age, a creation of the New Consciousness or else a transformed body such as none has ever imagined ... All that is above man will be within its reach. It will be guided by the Truth alone and nothing less. That is what it is and more even than has ever been conceived.'895 This the Mother told in French to Mona Sarkar, who noted it down as faithfully as possible and read it out to her for verification. The supramental body will not only be omnipotent and omniscient, but also omnipresent. And immortal. Not condemned to a never ending monotonous immortality - which, again, is one of our human interpretations of immortality - but for ever existing in an ecstasy of inexhaustible delight in 'the Joy that surpasses all understanding.' Moment after moment, eternity after eternity. For in that state each moment is an eternity and eternity an ever present moment. If gross matter is not capable of being used as a permanent coating of the soul in the present phase of its evolution, then it certainly is not capable of being the covering of the supramental consciousness, to form the body that has, to some extent, been described above. This means that the crux of the process of supramental transformation lies in matter; the supramental world has to become possible in matter, which at present still is gross matter. - Sri Aurobindo and the Mother were supramentalized in their mental and vital, but their enormous problem was the supramentalization of the physical body, consisting of the gross matter of the Earth. As the Mother said: 'It is matter itself that must change so that the Supramental may manifest. A new kind of matter no longer corresponding with Mendeleyev's periodic table of the elements? Is that possible?
~ Georges Van Vrekhem,#KEYS
542:28 August 1957
Mother, Sri Aurobindo says here: "Whether the whole of humanity would be touched [by the Supramental influence] or only a part of it ready for the change would depend on what was intended or possible in the continued order of the universe."
The Supramental Manifestation, SABCL, Vol. 16, p. 56
What is meant by "what was intended or possible"? The two things are different. So far you have said that if humanity changes, if it wants to participate in the new birth...
It is the same thing. But when you look at an object on a certain plane, you see it horizontally, and when you look at the same object from another plane, you see it vertically. (Mother shows the cover and the back of her book.) So, if one looks from above, one says "intended"; if one looks from below, one says "possible".... But it is absolutely the same thing, only the point of view is different.
But in that case, it is not our incapacity or lack of will to change that makes any difference.
We have already said this many a time. If you remain in a consciousness which functions mentally, even if it is the highest mind, you have the notion of an absolute determinism of cause and effect and feel that things are what they are because they are what they are and cannot be otherwise.
It is only when you come out of the mental consciousness completely and enter a higher perception of things - which you may call spiritual or divine - that you suddenly find yourself in a state of perfect freedom where everything is possible.
(Silence)
Those who have contacted that state or lived in it, even if only for a moment, try to describe it as a feeling of an absolute Will in action, which immediately gives to the human mentality the feeling of being arbitrary. And because of that distortion there arises the idea - which I might call traditional - of a supreme and arbitrary God, which is something most unacceptable to every enlightened mind. I suppose that this experience badly expressed is at the origin of this notion. And in fact it is incorrect to express it as an absolute Will: it is very, very, very different. It is something else altogether. For, what man understands by "Will" is a decision that is taken and carried out. We are obliged to use the word "will", but in its truth the Will acting in the universe is neither a choice nor a decision that is taken. What seems to me the closest expression is "vision". Things are because they are seen. But of course "seen", not seen as we see with these eyes.
(Mother touches her eyes...) All the same, it is the nearest thing.
It is a vision - a vision unfolding itself.
The universe becomes objective as it is progressively seen.
And that is why Sri Aurobindo has said "intended or possible". It is neither one nor the other. All that can be said is a distortion.
(Silence)
Objectivisation - universal objectivisation - is something like a projection in space and time, like a living image of what is from all eternity. And as the image is gradually projected on the screen of time and space, it becomes objective:
The Supreme contemplating His own Image.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1957-1958,#KEYS
543:On that spring day in the park I saw a young woman who attracted me. She was tall and slender, elegantly dressed, and had an intelligent and boyish face. I liked her at once. She was my type and began to fill my imagination. She probably was not much older than I but seemed far more mature, well-defined, a full-grown woman, but with a touch of exuberance and boyishness in her face, and this was what I liked above all .
I had never managed to approach a girl with whom I had fallen in love, nor did I manage in this case. But the impression she made on me was deeper than any previous one had been and the infatuation had a profound influence on my life.
Suddenly a new image had risen up before me, a lofty and cherished image. And no need, no urge was as deep or as fervent within me as the craving to worship and admire. I gave her the name Beatrice, for, even though I had not read Dante, I knew about Beatrice from an English painting of which I owned a reproduction. It showed a young pre-Raphaelite woman, long-limbed and slender, with long head and etherealized hands and features. My beautiful young woman did not quite resemble her, even though she, too, revealed that slender and boyish figure which I loved, and something of the ethereal, soulful quality of her face.
Although I never addressed a single word to Beatrice, she exerted a profound influence on me at that time. She raised her image before me, she gave me access to a holy shrine, she transformed me into a worshiper in a temple.
From one day to the next I stayed clear of all bars and nocturnal exploits. I could be alone with myself again and enjoyed reading and going for long walks.
My sudden conversion drew a good deal of mockery in its wake. But now I had something I loved and venerated, I had an ideal again, life was rich with intimations of mystery and a feeling of dawn that made me immune to all taunts. I had come home again to myself, even if only as the slave and servant of a cherished image.
I find it difficult to think back to that time without a certain fondness. Once more I was trying most strenuously to construct an intimate "world of light" for myself out of the shambles of a period of devastation; once more I sacrificed everything within me to the aim of banishing darkness and evil from myself. And, furthermore, this present "world of light" was to some extent my own creation; it was no longer an escape, no crawling back to -nether and the safety of irresponsibility; it was a new duty, one I had invented and desired on my own, with responsibility and self-control. My sexuality, a torment from which I was in constant flight, was to be transfigured nto spirituality and devotion by this holy fire. Everything :brk and hateful was to be banished, there were to be no more tortured nights, no excitement before lascivious picures, no eavesdropping at forbidden doors, no lust. In place of all this I raised my altar to the image of Beatrice, :.. and by consecrating myself to her I consecrated myself to the spirit and to the gods, sacrificing that part of life which I withdrew from the forces of darkness to those of light. My goal was not joy but purity, not happiness but beauty, and spirituality.
This cult of Beatrice completely changed my life.
~ Hermann Hesse, Demian,#KEYS
544:At it's narrowest (although this is a common and perhaps the official position; need to find ref in What is Enlightenment) "integral", "turquois" (Spiral Dynamics), and "second tier" (ditto) are all synonms, and in turn are equivalent to Wilber IV / AQAL/Wilber V "Post-metaphysical" AQAL. This is the position that "Integral = Ken Wilber". It constitutes a new philosophical school or meme-set, in the tradition of charismatic spiritual teachers of all ages, in which an articulate, brilliant, and popular figure would arise, and gather a following around him- or her-self. After the teacher passes on, their teaching remains through books and organisations dedicated to perpetuating that teaching; although without the brilliant light of the Founder, things generally become pretty stultifying, and there is often little or no original development. Even so, the books themselves continue to inspire, and many people benefit greatly from these tecahings, and can contact the original Light of the founders to be inspired by them on the subtle planes. Some late 19th, 20th, and early 21st century examples of such teachers, known and less well-known, are Blavatsky, Theon, Steiner, Aurobindo, Gurdjieff, Crowley, Alice Bailey, Carl Jung, Ann Ree Colton, and now Ken Wilber. Also, many popular gurus belong in this category. It could plausibly be suggested that the founders of the great world religions started out no different, but their teaching really caught on n a big way.
...
At its broadest then, the Integral Community includes not only Wilber but those he cites as his influences and hold universal and evolutionary views or teachings, as well as those who, while influenced by him also differ somewhat, and even those like Arthur M Young that Wilber has apparently never heard of. Nevertheless, all share a common, evolutionary, "theory of everything" position, and, whilst they may differ on many details and even on many major points, taken together they could be considered a wave front for a new paradigm, a memetic revolution. I use the term Daimon of the Integral Movement to refer to the spiritual being or personality of light that is behind and working through this broader movement.
Now, this doesn't mean that this daimon is necessarily a negative entity. I see a lot of promise, a lot of potential, in the Integral Approach. From what I feel at the moment, the Integral Deva is a force and power of good.
But, as with any new spiritual or evolutionary development, there is duality, in that there are forces that hinder and oppose and distort, as well as forces that help and aid in the evolution and ultimate divinisation of the Earth and the cosmos. Thus even where a guru does give in the dark side (as very often happens with many gurus today) there still remains an element of Mixed Light that remains (one finds this ambiguity with Sai Baba, with Da Free John, and with Rajneesh); and we find this same ambiguity with the Integral Community regarding what seems to me a certain offputting devotional attitude towards Wilber himself. The light will find its way, regardless. However, an Intregral Movement that is caught up in worship of and obedience to an authority figure, will not be able to achieve what a movement unfettered by such shackles could. ~ M Alan Kazlev, Kheper, Wilber, Integral,#KEYS
545:Can it be said in justification of one's past that whatever has happened in one's life had to happen?
The Mother: Obviously, what has happened had to happen; it would not have been, if it had not been intended. Even the mistakes that we have committed and the adversities that fell upon us had to be, because there was some necessity in them, some utility for our lives. But in truth these things cannot be explained mentally and should not be. For all that happened was necessary, not for any mental reason, but to lead us to something beyond what the mind imagines. But is there any need to explain after all? The whole universe explains everything at every moment and a particular thing happens because the whole universe is what it is. But this does not mean that we are bound over to a blind acquiescence in Nature's inexorable law. You can accept the past as a settled fact and perceive the necessity in it, and still you can use the experience it gave you to build up the power consciously to guide and shape your present and your future.
Is the time also of an occurrence arranged in the Divine Plan of things?
The Mother: All depends upon the plane from which one sees and speaks. There is a plane of divine consciousness in which all is known absolutely, and the whole plan of things foreseen and predetermined. That way of seeing lives in the highest reaches of the Supramental; it is the Supreme's own vision. But when we do not possess that consciousness, it is useless to speak in terms that hold good only in that region and are not our present effective way of seeing things. For at a lower level of consciousness nothing is realised or fixed beforehand; all is in the process of making. Here there are no settled facts, there is only the play of possibilities; out of the clash of possibilities is realised the thing that has to happen. On this plane we can choose and select; we can refuse one possibility and accept another; we can follow one path, turn away from another. And that we can do, even though what is actually happening may have been foreseen and predetermined in a higher plane.
The Supreme Consciousness knows everything beforehand, because everything is realised there in her eternity. But for the sake of her play and in order to carry out actually on the physical plane what is foreordained in her own supreme self, she moves here upon earth as if she did not know the whole story; she works as if it was a new and untried thread that she was weaving. It is this apparent forgetfulness of her own foreknowledge in the higher consciousness that gives to the individual in the active life of the world his sense of freedom and independence and initiative. These things in him are her pragmatic tools or devices, and it is through this machinery that the movements and issues planned and foreseen elsewhere are realised here.
It may help you to understand if you take the example of an actor. An actor knows the whole part he has to play; he has in his mind the exact sequence of what is to happen on the stage. But when he is on the stage, he has to appear as if he did not know anything; he has to feel and act as if he were experiencing all these things for the first time, as if it was an entirely new world with all its chance events and surprises that was unrolling before his eyes. 28th April ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1929-1931,#KEYS
546:If this is the truth of works, the first thing the sadhaka has to do is to recoil from the egoistic forms of activity and get rid of the sense of an "I" that acts. He has to see and feel that everything happens in him by the plastic conscious or subconscious or sometimes superconscious automatism of his mental and bodily instruments moved by the forces of spiritual, mental, vital and physical Nature. There is a personality on his surface that chooses and wills, submits and struggles, tries to make good in Nature or prevail over Nature, but this personality is itself a construction of Nature and so dominated, driven, determined by her that it cannot be free. It is a formation or expression of the Self in her, - it is a self of Nature rather than a self of Self, his natural and processive, not his spiritual and permanent being, a temporary constructed personality, not the true immortal Person. It is that Person that he must become. He must succeed in being inwardly quiescent, detach himself as the observer from the outer active personality and learn the play of the cosmic forces in him by standing back from all blinding absorption in its turns and movements. Thus calm, detached, a student of himself and a witness of his nature, he realises that he is the individual soul who observes the works of Nature, accepts tranquilly her results and sanctions or withholds his sanction from the impulse to her acts. At present this soul or Purusha is little more than an acquiescent spectator, influencing perhaps the action and development of the being by the pressure of its veiled consciousness, but for the most part delegating its powers or a fragment of them to the outer personality, - in fact to Nature, for this outer self is not lord but subject to her, anı̄sa; but, once unveiled, it can make its sanction or refusal effective, become the master of the action, dictate sovereignly a change of Nature. Even if for a long time, as the result of fixed association and past storage of energy, the habitual movement takes place independent of the Purusha's assent and even if the sanctioned movement is persistently refused by Nature for want of past habit, still he will discover that in the end his assent or refusal prevails, - slowly with much resistance or quickly with a rapid accommodation of her means and tendencies she modifies herself and her workings in the direction indicated by his inner sight or volition. Thus he learns in place of mental control or egoistic will an inner spiritual control which makes him master of the Nature-forces that work in him and not their unconscious instrument or mechanic slave. Above and around him is the Shakti, the universal Mother and from her he can get all his inmost soul needs and wills if only he has a true knowledge of her ways and a true surrender to the divine Will in her. Finally, he becomes aware of that highest dynamic Self within him and within Nature which is the source of all his seeing and knowing, the source of the sanction, the source of the acceptance, the source of the rejection. This is the Lord, the Supreme, the One-in-all, Ishwara-Shakti, of whom his soul is a portion, a being of that Being and a power of that Power. The rest of our progress depends on our knowledge of the ways in which the Lord of works manifests his Will in the world and in us and executes them through the transcendent and universal Shakti. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supreme Will, 216, #KEYS
547:It is thus by an integralisation of our divided being that the Divine Shakti in the Yoga will proceed to its object; for liberation, perfection, mastery are dependent on this integralisation, since the little wave on the surface cannot control its own movement, much less have any true control over the vast life around it. The Shakti, the power of the Infinite and the Eternal descends within us, works, breaks up our present psychological formations, shatters every wall, widens, liberates, presents us with always newer and greater powers of vision, ideation, perception and newer and greater life-motives, enlarges and newmodels increasingly the soul and its instruments, confronts us with every imperfection in order to convict and destroy it, opens to a greater perfection, does in a brief period the work of many lives or ages so that new births and new vistas open constantly within us. Expansive in her action, she frees the consciousness from confinement in the body; it can go out in trance or sleep or even waking and enter into worlds or other regions of this world and act there or carry back its experience. It spreads out, feeling the body only as a small part of itself, and begins to contain what before contained it; it achieves the cosmic consciousness and extends itself to be commensurate with the universe. It begins to know inwardly and directly and not merely by external observation and contact the forces at play in the world, feels their movement, distinguishes their functioning and can operate immediately upon them as the scientist operates upon physical forces, accept their action and results in our mind, life, body or reject them or modify, change, reshape, create immense new powers and movements in place of the old small functionings of the nature. We begin to perceive the working of the forces of universal Mind and to know how our thoughts are created by that working, separate from within the truth and falsehood of our perceptions, enlarge their field, extend and illumine their significance, become master of our own minds and active to shape the movements of Mind in the world around us. We begin to perceive the flow and surge of the universal life-forces, detect the origin and law of our feelings, emotions, sensations, passions, are free to accept, reject, new-create, open to wider, rise to higher planes of Life-Power. We begin to perceive too the key to the enigma of Matter, follow the interplay of Mind and Life and Consciousness upon it, discover more and more its instrumental and resultant function and detect ultimately the last secret of Matter as a form not merely of Energy but of involved and arrested or unstably fixed and restricted consciousness and begin to see too the possibility of its liberation and plasticity of response to higher Powers, its possibilities for the conscious and no longer the more than half-inconscient incarnation and self-expression of the Spirit. All this and more becomes more and more possible as the working of the Divine Shakti increases in us and, against much resistance or labour to respond of our obscure consciousness, through much struggle and movement of progress and regression and renewed progress necessitated by the work of intensive transformation of a half-inconscient into a conscious substance, moves to a greater purity, truth, height, range. All depends on the psychic awakening in us, the completeness of our response to her and our growing surrender. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, 183, #KEYS
548:(Nirodbaran:) "It was the first week of January 1930.
At about 3 p.m., I reached Dilip Kumar Roy's place. "Oh, you have come! Let us go," he said, and cutting a rose from his terrace-garden he added, "Offer this to the Mother." When we arrived at the Ashram he left me at the present Reading Room saying, "Wait here." My heart was beating nervously as if I were going to face an examination. A stately chair in the middle of the room attracted momentarily my attention. In a short while the Mother came accompanied by Nolini, Amrita and Dilip. She took her seat in the chair, the others stood by her side. I was dazzled by the sight. Was it a ‘visionary gleam’ or a reality? Nothing like it had I seen before. Her fair complexion, set off by a finely coloured sari and a headband, gave me the impression of a goddess such as we see in pictures or in the idols during the Durga Puja festival. She was all smiles and redolent with grace. I suppose this was the Mahalakshmi smile Sri Aurobindo had spoken of in his book The Mother. She bathed me in the cascade of her smile and heart-melting look. I stood before her, shy and speechless, made more so by the presence of the others who were enjoying the silent sweet spectacle. Minutes passed. Then I offered to her hand my rose and did my pranam at her feet which had gold anklets on them. She stooped and blessed me. On standing up, I got again the same enchanting smile like moonbeams from a magic sky. After a time she said to the others, "He is very shy." "[1]
(Amal Kiran:) "Now to come back to all the people, all – the undamned all who were there in the Ashram. Very soon after my coming Dilip Kumar Roy came with Sahana Devi. They came and settled down. And, soon after that, I saw the face of my friend Nirod. It was of course an unforgettable face. (laughter) I think he had come straight from England or via some place in Bengal, but he carried something of the air of England. (laughter) He had passed out as a doctor at Edinburgh. I saw him, we became friends and we have remained friends ever since. But when he came as a doctor he was not given doctoring work here. As far as I remember he was made the head of a timber godown! (laughter) All sorts of strange jobs were being given to people. Look at the first job I got. The Mother once told me, "I would like you to do some work." I said, "All right, I am prepared to do some work." Then she said,"Will you take charge of our stock of furniture?" (laughter)"[2]
(Amal Kiran:) "To return to my friend Nirod – it was after some time that he got the Dispensary. I don't know whether he wanted it, or liked it or not, but he established his reputation as the frowning physician. (laughter) People used to come to him with a cold and he would stand and glare at them, and say, "What? You have a cold!" Poor people, they would simply shiver (laughter) and this had a very salutary effect because they thought that it was better not to fall ill than face the doctor's drastic disapproval of any kind of illness which would give him any botheration. (laughter) But he did his job all right, and every time he frightened off a patient he went to his room and started trying to write poetry (laughter) – because that, he thought, was his most important job. And, whether he succeeded as a doctor or not, as a poet he has eminently succeeded. Sri Aurobindo has really made him a poet.
The doctoring as well as the poetry was a bond between us, because my father had been a doctor and medicine ran in my blood. We used to discuss medical matters sometimes, but more often the problems and pains of poetry."[3] ~ https://wiki.auroville.org.in/wiki/Nirodbaran#KEYS
549:Allow the Lord to Do Everything :::
Now, when I start looking like this (Mother closes her eyes), two things are there at the same time: this smile, this joy, this laughter are there, and such peace! Such full, luminous, total peace, in which there are no more conflicts, no more contradictions. There are no more conflicts. It is one single luminous harmony - and yet everything we call error, suffering, misery, everything is there. It eliminates nothing. It is another way of seeing.
(long silence)
There can be no doubt that if you sincerely want to get out of it, it is not so difficult after all: you have nothing to do, you only have to allow the Lord to do everything. And He does everything. He does everything. It is so wonderful, so wonderful!
He takes anything, even what we call a very ordinary intelligence and he simply teaches you to put this intelligence aside, to rest: "There, be quiet, don't stir, don't bother me, I don't need you." Then a door opens - you don't even feel that you have to open it; it is wide open, you are tkane over to the other side. All that is done by Someone else, not you. And then the other way becomes impossible.
All this... oh, this tremendous labour of hte mind striving to understand, toiling and giving itself headaches!... It is absolutely useless, absolutely useless, no use at all, it merely increases the confusion.
You are faced with a so-called problem: what should you say, what should you do, how should you act? There is nothing to do, nothing, you only have to say to the Lord, "There, You see, it is like that" - that's all. And then you stay very quiet. And then quite spontaneously, without thinking about it, without reflection, without calculation, nothing, nothing, without the slightest effect - you do what has to be done. That is to say, the Lord does it, it is no longer you. He does it. He arranges the circumstances, He arranges the people, He puts the words into your mouth or your pen - He does everything, everything, everything, everything; you have nothing more to do but allow yourself to live blissfully.
I am more and more convinced that people do not really want it.
But clearing the ground is difficult, the work of clearing the ground before hand.
But you don't even need to do it! He does it for you.
But they are constantly breaking in: the old consciousness, the old thoughts....
Yes, they try to come in again, by habit. You only have to say, "Lord, You see, You see, You see, it is like that" - that's all. "Lord, You see, You see this, You see that, You see this fool" - and it is all over immediately. And it changes automatically, my child, without the slightest effort. Simply to be sincere, that is to say, to truly want everything to be right. You are perfectly conscious that you can do nothing about it, that you have no capacity.... But there is always something that wants to do it by itself; that's the trouble, otherwise...
No, you may be full of an excellent goodwill and then you want to do it. That's what complicated everything. Or else you don't have faith, you believe that the Lord will not be able to do it and that you must do it yourself, because He does not know! (Mother laughs.) This, this kind of stupidity is very common. "How can He see things? We live in a world of Falsehood, how can He see Falsehood and see..." But He sees the thing as it is! Exactly!
I am not speaking of people of no intelligence, I am speaking of people who are intelligent and try - there is a kind of conviction, like that, somewhere, even in people who know that we live in a world of Ignorance and Falsehood and that there is a Lord who is All-Truth. They say, "Precisely because He is All-Truth, He does not understand. (Mother laughs.) He does not understand our falsehood, I must deal with it myself." That is very strong, very common.
Ah! we make complications for nothing. ~ The Mother,#KEYS
550:The perfect supramental action will not follow any single principle or limited rule.It is not likely to satisfy the standard either of the individual egoist or of any organised group-mind. It will conform to the demand neither of the positive practical man of the world nor of the formal moralist nor of the patriot nor of the sentimental philanthropist nor of the idealising philosopher. It will proceed by a spontaneous outflowing from the summits in the totality of an illumined and uplifted being, will and knowledge and not by the selected, calculated and standardised action which is all that the intellectual reason or ethical will can achieve. Its sole aim will be the expression of the divine in us and the keeping together of the world and its progress towards the Manifestation that is to be. This even will not be so much an aim and purpose as a spontaneous law of the being and an intuitive determination of the action by the Light of the divine Truth and its automatic influence. It will proceed like the action of Nature from a total will and knowledge behind her, but a will and knowledge enlightened in a conscious supreme Nature and no longer obscure in this ignorant Prakriti. It will be an action not bound by the dualities but full and large in the spirit's impartial joy of existence. The happy and inspired movement of a divine Power and Wisdom guiding and impelling us will replace the perplexities and stumblings of the suffering and ignorant ego.
If by some miracle of divine intervention all mankind at once could be raised to this level, we should have something on earth like the Golden Age of the traditions, Satya Yuga, the Age of Truth or true existence. For the sign of the Satya Yuga is that the Law is spontaneous and conscious in each creature and does its own works in a perfect harmony and freedom. Unity and universality, not separative division, would be the foundation of the consciousness of the race; love would be absolute; equality would be consistent with hierarchy and perfect in difference; absolute justice would be secured by the spontaneous action of the being in harmony with the truth of things and the truth of himself and others and therefore sure of true and right result; right reason, no longer mental but supramental, would be satisfied not by the observation of artificial standards but by the free automatic perception of right relations and their inevitable execution in the act. The quarrel between the individual and society or disastrous struggle between one community and another could not exist: the cosmic consciousness imbedded in embodied beings would assure a harmonious diversity in oneness.
In the actual state of humanity, it is the individual who must climb to this height as a pioneer and precursor. His isolation will necessarily give a determination and a form to his outward activities that must be quite other than those of a consciously divine collective action. The inner state, the root of his acts, will be the same; but the acts themselves may well be very different from what they would be on an earth liberated from ignorance. Nevertheless his consciousness and the divine mechanism of his conduct, if such a word can be used of so free a thing, would be such as has been described, free from that subjection to vital impurity and desire and wrong impulse which we call sin, unbound by that rule of prescribed moral formulas which we call virtue, spontaneously sure and pure and perfect in a greater consciousness than the mind's, governed in all its steps by the light and truth of the Spirit. But if a collectivity or group could be formed of those who had reached the supramental perfection, there indeed some divine creation could take shape; a new earth could descend that would be a new heaven, a world of supramental light could be created here amidst the receding darkness of this terrestrial ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Standards of Conduct and Spiritual Freedom, 206,#KEYS
551:The recurring beat that moments God in Time.
Only was missing the sole timeless Word
That carries eternity in its lonely sound,
The Idea self-luminous key to all ideas,
The integer of the Spirit's perfect sum
That equates the unequal All to the equal One,
The single sign interpreting every sign,
The absolute index to the Absolute.
There walled apart by its own innerness
In a mystical barrage of dynamic light
He saw a lone immense high-curved world-pile
Erect like a mountain-chariot of the Gods
Motionless under an inscrutable sky.
As if from Matter's plinth and viewless base
To a top as viewless, a carved sea of worlds
Climbing with foam-maned waves to the Supreme
Ascended towards breadths immeasurable;
It hoped to soar into the Ineffable's reign:
A hundred levels raised it to the Unknown.
So it towered up to heights intangible
And disappeared in the hushed conscious Vast
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;
Mounting into great voiceless stillnesses
It marries the earth to screened eternities.
Amid the many systems of the One
Made by an interpreting creative joy
Alone it points us to our journey back
Out of our long self-loss in Nature's deeps;
Planted on earth it holds in it all realms:
It is a brief compendium of the Vast.
This was the single stair to being's goal.
A summary of the stages of the spirit,
Its copy of the cosmic hierarchies
Refashioned in our secret air of self
A subtle pattern of the universe.
It is within, below, without, above.
Acting upon this visible Nature's scheme
It wakens our earth-matter's heavy doze
To think and feel and to react to joy;
It models in us our diviner parts,
Lifts mortal mind into a greater air,
Makes yearn this life of flesh to intangible aims,
Links the body's death with immortality's call:
Out of the swoon of the Inconscience
It labours towards a superconscient Light.
If earth were all and this were not in her,
Thought could not be nor life-delight's response:
Only material forms could then be her guests
Driven by an inanimate world-force.
Earth by this golden superfluity
Bore thinking man and more than man shall bear;
This higher scheme of being is our cause
And holds the key to our ascending fate;
It calls out of our dense mortality
The conscious spirit nursed in Matter's house.
The living symbol of these conscious planes,
Its influences and godheads of the unseen,
Its unthought logic of Reality's acts
Arisen from the unspoken truth in things,
Have fixed our inner life's slow-scaled degrees.
Its steps are paces of the soul's return
From the deep adventure of material birth,
A ladder of delivering ascent
And rungs that Nature climbs to deity.
Once in the vigil of a deathless gaze
These grades had marked her giant downward plunge,
The wide and prone leap of a godhead's fall.
Our life is a holocaust of the Supreme.
The great World-Mother by her sacrifice
Has made her soul the body of our state;
Accepting sorrow and unconsciousness
Divinity's lapse from its own splendours wove
The many-patterned ground of all we are.
An idol of self is our mortality.
Our earth is a fragment and a residue;
Her power is packed with the stuff of greater worlds
And steeped in their colour-lustres dimmed by her drowse;
An atavism of higher births is hers,
Her sleep is stirred by their buried memories
Recalling the lost spheres from which they fell.
Unsatisfied forces in her bosom move;
They are partners of her greater growing fate
And her return to immortality;
They consent to share her doom of birth and death;
They kindle partial gleams of the All and drive
Her blind laborious spirit to compose
A meagre image of the mighty Whole.
The calm and luminous Intimacy within
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The World-Stair,#KEYS
552:The ancient Mesopotamians and the ancient Egyptians had some very interesting, dramatic ideas about that. For example-very briefly-there was a deity known as Marduk. Marduk was a Mesopotamian deity, and imagine this is sort of what happened. As an empire grew out of the post-ice age-15,000 years ago, 10,000 years ago-all these tribes came together. These tribes each had their own deity-their own image of the ideal. But then they started to occupy the same territory. One tribe had God A, and one tribe had God B, and one could wipe the other one out, and then it would just be God A, who wins. That's not so good, because maybe you want to trade with those people, or maybe you don't want to lose half your population in a war. So then you have to have an argument about whose God is going to take priority-which ideal is going to take priority.
What seems to happen is represented in mythology as a battle of the gods in celestial space. From a practical perspective, it's more like an ongoing dialog. You believe this; I believe this. You believe that; I believe this. How are we going to meld that together? You take God A, and you take God B, and maybe what you do is extract God C from them, and you say, 'God C now has the attributes of A and B.' And then some other tribes come in, and C takes them over, too. Take Marduk, for example. He has 50 different names, at least in part, of the subordinate gods-that represented the tribes that came together to make the civilization. That's part of the process by which that abstracted ideal is abstracted. You think, 'this is important, and it works, because your tribe is alive, and so we'll take the best of both, if we can manage it, and extract out something, that's even more abstract, that covers both of us.'
I'll give you a couple of Marduk's interesting features. He has eyes all the way around his head. He's elected by all the other gods to be king God. That's the first thing. That's quite cool. They elect him because they're facing a terrible threat-sort of like a flood and a monster combined. Marduk basically says that, if they elect him top God, he'll go out and stop the flood monster, and they won't all get wiped out. It's a serious threat. It's chaos itself making its comeback. All the gods agree, and Marduk is the new manifestation. He's got eyes all the way around his head, and he speaks magic words. When he fights, he fights this deity called Tiamat. We need to know that, because the word 'Tiamat' is associated with the word 'tehom.' Tehom is the chaos that God makes order out of at the beginning of time in Genesis, so it's linked very tightly to this story. Marduk, with his eyes and his capacity to speak magic words, goes out and confronts Tiamat, who's like this watery sea dragon. It's a classic Saint George story: go out and wreak havoc on the dragon. He cuts her into pieces, and he makes the world out of her pieces. That's the world that human beings live in.
The Mesopotamian emperor acted out Marduk. He was allowed to be emperor insofar as he was a good Marduk. That meant that he had eyes all the way around his head, and he could speak magic; he could speak properly. We are starting to understand, at that point, the essence of leadership. Because what's leadership? It's the capacity to see what the hell's in front of your face, and maybe in every direction, and maybe the capacity to use your language properly to transform chaos into order. God only knows how long it took the Mesopotamians to figure that out. The best they could do was dramatize it, but it's staggeringly brilliant. It's by no means obvious, and this chaos is a very strange thing. This is a chaos that God wrestled with at the beginning of time.
Chaos is half psychological and half real. There's no other way to really describe it. Chaos is what you encounter when you're blown into pieces and thrown into deep confusion-when your world falls apart, when your dreams die, when you're betrayed. It's the chaos that emerges, and the chaos is everything it wants, and it's too much for you. That's for sure. It pulls you down into the underworld, and that's where the dragons are. All you've got at that point is your capacity to bloody well keep your eyes open, and to speak as carefully and as clearly as you can. Maybe, if you're lucky, you'll get through it that way and come out the other side. It's taken people a very long time to figure that out, and it looks, to me, that the idea is erected on the platform of our ancient ancestors, maybe tens of millions of years ago, because we seem to represent that which disturbs us deeply using the same system that we used to represent serpentile, or other, carnivorous predators. ~ Jordan Peterson, Biblical Series, 1,#KEYS
553:A God's Labour
I have gathered my dreams in a silver air
Between the gold and the blue
And wrapped them softly and left them there,
My jewelled dreams of you.
I had hoped to build a rainbow bridge
Marrying the soil to the sky
And sow in this dancing planet midge
The moods of infinity.
But too bright were our heavens, too far away,
Too frail their ethereal stuff;
Too splendid and sudden our light could not stay;
The roots were not deep enough.
He who would bring the heavens here
Must descend himself into clay
And the burden of earthly nature bear
And tread the dolorous way.
Coercing my godhead I have come down
Here on the sordid earth,
Ignorant, labouring, human grown
Twixt the gates of death and birth.
I have been digging deep and long
Mid a horror of filth and mire
A bed for the golden river's song,
A home for the deathless fire.
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.
For man's mind is the dupe of his animal self;
Hoping its lusts to win,
He harbours within him a grisly Elf
Enamoured of sorrow and sin.
The grey Elf shudders from heaven's flame
And from all things glad and pure;
Only by pleasure and passion and pain
His drama can endure.
All around is darkness and strife;
For the lamps that men call suns
Are but halfway gleams on this stumbling life
Cast by the Undying Ones.
Man lights his little torches of hope
That lead to a failing edge;
A fragment of Truth is his widest scope,
An inn his pilgrimage.
The Truth of truths men fear and deny,
The Light of lights they refuse;
To ignorant gods they lift their cry
Or a demon altar choose.
All that was found must again be sought,
Each enemy slain revives,
Each battle for ever is fought and refought
Through vistas of fruitless lives.
My gaping wounds are a thousand and one
And the Titan kings assail,
But I dare not rest till my task is done
And wrought the eternal will.
How they mock and sneer, both devils and men!
"Thy hope is Chimera's head
Painting the sky with its fiery stain;
Thou shalt fall and thy work lie dead.
"Who art thou that babblest of heavenly ease
And joy and golden room
To us who are waifs on inconscient seas
And bound to life's iron doom?
"This earth is ours, a field of Night
For our petty flickering fires.
How shall it brook the sacred Light
Or suffer a god's desires?
"Come, let us slay him and end his course!
Then shall our hearts have release
From the burden and call of his glory and force
And the curb of his wide white peace."
But the god is there in my mortal breast
Who wrestles with error and fate
And tramples a road through mire and waste
For the nameless Immaculate.
A voice cried, "Go where none have gone!
Dig deeper, deeper yet
Till thou reach the grim foundation stone
And knock at the keyless gate."
I saw that a falsehood was planted deep
At the very root of things
Where the grey Sphinx guards God's riddle sleep
On the Dragon's outspread wings.
I left the surface gauds of mind
And life's unsatisfied seas
And plunged through the body's alleys blind
To the nether mysteries.
I have delved through the dumb Earth's dreadful heart
And heard her black mass' bell.
I have seen the source whence her agonies part
And the inner reason of hell.
Above me the dragon murmurs moan
And the goblin voices flit;
I have pierced the Void where Thought was born,
I have walked in the bottomless pit.
On a desperate stair my feet have trod
Armoured with boundless peace,
Bringing the fires of the splendour of God
Into the human abyss.
He who I am was with me still;
All veils are breaking now.
I have heard His voice and borne His will
On my vast untroubled brow.
The gulf twixt the depths and the heights is bridged
And the golden waters pour
Down the sapphire mountain rainbow-ridged
And glimmer from shore to shore.
Heaven's fire is lit in the breast of the earth
And the undying suns here burn;
Through a wonder cleft in the bounds of birth
The incarnate spirits yearn
Like flames to the kingdoms of Truth and Bliss:
Down a gold-red stairway wend
The radiant children of Paradise
Clarioning darkness' end.
A little more and the new life's doors
Shall be carved in silver light
With its aureate roof and mosaic floors
In a great world bare and bright.
I shall leave my dreams in their argent air,
For in a raiment of gold and blue
There shall move on the earth embodied and fair
The living truth of you.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, A God's Labour, 534,#KEYS
554:GURU YOGA
Guru yoga is an essential practice in all schools of Tibetan Buddhism and Bon. This is true in sutra, tantra, and Dzogchen. It develops the heart connection with the masteR By continually strengthening our devotion, we come to the place of pure devotion in ourselves, which is the unshakeable, powerful base of the practice. The essence of guru yoga is to merge the practitioner's mind with the mind of the master.
What is the true master? It is the formless, fundamental nature of mind, the primordial awareness of the base of everything, but because we exist in dualism, it is helpful for us to visualize this in a form. Doing so makes skillful use of the dualisms of the conceptual mind, to further strengthen devotion and help us stay directed toward practice and the generation of positive qualities.
In the Bon tradition, we often visualize either Tapihritsa* as the master, or the Buddha ShenlaOdker*, who represents the union of all the masters. If you are already a practitioner, you may have another deity to visualize, like Guru Rinpoche or a yidam or dakini. While it is important to work with a lineage with which you have a connection, you should understand that the master you visualize is the embodiment of all the masters with whom you are connected, all the teachers with whom you have studied, all the deities to whom you have commitments. The master in guru yoga is not just one individual, but the essence of enlightenment, the primordial awareness that is your true nature.
The master is also the teacher from whom you receive the teachings. In the Tibetan tradition, we say the master is more important than the Buddha. Why? Because the master is the immediate messenger of the teachings, the one who brings the Buddha's wisdom to the student. Without the master we could not find our way to the Buddha. So we should feel as much devotion to the master as we would to the Buddha if the Buddha suddenly appeared in front of us.
Guru yoga is not just about generating some feeling toward a visualized image. It is done to find the fundamental mind in yourself that is the same as the fundamental mind of all your teachers, and of all the Buddhas and realized beings that have ever lived. When you merge with the guru, you merge with your pristine true nature, which is the real guide and masteR But this should not be an abstract practice. When you do guru yoga, try to feel such intense devotion that the hair stands upon your neck, tears start down your face, and your heart opens and fills with great love. Let yourself merge in union with the guru's mind, which is your enlightened Buddha-nature. This is the way to practice guru yoga.
The Practice
After the nine breaths, still seated in meditation posture, visualize the master above and in front of you. This should not be a flat, two dimensional picture-let a real being exist there, in three dimensions, made of light, pure, and with a strong presence that affects the feeling in your body,your energy, and your mind. Generate strong devotion and reflect on the great gift of the teachings and the tremendous good fortune you enjoy in having made a connection to them. Offer a sincere prayer, asking that your negativities and obscurations be removed, that your positive qualities develop, and that you accomplish dream yoga.
Then imagine receiving blessings from the master in the form of three colored lights that stream from his or her three wisdom doors- of body, speech, and mind-into yours. The lights should be transmitted in the following sequence: White light streams from the master's brow chakra into yours, purifying and relaxing your entire body and physical dimension. Then red light streams from the master's throat chakra into yours, purifying and relaxing your energetic dimension. Finally, blue light streams from the master's heart chakra into yours, purifying and relaxing your mind.
When the lights enter your body, feel them. Let your body, energy, and mind relax, suffused inwisdom light. Use your imagination to make the blessing real in your full experience, in your body and energy as well as in the images in your mind.
After receiving the blessing, imagine the master dissolving into light that enters your heart and resides there as your innermost essence. Imagine that you dissolve into that light, and remain inpure awareness, rigpa.
There are more elaborate instructions for guru yoga that can involve prostrations, offerings, gestures, mantras, and more complicated visualizations, but the essence of the practice is mingling your mind with the mind of the master, which is pure, non-dual awareness. Guru yoga can be done any time during the day; the more often the better. Many masters say that of all the practices it is guru yoga that is the most important. It confers the blessings of the lineage and can open and soften the heart and quiet the unruly mind. To completely accomplish guru yoga is to accomplish the path.
~ Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Yogas Of Dream And Sleep, [T3],#KEYS
555:Education
THE EDUCATION of a human being should begin at birth and continue throughout his life.
Indeed, if we want this education to have its maximum result, it should begin even before birth; in this case it is the mother herself who proceeds with this education by means of a twofold action: first, upon herself for her own improvement, and secondly, upon the child whom she is forming physically. For it is certain that the nature of the child to be born depends very much upon the mother who forms it, upon her aspiration and will as well as upon the material surroundings in which she lives. To see that her thoughts are always beautiful and pure, her feelings always noble and fine, her material surroundings as harmonious as possible and full of a great simplicity - this is the part of education which should apply to the mother herself. And if she has in addition a conscious and definite will to form the child according to the highest ideal she can conceive, then the very best conditions will be realised so that the child can come into the world with his utmost potentialities. How many difficult efforts and useless complications would be avoided in this way!
Education to be complete must have five principal aspects corresponding to the five principal activities of the human being: the physical, the vital, the mental, the psychic and the spiritual. Usually, these phases of education follow chronologically the growth of the individual; this, however, does not mean that one of them should replace another, but that all must continue, completing one another until the end of his life.
We propose to study these five aspects of education one by one and also their interrelationships. But before we enter into the details of the subject, I wish to make a recommendation to parents. Most parents, for various reasons, give very little thought to the true education which should be imparted to children. When they have brought a child into the world, provided him with food, satisfied his various material needs and looked after his health more or less carefully, they think they have fully discharged their duty. Later on, they will send him to school and hand over to the teachers the responsibility for his education.
There are other parents who know that their children must be educated and who try to do what they can. But very few, even among those who are most serious and sincere, know that the first thing to do, in order to be able to educate a child, is to educate oneself, to become conscious and master of oneself so that one never sets a bad example to one's child. For it is above all through example that education becomes effective. To speak good words and to give wise advice to a child has very little effect if one does not oneself give him an example of what one teaches. Sincerity, honesty, straightforwardness, courage, disinterestedness, unselfishness, patience, endurance, perseverance, peace, calm, self-control are all things that are taught infinitely better by example than by beautiful speeches. Parents, have a high ideal and always act in accordance with it and you will see that little by little your child will reflect this ideal in himself and spontaneously manifest the qualities you would like to see expressed in his nature. Quite naturally a child has respect and admiration for his parents; unless they are quite unworthy, they will always appear to their child as demigods whom he will try to imitate as best he can.
With very few exceptions, parents are not aware of the disastrous influence that their own defects, impulses, weaknesses and lack of self-control have on their children. If you wish to be respected by a child, have respect for yourself and be worthy of respect at every moment. Never be authoritarian, despotic, impatient or ill-tempered. When your child asks you a question, do not give him a stupid or silly answer under the pretext that he cannot understand you. You can always make yourself understood if you take enough trouble; and in spite of the popular saying that it is not always good to tell the truth, I affirm that it is always good to tell the truth, but that the art consists in telling it in such a way as to make it accessible to the mind of the hearer. In early life, until he is twelve or fourteen, the child's mind is hardly open to abstract notions and general ideas. And yet you can train it to understand these things by using concrete images, symbols or parables. Up to quite an advanced age and for some who mentally always remain children, a narrative, a story, a tale well told teach much more than any number of theoretical explanations.
Another pitfall to avoid: do not scold your child without good reason and only when it is quite indispensable. A child who is too often scolded gets hardened to rebuke and no longer attaches much importance to words or severity of tone. And above all, take good care never to scold him for a fault which you yourself commit. Children are very keen and clear-sighted observers; they soon find out your weaknesses and note them without pity.
When a child has done something wrong, see that he confesses it to you spontaneously and frankly; and when he has confessed, with kindness and affection make him understand what was wrong in his movement so that he will not repeat it, but never scold him; a fault confessed must always be forgiven. You should not allow any fear to come between you and your child; fear is a pernicious means of education: it invariably gives birth to deceit and lying. Only a discerning affection that is firm yet gentle and an adequate practical knowledge will create the bonds of trust that are indispensable for you to be able to educate your child effectively. And do not forget that you have to control yourself constantly in order to be equal to your task and truly fulfil the duty which you owe your child by the mere fact of having brought him into the world.
Bulletin, February 1951
~ The Mother, On Education,#KEYS
556:The Two Paths Of Yoga :::
14 April 1929 - What are the dangers of Yoga? Is it especially dangerous to the people of the West? Someone has said that Yoga may be suitable for the East, but it has the effect of unbalancing the Western mind.
Yoga is not more dangerous to the people of the West than to those of the East. Everything depends upon the spirit with which you approach it. Yoga does become dangerous if you want it for your own sake, to serve a personal end. It is not dangerous, on the contrary, it is safety and security itself, if you go to it with a sense of its sacredness, always remembering that the aim is to find the Divine.
Dangers and difficulties come in when people take up Yoga not for the sake of the Divine, but because they want to acquire power and under the guise of Yoga seek to satisfy some ambition. if you cannot get rid of ambition, do not touch the thing. It is fire that burns.
There are two paths of Yoga, one of tapasya (discipline), and the other of surrender. The path of tapasya is arduous. Here you rely solely upon yourself, you proceed by your own strength. You ascend and achieve according to the measure of your force. There is always the danger of falling down. And once you fall, you lie broken in the abyss and there is hardly a remedy. The other path, the path of surrender, is safe and sure. It is here, however, that the Western people find their difficulty. They have been taught to fear and avoid all that threatens their personal independence. They have imbibed with their mothers' milk the sense of individuality. And surrender means giving up all that. In other words, you may follow, as Ramakrishna says, either the path of the baby monkey or that of the baby cat. The baby monkey holds to its mother in order to be carried about and it must hold firm, otherwise if it loses its grip, it falls. On the other hand, the baby cat does not hold to its mother, but is held by the mother and has no fear nor responsibility; it has nothing to do but to let the mother hold it and cry ma ma.
If you take up this path of surrender fully and sincerely, there is no more danger or serious difficulty. The question is to be sincere. If you are not sincere, do not begin Yoga. If you were dealing in human affairs, then you could resort to deception; but in dealing with the Divine there is no possibility of deception anywhere. You can go on the Path safely when you are candid and open to the core and when your only end is to realise and attain the Divine and to be moved by the Divine. There is another danger; it is in connection with the sex impulses. Yoga in its process of purification will lay bare and throw up all hidden impulses and desires in you. And you must learn not to hide things nor leave them aside, you have to face them and conquer and remould them. The first effect of Yoga, however, is to take away the mental control, and the hungers that lie dormant are suddenly set free, they rush up and invade the being. So long as this mental control has not been replaced by the Divine control, there is a period of transition when your sincerity and surrender will be put to the test. The strength of such impulses as those of sex lies usually in the fact that people take too much notice of them; they protest too vehemently and endeavour to control them by coercion, hold them within and sit upon them. But the more you think of a thing and say, "I don't want it, I don't want it", the more you are bound to it. What you should do is to keep the thing away from you, to dissociate from it, take as little notice of it as possible and, even if you happen to think of it, remain indifferent and unconcerned. The impulses and desires that come up by the pressure of Yoga should be faced in a spirit of detachment and serenity, as something foreign to yourself or belonging to the outside world. They should be offered to the Divine, so that the Divine may take them up and transmute them. If you have once opened yourself to the Divine, if the power of the Divine has once come down into you and yet you try to keep to the old forces, you prepare troubles and difficulties and dangers for yourself. You must be vigilant and see that you do not use the Divine as a cloak for the satisfaction of your desires. There are many self-appointed Masters, who do nothing but that. And then when you are off the straight path and when you have a little knowledge and not much power, it happens that you are seized by beings or entities of a certain type, you become blind instruments in their hands and are devoured by them in the end. Wherever there is pretence, there is danger; you cannot deceive God. Do you come to God saying, "I want union with you" and in your heart meaning "I want powers and enjoyments"? Beware! You are heading straight towards the brink of the precipice. And yet it is so easy to avoid all catastrophe. Become like a child, give yourself up to the Mother, let her carry you, and there is no more danger for you.
This does not mean that you have not to face other kinds of difficulties or that you have not to fight and conquer any obstacles at all. Surrender does not ensure a smooth and unruffled and continuous progression. The reason is that your being is not yet one, nor your surrender absolute and complete. Only a part of you surrenders; and today it is one part and the next day it is another. The whole purpose of the Yoga is to gather all the divergent parts together and forge them into an undivided unity. Till then you cannot hope to be without difficulties - difficulties, for example, like doubt or depression or hesitation. The whole world is full of the poison. You take it in with every breath. If you exchange a few words with an undesirable man or even if such a man merely passes by you, you may catch the contagion from him. It is sufficient for you to come near a place where there is plague in order to be infected with its poison; you need not know at all that it is there. You can lose in a few minutes what it has taken you months to gain. So long as you belong to humanity and so long as you lead the ordinary life, it does not matter much if you mix with the people of the world; but if you want the divine life, you will have to be exceedingly careful about your company and your environment.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1929-1931,#KEYS
557:Attention on Hypnagogic Imagery The most common strategy for inducing WILDs is to fall asleep while focusing on the hypnagogic imagery that accompanies sleep onset. Initially, you are likely to see relatively simple images, flashes of light, geometric patterns, and the like.
Gradually more complicated forms appear: faces, people, and finally entire scenes. 6
The following account of what the Russian philosopher P. D. Ouspensky called "half-dream states" provides a vivid example of what hypnagogic imagery can be like:
I am falling asleep. Golden dots, sparks and tiny stars appear and disappear before my eyes. These sparks and stars gradually merge into a golden net with diagonal meshes which moves slowly and regularly in rhythm with the beating of my heart, which I feel quite distinctly. The next moment the golden net is transformed into rows of brass helmets belonging to Roman soldiers marching along the street below. I hear their measured tread and watch them from the window of a high house in Galata, in Constantinople, in a narrow lane, one end of which leads to the old wharf and the Golden Horn with its ships and steamers and the minarets of Stamboul behind them. I hear their heavy measured tread, and see the sun shining on their helmets. Then suddenly I detach myself from the window sill on which I am lying, and in the same reclining position fly slowly over the lane, over the houses, and then over the Golden Horn in the direction of Stamboul. I smell the sea, feel the wind, the warm sun. This flying gives me a wonderfully pleasant sensation, and I cannot help opening my eyes. 7
Ouspensky's half-dream states developed out of a habit of observing the contents of his mind while falling asleep or in half-sleep after awakening from a dream. He notes that they were much easier to observe in the morning after awakening than before sleep at the beginning of the night and did not occur at all "without definite efforts." 8
Dr. Nathan Rapport, an American psychiatrist, cultivated an approach to lucid dreaming very similar to Ouspensky's: "While in bed awaiting sleep, the experimenter interrupts his thoughts every few minutes with an effort to recall the mental item vanishing before each intrusion that inquisitive attention." 9 This habit is continued sleep itself, with results like the following:
Brilliant lights flashed, and a myriad of sparkles twinkled from a magnificent cut glass chandelier. Interesting as any stage extravaganza were the many quaintly detailed figurines upon a mantel against the distant, paneled wall adorned in rococo.
At the right a merry group of beauties and gallants in the most elegant attire of Victorian England idled away a pleasant occasion. This scene continued for [a] period of I was not aware, before I discovered that it was not reality, but a mental picture and that I was viewing it. Instantly it became an incommunicably beautiful vision. It was with the greatest stealth that my vaguely awakened mind began to peep: for I knew that these glorious shows end abruptly because of such intrusions.
I thought, "Have I here one of those mind pictures that are without motion?" As if in reply, one of the young ladies gracefully waltzed about the room. She returned to the group and immobility, with a smile lighting her pretty face, which was turned over her shoulder toward me. The entire color scheme was unobtrusive despite the kaleidoscopic sparkles of the chandelier, the exquisite blues and creamy pinks of the rich settings and costumes. I felt that only my interest in dreams brought my notice to the tints - delicate, yet all alive as if with inner illumination. 10
Hypnagogic Imagery Technique
1. Relax completely
While lying in bed, gently close your eyes and relax your head, neck, back, arms, and legs. Completely let go of all muscular and mental tension, and breathe slowly and restfully. Enjoy the feeling of relaxation and let go of your thoughts, worries, and concerns. If you have just awakened from sleep, you are probably sufficiently relaxed.
Otherwise, you may use either the progressive relaxation exercise (page 33) or the 61-point relaxation exercise (page 34) to relax more deeply. Let everything wind down,
slower and slower, more and more relaxed, until your mind becomes as serene as the calmest sea.
2. Observe the visual images
Gently focus your attention on the visual images that will gradually appear before your mind's eye. Watch how the images begin and end. Try to observe the images as delicately as possible, allowing them to be passively reflected in your mind as they unfold. Do not attempt to hold onto the images, but instead just watch without attachment or desire for action. While doing this, try to take the perspective of a detached observer as much as possible. At first you will see a sequence of disconnected, fleeting patterns and images. The images will gradually develop into scenes that become more and more complex, finally joining into extended sequences.
3. Enter the dream
When the imagery becomes a moving, vivid scenario, you should allow yourself to be passively drawn into the dream world. Do not try to actively enter the dream scene,
but instead continue to take a detached interest in the imagery. Let your involvement with what is happening draw you into the dream. But be careful of too much involvement and too little attention. Don't forget that you are dreaming now!
Commentary
Probably the most difficult part of this technique to master is entering the dream at Step 3. The challenge is to develop a delicate vigilance, an unobtrusive observer perspective, from which you let yourself be drawn into the dream. As Paul Tholey has emphasized, "It is not desirable to want actively to enter into the scenery,
since such an intention as a rule causes the scenery to disappear." 11 A passive volition similar to that described in the section on autosuggestion in the previous chapter is required: in Tholey's words, "Instead of actively wanting to enter into the scenery, the subject should attempt to let himself be carried into it passively." 12 A Tibetan teacher advises a similar frame of mind: "While delicately observing the mind, lead it gently into the dream state, as though you were leading a child by the hand." 13
Another risk is that, once you have entered into the dream, the world can seem so realistic that it is easy to lose lucidity, as happened in the beginning of Rapport's WILD described above. As insurance in case this happens, Tholey recommends that you resolve to carry out a particular action in the dream, so that if you momentarily lose lucidity, you may remember your intention to carry out the action and thereby regain lucidity.
~ Stephen LaBerge, Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming,#KEYS
558:This, in short, is the demand made on us, that we should turn our whole life into a conscious sacrifice. Every moment and every movement of our being is to be resolved into a continuous and a devoted self-giving to the Eternal. All our actions, not less the smallest and most ordinary and trifling than the greatest and most uncommon and noble, must be performed as consecrated acts. Our individualised nature must live in the single consciousness of an inner and outer movement dedicated to Something that is beyond us and greater than our ego. No matter what the gift or to whom it is presented by us, there must be a consciousness in the act that we are presenting it to the one divine Being in all beings. Our commonest or most grossly material actions must assume this sublimated character; when we eat, we should be conscious that we are giving our food to that Presence in us; it must be a sacred offering in a temple and the sense of a mere physical need or self-gratification must pass away from us. In any great labour, in any high discipline, in any difficult or noble enterprise, whether undertaken for ourselves, for others or for the race, it will no longer be possible to stop short at the idea of the race, of ourselves or of others. The thing we are doing must be consciously offered as a sacrifice of works, not to these, but either through them or directly to the One Godhead; the Divine Inhabitant who was hidden by these figures must be no longer hidden but ever present to our soul, our mind, our sense. The workings and results of our acts must be put in the hands of that One in the feeling that that Presence is the Infinite and Most High by whom alone our labour and our aspiration are possible. For in his being all takes place; for him all labour and aspiration are taken from us by Nature and offered on his altar. Even in those things in which Nature is herself very plainly the worker and we only the witnesses of her working and its containers and supporters, there should be the same constant memory and insistent consciousness of a work and of its divine Master. Our very inspiration and respiration, our very heart-beats can and must be made conscious in us as the living rhythm of the universal sacrifice.
It is clear that a conception of this kind and its effective practice must carry in them three results that are of a central importance for our spiritual ideal. It is evident, to begin with, that, even if such a discipline is begun without devotion, it leads straight and inevitably towards the highest devotion possible; for it must deepen naturally into the completest adoration imaginable, the most profound God-love. There is bound up with it a growing sense of the Divine in all things, a deepening communion with the Divine in all our thought, will and action and at every moment of our lives, a more and more moved consecration to the Divine of the totality of our being. Now these implications of the Yoga of works are also of the very essence of an integral and absolute Bhakti. The seeker who puts them into living practice makes in himself continually a constant, active and effective representation of the very spirit of self-devotion, and it is inevitable that out of it there should emerge the most engrossing worship of the Highest to whom is given this service. An absorbing love for the Divine Presence to whom he feels an always more intimate closeness, grows upon the consecrated worker. And with it is born or in it is contained a universal love too for all these beings, living forms and creatures that are habitations of the Divine - not the brief restless grasping emotions of division, but the settled selfless love that is the deeper vibration of oneness. In all the seeker begins to meet the one Object of his adoration and service. The way of works turns by this road of sacrifice to meet the path of Devotion; it can be itself a devotion as complete, as absorbing, as integral as any the desire of the heart can ask for or the passion of the mind can imagine.
Next, the practice of this Yoga demands a constant inward remembrance of the one central liberating knowledge, and a constant active externalising of it in works comes in too to intensify the remembrance. In all is the one Self, the one Divine is all; all are in the Divine, all are the Divine and there is nothing else in the universe, - this thought or this faith is the whole background until it becomes the whole substance of the consciousness of the worker. A memory, a self-dynamising meditation of this kind, must and does in its end turn into a profound and uninterrupted vision and a vivid and all-embracing consciousness of that which we so powerfully remember or on which we so constantly meditate. For it compels a constant reference at each moment to the Origin of all being and will and action and there is at once an embracing and exceeding of all particular forms and appearances in That which is their cause and upholder. This way cannot go to its end without a seeing vivid and vital, as concrete in its way as physical sight, of the works of the universal Spirit everywhere. On its summits it rises into a constant living and thinking and willing and acting in the presence of the Supramental, the Transcendent. Whatever we see and hear, whatever we touch and sense, all of which we are conscious, has to be known and felt by us as That which we worship and serve; all has to be turned into an image of the Divinity, perceived as a dwelling-place of his Godhead, enveloped with the eternal Omnipresence. In its close, if not long before it, this way of works turns by communion with the Divine Presence, Will and Force into a way of Knowledge more complete and integral than any the mere creature intelligence can construct or the search of the intellect can discover.
Lastly, the practice of this Yoga of sacrifice compels us to renounce all the inner supports of egoism, casting them out of our mind and will and actions, and to eliminate its seed, its presence, its influence out of our nature. All must be done for the Divine; all must be directed towards the Divine. Nothing must be attempted for ourselves as a separate existence; nothing done for others, whether neighbours, friends, family, country or mankind or other creatures merely because they are connected with our personal life and thought and sentiment or because the ego takes a preferential interest in their welfare. In this way of doing and seeing all works and all life become only a daily dynamic worship and service of the Divine in the unbounded temple of his own vast cosmic existence. Life becomes more and more the sacrifice of the eternal in the individual constantly self-offered to the eternal Transcendence. It is offered in the wide sacrificial ground of the field of the eternal cosmic Spirit; and the Force too that offers it is the eternal Force, the omnipresent Mother. Therefore is this way a way of union and communion by acts and by the spirit and knowledge in the act as complete and integral as any our Godward will can hope for or our soul's strength execute.
It has all the power of a way of works integral and absolute, but because of its law of sacrifice and self-giving to the Divine Self and Master, it is accompanied on its one side by the whole power of the path of Love and on the other by the whole power of the path of Knowledge. At its end all these three divine Powers work together, fused, united, completed, perfected by each other.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, The Sacrifice, the Triune Path and the Lord of the Sacrifice [111-114],#KEYS
559:The Supermind [Supramental consciousness] is in its very essence a truth-consciousness, a consciousness always free from the Ignorance which is the foundation of our present natural or evolutionary existence and from which nature in us is trying to arrive at self-knowledge and world-knowledge and a right consciousness and the right use of our existence in the universe. The Supermind, because it is a truth-consciousness, has this knowledge inherent in it and this power of true existence; its course is straight and can go direct to its aim, its field is wide and can even be made illimitable. This is because its very nature is knowledge: it has not to acquire knowledge but possesses it in its own right; its steps are not from nescience or ignorance into some imperfect light, but from truth to greater truth, from right perception to deeper perception, from intuition to intuition, from illumination to utter and boundless luminousness, from growing widenesses to the utter vasts and to very infinitude. On its summits it possesses the divine omniscience and omnipotence, but even in an evolutionary movement of its own graded self-manifestation by which it would eventually reveal its own highest heights, it must be in its very nature essentially free from ignorance and error: it starts from truth and light and moves always in truth and light. As its knowledge is always true, so too its will is always true; it does not fumble in its handling of things or stumble in its paces. In the Supermind feeling and emotion do not depart from their truth, make no slips or mistakes, do not swerve from the right and the real, cannot misuse beauty and delight or twist away from a divine rectitude. In the Supermind sense cannot mislead or deviate into the grossnesses which are here its natural imperfections and the cause of reproach, distrust and misuse by our ignorance. Even an incomplete statement made by the Supermind is a truth leading to a further truth, its incomplete action a step towards completeness. All the life and action and leading of the Supermind is guarded in its very nature from the falsehoods and uncertainties that are our lot; it moves in safety towards its perfection. Once the truth-consciousness was established here on its own sure foundation, the evolution of divine life would be a progress in felicity, a march through light to Ananda. Supermind is an eternal reality of the divine Being and the divine Nature. In its own plane it already and always exists and possesses its own essential law of being; it has not to be created or to emerge or evolve into existence out of involution in Matter or out of non-existence, as it might seem to the view of mind which itself seems to its own view to have so emerged from life and Matter or to have evolved out of an involution in life and Matter. The nature of Supermind is always the same, a being of knowledge, proceeding from truth to truth, creating or rather manifesting what has to be manifested by the power of a pre-existent knowledge, not by hazard but by a self-existent destiny in the being itself, a necessity of the thing in itself and therefore inevitable. Its -manifestation of the divine life will also be inevitable; its own life on its own plane is divine and, if Supermind descends upon the earth, it will bring necessarily the divine life with it and establish it here. Supermind is the grade of existence beyond mind, life and Matter and, as mind, life and Matter have manifested on the earth, so too must Supermind in the inevitable course of things manifest in this world of Matter. In fact, a supermind is already here but it is involved, concealed behind this manifest mind, life and Matter and not yet acting overtly or in its own power: if it acts, it is through these inferior powers and modified by their characters and so not yet recognisable. It is only by the approach and arrival of the descending Supermind that it can be liberated upon earth and reveal itself in the action of our material, vital and mental parts so that these lower powers can become portions of a total divinised activity of our whole being: it is that that will bring to us a completely realised divinity or the divine life. It is indeed so that life and mind involved in Matter have realised themselves here; for only what is involved can evolve, otherwise there could be no emergence. The manifestation of a supramental truth-consciousness is therefore the capital reality that will make the divine life possible. It is when all the movements of thought, impulse and action are governed and directed by a self-existent and luminously automatic truth-consciousness and our whole nature comes to be constituted by it and made of its stuff that the life divine will be complete and absolute. Even as it is, in reality though not in the appearance of things, it is a secret self-existent knowledge and truth that is working to manifest itself in the creation here. The Divine is already there immanent within us, ourselves are that in our inmost reality and it is this reality that we have to manifest; it is that which constitutes the urge towards the divine living and makes necessary the creation of the life divine even in this material existence. A manifestation of the Supermind and its truth-consciousness is then inevitable; it must happen in this world sooner or lateR But it has two aspects, a descent from above, an ascent from below, a self-revelation of the Spirit, an evolution in Nature. The ascent is necessarily an effort, a working of Nature, an urge or nisus on her side to raise her lower parts by an evolutionary or revolutionary change, conversion or transformation into the divine reality and it may happen by a process and progress or by a rapid miracle. The descent or self-revelation of the Spirit is an act of the supreme Reality from above which makes the realisation possible and it can appear either as the divine aid which brings about the fulfilment of the progress and process or as the sanction of the miracle. Evolution, as we see it in this world, is a slow and difficult process and, indeed, needs usually ages to reach abiding results; but this is because it is in its nature an emergence from inconscient beginnings, a start from nescience and a working in the ignorance of natural beings by what seems to be an unconscious force. There can be, on the contrary, an evolution in the light and no longer in the darkness, in which the evolving being is a conscious participant and cooperator, and this is precisely what must take place here. Even in the effort and progress from the Ignorance to Knowledge this must be in part if not wholly the endeavour to be made on the heights of the nature, and it must be wholly that in the final movement towards the spiritual change, realisation, transformation. It must be still more so when there is a transition across the dividing line between the Ignorance and the Knowledge and the evolution is from knowledge to greater knowledge, from consciousness to greater consciousness, from being to greater being. There is then no longer any necessity for the slow pace of the ordinary evolution; there can be rapid conversion, quick transformation after transformation, what would seem to our normal present mind a succession of miracles. An evolution on the supramental levels could well be of that nature; it could be equally, if the being so chose, a more leisurely passage of one supramental state or condition of things to something beyond but still supramental, from level to divine level, a building up of divine gradations, a free growth to the supreme Supermind or beyond it to yet undreamed levels of being, consciousness and Ananda.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, 558,#KEYS
560:Chapter 18 - Trapped in a Dream
(A guy is playing a pinball machine, seemingly the same guy who rode with him in the back of the boat car. This part is played by Richard Linklater, aka, the director.)
Hey, man.
Hey.
Weren't you in a boat car? You know, the guy, the guy with the hat? He gave me a ride in his car, or boat thing, and you were in the back seat with me?
I mean, I'm not saying that you don't know what you're talking about, but I don't know what you're talking about.
No, you see, you guys let me off at this really specific spot that you gave him directions to let me off at, I get out, and end up getting hit by a car, but then, I just woke up because I was dreaming, and later than that, I found out that I was still dreaming, dreaming that I'd woken up.
Oh yeah, those are called false awakenings. I used to have those all the time.
Yeah, but I'm still in it now. I, I can't get out of it. It's been going on forever, I keep waking up, but, but I'm just waking up into another dream. I'm starting to get creeped out, too. Like I'm talking to dead people. This woman on TV's telling me about how death is this dreamtime that exists outside of life. I mean, (desperate sigh) I'm starting to think that I'm dead.
I'm gonna tell you about a dream I once had. I know that's, when someone says that, then usually you're in for a very boring next few minutes, and you might be, but it sounds like, you know, what else are you going to do, right? Anyway, I read this essay by Philip K. Dick.
What, you read it in your dream?
No, no. I read it before the dream. It was the preamble to the dream. It was about that book, um Flow My Tears the Policeman Said. You know that one?
Uh, yeah yeah, he won an award for that one.
Right, right. That's the one he wrote really fast. It just like flowed right out of him. He felt he was sort of channeling it, or something. But anyway, about four years after it was published, he was at this party, and he met this woman who had the same name as the woman character in the book. And she had a boyfriend with the same name as the boyfriend character in the book, and she was having an affair with this guy, the chief of police, and he had the same name as the chief of police in his book. So she's telling him all of this stuff from her life, and everything she's saying is right out of his book. So that's totally freaking him out, but, what can he do?
And then shortly after that, he was going to mail a letter, and he saw this kind of, um, you know, dangerous, shady looking guy standing by his car, but instead of avoiding him, which he says he would have usually done, he just walked right up to him and said, "Can I help you?" And the guy said, "Yeah. I, I ran out of gas." So he pulls out his wallet, and he hands him some money, which he says he never would have done, and then he gets home and thinks, wait a second, this guy, you know, he can't get to a gas station, he's out of gas. So he gets back in his car, he goes and finds the guy, takes him to the gas station, and as he's pulling up at the gas station, he realizes, "Hey, this is in my book too. This exact station, this exact guy. Everything."
So this whole episode is kind of creepy, right? And he's telling his priest about it, you know, describing how he wrote this book, and then four years later all these things happened to him. And as he's telling it to him, the priest says, "That's the Book of Acts. You're describing the Book of Acts." And he's like, "I've never read the Book of Acts." So he, you know, goes home and reads the Book of Acts, and it's like uncanny. Even the characters' names are the same as in the Bible. And the Book of Acts takes place in 50 A.D., when it was written, supposedly. So Philip K. Dick had this theory that time was an illusion and that we were all actually in 50 A.D., and the reason he had written this book was that he had somehow momentarily punctured through this illusion, this veil of time, and what he had seen there was what was going on in the Book of Acts.
And he was really into Gnosticism, and this idea that this demiurge, or demon, had created this illusion of time to make us forget that Christ was about to return, and the kingdom of God was about to arrive. And that we're all in 50 A.D., and there's someone trying to make us forget that God is imminent. And that's what time is. That's what all of history is. It's just this kind of continuous, you know, daydream, or distraction.
And so I read that, and I was like, well that's weird. And than that night I had a dream and there was this guy in the dream who was supposed to be a psychic. But I was skeptical. I was like, you know, he's not really a psychic, you know I'm thinking to myself. And then suddenly I start floating, like levitating, up to the ceiling. And as I almost go through the roof, I'm like, "Okay, Mr. Psychic. I believe you. You're a psychic. Put me down please." And I float down, and as my feet touch the ground, the psychic turns into this woman in a green dress. And this woman is Lady Gregory.
Now Lady Gregory was Yeats' patron, this, you know, Irish person. And though I'd never seen her image, I was just sure that this was the face of Lady Gregory. So we're walking along, and Lady Gregory turns to me and says, "Let me explain to you the nature of the universe. Now Philip K. Dick is right about time, but he's wrong that it's 50 A.D. Actually, there's only one instant, and it's right now, and it's eternity. And it's an instant in which God is posing a question, and that question is basically, 'Do you want to, you know, be one with eternity? Do you want to be in heaven?' And we're all saying, 'No thank you. Not just yet.' And so time is actually just this constant saying 'No' to God's invitation. I mean that's what time is. I mean, and it's no more 50 A.D. than it's two thousand and one. And there's just this one instant, and that's what we're always in."
And then she tells me that actually this is the narrative of everyone's life. That, you know, behind the phenomenal difference, there is but one story, and that's the story of moving from the "no" to the "yes." All of life is like, "No thank you. No thank you. No thank you." then ultimately it's, "Yes, I give in. Yes, I accept. Yes, I embrace." I mean, that's the journey. I mean, everyone gets to the "yes" in the end, right?
Right.
So we continue walking, and my dog runs over to me. And so I'm petting him, really happy to see him, you know, he's been dead for years. So I'm petting him and I realize there's this kind of gross oozing stuff coming out of his stomach. And I look over at Lady Gregory, and she sort of coughs. She's like [cough] [cough] "Oh, excuse me." And there's vomit, like dribbling down her chin, and it smells really bad. And I think, "Well, wait a second, that's not just the smell of vomit," which is, doesn't smell very good, "that's the smell of like dead person vomit." You know, so it's like doubly foul. And then I realize I'm actually in the land of the dead, and everyone around me is dead. My dog had been dead for over ten years, Lady Gregory had been dead a lot longer than that. When I finally woke up, I was like, whoa, that wasn't a dream, that was a visitation to this real place, the land of the dead.
So what happened? I mean how did you finally get out of it?
Oh man. It was just like one of those like life altering experiences. I mean I could never really look at the world the same way again, after that.
Yeah, but I mean like how did you, how did you finally get out of the dream? See, that's my problem. I'm like trapped. I keep, I keep thinking that I'm waking up, but I'm still in a dream. It seems like it's going on forever. I can't get out of it, and I want to wake up for real. How do you really wake up?
I don't know, I don't know. I'm not very good at that anymore. But, um, if that's what you're thinking, I mean you, you probably should. I mean, you know if you can wake up, you should, because you know someday, you know, you won't be able to. So just, um ... But it's easy. You know. Just, just wake up. ~ Waking Life,#KEYS
561:The Supreme Discovery
IF WE want to progress integrally, we must build within our conscious being a strong and pure mental synthesis which can serve us as a protection against temptations from outside, as a landmark to prevent us from going astray, as a beacon to light our way across the moving ocean of life.
Each individual should build up this mental synthesis according to his own tendencies and affinities and aspirations. But if we want it to be truly living and luminous, it must be centred on the idea that is the intellectual representation symbolising That which is at the centre of our being, That which is our life and our light.
This idea, expressed in sublime words, has been taught in various forms by all the great Instructors in all lands and all ages.
The Self of each one and the great universal Self are one. Since all that is exists from all eternity in its essence and principle, why make a distinction between the being and its origin, between ourselves and what we place at the beginning?
The ancient traditions rightly said:
"Our origin and ourselves, our God and ourselves are one."
And this oneness should not be understood merely as a more or less close and intimate relationship of union, but as a true identity.
Thus, when a man who seeks the Divine attempts to reascend by degrees towards the inaccessible, he forgets that all his knowledge and all his intuition cannot take him one step forward in this infinite; neither does he know that what he wants to attain, what he believes to be so far from him, is within him.
For how could he know anything of the origin until he becomes conscious of this origin in himself?
It is by understanding himself, by learning to know himself, that he can make the supreme discovery and cry out in wonder like the patriarch in the Bible, "The house of God is here and I knew it not."
That is why we must express that sublime thought, creatrix of the material worlds, and make known to all the word that fills the heavens and the earth, "I am in all things and all beings."When all shall know this, the promised day of great transfigurations will be at hand. When in each atom of Matter men shall recognise the indwelling thought of God, when in each living creature they shall perceive some hint of a gesture of God, when each man can see God in his brother, then dawn will break, dispelling the darkness, the falsehood, the ignorance, the error and suffering that weigh upon all Nature. For, "all Nature suffers and laments as she awaits the revelation of the Sons of God."
This indeed is the central thought epitomising all others, the thought which should be ever present to our remembrance as the sun that illumines all life.
That is why I remind you of it today. For if we follow our path bearing this thought in our hearts like the rarest jewel, the most precious treasure, if we allow it to do its work of illumination and transfiguration within us, we shall know that it lives in the centre of all beings and all things, and in it we shall feel the marvellous oneness of the universe.
Then we shall understand the vanity and childishness of our meagre satisfactions, our foolish quarrels, our petty passions, our blind indignations. We shall see the dissolution of our little faults, the crumbling of the last entrenchments of our limited personality and our obtuse egoism. We shall feel ourselves being swept along by this sublime current of true spirituality which will deliver us from our narrow limits and bounds.
The individual Self and the universal Self are one; in every world, in every being, in every thing, in every atom is the Divine Presence, and man's mission is to manifest it.
In order to do that, he must become conscious of this Divine Presence within him. Some individuals must undergo a real apprenticeship in order to achieve this: their egoistic being is too all-absorbing, too rigid, too conservative, and their struggles against it are long and painful. Others, on the contrary, who are more impersonal, more plastic, more spiritualised, come easily into contact with the inexhaustible divine source of their being.But let us not forget that they too should devote themselves daily, constantly, to a methodical effort of adaptation and transformation, so that nothing within them may ever again obscure the radiance of that pure light.
But how greatly the standpoint changes once we attain this deeper consciousness! How understanding widens, how compassion grows!
On this a sage has said:
"I would like each one of us to come to the point where he perceives the inner God who dwells even in the vilest of human beings; instead of condemning him we would say, 'Arise, O resplendent Being, thou who art ever pure, who knowest neither birth nor death; arise, Almighty One, and manifest thy nature.'"
Let us live by this beautiful utterance and we shall see everything around us transformed as if by miracle.
This is the attitude of true, conscious and discerning love, the love which knows how to see behind appearances, understand in spite of words, and which, amid all obstacles, is in constant communion with the depths.
What value have our impulses and our desires, our anguish and our violence, our sufferings and our struggles, all these inner vicissitudes unduly dramatised by our unruly imagination - what value do they have before this great, this sublime and divine love bending over us from the innermost depths of our being, bearing with our weaknesses, rectifying our errors, healing our wounds, bathing our whole being with its regenerating streams?
For the inner Godhead never imposes herself, she neither demands nor threatens; she offers and gives herself, conceals and forgets herself in the heart of all beings and things; she never accuses, she neither judges nor curses nor condemns, but works unceasingly to perfect without constraint, to mend without reproach, to encourage without impatience, to enrich each one with all the wealth he can receive; she is the mother whose love bears fruit and nourishes, guards and protects, counsels and consoles; because she understands everything, she can endure everything, excuse and pardon everything, hope and prepare for everything; bearing everything within herself, she owns nothing that does not belong to all, and because she reigns over all, she is the servant of all; that is why all, great and small, who want to be kings with her and gods in her, become, like her, not despots but servitors among their brethren.
How beautiful is this humble role of servant, the role of all who have been revealers and heralds of the God who is within all, of the Divine Love that animates all things....
And until we can follow their example and become true servants even as they, let us allow ourselves to be penetrated and transformed by this Divine Love; let us offer Him, without reserve, this marvellous instrument, our physical organism. He shall make it yield its utmost on every plane of activity.
To achieve this total self-consecration, all means are good, all methods have their value. The one thing needful is to persevere in our will to attain this goal. For then everything we study, every action we perform, every human being we meet, all come to bring us an indication, a help, a light to guide us on the path.
Before I close, I shall add a few pages for those who have already made apparently fruitless efforts, for those who have encountered the pitfalls on the way and seen the measure of their weakness, for those who are in danger of losing their self-confidence and courage. These pages, intended to rekindle hope in the hearts of those who suffer, were written by a spiritual worker at a time when ordeals of every kind were sweeping down on him like purifying flames.
You who are weary, downcast and bruised, you who fall, who think perhaps that you are defeated, hear the voice of a friend. He knows your sorrows, he has shared them, he has suffered like you from the ills of the earth; like you he has crossed many deserts under the burden of the day, he has known thirst and hunger, solitude and abandonment, and the cruellest of all wants, the destitution of the heart. Alas! he has known too the hours of doubt, the errors, the faults, the failings, every weakness.
But he tells you: Courage! Hearken to the lesson that the rising sun brings to the earth with its first rays each morning. It is a lesson of hope, a message of solace.
You who weep, who suffer and tremble, who dare not expect an end to your ills, an issue to your pangs, behold: there is no night without dawn and the day is about to break when darkness is thickest; there is no mist that the sun does not dispel, no cloud that it does not gild, no tear that it will not dry one day, no storm that is not followed by its shining triumphant bow; there is no snow that it does not melt, nor winter that it does not change into radiant spring.
And for you too, there is no affliction which does not bring its measure of glory, no distress which cannot be transformed into joy, nor defeat into victory, nor downfall into higher ascension, nor solitude into radiating centre of life, nor discord into harmony - sometimes it is a misunderstanding between two minds that compels two hearts to open to mutual communion; lastly, there is no infinite weakness that cannot be changed into strength. And it is even in supreme weakness that almightiness chooses to reveal itself!
Listen, my little child, you who today feel so broken, so fallen perhaps, who have nothing left, nothing to cover your misery and foster your pride: never before have you been so great! How close to the summits is he who awakens in the depths, for the deeper the abyss, the more the heights reveal themselves!
Do you not know this, that the most sublime forces of the vasts seek to array themselves in the most opaque veils of Matter? Oh, the sublime nuptials of sovereign love with the obscurest plasticities, of the shadow's yearning with the most royal light!
If ordeal or fault has cast you down, if you have sunk into the nether depths of suffering, do not grieve - for there indeed the divine love and the supreme blessing can reach you! Because you have passed through the crucible of purifying sorrows, the glorious ascents are yours.
You are in the wilderness: then listen to the voices of the silence. The clamour of flattering words and outer applause has gladdened your ears, but the voices of the silence will gladden your soul and awaken within you the echo of the depths, the chant of divine harmonies!
You are walking in the depths of night: then gather the priceless treasures of the night. In bright sunshine, the ways of intelligence are lit, but in the white luminosities of the night lie the hidden paths of perfection, the secret of spiritual riches.
You are being stripped of everything: that is the way towards plenitude. When you have nothing left, everything will be given to you. Because for those who are sincere and true, from the worst always comes the best.
Every grain that is sown in the earth produces a thousand. Every wing-beat of sorrow can be a soaring towards glory.
And when the adversary pursues man relentlessly, everything he does to destroy him only makes him greater.
Hear the story of the worlds, look: the great enemy seems to triumph. He casts the beings of light into the night, and the night is filled with stars. He rages against the cosmic working, he assails the integrity of the empire of the sphere, shatters its harmony, divides and subdivides it, scatters its dust to the four winds of infinity, and lo! the dust is changed into a golden seed, fertilising the infinite and peopling it with worlds which now gravitate around their eternal centre in the larger orbit of space - so that even division creates a richer and deeper unity, and by multiplying the surfaces of the material universe, enlarges the empire that it set out to destroy.
Beautiful indeed was the song of the primordial sphere cradled in the bosom of immensity, but how much more beautiful and triumphant is the symphony of the constellations, the music of the spheres, the immense choir that fills the heavens with an eternal hymn of victory!
Hear again: no state was ever more precarious than that of man when he was separated on earth from his divine origin. Above him stretched the hostile borders of the usurper, and at his horizon's gates watched jailers armed with flaming swords. Then, since he could climb no more to the source of life, the source arose within him; since he could no more receive the light from above, the light shone forth at the very centre of his being; since he could commune no more with the transcendent love, that love offered itself in a holocaust and chose each terrestrial being, each human self as its dwelling-place and sanctuary.
That is how, in this despised and desolate but fruitful and blessed Matter, each atom contains a divine thought, each being carries within him the Divine Inhabitant. And if no being in all the universe is as frail as man, neither is any as divine as he!
In truth, in truth, in humiliation lies the cradle of glory! 28 April 1912 ~ The Mother, Words Of Long Ago, The Supreme Discovery,#KEYS
562:I am the God of Wealth, the Strong and Splendid, I am the Master of the thousands and the Regent of the millions, I am the puissant Creator, the full-handed gatherer, the opulent disposer of treasures. All the riches of every kind that are in the earth and on the earth and below it and all the riches that are in the waters are mine by right; I have power over all their plenitudes. My power is for the Mother; I call all these riches for her, that I may dedicate them to her, that I may lay them at the feet of the Mother of Radiances, ॐ तथास्तु.. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:Time did not compose her. ~ jane-austen, @wisdomtrove 2:Virtue is her own reward. ~ john-dryden, @wisdomtrove 3:It's cheaper to keep her. ~ robin-williams, @wisdomtrove 4:A woman always has her revenge ready. ~ moliere, @wisdomtrove 5:She is laughing up her sleeve at you. ~ moliere, @wisdomtrove 6:White-seeded is her crimson mouth. ~ oscar-wilde, @wisdomtrove 7:He was the toast to her butter. ~ nicholas-sparks, @wisdomtrove 8:She was feeling her bohemian oats. ~ steve-martin, @wisdomtrove 9:She was the captain of her soul ~ william-faulkner, @wisdomtrove 10:Walking with her man, Lost in a dream. ~ a-a-milne, @wisdomtrove 11:The Soul selects her own Society. ~ emily-dickinson, @wisdomtrove 12:A girl's best friend is her mutter. ~ dorothy-parker, @wisdomtrove 13:And her joy was nearly like sorrow. ~ john-steinbeck, @wisdomtrove 14:Good hope is often beguiled by her own augury. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove 15:Nature never breaks her own laws. ~ leonardo-da-vinci, @wisdomtrove 16:she smiled at him, and at her own fears. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 17:I gave her my heart but she wanted my soul. ~ bob-dylan, @wisdomtrove 18:She had bullets in her eyes and they fired. ~ bob-dylan, @wisdomtrove 19:Each found her greatest safety in silence. ~ jane-austen, @wisdomtrove 20:America is laughing her way to Hell. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 21:…each found her greatest safety in silence… ~ jane-austen, @wisdomtrove 22:He liked her; it was as simple as that. ~ nicholas-sparks, @wisdomtrove 23:Love conquers all things; let us own her dominion. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove 24:An obedient wife commands her husband. ~ benjamin-disraeli, @wisdomtrove 25:Captive Greece took captive her savage conqueror. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 26:... faultless in spite of all her faults... ~ jane-austen, @wisdomtrove 27:He felt married to her, that was all. ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove 28:The Earth would die if the sun stopped kissing her. ~ hafez, @wisdomtrove 29:The wife should yield in all things to her lord ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove 30:Bitch was so fine I'd suck her daddy's dick. ~ richard-pryor, @wisdomtrove 31:Her life was a tissue of vanity and deceit. ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove 32:What one beholds of a woman is the least part of her. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove 33:Hear reason, or she'll make you feel her. ~ benjamin-franklin, @wisdomtrove 34:She wished such words unsaid with all her heart ~ jane-austen, @wisdomtrove 35:The only decent bone in her body was mine. ~ ernest-hemingway, @wisdomtrove 36:When Misfortune is asleep, let no one wake her. ~ john-dryden, @wisdomtrove 37:Dear to the heart of a girl is her own beauty and charm. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove 38:Her wit was more than man, her innocence a child. ~ john-dryden, @wisdomtrove 39:If a cow laughed, would milk come out her nose? ~ steven-wright, @wisdomtrove 40:Man has will, but woman has her way. ~ oliver-wendell-holmes-jr, @wisdomtrove 41:We cannot command Nature except by obeying her. ~ francis-bacon, @wisdomtrove 42:A woman needn't be dragged down by her functions. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 43:Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 44:Her heart did whisper that he had done it for her. ~ jane-austen, @wisdomtrove 45:Written on her tombstone: "I told you I was sick. ~ erma-bombeck, @wisdomtrove 46:She was always waiting, it seemed to be her forte. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 47:To feed death with her works is here life's doom. ~ sri-aurobindo, @wisdomtrove 48:True beauty in a woman is reflected in her soul. ~ audrey-hepburn, @wisdomtrove 49:What else goes wrong for a woman-except her marriage? ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove 50:Her voice is full of money, he said suddenly. ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove 51:I stole her heart away and put ice in its place. ~ charles-dickens, @wisdomtrove 52:A girl does not need anyone who does not need her. ~ marilyn-monroe, @wisdomtrove 53:God knows I didn't mean to fall in love with her ~ ernest-hemingway, @wisdomtrove 54:Her profession's her religion, her sin is lifelessness. ~ bob-dylan, @wisdomtrove 55:History, with all her volumes vast, Hath but one page. ~ lord-byron, @wisdomtrove 56:I was too young to know how to love her. ~ antoine-de-saint-exupery, @wisdomtrove 57:Man has his will, but woman has her way. ~ oliver-wendell-holmes-sr, @wisdomtrove 58:Nature, so far as in her lies, imitates God. ~ alfred-lord-tennyson, @wisdomtrove 59:Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her; ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove 60:And the Prince stared at her like a man out of his wits. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 61:A woman's pity sometimes makes her mad. ~ elizabeth-barrett-browning, @wisdomtrove 62:She turned the key, never taking her eyes from him. ~ nicholas-sparks, @wisdomtrove 63:The most beautiful curve on a woman’s body is her smile. ~ bob-marley, @wisdomtrove 64:The one great poem of New England is her Sunday. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 65:The public is anold woman.Let her maunderand mumble. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 66:A leader’s most powerful ally is his or her own example. ~ john-wooden, @wisdomtrove 67:An untempted woman cannot boast of her chastity. ~ michel-de-montaigne, @wisdomtrove 68:Now she hates me. I have taught her that, at least. ~ william-faulkner, @wisdomtrove 69:We have exiled beauty; the Greeks took up arms for her. ~ albert-camus, @wisdomtrove 70:Adopt the pace of nature, her secret is patience. ~ ralph-waldo-emerson, @wisdomtrove 71:Every patient carries her or his own doctor inside. ~ albert-schweitzer, @wisdomtrove 72:Every patient carries his or her own doctor inside. ~ albert-schweitzer, @wisdomtrove 73:I don't believe in God but I'm very interested in her. ~ arthur-c-carke, @wisdomtrove 74:Paradox - Truth standing on her head to get attention. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove 75:She was so fat that her bathtub has stretch marks. ~ rodney-dangerfield, @wisdomtrove 76:And men said that the blood of the stars flowed in her veins ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 77:I wish I had died before I ever loved anyone but her. ~ ernest-hemingway, @wisdomtrove 78:One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. ~ oscar-wilde, @wisdomtrove 79:Over-taxation cost England her colonies of North America. ~ edmund-burke, @wisdomtrove 80:She clung to that which had robbed her, as people do. ~ william-faulkner, @wisdomtrove 81:She was so fat that her belly button makes an echo. ~ rodney-dangerfield, @wisdomtrove 82:She was so ugly that her face could stop a sundial. ~ rodney-dangerfield, @wisdomtrove 83:I like a woman with a head on her shoulders. I hate necks. ~ steve-martin, @wisdomtrove 84:Nature, like us is sometimes caught without her diadem. ~ emily-dickinson, @wisdomtrove 85:She got her looks from her father. He's a plastic surgeon. ~ groucho-marx, @wisdomtrove 86:The cat would eat fish but would not get her feet wet. ~ geoffrey-chaucer, @wisdomtrove 87:Who do you think it was that brought the bottle to her? ~ nicholas-sparks, @wisdomtrove 88:‚Äé"she’ mad but she’ magic. there’ no lie in her fire. ~ charles-bukowski, @wisdomtrove 89:A woman in harmony with her Spirit is like a river flowing. ~ maya-angelou, @wisdomtrove 90:Because one accepts oneself, the whole world accepts him or her. ~ lao-tzu, @wisdomtrove 91:I love her and that's the beginning of everything... ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove 92:Maybe it's just a daughter's job to piss off her mother. ~ chuck-palahniuk, @wisdomtrove 93:We support the security of both Israel and her neighbors. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 94:A feminist is any woman who tells the truth about her life ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove 95:and he loved her suddenly because she loved him. ~ william-somerset-maugham, @wisdomtrove 96:Dramatic art in her opinion is knowing how to fill a sweater. ~ bette-davis, @wisdomtrove 97:Uncorseted, her friendly bust Gives promise of pneumatic bliss. ~ t-s-eliot, @wisdomtrove 98:You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think. ~ dorothy-parker, @wisdomtrove 99:You're only a rebel from the waist downwards,' he told her. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove 100:A dirge for her the doubly dead in that she died so young. ~ edgar-allan-poe, @wisdomtrove 101:Everything that reminds me of her goes through me like a spear. ~ john-keats, @wisdomtrove 102:If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends? ~ steven-wright, @wisdomtrove 103:If you can make a girl laugh, you can make her do anything. ~ marilyn-monroe, @wisdomtrove 104:In an evil hour thou bring'st her home. [You are marrying a shrew.] ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 105:She's not wearing makeup so her face just looks like skin. ~ chuck-palahniuk, @wisdomtrove 106:Bride: A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her. ~ ambrose-bierce, @wisdomtrove 107:The echo mocks her origin to prove she is the original. ~ rabindranath-tagore, @wisdomtrove 108:Behind every successful man is a woman, behind her is his wife. ~ groucho-marx, @wisdomtrove 109:Bird and bear and hare and fish, give my love her fondest wish. ~ stephen-king, @wisdomtrove 110:Don't say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream. ~ mark-twain, @wisdomtrove 111:For my sister's 50th birthday, I sent her a singing mammogram. ~ steven-wright, @wisdomtrove 112:She got her good looks from her father. He's a plastic surgeon. ~ groucho-marx, @wisdomtrove 113:Give her a day, and then in return Momma gives you the other 364. ~ will-rogers, @wisdomtrove 114:Her many achievements will be appreciated more as time goes on. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 115:I love her and that's the beginning and end of everything. ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove 116:Love means each person is free to follow his or her own heart. ~ melody-beattie, @wisdomtrove 117:To find out a girl's faults, praise her to her girlfriends. ~ benjamin-franklin, @wisdomtrove 118:Give a girl an education and introduce her properly into the world ~ jane-austen, @wisdomtrove 119:Her cry was the saddest sound of orgasm that I had ever heard. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove 120:I love her, and that's the beginning and end of everything. ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove 121:Take the pencil and write under my name, & 122:Until the bitter end, the emptiness inside her was hers alone. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove 123:When the bride is one with her lover, who cares about the wedding party? ~ kabir, @wisdomtrove 124:A man always imagines a woman to be ready for anybody who asks her. ~ jane-austen, @wisdomtrove 125:A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her. ~ oscar-wilde, @wisdomtrove 126:A sense of responsibility would spoil her. She's too pretty. ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove 127:Her body was wrapped in shadows like moth wings, like rose-petals. ~ stephen-king, @wisdomtrove 128:Let her sleep, for when she wakes, she will shake the world. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 129:Now that the lilacs are in bloom She has a bowl of lilacs in her room ~ t-s-eliot, @wisdomtrove 130:But Psyche uplifting her finger said: Sadly this star I mistrust ~ edgar-allan-poe, @wisdomtrove 131:Each of us creates his or her own life largely by our attitude. ~ earl-nightingale, @wisdomtrove 132:Here lies my wife: here let her lie! Now she's at rest, and so am I. ~ john-dryden, @wisdomtrove 133:Nature's never quite Sure she hasn't erred In her vague design... . ~ robert-frost, @wisdomtrove 134:A woman has to live her life, or live to repent not having lived it. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 135:Each reader needs to bring his or her own mind and heart to the text. ~ dean-koontz, @wisdomtrove 136:farmer's wife will be nervously trying to quiet her scared horse as ~ dale-carnegie, @wisdomtrove 137:Her own thoughts and reflections were habitually her best companions. ~ jane-austen, @wisdomtrove 138:it was her habit to build up laughter out of inadequate materials. ~ john-steinbeck, @wisdomtrove 139:There never yet was a mother who taught her child to be an infidel. ~ josh-billings, @wisdomtrove 140:A lie travels round the world while truth is putting her boots on. ~ edgar-allan-poe, @wisdomtrove 141:A wise girl knows her limits, a smart girl knows that she has none. ~ marilyn-monroe, @wisdomtrove 142:Prosperity's right hand is industry and her left hand is frugality. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove 143:Remember Her? Take A Deep Breath Before You See What She Looks Like Now ~ ken-wilber, @wisdomtrove 144:When a woman is talking to you, listen to what she says with her eyes. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 145:He had shown her all the workings of his soul, mistaking this for love. ~ e-m-forster, @wisdomtrove 146:In Hollywood a girl's virtue is much less important than her hairdo. ~ marilyn-monroe, @wisdomtrove 147:She lived for others, her heart tuned to their anguish and their needs. ~ dean-koontz, @wisdomtrove 148:She was so fat that her clothes are made by Omar the tent maker. ~ rodney-dangerfield, @wisdomtrove 149:The best thing a parent can do for a child is to love his or her spouse. ~ zig-ziglar, @wisdomtrove 150:When bounteous autumn rears her head, he joys to pull the ripened pear. ~ john-dryden, @wisdomtrove 151:Youth enters the world with very happy prejudices in her own favour. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove 152:And again she felt alone in the presence of her old antagonist, life. ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove 153:Dear Mary: We all knew you had it in you. (on the birth of her child) ~ dorothy-parker, @wisdomtrove 154:He looked at her the way all women want to be looked at by a man. ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove 155:Luck is a thing that comes in many forms and who can recognize her? ~ ernest-hemingway, @wisdomtrove 156:…one half of her should not be always so much wiser than the other half… ~ jane-austen, @wisdomtrove 157:A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction. ~ oscar-wilde, @wisdomtrove 158:A resourceful person will always make opportunity fit his or her needs. ~ napoleon-hill, @wisdomtrove 159:At every breath try to be in communion with Him [Her] through His Name. ~ anandamayi-ma, @wisdomtrove 160:... for her whom in life thou dids't abhor, in death thou shalt adore ~ edgar-allan-poe, @wisdomtrove 161:Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove 162:The chief difficulty Alice found at first was in managing her flamingo. ~ lewis-carroll, @wisdomtrove 163:The exhilarating ripple of her voice was a wild tonic in the rain. ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove 164:A woman uses her intelligence to find reasons to support her intuition. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove 165:Be kind to your mother-in-law, but pay for her board at some good hotel. ~ josh-billings, @wisdomtrove 166:Feeling like the voice she liked best in all the world was calling her name. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 167:It is God who makes woman beautiful, it is the devil who makes her pretty. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 168:Letter to Julia Ward Howe on her 70th birthday, 27 May (1889) ~ oliver-wendell-holmes-sr, @wisdomtrove 169:Little Alice fell d o w n the hOle, bumped her head and bruised her soul ~ lewis-carroll, @wisdomtrove 170:[On the ringing of her doorbell or telephone:] What fresh hell is this? ~ dorothy-parker, @wisdomtrove 171:Races, better than we, have leaned on her wavering promise, ~ henry-wadsworth-longfellow, @wisdomtrove 172:The Moon for all her light and grace Has never learned to know her place. ~ robert-frost, @wisdomtrove 173:While her lips talked culture, her heart was planning to invite him to tea ~ e-m-forster, @wisdomtrove 174:Always the most revealing thing about the church is her idea of God. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 175:By plucking her petals, you do not gather the beauty of the flower. ~ rabindranath-tagore, @wisdomtrove 176:Chaucer followed Nature everywhere, but was never so bold to go beyond her. ~ john-dryden, @wisdomtrove 177:My mother-in-law buys her coats in a carper shop. She wears a 9& 178:Remember Her? Take A Deep Breath Before You See What She Looks Like Now ~ richard-branson, @wisdomtrove 179:She that weds well will wisely match her love, Nor be below her husband nor above. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove 180:A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction. ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove 181:I admire the hell out of her. You can't have sex with someone you admire. ~ jerry-seinfeld, @wisdomtrove 182:I haven't spoken to my wife in years. I didn't want to interrupt her. ~ rodney-dangerfield, @wisdomtrove 183:I knew a girl so ugly, they use her in prisons to cure sex offenders. ~ rodney-dangerfield, @wisdomtrove 184:It was very exciting for her, taking his dignity away in the name of love. ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove 185:Reason enslaves all whose minds are not strong enough to master her. ~ george-bernard-shaw, @wisdomtrove 186:She who resists as though she would not win, By her own treason falls an easy prey. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove 187:The cruelest thing a man can do to a woman is to portray her as perfection. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 188:A cow is a very good animal in the field; but we turn her out of a garden. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove 189:Each person is different and each one will reach God by his or her own path. ~ paulo-coelho, @wisdomtrove 190:Her big heart did not, as is so sadly often the case, inhabit a big bosom. ~ dorothy-parker, @wisdomtrove 191:Her philosophy is carpe diem for herself and laissez faire for others. ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove 192:I'd love to slit my mother-in-law's corsets and watch her spread to death. ~ phyllis-diller, @wisdomtrove 193:If that person doesn't want to be in your life, just let him or her leave. ~ melody-beattie, @wisdomtrove 194:If virtue holds the secret, don't defer; Be off with pleasure, and be on with her. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 195:Part of me aches at the thought of her being so close yet so untouchable. ~ nicholas-sparks, @wisdomtrove 196:She was so ugly that I took her to a dog show and she won first prize. ~ rodney-dangerfield, @wisdomtrove 197:Woman is born for love, and it is impossible to turn her from seeking it. ~ margaret-fuller, @wisdomtrove 198:An elegant woman is a woman who despises you and has no hair under her arms. ~ salvador-dali, @wisdomtrove 199:Ask an older person you respect to tell you his or her greatest regret. ~ h-jackson-brown-jr, @wisdomtrove 200:i wait. with all my dreams, i know her heart, and i know i'm almost there. ~ nicholas-sparks, @wisdomtrove 201:May dawn, as the proverb goes, bring happy tidings coming from her mother night. ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove 202:No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating. ~ oscar-wilde, @wisdomtrove 203:This sweetest and best of all creatures, faultless in spite of all her faults. ~ jane-austen, @wisdomtrove 204:This was a lucky recollection - it saved her from something like regret. ~ jane-austen, @wisdomtrove 205:Angry, and half in love with her, and tremendously sorry, I turned away. ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove 206:Her great merit is finding out mine; there is nothing so amiable as discernment. ~ lord-byron, @wisdomtrove 207:Her mind was all disorder. The past, present, future, every thing was terrible. ~ jane-austen, @wisdomtrove 208:For beautiful hair, let a child run his or her fingers through it once a day. ~ audrey-hepburn, @wisdomtrove 209:France needs nothing so much to promote her regeneration as good mothers. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 210:No girl should ever forget that she doesn't need anyone who doesn't need her. ~ marilyn-monroe, @wisdomtrove 211:She was so fat that her bikini is made out of two bed sheets (king-size). ~ rodney-dangerfield, @wisdomtrove 212:The moon's an arrant thief, And her pale fire she snatches from the sun. ~ william-shakespeare, @wisdomtrove 213:With girls I get no respect. A belly dancer told me I turned her stomach. ~ rodney-dangerfield, @wisdomtrove 214:Fortune is like a coquette; if you don't run after her, she will run after you. ~ josh-billings, @wisdomtrove 215:I give her sadness and the gift of pain,a new moon madness and a love of rain. ~ dorothy-parker, @wisdomtrove 216:Let her go to Italy!" he cried. "Let her meddle with what she doesn't understand! ~ e-m-forster, @wisdomtrove 217:She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. ~ jean-paul-sartre, @wisdomtrove 218:She can play my guitar note for note, she likes to stick her tongue down my throat. ~ bob-dylan, @wisdomtrove 219:The moment the church of God shall despise the pulpit, God will despise her. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 220:You come to nature with all her theories, and she knocks them all flat. ~ pierre-auguste-renoir, @wisdomtrove 221:Beauty is truth's smile when she beholds her own face in a perfect mirror. ~ rabindranath-tagore, @wisdomtrove 222:George: This woman hates me so much, I’m starting to like her. Seinfeld TV show ~ jerry-seinfeld, @wisdomtrove 223:Her contempt for me was so strong, that it became infectious, and I caught it. ~ charles-dickens, @wisdomtrove 224:His dress told her nothing, but his face told her things which she was glad to know. ~ a-a-milne, @wisdomtrove 225:I read the way a person might swim, to save his or her life. I wrote that way too. ~ mary-oliver, @wisdomtrove 226:Lover," she whispers, and closes her eyes. It falls upon her. Love is like dying. ~ stephen-king, @wisdomtrove 227:Mona Lisa is the only beauty who went through history and retained her reputation. ~ will-rogers, @wisdomtrove 228:No matter how old you get, hug and kiss your mother whenever you greet her. ~ h-jackson-brown-jr, @wisdomtrove 229:She herself had never been able to be altogether herself: it had been denied her. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 230:Since my daughter is only half-Jewish, could she go in the water up to her knees? ~ groucho-marx, @wisdomtrove 231:The soul, too has her virginity and must bleed a little before bearing fruit. ~ george-santayana, @wisdomtrove 232:When a person doesn't have gratitude, something is missing in his or her humanity. ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove 233:When liberty comes with hands dabbled in blood it is hard to shake hands with her. ~ oscar-wilde, @wisdomtrove 234:1966 On her favourite character roles. In the NewYork State Theater programme, Jun. ~ bette-davis, @wisdomtrove 235:Get what start the sinner may, Retribution, for all her lame leg, never quits his track. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 236:Her body calculated to a millimeter to suggest a bud yet guarantee a flower. ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove 237:Her life-that was the only chance she had-the short season between two silences. ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove 238:If a woman hasn't got a tiny streak of harlot in her, she's a dry stick as a rule. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 239:Like a mermaid in sea-weed, she dreams awake, trembling in her soft and chilly nest. ~ john-keats, @wisdomtrove 240:[When asked what was the inspiration for most of her work:] Need of money, dear. ~ dorothy-parker, @wisdomtrove 241:A sick child is always the mother's property; her own feelings generally make it so. ~ jane-austen, @wisdomtrove 242:Better let it all alone in the depths of her heart and the depths of the sea. ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove 243:Her eyes always had a frantic, lost look. He could never cure her eyes of that. ~ charles-bukowski, @wisdomtrove 244:I really don't advise a woman who wants to have things her own way to get married ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove 245:The artist is the lover of nature; therefore he is her slave and her master. ~ rabindranath-tagore, @wisdomtrove 246:The woman I love she got a prize fighter nose, cauliflower ears and a run in her hose. ~ bob-dylan, @wisdomtrove 247:What makes Amma happy, is to see her children helping others to feel happy. ~ mata-amritanandamayi, @wisdomtrove 248:And when her eyes met mine, I felt something click, like a key turning in a lock. ~ nicholas-sparks, @wisdomtrove 249:Everyone has something wrong. And for a while, her heart just sort of flat lined. ~ chuck-palahniuk, @wisdomtrove 250:Her pupils have taken on a lonely hue, like grey clouds reflected in a calm lake. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove 251:Life could do nothing for her, beyond giving time for a better preparation for death. ~ jane-austen, @wisdomtrove 252:Oh the innocent girl in her maiden teens knows perfectly well what everything means. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 253:She is delightfully chaotic; a beautiful mess. Loving her is a splendid adventure. ~ steve-maraboli, @wisdomtrove 254:the whole world is caught in her glance and at last the universe is magnificent. ~ charles-bukowski, @wisdomtrove 255:When she is alone in the rooms I hear her humming to keep herself from thinking. ~ jean-paul-sartre, @wisdomtrove 256:Yes, she thought, laying down her brush in extreme fatigues, I have had my vision. ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove 257:Ambition has one heel nailed in well, though she stretch her fingers to touch the heavens. ~ lao-tzu, @wisdomtrove 258:As Logan walked towards her, he smiled as if reading her mind and opened his arms. ~ nicholas-sparks, @wisdomtrove 259:A woman's heart should be so hidden in God that a man has to seek Him just to find her. ~ max-lucado, @wisdomtrove 260:Happy is England, sweet her artless daughters; / Enough their simple loveliness for me. ~ john-keats, @wisdomtrove 261:I chose my wife, as she did her wedding gown, for qualities that would wear well. ~ oliver-goldsmith, @wisdomtrove 262:My mother-in-law had a pain beneath her left breast. Turned out to be a trick knee. ~ phyllis-diller, @wisdomtrove 263:My sister was so promiscuous she broke her ankle in the glove compartment of a car. ~ phyllis-diller, @wisdomtrove 264:She press'd his hand in slumber; so once more He could not help but kiss her and adore. ~ john-keats, @wisdomtrove 265:So softly death succeeded life in her, She did but dream of heaven, and she was there. ~ john-dryden, @wisdomtrove 266:The babe at first feeds upon the mother's bosom, but it is always on her heart. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 267:The great secret of happiness in love is to be glad that the other fellow married her. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 268:This woman was so cross-eyed. She can go to a tennis match and never move her head. ~ phyllis-diller, @wisdomtrove 269:When discord dreadful bursts her brazen bars, And shatters locks to thunder forth her wars. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 270:But so fair, She takes the breath of men away Who gaze upon her unaware. ~ elizabeth-barrett-browning, @wisdomtrove 271:Glory, like the phoenix & 272:I met this girl, she was an actress, and she gave me her number. It started with 555. ~ mitch-hedberg, @wisdomtrove 273:Like a bird she seems to wear gay plumage unconsciously, as if it grew upon her. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 274:A person's acts are always in harmony with the dominating thoughts of his or her mind. ~ napoleon-hill, @wisdomtrove 275:Be sure your sins will find you out, especially if you're married and her name's Bertha ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 276:Nature does nothing in vain, and in the use of means to her goals she is not prodigal. ~ immanuel-kant, @wisdomtrove 277:She knows her man, and when you rant or swear, / Can draw you to her with a single hair. ~ john-dryden, @wisdomtrove 278:So the false spider, when her nets are spread, deep ambushed in her silent den does lie. ~ john-dryden, @wisdomtrove 279:The Russians love Brooke Shields because her eyebrows remind them of Leonid Brezhnev. ~ robin-williams, @wisdomtrove 280:To love is to commune with another person and to discover in him or her a divine spark. ~ paulo-coelho, @wisdomtrove 281:A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age. ~ robert-frost, @wisdomtrove 282:All a girl really wants is for one guy to prove to her that they are not all the same. ~ marilyn-monroe, @wisdomtrove 283:A very short trial convinced her that a curricle was the prettiest equipage in the world. ~ jane-austen, @wisdomtrove 284:If adventures will not befall a young lady in her own village, she must seek them abroad. ~ jane-austen, @wisdomtrove 285:I have heard Will Honeycomb say, A Woman seldom Writes her Mind but in her Postscript. ~ gertrude-stein, @wisdomtrove 286:I'm not a sexy guy. I went to a hooker. I dropped my pants. She dropped her price. ~ rodney-dangerfield, @wisdomtrove 287:I wrote the story myself. It's all about a girl who lost her reputation but never missed it. ~ mae-west, @wisdomtrove 288:My marriage is on the rocks again. Yeah. My wife just broke up with her boyfriend. ~ rodney-dangerfield, @wisdomtrove 289:My marriage is on the rocks again, yeah, my wife just broke up with her boyfriend. ~ rodney-dangerfield, @wisdomtrove 290:She was dazzling& 291:There are those who seek the love of a woman to forget her, to not think about her. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 292:Wisdom is better than wit, and in the long run will certainly have the laugh on her side. ~ jane-austen, @wisdomtrove 293:Christianity at any given time is strong or weak depending upon her concept of God. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 294:It's a rare man who can stand being around an intelligent woman, let alone married to her. ~ bette-davis, @wisdomtrove 295:She can sit up and beg, and she can give her paw ‚Äî I don't say she will, but she can. ~ dorothy-parker, @wisdomtrove 296:Success is feminine and like a woman, if you cringe before her, she will override you ~ william-faulkner, @wisdomtrove 297:The soul is a very perfect judge of her own motions, if your mind doesn't dictate to her. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 298:When mind is still, then truth gets her chance to be heard in the purity of the silence. ~ sri-aurobindo, @wisdomtrove 299:Drive Nature forth by force, she'll turn and rout The false refinements that would keep her out. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 300:The great trick with a woman is to get rid of her while she think's she's rid of you. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove 301:There were moments when it honestly seemed as if the world were conspiring against her. ~ nicholas-sparks, @wisdomtrove 302:And for an instant, I fantasized about wrapping my arms around her right then and there. ~ nicholas-sparks, @wisdomtrove 303:Do not give, as many rich men do, like a hen that lays her eggs ... and then cackles. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 304:I once met a beautiful, proper English girl. I bid her adieu... . she bid me a don't. ~ rodney-dangerfield, @wisdomtrove 305:Love your country, not for her power or wealth, but for her selflessness and her idealism. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 306:We must consider what Miss. Fairfax quits, before we condemn her taste for what she goes to. ~ jane-austen, @wisdomtrove 307:Why was I with her? She reminds me of you. In fact, she reminds me more of you than you do! ~ groucho-marx, @wisdomtrove 308:Each of us inevitable; Each of us limitless-each of us with his or her right upon the earth. ~ walt-whitman, @wisdomtrove 309:Glory drags all men along, low as well as high, bound captive at the wheels of her glittering car. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 310:Her modest looks the cottage might adorn, Sweet as the primrose peeps beneath the thorn. ~ oliver-goldsmith, @wisdomtrove 311:I believe you should place a woman on a pedestal: high enough so you can look up her dress. ~ steve-martin, @wisdomtrove 312:I kissed her hard and held her tight and tried to open her lips; they were closed tight. ~ ernest-hemingway, @wisdomtrove 313:The fire blazing in her dark and injured heart seemed to glow around her like a flame. ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove 314:the moon shone bright on Mrs Porter / And on her daughter / They wash their feet in soda water. ~ t-s-eliot, @wisdomtrove 315:i'm sorry she never got her miracle. she did get her miracle, Landon, her miracle was you. ~ nicholas-sparks, @wisdomtrove 316:It is a high distinction for a homely woman to be loved for her character rather than for beauty. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove 317:She, though in full-blown flower of glorious beauty, Grows cold even in the summer of her age. ~ john-dryden, @wisdomtrove 318:She was a fool and he knew it and because he loved her it had made no difference. ~ william-somerset-maugham, @wisdomtrove 319:So young a child ought to know which way she's going, even if she doesn't know her own name! ~ lewis-carroll, @wisdomtrove 320:The impulse of the American woman to geld her husband and castrate her sons is very strong. ~ john-steinbeck, @wisdomtrove 321:The woman who cannot tell a lie in defense of her husband, is unworthy of the name of wife. ~ elbert-hubbard, @wisdomtrove 322:We will never disarm any American who seeks to protect his or her family from fear and harm. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 323:Wickedness frames the engines of her own torment. She is a wonderful artisan of a miserable life. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove 324:... and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky... ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 325:If you haven't seen your wife smile at a traffic cop, you haven't seen her smile her prettiest. ~ kin-hubbard, @wisdomtrove 326:Let the wife make the husband glad to come home, and let him make her sorry to see him leave. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 327:To you the Earth yields her fruit, and you shall not want if you know how to fill your hands. ~ kahlil-gibran, @wisdomtrove 328:As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied. ~ oscar-wilde, @wisdomtrove 329:How do you humiliate and demean someone and then expect him or her to care about product quality. ~ tom-peters, @wisdomtrove 330:If you love someone but rarely make yourself available to him or her, that is not true love. ~ thich-nhat-hanh, @wisdomtrove 331:In the spring of her twenty-second year, Sumire fell in love for the first time in her life. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove 332:The biggest coward of a man is to awaken the love of a woman without the intention of loving her. ~ bob-marley, @wisdomtrove 333:When a woman conceives her true self, a miracle occurs and life around her begins again. ~ marianne-williamson, @wisdomtrove 334:When one individual writer sings her song of beauty, she changes the lives of a million others. ~ richard-bach, @wisdomtrove 335:A mother only does her children harm if she makes them the only concern of her life. ~ william-somerset-maugham, @wisdomtrove 336:And her sleep was too long and deep for that:so deep that she left her normal reality behind. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove 337:Because being comfortable meant she might lower her guard, and she could not let that happen. ~ nicholas-sparks, @wisdomtrove 338:Faith never makes herself her own plea, she rests all her argument upon the blood of Christ. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 339:In order that she may be able to give her hand with dignity, she must be able to stand alone. ~ margaret-fuller, @wisdomtrove 340:One night she told me to put out the garbage. I told her "you cooked it, you take it out". ~ rodney-dangerfield, @wisdomtrove 341:The time was fast approaching when Earth, like all mothers, must say farewell to her children. ~ arthur-c-carke, @wisdomtrove 342:Virtue rejects facility to be her companion. She requires a craggy, rough and thorny way. ~ michel-de-montaigne, @wisdomtrove 343:A woman is like a tea bag - you can't tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water. ~ eleanor-roosevelt, @wisdomtrove 344:I tell ya, with my wife, I got no sex life. Her favorite position is facing Bloomingdale's. ~ rodney-dangerfield, @wisdomtrove 345:I took her by the hand and my heart it was thumpin'. When she said, hey man, you crazy or somethin'? ~ bob-dylan, @wisdomtrove 346:She didn't answer. Angry, and half in love with her, and tremendously sorry, I turned away. ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove 347:She fights and vanquishes in me, and I live and breathe in her, and I have life and being. ~ miguel-de-cervantes, @wisdomtrove 348:The challenge for a human now is to be more interesting to another than his or her smartphone. ~ alain-de-botton, @wisdomtrove 349:The soul selects her own society, Then shuts the door; On her divine majority Obtrude no more. ~ emily-dickinson, @wisdomtrove 350:To be in love is not the same as loving. You can be in love with a woman and still hate her. ~ fyodor-dostoevsky, @wisdomtrove 351:Were there a Christian so faithful to his God as I was to her we would all be Jesus Christ today. ~ henry-miller, @wisdomtrove 352:When discovered by his wife, kissing the maid, Groucho said, "I was just whispering in her mouth" ~ groucho-marx, @wisdomtrove 353:Her hat is a creation that will never go out of style; it will just look ridiculous year after year. ~ fred-allen, @wisdomtrove 354:I criticize America because I love her. I want her to stand as a moral example to the world. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 355:Nature is what we know - Yet have not art to say - So impotent our wisdom is To her simplicity. ~ emily-dickinson, @wisdomtrove 356:She never stumbles, she's got no place to fall. She's nobody's child, the law can't touch her at all. ~ bob-dylan, @wisdomtrove 357:That's my sweetheart in there. I'm not living her. This is my home now. Your mother is my home. ~ nicholas-sparks, @wisdomtrove 358:The artist has a twofold relation to nature; he is at once her master and her slave. ~ johann-wolfgang-von-goethe, @wisdomtrove 359:The woman who can't influence her husband to vote the way she wants ought to be ashamed of herself. ~ e-m-forster, @wisdomtrove 360:When I invite a woman to dinner, I expect her to look at my face. That's the price she has to pay. ~ groucho-marx, @wisdomtrove 361:A woman never forgets her sex. She would rather talk with a man than an angel, any day. ~ oliver-wendell-holmes-sr, @wisdomtrove 362:One way to sell a consumer something in the future is simply to get his or her permission in advance. ~ seth-godin, @wisdomtrove 363:The greatest weapon any warrior can carry into battle is absolute certainty of her eternal soul. ~ chuck-palahniuk, @wisdomtrove 364:A great social success is a pretty girl who plays her cards as carefully as if she were plain. ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove 365:By abortion, the mother does not learn to love, but kills even her own child to solve her problems. ~ mother-teresa, @wisdomtrove 366:Control your temper. Remember, you can measure the size of a person by what makes him or her angry. ~ dale-carnegie, @wisdomtrove 367:Let her love God as He is in Himself, and not as her imagination says He is, and pictures Him. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 368:The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech. ~ george-bernard-shaw, @wisdomtrove 369:True joy comes when you inspire, encourage, and guide someone else on a path that benefits him or her. ~ zig-ziglar, @wisdomtrove 370:When a man has married a wife, he finds out whether / Her knees and elbows are only glued together. ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove 371:A woman may be as wicked as she likes, but if she isn't pretty it won't do her much good. ~ william-somerset-maugham, @wisdomtrove 372:Experience does not err. Only your judgments err by expecting from her what is not in her power. ~ leonardo-da-vinci, @wisdomtrove 373:I told her I knew when I was going to die because my birth certificate had an expiration date on it. ~ steven-wright, @wisdomtrove 374:My wife’s not too smart. I told her our kids were spoiled. She said, ‘All kids smell that way.' ~ rodney-dangerfield, @wisdomtrove 375:She [Mary I] married Philip King of Spain, who in her sister's reign, was famous for building Armadas. ~ jane-austen, @wisdomtrove 376:She was sensible and clever, but eager in everything; her sorrows, her joys, could have no moderation. ~ jane-austen, @wisdomtrove 377:The earth yields up her stores, of every ill The instigators; iron, foe to man, And gold, than iron deadlier. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove 378:The helpless ecstasy of loosing himself in her charm was a powerful opiate rather than a tonic. ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove 379:Woman has suffered for eons, and that has given her infinite patience and infinite perseverance. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 380:Everything united in her; good understanding, correct opinions, knowledge of the world and a warm heart ~ jane-austen, @wisdomtrove 381:He felt now that he was not simply close to her, but that he did not know where he ended and she began. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 382:He had no plans, no definite intentions, except to kiss her lips again, to hold her in his arms. ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove 383:Men who think that a woman's past love affairs lessen her love for them are usually stupid and weak. ~ marilyn-monroe, @wisdomtrove 384:My wife had her drivers’ test the other day. She got 8 out of 10. The other 2 guys jumped clear. ~ rodney-dangerfield, @wisdomtrove 385:... one emotion after another crept into her face like objects into a slowly developing picture. ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove 386:She turned to the sunlight And shook her yellow head, And whispered to her neighbor: "Winter is dead. ~ a-a-milne, @wisdomtrove 387:The American girl makes a servant of her husband and then finds him contemptible for being a servant ~ john-steinbeck, @wisdomtrove 388:The depth lies in the valleys where we seek her, and not upon the mountain-tops where she is found. ~ edgar-allan-poe, @wisdomtrove 389:When a woman rises up in glory, her energy is magnetic and her sense of possibility contagious. ~ marianne-williamson, @wisdomtrove 390:A modest woman, dressed out in all her finery, is the most tremendous object of the whole creation. ~ oliver-goldsmith, @wisdomtrove 391:As her time in Florence drew to a close she was only at ease amongst those to whom she felt indifferent. ~ e-m-forster, @wisdomtrove 392:Brisk Confidence still best with woman copes: Pique her and soothe in turn-soon Passion crowns thy hopes. ~ lord-byron, @wisdomtrove 393:It's tough to stay married. My wife says no because she's tired then stays up and reads her book. ~ rodney-dangerfield, @wisdomtrove 394:Man can never be a woman's equal in the spirit of selfless service with which nature has endowed her. ~ mahatma-gandhi, @wisdomtrove 395:Moths like me die by the thousands every minute. Her work goes on all the same. Glory unto Mother! ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 396:The expression a woman wears on her face is far more important than the clothes she wears on her back. ~ dale-carnegie, @wisdomtrove 397:To regain her lost power the Church must see heaven opened and have a transforming vision of God. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 398:úA living poemù had always been the words that came to mind when he tried to describe her to others. ~ nicholas-sparks, @wisdomtrove 399:I am following Nature without being able to grasp her, I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers. ~ claude-monet, @wisdomtrove 400:Man is always looking for someone to boast to; woman is always looking for a shoulder to put her head on. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 401:Nature knows no pause in progress and development, and attaches her curse on all inaction. ~ johann-wolfgang-von-goethe, @wisdomtrove 402:No matter how much a woman loved a man, it would still give her a glow to see him commit suicide for her. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 403:Once she knows how to read there's only one thing you can teach her to believe in and that is herself. ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove 404:Don't tell a woman she's pretty; tell her there's no other woman like her, and all roads will open to you ~ jules-renard, @wisdomtrove 405:If a woman's got nothing but her fair fame to feed on, why, it's thin tack, and a donkey would die of it! ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 406:If you are ever in doubt as to whether to kiss a pretty girl, always give her the benefit of the doubt. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 407:Let us a little permit Nature to take her own way; she better understands her own Affairs than we. ~ michel-de-montaigne, @wisdomtrove 408:Marianne was silent; it was impossible for her to say what she did not feel, however trivial the occasion… ~ jane-austen, @wisdomtrove 409:[On hearing that Clare Boothe Luce was invariably kind to her inferiors:] And where does she find them? ~ dorothy-parker, @wisdomtrove 410:She - philosophy is equally helpful to the rich and poor: neglect her, and she equally harms the young and old. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 411:Theology sits rouged at the window and courts philosophy's favor, offering to sell her charms to it. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove 412:The Past is such a curious Creature To look her in the Face A Transport may receipt us Or a Disgrace-. ~ emily-dickinson, @wisdomtrove 413:The wind in the grain is the caress to the spouse; it is the hand of peace stroking her hair. ~ antoine-de-saint-exupery, @wisdomtrove 414:Don't tell a woman she's pretty; tell her there's no other woman like her, and all roads will open to you. ~ jules-renard, @wisdomtrove 415:Her Inspiration: Secrets to Help You Work Smart, Be Successful, and Have Fun. Book by Mina Parker, 2008. ~ marilyn-monroe, @wisdomtrove 416:If you like her, if she makes you happy, and if you feel like you know her - then don't let her go. ~ nicholas-sparks, @wisdomtrove 417:I once went out with this wild girl. She made French toast and got her tongue caught in the toaster. ~ rodney-dangerfield, @wisdomtrove 418:I tell ya, it's tough to save a buck. Right now I'm supporting two fighters. My wife and her mother. ~ rodney-dangerfield, @wisdomtrove 419:Marrying a woman for her money is very much like setting a rat-trap, and baiting it with your own finger. ~ josh-billings, @wisdomtrove 420:Nature goes her own way, and all that to us seems an exception is really according to order. ~ johann-wolfgang-von-goethe, @wisdomtrove 421:Proud to steal her anything she sees, but you will wind up peeking through her key hole down upon your knees. ~ bob-dylan, @wisdomtrove 422:She admired him; she was used to clutching her hands together in his wake and heaving audible sighs. ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove 423:The effective leader recognizes that she is more dependent on her people than they are on her. Walk softly. ~ brian-tracy, @wisdomtrove 424:The ocean asks for nothing but those who stand by her shores gradually attune themselves to her rhythm. ~ charles-dickens, @wisdomtrove 425:Well, I can't describe her exactly-except to say that she was beautiful. She was-tremendously alive. ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove 426:Her maternal instinct told her Natasha had too much of something, and because of this she would not be happy ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 427:Her smile steps offstage for a moment, then does an encore, all while I'm dealing with my blushing face. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove 428:If Miss Honeychurch ever takes to live as she plays, it will be very exciting& 429:she may not be the most popular or prettiest but if you love her and she makes you smile.. what else matters? ~ bob-marley, @wisdomtrove 430:True love allows each person to follow his or her own path, aware that doing so can never drive them apart. ~ paulo-coelho, @wisdomtrove 431:A man is called a good fellow for doing things which, if done by a woman, would land her in a lunatic asylum. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 432:Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone. ~ mark-twain, @wisdomtrove 433:Her beauty climbed the rolling slope, it came into the room, rustling ghost-like through the curtains. ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove 434:I once went out with this girl, she was no bargain either, she showed up with pigtails under her arms. ~ rodney-dangerfield, @wisdomtrove 435:Power is my mistress. I have worked too hard at her conquest to allow anyone to take her away from me. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 436:She speaks with a stutter and she and she walks with a hop. I don't know why I love her, but I just can't stop. ~ bob-dylan, @wisdomtrove 437:Some believe strongly that each Christian may have his own guardian angel assigned to watch over him or her. ~ billy-graham, @wisdomtrove 438:This is [her] soul group.‚Äô What do you mean?‚Äô It‚Äôs a group of souls with whom she resonates closely. ~ james-redfield, @wisdomtrove 439:I am never long, even in the society of her I love, without yearning for the company of my lamp and my library. ~ lord-byron, @wisdomtrove 440:If Nature put not forth her power About the opening of the flower, Who is it that could live an hour? ~ alfred-lord-tennyson, @wisdomtrove 441:I hate a woman who offers herself because she ought to do so, and cold and dry thinks of her sewing when making love. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove 442:[On her father:] ... in losing him I lost my greatest blessing and comfort, for he was always that to me. ~ teresa-of-avila, @wisdomtrove 443:Plots and character don't make life. Life is here and now, anytime you say the word, anytime you let her rip. ~ henry-miller, @wisdomtrove 444:To have her here in bed with me, breathing on me, her hair in my mouth‚ÄîI count that something of a miracle. ~ henry-miller, @wisdomtrove 445:A mother takes twenty years to make a man of her boy, and another woman makes a fool of him in twenty minutes. ~ robert-frost, @wisdomtrove 446:And then her heart changed, or at least she understood it; and the winter passed, and the sun shone upon her. ~ j-r-r-tolkien, @wisdomtrove 447:A widow, the mother of a family, and from her heart she produces chords to which my whole being responds. ~ fyodor-dostoevsky, @wisdomtrove 448:because it was then, as he held her in his unwavering gaze, that she knew she was in love with him as well. ~ nicholas-sparks, @wisdomtrove 449:... in that drunken place you would like to hand your heart to her and say touch it but then give it back. ~ charles-bukowski, @wisdomtrove 450:Margaret Thatcher - this great lady has not only served her country well, she has served the free world well. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 451:No man can teach another self-knowledge. He can only lead him or her up to self-discovery - the source of truth. ~ barry-long, @wisdomtrove 452:No mother would ever willingly sacrifice her sons for territorial gain, for economic advantage, for ideology. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 453:Somewhere in his body& 454:The soil in return for her service keeps the tree tied to her, the sky asks nothing and leaves it free. ~ rabindranath-tagore, @wisdomtrove 455:What was the use of doing great things if I could have a better time telling her what I was going to do? ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove 456:When a girl feels that she’s perfectly groomed and dressed she can forget that part of her. That’s charm ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove 457:I fell in love with her when we were together, then fell deeper in love with her in the years we were apart. ~ nicholas-sparks, @wisdomtrove 458:Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart! ~ nathaniel-hawthorne, @wisdomtrove 459:My favorite definition of an intellectual: & 460:Nature seems to have poured forth her riches so without calculation, merely to mark the fullness of her joy. ~ margaret-fuller, @wisdomtrove 461:Of Consciousness, her awful Mate. The Soul cannot be rid - as easy the secreting her behind the Eyes of God. ~ emily-dickinson, @wisdomtrove 462:One can be very much in love with a woman without wishing to spend the rest of one's life with her. ~ william-somerset-maugham, @wisdomtrove 463:She did not know the nature of her loneliness. The only words that named it were: This is not the world I expected. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 464:She did not want to talk of her sorrow, but with that sorrow in her heart she could not talk of outside matters. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 465:[... ] Shimamoto had her own little world within her. A world that was for her alone, one I could not enter. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove 466:To a mother, a child is everything; but to a child, a parent is only a link in the chain of her existence. ~ benjamin-disraeli, @wisdomtrove 467:We have a great dream. It started way back in 1776, and God grant that America will be true to her dream. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 468:When the Soul wants to experience something, she throws out an image in front of her and then steps into it. ~ meister-eckhart, @wisdomtrove 469:Fortune, delighting in her cruel task, and playing her wanton game untiringly, is ever shifting her uncertain favours. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 470:If you tell an ugly woman that she is beautiful, you offer her the great homage of corrupting the concept of beauty. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 471:I think I should know how to educate a boy, but not a girl; I should be in danger of making her too learned. ~ reinhold-niebuhr, @wisdomtrove 472:JK Rowling created seven Horcruxes. She put a part of her soul in every book and now her books will live forever ~ stephen-king, @wisdomtrove 473:There was nothing separate about her days. Like drops on the window-pane, they ran together and trickled away. ~ dorothy-parker, @wisdomtrove 474:And if we can accept that a mother can kill her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another? ~ mother-teresa, @wisdomtrove 475:Beautiful as seemed mama's face, it became more lovely when she smiled and seemed to enliven everything about her. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 476:He looked at her and for a moment she lived in the bright blue worlds of his eyes, eagerly and confidently. ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove 477:How is it possible to miss a woman whom you kept at a distance, so that when she was gone you would not miss her? ~ steve-martin, @wisdomtrove 478:I knew a girl so ugly, I took her to the top of the Empire State building and planes started to attack her. ~ rodney-dangerfield, @wisdomtrove 479:I sent my flowers across the hall to Mrs Nixon but her husband remembered what a Democrat I am and sent them back. ~ bette-davis, @wisdomtrove 480:Many people (who go to her as volunteers) have found peace, joy and unity in their families by helping the poor. ~ mother-teresa, @wisdomtrove 481:No matter how plain a woman may be, if truth and honesty are written across her face, she will be beautiful. ~ eleanor-roosevelt, @wisdomtrove 482:[On an actor who'd broken her leg in London:] Oh, how terrible. She must have done it sliding down a barrister. ~ dorothy-parker, @wisdomtrove 483:She leaned into me, and when I closed my eyes, I knew I wanted nothing more than to hold her this way forever. ~ nicholas-sparks, @wisdomtrove 484:The Church limits her sacramental services to the faithful. Christ gave Himself upon the cross a ransom for all. ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove 485:We in the industry know that behind every successful screenwriter stands a woman. And behind her stands his wife. ~ groucho-marx, @wisdomtrove 486:A life in harmony with nature, the love of truth and virtue, will purge the eyes to understanding her text. ~ ralph-waldo-emerson, @wisdomtrove 487:and all I could think was that I would like to spend every morning for the rest of my life waking up beside her ~ nicholas-sparks, @wisdomtrove 488:A sharp-tempered woman, or, for that matter, a man, Is easier to deal with than the clever type Who holds her tongue. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove 489:I shouldn't tell jokes about my wife. she's attached to a machine that keeps her alive... The refrigerator. ~ rodney-dangerfield, @wisdomtrove 490:No man knows what the wife of his bosom is until he has gone with her through the fiery trials of this world. ~ washington-irving, @wisdomtrove 491:The land was ours before we were the land's. She was our land more than a hundred years Before we were her people. ~ robert-frost, @wisdomtrove 492:The land was ours before we were the land s. She was our land more than a hundred years before we were her people. ~ robert-frost, @wisdomtrove 493:Then he kissed her. At his lips' touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete. ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove 494:Fortune, that with malicious joyDoes man her slave oppress,Proud of her office to destroy,Is seldom pleasd to bless. ~ john-dryden, @wisdomtrove 495:No matter what form the relationship might take, he was the only person she could picture sharing her life with. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove 496:No woman is worth more than a fiver unless you're in love with her. Then she's worth all she costs you. ~ william-somerset-maugham, @wisdomtrove 497:Only God Himself fully appreciates the influence of a Christian mother in the molding of character in her children. ~ billy-graham, @wisdomtrove 498:She had learned, in the slums of her childhood, that honest people were never touchy about the matter of being trusted. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 499:She rose to his requirement, dropped The playthings of her life To take the honorable work Of woman and of wife. ~ emily-dickinson, @wisdomtrove 500:Something in her small eyes caught the sunlight and glistened, like a glacier on the faraway face of a mountain. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:her completely back ~ John Conroe, #NFDB
2:Her smile hugged me ~ R J Palacio, #NFDB
3:Him urging her to sin ~ Ker Dukey, #NFDB
4:Rub her feet! ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
5:shucking her buns. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
6:was recalling her ~ Fern Michaels, #NFDB
7:and he kneaded her. ~ Kathryn Shay, #NFDB
8:began to caw her best, but ~ Aesop, #NFDB
9:catch her sometimes, ~ Mary Kubica, #NFDB
10:Don’t believe her. ~ Lauren Oliver, #NFDB
11:fluff in her butt. In ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
12:Her blood loudened. ~ Markus Zusak, #NFDB
13:Her questioning would ~ Maya Banks, #NFDB
14:Her wavy blond hair ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
15:his touch and her ~ Terry Bolryder, #NFDB
16:it. Her embarrassed ~ Krista Lakes, #NFDB
17:them as tall as her— ~ Dave Eggers, #NFDB
18:tittupped after her. ~ Carola Dunn, #NFDB
19:When Caro and her ~ Cynthia Wright, #NFDB
20:Where was her joy? ~ Shelley Noble, #NFDB
21:Where was her peace? ~ Jason Letts, #NFDB
22:candles for her ~ Lisa Brennan Jobs, #NFDB
23:Don't. Talk. About. Her. ~ Susan Ee, #NFDB
24:For three days her father, ~ Ha Jin, #NFDB
25:gripped her waist but ~ Pepper Pace, #NFDB
26:Her eyes ate me. ~ Raymond Chandler, #NFDB
27:her horse, Basil. ~ Sarah Mlynowski, #NFDB
28:Her legs shook so hard, ~ T R Ragan, #NFDB
29:Her lips twitched ~ Julie Johnstone, #NFDB
30:ice in her veins. ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
31:It wasn’t her fault, ~ Rachel Caine, #NFDB
32:I will fight for her. ~ Layla Hagen, #NFDB
33:kissed her cheek and ~ Addison Cole, #NFDB
34:one photo of her with ~ Terry Hayes, #NFDB
35:overheard her.” “And ~ Lisa Jackson, #NFDB
36:She slid her arms ~ Julie Anne Long, #NFDB
37:She suctioned her mouth, ~ T A Grey, #NFDB
38:Some lizard in her ~ Michael Wehunt, #NFDB
39:Turning on her heel, Eve ~ J D Robb, #NFDB
40:and lay with her father; ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
41:Do with her as you will. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
42:fate of her husband. ~ Aleatha Romig, #NFDB
43:had told her he was ~ Danielle Steel, #NFDB
44:... her best feature. ~ M K Schiller, #NFDB
45:her Jonquil overlay ~ Charles Stross, #NFDB
46:I devoured her mouth. ~ Chelle Bliss, #NFDB
47:and her interests spanned ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
48:but her expression was ~ Janet Dailey, #NFDB
49:closed her eyes as if ~ Melinda Leigh, #NFDB
50:Furthermore, fuck her. ~ Katy Regnery, #NFDB
51:Gie’d her a total riddy, ~ Ian Rankin, #NFDB
52:Hannah and her sisters ~ Joanne Fluke, #NFDB
53:He made her feel alive. ~ Julia Crane, #NFDB
54:Her always is mine ~ Jacqueline Carey, #NFDB
55:her: did you really came? ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
56:her house. The mental ~ Kendra Elliot, #NFDB
57:Her snooch got all warm ~ Sandra Hill, #NFDB
58:Her-Story Department, ~ Bill O Reilly, #NFDB
59:Her team were good. ~ Patricia Gibney, #NFDB
60:I dreamed about her. ~ Brandy Colbert, #NFDB
61:I'm as good as her dog ~ Henry Miller, #NFDB
62:I want her,” Nathan said. ~ C L Stone, #NFDB
63:I was an echo of her. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
64:privileging her ~ Garth Risk Hallberg, #NFDB
65:She returned to her car. ~ Dale Mayer, #NFDB
66:She wants her freedom. ~ Kenya Wright, #NFDB
67:Tall for Her Age ~ Gennifer Choldenko, #NFDB
68:Terri threw up her hands. ~ Bex Aaron, #NFDB
69:through her friend’s and ~ Rhys Bowen, #NFDB
70:What happened to her now? ~ C L Stone, #NFDB
71:Adı olan her şey mevcuttur ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
72:away with the flat of her ~ Jojo Moyes, #NFDB
73:but her body was fuller. ~ Betty Smith, #NFDB
74:DeeDee had plagued her ~ Lesley Pearse, #NFDB
75:Ella curled her fingers ~ Krista Lakes, #NFDB
76:her distress tore straight ~ J S Scott, #NFDB
77:her e-reader. ~ Jennifer Foehner Wells, #NFDB
78:Her time was running out. ~ Katie Reus, #NFDB
79:I heard her singing. ~ Suzanne Collins, #NFDB
80:I like her. She's restful. ~ Jo Walton, #NFDB
81:Innocent? Her? Never. ~ Marie Rutkoski, #NFDB
82:Love will set her free. ~ Tahereh Mafi, #NFDB
83:Mimi killed her brother, ~ Gregg Olsen, #NFDB
84:mistake. He pours her ~ Jonathan Stone, #NFDB
85:mood out of her. He slipped ~ J D Robb, #NFDB
86:Oh God, it's her, run! ~ Simon R Green, #NFDB
87:settled her ample figure ~ Kate Alcott, #NFDB
88:seventeen, tells her ~ Jennifer Weiner, #NFDB
89:She'd chucked her Freezoni ~ Angie Fox, #NFDB
90:She had found her brother. ~ Matt Shaw, #NFDB
91:She soars on her own wings. ~ Socrates, #NFDB
92:the dark circles under her ~ J S Scott, #NFDB
93:This is her first novel. ~ Tess Sharpe, #NFDB
94:wiped a tear from her eye. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
95:Alicia, her eyes shining. ~ Enid Blyton, #NFDB
96:And he misses her already. ~ Anna Banks, #NFDB
97:before he kissed her. ~ Catherine Bybee, #NFDB
98:Good for her! Not for me. ~ Amy Poehler, #NFDB
99:Good for her, not for me. ~ Amy Poehler, #NFDB
100:Her hair was full of lights ~ Ana s Nin, #NFDB
101:her hand over Emily’s. “But ~ Nadia Lee, #NFDB
102:Her smile shames the sun ~ Harlan Coben, #NFDB
103:her to me and asked if I ~ Dick Francis, #NFDB
104:I click through her photos. ~ Matt Haig, #NFDB
105:I loved her present tense. ~ John Green, #NFDB
106:Please. I love her. ~ Michelle Leighton, #NFDB
107:She's got a way about her, ~ Billy Joel, #NFDB
108:She zipped her lips. ~ Beatriz Williams, #NFDB
109:The corners of her mouth ~ Jodi Picoult, #NFDB
110:they were better than her ~ Imbolo Mbue, #NFDB
111:Time did not compose her. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
112:Virtue is her own reward. ~ John Dryden, #NFDB
113:was terrified. Her heart ~ Cheryl Bolen, #NFDB
114:because of her foolishness, ~ Lori Wilde, #NFDB
115:Dying had distracted her. ~ Laini Taylor, #NFDB
116:followed her and, ~ Kathleen E Woodiwiss, #NFDB
117:He had to find her. “No, ~ Tarryn Fisher, #NFDB
118:Her beauty saddened me. ~ Henri Barbusse, #NFDB
119:her bedroom and picked up ~ Mia Caldwell, #NFDB
120:her, didn’t you?” Adam’s ~ Trevion Burns, #NFDB
121:her face like a seawall, ~ Sue Monk Kidd, #NFDB
122:Her name is Portia ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
123:her—nobody but Sarah; ~ George MacDonald, #NFDB
124:Her rage split her open. ~ Marissa Meyer, #NFDB
125:Her self was an island. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
126:her the next six weeks to ~ Lisa Jackson, #NFDB
127:How southern belle of her. ~ Kelly Moran, #NFDB
128:I made her listen.” He ~ Rebecca Donovan, #NFDB
129:I’m her lost boy, now found. ~ E L James, #NFDB
130:I won't leave her. I can't. ~ Maya Banks, #NFDB
131:Liya’s letter threw her parents ~ Ha Jin, #NFDB
132:phone and warn her I’d ~ Janet Evanovich, #NFDB
133:reared up over her and then ~ K L Slater, #NFDB
134:reveal her bulbous cleavage. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
135:Revenge is her right. ~ Victoria Aveyard, #NFDB
136:talking into her phone. ~ Elly Griffiths, #NFDB
137:The arrows are from her dowry. ~ Juvenal, #NFDB
138:The light was in her eyes. ~ Henry James, #NFDB
139:twisted her words into ~ Nicholas Sparks, #NFDB
140:Vår stutte tid blir her. ~ Tarjei Vesaas, #NFDB
141:with her husband as she ~ Julie Orringer, #NFDB
142:Yeah. He was her thing. ~ Kristen Ashley, #NFDB
143:already upstairs in her ~ Rosanne Bittner, #NFDB
144:At long last he was her's ~ Josephine Cox, #NFDB
145:Elizabeth drifted in her ~ Monique Martin, #NFDB
146:Fie, fie upon her! ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
147:For her, he was . . . the one. ~ J R Ward, #NFDB
148:Her body is one long sigh. ~ Warsan Shire, #NFDB
149:her divorce petition, Jillian ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
150:her in the face. When she falls ~ Various, #NFDB
151:Her suspense was terrible. ~ Thomas Hardy, #NFDB
152:Her words had often been ~ Angela Marsons, #NFDB
153:He shat on her feet in panic. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
154:I didn't mean to hurt her. ~ Quinn Loftis, #NFDB
155:into the cause of her death. ~ Carol Wyer, #NFDB
156:It’s just me and her. We ~ Krista Ritchie, #NFDB
157:legs through her arms and ~ Melinda Leigh, #NFDB
158:Let her see me clearly. ~ Stephenie Meyer, #NFDB
159:Love her, but leave her wild ~ Harper Lee, #NFDB
160:May her memory be a blessing. ~ Jo Walton, #NFDB
161:much? Convinced that what her ~ C M Palov, #NFDB
162:Needs could not bully her. ~ Michel Faber, #NFDB
163:put on her dress and prepare ~ Eowyn Ivey, #NFDB
164:she drew her cavalry sword ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
165:The bird loves her nest. ~ George Herbert, #NFDB
166:To see her is to love her, ~ Robert Burns, #NFDB
167:used to write her books. ~ Peter Robinson, #NFDB
168:You charm her next time". ~ Jillian Stone, #NFDB
169:And there was her miracle. ~ Gordon Korman, #NFDB
170:As if her veins ran lightning ~ Lord Byron, #NFDB
171:ask her about it. ~ Marybeth Mayhew Whalen, #NFDB
172:bad-mouth her husband? ~ Catherine Coulter, #NFDB
173:found murdered. Her wrists ~ Kendra Elliot, #NFDB
174:Get away from her, you! ~ Alan Dean Foster, #NFDB
175:have been aiming for her dad, ~ Joan Holub, #NFDB
176:He feeds her his worlds. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
177:her bottle cap popping vagina ~ Sonali Dev, #NFDB
178:Her yük yük değildir! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
179:He was going to make her his… ~ Katie Reus, #NFDB
180:Hold her head; that’s it, lad! ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
181:If you hurt her, you’re gone. ~ Linda Kage, #NFDB
182:Is he teaching her to write? ~ Ally Condie, #NFDB
183:I throw her over my shoulder ~ Sabaa Tahir, #NFDB
184:I took her beauty personally. ~ Emma Cline, #NFDB
185:It's cheaper to keep her. ~ Robin Williams, #NFDB
186:It was her. It was Teresa. ~ James Dashner, #NFDB
187:I would her pay a visit. Of ~ Julie Kagawa, #NFDB
188:Jennifer, her mother’s face ~ Bill Clinton, #NFDB
189:Jolene smiled down at her ~ Kristin Hannah, #NFDB
190:Love her, but leave her wild. ~ Harper Lee, #NFDB
191:Mary felt her blood run cold. ~ Terri Reid, #NFDB
192:Mine. I need her to be mine. ~ Celia Aaron, #NFDB
193:my hand, I said her name. ~ Jami Attenberg, #NFDB
194:Pride would never be her ally. ~ Zane Grey, #NFDB
195:Remember the stone in her fist. ~ Joe Hill, #NFDB
196:Tell her it’s…Hal. Hal E. Wood. ~ J R Ward, #NFDB
197:That'll boil her ice cream. ~ P T Michelle, #NFDB
198:The bitch is her own guide. ~ Sherry Argov, #NFDB
199:took a drop from her vile ~ Melanie Karsak, #NFDB
200:watching her. No one was. ~ Kristin Hannah, #NFDB
201:Why had they taken her car? ~ Lisa Plumley, #NFDB
202:crossed her bare shoulders. ~ Melinda Leigh, #NFDB
203:Damn, her mouth was a weapon. ~ Kelly Moran, #NFDB
204:Dougless gritted her teeth. ~ Jude Deveraux, #NFDB
205:He missed her like crazycakes. ~ John Green, #NFDB
206:Her ağaç bir melektir! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
207:her Cadillac. Then she’d found ~ Tim Tigner, #NFDB
208:Her face was her chaperone. ~ Rupert Hughes, #NFDB
209:Her glass wings are gone. ~ Margaret Atwood, #NFDB
210:Her grip bit into his arm. ~ Steven Erikson, #NFDB
211:Her,” he said. “I’ll take her. ~ Tessa Dare, #NFDB
212:Her mind is a haunted house. ~ Nadeem Aslam, #NFDB
213:Her nerves licked her palms. ~ Markus Zusak, #NFDB
214:his crashing her interview. ~ Kendra Elliot, #NFDB
215:How did you get on to her? ~ David Baldacci, #NFDB
216:in her hand to force her ~ Brianna Labuskes, #NFDB
217:Jasper to her. I was obliged ~ Henry James, #NFDB
218:Love her enough to let her live. ~ Nely Cab, #NFDB
219:Morgan held beck her tears. ~ Melinda Leigh, #NFDB
220:N-no. Stop it.” Dana turned her ~ Tami Hoag, #NFDB
221:No mother should lose her child. ~ Ann Hood, #NFDB
222:She would earn her living. ~ Sinclair Lewis, #NFDB
223:tape and handed her the water ~ Mary Burton, #NFDB
224:this timid girl in front of her ~ H Y Hanna, #NFDB
225:all of her ability to make ~ Christy Barritt, #NFDB
226:a toy made of her own blood, ~ Amrita Pritam, #NFDB
227:Autumn was her happiest season. ~ Harper Lee, #NFDB
228:A woman's hair is her mystery. ~ Betty Smith, #NFDB
229:born with a book in her mouth. ~ Jean Sasson, #NFDB
230:buying gunk for her hair. ~ Elizabeth George, #NFDB
231:Damn it. I had to let her stay. ~ Kiera Cass, #NFDB
232:Fedakarlık her zaman soyludur. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
233:for her to follow him back to ~ Paula Graves, #NFDB
234:front of her dress somewhere ~ Carolyn Brown, #NFDB
235:Give her hell from us, Peeves. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
236:gone and couldn’t protect her, ~ Selena Kitt, #NFDB
237:he missed her all over his body ~ John Green, #NFDB
238:Her bikini - small; heels - tall ~ LL Cool J, #NFDB
239:her cheeks a slight Asian red; ~ Ned Vizzini, #NFDB
240:her, climbing out of the bath. ~ Anne Stuart, #NFDB
241:He returned her stare but said ~ Rose Gordon, #NFDB
242:Her faith in you survives her, ~ Lauren Kate, #NFDB
243:...her şey ölçüsünde olmalı... ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
244:He would always hold her safe ~ Nalini Singh, #NFDB
245:If you love her, support her. ~ Randy Pausch, #NFDB
246:I love her fairy-wise mind. ~ Alexander Blok, #NFDB
247:Kid with the hole in her head, ~ Apryl Baker, #NFDB
248:loose about her shoulders ~ Georgia Le Carre, #NFDB
249:Love her but leave her Wild ~ Atticus Poetry, #NFDB
250:only that her lips were moving ~ Kate Morton, #NFDB
251:ragged. “You found her?” The ~ Emily Bleeker, #NFDB
252:serious with her. Well, if he ~ Holly Martin, #NFDB
253:She had her Kindle with her ~ Samantha Chase, #NFDB
254:She needs me. And I need her. ~ Pamela Ribon, #NFDB
255:She was fond of her comfort. ~ Anton Chekhov, #NFDB
256:Storm. I shall call her Storm. ~ John Gwynne, #NFDB
257:Tears were her final defense. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
258:The Eye will take care of her. ~ Rick Yancey, #NFDB
259:the line of her lower lip. ~ Jackie Ashenden, #NFDB
260:the smell of her blue waffles ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
261:turning scarlet in her mind, ~ Anthony Doerr, #NFDB
262:validate her misperceptions. ~ Tara Westover, #NFDB
263:We all came to watch her die. ~ Kenya Wright, #NFDB
264:Who’s willing to test her bluff? ~ Jay Asher, #NFDB
265:Why did it have to be her? ~ Karin Slaughter, #NFDB
266:Why would he done that to her? ~ Chanda Hahn, #NFDB
267:Without her, I couldn't live. ~ Kenya Wright, #NFDB
268:would know her secret. ~ Christina Tetreault, #NFDB
269:America is on her deathbed. ~ Louis Farrakhan, #NFDB
270:Am I in your head?', I ask her. ~ Nicola Yoon, #NFDB
271:as soon as they left her mouth. ~ L J Sellers, #NFDB
272:because her boils had erupted ~ Katherine Boo, #NFDB
273:Because I Stupidly Loved Her ~ Mary E Pearson, #NFDB
274:Bless her head-patting heart ~ Kiersten White, #NFDB
275:but to see her in person was ~ Brian Panowich, #NFDB
276:Emma knows I never flatter her, ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
277:He had never even glimpsed her. ~ Kim Edwards, #NFDB
278:Her hate was a thing of glory. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
279:Her Hjemme I Min Stue
~ Christian Winther,#NFDB
280:her jailer. She wrapped her arms ~ Mia Thorne, #NFDB
281:her little girl. She found enough ~ C J Lyons, #NFDB
282:Her smile put the moon to shame. ~ Dan Rhodes, #NFDB
283:I assume you gave her the cat? ~ Cayla Kluver, #NFDB
284:I couldn't stay away from her. ~ Kenya Wright, #NFDB
285:I just wanted to watch her exist. ~ C D Reiss, #NFDB
286:I told her this was a mistake. ~ Katee Robert, #NFDB
287:leave her out of this’ that it ~ M Ruth Myers, #NFDB
288:Let her in or let her go. Neither ~ J Daniels, #NFDB
289:life—and that of her child. ~ Debbie Macomber, #NFDB
290:look into her eyes is to see ~ Ginger Garrett, #NFDB
291:Love her but leave her wild. ~ Atticus Poetry, #NFDB
292:Love her but leave her wild ~ Atticus Poetry, #NFDB
293:...Neferet fell smack on her butt. ~ P C Cast, #NFDB
294:presented her slender back ~ Rebecca Hamilton, #NFDB
295:She wants her cup of stars. ~ Shirley Jackson, #NFDB
296:thrust deep inside her body, ~ Kristin Hannah, #NFDB
297:to the bone instead of her own ~ Sara Shepard, #NFDB
298:What a revolution in her ideas! ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
299:You're her reason for everything ~ Jay McLean, #NFDB
300:Zach had brought her a dog. ~ Jennifer Crusie, #NFDB
301:... and her name was Freedom. ~ Pam Mu oz Ryan, #NFDB
302:Anyway, I'm glad you found her. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
303:around her folds, and tasted ~ Sharon Hamilton, #NFDB
304:Canterbury, despoiled of her goods, ~ John Guy, #NFDB
305:close by her. When it was hot we ~ Anna Sewell, #NFDB
306:Everything he was, he gave to her. ~ L J Smith, #NFDB
307:found her in the closet. ~ Denise Grover Swank, #NFDB
308:Gaea or one of her minions. But ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
309:Go home to your wife. Go bury her. ~ Euripides, #NFDB
310:Graphic tees were her weakness. ~ Alanea Alder, #NFDB
311:Grumpy is her favorite dwarf. ~ Christina Dodd, #NFDB
312:He’d kill them all to find her. ~ Lietha Wards, #NFDB
313:Her eyes serious tho. Sad some. ~ Alice Walker, #NFDB
314:Her heart was talking now... ~ Karen Kingsbury, #NFDB
315:Her sister continued to stare ~ RaeAnne Thayne, #NFDB
316:Her smile colud've broen glass. ~ Colum McCann, #NFDB
317:her teethe comb her hair, and ~ Christie Craig, #NFDB
318:His heart would take him to her. ~ Lauren Kate, #NFDB
319:I'd prefer her story than history. ~ Toba Beta, #NFDB
320:If I see her she may kill hope. ~ Iris Murdoch, #NFDB
321:I missed her, the idea of her. ~ Cecelia Ahern, #NFDB
322:I must warn her about Tigerclaw, ~ Erin Hunter, #NFDB
323:insecurity in her face. She's ~ Deborah Bladon, #NFDB
324:Love her, but leave her wild. ~ Atticus Poetry, #NFDB
325:she’d exposed her body, with all ~ Sandra Hill, #NFDB
326:She urged her mount into a cantor, ~ T J Brown, #NFDB
327:She weighed her possibilities. ~ Aleatha Romig, #NFDB
328:Sometimes it upset her gravity. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
329:So much more than thank you.” Her ~ Kim Holden, #NFDB
330:That I love her. That I’m sorry. ~ Mary Kubica, #NFDB
331:The moon in her chariot of pearl ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
332:The whole city is my missing her. ~ Max Porter, #NFDB
333:to her hair and makeup. This ~ Debbie Macomber, #NFDB
334:us, not with her,’ she observed. ~ Betty Neels, #NFDB
335:with a scrap of bacon on her ~ Solomon Northup, #NFDB
336:Words weren't her language. ~ Roseanna M White, #NFDB
337:You can show Vivi her room later, ~ Marian Tee, #NFDB
338:A woman always has her revenge ready. ~ Moliere, #NFDB
339:Beautiful doesn't do her justice. ~ Mary Kubica, #NFDB
340:Combative is her default setting. ~ Marko Kloos, #NFDB
341:door, she kept her eyes closed, ~ Josephine Cox, #NFDB
342:Every day to him is her funeral. ~ Kayla Krantz, #NFDB
343:Get you’re fucking hands off her, ~ T M Frazier, #NFDB
344:he came for her sake alone. ~ Louisa May Alcott, #NFDB
345:He gave her mischievous look. ~ Janice L Dennie, #NFDB
346:Her anger didn't have a fixed point. ~ Joe Hill, #NFDB
347:her butt could drive a man crazy. ~ Dean Koontz, #NFDB
348:her eyes clear of the angry rage ~ A J Scudiere, #NFDB
349:Her kung fu is that powerful. ~ Maureen Johnson, #NFDB
350:Her şeyin şükrü kendi cinsindendir. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
351:her skin chilled while Gwyneth, ~ Jacki Delecki, #NFDB
352:Her smile could've broken glass. ~ Colum McCann, #NFDB
353:Her Var End Naturen Samlet
~ Emil Aarestrup,#NFDB
354:His heart was as empty as her stare. ~ J R Ward, #NFDB
355:I am her monster, and she is mine. ~ Stacey Jay, #NFDB
356:I am the thief of her last moments. ~ Nick Cole, #NFDB
357:I devour her. And she consumes me. ~ Emily Snow, #NFDB
358:I kissed her greedily, my brain ~ Bethany Lopez, #NFDB
359:… I’m breaking her broken heart. ~ Jandy Nelson, #NFDB
360:Isabeau had a garden insider of her. ~ M J Rose, #NFDB
361:It reminded her of a casket. She ~ Justin Sloan, #NFDB
362:Kaylin swiveled in her chair. ~ Michelle Sagara, #NFDB
363:man, letting all her doubts fade ~ Rachel Hauck, #NFDB
364:Midnight. You are mine, female.” Her ~ J R Ward, #NFDB
365:My fingertips miss her so much. ~ Andrea Gibson, #NFDB
366:prepare. Creed took her mouth. ~ Kristen Ashley, #NFDB
367:Relief and fear were equal in her. ~ James Agee, #NFDB
368:She covered her hands with her face, ~ J D Robb, #NFDB
369:She is laughing up her sleeve at you. ~ Moliere, #NFDB
370:She thought her eyes were playing ~ Kami Garcia, #NFDB
371:survive this evening with her ~ Debbie Macomber, #NFDB
372:There was just no fear in her. ~ Rainbow Rowell, #NFDB
373:up into a hug, her brother’s ~ Elizabeth Lennox, #NFDB
374:Would he love her or kill her? ~ Christian M rk, #NFDB
375:57 REEL COULDN’T TAKE her eyes ~ David Baldacci, #NFDB
376:All of this, yet I watched her. ~ Natalia Jaster, #NFDB
377:A lover knows her beloved's voice. ~ Julie Berry, #NFDB
378:And I talk to hear her talk back. ~ Cath Crowley, #NFDB
379:and then they were upon her. ~ John Joseph Adams, #NFDB
380:Art, like Nature, has her monsters ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
381:assailing her. Were they doing the ~ Herman Wouk, #NFDB
382:baffled at how he had released her. ~ Robin Hobb, #NFDB
383:Deya felt a rainbow bloom inside her. ~ Etaf Rum, #NFDB
384:For her I bend, for you I break ~ Colleen Hoover, #NFDB
385:friend poked her in the ribs. “Hey, ~ T L Haddix, #NFDB
386:He hissed in oxygen at her touch. ~ Lynda Chance, #NFDB
387:Her five-feet seven-inch frame ~ Beverly Jenkins, #NFDB
388:Her hair smelled of apples. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
389:her stories and a once-a-week ~ Michael Connelly, #NFDB
390:Her voice is full of money, ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB
391:Her voice is full of money. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB
392:He wasn’t angry about her feelings. ~ M R Forbes, #NFDB
393:He worshiped her; she idolized him. ~ Robyn Carr, #NFDB
394:I could own you by morning.” Her ~ Tiffany Reisz, #NFDB
395:If she wounds you, love her... ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
396:I'm a jencel bird," Kalen told her. ~ Cate Rowan, #NFDB
397:It’s okay. Don’t push her, Sharon. ~ Laura Wiess, #NFDB
398:I want to make her a mixed tape. ~ Ainsley Booth, #NFDB
399:I welcome her feral nature. ~ Karen Marie Moning, #NFDB
400:Love, to her ear, was but a name, ~ Walter Scott, #NFDB
401:Monica grabbed her Kindle Fire ~ Catherine Bybee, #NFDB
402:No one who goes against her can win. ~ Euripides, #NFDB
403:Nothing in her heart made any sense. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
404:Now Nature hangs her mantle green ~ Robert Burns, #NFDB
405:One day he’d learn all her secrets… ~ Katie Reus, #NFDB
406:O, Var Du Her I Denne By
~ Christian Winther,#NFDB
407:Pain lanced through her thighs. ~ Steven Erikson, #NFDB
408:Pure hell was living in her eyes. ~ Linda Howard, #NFDB
409:She could hear her hair growing. ~ Arundhati Roy, #NFDB
410:She feels as if her heart may burst. ~ Sarah Jio, #NFDB
411:should be a wall, her hands find ~ Anthony Doerr, #NFDB
412:Soft and sun-warm, see her glide ~ John Betjeman, #NFDB
413:told her about. “He’s your cousin? ~ Sienna Mynx, #NFDB
414:trying not to wake her, he sat up ~ Shannyn Leah, #NFDB
415:and gave her a thank-goodness hug ~ Blue Balliett, #NFDB
416:A woman who knew her own worth, ~ Tricia O Malley, #NFDB
417:Do I read her books? Of course. ~ Debbie Reynolds, #NFDB
418:Elderberry,” the old woman told her. ~ Lois Lowry, #NFDB
419:Every leader has blood on her hands. ~ Libba Bray, #NFDB
420:felt her legs begin to give way. ~ David Baldacci, #NFDB
421:For her I bend, for you I break. ~ Colleen Hoover, #NFDB
422:God save her from annoying Alphas. ~ Jill Shalvis, #NFDB
423:Golf may be a hussy, but I love her. ~ Don Herold, #NFDB
424:Hayatta her şey bir ruh durumudur. ~ O Z Livaneli, #NFDB
425:He kissed her. Hard. Fast. Vaughn. ~ Nalini Singh, #NFDB
426:her affection would be his forever. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
427:Her blood sang with the violence. ~ Mark Lawrence, #NFDB
428:Her eyes the glowworm lend thee, ~ Robert Herrick, #NFDB
429:Her life is deep, but I still dig her ~ Lil Wayne, #NFDB
430:Her Majesty is not a subject. ~ Benjamin Disraeli, #NFDB
431:her motions quick and precise. ~ Victoria Aveyard, #NFDB
432:Her nipples harden under her sweater. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
433:Her only flair is in her nostrils. ~ Pauline Kael, #NFDB
434:Her only weapons were her tears. ~ Eiji Yoshikawa, #NFDB
435:Her stillness defeated his storm. ~ Chris Gardner, #NFDB
436:Her sunny side was always up. ~ Richard Brautigan, #NFDB
437:he was always in her crosshairs? ~ Yahrah St John, #NFDB
438:He was the toast to her butter. ~ Nicholas Sparks, #NFDB
439:I don't like seeing her this delicate. ~ Marie Lu, #NFDB
440:I just saw her. She was so … alive. ~ Colin Meloy, #NFDB
441:I'll do anything for her. ~ Jennifer L Armentrout, #NFDB
442:I love my mother. I do love her. ~ Mindy McCready, #NFDB
443:I saved her only to hear her die. ~ Anthony Doerr, #NFDB
444:I would pay snakes to bite her. ~ Chuck Palahniuk, #NFDB
445:Look, in Britspeak, I 'fancy' her. ~ Molly Ringle, #NFDB
446:Looking at her is like waking up. ~ Veronica Roth, #NFDB
447:Man, I smashed her like an Idaho Potato ~ Mos Def, #NFDB
448:Matt had no trouble believing her. ~ Nancy Farmer, #NFDB
449:Nicholas waved for her to precede ~ Bronwen Evans, #NFDB
450:or was he really asleep? Her first ~ John Grisham, #NFDB
451:practice her craft, she would lose ~ Alexie Aaron, #NFDB
452:red plastic rain
her tears stain ~ Kami Garcia,#NFDB
453:Romance at short notice was her specialty. ~ Saki, #NFDB
454:She didn’t walk her talk. ~ Barbara Taylor Sissel, #NFDB
455:She just witnessed her own murder. ~ Blake Crouch, #NFDB
456:she touched her face with the gloves. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
457:She was feeling her bohemian oats. ~ Steve Martin, #NFDB
458:So Ginny poured out her soul to me, ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
459:So I let her go, too. And I'm sorry. ~ John Green, #NFDB
460:There was a fuss over Rene, but her ~ Lily Koppel, #NFDB
461:The wound in her heart was real. ~ Corban Addison, #NFDB
462:Two of her—what could be worse? I ~ Stacy Claflin, #NFDB
463:Walking with her man, Lost in a dream ~ A A Milne, #NFDB
464:who had lost her mother ~ Frances Hodgson Burnett, #NFDB
465:Who Knew I'd Make Her So Blue. ~ Kathleen Glasgow, #NFDB
466:You knocked her the fuck out. ~ Toye Lawson Brown, #NFDB
467:You never put her in your heart. ~ Iyanla Vanzant, #NFDB
468:and didn't know her own mind, but ~ Danielle Steel, #NFDB
469:A woman's weapon is her tongue. ~ Anthony Trollope, #NFDB
470:bent ostentatiously to her work. ~ Gregory Maguire, #NFDB
471:But in a story I can steal her soul. ~ Tim O Brien, #NFDB
472:could just go on foot to visit her ~ Beverly Lewis, #NFDB
473:custody or contact with her daughter? ~ David Bell, #NFDB
474:Dani rummaged through her pocketbook ~ Marti Green, #NFDB
475:Find her tells. Everyone has them. ~ Leigh Bardugo, #NFDB
476:For her I bend, for you, I break. ~ Colleen Hoover, #NFDB
477:Fuck her, but she loved this man. ~ Pepper Winters, #NFDB
478:Goofy was eating her cereal. ~ Katherine Applegate, #NFDB
479:haven’t seen hide nor hair of her, ~ John Flanagan, #NFDB
480:he forgot about being cross with her ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
481:He had become, after all, her home. ~ Lauren Groff, #NFDB
482:Her blue eyes sought the west afar, ~ Walter Scott, #NFDB
483:Her heart raced with joy to sleep with War ~ Homer, #NFDB
484:her jeans and sleeveless blouse. ~ Nicholas Sparks, #NFDB
485:Her Paa Deilighedens Blode
~ Christian Winther,#NFDB
486:her wrist. He grabbed her other wrist ~ A G Riddle, #NFDB
487:He should probably make love to her. ~ Tara Janzen, #NFDB
488:I know. I want her. I want all of her. ~ K Webster, #NFDB
489:I loved her more than I loved myself. ~ J J McAvoy, #NFDB
490:I love her beauty, but I fear her mind. ~ Stendhal, #NFDB
491:it was all so new to her, he guessed. ~ Anne Tyler, #NFDB
492:I want to be the best and her only. ~ Karina Halle, #NFDB
493:Luca da Peraga. Her wings. Her heart. ~ Fiona Paul, #NFDB
494:Mercy bit the inside of her cheek. ~ Kendra Elliot, #NFDB
495:My voice had no home until her. ~ Rabih Alameddine, #NFDB
496:Nia continued, shaking her head. ~ Andrew Peterson, #NFDB
497:No,” she said and turned her empty eyes ~ J D Horn, #NFDB
498:oe led her father out of the pub, ~ David Walliams, #NFDB
499:Please ask her to leave us alone. ~ Shalini Boland, #NFDB
500:pulse raced, and she found her ~ Anne Easter Smith, #NFDB
501:Remember to let her into your heart. ~ John Lennon, #NFDB
502:Rubbing her eyes, Juliette followed as ~ Gill Paul, #NFDB
503:Sam judo-flipped him over her knee. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
504:school before me, and we’d see her ~ Carolyn Brown, #NFDB
505:She had nothing. Except her music. ~ Grady Hendrix, #NFDB
506:She needs to sort out her priorities ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
507:She’s always had her own, ah, compass. ~ Dee Ernst, #NFDB
508:She was the captain of her soul ~ William Faulkner, #NFDB
509:Soul selects her own Society ~ Katherine V Forrest, #NFDB
510:The My Real Babies frightened her, ~ Sherry Turkle, #NFDB
511:There was a horse licking her face. ~ Adam Gidwitz, #NFDB
512:the “Sonia Gluck as I knew her” gag? ~ Ngaio Marsh, #NFDB
513:The woman is the reflection of her man ~ Brad Pitt, #NFDB
514:this is her body this is her blood ~ Saul Williams, #NFDB
515:wondered why she chose her isolated ~ Louise Penny, #NFDB
516:about failed to cheer her. She felt the ~ Mary Wine, #NFDB
517:And if she fell, he'd fall with her. ~ Nalini Singh, #NFDB
518:A woman warmer than the air around her ~ Junot D az, #NFDB
519:A woman who'd lost her first son ~ Michael S Harper, #NFDB
520:Because I wanted her,” Adrian said. ~ Richelle Mead, #NFDB
521:Captive Greece captured her rude conqueror ~ Horace, #NFDB
522:domestic economy for her private study. ~ H G Wells, #NFDB
523:Ethan pressed a kiss to her temple, ~ Melinda Leigh, #NFDB
524:Faultless in spite of all her faults. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
525:Given how loudly she lived her life, ~ Jill Shalvis, #NFDB
526:Had he expected me to hump her leg? ~ Ilona Andrews, #NFDB
527:he kissed her on the lips ~ Oxford University Press, #NFDB
528:He loved her more than Michelangelo. ~ Markus Zusak, #NFDB
529:Her bark is worse than her bite. ~ Deborah Harkness, #NFDB
530:her head, although the wind was hardly ~ Rhys Bowen, #NFDB
531:her life was restored by God's mercy, ~ Jacob Grimm, #NFDB
532:Her lips write silent poetry upon mine. ~ B L Berry, #NFDB
533:Her mouth formed a silent “O” to ~ Sabrina Jeffries, #NFDB
534:Her muscles were disobedient noodles. ~ Eliot Peper, #NFDB
535:Her power with him was gone for ever. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
536:his breath a zephyr against her throat. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
537:His love roared louder than her demons. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
538:I am a person who sticks to her word. ~ Steffi Graf, #NFDB
539:I'd been forced to love her from afar. ~ Kiera Cass, #NFDB
540:I felt better for having met her. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
541:If you love your girl? Buy her books. ~ Kylie Scott, #NFDB
542:I kissed her and forgot death. ~ Jeanette Winterson, #NFDB
543:I pacified Psyche and kissed her, ~ Edgar Allan Poe, #NFDB
544:I pressed her thigh and death smiled ~ Jim Morrison, #NFDB
545:I swore I'd never fall for her again. ~ Kelly Moran, #NFDB
546:It just makes me love her even more. ~ Kahlen Aymes, #NFDB
547:It was her job to find that reason. ~ Kendra Elliot, #NFDB
548:It was the fakeness that killed her. ~ Blake Crouch, #NFDB
549:Just like Brad Pitt and what's her name! ~ Jim Ross, #NFDB
550:Love her fully, or let her go. ~ Brittainy C Cherry, #NFDB
551:Love, she thinks, is not meant for her. ~ Sarah Jio, #NFDB
552:Nahri always smiled at her marks. ~ S A Chakraborty, #NFDB
553:Patrick licked blood from her face. ~ Michael Grant, #NFDB
554:Ron stared after her, his mouth open. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
555:She had her whole death ahead of her ~ Markus Zusak, #NFDB
556:She is the sun and her eyes burn stars. ~ C G Drews, #NFDB
557:She needs to sort out her priorities. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
558:She was young; her blood ran hot. ~ Katherine Arden, #NFDB
559:She who only finds her self-esteem ~ Joanna Baillie, #NFDB
560:Solitude was a spell that freed her. ~ Robert Crais, #NFDB
561:That girl can barely spell her name. ~ Tupac Shakur, #NFDB
562:The earth yields up her stores, of every ill ~ Ovid, #NFDB
563:...the girl.. her name was Shelly... ~ James O Barr, #NFDB
564:The girl with the pictures on her skin ~ Lisa Unger, #NFDB
565:The Moon for all her light and grace ~ Robert Frost, #NFDB
566:then sensing her self-consciousness ~ Josephine Cox, #NFDB
567:The Soul selects her own Society. ~ Emily Dickinson, #NFDB
568:The sound of her name is like music. ~ Amie Kaufman, #NFDB
569:This morning, with her, having coffee ~ Johnny Cash, #NFDB
570:tingle racing up her spine. “Come ~ Carrie Ann Ryan, #NFDB
571:Venus, when her son was lost, ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
572:wearily, annoyed by her intrusion into ~ Casey Hill, #NFDB
573:What the hell have you done to her? ~ Richelle Mead, #NFDB
574:When Addy died and her will decreed ~ Jude Deveraux, #NFDB
575:You hit her with a box of donuts? ~ Kirkus MacGowan, #NFDB
576:You stay with her. I’ll follow it in. ~ Dan Simmons, #NFDB
577:You were totally unprepared for her ~ Richelle Mead, #NFDB
578:A girl's best friend is her mutter. ~ Dorothy Parker, #NFDB
579:And her joy was nearly like sorrow. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
580:An older woman, probably in her mid-forties, ~ Tijan, #NFDB
581:Aşk her şey değilse, hiçbir şeydir. ~ Salman Rushdie, #NFDB
582:A sniffle left her nose. She was crying. ~ G L Tomas, #NFDB
583:bleeding heavily, her eyes flat with ~ John Sandford, #NFDB
584:Bu kitaptaki her şey yanlış olabilir. ~ Richard Bach, #NFDB
585:but maybe she’d overstayed her welcome. ~ Jamie Beck, #NFDB
586:By the universe, I really loved her. ~ Rebecca Royce, #NFDB
587:Easy, Caleb. Don’t break her. Win her. ~ C J Roberts, #NFDB
588:elephantine in their midst, pulled up her ~ C P Snow, #NFDB
589:Fire sparked in her eyes. “Take me. ~ Pepper Winters, #NFDB
590:followed her outside, deeply moved. ~ Danielle Steel, #NFDB
591:fourteen boys in her life. None of them ~ Kiera Cass, #NFDB
592:Germany must have her place in the sun. ~ Wilhelm II, #NFDB
593:He kills her in her own humor. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
594:He'll burn the world for her ~ Jennifer L Armentrout, #NFDB
595:Her dress was white and it whispered. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
596:Her eyes pools of absolute sorrow ~ Melina Marchetta, #NFDB
597:her true name is never spoken aloud. ~ Kris Waldherr, #NFDB
598:her. “What’ll you do?” I asked, meaning ~ Rod Duncan, #NFDB
599:Her womb was not an apartment for rent. ~ Celeste Ng, #NFDB
600:Huusnisserne Her I Vort Slot
~ Christian Winther,#NFDB
601:I kissed her, and forgot death. ~ Jeanette Winterson, #NFDB
602:I kiss her like my life depends on it. ~ Sonya Sones, #NFDB
603:I know who didn’t kill her.” “Don’t ~ Nelson DeMille, #NFDB
604:I’m going to change her last name. ~ Kimberly Lauren, #NFDB
605:I saw no heaven — but in her eyes. ~ Edgar Allan Poe, #NFDB
606:It unnerved her, how not wrong he was. ~ Holly Black, #NFDB
607:Lizzy’s inarching to her own drummer ~ Sherryl Woods, #NFDB
608:lost her only son—and Elijah to blame. ~ R T Kendall, #NFDB
609:Me. Her. Everything…it equaled nothing. ~ J J McAvoy, #NFDB
610:Moscow killed her princes quickly. ~ Katherine Arden, #NFDB
611:newborns reminded her of tiny buddhas ~ Jodi Picoult, #NFDB
612:nonchalantly, against her damp brow. ~ Fern Michaels, #NFDB
613:No one had told her what “birth” meant. ~ Lois Lowry, #NFDB
614:Scars crossed her welded wrists. ~ Jeffrey Eugenides, #NFDB
615:She could no longer control her fear. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
616:She gives me storm, and I give her peace. ~ L J Shen, #NFDB
617:She got Wainwright to drive her up the ~ Ann Cleeves, #NFDB
618:She liked him too much for her own ~ Nicholas Sparks, #NFDB
619:She liked to keep her scent a mystery ~ Isaac Marion, #NFDB
620:She was a lioness, fierce in her roar. ~ Cole McCade, #NFDB
621:She was thong-climbing-her-ass pissed. ~ Caris Roane, #NFDB
622:Something invisible snapped inside her. ~ John Green, #NFDB
623:studied her face. Heat crawled up her ~ Alison Stone, #NFDB
624:Tanımadığın sürece her acı dayanılabilir. ~ Tezer zl, #NFDB
625:the back of her hand. “Clear, ~ Emily St John Mandel, #NFDB
626:. . . the huge machine of her misery. ~ Iris Murdoch, #NFDB
627:the measure of a person was her ideas ~ Jason Fagone, #NFDB
628:The memory was like a stab to her heart. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
629:There was so much I could teach her. ~ Ilona Andrews, #NFDB
630:The Swooping Birds that Caught Her Eyes ~ Hugh Howey, #NFDB
631:This was her moment, the perfect now. ~ Ann Patchett, #NFDB
632:tight around her while she stood at ~ Peter Robinson, #NFDB
633:us were glad to see her get married, ~ Jude Deveraux, #NFDB
634:Walking with her man,
Lost in a dream ~ A A Milne,#NFDB
635:whom when they had washed, they laid her ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
636:With virtues equall'd by her wit alone, ~ Lord Byron, #NFDB
637:Yield not to calamity, but face her boldly. ~ Virgil, #NFDB
638:A German walked up to her, his rifle ~ Kristin Hannah, #NFDB
639:A gleam hits her green eyes. “Follow me. ~ Tara Brown, #NFDB
640:America was built on her citizens. ~ Stephen K Bannon, #NFDB
641:And I'm sure Theo can always find her. ~ John Grisham, #NFDB
642:An old cat sports not with her prey. ~ George Herbert, #NFDB
643:Ask her. Why. She is starving. Meeee! ~ Elizabeth May, #NFDB
644:But you love her. You could love her. ~ Ellen Sussman, #NFDB
645:By losing myself to her, I gain her. ~ David Levithan, #NFDB
646:Close your eyes, tasty and her wolf.” I ~ Aileen Erin, #NFDB
647:Fire in her eyes, ice in her voice. ~ Agatha Christie, #NFDB
648:Fuck you! I pierced my nipples for her! ~ Stjepan eji, #NFDB
649:Good hope is often beguiled by her own augury. ~ Ovid, #NFDB
650:having rather too much her own way, and a ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
651:Her cheeks glowed with pink charcoals. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
652:Her eyes are open but she does not see. ~ Dan Simmons, #NFDB
653:Her face answered all its own questions. ~ Emma Cline, #NFDB
654:her first published book, Once (1965). ~ Alice Walker, #NFDB
655:Her mind was less difficult to develop. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
656:Her mother and memory lapses were BFFs. ~ Kelly Moran, #NFDB
657:Her name was Lark and she was my muse. ~ Bijou Hunter, #NFDB
658:her photographs had not done her justice; ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
659:Her softest, most secret parts quivered. ~ Tessa Dare, #NFDB
660:her with him she was likely going to ~ David Baldacci, #NFDB
661:he stole her very soul in that one kiss. ~ Elle James, #NFDB
662:He used to call her Poppens out of fun. ~ James Joyce, #NFDB
663:I do not threaten,” he assured her. “I ~ Lynsay Sands, #NFDB
664:I need her with me. She goes where I go. ~ Katy Evans, #NFDB
665:I will become her Gallowglass ~ Lauren Baratz Logsted, #NFDB
666:judgmental looks cast her way by the ~ Kristin Hannah, #NFDB
667:knowing it was her first time. I ~ Brittainy C Cherry, #NFDB
668:Love had unexpectedly rearranged her. ~ Stuart Nadler, #NFDB
669:My mom knows pretty well how I see her. ~ Lena Dunham, #NFDB
670:Nature never breaks her own laws. ~ Leonardo da Vinci, #NFDB
671:on the bedside table in her room that ~ Donna Andrews, #NFDB
672:risen sun too bright in her losing eyes, ~ John Green, #NFDB
673:She always puts crisps in her sarnies. ~ Lesley Jones, #NFDB
674:She had eyes in the back of her heart. ~ Richard Peck, #NFDB
675:She shook her head, as if she couldn’t ~ Linda Howard, #NFDB
676:She won't be alone. I'm not leaving her. ~ Maya Banks, #NFDB
677:shocking a gasp out of her. He lifted ~ Tonya Burrows, #NFDB
678:Something deep on the inside said to her, ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
679:tell her, right now? If you could say ~ Gail Honeyman, #NFDB
680:that she was woman, hear her roar! And ~ Lili Valente, #NFDB
681:the edge off. The longer he knew her, the ~ J S Scott, #NFDB
682:the mistress of ceremonies, in her ~ Elin Hilderbrand, #NFDB
683:This is what her life would be with me. ~ Celia Aaron, #NFDB
684:time to overcome her distrust of the ~ Winston Graham, #NFDB
685:two-edged sword; Her feet go down ~ Wolf Dieter Storl, #NFDB
686:What had possessed her to kiss him? ~ Kristen Britain, #NFDB
687:You are the one. For her, you are the one. ~ J R Ward, #NFDB
688:arms, her black African arms, with ~ Caroline B Cooney, #NFDB
689:Ask of Her, the mighty Mother. ~ Gerard Manley Hopkins, #NFDB
690:A women's greatest asset is her beauty. ~ Alex Comfort, #NFDB
691:being close to her all the time was making ~ J S Scott, #NFDB
692:Chris reveres her as his own religion. ~ Katie McGarry, #NFDB
693:Don't listen to her listen through her. ~ Stevie Nicks, #NFDB
694:Everything I do is for her, for Fallon. ~ Soraya Naomi, #NFDB
695:fine artistry of my paintings. Her profile ~ E L James, #NFDB
696:Hawaii made the mouth of her soul water. ~ Tom Robbins, #NFDB
697:Her ağaç için bir kuş vardır. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, #NFDB
698:Hera sent her the same message—Free me. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
699:Her eyes are classic novels and poetry. ~ Isaac Marion, #NFDB
700:Her freedom was worse than any chains. ~ Pauline R age, #NFDB
701:... her life like a TV show about summer. ~ Emma Cline, #NFDB
702:Her past was getting away from her. ~ Frances Hardinge, #NFDB
703:Her second best friend is her computer. ~ Ann M Martin, #NFDB
704:Her şey akıp gider, bir katı hüzün kalır ~ Turgut Uyar, #NFDB
705:Her smile put the sunflower to shame. ~ Jerry Spinelli, #NFDB
706:Her subject was pride, in all its forms. ~ Zadie Smith, #NFDB
707:Her thoughts ran in cannibal circles. ~ Seth Dickinson, #NFDB
708:I belong with her, wherever that may be. ~ A A Aguirre, #NFDB
709:I created her, but she answers to no one. ~ Jill Myles, #NFDB
710:I desire Virtue, though I love her not- ~ Anna Wickham, #NFDB
711:I hate when vice can bolt her arguments, ~ John Milton, #NFDB
712:I like a woman with a bit of fire in her. ~ K A Tucker, #NFDB
713:I'm a woman who wants her chocolate. ~ Jessica Simpson, #NFDB
714:In her heart there burns a secret fire, ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
715:in her own zone, breathing her own air. ~ Leylah Attar, #NFDB
716:inside her, loving her, tasting her. ~ Sharon Hamilton, #NFDB
717:I only know what I want her to be—mine. ~ Lauren Layne, #NFDB
718:I told her, “I’m Wayne, and this is— ~ Karin Slaughter, #NFDB
719:It seems I can't stay away from her. ~ Stephenie Meyer, #NFDB
720:It was all up to her. Just her. ~ Victoria Helen Stone, #NFDB
721:I want a girl with extensions in her hair, ~ LL Cool J, #NFDB
722:I will kill myself before letting her go. ~ Katy Evans, #NFDB
723:Love me more than you hate her. Please. ~ Aly Martinez, #NFDB
724:Marvin flashed her an electronic look. ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
725:Merhaba,her zaman iyi bir başlangıçtır. ~ Cindi Madsen, #NFDB
726:Nature distributes her favors unequally. ~ George Sand, #NFDB
727:No. I think you could be her downfall. ~ Christy Reece, #NFDB
728:No one had ever given her music before. ~ Markus Zusak, #NFDB
729:ritual she calls her “trigger moment. ~ Jocelyn K Glei, #NFDB
730:said. “You never do,” Keith told her. ~ Vaughn Heppner, #NFDB
731:See, Nu Er Her Svalt Og Stille
~ Christian Winther,#NFDB
732:she gave her a good clout to the ear. ~ Kate DiCamillo, #NFDB
733:She gets naughty with her Pilates body ~ Mickey Avalon, #NFDB
734:She had my heart. I gave her my soul. ~ Suanne Laqueur, #NFDB
735:She hovers over me, her breasts bare. ~ Brandy Colbert, #NFDB
736:She slips her hand into mine and smiles. ~ Nicola Yoon, #NFDB
737:she smiled at him, and at her own fears. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
738:She wants her cup of stars.” Eleanor ~ Shirley Jackson, #NFDB
739:She will not die today. I won't let her. ~ Erin Hunter, #NFDB
740:So excited her wings were quivering. ~ Jeanne Birdsall, #NFDB
741:Suddenly, I no longer belong to her. ~ Erika L S nchez, #NFDB
742:The Teflon woman. No one sticks to her. ~ Lisa Jackson, #NFDB
743:Watching her means paying attention. ~ Durga Chew Bose, #NFDB
744:We wondered what was inside her heart ~ Kevin Sampsell, #NFDB
745:What my mother doesnt know wont hurt her ~ Sonya Sones, #NFDB
746:what my mother doesnt know wont hurt her ~ Sonya Sones, #NFDB
747:Whenever it rains you will think of her. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
748:Where Sir Simon had got her with child. ~ Tamara Leigh, #NFDB
749:Without her, he was blind, deaf, and dumb. ~ Tim Green, #NFDB
750:You made her mad when you're teasing me. ~ Jamie Magee, #NFDB
751:again after what you did to her yesterday? ~ Lucy Kevin, #NFDB
752:A lady of resources makes her own luck. ~ Shelley Adina, #NFDB
753:always asks how her nursing classes ~ Heather Gudenkauf, #NFDB
754:a sense, considering it on her children's ~ Jo Beverley, #NFDB
755:A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband: ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
756:band above her and calls to somebody she ~ John le Carr, #NFDB
757:Becky had sent her as souvenirs of her ~ Danielle Steel, #NFDB
758:Bennie tried to keep her face forward ~ Lisa Scottoline, #NFDB
759:But I wanted so much more than her body. ~ Tahereh Mafi, #NFDB
760:...but loving had left her skinless. ~ Scott Westerfeld, #NFDB
761:But, why give her all of this? ~ Jennifer Foehner Wells, #NFDB
762:Care? He didn't care. He loved her. ~ Maya Banks, #NFDB
763:conquer nature only as we obey her. ~ Michael J Tougias, #NFDB
764:Emma - "faultless, in spite of her faults ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
765:For her, true happiness means you, Warden. ~ Jay McLean, #NFDB
766:Fortune can, for her pleasure, fools advance, ~ Juvenal, #NFDB
767:Genealogy was her favorite insanity. ~ Anthony Trollope, #NFDB
768:Give her the goddamn Advil, Dibs. Jesus. ~ Lili St Crow, #NFDB
769:going past her on a gurney, surrounded ~ Danielle Steel, #NFDB
770:He kisses her. She kisses him. They kiss. ~ Lisa McMann, #NFDB
771:He reached out and caressed her bare arm. ~ Diane Capri, #NFDB
772:her ear, wondering if she’d heard him ~ Nicholas Sparks, #NFDB
773:Her expression stroked the man on his face. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
774:Her idea of who's worth what ain't mine. ~ Janet Morris, #NFDB
775:Her insan bir uyumsuzluktur ölü olmadıkça ~ Turgut Uyar, #NFDB
776:her mother. “It’s too windy.” The umbrella ~ Nancy Star, #NFDB
777:Her only shame was that she felt none. ~ Nicholas Evans, #NFDB
778:Her peculiarities must not be punished. ~ Johanna Spyri, #NFDB
779:Her shame and fierceness were blended. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
780:He who wants a rose must respect her thorn. ~ Andr Gide, #NFDB
781:I drove back home. I missed her already. ~ Durjoy Datta, #NFDB
782:I gave her my heart but she wanted my soul. ~ Bob Dylan, #NFDB
783:I had to accept myself outside of her. ~ Elena Ferrante, #NFDB
784:I’m not sure I could ever say no to her. ~ Tahereh Mafi, #NFDB
785:I need her like I need air to breathe. ~ Laurelin Paige, #NFDB
786:I want to show her how domineering I can be ~ E L James, #NFDB
787:I was already set for life when I met her. ~ David Gest, #NFDB
788:I worshipped her virtue while destroying it ~ C D Reiss, #NFDB
789:Jon has a mother. Wylla, her name is Wylla. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
790:merriment, the ache in her side that ~ Georgia Bockoven, #NFDB
791:Nearness to her was an aphrodisiac. “I ~ Lauren Blakely, #NFDB
792:Niceness is expected of her, not honesty. ~ Deb Caletti, #NFDB
793:No cat’s going to listen to her lies when ~ Erin Hunter, #NFDB
794:Nothing is left of me
Each time I see her ~ Catullus,#NFDB
795:Offer to sharpen her knives in the kitchen. ~ John Gray, #NFDB
796:rain—was grappling for her wallet. “Maybe ~ Donna Tartt, #NFDB
797:She had bullets in her eyes and they fired. ~ Bob Dylan, #NFDB
798:She has the gift of accepting her life. ~ Jhumpa Lahiri, #NFDB
799:She marked off another day in her head. ~ Stieg Larsson, #NFDB
800:She was a sea: and I had to swim in her. ~ Clive Barker, #NFDB
801:Take her. Own her. Eat. Feed. Bite. Devour. ~ Aria Cole, #NFDB
802:The gentle Hawke halfe mans her selfe. ~ George Herbert, #NFDB
803:The man irritated her just like a rash. ~ Julie Garwood, #NFDB
804:There was no one. And then, poof—her. ~ Heather Harpham, #NFDB
805:the room and her appearance startled him. ~ Beth Brower, #NFDB
806:They were going to turn her into a boy. ~ Deborah Ellis, #NFDB
807:Though thou loved her as thyself, ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
808:told off for waving her arms around. ~ Monica McInerney, #NFDB
809:upon a time. Gripping her shirt at the ~ Melissa Cutler, #NFDB
810:was she following her parents’ examples? ~ John Grisham, #NFDB
811:way, and I could see how her timorousness ~ Edie Claire, #NFDB
812:What is a woman that you forsake her, ~ Rudyard Kipling, #NFDB
813:Whenever it rains, you will think of her. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
814:You break her heart, I'll break your neck. ~ Vin Diesel, #NFDB
815:You could bounce rocks off her pride. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
816:You mean I shot her for no good reason? ~ Erin Kellison, #NFDB
817:You’re safe now,” he whispered to her. ~ Jason Matthews, #NFDB
818:America takes her writers too seriously. ~ Kingsley Amis, #NFDB
819:An accusing heart couldn't see her own sins. ~ Toba Beta, #NFDB
820:And Mother Sea took him in her cold embrace. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
821:And on her lover's arm she leant, ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson, #NFDB
822:And you old enough to be her father! ~ Margaret Mitchell, #NFDB
823:As if Max needed her permission. ~ Diana Pharaoh Francis, #NFDB
824:A wise warrior learns from her mistakes. ~ Leigh Bardugo, #NFDB
825:A woman's health is her capital. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe, #NFDB
826:Bailey hung her head for a moment, and ~ Karen Kingsbury, #NFDB
827:be missing her. He had to be thinking ~ Elin Hilderbrand, #NFDB
828:Bucknell joined their family, editing her ~ Eloisa James, #NFDB
829:called, in her era, the generation gap. ~ Jeffrey Toobin, #NFDB
830:Charity couldn’t meet her mother’s eyes. ~ Lesley Pearse, #NFDB
831:closing it for her after she was seated. ~ Clive Cussler, #NFDB
832:Each found her greatest safety in silence. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
833:...faultless in spite of all her faults... ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
834:...filled her memory bank with shiny coins. ~ Erica Jong, #NFDB
835:From his lips/Not words alone pleased her. ~ John Milton, #NFDB
836:Fuck you! What the fuck did you tell her? ~ Nora Sakavic, #NFDB
837:gilding her hair. Her bow glides across ~ Tess Gerritsen, #NFDB
838:glared at Danny with her wolfish eyes, and ~ Donna Tartt, #NFDB
839:He growled at her. Scarlet growled back. ~ Marissa Meyer, #NFDB
840:He loved her but he could not live anymore. ~ Naomi Wood, #NFDB
841:her ability to hear music in the silence. ~ Gayle Forman, #NFDB
842:her. Amber’s parents are threatening to sue. ~ S M Reine, #NFDB
843:Her birimiz bir şeyden suçluyuzdur! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
844:Her breasts rested on the edge of the table. ~ Lee Child, #NFDB
845:her by night, somebody gets killed, see? ~ Louis L Amour, #NFDB
846:Her cehennemde bir güzellik vardır! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
847:Her chastity belt’s in the back of my car. ~ Gail McHugh, #NFDB
848:Her college years felt like freedom to her. ~ Ian McEwan, #NFDB
849:her dangling braids the color of rain. ~ Lucille Clifton, #NFDB
850:Her entire body became a heartbeat. ~ Charlie N Holmberg, #NFDB
851:Her face lay still on the air under his face. ~ Ayn Rand, #NFDB
852:Her gün kaderimizi yeniden seçeriz! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
853:Her memory's your love. You want no other. ~ Henry James, #NFDB
854:Her name is Grace, and she is on fire. ~ Victoria Schwab, #NFDB
855:Her need to shape memory into history. ~ Charles Frazier, #NFDB
856:Her screams spiraled up into the night air ~ Holly Black, #NFDB
857:Her skin was white as leprosy. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge, #NFDB
858:Her sweet cinnamon smell intoxicated me. ~ Katie McGarry, #NFDB
859:her?” the man asked. He sounded nervous. ~ Emelle Gamble, #NFDB
860:her toes, then jerked the foot back. ~ Kristen Heitzmann, #NFDB
861:Her uzun seyahat insanı değiştirir! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
862:Her womanhood went eagerly to meet him. ~ George Gissing, #NFDB
863:Her worst nightmare and her wettest dream. ~ Gail McHugh, #NFDB
864:He who wants a rose must respect her thorn. ~ Andre Gide, #NFDB
865:Holding on to her in order to hold me up. ~ Raine Miller, #NFDB
866:I feel that I an everything to her. ~ Audrey Niffenegger, #NFDB
867:I found my inner bitch and ran with her. ~ Courtney Love, #NFDB
868:If you love her, that's all that matters. ~ Bijou Hunter, #NFDB
869:I had her all over my face. It was fantastic. ~ J R Ward, #NFDB
870:I liked the feeling of her hand in mine. ~ Julie Buxbaum, #NFDB
871:I'm a cell in the cancer that killed her. ~ Isaac Marion, #NFDB
872:I'm not brave, I tell her. Just curious. ~ Melissa Febos, #NFDB
873:I regret leaving her, not lovin’ her. ~ Corinne Michaels, #NFDB
874:I seen her in the subway, on my way to Brooklyn. ~ Rakim, #NFDB
875:I still love her. But she's retarded, too. ~ Guy Ritchie, #NFDB
876:It happened.
He had rendered to her. ~ Veronica Rossi,#NFDB
877:It’s like a crimson waterfall from her lips. ~ Ker Dukey, #NFDB
878:it was up to her to see everyone to safety. ~ M R Forbes, #NFDB
879:I wanted to burn her, the wicked witch. ~ Fyodor Sologub, #NFDB
880:Jill tried to reswallow her stomach. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
881:Love her but leave her wild.”
― Atticus ~ Harper Lee,#NFDB
882:Love made her patient. It made her hopeful. ~ Maya Banks, #NFDB
883:Love's love in her blackest season. ~ Mark Z Danielewski, #NFDB
884:Mary's role is to make Her Son Shine ~ Pope John Paul II, #NFDB
885:morning. Her gaze lowered to the screen. ~ Fern Michaels, #NFDB
886:My mother was a cleaning lady all her life. ~ Raf Simons, #NFDB
887:Nor Fame I slight, nor her favors call. ~ Alexander Pope, #NFDB
888:of her blood. Oh, I do not say these are ~ John Banville, #NFDB
889:One way to hold a woman is not to hold her. ~ Gay Talese, #NFDB
890:Purpose. It had suffused her with light. ~ Leigh Bardugo, #NFDB
891:Red,’ says Jack. ‘It’s her favourite colour. ~ B A Paris, #NFDB
892:screwed her courage to the sticking place ~ Lynsay Sands, #NFDB
893:She cheated on her past with happiness. ~ Pepper Winters, #NFDB
894:She cleaned as if it were her religion. ~ Heidi W Durrow, #NFDB
895:She had her scars just like the rest of us ~ Gina Holmes, #NFDB
896:She had to make her own marvelous mistakes. ~ Paul Scott, #NFDB
897:she hated everything her parents loved ~ Stephen Chbosky, #NFDB
898:She is good for me. I'm in love with her ~ Monica Murphy, #NFDB
899:She lived in private with her own horror. ~ Iris Murdoch, #NFDB
900:She made a good point. So did her nipples. ~ Jaci Burton, #NFDB
901:She's cuckoo, laying her egg in my nest. ~ Paula Hawkins, #NFDB
902:She's lost in thought. I'm lost in her. ~ Colleen Hoover, #NFDB
903:She’s lost in thought. I’m lost in her. ~ Colleen Hoover, #NFDB
904:She was a woman on her way towards peace. ~ Kelly Rimmer, #NFDB
905:She wore her determination like war paint. ~ Sara Donati, #NFDB
906:sight of him and narrowed her eyes. “You. ~ Jill Shalvis, #NFDB
907:So help her, if Pig-Pen was a blond . . . ~ Kresley Cole, #NFDB
908:Solitude was her soul's hermitage. ~ Jacqueline Winspear, #NFDB
909:something so regal and linear about her. ~ Lauren Graham, #NFDB
910:Sonuçta her cinayetin çözümü bir cümledir ~ Emrah Serbes, #NFDB
911:stipulation that she be sent home to her ~ Richard Price, #NFDB
912:the body, trying to rouse her mother. She ~ Jodi Picoult, #NFDB
913:The image of her bounding away—pristine ~ Pepper Winters, #NFDB
914:The storm dropped a house on her head. ~ Gregory Maguire, #NFDB
915:This boy would dream her forever. ~ Benjamin Alire S enz, #NFDB
916:time Corrie May saw her more clearly than ~ Gwen Bristow, #NFDB
917:Two steps behind her, I say her name. "Skye. ~ Jay Asher, #NFDB
918:What good's a captive without her captor? ~ Adam Johnson, #NFDB
919:What is it about me that made her leave? ~ Holly Throsby, #NFDB
920:What’s her name? Claire, what’s her name? ~ Rachel Caine, #NFDB
921:With her mother, Leeda acted a lot. ~ Jodi Lynn Anderson, #NFDB
922:You kiss better than most men fuck.” Her ~ Jay Crownover, #NFDB
923:A crude puppet impaled by her puppet master. ~ Alex Adams, #NFDB
924:affection for her, of the compatibility ~ Abraham Lincoln, #NFDB
925:And the sea moved her back down the shore. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
926:And these gems of Heav'n, her starry train. ~ John Milton, #NFDB
927:Any woman who counts on her face is a fool. ~ Zadie Smith, #NFDB
928:A woman's gifts will make room for her. ~ Hattie McDaniel, #NFDB
929:Bailey Voss smiled at her daughter. Being ~ Susan Mallery, #NFDB
930:behind his desk and smiled at her. ‘John ~ Jeffrey Archer, #NFDB
931:but her absence was like a character in it. ~ Mitch Albom, #NFDB
932:But mighty Nature bounds as from her birth; ~ Lord Byron, #NFDB
933:Chance favors only those who court her. ~ Charles Nicolle, #NFDB
934:Don’t kill her! Only maim her a little! ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
935:…each found her greatest safety in silence… ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
936:Every mother has to take care of her family. ~ Kelly Long, #NFDB
937:Fire to his ice, frost to her flame. ~ Karen Marie Moning, #NFDB
938:Fuck her once, she’ll write a book about it ~ Chris Kraus, #NFDB
939:Get her to safety or I will kill you for it. ~ Kailin Gow, #NFDB
940:Google needs to mind her damn business! ~ Gabourey Sidibe, #NFDB
941:He'd cherished her more than his own life. ~ Jody Hedlund, #NFDB
942:He exhaled and took it. Letting her steam. ~ Rachel Hauck, #NFDB
943:He feared her hatred more than any sword. ~ Maeve Greyson, #NFDB
944:He liked her; it was as simple as that. ~ Nicholas Sparks, #NFDB
945:He longed to be master of her strange mood. ~ James Joyce, #NFDB
946:her, and it seemed wiser not to see each ~ Danielle Steel, #NFDB
947:Her brother, Ryan-the-tattletale-sheriff, ~ Tamra Baumann, #NFDB
948:Her death was as insignificant as her life. ~ Mitch Albom, #NFDB
949:Her décolletage heaved with appreciation. ~ Gail Carriger, #NFDB
950:Her dullness made her own punishment. ~ Daphne du Maurier, #NFDB
951:Her eyes are warm, but her mouth is sad. ~ Jennifer Niven, #NFDB
952:Her eyes were olive green―incisive and clear. ~ Dan Brown, #NFDB
953:Her face a mask of fury and determination. ~ Jody Hedlund, #NFDB
954:Her first real kiss and he had apologised. ~ Lynne Graham, #NFDB
955:Her hair that lay along her back ~ Dante Gabriel Rossetti, #NFDB
956:Her laughter was like sweet deadly venom. ~ H P Lovecraft, #NFDB
957:Her Midt Blandt Dine Huus-Spioner
~ Christian Winther,#NFDB
958:her mouth was a cruel flower. “Hair ~ Walter Jon Williams, #NFDB
959:Her Rasler Skoven Og Her Suser Sivet
~ Emil Aarestrup,#NFDB
960:Her şey dönüp dolaşıp insanda ölüyordu. ~ Hasan Ali Topta, #NFDB
961:He wanted her to endure. But she would not. ~ Meg Collett, #NFDB
962:His hand fell like a prayer on her temple. ~ Jodi Picoult, #NFDB
963:His memory loved her too much. ~ Sarah Blakley Cartwright, #NFDB
964:His mindsets never ceased to dumbfound her. ~ Lucian Bane, #NFDB
965:Hope, like oxygen, is what kept her going. ~ Ruta Sepetys, #NFDB
966:I already knew I would slay dragons for her. ~ Eve Carter, #NFDB
967:I feel like a bad mother just watching her, ~ Tova Mirvis, #NFDB
968:If I could hold on to her, I’d be okay. ~ Kate Canterbary, #NFDB
969:If I have my way, you'll have her no longer. ~ Maya Banks, #NFDB
970:I gave her my heart but she wanted my soul... ~ Bob Dylan, #NFDB
971:I give her sadness and the gift of pain, ~ Dorothy Parker, #NFDB
972:I hated to see her sad as a panda without bamboo. ~ D Rus, #NFDB
973:intently at her, as if expecting an answer. ~ Sue Bentley, #NFDB
974:I remember that it hurt. Looking at her hurt. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
975:/ I showed her the time, like Doctor Who / ~ Ransom Riggs, #NFDB
976:I swear all I do is get hard in her presence. ~ K Webster, #NFDB
977:I think she might cry. In her way, she is. ~ Megan Abbott, #NFDB
978:I tried to grab her but I couldn’t reach her. ~ B A Paris, #NFDB
979:It was ridiculous of her to feel so wounded. ~ Anne Tyler, #NFDB
980:I wanted nothing but her, now and forever. ~ Karina Halle, #NFDB
981:I would die a thousand deaths to save her. ~ Leylah Attar, #NFDB
982:June falls asleep upon her bier of flowers; ~ Lucy Larcom, #NFDB
983:Karma’s a bitch, but I sure like her tonight ~ Amy Harmon, #NFDB
984:Life is a b*tch depending how you dress her. ~ Kanye West, #NFDB
985:Listen to her voice, don't look at her. ~ Ella Fitzgerald, #NFDB
986:Lost causes had a romantic charm for her, ~ Edith Wharton, #NFDB
987:Love conquers all things; let us own her dominion. ~ Ovid, #NFDB
988:Maybe it was a blessing he never loved her. ~ Rita J Webb, #NFDB
989:Maybe she needs me to be her basket case. ~ Lolly Winston, #NFDB
990:Mens Sorgfuld Jeg Mig Her Har Sat
~ Christian Winther,#NFDB
991:Mia had saved me, and then I'd saved her. ~ Adriane Leigh, #NFDB
992:Missing her kept him awake more than coffee. ~ John Green, #NFDB
993:Mrs Whatsit shook her beautiful head. ~ Madeleine L Engle, #NFDB
994:My second thought was, I’m prettier than her. ~ Jenny Han, #NFDB
995:My sex-starved inner horn dog wags her tail. ~ Ella James, #NFDB
996:Nature was beautiful, even in her tears ~ Jerome K Jerome, #NFDB
997:O'er her warm cheek, and rising bosom, move ~ Thomas Gray, #NFDB
998:Oh, how I had willed her to come back. ~ Julianne MacLean, #NFDB
999:People like her got addictive personalities. ~ Junot D az, #NFDB
1000:Please try to he asked angrily into her. ~ Caroline Fyffe, #NFDB
1001:raped her while he was living with them. ~ John Lescroart, #NFDB
1002:she’d caught her by the edge of her shadow. ~ Kate Morton, #NFDB
1003:she might be dying. The idea pleased her. ~ Lauren Oliver, #NFDB
1004:She nibbles her pencil... She's human! ~ Charles M Schulz, #NFDB
1005:She’s got hearts in her eyes these days, ~ Lauren Blakely, #NFDB
1006:she wrapped her arms around his neck and ~ Melissa Foster, #NFDB
1007:Shit. I liked her. Shit. I really liked her. ~ Louise Bay, #NFDB
1008:Silly little vamp, afraid of her feelings. ~ Kim Harrison, #NFDB
1009:Suffering was lost in her immortal smile. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #NFDB
1010:that he should actually let her ~ Frances Hodgson Burnett, #NFDB
1011:That was the beginning of her abstraction. ~ Alice Walker, #NFDB
1012:Their eyes held, her desire feeding his. ~ Pepper Winters, #NFDB
1013:Then, the clock caught her eye, 12:11 PM. ~ Aleatha Romig, #NFDB
1014:There’s only room for one freak in her world. ~ K Webster, #NFDB
1015:The risen sun too bright in her losing eyes. ~ John Green, #NFDB
1016:To be next to her was to have everything. ~ Marisha Pessl, #NFDB
1017:Wait—slow down.” Shane grabbed her shoulders ~ N W Harris, #NFDB
1018:wearing her whatever they call itsy-bitsy ~ W E B Griffin, #NFDB
1019:Werewolf was soooooo in her color wheel. ~ Dakota Cassidy, #NFDB
1020:When it rains," her father said "it pours. ~ Jodi Picoult, #NFDB
1021:Woman submits to her fate; man makes his ~ Emile Gaboriau, #NFDB
1022:Words pay no debts, give her deeds. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
1023:a fierce eagle love flashed in her eyes. ~ Madeline Miller, #NFDB
1024:A girl with tears and secrets in her eyes. ~ Cameron Dokey, #NFDB
1025:Already he loved the laugh she held in her, ~ Lauren Groff, #NFDB
1026:And grace that won who saw to wish her stay. ~ John Milton, #NFDB
1027:And she already has her treasure: it’s you. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
1028:An obedient wife commands her husband. ~ Benjamin Disraeli, #NFDB
1029:...anxiety was, for her, a form of prayer. ~ Peter Ackroyd, #NFDB
1030:Anyone who lives in her own world is crazy. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
1031:At least he loves her enough to regret it ~ Colleen Hoover, #NFDB
1032:Because if I lost her, I would be lost, too. ~ Kami Garcia, #NFDB
1033:Ben chimed in. “I like Honey in her Chucks. ~ Tessa Bailey, #NFDB
1034:called her “supermodel mark”—just in case ~ Colleen Oakley, #NFDB
1035:Captive Greece took captive her savage conqueror. ~ Horace, #NFDB
1036:couldn’t take his gaze off her. “Callahan? ~ Kendra Elliot, #NFDB
1037:Creative Endeavour lost her wings, Mrs Ape. ~ Evelyn Waugh, #NFDB
1038:Does he touch her the way he touched me. * ~ Sarah McCarry, #NFDB
1039:Do you love her?”
“My heart beats for her. ~ Jay McLean,#NFDB
1040:Do you want to hold her?” Ronan asked. ~ Maggie Stiefvater, #NFDB
1041:endured. Was this how her father had felt? ~ Toni Anderson, #NFDB
1042:feet—“Charlotte.” Someone inside was using her ~ Tom Wolfe, #NFDB
1043:fuck her hard. Women love it hard.” “Dickhead. ~ T L Smith, #NFDB
1044:gaol of her closed bedroom door. ‘I was only ~ Kate Morton, #NFDB
1045:gave up when he ignored her instructions and ~ Lilly Atlas, #NFDB
1046:He felt married to her, that was all. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB
1047:Hem her yerde evimdeydim,hem de hiçbir yerde. ~ Somaly Mam, #NFDB
1048:He must care for her and show her affection. ~ Lisa Valdez, #NFDB
1049:Her breath caught in her throat. No, she ~ Nicholas Sparks, #NFDB
1050:Her death was a foul corruption of her beauty. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1051:Here was one man who knew of her secret love. ~ Hugh Howey, #NFDB
1052:Her eyelashes lay still; her heart was still. ~ Juan Rulfo, #NFDB
1053:Her father lov'd me; oft invited me; ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
1054:her footsteps on the stairs. I was expecting ~ Cathy Glass, #NFDB
1055:her. “From what you’ve told us, the killer ~ John Sandford, #NFDB
1056:Her grief grieved her. His devastated her. ~ Arundhati Roy, #NFDB
1057:Her hair, brown.
Her speciality, damage. ~ Laura Mullen,#NFDB
1058:Her laugh produced in him a momentary gloom. ~ Henry James, #NFDB
1059:Her silks were feathers, and she was free. ~ Leigh Bardugo, #NFDB
1060:...her tone more disapproving than dismayed. ~ Kim Edwards, #NFDB
1061:her youth passed in renaissance glory ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB
1062:He was calling her by her God-given name, ~ Selene Charles, #NFDB
1063:He was proud of her wild, exploring mind. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
1064:he winks at her. The wink makes me think of ~ Lisa Wingate, #NFDB
1065:hoped he wouldn’t be too upset at her absence ~ Cora Seton, #NFDB
1066:How she hated the weakness of her human heart. ~ Anne Ursu, #NFDB
1067:I am not her. I will never be her. ~ Jennifer L Armentrout, #NFDB
1068:I'd like to add her initial to my monogram. ~ Ira Gershwin, #NFDB
1069:I don’t think there’s enough of her left. ~ Rainbow Rowell, #NFDB
1070:If drinking don't kill me, her memory will. ~ George Jones, #NFDB
1071:I fell for her like a suicide from a bridge. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
1072:If I didn't like her so much, I'd hate her. ~ Val McDermid, #NFDB
1073:If you love her, you cannot see her. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
1074:I like Hillary Clinton a lot. I know her. ~ Isabel Allende, #NFDB
1075:I love her. My piano. play the sh*t outta her. ~ Lady Gaga, #NFDB
1076:I love you, he thought. And then left her. ~ Lauren Gilley, #NFDB
1077:Instinct chooses her own children. ~ Gregory David Roberts, #NFDB
1078:Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrow. ~ James Joyce, #NFDB
1079:I run for her.
I run for them.
For me. ~ Ally Condie,#NFDB
1080:is to teach her impulse control in her early ~ John Medina, #NFDB
1081:It was her chaos that made her beautiful. ~ Atticus Poetry, #NFDB
1082:It was her job to pay attention to detail. ~ Toni Anderson, #NFDB
1083:I want to be tangled up in all her strings. ~ Shayla Black, #NFDB
1084:I want to kiss her more than I want air. ~ Karen M McManus, #NFDB
1085:kerfuffle will make things easier on her? ~ Rachel Hawkins, #NFDB
1086:Meilin passed stared at her. Some covertly, ~ Brandon Mull, #NFDB
1087:much she wanted her father to walk her down ~ Kelly Rimmer, #NFDB
1088:mused, examining her own stunning reflection ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
1089:Nancy Reagan fell down and broke her hair. ~ Johnny Carson, #NFDB
1090:No, it was in town a few minutes from her. The ~ Amy Brent, #NFDB
1091:Oh that was your girl? I thought I recognized her. ~ Drake, #NFDB
1092:pretended to be interested in her, allowing ~ Julia London, #NFDB
1093:Rachel's witchcraft is whiter than her ass. ~ Kim Harrison, #NFDB
1094:Reproof on her lip, but a smile in her eye. ~ Samuel Lover, #NFDB
1095:room and went into her father’s—which was ~ Kristin Hannah, #NFDB
1096:said Rumfoord. “I dared her to invite you, ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
1097:Scars and a thrill seeker. Gods help her... ~ Lisa Kessler, #NFDB
1098:She always smiled with her heart in her eyes. ~ Ella James, #NFDB
1099:She could assassinate streets with her eyes ~ Dionne Brand, #NFDB
1100:She drove her chariot like a centurion. ~ Whitley Strieber, #NFDB
1101:She had deemed it unwise to reveal her soul. ~ E M Forster, #NFDB
1102:She liked it dark when her soul felt black ~ Jamie McGuire, #NFDB
1103:She outright murdered Clough with her eyes. ~ Warren Ellis, #NFDB
1104:She pauses, hand on her hip. “Yes, ~ Christina Baker Kline, #NFDB
1105:She pouted her lips like a gun in my face. ~ Chinua Achebe, #NFDB
1106:she's a red-Headed bitch and I hate her! ~ Sophie Kinsella, #NFDB
1107:She seemed imprisoned in her sadness. ~ Sena Jeter Naslund, #NFDB
1108:she’s faced with her worst nightmare. ~ Chautona Havig, #NFDB
1109:She stood up in her cube as called after him. ~ A G Riddle, #NFDB
1110:She was not a half. She was wholly her own. ~ Ren e Ahdieh, #NFDB
1111:Shiny teeth were footnote to her smile. ~ Aleksandar Hemon, #NFDB
1112:Soul of a victim tends to prove her innocence. ~ Toba Beta, #NFDB
1113:spoke through her teeth, another skill ~ Lauraine Snelling, #NFDB
1114:The change in her when it came was sudden. ~ Chinua Achebe, #NFDB
1115:the emptiness inside her was hers alone. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
1116:The hospital fired her ’cause she was sick. ~ Angie Thomas, #NFDB
1117:The lily in splendor, the vine in her grace, ~ Ruth Pitter, #NFDB
1118:There was too much hate inside her already. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
1119:The tartness of her face sours ripe grapes. ~ Elisa Braden, #NFDB
1120:The words scare her. She’s scared of love. ~ Katie McGarry, #NFDB
1121:This is her home now--of her own free will. ~ Paul Gallico, #NFDB
1122:to her, Rose. I’ll find out the real story ~ Richelle Mead, #NFDB
1123:to him. How stupid of her to turn off her phone ~ J C Reed, #NFDB
1124:Virtue's guard is labor; ease, her sleep. ~ Torquato Tasso, #NFDB
1125:wet. Her jacket had a hood, but the rain had ~ Clare Lydon, #NFDB
1126:Wherefore did Nature pour her bounties forth ~ John Milton, #NFDB
1127:Words were her plague and words were her redemption. ~ H D, #NFDB
1128:Yes, I-- I think I love her. Is that nuts? ~ Richelle Mead, #NFDB
1129:You love her.
I do. I love her. ~ Jennifer L Armentrout,#NFDB
1130:Analysis of her modus vivendi (how she lived) ~ Joe Navarro, #NFDB
1131:And a sweet expression spreads over her fair face. ~ Sappho, #NFDB
1132:And he asked her to share his forever. ~ A Meredith Walters, #NFDB
1133:And she grasps it because it's her fate. ~ Gabriela Mistral, #NFDB
1134:And so, you see, her absence stopped time. ~ Louise Erdrich, #NFDB
1135:And the gold of her ruined wedding dress. ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
1136:A pink fluttering bird flew across her mind. ~ Anne Mallory, #NFDB
1137:a road trip with her ex? danger ahead... ~ Lauren Barnholdt, #NFDB
1138:As always, one of her books was next to her. ~ Markus Zusak, #NFDB
1139:bitchiness gone from her tone. “My father would ~ T K Leigh, #NFDB
1140:Break her heart; like raping a virgin girl. ~ M F Moonzajer, #NFDB
1141:bring himself to leave her, even when ~ William W Johnstone, #NFDB
1142:But the screaming. The screaming got to her. ~ Sam Sisavath, #NFDB
1143:But the thing is, all I really want is her. ~ Karina Halle, #NFDB
1144:Calls her beautiful, but she cannot hear. ~ Stephen Chbosky, #NFDB
1145:Come on. We’re not going to let her bother ~ Liane Moriarty, #NFDB
1146:Death on her left. Devil on her right. ~ Karen Marie Moning, #NFDB
1147:Dispute not with her: she is lunatic. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
1148:Drek. He was definitely in love with her now. ~ Rose Lerner, #NFDB
1149:Eyes remaining solidly on her, he replied, ~ Dianne Venetta, #NFDB
1150:For once her new placidity was impaired. ~ John D MacDonald, #NFDB
1151:God helping her, she can do no other.’” The ~ Ann H Gabhart, #NFDB
1152:going to talk to her attorney.” Angel ~ Patricia H Rushford, #NFDB
1153:He didn’t want to let her go. At all. Ever. ~ Erin Nicholas, #NFDB
1154:He made her name sound like a swear word. ~ Debbie Macomber, #NFDB
1155:her body—plump in all the right places—leaned ~ Jayde Scott, #NFDB
1156:her eyes; she was worn out after the last few ~ Lucy Dillon, #NFDB
1157:Her feet had turned into snails. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, #NFDB
1158:her grandmother reminding her how to come home. ~ Yaa Gyasi, #NFDB
1159:her head and her face was in shadow. She’d pushed ~ C J Box, #NFDB
1160:Her heart beat with the rattle of broken wings. ~ N M Kelby, #NFDB
1161:Her lips were like large crimson polyps. ~ Vladimir Nabokov, #NFDB
1162:Her mind can’t go to the dark places mine does. ~ Jenny Han, #NFDB
1163:Hermione was biting her lip, deep in thought. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
1164:Her name Toor Pekai means “raven tresses ~ Malala Yousafzai, #NFDB
1165:her young heart was no longer her own. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
1166:He says, "I saved her only to hear her die. ~ Anthony Doerr, #NFDB
1167:He still wanted her more than his next breath… ~ Katie Reus, #NFDB
1168:his cock sliced through her over and over, ~ Suzanne Wright, #NFDB
1169:I believe she's blown some dust off her heart. ~ Kate Maloy, #NFDB
1170:I don't have to agree with her to love her. ~ Swati Avasthi, #NFDB
1171:I may be a monster but I was her monster.! ~ Pepper Winters, #NFDB
1172:In her dream, she slapped the past in its face. ~ Ali Smith, #NFDB
1173:I saw him at her apartment. He was watching ~ Anita Clenney, #NFDB
1174:It never occurred to her to give up. ~ Kay Redfield Jamison, #NFDB
1175:It's okay," I assure her. "I like stalkers. ~ Courtney Cole, #NFDB
1176:It was her chaos that made her beautiful. ~ Atticus Poetry, #NFDB
1177:I want to have her hands..!
Morino's hands... ~ Otsuichi,#NFDB
1178:I was going to kiss her while I strangled her. ~ Penny Reid, #NFDB
1179:Jennifer Senior in her 2014 TED Talk ~ Julie Lythcott Haims, #NFDB
1180:lack of progress on the murder case and her ~ Melinda Leigh, #NFDB
1181:Life is a gift. Don’t forget to live it.” Her ~ Nicola Yoon, #NFDB
1182:Lily slid across the seat, wrapped her arms ~ Carolyn Brown, #NFDB
1183:Love her, too?" I whispered, incredulous. ~ Stephenie Meyer, #NFDB
1184:Luca’s freedom was at the tips of her fingers. ~ Fiona Paul, #NFDB
1185:mottled in stark contrast to her fair, soft ~ Melinda Leigh, #NFDB
1186:My inner goddess is celebrating her inner bitch ~ E L James, #NFDB
1187:No one but her, never before, never again. ~ Laurelin Paige, #NFDB
1188:Oh God, they’d sewn her fucking eyelids open! ~ Lucian Bane, #NFDB
1189:She began to curl her hair and long for balls ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
1190:Shee spins well that breedes her children. ~ George Herbert, #NFDB
1191:She had become catatonic in her fear. ~ Kimberly Rae Miller, #NFDB
1192:She knows she can’t survive this on her own. ~ Shari Lapena, #NFDB
1193:She’s drunk herself out of her senses, ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
1194:She thought of Warren Fox grabbing her, the ~ Melinda Leigh, #NFDB
1195:She twisted her wrists to the sides, trying to ~ Mira Grant, #NFDB
1196:Shit. I’d felt her up, in my sleep. ~ Jennifer L Armentrout, #NFDB
1197:shouldn’t they? She had given her maiden name ~ Edie Claire, #NFDB
1198:Show her I am a man of deeds, not lobsters, ~ Gail Carriger, #NFDB
1199:sitting across from her. But there was no ~ Nicholas Sparks, #NFDB
1200:snorted coke because a boyfriend told her ~ Karin Slaughter, #NFDB
1201:Suddenly a scream froze her in her tracks. It ~ Dan Simmons, #NFDB
1202:tall gray-faced black woman in her thirties ~ Russell Banks, #NFDB
1203:The ash her purple drops forgivingly ~ James Russell Lowell, #NFDB
1204:The earth turned on the pivot of her mouth. ~ Angela Carter, #NFDB
1205:The love of her life dissolved into dreams. ~ Ellen Hopkins, #NFDB
1206:The moon had the old moon in her arms. ~ Dorothy Wordsworth, #NFDB
1207:The Sphinx must solve her own riddle. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
1208:The wife should yield in all things to her lord ~ Euripides, #NFDB
1209:This is her home now...of her own free will. ~ Paul Gallico, #NFDB
1210:Time had a grudge against her.’ – Evalle ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon, #NFDB
1211:upyr,” said Alyosha. Vasya shook her head ~ Katherine Arden, #NFDB
1212:way to nail Cozone. Her cell phone buzzed as ~ Harlan Coben, #NFDB
1213:what happened.” I took her hand. She shrugged. ~ Jaymin Eve, #NFDB
1214:You didn’t bury her. That’s why we couldn’t ~ Robert Dugoni, #NFDB
1215:You only know you love her when you let her go. ~ Passenger, #NFDB
1216:you saw her fair, none else being by, ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
1217:A doll who can take any form but her own. ~ Victoria Aveyard, #NFDB
1218:And live like Nature's bastards, not her sons. ~ John Milton, #NFDB
1219:Annemarie’s silvery blond hair flew behind her, ~ Lois Lowry, #NFDB
1220:an undiscovered tumor squats on her kidney. ~ Rae Armantrout, #NFDB
1221:Anybody. She uses her body like I use the loose ~ Mario Puzo, #NFDB
1222:A woman's paradise is under her husband's foot ~ Wafa Sultan, #NFDB
1223:But her emails! —the internet, 2017 ~ Hillary Rodham Clinton, #NFDB
1224:Energy had fastened upon her like a disease. ~ Ellen Glasgow, #NFDB
1225:...Every woman is her true age when she sleeps. ~ Gene Wolfe, #NFDB
1226:festooned her sweaters with festive holiday pins ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1227:flaps and buttons. She concealed her gray hair ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
1228:Fuck it, maybe she’d even get her hair cut. ~ Liane Moriarty, #NFDB
1229:He drew in her scent. Her breath smelled of ~ David Baldacci, #NFDB
1230:Her beauty completely erased by jealousy. ~ Philippa Gregory, #NFDB
1231:Her best smile seemed to be for him alone. ~ Jaclyn Dolamore, #NFDB
1232:Her death the dividing mark: Before and After. ~ Donna Tartt, #NFDB
1233:Her disiplinli çabanın; birden çok ürünü vardır. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1234:Her eyes are homes of silent prayers. ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson, #NFDB
1235:her flesh no longer existed in this world. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
1236:Her insan kendi hayatının başrolünde oynuyor. ~ O Z Livaneli, #NFDB
1237:her? I wonder. “Tom?” I say, taking advantage of ~ Greg Iles, #NFDB
1238:her left hand while she kept her right hand ~ Leighann Dobbs, #NFDB
1239:Her life was a tissue of vanity and deceit. ~ Virginia Woolf, #NFDB
1240:Her lips thinned like a spinster’s hopes. ~ Elizabeth George, #NFDB
1241:Her majesty is one verb short of a sentence. ~ Jasper Fforde, #NFDB
1242:Her mask gave no sign of how this affected her. ~ Donna Leon, #NFDB
1243:her possession crucial evidence about Quinn’s ~ John Grisham, #NFDB
1244:Her real offense was having a mind of her own. ~ Henry James, #NFDB
1245:Her sister, who was three years her elder ~ Anthony Trollope, #NFDB
1246:Her soul is Alive. And we are drawn to her. ~ Stasi Eldredge, #NFDB
1247:He wanted all her circles to lead back to him ~ Lisa Kleypas, #NFDB
1248:His scars were hidden and safe in her hand. ~ Paolo Giordano, #NFDB
1249:I can bear to die - I cannot bear to leave her. ~ John Keats, #NFDB
1250:If heartbreak had a sound, it would be her sob. ~ Jay McLean, #NFDB
1251:If love were a person, it would be her. ~ Brittainy C Cherry, #NFDB
1252:I frowned. “I need her more than Jesus does. ~ Jamie McGuire, #NFDB
1253:If she were drowning, I'd hold her head under ~ Jandy Nelson, #NFDB
1254:I have that sense of connection with her. ~ Lisa Renee Jones, #NFDB
1255:I hope I’m the ghost that belongs to her. ~ Courtney Summers, #NFDB
1256:I like a girl who spend a little cash for her shoes. ~ Jay Z, #NFDB
1257:I’ll burn the world down to save her ~ Jennifer L Armentrout, #NFDB
1258:I loved her like a rabbit loves a rattlesnake ~ James M Cain, #NFDB
1259:I love her. She fills the void. She’s my soul. ~ Abbi Glines, #NFDB
1260:I married her just because she looks like you. ~ Lyle Lovett, #NFDB
1261:In her mind, the orchid was still screaming. ~ Joe Schreiber, #NFDB
1262:I want her to be safe. I want her to be mine. ~ Jodi Picoult, #NFDB
1263:I wish I could lay down beside her and die too. ~ John Adams, #NFDB
1264:Just enough madness to make her interesting ~ Atticus Poetry, #NFDB
1265:Like old time... wanna arm wrestle for her? ~ Catherine Vale, #NFDB
1266:Loving her isn’t a choice— it’s who I am. ~ Corinne Michaels, #NFDB
1267:Malice is poisoned by her own venom. ~ Johann Kaspar Lavater, #NFDB
1268:Mary Magdalene beat her breasts and sobbed, ~ Anna Akhmatova, #NFDB
1269:Mom smiled at me. Her smile kind of hugged me. ~ R J Palacio, #NFDB
1270:My inner goddess is celebrating her inner bitch. ~ E L James, #NFDB
1271:My mother was ahead of her time as a woman. ~ Sandra Bullock, #NFDB
1272:Never ask a mermaid if you can borrow her tail. ~ Mira Grant, #NFDB
1273:News of the murder had her all in a tizzy. ~ Douglas Preston, #NFDB
1274:notice his slip-up. ‘You took her up on top of ~ Sibel Hodge, #NFDB
1275:Not to help justice in her need would be an impiety. ~ Plato, #NFDB
1276:No way in hell would anyone see her cry. ~ Christian Galacar, #NFDB
1277:Once I only saw her beauty, now I feel it. ~ Charlotte Bront, #NFDB
1278:Only a child thinks life is about her wants. ~ Dennis Lehane, #NFDB
1279:Out of her favour, where I am in love. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
1280:past that is about to explode into her present. ~ C J Archer, #NFDB
1281:Protect her heart. That’s what gentlemen do. ~ Heather Burch, #NFDB
1282:Sam," she said, and I crushed her to me. ~ Maggie Stiefvater, #NFDB
1283:Savaşlar her şeyi yok eder, umut hariç! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
1284:She’d do it on her own terms. Screw the FBI. ~ Toni Anderson, #NFDB
1285:She grieved a while and her grief changed her. ~ Betty Smith, #NFDB
1286:She narrowed her eyes as she stared at him. The ~ Greig Beck, #NFDB
1287:She puzzled her head to find some vow to fulfil. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1288:She's fragile because you let her be fragile. ~ Jessica Park, #NFDB
1289:She unbent her mind afterwards - over a book. ~ Charles Lamb, #NFDB
1290:She wants him to want to be looking at her. ~ Alexis M Smith, #NFDB
1291:She was always mine…I just hadn’t found her yet. ~ K Webster, #NFDB
1292:She was my accountant, so I just believed her. ~ John Howard, #NFDB
1293:She was my freedom, yet I was her cage. ~ Brittainy C Cherry, #NFDB
1294:Shor Sa Aik, Her Aik Simat Bapa Lagta Hai
~ Adeem Hashmi,#NFDB
1295:Some battles, a woman has to fight on her own ~ Nalini Singh, #NFDB
1296:Something fell off the shelf inside her ~ Zora Neale Hurston, #NFDB
1297:Staring at her, his reasons are lost to me. ~ Victoria Scott, #NFDB
1298:Straightening his slight form he told her in ~ Josephine Cox, #NFDB
1299:Tell her next time to look where she's going. ~ Elaine Dundy, #NFDB
1300:That was Hera. Her Majesty, the Loose Cannon. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
1301:the laboratory evidence that linked her to Todd ~ A J Banner, #NFDB
1302:these past few years. They had filled her ~ Patricia Scanlan, #NFDB
1303:The story of her death was written in bone. ~ Jefferson Bass, #NFDB
1304:They seem to have noticed her for the first time ~ Jenny Han, #NFDB
1305:This time I hurt her more than she loves me. ~ Conway Twitty, #NFDB
1306:told her. “There’s smoke in the chimney, ~ Rosamunde Pilcher, #NFDB
1307:to the GPS system. It greeted her in French. ~ Susan Mallery, #NFDB
1308:up the hem of her silk shell and scooped his ~ Farrah Rochon, #NFDB
1309:Val smiled at the girl. She dropped her pen. ~ Elaine Levine, #NFDB
1310:We, her children, are heroic, dersperate. ~ Marguerite Duras, #NFDB
1311:What a weird future awaited her in the past! ~ Karen Russell, #NFDB
1312:What if she actually enjoyed her debasement? ~ Pauline R age, #NFDB
1313:What one beholds of a woman is the least part of her. ~ Ovid, #NFDB
1314:which descended low from her beaver. ~ James Fenimore Cooper, #NFDB
1315:You could drown a kitten in her blue eyes. ~ Gary Shteyngart, #NFDB
1316:You’re working wonders for her self-esteem. ~ Anna DeStefano, #NFDB
1317:Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
1318:A jealous woman holds poison on her tongue. ~ Vivienne Lorret, #NFDB
1319:a little comb to brush her luxurious red hair. ~ Blake Crouch, #NFDB
1320:All that remained of Daphne was her shining loveliness ~ Ovid, #NFDB
1321:All within her and around her was abandoning her. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1322:A mother is only as happy as her saddest child. ~ Phil McGraw, #NFDB
1323:An angel giving a devil her wings for safekeeping ~ Ker Dukey, #NFDB
1324:And Alice drove her hand into Kate’s chest. ~ Victoria Schwab, #NFDB
1325:And if I’m truly honest, I am in love with her. ~ Nina Levine, #NFDB
1326:And the earth self-balanced on her centre hung. ~ John Milton, #NFDB
1327:And when I smiled, 'Bing!' I almost blinded her. ~ Slick Rick, #NFDB
1328:A queen bows to no one, especially to her king. ~ Tillie Cole, #NFDB
1329:As if this whole place were a story about her. ~ Laini Taylor, #NFDB
1330:asking her if she could use it.” Jennifer said, ~ Brad Taylor, #NFDB
1331:a slow drum muffled in velvet. It’s her heart. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
1332:A woman can keep one secret the secret of her age. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1333:behind the anger, she saw that he loved her, ~ Mary Jo Putney, #NFDB
1334:calls her beautiful, but she cannot hear... ~ Stephen Chbosky, #NFDB
1335:Certainly love was not as real as her sword. ~ Erika Johansen, #NFDB
1336:Confusion looked seductively X-rated on her. ~ Pepper Winters, #NFDB
1337:Don't focus on her hiss. Remember her purr. ~ Donna Lynn Hope, #NFDB
1338:down her cheeks, despite her best effort to ~ Julie Johnstone, #NFDB
1339:dozens of slave bracelets clinked on her wrists. ~ Harper Lee, #NFDB
1340:Elizabeth Taylor. In her heyday, she was amazing. ~ Joe Jonas, #NFDB
1341:Everyone is political in his or her own way. ~ Thomas Piketty, #NFDB
1342:Every woman should have a purse of her own. ~ Susan B Anthony, #NFDB
1343:gathering wholesome young people around her. ~ Danielle Steel, #NFDB
1344:Hear reason, or she'll make you feel her. ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
1345:He growled at her. Scarlet growled back. Lips ~ Marissa Meyer, #NFDB
1346:he had to move to L.A., on her terms. And he ~ Danielle Steel, #NFDB
1347:He hunted with his groin but couldn't find her. ~ Caris Roane, #NFDB
1348:Her bir an, bilinmeyene bir yolculuktur! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
1349:her blood was made of ennui and missed chances, ~ Cole McCade, #NFDB
1350:Her brain was a storm, her usual insight gone. ~ Alice Sebold, #NFDB
1351:Her entire body flushed, thrilled from his touch. ~ Cindy Pon, #NFDB
1352:Her fingers walk the tightropes of sentences; ~ Anthony Doerr, #NFDB
1353:Her güzel sokak, bir mutluluk limanıdır! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
1354:Her legs are crossed at the knee and ankle. ~ Chuck Palahniuk, #NFDB
1355:Her love was trembling in laughter on her lips. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
1356:Her mother gave her a sympathetic smile. ~ Roderick J Robison, #NFDB
1357:Her nakedness was not vulnerability, but armour. ~ Robin Hobb, #NFDB
1358:Her sabah karanlığa karşı bir devrimdir! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
1359:Her self, then, was represented in her books. ~ Claire Messud, #NFDB
1360:Her skin seemed to bum with countless harts. ~ Richard Laymon, #NFDB
1361:He was as beautiful a man as her was a tiger. ~ Colleen Houck, #NFDB
1362:How did I love her?
Let me count the ways. ~ Lauren Oliver,#NFDB
1363:I am her tribute. Survival is my gift to her. ~ Pittacus Lore, #NFDB
1364:I could see my face, crying, in her blank eye. ~ M T Anderson, #NFDB
1365:I curled closer to May, comforted by her warmth. ~ Kiera Cass, #NFDB
1366:If her hormones had a face, she would slap it. ~ Melissa Grey, #NFDB
1367:I got this," said Nix, raising her bokken. ~ Jonathan Maberry, #NFDB
1368:I intend to stay on her like hair on soap. ~ Kathryn Stockett, #NFDB
1369:I'll burn the world down to save her. ~ Jennifer L Armentrout, #NFDB
1370:I’ll burn the world down to save her. ~ Jennifer L Armentrout, #NFDB
1371:I love her for that, because it was so human. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
1372:In fact you are quite certain of her guilt. ~ Agatha Christie, #NFDB
1373:into her embrace and clung to her. “There, ~ Karen McQuestion, #NFDB
1374:I respect a woman too much to marry her. ~ Sylvester Stallone, #NFDB
1375:I saved her life!” Now I needed someone to save mine. ~ Tijan, #NFDB
1376:Is she yours?"
"Touch her and find out. ~ Nalini Singh,#NFDB
1377:Just at the moment, her life seemed oddly thin ~ Eloisa James, #NFDB
1378:Just enough madness to make her interesting. ~ Atticus Poetry, #NFDB
1379:Lace it with Ex-Lax. It will do her some good. ~ Molly Harper, #NFDB
1380:Levi was smiling. He kicked her chair again. ~ Rainbow Rowell, #NFDB
1381:Life was imposed on her from outside ~ Gabriel Garc a M rquez, #NFDB
1382:Like I was in a helicopter crash,” I tell her. ~ Karina Halle, #NFDB
1383:Like old times... wanna arm wrestle for her? ~ Catherine Vale, #NFDB
1384:Matthias was dreaming again. Dreaming of her. ~ Leigh Bardugo, #NFDB
1385:mind her when I’m away?’ I stayed overnight in ~ Marian Keyes, #NFDB
1386:Most men admire Virtue who follow not her lore. ~ John Milton, #NFDB
1387:My cat speaks sign language with her tail. ~ Robert A M Stern, #NFDB
1388:Nïx : Poach her portal. So going on a T-shirt. ~ Kresley Cole, #NFDB
1389:Olmak istediğimiz kişi olamayız her zaman. ~ Julianna Baggott, #NFDB
1390:Opulence without elegance seems to be her motto. ~ T E Kinsey, #NFDB
1391:Our hearts, the war. Her body, the battlefield. ~ Rick Yancey, #NFDB
1392:Poetry and art are the breath of life to her. ~ Edith Wharton, #NFDB
1393:She couldn't live in denial of her own humanity. ~ Fuyumi Ono, #NFDB
1394:she’d felt like she’d had the sky in her veins. ~ Cole McCade, #NFDB
1395:She had fire in her eyes, and a war in her heart. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1396:She needed someone to love her. He needed it too. ~ C L Stone, #NFDB
1397:She’s all right now. We just want to get her ~ Danielle Steel, #NFDB
1398:She showed him her finger—just one of them. ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
1399:She smiled and her face was heartbreaking. ~ Ernest Hemingway, #NFDB
1400:She touched her forehead with the back of her ~ Carolyn Keene, #NFDB
1401:She wished such words unsaid with all her heart ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
1402:She wore no jewellery, just her wedding ring. ~ Kingsley Amis, #NFDB
1403:sighed and put her fingers in his palm. “For ~ Carly Phillips, #NFDB
1404:Tell her not to worry about the hour; I’ll come. ~ Kiera Cass, #NFDB
1405:That’s when Steve bent down and kissed her. ~ Maureen Johnson, #NFDB
1406:that the young dragon beside her had hatched ~ Joseph R Lallo, #NFDB
1407:That would probably scare her off but good. ~ Christy Barritt, #NFDB
1408:The only decent bone in her body was mine. ~ Ernest Hemingway, #NFDB
1409:There was nothing more to say so I kissed her and ~ Lily King, #NFDB
1410:the sweetness had gone so quickly from her ~ Mary Kay Andrews, #NFDB
1411:The thought sent a thrill through her as she laid ~ Ginny Dye, #NFDB
1412:The wasp sits on the porch of her paper castle. ~ Mary Oliver, #NFDB
1413:the water. The feral cats scattered before her. ~ Jess Walter, #NFDB
1414:This man she hardly knew read her like a book. ~ Debora Geary, #NFDB
1415:This was her home, her ruin, her scattered dream. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1416:This woman has had the hell beaten out of her. ~ John Grisham, #NFDB
1417:those dates had prepared her for the hot rush of ~ Anne Marsh, #NFDB
1418:Veiled melancholy has her sovereign shrine ~ Stephanie Danler, #NFDB
1419:What happens if a drone falls right next to her? ~ Kanye West, #NFDB
1420:When Misfortune is asleep, let no one wake her. ~ John Dryden, #NFDB
1421:Where, she wondered, would all her love go? ~ Liza Klaussmann, #NFDB
1422:with her fog, her amphetamine, and her pearls ... ~ Bob Dylan, #NFDB
1423:you. It kept her so busy while she was here. The ~ Tracy Rees, #NFDB
1424:Yozzy is a horse, for which I envy her. ~ Catherine Ryan Hyde, #NFDB
1425:Adrenaline blasted a path through her tiredness. ~ Lisa Jewell, #NFDB
1426:and friend, for her good advice and infinite ~ Deborah Crombie, #NFDB
1427:And heaven wept to see the sins of her children. ~ Lauren Kate, #NFDB
1428:A star is only as good as her last picture. ~ Barbara Stanwyck, #NFDB
1429:A woman like her wasn’t meant for a man like me. ~ Celia Aaron, #NFDB
1430:Belli bir hedefi olmayan her hayat bir hatadır. ~ Stefan Zweig, #NFDB
1431:Bennie wiped her greasy fingers on a napkin, ~ Lisa Scottoline, #NFDB
1432:be there watching TV or playing her Nintendo ~ Christy Barritt, #NFDB
1433:Dex had taught her well, and now he would pay. ~ Sasha Alsberg, #NFDB
1434:Don’t,” I beg her. “Please don’t get over me. ~ Colleen Hoover, #NFDB
1435:Don't make a black woman take off her earrings". ~ Tyler Perry, #NFDB
1436:Emotions unreel in her like spools of cotton. ~ Louise Erdrich, #NFDB
1437:Even when she slept, her anxieties did not. ~ Frances Hardinge, #NFDB
1438:Everyone becomes psychotic in his or her own ways. ~ Elyn Saks, #NFDB
1439:Fire's own laughter was a balm to her heart. ~ Kristin Cashore, #NFDB
1440:For the second time, humans had raided her home ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
1441:Freedom needs all her poets; it is they ~ James Russell Lowell, #NFDB
1442:gratified by this as her mother could be, though ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
1443:had been ripped open, and her intestines ~ John Edward Douglas, #NFDB
1444:He looked at the celebrant. ‘Can I kiss her now? ~ K M Golland, #NFDB
1445:Her dad was as much ape as dad. He was an ape dad. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1446:her dearest friends are characters in books. ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
1447:...her dearest friends are characters in books. ~ Sarah J Maas, #NFDB
1448:Her eyes are liquid and draining out of her. ~ Marianne Curley, #NFDB
1449:her,” he said. “She stares. That’s what she does ~ Derek Landy, #NFDB
1450:Her husband was asleep beside her. She could ~ Alice McDermott, #NFDB
1451:Her jaw set, she passed him, going to the high ~ Denise Hunter, #NFDB
1452:Her lack of magnificence in a magnificent world ~ Thomas Wolfe, #NFDB
1453:Her lips drink water but her heart drinks wine. ~ E E Cummings, #NFDB
1454:Her love is not the hare that I do hunt; ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
1455:Her mother could win Olympic gold in fussing. ~ RaeAnne Thayne, #NFDB
1456:Her only way home was to betray her friend. ~ Scott Westerfeld, #NFDB
1457:Her people would kill one beauty to make another. ~ Greg Keyes, #NFDB
1458:her short stories read like perfect songs. ~ Clarice Lispector, #NFDB
1459:Her sister?” Erik asked. “Weekday or weekend? ~ Alethea Kontis, #NFDB
1460:Her skin beaded from his steady, gentle touch. ~ Lorelei James, #NFDB
1461:Her smile was a bite, and I was its target. ~ Yevgeny Zamyatin, #NFDB
1462:Her soul whispers to his, "Take me. I am ready. ~ Truth Devour, #NFDB
1463:Her teeth were like a soccer crowd, crammed in. ~ Markus Zusak, #NFDB
1464:Her voice is as casual as a knife in the gut. ~ Kiersten White, #NFDB
1465:He was jealous of her future, and she of his past. ~ Anais Nin, #NFDB
1466:He was jealous of her future, and she of his past. ~ Ana s Nin, #NFDB
1467:He was the first man who did not see through her. ~ Roxane Gay, #NFDB
1468:Hey, a woman changed her mind - what else is new? ~ Glenn Frey, #NFDB
1469:Hot he might be, but he wasn’t her type at all… ~ Sarah Morgan, #NFDB
1470:how it was meant to be. Him squeezing her hand, ~ Jenny Oliver, #NFDB
1471:I am looking at her and she is so beautiful. ~ Stephen Chbosky, #NFDB
1472:I asked her for Adidas and she bought me Zips. ~ DJ Jazzy Jeff, #NFDB
1473:İç huzuru bulduğun her yer senin evindir! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
1474:I did not then entreat to have her stay, ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
1475:I don't see that her being cyborg is relevant. ~ Marissa Meyer, #NFDB
1476:I don’t see that her being cyborg is relevant. ~ Marissa Meyer, #NFDB
1477:I don't understand," he said, understanding her. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
1478:Everything about her has to do with me. ~ Richelle Mead, #NFDB
1479:If she’ll have me, I’m going to marry her. ~ Suzanne Brockmann, #NFDB
1480:If you did wed my sister for her wealth, ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
1481:I gave her my deluxe I'll-Kill-You-Later stare. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
1482:I lift my head and look at her. “I thought she ~ Carla Buckley, #NFDB
1483:I'll always be the girl crying on her bed. ~ Stephanie Perkins, #NFDB
1484:I’m lost in her and found in her all at once. ~ Laurelin Paige, #NFDB
1485:I'm so sick of Betty White. Never liked her. ~ Cloris Leachman, #NFDB
1486:I needed to touch her, like I needed to breathe. ~ Kami Garcia, #NFDB
1487:In her head, she screamed. But nobody could hear. ~ Hugh Howey, #NFDB
1488:I smacked her, cracked her, put her in a full nelson. ~ Redman, #NFDB
1489:It is hard to tell your mother to change her life. ~ Tony Yayo, #NFDB
1490:It was the most incredible ride of her life. ~ Johanna Lindsey, #NFDB
1491:Judy woke up on her back in the parking lot. ~ Lisa Scottoline, #NFDB
1492:Kendine inanmayan yalan söyler her zaman ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
1493:Lauren was his and he wasn’t letting her go. ~ Savannah Stuart, #NFDB
1494:Let a bitch enjoy her mental breakdown in peace. ~ C J Roberts, #NFDB
1495:Let her have today.Leave tomorrow to the angels. ~ Kami Garcia, #NFDB
1496:Lord, save Russia and bring her peace. ~ Nicholas II of Russia, #NFDB
1497:Mami looked vaguely out of the snout of her parka ~ Junot D az, #NFDB
1498:Nahed unveiled her magnificently even teeth. ~ Franck Thilliez, #NFDB
1499:Nora Linde automatically answered her cell phone ~ Viveca Sten, #NFDB
1500:Not it. Her. Give the Falcon some respect, kid. ~ Chuck Wendig, #NFDB
2358 Integral Yoga
1650 Poetry
311 Philosophy
280 Occultism
229 Fiction
224 Mysticism
181 Christianity
116 Yoga
91 Psychology
54 Islam
50 Philsophy
33 Science
28 Hinduism
23 Sufism
23 Mythology
20 Education
17 Kabbalah
16 Theosophy
16 Integral Theory
14 Buddhism
13 Zen
8 Cybernetics
6 Baha i Faith
1 Thelema
1 Alchemy
1526 The Mother
1095 Satprem
826 Sri Aurobindo
452 Nolini Kanta Gupta
238 William Wordsworth
160 Walt Whitman
141 William Butler Yeats
141 Percy Bysshe Shelley
115 Aleister Crowley
104 H P Lovecraft
93 John Keats
89 Carl Jung
80 Robert Browning
78 Rabindranath Tagore
76 Friedrich Schiller
72 Friedrich Nietzsche
68 James George Frazer
66 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
62 Plotinus
59 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
57 Sri Ramakrishna
54 Muhammad
50 Ralph Waldo Emerson
36 Swami Krishnananda
36 Li Bai
34 Saint Augustine of Hippo
34 Anonymous
33 Edgar Allan Poe
32 Rainer Maria Rilke
32 Jorge Luis Borges
31 Franz Bardon
30 Saint Teresa of Avila
30 Lucretius
26 A B Purani
24 Aldous Huxley
23 Swami Vivekananda
22 Saint John of Climacus
22 Rudolf Steiner
20 Jalaluddin Rumi
20 Hafiz
19 Vyasa
17 Rabbi Moses Luzzatto
16 Ramprasad
16 Aristotle
14 Ovid
14 Nirodbaran
12 Plato
12 Kabir
12 Ibn Arabi
11 George Van Vrekhem
10 Sri Ramana Maharshi
10 Lewis Carroll
9 Joseph Campbell
8 Norbert Wiener
7 Shiwu (Stonehouse)
7 Omar Khayyam
7 Mirabai
7 Jordan Peterson
7 Henry David Thoreau
7 Baha u llah
6 Thubten Chodron
6 Saint John of the Cross
6 Paul Richard
6 Bokar Rinpoche
6 Alice Bailey
6 Al-Ghazali
5 Taigu Ryokan
4 Swami Sivananda Saraswati
4 Peter J Carroll
4 Patanjali
4 Lalla
4 Jetsun Milarepa
4 Farid ud-Din Attar
3 Yuan Mei
3 Saint Hildegard von Bingen
3 R Buckminster Fuller
3 Matsuo Basho
3 Ken Wilber
3 Hsuan Chueh of Yung Chia
3 Hakim Sanai
3 Dogen
3 Alfred Tennyson
2 William Blake
2 Thomas Merton
2 Solomon ibn Gabirol
2 Saint Francis of Assisi
2 Saint Clare of Assisi
2 Rabbi Abraham Abulafia
2 Moses de Leon
2 Michael Maier
2 Mechthild of Magdeburg
2 Mahendranath Gupta
2 Jorge Luis Borges
2 Jean Gebser
2 Jayadeva
2 Jacopone da Todi
2 Italo Calvino
2 Han-shan
2 Genpo Roshi
2 Fukuda Chiyo-ni
2 Dante Alighieri
2 Bulleh Shah
2 Boethius
238 Wordsworth - Poems
151 Whitman - Poems
141 Yeats - Poems
141 Shelley - Poems
134 The Synthesis Of Yoga
129 Record of Yoga
118 Agenda Vol 13
104 Lovecraft - Poems
101 Agenda Vol 01
93 Keats - Poems
91 Agenda Vol 12
89 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
87 Agenda Vol 10
82 Agenda Vol 08
80 Browning - Poems
80 Agenda Vol 03
77 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
77 Agenda Vol 11
76 Schiller - Poems
76 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
76 Agenda Vol 07
75 Tagore - Poems
73 Agenda Vol 04
72 Agenda Vol 09
69 Agenda Vol 06
68 The Golden Bough
68 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
68 Agenda Vol 02
66 Agenda Vol 05
64 Thus Spoke Zarathustra
64 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
63 Magick Without Tears
61 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
60 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
55 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
55 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
54 The Life Divine
54 Quran
54 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
50 Emerson - Poems
50 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
49 Savitri
47 Questions And Answers 1956
45 Letters On Yoga IV
41 Letters On Yoga II
41 Goethe - Poems
40 Liber ABA
38 Collected Poems
37 Mysterium Coniunctionis
36 The Study and Practice of Yoga
36 Questions And Answers 1953
36 Li Bai - Poems
35 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08
34 Questions And Answers 1954
33 The Divine Comedy
32 Rilke - Poems
32 Questions And Answers 1955
32 Poe - Poems
30 Of The Nature Of Things
30 Essays On The Gita
29 Prayers And Meditations
28 Words Of Long Ago
28 Questions And Answers 1929-1931
28 Letters On Yoga III
27 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 06
26 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
25 The Bible
25 Faust
24 The Perennial Philosophy
24 The Human Cycle
23 The Practice of Psycho therapy
22 The Ladder of Divine Ascent
22 Letters On Yoga I
22 City of God
21 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 01
20 The Future of Man
20 On Education
20 Labyrinths
20 Initiation Into Hermetics
20 Essays Divine And Human
19 Vishnu Purana
18 The Way of Perfection
18 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
17 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04
17 On the Way to Supermanhood
17 General Principles of Kabbalah
17 Anonymous - Poems
16 Poetics
16 Letters On Poetry And Art
15 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
15 Crowley - Poems
14 Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo
14 The Secret Of The Veda
14 The Phenomenon of Man
14 The Mother With Letters On The Mother
14 Metamorphoses
14 Hafiz - Poems
14 Aion
13 The Confessions of Saint Augustine
13 Some Answers From The Mother
13 Let Me Explain
13 Isha Upanishad
12 Talks
12 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 03
12 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 02
12 Hymn of the Universe
12 Borges - Poems
11 Vedic and Philological Studies
11 The Practice of Magical Evocation
11 Preparing for the Miraculous
10 Theosophy
10 The Interior Castle or The Mansions
10 Rumi - Poems
10 Knowledge of the Higher Worlds
10 Dark Night of the Soul
10 Alice in Wonderland
10 A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah
9 Twilight of the Idols
9 The Hero with a Thousand Faces
9 Raja-Yoga
9 Kena and Other Upanishads
9 Bhakti-Yoga
9 Arabi - Poems
9 5.1.01 - Ilion
8 The Integral Yoga
8 The Blue Cliff Records
8 Songs of Kabir
8 Hymns to the Mystic Fire
8 Cybernetics
7 Words Of The Mother II
7 Walden
7 Song of Myself
7 Maps of Meaning
6 Writings In Bengali and Sanskrit
6 The Secret Doctrine
6 The Red Book Liber Novus
6 The Problems of Philosophy
6 The Alchemy of Happiness
6 Tara - The Feminine Divine
6 How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator
6 A Treatise on Cosmic Fire
5 Words Of The Mother III
5 Words Of The Mother I
5 Ryokan - Poems
4 The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
4 Patanjali Yoga Sutras
4 Milarepa - Poems
4 Liber Null
4 Beating the Cloth Drum Letters of Zen Master Hakuin
3 The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep
3 The Lotus Sutra
3 The Book of Certitude
3 Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking
3 Sex Ecology Spirituality
3 Dogen - Poems
3 Basho - Poems
2 The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma
2 The Ever-Present Origin
2 The Essentials of Education
2 The Castle of Crossed Destinies
2 Symposium
2 Selected Fictions
2 Han-shan - Poems
2 God Exists
2 Amrita Gita
2 Agenda Vol 1
2 Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2E
00.00 - Publishers Note A, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The present volume consists of the first seven parts of the book The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo which has run into twelve parts, as it stands now; of these twelve, parts five to nine are based upon talks of the Mot her (given by her to the children of the Ashram). In this volume the later parts of the Talks (8 and 9) could not be included: they are to wait for a subsequent volume. The talks, originally in French, were spread over a number of years, ending in about 1960. We are pleased to note that the Government of India have given us a grant to meet the cost of publication of this volume.
13 January 1972
00.00 - Publishers Note B, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The present volume consists of five parts of the book Yoga of Sri Aurobindo which has now run into twelve parts. Of these five parts, eight and nine are based on talks of the Mot her given by her, in French, to the children of the Ashram.
We are pleased to note that the Government of India have given us a grant to meet the cost of publication of this volume.
00.00 - Publishers Note, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Mot her has graciously permitted the use of her sketch of the author as a frontispiece to the book.
13 January 1971
0 0.01 - Introduction, #Agenda Vol 1, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
- 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 w here is my law? What is the law? And what if t here 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 slit hering 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 ot herwise, it felt ot herwise. 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.
--
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. Mot her 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.
--
her step by step, as one discovers a forest, or rat her as one fights with it, machete in hand - and then it melts, one loves, so sublime does it become. Mot her grew beneath our skin like an adventure of life and death. For seven years we fought with her. It was fascinating, detestable, powerful and sweet; we felt like screaming and biting, fleeing and always coming back: 'Ah! You won't catch me! If you think I came here to worship you, you're wrong!' And She laughed. She always laughed.
We had our bellyful of adventure at last: if you go astray in the forest, you get delightfully lost yet still with the same old skin on your back, w hereas here, t here is nothing left to get lost in! It is no longer just a matter of getting lost - you have to CHANGE your skin. Or die. Yes, change species.
Or become one more nauseating little worshipper - which was not on our program. 'We are the enemy of our own conception of the Divine,' She told us one day with her mischievous little smile.
The whole time - or for seven years, in any event - we fought with our conception of God and the
'spiritual life': it was all so comfortable, for we had a supreme 'symbol' of it right t here. She let us do as we pleased, She even opened up all kinds of little heavens in us, along with a few hells, since they go toget her. She even opened the door in us to a certain 'liberation,' which in the end was as soporific as eternity - but t here was now here to get out: it WAS eternity. We were trapped on all sides. T here was nothing left but these 4m2 of skin, the last refuge, that which we wanted to flee by way of above or below, by way of Guiana or the Himalayas. She was waiting for us just t here, at the end of our spiritual or not so spiritual pirouettes. Matter was her concern. It took us seven years to understand that She was beginning t here, 'w here the ot her yogas leave off,' as Sri Aurobindo had already said twenty-five years earlier. It was necessary to have covered all the paths of the Spirit and all those of Matter, or in any case a large number geographically, before discovering, or even simply understanding, that 'something else' was really Something Else. It was not an improved
Spirit nor even an improved Matter, but ... it could be called 'nothing,' so contrary was it to all we know. For the caterpillar, a butterfly is nothing, it is not even visible and has nothing in common with caterpillar heavens nor even caterpillar matter. So t here we were, trapped in an impossible adventure. One does not return from t here: one must cross the bridge to the ot her side. Then one day in that seventh year, while we still believed in liberations and the collected Upanishads, highlighted with a few glorious visions to relieve the commonplace (which remained appallingly commonplace), while we were still considering 'the Mot her of the Ashram' rat her like some spiritual super-director (endowed, albeit, with a disarming yet ever so provocative smile, as though
She were making fun of us, then loving us in secret), She told us, 'I have the feeling that ALL we have lived, ALL we have known, ALL we have done is a perfect illusion ... When I had the spiritual experience that material life is an illusion, personally I found that so marvelously beautiful and happy that it was one of the most beautiful experiences of my life, but now it is the entire spiritual structure as we have lived it that is becoming an illusion! - Not the same illusion, but an illusion far worse. And I am no baby: I have been here for forty-seven years now!' Yes, She was eighty-three years old then. And that day, we ceased being 'the enemy of our own conception of the Divine,' for this entire Divine was shattered to pieces - and we met Mot her, at last. This mystery we call
Mot her, for She never ceased being a mystery right to her ninety-fifth year, and to this day still, challenges us from the ot her side of a wall of invisibility and keeps us floundering fully in the mystery - with a smile. She always smiles. But the mystery is not solved.
Perhaps this AGENDA is really an endeavor to solve the mystery in the company of a certain
--
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, w here 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 ot her thing. It was incomprehensible and yet filled with anot her comprehension. It eluded us on all sides, and yet it was dazzlingly obvious. The 'ot her species' was really radically ot her, 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 anot her, in Thebes as in Eleusis as everyw here 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 bot her 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 - whet her illusory little heavens or barbarous little machines.
00.01 - The Approach to Mysticism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Mysticism is not only a science but also, and in a greater degree, an art. To approach it merely as a science, as the modern mind attempts to do, is to move towards futility, if not to land in positive disaster. Sufficient stress is not laid on this aspect of the matter, although the very crux of the situation lies here. The mystic domain has to be apprehended not merely by the true mind and understanding but by the right temperament and character. Mysticism is not merely an object of knowledge, a problem for inquiry and solution, it is an end, an ideal that has to be achieved, a life that has to be lived. The mystics themselves have declared long ago with no uncertain or faltering voice: this cannot be attained by intelligence or much learning, it can be seized only by a purified and clear temperament.
The warning seems to have fallen, in the modern age, on unheeding ears. For the modern mind, being pre-eminently and uncompromisingly scientific, can entertain no doubt as to the perfect competency of science and the scientific method to seize and unveil any secret of Nature. If, it is argued, mysticism is a secret, if t here is at all a truth and reality in it, then it is and must be amenable to the rules and regulations of science; for science is the revealer of Nature's secrecies.
--
Furt hermore, being so, the mystic domain is of infinitely greater potency than the domain of intra-atomic forces. If one comes, all on a sudden, into contact with a force here without the necessary preparation to hold and handle it, he may get seriously bruised, morally and physically. The adventure into the mystic domain has its own toll of casualtiesone can lose the mind, one can lose one's body even and it is a very common experience among those who have tried the path. It is not in vain and merely as a poetic metaphor that the ancient seers have said
Kurasya dhr niit duratyay1
--
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 t here 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 t here 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 true knowledge comes of, and means, identity of being. All ot her knowledge may be an apprehension of things but not comprehension. In the former, the knower stands apart from the object and so can envisage only the outskirts, the contour, the surface nature; the mind is capable of this alone. But comprehension means an embracing and penetration which is possible when the knower identifies himself with the object. And when we are so identified we not merely know the object, but becoming it in our consciousness, we love it and live it.
00.01 - The Mother on Savitri, #Sweet Mother - Harmonies of Light, #unset, #Zen
On the 18th January 1960; when a young sadhak met the Mot her for a personal interview, She said to him: "I shall give you something special; be prepared." The next day, when he again met her, She spoke in French first about how to kindle the psychic Flame and then in this connection started speaking about Sri Aurobindo`s great epic Savitri and continued to speak at length.
The sadhak, after returning from the Mot her, wanted to note down immediately what She had said, but he could not do so because he felt a great hesitation due to his sense of incapacity to transcribe exactly the Mot her`s own words.
After nearly seven years, however, he felt a strong urge to note down what the Mot her had spoken; so in 1967 he wrote down from memory a report in French. The report was seen by the Mot her and a few corrections were made by her. To anot her sadhak who asked her permission to read this report She wrote: "Years ago I have spoken at length about it [Savitri] to Mona Sarkar and he has noted in French what I said. Some time back I have seen what he has written and found it correct on the whole."(4.12.1967)
On a few ot her occasion also, the Mot her 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 t here were many requests for its English version. A translation was t herefore made in November 1967. A proposal was made to the Mot her in 1972 for its publication and it was submitted to her for approval. The Mot her wanted to check the translation before permitting its publication but could check only a portion of it.
Do you read Savitri?
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Savitri alone is sufficient to make you climb to the highest peaks. If truly one knows how to meditate on Savitri, one will receive all the help one needs. For him who wishes to follow this path, it is a concrete help as though the Lord himself were taking you by the hand and leading you to the destined goal. And then, every question, however personal it may be, has its answer here, every difficulty finds its solution herein; indeed t here is everything that is necessary for doing the Yoga.
*He has crammed the whole universe in a single book.* It is a marvellous work, magnificent and of an incomparable perfection.
You know, before writing Savitri Sri Aurobindo said to me, *I am impelled to launch on a new adventure; I was hesitant in the beginning, but now I am decided. Still, I do not know how far I shall succeed. I pray for help.* And you know what it was? It was - before beginning, I warn you in advance - it was His way of speaking, so full of divine humility and modesty. He never... *asserted Himself*. And the day He actually began it, He told me: *I have launched myself in a rudderless boat upon the vastness of the Infinite.* And once having started, He wrote page after page without intermission, as though it were a thing already complete up t here and He had only to transcribe it in ink down here on these pages.
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 t here, 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 anyw here 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 t here 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 t here, 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 t here all that is needed to realise the Divine. Each step of Yoga is noted here, including the secret of all ot her 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 t here 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 t here: 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 t here. You can find all the answers to all your questions t here. 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 t here 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 altoget her 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 toget her. 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 rat her into the Supermind.
00.02 - Mystic Symbolism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
We can make a distinction here between two types of expression which we have put toget her 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 ot her 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 anot her 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 t here.
0 0.02 - Topographical Note, #Agenda Vol 1, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
From the time of Sri Aurobindo's departure (1950) until 1957, we have only a few notes and fragments or rare statements noted from memory. These are the only landmarks of this period, along with Mot her's Questions and Answers from her talks at the Ashram Playground. A few of these conversations have been reproduced here insofar as they mark stages of the Supramental
Action.
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French disciples, on the second floor of the main Ashram building, on some pretext of work or ot her. She listened to our queries, spoke to us at length of yoga, occultism, her past experiences in
Algeria and in France or of her current experiences; and gradually, She opened the mind of the rebellious and materialistic Westerner that we were and made us understand the laws of the worlds, the play of forces, the working of past lives - especially this latter, which was an important factor in the difficulties with which we were struggling at that time and which periodically made us abscond.
Mot her would be seated in this rat her medieval-looking chair with its high, carved back, her feet on a little tabouret, while we sat on the floor, on a slightly faded carpet, conquered and seduced, revolted and never satisfied - but nevertheless, very interested. Treasures, never noted down, were lost until, with the cunning of the Sioux, we succeeded in making Mot her consent to the presence of a tape recorder. But even then, and for a long time t hereafter, She carefully made us erase or delete in our notes all that concerned her rat her too personally - sometimes we disobeyed her.
But finally we were able to convince her of the value in herent in keeping a chronicle of the route.
It was only in 1958 that we began having the first tape-recorded conversations, which, properly speaking, constitute Mot her'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 - neit her Mot her, nor ourself - knew that this was 'the Agenda' and that we were out to explore the 'Great Passage.'
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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 Mot her'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. Mot her 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 Mot her. 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 Mot her - of the Ashram, of Auroville, of
Sri Aurobindo, of everything - and that the new world was going to be denatured into a new
Church. T here and then, they made us understand why She had pulled us from our forest, one day, and chosen as her confidant an incurable rebel.
00.03 - Upanishadic Symbolism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
T here was an aspirant, a student who was seeking after knowledge. One day t here appeared to him a white dog. Soon, ot her dogs followed and addressed their predecessor: "O Lord, sing to our Food, for we desire to eat." The white dog answered, "Come to me at dawn here in this very place." The aspirant waited. The dogs, like singer-priests, circled round in a ring. Then they sat and cried aloud; they cried out," Om We eat and Om we drink, may the gods bring here our food."
Now, before any explanation is attempted it is important to bear in mind that the Upanishads speak of things experiencednot merely thought, reasoned or argued and that these experiences belong to a world and consciousness ot her than that of the mind and the senses. One should naturally expect here a different language and mode of expression than that which is appropriate to mental and physical things. For example, the world of dreams was once supposed to be a sheer chaos, a mass of meaningless confusion; but now it is held to be quite ot herwise. Psychological scientists have discovered a methodeven a very well-defined and strict methodin the madness of that domain. It is an ordered, organised, significant world; but its terminology has to be understood, its code decip hered. It is not a jargon, but a foreign language that must be learnt and mastered.
In the same way, the world of spiritual experiences is also something methodical, well-organized, significant. It may not be and is not the rational world of the mind and the sense; but it need not, for that reason, be devoid of meaning, mere fancifulness or a child's imagination running riot. here also the right key has to be found, the grammar and vocabulary of that language mastered. And as the best way to have complete mastery of a language is to live among the people who speak it, so, in the matter of spiritual language, the best and the only way to learn it is to go and live in its native country.
Now, as regards the interpretation of the story cited, should not a suspicion arise naturally at the very outset that the dog of the story is not a dog but represents something else? First, a significant epithet is given to itwhite; secondly, although it asks for food, it says that Om is its food and Om is its drink. In the Vedas we have some references to dogs. Yama has twin dogs that "guard the path and have powerful vision." They are his messengers, "they move widely and delight in power and possess the vast strength." The Vedic Rishis pray to them for Power and Bliss and for the vision of the Sun1. T here is also the Hound of Heaven, Sarama, who comes down and discovers the luminous cows stolen and hidden by the Panis in their dark caves; she is the path-finder for Indra, the deliverer.
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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 fart her 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 hig herreach 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 ot her lights trouble or distract our attention, t here 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
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Finally, once the Truth is reached, it is to be held fast, firmly established, embodied and fixed in its in herent 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.
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The Gods are the formations or particularisations of the Truth-consciousness, the multiple individualisations of the One spirit. The Pitris are the Divine Fat hers, that is to say, souls that once laboured and realised here below, and now have passed beyond. They dwell in anot her world, not too far removed from the earth, and from t here, 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 T here (antarika), and serve to bring men and gods nearer to each ot her, 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 t hers, whose formative powers we have to invoke, so that we may pass on to the realisation, the firm embodiment of hig her and greater destinies.
III. The Path of the Fat hers and the Path of the Gods
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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 ot her 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.
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Air is Mind, the world of thought, of conscious formation; it is w here life-movements are taken up and given a shape or articulate formula for an organised expression. The forms here have not, however, the concrete rigidity of Matter, but are pliant and variable and fluidin fact, they are more in the nature of possibilities, rat her than actualities. The Vedic Maruts are thought-gods, and lndra (the Luminous Mind), their king, is called the Fashioner of perfect forms.
Et her or Space is the infinitude of the Spirit, the limitless Presence that dwells in and yet transcends the body, the life the heart and the mind.
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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 Fat her or Male, who elaborates in himself the generating fluid.
Finally, this fluid is offered to the fifth Agni, the Mot her or the Female, who delivers the Child.
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Apart from the question whet her the biological phenomenon described is really a symbol and a cloak for anot her 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 t here is wonderful or particularly spiritual in this rat her 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 ot her eyes and through anot her 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 ot herwise, 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 t here 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
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Some Western and Westernised scholars have tried to show that the phenomenon described here is an exclusively natural phenomenon, actually visible in the polar region w here the sun never sets for six months and moves in a circle whose plane is parallel to the plane of the horizon on the summer solstice and is gradually inclined as the sun regresses towards the equinox (on which day just half the solar disc is visible above the horizon). The sun may be said t here to move in the direction East-South-West-North and again East. Indeed the Upanishad mentions the positions of the sun in that order and gives a character to each successive station. The Ray from the East is red, symbolising the Rik, the Sout hern Ray is white, symbolising the Yajur, the Western Ray is black symbolising the Atharva. The natural phenomenon, however, might have been or might not have been before the mind's eye of the Rishi, but the symbolism, the esotericism of it is clear enough in the way the Rishi speaks of it. Also, apart from the first four movements (which it is already sufficiently difficult to identify completely with what is visible), the fifth movement, as a separate descending movement from above appears to be a foreign element in the context. And although, with regard to the sixth movement or status, the sun is visible as such exactly from the point of the North Pole for a while, the ring of the Rishi's utterance is unmistakably spiritual, it cannot but refer to a fact of inner consciousness that is at least what the physical fact conveys to the Rishi and what he seeks to convey and express primarily.
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 w here all movements cease, w here t here is no rising and setting, no ebb and flow, no waxing and waning, w here t here 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 elsew here 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 ot her 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.
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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 sp heric 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 ot her 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 rat her synthesis, t here 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 t here 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.
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The three boons asked for by Nachiketas from Yama, Lord of Death, and granted to him have been interpreted in different ways. here is one more attempt in the direction.
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.
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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 t here 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 t here outside creation, outside manifestation, outside Maya, to use a latter day term? Is t here 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, t here 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 ot her path leads towards the inner and the hig her 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.
00.04 - The Beautiful in the Upanishads, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The white Mot her comes reddening with the ruddy child; the dark Mot her opens wide her chambers, the feeling and the expression of the beautiful raise no questioning; they are au thentic as well as evident. All will recognise at once t at we have here beautiful things said in a beautiful way. No less au thentic however is the sense of the beautiful that underlies these Upanishadic lines:
na tatra sryo bhti na candratrakam
--
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; rat her 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-gat hered luminous energy than, for example:
yat prena na praiti yena pra
00.05 - A Vedic Conception of the Poet, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
On this Earth they hold everyw here in themselves all the secrets. They make Earth and Heaven move toget her, so that they may realise their heroic strength. They measure them with their rhythmic measurings, they hold in their controlled grasp the vast and great twins, and unite them and establish between them the mid-world of Delight for the perfect poise.30
All the gods are poetstheir forms are perfect, surpa, suda, their Names full of beauty,cru devasya nma.31 This means also that the gods embody the different powers that constitute the poetic consciousness. Agni is the Seer-Will, the creative vision of the Poet the luminous energy born of an experience by identity with the Truth. Indra is the Idea-Form, the architectonic conception of the work or achievement. Mitra and Varuna are the large harmony, the vast cadence and sweep of movement. The Aswins, the Divine Riders, represent the intense zest of well-yoked Life-Energy. Soma is Rasa, Ananda, the Supreme Bliss and Delight.
0.00a - Introduction, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
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. Neit her has much intrinsic usefulness w here 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 hig her 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.
--
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 rat her 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.
--
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) T herefore 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 furt her states that were a brot herhood of man to be formed today, "its only possible common bond would be ignorance of what man is."
--
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.
000 - Humans in Universe, #Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, #R Buckminster Fuller, #Science
Queen Elizabeth and a small group of her intimates. The limited legal liability of
their enterprise was granted by royal decree, and its projects were t hereafter
0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
About his parents Sri Ramakrishna once said: "My mot her 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 fat her, 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."
Khudiram Chattopadhyaya and Chandra Devi, the parents of Sri Ramakrishna, were married in 1799. At that time Khudiram was living in his ancestral village of Dereypore, not far from Kamarpukur. Their first son, Ramkumar, was born in 1805, and their first daughter, Katyayani, in 1810. In 1814 Khudiram was ordered by his landlord to bear false witness in court against a neighbour. When he refused to do so, the landlord brought a false case against him and deprived him of his ancestral property. Thus dispossessed, he arrived, at the invitation of anot her landlord, in the quiet village of Kamarpukur, w here he was given a dwelling and about an acre of fertile land. The crops from this little property were enough to meet his family's simple needs. here he lived in simplicity, dignity, and contentment.
Ten years after his coming to Kamarpukur, Khudiram made a pilgrimage on foot to Rameswar, at the sout hern extremity of India. Two years later was born his second son, whom he named Rameswar. Again in 1835, at the age of sixty, he made a pilgrimage, this time to Gaya. here, from ancient times, Hindus have come from the four corners of India to discharge their duties to their departed ancestors by offering them food and drink at the sacred footprint of the Lord Vishnu. At this holy place Khudiram had a dream in which the Lord Vishnu promised to he born as his son. And Chandra Devi, too, in front of the Siva temple at Kamarpukur, had a vision indicating the birth of a divine child. Upon his return the husband found that she had conceived.
It was on February 18, 1836, that the child, to be known afterwards as Ramakrishna, was born. In memory of the dream at Gaya he was given the name of Gadadhar, the "Bearer of the Mace", an epithet of Vishnu. Three years later a little sister was born.
--
Gadadhar was seven years old when his fat her died. This incident profoundly affected him. For the first time the boy realized that life on earth was impermanent. Unobserved by ot hers, 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 mot her 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 fat her 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.
--
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 ot her 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; t herefore 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 ot her 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: "Brot her, what shall I do with a mere bread-winning education?"
--
At that time t here 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 Mot her, Kali.
The temple garden stands directly on the east bank of the Ganges. The nort hern section of the land and a portion to the east contain an orchard, flower gardens, and two small reservoirs. The sout hern 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 eit her 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 Mot her, here worshipped as Bhavatarini, the Saviour of the Universe. The floor of this temple also is paved with marble. The basalt image of the Mot her, 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 ot her 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 ot her allays their fear. The majesty of her posture can hardly be described. It combines the terror of destruction with the reassurance of mot herly 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 Mot her (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 toget her, creating the greatest synthesis of religions. All aspects of Reality are represented t here. 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 Mot her, "my Mot her" 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 anot her fortune for its dedication ceremony, which took place on May 31, 1855.
--
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 Mot her 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.
--
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 Mot her. 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 ot her 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 Mot her 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. T here 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 t herefore superior to all. When calling on the Mot her one has to set aside all such ideas." Hriday thought his uncle was becoming insane.
--
But he did not have to wait very long. He has thus described his first vision of the Mot her: "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 Mot her's temple. I determined to put an end to my life. When I jumped up like a madman and seized it, suddenly the blessed Mot her 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 t here was a steady flow of undiluted bliss, altoget her new, and I felt the presence of the Divine Mot her." On his lips when he regained consciousness of the world was the word "Mot her".
--
Yet this was only a foretaste of the intense experiences to come. The first glimpse of the Divine Mot her made him the more eager for her uninterrupted vision. He wanted to see her both in meditation and with eyes open. But the Mot her 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 ot her, 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 Mot her 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 Mot her, 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 Mot her 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-wis hers 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 Mot her herself. To her he would pray: "I do not know what these things are. I am ignorant of mantras and the scriptures. Teach me, Mot her, how to realize Thee. Who else can help me? Art Thou not my only refuge and guide?" And the sustaining presence of the Mot her 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 nort hern wooded section of the temple garden. With Hriday's help he planted t here 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 Mot her. He learnt to surrender himself completely to her will and let her direct him.
"O Mot her," he would constantly pray, "I have taken refuge in Thee. Teach me what to do and what to say. Thy will is paramount everyw here and is for the good of Thy children. Merge my will in Thy will and make me Thy instrument."
His visions became deeper and more intimate. He no longer had to meditate to behold the Divine Mot her. Even while retaining consciousness of the outer world, he would see her as tangibly as the temples, the trees, the river, and the men around him.
On a certain occasion Mathur Babu stealthily entered the temple to watch the worship. He was profoundly moved by the young priest's devotion and sincerity. He realized that Sri Ramakrishna had transformed the stone image into the living Goddess.
--
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 Mot her 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 Mot her of the Universe and went into samadhi uttering her name.
--- HALADHARI
--
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 mot her 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
But in a few months his health showed improvement, and he recovered to some extent his natural buoyancy of spirit. His happy mot her was encouraged to think it might be a good time to arrange his marriage. The boy was now twenty-three years old. A wife would bring him back to earth. And she was delighted when her son welcomed her suggestion. Perhaps he saw in it the finger of God.
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, t here 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.
--
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 Mot her. Whenever a desire arose in his mind, Mathur fulfilled it without hesitation.
--- THE BRAHMANI
T here 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 mot her. 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 ot hers. 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. W hereupon 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 mot her, 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
t here, 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."
--
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 Mot her of the Universe. The very basis of Tantra is the Mot herhood 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. Furt her, 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 t herefore is the Divine Mot her. 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 Mot her.
Sri Ramakrishna set himself to the task of practising the disciplines of Tantra; and at the bidding of the Divine Mot her herself he accepted the Brahmani as his guru. He performed profound and delicate ceremonies in the Panchavati and under the bel-tree at the nort hern 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, w here 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 everyw here manifest the power and beauty of the Mot her; 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 mot her, 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 furt her 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.
--
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.
--
About the year 1864 t here came to Dakshineswar a wandering Vaishnava monk, Jatadhari, whose Ideal Deity was Rama. He always carried with him a small metal image of the Deity, which he called by the endearing name of Ramlala, the Boy Rama. Toward this little image he displayed the tender affection of Kausalya for her divine Son, Rama. As a result of lifelong spiritual practice he had actually found in the metal image the presence of his Ideal. Ramlala was no longer for him a metal image, but the living God. He devoted himself to nursing Rama, feeding Rama, playing with Rama, taking Rama for a walk, and bathing Rama. And he found that the image responded to his love.
Sri Ramakrishna, much impressed with his devotion, requested Jatadhari to spend a few days at Dakshineswar. Soon Ramlala became the favourite companion of Sri Ramakrishna too. Later on he described to the devotees how the little image would dance gracefully before him, jump on his back, insist on being taken in his arms, run to the fields in the sun, pluck flowers from the bushes, and play pranks like a naughty boy. A very sweet relationship sprang up between him and Ramlala, for whom he felt the love of a mot her.
--
While worshipping Ramlala as the Divine Child, Sri Ramakrishna's heart became filled with mot herly 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 Mot her 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.
He said later on: "It is impossible to describe the heavenly beauty and sweetness of Radha. her very appearance showed that she had completely forgotten herself in her passionate attachment to Krishna. her complexion was a light yellow."
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] t here 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 teac her 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 Mot her 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 teac her 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 t here 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
--
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 teac her and the disciple repaired to the meditation room near by. Totapuri began to impart to Sri Ramakrishna the great truths of Vedanta.
--
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 Mot her 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 altoget her 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 Mot her, 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 Mot her 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 ot her 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, everyw here 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 ot her than Kali, the Divine Mot her. 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 Mot her 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 altoget her 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 Mot her. 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 hig her force of creation: the spiritual virtues, the enlightening qualities, kindness, purity, love, devotion. Vidyamaya elevates man to the hig her 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.
--
From Sri Ramakrishna Totapuri had to learn the significance of Kali, the Great Fact of the relative world, and of maya, her indescribable Power.
One day, when guru and disciple were engaged in an animated discussion about Vedanta, a servant of the temple garden came t here 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. T hereupon he walked into the river. But, lo! He walks to the ot her 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 t here not enough water in the Ganges? Standing dumbfounded on the ot her 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 Mot her. 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 Mot her. In the morning he went to the Kali temple with Sri Ramakrishna and prostrated himself before the image of the Mot her. He now realized why he had spent eleven months at Dakshineswar. Bidding farewell to the disciple, he continued on his way, enlightened.
--
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 pitc her full of bliss were placed in my heart. The joy was indescribable."
--- PILGRIMAGE
--
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 fat her'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.
--
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 fat her, 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 ad here 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 toget her 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 Mot her. 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 ad hering 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 toget her as spiritual companions. Thus his life is a synthesis of the ways of life of the householder and the monk.
--
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. T here 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."
--- SUMMARY OF THE MASTER'S SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCES
--
In March 1875, about a year before the death of his mot her, 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.
--- BRAHMO SAMAJ
--
Shivanath vehemently criticized the Master for his ot her-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.' Anot her 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; ot herwise 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 preac her 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 t here 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 Mot herhood, helped to unfold it [God as our Mot her] 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."
--
Contact with the Brahmos increased Sri Ramakrishna's longing to encounter aspirants who would be able to follow his teachings in their purest form. "T here 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 anot her, and so on. But when the day would come to a close I would not be able to curb my feelings. The thought that anot her 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, w here are you? I cannot bear to live without you.' A mot her 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 ot hers, 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, philosop hers 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
--
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 ot her educated young men of the time, he prided himself on his atheism and led a Bohemian life. He was addicted to drinking. He c herished 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 Mot her 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 Mot her 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, t here is a possibility of my forgetting the ideal and becoming entangled in the world."
--- BHAVANATH
--
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 fat her'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 Mot her 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 w here 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
--
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 ot her 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. T herefore 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.
--
Sri Ramakrishna was grateful to the Divine Mot her 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 Mot her 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 Mot her. Then he said to Narendra: "You rogue, I won't listen to you any more. Mot her 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 t here 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 whet her 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.
--
One day, soon after, Narendra requested Sri Ramakrishna to pray to the Divine Mot her to remove his poverty. Sri Ramakrishna bade him pray to her himself, for She would certainly listen to his prayer. Narendra entered the shrine of Kali. As he stood before the image of the Mot her, he beheld her as a living Goddess, ready to give wisdom and liberation. Unable to ask her for petty worldly things, he prayed only for knowledge and renunciation, love and liberation. The Master rebuked him for his failure to ask the Divine Mot her to remove his poverty and sent him back to the temple. But Narendra, standing in her presence, again forgot the purpose of his coming. Thrice he went to the temple at the bidding of the Master, and thrice he returned, having forgotten in her presence why he had come. He was wondering about it when it suddenly flashed in his mind that this was all the work of Sri Ramakrishna; so now he asked the Master himself to remove his poverty, and was assured that his family would not lack simple food and clothing.
This was a very rich and significant experience for Narendra. It taught him that Sakti, the Divine Power, cannot be ignored in the world and that in the relative plane the need of worshipping a Personal God is imperative. Sri Ramakrishna was overjoyed with the conversion. The next day, sitting almost on Narendra's lap, he said to a devotee, pointing first to himself, then to Narendra: "I see I am this, and again that. Really I feel no difference. A stick floating in the Ganges seems to divide the water; But in reality the water is one. Do you see my point? Well, whatever is, is the Mot her — isn't that so?" In later years Narendra would say: "Sri Ramakrishna was the only person who, from the time he met me, believed in me uniformly throughout. Even my mot her and brot hers did not. It was his unwavering trust and love for me that bound me to him for ever. He alone knew how to love. Worldly people, only make a show of love for selfish ends.
--
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 t here 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
--
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
--
Subodh visited the Master in 1885. At the very first meeting Sri Ramakrishna said to him: "You will succeed. Mot her says so. Those whom She sends here will certainly attain spirituality." During the second meeting the Master wrote something on Subodh's tongue, stroked his body from the navel to the throat, and said, "Awake, Mot her! Awake." He asked the boy to meditate. At once Subodh's latent spirituality was awakened. He felt a current rushing along the spinal column to the brain. Joy filled his soul.
--- SARADA AND TULASI
--
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 Mot her. 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, w hereupon 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 ot her delicacies. After some time he regained consciousness and returned to his bed. But the mind of Gopala's Mot her was still roaming in anot her 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, mot her, they are quite true." Behind his cynicism Narendra, too, possessed a heart full of love and tenderness.
--- THE MARCH OF EVENTS
--
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 neit her control his trances nor withhold from seekers the solace of his advice. Sometimes, like a sulky child, he would complain to the Mot her 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 Mot her — 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, w here 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.
At Syampukur the devotees led an intense life. Their attendance on the Master was in itself a form of spiritual discipline. His mind was constantly soaring to an exalted plane of consciousness. Now and then they would catch the contagion of his spiritual fervour. They sought to divine the meaning of this illness of the Master, whom most of them had accepted as an Incarnation of God. One group, headed by Girish with his robust optimism and great power of imagination, believed that the illness was a mere pretext to serve a deeper purpose. The Master had willed his illness in order to bring the devotees toget her and promote solidarity among them. As soon as this purpose was served, he would himself get rid of the disease. A second group thought that the Divine Mot her, in whose hand the Master was an instrument, had brought about this illness to serve her own mysterious ends. But the young rationalists, led by Narendra, refused to ascribe a
supernatural cause to a natural phenomenon. They believed that the Master's body, a material thing, was subject, like all ot her material things, to physical laws. Growth, development, decay, and death were laws of nature to which the Master's body could not but respond. But though holding differing views, they all believed that it was to him alone that they must look for the attainment of their spiritual goal.
--
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 Mot her, 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, ot her 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 brot her disciples to intensify their meditation, scriptural studies, and ot her spiritual disciplines. They all forgot their relatives and their
--
NARENDRA: "Then please pray to her. She must listen to you."
MASTER: "But I cannot pray for my body."
--
A few hours later the Master said to Narendra: "I said to her: 'Mot her, I cannot swallow food because of my pain. Make it possible for me to eat a little.' She pointed you all out to me and said: 'What? You are eating enough through all these mouths. Isn't that so?' I was ashamed and could not utter anot her word." This dashed all the hopes of the devotees for the Master's recovery.
"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.
--
The words were tender and touching. Like a mot her 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 Mot her has ordained ot herwise. 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 ot her 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 t here is a body. The Lord takes on the body for the sake of His devotees."
Yet one is not sure whet her 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 t here 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 t here 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. T here is one indivisible Absolute Existence.'"
The Holy Mot her 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.
One day when Narendra was on the ground floor, meditating, the Master was lying awake in his bed upstairs. In the depths of his meditation Narendra felt as though a lamp were burning at the back of his head. Suddenly he lost consciousness. It was the yearned-for, all-effacing experience of nirvikalpa samadhi, when the embodied soul realizes its unity with the Absolute. After a very long time he regained partial consciousness but was unable to find his body. He could see only his head. "W here is my body?" he cried. The elder Gopal entered the room and said, "Why, it is here, Naren!" But Narendra could not find it. Gopal, frightened, ran upstairs to the Master. Sri Ramakrishna only said: "Let him stay that way for a time. He has worried me long enough."
After anot her long period Narendra regained full consciousness. Bathed in peace, he went to the Master, who said: "Now the Mot her has shown you everything. But this revelation will remain under lock and key, and I shall keep the key. When you have accomplished the Mot her's work you will find the treasure again."
--
The Holy Mot her was weeping in her room, not for her husband, but because she felt that Mot her Kali had left her. As she was about to put on the marks of a Hindu widow, in a moment of revelation she heard the words of faith, "I have only passed from one room to anot her."
0.00 - Publishers Note C, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
His original writings in French have also been included here. We are grateful to the Government of India for a grant towards meeting the cost of publication of this volume.
31 March 1974
0.00 - The Book of Lies Text, #The Book of Lies, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
here is the Bread.
here is the Blood.
Bring us through Temptation!
--
Be thou the Bride; thou shalt be the Mot her here-
after.
--
compare the account of Christ before herod/Pilate in
the gospels, and of Dionysus before Pentheus in
--
The hermit, which represents him as cloaked.
Jod is the concealed Phallus as opposed to Tau, the
--
All is here and Now. Nor is t here any t here or Then;
for all that is, what is it but a manifestation, that is,
--
Triad is here insisted upon.
Pan is a generic name, including this whole system
--
Heaven which draweth me into her Womb, this
Dome which hideth, which absorbeth, Me.
--
is here identified with the will. The Greek word
{Pi-upsilon-rho-alpha-mu-iota-sigma}
--
Samson, the Hebrew hercules, is said in the legend
to have pulled down the walls of a music-hall w here he
--
..........May be: I write it but to write her name.
[66]
--
reject all impressions, but here is an opposite practice,
very much more difficult, in which all are accepted.
--
here is the Bread; here is the Blood.
Bring me through midnight to the Sun!
--
Even now and here be mine. AMEN.
He puts the first Cake on the Fire of the Thurible.
--
and found her a virgin in the morning.
[100]
--
her bed.
Seven eunuchs guard her with drawn swords; No
Man may come nigh unto her.
In her wine-cup are seven streams of the blood of
the Seven Spirits of God.
--
Seven letters hath her holiest name; and it is
A B
--
here is Wisdom. Let Him that hath Understanding
count the Number of Our Lady; for it is the
Number of a Woman; and her Number is
An Hundred and Fifty and Six.
--
her number is An Hundred and Eleven.
Yet with all this went The Work awry; for THE
--
here: I seek distraction t here: but this is all my
truth, that I who love have lost; and how may I
--
Isis in her Millions-of-Names, All-Mot her,
Genetrix-Meretrix!
--
and death; for her do I blaspheme alike the finite
and the The Infinite.
--
an Australian animal, like Laylah herself, and was
doubtless chosen for this reason.
--
Sold her bed to lie upon straw.
Was not she a silly slut
To sell her bed to lie upon dirt?"
The word "see-saw" is significant, almost a comment
--
GOD are not worth even her blemishes.
Al-lah is only sixty-six; but LAYLAH counteth
--
most of all of every herald of the Dawn!
O ye who dwell in the City of the Pyramids beneath
--
The hermit asked for love; worst bargain of all.
And now he has let his girl go to America, to have
--
Were I an hermit, how could I support
The pain of consciousness, the curse of thought?
--
this chapter, Laylah is herself not devoid of "Devil", but,
as she habitually remarks, on being addressed in terms
--
What! shall the Adept give up his hermit life, and
go eating and drinking and making merry?
--
{Alpha-Iota-Theta-Eta-Rho}. here is a new Pentagrammaton, presumably suitable
for anot her analysis of the elements; but after a different manner.
--
is nothing; but here is an hundred thousand
pounds.
0.00 - THE GOSPEL PREFACE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
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 eit her 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.
--
The life and teachings of Sri Ramakrishna have redirected the thoughts of the denationalized Hindus to the spiritual ideals of their forefa t hers. During the latter part of the nineteenth century his was the time-honoured role of the Saviour of the Eternal Religion of the Hindus. His teachings played an important part in liberalizing the minds of orthodox pundits and hermits. Even now he is the silent force that is moulding the spiritual destiny of India. His great disciple, Swami Vivekananda, was the first Hindu missionary to preach the message of Indian culture to the enlightened minds of Europe and America. The full consequence of Swami Vivekn and work is still in the womb of the future.
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!
--
T here 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," Mot her 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 Mot her keeps a Bhagavata Pandit with a bondage in the world!"
( Ibid P.36.)
--
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 elsew here. During the Master's lifetime he spent all his Sundays and ot her 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.
--
During the Master's lifetime M. does not seem to have revealed the contents of his diary to any one. T here 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 Mot her's blessings and permission. The Holy Mot her, 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 Teac her 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 Teac her and Lord was so original, and each one of us will have to be original or nothing.
--
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
--
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, w here the Holy Mot her had herself installed the Master and w here His regular worship was being conducted for the previous 40 years. The night of 3rd June being the Phalahrini Kli Pooja day, M.
had sent his devotees who used to keep company with him, to attend the special worship at Belur Math at night. After attending the service at the home shrine, he went through the proof of the Kathmrita for an hour. Suddenly he got a severe attack of neuralgic pain, from which he had been suffering now and then, of late. Before 6 a.m. in the early hours of 4th June 1932 he passed away, fully conscious and chanting: 'Gurudeva-Ma, Kole tule na-o (Take me in your arms! O Master! O Mot her!!)'
0.00 - The Wellspring of Reality, #Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, #R Buckminster Fuller, #Science
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 t here 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 t here are that the mind may discover, on the one hand, additional generalized principles or, on the ot her hand, exceptions that disqualify one or anot her 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, t here to be received only if the switches are "on." Specialization tends to shut off the wide-band tuning searches and thus to preclude furt her 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 anot her, 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 furt her warring with ot her 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 t here 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.
--
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.
--
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; w herefore, 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.
0.01f - FOREWARD, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
So please do not expect a final explanation of things here, nor
a metaphysical system. Neit her do I want any misunderstanding
--
attempting to put forward here arc, of course, largely tentative
and personal. Yet inasmuch as they are based on arduous investi-
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
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. Anot her 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 Pondic herry 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 ot hers 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 ot her-worldliness of his Yoga and the absence of any good by it to mankind.
0.01 - Letters from the Mother to Her Son, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
object:0.01 - Letters from the Mot her to her Son
author class:The Mot her
--
Letters from the Mot her to her Son
Our community is growing more and more; we are nearly thirty
--
Series One - To her Son
on, at your leisure, will enable you to understand those parts
--
as many people as she needs to carry out her plan. The earth
will surely never suffer from a dearth of men.
--
Series One - To her Son
It is no use lamenting, however, saying: W here are you
--
the realisation of an ideal. The life we lead here is as far from
ascetic abstinence as from an enervating comfort; simplicity is
the rule here, but a simplicity full of variety - a variety of occupations, of activities, of tastes, tendencies, natures; each one
is free to organise his life as he pleases, the discipline is reduced
--
have the time or the possibility to come here? Once you did let
me hope for a visit.
--
Even here, in this poor little nook, we have not escaped the
general malady. For three or four days the forces at work were
--
Series One - To her Son
was beginning to set in. I must say that under the circumstances
0.01 - Life and Yoga, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
In the right view both of life and of Yoga all life is eit her 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
Mot her 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 rat her as an intense and exceptional use of powers that she has already manifested or is progressively
Life and Yoga
organising in her less exalted but more general operations.
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 ot herwise be impossible and that seem miraculous to those who have not seized the rationale of their process. And if in some ot her 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
0.02 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
properly. Unless you are a hercules and a wrestler you have no
hope of closing them at all. They keep closed through goodwill, I
--
words to the letter. I started following her advice. I
didn't ask for anything, even on April 1st,10 and that is
--
The old servant X wants a job for her young son
(who is less than eight years old, I think). Can he be
--
Yes, here everyone thinks only of spending, spending, spending
as much as he can; no one thinks of saving and avoiding waste.
--
action of Saint Genevieve who, by the ardour of her prayers,
obtained the intervention of the Divine Grace. This prompted
--
I concentrate on Mot her, ask her to guide me and find
the solution. This is not unusual. It has happened several
--
surrounded by people who, though they are here to practise
yoga, are still convinced that "a cat is a cat", as we commonly
--
It is here that on your side a freedom of movement and speech
arising from an affectionate confidence must come in: if t here is
0.02 - The Three Steps of Nature, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But in order that we may be wisely guided in our effort, we must know, first, the general principle and purpose underlying this separative impulse and, next, the particular utilities upon which the method of each school of Yoga is founded. For the general principle we must interrogate the universal workings of Nature herself, recognising in her no merely specious and illusive activity of a distorting Maya, but the cosmic energy and working of God Himself in His universal being formulating and inspired by a vast, an infinite and yet a minutely selective
Wisdom, prajna prasr.ta puran. of the Upanishad, Wisdom that went forth from the Eternal since the beginning. For the particular utilities we must cast a penetrative eye on the different methods of Yoga and distinguish among the mass of their details the governing idea which they serve and the radical force which gives birth and energy to their processes of effectuation.
--
displayed, if not constantly, then occasionally or with some regularity of recurrence, in primary formations or in ot hers 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.
And these self-exceedings are the revelation of that in her which is most divine or else most diabolical, but in eit her case the most puissant to bring her rapidly forward towards her goal.
That which Nature has evolved for us and has firmly founded is the bodily life. She has effected a certain combination and harmony of the two inferior but most fundamentally necessary elements of our action and progress upon earth, -
Matter, which, however the too et hereally 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 t here 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 hig her 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, t herefore, no integral Yoga which ignores the body or makes its annulment or its rejection indispensable to a perfect spirituality. Rat her, 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 t here 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 t herefore no integral Yoga that kills these vital energies, forces them into a nerveless quiescence or roots them out as the source
--
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 w herever 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, w here 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, t herefore, 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
--
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 ot her 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 hig her 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; ot hers 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 t her 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 everyw here. 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. Eit her, 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 atmosp here 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.
--
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 hig her to the detriment of the lower existence.
But what then constitutes this hig her or highest existence to which our evolution is tending? In order to answer the question we have to deal with a class of supreme experiences, a class of unusual conceptions which it is difficult to represent accurately in any ot her language than the ancient Sanskrit tongue in which alone they have been to some extent systematised.
--
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.
--
We perceive, then, these three steps in Nature, a bodily life which is the basis of our existence here in the material world, a mental life into which we emerge and by which we raise the bodily to hig her uses and enlarge it into a greater completeness, and a divine existence which is at once the goal of the ot her two and returns upon them to liberate them into their highest possibilities. Regarding none of them as eit her beyond our reach or below our nature and the destruction of none of them as essential to the ultimate attainment, we accept this liberation and fulfilment as part at least and a large and important part of the aim of Yoga.
0.03 - Letters to My little smile, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
later became one of her personal attendants. She began writing
to the Mot her at the age of seventeen.
--
smile" and give her back the joy and peace I want her always to
have.
--
has passed her French test.
Affectionately.
--
and runs here and t here like a madman.
The mind always runs about like a madman. The first step is to
--
longer sees her at Pranam." Then I replied, "But he has
nothing to do with her and it is not good to talk about
these things to people because they cannot do anything
for her." "Yes," the doctor said, "I understand that he
asked me about that just out of curiosity and I will say
--
asks me to go away from here, I have no one to go to and
now here to stay; I will remain here even as a servant, but
it is impossible for me to live elsew here."
--
How can you dream of such a thing? You are at home here -
are you not my little daughter? - and you will always have a
--
won't tell Mot her this or that, but rat her say: I shall tell her
everything quite frankly.
--
should never have wished to come here. Mot her, I wish
You would not tell me that I am rebelling, I do not like
--
I am not angry because what you write here means nothing
- I pity you, that's all. Did I tell you that it would disappear
--
is necessary? Am I not here with You? Am I so far
away? Then why should I have to listen to the advice of
--
spent nearly two hours this evening making her understand how to write things very clearly. But in vain.
The trouble one takes like this for someone is never in vain. The
--
and her beautiful work!
15 August 1933
--
Poor little X has become very sad... Are you so serious with her?
27 November 1933
--
so I speak only about important things, with her as well
as with ot hers; that is to say, if she asks me something I
answer her and I show her the work to be done.
Mot her, I want Your presence and I try to keep it at
--
if you feel you can explain to her kindly what is happening in
you, it will be very good.
--
What you have written here is very beautiful and it is also very
true. The beautiful things are far stronger than the ugly ones
--
finer things than anyone else here", something like that.
And that is why when I saw something very beautiful
--
blow. Isn't that true? (Mot her, here I recall a sentence I
once heard Y telling someone: "Mot her knows how to
--
With my love and blessings that her aspiration may be
realised this year.
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 ot hers 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.
--
He can subordinate this aim, but only to physical Nature's ot her 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 in herited 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 hig her 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.
--
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, t here is a defect; for this often tends only to the creation of a religious temperament, the most outward form of spirituality.
Its hig her manifestations, even the most splendid and puissant, eit her 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 neit her the mental effort nor the spiritual impulse can suffice, divorced from each ot her, to overcome the immense resistance of material Nature.
--
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, whet her 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. T here it is hampered and inefficient, works by bungling experiments and has eit her 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 eit her 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 c herish.
1 Who dwells in Dream, the inly conscious, the enjoyer of abstractions, the Brilliant.
--
That highest thing, the spiritual existence, is concerned with what is eternal but not t herefore 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 in herent 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? T herefore the spiritual life tends easily in the saint and Sannyasin to withdraw from the material existence and reject it eit her wholly and physically or in the spirit. It sees this world as the kingdom of evil or of ignorance and the eternal and divine eit her in a far-off heaven or beyond w here t here 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.
--
T herefore 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 what Nature aims at for the mass in a slow evolution, Yoga effects for the individual by a rapid revolution. It works by a quickening of all her energies, a sublimation of all her faculties. While she develops the spiritual life with difficulty and has constantly to fall back from it for the sake of her lower realisations, the sublimated force, the concentrated method of Yoga can attain directly and carry with it the perfection of the mind and even, if she will, the perfection of the body. Nature seeks the Divine in her own symbols: Yoga goes beyond Nature to the Lord of Nature, beyond universe to the Transcendent and can return with the transcendent light and power, with the fiat of the Omnipotent.
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 hig her 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 Mot her 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
necklace which I am enclosing herewith for our darling
Ra4 on that day.
--
with sadhana. Is X here to solve chess problems? He could do it
just as well elsew here.
--
as he wanted her to. This was her mistake. When I ran
and questioned him he did not care to answer. Servants
--
before too and it seems he wants to control her like that.
If truly he does it, it is brutal and stupid; apart from spoiling
her head, which is bad enough, he will make her vindictive and
violent which is worse.
0.04 - The Systems of Yoga, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Nature and climbs beyond her. For the aim of the Universal
Mot her is to embrace the Divine in her own play and creations and t here to realise It. But in the highest flights of Yoga she reaches beyond herself and realises the Divine in Itself exceeding the universe and even standing apart from the cosmic play.
T herefore by some it is supposed that this is not only the highest but also the one true or exclusively preferable object of Yoga.
Yet it is always through something which she has formed in her evolution that Nature thus overpasses her evolution. It is the individual heart that by sublimating its highest and purest emotions attains to the transcendent Bliss or the ineffable Nirvana, the individual mind that by converting its ordinary functionings into a knowledge beyond mentality knows its oneness with the
Ineffable and merges its separate existence in that transcendent unity. And always it is the individual, the Self conditioned in its experience by Nature and working through her formations, that attains to the Self unconditioned, free and transcendent.
In practice three conceptions are necessary before t here can be any possibility of Yoga; t here 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
--
and the Individual. If the individual and Nature are left to themselves, the one is bound to the ot her and unable to exceed appreciably her lingering march. Something transcendent is needed, free from her and greater, which will act upon us and her, attracting us upward to Itself and securing from her by good grace or by force her consent to the individual ascension.
It is this truth which makes necessary to every philosophy of Yoga the conception of the Ishwara, Lord, supreme Soul or supreme Self, towards whom the effort is directed and who gives the illuminating touch and the strength to attain. Equally true is the complementary idea so often enforced by the Yoga of devotion that as the Transcendent is necessary to the individual and sought after by him, so also the individual is necessary in a sense to the Transcendent and sought after by It. If the
--
Nature the equilibrium is based upon the individualisation of a limited quantity and force of the Prana; more than that the individual is by personal and hereditary habit unable to bear, use or control. In Hathayoga, the equilibrium opens a door to the universalisation of the individual vitality by admitting into the body, containing, using and controlling a much less fixed and limited action of the universal energy.
The chief processes of Hathayoga are asana and pran.ayama.
--
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 ot her 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.
--
differs also in this, - and here from the point of view of an integral Yoga t here seems to be a defect, - that it is indifferent to mental and bodily perfection and aims only at purity as a condition of the divine realisation. A second defect is that as actually practised it chooses one of the three parallel paths exclusively and almost in antagonism to the ot hers instead of effecting a synthetic harmony of the intellect, the heart and the will in an integral divine realisation.
The Path of Knowledge aims at the realisation of the unique and supreme Self. It proceeds by the method of intellectual reflection, vicara, to right discrimination, viveka. It observes and distinguishes the different elements of our apparent or phenomenal being and rejecting identification with each of them arrives at their exclusion and separation in one common term as constituents of Prakriti, of phenomenal Nature, creations of
--
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.
--
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
0.05 - Letters to a Child, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
not so difficult, especially here w here you are as if bathed in a
sea of energy. You have only to open and receive.
--
all her love, and her solicitude for you?
No, all is not sad and gloomy, neit her the trees nor the sky
--
to complain to her about one thing or anot her, to tell her that
we were discontented, she would make fun of us or scold us and
--
grateful to her for having taught me the discipline and the necessity of self-forgetfulness through concentration on what one
is doing.
--
follows, success always comes to those who are strong, courageous, enduring. And you know that here our force and our help
are always available to you; you have only to learn to make use
--
off here than anyw here else. I added that only if you wanted to
marry would you have to leave the Ashram.
--
once again after returning here.
Read my letter very carefully, think it over well to be sure
--
Pondic herry in February, for once you are here you might again
become troubled and uncertain, and that would arouse an
--
(1) Your vital will find no gratification here, as life has
become very restricted in the present war conditions.
(2) You will live here, as all of us, night and day under the
constant threat of a sudden bombardment.
0.05 - The Synthesis of the Systems, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
If, however, we leave aside, here also, the actual methods and practices and seek for the central principle, we find, first, that Tantra expressly differentiates itself from the Vedic methods of Yoga. In a sense, all the schools we have hit herto examined are Vedantic in their principle; their force is in knowledge, their method is knowledge, though it is not always discernment by the intellect, but may be, instead, the knowledge of the heart expressed in love and faith or a knowledge in the will working out through action. In all of them the lord of the Yoga is the Purusha, the Conscious Soul that knows, observes, attracts, governs. But in Tantra it is rat her Prakriti, the Nature-Soul, the Energy, the
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.
0.06 - INTRODUCTION, #Dark Night of the Soul, #Saint John of the Cross, #Christianity
abundance than before. The Saint here postulates a principle of dogmatic theology
that by himself, and with the ordinary aid of grace, man cannot attain to that
--
body. The Saint is particularly effective here, and we may once more compare this
chapter with a similar one in the Ascent (II, xiii)that in which he fixes the point
--
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.
--
his mystical dissertations find such an outlet as here. Now here else, again, is he
quite so appealingly human; for, though he is human even in his loftiest and
0.06 - Letters to a Young Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
chronologically. The replies here were written between 1933 and 1949 - most of them
between 1933 and 1935.
--
to come down here. But Mot her, You are so great and
remain so high up that it seems to me almost impossible
--
You speak here of vital love, but certainly not of psychic love
and still less of the Divine Love.
--
not here.
It is not this person or that who attracts you... it is the eternal
--
overcome one's lower nature. And is this not easier here, with
a concrete and tangible help, than all alone, without anyone to
--
It is never good to tell a lie, but here its results cannot but be
disastrous, for falsehood is the very symbol of that which wants
--
and passions, of cowardice, but also of heroism - to bridle it is
to turn all this towards the divine Will and submit it to this Will.
--
realisation here below. Does it not follow that intellectual culture is indispensable for rising above the mind to
find t here the true knowledge?
0.07 - DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL, #Dark Night of the Soul, #Saint John of the Cross, #Christianity
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 w hereof 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 t here 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:
On a dark night
0.07 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I know, it is only to give her confidence.
No, I always mean what I say.
--
fulfil her in my life and to know the worlds, if it is her
Will that I should do so. But above all, I must have the
--
without a Guru who will lead me to her Feet?
I do not see anybody in the world more qualified than Sri
--
in her child, that only speaks of the goodness of the
Mot her's heart.
--
I know not except by her lotus-feet. That is the reason
why my eyes seek her in your lotus-feet, and my heart
yearns to press them to itself knowing them as its sole
--
invoking her and t here you were with the pot of pickles
and an ocean of Love! Such is your play, dear playful
--
Why did the Mot her choose this frail vessel for her
abode? I know that so long as She chooses to make her
abode here, sooner or later poor me will have to abdicate
in favour of her Imperial Majesty and till that day comes
t here will be no rest for poor me.
--
with her love and blessings.
28 October 1939
--
very cold. I still do not feel at home here. I do not know
what I should do. And time waits for no one. Please
--
My dear child, here is the programme for this year: Unify your
whole being around your highest consciousness and do not let
0.08 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
person. but of what she represents, what stands behind her.
For you must never forget that the outer person is only the
--
"supreme faculties" are being referred to here? Those of man on
the way to becoming superman, or those that the supramental
0.09 - Letters to a Young Teacher, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
storeroom of words. here, more or less excited, we select, reject,
assemble, combine, disarrange, rearrange all the words in our
--
those who are sincere in their aspiration will remain here and
receive all the help needed to be able to change in themselves
--
It should be understood clearly that t here is no question here
of any physical embracing, as practical jokers with the tastes
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 eit her 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 t hereby 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.
--
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 t here 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 ot her 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 t here 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. Furt hermore, the descent spoken of here is the descent, not of a divine consciousness for t here 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 t herealthough it is always the inner heart which first recognises the Divine Presence and gives its assent to the Divine action for the mind, the hig her 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.
Anot her 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 t here 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 rat her than later. Indeed, the ideal is one of here and now here upon this earth of material existence and now in this life, in this very bodynot hereafter or elsew here. How long exactly that will mean, depends on many factors, but a few decades on this side or the ot her 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 toget her: 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 hig her 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 ot herwise.
--
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 ot her 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 atmosp here and the waking human consciousness and is labouring t here. 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
The world is in the throes of a new creation and the pangs of that new birth have made mot her 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 brot her, 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 sp here 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. T here 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.
--
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. T herefore 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 rat her 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 hig her personal self which is one with the cosmic soul and t herefore with ot her personal souls. The Asura, in spite of, or rat her, 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.
01.01 - The Symbol Dawn, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
In her unlit temple of eternity,
Lay stretched immobile upon Silence' marge.
--
In the sombre symbol of her eyeless muse
The abysm of the unbodied Infinite;
--
Forgetful of her spirit and her fate.
1.7
--
Dawn built her aura of magnificent hues
And buried its seed of grandeur in the hours.
--
And saw the spaces ready for her feet.
1.32
Once she half looked behind for her veiled sun,
Then, thoughtful, went to her immortal work.
1.33
--
The waking ear of Nature heard her steps
And wideness turned to her its limitless eye,
And, scattered on sealed depths, her luminous smile
--
And Truth has her throne on the shadowy back of doubt,
On this anguished and precarious field of toil
--
Pursued the cycles of her blinded quest.
1.46
--
And, leader here with his uncertain mind,
Alone who stares at the future's covered face,
--
Visited her heart like a sweet alien note.
2.4
Time's message of brief light was not for her.
2.5
In her t here was the anguish of the gods
Imprisoned in our transient human mould,
--
A vaster Nature's joy had once been hers,
But long could keep not its gold heavenly hue
--
She had brought with her into the human form,
The calm delight that weds one soul to all,
--
A prodigal of her rich divinity,
her self and all she was she had lent to men,
Hoping her greater being to implant
And in their body's lives acclimatise
--
To live with grief, to confront death on her road,--
The mortal's lot became the Immortal's share.
--
Awaiting her ordeal's hour abode,
Outcast from her inborn felicity,
Accepting life's obscure terrestrial robe,
Hiding herself even from those she loved,
The godhead greater by a human fate.
--
A dark foreknowledge separated her
From all of whom she was the star and stay;
--
In her torn depths she kept the grief to come.
2.19
--
Harbouring a foe whom with her heart she must feed,
Unknown her act, unknown the doom she faced,
Unhelped she must foresee and dread and dare.
--
The long-foreknown and fatal morn was here
Bringing a noon that seemed like every noon.
--
For Nature walks upon her mighty way
Unheeding when she breaks a soul, a life;
Leaving her slain behind she travels on:
Man only marks and God's all-seeing eyes.
--
Even in this moment of her soul's despair,
In its grim rendezvous with death and fear,
No cry broke from her lips, no call for aid;
She told the secret of her woe to none:
Calm was her face and courage kept her mute.
2.23
Yet only her outward self suffered and strove;
Even her humanity was half divine:
her spirit opened to the Spirit in all,
--
Aloof, she carried in herself the world:
her dread was one with the great cosmic dread,
--
The universal Mot her s love was hers.
2.25
--
Of her pangs she made a mystic poignant sword.
2.26
--
At first life grieved not in her burdened breast:
On the lap of earth's original somnolence
--
Nothing recalling of the sorrow here.
2.29
--
And sighing she laid her hand upon her bosom
And recognised the close and lingering ache,
--
But now she stirred, her life shared the cosmic load.
2.33
At the summons of her body's voiceless call
her strong far-winging spirit travelled back,
--
And the tired feet of thought approached her doors.
2.35
All came back to her: Earth and Love and Doom,
The ancient disputants, encircled her
Like giant figures wrestling in the night:
--
And in the shadow of her flaming heart,
At the sombre centre of the dire debate,
--
The daily oblation of her unwept tears.
2.37
--
Immobile in herself, she gat hered force.
2.42
01.02 - Natures Own Yoga, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Sri Aurobindo's Yoga is in the direct line of Nature's own Yoga. Nature has a Yoga, which she follows unfailingly, and inevitably for it is her innermost law of being. Yoga means, in essence, a change or transformation of consciousness, a heightening and broadening of consciousness, which is effected by communion or union or identification with a hig her and vaster consciousness.
This process of a developing consciousness in Nature is precisely what is known as Evolution. It is the bringing out and fixing of a hig her and hig her principle of consciousness, hit herto 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, w here we stand at present, is that of the embodied self-conscious life in man.
--
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 altoget her beyond it, that lies, as it were, at the ot her 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 hig her 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 t here 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.
--
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 t here, 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. W here Supermind and Overmind meet, one can see the multiple godheads, each distinct in his own truth and beauty and power and yet all toget her forming the one supreme consciousness infinitely composite and inalienably integral. But stepping back into Supermind one sees something moreOneness gat hering 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 sp here. 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 ot her and t herefore its creation, play or action admits of no trial or stumble or groping or deviation; for each truth rests on all ot hers and on that which harmonises them all and does not act as a Power diverging from and even competing with ot her 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 t here 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 ot hers 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 rat her, 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.
II
--
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. T here are ot her still hig her 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 t here 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 gat hers 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 hig her order of being should be created out of him.
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 philosop her, but a philosop her chanting out his philosophy in sheer poetry has been one of the rarest spectacles.1 I can think of only one instance just now w here a philosop her has almost succeeded being a great poet I am referring to Lucretius and his De Rerum Natura. Neit her 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 philosop hers eit her. 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, w here he is a passionate visionary, and not his Paradiso (w here 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 whit her 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 ot her 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.
--
It is the bare truth, "truth in its own home", as I have said already using a phrase of the ancient sages, that is formulated here without the prop of any external symbolism. T here is no veil, no mist, no uncertainty or ambiguity. It is clarity itself, an almost scientific exactness and precision. In all this t here is something of the straightness and fullness of vision that characterised the Vedic Rishis, something of their supernal genius which could mould speech into the very expression of what is beyond speech, which could sublimate the small and the finite into forms of the Vast and the Infinite. Mark how in these aphoristic lines embodying a deep spiritual experience, the inexpressible has been expressed with a luminous felicity:
Delight that labours in its opposite,
--
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 hig her 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. T here is here, no doubt, some theology, a good dose of mental cleverness or conceit, but a modern intellectual or rat her rational intelligence is something ot her, 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 hig her 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 ot her-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 ot her firmaments usually supposed to be antagonistic and incompatible.
--
And here, let me point out, the capital difference between the European or rat her 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 ot her 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
--
And because our Vedic poets always looked beyond humanity, beyond earth, t herefore could they make divine poetry of humanity and what is of earth. T herefore 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:
--
This is poetry salutary indeed if t here were any. We are so often and so much enamoured of the feminine languidness of poetry; the clear, the sane, the virile, that is a type of poetry that our nerves cannot always or for long stand. But t here is poetry that is agrable and t here is poetry that is grand, as Sainte Beuve said. T here are the pleasures of poetry and t here are the "ardours of poetry". And the great poets are always grand rat her than agrable, full of the ardours of poetry rat her than the pleasures of poetry.
And if t here 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.
01.02 - The Issue, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Dying, it lived imperishably in her;
Transient and vanishing from transient eyes,
--
Flew past her eagle-winged through memory's skies.
3.4
--
Lay mapped to her sun-clear recording view,
From the bright country of her childhood's days
And the blue mountains of her soaring youth
And the paradise groves and peacock wings of Love
--
Or, in her unborn element awake,
her will must cancel her body's destiny.
3.8
--
She must disrupt, dislodge by her soul's force
her past, a block on the Immortal's road,
Make a rased ground and shape anew her fate.
3.12
--
She must plead her case upon extinction's verge,
In the world's death-cave uphold life's helpless claim
And vindicate her right to be and love.
3.14
--
Acquittance she must win from her past's bond,
An old account of suffering exhaust,
--
Penetrate with her thinking depths the Void's monstrous hush,
Look into the lonely eyes of immortal Death
And with her nude spirit measure the Infinite's night.
3.16
--
Around her were the austere sky-pointing hills,
And the green murmurous broad deep-thoughted woods
--
Immured her destiny's secluded scene.
3.22
T here had she grown to the stature of her spirit:
The genius of titanic silences
Steeping her soul in its wide loneliness
Had shown to her her self's bare reality
And mated her with her environment.
3.23
Its solitude greatened her human hours
With a background of the eternal and unique.
--
Had left in her deep room for thought and God.
3.25
T here was her drama's radiant prologue lived.
3.26
--
Love came to her hiding the shadow, Death.
3.28
Well might he find in her his perfect shrine.
3.29
--
All in her pointed to a nobler kind.
3.31
--
Exalted and swift her young large-visioned spirit
Voyaging through worlds of splendour and of calm
--
Ardent was her self-poised unstumbling will;
her mind, a sea of white sincerity,
--
Immortal rhythms swayed in her time-born steps;
her look, her smile awoke celestial sense
Even in earth-stuff, and their intense delight
--
A wide self-giving was her native act;
A magnanimity as of sea or sky
--
Feel her bright nature's glorious ambience,
And preen joy in her warmth and colour's rule.
3.37
--
Love in her was wider than the universe,
The whole world could take refuge in her single heart.
3.38
The great unsatisfied godhead here could dwell:
Vacant of the dwarf self's imprisoned air,
--
For even her gulfs were secrecies of light.
3.40
--
The strength, the silence of the gods were hers.
3.41
In her he found a vastness like his own,
His high warm subtle et her he refound
And moved in her as in his natural home.
3.42
In her he met his own eternity.
4.1
--
Since her orbed sight in its breath-fastened house,
Opening in sympathy with happier stars
--
The impunity of unborn Mights was hers.
4.3
--
Almost they saw who lived within her light
her playmate in the sempiternal sp heres
--
In her attracting advent's luminous wake,
The white-fire dragon-bird of endless bliss
Drifting with burning wings above her days:
Heaven's tranquil shield guarded the missioned child.
--
A glowing orbit was her early term,
Years like gold raiment of the gods that pass;
--
On her too closed the inescapable Hand:
The armed Immortal bore the snare of Time.
--
One dealt with her who meets the burdened great.
4.10
--
And called her to fill with her vast self the abyss.
4.11
--
Assailing her divinest elements,
He made her heart kin to the striving human heart
And forced her strength to its appointed road.
4.13
--
Was her soul's issue thrown with Destiny's dice.
4.15
--
To lead, to deliver was her glorious part.
4.16
--
A conscious frame was here, a self-born Force.
4.19
--
Baring her helpless heart to destiny's stroke.
4.27
--
In her the superhuman cast its seed.
4.29
--
Writing the unfinished story of her soul
In thoughts and actions graved in Nature's book,
--
Cancel her commerce with eternity,
Or set a signature of weak assent
--
A force in her that toiled since earth was made,
Accomplishing in life the great world-plan,
--
Forfeit the meaning of her birth in Time,
Obey the government of the casual fact
Or yield her high destiny up to passing Chance.
4.33
In her own self she found her high recourse;
She matched with the iron law her sovereign right:
her single will opposed the cosmic rule.
--
At the Unseen's knock upon her hidden gates
her strength made greater by the lightning's touch
Awoke from slumber in her heart's recess.
4.36
--
Of a tied Chance repeating her old steps
In circles around Matter's binding-posts.
--
To which reason lends illusive sense, is here,
Or the empiric Life's instinctive search,
--
Then Nature's instrument crowns himself her king;
He feels his witnessing self and conscious power;
--
The great World-Mot her now in her arose:
A living choice reversed fate's cold dead turn,
01.02 - The Object of the Integral Yoga, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The only creation for which t here 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.
01.03 - Mystic Poetry, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Is t here not a fundamental difference, difference not merely with regard to the poetic personality, but with regard to the very stuff of consciousness? T here is direct vision here, the fullness of light, the native rhythm and substance of revelation, as if
In the dead wall closing from a wider self,
--
both so idealise, et herealize, almost spiritualise the earth and the flesh that they seem ostensibly only a vesture of something else behind, something mysterious and ot her-worldly, something ot her 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 ot her 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. T here 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 ot herwise 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 ot her 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,
--
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 altoget her 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 in herent in the Indian tongue, although those too breathed and grew in a spiritual atmosp here. The later languages, however, Greek or Latin or their modern descendants, have gone still fart her 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 whit her 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 rat her 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. T here was an idealism, a clarity of vision and an intensity of perception, which however scientific apparently, gave his creation a note, an accent, an atmosp here 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.
T here have been ot her 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 philosop her poet is of course Dante, the Dante of Paradiso, a philosop her in the mediaeval manner and to the extent a lesser poet, according to some. Goe the is anot her, 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.
--
The great World-Mot her by her sacrifice||4.47||
Has made her soul the body of our state;
Accepting sorrow and unconsciousness
--
here we have a pattern of thought-movement that does not seem to follow the lineaments of the normal brain-mind consciousness, although it too has a basis t here: our customary line of reasoning receives a sudden shock, as it were, and then is shaken, moved, lifted up, transportedgradually or suddenly, according to the temperament of the listener. Besides, we have here the peculiar modern tone, which, for want of a better term, may be described as scientific. The impressimprimaturof Science is its rational co herence, justifying or justified by sense data, by physical experience, which gives us the pattern or model of an inexorable natural law. here too we feel we are in the domain of such natural law but lifted on to a hig her level.
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 ot herwise, 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 t here 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).
--
And I alone sit lingering here, . . .
O Fat her of eternal life, and all
--
The allegorical element too finds here cleverly woven into the mystically religious texture. here is anot her example of the mystically religious temper from Donne:
For though through many streights, and lands I roame,
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 w here falsehood masquerades as truth, w here prejudices move as realities, w here notions rule as ideals.
01.03 - The Yoga of the King - The Yoga of the Souls Release, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
A world's desire compelled her mortal birth.
One in the front of the immemorial quest,
--
Brought down to earth's dumb need her radiant power.
His was a spirit that stooped from larger sp heres
--
And paying here God's debt to earth and man
A greater sonship was his divine right.
--
As the security of her changing world
And shapes the figure of her unborn mights.
Immortally she conceives herself in him,
In the creature the unveiled Creatrix works:
her face is seen through his face, her eyes through his eyes;
her being is his through a vast identity.
--
Cult of an ideal never made real here,
An endless spiral of ascent and fall
--
Wisdom upraised him to her master craft
And made him an archmason of the soul,
--
To which life strives to fit our rhyme-beats here,
Melting our limits in the illimitable,
--
All was revealed t here none can here express;
Vision and dream were fables spoken by truth
--
T here knowing herself by her own termless self,
Wisdom supernal, wordless, absolute
--
All here must learn to obey a hig her law,
Our body's cells must hold the Immortal's flame.
--
Made whole the fragment-being we are here.
7.15
--
Detect the magic bride in her disguise
Or scan the apparent face of thought and life.
\t:Oft inspiration with her lightning feet,
A sudden messenger from the all-seeing tops,
--
Bringing her rhythmic sense of hidden things.
A music spoke transcending mortal speech.
--
Unguessed domains she made her native field.
All-vision gat hered into a single ray,
--
And her magic methods wrapped in a thousand veils;
Or she gat hered the lost secrets dropped by Time
--
Made t here her study of divining thought
And sanctuary of prophetic speech
--
In the deep subconscient glowed her jewel-lamp;
Lifted, it showed the riches of the Cave
--
And rescue of the lost herds of the Sun.
In a splendid extravagance of the waste of God
--
And Nature bore the Immortal in her womb,
That she might climb through him to eternal life.
--
Attuned to her movements that exceed our ken,
He grew one with a covert universe.
His grasp surprised her mightiest energies' springs;
He spoke with the unknown Guardians of the worlds,
01.03 - Yoga and the Ordinary Life, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
In the Yoga practised here the aim is to rise to a hig her consciousness and to live out of the hig her consciousness alone, not with the ordinary motives. This means a change of life as well as a change of consciousness. But all are not so circumstanced that they can cut loose from the ordinary life; they accept it t herefore as a field of experience and self-training in the earlier stages of the sadhana. But they must take care to look at it as a field of experience only and to get free from the ordinary desires, attachments and ideas which usually go with it; ot herwise it becomes a drag and hindrance on their sadhana. When one is not compelled by circumstances t here is no necessity to continue the ordinary life.
It is not helpful to abandon the ordinary life before the being is ready for the full spiritual life. To do so means to precipitate a struggle between the different elements and exasperate it to a point of intensity which the nature is not ready to bear. The vital elements in you have partly to be met by the discipline and experience of life, while keeping the spiritual aim in view and trying to govern life by it progressively in the spirit of Karmayoga.
01.04 - Motives for Seeking the Divine, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Divine will bring Ananda, t herefore it must be for the Ananda that we seek the union, is not true and has no force. One who loves a queen may know that if she returns his love it will bring him power, position, riches and yet it need not be for the power, position, riches that he seeks her love. He may love her for herself and could love her equally if she were not a queen; he might have no hope of any return whatever and yet love her, adore her, live for her, die for her simply because she is she. That has happened and men have loved women without any hope of enjoyment or result, loved steadily, passionately after age has come and beauty has gone. Patriots do not love their country only when she is rich, powerful, great and has much to give them; their love for country has been most ardent, passionate, absolute when the country was poor, degraded, miserable, having nothing to give but loss, wounds, torture, imprisonment, death as the wages of her service; yet even knowing that they would never see her free, men have lived, served and died for her - for her own sake, not for what she could give. Men have loved Truth for her own sake and for what they could seek or find of her, accepted poverty, persecution, death itself; they have been content even to seek for her always, not finding, and yet never given up the search.
That means what? That men, country, Truth and ot her 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 eit her 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
01.04 - The Intuition of the Age, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
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 ot her 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, t here 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 ot her 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 t here be light' and t here 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 hig her reaches of humanity seem capable. For that is after all humanity only accentuated in certain ot her 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 t here 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.
01.04 - The Poetry in the Making, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
But the Yogi is a wholly conscious being; a perfect Yogi is he who possesses a conscious and willed control over his instruments, he silences them, as and when he likes, and makes them convey and express with as little deviation as possible truths and realities from the Beyond. Now the question is, is it possible for the poet also to do something like that, to consciously create and not to be a mere unconscious or helpless channel? Conscious artistry, as we have said, means to be conscious on two levels of consciousness at the same time, to be at home in both equally and simultaneously. The general experience, however, is that of "one at a time": if the artist dwells more in the one, the ot her retires into the background to the same measure. If he is in the over-consciousness, he is only half-conscious in his brain consciousness, or even not conscious at allhe does not know how he has created, the sources or process of his creative activity, he is quite oblivious of them" gone through them all as if per saltum. Such seems to have been the case with the primitives, as they are called, the elemental poetsShakespeare and Homer and Valmiki. In some ot hers, who come very near to them in poetic genius, yet not quite on a par, the instrumental intelligence is strong and active, it helps in its own way but in helping circumscribes and limits the original impulsion. The art here becomes consciously artistic, but loses something of the initial freshness and spontaneity: it gains in correctness, polish and elegance and has now a style in lieu of Nature's own naturalness. I am thinking of Virgil and Milton and Kalidasa. Dante's place is perhaps somew here in between. Lower in the rung w here the mental medium occupies a still more preponderant place we have intellectual poetry, poetry of the later classical age whose representatives are Pope and Dryden. We can go fart her down and land in the domain of versificationalthough here, too, t here can be a good amount of beauty in shape of ingenuity, cleverness and conceit: Voltaire and Delille are of this order in French poetry.
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 t here is a veil, although a thin transparent veil, yet a veil between which intervenes. With the third of the Brot herhood, 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 ot her words, the poet then was an excessively self-conscious artist. That seems to be the general trend of all literature.
But should t here be an in herent 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 elsew here. The poet's consciousness becomes then divalent as it weret here is a sense of absolute passivity in respect of the receiving apparatus and coupled and immisced with it t here 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 ot her words, the poet is both a seer (kavih) and a creator or doer (poits).
--
That is what is wanted at present in the artistic world the true inspiration, the breath from hig her 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 hig her consciousness beyond the brain and mind, when one lives t here 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 t here is a spontaneity of instinct, t here is likewise also a spontaneity of vision: a child is spontaneous in its movements, even so a seer. Not only so, the hig her spontaneity is more spontaneous, for the hig her 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 hig her inspiration had very often to bypass it, or rob it of its serviceable materials without its knowledge, in an almost clandestine way. W herever 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 hig her 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 t here 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 anot her 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.
--
Ifso long the poet was more or less a passive, a half-conscious or unconscious intermediary between the hig her 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 ot herwise escape the too human mould.
"The Last Voyage" by Charles Williams-A Little Book of Modern Verse, (Faber and Faber).
01.04 - The Secret Knowledge, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Concealed in life's hermetic envelope.
10.28
--
Ever surround our brief existence here
Grey shadows of unanswered questionings;
--
Or for what reason is the suffering here,
God's sanction to the paradox of life
--
In the coiled blackness of her nescient course
The Earth-Goddess toils across the sands of Time.
A Being is in her whom she hopes to know,
A Word speaks to her heart she cannot hear,
A Fate compels whose form she cannot see.
In her unconscious orbit through the Void
Out of her mindless depths she strives to rise,
A perilous life her gain, a struggling joy;
A Thought that can conceive but hardly knows
Arises slowly in her and creates
The idea, the speech that labels more than it lights;
--
Alarmed by the sorrow dragging at her feet
And conscious of the high things not yet won,
Ever she nurses in her sleepless breast
An inward urge that takes from her rest and peace.
Ignorant and weary and invincible,
--
The pure perfection her marred nature needs,
A breath of Godhead on her stone and mire.
A faith she craves that can survive defeat,
--
A light grows in her, she assumes a voice,
her state she learns to read and the act she has done,
But the one needed truth eludes her grasp,
herself and all of which she is the sign.
An inarticulate whisper drives her steps
Of which she feels the force but not the sense;
--
Immense divining flashes cleave her brain,
And sometimes in her hours of dream and muse
The truth that she has missed looks out on her
As if far off and yet within her soul.
A change comes near that flees from her surmise
And, ever postponed, compels attempt and hope,
--
A vision meets her of supernal Powers
That draw her as if mighty kinsmen lost
Approaching with estranged great luminous gaze.
--
And stretches arms to what was never hers.
Outstretching arms to the unconscious Void,
--
What most she needs, what most exceeds her scope,
A Mind unvisited by illusion's gleams,
--
For these she yearns and feels them destined hers:
Heaven's privilege she claims as her own right.
Just is her claim the all-witnessing Gods approve,
Clear in a greater light than reason owns:
--
Moves here in a half-light that seems the whole:
An interregnum in Reality
--
And Nature hews her way through adamant
A divine intervention thrones above.
--
We whirl not here upon a casual globe
Abandoned to a task beyond our force;
--
Absolves from hour to hour her secret charge.
All she foresees in masked imperative depths;
--
All here w here each thing seems its lonely self
Are figures of the sole transcendent One:
--
To hide from her pursuit in force and form.
A secret spirit in the Inconscient's sleep,
--
He was here before the elements could emerge,
Before t here was light of mind or life could breathe.
Accomplice of her cosmic huge pretence,
His semblances he turns to real shapes
--
She has forged from him her works of skill and might:
She wraps him in the magic of her moods
And makes of his myriad truths her countless dreams.
The Master of being has come down to her,
An immortal child born in the fugitive years.
--
Dreaming she chases her idea of him,
And catches here a look and t here a gest:
Ever he repeats in them his ceaseless births.
--
For nothing here is utterly what it seems;
It is a dream-fact vision of a truth
--
She has concealed her glory and her bliss
And disguised the Love and Wisdom in her heart;
Of all the marvel and beauty that are hers,
Only a darkened little we can feel.
He too wears a diminished godhead here;
He has forsaken his omnipotence,
--
He knows her only, he has forgotten himself;
To her he abandons all to make her great.
He hopes in her to find himself anew,
Incarnate, wedding his infinity's peace
To her creative passion's ecstasy.
Although possessor of the earth and heavens,
He leaves to her the cosmic management
And watches all, the Witness of her scene.
A supernumerary on her stage,
He speaks no words or hides behind the wings.
He takes birth in her world, waits on her will,
Divines her enigmatic gesture's sense,
The fluctuating chance turns of her mood,
Works out her meanings she seems not to know
And serves her secret purpose in long Time.
As one too great for him he worships her;
He adores her as his regent of desire,
He yields to her as the mover of his will,
He burns the incense of his nights and days
--
A rapt solicitor for her love and grace,
His bliss in her to him is his whole world:
He grows through her in all his being's powers;
He reads by her God's hidden aim in things.
13.24
Or, a courtier in her countless retinue,
Content to be with her and feel her near
He makes the most of the little that she gives
--
A word from her lips with happiness wings the hours.
13.26
He leans on her for all he does and is:
He builds on her largesses his proud fortunate days
And trails his peacock-plumaged joy of life
And suns in the glory of her passing smile.
13.27
In a thousand ways he serves her royal needs;
He makes the hours pivot around her will,
Makes all reflect her whims; all is their play:
This whole wide world is only he and she.
--
His soul, silent, supports the world and her,
His acts are her commandment's registers.
Happy, inert, he lies beneath her feet:
His breast he offers for her cosmic dance
Of which our lives are the quivering theatre,
--
His works, his thoughts have been devised by her,
His being is a mirror vast of hers:
Active, inspired by her he speaks and moves;
His deeds obey her heart's unspoken demands:
Passive, he bears the impacts of the world
As if her touches shaping his soul and life:
His journey through the days is her sun-march;
He runs upon her roads; hers is his course.
A witness and student of her joy and dole,
A partner in her evil and her good,
He has consented to her passionate ways,
He is driven by her sweet and dreadful force.
His sanctioning name initials all her works;
His silence is his signature to her deeds;
In the execution of her drama's scheme,
In her fancies of the moment and its mood,
In the march of this obvious ordinary world
--
Unrolls the material of her cosmic Act,
her happenings that exalt and smite the soul,
her force that moves, her powers that save and slay,
her Word that in the silence speaks to our hearts,
--
He is governed by her subtle and mighty laws.
His consciousness is a babe upon her knees,
His being a field of her vast experiment,
her endless space is the playground of his thoughts;
--
And her sport of death and pain and Nescience,
His changed and struggling immortality.
--
His substance a material for her works.
His spirit survives amid the death of things,
--
He is carried by her from Night to deathless Light.
This grand surrender is his free-will's gift,
His pure transcendent force submits to hers.
In the mystery of her cosmic ignorance,
In the insoluble riddle of her play,
A creature made of perishable stuff,
--
He thinks with her thoughts, with her trouble his bosom heaves;
He seems the thing that she would have him seem,
He is whatever her artist will can make.
Although she drives him on her fancy's roads,
At play with him as with her child or slave,
To freedom and the Eternal's mastery
--
She moves her seeming puppet of an hour.
Even in his mortal session in body's house,
--
To reign she spurs him. He takes up her powers;
He has harnessed her to the yoke of her own law.
His face of human thought puts on a crown.
Held in her leash, bound to her veiled caprice,
He studies her ways if so he may prevail
Even for an hour and she work out his will;
He makes of her his moment passion's serf:
To obey she feigns, she follows her creature's lead:
For him she was made, lives only for his use.
But conquering her, then is he most her slave;
He is her dependent, all his means are hers;
Nothing without her he can, she rules him still.
At last he wakes to a memory of Self:
--
Till then he is a plaything in her game;
her seeming regent, yet her fancy's toy,
A living robot moved by her energy's springs,
He acts as in the movements of a dream,
--
He stumbles on driven by her whip of Force:
His thought labours, a bullock in Time's fields;
His will he thinks his own, is shaped in her forge.
Obedient to World-Nature's dumb control,
--
He has sold himself into her regal power
For any blow or boon that she may choose:
--
He feels the sweetness of her mastering touch,
In all experience meets her blissful hands;
On his heart he bears the happiness of her tread
And the surprise of her arrival's joy
In each event and every moment's chance.
--
He revels in her, a swimmer in her sea,
A tireless amateur of her world-delight,
He rejoices in her every thought and act
And gives consent to all that she can wish;
--
Guarding from Time by her immobile sleep
The ineffable puissance of his solitude.
--
And in her living and inanimate signs
And in her complex tracery of events
He explores the ceaseless miracle of himself,
--
For love of her and joined to her for ever
To follow the course of Time's eternity,
Amid magic dramas of her sudden moods
And the surprises of her masked Idea
And the vicissitudes of her vast caprice.
Two seem his goals, yet ever are they one
--
And the rude enigma of her terrestrial ways
He is the explorer and the mariner
--
In her material order's fixed design
W here all seems sure and, even when changed, the same,
--
In the hidden strength of her omnipotent Will,
Driven by her breath across life's tossing deep,
Through the thunder's roar and through the windless hush,
--
He carries her sealed orders in his breast.
Late will he know, opening the mystic script,
--
He goes or, armed with her fiat, to discover
A new mind and body in the city of God
--
Always he follows in her force's wake.
He sails through life and death and ot her life,
--
A power is on him from her occult force
That ties him to his own creation's fate,
--
Even when he sleeps, he keeps her on his breast:
Whoever leaves her, he will not depart
To repose without her in the Unknowable.
T here is a truth to know, a work to do;
--
A purpose in her vast and random game.
This ever she meant since the first dawn of life,
This constant will she covered with her sport,
To evoke a Person in the impersonal Void,
01.05 - Rabindranath Tagore: A Great Poet, a Great Man, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
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, t here 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 t here 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.
--
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 t here 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 wit her 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 somew here 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 fat her to his son, to use a Vedic phrase; on the ot her hand, earthly things, mere humanities are uplifted and suffused with a "light that never was, on sea or land."
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 somew here hig her. 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 t herefore 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 ot her 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 t hereby 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 t herefore 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 t here is anot her 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, t here 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 t herefore 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 eit her 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
Nature's impossible herculean toil
Only her warlock-wisecraft could enforce,
Its law of the opposition of the gods,
--
The dumb great Mot her in her cosmic trance
Exploiting for creation's joy and pain
--
Only beginnings are accomplished here;
Our base's Matter seems alone complete,
--
Thrown by the World-Power to her body-slave,
Or a simulacrum of enforced delight
--
He saw the doubtfulness of all things here,
The incertitude of man's proud confident thought,
--
Illusion lost her aggrandising lens;
As from her failing hand the measures fell,
Atomic looked the things that loomed so large.
--
A secret Nature stripped of her defence,
Once in a dreaded half-light formidable,
Overtaken in her mighty privacy
Lay bare to the burning splendour of his will.
--
And the sure power-pattern of her cryptic signs,
her diagrams of geometric force,
--
In her mystery's moods divorced from the Maker's laws
She too as sovereignly creates her field,
her will shaping the undetermined vasts,
--
She too can make an order of her caprice,
As if her rash superb wagered to outvie
The veiled Creator's cosmic secrecies.
The rapid footsteps of her fantasy,
Amid whose falls wonders like flowers rise,
--
Compels all substance by her wand of Mind.
Mind is a mediator divinity:
--
All's miracle here and can by miracle change.
This is that secret Nature's edge of might.
--
Thence to the initiate who observes her laws
She brings the light of her mysterious realms:
here w here he stands, his feet on a prostrate world,
--
She invents for her self-bound free-will its grooves
And feigns for magic's freaks a binding cause.
--
All worlds she makes the partners of her deeds,
Accomplices of her mighty violence,
her daring leaps into the impossible:
From every source she has taken her cunning means,
She draws from the free-love marriage of the planes
Elements for her creation's tour-de-force:
A wonder-weft of knowledge incalculable,
--
In her unhedged Circean wonderland
Pell-mell she shep herds her occult mightinesses;
her mnemonics of the craft of the Infinite,
--
Have woven her balanced web of miracles
And the weird technique of her tremendous art.
This bizarre kingdom passed into his charge.
--
her great possessions and her power and lore
She gave, compelled, with a reluctant joy;
--
her engined wrath, her invisible means to slay;
her dangerous moods and arbitrary force
--
A greater despot tamed her despotism.
Assailed, surprised in the fortress of her self,
Conquered by her own unexpected king,
Fulfilled and ransomed by her servitude,
She yielded in a vanquished ecstasy,
her sealed hermetic wisdom forced from her,
Fragments of the mystery of omnipotence.
--
Behind her an ineffable Presence stood:
her reign received their mystic influences,
Their lion-forces crouched beneath her feet;
The future sleeps unknown behind their doors.
--
Above her lightened high immensities;
All the unknown looked out from boundlessness:
--
her gulfs stood nude, her far transcendences
Flamed in transparencies of crowded light.
\tA giant order was discovered here
Of which the tassel and extended fringe
--
All t here discovered what it seeks for here.
It freed the finite into boundlessness
--
Giving to her her lost forgotten soul.
A grand solution closed the long impasse
01.06 - On Communism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Communism is the synthesis of collectivism and individualism. The past ages of society were characterised more or less by a severe collectivism. In ancient Greece, more so in Sparta and in Rome, the individual had, properly speaking, no separate existence of his own; he was merged in the State or Nation. The individual was considered only as a limb of the collective being, had to live and labour for the common weal. The value attached to each person was strictly in reference to the output that the group to which he belonged received from him. Apart from this service for the general unit the body politicany personal endeavour and achievement, if not absolutely discouraged and repressed, was given a very secondary place of merit. The summum bonum of the individual was to sacrifice at the altar of the res publica, the bonum publicum. In India, the position and function of the State or Nation was taken up by the society. here too social institutions were so constituted and men were so bred and brought up that individuality had neit her the occasion nor the incentive to express itself, it was a thing that remained, in the Kalidasian phrase, an object for the ear onlysrutau sthita. Those who sought at all an individual aim and purpose, as perhaps the Sannyasins, were put outside the gate of law and society. Within the society, in actual life and action, it was a sin and a crime or at least a gross imperfection to have any self-regarding motive or impulse; personal preference was the last thing to be considered, virtue consisted precisely in sacrificing one's own taste and inclination for the sake of that which the society exacts and sanctions.
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 ot her 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 t here. 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 in herent 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 rat her 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 t here is no such thing as corporate life and activity; what appears as such is only a camouflage for rigorous competition; at the best, t here 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 toget her 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 brot herhood 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 ot hers. The scientists have begun to discover ot her 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 hig her 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 whet her 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 ot hers in a wider freedom, see ot her creatures in himself and himself in ot her 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 ot hers; 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.
01.06 - Vivekananda, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
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 eit her. 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 atmosp here: 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
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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, rat her 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 w herefore is this call for the life spiritual? Thus the aspiring soul would answer:
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"Man is hig her 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 ot hers to be Gods.
01.07 - Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In his inquiry into truth and certitude Pascal takes his stand upon what he calls the geometrical method, the only valid method, according to him, in the sp here of reason. The characteristic of this method is that it takes for granted certain fundamental principles and realitiescalled axioms and postulates or definitionsand proceeds to ot her truths that are infallibly and inevitably deduced from them, that are in herent and implied in them. T here is no use or necessity in trying to demonstrate these fundamentals also; that will only land us into confusion and muddle. They have to be simply accepted, they do not require demonstration, it is they that demonstrate ot hers. Such, for instance, are space, time, number, the reality of which it is foolishness and pedantry to I seek to prove. T here is then an order of truths that do not i require to be proved. We are referring only to the order of I physical truths. But t here is anot her order, Pascal says, equally I valid and veritable, the order of the Spirit. here we have anot her set of fundamentals that have to be accepted and taken for granted, matrix of ot her truths and realities. It can also be called the order of the Heart. Reason posits physical fundamentals; it does not know of the fundamentals of the Heart which are beyond its reach; such are God, Soul, Immortality which are evident only to Faith.
But Faith and Reason, according to Pascal, are not contraries nor irreconcilables. Because the things of faith are beyond reason, it is not that they are irrational. here is what Pascal says about the function and limitation of reason:
"The last movement of reason is to know that t here is an infinity of things that are beyond it. It must be a very weak reason if it does not arrive t here."2
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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 ot her '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. T here was a gap between that was not thoroughly bridged. Pascal did not possess the hig her, 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 t here 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 ot her and need each ot her. Greatness and misery are intertwined, united, unified with each ot her 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; t here 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 t here 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 t here is no ot her. 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.
01.07 - The Bases of Social Reconstruction, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
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 rat her 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. Neit her 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 t here is hardly any hope for mankind. But improbable or probable, that is the only way which man has to try and test, and t here is none ot her.
01.08 - A Theory of Yoga, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
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 ot her instincts of the mere animal life. However, leaving aside for the moment the question whet her man's ethical and spiritual ideals are a mere dissimulation of his animal instincts or whet her 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.
T here are three lines, as the Psycho-analysts point out along which this control or censuring of the primary instincts acts. First, t here 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 altoget her 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 w here subconsciously t here 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, t here 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 ot her channels, use it to ot her purposes which do not demand equal sacrifice, may even, on the ot her 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. Anot her variety of this is what is known as "drowning one's sorrow in drinking."
Thirdly, t here is the line of Sublimationit is when the natural impulse is neit her repressed nor diverted but lifted up into a hig her 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 t here 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 t here is always the danger of the superstructure coming down helplessly by a sudden upheaval of the net her 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.
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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 t herefore 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 ot her 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 anot her source, an opposite pole of being from which ot her 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 hig her 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 t here is a pressure upon them of hig her 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.
01.08 - Walter Hilton: The Scale of Perfection, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
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 t here 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-t here 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 t here 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 t here and dwells in love and union with him. But t here is still a furt her 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 t here 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 altoget her 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 t here in the profoundest depth of our being as Jesus, our beloved and our soul rests in him in utmost bliss. We are aware neit her 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 mot her 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 t here 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 t herefore 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 t here is a furt her mystery. Christ not only lived for all men for all time, whet her they know him, recognise him or not; but he still lives, he still chooses his beloved and his beloved chooses him, t here is a conscious acceptance on eit her 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.
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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 anot her 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, t here is nothing else than theOneekamevdvityam; (2) the cosmic unity: all existence is one, whatever exists is that One, t hereare 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 ot her take cognizance of the truth of it. The Christian doctrine too says indeed, 'I and my Fat her 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 altoget her 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 t here 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 in herent 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, w here 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, w here one has become the utter unity, who loves whom? To explain furt her 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 brot her in spirit, one loves the sinner because t here 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 neit her 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. T here is only one reality, one truth which is viewed differently. Whet her a thing is considered good or evil or neutral, essentially and truly, it is that One and nothing else. God's own self is everyw here 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 anot her 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 ric her and seems to possess more amplitude; it is more concrete and less et hereal. 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." W hereas 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 toget her 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. T here 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 ad herence 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 neit her 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 anot her 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, w here the stead of love is, thou shouldst be able to have part of that love... " What exquisite utterance, what a deep truth!
Indeed, t here are one or two points, notes for the guidance of the aspirant, which I would like to mention here for their striking appositeness and simple "soothfastness." First of all with regard to the restless enthusiasm and eagerness of a novice, here is the advice given: "The fervour is so mickle in outward showing, is not only for mickleness of love that they have; but it is for littleness and weakness of their souls, that they may not bear a little touching of God.. afterward when love hath boiled out all the uncleanliness, then is the love clear and standeth still, and then is both the body and the soul mickle more in peace, and yet hath the self soul mickle more love than it had before, though it shew less outward." And again: "without any fervour outward shewed, and the less it thinketh that it loveth or seeth God, the nearer it nigheth" ('it' naturally refers to the soul). The statement is beautifully self-luminous, no explanation is required. Anot her hurdle that an aspirant has to face often in the passage through the Dark Night is that you are left all alone, that you are deserted by your God, that the Grace no longer favours you. here is however the truth of the matter; "when I fall down to my frailty, then Grace withdraweth: for my falling is cause t here-of, and not his fleeing." In fact, the Grace never withdraws, it is we who withdraw and think ot herwise. One more difficulty that troubles the beginner especially is with regard to the false light. The being of darkness comes in the form of the angel of light, imitates the tone of the still small voice; how to recognise, how to distinguish the two? The false light, the "feigned sun" is always found "atwixt two black rainy clouds" : they are "highing" of oneself and "lowing" of ot hers. When you feel flattered and elated, beware it is the siren voice tempting you. The true light brings you soothing peace and meekness: the ot her light brings always a trail of darknessf you are soothfast and sincere you will discover it if not near you, somew here at a distance lurking.
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 t here is this double movement necessary for the full achievement. "Neit her 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 ot her." Mysticism is not all eccentricity and irrationality: on the contrary, sanity seems to be the very character of the hig her mysticism. And it is this sanity, and even a happy sense of humour accompanying it, that makes the genuine mystic teac her say: "It is no mastery to me for to say it, but for to do it t here is mastery." Amen.
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 rat her 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 t here no ot her hig her 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 ric her combination of its colour and light and shade and rhythm. But also, this may not be sot here may be the possibility of a furt her 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 hig her 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 anot her. And as the hig her level takes up the law of the lower and evolves out of it a characteristic function, even so the law of the hig her 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 hig her 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 ot her 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 w here creation, the diversity of Becoming takes rise, it is the Truth-worldRitam the domain of typal realities. The distinction is necessary, as t here 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, "t here is this incalculable element in human life influencing us from the mystery which envelops our being, and when reason is satisfied, t here is something deeper than Reason which makes us still uncertain of truth. Above the human reason t here is a transcendental sp here to which the spirit of men sometimes rises, and the will may be forged t here at a lordly smithy and made the unbreakable pivot."(A.E.)
--
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 anot her kind of experiment the evolving of anot her life, anot her 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
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 elsew here, 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.
--
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 atmosp here. 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 Neit her, however, the Spirit alone nor the body alone is man's reality; neit her only the earth here nor only the heaven t here 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 fat her and this Earth my mot her. And Blake and Nietzsche are fiery apostles of that dream and ideal in an age crippled with doubt, falsehood, smallness, crookedness, impotence, colossal ignorance.
--
Touching the very core of the malady of our age he says that our modern enlightenment seeks to cancel altoget her the hig her values and install instead the lower alone as true. Thus, for example, Marx and Freud, its twin arch priests, are brot hers. Both declare that it is the lower, the under layer alone that matters: to one "the masses", to the ot her "the instincts". Their wild imperative roars: "Sweep away this pseudo-hig her; let the instincts rule, let the pro-letariat dictate!" But more characteristic, Monsieur Thibon has made anot her 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 hig her and neglected the lower. T herefore 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 hig her, but on condition that the hig her 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 hig her into the lower and the integration of the lower into the hig her 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 toget her 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."
0.10 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
book shows how Sri Aurobindo is working in every corner of the world. We who are here in the Ashram still
haven't even had a glimpse of him.
T here are people here who see him and are constantly in contact
with him. They are those who love him sincerely and sufficiently
--
You told us: "All of you here are taking life very
lightly, you are amusing yourselves all the time, you are
--
What Sri Aurobindo writes here is a paradox to awaken sleepy
minds. But we must understand all the irony in these sayings, and
--
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
--
unless the Mot her herself intervenes.
It is impossible. Each one has his own taste and his own temperament. Nothing can be done without discipline - the whole of
--
had not given her darshan to Z. But now I am afraid
that Mot her may be angry at my audacity in writing such
--
education programme and the countless ot her activities we have here, he asked me: "Can you give me a
valid example of even one person who takes part in so
--
Do not forget - all of you who are here - that we want to
realise something which does not yet exist upon earth; so it is
--
you will one day realise that it is the Divine in her that you love
and that the outer person is merely a pretext.
--
What is the difference between meditating here in
my room and going to meditate at the Playground with
--
Is it better to meditate t here or here in my room?
Meditate w here you meditate best - that is to say, w herever you
--
About the hero of the film Reach for the Sky, I said
that nothing could ever discourage him. For even after
--
saw the Mot her and received her Blessings.
It is not a dream, but the result of the preceding meditation and
--
Most people here quote the Mot her to suit their own
convenience.
--
each person here in the Ashram represents a particular
human difficulty, and that this difficulty will be mastered
--
Would it not be better to have a basic discipline here
instead of so much freedom, a freedom we are not able
--
Why do you ask me this question? All those who are here should
at least know what yoga means - as for practising it, that is
--
for She does not like her children to beg.
To ask from me is not begging and you may do so whenever
--
All of you young people here have had a very easy life, and
instead of taking advantage of it to concentrate your efforts on
--
(Regarding X, who related her misfortunes to the captain, blaming herself for all her troubles) To console her,
I told her that blaming oneself was perhaps not always
saintly or healthy.
--
that it is not due to any fault of hers that he is inconstant and
fickle - it is his nature to be like that and he acts according to
--
he does, then it is her own fault, for it means that her own feeling
is tainted with egoism. It is this egoism that she must conquer,
--
speaking of the outward act - whet her one eats here or t here
comes to the same thing - I am speaking of the inner attitude,
--
That proves that life is too easy here and that for the most part
you are all too tamasic to make an effort unless goaded by the
--
who have been here since childhood. T here is a kind
of uncertainty in our young people when they see ot hers
leave here and they say cautiously: "Who knows whet her
it won't be my turn some day!" I feel t here is a force
--
children who have studied here need to come to grips with life
before they can be ready for the divine work, and that is why
--
unique privilege of living here in the Ashram?
Never forget w here you are.
--
doctor or barrister, come to stay here in the Ashram
for their own salvation? They could perhaps serve the
--
Nobody comes here for his own salvation because Sri Aurobindo
does not believe in salvation; for us salvation is a meaningless
word. We are here to prepare the transformation of the earth
and men so that the new creation may take place, and if we
--
the nobility of the human character or an idea that we are here
to establish mental and moral and social Truth and justice on
--
pitiful condition and reaffirm her greatness?
When she renounces falsehood and lives in the Truth.
--
the state of one who feels that everything here is the play
Sri Aurobindo sent a special messenger to Delhi advising Indian leaders to accept,
--
India by putting her on a par with the various Dominions already associated with the
United Kingdom. Had his advice been heeded, the partition of India might have been
--
"something one hears about" for most people here.
When shall we feel and see this supreme and radical
--
and cooperation here among us and among the various departments. This results in a great waste of money
and energy. W here does this disharmony come from and
--
cries for the sword of the hero of the struggle and the word of
its prophet."26
--
in her blind ambition to imitate the West, she has become
materialistic and neglectful of her soul.
13 October 1965
--
Is t here a hierarchicised group here in the Ashram?
Mot her, I want to know more about it, but I don't know
--
You write: "Each one here represents an impossibility to be solved."30 Could You explain to me what this
means exactly?
--
the standpoint of transformation, are gat hered here to concretise
and synthesise the work of transforming the earth in order to
--
T here is a tendency among most of us here to conduct our lives and programmes according to the customs
of society. We say: "We must also think of the opinion of
--
If most people here think and feel like that, it is an obvious proof
that most are not at all ready for the new life, nor even ready to
--
have here, without being worthy of enjoying them.
12 January 1966
--
As soon as the children were admitted here, it was no longer
possible to be strict and the nature of the life changed.
--
are living here, you are helped in your yoga to the utmost of
your possibilities. The only thing you lack is being conscious.
--
said somew here, "Not everyone here is meant for yoga."
So... ?
--
(3) "Not everyone here is meant for yoga" - that
is, they are incapable of doing it consciously?
--
people who are here, t here are only 250 or so who understand Sri Aurobindo's yoga, only forty-five who practise
it, five who are capable of realisation and only one who
--
us here. But, Mot her, why do we do this? For, each one
of us has surely felt and enjoyed - at least once in his
--
do so here. The only thing that one has outside, but does not
have here, is the moral constraint of an external discipline.
here one is free and the only constraint is the one that one
--
anyway. But even here, t here are quite a number who by tradition have a "family deity", yet it doesn't bot her them at all
to take their deity and throw it into the Ganges when they get
--
her and throw her into the Ganges because they were displeased
with her. If one believes in the Divine, one cannot do things like
that.
--
so her protection was with us. Then how is it possible?
The protection is over the group - and if the action of the group
--
When one goes away from here, one feels a sort of
emptiness inside. Even if one has all the physical comforts, t here is still something missing. One doesn't feel
--
been done better, but that Mot her has to do her work
with the instruments She has at her disposal. Finally he
told me that he had no opinion on the subject. "My
01.10 - Principle and Personality, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
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 philosop hers, 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 ot her 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.
--
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 t here to make people self-knowing and self-guiding; and the man is also t here to illustrate that principle, to serve as the hope and prophecy of achievement. The living soul is t here to touch your soul, if you require the touch; and the principle is t here 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 ot her 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 ot her, 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 anot her 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 anot her. 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
Huxley gives only one quotation from Sri Aurobindo under the heading "God in the World". here it is:
"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:
--
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 gat hering 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.
T here is a beautiful quotation from the Chinese sage, Wu Ch'ng-n, regarding the doubtful utility of written Scriptures:
"'Listen to this!' shouted Monkey. 'After all the trouble we had getting here from China, and after you specially ordered that we were to be given the scriptures, Ananda and Kasyapa made a fraudulent delivery of goods. They gave us blank copies to take away; I ask you, what is the good of that to us?' 'You needn't shout,' said the Buddha, smiling. 'As a matter of fact, it is such blank scrolls as these that are the true scriptures. But I quite see that the people of China are too foolish and ignorant to believe this, so t here is nothing for it but to give them copies with some writing on.' "
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. T here is anot her 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.
***
01.11 - The Basis of Unity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
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 'sp here of sorrow' here below. Credal parap hernalia 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 eit her 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 t here is a personal allegiance to one particular form.
--
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 ot her 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 t here 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. T here 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.
--
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 ot her 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 t here, 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.
The solution can come, first, by going to the true religion of the Spirit, by being truly spiritual and not merely religious, for, as we have said, real unity lies only in and through the Spirit, since Spirit is one and indivisible; secondly, by bringing down somethinga great part, indeed, if not the wholeof this puissant and marvellous Spirit into our life of emotions and sensations and activities.
--
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 anot her 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
Thus, as sanctioned by God, t here 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 ot her hand, in return, man will have to serve Satan t here, on the ot her 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 t here or elsew here: 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
01.12 - Three Degrees of Social Organisation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
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 ot herwise as many as possible belonging to ot her faiths: it was the mission of the good shep herd 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 t here 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 anot her 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 ot hers to do the same. The measure of one's liberty is equal to the measure of ot hers' liberty.
here is the crux of the question. The dictum of utilitarian philosop hers is a golden rule which is easy to formulate but not so to execute. For the line of demarcation between one's own rights and the equal rights of ot hers is so undefinable and variable that a title suit is inevitable in each case. In asserting and establishing and even maintaining one's rights t here is always the possibilityalmost the certaintyof encroaching upon ot hers' rights.
What is required is not t herefore an external delimitation of frontiers between unit and unit, but an inner outlook of nature and a poise of character. And this can be cultivated and brought into action by learning to live by the sense of duty. Even then, even the sense of duty, we have to admit, is not enough. For if it leads or is capable of leading into an aberration, we must have something else to check and control it, some ot her hig her and more potent principle. Indeed, both the conceptions of Duty and Right belong to the domain of mental ideal, although one is usually more aggressive and militant (Rajasic) and the ot her tends to be more tolerant and considerate (sattwic): neit her can give an absolute certainty of poise, a clear guarantee of perfect harmony.
--
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 altoget her eliminate the seeds of conflict that lie imbedded in the very nature of life. It is for this reason that t here 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 dutyt here 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, t here 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.
01.13 - T. S. Eliot: Four Quartets, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
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 neit her 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
Not here the darkness, in this twittering world.
Descend lower, descend only
--
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 ot her part is furnished by an immanence. He does not cut away altoget her from Time, but reaches its outermost limit, its rim, its summit, w here it stops, not altoget her 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. Neit her flesh nor fleshless;
--
here, the intersection of the timeless moment
Is England and now here. Never and always.7
--
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 philosop her 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 c herishes. The mannerism may explain his psychology and enshrine his philosophy. But the poet, the magician is to be looked for elsew here. 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 anot her pattern, and ceases to be a mere sequence
--
here the poet is almost grimly tense, concentrated and has not allowed himself to be dissipated by thinkings and arguments, has confined himself wholly to a living experience. That is because the poet has since then moved up and sought a more rarefied air, a more even and smooth temper. The utter and absolute poetic ring of the Inferno is difficult to maintain in the Paradiso, unless and until the poet transforms himself wholly into the Rishi, like the poet of the Gita or the Upanishads.
"East Coker"
01.14 - Nicholas Roerich, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
here pilgrims roam, that strayed so far to seek In Golgotha him dead who lives in heaven
the pilgrim soul of Roerich declares with but equal vehemence and assurance:
0.11 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
this volume, the last paragraph of her reply of 20 September 1969.
Series Eleven - To a Sadhak
--
speaking here of the truth of your being. Moreover, he
sometimes moulds himself according to your outer aspirations, and if you live like the devotees who alternate
--
As for all psychological problems, here too sincerity, a total
and uncompromising sincerity, is the true remedy.
--
in her child.
It is not an absolute rule - far from it - but the case is quite
--
A Mot her's eyes are on them and her arms
Stretched out in love desire her rebel sons."9
What had the white gods missed?
--
Is Sri Aurobindo referring here to knowledge by
identity?
--
stands above all the worlds and bears in her eternal
consciousness the Supreme Divine."20
0.12 - Letters to a Student, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
for it is an important day here.
Series Twelve - To a Student
--
with her, that can help in widening the consciousness.
Blessings.
--
Naturally, here we have combined the two. But this is mainly
because human beings, especially in their childhood, still need a
--
and teac hers here?
An obedient, willing and affectionate attitude. They are your
0.13 - Letters to a Student, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
of knowing why we are here on earth, but I have thought
about it and the only answer I could get is that at least
we are here in the Ashram to manifest the Divine upon
earth. But t here remains one question: if everything is
--
I do not think that t here are more accidents here than elsew here.
Certainly t here ought to be less. But for that, the children who
study here must make an effort to grow in consciousness (a thing
they could do more easily here than elsew here). Unfortunately,
however, few of them take the trouble to do it, so they lose the
--
Do you think it isn't good to visit the churches here
to see the midnight ceremony?
0 1954-08-25 - what is this personality? and when will she come?, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
T here are ot her great Personalities of the Divine Mot her, but they were more difficult to bring down and have not stood out in front with so much prominence in the evolution of the earth-spirit. T here are among them Presences indispensable for the supramental realization,most of all one who is her Personality of that mysterious and powerful ecstasy and Ananda1 which flows from a supreme divine Love, the Ananda that alone can heal the gulf between the highest heights of the supramental spirit and the lowest abysses of Matter, the Ananda that holds the key of a wonderful divines Life and even now supports from its secrecies the work of all the ot her Powers of the universe.
Sri Aurobindo, The Mot her
--
You asked, What is this Personality and when will She come? here is my answer (Mot her reads):
She has come, bringing with her a splendor of power and love, an intensity of divine joy heretofore unknown to the Earth. The physical atmosp here has been completely changed by her descent, permeated with new and marvelous possibilities.
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 lovew hereas 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 Mot hers 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 t herefore TOTALLY renounce all feelings of pleasure to be ready to receive the divine Ananda. But rare are those who can renounce pleasure without t hereby 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, t hereby creating a virtually insuperable obstacle to their own transformation.
--
She came down because t here WAS a possibilitybecause things had reached such a stage that it was her hour to come down. But in truth, She came down because because I thought it was possible for her to succeed.
Possibilities are still t hereonly they have to materialize.
This is borne out by the fact that her descent took place at a given moment and for two or three weeks the atmosp herenot only of the Ashram but of the Earthwas so highly charged with such a power of such an intense divine Bliss creating so marvelous a force that things difficult to do before could be done almost instantly.
T here were repercussions the world over. But I dont believe that a single one of you noticed it you cannot even tell me when it happened, can you?
--
Oh! But you see, from an occult standpoint, it is a selection. From an external standpoint you could say that t here are people in the world who are far superior to you (and I would not disagree!), but from an occult standpoint, it is a selection. T here are It can be said that without a doubt the majority of young people here have come because it was promised them that they would be present at the Hour of Realization but they just dont remember it! (Mot her laughs) I have already said several times that when you come down on earth, you fall on your head, which leaves you a little dazed! (laughter) Its a pity, but after all, you dont have to remain dazed all your lives, do you? You should go deep within yourselves and t here find the immortal consciousness then you can see very well, you can very clearly remember the circumstances in which you you aspired to be here for the Hour of the Works realization.
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, Mot her is t here! Shell take care of it for me! And you think about something else.
Mot her, 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 Pondic herry 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 ot her 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 furt her 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 t here 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 t here 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 t here being such a COMPLETE and PASSIVE dependence on the disciples part, each one has to make his own little effort. Truly, thats excellent.
--
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!
So thats how it is.
--
And when, as I told you, I chanced upon a book or an individual that could give me just a little clue and tell me, here. If you do such and such, you will find your pathwell I charged into it like a cyclone and nothing could have stopped 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?
--
I thought someone might ask me, Why doesnt She4 stay for your sake? Since She came here because you called her, then why doesnt She stay for your sake?
But no one asked me that.
--
For her, this body is but one instrument among so many ot hers 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 furt her 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 t here! 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! Furt hermore, 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 t here 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 ot herwise 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.
But in and of itself, it is only one body among countless ot hers. Thats all.
--
(Mot her gets up to go, but while leaving, She says to the children around her:) If you had made just one little decision to try to feel your psychic being, my time would not have been wasted.
Ananda: Divine Joy.
0 1955-03-26, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Mahakali: the eternal Mot her in her warrior aspect, She who severs the heads of the demons.
Such was our old, meaningless name (except for its Germanic root: 'hard bear') until a certain March 3, 1957, when Mot her named us Sat-prem ('the one who loves truly').
0 1955-04-04, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
When I am not immediately engrossed in work, I have to confront a thousand little temptations and daily difficulties that come from my contact with ot her beings and a life that does indeed remain in life. here, even more, t here is the feeling of an impossible struggle, and all these little difficulties seem to gnaw away at me; scarcely has one hole been filled when anot her opens up, or the same one reappears, and t here is never any real victoryone has constantly to begin everything again. Finally, it seems to me that I really live only one hour a day, during the evening distribution at the playground.2 It is scarcely a life and scarcely a sadhana!
Consequently, I understand much better now why in the traditional yogas one settled all these difficulties once and for all by escaping from the world, without bot hering to transform a life that seems so untransformable.
--
By continuing this daily little ant-like struggle and by having to confront the same desires, the same distractions every day, it seems to me I am wasting my energy in vain. Sri Aurobindos Yoga, which is meant to include life, is so difficult that one should come to it only after having already established the solid base of a concrete divine realization. That is why I want to ask you if I should not withdraw for a certain time, to Almora,3 for example, to Brewsters place,4 to live in solitude, silence, meditation, far away from people, work and temptations, until a beginning of Light and Realization is concretized in me. Once this solid base is acquired, it would be easier for me to resume my work and the struggle here for the true transformation of the outer being. But to want to transform this outer being without having fully illumined the inner being seems to me to be putting the cart before the horse, or at least condemning myself to a pitiless and endless battle in which the best of my forces are fruitlessly consumed.
In all sincerity, I must say that when I was at Brewsters place in Almora, I felt very near to that state in which the Light must surge forth. I quite understand the imperfection of this process, which involves fleeing from difficulties, but this would only be a stage, a strategic retreat, as it were.
--
Perhaps being far away from the Ashram for a while will help you feel the special atmosp here that exists here and that cannot be found anyw here else to the same extent.
In any event, my blessings will always be with you to help you find, at long last, this inner Presence which alone gives joy and stability.
0 1955-09-15, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Mot her, 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.
I have friends in Bangalore whom I would like to join for two or three weeks, perhaps more, perhaps less, however long it may take to confront this vital with its own freedom. I need a vital activity, to move, to sail, for example, to have friends etc. The need I am feeling is exactly that which I sought to satisfy in the past through my long boat journeys along the coast of Brittany. It is a kind of thirst for space and movement.
0 1956-03-19, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Note written by Mot her in French. At this period, Mot her'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 Mot her noted down the experience under the name 'Agenda of the Supramental Action on Earth.' It was the first time Mot her 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, Mot her would translate the works of Sri Aurobindo into French before a group of disciples.
AGENDA OF THE SUPRAMENTAL ACTION ON EARTH
0 1956-03-20, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Mot her appeared on her balcony daily at about 6 a.m. to give a few moments of meditation to her disciples before the beginning of the day's work.
***
0 1956-04-04, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Mot her, two months ago I had a clear mental perception of what was asked of me: to spend the rest of my life here. This is the source of my difficulties and of the inner hell I have been living through ever since. Each time I try to emerge, t here is this image that rises up in me: your-whole-life and this casts me into a violent conflict. When I came here, I thought of staying for two or three years; for me the Ashram was a means of realization, not an end.
I understand now that as long as my whole being has not ACCEPTED that it must finish its life here, t here is no way out nor any recovery possible. Through my mental force alone, this acceptance is impossible; I have been turning infernally in circles these past two months, and the mind is in league with the vital. T herefore, a force greater than mine must help me accept that my way is here. I need you, Mot her, for without you I am lost. I need you to tell me that the Truth of my being is indeed here and that I am truly ready to follow this path. Mot her, I beseech you, help me to see the truth of my being, give me some sign that my way is here and not elsew here. I beg of you, Mot her, help me to know.
I also had a very clear sensation that you were abandoning me, that you had no furt her interest in me and I could just as well do as I pleased. Perhaps you cannot forgive some of my inner rebellions which have been so very violent? Am I totally guilty? Is it true that you are abandoning me?
0 1956-04-23, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
and rewrites it as follows in her own hand:
29 February29 March
0 1956-04-24, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
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
Oh, really! How ignorant! It has been promised for such a very long time, it has been said for such a very long timenot only here in the Ashram, but ever since the beginning of the earth. T here have been all kinds of predictions, by all kinds of prophets. It has been said, T here will be a new heaven and a new earth, a new race shall be born, the world shall be transformed Prophets have spoken of this in every tradition.
You said, They are fulfilled.
--
Because a lot of people have come here, and they are asking, How are we going to benefit from it?
Oh!
And why should they benefit from it? What entitles them to benefit from it? Simply because they took the train to come here?
I knew some people who came here a long time ago, something like (Oh, I dont recall anymore, but quite a long time ago!), certainly more than twenty years ago; the first time someone died in the Ashram, they expressed a considerable dissatisfaction: But I came here because I thought this yoga would make me immortal! If you can still die, then why did I come here?
Well, its the same thing. People take the train to come heret here were about a hundred and fifty more people than usual1simply because they want to benefit. But this may be exactly why they have not benefited from it! Because This [the supramental consciousness] has not come to make people benefit in any way whatsoever!
They ask if their inner difficulties will be easier to overcome.
--
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.
--
Look. If all of you who have heard of this, not once but perhaps hundreds of times, who have spoken of it yourselves, thought about it, hoped for it, wanted it (t here are some people who have come here only for this, to receive the Supramental Force and to be transformed into supermen, this has been their goal) then how is it that you were ALL such strangers to this Force that when it came, you did not even feel it?!
Can you solve that problem for me? If you find the solution to this problem, you will have the solution to the difficulty.
--
I hasten to tell you that some did recognize it, but they were so few But as for those who ask these questions, who even took the trouble to come here, who took the train to gulp this down as you gulp down a soft drink, how can they possibly feel anything whatsoever if they have not prepared themselves at all? Yet they are already speaking of profiting: We want to benefit from it
After all, if they have even a tiny bit of sincerity (not too much, its tiring!), a tiny bit of sincerity, it is quite possible (I am joking), it is quite possible that they might get a few good kicks to make them go faster! It is possible. In fact, I think thats what will happen.
--
Mot her is referring to the darshan of April 24, 1956. Four times a year, for 'darshan,' visitors increasingly poured into the Ashram to pass one by one before Mot her (and formerly, Sri Aurobindo) to receive her look.
***
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, Mot her wrote, 'This account is quite correct,' and She signed the text. Words added or corrected by Mot her are in italics.
(During the Wednesday class)
0 1956-09-14, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
You asked me what I see and whet her your difficulties will not reappear upon your return to the Ashram. It may well be. If you return as you still are at present, it may be that after a very short period it will all begin again. That is why I am going to propose something to you but to accept it you will have to be heroic and very determined in your consecration to my work.
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 whet her 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
It was because I hadnt thought of it. It hadnt even grazed my consciousness. The divine will is not at all like that, it is not a will: it is a VISION, a global vision, that sees and No, it does not guide (to guide suggests something outside, but nothing is outside), a creative vision, as it were; yet even then, the word create does not here have the meaning we generally attribute to it.
And what is the Ashram? (I dont even mean in terms of the Universeon Earth only.) A speck. And why should this speck receive exceptional treatment? Perhaps if people here had realized the supermind. But are they so exceptional as to expect exceptional treatment?
As Sri Aurobindo says, people see God as a magnified man: he is the Demiurge, Jehovahwhat I call the Lord of Falsehood.
--
Which is why things go amiss when people try to force me to act: I am outside of myself, so to speak. As soon as I come back here, with no one around, then I see.
I have called for a greater package of Grace and asked that the truth of things prevail. We shall see what happens.
Mot her is referring to a strike by the salaried workers of the Ashram, one of the numerous internal and external difficulties constantly assailing her.
***
0 1956-10-28, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
In this state, I am ceaselessly thinking of my forest in Guiana or of my travels through Africa and the ardor that filled me with life in those days. I seem to need to have my goal before me and to walk towards it. Outer difficulties also seem to help me resolve my inner problems: t here is a kind of need in me for the elements the sea, the forest, the desert for a milieu with which I can wrestle and through which I can grow. here, I seem to lack a dynamic point of leverage. here, in the everyday routine, everything seems to be falling apart in me. Should I not return to my forest in Guiana?
Mot her, I implore you, in the name of whatever led me to you in the first place, give me the strength to do WHAT HAS TO BE DONE. You who see and who can, decide for me. You are my Mot her. Whatever my shortcomings, my difficulties, I feel I am so deeply your child.
--
P.S. If you see that I should remain here, put in me the necessary strength and aspiration. I shall obey you. I want to obey you.
***
0 1957-04-09, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
For more than a year now, I have been hypnotized by the idea that if I give in, I will be condemned to remain here. Once more, forgive me for speaking so absurdly, for of course I know it is not a condemnation; and yet a part of me feels that it would be.
Thus I am so tense that I do not even want to close my eyes to meditate for fear of yielding. And I fall into all kinds of errors that horrify me, simply because the pressure is too strong at times, and I literally suffocate. Mot her, I am not cut out to be a disciple.
I realize that all the progress I was able to make during the first two years has been lost and I am just as before, worse than beforeas if all my strength were in ruin, all faith in myself undoneso much so that at times I curse myself for having come here at all.
That is the situation, Mot her. I feel my unworthiness profoundly. I am the opposite of Satprem, unable to love and to give myself. Everything in me is sealed tight.
--
P.S. And yet, even if I leave, I know that I shall have to come back here Everything is a paradox, and I CANNOT get out of this paradox.
***
--
I read your letter yesterday, and here is the answer that immediately came to me. I add to it the assurance that nothing has changed, nor can change, in my relationship with you, and that you are and always will be my child for that is the truth of your being.
here is what I wrote:
In your ignorance, you created a phantom of your destiny, and then, out of this non-existent ghost, you made a hobgoblin around which all the resistances of your outer nature have crystallized.
0 1957-07-03, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Its symbolism was very clear, though of quite a familiar nature, as it were, and because of its very familiarity, unmistakable in its realism Were I to tell you all the details, you would probably not even be able to follow: it was rat her intricate. It was a kind of (how can I express it?)an immense hotel w here all the terrestrial possibilities were lodged in different apartments. And it was all in a constant state of transformation: parts or entire wings of the building were suddenly torn down and rebuilt while people were still living in them, such that if you went off somew here within the immense hotel itself, you ran the risk of no longer finding your room when you wanted to return to it, for it might have been torn down and was being rebuilt according to anot her plan! It was orderly, it was organized yet t here was this fantastic chaos which I mentioned. And all this was a symbola symbol that certainly applies to what Sri Aurobindo has written here1 regarding the necessity for the transformation of the body, the type of transformation that has to take place for life to become a divine life.
It went something like this: somew here, in the center of this enormous edifice, t here was a room reservedas it seemed in the story for a mot her and her daughter. The mot her was a lady, an elderly lady, a very influential matron who had a great deal of authority and her own views concerning the entire organization. her daughter seemed to have a power of movement and activity enabling her to be everyw here at once while at the same time remaining in her room, which was well, a bit more than a roomit was a kind of apartment which, above all, had the characteristic of being very central. But she was constantly arguing with her mot her. The mot her wanted to keep things just as they were, with their usual rhythm, which precisely meant the habit of tearing down one thing to rebuild anot her, then again tearing down that to build still anot her, thus giving the building an appearance of frightful confusion. But the daughter did not like this, and she had anot her plan. Most of all, she wanted to bring something completely new into the organization: a kind of super-organization that would render all this confusion unnecessary. Finally, as it was impossible for them to reach an understanding, the daughter left the room to go on a kind of general inspection She went out, looked everything over, and then wanted to return to her room to decide upon some final measures. But this is w here something rat her peculiar began happening.
She clearly remembered w here her room was, but each time she set out to go t here, eit her the staircase disappeared or things were so changed that she could no longer find her way! So she went here and t here, 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 t here was somew here (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 w here 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 t here. 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 w here 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 mot her 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 altoget her 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 inco herent 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.
--
It is certainly not an arbitrary construction of the type built by men, w here everything is put pell-mell, without any order, without reality, and which is held toget her 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 toget her, etc.; t here is an overall identity. But naturally, on the inside t here 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 toget her, band toget her, 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 ot her members of the community; that is, each one should not feel himself a member connected to all the ot hers in an arbitrary way, but that all are one within himself. For each one, the ot hers 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.
0 1957-09-27, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
(A child's question concerning a vision in which Mot her had appeared to her in a luminous body)
Why have you come as we are?
0 1957-10-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
T here is no question of my abandoning the path and I remain convinced that the only goal in life is spiritual. But I need things to help me along the way: I am not yet ripe enough to depend upon inner strength alone. And when I speak of the forest or a boat, it is not only for the sake of adventure or the feeling of space, but also because they mean a discipline. Outer constraints and difficulties help me, they force me to remain concentrated around that which is best in me. In a sense, life here is too easy. Yet it is also too hard, for one must depend on ones own discipline I do not yet have that strength, I need to be helped by outer circumstances. The very difficulty of life in the outside world helps me to be disciplined, for it forces me to concentrate all my vital strength in effort. here, this vital part is unemployed, so it acts foolishly, it strains at the leash.
I doubt that a new experience outside can really resolve things, but I believe it might help me make it to the next stage and consolidate my inner life. And if you wish, I would return in a year or two.
0 1957-10-17, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
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 w here 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 hig her 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.
0 1957-10-18, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I need a practical method corresponding to my present possibilities and to results of which I am presently capable. I feel that my efforts are dispersed by concentrating sometimes here, sometimes t herea feeling of not knowing exactly what to do to break through and get out of all this. Would you point out some particular concentration to which I could ad here, a particular method that I would stick to?
I am well aware that a supple attitude is recommended in the Yoga, yet for the time being, it seems to me that one well-defined method would help me hold on1this practical aspect would help me. I will do it methodically, obstinately, until it cracks for good.
--
This unique method was to be the mantra, as Mot her herself would discover.
***
0 1958-01-01, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
(Mot her reads the notation of her experience)
During one of our classes (October 30, 1957), I spoke of the limitless abundance of Nature, this tireless Creatrice who takes the multitude of forms, mixes them toget her, separates them again and reforms them, again undoes them, again destroys them, in order to move on to ever new combinations. As I said, it is a huge cauldron. Things get churned up in it and somehow something emerges; if its defective, it is thrown back in and something else is taken out One form, two forms or a hundred forms make no difference to her, t here are thousands upon thousands of formsand one year, a hundred years, a thousand years, millions of years, what difference does it make? Eternity lies before her! She quite obviously enjoys herself and is in no hurry. If you speak to her of pressing on or of rushing through some part of her work or ot her, her reply is always the same: But what for? Why? Arent you enjoying it?
The evening I told you these things, I totally identified myself with Nature and I entered into her play. And this movement of identification brought forth a response, a new kind of intimacy between Nature and myself, a long movement of drawing ever nearer which culminated in an experience that came on November 8.
Nature suddenly understood. She understood that this newborn Consciousness does not seek to reject her, but wants to embrace her entirely. She understood that this new spirituality does not stand apart from life, does not timorously recoil before the awesome richness of her movement, but on the contrary wants to integrate all her facets. She understood that the supramental consciousness is not t here to diminish her but to make her complete.
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, t here 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 t her 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 ot her 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 1958-02-03a, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I would like to tell you that I am staying, very simply, for something in me wants this, but I am afraid to make a decision that I may not be able to keep. A force ot her than mine is needed. In short, you have to do the willing for me, to utter a word that would help me understand truly that I must stay here. Grant me the grace of helping and enlightening me. I would like to decide without preference, in obedience to the sole Truth and in accordance with my real possibilities.
I have received a long letter from Swami,1 who in essence says that I should be able to realize what I have to realize right here with you, but he does not refuse to take me with him should I persist in my intention.
Mot her, I am placing all this in your hands, sincerely.
0 1958-02-03b - The Supramental Ship, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
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 t here 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 t here 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 t here 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 t here! 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. T here 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. T here was ONE SINGLE substance in all things; it changed the nature of its vibration according to the needs or uses.
--
As for the people I saw aboard ship, I recognized them all. Some were here in the Ashram, some came from elsew here, but I knew them as well. I saw everyone, but as I realized that I would not remember everyone when I came back, I decided not to give any names. Besides, it is unnecessary. Three or four faces were very clearly visible, and when I saw them, I understood the feeling that I have had here, on earth, while looking into their eyes: t here was such an extraordinary joy On the whole, the people were young; t here were very few children, and their ages were around fourteen or fifteen, but certainly not below ten or twelve (I did not stay long enough to see all the details). T here were no very old people, with the exception of a few. Most of the people who had gone ashore were of a middle ageagain, except for a few. Several times before this experience, certain individual cases had already been examined at a place w here people capable of being supramentalized are examined; I had then had a few surprises which I had noted I even told some people. But those whom I disembarked today I saw very distinctly. They were of a middle age, neit her young children nor elderly people, with only a few rare exceptions, and this quite corresponded to what I expected. I decided not to say anything, not to give any names. As I did not stay until the end, it would be impossible for me to draw an exact picture, for it was neit her absolutely clear nor complete. I do not want to say things to some and not say them to ot hers.
What I can say is that the criterion or the judgment was based EXCLUSIVELY on the substance constituting the peoplewhe t her they belonged completely to the supramental world or not, whet her they were made of this very special substance. The criterion adopted was neit her moral nor psychological. It is likely that their bodily substance was the result of an inner law or an inner movement which, at that time, was not in question. At least it is quite clear that the values are different.
When I came back, along with the memory of the experience, I knew that the supramental world was permanent, that my presence t here 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 rat her long, almost the whole day) was of an extreme relativityno, not exactly that, but an impression that the relationship between this world and the ot her 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 ot her things that we consider important were really quite unimportant t here! Whet her 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 whet her 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 Mot her speaks to the children)
--
But one thing and I wish to stress this point to youwhich now seems to me to be the most essential difference between our world and the supramental world (and it is only after having gone t here consciously, with the consciousness that ordinarily works here, that this difference appeared to me in what might be called its enormity): everything here, except for what happens within and at a very deep level, seemed absolutely artificial to me. Not one of the values of ordinary physical life is based upon truth. Just as we have to buy cloth, sew it toget her, then put it on our backs in order to dress ourselves, likewise we have to take things from outside and then put them inside our bodies in order to feed ourselves. For everything, our life is artificial.
A true, sincere, spontaneous life, as in the supramental world, is a springing forth of things through the fact of conscious will, a power over substance that shapes this substance according to what we decide it should be. And he who has this power and this knowledge can obtain whatever he wants, w hereas he who does not has no artificial means of getting what he desires.
--
Indeed, one of the people near Mot her had pulled her out of the experience.
See Questions and Answers, (July 10, 1957).
0 1958-02-25, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
The only thing in the world that still appears intolerable to me now is all physical deterioration, physical suffering, the ugliness the powerlessness to express this capacity of beauty in herent in every being. But this, too, will be conquered one day. here, too the power will come one day to shift the needle a little. Only, one has to climb hig her in consciousness: the deeper into matter you want to descend, the hig her must you ascend in consciousness.
It will take time. Sri Aurobindo was surely right when he spoke of a few centuries.
0 1958-03-07, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Your place has remained vacant here; you alone can fill it, and it awaits your return, when the moment comes.
As soon as the problem children on the surface will also have learned their lesson, you have only to let me know of the date of your return and you will be welcome.
0 1958-04-03, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
We are still in Kataragama, and we shall only go up to nort hern Ceylon, to Jaffna, around the 15th, then return to India towards the beginning of May if the visa problems are settled. Only in India, at the temple of Rameswaram, can I receive the orange robe. I am living here as a sannyasi, but dressed in white, like a Hindu. It is a stark life, nothing more. I have seen however, that truth does not lie in starkness but in a change of consciousness. (Desire always finds a means to entrench itself in very small details and in very petty and stupid, though well-rooted, avidities.)
Mot her, I am seeing all the mean pettiness that obstructs your divine work. Destroy my smallness and take me unto you. May I be sincere, integrally sincere.
0 1958-05-10, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
From the positive point of view, I am convinced that we agree upon the result to be obtained, that is, an integral and unreserved consecrationin love, knowledge and actionto the Supreme AND TO HIS WORK. I say to the Supreme and to his work because consecration to the Supreme alone is not enough. Now we are here for the supramental realization, this is what is expected of us, but to reach it, our consecration to it must be total, unreserved absolutely integral. I believe you have understood thisin ot her words, that you have the will to realize it.
From the negative point of view I mean the difficulties to be overcomeone of the most serious obstacles is that the ignorant and falsifying outer consciousness, the ordinary consciousness legitimizes all the so-called physical laws, causes, effects and consequences, all that science has discovered physically and materially. All this is an unquestionable reality to the consciousness, a reality that remains independent and absolute even in the face of the eternal divine Reality.
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 t here 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! T here 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 t here 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.
It was very strange, because my first reaction was one of bewilderment: how is it that someone I was really bewildered for a fraction, not even the fraction of a second. And then
--
Mot her is referring to her 'Darshan' when four times a year She appeared on her balcony high above the assembled mass of disciples and visitors on the street below. The 'darshan days' were February 21, April 24, August 15 and November 24.
Tamas: in Indian psychology, inertia and obscurity.
0 1958-06-06 - Supramental Ship, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
In the first experience [of 1910], the consciousness was established in the psychic depths of the being, and from that poise issued the feeling of no longer doing anything but what the Divine wantedit was the consciousness that the divine Will was all-powerful and that t here was no longer any personal will, although t here was still some mental activity and everything had to be made silent. In 1914, it was silenced, and the consciousness was established above the head. here (the heart) and here (above the head), the connection is constant.
Does one exclude the ot her?
They exist simultaneously; its the same thing. When you start becoming truly conscious, you realize that it depends upon the kinds of activities you have to do. When you do a certain kind of work, it is in the heart that the Force gat hers to radiate outwards, and when you do anot her kind of work, it is above the head that the Force concentrates to radiate outwards, but the two are not separate: the center of activity is here or t here depending upon what you have to do.
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. T here 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, t here CAN NO LONGER be illness it is impossible. T here can no longer be accidents, t here can no longer be illness, t here 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!
--
This consciousness here is true in relation to this world as it is, but the ot her is something else entirely. An adjustment is needed for the two to touch, ot herwise one jumps from one to the ot her. And that serves no purpose. A progressive passage has to be built between the two. This means that a whole number of rungs of consciousness are missing. This consciousness here must consciously connect with that consciousness t here, which means a multitude of stairs passing from one to the ot her. Then we will be able to rise up progressively, and the whole will arise.
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 ot her to the ot her 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, w hereas 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 rat her too zealously will certainly vanish with them. And this is what was expressed in this concept of the Last Judgment.
0 1958-07-05, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Yes, I remember. It was towards the end of the Darshan and I was repeating within me, Lord, Lord, Lord, Lord But wordlessly. It came like that (gesture) and went far, far, far, far! It is all here (motion around the head). And that (Mot her points to her chin) is determination (but t here should have been a little more light on the chin!), the realizing will.
Thats it: the capacity to be an ABSOLUTELY receptive passivitylike thatin TOTAL silence and surrender, and at the same time here, t here, an IRREDUCIBLE, OMNIPOTENT will with a total power to effectuate, shattering all resistances. Both simultaneously without one inhibiting the ot her, in the same joy that is the GREAT secret! The harmonization of opposites, in joy and plenitude, ALWAYS, ALWAYS, for all problems: that is the great secret.
In regard to the Ashram's financial difficulties.
0 1958-07-06, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
She didnt do a thing! Nothing, absolutely nothing: a complete refusal. Did she refuse or was she unable to? It may be that I always saw that money was under the control of an asuric force. (I am speaking of currency, cash; I dont want to do business. When I try to do business, it generally succeeds very well, but I dont mean that. I am speaking of cash.) I never asked her that question.
You see, this is how it happened: t heres this Ganesh2 We had a meditation (this was more than thirty years ago) in the room w here Prosperity3 is now distributed. T here 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 t here. 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? T hereupon, 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!
--
Once someone even asked Santa Claus! A young Muslim girl who had a special liking for Fat her Christmas I dont know why, as it was not part of her religion! Without saying a word to me, she called on Santa Claus and told him, Mot her doesnt believe in you; you should give her a gift to prove to her that you exist. You can give it to her for Christmas. And it happened! She was quite proud.
But it only happened like that once. And as for Ganesh, that was the end of it. So then I asked Nature. It took her a long time to accept to collaborate. But as for the money, I shall have to ask her about it; because for me personally, it is still going on. I think, Hmm, wouldnt it be nice to have a wristwatch like that. And I get twenty of them! I say to myself, Well, if I had that and I get thirty of them! Things come in from every side, without my even uttering a word I dont even ask, they just come.
The first time I came here and spoke with Sri Aurobindo about what was needed for the Work, he told me (he also wrote it to me) that for the secure achievement of the Work we would need three powers: one was the power over health, the second was the power over government, and the third was the power over money.
Health naturally depends upon the sadhana; but even that is not so sure: t here are ot her factors. As for the second, the power over government, Sri Aurobindo looked at it, studied it, considered it very carefully, and finally he told me, T here is only one way to have that power: it is TO BE the government. One can influence individuals, one can transmit the will to them, but their hands are tied. In a government, t here is no one individual, nor even several who is all-powerful and who can decide things. One must be the government oneself and give it the desired orientation.
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 everyw here, among all men) will have the right to enter. In ot her 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, everyw hereis quite anot her. 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.
--
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. W hereas 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. T here 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.
So considering all that, Sri Aurobindo came to the conclusion that only the supramental power (Mot her brings down her hands) as he said, will be able to rule over everything. And when that happens, it will be all overincluding Nature. For a long time, Nature rebelled (I have written about it often). She used to say, Why are you in such a hurry? It will be done one day. But then last year, t here was that extraordinary experience.5 And it was because of that experience that I told her, Well, now that we agree, give me some proof; I am asking you for some proofdo it for me. She didnt budge, absolutely nothing.
Perhaps it is a kind of it can hardly be called an intuition, but a kind of divination of this idea that made people speak of selling ones soul to the devil for money, of money being an evil force, which produces this shrinking on the part of all those who want to lead a spiritual life but as for that, they shrink from everything, not only from money!
0 1958-08-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
T here (gesture above the head), everything has been resolved, I could write books on how to resolve this or that, how the synthesis is made, etc., but here (the body) I live this synthesis stumblingly. The two coexist, but it is still not THAT (gesture, hands clasped toget her, pointing upwards).
(silence)
--
We know nothing. We believe we know, but as soon as it is a question of that (the body), we know nothing. As soon as we are in the subtle physical, we know everything, we live in bliss but here, we know nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing.
***
0 1958-08-09, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
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 1958-08-30, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
No, it came up to here (gesture to the top of the head). It seemed to be a tractor tire, but it did not have the heavy tread that tractor tires have.
(Abhay Singh:) T here are tractor tires that have no tread.
Ah! So He was standing, and it came up to here (same gesture). So it must have been a tractor tire.
What could it represent, he, and the tractor? I dont know It was not personal, you see I mean this body. It had nothing to do with that.
0 1958-09-16 - OM NAMO BHAGAVATEH, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
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 Pondic herry. 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 rat her 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.
--
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.
--
It rose up from here (Mot her 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 hig her tones it was a kind of opaline white light: OM NAMO BHAGAVATEH, OM NAMO BHAGAVATEH, OM NAMO BHAGAVATEH.
The ot her day (I was in my bathroom upstairs), it came; it took hold of the entire body. It rose up in the same way, and all the cells were trembling. And with such a power! So I stopped everything, all movement, and I let the thing grow. The vibration went on expanding, ever widening, as the sound itself was expanding, expanding, and all the cells of the body were seized with an intensity of aspiration as if the entire body were swellingit became overwhelming. I felt that it would all burst.
--
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 t here, not in your head, but here (Mot her points to the center of her heart), it will come. One day, eit her 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.
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 atmosp here that extends everyw herea very conscious atmosp herewhich 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. Rat her, I receive a sensation or an impression; and as these sensations and impressions are innumerable, its rat her 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 somew here, thats how it is.
The ot her 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 eit her way; when I am concentrated, things on the physical plane no longer exist), I deliberately opened the minds eyes, for that is w here 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 thatt here are certainly a great many people here and elsew here 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 t here or t here or t herehundreds 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 rat her a work that is done automatically.
When you asked me if X4 were thinking of me, I consulted my atmosp here 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 whet her its like this or like that. W hereas this vision the ot her day was something that thrust itself on me; I was in anot her region altoget her, 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, t here was a living form the being himself was t here but upon leaving (probably to see the effect, to find out whet her 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 altoget her 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 ot her 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 rat her 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 t here, 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 ot hers 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.
--
T here is an interdependence between the individual progress and the collective progress, between that which works and that which is worked upon. It proceeds like this (gesture of intermeshing), and as one progresses, the ot her progresses. The progress above not only hastens the progress below but brings the two nearer toget her, thus changing the distance in the relationship; that is, the distance will not remain the same, the ratio between the progress here and the progress above wont always be identical.
The progress above follows a certain trajectory, and in some cases the distance increases, in ot hers it decreases (although on the whole, the distance remains relatively unchanged), but my feeling is that the collective receptivity will increase as the action becomes increasingly supramentalized. And the need for an individual receptivitywith all its distortions and alterations and limitationswill decrease in importance as the supramental influence increasingly imposes its power. This influence will impose itself in such a way that it will no longer be subject to the defects in receptivity.
--
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 t here 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 ot her more effectively than they are presently doing, it must be used to enrich the earth: to enrich the earth, to make the earth ric her and ric her, 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.
--
In this vision, the d. ceased tantric guru of the guru who initiated Satprem appeared to Mot her in a dark blue light and 'imposed' himself on her to tell her certain things.
The disciple's tantric guru.
0 1958-10-10, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Then and this becomes rat her 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, t here are those who believe, who have faith, or to whom the eternal Mot her is revealed through Grace, who have this kind of relationship with the eternal Mot her and t here are those who themselves are plunged in sadhana, who have the consciousness of a developed sadhak, and t hereby 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 ot hers dont have this relationship of sadhak to Guru (I am taking the two extremes, but of course t here are all the possibilities in between), they are only in contact with the eternal Mot her and, in the simplicity of their hearts, they expect her to do everything for them. If they were perfect in this attitude, the eternal Mot her 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, t here 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 Mot her, and those who have this ot her 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; t herefore, 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 t here, 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!
--
And this explains everything, absolutely everything: how it works, how it functions in the world.3 I was saying to myself, But I have no powers, I have no powers! Several days ago, I said, But after all, I KNOW WHO is t here, I know, yet how is it that ? T here, up to t here (the level of the head), it is all-powerful, nothing can resist but here it is ineffective. So those who have faith, even an ignorant but real faith (it can be ignorant but nevertheless it is real), say, What! How can you have no powers? Because the sadhana is not yet over.
The Lord will possess his universe only when the universe will have consciously become the Lord.
0 1958-10-17, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
(Mot her brings with her the continuation of the first seven Sutras written by her, probably in 1957.)
[See p. 119]
0 1958-10-25 - to go out of your body, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
When X does his puja, I clearly see the particular form of the Mot her he is invoking I see her descending.
Each one is in touch with the universal expression of an aspect or a will or a mode of the Supreme, and if one aspires for this, it is this that comes, with an extraordinary plasticity. And when that happens, I even become the Witness (not the witness in the way of the Purusha1: a witness far more infinite and eternal than the Purusha). I see what responds, why it responds, how it responds. This is how I know what people want (not here below, nor even in their highest aspiration). I see it even when the people themselves are no longer consciousor rat her, not yet conscious (for me, its no longer, but anyway ), when they are not yet conscious of this identification somew here. Even then I see it.
Its interesting.
--
And that is what always brings in complications, conflicts. I was surprised that the atmosp here [of the Ashram] is filled with conflict when he is here but that is the reason.2
Why arent people conscious of this identification while having it in a part of their being?
0 1958-11-04 - Myths are True and Gods exist - mental formation and occult faculties - exteriorization - work in dreams, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
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! (Mot her 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 t here. 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 ot herwise! 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 t here). And because she invoked Shiva (it is lovely in the story), because she invoked Shiva, Shivas foot began burning! (Mot her 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.
--
So personally, I am convinced that t here was indeed a tradition anterior to both these traditions containing a knowledge very close to an integral knowledge. Certainly, t here 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, neit her the Vedas nor the Tantras.
So very probably t here was a tradition anterior to both. I have recollections (for me, these are always things I have LIVED), very clear, very distinct recollections of a time that was certainly VERY anterior to the Vedic times and to the Cabala, to the Chaldean tradition.
0 1958-11-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
At the time, I wondered what it meant. Later, of course, I found out, and finally this morning, I said to myself, Ah, so thats it! It came to give me my message for the new year! Then I transcribed the experienceit cant be described, of course, for it was indescribable; it was a psychological phenomenon and the form it took was only a way of describing the psychological state to oneself. here is what I wrote down, obviously in a mental way, and I am thinking of using it as my message.
T here was a hesitation in the expression, so I brought the paper and I want us to decide upon the final text toget her.
--
And then, down into this hole I still see what I saw then, this crevasse between two rocks. The sky was not visible, but on the rock summits I saw something like the reflection of a glimmera glimmercoming from something beyond, which (laughing) must have been the sky! But it was invisible. And as I descended, as if I were sliding down the face of this crevasse, I saw the rock edges; and they were really black rocks, as if cut with a chisel, cuts so fresh that they glistened, with edges as sharp as knives. T here was one here, one t here, anot her t here, everyw here, all around. And I was being pulled, pulled, pulled, I went down and down and downt here was no end to it, and it was becoming more and more compressing.1 It went down and down
And so, physically, the body followed. My body has been taught to express the inner experience to a certain extent. In the body t here is the body-force or the body-form or the body-spirit (according to the different schools, it bears a different name), and this is what leaves the body last when one dies, usually taking a period of seven days to leave.2 With special training, it can acquire a conscious lifeindependent and consciousto such a degree that not only in a state of trance (in trance, it frequently happens that one can speak and move if one is slightly trained or educated), but even in a cataleptic state it can produce sounds and even make the body move. Thus, through training, the body begins to have somnambulistic capacitiesnot an ordinary somnambulism, but it can live an autonomous life.3 This is what took place, yesterday evening it was like that I had gone out of my body, but my body was participating. And then I was pulled downwards: my hand, which had been on the arm of the chair, slipped down, then the ot her hand, then my head was almost touching my knees! (The consciousness was elsew here, I saw it from outsideit was not that I didnt know what I was doing, I saw it from outside.) So I said, In any case, this has to stop somew here because if it continues, my head (laughing) is going to be on the ground! And I thought, But what is t here at the bottom of this hole?
--
(Mot her begins recopying her message)
At the very bottom of the inconscience most hard and rigid Because generally, the inconscience gives the impression, precisely, of something amorphous, inert, formless, drab and gray (when formerly I entered the zones of the inconscient, that was the first thing I encountered). But this was an inconscience it was hard, rigid, COAGULATED, as if coagulated to resist: all effort slides off it, doesnt touch it, cannot penetrate it. So I am putting, most hard and rigid and narrow (the idea of something that compresses, compresses, compresses you) and stiflingyes, stifling is the word.
--
(Mot her resumes her message)
I do not want to put the word Unless, instead of putting generator of all creation, I put of the new creation Oh, but then it becomes absolutely overwhelming! It is THAT, in fact. It is that. But is it time to say so? I dont know
0 1958-11-11, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
(Mot her arrives with a new change in her message for January 1, 1959: instead of 'an almighty spring that cast me up forthwith into a formless, limitless Vast, generator of the new world,' Mot her puts 'a formless, limitless Vast vibrating with the seeds of a new world')
The objectification of the experience came progressively, as always happens to me. When I have the experience, I am absolutely blank, like a newborn baby to whom things come just like that. I dont know what is happening, and I expect nothing. How much time it has taken me to learn this!
0 1958-11-15, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
The link between the two worlds has not yet been built, but it is in the process of being built; this was the meaning of the experience of February 3 1958, 1: to build a link between the two worlds. For both worlds are indeed t herenot one above the ot her, but within each ot her, in two different dimensions. Only, t here is no communication between them; they overlap, as it were, without being connected. In the experience of February 3, I saw certain people from here (and from elsew here) who already belong to the supramental world in a part of their being, but t here is no connection, no link. But now the hour has come in universal history for this link to be built.
What is the relationship between this experience of February 3 and that of November 7 (the almighty spring)? Is what you found in the depths of the Inconscient this same Supramental?
The experience of November 7 was a furt her step in the building of the link between the two worlds. W here I was cast was clearly into the origin of the supramental creationall this warm gold, this tremendous living power, this sovereign peace. And once again I saw that the values governing the supramental world have nothing to do with our values here, even the values of our highest wisdom, even those we consider the most divine when we live constantly in a divine Presence: it is utterly different.
Not only in our state of adoration and surrender to the Supreme, but even in our state of identification, the QUALITY of the identification is different depending upon whet her we are on this side, progressing in this hemisp here, or have passed to the ot her side and have emerged into the ot her world, the ot her hemisp here, the hig her hemisp here.
The quality or the kind of relationship I had with the Supreme at that moment was entirely different from the one we have hereeven the identification had a different quality. One can very well understand that all the lower movements are different but this identification by which the Supreme governs and lives in us was the summit of our experience herewell, the way He governs and lives is different depending on whet her we are in this hemisp here here or in the supramental life. And at that moment (the experience of November 13), what made the experience so intense was that I came to perceive vaguely both these states of consciousness at once. It was almost as if the Supreme Himself were different, or our experience of Him. And yet, in both cases, it was a contact with the Supreme. It is probably how we perceive Him or the way in which we translate it that differs, but the fact is that the quality of the experience is different.
In the ot her hemisp here, t here is an intensity and a plenitude which are translated by a power different from the one here. How can I formulate it?I cannot.
The quality of the consciousness itself seems to change. It is not something hig her than the summit we can attain here, it is not one MORE rung, not that. here, we have reached the end, the summit, but its the quality that is different. The quality, in the sense that a fullness, a richness, a power is t here (this is a translation, you see, in our way), but t here is a something that that eludes us. It is truly a new reversal of consciousness.
When we begin living the spiritual life, a reversal of consciousness takes place which for us is the proof that we have entered the spiritual life; well, yet anot her occurs when we enter the supramental world.
--
It can be expressed in this way (but its quite approximate, more than diminished or deformed): its as if our entire spiritual life were made of silver, w hereas the supramental life is made of goldas if our entire spiritual life here were a vibration of silver, not gold but simply a light, a light that goes right to the summit, an absolutely pure light, pure and intense; but in the ot her, in the supramental world, t here is a richness and a power that make all the difference. This whole spiritual life of the psychic being and of all our present consciousness that appears so warm, so full, so wonderful, so luminous to the ordinary consciousness, well, all this splendor seems poor in comparison to the splendor of the new world.
I can explain the phenomenon like this: successive reversals such that an EVER NEW richness of creation will take place from stage to stage, making whatever came before seem so poor in comparison. What to us seems supremely rich compared to our ordinary life, appears so poor compared to this new reversal of consciousness. Such was my experience.
Last night, my effort to understand what was missing in order to help you completely and truly come out of the difficulty reminded me of what I said the ot her day about Power, the transforming power, the true realizing power, the supramental power. When you enter that, when you suddenly surge into that Thing, then you seeyou see that it is truly almighty in comparison to what we are here. So once again, I touched it, I experienced both states simultaneously.
But as long as this is not an accomplished fact, it will still be a progressiona progression, an ascension; you gain a little, you gain some ground, you rise hig her and hig her. But as long as the new reversal has not taken place, its as if everything had still to be done. It is a repetition of the experience below, reproduced above.
0 1958-11-22, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
My immediate impression was that you were being put in direct contact with this this sort of Fatality that here they call karma, which is the consequence yes, something that must be exhausted, something that remains in the consciousness.
This is how it works: the psychic being passes from one life to anot her, but t here are cases in which the psychic incarnates in order to to work out2 to pass through a certain experience, to learn a certain thing, to develop a certain thing through a certain experience. And so in this life, in the life w here the experience is to be made, it can happen (t here may be more than one reason) that the soul does not come down accurately in the place it should have, some shift or ot her may occur, a set of contrary circumstancesthis happens sometimesand then the incarnation miscarries entirely and the soul leaves. But in ot her cases, the soul is simply placed in the impossibility of doing exactly what it wants and it finds itself swept away by unfortunate circumstances. Not only unfortunate from an objective standpoint, but unfortunate for its own development, and then that creates in it the necessity to begin the experience all over again, and in much more difficult conditions.
--
And then I saw a GREAT light, like a glory, when you were at Rameswaram. A great light. And when you returned here, this light was upon you, very strong and imposing. But at the same time, I felt that it needed protectingto be shielded, protected that it was not yet established. Established, ready to resist all that decomposes an experience. I would have liked to have kept you apart, under a glass case, but then I saw that this would have drawbacks as well as advantages. Also, I liked the way you wanted to fight against an uncomprehending reception due to your orange robes and your shaved head. Of course, it was a much shorter path than the ot her, but it was more difficult.
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
--
As soon as you had left, and since I was following you, I saw that nothing of the kind was going to happen, but rat her 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. T here are places that are favorable for occult experiences. Benares is one of these places, the atmosp here t here is filled with vibrations of occult forces, and if one has the slightest capacity, it spontaneously develops t here, 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 anot her 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 t here was still a GREAT dignity and a GREAT sincerity in this endeavor of the Sannyasis towards the hig her life and in the self-giving of a certain number of people to realize this hig her 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 t here, 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 t here should not have been all kinds of outer, superficial things) Anyway, it didnt happen. So it means that the time had not come.
But when here the difficulties returned and because of their obstinacy, their appearance of an inevitable fatality I concluded that it was a karma, although I knew it with certainty only now.
But I always had a presentiment of the true thing: that only a VERY COURAGEOUS act of self-giving could efface the thingnot courageous or difficult from the material point of view, not that T here is a certain zone of the vital in you, a mentalized vital but still very material, which is very much under the influence of circumstances and which very much believes in the effectiveness of outer measuresthis is what is resisting.
0 1958-11-27 - Intermediaries and Immediacy, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
(Concerning the disciple's karma and the tantric discipline that he is following to dissolve this karma, Mot her wonders why She herself had not been able to dissolve it directly and why it was necessary to resort to intermediaries)
I am used to seeing the process or the working of things more from a spiritual point of view, something more universal, w hereas this needs to be seen from a detailed, occult point of view.
--
What interested me is that in their case (those who follow tantric or ot her initiations), what is doubtful is whet her or not they can succeed in receiving the response of the true Power, the divine power, the supreme power; they do everything they can, but this question still remains. W hereas for me, it is the opposite situation: the Power is t here, I have it, but how can I make it act here in matter? The process for making it act immediately was missingthough not totally; I know from the psychological standpoint, but t here is something ot her than the psychological power, t here is the whole play of conscious, individualized forces that are everyw here in Nature and that have the right to exist. Since it was created this way, it must express something of the supreme Will, ot herwise He wouldnt have made use of intermediaries but in His plan, it is obvious that the intermediary has a legitimate place.
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, w hereas 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. T here 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 t here, 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 t here 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 w here it is this condensation of energy that makes things (Mot her 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.
--
A few days later, the disciple left on a journey, then Mot her fell 'ill.' It was to be the first great turning in her yoga: the beginning of the yoga of the cells.
***
0 1958-11-30, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
here is the w herewithal to go to Hyderabad. Whatever you may decide, I will always be with you, invariably, in the truth of your being.
Signed: Mot her
0 1958-12-04, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I do not want to remain in Hyderabad. This is not the atmosp here I need, although everything is very quiet here.
If you want, I can return to the Ashram and throw myself headlong into the work in order to forget all this. T here is a lot of work with herberts things to correct, the revision of The Synthesis of Yoga, your old Questions and Answers and the Dhammapada, and perhaps you would accept to take up our work toget her again?
Ot herwise, if you consider it preferable to wait, I could go join Swami in Rameswaram, discarding all my little personal reactions towards him. And I would try my best to find again the Light of the first time and return to you stronger. I dont know. I will do what you say. All this really has to change. I dont know, moreover, whet her Swami wishes to have me.
--
I have just received your letter which I read with all my love, the love that understands and effaces. When you return here, you will always be very welcome, and we shall certainly take up our work toget her again. I shall be happy, and it is very much needed. But first of all, it will be good for you to go to Rameswaram. I know that you will be welcome t here. Stay t here as long as necessary to find and consolidate your experience. Afterwards, come back here, stronger and better armed, to face a new period of outer and inner work. At the end of the labor is the Victory.
With all my confident love.
0 1958-12-15 - tantric mantra - 125,000, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I clearly see that the hour has come: eit her I will perish right here, or else I will emerge from this COMPLETELY changed. But something has to change. Mot her, you are with me, I know, and you are protecting me, you love me I have only you, only you, you are my Mot her. 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. Mot her, 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 beot herwise I can no longer go on.
Mot her, I believe I understand something of all that you yourself are suffering, and the crucifixion of the Divine in Matter is a real crucifixion. In this moment of consciousness, I offer you all my trials and little sufferings. I would like to triumph so that it be your triumph, one weight less upon your heart.
--
I have just received your letter of the 15th. Yes, I know that the hour is critical. It has been grave here as well. I had to stop everything, for the attack upon my body was too violent. Now it is better but I have not yet resumed any of my outer activities, and I remain in my room upstairs. The battle continues in the invisible and I consider it decisive. You are a very intimate part of this battle. This is to tell you that I am with you in the most integral sense of these words. I know what you are suffering, I feel it but you must hold on. The Grace is t here, all-powerful. As soon as it is possible and without going through one minute more than needed to transform that which has to be transformed, the trial will reach its end and we shall emerge into the light and joy. So never forget that I am with youin youand that WE SHALL TRIUMPH:
With all that love can bring of solace and endurance,
--
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
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
One sentence in your letter prompted much reflection; you write that Xs action might be useful here, too. After hesitating, I told Swami of the magic attack aimed directly against you.
If you wish, two things can be done to help your action: eit her X can undertake certain mantric operations upon you here in Rameswaram, or better still, he can immediately come to Pondic herry with Swami and do what is needed in front of you.
Sweet Mot her, 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.
--
The work can be done from here also, but naturally it will not be quite as effective. In that case, you would have to set a specific time to synchronize the action in Rameswaram and Pondic herry. Swami can also do something in his pujas. It is for you to decide, but I hope you will not want to prolong this battle unnecessarily.
On my side, within my little field, I am taking the bull by the horns and henceforth the enemy will no longer have my complicity. May all my being be turned solely towards your Lightand be your help, your instrument, your knight.
--
I have just now received your letter of the 28th. On that day I definitely felt that t here was a decisive change in the situation and I understood right away that you had spoken to Swami and also that what I had written to you gave you the opportunity to take a great step. I am very happy and can say with certitude that the worst is over. However, from several points of view, I infinitely appreciate Xs offer. And although I do not think it necessary, or even desirable, that they both come here (it would create a veritable revolution and perhaps even a panic among the ashramites), I am sure that their intervention in Rameswaram itself would not only be useful but most effective
Yes, everything has changed since you now understand that your battle is not only a personal battle and that by winning it, it is a real service you are rendering to the Divine Work.
0 1958 12 - Floor 1, young girl, we shall kill the young princess - black tent, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
(This note was written by Mot her in English. It concerns an attack of black magic that threatened her life and in the end completely changed her outer existence. A new stage begins.)
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 w here 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, rat her 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, W here 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 ot her 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.
--
Mot her withdrew on December 9. In fact, She had been unwell for already more than a month before withdrawing. On November 26, the last 'Wednesday class' took place at the playground; on November 28 the last 'Friday class', on December 6, the last 'Translation class'; on December 1, the end of Mot her's tennis and the last visit to the playground. On December 9, She again went down for the meditation around the Samadhi. From December 10, Mot her remained in her room for one month. A great period had come to an end. Henceforth, She would only go out of the Ashram building on rare occasions.
A disciple
0 1959-01-06, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
His action here has been very effective and really very interesting. I still do not know whet her 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 atmosp here. Also their mantric intervention did not stop at that, for it has had anot her 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 t here 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 ot hers. 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
This morning, X told me that he would be most happy to continue his action upon you if it would help your work; he has continued it anyway, even after knowing that the malefic influence was expelled from the Ashram. By the way, X told me that this evil spirit is continuing to circle around the Ashram, but beyond its borders. T herefore, if you agree, it would be necessary for him to come to Pondic herry one of these days to come to grips directly with the evil one and finish him off in such a way that he can no longer come to disturb the sadhaks, or your work, upon the slightest pretext. Then X could force this spirit to appear before him, and t hereby free the atmosp here from its influence. Anyway, this trip to Pondic herry would not take place in the near future, and it would be easy to give him an official excuse: seminars on the Tantra Shastra that will interest all the Sanskritists at the Ashram. Moreover, Xs work would be done quietly in his room when he does his daily puja. From here, from Rameswaram, it is rat her difficult to attract Pondic herrys atmosp here and do the work with precision. Of course, nothing will be done without your express consent. Swami is writing you on his own to tell you of the revelation that X received from his [deceased] guru concerning your experience and the schemings of certain Ashram members.
In this regard, perhaps you know that X is the tenth in the line of Bhaskaraya (my spelling of this name is perhaps not correct), the great Tantric of whom you had a vision, who could comm and the coming of Kali along with all her warriors. It is from X that Swami received his initiation.
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
0 1959-01-21, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
here is what X told me: I have received a message from my guru.1 In my vision, the Mot her was t here, next to my guru, and she was smiling. My guru told me that your present difficulties are a period of testing, but I could already give you the first stage of tantric initiation and that for you, the three stages of initiation could be done in an accelerated way.
I will t herefore 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 Pondic herryor 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. (!!) T here, 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 Mot her, t here 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 Pondic herry 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 Mot her, by your attention and the money you are sending me.
0 1959-01-31, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
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.
As for the rest, we shall speak of it here.
So, until we meet soon.
0 1959-04-13, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
here is the outline for the book on Sri Aurobindo for the ditions du Seuil.1
It is a rough sketch, and in the actual process of writing, the proposed sequence may change according to the inner necessity, but these are the themes to be developed. So now T would like to know what you feel and if you see anything to be changed, added or deleted.
0 1959-05-25, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
A love for you might have held me here. And indeed, for you I have devotion, veneration, respect, an attachment, but t here 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.
I have no illusions, and I do not at all suppose that elsew here my life may at last be fulfilled. No, I know that this whole life is cursed, but it may as well be truly cursed. If the Divine does not want to give me his Love, may he give me his curse. But not this life between two worlds. Or if I am too hardened, may he break me. But not this tepidness, this approximation.
--
T here is someone here who could have saved me, whom I could have loved. Oh, it has nothing to do with all those things you might imagine! My soul loves her soul. It is something very serene. We have known each ot her for five years, and I had never even dreamed of calling it love. But all the outer circumstances are against us. And I do not want to turn anyone away from you. Anyway, if I sink into the depths of the pit, or so I tell myself, it is no reason to drag someone else along with me. So this too is one more reason for me to leave. I cannot continue suffocating all alone in my corner. (It is useless to ask her name, I will say nothing.)
You are imposing a new ordeal on me by asking me to go to Rameswaram. For you, I have accepted. But I shall go t here sheathed in my sturdiest armor and I will not yield, because I know that it is always to be begun again. I do not want to become a great Tantric or whatever else it may be. I want only to love. And since I cannot love, I am leaving. I will arrive in Rameswaram at 2 in the morning, and will leave again by the 11 oclock train.
0 1959-05-28, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
2) T here 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, t here 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, Mot her, for you do all you can to help me. But I realize that to write, one must have leisure, and t here 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 ot her need in me, and periodically it awakens and sprouts up to tell me that it too needs to breathe.
3) T here 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 furt her. 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 ot her 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 neit her can I stifle this with reasoning.
So t here remains the pure spiritual destiny, pure interiorization. That is what I have been trying to do for the last five years, without much success. T here 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 ot her being stifled.
--
I did not utter the words that you heard I wanted to speak to you of my experience during the night, but I was paralyzed because I clearly felt that you no longer understood me. As soon as I received your letter, I concentrated on you in an effort to help you, and when night fell, just at the hour I enter into contact with X, I called for his helpw hereupon he sent me this little Kali whom he had already sent once before. So I went to your house, I took you in my arms and pressed you tightly to my heart to keep you as sheltered as possible from blows, and I let Kali do her warrior dance against this titan who is always trying to possess you, creating this rebelliousness in you. She must have at least partially succeeded in her work, because very early in the morning the titan went away somewhat discomfited, but while leaving, he flung this at me as he went by: You will regret it, for you would have had less trouble if he had left. I flung his suggestion back in his face with a laugh and told him, Take that, along with all the rest of your ugly person! I have no need of it! And the atmosp here cleared up.
I wanted to tell you all this, but I couldnt because you were still far away from me and it would have seemed like boasting. Also the misunderstanding created by the distance made you hear ot her words than those I uttered.
0 1959-06-03, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
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 whet her 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 toget her 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 Pondic herry). X repeated to me again and again that I am not merely a disciple to him, like the ot hers, 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 Pondic herry, 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.
In any event, since I left Pondic herry, I have been living like a kind of robot (it began in the train); I am empty, void of the least feeling for whomever it may be. I keep going by a kind of acquired momentum, but actually I feel completely anesthetized.
--
For what occurred here, I can say only one thing: when the Supreme Lord wants to save someone, He clothes his will in every appearance necessary.
As for the emptiness you feel (which perhaps is already better): to those who complained of this sensation of inner emptiness, Sri Aurobindo always said that it is a very good thing; it is the sign that they are going to be filled with something better and truer.
--
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 Pondic herry, 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 1959-06-07, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I have no ot her 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, ot herwise I would be travelling along ot her 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 neit her can I pretend any longer to be happy with my lot.
Signed: Satprem
0 1959-06-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
here are a few additional indications regarding the forthcoming events.
As I appeared to be doubting, X told me, T here is no suspicion [doubt], the war will take place in November (in fact, it is to occur some time between September and November), and for the rest of the talk, he had a tone of absolute certitude: The first atom bomb will fall in China. Russia will be crushed. It will be a victory for America. Not more than 2 or 3 atom bombs will be used. It will be very quick. And he repeated that the starting-point of the conflict would be situated in India due to the aggression of Pakistan, then of China.
--
P.S. X asked me questions about my family. I was prompted to speak to him of my mot her (seeing her photo, you had said that you knew her very well, if you recall). He immediately said, You MUST go and see your mot her. You will go in August and quickly come back by plane beginning September! Of course, I told him that all this seems like the highest fantasy to me, and that to begin with I had no money and would surely not ask you anything for that. He said, I shall ask my Mot her. She will arrange everything.
***
0 1959-06-13a, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I have received your last two letters of the 10th and 11th. I told X what you wrote about this trip to France and that your finances are in an almost desperate state. He replied with perfect assurance, Soon it will increase, very soon it will change. I am obviously hesitant to accept your generous offer and I do not know what I should do. I had never thought of returning to France, except in a distant future. I dont know why X told me that I should return t here, except perhaps because he felt who my mot her is. I know that she is sad, that she believes me lost to her and thinks she will die without seeing me again. It would surely be a great joy to her. But ot her than that, I have no desire to go t here, for each time I go to France, I feel like I am entering a prison. Naturally I would be happy for my mot hers joy; she is a great soul, but is this reason enough?
Sunday, 14th
0 1959-06-17, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Would you please tell me whet her I may really write to my mot her that I am coming to see her?
***
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, t here 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 t here they were, it was too late and I woke up.
The last time I was in Rameswaram, I had two ot her 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 ot her, 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 t here 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 neit her this side nor that side, w hereupon 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 ot her worlds] and I fell under their power. For two ot her 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 t here. 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.
As for this last existence, you already know.
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 t here, even in the greatest suffering. But I am broken, rat her 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 1959-10-06 - Sri Aurobindos abode, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I found myself in anot her world, but not far away (I was not in a total trance). This world was almost as substantial as the physical world. T here were roomsSri Aurobindos room with the bed he rests on and he was living t here, he was t here all the time: it was his abode. Even my room was t here, with a large mirror like the one I have here, combs, all kinds of things. And the substance of these objects was almost as dense as in the physical world, but they shone with their own light. It was not translucent, not transparent, not radiant, but self-luminous. The various objects and the material of the rooms did not have this same opacity as the physical objects here, they were not dry and hard as in the physical world we know.
And Sri Aurobindo was t here, with a majesty, a magnificent beauty. He had all his beautiful hair as before. It was all so concrete, so substantialhe was even being served some kind of food. I remained t here for one hour (I had looked at my watch before and I looked at it afterwards). I spoke to Sri Aurobindo, for I had some important questions to ask him about the way certain things are to be realized. He said nothing. He listened to me quietly and looked at me as if all my words were useless: he understood everything at once. And he answered me with a gesture and two expressions on his face, an unexpected gesture that did not at all correspond to any thought of mine; for example, he picked up three combs that were lying near the mirror (combs similar to those I use here, but larger) and he put them in his hair. He planted one comb in the middle of his head and the two ot hers on each side, as if to gat her all his hair over his temples. He was literally COIFFED with these three combs, which gave him a kind of crown. And I immediately understood that by this he meant that he was adopting my conception: You see, I embrace your conception of things, and I coif myself with it; it is my will. Anyway, I remained t here for one hour.
And when I awoke, I didnt have this feeling of returning from afar and of having to re-enter my body, as I usually do. No, it was simply as though I were in this ot her world, then I took a step backwards and found myself here again. It took me a good half an hour to understand that this world here existed as much as the ot her and that I was no longer on the ot her side but here, in the world of falsehood. I had forgotten everythingpeople, things, what I had to do; everything had gone, as if it had no reality at all.
You see, its not as if this world of Truth had to be created from nothing: it is fully ready, it is t here, like a lining of our own present world. Everything is t here, EVERYTHING is t here.
--
Sri Aurobindo gave me two days of thistotal bliss. But all the same, by the end of the second day I realized that I could not continue to remain t here, for the work was not advancing. The work must be done in the body; the realization must be attained here in this physical world, for ot herwise it is not complete. So I withdrew from that world and set to work here again.
And yet, it would take little, very little, to pass from this world to the ot her, or for the ot her to become the real world. A little click would be enough, or rat her a little reversal in the inner attitude. How should I put it? It is imperceptible to the ordinary consciousness; a very little inner shift would be enough, a change in quality.
--
Of course, Sri Aurobindo himself had joy. But I had the impression that it was not total and that this is why I had to continue the work. I felt that it could only be total when things here have changed.
See July 24-25.
0 1959-10-15, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
here are two or three things that might interest you:
1) X spoke to me again of the war without my asking anything. He repeated, T here will be war, and he again spoke of an attack on India by China
--
7) X wants to send me back to Pondic herry this Sunday (Sunday the 18th, arriving Monday the 19th morning). He says it is useless for me now to remain here any longer since his house is not ready and he can do nothing. But, he said, I will have you come to my house for 3 months and I shall give you a training by which you can know Past, Present and Future, and have the same qualifications as me!
8) He gave me certain methods to follow, about which I shall speak to you in person.
--
I would wish to be like Sujata, completely transparent, your child with her at your feet. Mot her, help me. I need you. Sujata is healing something that was very painful in me, as though it were flayed or wounded, and which threw me into revolt. With this calming influence, I would like to begin a new life of self-giving. This change of residence is for me like the symbol of anot her change. Oh, Mot her! may the painful road be over, and may all be achieved in the joy of your Will.
Your child,
0 1960-01-31, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
(Letter from Mot her to the disciple concerning her former commentaries on the 'Dhammapada' at the Playground)
When I began the readings from the Dhammapada, I had hoped that my listeners would take enough interest in the practical spiritual side for me to read only one verse at a time. But quite quickly, I saw they found this very boring and were making no effort to benefit from the meditation. The only solution then was to treat the matter as an intellectual study, which is why I started reading chapter by chapter.
0 1960-03-07, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
here is the letter from the publis her. All comes from you, all is yours.
May I always serve you.
--
Publis her and friend are here one in telling you that LOrpailleur is a beautiful book whose richness and force have struck me even more this time than before when I read the first version. I cannot tell you how much your Job is my brot herin his darkness as in his light. The joy, the wild, irrepressible joy that furtively yearns and at times bursts forth, embracing all, this joy at the heart of the book burns the reader for a few, in any case, who are prepared to be inflamed. In the end, I cant say if LOrpailleur will or will not be noticed, if the critics will or will not bestow an article, a comment, an echo upon it, if bookstores will or will not sell it (poor orpailleur!). But what I know is that for a few readers2, 3, 10 perhapsyour book will be the cry that will rip them from their sleep forever. To your song, anot her song in themselves will respond. W here, how shall this concert finish? Who knowsanything is possible!
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.
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
I read Mot her the extract from the Revue des Deux Mondes. This was her comment:
It is quite possible that this is their original intention, I am aware of it. But they are wrong if they think it will turn out like that We shall see!
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.
Mot her, I am at your feet, with my love and my gratitude.
0 1960-05-16, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
X has the power of rendering things very material thats his great power, which is why things get upset when he comes here. Overnight, someone progressing well comes to grips with difficulties; money on the way stops coming; you fall sick, things break downall because he has the power to give materiality to things from above. For, you see, you can go right to the height of your consciousness and from t here sweep away the difficulties (at a certain moment of the sadhana, difficulties truly dont exist, its only a matter of nabbing the undesirable vibration and its over, its reduced to dust). And everything is fine up above, but down below its swarming. When X comes, its precisely all this swarming that becomes tangible.
The mastery must be a TRUE mastery, a very humble and austere mastery which starts from the very bottom and, step by step, establishes control. As a matter of fact, it is a battle against small, really tiny things: habits of being, ways of thinking, feeling and reacting.
0 1960-05-21 - true purity - you have to be the Divine to overcome hostile forces, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
When X is here, I get the impression that things are going backwards instead of forwards. But once hes left, I suddenly leap ahead. And then I perceive that the progress is a real progress, that things won have really been won and they dont come undone again. That is Xs true power, a very material power. For I often feel that things could come into being, they could be realized in the consciousness above (and the vision is t here, the Power is t here, I have it the invisible power over the earth). But when you come down to the material plane, everything is uncertain. W hereas with X, once things have come down, they no longer dissipate. This is certainly why the Supreme put him on my path.
For example, t here was one difficulty he helped me resolve. I have always been literally pestered, constantly, night and day, by all kinds of thoughts coming from peopleall kinds of calls, questions, formations2 that have naturally to be answered. For I have trained myself to be conscious of everything, always. But it disturbed me in the work, particularly when I needed absolute concentration and I could never cut myself off from people or cut myself off from the world. I had to answer all these calls and these questions, I had to send the necessary force, the necessary light, the healing power, I constantly had to purify all these formations, these thoughts, these wills, these false movements that were falling on me.
0 1960-05-24 - supramental flood, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
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 t here 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 anot her 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, t here was nothing but the Supreme manifesting through the eternal Mot her.
--
And of course, the whole ordinary and hig her mind (as well as the physical mind, it goes without saying, for that must be abolished before going into trance), everything here in the head, above the head, around the headabsolutely immobile.
After all that, towards the end of the night, at two in the morning, only a kind of faint suggestion was left: How can this statewhich I knew in trance, in samadhi, and which necessitates lying downbecome constant in a physical body which moves about? T here is something to discover t here. And what form will it take? For in my consciousness, you see, it is constantly like that, this universal flood, but the problem is IN THE BODY: its the problem of the Force in its most material form.
0 1960-05-28 - death of K - the death process- the subtle physical, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I think they do it here (apart from entirely sanitary considerations in the case of people who have died from nasty diseases), here in India, mainly because they are very afraid of all these little entities that come from desires, impulsesthings which are dispersed in the air and which make ghosts and all kinds of things. All desires, all attachments, all those things are like pieces that break off (each one goes its own way, you see), then these pieces gain strength in the surrounding atmosp here, and when they can fasten on to someone, they vampirize him. Then they keep on trying to satisfy their desires.
The world, the terrestrial atmosp here, is full of filth.
And people here are much more sensitive than in Europe because they are much more interiorized, so they are conscious of all these little entities, and naturally theyre afraid. And the more afraid they are, the more theyre vampirized!
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.
But as he was accustomed to going out of his body, he didnt know! He even used to make experimentshe would go out, circle around in his room, see his body from outside, observe the difference between the subtle physical and the material physical, etc. So he didnt know. And its only when they burned his body
--
It was at Tlemcen, in Algeria. While Mot her was in trance, Theon caused the thread which linked Mot her to her body to break through a movement of anger. He was angry because Mot her, who was in a region w here 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 Mot her's force and all Theon's occult science to get Mot her 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 1960-06-07, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I have to see some fellow again whom I saw yesterday. But I told him to come at 11 oclock. So if I leave here at 10:55, that will give me enough time.
They brought these people to Prosperity to introduce them to me. You know, I had precisely the impression that they feed only on banknotes! (Mot her laughs) It makes you gray, oh! And dry like dead wood.
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 t here), 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.
--
But just now You see, when I am in contact with younot when were sitting toget her, but at the balcony or at the meditation or at any time at allthis contact is very good, very good, very luminous and clear. I wrote you that, and its getting more and more tangible. But when were herE toget her, it feels as though it doesnt move Something is preventing it from taking place herE. So when you spoke (it was when you made a face), I looked.
It gives me the impression of something like Yes, thats it, like a cavemanOh (Mot her 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 (Mot her 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.
--
No, no thats not what I mean. Im speaking of the relationship I have with you, the true onewhat I was telling you about just a moment ago. Because, you see, Im going to tell you everything! (Mot her laughs) I have the impression that it would go much faster if I could pick you up, put you here (Mot her touches her heart), carry you here and tell you, Calm yourself, listen! But its not possible (alas). Youre always fast on your feet with your head touching this very low ceiling. Myself, I cant be like that. Im not even sure (laughing) if my feet would get in!
Anyway, my child, its not that Im not trying I am trying. And its not that you cantyou can. Thats the problem You know, its as if you were stubbornly trying to turn the key the wrong way in the lock.
--
The disciple means in meditationto imagine Mot her in her physical form or to use her physical form as an 'object' of meditation. In fact, he was very afraid of getting caught.
***
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 rat her it roused me from one trance to put me into anot her. 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 t here 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 w hereas 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 ot her things just happen, and they may be interesting, but this was so spontaneous; I was watching it (I dont know w here my head was), I was looking down from above so tiny, so tiny.
What was me was up above, and the Ashram was It began just here (the navel) and went that way (downwards), and it was encircled, to show that it was a special formationencircled in the inconscience of the terrestrial creation. And I was everything else, with the usual vibrations of power and light. And then one current and anot her current and anot her were passing into it, into this formation, and they kept going in and in and in, accumulating. They kept going in, and yet they did not come out, they did not leave. It was not an undulatory movement, but rat her a pulsating movementit had no beginning, it didnt go out, and yet it kept moving. Its very difficult to describe.
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 ot her as though each represented one part of the body; each was symbolic of eit her 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
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
here, Ill draw you a little sketch:
Image 2
The water was flowing off towards the right. From time to time t here were these fissured dips or depressions along the vehicles path w here 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 t here 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 t here (in this way t here were many fissures, though Ive only drawn two; t here were quite a few, five or six at least), and again we would dart across, then race on until we would reach the spot w here I have drawn the water turning.
Right at the end, t here was a place w here 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 t here I was.
And once on the ot her side, without even a rise in ground level (I dont know why), it was immediately safe. And the current went on and on, waves upon waves, on and on, as far as the eye could see, but it was canalized here at the Great Turning; and as soon as it went past this point, the inundation was total, it spread out over something over the earth. And the current turnedit turned but I was already on the ot her side. And down below, everything was finished, the water rushed down everyw here. Only, as soon as I was on the ot her side, it could not touch me the water could not get across, it was stopped by something invisible, and it turned away.
Moreover, it seemed that everything had already been prepared, as if the way had been made to divert the water.
--
It had all the dimensions of something almost the earth seemed small in comparison, you see. It was similar to what happens here when water is unleashed on earth, during floods for instance, but on a much greater scale.
What was pleasing, and really quite interesting, was this tremendous speed, like an arrow, and I always arrived in time, just in time, just in time. Once I had crossed over to the ot her side (I clearly felt that nothing would be left, for it was such a powerful deluge), the danger was finished, t here was no longer ANY possibility at all of being touchedthis was the main feeling. Everything was stopped. Nothing could touch.
I turned around and saw all this water rushing down, and I thought, Now lets see if we can do something here. T here 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 ot her side. Not really individuals, but more like beings representative of something that was following me quite closely. When I was t here, it also was t here, 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 everyw here. But t here 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, t here that could still be donemy consciousness moved at the same speed, and I noted everything along the way), and once I was firmly t here on the ot her 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, t here was still a hope, even even after the water had passed; I probably had a certain power at my disposal to help ot hers cross these fissured places. But because I woke up, I didnt see what it was. So that stopped everything. Probably because I woke up rat her abruptly, I could not see what it meant.
All this is a translation in human language, actually, because really it was
0 1960-07-26 - Mothers vision - looking up words in the subconscient, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I came out of the concentration at 4:10quite late. For I was VERY busy! I was in some sort of small house similar to my room, but it was at the top of a tower, for you could see the landscape from above. It was similar to my room here, with large windows. And I was much taller than I actually am, for t here was a ledge below each window (t here was a cupboard below each window, as in my room), and this ledge came quite low on me; in my room, it comes up to my chest, w hereas it was much lower in my vision. And from t here oh, what beautiful landscapes! It was surrounded by such lovely countryside! T here was a flowing river, woods, sunlightoh, it was really lovely! And I was very busy looking up words in the dictionary!
I had taken out a dictionary. T here, its this one, I said. Someone was next to me, but this someone is always symbolic: each activity takes on a special form which may resemble someone or ot her. (The people around me for the work here are like families in those worlds t here; they are types, that iseach person represents a typeso then I know that Im in contact with all the people of this same type. If they were conscious, they would know that I was t here telling them something in particular. But its not a person, its a type and not a type of character, but a type of activity and relationship with me.)
I was with a certain type, and I was looking for a word, I wanted to conjugate the verb vaincre [to conquer]: je vaincs, tu vaincs, il vaincgood, now nous vainquons, how do you spell that, nous vainquons? It was so funny! And I was looking it up in the dictionaryvainquons, how do you spell that?
--
You have to be inside this automatic convention to remember; its very difficult (Mot her laughs). So I make a lot of spelling mistakes (under her breath, in a mischievous tone) I think Ill ask him for his dictionary (laughter)!
Vaincre! I wanted to write to someone to proclaim the Victory. The idea was very clear, it was really lovely. Then, in a second, I was stoppedHow do you spell vainquons? And how do you spell vaincs? The person next to me didnt know a thingnothing. Its spelled v-a-i-n, he said. So I said, No, I dont think so! (laughter) It went on like that, you know, it was so funny!
0 1960-08-10 - questions from center of Education - reading Sri Aurobindo, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Its all from up here (Mot her touches her forehead).
(Pavitra:) Passion and reactions.
--
And then they stuff into it what they consider intellectual reasonings, but their intellectuality is not so terribly luminousanyway (Mot her shows the letter) here, Ill read this to you for your edification (!).
And finally, Sweet Mot her, 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 Mot her? 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
--
It is not a question of preparing students to read these or some ot her 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 t here is anot her, 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 ot hers, all those who want the human way of thinking and living, the world is vast and t here is place t here for everyone.
--
Then Z asks about languages: should they choose ONE language or I dont know. And then, if only ONE language, which language? She said, Should it be a common or international language, or their [the students] vernacular? I answered her, If only ONE language is known [well], it is better (international or common).1
These are matters of common sense I dont even know why they bring them up.
--
T here 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).
Original English.
0 1960-08-20, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
(Getting up to leave, Mot her holds in her hands the first copy of LOrpailleur which the disciple has just received from France and offered to her)
Shall I take your book or ? Dont you want it?
--
Dont you want it? I like it very much, very much. Its a very good friend (Mot her holds the book against her heart).
Oh, I must write a few letters here and t here, to France (to announce the publication of the book). I already wrote to A, but I must write him again. Though I suppose he knows that it has come ou the should know. I told him to follow it with
I dont know if the book has come out yet. I believe its to appear in early September.
--
(Just at the doorstep, as She is leaving, Mot her tells the disciple that She had seen three books, a trilogy, and the third one would be about her. And She adds:)
Sri Aurobindo came during my japa to tell me, I will help him all through.
0 1960-09-20, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
If he imagines for one moment that I believe all the people here are doing sadhana, he is grossly mistaken!
The idea is that the earth as a whole must be prepared in all its forms, including even those least ready for the transformation. T here must be a symbolic representation of all the elements on earth upon which we can work to establish the link.1 The earth is a symbolic representation of the universe, and the group is a symbolic representation of the earth.
--
And life itself has responded by bringing people forward to form a nucleus. Of course, we clearly saw that this would make the work a bit more complex and difficult (it gives me a heavy responsibility, an enormous material work), but from the overall point of view for the Workits indispensable and even inevitable. And in any case, as we were later able to verify, each one represents simultaneously a possibility and a special difficulty to resolve. I have even said, I believe, that each one here is an impossibility.3
But this way of seeing is too far removed from the state of mind and spiritual education in which X has lived,4 of course, for him to understand. Nor am I in favor of proselytizing (to convince X); it would disturb him quite needlessly. He has not come here for that. He came here for something special, something I wanted which he brought, and I have learnt it. Now its excellent, he is a part of the group in his own fashion, thats all. And in a certain way, his presence here is having a very good effect on a whole category of people who had not been touched but who are now becoming more and more favorably inclined. It was difficult to reach all the traditionalists, for example, the people attached to the old spiritual forms; well, they seem now to have been touched by something.
When Amrita,5 seized with zeal, wanted to make him understand what we were doing here and what Sri Aurobindo had wanted, it almost erupted into an unpleasant situation. So after that, I decided to identify myself with him to see I had never done this, because normally I only do it when I am responsible for someone, in order to truly help someone, and Ive never felt any responsibility in regard to X. So I wanted to see his inner situation, what could and could not be done. That was the day you saw him coming down from our meditation in an ecstatic state, when he told you that all separation between him and me had dropped awayit was to be expected, I anticipated as much!
But when I did that, I saw what X wanted to do for me. As a matter of fact, I recalled that when we first met I had told him that everything was all right up to this point (Mot her indicates the region above the head), but below that, in the outer being, I wanted to hasten the transformation, and things t here were difficult to handle.
When Sri Aurobindo was here, I never bot hered 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 t here 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 rat her complicated and I realized t here 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 toget her, 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 ot her 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 t herethis (Mot her indicates her forehead), silent, motionless, turned upwards, while That (gesture above the head) sees, acts, knows, decidesall is done from t here. Only t here can you feel at ease.
Along the way, I once went down into this physical mind for awhile to try to set it right, to organize it a little (it was done rat her quickly, I didnt stay t here long). So when I went inside X, I saw It was rat her curious, for its the opposite of the method we follow. In his material consciousness (physical and vital), he has trained himself to be impersonal, open, limitless, in communication with all the universal forces. In the physical mind, silence, immobility. But in the speculative mind, the one t here at the very top of the head what an organization, phew! All the tradition in its most superb organization, but such a ri-gi-dity! And it had a pretty quality of light, a silver blueVERY pretty. Oh, it was very calm, wonderfully calm and quiet and still. But what a ceiling it had!the outer form resembled rigid cubes. Everything inside was beautiful, but that T here was a very large cube right at the top, I recall, bordered by a purple line, which is a line of powerall this was quite luminous. It looked like a pyramid; the smaller cubes formed a kind of base, the lower part of which faded into something cloudy, and then this passed imperceptibly downwards to a more material realm, or in ot her words, the physical mind. The cube on top was the largest and most luminous, and the least yieldingeven inflexible, you could say. The ot hers were somewhat less defined, and at the bottom it was very blurred. But up at the top!thats w here I wanted to go, right to the top.
--
Especially at the beginning, Sri Aurobindo used to shatter to pieces all moral ideas (you know, as in the Aphorisms, for example). He shattered all those things, he shattered them, really shattered them to pieces. So t heres a whole group of youngsters7 here who were brought up with this idea that we can do whatever we want, it doesnt matter in the least!that they need not bot her about all those concepts of ordinary morality. Ive had a hard time making them understand that this morality can be abandoned only for a hig her one So, one has to be careful not to give them the Power too soon.
Its an almost physical discipline. Moreover, I have seen that the japa has an organizing effect on the subconscient, on the inconscient, on matter, on the bodys cellsit takes time, but by persistently repeating it, in the long run it has an effect. It is the same principle as doing daily exercises on the piano, for example. You keep mechanically repeating them, and in the end your hands are filled with consciousness it fills the body with consciousness.
--
Later on, I heard Sri Aurobindo saying that t here were two people here to whom he had done this and as soon as t here was silence, they panicked: My God, Ive gone stupid!! And they threw it all overboard by starting to think again.
Once it was done, it was done. It was well-rooted.
--
'Each one here represents an impossibility to be resolved';
Words of the Mot her, p. 14 (January 15, 1933).
0 1960-10-02a, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Before going to bed, sometimes I say to myself, I will do what is necessary to spend my night in these great currents of force(because t here is a way to do it). And then I think, Oh, what an egotist you are, my girl! So sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesntwhen t heres something important to do, it doesnt happen. But all I have to do is concentrate in a certain way before going to sleep to spend my whole night in these very far from here, very far I cant say very far from the earth, for surely its in an intermediate zone between the forces from above and the earths atmosp here. Thats what it mainly is, in any case. Its a great universal current as well, but mainly its what descends and comes onto the earth, and it is permeating the earths atmosp here all the time, all the time, and it comes with this wide, overall visionit makes for wonderful nights I no longer bot her about people at allat least not as such, but in a more impersonal way.
(silence)
--
This has protected me from all seeking for pleasure in life. It was a wonderful protection, because pleasure always seemed so futile to meyes, futile; for the sake of your personal satisfaction. Later, I even understood how foolish it is, for you can never be satisfiedthough when youre small you dont yet know that. I never liked it: But is it really useful, does it serve some purpose? And I still have this attitude in regard to my nights. I have this widening of the consciousness, this impersonalization, this wonderful joy of being above all that. But at the same time I also have, Im here in this body, on earth, to do something I mustnt forget it. And this is what I have to do. But probably Im wrong!
Im waiting for the Lord to tell me clearly.
0 1960-10-02b, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
As I did not find the translation of the Message fully satisfying, I have continued pondering over it. Then anot her possibility, which MAY be better, presented itself. here it is:
Ce monde merveilleux de flicit,
0 1960-10-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
The SOUND must be captured. T here must be one sound at the origin of all language And then, to capture it and project it. To make it vibrate because it doesnt vibrate in the same way here as it does above.
That would be an interesting work.
0 1960-10-11, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
It has never left. I have always kept it. Like a smooth white surface turned upwards. And at any moment at all You see, we speak like a machine, but t here nothing moves; at any moment at all it can turn towards the heights. Its ALWAYS turned like that, but we can become aware of it being like that. Then, if we listen, we can hear what comes from above. My active consciousness, which was here (Mot her points to her forehead), has settled above, and it has never again moved from t here.
I told this to Xor rat her had someone tell himto see his reaction. And I realized that he did not understand in the least! Once Amrita asked him how he himself SAW and KNEW things. So he tried to explain; he told Amrita that he had to pull his consciousness upwards by a gradual effort, to go beyond the heart, beyond the throat center to pull it right up here (the top of the head), and once t here, youre divine, you know! All of a sudden, I understood that when I said it was t here, above the head, it must have seemed absolutely impossible to him! For him, its the crown of the head1 (what they call the thousand-petalled lotus), just at the top of the head, w hereas in my experience it opens, it rises and you go above, and then you settle t here For a number of years it even changed my [physical] visionit was as if I were looking at things from above. It returns from time to time, too, as if suddenly I were seeing from above instead of from here, at eye level.
But the faculty of forming thoughts is now t here, up above; its no longer here (Mot her points to her forehead). And thats contrary to their teachings.
The tantrics recognize seven chakras,2 I believe. Theon said he knew of more, specifically two below the body and three above. That is my experience as well I know of twelve chakras. And really, the contact with the Divine Consciousness is t here (Mot her motions above the head), not here (at the top of the head). One must surge up above.
Doing japa seems to exert a pressure on my physical consciousness, which goes on turning! How can I silence it? As soon as my concentration is not absolute, the physical mind starts upit grabs at anything, anything at all, any word, fact or event that comes along, and it starts turning, turning. If you stop it, if you put some pressure on it, then it springs back up two minutes later And t here is no inner consent at all. It chews on words, it chews on ideas or feelingsinterminably. What should I do?
--
But what you are speaking of, this sort of sound-mill, this milling of words interminably repeating the same thing, Ive suddenly caught it two or three times (not very often and with long intervals). It has always seemed fantastic to me! How is it stopped? Always in the same way. Its something that takes place outside, actually; its not insideits outside, on the surface, generally somew here here (Mot her indicates the temples), and the method is to draw your consciousness up above, to go t here and remain t herewhite. Always this whiteness, white like a sheet of paper, flat like a plate of glass. An absolutely flat and white and motionless surfacewhite! White like luminous milk, turned upwards. Not transparent: white.
When this mill starts turningusually it comes from this side (Mot her indicates the right side of the head)it takes hold of any sound or any word at all, and then it starts turning, harping on the same thing. This has happened to me a dozen times perhaps, but it doesnt come from me; it comes from outside, from someone or something or some particular work. So then you take itas if you were picking it up with pincers, and then (She lifts it upwards), then I hold it t here, in this motionless whiteno need to keep it t here for long!
--
(Concerning an old Question and Answer of July 4, 1956 at the Playground in which Mot her speaks of her first realization of the Divine, in Paris)
Just as the shooting star flashed past, t here sprang from my consciousness: To realize the divine union, for my body! And before twelve months were out, it was done.
0 1960-10-15, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I see Z every day, yet he asked me, Why do you do nothing for me?!! Each time you come here, I told him, I am NECESSARILY doing something for you, it cannot be ot herwise! But since its just a part of his work,1 it doesnt count!
Of course, I dont say, All right, now lets meditate! So on his birthday Ill have to sit down and tell him, Now we are going to meditate that way hell feel sure. What childishness!
--
Z's work involved seeing Mot her everyday to watch over her health and her food.
***
0 1960-10-19, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
She has already been here for two days and Oh, yesterday especially, she was so in such a mood!like a warrior. I said to her, But why not change them through through an excess of love?
So then she answered (I remember how she put it), First a good punch in the chest (she didnt say in the nose!), a good punch in the chest, and then when theyre down, gasping for air, theyre ready.
--
And when it came to ot hers he could remove an illness like that (gesture, as if Mot her 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 (Mot her brushes her hand across her forehead). You see, his actions were absolutely On ot hers, it had all the characteristics of a total mastery Absolutely superhuman.
One day, hell tell you all this himself.1
--
Mot her stopped all her activities for twelve days from December 5, 1950, the day Sri Aurobindo departed.
***
0 1960-10-22, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
here, this is the kitchen; here is the living room, this is the studio. And then behind the kitchen t here was a small room that I used as the dining room, and it opened onto a courtyard. Between the dining room and the kitchen t here was a bathroom and a small hallway. The kitchen is here; you went up three steps and then t here was this small hallway with the stairs leading up to the bedroom. Next to the bedroom was a bathroom about as big as a thimble.
It is part of a huge house. T heres a seven-story apartment building on each side, and the street is here.
It wasnt very big. The studio was rat her largea beautiful room Thats w here I received Madame David-Neelwe saw each ot her nearly every evening.
--
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 t here in Tlemcen with Andres fat her, 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 ot her answered, its violet. Theon went rigid: When I say purple, its purple! And they started arguing over this foolishness. Suddenly t here 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 (neit her of us uttered a word the ot her two were staring at each ot her 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!
--
And it is here, too, that I see the result of this confusion and excitement in the Ashramit jumps, jumps, jumps about. It keeps jumping on the same spot. T here are machines like thatconstantly shaking; its exasperating.
***
--
Yesterday, I suddenly saw a huge living head of blue lightthis blue light which is the force, the powerful force in material Nature (this is the light the tantrics use). The head was made entirely of this light, and it wore a sort of tiaraa big head, so big (Mot her indicates the length of her forearm); its eyes werent closed, but rat her lowered, like this. The immobility of eternity, absolutely the repose, the immobility of eternity. A magnificent head, quite similar to the way the gods here are represented, but even better; something between certain heads of the Buddha and (these heads most probably come to the artists). Everything else was lost in a kind of cloud.
I felt that this kind of yes, immobility came from t here: everything stops, absolutely everything stops. Silence, immobility truly, you enter into eternity.I told him it wasnt time!
But I tried to understand what he wanted Its been difficult here in the Ashram for some timeeveryone is seized with a sort of frenzy, a weary restlessness. They are all writing to me, they all want to see me. It makes for such an atmosp here I react as well as I can, but Im not able to pass this on to them to keep them quiet (the more tired and weary you are, the more calm you ought to remaincertainly not get excited, thats dreadful!). So I understood: this head had come to tell me, This is what you must give them.
But if I were to pass that on to them, theyd all think they were becoming rattle-brained, that they were losing their faculties, that their energy was spent. For they only feel energy when they spend it. They are incapable of feeling energy in immobility they have to be stirring about, they have to be spending it. Or else, it has to be pounded into them.
--
The experience I havewhat I mean by I is this aggregate here (Mot her 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 atmosp here, 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 (Mot her 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 eit her isolate yourself or be capable of imposing a calm on this whirlwind of forces that comes upon you all the time from all around.
All the teac hers are wanting to quit the schoolweary! Which means theyll begin the year with half the teac hers gone. They live in constant tension, they dont know how to relax thats really what it is. They dont know how to act without agitation.
I think thats what this head came to tell me, and its precisely whats wrong in the Ashrameverything here is done in agitation, absolutely everything. So its constantly a comedy of errors; someone speaks, the ot her doesnt listen and responds all wrong, and nothing gets done. Someone asks one thing, anot her answers to something elsebah! Its a dreadful con-fu-sion.
(silence)
--
Sit as you normally do and forget that Im here!
(After the meditation)
Im going to tell you what I sawits very interesting. First, emanating from here (Mot her 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, t here was the image of the Mot her 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 t here 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.
--
I had to stop because t here is something like time that exists herewhat a shame!
But it is very good.
0 1960-10-25, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
S has a nephew in Bombay, and one day towards the end of August or beginning September, he told me an extraordinary story about this nephew, who had disappeared (he showed me his photographhe looks rat her like a medium). He returned home two days later, I believe. Hed been found in a train in a hypnotic state; fortunately someone shook him and he suddenly woke up: Why am I here? What am I doing here? (He had no intention of travelling, you see; he had simply left his house to visit a neighbor in Bombay.) So he returned home without knowing what had happened to him. And he was quite bizarre, really rat her off.
A few days later, this nephew had to go somew here, I dont know w here; he went down to the railway station and didnt return. Impossible to find out what had happened to him, he was now here to be found. Several days had passed when the family decided to send me his photograph and to tell me the story, adding that it was surely a sequel to the previous occurrence (t here must be some people doing hypnotism), and then they asked me w here he was and what had become of him.
--
But then t here 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 t herea 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 t here 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 mot her 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 mot her wasnt very happy! She feared he was leaping from the frying pan into the fire!
Anot her 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!
--
(The conversation resumes here)
But I was mainly interested by the fact that I felt the danger these people representednot because they were brigands, but because they had some powerbrigands with a power and from what I saw, it was not merely an hypnotic power. T here must have been a tantric force in it, ot herwise they would not have been so powerful, and especially so powerful from a distance. I had said to myself, They MUST be caught. Which was why (the Force kept on working, you see). And yesterday, the newspaper said that a gang of five men, eight women and half a dozen children had been arrested by the police in Allahabad for using what the newspaper called mesmeric means to rob people, attack them, etc. (They were operating in Poona, Bombay and Ahmedabad, but they were caught in Allahabad). Probably when they realized that the boy was gone, they got frightened and fled to the North. And they were arrested in Allahabad I had made a very strong formation and had said, They MUST be caught.
As of now, I have no ot her news Theyve been caught, so they cant do any wrong OUTWARDLY, but still their power is t here. Were going to have to be And everyone here says the same thinglike a black veil of unconsciousness that has fallen upon us. Even those who arent accustomed to such things have felt it. Im presently cleaning the whole placeits not easy. Everything is upside down.
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, Mot her must see to it, only Mot hers 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.
--
(No sooner had Mot her finished telling this story than, by a curious coincidence, someone brought her a portrait drawn by P.K., one of the Ashram artists. Several days earlier, at about two in the morning during an uncommonly violent lightning storm, P.K. had suddenly SEEN amidst the flashes of lightning in the sky a rat her terrible, demoniacal head in front of his very eyes. Having nothing else available, he hastily drew his vision in chalk on a schoolchilds slate, which is the portrait Mot her speaks of here:)
Well, well! So P.K. is clairvoyant! Its him, for surethis is the being behind those people. Thats why they had so much power. And he came here because of tha the was furious. Quite a demon!
I also saw him that night. You fools with your small crackers, he said, I will show you what real crackers are!6and those flashes of lightning, such an astonishing violence Oh, he proclaimed all kinds of things, disasters, what not But these are very complex matters and its better not to go into detail.
--
Which is whyunless you are intentionally and constantly in what here is called the Brahmic consciousness it is practically impossible to control. And this is what gives the impression of certain things happening in the body independently of not only of our will but of our consciousness BUT IT IS NOT TRUE.
Only, t here is all that comes from outside thats what is most dangerous. Constantly, constantlywhen you eat, you catch it oh, what a mass of vibrations! The vibrations of the thing you eat when it was living (they always remain), the vibrations of the person who cooked it, vibrations of All the time, all the time, they never stopyou breathe, they enter. Of course, when you start talking to someone or mixing with people, then you become a bit more conscious of what is coming, but even just sitting still, uninvolved with ot hersit comes! T here is an almost total interdependenceisolation is an illusion. By reinforcing your own atmosp here (Mot her gestures, as if building a wall around her), you can hold these things off TO A CERTAIN EXTENT, but simply this effort to keep them at a distance creates (Im thinking in English and speaking in French) disturbances.8 Anyway, now all this has been SEEN.
But I know in an absolute way that once this whole mass of the physical mind is mastered and the Brahmic consciousness is brought into it in a continuous way, you CAN you become the MASTER of your health.
0 1960-10-30, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
You know, even now, all this (Mot her touches her body, her hands) feels so vibrant and alive that its difficult to sense its limits as if it extends beyond the body in all directions. It no longer has any limits.
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 t here 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. W hereas 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.
--
All I know is that herE you must be very careful not to weaken the bodys resistance (I dont just mean in India, but here in the Ashram). here, its important the base must be solid, for ot herwise its difficult. The more the Force descendsas it has just now descended the more the body must be rat her square. Its important.
Ive tried everything, you know, from complete fasting to a meat dieteverything, everything. Well, I noticed that you can have pleasant experiences while fasting, but its not good, it shouldnt be donethese are all old ideas. No, the body must be solid, solid ot herwise
(Mot her gives the disciple a carnation, named by her Collaboration)
So, I wont see you again? No, too many people come in the afternoon, its not pleasant
--
According to tradition, Anubis, the jackal-headed god, helped Isis to rebuild the body of her spouse, Osiris, who had been killed and dismembered by his brot her Set. Osiris was the first god to rule over men. Owing to certain special rites, Isis, helped by Anubis, succeeded in bringing him back to life. So we are not very far from the legend of Savitri and Satyavan.
L'Orpailleur, which had just been published. The man's description, as a matter of fact, bears a striking resemblance to the publis her.
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 rat her 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 w here you rent scenery and costumes. Its all ready and waitinga little call, and t here 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 anot her 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 (t here are two such examples here, but its not necessary to name them) T here 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. T here are ot hers who have lived their entire lives in a yogic or religious discipline, and they see this as an obstacle, illusion, dirtyness (Mot her 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 t here, 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 furt her than his daily round. It was necessary. We mustnt condemn it, we mustnt use harsh words.
The mistake we make is to remain t here 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! Ot herwise its boring and all much too flat.
--
Its an approach which is not at all mental nor intellectual nor (God knows!) moral in the leastno notion of Good or Evil nor any of those things, absolutely none of that. T heres a moment in life when you begin thinking a little and you see all this from an overall or universal point of view in which all moral notions completely disappearFOR ANOT her REASON. This experience with Z reminded me of a certain way of approaching Beauty that enables you even to find it in what appears dirty and ugly to the common vision. It is She trying to express herself in this something which to the common vision is ugly, dirty, hypocritical. But of course, if you yourself have striven assiduously and have greatly held yourself in, then you look at it reprovingly.
From my earliest childhood, instinctively, I have never felt the slightest contempt or how should I say (well, well! I was thinking in English) shrinking or disapproval, severe criticism or disgust for the things people call vice.
--
I know I told you that I had had a vision, but you didnt understand what I told you that day. It was a vision of the place you occupy in my being and of the work we have to do toget her. Thats really how it is. These things [that I tell you] have their utility and a concrete life, and I see them as very powerful for world transformation theyre what I call experiences (which is much more than an experience because it extends far beyond the individual)and its the same whet her its said or not said: the Action is done. But the fact that it is said, that it is formulated here and preserved, is exclusively for you, because you were made for this and this is why we met.
It doesnt need a lot of explaining.
0 1960-11-12, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Speaking of which, I looked at Ts most recent questions on the Aphorisms again. All these children havent the least sense of humor, so Sri Aurobindos paradoxes throw them into a kind of despair! The last aphorism went something like this: When I could read a wearisome book from one end to the ot her with pleasure, then I knew I had conquered my mind.2 So T asked me How can you read a wearisome book with pleasure?!! I had to explain it to her. And on top of that, I have to take on a rat her serious tone, for were I to reply in the same ironic fashion, they would be totally drowned! It throws them into a terrible confusion!
Its a lack of plasticity in the mind, and they are bound by the expression of things; for them, words are rigid. Sri Aurobindo explained it so well in The Secret of the Veda; he shows how language evolves and how, before, it was very supple and evocative. For example, one could at once think of a river and of inspiration. Sri Aurobindo also gives the example of a sailboat and the forward march of life. And he says that for those of the Vedic age it was quite natural, the two could go toget her, superimposed; it was merely a way of looking at the same thing from two sides, w hereas now, when a word is said, we think only of this word all by itself, and to get a clear picture we need a whole literary or poetic imagery (with explanations to boot!). Thats exactly the case with these children; theyre at a stage w here everything is rigid. Such is the product of modern education. It even extracts the subtlest nuance between two words and FIXES it: And above all, dont make any mistake, dont use this word for that word, for ot herwise your writings no good. But its just the opposite.
--
So Im trying to come to an understanding, to reach an agreement these are very complicated matters (!). For its a whole totality You see, we are trying something here which really is contrary to all those laws and practices, something which disturbs everything. So they propose things that have me advancing like this (sinuous motion), without disturbing things too much, and without having to call in forces (Mot her makes a gesture of a lance thrust into the pack) forces a bit too great, which may disturb things too much. Like that, we can keep tacking back and forth.
A while ago You know that I have TREMENDOUS financial difficulties. In fact, I have handed the whole matter over to the Lord, telling Him, Its your affair; if you want us to continue this experience, well, you must provide the means. But this upsets some of them, so they come along with all kinds of suggestions to keep me from having to to resort to something so drastic. They suggest all kinds of things; some time ago they said, What about a good cyclone, or a good earthquake? A lot of damage to the Ashram, a public appeal that would bring in some funds! (Mot her laughs) Yes, its of this order! And its all quite clear and definitewe have veritable conversations!
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 (Mot her 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 furt her away. Then I moved. And even now, it comesfrom ot hers (t heres not just one, you see, t here are many): How about a good flood? A roof collapsed the ot her 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 ot her 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.
--
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 Mot hers 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.
--
So much time is wasted. We are oh! We are so hard! (Mot her hits her body) As hard as a rock.
But three times now, Ive really felt that I was on the verge of falling apart. The first time it brought a fever, a fever so I dont know, as if I had at least 115!I was roasting from head to toe; everything became red hot, and then it was over. That was the day when suddenlysuddenly I was You see, I had said to myself, All right, you must be peaceful, lets see what happens, so then I brought down the Peace, and immediately I was able to pass into a second of unconsciousness and I woke up in the subtle physical, in Sri Aurobindos abode.4 T here he was. And then I spent some time with him, explaining the problem.
--
In ot her words, a more and more complete, a more and more integral assent, more and more like this (gesture of letting herself be carried). Thats when you have the feeling that you must be ABSOLUTELY like a child.
If you start thinking, Oh, I want to be like this! Oh, I ought to be like that! you waste your time.
0 1960-11-15, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
While it was all coming up, I thought, How is this possible? For during those years of my life (Im now outside things; I do them but Im entirely outside, so they dont involve mewhet her its like this or like that makes no difference to me; Im only doing my work, thats all), I was already conscious, but nevertheless I was IN what I was doing to a certain extent; I was this web of social life (but thank God it wasnt here in India, for had it been here I could not have withstood it! I think that even as a child I would have smashed everything, because here its even worse than over t here). You see, t here its its a bit less constricting, a bit looser, you can slip through the mesh from time to time to brea the some air. But here, according to what Ive learned from people and what Sri Aurobindo told me, its absolutely unbearable (its the same in Japan, absolutely unbearable). In ot her words, you cant help but smash everything. Over t here, you sometimes get a breath of air, but still its quite relative. And this morning I wondered (you see, for years I lived in that way for years and years) just as I was wondering, How was I ABLE to live that and not kick out in every direction?, just as I was looking at it, I saw up above, above this (it is worse than horrible, it is a kind of Oh, not despair, for t here isnt even any sense of feeling t here is NOTHING! It is dull, dull, dull gray, gray, gray, clenched tight, a closed web that lets through neit her air nor life nor lightt here is nothing) and just then I saw a splendor of such sweet light above itso sweet, so full of true love, true compassion something so warm, so warm the relief, the solace of an eternity of sweetness, light, beauty, in an eternity of patience which feels neit her the past nor the inanity and imbecility of thingsit was so wonderful! That was entirely the feeling it gave, and I said to myself, THAT is what made you live, without THAT it would not have been possible. Oh, it would not have been possible I would not have lived even three days! THAT is t here, ALWAYS t here, awaiting its hour, if we would only let it in.
(silence)
And its still the same thing; only now Im up here (Mot her gestures above the head), Im here, so its quite anot her matter.
I am no longer looking out at the sky from below, but from up above I am looking, as if each look at each thing seen established the Contact.
--
It all began the day I received the news of Zs arrival. All right, I thought, heres a chunk of life sent back to me for clarifying. I must work on it. But it didnt stop t here Its strange how all this past had been swept clean I could no longer remember dates, I couldnt even remember when Z had been here before, I no longer knew what had happened, it had all been wiped cleanwhich means that it had all been pushed down into the subconscient. I didnt even know how I used to speak to him when I saw him, nothing, it was all gone. All that had remained alive were one or two movements or facts which were clearly connected to the psychic life, the psychic consciousness but just one or two or three such memories; all the rest was gone.
So a whole slice of my life came back, but it didnt stop t here! It keeps extending back furt her and furt her, and memories keep on coming, things that go back sixty years now, even beyond, seventy, seventy-five yearsthey are all coming back. And so it all has to be put in order.
--
Formerly, that was my first stepa long time ago. Now its so very different I wonder how it was possible to have been so totally blind as to call that oneself at any moment in ones life! Its a collection of things. And what was the link by which that could be called oneself? Thats more difficult to find out. Only when you climb above do you come to realize that THAT is at work here, but it could work t here as well, or as well here, or here, or here At times t here is suddenly a drop of something (Oh, I saw that this morningit was like a drop, a little drop, but with SUCH an intense and perfect light ), and w here THAT falls it makes its center and begins radiating out and acting. THAT is what can be called oneselfnothing else. And THAT precisely is what enabled me to live in such dreadfully uninteresting, such nonexistent circumstances. And at the moment when you ARE that, you see how that has lived and how that has used everything, not only in this body but in all bodies and through all time.
At the core, this is the experience; it is no longer knowledge. I now understand quite clearly the difference between the knowledge of the eternal soul, of life eternal through all its changes, and this CONCRETE experience of the thing.
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 everyw here UP TO A CERTAIN REGION (in ot her words, whet her 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 anot her, and upon these points t here 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 rat her 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 t here and they come back up whenever they please.
--
Before I fell sick, I had a peculiar dream. I was here in the corridor, and someone quite dark came to tell me that Mot her 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 t here at a table with some ot hers. 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.
0 1960-12-17, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
This realm that Im now investigating, oh! I spend whole nights visiting certain places, and t here 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 1960-12-20, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
For a while, t here was a Muslim girl close to me (not a believer, but her origins were Muslim; in ot her words, she wasnt at all Christian) who had a special fondness for Santa Claus! She had seen pictures of him, read some books, etc. Then one year while she was here, she got it into her head that Santa Claus had to bring me something. He has to bring you something for Christmas, she told me.
Try, I replied.
--
T heres the religious attitude, and then t heres ordinary life w here people do thingsworking, living, eating, enjoying life; they regard these as the essentials, and as for the rest, well, when t heres time they think about it. But what Sri Aurobindo brought down, precisely I remember at Tlemcen, Theon used to say that t here was a whole world of things, such as eating, for example, or taking care of your body, that should be done automatically, without giving it any importanceits not the time to think of things divine.(!) Thats what he preached. So you have the religious attitude of all the religious types, and then ordinary life I found both of them equally unsatisfactory. Then I came here and told Sri Aurobindo my feeling; I said that if someone is truly in union with the Divine, it CANNOT change no matter what he does (the quality of what youre doing may change, but the union cant change no matter what youre doing). And when he said that this was the truth, I felt a relief. And that feeling has stayed with me all through my life.
And now, all these different attitudes which individuals, groups and categories of men hold are coming from every direction (while Im walking upstairs) to assert their own points of view as the true thing. And I see that for myself, Im being forced to deal with a whole mass of things, most of which are quite futile from an ordinary point of viewnot to mention the things of which these moral or religious types disapprove. Quite interestingly, all kinds of mental formations come like arrows while Im walking for my japa upstairs (Mot her makes a gesture of little arrows in the air coming into her mental atmosp here from every direction); and yet, Im entirely in what I could call the joy and happiness of my japa, full of the energy of walking (the purpose of walking is to give a material energy to the experience, in all the bodys cells). Yet in spite of this, one thing after anot her comes, like this, like that (Mot her draws little arrows in the air): what I must do, what I must answer to this person, what I must say to that one, what has to be done All kinds of things, most of which might be considered most futile! And I see that all this is SITUATED in a totality, and this totality I could say that its nothing but the body of the Divine. I FEEL it, actually, I feel it as if I were touching it everyw here (Mot her touches her arms, her hands, her body). And all these things neit her veil nor destroy nor divert this feeling of being entirely this a movement, an action in the body of the Divine. And its increasing from day to day, for it seems that He is plunging me more and more into entirely material things with the will that T herE TOO it must be done that all these things must be consciously full of Him; they are full of Him, in actual fact, but it must become conscious, with the perception that it is all the very substance of His being which is moving in everything
It was quite beautiful on the balcony this morning
0 1960-12-23, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
For when something isnt right, a pressure always comes down on the body from above, the pressure of the descending Force. But in this case it wasnt that at all; rat her, it was like this (Mot her holds her palms upwards in an attitude of total surrender), but beatific in that it lives in itself, it is existence in itself and thats all.
I came here in that state directly after the meditation, and when I sat down You see, I didnt even have the (naturally t here is no question of idea) I dont know, not even the instinct to pick up a flower for you, you understand? And when I sat down here, the consciousness of the column of Light started coming. T here was no more personality, no more individuality: t here was only a column of Light descending right into the very cells of the body and thats all.
Then it gradually became conscious of itself, conscious of BEING this column of Light. And then the ordinary consciousness slowly returned.
--
Its interesting for me to come here soon after the meditation, for its as if I were objectivizing my experience. Ot herwise Id be within, like that (gesture), and t heres no longer any (you see, I say Ibut at that moment it doesnt exist!) and even THE BODY feels this way, a kind of immutable and beatific eternity, and thats all.
I tell you, not even When I arrived, I said to you, My hands are empty; merely the contact with your atmosp here made me say it. But ot herwise the my, the handsnone of it had any meaning.
0 1960-12-31, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
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 atmosp here. 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 gott here 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 anyw here! 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 neit her 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 t here wasnt even any ladder by which to get down. In ot her 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
--
T here have been similar stories in dreams with X. I saw him when he was very young (his education, the ideas he had, how he was trained). And the same thing happened. I was with him but Ill tell you that anot her time6 And then at the end, Id had enough and I said, Oh, no! Its too ridiculous! and with that I left the house. At the door was a little squirrel sitting on his haunches making friendly little gestures towards me. Oh! I said, heres someone who understands better!
But later I observed, I saw that this had helped drain him of all the weight of his past education. Very interesting Night after night, night after night, night after nightplenty of things! You could write novels about it all.
--
Mot her later narrated the end of her 'dream' with X:
'It was his house, and it was rat her 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. (Mot her 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!' T hereupon, I left. All the old ideas...
0 1961-01-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I came down at 9:30 sharp, thinking half an hour would be enough to cross the corridor and get here. Apparently not!
(Mot her gives Satprem a rose.) This is the Tenderness of the Divine for for himself! The tenderness He has for his creation. Creation I dont like that word, as if it all were created from nothing! It is He himself, creating with all his tenderness. Some of these roses get quite big; theyre so lovely!
And I am how to put it? Nothing we say is ever absolutely true, but, to stretch it a bit, while I am not worried, not perturbed, not discouraged, I feel I cant get anything done; I spend all my time, all my time, seeing people, receiving and answering lettersdoing nothing. I havent touched my translation1 for over a week. T. sent me her notebook with questions and I had it for two weeks before I found time to answer.2 Nothing is ready for the Bulletin except what you have done.
Its a pity you have no time to do your work.
Even the translation. You know, when I am tired and work on the translation I feel rested. But, oh, all these letters! Even the best of them are stupid. Anyway. When I came here just now t here was someone waiting to see me I told him to come at 11: 00, and by then t here will be 700 people waiting for me to come out. They are already gat hered around the Samadhi.3
Well, enough grumbling. Lets get to work.
--
Understanding The Synthesis of Yoga is quite simple: I have only to be silent for a moment, and Sri Aurobindo is here.
Its not this bodys understanding: HE is here!
Mot her generally worked a little every day on the French translation of The Synthesis of Yoga.
The notebook in which a young woman disciple asked questions on Sri Aurobindo's Thoughts and Aphorisms. Later, Mot her 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.
W here Sri Aurobindo's body lies, in the Ashram courtyard.
0 1961-01-10, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
here we are at the top rung on the scale of collaboration.
Put this way, t here is no need to bring the principle of love into our explanation. But if we want to know or understand the nature of the Force or Power that permits and accomplishes this transformation (specially in the case of evil, but for ugliness to some extent as well), we see that of all powers, Love is obviously the mightiest, the most integralintegral in that it applies to all cases. Its even mightier than the power of purification which dissolves bad wills and is, in a way, master over the adverse forces, but which doesnt have the direct transforming power; because the power of purification Must FIRST dissolve in order to form again later. It destroys one form to make a better one from it, while Love doesnt need to dissolve in order to transform: it has the direct transforming power. Love is like a flame changing the hard into the malleable, then sublimating even the malleable into a kind of purified vapor. It doesnt destroy: it transforms.
--
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 ot her occasions (not that I try to recall them, they are t here and simply come back). But when t heres a new contact, something new always comes.
***
--
Twice a week, during the period of the Playground Talks, Mot her would publicly reply to questions put to her by the disciples assembled at the Ashram Playground.
World Uniona 'movement' launched through the personal initiative of a disciple.
0 1961-01-12, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
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 anot her 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 ot her 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!
Even those who claim to be broad-minded, above these conventions, immediately fall right into the trap. And to ease their consciences they say, Mot her wouldnt allow that. Mot her wouldnt permit that. Mot her wouldnt tolerate such a thing!to add a furt her inanity to the rest.
--
Saraswati represents the universal Mot her's aspect of Knowledge and artistic creativity. On this occasion, Mot her would go down to the Meditation Hall and the disciples would silently pass in front of her to receive a message. This year they would receive a folder containing five photographs of Mot her.
Savitri, Vol. 29, XI.I.702.
0 1961-01-17, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Anger, moreover, like all forms of violence, is always a sign of weakness, impotence and incapacity. here the deception comes from the approval one gives it or the flattering adjective one covers it with; for rage can be no more than blind, ignorant and asuricopposed to the light.
But this is still the best of cases.
0 1961-01-19, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I think it would be wiser if I went back upstairsalthough if I leave here too early, people will be waiting for me and Ill have to see them before going up. We could meditate a little; as soon as I meditate, everything is fine.
(meditation)
0 1961-01-22, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mot her had been unwell the past few days. She speaks here of the causes behind the physical disorder.)
Ah! How are you?
--
At last I found myself in a big place down below w here t here was a row of houses, all kinds of things, and it was absolutely essential that I go back upwhen suddenly a somewhat indistinct form (rat her dark, unluminous) came to me and said, Oh, dont go t here, its very bad, very dangerous! Theyve set it all up in a terrifying way: none can withstand it! You mustnt go t here, wait a bit. And if you need something, do come, you know I have everything you need! (Mot her 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 anot her, 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 ot her areas for washing and dressing, t here was everything one could possibly need. You can use it all. Dont go up t here! 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, Mot her, you are nice! (Mot her laughs) I knew then that she was material Mot her 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 ot her side; but I didnt have to go t here anymore.
--
But they are furious! T here is evidently a whole alignment of forces (they must be vital forces) between here and my domain. Theyre furious! They set up explosions, demolitions. And I could see all the settings they were quite artificial, nothing real, but dangerous nonetheless.
All in all, it was rat her amusing.
--
Yes, I am disrupting their work I know perfectly well that I am disrupting their domination of the world! All these vital beings have taken possession of the whole of Matter (Mot her touches her body)life and action and have made it their domain, this is evident. But they are beings of the lower vital, for they seemed artificial they didnt express any hig her form, but an entire range of artificial mechanisms, artificial will, artificial organization, all deriving from their own imagination and not at all from a hig her inspiration.1 The symbol was very clear.
And I saw my own domain through them and through it all; I saw my domain: I can see it!, I said. But no sooner would I start on my way than the path would be lost, I no longer saw it, I couldnt see anymore w here I was going. It became almost impossible to get my bearings t here: hundreds and thousands of people, thingsutter confusion. An inco herent immensity and violent, what violence!
--
At one point, it seized me here in the belly as if it wanted to rip something out.
Yes, yesoh, what violence, what fury!
--
I remained perfectly tranquil, t here was nothing else to do; I knew it meant a battle. I was perfectly tranquil, but I could no longer eat, I could no longer rest, do japa2 or walk, and my head felt as though it would burst. I could only abandon myself (Mot her opens her arms in a gesture of surrender), enter into a very, very deep trance, a very deep samadhithis is something one can always do. But that was the only thing left to me. Ideas were just as clear as ever (all that is above and doesnt budge), but my body was in a very bad way. It was a fight, a fight at each second. The least thing, just to walk a step, was a struggle, an awful battle!
Then last night I saw the symbol, the image of the thing. But what was it? It was an element in the most material Matter,3 because it was deep down below; yet despite it all, Mot her Nature was in charge t here: she was familiar with everything, knew everything and it was all at her disposalabsolutely the most material Nature. And she herself had no light, but was very, very she had a concealed power that was completely invisible.
Each time I set out to leave her domain and ascend above, it triggered a hurricane. I would pass this way and the storm started up, pass that way, unleash a gale. Finally she approached me and said very gently, very sweetly, in a most unassuming way, No, dont go t here, dont go! Dont try to return to your home. They have set up a dreadful hurricane! And artificial: t here were explosions like bombs everyw here, and even worse, like thunderbolts. One could see the artificial tricks and electrical effects they were using to create their thunder, but it was on a tremendous scale!
It isnt over.
I simply consented to stay t here. 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! T here 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 anot her, they would organize themselves, take their proper place, and all became neat. You will just have to dust them off a bit, she said. (Mot her laughs)
But Im not surprised it came down on you.
--
For me it was in the head (not last night but over the past few days), when I was trying to do my japaoh, it was as though my head would burst! All the nerves were not just tense (Mot her touches the nape of her neck), but cramped. And my head felt as if boiling oil were being poured inside it; it was about to explode, and I couldnt see clearly.
Something was obviously bent on preventing me from going down for the distribution.4 But by an act of will I went down. I will do it, I said. But it was difficult. T here were moments when it sidled up to me: Now youre going to faint, and then, Now your legs will no longer be able to walk. Now. It kept coming like that. So I kept repeating the japa the whole time, and it was touch-and-go right up to the end. Finally I couldnt distinguish people, I saw only shapes, forms passing by, and not clearly. When the distribution was over, I got up (I knew I had to get up), I stood up without flinching and stepped down from the chair without faltering. But I was not careful and when I turned away from the light in the room to go towards the staircasean abrupt blackout. Not the blackout of a faintmy eyes no longer saw. I saw only shadows. Ah! I said to myself, w here is the step?! And to avoid missing it, I clutched the railing. What a commotion that made! Champaklal came rushing up, thinking I was about to fall!
--
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 anot her 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, t here 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.
And this is the confusion made by all those people who believed that their what they called their personal salvation was the salvation of the worldits not true at all! It isnt trueits a PERSONAL salvation.
--
But all of that is wonderfully, accurately expressed and EXPLAINED in Savitri. Only you must know how to read it! The entire last part, from the moment she goes to seek Satyavan in the realm of Death (which affords an occasion to explain this), the whole description of what happens t here, right up to the end, w here every possible offer is made to tempt her, everything she must refuse to continue her terrestrial labor it is my experience EXACTLY.
Savitri is really a condensation, a concentration of the universal Mot her the eternal universal Mot her, Mot her 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 t here! 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 t here! 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 Mot her said (or the 'physical plunge' referred to by Sri Aurobindo), leading to the pure cellular consciousness.
Japa: the continuous repetition of a mantra. Mot her'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, Mot her 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
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 ot her things2 happened in regard to certain people, certain circumstances (nothing to do with me personally: it came from here and t here). 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 (Mot her points above her head, indicating the hig her consciousness), and I looked at that (Mot her 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.
(long silence)
I must say that after this, when I read The Secret of the Veda as I do each evening. In fact, I am in very close contact with the entire Vedic world since Ive been reading that book: I see beings, hear phrases. It comes up in a sort of subliminal consciousness, a lot of things are from the ancient Vedic tradition. (By the way, I have even come to see that the pink marble bathtub I told you about last time, which Nature had offered me, belongs to the Vedic world, to a civilization of that epoch.3) T here weret here are alwaysSanskrit words coming up, sentences, bits of dialogue. This is of interest, because I realized that what I had seen the ot her day (I told you about it) and then what I saw yesterday that whole domainwas connected to what the Vedas call the dasyus the panis and the dasyus4the enemies of the Light. And this Force that came was very clearly a power like Indras5 (though something far, far greater), and at war with darkness everyw here, like this (Mot her sketches in space a whirling force touching points here and t here throughout the world), this Force attacked all darkness: ideas, people, movements, events, whatever made stains, patches of shadow. And it kept on going, a formidable power, so great that my hands were like this (Mot her clenches her fists). Later when I read (I happened to be reading just the chapter concerning the fight against the dasyus), this proximity to my own experience became interesting, for it was not at all intellectual or mental t here was no idea, no thought involved.
The remainder of the evening passed as usual. I went to bed, and at exactly a quarter to twelve I got up with the feeling that this presence in me had increased even furt her and really become rat her formidable. I had to instill a great deal of peace and confidence into my body, which felt as though it wasnt so easy to bear. So I concentrated, I told my body to be calm and to let itself go completely.
At midnight I was lying in bed. (And I remained t here from midnight until I oclock fully awake. I dont know if my eyes were open or closed, but I was wide awake, NOT IN TRANCEI could hear all the noises, the clocks, and so forth.) Then, lying flat, my entire body (but a slightly enlarged body, exceeding the purely physical form) became ONE vibration, extremely rapid and intense but immobile. I dont know how to explain this, because it did not move in space but was a vibration (that is, it wasnt motionless); yet it was motionless in space. And the exact form of my body was absolutely the most brilliant white Light of the supreme Consciousness, the consciousness OF the Supreme. It was IN the body and it was as though in EACH cell t here was a vibration, and it was all part of a single BLOCK of vibration. It extended this much beyond the body (gesture indicating about six centimeters). I was absolutely immobile in my bed. Then, WITHOUT MOVING, without shifting, it began consciously to rise upwithout moving, you understand: I remained like this (Mot her holds her two joined and motionless hands at the level of her forehead, as if her entire body were mounting in prayer)consciously like an ascension of this consciousness6 towards the supreme Consciousness.
The body was stretched out flat.
--
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 (Mot her points to the center above the head and then touches the crown of the head, the forehead, throat, chest, etc.) then t here, t here, t here. At each t here 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 TOGET her, 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, fart her and fart her, 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.
--
Does a servant come to your house? No one is sick in his family? Because what happens is that they dont want to lose their jobs or their salary, so they dont warn you. They may have smallpox or measles or chickenpox and they dont take the slightest care to wash or change their clothes; they come to your house and of course they bring along the disease. So the number of cases keeps multiplying and multiplying. I have been meaning to tell Pavitra to be careful of that little character who works for himeven ordinarily I dont like to see him running around here. Its strange how it sullies the atmosp hereoh, you cant imagine! Almost all of them, almost all!
Its not at all the same as in the West, in Europe or America, not at all. Basically, the people in those countries are made of the same stuff as we are. But here thats not the case, because for centuries it never changeda Brahmin, for example, always remained a Brahmin, a Kshatria was always a Kshatria and all his servants were Kshatrias. It stayed in the family, in the sense that in each caste the servantsoften poor relativesbe longed to that same caste. From a social standpoint this might not have been too pleasant, but as far as atmosp here was concerned, it was very good. This was changed, however, first by the Muslim invasion, and then especially by the British.
The British, you see, were served only by pariahs (in fact, its we Europeans who named them that!). But they were not actually pariahs by birth, they became pariahs out of HABIT.
--
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 t here 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 didt here 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.
We think these people are the way they are because the environment is bad, the education is poor, the conditions are difficultits not true! In the universal economy of things they REPRESENT something, a certain type of force and vibration. It will have to be eit her dissolved or transformed. Transformed? But perhaps that is. It may disappear along with the hostile forces. Perhaps once everything has been transformed it will disappear I dont know when.
In any case, I really tried my best, with all the power I had, all the knowledge I had, because I liked this girl a lot, it wasnt at all a question of charity, I found her very interesting. But I watchedwith a kind of horror, reallyas this past repossessed her more and more, more and more each day, until we were finally obliged to dismiss her, to tell her, Go. Yes, I understand, she replied, I cant stay here.
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 t here.
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!
--
T here 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 t here. Then everything came in.
But now the situation is bad. T here 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, ot herwise well have to stop everything!
--
Mot her did her japa while walking back and forth in her room.
Satprem later asked Mot her what she meant by these 'things,' and Mot her replied: 'For example, t here 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 atmosp here for me to seethings I see and which have to be acted upon.'
--
In the Vedas, the panis and dasyus represent beings or forces hidden in subterranean caves who have stolen the 'Riches' or the 'Lights', symbolized by herds of cows. With the help of the gods, the Aryan warrior must recover these lost riches, the 'sun in the darkness,' by igniting the flame of sacrifice. It is the path of subterranean descent.
Indra represents the king of the gods, the master of mental power freed from the limitations and obscurities of the physical consciousness.
0 1961-01-29, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You can tell her anything you like, it doesnt matterjust tell her to keep it to herself.
But ot herwise. Some of the things you note down I just put away. But some I show to Nolini (of them all, Nolini is the one who can best understand). I give him certain things to read, but ot herwise, no. It is completely different between us, as I told you completely different. If you benefit from it, so much the better! If it helps you in your inner development, good, I have no objectionon the contrary. Its quite natural, the natural consequence of our meetings.
But if while speaking with Sujata you feel that something might help her, I have no objection to your telling hersimply say that its between the two of you.
So far, I havent said anything. You know how I am: I keep quiet, I dont say a word.
Oh, yes, thats best. Because one must absolutely beware. But as I said, with her I have no objection.
***
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 t here was a disorder here or t here 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?
--
This was a very important experience. Afterwards (especially yesterday afternoon and this morning), I gradually began to realize that this kind of indifferent detachment is the ESSENTIAL condition for the establishment of true Harmony in the most material Matter the most external, physical Matter (Mot her pinches the skin of her hand).
This experience has been like a stagean indispensable stage for establishing this complete detachment; an indispensable stage so that the harmony of the body-consciousness (which came with the bodys experience of the Divine) might have its effect upon the most external, superficial part of the body.
--
(After the work, Mot her begins speaking of her translation of The Synthesis of Yoga.)
A few days ago I had an experience related to this. For some time I had been unable to work because I was unwell and my eyes were very tired. And two or three days ago, when I resumed the translation, I suddenly realized that I was seeing it quite differently! Something had happened during those days (how to put it?) the position of the translation work in relation to the text was different. My last sentence was all I had with me, because I file my papers as I go along, so I went back to it along with the corresponding English sentence. Oh, look! I said, Thats how it goes! And I made all the corrections quite spontaneously. The position really seemed different.
--
It is striking that Mot her'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 Mot her was living spontaneously in her bodyperhaps 'at the speed of light.'
***
0 1961-02-04, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
here, I have brought you two flowers. They have two different yet very typically Indian fragrances: this one is Straightforwardness,1 and this is Simplicity.2 I have always found that this one (Mot her holds out the Simplicity) has a cleansing fragrance: when you brea the it, ah, everything becomes cleanits wonderful! (Mot her breathes in the flowers fragrance.) Once I cured myself of the onset of a cold with itthis can be done when you catch it at the very beginning. It fills you completely, the nose, the throat. And this [Straightforwardness] is right at the ot her end of the spectrum. I find it very, very powerfulstrange, isnt it?
Its not at all sweet-smelling.
--
I have had several experiences demonstrating my power over snakes (not so much as over catswith cats its extraordinary!). Long ago, I often used to take a drive and then stop somew here for a walk. One day after my walk, as I was getting back into the car to drive away (the door was still open), a very large snake came out, right from the spot I had just left. He was furious and heading straight towards the open door, ready to strike (luckily I was alone, neit her the driver nor Pavitra were t here, ot herwise). When the snake had come quite near, I looked at him closely and said, What do you want? Why have you come here? T here was a pause. Then he fell down flat and off he went. I hadnt made a move, only asked him, What do you want? Why have you come here? You know, they have a way of suddenly falling back, going limp, and prrt! Gone!
How many, many experiences t here were during those days at Tlemcen! Surely youve heard them. Were you t here 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 t here 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!
--
And do you know how he received me when I arrived t here? It was the first time in my life I had traveled alone and the first time I had crossed the Mediterranean. Then t here was a fairly long train ride between Oran and Tlemcenanyway, I managed rat her well: I got t here. He met me at the station and we set off for his place by car (it was rat her 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.) T here 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. (Mot her touches her heart.)
Well, he really went pale.
--
Someone had wanted to plant pine treesScotch firs, I think and by mistake Norway spruce were sent instead. And it began to snow! It had never snowed t here before, as you can imagineit was only a few kilometers from the Sahara and boiling hot: 113 in the shade and 130 in the sun in summer. Well, one night Madame Theon, asleep in her bed, was awakened by a little gnome-like beinga Norwegian gnome with a pointed cap and pointed slippers turned up at the toes! From head to foot he was covered with snow, and it began melting onto the floor of her room, so she glared at him and said:
What are You doing here? Youre dripping wet! Youre making a mess of my floor!
Im here to tell you that we were called to this mountain and so we have come.
Who are you?
--
Because it is all here, it just hasnt been brought to the surface.
So, its time to go and we still havent workedonce again Ive been talking away! Dont bot her noting it all down; Ive told it just for you, for your personal entertainment!
But many things here will interest everyone!
No. Besides, t here are things. T here are things I dont want to speak of because (and I havent said them, eit her) because, after all, he taught me a lot.
--
The story doesn't seem to end here, but perhaps Mot her did not wish to say anything furt her.
***
0 1961-02-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But here also, all depends on the sincerity and the endurance with which the chosen path is followed. Because here also, t here are difficulties and obstacles to surmount.
So, in life, nothing comes without an effort and a struggle.
--
Those who try to lead a spiritual life have always been compared to warriors (t here are classic writings on this subject), and one must truly be a fighterfighter is more exact than warrior because you wage war against no one: everything wages war against you! Everything (Mot her makes a gesture like an avalanche falling upon her) and with such savage opposition!
Ah, well.
--
It has been good for it (not externally, but inwardly, for its state of consciousness: the body-consciousness), it has done the body some good, but. Now its like this (Mot her opens her hands in a gesture of total surrender). For each blow it receives (its a bludgeoning, my child!), for each blow, it remains like this (same gesture). Yesterday, to make it happy, I wrote down something like this (concerning its latest difficulty): If this present difficulty is useful (its the body addressing the Lord, and the Lord. its a perpetual adoration: all the cells vibrate, vibrate with the joy of Love; yet despite that ), if this or that difficulty is useful for Your Workso be it. But if it is an effect of my stupidity (its the body speaking), if its an effect of my own stupidity, then I beseech You to cure me of this stupidity as quickly as possible.
It doesnt ask to be cured of the illness! It doesnt ask, it is ready; All right, it says. As long as I can keep going, I will keep going. As long as I can last, I will last. But thats not what Im asking for: I am asking to be cured of my stupidity. I believe this is what enables it to yes, what gives it the necessary endurance.
0 1961-02-11, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its written in black and white, but the people here read and dont understand what theyre reading, and thats a pity. They have to be told, This means that!
T. asks, Why dont the gods help us? Why do they keep us in bondage?
--
The trouble is, they hinder my work (Mot her indicates her legs). Not the work up in my roomt here, on the contrary, it is going well, very well, clear, precise. Yesterday again I worked on the translation of The Synthesis of Yoga, and it was so pleasant. So pleasant.
You see, I cant stand up; and these people persistently try to keep me standing. But I cant remain standing, its all out of order. Anyway, it doesnt matter, it will pass.
--
You see, t heres a curious fluctuation possibly indicating that your dream is part of the present attack which continues with such violence. The night before last, between midnight and half-past, t here was a formidable attack. When I emerged from it, I felt that something had lifted, a victory had been won and that the bodys condition had improved. It happens like that, the horizon clears and this Certainty comes with. (The presence is always hereSri Aurobindo and I are toget her almost every night but the night when I saw that formation, the illness spell over the Ashram, Sri Aurobindo was quite sick in his bed, just as I saw him in 1950.) So when it lifts, all is well: once again t here is harmony, t here is joy, t here is force and again the whole thing continues, the effort continues, consciously. Yet t here is a kind of fluctuation: it will go on like that for a few moments or a few hours and then suddenly everything becomes muddled again and I am beset by a fatigue. A fatigue which is I cant say almost unbearable, because nothing in the consciousness feels it to be unbearable but it makes me like this (Mot her clenches her fist tightly in a tension to hold on).
For example, at five-thirty in the evening, after Ive spent an hour and a half here with people, its a labor to climb the stairs; and by the time I get upstairs, I feel strained to the breaking point. Then I begin to walk (I dont stop, I dont rest), I immediately begin to walk with my japa, and within half an hour, pfft! it has lifted.
But the bodys fatigue doesnt go: its t here its contained but it is t here.
--
The most violent attack came immediately after that experience [of January 24]. But of all the experiences in my life, this was the most wonderful for the simple reason that it was NOT EVEN preceded by an aspiration, not even an aspiration from the body it came directly as the Supreme Will, bang! (Mot her bangs down her hands in an irresistible gesture) And then t here was nothing, nothing but THE thing, WITHOUT ANY PERSONAL PARTICIPATION WHATSOEVER: no will, no aspiration, not even the satisfaction of itnothing. It was. I was (in my hig her consciousness) filled with wonder at the ABSOLUTENESS of the experience. It came, a thing DECREED and eternallike that (same irresistible gesture).
(silence)
--
Ot herwise, 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 t here, aches here, aches t here (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.
--
Of course, t heres the constant difficulty of all the thoughts coming from outside and from the people you live with. But now the consciousness is such that these outer things are seen objectively (Mot her makes a gesture of seeing vibrations coming and stopping before her eyes)automatically I see everything that comes from the surrounding vibrations objectively: far, near, above, below, everyw here. The vibration comes WITH THE KNOWLEDGE. In ot her words, its not that you see what it is only after it has been received and absorbed: it comes with the knowledge, and this is a great help. This type of perception has considerably increased and become much more precise since that experience [of January 24], much more; it has made a big difference.
But perhaps t here 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 ot her than this Vibration.
It didnt last longer than a quarter of an hour and it wasnt as total.
--
Thats how it works. Because all substance is ONE. All is onewe constantly forget that! We always have a sense of separation, and that is total, total falsehood; its because we rely on what our eyes see, on (Mot her touches her hands and arms, as if to indicate a separate body, cut off from ot her bodies). That is truly Falsehood. As soon as your consciousness changes a little, you realize that what we see is like an image plastered over something. But its not true, NOT TRUE AT ALL. Even in the most material Matter, even a stoneeven in a stoneas soon as ones consciousness changes, all this separation, all this division, completely vanishes. These are (how to put it?) modes of concentration (something akin to yet not quite that), vibratory modes WITHIN THE SAME THING.8
(The clock strikes) Oh, now I must go!
--
(Mot her 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 toget her because we have to do it toget her, that is alllike this, like that, in this way, in that way (Mot her tilts her hand from right to left as though to indicate this side of the world or the ot her, life or death), it has no importance. But this is the true fact.
T here, petit.
--
Four times a year, for 'darshan,' visitors poured into the Ashram to pass one by one before Mot her (and formerly Sri Aurobindo as well) to receive her look.
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!
0 1961-02-14, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Sri Aurobindo speaks here of the hig her soul.1 Yet we cant translate it by me suprieure, as if t here were an inferior soul, can we?
Sri Aurobindo wants to make the distinction between the progressive soul (the soul which has experiences and progresses from life to life), what can be called the lower soul, and the hig her soul, that is, the eternal, immutable and divine soulessentially divine. He wrote this when he was in contact with certain Theosophical writings, before I introduced Theons vocabulary to him. For Theon, t here is the divine center which is the eternal soul, and the psychic being; similarly, to avoid using the same word in both cases, Sri Aurobindo speaks in later writings of the psychic being and of the divine center or central being the essential soul.
0 1961-02-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
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.
(silence)
Anyhow, I was sent here to do this work, so I am trying to do it, thats all. I could have. If it hadnt been for the work, I would have left with Sri Aurobindo; t here you have it. I remained only for the sake of the workbecause it was t here to be done and he told me to do it and I am doing it. Ot herwise, when one is perfectly conscious, one is far less limited without a body: one can see a hundred people at the same time, in a hundred different places, just as Sri Aurobindo is doing right now.
If I may ask, has Sri Aurobindo remained quite conscious of material things?
--
She saw your publis hers in Paris and they told her they are impatiently awaiting (Mot her is mocking) your book on Sri Aurobindo.
I wish I could help them out!
--
I tell you this because just now as we were speaking about the book and you were saying it would come all at once in a single flow, I saw a kind of globe, like a suna sun shedding a twinkling dust of incandescent light (the sun was moving forward and this dust came twinkling in front of it), like this (gesture). It came towards you, then made a circle around you as if to say, here is the formation. It was magnificent! T here was a creative warmth in it, a warmth like the sunsa power of Truth. And here again, I was given the same impression: that what Sri Aurobindo has come to bring is not a teaching, not even a revelation, but a FORMIDABLE action coming direct from the Supreme.
It is something pouring over the world.
--
(After anot her digression, Mot her again speaks of her experience of January 24, which triggered a backlash of subconscious difficulties.)
A great deal has been brought to light since that experience. It has been the starting point for such turmoil, even physically, such strong jolts that I might have wondered, Was I dreaming or was it real?. And more and more I am coming to understand that this is the INDISPENSABLE preparation in the most material world for that experience to become definitively established, to express itself outwardly, constantlythis is obvious.
--
It did not remain. It has remained above, but not here.
It has given the physical consciousness a certain self-confidence in the sense that when I see something now, I am sure of it, t here are no hesitations: Is this right or not? Is this true, is this.All that has vanishedwhen I see, t here is certainty. That is, t here has really been a great change in the material CONSCIOUSNESS; but that formidable power is not t here. 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; t here is a lot to be cleared out before the experience can be firmly established. Thats logical, it is quite natural.
--
I have a feeling (but these are old ideas) that if I were all alone somew here and didnt have to look after these people and things, it would be easier. But that would not be the TRUE thing. For when I had the experience [of January 24], all that is normally under my care was present: the whole earth seemed to be present at the experience. T here is no individuality (Mot her indicates her body). I have difficulty finding an individuality now, even in my own body. What I do find in this body are the subconscious vibrations (conscious as well as subconscious) of a WORLD, a whole world of things. So it can be done ONLY on a large scale, ot herwise its the same old story but then its not the power herE [in matter]one simply quits this world. Oh, these people cant imagine what it is! They have made such a fuss over their departure. They have wanted us to believe it was something quite extraordinary. But its infantile, its childs play, its nothing at all to quit this world! One simply goes poff!, like diving into watera little kick and one resurfaces, and thats all t here is to it, its done (Mot her laughs).
And the same goes for their stories about attachments and desiresmy god! T heres nothing to it! Imagine, with anything concerning my body, through all this horror of the subconscient, NOT ONCE have I had to bear the consequence of a desire; I have always had to bear the consequences of the battle against lifes unconscious and malicious resistances, but not once has something come up like that (gesture of something resurging from below) to tell me, You see! You had a desire, now heres the result of it! Not oncevery, very sincerely.
Thats really not the difficulty the difficulty is that the world is not ready! The very substance one is made of (Mot her touches her body) shares in the worlds lack of preparationnaturally! Its the same thing, the very same thing. Perhaps t here is a tiny bit more light in this body, but so little that its not worth mentioning-its all the same thing. Oh, a sordid slavery!
(silence)
--
But Z is not honest. He hasnt been honest at all. We were forced to intervene once or twice because his deletions distorted the meaning. We finally told him (for the book published here), We wont publish it unless you restore these things.
(silence)
0 1961-02-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This one is the Constant Remembrance of the Divine.1 This is Life Energy2 and Purified Life Energy.3 Then Faithfulness4: the peace of FaithfulnessFaithfulness to the Divine, of course, thats understood! This is Divine Solicitude5; this is the Aspiration for Transformation,6 and the response: see how beautiful it islike velvet! its the Promise of Realization.7 here is Light Without Obscurity,8 and finally Realization9the first flower from the tree at Nanteuil.10
T here you are.
--
The Darshan went rat her 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 (Mot her 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 t here! 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.
--
T heres an American living in Madras, a rat her 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, t here 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.
--
T here is only one thing you can doANNUL YOURSELF as much as possible. If you can annul yourself completely, then the experience is total. And if your disappearance could be constant, the experience would be constantly t here but thats still far away. I dont know if all this (Mot her looks at her body).
(silence)
--
Now the body has a kind of extraordinary smile for everything. At the end of the day, with the accumulation of everything coming from the people I have seen and the work I have done, when I have to push and pull myself just to climb the stairs because my legs are like iron rods, without any will (thats the most terrible part: they dont respond to the will), even at times like these, when my arms are what pull me up the stairs (no longer my legs), the body doesnt protest, doesnt protest. Then it begins walking back and forth for japa. And after half an hour of walking, things are infinitely better (Mot her makes a gesture of the Force descending into her body).
(silence)
--
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 rat her 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 t heres 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 t here, groups of cells fail to respond, and the Force cannot act. So what must be found is.
(silence)
Even in this, right now, in what I am saying, t heres a sense of tapasya; t heres the whole inner consciousness making the body do a tapasya. But my knowledge and my certainty (what I KNOW) is that it may be a necessary preparation, but it is NOT what accomplishes the work.15 Rat her, it is something acting like that (Mot her abruptly turns her hand over to indicate a reversal of states). And when it goes like that, it is done, all is done. All is done.
Are these disorders necessary for it to become like that? I have my doubts. I have my doubts. But the question cant even be asked, because what it implies seems to verge on a fatalism having no truth in itselfit is not a fatalism, not at all. What is it? Something that defies expression.
--
Even the body, the body itself, has the constant perception of bathing in the vibration of the CONCRETE divine Presence; so certainly from a psychological standpoint t here is not the slightest shadow in the picture. Even from the material standpoint, this Presence is here. Yet although it is here, felt, perceived and experienced, t here is still this disorder! (I call it disorder.)
(long silence)
--
All our aspirations, all our seekings, all our ascents always remind me of that flower I gave you the ot her day16: its something like that (Mot her makes a vague, et hereal gesture), vibrating, vibrating, vibrating, very luminous, very delicate, essentially very lovely (silence) but it is not THAT (Mot her again turns her hand over to indicate an abrupt reversal). It is not That.
(silence)
--
here Mot her gradually goes into trance and all the rest of this conversation will take place in a state of trance.
I.e., it is not through any effort or tapasya that the true change is brought about.
0 1961-03-04, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Look, its Enthusiasm, see how beautiful it is! It must be put in water right away, ot herwise. It needs vital force and water is vital force. Its lovely! What fantasy! And this one is the Consciousness one with the Divine Consciousness,1 but supramentalizedbeginning to be supramentalized. And here is a very pretty Promise of Realization2, and heres Balance3 and the Peace of Faithfulness.4
T here you are, mon petit.
--
I treated it as something altoget her secondary and unimportantwhen people need to gallop, I let them gallop (but I hadnt met Z). Then J. and Z left toget her on a speaking-tour of Africa and t here things began to go sour, because Z was working in one way and J. in anot her. Finally, they were at odds and came back here to tell me, World Union is off to a good startwith a quarrel! (Mot her laughs) Z was saying, Nothing can be done unless we base ourselves EXCLUSIVELY on the teaching of Sri Aurobindo and the Mot her 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 toget her), and finally they wrote me a little more clearly. (T here 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 rat her intelligent and I have some control over her, so I will try to stop her from writing nonsense.
They also had a sudden brainstorm to affiliate with the Sri Aurobindo Society. But the Sri Aurobindo Society has absolutely nothing to do with their project: its a strictly external thing, organized by businessmen to bring in moneyEXCLUSIVELY. That is, they want to put people in a position w here they feel obliged to give (so far they have succeeded and I believe they will succeed). But this has nothing to do with working for an ideal, it is COMPLETELY practical.10 And of course, World Union has nothing to offer the Sri Aurobindo Society: they would simply siphon off funds. So I told them, Nothing doingits out of the question!
--
In addition, I told them it was preferable not to hold any functions herethey can be held at Tapogiri in the Himalayas, or elsew here and this is understood. They did hold a seminar here (a perfect fiasco, besides), but it had been arranged a long time ago. They invited people who promised to come (I think very few showed up in the end), and it was of very secondary importance. Nevertheless, I told them, This is the last time; dont do it here any more. At Tapogiri, as often as you like: its a beautiful spot in the mountains, a health resort, people go t here in the summer for the fresh air and to sit around and chat!
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!
--
For example, t heres 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 t here 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 Mot her 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.
--
Then it proves they have never read anything by Sri Aurobindo. Its unimportant. No, its even better than unimportant: its a test. This place is full of tests, full, full, full! People dont realize. One can see it happening, as though it were done on purpose just to trip people up (not really on purpose, but thats how it acts). It protects me from hordes of good-for-nothings! I am not eager to have a lot of people here.
Anot her thing that shocked me was in their journal.
--
Im going to send this to V, asking her innocently, Has this appeared in your journal? Because it would be better if it didnt: we dont make propaganda. Oh, I am hard on them, you know!
But it doesnt matter, we must always keep smiling, mon petit. In the end, good always comes out of such thingsits a sorting-out! A splendid, splendid sifter!
The truth is, VERY FEW people are ready to be here, very few. We have taken in all typeswe accept, we accept, we acceptafterwards, we sift. And the sifting goes on more and more. Actually, we accept everything, the entire earth, and then (gesture) t heres a churning. And everything useless goes away.
The opposition is clearly becoming stronger and stronger, a very good signit means we are advancing. But circumstances are growing more and more difficult: the least thing becomes an opportunity to demonstrate bad will and spiteon the part of the government, on the part of people here and so on. Seen from a superficial viewpoint, we are more than ever in the soup. But this makes my heart rejoice! I take it as a sign that we are getting nearer.
Dont let it trouble you, you must always smile. Smile, be absolutely above it allabsolutely.
--
Of course, I have a kind of responsibility because people expect me to organize everything, so I try to put things in their place. Thats why I told them I preferred they didnt hold seminars here, because it appears a bit I didnt say parasitic, but its like (laughing) a toadstool growing on an oak tree!
***
(Mot her begins the work. A mosquito bites her and she remarks:)
Oh, I dont like that! You know, I have filariasis in my legs. Yes, I think sot heres every reason to believe it! (Mot her laughs) But it doesnt matter, it will go away I think. I dont like to be bitten on account of the germs; but during the day t heres nothing for them to pick upthey only pick up germs around midnight.
0 1961-03-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mot her arrives late ... as usual. Crossing the corridor was like crossing through a jungle and has taken her almost one hour.)
How long it has taken me oh, its disgraceful! Ill have to start coming down at 9 a.m., but then I wont get anything done upstairs, thats the problem.
--
Its a rat her 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 t heres 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?
--
Mon petit, I dont claim to be totally universal, but in any case I am open enough to receive. You see, given the quantity of material I have taken into my consciousness, its quite natural that the body bears the consequences. T here is nothing, not one wrong movement, that my body doesnt feel5; generally, though, things are automatically set in order (gesture indicating that Mot her automatically purifies and masters the vibrations coming to her). But t here are timesespecially when it coincides with a revolt of adverse forces who dont want to give up their domain and enter into battle with all their mightwhen I must admit its hard. If I had some hours of solitude it would be easier. But particularly during the period of my Playground activities, I was badgered, harassed; I would rush from one thing to the next, one thing to the next, I had no nights to speak ofnights of two and a half or three hours rest, which isnt enough, t heres no time to put things in order.
Under those conditions I could only hold the thing like this (same gesture of muzzling the illness or holding it in abeyance).
--
Long ago when Sri Aurobindo was still here, I was once bitten by a mosquito that had just come from a leper. He was sitting on the street corner, although I didnt know it at the time (I was in my bathroom, just opposite the corner). Suddenly I was bitten here, on the chin, and I knew IMMEDIATELY: Leprosy! Within a few seconds it became terriblehideous! I did what was necessary at once (as I was in the bathroom, I had what I needed). Then I suddenly got the impulse to go and look out the window t here was the leper. And I understood: the mosquito had been kind enough to fly from him to me! But in that instance I was able to check it right away (it lasted three or four days)I say check because they claim leprosy sometimes takes fifteen years to surface, so. But now it has been more than fifteen years (Mot her laughs), so its finished!
No, the difference, the great difference, is that when one is conscious, the thing is KNOWN immediately and one can react.
--
Until 1958, Mot her went daily to the Ashram Playground, from 5 p.m. to 9 or 10 in the evening, to see people and give her direct spiritual help to some 2,000 disciples who passed before her one by one.
Mot her is referring to the movements of consciousness, both good and bad, of those whom she has accepted as disciples and taken into her consciousness.
Mot her was already seeking the 'new food.'
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 t here 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, T here 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 t here 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 t here) 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 t heres a good companion!
--
Oh! (Mot her notices the flowers in her hands) This is Supramental Beauty,2 this is Supramental Victory and this is the Endurance3 needed to get t here and the Promise.4 Then this one is a lily that grows here (Mot her looks at it for a long time) and inside I have put Attachment for the Divine5I brought it for you because its so lovely.
What are we working on today? (Mot her looks at Sri Aurobindos Aphorisms) Ive already begun replying!
--
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. (Mot her 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 t here was a kind of earthly paradise, in the sense that t here 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 w here 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.
--
Truly, they have ruined the earth, they have ruined itthey have ruined the atmosp here, they have ruined everything; and for it to become something like the earthly paradise again, ohh! What a long way to gopsychologically, above all. Even the very structure of Matter (Mot her fingers the air around her), with their bombs and their experiments and their oh, they have made a mess of it all! They have truly made a mess of Matter.
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.
0 1961-03-14, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And within oh! Its like waves, constantly, the equivalent of those nuances of color I was speaking about, waves of this joy of life, the joy of life rippling past, touching; but instead of being. At times, you see, the body is in a sort of equilibrium (what we, in our ordinary outer consciousness, call equilibrium that is, good health), and then this joy is constant, like swells on the sea (Mot her shapes great waves): it seems to flow on behind everything; it comes and shows its face for a moment, then vanishes. In the very tiny things of lifeyes, physical life the joy of these things, the joy life contains, this luminous, special kind of vibration, rises up as if to remind us that its here; it is here, it mustnt be forgotten, its here but its kept down by this tension.
Then, from time to time, everything seems to be on the edge of a precipice; the body doesnt fall simply because it keeps its balance but without this hig her state of perfect faith, one would surely fall!
--
(Mot her remains absorbed within herself) The equilibrium of this rhythm the progressive, ascending equilibrium of this rhythmis what, for Matter, must constitute Immortality.
Yet even so.
0 1961-03-17, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The experience occurred in a place corresponding to ours [the main Ashram building], but immense: the rooms were ten times bigger, but absolutely one cant say emptythey were barren. Not that t here was nothing in them, but nothing was in order, everything was just w here it shouldnt be. T here wasnt any furniture so things were strewn here and t herea dreadful disarray! Things were being put to uses they werent made for, yet nothing needed for a particular purpose could be found. The whole section having to do with education [the Ashram School] was in almost total darkness: the lights were out with no way to switch them on, and people were wandering about and coming to me with inco herent, stupid proposals. I tried to find a comer w here I could rest (not because I was tired; I simply wanted to concentrate a little and get a clear vision in the midst of it all), but it was impossible, no one would leave me alone. Finally I put a tottering armchair and a footstool end-to-end and tried to rest; but someone immediately came up (I know who, Im purposely not giving names) and said, Oh! This wont do at all! It CANT be arranged like that! Then he began making noise, commotion, disorderwell, it was awful.
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.
--
here, Mot her had a passage deleted.
***
0 1961-03-21, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Last night I had two consecutive experiences showing with extreme precision that black magic is at the root of all this (Mot her is speaking of both general and personal difficulties, in the Ashram and in her body).
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 everyw here, 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 anot her, and when I master it t here it reappears somew here 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 t here (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 t here. 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 rat her dark, with slicked-down hairwhat you would normally call a handsome young man. He seemed to have been drawn1 t here becausehe was standing in front of me staring into space, not looking at me. And the moment I saw him, t here 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.
--
But Z I dont know how to explain my relationship with him. He is sheltered by a light of benediction, so. When he was here I opened the doors for him to a realization he was incapable of having, something light years beyond him; and it gave him an appalling ambition, totally spoiling everything. From this point of view, its a great blessing for him; even if he becomes a dreadful Asura, it will come to a good end! It doesnt matter, its not important. Thats why this morning, even when I heard what X said about Z, it was the same thing: this great Light of the supreme Mot her going out towards Z. His magic is not important, but if he indulges in it, too bad for him. It doesnt concern me: its Xs business and X is doing whats necessary and I believe (laughing) he hits hard!5
(silence)
When I came down this morning I didnt want my cold to disturb the meditation with X, and this immobility came (Mot her brings down her fists, showing a solid mass descending). Its what he uses for healing and I must say that the same thing happens to me, even when it doesnt come from him: a Force that seizes everything, stops everythingno more vibrations, an immobility.
I had told N. to knock at the door when he arrived with X, but he didnt do itluckily I heard the door opening. I stood up, still in that state and almost fell over! X must have thought I was having a spell of weakness or something, because I was holding onto the arms of the chair, and when I took his flowers, my hands were trembling I wasnt in my body. And afterwards, ah, what a concentration! We remained in it for about thirty-five minutes. It was SOLIDan extraordinary solidity! I didnt want to waste time waiting for it to subside before coming here, and you must have seen how I was when I arrived: like a sleepwalker! I said to the people I passed in the corridor, Im coming back, Im coming back! Thats all I could say, like an idiot.
(silence)
--
Who can do it, then? T here is no one here. Thats why I wish greater attention would be paid in publishing translations of Sri Aurobindo.
Yes, its a problem. Thats why I dont categorically tell you not to do it, because after all, he shouldnt be massacred!
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 t here at the same moment (Mot her 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 t here (gesture above) and something up t here knew, and yet t here was something down here that would never have known if the ot her hadnt (same gesture). Nevertheless the total experience was t here.
Its very difficult to explain, its extremely subtle.
But it made me think that something like this must be happening with people here. Because, not to boast, but I do give you people experiences!
Of course, all of you would be perfectly justified in replying, What good does that do if were not aware of it! But it must be a phenomenon like the one I described. I am looking for the reason something which refuses the knowledge. A part of the being is refusingalthough not consciouslyto become aware of the experience.
0 1961-03-27, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You know he said someone has been doing black magic against me; but I have never felt anything of the sort in the room w here we meditate, because I make a point of coming half an hour early and this of course clears the atmosp here: everything is always ready when he arrives, in silence, in perfect peace. Hasnt he always told you that when he comes into that room he enters anot her world, like Kailas?1 And thats the way it has always been. If t here has been a change, its that now its even more like thatbecause (how to put it?) its more stable. Before, it fluctuated a bit: it came, went, came. But now its like a tranquil mass (Mot her lowers her arms) that doesnt stir. Yesterday in particular, this was the experience: I felt him coming (when he is about to come in, I always sense something drawing me outward a little so that I wont be completely in trance and can stand up), and this prayer came so spontaneously, oh! And then (laughing) in the afternoon N. tells me, Oh, X said he had some difficulty at the start of todays meditationa hostile force was present and it took him five minutes to clarify the atmosp here!
It gave me the impression you get in outer life: all the pieces more or less dovetail but with no inner unityt heres not ONE thing, not one, that is true, essentially and always true. We know it is like that outwardly, of course; but I have always felt that with people who have an inner life, one could attain a kind of identity of vibration and knowledge but no!
--
My bodys consciousness has changed that much I know. Not totally, of course, but enough to feel that t heres no separation, that vibrations are unpartitioned t here are no partitions! And I felt this very strongly with X: that when we were face to face in meditation t here was no longer any difference between us, that this Vibration I was feelingthis Vibration of a strong and very solid, very balanced peacewas the same for him as for me. I didnt feel that I was here and he was t here. I had only to shut my eyes and t here was no difference between us. (This doesnt happen just with him: I feel it with everyone; but I am aware of how it is with ot hers, I can sense why they dont feel it.) But I was under the impression that he, at least, would have felt it I must have been mistaken! This incident came to tell me I was mistaken.
Still, it surprises me. Because sitting in that room, one has the feeling (I say one, its probably I dont know what it is), I thought he had the same feeling I did: oh, it could last an eternity! Its like that: tranquil, tranquil, peaceful, balanced, strong. On ot her occasions t here was a kind of movement: it came, went, came, went; but this time (Mot her stretches forth her arms as if time had stopped) and I am like that (not the I here, the I above), I see it like that. Then just as the clock is about to strike, when the half-hour is finished, something comes and tells my body, Now! A tiny shock, and two or three seconds later the clock strikes. I always feel beforehand, Now its over. Ot herwise t here would be no reason for it to endits so peaceful! And not something diluted, as it were, but strong, compact. Compact. Then that tiny shock and the body comes to attention: Ah, Im going to have to move! And always after about two seconds, the clock strikes. I open my eyes, look at X and wait. Three or four seconds later, or after a minute or two, he opens his eyes, bows to me and gets up. Then I get up. Its always the same. So I dont know why. I dont understand what goes on in his consciousness. I no longer understand.
Im not so sure about what he said to N.
--
It ruffles me because its like a negation of my power. Till yesterday I had never experienced anything of the kind! On the 29th, you know, it will be forty-seven years since I first came here3thats not exactly yesterday! And ever since I began working with Sri Aurobindo, I have had the sense of this Power, it has never left me; so. It is disconcerting to have this kind of episode come up after such a long time.
Ill try to speak with X and find out exactly what happened.
--
I probably needed the experience. You remember that type of detachment I spoke of when I had that experiencewhen the BODY had that experience of January 24, 1961well, it has increased to such an extent that it now applies to anything and everything linked with action on earth. This detachment was probably necessary. It began with something like things dissolving (Mot her makes a gesture of crumbling something between her fingers); certain kinds of links between my consciousness and the Work were dissolving (not links with me, because I dont have any, but with the body; the whole physical consciousness, all that attaches it to the things in its environment, to the Work and to the entourage I spoke to you about that in regard to physical immortality; well, thats what is happening now). Its like things dissolvingdissolving, dissolving, dissolving. And its more and more pronounced. During these last days, things have been becoming increasingly difficultdifficulties have been coming one after anot her, one after anot her. Formerly, I had the power to get a grip on them and hold them (Mot her tightens her grip as though mastering circumstances); but now that this type of detachment has begun, things drift away everyw hereeveryw here, everyw here.
So this episode with X is probably part of the same process. What has been affected is a certain confidence in the REALITY of the Power, the REALITY of spiritual action; t here seems to be no communication between here (above) and t here (below).
Does that mean youre breaking all contacts with the earth?
--
If That was not t here. Obviously, That [divine Love] is here, like a mattress placed so you wont break your neck when you fall. Thats precisely the feeling: this experience of the vibration of divine Love is the mattress so you dont break your neck!
So, petit, dont brood; whatever your difficulties may be (laughing), you can tell yourself they are only beginning!
And Im not exactly a baby; I have been here forty-seven years, and for something like yes, certainly for sixty years I have been doing a conscious yoga, with all that memories of an immortal life can bring and see w here I am! When Sri Aurobindo says you must have endurance, I think he is right!
This path is not for the weak, thats for sure.
I believe this body has suffered as much as a body can bear without going to pieces, and it keeps going, it has never asked for mercynot once has it said, No, its too much, not once. It says, As You will, Lord: here I am.
And so it continues.
--
And t heres no point in giving up, because it would just have to be started all over again next time. What I always say is: heres the opportunitygo right to the end. Its no use saying, Ah, I cant, because next time it will be even more difficult.
A region high in the Himalayas, also known as the abode of Shiva.
0 1961-04-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
X hears about it from the doctor. He asks the doctor and the doctor tells him whatever he likes. X says to him, I will completely cure her, and the doctor replies, Thats impossibleit cant be cured! So X says, You have no faith, and the doctor replies, Youre living in illusions!
The truth is that the body is holding its own quite well. But its a formidable affair. They1 are multiplying by the millions; so you can see it will take time to get rid of them! They circulate throughout the body, sometimes for two, three or four hours at night, pricking and stinging from inside out; they prick like fiery needles. And they go everyw here, in the legs, the trunk, the armstheyre really having fun! But anyway, its subsiding: the legs are better. Its not quite right yet, but its coming along. Its nothing.
--
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.
--
As for him, even now his way of working consists in eliminating all obstaclesjust the opposite of what Sri Aurobindo was doing. Sri Aurobindo used to envelop them, like this (Mot her opens her arms to embrace everything), and then act upon them so that they would no longer be obstacles. But the first thing X said when he first came to the Ashram was, Oh, t here are a lot of elements which shouldnt be here! And he would talk about a purge: eliminate, eliminate, eliminate. But if you eliminate everything from life which is unresponsive to the Divine, what will be left?
He certainly hasnt understood Sri Aurobindos yoga. And its useless to try to explain anything to him.
--
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 eartht here was a moment when it came; they who are called the forefa t hers 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 (Mot her catches her breath): t here 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.
--
What we really have to do is come alive from minute to minute, living always in the present moment, stubbornly, like this (Mot her puts a fist on the arm of her chair, then anot her, and so on, in a slow, dogged, unrelenting march).,
Yet Sri Aurobindo seemed to say that things would be easier once the Supermind came down.
--
The night before last I was again awakened at midnight (not awakened: I came out of my trance) with those stings burning from inside out, from the tips of the feet up to here, everyw here, in the back it lasted four hours, non-stop. Well, my body didnt once complain. Not once did it ask for it to stop; it just kept quiet, saying: Thy Will be done. And not only saying it but FEELING it, quietlyfour hours of minuscule tortures. It didnt say a thing.
Saying nothing is elementary for me! But the body didnt say anythingit didnt even fidget; it didnt even have, you know, that feeling of, When will it be over? Nothing. It just stayed quiet, quiet. I was like a statue in my bed, stinging from head to toe. So I really cant complain! The instrument I have been given is of truly good quality. An unflinching goodwill.
--
Note that just a few days earlier, the Ashram coffers were completely empty. Mot her had sold the last of her jewels: 'It is not for the upkeep of any [Ashram] department that I have sold my jewels; it is for food, lodging [of the sadhaks] and wages for domestic servants.'
Satprem is referring to the enormous amount of material work he had in addition to seven hours of daily japa.
0 1961-04-08, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
He is used to maintaining a kind of poise, the poise of the traditional attitude of indifference towards everything material: Its an illusion, it has no importance, t heres no need to be concerned with it. Nature is acting, not 1; Nature is acting and Nature is built like that, so why bot her about it, why worry. Thats how he lived until he came here, and its why he had this attitude of indifference. But here it began to change. And of course his body isnt used to it; it has difficulty keeping up, it lacks plasticity.
The first thing he did was to go see the Doctor and ask him to heal his ear, heal his stomach, heal. So the Doctor told him, But why do you eat just anything at any time of day? Naturally youre sick. And then he was constantly running up against our ways of organizing material things herepeople like him dont organize, they dont care, they just let things drift. Regarding his son, for instance, the Doctor told him, Its because you dont look after him. If you did, this wouldnt happen. And X very bluntly replied, But why!?
T heres a gap.
0 1961-04-12, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
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. (T here was no draft or anything.) It fell and the glass broke into smit hereens. 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 (Mot her 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.
The news came a week later. But the newspapers gave the date when they had moved out of the trenches and been killedit had been on that day.
--
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 t here, 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 t here 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 ot her one and placed it between my feet (not beside, between my feet). Now you can go out, I told her. And out she went.
I had anot her cat named Kiki. He had a wonderful color and was just like velvet. We used to have meditations and he would come, get up on a chair and go into trance; he would make the brusque movements of trance during the meditation. And I had to rouse him out of it, ot herwise he wouldnt wake up!
--
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. T here had been an old mango tree t here that was wit hering 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.
When I moved here to the Ashram, I said, We cant bring any cats into this house, its quite impossible. This was after Big Boys death, and we had had enough of cats. I gave away the ot hers, but the first one, the mot her of the whole line, was old and didnt want to leave, so I felt her behind. She stayed in a house over t here, within the Ashram compound. And one dayshe was very old and could no longer move I saw her come dragging in and sit down on that terrace on the ot her side. (Now you cant see it any more the Service Tree has hidden it completely but in those days you could see it very clearly.) She came and sat down over t here w here she could watch me until she died. Quietly, without moving, she died watching me.
All these cat stories! If we had photographs, we could make a pretty little album of cat stories.
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, ot hers 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.
Once one of her kittens was ill. She was pretty and gray colored, clear gray like a very soft fur, very pretty. She had caught this cat sickness and was lying down. And the mot her was teaching all the little ones not to come near her; she would make them go all the way around, as if her instinct told her it was contagious. And you would see them (the sick kitten was right in their way) going all the way around, never coming near.
These cat stories went on for years and years.
--
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 (t here 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 t here 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 t here 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 anot her 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.
T here was one I know I SAW it: when he died t here was already the embryo of a psychic being, ready for a human incarnation. I made them progress like wildfire.
0 1961-04-15, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I could say something formidable (Mot her is about to speak, then restrains herself). But its not true, its not like that. If I say it, it will become something else.
Its better to say nothing.
--
On the 24th, how long will it be? Forty-one years since I came here. And I havent moved since.
Its really strange: t here is no space between that time and now. I dont know how to explain it. I have no feeling of time, none at all, none.
--
I have become only this (Mot her slowly moves her arm forward with clenched fist, as if to show all her force tensed and pushing, inexorably pushing).
(Mot her gets up)
--
Its all right. Dont worry. When you are a little upset, you only have to think: Oh, Mot her is here, and she will do the work.
And dont have any more toothaches. I dont like you to have toothaches!
0 1961-04-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
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 t here (it has ALREADY been done t here). Its very simple.
Yes, I quite understand. But in general, does EVERYTHING that happens here first get played out on the ot her side in some way? Its an occult problem, and furt hermore a problem of freedom.
According to my experience both things are simultaneous, so to speak. Its we who introduce the notion of time, but the notion of time doesnt exist on the ot her side.
For example, if I were asked how much time it takes for a thing decided upon t here to be realized here, I would answer that it is absolutely indeterminate. That is my experience. I always give the following example because its so clear: Thirty-five years before India became free, I saw that she was free. It was already done. And I have also seen things which for us are almost instantaneous something is decided t here and realized almost instantly here. And t here are all sorts of possibilities between these two extremes, because the notion of time is not at all the sameso we cant judge. It is facile to say that what you are seeing will happen in a year or in a week or in an hour but in fact, this is impossible. It depends upon the case and certain factors which are part of the whole.
In one chapter of The Synthesis of Yoga, Sri Aurobindo says that t here is a state of consciousness in which all is from all eternityeverything, without exception, that is to be manifested here.
In detail?
In a certain state of consciousness (I no longer remember what he calls it I think its in the Yoga of Self-Perfection), one is perfectly identified with the Supreme, not in his static but in his dynamic aspect, the state of becoming. In this state, everything is already t here from all eternity, even though here it gives us the impression of a becoming. And Sri Aurobindo says that if you are capable of maintaining this state,2 then you know everything: all that has been, all that is and all that will bein an absolutely simultaneous way.
But you must have a firm head on your shoulders! Reading some of these chapters in Self-Perfection, I thought it would be better if it didnt fall into just anyones hands.
--
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; ot herwise 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 t here 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, w here one is simultaneously both here and t here. Because, as Sri Aurobindo says, some people have managed to be entirely t here, but what he has called the realization is to be both t here 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.
No, no!
--
I have had this particular consciousness in flashes. The difficulty is that in expressing it, we use all our mental faculties, and they themselves are falseso we are cornered. Because when you follow through. Whatever you say,If this, if that, if the ot heris all part of our general stupidity. Going right to the end of it, you are suddenly like this: Ah! (Mot her remains suspended midway in her sentence) T here is nothing more to do, not a move to make.
Only, as I have told you, practically speaking this experience can be dangerous. When it came, you see, one part of me was having the experience, and one part wasnt yet ready for it. Well, I was awake enough to tell myself, The part experiencing this prevails and keeps the rest calm, yet if the preparation had not been adequate, it could have produced an imbalance. And if by mischance someone without sufficient strength had the possibility of picking up something of that, well, he would lose his head.
--
But even if its put in absolute terms, the relationships remain exactly the same.6 You see, the initial impulse is to say, Whats the use of doing anything? But look here, the very fact that you might want to do something is part of the general determinism! Because we always keep something back and wont admit it into the total scheme of things, ot herwise. T here is no way to get out of it thats just the way it is.
And Sri Aurobindo explains this in such a complete, total and compact way, that t here is no escape; so this so-called incapacity, this idea of still being incapable of emerging from ones divided state, becomes false.
But you have to have a firm head on your shoulders. You must always be able to refer to THAT (pointing above) and then here, silence (Mot her touches her forehead): peace, peace, peace, stop everything, stop everything. Dont try, above all, dont try to understand! Oh, t here is nothing more dangerous! We try to understand with an instrument not made for understanding, thats incapable of understanding.
In any case, for your question its very simple: we dont need to go to these extremes!
--
Something is happening t here (Mot her touches her head); something is taking shape, being worked on. Every day, twice a day, during my long evocation-invocation-aspiration (or prayer, if you like), I say to the Supreme Lord, Take possession of this brain. (I dont mean thought, I mean thisMo t her points to her headthis substance inside.) Take possession of it!
Once during the night, I went exploring inside this head; some cells still had fresh imprints of things registered during the day for whatever reason they hadnt had time to be combined into the whole, so they showed up as tiny, very clear images, minuscule things utterly devoid of any mental or psychological movementsimply like tiny photographic images. T here were three or four images like that, and it was so shocking to see them in this Presence that all at once I said to myself, Am I going mad?! It was that shocking. And I had to bring in a peace, a peacenot to make the movement of possession stop, but to accompany it simultaneously with a mighty peace so I wouldnt tell myself, Youre losing your head. Thats how shocking it was.
--
But for those who are here, we can say, It is what the Supreme Lord is preparing for the earth. He sent Sri Aurobindo to prepare it; Sri Aurobindo called it the supramental realization, and to facilitate communication we can use the same words. Well, this movement (gesture of a rising flame) towards That must be constantconstant, total. All the rest is none of our business, and the less we meddle with it mentally, the better. But THAT, that Flame, is indispensable. And when it goes out, light it again; when it falters, rekindle itall the time, all the time, ALL THE TIMEwhen sleeping, walking, reading, moving around, speaking all the time.
The rest doesnt matter, one can do anything (it depends on people and their ways of thinking). You can just ask people like X, they will tell you: You can do anything at allit doesnt matter in the least. Only you mustnt feel its you doing it, thats all. You have to feel that Nature does it. But I dont much approve of this system.
--
Satprem had assumed that this state of consciousness was accessible only through a kind of trance or samadhi and that when Mot her said one had to be capable of 'maintaining this state,' she meant that one should be capable of bringing it back here, into the waking consciousness. However, Mot her rectified: 'It is a state with no " here" or "t here". I have had this experience in the waking consciousness and both perceptions (the true and the false) were simultaneous.'
The Rishis distinguished between the 'straight' (almost in the optical sense: that which allows the ray to pass straight through) and the twisted or crooked consciousness.
0 1961-04-22, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Soon afterwards, concerning X, who had stated that the most recent attacks against Mot her, 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.)
I have been racking my brains, but really, I cant hit on who, IN THE ASHRAM, could be doing magic against me! Having bad thoughts is very widespread, but that doesnt matter in the least.
--
I know all the people here. I know everything thats going on, I see it night and day. But I havent seen this. Yes, t here are ill-intentioned people, but they are even obliged to tell me so! T here are people who oh, they almost wish I would leave, because they feel my presence as a constraint! They tell me so very frankly: As long as youre here, were obliged to do the yoga, but we dont want to do the yoga, we want to live quietly; so if you werent here, well, we wouldnt have to think about yoga anymore! But they are a bunch of fools with no power in them at all. As I said, they are even forced to tell me their true feelings.
T here 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!
0 1961-04-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mot her comes in with a book by Alice Bailey, 'Discipleship in the New Age,' which had recently been sent to her. Pavitra is present and shows Mot her a brochure he has received, 'World Goodwill Bulletin,' and protests against this proliferation of movements all claiming to work towards 'world union,' and proselytes making so-called 'spiritual' propaganda without having found, within and by themselves, the true spiritual foundation. Mot her goes on.)
But these people just cant get out of their education! here is a lady [A. Bailey], quite renowned, it seems (shes dead now), who became the disciple of a Tibetan lama and she still speaks of Christ as the sole Avatar! She just cant get out of it!
And each one has the absolute Truth!
--
And I am surrounded by people who tell me, Im sending your message to so-and-so, they MUST come here, they HAVE to meet you. Oh! Im going away! I said to myself, Im going to hide somew here. Ive had enough.
It began with this famous World Union1 and now the Sri Aurobindo Society2 is meddling in it! They have put toget her a brochure saying, We will facilitate your relations with the Mot her!! Luckily, the draft was sent to me. I said, I do not accept this responsibility. I agreed to be President because money is involved and I wanted to be a guarantee that all these people who make propaganda dont put the money into their own pockets for their personal use; so I agreed to be Presidentto guarantee that the money would really go to work for Sri Aurobindo, thats all. But no spiritual responsibility; I have nothing to teach to anyone, thank God!
--
And thats not all. This J.M., who thinks herself highly intelligent, has written a letter saying, It is exactly the same teachingexactly. Its always exactly the same teaching! They are abysmally ignorant.
(Satprem:) They jumble everything up.
--
The first thing I did this morning was to open this book by Alice Bailey (Ive had it for several days, I had to have a look at it). So I looked Ah, I saidwell, well! heres a person whos dead now, but she was the disciple of a Tibetan Buddhist lama and considered a very great spiritual leader, and she writes, Christ is the incarnation of divine love on earth. And thats that. And the world will be transformed when Christ is reborn, when he comes back to earth. But why the devil does she put Christ? Because she was born Christian? Its deplorable.
And such a mixture of everythingeverything! Instead of making a synthesis, they make a pot-pourri. They scoop it all up, toss it toget her, whip it up a little, use a bunch of words that have nothing to do with one anot her, and then serve it to you!
--
After this, I received the draft of the Sri Aurobindo Societys brochure to be distributed among all disciples, all society members, in order to encourage them. Well, that was the last straw! Oh, the most asinine propaganda! And plump in the middle of a bunch of ot her things (which had nothing to do with me), I come across this: We have the great fortune to have the Mot her among us, and we propose to be the intermediary for all who wish to come into direct contact with her! They wanted to print this and distribute it, just like that! So I took my brightest red ink and wrote: I do not accept this responsibility, you cannot make this promise. And that was that. I cut it. And now heres A., doing the same thing!
(silence)
--
Already, with all the people here. (But I never told them they were my disciples, I told them they were my children and with children, to begin with, t heres no need to do everything they want!) I already waste all my time answering their letters, which are worse than stupid. What questions they askquestions already answered at least fifty timessimply for the pleasure of writing! So now Ive stopped answering. I write one or two words, and thats it.
No, its disgusting!
--
Look here, t heres 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 t here 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.
--
Well, his jaw dropped! People imagine that by the simple fact of being here they become disciples and apprentice yogis! But its not true.
So, now Im not angry any more!
--
here, this is Grace.5 here, Balance6 (how lovely!). here, Light without Obscurity.7 And this is purity: an Integral Conversion8 (in the cup of this flower, Mot her has placed two ot her flowers: Service9 and Sri Aurobindos Compassion10), an integral conversion, with Sri Aurobindo, with his compassionhis compassion which gives us the opportunity to serve him.
Oh, mon petit, we need to say something a bit intelligent, dont you think? Im counting on you.
--
For mental narrowness, we know the meansone has only to go beyond itwe know the means. But this (Mot her touches her body), however much one keeps bringing in, bringing in, bringing in the Light and the Force. Yes, for a few moments one can live a universal life, even in the sensations but in the body.
(silence)
--
Yes, it would be useless; I mean, perhaps after millions of years it would gradually snowball and have some effect but thats just how Nature functions when left to her own interminable wayit is not yoga.
But once you have effected the transformation in your own body, will it be transmittable to ot hers? Will your experience and your realization be transmittable?
--
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 t here 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 ot hers have simply said, Its impossible. Sri Aurobindo explains that its not impossible, but nothing more. And he himself hadnt done it.
No, for the least little thing, the whole mechanism has to be discovered, and discovered in a realm of the most total ignorance, w here, really, unconsciousness is the most unconscious and ignorance the most ignorant.
0 1961-04-29, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Some fragments of this conversation were originally published in Mot her's 'Commentaries on the Aphorisms' of Sri Aurobindo. Considering it too personal, Mot her had not wanted the unabridged text to appear even in her Agenda. However, we felt it should be kept. This conversation's starting point was the following aphorism:)
59One of the greatest comforts of religion is that you can get hold of God sometimes and give him a satisfactory beating. People mock at the folly of savages who beat their gods when their prayers are not answered; but it is the mockers who are the fools and the savages.
--
I wrote (Mot her reads her answer):
Those who say that are simpletons and dont even know what theyre talking about! It is enough to read everything Sri Aurobindo has written to know that it is IMPOSSIBLE (underlined) to found a religion upon his writings, since for each problem, for each question, he presents all aspects and, while demonstrating the truth contained in each approach, he explains that to attain the Truth a synthesis must be effected, overpassing all mental notions and emerging in a transcendence beyond thought.
--
T here are people here who do the same thing. I know some people who had a statue of Kali in their house (it was their family divinity), and all kinds of calamities befell them, so the last generation became furious and took the idol and threw it into the Ganges. They are not the only onest here have been several cases like that. And to cap it all, one of them even asked my permission before doing it!
Creating a god in the image of man gives you the possibility of treating it as you would treat a human enemy.
--
Someone made a large painting of Sri Aurobindo and myself, and they brought it here to show me. I said, Oh, its dreadful! It was to the physical eye it was really dreadful. Its dreadful, I said, we cant keep it. Then immediately someone asked me for it, saying, Im going to put it up in my house and do my puja before it. Ah! I couldnt help saying, But how could you put up a thing like that! (It wasnt so much ugly as frightfully banal.) How can you do puja before something so commonplace and empty! This person replied, Oh, to me its not empty! It contains all the presence and all the force, and I shall worship it as that: the Presence and the Force.
All this is based on the old idea that whatever the imagewhich we disdainfully call an idolwhatever the external form of the deity may be, the presence of the thing represented is always t here. And t here is always someonewhe t her priest or initiate, sadhu or sannyasisomeone who has the power and (usually this is the priests work) who draws the Force and the Presence down into it. And its true, its quite real the Force and the Presence are T herE; and this (not the form in wood or stone or metal) is what is worshipped: this Presence.
--
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. T here 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 t here, someone who must have been in distressshe was crying and praying. And t here 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 t here to swallow all the vital force of the people who came. It was heart-rending. I said to myself, Oh, these people T here was this miserable woman who had come seeking solace, who was praying t here, 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 ot her things but I have rarely seen anything favorable in churches. here, I remember going to M I was taken inside and received t here in quite an unusual waya highly respected person introduced me as a great saint! They led me up to the main altar w here people are not usually allowed to go, and what did I see t here! 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!
Anot her thing happened to me in a fishing village near A., on the seashore, w here t here 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 t here 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 feat hers), 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 t hers littered everyw here! It was disgusting. And she was asking for my help!
But the curious thing is that these vital beings are aware of what is happening. I knew nothing about any of it, neit her the story, nor the being, nor the head sticking out of the ground and she wanted me to get her out of it. They feel the atmosp here. They are awarethey may not be conscious on hig her planes, but they are conscious on vital planes, aware of vital power and the vital force it represents. Its like this asura from M.: when I came in he suddenly seemed to tremble on his pedestal; then he left his idol and came to seek my alliance.
But its strange.
--
In churches, I dont know. I havent been to them very often. I have been to mosques and templesJewish temples. The Jewish temples in Paris have such beautiful music; oh, what beautiful music! I had one of my first experiences in a temple. It was at a marriage, and the music was wonderfulSaint-Saens, I later learned; organ music, the second best organ in Pariswonderful! I was 14 years old, sitting high up in the galleries with my mot her, and this music was being played. T here were some leaded-glass windowswhite, with no designs. I was gazing at one of these windows, feeling uplifted by the music, when suddenly through the window came a flash like a bolt of lightning. Just like lightning. It enteredmy eyes were openit entered like this (Mot her strikes her breast violently), and then I I had the feeling of becoming vast and all-powerful. And it lasted for days.
Of course, my mot her was such an out-and-out materialist, thank God, that it was impossible to speak to her of invisible thingsshe took them as evidence of a deranged brain! Nothing counted for her but what could be touched and seen. But this was a divine grace I had no opportunity to say anything. I kept my experience to myself. But it was one of my first contacts with. I learned later that it was an entity from the past who had come back into me through the aspiration arising from the music.
But I have rarely had an experience in churches. Rat her 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.
--
In fact, I have seen this all over the world. I have never been on very good terms with religions, neit her in Europe, nor Africa, nor Japan, nor even here.
(silence)
--
No, but this is something else. Those who are capable of personal experiences pass through everything. But not the common herd.
(silence)
--
I remember a good-hearted priest in Pau [Sout hern 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 fat her 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 Sout hern France, Say what you like, but you know Our Lord; ot herwise you could never have painted like that!
Well.
--
I wanted to carry on with my mornings program, but I couldnt. T heres a mound of letters, all in a muddle! Oh, these people hereletter upon letter, letter upon letter, urgent needs to see me.
I thought we would prepare a reply to T., but then I chatted away.
--
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.
You know, its a marvelous, marvelous grace to have had this experience so CONSTANTLY, So POWERFULLY, like something holding out against everything, everything: this Presence. And in my outward consciousness, a total negation of it all. Even later on, I used to say, Well, if God exists, hes a real scoundrel! Hes a wretch and I want nothing to do with this Creator of ours. You know, the idea of God sitting placidly in his heaven, creating the world and amusing himself by watching it, then telling you, How well done! Oh! I said, I want nothing to do with that monster!
0 1961-05-02, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When Sri Aurobindo was here, the work was done in anot her way; t here 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.
I had continued to work in the same way. But now its as if everything has been engulfed. And the number of ugly things, petty movements, nasty reactionseveryw here, everyw here, in everyone, oh! I am swamped with letters, and such letters! Such letters!
0 1961-05-12, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But I dont know. I dont know if they had it PHYSICALLYin the inner worlds of course, certainly! Its all very well, one is very happy living in those worlds. But it is here herE! How to make of this life here, this world here, something really worth living. Havent yet found the trick.
Thats all I can say. Thats what I am up against.
0 1961-05-19, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Not very long ago I met someone from France who told me, Personally, you understand, I had no wish at all to read Sri AurobindoSri Aurobindo translated by H.: no, thank you. And then he read some things translated here. Ah, he said, that makes a difference!
But still, I am not satisfied.
--
(Later, Satprem wanted to read certain past conversations to Mot her for her to add to her Agenda. Mot her refused to listenit wasnt the first time, eit her and lively protestations ensued.)
You dont want to hear them?
--
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 t here is a swarm of things here (gesture around the head) waiting to be heard, demanding attention.
Sometimes t here are amusing thingsif I were to note down all I see! T here are things things which dont appear as they are in ordinary life, but as they ARE when seen with a slightly more clairvoyant eyeits rat her amusing. But it amounts to nothing-a sort of distraction.
--
I had already had the experience for the sense of smell the divine vibration, the vibration of Ananda in odors. Just under my window, you know, Nripendra has his kitchen, w here every morning and afternoon food is prepared for the children2it all comes wafting up on gusts of air. And when the Samadhi tree is in flower, the scent wafts up to me on gusts of air; when people burn incense down below, it comes wafting up here on gusts of aireach and every fragrance (fragrancelets say odor). And generally it all comes while I am walking for my japaan Ananda of odors, each one with its meaning, its expression, its (how to say it?) its motivation and its goal. Marvelous! And t here are no longer any good or bad odors that notion is gone completely. Each one has its meaningits meaning and its raison dtre. I have been experiencing this for a long time.
But this experience of taste was completely new. It didnt last long, only a few minutes, because it amazed me so! It was as if I had a mouthful of the most marvelous foods one could imagine. And my hands were gat hering it up in the atmosp here it was so funny!
0 1961-05-30, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And I try to be as tranquil as I can (Mot her makes a gesture of mental immobility), but when you do so, you become aware of oh, its like a swarm of flies comingfrom here, from t here, from above, from below, oh coming and coming and coming!
Its probably worse for me than for ot hers because of all these people around me, clinging like leeches. But even for an ordinary being it is a swarm; it keeps on coming and comingyou would need to spend all your time fanning it away!
0 1961-06-02, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Regarding an earlier 'Questions and Answers'March 13, 1957w here Mot her says: 'And finally, isn't the Divine the best friend one could have? The Divine to whom one can tell all, reveal all, because here is the source of all mercy, of all power to efface error when it no longer recurs....' Surprised, Satprem blurts out.)
But t heres no more problem when the error no longer recurs! Isnt it when the error recurs that it needs to be effaced?
--
D. asked me if changing the time of her japa had much importance. I told her she can change the time if she has to, provided she remains sincere thats the most important thing.
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.
--
T herefore, I have told her (to put it simply): provided you are sincere in your attitude, all is well.
***
--
here is something interesting. I am translating the Yoga of Self-Perfection. My first look at it stiffened menow its a delight! And I have done nothing in between but simply let it work within; its so easy!
My translation is poorly written, hardly French at all, but to me it is limpid.
--
But to get t here, believe me, you must accept to be a total imbecile for quite some time! I am not exaggerating. I have found myself in such states: you no longer understand anything, no longer know anything, no longer think anything, no longer want anything, no longer can do anythingno more power, no more will, no more thought, no more anythingyou are like that. And when I am like that (when I WAS, because now its beginning to go away), I see the external world, people like those around me, looking at me and thinking, Ah! Mot her is lapsing into her second childhood! Their vibrations come to me and unfortunately they sometimes have the power to shake me I have to make a movement to free myself from the thoughts of ot hers.
(silence)
--
For years and years, until I was past forty, my skull was soft here (Mot her touches the front part of her skull), something which seems to be absolutely unheard-of. It was soft and becoming more so (gesture of the skull opening) and then, when you pressed t here. I didnt bot her about it, but then suddenly I noticed that here (Mot her touches the back part of her skull) it is truly like mountainous scenery t here are bumps everyw here, and hollows, valesvery interesting! Its increasing.
It means it must be getting more and more complicated in t here!
0 1961-06-06, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its so subtle! It could almost be. Its almost like being on the border between two worlds. Its the same world and itsis it two aspects of this world? I cant even say that. Yet its the SAME world; all is the Lord, He and nothing but He, only its. And so subtle, so subtle: if you go like this (Mot her tilts her hand slightly to the right), its perfectly harmonious; if you go like that (Mot her tilts her hand slightly to the left), oof! Its its at once absurd, meaningless, and laborious, painful. But its the SAME thing! Its all the same thing.
What is it?
T here is such a strong impression of facing something which completely escapes comprehension, reason, intelligence, everything mental or intellectual (even the most elevated); its not that, its. And then truly, if you stand back from it and employ big words, you would say, All this (Mot her tilts her hand to one side) is Truth, and all that (she tilts her hand to the ot her side) is Falsehood but its the SAME thing! In one case, you have the sense of being carriednot only the body but the entire world, all circumstancescarried, floating in a beatific light towards an eternal Realization; and in the ot her case, its like this (Mot her makes a gesture of being burdened), deadening, heavy, sorrowfulexactly the same thing! Almost the same material vibrations.
And its so subtle, so incomprehensible t heres a distinct impression of it TOTALLY eluding even the highest conscious will. What is it? What is it?
--
Thats why I had difficulty listening to you just now [during the work], because since last night I have been constantly facing this problem, and all morning long Ive had to you know, do like this (Mot her clenches her fist, as though getting a grip on herself) in order to come here and listen. I didnt feel like seeing anyone, doing anything only staying like this (Mot her keeps still, her arms at her sides) until that problem is willing to explain itself.
But if you had seen me yesterday. I would probably have said nothing, but it was so lovely! Exactly the same thing, the same people, the same circumstances, the same conditions in the body. Everything, everything was the same.
--
I am up against this fact: how did Truth become Falsehood? I am not asking myself intellectually that doesnt interest me at all! It is here, in Matter, that the thing must be found.
It is double, it is double.
--
And when the body makes this movement (gesture of stepping back from physical appearances)what to call it? This movement of fusion (is it fusion?), of no longer being a separate body, of being the Divine t here is something which. T here is a sort of abstraction of something (and even that is putting it too concretely). And sometimes it succeeds, the body floats in the Light; sometimes its only partial. Sometimes all the inner consciousness is t here, full and total but herE things remain as they are, stupid, stupid, utterly stupid! Blind, in shifting sands, painful (and its not a thought, its not even a sensation; I dont know what it is).
And T herE the conscious will can do nothing. Nothing. All it could do it has done, and it continues to do all it can at each minute, and its nothing, it is not THATwhat is it??
--
After all, thats what I am here for, isnt it?! It MUST be done, it has to be done.
But its quite a disgusting job.
0 1961-06-17, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(At the end of the conversation, Satprem complains to Mot her of the tiresome task of eating, and asks her if he couldnt cut it down drastically.)
The time has not yet come when we can stop eating. Never in my life has food interested me; t here have been long periods when I ate almost nothing. One day I said to myself, Why lose so much time eating? And the reply was, Dont stop yet, wait; thats not your look-out.
0 1961-06-20, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
At any rate, its the fourth day of this same silence (Mot her clenches her fists, as if to show a compact mass). Not only silenceimmobility (same compact gesture), WITHOUT TENSION, without tension, effortless, without anything; like a kind of eternityin the body.
I have no trouble getting out of it I dont get out of it, to tell the truth; its not like a trance you have to pull out of, its not that. This state seems quite natural to me: I hear the clock chime.
--
Anyway, it doesnt matter I assure you that for the half-hour he is here with me he is splendid.
Oh, he is splendid! T here is such a sweet warmth in him, so good, and a mastery (mastery of inner movements, of the vital movement) and the ability to bring into the physical this peace, this absolute immobility. Its splendid! I have been doing this for something like forty years and you cant imagine how difficult it is, how much effort it takes to achieve it! With him it comes all by itself. Thats the tantric mastery.
0 1961-06-24, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
As for your mot her, she must have been thinking of me, for ot herwise she wouldnt have come in that wayshe would have come through you (its different when things come through you). But she came to me directly, so I thought that for some reason she must have remembered me. I dont know. And I looked and said to myself (it came just like that), Now that she will be left all alone, why doesnt she come here? I havent done anything about that, eit her, one way or the ot her.
Thats odd the same thought has been coming to me these last three or four days: why doesnt she come here?
It didnt come from me, you understand; it didnt stem from a construction made by me: it came from outside. Why doesnt she come here? I wondered.
The same thought came to me three or four times.
Then she is thinking about itperhaps not consciously, but in her subconscient.
It happened some time ago. I even spoke to Sujata about it and said that someone over t here was calling you. Did she tell you?
--
T here was an experience like that quite recently. A.s mot her was illold and seriously ill. Seeing her declining, A. wrote to me: If the time has come, make it happen quicklydont let her suffer. Then I saw very clearly that t here was still something in her which didnt want to go; and when I applied the Force for the best to happen she suddenly began to recover! It must have coincided with a kind of inner aspiration in herno more fever, she was feeling well. And A. began preparing to come back here. If shes recovering, he said, t heres no longer any point in my staying! The same evening she had a relapse and he sent me a telegram. Meanwhile (it was evening) I had gone upstairs to walk; suddenly The Will came (which is a very, very rare thing), The Will: Enough, now it must finishits enough as it is. Within half an hour she was dead.
These things are very interesting. They must form part of the work I have come on earth to do. Because even before encountering Theon, before knowing anything, I had experiences at night, certain types of activities looking after people who were leaving their bodiesand with a knowledge of the process; I didnt know what I was doing nor did I seek to know, yet I knew exactly what had to be done and I did it. I was around twenty.
--
T here is a boy here, V., who is especially interested in what happens at the moment of death (this seems to be one reason why he has reincarnated). Hes a conscious boy, a remarkable clairvoyant, and he has a power. And we have had (how to put it?) some quite interesting correlations of experiences concerning people who pass away here. Extremely interesting and extraordinarily precise: he sends word to me, I reply, and at night when the disincarnated person comes he says, Mot her has done this and says to do that, and the person does it. And we dont need to speaksuch precision!
This happens in sleep?
--
I was keeping I.B. near me because I already had the idea of putting him immediately back into anot her bodyhis soul was not satisfied, it had not finished its experience (t here was a whole combination of circumstances) and it wanted to continue to live on earth. Then, that night, his inner being went to find V., lamenting, saying he was dead and hadnt wanted to die, that he had lost his body and wanted to continue to live. V. was very perplexed. He let me know about it in the morning: heres what has happened. I sent word to him of what I was doing, that I was keeping I.B. in my atmosp here and that he should stay very calm and not get excited, for I was going to put him back into a body as soon as possible I already had something in view. The same evening I.B. again went to find V., with the same complaint. V. told him very clearly, here is what Mot her says, here is what she is going to do; come now, be calm and dont torment yourself. And he saw in I.B.s face that he had understood (the inner being was taking on I.B.s physical appearance, naturally); his face relaxed, he became content.
He went away and he never came back. That is, he stayed tranquilly with me, until I was able to put him into C.s child.
--
T here 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. T here 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 t here, into all sorts of things (one part of her was seeking, seeking w here to go and what to do); anyway, it was rat her 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.
Not long ago M.s sister died (psychologically, she was in a terrible stateshe had no faith). Well, on that day,5 just when I came to know that she was passing away, I remember being upstairs in the bathroom communicating with Sri Aurobindo, having a sort of conversation with him (it happens very often), and I asked him, What happens to such people when they die here at the Ashram? Look, he replied, and I saw her passing away; and on her forehead, I saw Sri Aurobindos symbol in a SOLID golden light (not very luminous, but very concrete). T here it was. And with the presence of this sign the psychological state no longer matterednothing touched her. And she departed tranquilly, tranquilly. Then Sri Aurobindo told me, All who have lived at the Ashram and who die t here have automatically the same protection, whatever their inner state.
I cant say I was surprised, but I admired the mighty power by which the simple fact of having been here and died here was sufficient to help you to the utmost in that transition.
But t here 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) gat hering themselves toget her 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 gat hered toget her, 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 hig her hemisp here, t here w here Sri Aurobindo in his supramental action presides over earth. And he melted into that light.
--
Have I told you about the experience I had the day I suddenly found myself in Sri Aurobindos home in the subtle physical?7Well, its as if I took a step and entered a far more concrete world than the physicalmore concrete because things contain more truth. I spent a good while t here with Sri Aurobindo and then, when it was over, I took anot her step and I found myself back here slightly dumbfounded. It took me quite some time to regain my bearings here, because it was this world that seemed unreal to me, not the ot her.
But its simply thatyou take a step, and you enter anot her room. And when you live in your soul t here is a continuity, because the soul remembers, it keeps the whole memory; it remembers all occurrences, even outer occurrences, all the outer movements it has been associated with. So its a continuous, uninterrupted movement, here and t here, from one room to anot her, from one house to anot her, from one life to anot her.
People are so ignorant! Thats what irritates those who have passed to the ot her sidepeople dont understand, they shoo them away: What does he want? Why does he bot her me? Hes DEAD!
--
We have a disciple here who returns to his birthplace from time to time, and after the first year X began to do his puja to get people interested in the Ashram, he said it was extraordinary. He had previously been looked at askance and had to argue with people, but now everyone came to call on him as soon as he arrived! He wrote that he was completely astonished (he wasnt aware of Xs work); hundreds of people came to ask him to hold huge meetings; sadhus, monks and priests came to him for information on the Ashram. Things have developed so rapidly and completely that they now have some land w here they have built a center and hold meetings.
And its like that almost everyw here.
--
Do you know the story of the two simultaneous operations of E. and of T.? T. is that vice-admiral who came here and became quite enthusiastiche had a kind of inner revelation here. The two of them were operated on for a similar complaint, a dangerous ulcer in the digestive system. He was in one town and she was in anot her, and they were operated on a day apartboth serious operations. And in each case, after a few days had gone by, the surgeon who did the operation said, I congratulate you. Practically the same phrase in both cases. And they both protested: Why are you congratulating me? (Each one wrote me about this separately; they were living far from one anot her and only met afterwards.) Why? You did the operationyou should be congratulated for my quick recovery. And in both cases the doctor replied, No, no; we only operate, the body does the healing; you have healed yourself in a way which can qualify as miraculous, and I genuinely congratulate you. And then the two of them had the same reaction they wrote to me saying, We know w here the miracle comes from. And they had both called me. Moreover, E. had written me a remarkable letter a few days before her operation, w here she quoted the Gita as if it were quite natural for her, and told me, I know that the operation is ALREADY done, that the Lord has already done it, and so I am calm.
Things like that, everyw here 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 atmosp here 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.
--
At least fifty people wait for the last days of the month to see me and they imagine. One thing I have not yet comprehended: what to do to make physical time lose its physical reality? It may come. As you see, I still have to watch the clock, and when I am late, well, time gets short! Maybe Ill get the power of (what is it called?) ubiquity. I believe thats the solution! To be here, and then t herejust like that! It would be very amusing.
Satprem no longer has the text of this letter.
--
Among Mot her's papers we have found the following, which indicates that a state of dispersion after death is rat her frequent (it concerns a disciple's mot her who did not herself live at the Ashram): 'She has left her body without being at all prepared for the change of condition and has found herself disoriented and rat her dispersed. She will need some time to recover from this dispersion before anything useful can be done for her.'
May 17, 1959.
0 1961-06-27, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
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! T here is nothing more deadening than reasonable people.
--
Ah, no! Not here.
Ive heard about a curious theory which says one could reincarnate into the past.
0 1961-07-04, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mot her remarks in passing that the inspiration coming to her from Sri Aurobindo when she writes is sometimes in French and sometimes in English, and adds:)
Sri Aurobindo told me he had been French in a previous life and that French flowed back to him like a spontaneous memoryhe understood all the subtleties of French.
0 1961-07-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
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. T here.
--
Yes the explanation of his yoga and of what he wants us to realize. After reading it yesterday evening I said to him, How do you expect it to be done in this!(Mot her laughingly indicates her own body.) No, no, no! he replied, Thats not it! What is needed now is to learn how to last. Well speak of this again, he told me, in two or three hundred years. Ah! (laughing) Very well! I said. Learn to last, he told me.
Well, were going to learn how to last.
--
Unless one is ABSOLUTELY indifferent, truly one cannot last. This is quite clear. That is the way it must be (gesture of a becalmed sea). For suddenly you find yourself in a state which feels like it could last forevernothing matters, it goes on and on and on (Mot her stretches out her arms, as if floating on a vast, infinite sea) like this, forever. I have been in this state very often, and you truly feel that. But the experience must not be in the head (that can be easily had); it has to be herE (Mot her slaps her knees), here in the body. When the body catches on to this, nothing is eit her disagreeable or agreeable to itit takes no pleasure, feels no disgust, no uneasiness, no anything. Its in a state, ah! (same gesture of a becalmed sea)
Its very interesting.
--
Ah! I have seen T., who told me she was finding it too difficult to ask questions [on Sri Aurobindos Aphorisms] because it always seemed to be the same thing! So now she has nothing to ask. We have decided she wont ask any more questions, unless, by chance, something suddenly arouses a question in her. Ot herwise, no more questions (Mot her breathes a sigh of relief).
63God is great, says the Mahomedan. Yes, He is so great that He can afford to be weak, whenever that too is necessary.
--
I am putting this purposely into rat her childish terms so that it will be clearly understood. But this is the way it is. I am sure of it because I have observed it in myself for a VERY long time, and I had to. Due to the whole subconscious formation of childhoodenvironment, education, and so forthwe have to DRUM into this (Mot her touches her body) the consciousness of Unity : the absolute, EXCLUSIVE unity of the Divineexclusive in the sense that nothing exists apart from this Unity, even the things which seem most repulsive.
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 (Mot her takes on a scandalized tone): How can God be weak? How can God be foolish? How. But t here is nothing but God! He alone exists, t here 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. T here is a movement of rejection.
0 1961-07-12, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Regarding the last conversation, w here Mot her 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. T here 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.
--
This japa, you know, didnt at all come from here (Mot her points to her head). Its something I received fully formed, and to such an extent that I couldnt even change the place of a single thinga will seemed to oppose any change. Its a long series unfolding according to a law that probably corresponds to what is needed to develop this consciousness and the work it has to do (I suppose I dont really know and I havent tried to know). But a sort of law makes it impossible to change the position of even a single word, because these are not wordsthey are fully formed states of consciousness. And the whole series culminates with:
Manifest Your Love.
0 1961-07-15, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
To be in a condition in which all is the Supreme, all is wonderful, all is marvelous, all is marvelous love, all is all is profound Joyan unchanging, immutable, ever-present condition. To live in That, and then to have this bodily substance contradict it through every possible stupiditylosing sight, losing strength, pains here, pains t here, disorders, weaknesses, incapacities of every type. And at the SAME TIME, the response within this body, no matter what happens to it, is, O Lord, Your Grace is infinite. The contradiction is VERY disconcerting.
From experience, I know perfectly well that when one is satisfied with being a saint or a sage and constantly maintains the right attitude, all goes well the body doesnt get sick, and even if t here are attacks it recovers very easily; all goes very well AS LONG AS T herE IS NOT THIS WILL TO TRANSFORM. All the difficulties arise in protest against the will to transform; while if one says, Very well, its all right, let things be as they are, I dont care, I am perfectly happy, in a blissful state, then the body begins to feel content!
--
Well, since I believerightly or wrongly, I dont know that the doctor has more experience than I, that from the t herapeutic and biological standpoint he knows a bit more, I showed him the eye and asked, Can I read? Better not read until its finished, he replied, and told me to wash my eyes with glucose. (Its a useful piece of information for those with tired eyes: mix the glucoseliquid glucose, the kind that comes in ampoules for injectionwith something like the blue water we make here, half and half. Open the ample, put a third of it in the eye-cup, then add the blue water.) I have already tried it once and found that it gives a great deal of strength to the eyes. Tomorrow Im going to start doing it regularly. T here you are.
What made Sri Aurobindo stop?
--
I must say that t here was a time when, as Sri Aurobindo had entrusted his work to me, t here was a kind of tension to do it (it cant be called an anxiety); a tension in the will. This too has now ended (Mot her stretches her arms into the Infinite). Its finished. But t here MAY still be something tense lurking somew here 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, neit her through Sri Aurobindo nor directly, whet her or not I would go right to the end. I have never been told the contrary, eit her. 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.
(silence)
--
Some months ago, when this body had once again become a battlefield and was confronting all the obstacles, when it was suspended, asking itself whet her it wasnt wondering intellectually, but asking for a kind of perception, wanting to touch something: it wondered which direction it was taking, which way things were going to tilt. And suddenly, in all the cells, t here was this feeling (and I know w here it came from): If we are dissolved out of this amalgam, if this assemblage is dissolved and can no longer go on, then we shall all go straight, straight as an arrow and it was like a marvelous flamestraight to rejoin Sri Aurobindo in his supramental world, which is right here at our door. And t here was such joy! Such enthusiasm, such joy flooded all the cells! They didnt care at all whet her or not they would be dissociated. Oh, they felt, so what!
This was truly a decisive stage in the work of illuminating the body.
--
And that was when I received the Command from the Supreme, who was right here, this close (Mot her 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.
--
The only thing to do is to be like this (Mot her turns her hands towards the Heights in a gesture of abandonment). Provided you dont fall asleep! You mustnt enter into a beatific state w here you. No, we must keep moving on.
I dont know what to do. Its not easy.
--
Since Mot her began reading Sri Aurobindo's letters in On Himself, which seemed to put her into contact with all the difficulties of the Work.
Experience of November 8, 1957. Mot her has commented on this experience in 'Questions and Answers' of January 1, 1958. See Agenda I, p. 131.
0 1961-07-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But behind it all, the original problem remains unresolved: Why has it become like this? Why this deformation? Why has it all been deformed? T here 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.
It is.
--
One thing must inevitably cease: the Deformation, the veil of falsehood covering Truth, because all we see existing here is due to that. If the veil is removed, things will necessarily be completely different, completely: they will be as we experience them when we emerge individually from that deformed consciousness. When one comes out of that consciousness and enters the Truth-Consciousness, one is incredulous that such things as suffering, misery and death can exist; its amazing, in the sense that (when one is truly on the ot her side) one doesnt understand how all this can be happening. And, although this state of consciousness is habitually associated with the experience of the unreality of the world as we know it, Sri Aurobindo tells us that this perception of the worlds unreality need not exist for the supramental consciousness: only Falsehood is unreal , not the world. And this is most interesting the world has its own reality, independent of Falsehood.
I suppose this will be the first effect of the Supermindperhaps even its first effect in the individual, because it will begin in individuals first.
--
T here are stories like this, you know, about people who lived in an ideal solitude, and its not at all impossible to imagine. When one is in contact with this Power, when it is within you, you can see that such things are childs play! It even reaches the point w here t here is the possibility of changing certain things, of influencing vibrations and forms in the surrounding environment by contagion, so that automatically they begin to be supramentalized. All that is possible but confined to the individual scale. While if we take the example of what is happening here, w here the individual remains right in the midst of all this chaos. Thats the difficulty! Doesnt this very fact make a certain perfection in realization impossible to attain? But the ot her case, the individual isolated in the forest, is always the same thingan example giving no proof that the rest will be able to follow; while whats happening here should already have a much broader radiating influence. At some point this has to happenit MUST happen. But the problem still remains: can it happen simultaneously with or even before the supramentalization of the single individual?
(silence)
--
I am constantly seeing images! Not images, living thingslike answers to questions. A magnificent peacock was taking shape (its the symbol of victory here in India) and its tail opened out, and on it a construction appeared, like this construction of an ideal place. Its a pity this subtle world cant be photographed! T here ought to be photographic plates sensitive enough to do it. It has been tried. It would be interesting because it moves, its like a movie.
All right, then. What did you want to ask?
--
This eye [hemorrhage], for instance, resulted from such a disorder, a very dark force that someone allowed to enter, not deliberately, not knowingly, but through weakness and ignorance, always mingled, of course, with desire and ego and all the rest. (Without desire and ego, such things would find no access but desire and ego are very widespread.) At any rate, that was plainly the cause and I sensed it immediately. Sometimes when it comes, it creeps up like this (Mot her brings her hand to her throat), a black shadow strangling you. Yet inwardly nothing is affected at all, to such an extent that if I didnt pay attention to the purely external reaction, I wouldnt know anything had happened (its the great Play); but externally the indication is immediate: half an hour later I had this eye hemorrhage. I was struggling against a wholly undesirable intrusion, and I knew italthough from an outer point of view, the cause was insignificant. Its not always the events we consider serious or important that produce the most harmful effectsfar from it. Sometimes its an altoget her INSIGNIFICANT intrusion of falsehood, for some quite insignificant reasonwhat is commonly labeled a stupidity. This stems from the fact that the adverse forces are always lying in wait, ready to rush in at the least sign of weakness.
The incomprehension generated by doubt (the kind of doubt that always results from an egoistic movement) is very dangerous. Very dangerous. Its not even necessary to be in a psychic consciousness even for an enlightened vital consciousness, it produces no effect; but herE, in this material swarm.
But I dont see how all this work could be done in the solitude of the Himalayas or the forest. T heres a great risk of entering into that very impersonal, universal consciousness w here things are relatively easy the material consequences are so far below that it doesnt much matter! One can act directly only in the MIDST of things.
--
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 t here, delightful. Everything works out smoothly, its so harmonious, t heres 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 (Mot her 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 t heres a formidable power in this, since in one instance you touch something and drop or mishandle it, while in the ot her 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, t here 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.
--
I would be satisfied only if. Can one ever be satisfied? At any rate, I would begin to be satisfied only if this were a constant and total condition, active in all circumstances and at every moment, day and night. But is it possible with this INUNDATION pouring in from outside? Constantly! While walking this morning I was (how to put it?) something of a witness, watching what was coming in from outside. One thing after anot her, one thing after anot herwhat a mixture! From all sides, from everyone and everything and everyw here. And not only from here, but from far, far away on the earth and sometimes from far back in time, back into the pastthings out of the past coming up, presenting themselves to the new Light to be put in their place. Its always that: each thing wanting to be put in its place. And this work has to be done constantly. Its as if one keeps catching a new illness to be cured.
A fresh disorder to be straightened out.
--
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 t here 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. T here 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 w here 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 t here 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 t here 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 Mot her, 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
here is something important. Sri Aurobindo says that everything is involved down here the mind, the vital, the supermind and that what is involved evolves. But if everything is involved, including the supermind, what is the need for a descent? Cant things evolve by themselves?
Ah! He has explained this somew here.
--
The way Theon told it, t here was first the universal Mot her (he didnt call her the universal Mot her, but Sri Aurobindo used that name), the universal Mot her in charge of creation. For creating she made four emanations: Consciousness or Light; Life; Love or Beatitude and (Mot her 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, t here were four (I knew them by heart). Well, these emanations (Theon narrated it in such a way that someone not a philosop her, 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 (Mot her 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 Mot her 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 t here 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 anot her, 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 altoget her 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 hig her 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 Mot her 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 Mot her is universally present and at work in the universe, but the earth is w here concrete form is given to all the work to be done to bring evolution to its perfection, its goal. Well, at first t heres a sort of emanation representative of the universal Mot her, which is always on earth to help it prepare itself; then, when the preparation is complete, the universal Mot her 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 toget her they do the work; She has chosen the soul of the earth for her work, saying, herE is w here I will do my work. Elsew here (Mot her indicates regions of hig her Consciousness), its enough just to BE and things Simply ARE. here on earth you have to work.
T here 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? (Mot her shrugs her shoulders) How can a small human brain understand why! When you live it, you know! T heres 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, t heres no need for explanations.
--
Ever westward I advance, without weariness or hesitation. Spectacle succeeds spectacle in incredible variety; here upon a rock of lapis lazuli stretch fine and delicate seaweed like long blond or violet tresses; here great, rose-hued fortress walls, all streaked with silver; here flowers seem chiseled from enormous diamonds; here goblets, as beautiful as if carved by the most gifted sculptor, are filled with what appear to be droplets of emerald, alternately vibrant with light and shadow.
Presently I find myself between two rock walls of sapphire blue, upon a path flecked with silver; and the water becomes ever purer and more luminous.
--
Standing t here 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 everyw here; 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. T here 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.
0 1961-08-02, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Evolution begins with the Inconscient, complete Inconscience; and from this Inconscient a Subconscient gradually emerges that is, a half or quarter-consciousness. T here are two different things here. Consider life on earth (because the process is slightly different in the universe); earth-life begins with total Inconscience and little by little what was involved within it works out and changes this Inconscience into semi-consciousness or subconsciousness. At the same time, t here is an individual working that awakens the INDIVIDUAL inconscient to an individual semiconsciousness, and here, of course, the individual has controlalthough its not actually individualized because individualization begins with consciousness. The subconscient of plants or animals, for example, isnt individualized; what we call an animals behavior doesnt arise from individualization but from the genius of the species. Consequently, the individual subconscient is something already evolved out of the general Subconscient. But when one descends to accomplish a work of transformationto bring Light into the different layers of life, for instanceone descends into a cosmic, terrestrial Subconscient, not an individual Subconscient. And the work of transformation is done within the wholenot through individualization, but through the opposite movement, through a sort of universalization.
No, what I mean is that as we progress, we automatically become universalized.
--
vibrations from the outside, from here, t here its endless. How can we change it?
No, it isnt endlessits limited to the earths atmosp here.
--
Speaking of individualization, t heres a question Ive been wondering about: when one speaks of the central being, this central being is not something here in physical life, is it? Its above.
It is above and within and everyw here! (Mot her laughs)
--
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 (Mot her 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.
--
In all the traditions here in India (and in ot her countries and ot her religions as well), most of the time these gods behave impossibly! This is simply because they have no psychic being. The psychic being is the one thing belonging specifically to terrestrial life; it has been given as a grace to repair, to undo what had been done.
Yes, but arent the gods conscious of the Divine?
--
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 atmosp here; she is present, like thisgesture as if Durga were walking up and down with Mot her). 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.
I knew how it was with her because I remember the days when Sri Aurobindo was here and I used to go downstairs to give meditations to the people assembled in the hall. T heres a ledge above the pillars t here, w here all the gods used to sitShiva, Krishna, Lakshmi, the Trimurti, all of them the little ones, the big ones, they all used to come regularly, every day, to attend these meditations. It was a lovely sight. But they didnt have this kind of adoration for the Supreme. They had no use for that concepteach one, in his own mode of being, was fully aware of his own eternal divinity; and each one knew as well that he could represent all the ot hers (such was the basis of popular worship,7 and they knew it). They felt they were a kind of community, but they had none of those qualities that the psychic life gives: no deep love, no deep sympathy, no sense of union. They had only the sense of their OWN divinity. They had certain very particular movements, but not this adoration for the Supreme nor the feeling of being instruments: they felt they were representing the Supreme, and so each one was perfectly satisfied with his particular representation.
Except for Krishna. In 1926, I had begun a sort of overmental creation, that is, I had brought the Overmind down into matter, here on earth (miracles and all kinds of things were beginning to happen). I asked all these gods to incarnate, to identify themselves with a body (some of them absolutely refused). Well, with my very own eyes I saw Krishna, who had always been in rapport with Sri Aurobindo, consent to come down into his body. It was on November 24th, and it was the beginning of Mot her.8
Yes, in fact I wanted to ask you what this realization of 1926 was.
--
Then I went into Sri Aurobindos room and told him, heres what I have seen. Yes, I know! he replied (Mot her laughs) Thats fine; I have decided to retire to my room, and you will take charge of the people. You take charge. (T here were about thirty people at the time.) Then he called everyone toget her for one last meeting. He sat down, had me sit next to him, and said, I called you here to tell you that, as of today, I am withdrawing for purposes of sadhana, and Mot her will now take charge of everyone; you should address yourselves to her; she will represent me and she will do all the work. (He hadnt mentioned this to me!Mot her bursts into laughter)
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 ad herence 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.
--
From 1926, Sri Aurobindo officially introduced Mot her to the disciples as the 'Mot her'; previously he often called her 'Mirra.'
Evening Talks, noted by A.B. Purani.
0 1961-08-05, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The subtle physical is right here (gesture on the surface of the skin). Some people are sensitive in the subtle physical; you move your hand near them and they feel it immediately. Ot hers dont even noticeit depends on the subtle physicals sensitivity. And the circumconscient surrounds it like an envelope. If t here are no tears in it, this envelope is a magnificent protection.4 And its not dependent on any spiritual or intellectual rationale, but on a harmony with Nature and life, a kind of stability in the material being. People with strong envelopes are almost always in good health and succeed in what they do. It isnt something mentalwhen they do a work it comes out nicely, if they want to meet someone, they meet him. Things of this nature.
The circumconscient must be that.
--
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 ot her, I forgot and left it open. My mot her came in (in France the windows are covered with heavy curtains and in the morning my mot her 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 upot herwise it would have been most unpleasant!). Anyway, my mot her 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.
It wasnt easy.
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.
--
Its strange. I say strange because its due to her that I took birth in this body, that it was chosen. When she was very young she had a great aspiration. She was exactly twenty years older than 1; she was twenty when I was born and I was her third child. The first was a son who died in Turkey when he was two months old, I thinkthey vaccinated him against smallpox and poisoned him, (laughing) god knows what it means! He died of convulsions. Next was my brot her who was born in Egypt, at Alexandria, and then me, born in Paris when she was exactly twenty years old. At that time (especially since the death of her first child) she had a kind of GREAT aspiration in her: her children had to be the best in the world. It wasnt an ambition, I dont know what it was. And what a will she had! MY mot her had a formidable will, like an iron bar, utterly impervious to all outside influence. Once she had made up her mind, it was made up; even if someone had been dying before her eyes, she wouldnt have budged! And she decided: My children will be the best in the world.
One thing she did have was a sense of progress; she felt that the world was progressing and we had to be better than anything that had come before and that was sufficient.
--
Did I tell you what happened to my brot her? No? My brot her was a terribly serious boy, and frightfully studiousoh, it was awful! But he also had a very strong character, a strong will, and t here was something interesting about him. When he was studying to enter the Polytechnique, I studied with himit interested me. We were very intimate (t here 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 mot her 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 mot her, 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.
--
Three years later I had that experience Ive told you about itof the Light piercing through me; I physically saw it enter into me. It was obviously the descent of a Beingnot a past incarnation, but a Being from anot her plane. It was a golden light the incarnation of a divine consciousness. Which proves that she succeeded for both her children.
But she
She was down on her knees before my brot her. My mot her scorned all religious sentiments as weakness and superstition and she absolutely denied the invisible. Its all brain disease, she would say! But she could say just as well, Oh, my Matteo is my God, he is my God. The devil knows why, but in Alexandria she gave him the Italian name Matteo! And she truly treated him like a god. She left him only when he married, because then she really couldnt continue to follow him around any longer.
But whats interesting, for instance, is that when her fat her died she knew it; she saw him. She thought it was a dreama stupid dream. But he came to let her know he was dead and she saw him. Its nothing, she said, a dream! (Mot her laughs)
When my grandmo t her died. My grandmo t her had the occult sense. She had made her own fortune (a sizeable fortune) and had had five children, each one more extravagant than the ot her. She considered me the only sensible person in the family and she shared her secrets with me. You see, she told me, these people are going to squander all my money! She had a sixty year old son (she had married in Egypt at the age of fifteen, and had had this son when she was quite young). You see this boy, he goes out and visits impossible people! And then he starts playing cards and loses all my money! I saw this boy, I was t here in the house when he came to her and said very politely, Good-bye, mot her, Im going out to so-and-sos house. Ah, please dont waste all my money, and take an overcoatits getting chilly at night. Sixty years old! It was comical. But to return to my story, after my grandmo t her died (I took a lot of care over her), she came to my mot her (my mot her was with her when she died; they embalmed hershe had gotten it into her head that she wanted to be burned, and since she died at Nice they had to embalm her so she could be burned in Paris). I was in Paris. My mot her arrived with the body and told me, Just imagine, Im constantly seeing her! And whats more, she gives me advice! Dont waste your money! she tells me. Well, shes right, one must be careful, I replied. But look here, shes dead! Dead! How can she talk to me! Shes dead, I tell you, and quite dead at that! I said to her, What does it mean, to die?
It was all very funny.
--
Satprem remembers that a few years earlier Mot her had told him about the circumstances of this incident: during her work in trance, Mot her 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 Mot her to repeat this mantra to him. Mot her refused. Theon became violently angry and the link was cut (the link that connected Mot her to her body). When he realized the catastrophe his anger had caused, Theon grew afraid (for he knew who Mot her was) and he then, as Mot her recounts, made use of all his power to help her re-enter her body. Later, Mot her 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 ot her words, ultimately, knowledge of the reality of Matter and the mechanism of death: it is the whole cellular yoga of Sri Aurobindo and Mot her.
Tamas: inertia, obscurity.
--
On anot her occasion, Mot her told Sujata more about these three times her brot her almost killed her: 'One day we were playing croquet, and eit her because he got beaten or for some ot her reason, he flew into a rage and struck me hard with his Mallet; fortunately I escaped with only a slight scratch. Anot her time, we were sitting in a room and he threw a big chair towards me I ducked just in time and the chair passed over my head. A third time, as we were descending from a carriage, he pushed me down under it; luckily the horse didn't move.'
***
0 1961-08-08, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This is something new he has accepted, because the Supreme doesnt usually appear in tantrism they are in contact with the Shakti and dont bot her about the Supreme. But here he has come to accept it.
He has tried very hard to understand. But his spiritual conception has remained like this: one canone MUSTmaster life, and in life, to some extent, a certain adaptation to the hig her forces can be achieved; but t here is no question of transformation: the physical world remains the physical world. It can be a little better organized, more harmonious, but t here is no question of something else, of divinizationno question at all.
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 t here 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 (Mot her 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 (Mot her makes a gesture stretching to infinity). It has neit her beginning nor end. The body itself is starting to feel how Energy behaves.
Its very interesting.
--
And it is strangely indifferent to any scale of values or circumstances. Sometimes when I am meeting and speaking with someone, when I am seeing someone, this great universal Light of a perfect whiteness comes streaming in. Well, I must admit, this also occurs for the merest trifles, when Im tasting some cheese somebody has sent me, for example, or arranging objects in a cupboard, or deciding what things Im going to use or have to organize. It doesnt come in the same massive way as when it comes directly. When it comes directly its a mass, passing through and going out like that (Mot her shows the Light descending directly from above like a mass and passing through her head in order to spread out everyw here). In these small things its pulverized, as though it came through an atomizer, but its that same sparkling white light, utterly white. Then, whatever Im doing, t heres a sensation in the body thats like lying on a sea of something very soft, very intimate, very deep and eternal, immutable: the Lord. And all the bodys cells are joyously saying, You, You, You, You.
Thats my present condition.
0 1961-08-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
here (Mot her gives some flowers), this is the Generosity1 of inspiration, and this is the crowning achievement [Divine Love2].
So, petit, everything all right? Yes?
--
Let it come from here (pointing to the heart).
I am fully confident.
--
It must come from here (the heart). Thats what I was told: it must come from here. Not t here (the head), not even t here (above the head); herE (the heart). Usually expression comes from above, but its not t here: it is here (same gesture to the heart). Its a spontaneous little something coming all at once.
(silence)
Yesterday I had an experience. It didnt last long, no more than an hour or an hour and a half, but it was interesting. Experiences always take place here for me now, on the completely material plane. Well, in action, in relation to the world and things (it was quite a general feeling, in any case terrestrialnot universal, terrestrial), t here was no more center. From the standpoint of sensations and reactions, exchangesno more center. Everything was dispersed like that, everyw here. T here was only ONE center, the highest Center (highest or deepest)the sole Center. All sensations, all contacts, all exchangeseverything was like that.
It was rat her interesting in that I wasnt expecting it; it came suddenly when I was walking in my room in the evening the feeling not positively that the body no longer existed, since it kept walking, but that t here was no more center. I cant put it any ot her wayt here was no more center. T here was only one Center. It was all, all the same thing, and from the absolutely material standpoint, the standpoint of sensationsmaterial sensations, exchanges, vibrationseverything. At one point it even became so strong that something laughed and said, Ah! So thats how to no longer exist!
0 1961-08-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mot her gives flowers) This is Alchemy.1 And here! (Mot her hands Satprem some cheese)
I still have plenty, you know!
--
Anyway, X has written to me (and to M. also), telling me he will be here on the 29th, but will have to leave on the 10th, so it wont be for very longall because of various ceremonies.2 He writes me that hes going to train someone to replace him for all these ceremonies so he can be freer to come here for longer periods. But to M. (the devil knows what M. wrote to him), he says something like, Yes, t here is a very sorry situation in the Ashram and peoples jealousy and envy are increasing more and more. Yet nevertheless he feels so drawn by the Mot hers presence that he will come.
I admit I didnt like this letter. But I dont hold him responsible because. When people tell him things, he believes them. God knows what story M. told him!
--
After all, remembering is merely an amusement. I have come to the conclusion that its amusing and personally satisfying but not necessary at all. I see that MOST Of My work is done and done with great precisionwithout needing to be recorded here; its quite unnecessary. I am fully conscious when Im doing the work, but I would really rat her not remember it.
Thats all, petit.
0 1961-09-10, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The night before last, around 3 in the morning, I was in a place w here t here were a lot of people from here (you were t here), and I was trying to play some music, precisely in order to SAY something. T here were three pianos t here, which seemed to be interlocked into each ot her, so I leaned over sideways to get at one of the three and began playing on it. It was in a large hall with people seated at a distance, but you were just at my left alongside a young lady who was a symbol figure (that is, the vibration or impression I received from her and the relationship I had with her could be applied as well to four or five persons here: it was like relating to an amalgam something that is very interesting and often happens to me). Anyway, I was leaning over one of the keyboards and trying trying to work something out, to illustrate how this would translate into that. Finally I realized that playing half-standing, half-leaning was unnecessary acrobatics, because a grand piano was right t here in front, so I sat down before it. Well, the most amusing part of it was that the keys (t here were two keyboards) were all bluelike the marbled paper we are making now, all blue, and with every possible marbled effect. Black keys, white keys, high keys, low keys (all of them were the same width, quite wide, like this), all seemed to be coated but it wasnt paperwith this blue. Facing the piano I said to myself, Well now, this cant be played with physical eyesit has to be played FROM ABOVE.
While I was playing, I kept telling myself, But this is what Ive tried to do with music all my lifeplay on the blue keyboard!
--
Maybe this is what you were thinking ofwhat you would like to express in your book. It occurred in a place similar to the realm of expression w here, as I told you, I have frequently been going lately. It is very, very vast, very open, but this time t here were no walls. No ceiling, no walls. T here was only a kind of groundvery pale, luminous, vast and very empty, empty. People were seated but I didnt see any chairs. Only the pianos were visible, and they were quite odd: you could hardly see anything but the keyboards, which were sort of overlapping. In front was a grand piano, and over here was a somewhat bigger one the one I had been leaning over sideways to play on and then t here was one turned to the ot her side. And then this grand piano, right in front but with only the keyboard visible! Well, why shouldnt I be comfortable! I said to myself, and I sat down. Then everything became bluegreat, blue notes. How am I going to play? I wondered. I tried to play as usual and then: It doesnt work, it doesnt work, I said. Ah! It has to be played from aboveit has to be played from above! So I place my hands on the keys, I concentrate and brrff! It was like some not violent, not loud and noisy, butoh, overwhelming! Three, fournot notes: sounds, harmonies I dont really know what.
But this must be what you were thinking of, what you would like to use for your book.1
0 1961-09-16, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its curious, all the complications seemed to be t here (Mot her touches her temples), very complicated and very difficult to adjust; and then when he said, Be simplehow strangeit was like a light coming from his eyes, as if one had suddenly emerged into a garden of light.
It gave that impressionlike a garden bathed in light.
--
As if t here were too much mental tension: something here at the temples.
(silence)
I have to face a similar difficulty, mind you, although its on anot her level. T here is such a tremendous accumulation of people to see, things to do, questions to be resolvedeverything. The accumulation is So TIGHTLY packedso compact! Too compact for the life for the hours, the time, the forcesof an ordinary body. Yet behind it all, t here is a sort of constant active immobility, in the sense that the consciousness has the impression of being immobile, of being borne along on the stream of progress and evolution. But this immobility. If I should try to do what I have to do, you know, everything I have to do, well it becomes impossible, things clog up, it gets painful. And here his answer is the same: Be simple, be simple.
This morning when I was walking, the program of the day and the work ahead of me was so formidable that I felt it to be impossible. And yet simultaneously t here was this immobile inner POSITION in me; as soon as I stop my movement of formation and action, it becomes like a dance of joy: all the cells vibrating (t here is a sort of vivacity, and an extraordinary music), all the cells vibrant with the joy of the Presence the divine Presence. But when I see the outside world entering and attacking, well this joy doesnt exactly disappear, but it retreats. And the result is that I always feel like sitting down and keeping stillwhen I can do that it is marvelous. But of course, all the suggestions from outside come in: suggestions of helplessness and old age, of wear and tear, of diminishing power, all thatand I know positively that its false. But calm in the body is indispensable. Well, for me also Sri Aurobindos answer is always the same: Be simple, be simple, very simple.
And I know what he means: to deny entry to regimenting, organizing, prescriptive, judgmental though the wants none of all that. What he calls being simple is a joyous spontaneity; in action, in expression, in movement, in lifebe simple, be simple, be simple. A joyous spontaneity. To rediscover in evolution that condition he calls divine, which was a spontaneous and happy condition. He wants us to rediscover that. And for days now he has been here telling me (and the same goes for your work): Be simple, be simple, be simple. And in his simplicity was a luminous joy.
A joyous spontaneity.
--
Listen, here is a letter I have written to one of the teac hers at the School (Mot her reads):
We are not here to do only a little better what the ot hers do, we are here to do what the ot hers CANNOT do, because they do not have even the idea that it can be done. We are here to open the way of the Future to children who belong to the Future. Anything else is not worth the trouble and not worthy of Sri Aurobindos help.
Thats what I wrote.
0 1961-09-28, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
If you agree, here is what we could do: read aloud to me what you have written; perhaps seeing it in my consciousness will help you.
If you think this could be useful, I will see you on Saturday at 10 oclock.
0 1961-09-30, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This book is self-existent and you have only to follow it along, with simplicity, the way you would follow a path that has already been blazed that is already T herE, automatically brought into being by its own necessity. (For a long while Mot her gazes in front of her) Dont be alarmed, Im just looking!
You dont need to suffer; its not necessary.
--
1. This letter to Mot her is, with a few ot hers, the sole survivor of thirteen years of correspondence. All the rest, all Satprem's correspondence with Mot her since 1960, was confiscated by the Ashram after the Mot her's departure, for its own reasons. His letters of 1960, already published in Volume I, escaped the destruction because Mot her 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 Mot her 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 Mot her'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
The story began with an entirely concrete and material incident something very amusing; this is not the first time it has happened, but it was so concrete and so precise that it became interesting. Someone was complaining of being ill, quite a serious, psychological illness: periodic possession by a spirit of falsehood, recurring regularly every month, of more or less long duration. This person comes to see me, and the moment shes here t heres an upwelling of that profound Compassion of Love, with a considerable, concentrated Power to drive away the possession; and all of this accompanied, even outwardly, by quite an affectionate gesture. This person leaves and within half an hour I receive a letter: Now I know: you hate me, you want me to be ill and you want me to die because I disgust you.
It was interesting because it was so concrete. I was conscious of my movement of compassion and love and of what it had become in the ot her persons consciousness!
--
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 ot her way. And the two things are superposed (Mot her 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.
--
Then t here 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 somew here). 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.
And then, from a purely external and practical standpoint, I said, Illnesses are the falsehoods of the body (t here is no question of lie here, it is a matter of falsehood; in French we have only the one word mensonge) and each doctor ( here, of course, one would have to insert a little qualification: each sincere, honest doctor who truly wants to cure), each true doctor is a soldier in the great army of those who fight for Truth.3
That was the sentence I wrote for my doctor.
--
(Towards the end of the conversation, Satprem once again complains of his difficulties in writing his book. Mot her proposes that he try to unblock the way by reading his manuscript to her.)
You know, it [Mot hers 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, t herefore, you would be able to see your book a little more impersonally, outside yourself and your own creative power.
--
But some people I dont hear at all! I see lips moving, but t here is nothing, nothing, not even an ordinary thought! When people are capable of a little clear-thinking, I hear everything. But with ot hers, its like oo-oo-oo. Just recently t here was something really comical! I no longer know who it was, but someone came to see me and when he began to talk I understood nothing! All I heard was noise. What to do? This person was asking me questions (he came here for sadhana, mind you, not for external matters; it was a serious visit), and all that came out was oo-oo-oo-oo, nothing else. So I concentrated and put myself in contact with his soul, which was the only thing I could contact. It took some time. I kept silent, and finally so did he, since he saw that I was not replying. Then suddenly it came, so clearly, like drops of water falling from above: ready-made sentences. I began to tell him all sorts of things about what his soul wanted, what he had to do in the world. It was a revelation! Ah! he said, I have been waiting to hear this all my life!
But it took some time, because first of all he had to stop talking, and then I had to concentrate.
--
(As she is leaving, Mot her asks for some papers left by Pavitra for her to examine: some proposals for school reforms.)
Give me that stuff.
--
Identification of the person in question with the spirit who had taken possession of her.
here is the exact text of Mot her's message: Truth is supreme harmony and supreme delight. All disorder, all suffering is falsehood. Thus it can be said that illnesses are the falsehoods of the body, and consequently doctors are soldiers of the great and noble army fighting in the world for the conquest of Truth.
It took Satprem fourteen years to lose the habit of correcting.
0 1961-10-15, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
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 t here 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 t here 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 t here inside my head while you were talking), when you were saying that its necessary to explain to people; t here he very clearly said, No, not necessary.
But I was incapable of remembering or of registering anything the only head present t here was his.
--
One sees glimpses of it. I told you Ive often seen it with X. I also saw it with anot her tantric who came here (someone said to be greatly renowned in the North)this sort of very well organized mental power, a mental-physical power. But it was always vibrating or intermittent or partial, passing flashes or fluctuating formations. here it wasnt that; it was a feeling of eternity.
Normally one would have said that my body was in trance; yet it could move, it could speaksince I did speak to you; but nevertheless, it was a peculiar feeling (which I still have somewhat), like having a head too large for my body. Its not painful or disagreeable, but Im not used to it.
--
For a long, long time I have been asking for. When I would say, Lord, take possession of this brain, I expected something of the sort, but I was expecting it with the supramental light (which, partially and momentarily, I have had). But this! It was really. I dont know what he did with my brainnot brain, my mental power. Probably during that period he absorbed it (I suppose thats what happened because t here was no sense of difference). My impression was that as a result of this the physical cells were going to develop materially and be transformed (I think it will happen I had a sort of assurance that it will). Because now, as Im talking to you, Im looking at it and I see the effect is still t here: no longer with the same overwhelming power, but the effect is t here and it gives a sort of (it cant be compared to anything physical) a sort of warmth; its not heat, but warmth. Everything is seized by it, both ears (Mot her touches her head), everything here, t here, all around! Tremendous. And this immobility! As soon as one stops, it is immor (Mot her cuts off her word), it is eternity.
It is truly bringing THAT down here [into Matter].
Well then, are you going to read the rest to me or not?
No, Mot her, I feel I have to do it all over. I dont have the thread. I just have scraps here and t here, bits and pieces I dont have the thread.
But is this thread so very necessary? Because the last time you read (I cant pinpoint exactly w here), Sri Aurobindo seemed to intervene each time any of those habitual co herences of reason intruded, things you probably inserted precisely in order to join passages toget her and make them comprehensible. It was at these junctures (I cant remember them exactly) w here he would occasionally say, Not necessary, not necessary. That can go, that can go.
--
And yesterday again I clearly saw (Mot her touches this mass in her head). My eyes are full of it my eyes are full, you know, and I see that as it works to settle itself in here, it produces this little vibrationa twinkling of vibrationswhich seems to be indispensable for it to enter into this Matter.
But whats interesting is that it produced neit her headache, nor malaise, nor anything of the kind; yet neit her was t here any great joy or satisfaction. It is the words we use always take on a pejorative tone and spoil it, but the difference between our habitual way of functioning and this new way is something so tremendous and overwhelming that an adaptation is evidently required. And he always said that the adaptation would at first be a diminution, and that only gradually could one regain the original purity. Thats just how it is.
--
Indeed, he is so very much herE.
Two or three days ago, in one of those moments when you feel a little stupid (little is an understatement!), I said to myself, Yes, how good it was when I used to feel him with me all the time. In this period now, I no longer feel him. Then he told me so clearly, so positively, You dont feel me because I am you.
--
Simply awaken hope in them the Hope. A hope based on the certainty of an experience. You know, if they could imagine the Supreme Himself coming and saying, Listen now, Im here to tell you that this is the way it is, get ready.
Always, always, the first reaction of people on earth has been to say, Hes mad.
--
If I say all this its because I see to what extent Sri Aurobindo views this book as an important tool for world-wide workfrom the beginning he has taken it seriously. And he is so very much herE that it seems to me not at all impossible that he HIMSELF is stimulating the expression.
Its not so much a question of ideas, because all that is quite fine.
--
A thread is missing. I dont know, some people can write in bits and pieces, here and t here, but not me. If I dont feel that everything behind me is completed, I cant go ahead. I need to have a flow.
Listen, think it over. Because Im not so sure. When I see, I see segments: a blank, anot her segment, a blank (Mot her seems to sketch a kind of diagram in space), then an apotheosis at the endyour ending is magnificent.
0 1961-10-30, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Curious, this impression the feeling of the body and the atmosp here 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 et hereal, 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 atmosp here is of something more compactmore compact and at the same time without heaviness or thickness. All this is evidently absurd scientificallyyet t here is a feeling of compactness.
It was like that yesterday something so solid was with me (Mot her touches her head); how to put it? Its solid, but not in the way we usually speak of solidity! Its not like that.
And my head became heavy.
But he was t here the whole time you were reading (and now again its the same thing, he is t here). In his consciousness, all this was already past I was transported forward, the present moment was behind meand then, Ah, here is the beginning of the legend.
So t here will be a legend.
--
Yesterday afternoon and evening, my head seemed soft when I touched it! Thats the amazing thing (Mot her touches her head). It feels soft when I touch it, as if the head has become soft! And at the same time, its a compact mass.
What is it?
--
Well, mon petit, heres an experience for your birthday!
When I began to see this yesterday, I said, Ah, weve struck gold! I dont even know why, but it was the way you presented the thing, the way you explained that the most unconscious and the most conscious meet.1 That was the the thread or the key, I dont know. Then I followed the thread and came to this experience. And its still going on today.
--
It is not surprising, t herefore, 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 shep herds were barbarous enough to fear that one inauspicious day their sun might no longer rise, stolen away once and for all. Only here and t here, in a few of the more modern hymns, was t here 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 shep herds to the wisdom of Greek philosop hers. We cannot assume that t here was nothing between the early savage and Plato or the Upanishads.5
***
--
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 furt her. And soon we reach a mental frontier w here t here 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 ot her, 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 t here. 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 t here 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 ot hers 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, w here t here is no longer suffering nor falsehood nor death: it is immortality, amritam.
***
All is reconciled. The Rishi is the son of two mot hers: son of Aditi, the luminous cow, Mot her of infinite Light, creatrix of the worlds; and son as well of Diti, the black cow, Mot her 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 w here high meets lowand in truth, t here is no longer high nor low, but a single Sun everyw here: O Flame, thou goest to the ocean of Heaven, towards the gods; thou makest to meet toget her 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).
0 1961-11-05, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
No, its not true! This was never intended, never! The Arya was bilingual, one part in French and one in English, but it was one and the same magazine published here in Pondic herry. T here was never any question of publishing anything in France; this is incorrect, entirely falsea myth. Besides, it was I who translated the English into French, and rat her poorly at that!
I have noticed that as soon as one speaks of Richard one is unwittingly led to tell lies. Thats why I am so terribly careful to avoid the subject.
--
Once t here (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!
It was certainly Sri Aurobindos power that made Richard decide to leave. For twelve years I had been Richards guru (thats w here our relationship stood), but I hadnt succeeded in converting him, and when we came back here I said, Im through with it. Ive tried and Ive failed. Ive failed completely. Ask Sri Aurobindo. When Sri Aurobindo took him in hand, that was anot her story. He couldnt take i the left.
But the whole affair was diabolic, you know; it had turned into something fantastic.
--
This man clearly led a rat her 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 t here! 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 inco herent, all that. After a few months I was finally informed that I was divorced, which was rat her 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 t here 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 fat her 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.
--
here in Pondic herry, those last days might have become tragic (but of course it was impossible). T here was the great argument (for he was perfectly aware of who I was): But after all, he would tell me, since you are the eternal Mot her, why have you chosen Aurobindo as Avatar? Choose me! You must choose meme! It was the Asura speaking through him. I would smile and not discuss it. Thats not how its done! I would tell him (laughing). Then one day he said, Ah, so you dont want to. (gesture to the throat) Well, if you dont choose me, then. He was a strong fellow with powerful hands. I kept quite calm and said inwardly, My Lord, my Lord. I called Sri Aurobindo and I saw him come, like that (gesture enveloping Mot her and immobilizing everything). Then Richards hands loosened their grip.
T here were marks on my neck.
0 1961-11-06, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
[This letter survived because Mot her returned it with her reply written on the reverse.]
Sweet Mot her,
0 1961-11-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
T here 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 (t here 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, anot her classification (I dont remember it), but even so, the experience was identical. And like that, she successively left twelve different bodies, one after anot her. 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 t here, 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 t here, 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 t here was no furt her 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 (t here 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.
--
I think I made this experiment in 1904, so when I arrived here it was all a work accomplished and a well-known domain; and when the question of finding the Supermind came up, I had only to resume an experience I was used to I had learned to repeat it at will, through successive exteriorizations. It was a voluntary process.
When I returned from Japan and we began to work toget her, 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.
--
One thing is certainas soon as one goes beyond the terrestrial atmosp here, beyond the hig her minds highest region, the sensation of high and low totally vanishes. T here are no longer movements of ascent and descent, but (Mot her turns her hand over) something like inner reversals.
I think the problem arises only when you try to see and understand with the mental consciousness, even with the hig her mind.
I am telling you this because, as soon as I got your letter, I replied with what Ill read to you now; then I was immediately faced with something I couldnt formulate, the kind of thing that gives you the feeling of the unknown (all I knew was my own experience). So I did the usual thingbecame blank, turned towards the Truth; and I questioned Sri Aurobindo and beyondasking, if t here were something to be known, that it be told to me. Then I dropped it, I paid no more attention. And only as I was coming here today was I told I cant really use the word told, but anyway, what was communicated to me concerning your question was that the difference between the two processes [the Rishis and the present one] is purely subjective, depending upon the way the experience is registered. I dont know if I can make myself clear. T here is something which is the experience and which will be the Realization; and what appears to be a different, if not opposite, process is simply a subjective mental notation of one SINGLE experience. Do you follow?
Thats what I was told.
--
In January 1925, mot her had an inflammation of the knee. On May 25 of the same year, Sri Aurobindo noted in a letter, 'The condition here is not very good. I am at present fighting the difficulties on the physical plane.' (Cited by A.B. Purani, Life of Sri Aurobindo, p. 203.) Note that in 1925 the Nazi Party was founded.
We aren't sure, but this may refer to the experience of July 12, 1960, or to that of November 5, 1958, 'the almighty spring' (in fact, they are probably one and the same experience) which gave rise to the 1959 New Year Message: 'At the very bottom of the Inconscient, most hard and rigid and narrow and stifling, I struck upon an almighty spring that cast me up forthwith into a formless, limitless Vast, vibrating with the seeds of a new world.'
0 1961-11-12, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mot her nods her head.)
And in the whole last part, t here are at least twenty pages like that, with things that need to be perfected. Its a matter of a few little detailsif I knew what to do with them, everything would fall into place.
--
Yes, I have some things here, if you want.
What?
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.
--
(Mot her sits at the organ, plays, then turns halfway around on her stool and says:)
I shut my eyes (thats how I hear best) but then sometimes my fingers make mistakes; they slip. Because I see with ot her eyes; and when I do see with those ot her eyes, the music comes much better. When I open my eyes it doesnt come. Its always with eyes closed that I hear clearly, clearly. But then my fingers sometimes slip.
--
But then here I am, watching it all, enjoying myself immensely! Its very interesting.
(To Sujata) Look, I almost have a bruise on my arm!
--
(Mot her runs her hands over the keyboard)
T here was a hand t here and two kinds of trumpets going O-Oh! (Mot her plays)
--
When Mot her was asked for a New Year message, the first inspiration that came to her when she began to 'look' at the coming year was this:
'If the Lord wills that a calamity befall you, why should you protest? Take it as a blessing and in fact it will become one.'
0 1961-12-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
We shall publish it here, taking out the unnecessary pictureshaving only a few will make the book more interesting.
I suppose you can return their money and cancel the contract but reserve the right to print the book yourself, changing the presentation to avoid any confusion with their collection.
0 1961-12-20, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
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.
They want to tidy up your book, do they! They cant take it. I saw this when the book was sent off: they cant take it, they just cant. They put up a barrier; they cant receive what is in it, and so they will do all they can to annul its effects.
Coming from here, of course, it will take much more time to touch the general public, but I see how things work in the universe: it will go far more surely and directly to those who are ready to receive it. And we mustnt believe that only an elite public of especially intelligent and refined people will be touched: among very simple, open-hearted people t here is a deep intelligence that understands and responds to these things far better than very cultivated people dofar betterbecause they feel, they feel the vibration of this profound Hope, this profound Joy, something corresponding to the intense need of their being. While the ot hers begin to reason and sophisticate, which takes away half the power.
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 publis her 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. T here is always the sense of it needing a hundred years to have its full effect. With your publis her, on the ot her hand, the effects are far more violent, more external and noisy, but they fade far more quickly.
And I feel its rat her essential to change all the emphasis on pictures. I let them go because t here 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.
--
I am seeing this book now. I see it. But when I leave here, with that whole throng around me and all that work to do, it will fade away. I would need to be very quiet, have nothing to do, and just write when it comes to me; because I cannot do things in a logical fashion I have never been able to, never. The experience must come suddenlya memory, an experience then I note it down, put it aside and leave it. And when anot her comes, the same thing. In this way t here would be (smiling) no plan to the book! It would be very simple: no plan of ideas, no plan of development, nothing; simply a story.
For example, the importance of the departure2: how he was present the whole time I was away; how he guided my entire life in Japan; how. Of course, it would be seen in the mirror of my own experience, but it would be Sri Aurobindonot me, not my reactions: him; but through my experience because thats all I can speak of.
--
I feel that it will be done one daywhen that Person does the writing. But now t here is still too much mixture, too much of this (Mot her touches her body), this collection of little t heres still too much reaction from the small physical personnot in what I might say but in the BRAIN that would have to transcribe it.
But something else could be done. Its a great pity you never met him. Perhaps its best. Its very difficult to rise above appearances.3
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 brot her), 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, w here 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 rat her 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?!
--
Then when Richard came here he met Sri Aurobindo (he was haunted by the idea of meeting the Master, the Guru, the Great Teac her). 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, t here 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 t here, 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 t here was a fusion the decisive shock.
But this was merely the beginning of my vision. Only after a series of experiencesa ten months sojourn in Pondic herry, five years of separation, then the return to Pondic herry and the meeting in the same house and in the same waydid the END of the vision occur. I was standing just beside him. My head wasnt exactly on his shoulder, but w here his shoulder was (I dont know how to explain itphysically t here was hardly any contact). We were standing side by side like that, gazing out through the open window, and then TOGET her, at exactly the same moment, we felt, Now the Realization will be accomplished. That the seal was set and the Realization would be accomplished. I felt the Thing descending massively within me, with the same certainty I had felt in my vision. From that moment on t here was nothing to sayno words, nothing. We knew it was THAT.
--
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 w here we were living, near a lake. T here 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 Mot her makes an abrupt gesture showing a sudden ingat hering 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 t here was nothing to be done that it was impossible, impossible to do it this way. T here 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 t here: 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 gat hered me into its arms; it turned towards the West, towards India, and offered meand t here at the ot her 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 rat her 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 feel it will be told one day. But first of all, this (Mot her touches her body) must be sufficiently changed. Then the story will take on its full value.
You understand, none of my certitudesnone, without exceptionhave EVER come through the mind. The intellectual comprehension of each of these experiences came much later. Little by little, little by little, came the hig her understanding of the intellectual consciousness, long after the experience (I dont mean philosophical knowledge thats nothing but scholarly mumbo-jumbo and leaves me cold). Since my earliest childhood, experiences have come like that: something massive takes hold of you and you dont need to believe or disbelieve, know or not knowbam! T heres nothing to say; you are facing a fact.
--
For the moment, its not here.
(silence)
--
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.
0 1961-12-23, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
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 t heres also this phenomenon, amiably passing from one being to anot her!) Anyway, not long ago I had given an appointment to this woman and had decided not to say anythingbecause t here was nothing to be done (the most beautiful things go rotten, t heres 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). T here was only the Supreme, nothing else the Supreme T herE, in that very body, mon petit, in that whole agglomeration and in that apparently absolutely anti-divine influenceHIS Presence was t here!
--
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 matter her central will acted upon matter anyw here, since she WAS T herE. 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.
Well, I have understood. And now I know w here I stand.
--
Satprem did not keep the full text of his reply, still under the erroneous impression that his personal questions had no place here.
Prakriti: Nature or the executive force, as opposed to Purusha, the conscious Soul which sees, knows and creates through its vision. These are the two principles, feminine and masculine, of the universe.
See Agenda of March 26, 1959 (Vol. I, p. 288): the Titan sent especially to attack Mot her's body, and who uses the people around her for this purpose.
One of Mot her's personalities.
0 1962-01-09, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
T heres a seat in my bathroom upstairs, and between the seat and the wall are two small tables (not tables, but small stools w here a few things are kept), and a porcelain towel bar (luckily, everything has rounded corners). I found myself wedged in between the seat and the two small tables (a space about this wide!). And all that matter the material substance of the table and the objects on the table and the porcelain seatit all seemed so unreceptive! It doesnt give way like it should for things to be comfortable; but it wasnt that my body was uncomfortable t here was no body! The whole set-up was bizarre, everything was in a bizarre and absurd situation which I couldnt really understand, couldnt make out: Whats this big lump doing here, I seemed to be wondering, taking up so much room, getting in the way?
My elbow had ended up leaning on a little plastic tray I have t here, w here I keep pencils, ball-point pens, note pads and so forth. The body was leaning on this tray, evidently trying to get up, and the whole thing started cracking noisily under the weight. And in a diffuse but very clear consciousness I was saying to myself, But why? Whats all this ridiculous noise? And whats this heavy thing doing? What disorder. T here shouldnt be such disorder. And it went on crack-crack-cracking. Then suddenly normal consciousness returnedto be exact, what returned was the normal RELATIONSHIP consciousness has with thingsand I said, Well, really! What a ridiculous situation! What is this elbow doing on that tray? It should realize its breaking it! And when things were all completely back to normal I told my body, What are you doing, you idiot! Come on, pick yourself up, get moving! Immediately, docile as a little child, it extricated itself, turned around, and stood up straightquite straight. I had scratched my knee, scratched my elbow, and taken three knocks on the head. Luckily t here were no sharp edgesit was all hard enough, but no sharp edges. Anyway, in the end I was all right, no damage done.
--
here, mon petit,5 Ive been given something very good! (Mot her laughs and gives Satprem a tin of perhaps it was foie gras.)
Ive been slacking off too.
--
And suddenly I said to myself, How could it be? During all the time he was here, the time we were toget her (after I came back from Japan, when we were toget her), life, life on earth, lived such a wondrous divine possibility, so really so unique, something it had never lived to such an extent and in such a way, for thirty years, and it didnt even notice!
That.
--
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?
--
Yesterday evening I read something in the book9. Sri Aurobindo is writing to someone who said, How lucky people are who live near the Mot her. You dont know what youre talking about! he replies. To live in the Mot hers physical presence is one of the most difficult things. Do you remember this passage? I didnt know he had written that. Well, well I thought. He writes, It is hard to stay near her, because the difference between the physical consciousness of all you people and her physical consciousness is so enormous.10 Indeed, thats what tires me out. Thats what tires my body, because it is used to living in a certain rhythm, a universal rhythm.
(silence)
--
So here we are againwe wont get much work done today! Do you have any questions [on Sri Aurobindos Aphorisms]?
(Satprem reads:)
--
It always revolves around the same thing, but here its presented in a very subtle way.
To c herish in secret the sense of sin. No, I cant say Ive had that experience, in the sense that I have never had a very pronounced love of virtue.
--
So its a bit difficult for me to identify with the feeling Sri Aurobindo describes here; it doesnt correspond to anything in me. I understand, of course! I understand very well what he means. But to identify with that sentiment.
But tell me what you wanted to say.
--
here is the text of Sri Aurobindo's letter: "T here is a confusion here. The Mot her's grace is one thing, the call to change anot her, the pressure of nearness to her is yet anot her. Those who are physically near to her are not so by any special grace or favour, but by the necessity of their work that is what everybody here refuses to understand or believe, but it is the fact: that nearness acts automatically as a pressure, if for nothing else, to adapt their consciousness to hers which means change, but it is difficult for them because the difference between the two consciousnesses is enormous especially on the physical level and it is on the physical level that they are meeting her in the work."
Centenary Edition, Vol. XXV, p. 297
0 1962-01-12 - supramental ship, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Once and for all it has swept away all these notionsnot merely ordinary moral notions, but everything people here in India consider necessary for the spiritual life. In that respect, it was very instructive. And first and foremost, this so-called ascetic purity. Ascetic purity is merely the rejection of all vital movements. Instead of taking these movements and turning them towards the Divine, instead of seeing, that is, the supreme Presence in them (and so letting the Supreme deal with them freely), He is told (laughing): Noits none of Your business! You have no say in it.
As for the physical, its an old and well-known storyascetics have always rejected it; but they also reject the vital. And theyre all like that here, even X may have changed somewhat by now, but at the beginning he was no different eit her. Only things classically recognized as holy or admitted by religious tradition were accepted the sanctity of marriage, for example, and things like that. But a free life? Not a chance! It was wholly incompatible with religious life.
Well, all that has been completely swept away, once and for all.
--
And, over and above this, for the realization to be total, t here are two ot her conditions, which arent easy eit her. 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, t heres 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 hig her 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 ot her day.2
--
I voluntarily renounced all that in order to go furt her. And when I did it, I understood what people here in India mean when they say: he surrendered his experience. I had never really understood what that meant. When I did it, I understood. No, I said, I dont want to stop t here; I am giving it all to You, that I may go on to the end. Then I understood what it meant.
Had I kept it, oh I would have become one of those world-renowned phenomena, turning the course of the earths history upside down! A stupendous power! Stupendous, unheard-of. But it meant stopping t here, accepting that experience as final I went on.
--
Anot her thing I didnt mention to you when I related the experience was that the ship had no engine. Everything was set in motion through will powerpeople, things (even the clothes people wore were a result of their will). And this gave all things and every persons shape a great suppleness, because t here was an awareness of this willwhich is not a mental will but a will of the Self, what could be called a spiritual will or a soul-will (to give the word soul that particular meaning). I have that experience right here when t heres an absolute spontaneity in action, I mean when the action for instance, an utterance or a movementis not determined by the mind, and not even (not to mention thought or intellect), not even by the mind that usually sets us in motion. Generally, when we do something, we can perceive in ourselves a will to do it; when you watch yourself, you see this: t here is always (it can happen in a flash) the will to do. When you are conscious and watch yourself doing something, you see in yourself the will to do itthis is w here the mind intervenes, its normal intervention, the established order in which things happen. But the supramental action is decided by a leap over the mind. The action is direct, with no need to go through the mind. Something enters directly into contact with the vital centers and activates them without going through the mindyet in full consciousness. The consciousness doesnt function in the usual sequence, it functions from the center of spiritual will straight to matter.
And so long as you can keep that absolute immobility in the mind, the inspiration is absolutely pureit comes pure. When you can catch and hold onto this while youre speaking, then what comes to you is unmixed too, it stays pure.
--
here, take your piece of paperits nothing but an intellectual notation.
(Later, as Mot her is leaving)
--
That was the idea: for a few beings to first attain, here in this physical world, a level of realization giving them the power to materialize a supramental being.
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: t here 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.
And without this quality, well the creations continuity could not be assured.
--
Mot her 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
But its really interesting because the exact date was given. The revolution will take place in exactly five years, he told me. He knew it before he left. And that, he continued, will be the beginning, the first terrestrial movement heralding the transformation of. (Theon didnt use the word supramental; he used to talk about the new world on earth.)2
But I did note that down.
--
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 Mot her 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 fat her, a prelude to his revolutionary career.
***
0 1962-01-21, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
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 t here always be this deeply painful sense of the nondivine, of the state that, compared with the one to come, is not divine? Wont t here always be what we call adverse forces, in ot her 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 the same experience when I told Sri Aurobindo that India was free; it was the Universal Mot her speaking from what could be called her originit was from that level and the thing took thirty-five years to come down on Earth.
When I had the experience that the time had come for the supramental Force to descend on Earth, I followed the effects of that descent, I followed the effects and the consequences in my consciousness. But to ordinary eyes it was something like what happened with Indias liberationits possible, of course, that the Supermind did come down, but for the moment its effects are more than veiled.
--
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 hig her 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 hig her 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 hig her guidance, keeping always the right attitude; for ot herwise 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 hig her 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.
--
I find it difficult to take these psycho-analysts at all seriously when they try to scrutinise spiritual experience by the flicker of their torch-lights,yet perhaps one ought to, for half-knowledge is a powerful thing and can be a great obstacle to the coming in front of the true Truth. This new psychology looks to me very much like children learning some summary and not very adequate alphabet, exulting in putting their a-b-c-d of the subconscient and the mysterious underground super-ego toget her and imagining that their first book of obscure beginnings (c-a-t cat, t-r-e-e tree) is the very heart of the real knowledge. They look from down up and explain the hig her lights by the lower obscurities; but the foundation of these things is above and not below, upari budhna esam. The superconscient, not the subconscient, is the true foundation of things. The significance of the lotus is not to be found by analysing the secrets of the mud from which it grows here; its secret is to be found in the heavenly archetype of the lotus that blooms for ever in the Light above. The self-chosen field of these psychologists is besides poor, dark and limited; you must know the whole before you can know the part and the highest before you can truly understand the lowest. That is the promise of the greater psychology awaiting its hour before which these poor gropings will disappear and come to nothing.4
Questioned about the meaning of these words, Mot her said, "The state I was in was like a memory."
--
When Satprem published extracts from this conversation in the Ashram Bulletin of April 1962, Mot her had this passage modified (over his protests). Instead of "Do not try to be virtuous," she put "Do not try to seem virtuous"; and she added: "T here's a drawback here. People never understand anything, or rat her they understand everything in their own way. They would take this sentence as an encouragement to get into mischief, to misbehave, to entertain wrong feelings, and then proclaim, 'We are the Lord's favorites!' ... T here was something like it in one of Sri Aurobindo's letters, you remembera letter to people who wanted to bring all the impurities in themselves out to the surface; he told them that was definitely not the way!" (See Sri Aurobindo's two letters on psychoanalysis in the Addendum)
Letters on Yoga, Cent. Ed., XXIV. 1605 ff.
0 1962-01-24, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Id rat her you read it yourself, because my English. I found it really striking these four lines here.
(Mot her reads:)
--
A Mot hers eyes are on them and her arms
Stretched out in love desire her rebel sons.1
Yes, thats it.
0 1962-01-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
What did you want to ask? What was it that the white gods had missed? But Sri Aurobindo has written it all down in full, right here in the Aphorisms. He has mentioned everything, taken up one thing after anot her: Without this, t here would not have been that; without this, t here would not have been that and so on.1
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 w here I first learned of the universal Mot hers first four emanations, when the Lord delegated his creative power to the Mot her. 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 Mot her 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 Mot her 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 t here (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, rat her lacking in initiative. They do have some, but.
--
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 t here 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, rat her slowly, in a rat her low voice, but it works quite well). She would speak and a friend of hers, anot her 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 ot her, one body after the ot her, and so on twelve times. And my experienceapart from certain quite negligible differences, doubtless due to differences in the receiving brainwas exactly the same.
--
I dont know if those experiences have been described in traditional scriptures. I havent read any I know nothing of Indian literature, nothing at all. I only know what Sri Aurobindo has said, plus a few odds and ends from here and t here. And each time I found myself faced with their vocabulary oh, it really puts you off!
You speak of exteriorizationcouldnt you show me a simple way of learning to do it?
--
I did try once in Francewith Hohlenberg, that painter who came here during the war [World War I] and then had to go back.2
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 t here, 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.
--
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 Mot her 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 Mot her's mantra!" And the moment Satprem began to recite the mantra, the whole place explodedblown to smit hereens. 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
(A visitor has written to Mot her about her difficulties, saying she is the victim of a "collective karma.")
Those karma stories.
--
I mean, if they themselves discover the experiences they had in their past life, then its part of a whole inner, psychic awakening, and very useful. But if some guru or ot her comes along and tells you, here, this was your karma. I dont think its useful, to put it mildly!
If you discover the line of a former life on your own, thats different; its part of an inner, psychic awakening, and its very good. But I dont think its helpful when someone sees something and comes and tells you, You know, you have been this, you have done that. I feel it makes things worse instead of betterit puts you back in touch with things you were in the process of eliminating.
--
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, t here are all the links you have with people youve known in past lives; in that sense, yes, t here is a collective karma! But really, people use such big words and big ideas for things that are actually quite natural.
Yet I found it helpful to have some understanding of what happened in my ot her lives.
Because you were here.
Because before you were told about your karma, I had already seen certain things about you and was trying to set you freenot from the thing itself, but from the tendency that remained in your nature. That, yes.
But Sujata, for example, was completely, COMPLETELY free of the whole (what shall I say?) what could be called the unhappy aspect of her karmacompletely free. For I know the people around me and what they carry with them very well, and t here was nothingjust one thing remained, the one part that was rat her constructive, so I had left that totally intact. And when the events of her past life were revealed to her, I took the greatest care to destroy the revelation as it was being given. And I did it ruthlessly. You see, it was like dumping a load of mud on someone completely unsullied, and I didnt let it happen (I couldnt stop what entered through her physical brain, but inwardly I utterly annihilated it). The only thing I left untouched was the constructive part of the bond that had existed between you two, and so when she met you, she. Thats all I left, because it was good, pure, lovelyit was good. But all the rest. And you saw how strongly I protested when I was told she had committed suicide. No, no, no! I said; even if somebody with perfect knowledge were to tell me so, Id still say NO.
She is untainted by all thatpure and I wont stand for someone pure to be soiled. She was so much my child that after her death everything was carefully cleansed, arranged, put back in place, organized, purified. So she returned unblemished and pure, and I dont want her soiled.
You see, a grace is actually working to drive those karmas away sometimes far, far away and its no good to call them back.
--
It happened again recently: K.s sister came because she had lost her sonit had just occurred and he was still here (he hadnt left yet). So I arranged everything, saw to the mot hers condition and so forth; I arranged it all nicely, very carefully keeping the son here and telling his mot her he would shortly return in some family member. Everything was well organized.
But naturally that was against the rules I make a habit of doing everything against the rules, ot herwise t here would be no point in my being here; the rules could just go on and on! So they went to see X. They shouldnt have said anything, but they did. And that was thatall sorts of things were said and my work was completely mucked up.
So now its all going according to rule, because thats the way it has to be. I am not bot hering with it any more.
--
This analogy is very apt down here on this plane, but for the hig her realms it doesnt applyup t here its just the opposite! As long as you remain the arc her, touching one point, thats how it is; all intelligence below is like that, seeing all sorts of possibilities, so it cant make a choice and act. To see the whole target, the all-inclusive Truth, you must cross to the ot her side. And when you do, what you see is not the sum of countless truths, an innumerable quantity of truths added toget her and viewed one after anot her, making it impossible to grasp the whole at a glance; when you go above, its the whole you see first, AT A GLANCE, in its entirety, without division. So t here is no longer any choice to be made; its a vision: THAT is to be done. The choice is no longer between this and that, it doesnt work that way any more. Things are no longer seen in succession, one after anot her; t here is rat her a simultaneous vision of a whole that exists as a unit. The choice is simply a vision.
As long as youre not in that state, you cant see the whole. The whole cant be seen successively, by adding one truth to anot her; this is precisely what the mind does, and why it is incapable of seeing the whole. It cant do it. The mind will always see things in succession, by addition, but thats not IT, something will always elude you the very sense of truth will elude you.
--
Thats what I have been studying these past two daysnot for you in particular, but the general effect of japa, the reason for it in the organization of ones life. I cant say I have made any discoveries (maybe for myself, I dont know); but my study is not on hig her levels, its right here.
It would take too long to give the details; I can summarize, but I dont want to make a doctrine, and for it to be living its bound to be long.
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, eit her 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.)
T here 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 anot her portion puts it in contact with ot her parts and activities of the being; but one portion of sleep is exclusively for maintaining the bodys balance. Then t here 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 ot her bodily activities are used for personal pleasure and benefit. The spiritual man, on the ot her 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 ot her 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.)
--
In fact, without knowing anything, Satprem had sensed a kind of warrior, very luminous and white, reminding him of the god Kartik, son of the Universal Mot her, armed with a spear. Later, Mot her said that her vital being was a "diamond-warrior."
Japa: the continuous repetition of a mantra.
0 1962-02-06, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
These past few days I have been reading Perseus1it was performed here, so I knew a little of it but it never much interested me. But reading it the way I read now, I have found it VERY interesting, I have discovered all kinds of things, all kinds.
Yes, I have noticed that in the space of (I dont remember when we performed it,2 you were already here) between then and now t here is at least a good fifty years differencea fifty-year change in consciousness.
But in practice, I am always up against the same problem.
--
Generally speaking, the antidivine is easily understood, but in the minute details of daily life, how do you choose between this and that? What is the truth behind the thing you choose and the one you dont choose? And you know, my standpoint is totally beyond any question of egoistic, individual will that isnt the problem here. Its not that.
As soon as you try to say it, it evaporates.
--
Is it a problem for action here in matter?
Yes, thats what everything always boils down to.
--
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. (Mot her places her palms toget her 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 ot her 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 Mot her an urgent question)
--
Thats how it is: I wasnt here, yet all the same, physicallyPHYSICALLYI saw something passing by. My eyes were closed, werent they?
Yes, you must have felt something.
--
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 Mot her 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
Take Z, for instanceshe told me that Maharshi1 wrote in his book that if I were Hindu and did asanas every day, all India would be at my feet! This has certainly been Zs biggest difficulty: it was easy to come here, she could speak to me perfectly freely, I didnt behave mysteriously. So of course, it was too simple!
***
0 1962-02-13, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
At that time, I had the sense of a hig her way of living: I used to make a distinction between different ways of life. Now this so-called hig her way of living seems so miserable to meso petty, mean, narrow that I very often find myself in the same position as those who ask, But is t here really something to it? And I understand them (even though I have a different will and vision of something to come that is not yet here), I understand the feeling of those who came into contact with spiritual life and asked, What good is itwhat good is it? Is t here anything worth living in it? We are NECESSARILY hemmed in, bound to live in narrowness and pettiness simply to keep alive, for the sake of all the bodys needs.
It takes such an effort to bring Light into this poverty, to bring a Force, a Reality, a Power, something, good Lord, something TRUE! Through constant effort and will, constant tension, suddenly, ah! I get two or three seconds and then it all ebbs away again.
In that former illusion, t here were noble actions, generous actions, great, heroic actions, all adding color to life and capable of giving you some interesting hours. Now that too is gone: I see it all as childishness.
I understand very well that this present state is necessary for getting out of it. For as long as something seems normal, natural, acceptable, t heres no escaping it. You have one life on the side and then this [the life in the body], thats the way people with a spiritual life always lived: they had their spiritual life and let this continue on automatically, without attaching any importance to itits very easy.
--
I cant express it the minute you try to express it, most of it evaporates. And even if I did tell what little I could, surely a good nine and a half people out of ten would say, Shes batty! If I spoke to the people here that way, they would probably say, Shes soft in the head!
Strange. This morning it was strange, for both were t here: the feeling of physical weaknessalmost a physical decomposition and AT THE SAME TIME, SIMULTANEOUSLY (not even one behind the ot her, but both toget her), a glory of divine splendor.
--
Yes, I too have quite often thought that someone should come here who.
who knows.
--
In fact, in the Agenda conversations of 1958 and '59 (never noted by Satprem because he believed them too "personal"), Mot her 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 Mot her the secrets of transformation; and Mot her indicated to him the spot w here 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 ot herwiseone's very nature must change. No one could help Mot her because if someone "knew," it would already be done.
Mot her means that it wasn't possible for Sri Aurobindo to continue.
0 1962-02-17, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
T here arent a lot of people, it isnt crowded: a few from here, a few from t here, like a place of study.
But t heres probably no link with this in your consciousness; t here must be gaps on the way back, so you dont remember. You receive it only as an inspiration, not through your regular continuous consciousness.
--
I climb not to thy everlasting Day... Earth is the chosen place of mightiest souls; Earth is the heroic spirit's battlefield... Thy servitudes on earth are greater, king, Than all the glorious liberties of heaven... Oh, to spread forth, oh to encircle and seize More hearts till love in us has filled thy world!... Are t here not still a million fights to wage?
Savitri, XI,1 (Cent. Ed. XXIX. 686).
0 1962-02-24, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The 19th was so-so, and on the 20th I was concentrated all day long: no contacts with anyone, nothing external, only an intense invocation as intense and concentrated as when youre trying to melt into the Lord at death. It was like that. The same movement of identification, but at its core a will for everything to work out in a good way here [on the material plane]. In a good way I mean I said to the Lord, YOUR Good, the true Good, not. The true Good, a victorious Good, a real progress over the way life is usually lived. And I stayed in this unwavering concentration the whole day, all the time, all the time: even when I spoke, it was something very external speaking. And then at night when I went to bed I felt something had changed the body felt completely different. When I got up in the morning, all the pains and disorders and dangers had vanished. Lord, I said, You have given me a gift of health.
And with this change, the bodily substance, the very stuff of the cells, was constantly being told, Dont you forget, now you see that miracles CAN happen. In ot her words, the way things work out in physical substance may not at all conform to the laws of Nature. Dont forget, now! It kept coming back like a refrain: Dont forget, now! This is how it is. And I saw how necessary this repetition was for the cells: they forget right away and try to find explanations (oh, how stupid can you be!). Its a sort of feeling (not at all an individual way of thinking), its Matters way of thinking. Matter is built like that, its part of its make-up. We call it thinking for lack of a better word, but its not thinking: it is a material way of understanding things, the way Matter is able to understand.
--
You can achieve excellent control of the heart. But I never practiced it violently, never strained myself. I think holding for 16 is too long. I used to do it simply like this: brea the in very slowly to the count of 4, then hold for 4 like this (I still have the knack of it!), lifting the diaphragm and lowering the head8 (Mot her bends her neck), closing everything and exerting pressure (this is an almost instantaneous cure for hiccupsits handy!). Then while I held the air, I would make it circulate with the force (because it contained force, you see) and with the peace as well; and I would concentrate it w herever t here was a physical disorder (a pain or something wrong somew here). Its very effective. The way I did it was: inhale, hold, exhale and emptyyou are completely empty. Its very useful; very handy for underwater swimmers, for instance!
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.
0 1962-02-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mot her shakes her head)
I did prepare something, it goes like this: in sleep one can have a very exact knowledge of what is going to happen, sometimes with astonishingly accurate material details; its as if everything were already worked out down to the least detail on an occult plane. Is this correct? What is this plane of knowledge? Is t here more than one? How can one gain conscious access to it in the waking state? And how is it that serious people, who have a divine realization, are sometimes so grossly mistaken in their predictions?
--
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 t here 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.
--
This type of thing has happened to me very, very oftenfour times with snakes. T here was one incident here near the fishing village of Ariankuppam, a place w here 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 w here I was casually going to put my foot. Those fellows dont like that sort of thing! It slit hered 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!
I have had hundreds and hundreds of experiences like thatinformed just at the last moment (not one second too soon)and in very different circumstances. Once in Paris I was crossing the Boulevard Saint Michel (I had resolved to attain union with the psychic presence, the inner Divine, within a certain number of months, and these were the last weeks I was thinking of nothing but that, engrossed in that alone). I lived near the Luxembourg Gardens and was going t here for a stroll, to sit in the gardens that eveningstill indrawn. I came to a kind of intersectionnot a very sensible place to cross when youre interiorized! So, in that state, I started to cross when all of a sudden I had a shock, as if something had hit me, and I instinctively jumped back. As I jumped back a streetcar rushed by. I had felt the streetcar at a little more than arms length. It had touched my aura, the protective aura (that aura was very strong at the time I was deep into occultism and knew how to maintain it). My protective aura was touched, and it literally threw me backwards, just like a physical shock. Accompanied by the drivers insults!
0 1962-03-03, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
heres a strange aphorism.
Ah! Read it to me.
76Europe prides herself on her practical and scientific organisation and efficiency. I am waiting till her organisation is perfect; then a child shall destroy her.
Thats embarrassing.
0 1962-03-06, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Really, I dont understand anything any more. I dont understand. I have absolute faith in Something Else thats always been t here, it doesnt waver. But t here seems to be no progress. I see nothing ahead of me, nothing behind me, nothing. I dont know, Ive already been here a good number of years and I dont feel Ive made an inch of progress, nothing I see nothing. Not that Im losing faith, thats my only reason for living; without this certainty of Something Else, I would kill myself. But practically speaking.
T here are periods like that.
--
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 (Mot her clenches her fists), keeping hold of this body and body-consciousness. And the whole time the Force was at work t here (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; t here 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 noset here was no escaping it, it had to be admitted. But you know what, mon petit, as soon as I let up on the pressureforgotten!
I remember the whole experience, of course, but the body-consciousness forgot. The slightest difficulty, even the shadow or the recollection of a difficulty, was enough for it to start up all over again: Oh oh! Now whats going to happen? The same old anxieties and stupidities.
--
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 ot hers! I myself never lose eit her 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!
--
I used to say the same thing. When Sri Aurobindo was here I used to tell everybody, I am not a saint and dont want to be a saint! And look what has happened to me!
You have to be an unsaintly saint.
0 1962-03-11, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
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.
You do say a couple of words about it.
--
The ot her day, didnt I tell you the story of those entities working for me? (It wasnt you? Id had a vision.) In fact, I very often see entities like Nature spirits when I enter the subtle physical and work t here (usually for people here and the Ashram, and for the world at large), I very, very often have them with me, or else I meet them in the course of my work. They are forces, generally feminine in appearance, that do some work and have a great deal of power. They are usually the ones that respond to Tantric invocations (I dont mean the Tantrics who call on Kali or Durga, thats something else altoget her, those belong to a totally different world). Most of the time these Nature forces are very willing to helpat any rate, they are wonderfully obliging with me! But they are limited beings, with their own ideas and laws, their own volition, and when vexed they can do unpleasant things. Yet they are not hostile beings, nor are they vital beings: they are personified forces of physical Nature, in the subtle physical.
A world of things could be said.
0 1962-03-13, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Satprem voices various complaints, then adds:) And then to top it off, the ot her day you tell me this Agenda isnt interesting eit her, that its not worth keeping. So what am I doing here?
What? Whats not worth keeping?
--
No, obviously not. But you said it didnt interest you and it should be filed away in a corner or I dont know what. So what am I doing here?
You surely misunderstood me. I said its unpublishable for the time being; thats quite different.
--
Instead of putting on grand airs and saying its difficult, I make jokes. But its something else entirely. I dont like drama I just dont like it. The greatest, loftiest, noblest, most sublime things can be said with simplicity. T heres no need to be dramatic, to see things tragically. I dont want to be a victim or a hero or or a martyr or anything of the kind!
How well I understand!
--
Listen, I told you onceit wasnt just wordsand I thought you understood and would remember: everything I write is absolutely dependent on your work, in the sense that if you werent here I wouldnt write anot her wordjust letters with I send you my blessings. Period. Not that I dont have time or cant do it, but I dont enjoy it. When we do something toget her, when we write, I get the feeling its complete and has a certain quality that makes it useful. When you arent here to write it, I feel something missing. So if you think its useless to do this for me, I am sorry that hurts!
No, of course not!
--
Because it comes from very highits not from here, not at all; it was decided on high, and a long, LONG time ago. Before you came here, I was constantly feeling. Besides, it hadnt been so long without Sri Aurobindo; when Sri Aurobindo was here I had nothing to say, and if I did speak it was almost by chance. Thats all. What had to be said was said by him. And when he left and I began to read his books (which I hadnt read before), I told myself, Well, what do you know! T here was absolutely no need for me to say anything. And I had less and less desire to speak. The minute I met you, I began to get interested. Ah, I thought, collaboration! Something interesting can be done.
None of this is random chance. Its not that were taking advantage of circumstances, not at all; it was DECREED.
0 1962-04-03, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Since March 16, Mot her has been going through a grave ordeal that threatened her physical existence. Even so, she went down to the balcony on the 18th and 20th of March, which were to be the last times. She has not left her room since then. All her conversations with Satprem will henceforth take place in her upstairs room. The latest attack occurred the previous night, April 2-3, and took the form of a total cardiac arrest. Despite her condition, this morning Mot her has found the strength to speak. She speaks in English. her words have been noted down from memory.)
Just between eleven and twelve [last night] I had an experience by which I discovered that t here is a group of peoplepurposely their identity was not revealed to mewanting to create a kind of religion based on the revelation of Sri Aurobindo. But they have taken only the side of power and force, a certain kind of knowledge and all which could be utilized by Asuric forces. T here is a big Asuric being that has succeeded in taking the appearance of Sri Aurobindo. It is only an appearance. This appearance of Sri Aurobindo has declared to me that the work I am doing is not his. It has declared that I have been a traitor to him and to his work and has refused to have anything to do with me.
--
(Sometime later, when the communication was read to her.)
The fight is within the body.
0 1962-04-13, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(After a perilous month, Mot her has suddenly had the formidable, decisive experience, and she gives her first message. She is lying on her bed in the room upstairs, and has become quite thin. It is around ten in the morning. her voice has greatly changed. Schoolchildren can be heard playing in the distance:)
Night of April 12-13.1
--
here Mot her begins speaking French.
Glory to You, Lord, Triumphant One supreme.
0 1962-05-08, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
1) That he will make a special four-day puja here, in order to help.
2) That he has understood: it has come to his [inner] knowledge that the present period is terrible.
0 1962-05-13, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(This is the first conversation with Mot her in two months. She is still reclining on her chaise longue. She looks quite pale and fragile, almost translucent. She enlarges upon the experience she had a month earlier, on April 13. The following text was not taped but noted down from memory and then read out to Mot her.)
I was at the Origin I WAS the Origin. For more than two hours, consciously, here on this bed, I was the Origin. And it was like gustslike great gusts ending in explosions. And each one of these gusts was a span of the universe.
It was Love in its supreme essencewhich has nothing to do with what people normally understand by that word.
--
Then began the process of descent,1 and the Voice was explaining it to me I lived through it all in detail, and it wasnt pleasant. It took an hour and a half to change from that true Consciousness to the individual consciousness. Because throughout the experience this present individuality no longer existed, this body no longer existed, t here were no more limits, I was no longer herewhat was here was THE PERSON. An hour and a half was needed to return to the body-consciousness (not the physical consciousness but the body-consciousness), to the individual body-consciousness.
The first sign of the return to individuality was a prick of pain, a tiny point (Mot her holds between her fingers a minuscule point in the space of her being). Yes, because I have a sore, a sore in a rat her awkward place, and it hurts2 (Mot her laughs). So I felt the pain: it was the sign of individuality coming back. Ot her than that, t here 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 (Mot her 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.
0 1962-05-15, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Did I tell you about it? It was a sort of vision that I took for a beginning of work on the subconscient. I had come to a place w here Sri Aurobindo was staying and found him closeted in his room. T here was a sort of large hall, an immense hall with rooms opening onto it, and his apartment was off to one side (gesture). I asked to see him. I was told it wasnt possible and I had to wait. I was astonished. Then certain things happened in the hall concerning A. and M. (rat her interesting things, but concerning them personally). And at the same time, I was waiting. When it was all over, I asked once again to go into the room. Then through the doorway I saw I saw a tall Sri Aurobindomuch taller than he actually wasstrong but rat her thin, thin in a way that not the way he really wasit was rat her a gauntness, very harsh, very cold; and he was somewhat darker than he used to be. I saw him t here, walking up and down; and when he was told I was asking to see him, I saw him in the distance saying, No, I dont want to see her. I wont acknowledge her and I dont want anything to do with hershe has betrayed me. Something like that (I couldnt hear the actual words, but the gestures were plain enough). Well, that was the very first timenothing of the kind had ever occurred before.
And I immediately felt that it was the expression of certain peoples thoughts. During the war t here was a whole clique (I know their names and all the details) who said I had influenced Sri Aurobindo, made him deviate from his nationalist path and turn towards the Allies; they considered me to have ruined his life, his consciousness, his workeverything, you understand.1
And I was seeing the very IMAGE of that in this vision. A person I wont name (but I spoke to him afterwards; hes still here) came out of the room to tell me all this. In my vision I told him two things (it seems very distant nowit was back in 59and I no longer recall if I told him one thing after the ot her or both toget her). First of all, I protested against everything that fake Sri Aurobindo was saying about me, and at the same time I was going towards the person coming out of the room (its someone living here, you know, who is, who was quite close to Sri Aurobindo. Apparently he was under the influence of certain doubting thoughts, certain doubts, thats why he was t here). I called him by name and spoke to him in English: But surely we have had a true spiritual relationship, a true union! Immediately he melted and said yes, and rushed headlong into my arms. In ot her words, that was his conversion, and thats why I spoke to him about it afterwards; I didnt tell him about the experience but I spoke of the doubt that was in him. It was truly a beginning of conversion in one part of his being, and for that reason I wont name him. And along with this, in answer to what that fake Sri Aurobindo was saying, I said forcefully (also in English): This means the negation of all spiritual experience! And immediately the whole scene, the whole construction, everythingpoof! Vanished, dissolved. The Force swept it all away.
Later, when I had that second vision April 3, 1962, I saw that the same being was behind this would-be Sri Aurobindo (and with a whole group organized around himpeople, ceremonies and so on). So from that I concluded that the thing had been developing. But when I first encountered those people [in 1959] it was merely something in the Subconscient and the effect was only psychological (an hour or two was enough to sort things out and put them in order). It didnt affect my health. But this time.
--
No, nomy visions are in the subtle physical, but those people exist here on earth, although I dont know who they are. As I said, I knew only one of them. But its certain that a physical organization corresponding to these visions does exist. I dont know the details they just havent been given to me. But it corresponds to a group of PHYSICAL people.
Powerful?
--
And actually, apart from the fact of suffering (you know, an ache here, an ache t here, a pain here, a pain t here, giving the sense of bodily individuality), apart from that, that great undulating movement of life is my normal consciousness. Meaning that I what I call Me (gesture high above), my consciousness, is completely outside the body. Thats what the consciousness of the body is (what Ive just been describing), with only points of pain as reminders of what a body usually is: an ache here, an ache t here, anot her ache here. Thats what its like. And this pain has a small and extremely limited life; its not general, its not a body that suffers: it is suffering that suffers. Its a point, a point of paina scratch here, a sore t here, things like that. Thats what is individual and suffersits not the body that has a sore, you understand.
It is difficult to express.
--
My physical consciousness has been universalized for a long, long time, it encompasses all terrestrial movements3; but the body is limited solely to this small concentration of substance (Mot her touches her body)thats what I call the body-consciousness.
And when I said, I have left the body,4 it certainly didnt mean I have left the physical consciousness my overall contact with the terrestrial world has remained the same. It concerns only the purely bodily aspect, the specific concretization or concentration of substance giving each of us a different bodya different APPEARANCE.
--
(On the wave movement Mot her lived in her body:)
Once again, with Mot her, we find ourselves deep into modern physics. All theories of physics attempting to describe the structure of our universe and the composition of matter, whet her they emanate from official scientific laboratories or from the work of independent researc hers, point to the wavelike or sinusoidal movement as the constituent and dynamic foundation of physical reality. Indeed, whet her 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 Mot her says, The wave movement is the movement of life.
--
Striking though the parallel may be, t here is still a fundamental difference between these mathematical concepts and Mot hers 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 Mot her 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, Mot her 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. Mot hers body-consciousness is one with the movement of the universe, Mot her 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 rat her 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.
T here 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 w here Sri Aurobindo had to intervene forcefully and write: "I affirm again to you most strongly that this is the Mot her's war.... The victory of one side (the Allies) would keep the path open for the evolutionary forces: the victory of the ot her side would drag back humanity, degrade it horribly and might lead even, at the worst, to its eventual failure as a race, as ot hers 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, Mot her 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, t herefore, 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 treac hery 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
Oh, no! Nothing withdrewit had already withdrawn a long time ago. The consciousness wasnt at all centered in the body. When I said I, for instance, it NEVER occurred to me that I was this (Mot her points to her body). I, the I who spoke, was always a will ENTIRELY independent of the body, entirely independent.
But t here has been a strange phenomenon [since April 3]. Before, I used to say, I am outside my body. It was always I am outside my body. But this time, the body seemed to have been consigned or entrustedmore like entrusted.
--
Pain is the one thing I sense the way I used to. Food, for instance, taste, smell, vision, hearingall thats completely changed. They belong to anot her rhythm. And this condition has come progressively, like a crystallization of something behind the senses that doesnt come from herein taste, smell, vision, hearing, touch. Except this one point. Even the sense of touch is different now but PAIN.
Pain is the old world.
--
If that state remained, I would truly be free of the world as it is. Nonetheless, people can still hear me, cant they? And I can still see, but in a peculiar waya very peculiar way. At times I see with greater precision than ever before (generally, as I told you the ot her day, I seem to see from behind a veil; thats constant). I hear things that way too. Certain sounds. On one occasion I noticed a sound, a seemingly imperceptible sound, coming from about a hundred yards away, and it seemed to be right here. All this has changed I mean the whole way the organs function. Have the organs themselves changed, or is it their functioning? I dont know. But they all obey anot her lawabsolutely.
And I have the definite impression that that so-called illness was the external and ILLUSORY form of an indispensable process of transformation; without that so-called illness t here could be no transformationit is not an illness, I KNOW it: when people speak of illness, something in me laughs and says, What a bunch of geese!
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 Mot her's departureit concerned only the Ashram disciples. All the details and all Mot her'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
73When Wisdom comes, her first lesson is, T here is no such thing as knowledge; t here are only aperus of the Infinite Deity.
Very good.
--
But in any case, if it could be absolutely total (t heres an if here), objective, scientific knowledge pushed to its extreme limits would certainly bring you to the threshold. Thats what Sri Aurobindo means. But he also says its fatal, because all those who went in for that knowledge believed in it as an absolute truth, thus closing the door to the ot her approach. In this respect it is fatal.
From my own experience, though, I could say to all those who believe EXCLUSIVELY in the spiritual approach, the approach through inner experience, that thisat least if its exclusiveis equally fatal. For it reveals to them ONE aspect, ONE truth of the Whole but not THE Whole. The ot her side seems just as indispensable to me, for when I was so utterly in that supreme Realization, this ot her falsified, outer realization was undeniably just a distortion (and probably accidental) of something EQUALLY TRUE.
--
76Europe prides herself on her practical and scientific organisation and efficiency. I am waiting till her organisation is perfect; then a child shall destroy her.
I wont say anything about that, mon petit.
--
Mot her later changed her opinion about this.
***
0 1962-05-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(The subject here is a letter, no longer extant, in which Satprem expresses his desire to go write his new book1 in the Himalayas, far from present circumstances. These circumstances included poor health, but mainly, lurking behind, was the violent and almost physical inner wound caused by his break with X. The idea was to go away for a change of air.)
(With an ironic smile) On the meandering path of the world, this trip doesnt look too bad! For you personally, its an experience that yes, that would give you a concrete sense of the vanity of a number of things that still. You see, throughout all ones lives and all of lifes circumstances, t heres one thing after anot her, one thing after anot her, one thing after anot her (zigzag gesture) to remove the scales from your eyes.
--
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 (Mot her 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.
T here is no definite answer in the consciousness.
--
What youre asking of Sujata is nothing short of sacrifice. Not outwardly, perhaps, but it would be a sacrifice for her. She would be sacrificing something to you, something very precious. To help you she would have to sacrifice her own realization. Well, that in itself has a place in the spectrum of realizations.
I understand.
--
I mean it may beit may be that even an inner transformation (a complete conversion of the vital being, for instance) wouldnt necessarily bring an improvement in your health. It is here w here. Its not something I see imperatively. And to go back to ordinary life would be the end of everythingof your physical life and your inner life too.
I have absolutely no desire to do that!
--
A link is missing. T here (gesture above) one knows, here (gesture into Matter) one doesnt know, and t heres always the feeling that a change of place or a change of physical conditions is going to establish the contact. It happenstrue, it does happen: suddenly, flash! But it happens under ANY circumstances. It doesnt depend on outer changes. I know very well that nothing in eit her the climate or the living conditions here is absolutely intolerableits only our ideas about it, our mental reactions (mental and vital). But if t here were just that joy, the joy of total opening, all the rest would be all right.
Yet it may also be that up t here in the mountains, all alone with the mountains, it would suddenly come. It is possibleeverything is possible. T here is nothing that doesnt hold a possibility of truth.
0 1962-05-29, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Almost no philosophy, nothing intellectualalmost a story. His work presented in an entirely practical and matter-of-fact way, like the talks I used to give to the children here. When I said to the children, This, you know, is why you are here, I told them in a way they could understand, didnt I? Well the book should be like that. If I were to write (I will never write a book on Sri Aurobindo! Never, never, never I know it), but were I ever to write a book on Sri Aurobindo, thats the book I would write, something like a fairy tale. Just imagine. You see life, you see how it is, you are used to this sort of existence; and its dreary and its sad (some people find it entertainingbecause it doesnt take much to entertain them!). Well, behind it all t here is a fairy tale. Something in the making, something thats going to be beautiful, beautiful, inexpressibly beautiful. And we shall take part in it. You have no idea, you think you will forget everything when you die, leave it all behind you but its not true! And all who feel the call to a beautiful, luminous, joyous, progressive life, well they will all take part in it, in one way or anot her. You dont know now, but you will after a while. T here you are.
A fairy tale.
--
I was brought up by an ascetic, a stoic; my mot her was a woman like an iron bar, you know. When my brot her 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!
Splendid. I am infinitely grateful to her. My body has never asked for fun or well-being or anything else. Thats life, it said, and you just have to take it as it is. And thats why when I first met someone who told me it could be ot herwise (I was already past twenty), I said, Oh, really? Is that so? (Mot her laughs) And then when he told me all about Thons teachings and The Cosmic Life and about the inner God and a new world that would be a world of beauty and (at least) of peace and light well, I rushed into it headlong.
But even then I was told: It depends on YOU alone, not on circumstancesabove all, dont blame circumstances; you must find it in yourself, the transformative element is within you. And you can do it w herever you are, even in a cell at the bottom of a hole. The groundwork was already done, you see, since the body never asked for anything.
Well, I think thats the best education. To the children here we give the exact opposite! But thats how it is: its a principleits not practical.
Not practical?
--
We have some real little devils in the making here. Interesting, true enoughoh, the vital is definitely not suppressed! But really.
T heres a little American boy here (I dont know if his mot her 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 teac her, but just runs around the school from one classroom to anot hermaking noise, hitting people, calling the teac her nameslike a whirlwind; and then off he goes! And one day he went into the Playground; hes such a maniac that hes not allowed t here, but he sneaked in, and t here 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 atmosp here.
--
I know what its like in the mountains the body feels fine for a while, but. Z, you know, had the same feeling (she comes from the mountains); she felt that without mountain air she would always be sick. I knew, that wasnt it, that it was certain inner difficulties, but I let her go to the mountains. her body was exuberant! But she came back sicker than when she left. And yet her body was exuberant. Its very superficial.
No, I dont really feel any need for the mountains. The idea came to me because of this book.
Frankly, I dont believe thats the problem, mon petit. Because I see this book, I feel it. And since I feel it so vividly, dont you think it would be easier to write it here than up t here?
No, its solely a question of health. If I could. Listen, I also had a longing to go to the Himalayas, I had a great longing for it when I was in France. When I came here the first time it was fine, I was very happy, everything was beautiful, everything was perfect, but oh, to go to the Himalayas for a while! (I have always loved mountains.) I was living over t here in the Dupleix house, and I used to meditate while walking back and forth. T here was a small courtyard with a dividing wall, and shards of glass were stuck on top of the wall to keep out thieves. And I was meditatingmeditating on the spiritual lifewhen suddenly something caught my eye: a ray of sunlight on a sharp piece of blue glass on top of the wall. And positively, spontaneously, without thinking or reflecting or anything I saw the summits of the Himalayas: I was on the summits of the Himalayas.
It lasted more than half an hour. It was a marvelous mountain scene, with mountain air and the lightness of the mountainsit was all t here. The splendor of sunlight on the Himalayan peaks.
--
It is very interesting, mon petit. As you were telling me about it, I automatically went into that state. And t here was a kind ofhow shall I put it? I dont know what to call it. It is a movement akin to will, but it has nothing to do with thought, its a feeling: I wanted to take you into the experience. And it was shown to meliterally shown that your whole relationship with the inner and outer worlds is situated here (gesture above the head); thats why it is so well expressed through intellectual activity. But here (gesture to the solar plexus) t heres not much. And I was seeing this, you know, I was touching it. It only comes indirectly, as a consequence. And then down here (gesture lower down): NOTHING. It remains just the way it was formed when you came down to earth!
And here (umbilical region) I was shown that a sort of widening of the being is needed, a widening of the vibrationsa peace, a calm within the immensity. herEthe prana, that isis w here t here should be a widening into peace, peace, peace and calm. But within the immensity.
And thats what will loosen you up.
here (gesture to the head and above) the work is done and will not be undone; t here is no danger, the link is quite well established. All you have to do is this (Mot her takes a breath) and t here it is.
To open here (gesture to the heart), the method is a bit too classical, in that you would inevitably fall back into classical learning, all the classical methods and meansit will happen by itself, quite naturally.
And here (umbilical region): something like a quiet ease (t heres no equivalent in French). A quiet ease. It has been all cramped up, and now it must widen. The inner life of the prana must be widened (the inner vital, the true vital, the being that has the experiences I told you about the piece of glass, the glimpse of the sea); thats what must widen. And vast, vast. It is all cramped up and it suffers. It has to be relaxed inwardly, by bringing in the Force, the Force of that new experience [April 13]: apply it t here. And you simply let yourself go; if you could catch hold of the wave movement, that would be perfect.
Like this: relax, relax, relax. Youre floating on an infinite undulating movementfloating, floating, floating. Shall we try?
0 1962-05-31, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
T heres a strange thing that happens to me all the time, at least fifty times a day (and its particularly clear at night). In its most external form its like moving from one room to anot her, or from one house to anot her, and you go through the door or the wall almost without noticing it, automatically. Being in one room is reflected outwardly by quite a comfortable condition, a state w here t heres no pain at all, no pain anyw here, and a great peacea joyous peace, a state of perfect calm an ideal condition, at any rate, which sometimes lasts a long, long time. Its mainly at night, actually; during the day people interrupt me with all sorts of things, but for a certain number of hours at night this state is practically constant. And then suddenly, with no perceptible or apparent reason (I havent yet discovered the why or the w herefore of it), you seem to FALL into the ot her room, or into the ot her house, as though you had made a false step and then you have a pain here, an ache t here, youre uncomfortable.
Obviously its the continuation of the same experience I told you about,1 but now it has come to this. I mean the two states are now distinctnoticeably distinct; but so far I havent found eit her the why or the w herefore. Is it something coming from outside or just an old rut: yes, it really feels like an old rut, like a wrinkle in a piece of cloth; you know, you iron it out again and again, and the wrinkle comes back. Thats more the feeling it gives menot at all a conscious habit, just an old rut. But might something from outside also be provoking it?
--
One day I will certainly use the same method on those room changes, but for that it will have to become very clear and distinct, well defined in the consciousness. Because that change of room (intellectually you would call it a change of consciousness, but that means nothing at all; were dealing here with something very, very material) I have sometimes gone through it without experiencing ANY CHANGE OF EFFECT, which probably means I was centered not in the material consciousness but in a hig her consciousness dwelling and looking on from elsew herea witness consciousness and I was in a state w here everything flows flows like a river of tranquil peace. Truly, its marvelousall creation, all life, all movements, all things, and everything like a single mass, with the body in the midst of it all, blending homogeneously with the whole and it all flows on like a river of peace, peaceful and smiling, on to infinity. And then oops! You trip (gesture of inversion2) and once again find yourself SITUATEDyou ARE somew here, at some specific moment of time; and then t heres a pain here, a pain t here, a pain. And sometimes I have seen, I have witnessed the change from the one to the ot her WITHOUT feeling the pains or experiencing the thing concretely, which means that I wasnt at all in the body, I wasnt BOUND to the body I was seeing, only seeing, just like a witness. And its always accompanied by the kind of observation an indulgent (but not blind) friend might make: But why? Why that again? Thats how it comes. Whats the use of that? And I cant catch hold of what makes it happen.
It will come.
--
Something done with a very light touch, with no importance attached to it, but coming from a new worldoh, nowadays I constantly make a distinction between (what shall I say?) the straight-line, right-angle life and the undulating life. One life I might describe like this (Mot her makes chopping gestures, showing crisscrossing lines): everything is sharp-edged, hard, angular, and youre constantly bumping into things; and then t heres an undulating life, very sweet, with a great charmVERY charming but not not too stable. Strange, its a completely different kind of life. Well, my story belonged to that world. T here was nothing here (Mot her touches her forehead), and not even anything here (above the head); it was something like like waves. And it was very joyous, very joyous and carefree.
(silence)
--
And its the same thing: whats needed is the path of vastness, widening, relaxation, ease, of BLOSSOMING in the vitalnot so much a censorial vital as as gentleness, a certain sweetness. The vital blossoming into beauty: sweetness and beauty. I dont want to speak of sentiments because oh, that lands us right in a quagmire! No, but a sweetness and charm and beauty but not t here (in the head): here. And then restnot a stiff and stony and stagnant rest, a rest within the undulation. You let yourself float.3
(silence)
--
The art of letting oneself be carried by the Supreme (Mot her clasps her hands toget her) within the Infinite Becoming.
(long silence)
Whatever comes from here (Mot her touches her forehead, her face) from here onwards its all harsh, dry, crumpled upits violent, its aggressive. Even goodwill is aggressive, even affection, tenderness, attachmentall of that, its all terribly aggressive. Like the blows of a stick.
All mental life is harsh, actually.
--
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.
--
Mot her 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
And I know I was in a state of knowledge, because I suddenly knew who certain people herepeople I have known for a very, very long timewere the reincarnations of (I had never tried to find that out, it just came). I was almost calling them by their former names. Yes, a special state, a state of knowledge but not spiritual knowledge: a knowledge related to the material world. In such visions, water always represents the vital. When everything is harmonious with the water, it means the vital is harmonious.
It was delightful (it happened around 1:30 in the afternoon): sitting on the water the way you would sit on a chair! And the water was so clear, crystal clear, transparent, rippled with tiny waves; the depths were dark blue, but the surface was perfectly clear, transparent, almost colorless. Then when the big brot her came, boasting that he knew how to do it too, and would take me across, the water began to get muddy, as river water always isa dirty grayish yellow.
--
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 toget her 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.
--
The afternoon experience was very intriguing; I was busy working (organizing things for one of the departments, I no longer remember which) and then I said to the person I was with, Now I am going to my cousins place! When I was very young I had a cousin, the eldest son of one of my fat hers brot hers (he had a large family, such as you seldom see in France). This cousin became some kind of engineera civil engineer, maybe, or a mechanical engineer (he was an outstanding chemist). Anyway, this boy was very attracted to me. He went off to the war as an officer and caught some disease (I forget what) and died around 1915, at the time I returned to France. Well, in my experience yesterday afternoon, a certain family living herE gave me exactly the same sensation I had had towards those people when I was young. And especially for this cousin (for the rest of the family it was more vague, like a background to the experience). I am going to their place, I said. They have a lovely estate here, just as they had a lovely estate in France before (they had Madame de Sevignes chateau at Sucy, near Parisa beautiful property). And it was all so concrete! It wasnt coming through the head; it wasnt a thought but a sensation. I have to go see him now, I said. And even as I was having my vision I was telling myself, You must be going crazy! Can they really be here in Pondic herry? This uncle with whom I had only rat her distant relations and this cousin I never saw much of, but whom I knew to be very nice and very loyalAre they really here?! The sensation was most strange (the head wasnt functioning at all; it was a SENSATION). So off I went to see this cousin, and it was on the way to see him that I had the experience of crossing the river. And on the way back, after the discussion with the spiritual brot her (whom I really told off: Get out of here! I dont need you!), after that, when I found myself back on the bank, I started collecting my consciousness again, telling myself, Look here now! Lets try to see clearly. And then I realized that the cousin who died prematurely during the war had reincarnated in someone here. How strange, I thought. And the dates coincided.
But that is a singular state: t here is no mental intervention at all; you live things POSITIVELY, just as you experience them physically, in the same way that this (Mot her knocks on the table next to her) is physically a table. Its that kind of perception something positive. I positively said, I am going to my cousins place, and the relationship had an absolutely positive vibrationit wasnt at all something thought or even remembered: t heres no remembering anything, its simply t here, alive. A strange state. I have had it on several occasions, and when I have it I am aware that this must be the state people who know what is happening and make predictions are inin this state t here is no possibility of doubt. No thoughts intervenenone at all, not one. Absolutely nothing intellectual: simply certain vital-physical vibrations, and then you know. And you dont even wonder how you know; its not that kind of thingits self-evident. And since I was in that state when I saw the reincarnation of the cousin, I am perfectly sure of what I saw. And god knows (Mot her laughs), when I came out of it and began to look at it all with my usual consciousness, I said to myself, My word! I would never have thought of such a thing! It was millions of miles from any thought of mine. Besides, I never used to think of that cousin; he was a fine boy but I never paid much attention to him, he had no place in my active consciousness.
Its fun.
0 1962-06-06, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For example, just now I was sitting and waiting for you. When I have nothing to do I cant stay one second without immediately turning withininstead of the consciousness being turned outside, its turned within and well, I noticed that the body, which was sitting and waiting, had the feeling of going into something woolly, rounded, soft. And in both cases I was motionless. I was simply sitting here waiting. Its like going from something crisp, clear, precise (forget about thought or vision: this is pure sensation), from something crisp, precise, defined, into something soft, mellow like a light white smokenot milky white, but soft, transparent and oh, such peace. As if nothing in the world could resist that peace.
It happened in a split second: I was sitting, waiting for you, thinking you were about to come; but the door wasnt opening, so automatically the body went like this (inward-turning gesture). And since it happened so suddenly, I noticed the difference in the way the body felt. What it normally feels is a formidable willvery tranquil, very peaceful, free of tension or agitation, yet so direct and clear, concentrated (not concentrated: coagulated) that it is almost hard. And thats what controls the body, thats what the body obeys. And when thats not t here, its the ot her state: smooth, mellow, soft, woolly and what peace! As if nothing in the world could disturb it.
--
And as far as I remember (because I never remember fully), this sort of haziness, as it were, was my constant state at the start of that so-called illness; everything was that waypeople, things, life, the universe. Thats how it was, with only that special Vibration, so soft, so enveloping. And it has stayed, it is still here.
It doesnt take me any time, the time factor doesnt enter into it at allits a sort of inner resolution: this way or that way (Mot her turns the palms of her hands in and out). People say, Oh, youve been waiting! No, I never wait; its eit her action or a sort of blissful peace (same in and out gesture). And I am talking about the body, not the spirit the spirit is elsew here. Elsew here. The BODY feels like that.
And what nights I have! Nights like the one I told you about the ot her day, with visions and actions; and then I have nights. All night last night, I didnt lose consciousness, I dont feel I slept for a minute; and it was like being in a sort of temporal Infinity (both hands open above the head). From time to time, I look at the clock (all at once I feel something pulling me and I look at the clock): two or two and a half hours have passedlike a second. Did I sleep, you ask? Did the consciousness fall asleep? No, not for a second. But the sense of time completely disappears into into an inner immobility. But an immobility in motion!
--
So you see, here we face a problem that has yet to be solved.
Yes, but that different world you conceive of, will it be different subjectively, or in its material properties? Will that world be different to us only subjectively, in the way we think of it, or.
--
T here is indeed the case of Madame Thons sandals, which came and put themselves on her feet instead of her feet going and putting themselves in the sandals, but that that belongs to yet anot her realm. It wasnt what you would call a natural phenomenon: she was applying her will and her action, and the substance of the sandals was becoming receptive. But does that mean the world will be that way? I dont know.
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?
--
In putting this question, Satprem was thinking in particular about Madame Theon, who, rat her than going to get her sandals, made them come to her.
What Mot her seems to mean is that the hard state and the state with no angles coexist, like the two rooms or the two rivers.
0 1962-06-09, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(In the course of the preceding conversation, Satprem had thought that rat her than a subjective change, a change in one's attitude towards things, t here should be an objective change, a power capable of changing the very substance of things: their property of hardness, for instance. here Mot her elucidates her previous statement that "if matter were changeable, it would have changed long ago," a statement that, at first glance, seemed to shatter all hope of transformation.)
T here is nothing to change! Only the relations between things change.
--
And power is what makes the difference. The greater the power, you might say (these words are all very clumsy), the fart her 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 eit her 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.
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 Mot her's departure, were to reveal their ambitions in Auroville as well as Pondic herry. 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 Mot her 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?
--
T here 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. T here was an Englishwoman who came here after an unhappy love affair. She had come to India seeking consolation, and stumbled onto Pondic herry. It was right at the beginning (those English Conversations5 are things I said to her; I spoke in English and then translated itor rat her 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 fart her 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! (Mot her 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.
As a matter of fact, I dont do anything on purpose. Its like this (Mot her opens her hands): Lord, You have willed.
I cant do anything about it.
--
A lot of people have been praying for me and even taking vows that if I didnt die they would go here or t here on a pilgrimageits quite touching.
This greatly objectifies my situation, which has nothing to do with an illness to be cured! I cant be cured! It is a work of transformation. At any moment, if the Lord decides its hopeless, it will be hopeless, finished; and no matter what happens, if the Lord has decided that Ill go right to the end of the experience, then Ill go right to the end.
--
If within that immobility I had a vision of the Mot her, for instancea vision of the Mot herif 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.
But all that belongs to a lower stage.
--
T here may be some misunderstanding here! (Mot her laughs) I thought you wanted.
(silence)
--
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?
You want to SEE her?
Yes.
0 1962-06-16, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
No, its not a matter of patienceits like this (Mot her holds her hands above her head, open to the Eternal).
(silence)
0 1962-06-23, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It lasted more than an houroh, at least two hours. The body was in that experience, but I was going on as always with what I had to do while that being was t here. I am telling you this because suddenly, in the midst of it all, I remembered you: Why, he wants to see! So I told that being, Go show yourself to Satprem, show him you are here.
I wondered if you saw anything.
--
If you like, Ill read what she noted down: I am in Pavitras office, standing on the carpet next to his table. I raise my eyes and look down the corridor. It is empty. Then suddenly, all the way at the ot her end, next to her bathroom, I see Mot her appear. She is so tiny, my dear little Mot her! She starts towards the office w here I am. She leaves the boudoir behind on her right, keeps coming forward, passes by the big window with the birds and the pink vases on her left. And she is growing. With each step she grows taller. One after the ot her, she goes by her chair, the door to the stairway, my lab, and Mot her continues to grow. Then the door to Pavitras room, the door to the terrace, and Mot her comes to the office. She crosses the threshold: her head almost touches the top of the door. Mot her comes in. She is so tall! her head now touches the ceiling.2 Standing, I barely come to her knees! Something in me is staggered before that sublime height. I prostrate myself.
(After a silence) I see her quite frequently at night.
(silence)
0 1962-06-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This is obviously being prepared (Mot her touches her body) so that it wont put the usual obstacles in the way of expression.
But I would much prefer the thing to BE rat her than just talk about it. That would be more interesting. So for the moment I prefer to say nothing.
--
(Later, Mot her again speaks of her vision of the tall white being armed with a kind of halberd:)
What was standing t here was a manifestation of one of my states of being, a part of my vital being, or rat her one of my innumerable vital beingsbecause I have quite a few! And this one is particularly interested in things on earth.
--
Before I met Sri Aurobindo they would come and come and come to me, night after night and sometimes during the daya mass of things! Afterwards I told Sri Aurobindo about it, and he explained to me that it was quite natural. And indeed, it is quite natural: with the present incarnation of the Mahashakti (as he described it in Savitri), whatever is more or less bound up with her wants to take part, thats quite natural. And its particularly true for the vital: t here has always been a preoccupation with organizing, centralizing, developing and unifying the vital forces, and controlling them. So t heres a considerable number of vital beings, each with its own particular ability, who have played their role in history and now return.
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 [Mot her]. But, as I said, I saw it: it was sexless, neit her 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. T heres a description t here 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, Mot her seems to show several facets of a single prism). But its simply one and the same thing.4
Sri Aurobindos description fits this Being exactly. And a few days ago, this same Being came, without my calling it or thinking about it or wishing it to come. And it seemed to be saying it was time for it to intervene.
--
During the whole time Sri Aurobindo was here, the four entities he speaks of, the four Aspects of the Mot her,5 were always present. And I was constantly obliged to tell one or the ot her of them, Now keep calm, now, now, calm downthey were always inclined to intervene!
Did I ever tell you? Last time I went down for the pujas (was it last year or the year before? I remember nothing any more, you know: it all gets swept away, brrt!). Yes, it was the year before last, in 60, after that anniversary.6 (Durga used to come every year, two or three days before the Durga puja.) I was walking as usual and she came; that was when she made her surrender to the Supreme. Those divinities dont have the sense of surrender. Divinities such as Durga and the Greek gods (although the Greek gods are a bit dated now; but the gods of India are still very much alive!). Well, they are embodimentswhat you might almost call localizationsof something eternal, but they lack the sense of surrender to the Supreme. And while I was walking, Durga was t herereally, it was beautiful! Durga, with that awesome power of hers, forever bringing the adverse forces to heel and she surrendered to the Supreme, to the point of no longer even recognizing the adverse forces: ALL is the Supreme. It was like a widening of her consciousness.
Some interesting things have been happening in that world [since the supramental descent]. How can I explain? Those beings have an independence, an absolute freedom of movement (although at the same time, they are all a single Being), but they had the true sense of perfect Unity only with the supreme Consciousness. And now with this present intervention [Mot hers], with this incarnation and the establishment of the Consciousness here, like this (Mot her makes a fist in a gesture of immutable solidity), in such an absolute way (I mean t here are no fluctuations) herE, on earth, in the terrestrial atmosp here, this incarnation has a radiating action throughout all those worlds, all those universes, all those Entities. And it results in small events,7 incidents scaled to the size of the earthwhich in themselves are quite interesting.
(long silence)
--
Someone reads me a letter, for instance, and I have to answer; and t here, superimposed, are both functionings: the ordinary reaction coming from above (nothing from here: it comes from above but its the ordinary reaction) and if I follow that and start writing, after a moment comes a kind of sensation that its inadequate; and then t heres the ot her functioning which is not yet (whats the word? I should be speaking in English!) handy, not yet at my disposal. I have to keep myself quiet, then it starts operating [the new functioning]. But when t heres something to be done, the two are superimposed and I have to keep the old one quiet for the ot her to come. And the ot her one ohh, it has some unexpected ways! I answer a letter, for example, or I want to say something to someone: my old way is an expression of what comes from above (it is luminous enough, but ADAPTED) but then t heres that sensation of inadequacyit wont do. All right. I step back and something else comes; and what comes, I must admit its enough to drive people crazy! Its so MUCH SOMETHING ELSE!
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 anot her piece of paperit was blue and wrote something and that still wasnt it. So I ended up taking yet anot her 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.
--
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 (Mot her touches her body) would have to yield. But when? I dont know.
Ageless something neit her young nor old nor something totally different. And tall, strong.
--
And it is subtle-physical. You can tell her.
Its peculiar, she says, since March I have been seeing Mot her taller.
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! (Mot her laughs.)
0 1962-06-30, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mot her gives Satprem an old note to keepunfortunately, he does not recall exactly what it wasone of those little scraps of paper, scattered about almost everyw here, on which Mot her 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, Mot her adds:)
I have experienced this hundreds and hundreds of times: one has a deep, true experience, but the mind, even the hig her mind, immediately latches onto it (usually its the hig her mind) and very actively makes its OWN thing out of the experience, thus bringing in its own distortion.
--
Twice I knew that it wasnt just images but something that had happened to ME, but it took anot her 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, neit her 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 t here, engrossed in conversation with some people (I dont remember now, but t here were certain corrections here too). I mean I was a certain person (I dont remember who) and t here were those two brot hers who were sculptors (Mot her vainly tries to recollect the names3) anyhow, all kinds of people were t here 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, t here were some quite interesting details and corrections. That was one time.
T here was anot her time at Blois. They make Anjou wine at Blois. It was the same story: I never drank anything but water or herb tea, but t here was a luncheon and they served us sparkling Anjou wine it seemed so light! Afterwards (I was with an artist friend, we were all artists) we went to see the museum, and it appears I was sparkling with wit! And I suddenly halted in front of a painting by now lets see, who was it? Cou? No, Clouet! Clouet: the princess one of the princesses.4 And I started making a few remarks out loud (it took me a little while to notice that people were listening). Look at this! I was saying. Just look at this! Look what this fellow has done to me! See what hes done to meit wasnt at all like that! It was actually a beautiful painting, but I was quite unhappy about it: Look what hes done to me! Lookhe made this like that, but thats not at all how it was, it was LIKE THIS! Details. And then I became aware (I wasnt too conscious physically) I realized that people were standing around listening, so I got a grip on myself, and left without a word. But I told my friends, Listen, it was definitely me! It was MY portrait, it was ME!
Almost all my memories of past lives came like that; the particular being reincarnated in me rises to the surface and begins acting as if it were all on its own! Once in Italy, when I was fifteen, it happened in an extraordinary way. But that time I did some research. I was in Venice with my mot her and I researched in museums and archives, and I discovered my name, and the names of the ot her people involved. I had relived a scene in the Ducal Palace, but relived it in such a such an absolutely intense way (laughinga scene w here I was being strangled and thrown into a canal!) that my mot her had to hurry me out of t here as fast as she could! But that experience I wrote down, so the exact memory has been kept (I didnt write down the ot her experiences, so the details have all faded away, but this one was noted, although I didnt include any names). The next morning I did some research and uncovered the whole story. I told it all to Thon and Madame Thon, and he also had the memory of a past life t here, during the same period. And as a matter of fact, I had seen a portrait t here that was the spitting image of Thon! The portrait of one of the doges. It was absolutely (it was a Titian) absolutely Thon! HIS portrait, you know, as if it had just been done.5
--
(A little later, Mot her refers to a passage from the preceding conversation in which she said that her present incarnation on earth didnt have a merely terrestrial effect but an effect on all the ot her worlds as well and particularly on the gods.)
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 ot her 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.
--
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 ot her 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 t here 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 t here was such a sense of power, of immensity, of ineffable bliss in the contact with the Supreme (it was a day when Durga was t here), and she seemed to be taken and absorbed in it. And through that bliss she made her surrender.
Most interesting.
--
In those movements of consciousness, in this state of consciousness, I am comfortable (Mot her heaves a sigh). But it has taken me a lot of discipline to concentrate here [in the body]: t here was always something, from my very childhood, that felt hemmed in, squeezed, really oh! And with a sense of something so powerful that if it ever went into action (gesture of unleashing), it would smash everything.
Now it has been tamed.
--
Somewhat in the manner of Tantric yantrams, but using words charged with force instead of geometric symbols. Mot her 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."
--
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)?
Conversation of June 27
0 1962-07-04, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
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 ot hers not to doone foot here and one foot t here! It just wont do.
(silence)
--
As you know, N.S. has left his body. It was the result of an accident (he had a weak heart, and he worried about it). He took a fall, probably because he fainted, and fractured his skull: loss of consciousness due to cerebral hemorrhage (thats modern science speaking!). When the accident occurred, he came to me (not in a precise form, but in a state of consciousness I immediately recognized), and stayed here motionless, in complete trust and blissful peacemotionless in every state of being, absolutely (gesture of surrender) total, total trust: what will be, will be; what is, is. No questions, not even a need to know. A cosy peace a great ease.
They tried, fought, operated: no movement, nothing moved. Then one day they declared him dead (by the way, according to doctors, when the body dies the heart beats on faintly for a few seconds; then it stops and its all over). In his case, those faint beats (not strong enough to pump blood) continued for half an hour the kind of heartbeats typical of the trance state. (They all seem to be crassly ignorant! But anyway, it doesnt matter.) And they all said, even the doctors, Oooh, he must be a great yogi, this only happens to yogis! I have no idea what they mean by that. But I do know that although those heartbeats arent strong enough to pump blood through the body (thus putting the body into a cataleptic state), they do suffice to maintain life, and thats how yogis can remain in trance for months on end. Well, I dont know what type of doctors they are (probably very modern), but theyre ignorant of this fact. Anyway, according to them he had those pulsations for half an hour (normally they last a few seconds). All right. Hence their remarks. And he was here the whole while, immutable. Then suddenly I felt a kind of shudder; I lookedhe was gone. I was busy and didnt note the time, but it was in the afternoon, thats all I know. Later I was told that they had decided to cremate him, and had done so at that time.
The violence of the accident had brutally exteriorized him, but when it happened he must have been thinking of me with trust. He came and didnt budgehe never knew what was happening to his body. He didnt know he was dead! And if.
--
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 (Mot her 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!
--
People say, He has lost consciousness. They made this assumption in N.S.s case because t here were no vital signs and the consciousness in the body was reduced to a minimum; t here 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 anot her 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 gat hers itself back toget her. But N.S.s consciousness never scattered, he never lost consciousness.
0 1962-07-07, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But this chapter ends here, doesnt it?
Its simply to give some background. Still, I cant avoid saying whats new in what Sri Aurobindo brings, precisely because it has nothing to do with spiritual India. We cant avoid telling them this one way or anot her, can we?
--
Thats no problem the public isnt touched by inspiration. But what you write here is for intelligent people with inquiring minds, interested in ideasis t here such a public?
But after this prologue, I intend to tackle the problem practically, to speak of the moment when people reach the limits of the mind, when they start going round in circles and find nothing; then I will tell them of zones beyond the mind, and of what can be discovered when one goes within: mental silence. Ill talk about a practical discipline. That was my idea. My idea isnt to give an abstract explanation but to take up yoga from a practical angle: try to do this, and heres what you may expectmental transformation, change in the vital, dreams, etc. All practical things. Id like to explore the psychological aspect.
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 w here I put a question mark.
--
No, thats w here you have to give in. You have to put all this trying to make them understand out of the picture. If you want to include those things for your personal satisfaction, because it makes the thing more real, more living, I agree; but get rid of this trying to make them understand, its impossible. I tell you, as soon as you go beyond the matter-of-fact (Mot her sticks her hand right under her nose), theyre lost. But tell them what they can see when they get off the train: All these houses, thats the Ashram; here is the library, those are the tennis courts, t heres the sports ground, thats. Ah! They understand.
Its going well; it will be a very good book. But probably only a small portion of it will make them say, Ah, finally! Something practical!
0 1962-07-11, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Maybe. Ah, that day [April 13] the whole creation was colored waves, but not like the colors we have here, it was. Ah, that day!
For a good two hours it was absolutely. The world, the whole creation seemed like a child at play, thats how I related to it. And what play!
--
Some of the people concerned are here, ot hers elsew here that is, its the mental state (even the hig her mind in some cases, not necessarily very down-to-earth) of this one or that one or. It comes individually (and the persons name along with it). And a kind of uneasiness takes hold of my body, as if I were in the presence of I dont know, in ordinary life I would say, Go away! (Mot her brusquely shoos something away) But here it is presented for me to do a particular work (I know the people, some are here, ot hers elsew here; theyre people I am in touch with for the yoga). So I am faced with these mental formations and each one is HELD like this (Mot her grips the thing with both hands) so that I dont simply brush it aside. Then (its certainly a good opportunity to go completely crazy!) I slowly bring in the divine Vibration, and I hold it like this, without moving (Mot her holds this vibration tight and drives it in like a sword of light), without moving until everything fades away into silence.
I havent had the chance (laughing) to ask them what happened to them!
--
This has never happened before, its brand-new. Before, t here was always that Power transmitted through the hig her mind (what Sri Aurobindo calls the Overmind); it was up t here, dissolving, dispersing, changing, doing a whole lot of work, without any difficulty, effortlessly (gesture above the head showing the tranquil, irresistible flowing of a stream), nothing to it. That was my constant, second-to-second action, everyw here, all the time, for everything that came to me. But THIS is completely, completely new. Its a sort of imposition, almost like an imposition on the PHYSICAL brain (I presume it must be for changing the brain cells). And I am allowed to do only one thing (Mot her grips the mental construction presented to her); its right in front of me like this and wont leave me, it clings like a leech, stock-still. So I have to bring in the supreme, divine Vibration, the Vibration I experienced the ot her day [April 13], and hold it steadily (sometimes it takes quite a while) until all is hushed in a divine silence.
(silence)
--
You have few contacts with external realities. Your true life is t here. It comes down a bit here (Mot her points to the upper forehead), and goes like that (gesture above and around the head). It extends beyond your body, and is very active and steady. Then from time to time t heres a cascade, a lovely, shimmering cascade (gesture). You know, like a luminous fountain. Its VERY pretty, showering down like raindrops. And then here (the upper forehead) it starts moving.
Ah, its good, its interesting.
0 1962-07-14, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Mon petit, last night for the first time I saw you, just as you are, coming to me. How wonderful! I said to you. You came up like this (Mot her makes a gesture close to her face) and looked at me. Hes conscious! I said to myself.
You werent conscious?
--
You know, t heres the same vibration here as in to die unto death. Its something yes, I think we could say it is His Presence His creative Power. It is a special vibration. Dont you feel something like like a pure superelectricity?
When we touch That, we see that its everyw here, but we are unaware of it.
--
In fact, this too is tied in with to die unto death. Because, just imagine, why on earth do I invariably see the experience of the 12th to 13th on my left (gesture to the left)? And rat her distant, as though I had returned along a LEVEL path (horizontal gesture) from t here back to my body. Out t here (to the left), I didnt have it any more! I didnt have it I existed in FULL consciousness, but I no longer had my body. Thats what makes me say my body was dead. I no longer had it. The experience was far, FAR away from here (I dont mean in the garden!) somew here. Somew here very far away to the left, in the physical consciousness. And when I had traveled back here along a level path, I noticed that t here was still a body.2
But this body is no longer MY body it is A body.
--
I felt MUCH more alive t here 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 t here, to the left.
Why the left?
--
I saw you just as I am seeing you now, exactly the same, only with a more intense and vibrant vibration. For me, you know, the physical world is always veiled, as if it were being snuffed out like a candle; well, t here was no snuffer, it was you exactly, same features, same expression, but intense, intense. And you were looking at me (Mot her makes a gesture showing Satprem peering right into her face), as if to say, Ah! So thats what you look like. (Laughter.)
I was very glad. Very glad. Ah, at last weve made it! That was my feeling here we are at last.
--
And simultaneously t here is an automatic perception of timeclock timewhich is rat her curious (everything is regulated by the comings and goings of the people around me, you see: such a thing at this time, such a thing at that time), I dont need to hear the clock I am warned just before it strikes. I repeat one part of the japa in a particular way while lying down, because the Power is greater (these arent meditations, they are actions), and anot her part while walking. So I stay stretched out for a certain time, I walk for a certain time, and at a fixed hour this one goes, anot her comes, and so on. But none of them are people; I dont tell them so, but theyre not people: they are movements of the Lord. And its extremely interestingone of the Lords movements will have this particular character, anot her movement will have a different type of vibration, and they all harmonize very nicely into a whole. But I know what time it is just before the clock strikes: six oclock, 6:30, 7:00, 7:30, like that. Not with the words six, seven, but: its time, its time, its time. And along with thisthis clockwork precision I have that ot her notion of time which is quite different, its. Although its a very rigid convention, our time is a living formation with its own living power here in the world of action. The ot her time is the rhythm of consciousness. So according to the intensity of the Presence (t heres a concentration and an expansion, I mean), according to this pulsationwhich can vary, its not regular and mechanicalwalking around the room takes eit her no time at all, or else an ENORMOUS amount of time. But this doesnt interfere with the ot her time, t heres no contradiction. Our time is on a different plane, something far more external; but it has its usefulness and its own law, and the one doesnt hinder the ot her.4
And its gradually becoming foreseeable that.5
--
They are silly, silly! They are absolutely ignorant and yet t heres a flame of aspiration suddenly awakening. And then they want to know, want to investigate, want to find, want to learn, want to. Its going like this (Mot her blinks her eyes like a baby bird waking up), vibrating and searching.
Theyve managed to stay very childlike.
--
1900? Well, yes, in 2000 things will take a clear direction. You will still be here.
I dont know about that!
--
Yes, its nothing! Nothing, a minuteyou will be here in any case, even without dying unto death. You will see it.
Yes, yes, its soon.
You will be here too!
That, I always have been and always will be, it makes no difference.
--
It [Mot hers consciousness] can go here, it can go t here and t here (gesture to the cardinal points), it can go backwards, forwards, anyw here at allno more axis, no turning on an axis. Interesting.
I think Ive lost you! (Mot her laughs.)
--
Looking at it now (1979), this "dream" doesn't seem to be from the subconscient but actually from the subtle physical, with that whole crowd of people relentlessly assailing Mot her and exhausting her (and pushing Satprem away, besides). But DESPITE the crowd, Satprem crossed through and came up "very close" to Mot her, which concurs with her vision. "Dressed as a Sannyasin" means in his essentiality, divested of day-to-day material circumstances.
When one goes out of the body (and probably at death), t here is always the impression of moving "upwards," or "inwards," which means into a deeper plane (eit her way, it is simply the expression of a change of dimension). What is striking about Mot her's experience is this LEVEL movement, indicating that she had not left the physical world. We are faced with a strange enigma: a physical world WITHIN the physical worldano t her world, or the same one lived differently? A physical world w here death no longer exists: one has died unto death. The world to come?...
0 1962-07-18, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its like an image. You see, the body is stretched out here on the chaise longue. You know how it is when experiments are done on animals? Its something like that the body is t here as the subject of an experiment. Then t heres my consciousness, the part focused on the earthly experience and the present transformation (its what I mean when I say I). And then the Lord. I say the Lord Ive adopted that because its the best way of putting it and the easiest for me, but I never, NEVER think of a being. For me, its a simultaneous contact with the Eternal, the Infinite, the Vast, the Totality of everything the totality of everything: all that is, all that has been, all that will be, everything. Words spoil it, but its like thatautomaticallywith consciousness, sweetness and SOLICITUDE. With all the qualities a perfect Personality can offer (I dont know if you follow me, but thats the way it is). And That (I use all these words to say it, and three-fourths is left out) is a spontaneous, constant, immediate experience. So the I I spoke of asks that the body may have the experience, or at least an initial taste, even a shadow of the experience of this Love. And each time its asked for, it comes INSTANTLY. Then I see the three toget her1in my consciousness and perception the three are toget her and I see that this Love is dosed out and maintained in exact proportion to what the body can bear.
The body is aware of this and is a little sad about it. But immediately comes something soothing, calming, making it vast. The body instantly senses the immensity and regains its calm.
This experience I am describing is exactly what happened yesterday (it happens every day, but yesterday it was especially clear). And its still here I am seeing it as I saw it, its still here. Actually, it is always herealways herethough its more striking when the body is stretched out, motionless in the Yoga. The experience is slightly different when walking because that involves action. When the body walks, it acts on behalf of everything thats related to it, hence the action is vaster and more powerful. But when it is stretched out and asks the Lord to take possession of it, it really asks with all its aspiration. And the very intensity of the aspiration brings in the possibility of a slight emotional vibration. But it is immediately drowned in the immobile immensity of matter, which senses the Divine Descent like a leaven that makes dough rise thats it exactly, the terrestrial immensity of matter and the leavening action of the Divine Descent. The intensity of these vibrations is above and beyond anything we are used to feeling the vital seems dull and flat in comparison. And what a Wisdom! It knows how to make use of time that is, it actually changes itself into timeso as to minimize the possibilities of damage.
Its plain to see that, left to itself in its full power of transformation and progress, this flame of aspiration, this flame of Agni would have scant consideration for the result of the process the result of the process is that fire burns. And t here could be mishaps in the functioning of the organs. All the organs must undergo a transformation, but were it too rapid and too sudden, well, everything would go out of whack. The machine would simply explode. But this Wisdom doesnt come from the universal consciousness (which I dont really think is so wise!), its infinitely hig her: the Supreme Wisdom. Something so wonderful! It foresees things the universal forces in their universal play would overlooka wonder!
--
But now the body the body itself, its very own selffeels it is WITHIN things or WITHIN people or WITHIN an action. T here are no more limits, none of this (Mot her touches the skin of her hands as if all separation had disappeared). Take this example: someone accidentally bumps me (it does happen) with an object or a part of his body. Well, it is NEVER something external: it happens INSIDE the bodys consciousness is much larger than my body. Yesterday, the table leg bumped my foot; so t here was the ordinary outward reaction (it operates automatically and in a curious way the body jumped), and then the body-consciousness now I am speaking of the body-consciousness saw that an unexpected and involuntary collision of two objects had taken place INSIDE ITSELF. And it also saw that if it made a certain movement of concentration at that particular spot, inside itself, some pain or damage would result; but if it made the ot her movement of (how shall I put it?) of union, of abolishing all separation (which it can do very well), well, then the results of the blow would be annulled. And thats what happened, I did it. I was simply sitting down, and I let my body cope with the whole thing (while I watched with keen interest); and I noticed it really did feel the blow inside and not outsideit wasnt that something from outside had struck it, but that t here had been an unexpected, or rat her an unforeseen and involuntary collision of two things inside itself. And I clearly followed how the body made a more complete movement of identification (you see, someone with the sense of separation had moved the table, so the sense of separation accompanied the blow, and then of course t here was all the regret,2 and so on and so forth); well, the body simply went into its usual state w here t heres no sense of separation, and the effect vanished instantaneously. Had I been asked, W here were you hit, what spot?, I couldnt have told, I dont know. All I know, because of words I heard spoken, is that the table leg bumped into my foot. But w here? I cant say; I couldnt have said even five minutes after the incidentit had utterly disappeared, and disappeared through a VOLUNTARY movement.
This body-consciousness has a will; it is constantly, constantly calling upon the Lords will: Lord, take possession of this, take possession of that, take. T heres no question of taking possession of the will, that was done ages ago, but: Take possession of these cells, those cells, this, that. It is the BODYS aspiration. Well, the blow wasnt caused by this will acting in the body; the blow didnt come directly from the body, but from something that had slipped in through an unconscious element; and the body simply erased, or absorbed, digested this unconsciousness and the thing vanished without a trace!
--
Oh, such humorous things happen. The ot her day I saw T. her old mot her lives in Moscow; shes very old and on her deathbed, and has asked T. to come see her. So T. is going to go t here. Its a risky adventure. She wrote to ask if she could see me before leaving (I dont see anyone and I had no intention of receiving her, but it was decided in spite of me and I let her come). She had been told not to speak, but thats impossible for such a chatterbox! So she began by lamenting (probably thinking it was the thing to do) over my serious illness and god knows what else I didnt listen. I simply told her, No, its not that, its the yoga. Then, with the effervescence of an ignorant child: Yoga! But you shouldnt be doing yoga! You shouldnt be. Just then, the Lords face came (the Lords face often takes on Sri Aurobindos appearancean idealized Sri Aurobindo, not exactly as he was physically), and it came here (right up against Mot hers face), and it was blue. Then It made my finger touch her cheek, like this (Mot her seems to tap T.s cheek), and It told that child, Little children dont know what theyre talking about. And it was so thoroughly Him! He was speaking and I saw only Him, his appearance: Little children dont know what theyre talking about.
I dont know how I looked (I was enjoying myself enormously), but she must have felt something (she didnt say a word), she must at least have felt something strange because a shudder went through her being. And I was told that when she left, she said, I may come back before I leave, but I wont ask to see Mot her! (Mot her laughs.)
But It was blueall blue. And That said, Little children dont know what theyre talking about.
0 1962-07-21, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
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 ot hers. One man or anot her 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. T here, the ignorance which creates a duality of opposition between the Spirit and Matter, between truth of spirit and truth of life, disappears. T here 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 hig her 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.
--
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 everyw here, something will be done indeed; but if we remain everyw here 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 t here and finally take all into itself. As we go on doing this t here 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.
--
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 t here 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, t here is lamentation on all sides, his wealth, his trade and commerce, his lands, his very agriculture have begun to pass into the hands of ot hers. We have abandoned the sadhana of Shakti and Shakti has abandoned us. We do the sadhana of Love, but w here Knowledge and Shakti are not, t here Love does not remain, t here narrowness and littleness come, and in a little and narrow mind t here is no place for Love. W here is Love in Bengal? T here is more quarreling, jealousy, mutual dislike, misunderstanding and faction t here than anyw here else even in India which is so much afflicted by division.
In the noble heroic age of the Aryan people4 t here 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 t here be a more favorable result in the spiritual field? I do not say t here has been no result. T here 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. T herefore 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 anot hersthis is what I want. It is such men that will raise the country.
0 1962-07-25, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In fact, if I look at the order my own yoga took. When I was five years old (I must have begun earlier, but the memory is a bit vague and imprecise) but from five onwards, in my consciousness (not a mental memory buthow can I put it?its noted, a notation in my consciousness) well, I began with consciousness. Of course I had no idea what it was. But my first experience was of the consciousness here (gesture above the head), which I felt like a Light and a Force; and I felt it t here (same gesture) at the age of five.
It was a very pleasant sensation. I would sit in a little armchair made especially for me, all alone in my room, and I (I didnt know what it was, you see, not a thing, nothingmentally zero) and I had a VERY PLEASANT feeling of something very strong, very luminous, and it was here (above the head). Consciousness. And I felt, Thats what I have to live, what I have to be. Not with all those words, naturally, but (Mot her makes a gesture of aspiration Upward). Then I would pull it down, for it was it was truly my raison dtre.
That is my first memoryat five years old. Its impact was more on the ethical side than the intellectual; and yet it took an intellectual form too, since. You see, apparently I was a child like any ot her, except that I was hard to handle. Hard in the sense that I had no interest in food, no interest in ordinary games, no liking for going to my friends houses for snacks, because eating cake wasnt the least bit interesting! And it was impossible to punish me because I really couldnt have cared less: being deprived of dessert was rat her a relief for me! And then I flatly refused to learn reading, I refused to learn. And even bathing me was very hard, because I was put in the care of an English governess, and that meant cold bathsmy brot her took it in stride, but I just howled! Later it was found to be bad for me (the doctor said so), but that was much later. So you get the picture.
But whenever t here was unpleasantness with my relatives, with playmates or friends, I would feel all the nastiness or bad willall sorts of pretty ugly things that came (I was rat her sensitive, for I instinctively nurtured an ideal of beauty and harmony, which all the circumstances of life kept denying) so whenever I felt sad, I was most careful not to say anything to my mot her or fat her, because my fat her didnt give a hoot and my mot her would scold me that was always the first thing she did. And so I would go to my room and sit down in my little armchair, and t here I could concentrate and try to understand in my own way. And I remember that after quite a few probably fruitless attempts I wound up telling myself (I always used to talk to myself; I dont know why or how, but I would talk to myself just as I talked to ot hers): Look here, you feel sad because so-and-so said something really disgusting to you but why does that make you cry? Why are you so sad? Hes the one who was bad, so he should be crying. You didnt do anything bad to him. Did you tell him nasty things? Did you fight with her, or with him? No, you didnt do anything, did you; well then, you neednt feel sad. You should only be sad if youve done something bad, but. So that settled it: I would never cry. With just a slight inward movement, or something that said, Youve done no wrong, t here was no sadness.
But t here was anot her 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 brot her or whatever, the smallest thing, it would say (Mot her 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 I had all this preparation. And I am giving you these details simply to tell you it all began with consciousness (I knew very well what consciousness was, even before I had any word or idea to explain it), consciousness and its forceits force of action, its force of execution. Next, a detailed study and thorough development of the vital. After that, mental development taken to its uppermost limit, w here you can juggle with all ideas; a developmental stage w here its already understood that all ideas are true and that t heres a synthesis to be made, and that beyond the synthesis lies something luminous and true. And behind it all, a continual consciousness. Such was my state when I came here: Id had a world of experiences and had already attained conscious union with the Divine above and withinall of it consciously realized, carefully noted and so forthwhen I came to Sri Aurobindo.
From the standpoint of shakti, this is the normal course: consciousness, vital, mental and spiritual.
--
Some receive it from above; for ot hers, it rises from below (gesture to the base of the spine). As I once told you, the old system always proceeds from below upwards, while Sri Aurobindo pulls from above downwards. This becomes very clear in meditation (well, in yoga, in yogic experience): for those who follow the old system, its invariably the kundalini at the base [of the spine] rising from center to center, center to center, until the lotus (in an ironic tone) bursts open here gesture at the crown of the head). With Sri Aurobindo, it comes like this (gesture of descending Force) and then settles here (above the head); it enters, and from t here it comes down, down, down, everyw here, to the very bottom, and even below the feet the subconscientand lower still, the inconscient.
Its the Shakti. He said, you know (I am still translating it), that the shakti drawn up from below (this is what happens in the individual process) is already what could be called a veiled shakti (it has power, but it is veiled). While the Shakti drawn down from above is a PURE Shakti; and if it can be brought down carefully and slowly enough so that it isnt (how shall I put it?) polluted or, in any case, obscured as it enters matter, then the result is immediately much better. As he has explained, if you start out with this feeling of a great power in yourself (because its always a great power no matter w here it awakens), t heres inevitably a danger of the ego meddling in. But if it comes pure and you are very careful to keep it pure, not to rush the movement but let it purify as it descends, then half the work is done.
--
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 hig her 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?
Oh, yes, I feel it!
--
Yes, thats what Sri Aurobindo always says! As soon as we start describing something, heres what happens (gesture of taking one step after anot her); and the moment that happens, the real thing is lost.
We just have to make the best of it.
--
I have had a few brief moments of this kind of experience; but even then it seemed rat her 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.
It was quite powerful, but incomplete. Incomplete.
--
Anyway, the periods of my life have been as clear as could be, distinctly defined, preparing everything for my coming here.
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 t here 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.
--
Thats all I had told him (not in great detail, in a few words). Then I sat down near him and he began talking with Richard, about the world, yoga, the futureall kinds of thingswhat was going to happen (he already knew the war would break out; this was 1914, war broke out in August, and he knew it towards the end of March or early April). So the two of them talked and talked and talkedgreat speculations. It didnt interest me in the least, I didnt listen. All these things belonged to the past, I had seen it all (I too had had my visions and revelations). I was simply sitting beside him on the floor (he was sitting in a chair with Richard facing him across a table, and they were talking). I was just sitting t here, not listening. I dont know how long they went on, but all at once I felt a great Force come into mea peace, a silence, something massive! It came, did this (Mot her sweeps her hand across her forehead), descended and stopped here (gesture at the chest).4 When they finished talking, I got up and left. And then I noticed that not a thought remained I no longer knew anything or understood anything, I was absolutely BLANK. So I gave thanks to the Lord and thanked Sri Aurobindo in my heart.
And I was very careful not to disturb it; I held it like that for I dont know how long, eight or ten days. Nothingnot one idea, not one thought, nothinga complete BLANK. In ot her words, from the outside, it must have looked like total idiocy.
But I was living in my inner joynothing stirring. I spoke as little as possible and it was like something mechanical, it wasnt me. Then slowly, slowly, as though falling drop by drop, something was built up again. But it had no limits, it had no it was vast as the universe and wonderfully still and luminous. Nothing here (the head), but T herE (gesture above the head); and then everything began to be seen from t here.
And it has never left meyou know, as a proof of Sri Aurobindos power its incomparable! I dont believe t here has ever been an example of such a (how can I put it?) such a total success: a miracle. It has NEVER left me. I went to Japan, I did all sorts of things, had all possible kinds of adventures, even the most unpleasant, but it never left mestillness, stillness, stillness
--
I also had an experience the first year I stayed here (although I didnt know it was an experience).
Ah!
One night during my first year here, he came and placed his hand over my heart, and in my dream I wept and wept and wept. Afterwards I told myself, What a strange imagination! I took it for imagination!
Oh, mon petit, how wonderful!
--
Oh, when Baron was here!5
Now thats interesting. In 48 ah, he was still in good health. He had had a broken leg.
How long did you stay here the first time?
Until 1949, I think.
0 1962-07-28, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mot her refers back to the last conversation, w here she spoke of her different stages of development.)
I have seen that the different stages of my development occurred in twelve-year periods, though I dont recall the exact dates. The first period, from the age of five (I cant start earlier than five!) to about eighteen, dealt with consciousness. Then came all the artistic and vital development, culminating in the occult development with Thon (I met Thon around 1905 or 06, I think1). Then right around this time an intensive mental development beganfrom 1908 to 1920, or a little before; but it was especially intense before coming here in 1914.
And 1920 marked the beginning of full development. Not spiritual development that had been going on from the very start but ACTION, the action with Sri Aurobindo. That was clearly from 1920 on; I had met Sri Aurobindo earlier, but it really began in 1920.2
--
The dates I am no good at dates! And I dont have any papers left to give me precise details. But the realization of the inner Divine must have been in 1911, because thats when I started writing my Meditations.3 But since my earliest childhood, you know, this presence was always t here, with an initial emphasis on consciousness, then on the vital and aesthetics, then on the mind and culminating here, in 1920, with action.
From 1911 or 12, up to 1914, t here was the whole series of inner experiences, psychic experiences, preparing me to meet Sri Aurobindo (so this ran parallel to my mental development).
0 1962-07-31, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
heres what he says: I read with great interest the Introduction to your new book on Shri Aurobindo. I must confess that if I have been late in replying it is because I am still very hesitant. The text reads well, but it leaves doubts as to how well the book that follows will conform to the norms of our Spiritual Masters series. I greatly fear that we will both end up disappointed again. The book you want to write is, I feel, very personal, w hereas this series must consist of books which are essentially expositions, introductions, tools of information: etc.
(After a silence) I am getting a sort of indication: when I turn the beacon to this side, the resistance suddenly seems to give wayt here must be a means of making it give way.
--
here, Ill give you an example: A. wrote to tell me, If you know how to get in touch with Agni,1 let me know, because I need him! I gave the natural reply, that whats needed is aspiration for progress, a will for perfection, and that you kindle the fire by burning your desires. I told him this in a way I call very concrete. Well, he answered (laughing), Ohhh! Youre living in abstractions. Thats not what I want, I want a living goda personality, you see!
Thats how people are.
0 1962-08-04, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And through certain things, I can perceive the very clear, precise and absolute Direction coming from the Supreme. And He is arranging all those thingsforms, various intellectual formsexactly as they should be. Because here (pointing to the crown of the head), and even from here (lower) down to here (the forehead), its all immobile. All these vibrations come, pass through, whirl around, they come from everyw here, but here (the head) nothing moves, t heres no response. And yet I have seen that on the intellectual level t here are a number of what Sri Aurobindo calls frames, certain principles of organization6 giving a precise orientation to the yogas action. One of them, the strongest, is my translation of The Synthesis of Yoga. I do a page almost every day and on that page I invariably find an idea or a sentence that EXACTLY expresses the field of experiences I was in that day and the night before; and some of the details. And interestingly enough, certain points in the pages you read me today were the EXACT frame of a series of experiences Ive been havingalmost word for word, with the same words.7 That sort of thing. Its like intellectual forms being assembled to give the field of experience precision, because t heres nothing here (the forehead), its blankyet some form is necessary! Well, the forms Sri Aurobindo has given predominate, but what you write has its place, and a very precise and interesting place: the way of thinking. And I see that t heres an immense field of intellectual thought, intellectual formulation, with varying degrees of intensity and precision, serving as a SIEVE for the Supremes Will to pass through. And the sievethis sort of immense universal sieveis what gives the precision.8 Its very interesting. That way, the mind remains perfectly stillit has nothing to do, everything is done for it! It is nothing but a mirrora living mirror w here everything gets inscribed and which can reflect back its image without becoming active.
The nature of my nights is changing, the nature of my days is changing.
0 1962-08-08, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
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 ot her 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 ot hers, 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.
--
And t heres always that same Solicitude dosing the experience out thats always here.
And I have noticed that now. You see, the body used to be like a little child, complaining when things werent right; it wouldnt revolt, but it moaned. But this time its only reaction was, Why am I not transformed? Why am I not transformed? I want to be transformed, I want to be transformed. Not with words, because t here was nothing mental about it, but simply with a kind of tension the tension you feel when the door to the psychic being is shut and you push, push, push to get to the ot her side. The same thing, the same kind of tension: pushing, pushing, pushing towards what? I dont know. We call it the transformation because we dont know what it isif we did know, it would mean we had already begun to realize it. T heres a faint impression of what that state could be (but its very, very faint). And t heres this feeling of tension, of pushingpleading and imploring. That was the bodys only reaction this time, nothing else, not even any sorrow. Because at one time something like fifty years agoit used to say, Why do I deserve this? and similar stupidities; thats been gone for more than fifty years. Then for a long while after, something disordered, unharmonious or nasty could bring me sorrow; thats gone too. But thats recent, it disappeared with the experience of April 13. And now: transformation, transformation, transformation; thats the only idea left, the only will.
--
I have had ot her 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.
--
Mot her touches her cheek.
Later, Satprem asked if this "and so" was connected to what precedes itif the old formation was connected to the vision of the future. Mot her answered: "I think it is connected. I am not sure, but I think it is. I have the feeling that this curve of future realization is what put me in contact with the old formations that used to come to me [formations of creative imagination], and this put me in contact with one of the body's habits, and so on; and that habit of the body triggered this kind of toothache."
0 1962-08-11, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Oh, during those hours the Presence lasted this morning, what I say here became so obvious, so obvious! You see (t heres 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, t here 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 t here 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 now here 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.
--
Its going all right, mon petit. And I am more and more certain that I have given you your true name (this seems to be coming out of the blue, but). The more I come into conscious contact with the future (because it is right herE, you see, just as we are pushing to go forward, it is pushing to descend), well its good. Its good.
Dont worrydont worry; simply let yourself BE what you truly are.
0 1962-08-14, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The feeling is rat her one of vibrations gat hered toget her and coagulated somew here and even at that, t heres a very supple inner play, for it spreads out like this (Mot her makes a gesture of diffusion or expansion all around her) through a sort of subtilization or et herization. And its limitlesshow could it have any limits! It goes like this (same radiating gesture)these same vibrations are everyw here, in all bodies and all things. What people call this body is merely the result of a willed concentration organized in a specific way; thats how it spontaneously feels, all the time (not that its observing itself, but if something forces it to observe itself, thats what it spontaneously feels). And the delimitation that exists in all beings, and which WAS in this body (was it this body? Havent the cells changed? I dont know), which once existed in what people call this body, has completely disappeared. Before (thirty years or so ago), it used to feel like something separate moving among ot her separate things thats all gone.
I have tried several times, telling myself, Ah, lets have a good lookis t here anything, anyw here, that feels that separation? (I am looking at the body from above.) T heres nothingtruly? Are you one hundred percent spontaneously sincere? Nothing at all? Its impossible to find a thing. Impossible.
--
And thats what makes the ESSENTIAL difference for this body. Thats why it feels different from ot her bodies. Its (Mot her shakes her head) no, its not the same thing, it distinctly feels its not the samebecause its reactions are different!
Perhaps t here once was a jiva. I dont know, I dont remember; all I remember now is ultimately, an evolving universe, with a special concentration on the affairs of the earth, because the Lord has decided that the time has come to to change something. Thats all. To change something.
--
One of our children, V., a courageous boy, went up t here all by himself. In winter its completely isolated, t heres nothing nearby. It was May and still frightfully cold, it seems, snow still covered the ground. And the man was sitting t here 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 t here, 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. W here do I come from? he asked. The man answered, Oh, from an ashram by the sea the sea is t here. 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 Mot her were t here, and that they wanted to do something on earth that had never been done before something very difficult. Then, I dont know whet her 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 t here 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.
--
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.
0 1962-08-18, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And as for what happened here in Pondic herry, t heres no need to make it very long. Because from the time he withdrew to his room (to be exact, from about the time we moved from the house over t here to this one1), his life no longer belonged to the public. And what happened well, it will be interesting in a hundred years. Not now.
***
--
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 t here, 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 t here 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 everyw here (Mot her touches her whole body), everyw here. 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.
It was compelling. One had to be just plain dense not to feel it.
--
And afterwards, its not as though he suddenly went away: he went slowly, slowly, slowly, like something evaporating; then things went back to normal, with various concentrations here and t here, various activities.
I think some people must have felt itmaybe they didnt fully understand, since they lack total vision, but they may have felt as if he were descending into them. Because in the afternoon, when everything had returned to normal (he is always here of course, but not that way! He is always here), t here was a kind of wave of regret passing through the atmosp here, like something saying, Oh, this beautiful thing has come to an end! Oh, now August 15 is over, this beautiful thing is over. But it was like I described, something so more than concrete, I dont know how to express it, it was t here was a sense of absoluteness about it.
I have often seen him in his supramental light; he has come very often (he used to come when I went to the balcony; sometimes he was above the Samadhi; he came very often). But that first of all, the proportions were enormoussitting down, I tell you, he extended beyond the compound; and he materialized in a way that could be PHYSICALLY felt. And t here was such confidence, such joy, such certainty; everything was so sure, so altoget her certain, as though all had been accomplished. T here was none of that anguish, that tension for things to get done.
0 1962-08-25, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Because I do rest, I remain in a very (whats the word?Mot her tightens her fist) coagulated, undiluted, and powerful trance from twelve-thirty or twelve forty-five until a quarter to two: a good hour. So its a favorable time.
It sure is!
0 1962-08-28, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(It is extremely unfortunate that the beginning of this conversation, which would have thrown a clear light on what follows, was not kept. As far as Satprem remembers, the subject was his sleep. It seems Mot her was saying that while his "strolls by the sea" took place during sleep and by passing into anot her state, for herand this is w here the notes begint here was no more "sleep" and no more "passing" into anot her state, from the ordinary physical to the subtle physical, because everything seemed to have become or was becoming one and the same continuous Matter. The true Matter, probably.)
Thats one thing thats happening. The two [the ordinary physical and the subtle physical] seem to be fusing more and more.
I have already explained this to you on several occasions: instead of SHIFTING from one to the ot her, its as if one were permeated by the ot her, like this (Mot her slips the fingers of her right hand in between the fingers of her left hand), and you can almost feel both simultaneously. Its one of the results of whats going on these days. A very slight concentration, for example, is all it takes to feel both at the same time, which leads me to a near conviction that true change in the physical results from a kind of PENETRATION. The most material physical substance no longer has that unreceptive sort of density, a density that resists penetration: it is becoming porous, and thus can be penetrated. Several times, in fact, Ive had the experience of one vibration quite naturally changing the quality of the ot her the subtle physical vibration was bringing about a sort of almost a transformation, or in any case a noticeable change in the purely physical vibration.
That seems to be the process, or at least one of the most important processes.
--
And thats probably true! It has some good points: what they call stubborn in Englishyou know (Mot her plants down her two fists and holds them motionless). And stubbornness is an essentially British quality, so t heres no ot her word for it. The body is stubborn; and thats what is needed.
All right.
0 1962-08-31, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But the vibration was t here, you see, high above and all around the earth, very powerful (it was all around the earth) and very strong, it seemed to be coming from ot her parts of the universe and trying to enter the earths atmosp here to help it participate in those new combinations. And it all seemed like childishness to me the whole universe seemed to be living in childishness. T here was something so tranquil hereso tranquil, so calm and unhurried, not interested in showing anything off, but capable of living in an eternity of quiet effort and progress. It was here, immobile, watching all these things. Finally (the spectacle lasted all evening) when I lay down in bed for the night, I said to the Lord, I dont need diversions, I dont need to see encouraging things I only want to work calmly, quietly, IN You. You, You are the worker; You are here and You alone exist. You are the realizer. Then all grew silent, still, motionlessand the excitement waned.
So you see, t heres excitement in the universe too, if youre not careful! But my impression is that it simply complicates thingsit clouds the issue, you know, it complicates things. Then you have to wait for the bubbles to subside before you can calmly set off again on your way towards the goal.
--
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, t heres 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 (Mot her makes a pulsating gesture), exactly like gustspuff, puff, puff.
0 1962-09-05, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Before reading his manuscript on Sri Aurobindo to Mot her, 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.
--
Meaning you never escape your destiny! Although its not official here, t heres still a wide margin of freedom.
Thats the first thing I told Sri Aurobindo: This was the resolution made by my psychic being (my psychic being was in a certain person I know who). And when I left, it declared categorically: I want NO MORE of this!
--
(Then Satprem reads a passage relating to the subtle physical and exteriorization; among ot her things, he cites the experience of D., who, when he exteriorized for the first time, was unable to get back into his body because he tried to reenter through the legs! here is the story:)
I was lying on my chaise longue in concentration when all at once I found myself in my friend Zs house. He and several ot hers were playing music. I could see everything very clearly, even more clearly than in the physical, and I moved around very quickly, unimpeded. I stayed t here watching for a while, and even tried to attract their attention, but they were unaware of me. Then suddenly something pulled me, a sort of instinct: I must go back. I felt pain in my throat. I remember that to get out of their room, which was all closed except for one small opening high up, my form seemed to vaporize (because I still had a form, though unlike our material onemore luminous, less opaque), and I went out like smoke through the open window. Then I found myself back in my room, next to my body, and I saw that my head was twisted and rigid against the cushion, and I was having trouble breathing. I wanted to get into my body: impossible. So I became afraid. I entered through the legs, and when I reached the knees I seemed to bounce back out; two, three times like that: the consciousness rose and then bounced back out like a spring. If I could only tip over this stool, I thought (t here was a small stool under my feet), the noise would wake me up! But nothing doing. And I was breathing more and more heavily. I was terribly afraid. Suddenly I remembered Mot her and cried out, Mot her! Mot her! and found myself back in my body, awake, with a stiff neck.
--
You must go out through here (the heart)you can go out through the top of the head, but its more difficult. You must leave through the heart and return the same way. Its quite natural; its the first thing you learn when you want to exteriorize. The whole consciousness has to be concentrated here (the heart), and thats w here you go out. And you must reenter the same way and maintain the link.
Its interesting though, very interesting.
--
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, t heres never anything remarkable or exceptionalits just average. It isnt low, but its not high eit hereverything is average. And thats really how I felt. I painted: it wasnt bad painting, but many ot hers 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.
--
But one has to. Look, its the same as for japa. Your japa is given to you, isnt it? You receive it (unless you find it on your own, but thats harder and already requires anot her level of realization); you receive your japa along with the power to do it but you have to learn how to do it, right? For a long while you dont fully succeed; all sorts of things happenyou forget it right in the middle or fall asleep or grow tired, get a headache, all sorts of things; or even outer circumstances interfere and disturb you. Well, here its the same: you tell yourself, Ill do it, and you will do it, even if. You have to go at it just like a mule: everything blocks the way but you keep going. You said youd do it and you will do it. T here are no results I dont care. Everything is against me I dont care. I said Id do it and I will I said Id do it and I will. And you keep on going like that.
Its the same thing in your case. It depends on what you want to achieve. Simply what I told you about sleep or resting, for example, ought to be enough. On that, you base your own disciplineor on words that were uttered, or gestures that were made, or ideas youve received. You establish your own discipline. And once you have chosen your discipline, you keep on with it.
0 1962-09-08, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its a strange sensation, a bizarre perception of both the true functioning and the functioning distorted by the sense of being an individual body. Theyre not even you cant even say theyre superimposed, theyre almost simultaneous, and thats why it is so hard to explain. A number of things are malfunctioning in the body; I dont know if they can be called illnesses (maybe the doctors would call them illnesses), but in any case, theyre malfunctionings in the bodys organs: the heart, the stomach, the intestines, the lungs and so on. And at the same time t heres (it cant be called a functioning) the true state. And thus certain disorders appear only when the consciousness as if the consciousness were pulled or pushed or poised in a certain way, and then, those malfunctionings INSTANTLY appearnot as a consequence: I mean the consciousness becomes aware of their existence. And if the consciousness stays in that position long enough, t here are what we conventionally call consequences: the malfunctioning has its consequences (tiny things, such as physical discomforts, for instance). And if through (is it yogic discipline, is it the Lords intervention? Call it what you will) but if the consciousness regains its true position, the consequences cease IMMEDIATELY. Sometimes, though, its like this (Mot her makes a gesture of an overlapping or interpenetration by interlacing the fingers of her two hands), in ot her words, this way, then that, this way, then that (Mot her slips the fingers of her right hand back and forth through the fingers of her left to show the consciousness alternating between two states), this position, then that position, this one, then that one. This movement takes only a few seconds, so I can almost perceive the two functionings simultaneously. Thats what gave me the knowledge of the process, ot herwise I wouldnt understand; I would simply think I am falling from one state into anot her. Thats not it, its just. The substance, the vibrations, everything is probably following its normal course, you see, and all that is really changing is the way consciousness perceives things.
So pushing this knowledge to its limit that is, applying it generallylife (what we usually call life, the physical life of the body) and death are THE SAME THING, simultaneous its just that the consciousness moves back and forth, back and forth (same gesture). I dont know if I am making myself clear. But its fantastic.
--
Dont let this visit ruffle you. Essentially, his approach has always seemed perip heral 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 ot her things. You know, t heres 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 t here 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 (Mot her 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.
(Mot her looks at the photo) T here is something in his forehead, eyes and nose (why the nose?) thats very similar in all who have experienced the inner contact.
--
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!
(Mot her looks at the photo) He looks like a good man.
0 1962-09-15, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Prayers and Meditations came to me, you knowit was dictated each time. I would write at the end of my concentration, and it didnt pass through the mind, it just came and it obviously came from someone interested in beautiful form. I used to keep it under lock and key so nobody would see it. But when I came here Sri Aurobindo asked about it, so I showed him a few pages and then he wanted to see the rest. Ot herwise I would have always kept it locked away. I destroyed whatever was leftt here were five thick volumes in which I had written every single day (t here was some repetition, of course): the outcome of my concentrations. So I chose which parts would be published (Sri Aurobindo helped in the choice), copied them out, and then I cut the pages up and had the rest burned.
Thats a shame!
--
Five thick notebooks, year after year. Even here I kept on writing for a while.
I wrote a lot in Japan.
--
Its only here that people started wanting to keep and keep and keep. (Mot her makes a gesture of throwing everything over her shoulder.) The world is moving fast, the world is moving fast, fast, fastwhy keep anything?
(silence)
0 1962-09-18, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its more interesting than listening to everybodys stories! Oh.. (Mot her raps her head). Thats all.
***
--
(These are the last lines of Savitri Mot her translated. They were found in her notebook under the date July 1, 1970:)
But how shall I seek rest in endless peace
--
her vision turned to read the enigmaed world,
her will tempered in the blaze of Wisdoms sun
And the flaming silence of her heart of love?
The world is a spiritual paradox
--
here are the three following lines, which Mot her never translated:
Its powers have come from the eternal heights And plunged into the inconscient dim Abyss And risen from it to do their marvelous work.
--- Grep of noun her
additions to esther
admonisher
aether
affenpinscher
altogether
ambusher
anther
apostelic father
apple polisher
archer
art teacher
atom smasher
autobiographer
automatic washer
backbencher
backscratcher
bad weather
bather
beach heather
beecher
bell heather
bellwether
bellyacher
belted kingfisher
bibliographer
big brother
biographer
bird watcher
black panther
blather
bleacher
blether
blood brother
blucher
blusher
bobby fischer
body snatcher
book of esther
botcher
bother
breather
brewer's mountain heather
bringing close together
britisher
brother
brown thrasher
burgher
butcher
calligrapher
calling together
cartographer
catcher
cather
chammy leather
chamois leather
choreographer
christopher
church father
cinematographer
cipher
cither
city father
clincher
clock watcher
cold weather
coming together
contour feather
cosmographer
cowcatcher
cowpuncher
crasher
cream pitcher
crossbencher
crushed leather
crusher
cryptographer
crystallographer
cypher
debaucher
demographer
den mother
diethyl ether
dish washer
dishwasher
dispatcher
dither
divinyl ether
doberman pinscher
dog catcher
dotted gayfeather
dowitcher
down feather
earth mother
emil hermann fischer
emmy noether
encroacher
english teacher
entlebucher
equetus pulcher
esther
etcher
ether
ethnographer
ethyl ether
eurasian kingfisher
existential philosopher
existentialist philosopher
extinguisher
eye-catcher
fair weather
fairy godmother
false heather
fast of esther
father
feather
finisher
fire extinguisher
fire watcher
fischer
fisher
flack catcher
flak catcher
flasher
fletcher
flight feather
flycatcher
forefather
foremother
foster-brother
foster-father
foster-mother
foster brother
foster father
foster mother
founding father
four-flusher
french teacher
fresher
friar preacher
frobisher
frontbencher
g. l. von blucher
gatecrasher
gather
gay-feather
gayfeather
gebhard leberecht von blucher
geographer
geometry teacher
get together
glove leather
gnatcatcher
godfather
godmother
golden heather
good weather
gopher
grandfather
grandmother
great grandfather
great grandmother
great mother
gusher
haberdasher
hagiographer
half-brother
half brother
hans fischer
head teacher
heather
henry ward beecher
hera
heracles
heracleum
heracleum sphondylium
heraclitus
herakles
herald
heraldic bearing
heraldry
herat
herb
herb bennet
herb christopher
herb doctor
herb garden
herb mercury
herb of grace
herb paris
herb robert
herb roberts
herb simon
herb tea
herba impia
herbaceous plant
herbage
herbal
herbal medicine
herbal tea
herbal therapy
herbalist
herbarium
herbart
herbert
herbert a. simon
herbert alexander simon
herbert blythe
herbert clark hoover
herbert george wells
herbert hoover
herbert kitchener
herbert marcuse
herbert marshall mcluhan
herbert marx
herbert mclean evans
herbert spencer
herbicide
herbivore
herbs mercury
herbs robert
herculaneum
hercules
hercules'-club
hercules'-clubs
hercules-club
herculius
herd
herd's grass
herder
herdsman
here
here and now
hereafter
herediatry spinal ataxia
hereditament
hereditarianism
hereditary cerebellar ataxia
hereditary condition
hereditary disease
hereditary motor and sensory neuropathy
hereditary pattern
heredity
hereford
hereness
herero
heresy
heretic
heritage
heritiera
heritiera littoralis
heritiera macrophylla
heritiera trifoliolata
heritor
herm
herman
herman hollerith
herman melville
herman northrop frye
herman wouk
hermann
hermann goering
hermann goring
hermann hesse
hermann joseph muller
hermann ludwig ferdinand von helmholtz
hermann maurice saxe
hermann minkowski
hermann snellen
hermann von helmholtz
hermann wilhelm goring
hermannia
hermannia verticillata
hermaphrodism
hermaphrodite
hermaphrodite brig
hermaphroditism
hermaphroditus
hermeneutics
hermes
hermissenda
hermissenda crassicornis
hermit
hermit crab
hermit thrush
hermitage
hermosillo
hernan cortes
hernan cortez
hernando cortes
hernando cortez
hernaria
hernaria glabra
hernia
herniated disc
herniation
hero
hero of alexandria
hero sandwich
hero worship
hero worshiper
hero worshipper
herod
herod the great
herodotus
heroic
heroic couplet
heroic meter
heroic poem
heroic poetry
heroic stanza
heroic tale
heroic verse
heroica puebla de zaragoza
heroics
heroin
heroin addict
heroin addiction
heroine
heroism
heron
heron's bill
heronry
herpangia
herpes
herpes encephalitis
herpes genitalis
herpes labialis
herpes simplex
herpes simplex 1
herpes simplex 2
herpes simplex encephalitis
herpes simplex virus
herpes varicella zoster
herpes varicella zoster virus
herpes virus
herpes zoster
herpes zoster virus
herpestes
herpestes ichneumon
herpestes nyula
herpetologist
herpetology
herr
herrenvolk
herrerasaur
herrerasaurus
herrick
herring
herring gull
herring hog
herring salad
herringbone
herringbone pattern
herschel
herschelian telescope
hershey
hershey bar
hertfordshire
hertha
hertz
hertzian wave
herzberg
historiographer
holy father
holy sepulcher
hot weather
housefather
housemother
hunger marcher
imitation leather
james usher
james ussher
john fletcher
kingfisher
kosher
languisher
lasher
lather
laugher
launcher
leather
lecher
left-handed pitcher
lexicographer
lithographer
little brother
loather
lock washer
lubavitcher
luncheon voucher
luncher
lurcher
luther
magazine publisher
marcher
margaret hilda thatcher
margaret thatcher
martin luther
masher
matcher
math teacher
mathematics teacher
milcher
miniature pinscher
molly pitcher
monkey pinscher
moocher
mother
muncher
musher
music teacher
new world flycatcher
newspaper publisher
noether
norther
northern pocket gopher
nosher
number cruncher
oceanographer
ocher
old world flycatcher
ooze leather
oyster catcher
oystercatcher
paleographer
panther
paper-pusher
paragrapher
pass catcher
patent leather
pedal pusher
pencil pusher
penny pincher
penpusher
percher
perisher
philosopher
photographer
piano teacher
piece of leather
pilgrim father
pill pusher
pinscher
pitcher
plains pocket gopher
poacher
pocket gopher
polisher
pork butcher
pornographer
port watcher
portwatcher
pother
practice teacher
preacher
press photographer
primary feather
prince's-feather
prince-of-wales feather
princess feather
publisher
puncher
purple heather
pusher
pyrographer
queen mother
quill feather
radiographer
rancher
rasher
rat-catcher
ravisher
raw weather
reading teacher
refinisher
refresher
relief pitcher
reproacher
researcher
right-handed pitcher
robert james fischer
rocket launcher
rusher
russia leather
saddle feather
sagittarius the archer
saint christopher
school teacher
schoolteacher
science teacher
scissortailed flycatcher
scorcher
scots heather
scratcher
screecher
sea feather
sea poacher
searcher
sepulcher
shammy leather
shoe leather
sickle feather
significant other
sir martin frobisher
sketcher
skirmisher
slasher
sloucher
smasher
smoother
smother
snatcher
snitcher
snorkel breather
soul brother
southeastern pocket gopher
souther
splasher
spotted flycatcher
squelcher
st. christopher
starting pitcher
stenographer
stepbrother
stepfather
stepmother
stitcher
stomacher
stretcher
student teacher
suede leather
sun pitcher
sunbather
superslasher
surrogate mother
switcher
swither
tail feather
teacher
telegrapher
telpher
tether
thatcher
thrasher
thresher
tither
toucher
train dispatcher
trencher
true flycatcher
typographer
tyrant flycatcher
usher
ussher
valley pocket gopher
vanisher
vanquisher
varnisher
vermillion flycatcher
vinyl ether
von blucher
voucher
wash leather
washer
watcher
weather
weigher
welcher
well-wisher
welsher
wencher
wether
whit leather
white feather
white heather
white leather
whited sepulcher
willa cather
willa sibert cather
window washer
yellow ocher
zither