TERMS STARTING WITH
prial ::: n. --> A corruption of pair royal. See under Pair, n.
prian ::: n. --> A fine, white, somewhat friable clay; also, the ore contained in a mixture of clay and pebbles.
priapean ::: n. --> A species of hexameter verse so constructed as to be divisible into two portions of three feet each, having generally a trochee in the first and the fourth foot, and an amphimacer in the third; -- applied also to a regular hexameter verse when so constructed as to be divisible into two portions of three feet each.
priapism ::: n. --> More or less permanent erection and rigidity of the penis, with or without sexual desire.
priapulacea ::: n. pl. --> A suborder of Gephyraea, having a cylindrical body with a terminal anal opening, and usually with one or two caudal gills.
pricasour ::: n. --> A hard rider.
priced ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Price ::: a. --> Rated in price; valued; as, high-priced goods; low-priced labor.
priceite ::: n. --> A hydrous borate of lime, from Oregon.
priceless ::: a. --> Too valuable to admit of being appraised; of inestimable worth; invaluable.
Of no value; worthless.
priceless ::: of inestimable worth; invaluable.
price ::: n. & v. --> The sum or amount of money at which a thing is valued, or the value which a seller sets on his goods in market; that for which something is bought or sold, or offered for sale; equivalent in money or other means of exchange; current value or rate paid or demanded in market or in barter; cost.
Value; estimation; excellence; worth.
Reward; recompense; as, the price of industry.
pricing ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Price
prick-eared ::: a. --> Having erect, pointed ears; -- said of certain dogs.
pricked ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Prick
pricker ::: n. --> One who, or that which, pricks; a pointed instrument; a sharp point; a prickle.
One who spurs forward; a light horseman.
A priming wire; a priming needle, -- used in blasting and gunnery.
A small marline spike having generally a wooden handle, -- used in sailmaking.
pricket ::: n. --> A buck in his second year. See Note under 3d Buck.
pricking ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Prick ::: n. --> The act of piercing or puncturing with a sharp point.
The driving of a nail into a horse&
pricking-up ::: n. --> The first coating of plaster in work of three coats upon laths. Its surface is scratched once to form a better key for the next coat. In the United States called scratch coat.
prickleback ::: n. --> Alt. of Pricklefish
pricklefish ::: n. --> The stickleback.
prickle ::: n. --> A little prick; a small, sharp point; a fine, sharp process or projection, as from the skin of an animal, the bark of a plant, etc.; a spine.
A kind of willow basket; -- a term still used in some branches of trade.
A sieve of filberts, -- about fifty pounds. ::: v. t.
prickliness ::: n. --> The quality of being prickly, or of having many prickles.
prickling ::: a. --> Prickly.
pricklouse ::: n. --> A tailor; -- so called in contempt.
prickly ::: a. --> Full of sharp points or prickles; armed or covered with prickles; as, a prickly shrub.
prickmadam ::: n. --> A name given to several species of stonecrop, used as ingredients of vermifuge medicines. See Stonecrop.
prick ::: n. 1. Fig. A goad, spur, incentive. v. 2. To urge on with or as if with a goad or spur. pricks.
prickpunch ::: n. --> A pointed steel punch, to prick a mark on metal.
prickshaft ::: n. --> An arrow.
pricksong ::: v. t. --> Music written, or noted, with dots or points; -- so called from the points or dots with which it is noted down.
prick ::: v. --> That which pricks, penetrates, or punctures; a sharp and slender thing; a pointed instrument; a goad; a spur, etc.; a point; a skewer.
The act of pricking, or the sensation of being pricked; a sharp, stinging pain; figuratively, remorse.
A mark made by a pointed instrument; a puncture; a point.
A point or mark on the dial, noting the hour.
The point on a target at which an archer aims; the mark; the
prickwood ::: n. --> A shrub (Euonymus Europaeus); -- so named from the use of its wood for goads, skewers, and shoe pegs. Called also spindle tree.
pricky ::: a. --> Stiff and sharp; prickly.
pride ::: 1. An excessively high opinion of oneself; conceit. 2. A sense of one"s own proper dignity or value; self-respect. 3. Display, pomp, or splendour. 4. A feeling of pleasure or satisfaction taken in an achievement, possession, or association. 5. Mettle or spirit in horses.
prided ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Pride
prideful ::: a. --> Full of pride; haughty.
prideless ::: a. --> Without pride.
pride ::: n. --> A small European lamprey (Petromyzon branchialis); -- called also prid, and sandpiper.
The quality or state of being proud; inordinate self-esteem; an unreasonable conceit of one&
pride ::: “Pride is only one form of ego—there are ten thousand others. Every action of man is full of ego—the good ones as well as the bad, his humility as much as his pride, his virtues as much as his vices.” Letters on Yoga
pridian ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to the day before, or yesterday.
pridingly ::: adv. --> Proudly.
priding ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Pride
priedieu ::: n. --> A kneeling desk for prayers.
pried ::: --> imp. & p. p. of Pry. ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Pry
prief ::: n. --> Proof.
prie ::: n. --> The plant privet. ::: v. i. --> To pry.
prier ::: n. --> One who pries; one who inquires narrowly and searches, or is inquisitive.
priestcap ::: n. --> A form of redan, so named from its shape; -- called also swallowtail.
priestcraft ::: n. --> Priestly policy; the policy of a priesthood; esp., in an ill sense, fraud or imposition in religious concerns; management by priests to gain wealth and power by working upon the religious motives or credulity of others.
priestery ::: n. --> Priests, collectively; the priesthood; -- so called in contempt.
priestess ::: a woman who presides over religious rites, especially in pagan religions. Also fig. and transf.
priestess ::: n. --> A woman who officiated in sacred rites among pagans.
priestess ::: “Thought sat, a priestess of Perversity,”
priesthood ::: n. --> The office or character of a priest; the priestly function.
Priests, taken collectively; the order of men set apart for sacred offices; the order of priests.
priesting ::: n. --> The office of a priest.
priestism ::: n. --> The influence, doctrines, principles, etc., of priests or the priesthood.
priestless ::: a. --> Without a priest.
priestless ::: without a priest.
priestlike ::: a. --> Priestly.
priestliness ::: n. --> The quality or state of being priestly.
priestly ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to a priest or the priesthood; sacerdotal; befitting or becoming a priest; as, the priestly office; a priestly farewell.
priestly ::: sacred; characteristic of a priest.
priest ::: n. --> A presbyter elder; a minister
One who is authorized to consecrate the host and to say Mass; but especially, one of the lowest order possessing this power.
A presbyter; one who belongs to the intermediate order between bishop and deacon. He is authorized to perform all ministerial services except those of ordination and confirmation.
One who officiates at the altar, or performs the rites of sacrifice; one who acts as a mediator between men and the divinity or
priest-ridden ::: a. --> Controlled or oppressed by priests; as, a priest-ridden people.
prieve ::: v. t. --> To prove.
prigged ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Prig
priggery ::: n. --> Priggism.
prigging ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Prig
priggish ::: a. --> Like a prig; conceited; pragmatical.
priggism ::: n. --> The quality or state of being priggish; the manners of a prig.
Roguery; thievery.
prighte ::: --> imp. of Prick.
prigidity ::: n. --> The condition or quality of being frigid; coldness; want of warmth.
Want of ardor, animation, vivacity, etc.; coldness of affection or of manner; dullness; stiffness and formality; as, frigidity of a reception, of a bow, etc.
Want of heat or vigor; as, the frigidity of old age.
prig ::: v. i. --> To haggle about the price of a commodity; to bargain hard. ::: v. t. --> To cheapen.
To filch or steal; as, to prig a handkerchief. ::: n.
prillion ::: n. --> Tin extracted from the slag.
prill ::: n. --> The brill.
A stream.
A nugget of virgin metal.
Ore selected for excellence.
The button of metal from an assay. ::: v. i.
primacy ::: a. --> The state or condition of being prime or first, as in time, place, rank, etc., hence, excellency; supremacy.
The office, rank, or character of a primate; the chief ecclesiastical station or dignity in a national church; the office or dignity of an archbishop; as, the primacy of England.
prima donna ::: a. --> The first or chief female singer in an opera.
prima donnas ::: pl. --> of Prima donna
primaeval ::: belonging to the first or earliest age or ages; original or ancient.
prima facie ::: --> At first view; on the first appearance.
primage ::: n. --> A charge in addition to the freight; originally, a gratuity to the captain for his particular care of the goods (sometimes called hat money), but now belonging to the owners or freighters of the vessel, unless by special agreement the whole or part is assigned to the captain.
primal ::: 1. Being first in time; original; primeval. 2. Of first importance; primary.
primal ::: a. --> First; primary; original; chief.
primality ::: n. --> The quality or state of being primal.
primaries ::: pl. --> of Primary
primarily ::: adv. --> In a primary manner; in the first place; in the first place; in the first intention; originally.
primariness ::: n. --> The quality or state of being primary, or first in time, in act, or in intention.
primary ::: a. --> First in order of time or development or in intention; primitive; fundamental; original.
First in order, as being preparatory to something higher; as, primary assemblies; primary schools.
First in dignity or importance; chief; principal; as, primary planets; a matter of primary importance.
Earliest formed; fundamental.
Illustrating, possessing, or characterized by, some
primary cache "hardware, architecture" (L1 cache, level one cache) A small, fast {cache} memory inside or close to the {CPU} chip. For example, an {Intel 80486} has an eight-{kilobyte} on-chip cache, and most {Pentiums} have a 16-KB on-chip level one cache that consists of an 8-KB {instruction cache} and an 8-KB {data cache}. The larger, slower {secondary cache} is normally connected to the CPU via its external {bus}. (1997-06-25)
primary ideality ::: in May-June 1918, the same as inferior ideality during the same period; cf. the logistic ideality of 1919-20.
primary key "database" A unique {identifier}, often an {integer}, that labels a certain row in a table of a {relational database}. When this value occurs in other tables as a reference to a particular row in the first table it is called a "foreign key". Some {RDBMS}es can generate a new unique identifier each time a new row is inserted, others merely allow a column to be constrained to contain unique values. A table may have multiple {candidate keys}, from which the primary key is chosen. The primary key should be an arbitrary value, such as an {autoincrementing} integer. This avoids dependence on uniqueness, permanence and format of existing columns with real-world meaning (e.g. a person's name) or other external identifier (e.g. social security number). There should be enough possible primary key values to cater for the current and expected number of rows, bearing in mind that a wider column will generally be slower to process. (2006-05-29)
primary logistic gnosis ::: same as intuitional ideality. primary utth utthapana
primary management domain "messaging" (PRMD) The component of an {X.400} {electronic mail address} that gives the organisation name, usually abbreviated to p= in written addresses. See also {ADMD}. (2003-05-15)
primary storage {main memory}
primate ::: a. --> The chief ecclesiastic in a national church; one who presides over other bishops in a province; an archbishop.
One of the Primates.
primateship ::: n. --> The office, dignity, or position of a primate; primacy.
primates ::: n. pl. --> The highest order of mammals. It includes man, together with the apes and monkeys. Cf. Pitheci.
primatial ::: a. --> Primatical.
primatical ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to a primate.
primed ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Prime
primely ::: adv. --> At first; primarily.
In a prime manner; excellently.
primeness ::: n. --> The quality or state of being first.
The quality or state of being prime, or excellent.
prime number theorem "mathematics" The number of {prime numbers} less than x is about x/log(x). Here "is about" means that the ratio of the two things tends to 1 as x tends to infinity. This was first conjectured by {Gauss} in the early 19th century, and was proved (independently) by Hadamard and de la Vall'ee Poussin in 1896. Their proofs relied on {complex analysis}, but Erdös and Selberg later found an "elementary" proof. (1995-04-10)
primer ::: n. --> One who, or that which, primes
an instrument or device for priming; esp., a cap, tube, or water containing percussion powder or other compound for igniting a charge of gunpowder.
Originally, a small prayer book for church service, containing the little office of the Virgin Mary; also, a work of elementary religious instruction.
A small elementary book for teaching children to read; a
primerole ::: n. --> See Primrose.
primero ::: n. --> A game at cards, now unknown.
prime :::
prime time (From TV programming) Normal high-usage hours on a {time-sharing} system; the day shift. Avoidance of prime time was traditionally given as a major reason for {night mode} hacking. The rise of the personal workstation has rendered this term, along with {time-sharing} itself, almost obsolete. The hackish tendency to late-night {hacking runs} has changed not a bit. [{Jargon File}] (1995-01-18)
primeval ::: a. --> Belonging to the first ages; pristine; original; primitive; primary; as, the primeval innocence of man.
primevally ::: adv. --> In a primeval manner; in or from the earliest times; originally.
primevous ::: a. --> Primeval.
primigenial ::: a. --> First born, or first of all; original; primary. See Primogenial.
primigenious ::: a. --> Alt. of Primigenous
primigenous ::: a. --> First formed or generated; original; primigenial.
primine ::: n. --> The outermost of the two integuments of an ovule.
priming ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Prime ::: n. --> The powder or other combustible used to communicate fire to a charge of gunpowder, as in a firearm.
The first coating of color, size, or the like, laid on canvas, or on a building, or other surface.
primipara ::: n. --> A woman who bears a child for the first time.
primiparous ::: a. --> Belonging to a first birth; bearing young for the first time.
primipilar ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to the captain of the vanguard of a Roman army.
primitiae ::: pl. --> of Primitia
primitial ::: a. --> Being of the first production; primitive; original.
primitia ::: n. --> The first fruit; the first year&
primitias ::: pl. --> of Primitia
primitive ::: 1. Of or relating to an earliest or original stage or state; primeval. 2. Simple, unsophisticated; crude, unrefined.
primitive ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to the beginning or origin, or to early times; original; primordial; primeval; first; as, primitive innocence; the primitive church.
Of or pertaining to a former time; old-fashioned; characterized by simplicity; as, a primitive style of dress.
Original; primary; radical; not derived; as, primitive verb in grammar.
primitively ::: adv. --> Originally; at first.
Primarily; not derivatively.
According to the original rule or ancient practice; in the ancient style.
primitiveness ::: n. --> The quality or state of being primitive; conformity to primitive style or practice.
primitive "programming" A {function}, {operator}, or {type} which is built into a programming language (or {operating system}), either for speed of execution or because it would be impossible to write it in the language. Primitives typically include the arithmetic and logical operations (plus, minus, and, or, etc.) and are implemented by a small number of {machine language} instructions. (1995-05-01)
primity ::: n. --> Quality of being first; primitiveness.
primly ::: adv. --> In a prim or precise manner.
primmed ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Prim
primming ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Prim
primness ::: n. --> The quality or state of being prim; affected formality or niceness; preciseness; stiffness.
prim ::: n. --> The privet. ::: a. --> Formal; precise; affectedly neat or nice; as, prim regularity; a prim person. ::: v. t.
primo ::: a. --> First; chief.
primogenial ::: a. --> First born, made, or generated; original; primary; elemental; as, primogenial light.
primogenitive ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to primogeniture. ::: n. --> Primogeniture.
primogenitor ::: n. --> The first ancestor; a forefather.
primogeniture ::: a. --> The state of being the firstborn of the same parents; seniority by birth among children of the same family.
The exclusive right of inheritance which belongs to the eldest son. Thus in England the right of inheriting the estate of the father belongs to the eldest son, and in the royal family the eldest son of the sovereign is entitled to the throne by primogeniture. In exceptional cases, among the female children, the crown descends by right of primogeniture to the eldest daughter only and her issue.
primogenitureship ::: n. --> The state or privileges of the firstborn.
primordial ::: a. --> First in order; primary; original; of earliest origin; as, primordial condition.
Of or pertaining to the lowest beds of the Silurian age, corresponding to the Acadian and Potsdam periods in American geology. It is called also Cambrian, and by many geologists is separated from the Silurian.
Originally or earliest formed in the growth of an individual or organ; as, a primordial leaf; a primordial cell.
primordialism ::: n. --> Devotion to, or persistence in, conditions of the primordial state.
primordially ::: adv. --> At the beginning; under the first order of things; originally.
primordian ::: n. --> A name given to several kinds of plums; as, red primordian, amber primordian, etc.
primordiate ::: a. --> Primordial.
primp ::: a. --> To be formal or affected in dress or manners; -- often with up.
primrose ::: a. --> An early flowering plant of the genus Primula (P. vulgaris) closely allied to the cowslip. There are several varieties, as the white-, the red-, the yellow-flowered, etc. Formerly called also primerole, primerolles.
Any plant of the genus Primula.
Of or pertaining to the primrose; of the color of a primrose; -- hence, flowery; gay.
primulaceous ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to an order of herbaceous plants (Primulaceae), of which the primrose is the type, and the pimpernel, the cyclamen, and the water violet are other examples.
primula ::: n. --> The genus of plants including the primrose (Primula vera).
primum mobile ::: --> In the Ptolemaic system, the outermost of the revolving concentric spheres constituting the universe, the motion of which was supposed to carry with it all the inclosed spheres with their planets in a daily revolution from east to west. See Crystalline heavens, under Crystalline.
primus ::: n. --> One of the bishops of the Episcopal Church of Scotland, who presides at the meetings of the bishops, and has certain privileges but no metropolitan authority.
primy ::: a. --> Being in its prime.
prinpriddle ::: n. --> The long-tailed titmouse.
prince ::: a. --> The one of highest rank; one holding the highest place and authority; a sovereign; a monarch; -- originally applied to either sex, but now rarely applied to a female.
The son of a king or emperor, or the issue of a royal family; as, princes of the blood.
A title belonging to persons of high rank, differing in different countries. In England it belongs to dukes, marquises, and earls, but is given to members of the royal family only. In Italy a
princedom ::: n. --> The jurisdiction, sovereignty, rank, or estate of a prince.
princehood ::: n. --> Princeliness.
princekin ::: n. --> A petty prince; a princeling.
princeless ::: a. --> Without a prince.
princelet ::: n. --> A petty prince.
princelike ::: a. --> Princely.
princeliness ::: n. --> The quality of being princely; the state, manner, or dignity of a prince.
princeling ::: n. --> A petty prince; a young prince.
princely ::: a. --> Of or relating to a prince; regal; royal; of highest rank or authority; as, princely birth, character, fortune, etc.
Suitable for, or becoming to, a prince; grand; august; munificent; magnificent; as, princely virtues; a princely fortune. ::: adv. --> In a princely manner.
princely ::: of or relating to a prince; royal.
princes ::: hereditary male rulers; kings.
princess ::: a woman member of a royal family other than the monarch, especially a daughter of a monarch.
princesse ::: a. --> A term applied to a lady&
princesslike ::: a. --> Like a princess.
princess ::: n. --> A female prince; a woman having sovereign power, or the rank of a prince.
The daughter of a sovereign; a female member of a royal family.
The consort of a prince; as, the princess of Wales.
princewood ::: n. --> The wood of two small tropical American trees (Hamelia ventricosa, and Cordia gerascanthoides). It is brownish, veined with lighter color.
princified ::: a. --> Imitative of a prince.
principal ::: a. --> Highest in rank, authority, character, importance, or degree; most considerable or important; chief; main; as, the principal officers of a Government; the principal men of a state; the principal productions of a country; the principal arguments in a case.
Of or pertaining to a prince; princely. ::: n.
principalities ::: pl. --> of Principality
principality ::: n. --> Sovereignty; supreme power; hence, superiority; predominance; high, or the highest, station.
A prince; one invested with sovereignty.
The territory or jurisdiction of a prince; or the country which gives title to a prince; as, the principality of Wales.
principally ::: adv. --> In a principal manner; primarily; above all; chiefly; mainly.
principalness ::: n. --> The quality of being principal.
principal type The most general {type} of an expression. For example, the following are all valid types for the {lambda abstraction} (\ x . x): Int -" Int Bool -" Bool (a-"b) -" (a-"b) but any valid type will be an instance of the principal type: a -" a. An instance is derived by substituting the same type expression for all occurences of some {type variable}. The principal type of an expression can be computed from those of its subexpressions by Robinson's {unification} {algorithm}. (1994-12-16)
principate ::: n. --> Principality; supreme rule.
principial ::: a. --> Elementary.
principia ::: n. pl. --> First principles; fundamental beginnings; elements; as. Newton&
principiant ::: a. --> Relating to principles or beginnings.
principiate ::: v. t. --> To begin; to initiate.
principiation ::: n. --> Analysis into primary or elemental parts.
principle ::: a basic or essential quality or element determining intrinsic nature or characteristic behaviour.
principled ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Principle
principle ::: n. --> Beginning; commencement.
A source, or origin; that from which anything proceeds; fundamental substance or energy; primordial substance; ultimate element, or cause.
An original faculty or endowment.
A fundamental truth; a comprehensive law or doctrine, from which others are derived, or on which others are founded; a general truth; an elementary proposition; a maxim; an axiom; a
principling ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Principle
princock ::: n. --> Alt. of Princox
princox ::: n. --> A coxcomb; a pert boy.
prinked ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Prink
prinker ::: n. --> One who prinks.
prinking ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Prink
prink ::: v. t. --> To dress or adjust one&
printa-ble ::: a. --> Worthy to be published.
printed circuit board "hardware" (PCB) A thin board to which electronic components are fixed by solder. Component leads and {integrated circuit} pins may pass through holes ("vias") in the board or they may be {surface mounted}, in which case no holes are required (though they may still be used to connect different layers). The simplest kind of PCB has components and wires on one side and interconnections (the printed circuit) on the other. PCBs may have components mounted on both sides and may have many internal layers, allowing more connections to fit in the same board area. Boards with internal conductor layers usually have "plated-through holes" to improve the electrical connection to the internal layers. The connections are metal strips (usually copper). The pattern of connections is often produced using photo-resist and acid etching. Boards, especially those for high frequency circuits such as modern {microprocessors}, usually have one or more "{ground planes}" and "power planes" which are large areas of copper for greater current carrying ability. A computer or other electronic system might be built from several PCBs, e.g. processor, memory, graphics controller, disk controller etc. These boards might all plug into a {motherboard} or {backplane} or be connected by a {ribbon cable}. (1995-05-01)
printed ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Print
printer "printer" A {peripheral} device for producing text and images on paper. There are many different types, broadly grouped into "{impact printers}" and "{non-impact printers}". Compare {plotter}. See also {Braille printer}, {tree-killer}. (1996-01-13)
printer ::: n. --> One who prints; especially, one who prints books, newspapers, engravings, etc., a compositor; a typesetter; a pressman.
printer port "hardware, printer" A connector found on many {microcomputers} intended for attaching a printer. This may be a general-purpose input/output {parallel port} or may be a special {Centronics} interface. Most printers can also be connected to a {serial port} but that is unlikely to be described as a "printer port". (1996-01-07)
printery ::: n. --> A place where cloth is printed; print works; also, a printing office.
printf "library" The standard function in the {C} programming language library for printing formatted output. The first argument is a format string which may contain ordinary characters which are just printed and "conversion specifications" - sequences beginning with '%' such as %6d which describe how the other arguments should be printed, in this case as a six-character decimal integer padded on the right with spaces. Possible conversion specifications are d, i or u (decimal integer), o ({octal}), x, X or p ({hexadecimal}), f ({floating-point}), e or E ({mantissa} and {exponent}, e.g. 1.23E-22), g or G (f or e format as appropriate to the value printed), c (a single character), s (a string), % (i.e. %% - print a % character). d, i, f, e, g are signed, the rest are unsigned. The variant {fprintf} prints to a given output stream and sprintf stores what would be printed in a string variable. {Unix manual page}: printf(3). (1996-12-08)
printing discussion [XEROX PARC] A protracted, low-level, time-consuming, generally pointless discussion of something only peripherally interesting to all. [{Jargon File}]
printing-house ::: a place where printing of books, pamphlets, etc. is done.
printing ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Print ::: n. --> The act, art, or practice of impressing letters, characters, or figures on paper, cloth, or other material; the business of a printer, including typesetting and presswork, with their adjuncts; typography; also, the act of producing photographic prints.
printless ::: a. --> Making no imprint.
Making no imprint.
print server "printer" A {server} device that is set up on a {network} to route print requests and status information between computers and {printers} connected by a network. A typical print server routes print requests for multiple computers and printers on a network. For example, a networked {workstation} user submits a print command that includes a {print file} and information about the printer to be used, usually a nearby printer for convenience. The print server sends the print file to the requested printer. The printer {spools} the print file and provides job status. The print server relays the status of the printer back to the workstation and makes this status information available to other devices on the network. (1999-02-18)
printshop ::: n. --> A shop where prints are sold.
prints ::: photographic images transferred to paper or to similar surfaces, usually from negatives.
print ::: v. t. --> To fix or impress, as a stamp, mark, character, idea, etc., into or upon something.
To stamp something in or upon; to make an impression or mark upon by pressure, or as by pressure.
To strike off an impression or impressions of, from type, or from stereotype, electrotype, or engraved plates, or the like; in a wider sense, to do the typesetting, presswork, etc., of (a book or other publication); as, to print books, newspapers, pictures; to print
prior ::: a. --> Preceding in the order of time; former; antecedent; anterior; previous; as, a prior discovery; prior obligation; -- used elliptically in cases like the following: he lived alone [in the time] prior to his marriage.
The superior of a priory, and next below an abbot in dignity.
priorate ::: n. --> The dignity, office, or government, of a prior.
prioress ::: n. --> A lady superior of a priory of nuns, and next in dignity to an abbess.
priories ::: pl. --> of Priory
priority ::: a. --> The quality or state of being prior or antecedent in time, or of preceding something else; as, priority of application.
Precedence; superior rank.
priority inheritance "parallel" A technique for avoiding {priority inversion} by temporarily raising the prioriry of all processes that want to access a shared resource to the highest priority level of any of them. Priority inversion occurs where a low priority process, L is holding a resource required by a high priority process, H, but L is not running because a medium priority process, M is running. Under priority inheritance, L temporarily inherits H's priority, allowing L to run and release the resource H is waiting for. For example, an ambulance (H) is stuck behind a lorry (L) waiting at a junction (the shared resource) for a gap in a line of cars (M) using the junction. Applying priority inheritance, the cars give way to the lorry as they would to the ambulance, thus allowing the lorry and then the ambulance to use the junction. (2005-02-11)
priority interrupt "jargon" Any stimulus compelling enough to yank one right out of {hack mode}. Classically used to describe being dragged away by an {SO} for immediate sex, but may also refer to more mundane interruptions such as a fire alarm going off in the near vicinity. Also called an {NMI} (non-maskable interrupt), especially in PC-land. [{Jargon File}] (2005-02-13)
priority inversion "parallel" The state of a concurrent system where a high priority task is waiting for a low priority task which is waiting for a medium priority task. The system may become {unstable} and {crash} under these circumstances. In an {operating system} that uses multiple tasks, each task (or {context}) may be given a priority. These priorities help the {scheduler} decide which task to run next. Consider tasks, L, M, and H, with priorities Low, Medium, and High. M is running and H is blocked waiting for some resource that is held by L. So long as any task with a priority higher than L is runable, it will prevent task L, and thus task H, from running. Priority inversion is generally considered either as a high-level design failure or an implementation issue to be taken into account depending on who is talking. Most operating systems have methods in place to prevent or take inversion into account. {Priority inheritance} is one method. The most public instance of priority inversion is the repeated 'fail-safe' rebooting of the {Mars Pathfinder (http://research.microsoft.com/~mbj/Mars_Pathfinder/Mars_Pathfinder.html)}. base station ('Sagan Memorial Station'). (2003-06-04)
priority queue "programming" A data structure with three operations: insert a new item, return the highest priority item, and remove the highest priority item. The obvious way to represent priority queues is by maintaining a sorted list but this can make the insert operation very slow. Greater efficiency can be achieved by using {heaps}. (1996-03-12)
priority scheduling "operating system" {Processes scheduling} in which the {scheduler} selects tasks to run based on their priority as opposed to, say, a simple {round-robin}. Priorities may be static or dynamic. Static priorities are assigned at the time of creation, while dynamic priorities are based on the processes' behaviour while in the system. For example, the scheduler may favour {I/O}-intensive tasks so that expensive requests can be issued as early as possible. A danger of priority scheduling is {starvation}, in which processes with lower priorities are not given the opportunity to run. In order to avoid starvation, in preemptive scheduling, the priority of a process is gradually reduced while it is running. Eventually, the priority of the running process will no longer be the highest, and the next process will start running. This method is called {aging}.
priorly ::: adv. --> Previously.
priorship ::: n. --> The state or office of prior; priorate.
priory ::: n. --> A religious house presided over by a prior or prioress; -- sometimes an offshoot of, an subordinate to, an abbey, and called also cell, and obedience. See Cell, 2.
prisage ::: n. --> A right belonging to the crown of England, of taking two tuns of wine from every ship importing twenty tuns or more, -- one before and one behind the mast. By charter of Edward I. butlerage was substituted for this.
The share of merchandise taken as lawful prize at sea which belongs to the king or admiral.
priscillianist ::: n. --> A follower of Priscillian, bishop of Avila in Spain, in the fourth century, who mixed various elements of Gnosticism and Manicheism with Christianity.
prise ::: n. --> An enterprise. ::: n. & v. --> See Prize, n., 5. Also Prize, v. t.
priser ::: n. --> See 1st Prizer.
prismatic ::: a. --> Alt. of Prismatical
prismatical ::: a. --> Resembling, or pertaining to, a prism; as, a prismatic form or cleavage.
Separated or distributed by a prism; formed by a prism; as, prismatic colors.
Same as Orthorhombic.
prismatically ::: adv. --> In the form or manner of a prism; by means of a prism.
prismatoidal ::: a. --> Having a prismlike form.
prism ::: a transparent solid body, often having triangular bases, used for dispersing light into a spectrum or for reflecting rays of light. Also fig.
prism ::: n. --> A solid whose bases or ends are any similar, equal, and parallel plane figures, and whose sides are parallelograms.
A transparent body, with usually three rectangular plane faces or sides, and two equal and parallel triangular ends or bases; -- used in experiments on refraction, dispersion, etc.
A form the planes of which are parallel to the vertical axis. See Form, n., 13.
prismoidal ::: a. --> Having the form of a prismoid; as, prismoidal solids.
prismoid ::: n. --> A body that approaches to the form of a prism.
prismy ::: a. --> Pertaining to a prism.
pris ::: n. --> See Price, and 1st Prize.
prisoned ::: held captive in or as in a prison.
prisoned ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Prison
prisoner ::: n. --> One who is confined in a prison.
A person under arrest, or in custody, whether in prison or not; a person held in involuntary restraint; a captive; as, a prisoner at the bar of a court.
prison-house ::: a prison. Often fig.
prisoning ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Prison
prisonment ::: n. --> Imprisonment.
prison ::: n. --> A place where persons are confined, or restrained of personal liberty; hence, a place or state o/ confinement, restraint, or safe custody.
Specifically, a building for the safe custody or confinement of criminals and others committed by lawful authority. ::: v. t.
pristinate ::: a. --> Pristine; primitive.
pristine ::: a. --> Belonging to the earliest period or state; original; primitive; primeval; as, the pristine state of innocence; the pristine manners of a people; pristine vigor.
pritchel ::: n. --> A tool employed by blacksmiths for punching or enlarging the nail holes in a horseshoe.
pritch ::: n. --> A sharp-pointed instrument; also, an eelspear.
Pique; offense.
prithee ::: interj. --> A corruption of pray thee; as, I prithee; generally used without I.
prithivimaya ::: see pr.thivimaya
prithivi ::: see pr.thivi.
prithivi. ::: the earth element from which the sense of smell arises
priti (priti; pritih) ::: pleasure; gladness; the "pleasure of the mind" in the rasa of all experience; an intense delight which "assumes the place of the scattered and external pleasure of the mind in existence or rather it draws all other delight into it and transforms by a marvellous alchemy the mind"s and the heart"s feelings and all sense movements"; sometimes substituted for bhoga as the second stage of active / positive samata or bhukti; an element of Mahasarasvati bhava. pritih. daks.yaṁ danapratidanalipsa anandibhava (pritih dakshyam pritih
pritih ::: [nominative]
pritih. ::: service, acuteness of intelligence, the urge to work, gladness (the attributes of Mahasarasvati).
priti ::: pleasure; ecstasy; love.
prittle-prattle ::: n. --> Empty talk; trifling loquacity; prattle; -- used in contempt or ridicule.
privacies ::: pl. --> of Privacy
privacy ::: 1. The quality or condition of being secluded from the presence or view of others. 2. Plural. Private places. privacies.
privacy ::: n. --> The state of being in retirement from the company or observation of others; seclusion.
A place of seclusion from company or observation; retreat; solitude; retirement.
Concealment of what is said or done.
A private matter; a secret.
See Privity, 2.
privacy "security" An attribute of a system's {security} that ensures that only intended or desired people or bodies can read a message or piece of stored data. Privacy is often enforced by some kind of {access control} or {encryption}. (2011-06-03)
privado ::: n. --> A private friend; a confidential friend; a confidant.
private ::: a. --> Belonging to, or concerning, an individual person, company, or interest; peculiar to one&
private {privacy}
privateered ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Privateer
privateering ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Privateer ::: n. --> Cruising in a privateer.
privateer ::: n. --> An armed private vessel which bears the commission of the sovereign power to cruise against the enemy. See Letters of marque, under Marque.
The commander of a privateer. ::: v. i. --> To cruise in a privateer.
privateersman ::: n. --> An officer or seaman of a privateer.
privateersmen ::: pl. --> of Privateersman
private key "cryptography" A piece of data used in {private-key cryptography} and {public-key cryptography}. In the former the private key is known by both sender and recipient whereas in the latter it is known only to the sender. (2008-02-07)
private-key cryptography "cryptography" As opposed to {public-key cryptography}, a cryptographic method in which the same key is used to encrypt and decrypt the message. Private-key algorithms include the obsolescent {Data Encryption Standard} (DES), triple-DES (3DES), the {Advanced Encryption Standard} (AES), also known as Rijndael, Blowfish, Twofish RC2, {RC4}, RC5 and RC6. A problem with private-key cryptography is that the sender and the recipient of the message must agree on a common key via some alternative secure channel. {Public-key cryptography} gives an answer to this problem. (2008-02-07)
privately ::: adv. --> In a private manner; not openly; without the presence of others.
In a manner affecting an individual; personally not officially; as, he is not privately benefited.
privateness ::: n. --> Seclusion from company or society; retirement; privacy; secrecy.
The state of one not invested with public office.
private ::: secluded from the sight, presence, or intrusion of others.
privation ::: n. --> The act of depriving, or taking away; hence, the depriving of rank or office; degradation in rank; deprivation.
The state of being deprived or destitute of something, especially of something required or desired; destitution; need; as, to undergo severe privations.
The condition of being absent; absence; negation.
privative ::: a. --> Causing privation; depriving.
Consisting in the absence of something; not positive; negative.
Implying privation or negation; giving a negative force to a word; as, alpha privative; privative particles; -- applied to such prefixes and suffixes as a- (Gr. /), un-, non-, -less. ::: n.
privatively ::: adv. --> In a privative manner; by the absence of something; negatively.
privativeness ::: n. --> The state of being privative.
privet ::: n. --> An ornamental European shrub (Ligustrum vulgare), much used in hedges; -- called also prim.
privies ::: pl. --> of Privy
privilege ::: 1. A special advantage or immunity or benefit not enjoyed by all. 2. The advantages and immunities enjoyed by a small usually powerful group or class, esp. to the disadvantage of others.
privileged ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Privilege ::: a. --> Invested with a privilege; enjoying a peculiar right, advantage, or immunity.
privileged instruction A {machine code} instruction that may only be executed when the processor is running in {supervisor mode}. Privileged instructions include operations such as I/O and {memory management}. (1995-02-15)
privileged ::: restricted to a select group or individual.
privilege ::: n. --> A peculiar benefit, advantage, or favor; a right or immunity not enjoyed by others or by all; special enjoyment of a good, or exemption from an evil or burden; a prerogative; advantage; franchise.
See Call, Put, Spread, etc. ::: v. t.
privileging ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Privilege
privily ::: adv. --> In a privy manner; privately; secretly.
privities ::: pl. --> of Privity
privity ::: a. --> Privacy; secrecy; confidence.
Private knowledge; joint knowledge with another of a private concern; cognizance implying consent or concurrence.
A private matter or business; a secret.
The genitals; the privates.
A connection, or bond of union, between parties, as to some particular transaction; mutual or successive relationship to the same rights of property.
privy ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to some person exclusively; assigned to private uses; not public; private; as, the privy purse.
Secret; clandestine.
Appropriated to retirement; private; not open to the public.
Admitted to knowledge of a secret transaction; secretly cognizant; privately knowing. ::: n.
privy ::: made a participant in knowledge of something private or secret, usually followed by to.
priya-apriya (priya-apriya; priya apriya) ::: the dvandva of pleasant and unpleasant, liked and disliked.
priya (priya; priyam) ::: pleasant, liked; that which is liked; the sense of liking.
priyam ::: see priya. priy priyapriyabodha
priya ::: pleasant; the pleasant; [Ved.]: love. ::: priyam [nominative]
priya&
prizable ::: a. --> Valuable.
prized ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Prize
prized ::: much loved; esteemed; valued.
prizeman ::: n. --> The winner of a prize.
prizemen ::: pl. --> of Prizeman
prize ::: n. --> That which is taken from another; something captured; a thing seized by force, stratagem, or superior power.
Anything captured by a belligerent using the rights of war; esp., property captured at sea in virtue of the rights of war, as a vessel.
An honor or reward striven for in a competitive contest; anything offered to be competed for, or as an inducement to, or reward of, effort.
prizer ::: n. --> One who estimates or sets the value of a thing; an appraiser.
One who contends for a prize; a prize fighter; a challenger.
prizing ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Prize ::: n. --> The application of a lever to move any weighty body, as a cask, anchor, cannon, car, etc. See Prize, n., 5.
Price ::: Rs. 10/-
PRI {ISDN} {Primary Rate Interface}. See also {BRI} (1994-12-08)
Primacy Effect ::: The tendency to remember the first bit of information in a series due to increased rehearsal.
Prima facie duties: A phrase used by W. D. Ross to indicate the nature of the general material rules of duty which he regarded as self-evident. Promise-keeping is a prima facie duty, one among others. I.e., if I have made a promise, I have a prima facie duty to keep it, which means that I will have an actual duty to keep it, if no higher prima facie duty is incumbent upon me. What Ross calls "prima facie duties" H. A. Prichard calls "claims" and E. F. Carntt "responsibilities." The notion is central to the recent neo-intuitionism of Oxford, constituting its reply to the usual objection to intuited general material propositions about duty on the score that these may conflict and must admit of exceptions. -- W.K.F.
Primary Domain Controller "networking" (PDC) Each {Windows NT} {domain} has a Primary Domain Controller and zero or more {Backup Domain Controllers}. The PDC holds the {SAM} database and authenticates access requests from {workstations} and {servers} in the domain. (2003-07-16)
Primary Qualities: The inherent qualities of bodies solidity, extension, figure, motion, rest, number. These qualities are conceived to be utterly inseparable from objects, they are constant. John Locke made classic the distinction of primary and secondary qualities made by Galileo and Descartes. -- V.F.
Primary Rate Interface (PRI) A type of {ISDN} connection. In North America and Japan, this consists of 24 channels, usually divided into 23 B channels and 1 D channel, and runs over the same physical interface as {T1}. Elsewhere the PRI has 31 user channels, usually divided into 30 B channels and 1 D channel and is based on the {E1} interface. PRI is typically used for connections such as one between a PBX (private branch exchange, a telephone exchange operated by the customer of a telephone company) and a CO (central office, of the telephone company) or IXC (inter exchange carrier, a long distance telephone company). (1995-01-18)
Primary Reinforcer ::: A reinforcer that meets our basic needs such as food, water, sleep, or love.
Primary truth: (Lat. primus, first) A conception or proposition which is dependent for its truth on no other principle in the same order of thought, it may be considered self-evident from common experience, special intuitive insight, or even by postulation, but it is not demonstrated -- V.J.B.
Prime Computer "company" (Or "Pr1ME") A {minicomputer} manufacturer. [Dates? Status? Products? Addresses?] (1996-09-28)
Prime Matter: See Matter. Prime Mover: In Aristotle's philosophy that which is the first cause of all change and, being first, is not subject to change by any prior agent. See Aristotelianism. -- G.R.M.
Primenet, Inc. Arizona's {Internet provider}. (1994-12-08)
Prime number – A number th at can be divided by only itself and one.
Primitive Communism: That stage of primitive society in which there is some form of socialized ownership of the basic means of production (the land, fisheries, natural resources and the like), an absence of economic classes (q.v.) and of the state as a special apparatus of internal force. -- J.M.S.
Primitivism: A modern term for a complex of ideas running back in classical thought to Hesiod. Two species of primitivism are found, (1) chronological primitivism, a belief that the best period of history was the earliest; (2) cultural primitivism, a belief that the acquisitions of civilization are evil. Each of these species is found in two forms, hard and soft. The hard primitivist believes the best state of mankind to approach the ascetic life; man's power of endurance is eulogized. The soft primitivist, while frequently emphasizing the simplicity of what he imagines to be primitive life, nevertheless accentuates its gentleness. The Noble Savage is a fair example of a hard primitive; the Golden Race of Hesiod of a soft. -- G.B.
Primum cognitum: (Lat. primus, first, cognitus pp. of cognoscere, to know) In Scholastic philosophy the most primitive intellectual cognition of the mind, in contrast to mere sensible cognition. -- L.W.
Princeton University "body, education" Chartered in 1746 as the College of New Jersey, Princeton was British North America's fourth college. First located in Elizabeth, then in Newark, the College moved to Princeton in 1756. The College was housed in Nassau Hall, newly built on land donated by Nathaniel and Rebeckah FitzRandolph. Nassau Hall contained the entire College for nearly half a century. The College was officially renamed Princeton University in 1896; five years later in 1900 the Graduate School was established. Fully coeducational since 1969, Princeton now enrolls approximately 6,400 students (4,535 undergraduates and 1,866 graduate students). The ratio of full-time students to faculty members (in full-time equivalents) is eight to one. Today Princeton's main campus in Princeton Borough and Princeton Township consists of more than 5.5 million square feet of space in 160 buildings on 600 acres. The University's James Forrestal Campus in Plainsboro consists of one million square feet of space in four complexes on 340 acres. As Mercer County's largest private employer and one of the largest in the Mercer/Middlesex/Somerset County region, with approximately 4,830 permanent employees - including more than 1,000 faculty members - the University plays a major role in the educational, cultural, and economic life of the region. {(http://princeton.edu/index.html)}. (1994-01-19)
Principal coordination: (Ger. prinzipialkoordination) The ego and the environment are the two central links in the originally given. The restoration of the natural world conception in which the perceived environmental fragments are no more viewed as ideas in us. It forms the correlative functioning of object and subject. (Avenarius.) -- H.H.
Principium individuationis: (Lat.) Principle of individuation (q.v.); the intrinsic, real factor in an existing singular thing which causes the individuality of the thing. -- V.J.B.
Principle: (Lat. principe, from principium, a beginning) A fundamental cause or universal truth, that which is inherent in anything. That which ultimately accounts for being. According to Aristotle, the primary source of all being, actuality and knowledge. (a) In ontology: first principles are the categories or postulates of ontology. (b) In epistemology: as the essence of being, the ground of all knowledge. Syn. with essence, universal, cause. -- J.K.F.
Principle of non-sufficient reason: According to this law, the probabilities of two propositions may be said to be equal, if there is no adequate ground for declaring them unequal. When applied without qualification, this principle may lead to unwarranted results. Such a difficulty may be avoided by an adequate formulation of the Principle of Indifference. -- T.G.
Principle of Organic Unities: A principle enunciated by G. E. Moore to the effect that the intrinsic value of a whole need not be equal to the sum of the intrinsic values of its parts. See Intrinsic value. -- W.K.F.
Principle of sufficient reason: According to Leibniz, one of the two principles on which reasoning is founded, the other being the principle of Contradiction. While the latter is the ground of all necessary truths, the Principle of Sufficient Reason is the ground of all contingent and factual truths. It applies especially to existents, possible or factual, hence its two forms actual sufficient reasons, like the actual volitions of God or of the free creatures, are those determined by the perception of the good and exhibit themselves as final causes involving the good, and possible sufficient reasons are involved, for example, in the perception of evil as a possible aim to achieve. Leibniz defines the Principle of Sufficient Reason as follows: It is the principle "in virtue of which we judge that no fact can be found true or existent, no judgment veritable, unless there is a sufficient reason why it should be so and not otherwise, although these reasons cannot more than often be known to us. . . . There must be a sufficient reason for contingent truths or truths of fact, that is, for the sequence of things which are dispersed throughout the universe of created beings, in which the resolution into particular reasons might go into endless detail" (Monadology, 31, 32, 33, 36). And again, "Nothing happens without a sufficient reason; that is nothing happens without its being possible for one who should know things sufficiently to give a reason showing why things are so and not otherwise" (Principles of Nature and of Grace). It seems that the account given by Leibniz of this principle is not satisfactory in itself, in spite of the wide use he made of it in his philosophy. Many of his disciples vainly attempted to reduce it to the Principle of Contradiction. See Wolff.
Principles of practice of yaga ::: AU Yoga proceeds in its method by three principles of practice; first, purification, that is to say, the removal of all abeirations, disorders, obstructions brought about by the mixed and irregular action of the energy of being in our physical, moral and mental system ; secondly, concentfStiof?, tlyit is to say, the bringing to its full intensity and the mastered and self-directed empleyment of that energy of
Printer Access Protocol "networking, protocol, printer" (PAP) A {protocol} used in {Mac OS} {Appletalk} to provide bi-directional communication between {PostScript} printers and the client computer. (1999-03-02)
PRINT I An early system on {IBM 705}. [CACM 2(5):16 (May 1959)].
PRINT "language" PRe-edited INTerpreter. An early mathematics language for the {IBM 705}. [Sammet 1969, p. 134]. (1995-05-01)
Print Services Facility "printer" (PSF) {IBM}'s system software which generates {native} IBM printer language, {IPDS} and, depending on the version, {PostScript} and LaserJet {PCL}. See also: {Advanced Function Presentation}. (1998-06-28)
Priority: The condition of being earlier in a succession of events. This condition is meaningful only in the past-present-future series relative to a given event or experience. In its logical sense, the term signifies a condition without which something else cannot be understood, explained, or thought of. -- R.B.W.
Prishni ::: see prsni
PRISM A distributed {logic language}. ["PRISM: A Parallel Inference System for Problem Solving", S. Kasif et al, Proc 1983 Logic Prog Workshop, pp. 123-152].
Prisoner of Bill "humour" (PoB) A derisory term, in use generally among {Unix} users, for anyone who uses {Microsoft} products either because they don't know there is anything better (i.e. Unix) or because they would be incapable of working anything more complex (i.e. Unix). The interesting and widespread presumption among users of the term is that (at least at the time of writing, 1998) using anything other than Unix or a Microsoft OS (whether {VMS}, {Macintosh}, {Amiga}) is so eccentric a choice as to be at least somewhat praiseworthy. (1998-09-07)
Prithivi, Prithvi ::: see prthvi
Privacy Enhanced Mail "messaging" (PEM) {Internet} {electronic mail} which provides {confidentiality}, {authentication} and message {integrity} using various {encryption} methods. See also {Pretty Good Privacy}. (2009-06-03)
Privacy, Epistemic: (Lat. privatus, from privus, private) Status of data of knowledge, e.g. somatic sensations, hedonic and emotional states, and perhaps even sense data, in so far as they are directly accessible to a single knowing subject. See Publicity, Epistemic. -- L.W.
Private Automatic Branch eXchange "communications" (PABX) A telephone exchange operated within an organisation, used for switching calls between internal lines and between internal and {PSTN} lines. In contrast to a {PMBX}, a PABX can route calls without manual intervention, based entirely on the number dialed. Not all PABXs can route external calls to internal numbers automatically however. (1998-08-07)
Private Branch Exchange "communications" (PBX) A telephone exchange local to a particular organisation who use, rather than provide, telephone services. The earliest PBXs were manual ({Private Manual Branch EXchange}, PMBX) but are now more likely to be automatic ({Private Automatic Branch eXchange}). (1997-06-25)
Private Manual Branch eXchange "communications" (PMBX) The original manual equivalent of a {PABX}; a PMBX involves company employed operators manually switching each call using a manual switchboard. (1998-08-07)
Privation: (Lat. privatis) In Aristotle's philosophy the condition of a substance that lacks a certain quality which it is capable of possessing and normally does possess. -- G.R.M Proaeresis: (Gr. proairesis) Reflective choice, especially of means to an end, deliberate desire (Aristotle). -- G.K.M.
TERMS ANYWHERE
1. Appearing sad or lonely because deserted or abandoned. 2. Forsaken or deprived.
1. Excessive pride in one"s appearance, qualities, abilities, achievements, etc.; character or quality of being vain; conceit; an instance or display of this quality or feeling. 2. Lack of usefulness, worth, or effect; worthlessness.
1. Imagination, caprice, whim, esp. when extravagant and unrestrained. 2. The forming of mental images, esp. wondrous, extravagant or visionary fancy. 3. A mental image, esp. when unreal or fantastic; vision. fantasies.
1. Imagination or fantasy, esp. as exercised in a capricious manner. 2. A mental image or conception. 3. An idea or opinion with little foundation; illusion. 4. A caprice; whim. 5. A sudden or irrational liking for a person or thing. fancy"s, Fancy"s, fancies.
1. Not affected in mind or feeling; not moved by excitement or emotion; undisturbed, calm. 2. Not approached, crossed, traversed, explored, or visited. 3. Remaining in a pristine state; unchanged.
1. Situated at, in, or near the center. 2. Of basic importance; essential or principal.
1. Spirited and original; daring; bold. 2. Fearlessly, often recklessly daring; bold; defiant; insolent; brazen; unrestrained by convention or propriety.
1. The active opposition or mutual hostility of two opposing forces, physical or mental. 2. An opposing force, principle, or tendency.
1. The expenditure of something, such as time or labour, necessary for the attainment of a goal. Also fig. **2. The price paid or required for acquiring, producing, or maintaining something, usually measured in money, time, or energy; expense or expenditure; outlay. 3. **Suffering or sacrifice; loss; penalty.
1. The face of a building, especially the principal face. 2. An artificial or deceptive front.
"1. ‘The Golden Embryo" in Hindu cosmology; the name given to the golden-hued Egg which floated on the surface of the primeval waters. In time the egg divided into two parts, the golden top half of the shell becoming the heavens and the silver lower half the earth. 2. ‘God imaginative and therefore creative"; the ‘Spirit in the middle or Dream State"; Lord of Dream-Life who takes from the ocean of subconsciously intelligent spiritual being the conscious psychic forces which He materializes or encases in various forms of gross living matter. (Enc. Br.; A)” Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works.
1. Where something originated or was nurtured in its early existence. 2. The place where something begins, where it springs into being.
3. In the Mahabharata and the Puranas, the second member of the Triad, the embodiment of sattva-guna, the preserving and restoring power. This power has manifested in the world as the various incarnations of Vishnu, generally accepted as being ten in number. Vishnu"s heaven is Vaikuntha, his consort Lakshmi and his vehicle Garuda. He is portrayed as reclining on the serpent-king Sesa and floating on the waters between periods of cosmic manifestation. The holy river Ganga is said to spring from his foot. (A; V. G.; Dow)” *Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works
absolutism ::: an absolute standard or principle.
absorbed ::: 1. Engrossed or entirely occupied; preoccupied. 2. Swallowed up, or comprised, so as no longer to exist apart.
abyss ::: 1. The great deep, the primal chaos; the ‘bowels of the earth", the supposed cavity of the lower world; the ‘infernal pit". 2. A bottomless gulf; any unfathomable or apparently unfathomable cavity or void space; a profound gulf, chasm, or void extending beneath. Abyss, abyss"s, abysses.
achieve ::: 1. To bring to a successful end, to carry out successfully (an enterprise); to accomplish, perform. 2. To succeed in gaining, to acquire by effort, to obtain, win. achieves, achieved, achieving.
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. 1. Not imprisoned or enslaved; being at liberty. 2. Unconstrained; unconfined. 3. Unobstructed; clear. 4. Ready or generous in using or giving; liberal; lavish. 5. Exempt from external authority, interference, restriction, etc., as a person or one"s will, thought, choice, action, etc.; independent; unrestricted. 6. Exempt or released from something specified that controls, restrains, burdens, etc. (usually followed by from or of). 7. Given readily or in profusion. freer, thought-free, world-free. *adv. *8. In a free manner; without constraints; unimpeded. v. 9. To make free; set at liberty; release from bondage, imprisonment, or restraint. 10. To disengage or clear something from an entanglement. 11. To relieve or rid of a burden, an inconvenience or an obligation. freed. set free. Released; liberated; freed.
"Adjustment for practical purposes of rival courses of action, systems, or theories, conflicting opinions or principles, by the sacrifice or surrender of a part of each. . . .” Essays Divine and Human*
“Adjustment for practical purposes of rival courses of action, systems, or theories, conflicting opinions or principles, by the sacrifice or surrender of a part of each….” Essays Divine and Human
admires ::: 1. Regards with pleased surprise, or with wonder mingled with esteem, approbation, or affection; and in modern usage, gazed on with pleasure. admired, admiring. adj. 2. Regarded with admiration; wondered at; contemplated with wonder mingled with esteem, etc.
adventure ::: n. 1. Any novel or unexpected event in which one shares; an exciting or remarkable incident befalling any one. 2. The encountering of risks or participation in novel and exciting events; bold or daring activity, enterprise. adventure"s, world-adventure, world-adventure"s. *v. 3. To take the chance of; to commit to fortune; to undertake a thing of doubtful issue; to try, to chance, to venture into or upon. 4. To risk or hazard; stake. *adventuring.
adventurer ::: one who seeks adventures, or who engages in daring enterprises. (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as an adj.) adventurers, Adventurers.
adytum ::: the innermost part of a temple; the secret shrine whence oracles were delivered; a most sacred or reserved part of any place of worship; hence, fig. a private or inner chamber, a sanctum.
Agni first, for without him the sacrificial flame cannot burn on the altar of the soul. That flame of Agni is the seven-tongued power of the Will, a Force of God instinct with knowledge. This conscious and forceful will is the immortal guest in our mortality, a pure priest and a divine worker, the mediator between earth and heaven. It carries what we offer to the higher Powers and brings back in return their force and light and joy into our humanity.” *The Secret of the Veda
Agni first, for without him the sacrificial flame cannot burn on the altar of the soul. That flame of Agni is the seven-tongued power of the Will, a Force of God instinct with knowledge. This conscious and forceful will is the immortal guest in our mortality, a pure priest and a divine worker, the mediator between earth and heaven. It carries what we offer to the higher Powers and brings back in return their force and light and joy into our humanity.” The Secret of the Veda
"A Godhead is seated in the heart of every man and is the Lord of this mysterious action of Nature. And though this Spirit of the universe, this One who is all, seems to be turning us on the wheel of the world as if mounted on a machine by the force of Maya, shaping us in our ignorance as the potter shapes a pot, as the weaver a fabric, by some skilful mechanical principle, yet is this spirit our own greatest self and it is according to the real idea, the truth of ourselves, that which is growing in us and finding always new and more adequate forms in birth after birth, in our animal and human and divine life, in that which we were, that which we are, that which we shall be, — it is in accordance with this inner soul-truth that, as our opened eyes will discover, we are progressively shaped by this spirit within us in its all-wise omnipotence.” *Essays on the Gita
“A Godhead is seated in the heart of every man and is the Lord of this mysterious action of Nature. And though this Spirit of the universe, this One who is all, seems to be turning us on the wheel of the world as if mounted on a machine by the force of Maya, shaping us in our ignorance as the potter shapes a pot, as the weaver a fabric, by some skilful mechanical principle, yet is this spirit our own greatest self and it is according to the real idea, the truth of ourselves, that which is growing in us and finding always new and more adequate forms in birth after birth, in our animal and human and divine life, in that which we were, that which we are, that which we shall be,—it is in accordance with this inner soul-truth that, as our opened eyes will discover, we are progressively shaped by this spirit within us in its all-wise omnipotence.” Essays on the Gita
::: ". . . all our spiritual and psychic experience bears affirmative witness, brings us always a constant and, in its main principles, an invariable evidence of the existence of higher worlds, freer planes of existence. Not having bound ourselves down, like so much of modern thought, to the dogma that only physical experience or experience based upon the physical sense is true, the analysis of physical experience by the reason alone verifiable, and all else only result of physical experience and physical existence and anything beyond this an error, self-delusion and hallucination, we are free to accept this evidence and to admit the reality of these planes. We see that they are, practically, different harmonies from the harmony of the physical universe; they occupy, as the word ‘plane" suggests, a different level in the scale of being and adopt a different system and ordering of its principles.” The Life Divine
“… all our spiritual and psychic experience bears affirmative witness, brings us always a constant and, in its main principles, an invariable evidence of the existence of higher worlds, freer planes of existence. Not having bound ourselves down, like so much of modern thought, to the dogma that only physical experience or experience based upon the physical sense is true, the analysis of physical experience by the reason alone verifiable, and all else only result of physical experience and physical existence and anything beyond this an error, self-delusion and hallucination, we are free to accept this evidence and to admit the reality of these planes. We see that they are, practically, different harmonies from the harmony of the physical universe; they occupy, as the word ‘plane’ suggests, a different level in the scale of being and adopt a different system and ordering of its principles.” The Life Divine
“All that manifested from the Eternal has already been arranged in worlds or planes of its own nature, planes of subtle Matter, planes of Life, planes of Mind, planes of Supermind, planes of the triune luminous Infinite. But these worlds or planes are not evolutionary but typal. A typal world is one in which some ruling principle manifests itself in its free and full capacity and energy and form are plastic and subservient to its purpose. Its expressions are therefore automatic and satisfying and do not need to evolve; they stand so long as need be and do not need to be born, develop, decline and disintegrate.” Essays Divine and Human
altruism ::: the principle or practice of unselfish concern for or devotion to the welfare of others (opposed to egoism ).
Amal: “On every plane there is the Power which is a revealer of undying rhythms of Truth like a high priest uttering ultimate secrets of existence.”
Amal: “The priestess in the mystic cults of the ancient world used to sit on a three-legged stool which symbolised the mysterious power of the three-headed snake, the original ignorance.”
Amal: “The pointer in the passage is to an excessive growth of falsehood before the Divine manifests—a period of great ignorance which will end with a sudden surprising revelation.”
amazed ::: greatly surprised; astounded; suddenly filled with wonder; astonished. amazing, amazement.
ambush ::: 1. An act or instance of lying concealed so as to attack by surprise. 2. The concealed position itself. ambushes.
ambushed ::: concealed so as suddenly to burst forth, come in view, or take by surprise.
"A mind of light will replace the present confusion and trouble of this earthly ignorance; it is likely that even those parts of humanity which cannot reach it will yet be aware of its possibility and consciously tend towards it; not only so, but the life of humanity will be enlightened, uplifted, governed, harmonised by this luminous principle and even the body become something much less powerless, obscure and animal in its propensities and capable instead of a new and harmonised perfection. It is this possibility that we have to look at and that would mean a new humanity uplifted into Light, capable of a spiritualised being and action, open to governance by some light of the Truth-consciousness, capable even on the mental level and in its own order of something that might be called the beginning of a divinised life.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“A mind of light will replace the present confusion and trouble of this earthly ignorance; it is likely that even those parts of humanity which cannot reach it will yet be aware of its possibility and consciously tend towards it; not only so, but the life of humanity will be enlightened, uplifted, governed, harmonised by this luminous principle and even the body become something much less powerless, obscure and animal in its propensities and capable instead of a new and harmonised perfection. It is this possibility that we have to look at and that would mean a new humanity uplifted into Light, capable of a spiritualised being and action, open to governance by some light of the Truth-consciousness, capable even on the mental level and in its own order of something that might be called the beginning of a divinised life.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Ananke ::: “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
"And if there is, as there must be in the nature of things, an ascending series in the scale of substance from Matter to Spirit, it must be marked by a progressive diminution of these capacities most characteristic of the physical principle and a progressive increase of the opposite characteristics which will lead us to the formula of pure spiritual self-extension. This is to say that they must be marked by less and less bondage to the form, more and more subtlety and flexibility of substance and force, more and more interfusion, interpenetration, power of assimilation, power of interchange, power of variation, transmutation, unification. Drawing away from durability of form, we draw towards eternity of essence; drawing away from our poise in the persistent separation and resistance of physical Matter, we draw near to the highest divine poise in the infinity, unity and indivisibility of Spirit.” The Life Divine
“And if there is, as there must be in the nature of things, an ascending series in the scale of substance from Matter to Spirit, it must be marked by a progressive diminution of these capacities most characteristic of the physical principle and a progressive increase of the opposite characteristics which will lead us to the formula of pure spiritual self-extension. This is to say that they must be marked by less and less bondage to the form, more and more subtlety and flexibility of substance and force, more and more interfusion, interpenetration, power of assimilation, power of interchange, power of variation, transmutation, unification. Drawing away from durability of form, we draw towards eternity of essence; drawing away from our poise in the persistent separation and resistance of physical Matter, we draw near to the highest divine poise in the infinity, unity and indivisibility of Spirit.” The Life Divine
And still we can recognise at once in the Overmind the original cosmic Maya, not a Maya of Ignorance but a Maya of Knowledge, yet a Power which has made the Ignorance possible, even inevitable. For if each principle loosed into action must follow its independent line and carry out its complete consequences, the principle of separation must also be allowed its complete course and arrive at its absolute consequence; this is Overmind in its descent reaches a line which divides the cosmic Truth from the cosmic Ignorance; it is the line at which it becomes possible for Consciousness-Force, emphasising the separateness of each independent movement created by Overmind and hiding or darkening their unity, to divide Mind by an exclusive concentration from the overmental source. There has already been a similar separation of Overmind from its supramental source, but with a transparency in the veil which allows a conscious transmission and maintains a certain luminous kinship; but here the veil is opaque and the transmission of the Overmind motives to the Mind is occult and obscure. Mind separated acts as if it were an independent principle, and each mental being, each basic mental idea, power, force stands similarly on its separate self; if it communicates with or combines or contacts others, it is not with the catholic universality of the overmind movement, on a basis of underlying oneness, but as independent units joining to form a separate constructed whole. It is by this movement that we pass from the cosmic Truth into the cosmic Ignorance. The cosmic Mind on this level, no doubt, comprehends its own unity, but it is not aware of its own source and foundation in the Spirit or can only comprehend it by the intelligence, not in any enduring experience; it acts in itself as if by its own right and works out what it receives as material without direct communication with the source from which it receives it. Its units also act in ignorance of each other and of the cosmic whole except for the knowledge that they can get by contact and communication,—the basic sense of identity and the mutual penetration and understanding that comes from it are no longer there. All the actions of this Mind Energy proceed on the opposite basis of the Ignorance and its divisions and, although they are the results of a certain conscious knowledge, it is a partial knowledge, not a true and integral self-knowledge, nor a true and integral world-knowledge. This character persists in Life and in subtle Matter and reappears in the gross material universe which arises from the final lapse into the Inconscience. …
“And though this Spirit of the universe, this One who is all, seems to be turning us on the wheel of the world as if mounted on a machine by the force of Maya, shaping us in our ignorance as the potter shapes a pot, as the weaver a fabric, by some skilful mechanical principle, yet is this spirit our own greatest self and it is according to the real idea, the truth of ourselves, that which is growing in us and finding always new and more adequate forms in birth after birth, in our animal and human and divine life, in that which we were, that which we are, that which we shall be,—it is in accordance with this inner soul-truth that, as our opened eyes will discover, we are progressively shaped by this spirit within us in its all-wise omnipotence.” Essays on the Gita
"A new humanity means for us the appearance, the development of a type or race of mental beings whose principle of mentality would be no longer a mind in the Ignorance seeking for knowledge but even in its knowledge bound to the Ignorance, a seeker after Light but not its natural possessor, open to the Light but not an inhabitant of the Light, not yet a perfected instrument, truth-conscious and delivered out of the Ignorance. Instead, it would be possessed already of what could be called a mind of Light, a mind capable of living in the truth, capable of being truth-conscious and manifesting in its life a direct in place of an indirect knowledge. Its mentality would be an instrument of the Light and no longer of the Ignorance. At its highest it would be capable of passing into the supermind and from the new race would be recruited the race of supramental beings who would appear as the leaders of the evolution in earth-nature. Even, the highest manifestations of a mind of Light would be an instrumentality of the supermind, a part of it or a projection from it, a stepping beyond humanity into the superhumanity of the supramental principle. Above all, its possession would enable the human being to rise beyond the normalities of his present thinking, feeling and being into those highest powers of the mind in its self-exceedings which intervene between our mentality and supermind and can be regarded as steps leading towards the greater and more luminous principle. This advance like others in the evolution might not be reached and would naturally not be reached at one bound, but from the very beginning it would be inevitable: the pressure of the supermind creating from above out of itself the mind of Light would compel this certainty of the eventual outcome.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“A new humanity means for us the appearance, the development of a type or race of mental beings whose principle of mentality would be no longer a mind in the Ignorance seeking for knowledge but even in its knowledge bound to the Ignorance, a seeker after Light but not its natural possessor, open to the Light but not an inhabitant of the Light, not yet a perfected instrument, truth-conscious and delivered out of the Ignorance. Instead, it would be possessed already of what could be called a mind of Light, a mind capable of living in the truth, capable of being truth-conscious and manifesting in its life a direct in place of an indirect knowledge. Its mentality would be an instrument of the Light and no longer of the Ignorance. At its highest it would be capable of passing into the supermind and from the new race would be recruited the race of supramental beings who would appear as the leaders of the evolution in earth-nature. Even, the highest manifestations of a mind of Light would be an instrumentality of the supermind, a part of it or a projection from it, a stepping beyond humanity into the superhumanity of the supramental principle. Above all, its possession would enable the human being to rise beyond the normalities of his present thinking, feeling and being into those highest powers of the mind in its self-exceedings which intervene between our mentality and supermind and can be regarded as steps leading towards the greater and more luminous principle. This advance like others in the evolution might not be reached and would naturally not be reached at one bound, but from the very beginning it would be inevitable: the pressure of the supermind creating from above out of itself the mind of Light would compel this certainty of the eventual outcome.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
**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*
antinomy ::: opposition between one law, principle, rule, etc., and another.
ape ::: 1. Any of a group of anthropoid primates characterized by long arms, a broad chest, and the absence of a tail; an animal of the monkey tribe. 2. An imitator, a mimic. apelike.
a person whose office it is to perform religious rites, and esp. to make sacrificial offerings. priests, priest-wind"s.
apt ::: 1. Having a natural tendency; inclined; disposed. 2. Unusually intelligent; able to learn quickly and easily. 3. Exactly suitable; appropriate.
arbitrary ::: 1. Based on or subject to individual will, judgment or preference: judgment without restriction; contingent solely upon one"s discretion. 2. Capricious; unreasonable; unsupported. 3. Derived from mere opinion or preference; capricious; uncertain. 4. Having unlimited power; uncontrolled or unrestricted by law; despotic; tyrannical.
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.
archangel ::: a chief or principal angel, the highest angel in rank. Archangel, Archangel"s.
arise ::: 1. To get up from sleep or rest; to awaken; wake up. 2. To go up, come up, ascend on high, mount. Now only poet. **3. To come into being, action, or notice; originate; appear; spring up. 4. Of circumstances viewed as results: To spring, originate, or result from. 5. To rise from inaction, from the peaceful, quiet, or ordinary course of life. 6. To rise in violence or agitation, as the sea, the wind; to boil up as a fermenting fluid, the blood; so of the heart, wrath, etc. Now poet. 7. Of sounds: To come up aloud, or so as to be audible, to be heard aloud. arises, arising, arose, arisen. *(Sri Aurobindo also employs arisen as an adj.*)
aristocracy ::: the class to which a ruling body belongs, a patrician order; the collective body of those who form a privileged class; also used fig. of those who are superior.
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.
“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
astonished ::: 1. Amazed, filled with sudden and overpowering surprise or wonder. 2. Filled with consternation; dismayed. astonishing.
bacchant ::: n. **1. A priest or votary of Bacchus (the god of wine). 2. A drunken reveller. adj. 3. Inclined to revelry. Bacchant.**
based ::: 1. Formed or established as a base. 2. Supported as a base. 3. Conceived as the fundamental principle or underlying concept.
base ::: n. 1. The fundamental principle or underlying concept of a system or theory; a basis, foundation. 2. A fundamental ingredient; a chief constituent. adj. 3. Having or showing a contemptible, mean-spirited, or selfish lack of human decency; morally low. base"s. baser.
"Beauty is the way in which the physical expresses the Divine – but the principle and law of Beauty is something inward and spiritual and expresses itself through the form.” *The Future Poetry
“Beauty is the way in which the physical expresses the Divine—but the principle and law of Beauty is something inward and spiritual and expresses itself through the form.” The Future Poetry
being ::: 1. The state or quality of having existence. 2. The totality of all things that exist. 3. One"s basic or essential nature; self. 4. All the qualities constituting one that exists; the essence. 5. A person; human being. 6. The Divine, the Supreme; God. Being, being"s, Being"s, beings, Beings, beings", earth-being"s, earth-beings, fragment-being, non-being, non-being"s, Non-Being, Non-Being"s, world-being"s.
Sri Aurobindo: "Pure Being is the affirmation by the Unknowable of Itself as the free base of all cosmic existence.” *The Life Divine :::
"The Absolute manifests itself in two terms, a Being and a Becoming. The Being is the fundamental reality; the Becoming is an effectual reality: it is a dynamic power and result, a creative energy and working out of the Being, a constantly persistent yet mutable form, process, outcome of its immutable formless essence.” *The Life Divine
"What is original and eternal for ever in the Divine is the Being, what is developed in consciousness, conditions, forces, forms, etc., by the Divine Power is the Becoming. The eternal Divine is the Being; the universe in Time and all that is apparent in it is a Becoming.” Letters on Yoga
"Being and Becoming, One and Many are both true and are both the same thing: Being is one, Becomings are many; but this simply means that all Becomings are one Being who places Himself variously in the phenomenal movement of His consciousness.” The Upanishads :::
"Our whole apparent life has only a symbolic value & is good & necessary as a becoming; but all becoming has being for its goal & fulfilment & God is the only being.” *Essays Divine and Human
"Our being is a roughly constituted chaos into which we have to introduce the principle of a divine order.” The Synthesis of Yoga*
benumbed ::: made (any part of the body) insensible, torpid, or powerless; made numb, deprived of sensation; stupefied or stunned, as by a blow or shock; now mostly used for the effects of cold.
bereft ::: deprived of or lacking something needed or expected.
binding posts ::: stakes, stout poles, columns, or the like, that are set upright in or on the ground; (with prefixed word indicating special purpose).
birthright ::: a right, possession, or privilege that is one"s due by birth.
blind ::: adj. 1. Unable to see; lacking the sense of sight; sightless. Also fig. 2. Unwilling or unable to perceive or understand. 3. Lacking all consciousness or awareness. 4. Not having or based on reason or intelligence; absolute and unquestioning. 5. Not characterized or determined by reason or control. 6. Purposeless; fortuitous, random. 7. Undiscriminating; heedless; reckless. 8. Enveloped in darkness; dark, dim, obscure. 9. Dense enough to form a screen. 10. Covered or concealed from sight; hidden from immediate view. 11. Having no openings or passages for light; (a window or door) walled up. blindest, half-blind. v. 12. To deprive of sight permanently or temporarily. 13. To make sightless momentarily; dazzle. blinded.* n. 14. A blind person, esp. as pl., those who are blind. 15. Fig.* Any thing or action intended to conceal one"s real intention; a pretence, a pretext; subterfuge.
blinded ::: 1. Sightless; deprived of sight or withheld the light from. 2. Fig. Unable or unwilling to perceive or understand, lacking in perception or foresight; deprived or destitute of spiritual light or guidance. thought-blinded.
bloom ::: n. **1. The flower of a plant. 2. Fig. A condition or time of vigour, freshness, and beauty; prime. 3. Fig. Glowing charm; delicate beauty. blooms. v. 4. To bear flowers; to blossom. Also fig. 5. To be in a healthy, glowing, or flourishing condition. 6. To flourish or grow. 7. To cause to flourish or grow; to flourish. Chiefly fig. blooms, bloomed.**
borrowed ::: taken from another source, appropriated; assumed; adopted or adapted for the present.
borrower ::: one who receives something or appropriates it from another source.
bound ::: n. **1. A leap; a jump. v. 2.** To spring; leap; to advance with leaps or springs: said both of inanimate and animate objects.
priceless ::: of inestimable worth; invaluable.
prick ::: n. 1. Fig. A goad, spur, incentive. v. 2. To urge on with or as if with a goad or spur. pricks.
pride ::: 1. An excessively high opinion of oneself; conceit. 2. A sense of one"s own proper dignity or value; self-respect. 3. Display, pomp, or splendour. 4. A feeling of pleasure or satisfaction taken in an achievement, possession, or association. 5. Mettle or spirit in horses.
pride ::: “Pride is only one form of ego—there are ten thousand others. Every action of man is full of ego—the good ones as well as the bad, his humility as much as his pride, his virtues as much as his vices.” Letters on Yoga
priestess ::: a woman who presides over religious rites, especially in pagan religions. Also fig. and transf.
priestess ::: “Thought sat, a priestess of Perversity,”
priestless ::: without a priest.
priestly ::: sacred; characteristic of a priest.
::: priest
primaeval ::: belonging to the first or earliest age or ages; original or ancient.
primal ::: 1. Being first in time; original; primeval. 2. Of first importance; primary.
primitive ::: 1. Of or relating to an earliest or original stage or state; primeval. 2. Simple, unsophisticated; crude, unrefined.
princely ::: of or relating to a prince; royal.
princes ::: hereditary male rulers; kings.
princess ::: a woman member of a royal family other than the monarch, especially a daughter of a monarch.
principle ::: a basic or essential quality or element determining intrinsic nature or characteristic behaviour.
printing-house ::: a place where printing of books, pamphlets, etc. is done.
prints ::: photographic images transferred to paper or to similar surfaces, usually from negatives.
-prints
prism ::: a transparent solid body, often having triangular bases, used for dispersing light into a spectrum or for reflecting rays of light. Also fig.
prisoned ::: held captive in or as in a prison.
prison-house ::: a prison. Often fig.
privacy ::: 1. The quality or condition of being secluded from the presence or view of others. 2. Plural. Private places. privacies.
private ::: secluded from the sight, presence, or intrusion of others.
privilege ::: 1. A special advantage or immunity or benefit not enjoyed by all. 2. The advantages and immunities enjoyed by a small usually powerful group or class, esp. to the disadvantage of others.
privileged ::: restricted to a select group or individual.
privy ::: made a participant in knowledge of something private or secret, usually followed by to.
prized ::: much loved; esteemed; valued.
“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
breaks out or from ::: bursts or springs out from restraint, confinement, or concealment. Said of persons and things material, also of fire, light, etc.
brood ::: n. 1. Offspring; progeny; in one family. 2. A breed, species, group, kind or race with common qualities. v. 3. To think deeply on; dwell or meditate upon, contemplate. broods, brooded.
" . . . but there is another kind of thought that springs out as if it were a body or form of the experience or of the consciousness involved in it — or of a part of that consciousness — and this does not seem to me to be intellectual in its character. It has another light, another power in it, a sense within the sense.” Letters on Yoga
“ . . . but there is another kind of thought that springs out as if it were a body or form of the experience or of the consciousness involved in it—or of a part of that consciousness—and this does not seem to me to be intellectual in its character. It has another light, another power in it, a sense within the sense.” Letters on Yoga
"By the supermind is meant the full Truth-Consciousness of the Divine Nature in which there can be no place for the principle of division and ignorance; it is always a full light and knowledge superior to all mental substance or mental movement.” Letters on Yoga
“By the supermind is meant the full Truth-Consciousness of the Divine Nature in which there can be no place for the principle of division and ignorance; it is always a full light and knowledge superior to all mental substance or mental movement.” Letters on Yoga
caprice ::: 1. A sudden, unpredictable change or series of actions or changes. 2. A sudden, unpredictable change, as of one"s mind; whim, fancy. caprices.
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.
canto ::: one of the principal divisions of a long poem.
captive ::: n. 1. One, such as a prisoner of war, who is forcibly confined, subjugated, or enslaved. captives. v. 2. Those taken and held as a prisoners. captived. adj. 3. Kept under restraint or control; confined. 4. Enraptured, as by beauty; captivated.
capture ::: 1. To take possession of; to take by force or stratagem; take prisoner; seize. 2. To represent, preserve or record in lasting form, a quality, etc. captures, captured, capturing.
cause ::: 1. A person or thing that acts, happens, or exists in such a way that some specific thing happens as a result; the producer of an effect. 2. A basis for an action or response; a reason. 3. Grounds for action; motive; justification. 4. Good or sufficient reason. 5. The principle, ideal, goal, or movement to which a person or group is dedicated. Cause.
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.
"Certainly, ideals are not the ultimate Reality, for that is too high and vast for any ideal to envisage; they are aspects of it thrown out in the world-consciousness as a basis for the workings of the world-power. But they are primary, the actual workings secondary. They are nearer to the Reality and therefore always more real, forcible and complete than the facts which are their partial reflection.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“Certainly, ideals are not the ultimate Reality, for that is too high and vast for any ideal to envisage; they are aspects of it thrown out in the world-consciousness as a basis for the workings of the world-power. But they are primary, the actual workings secondary. They are nearer to the Reality and therefore always more real, forcible and complete than the facts which are their partial reflection.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Certainly, ideals are not the ultimate Reality, for that is too high and vast for any ideal to envisage; they are aspects of it thrown out in the world-consciousness as a basis for the workings of the world-power. But they are primary, the actual workings secondary. They are nearer to the Reality and therefore always more real, forcible and complete than the facts which are their partial reflection. Reflections themselves of the Real, they again are reflected in the more concrete workings of our existence. The Supramental Manifestation
chamber ::: 1. Archaic or poetic: A room in a private house, esp. a bedroom. 2. An enclosed space; compartment. chamber"s, chambers, work-chamber.
charmed ::: 1. Delighted or fascinated. 2. Marked by good fortune or privilege. 3. Protected from evil and harm as by a magical power vested in an amulet, etc. 4. Filled with wonder and delight.
chemic ::: chemical. ::: cheque ::: a written order, usually on a standard printed form, directing a bank to pay money to a person or designated bearer. cheques.
confessional ::: a small enclosed stall in which a priest hears confessions.
confidante ::: a woman to whom secrets are confided or with whom private matters and problems are discussed.
confine ::: 1. To enclose within bounds, limit, restrict. 2. To shut or keep in; prevent from leaving a place because of imprisonment, illness, discipline, etc. confined.
convenance ::: suitability; expediency; propriety.
costly ::: of great price or value.
credentials ::: evidence of authority, status, rights, entitlement to privileges or the like, usually in written form.
credo ::: any formal or authorized statement of beliefs, principles, or opinions. credos.
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.
crude ::: 1. In a raw or unprepared state; unrefined or natural; unfinished, coarse. 2. Lacking in intellectual subtlety, perceptivity, etc.; rudimentary; undeveloped. 3. Rough or primitive. 4. Lacking culture, refinement, tact. crudely.
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.
curtain ::: 1. A hanging piece of fabric used to shut out the light from a window, adorn a room, increase privacy, etc. 2. Something that functions as or resembles a screen, cover, or barrier. curtains.
deaf ::: 1. Partially or wholly lacking, or deprived of the sense of hearing. 2. Refusing to listen, heed, or be persuaded.
deprived ::: divested, stripped, bereaved, dispossessed of (or from) a possession.
delight ::: “… 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
designs or pictures transferred from engraved plates, wood blocks, lithographic stones or other media. flower-prints.
"Desire is the lever by which the divine Life-principle effects its end of self-affirmation in the universe. . . " The Life Divine
“Desire is the lever by which the divine Life-principle effects its end of self-affirmation in the universe…” The Life Divine
discouraged ::: 1. Deprived of courage, hope, or confidence; disheartened; dispirited. 2. Obstructed by opposition or difficulty; hindered. discouraging.
disillusion ::: 1. To deprive of belief, idealism, etc. to disenchant. 2. To free from false belief or illusions. disillusioned, world-disillusion"s.
divulged ::: made known (something private or secret).
dream ::: 1. A series of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations occurring involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. 2. A vision occurring to a person while awake. 3. A person or thing that is as pleasant, or seemingly unreal, as a dream 4. An ideal or aspiration; goal; aim. 5. A wild or vain fancy. Dream, dream"s, Dream"s, dreams, dream-brood, dream-brush, dream-built, dream-caught, dream-fact, dream-fate, dream-god"s, dream-happiness, dream-hued, dream-life, dream-light, dream-made, dream-mind, dream-notes, dream-print, dream-sculptured, dream-shores, dream-smiles, dream-splendour, dream-truth, dream-vasts, dream-white, dream-world, half-dream, self-dream, sun-dream, world-dream. *adj. 6. Of a colour: misty, dim, or cloudy. v. 7. To have an image (of) or fantasy (about) in or as if in a dream. dreams, dreamed, *dreaming.
dungeon ::: a dark, often underground chamber or cell used to confine prisoners. (Sri Aurobindo employs the word as an adjective.)
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.
Earth ::: “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
elemental ::: 1. Starkly simple, primitive, or basic. 2. Motivated by or symbolic of primitive and powerful natural forces or passions.
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
elements ::: “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
embodiment ::: a person, being, or thing embodying a spirit, principle, etc.; incarnation. embodiments.
embody ::: 1. To invest (a spiritual entity) with a body or with bodily form; render incarnate; make corporeal. 2. To give a tangible, bodily, or concrete form to (an abstract concept) or to be an example of or express (an idea, principle, etc. embodies, embodied, embodying, self-embodying.
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.
endure ::: 1. To undergo (hardship, strain, privation, etc.) without yielding; bear. 2. To bear without resistance or with patience; tolerate. 3. To admit of; allow; bear. 4. To continue to exist; last. endures, endured.
energy ::: “It is true that when Matter first emerges it becomes the dominant principle; it seems to be and is within its own field the basis of all things, the constituent of all things, the end of all things: but Matter itself is found to be a result of something that is not Matter, of Energy, and this Energy cannot be something self-existent and acting in the Void, but can turn out and, when deeply scrutinised, seems likely to turn out to be the action of a secret Consciousness and Being: when the spiritual knowledge and experience emerge, this becomes a certitude,—it is seen that the creative Energy in Matter is a movement of the power of the Spirit.” The Life Divine
::: Equality means a quiet and unmoved mind and vital, it means not to be touched or disturbed by things that happen or things said or done to you, but to look at them with a straight look, free from the distortions created by personal feeling, and to try to understand what is behind them, why they happen, what is to be learnt from them, what is it in oneself which they are cast against and what inner profit or progress one can make out of them; it means self-mastery over the vital movements, — anger and sensitiveness and pride as well as desire and the rest, — not to let them get hold of the emotional being and disturb the inner peace, not to speak and act in the rush and impulsion of these things, always to act and speak out of a calm inner poise of the spirit.” *Letters on Yoga
Equality means a quiet and unmoved mind and vital, it means not to be touched or disturbed by things that happen or things said or done to you, but to look at them with a straight look, free from the distortions created by personal feeling, and to try to understand what is behind them, why they happen, what is to be learnt from them, what is it in oneself which they are cast against and what inner profit or progress one can make out of them; it means self-mastery over the vital movements,—anger and sensitiveness and pride as well as desire and the rest,—not to let them get hold of the emotional being and disturb the inner peace, not to speak and act in the rush and impulsion of these things, always to act and speak out of a calm inner poise of the spirit.” Letters on Yoga
erect ::: v. 1. To set up; build; establish. 2. To raise and to set in an upright or vertical position. 3. To bring about; cause to come into existence. erects, erected. *adj. *4. Upright in posture or position 5. Raised or directed upward.
ethics ::: 1. A system of moral principles. 2. The branch of philosophy dealing with values relating to human conduct, with respect to the rightness and wrongness of certain actions and to the goodness and badness of the motives and ends of such actions. **ethics".
“Every man is knowingly or unknowingly the instrument of a universal Power and, apart from the inner Presence, there is no such essential difference between one action and another, one kind of instrumentation and another as would warrant the folly of an egoistic pride. The difference between knowledge and ignorance is a grace of the Spirit; the breath of divine Power blows where it lists and fills today one and tomorrow another with the word or the puissance. If the potter shapes one pot more perfectly than another, the merit lies not in the vessel but the maker. The attitude of our mind must not be ‘This is my strength’ or ‘Behold God’s power in me’, but rather ‘A Divine Power works in this mind and body and it is the same that works in all men and in the animal, in the plant and in the metal, in conscious and living things and in things apparently inconscient and inanimate.’” The Synthesis of 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 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
exorbitant ::: exceeding the bounds of custom, propriety, or reason, esp. in amount or extent; highly excessive.
experiment ::: n. **1. A test, trial, or tentative procedure; an act or operation for the purpose of discovering something unknown or of testing a principle, supposition, etc. v. 2.* To try something new, especially in order to gain experience. experiments. adj.* experimenting.
felicitous ::: 1. Marked by happiness or good fortune. 2. Exhibiting an agreeably appropriate manner or style. felicitously
fitting ::: 1. Appropriate or proper; suitable. 2. Used with prefixed adverbs to denote an appropriate or inappropriate fit. 3. Of a manufactured article: Of the right measure or size; made to fit, accurate in fit, well or close-fitting. close-fitting, ill-fitting.
fit ::: v. 1. To adjust in order to render appropriate. 2. To be adapted to or suitable for (a purpose, object, occasion, etc.). fits. adj. 3. To be appropriate or suitable for. 4. Having the right qualifications; qualifying; competent.
formula ::: 1. A prescribed form; a rule or model; any fixed or conventional method for doing something. 2. An established form of words or symbols for use in a ceremony or procedure. 3. Math. A general relationship, principle, or rule stated, often as an equation, in the form of symbols. 4. A representation of a substance using symbols for its constituent elements. formulas.
::: "For the impersonal Divine is not ultimately an abstraction or a mere principle or a mere state or power and degree of being any more than we ourselves are really such abstractions. The intellect first approaches it through such conceptions, but realisation ends by exceeding them. Through the realisation of higher and higher principles of being and states of conscious existence we arrive not at the annullation of all in a sort of positive zero or even an inexpressible state of existence, but at the transcendent Existence itself which is also the Existent who transcends all definition by personality and yet is always that which is the essence of personality.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
“For the impersonal Divine is not ultimately an abstraction or a mere principle or a mere state or power and degree of being any more than we ourselves are really such abstractions. The intellect first approaches it through such conceptions, but realisation ends by exceeding them. Through the realisation of higher and higher principles of being and states of conscious existence we arrive not at the annullation of all in a sort of positive zero or even an inexpressible state of existence, but at the transcendent Existence itself which is also the Existent who transcends all definition by personality and yet is always that which is the essence of personality.” The Synthesis of Yoga
::: "For the inner knowledge comes from within and above (whether from the Divine in the heart or from the Self above) and for it to come, the pride of the mind and vital in the surface mental ideas and their insistence on them must go. One must know that one is ignorant before one can begin to know.” Letters on Yoga
“For the inner knowledge comes from within and above (whether from the Divine in the heart or from the Self above) and for it to come, the pride of the mind and vital in the surface mental ideas and their insistence on them must go. One must know that one is ignorant before one can begin to know.” Letters on Yoga
fortune ::: chance personified, commonly regarded as a mythical being distributing arbitrarily or capriciously the lots of life. Fortune.
fount ::: 1. A source or origin. 2. A spring of water; fountain. Fount, founts.
fourfold ::: composed of four parts; comprising four parts or members.
gaol ::: a prison, esp. one for the detention of persons awaiting trial or convicted of minor offences. (A variant spelling of jail. In British official use the form with G is still current; in literary and journalistic use both the G and the J form is now admitted as correct; in the U.S. the J form is standard.) gaoled.
"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
“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
goblin ::: a grotesque sprite or elf that is mischievous or malicious toward people. goblins, goblin-wizened.
god ::: a being conceived as the perfect, omnipotent, omniscient originator and ruler of the universe, the principal object of faith and worship in monotheistic religions. gods, gods", God"s, Gods, God-bliss, God-born, god-chant, God-child, god-children, God-ecstasy, God-face, God-frame, God-Force, God-given, god-haunts, God-instinct"s, God-joy, God-Light, god-kind, God-knowledge, God-language, God-light, god-mind, god-phase, God-spark, god-speech, God-state, god-touch, God-vision"s, god-wings, child-god, dream-god"s, half-god, Sun-god"s.
godhead ::: Sri Aurobindo: ". . . the Godhead is all that is universe and all that is in the universe and all that is more than the universe. The Gita lays stress first on his supracosmic existence. For otherwise the mind would miss its highest goal and remain turned towards the cosmic only or else attached to some partial experience of the Divine in the cosmos. It lays stress next on his universal existence in which all moves and acts. For that is the justification of the cosmic effort and that is the vast spiritual self-awareness in which the Godhead self-seen as the Time-Spirit does his universal works. Next it insists with a certain austere emphasis on the acceptance of the Godhead as the divine inhabitant in the human body. For he is the Immanent in all existences, and if the indwelling divinity is not recognised, not only will the divine meaning of individual existence be missed, the urge to our supreme spiritual possibilities deprived of its greatest force, but the relations of soul with soul in humanity will be left petty, limited and egoistic. Finally, it insists at great length on the divine manifestation in all things in the universe and affirms the derivation of all that is from the nature, power and light of the one Godhead.” *Essays on the Gita
Godhead ::: “… the Godhead is all that is universe and all that is in the universe and all that is more than the universe. The Gita lays stress first on his supracosmic existence. For otherwise the mind would miss its highest goal and remain turned towards the cosmic only or else attached to some partial experience of the Divine in the cosmos. It lays stress next on his universal existence in which all moves and acts. For that is the justification of the cosmic effort and that is the vast spiritual self-awareness in which the Godhead self-seen as the Time-Spirit does his universal works. Next it insists with a certain austere emphasis on the acceptance of the Godhead as the divine inhabitant in the human body. For he is the Immanent in all existences, and if the indwelling divinity is not recognised, not only will the divine meaning of individual existence be missed, the urge to our supreme spiritual possibilities deprived of its greatest force, but the relations of soul with soul in humanity will be left petty, limited and egoistic. Finally, it insists at great length on the divine manifestation in all things in the universe and affirms the derivation of all that is from the nature, power and light of the one Godhead.” Essays on the Gita
godlike ::: 1. Resembling or of the nature of a god or God; divine. 2. Appropriate to or befitting a god.
gods ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Gods are Brahman representing Itself in cosmic Personalities expressive of the one Godhead who, in their impersonal action, appear as the various play of the principles of Nature.” *The Upanishads
Gods ::: “The Gods are Brahman representing Itself in cosmic Personalities expressive of the one Godhead who, in their impersonal action, appear as the various play of the principles of Nature.” The Upanishads
gospel ::: 1. A doctrine regarded as of prime importance. 2. Any revelation from heaven.
hardship ::: conditions of life difficult to endure; extreme privation; suffering.
harp ::: a usually large musical instrument which is held upright, and which has many strings of varying length which are plucked with the fingers. harp"s, harps.
harrow ::: a farm implement consisting of a heavy frame with sharp teeth or upright disks, used to break up and even off ploughed ground.
harvest ::: n. 1.* fig. The result or consequence of an activity. v. *2. To gain, win, acquire, or use (a prize, product, or result of any past act, process, plan, etc.).
helpless ::: adj. **1. Deprived of strength or power; powerless; incapacitated. 2.* Unable to help oneself; weak or dependent. adv. helplessly. n.* helplessness.
hemmed ::: confined or bound by an environment of any kind; enclosed, shut in, limited, restrained, imprisoned; often followed by in.
heroic ::: having, displaying, or characteristic of the qualities appropriate to a hero, such as bravery and courageousness.
hierarchs ::: those who rule or have authority in sacred things; high priests.
history ::: “History teaches us nothing; it is a confused torrent of events and personalities or a kaleidoscope of changing institutions. We do not seize the real sense of all this change and this continual streaming forward of human life in the channels of Time. What we do seize are current or recurrent phenomena, facile generalisations, partial ideas. We talk of democracy, aristocracy and autocracy, collectivism and individualism, imperialism and nationalism, the State and the commune, capitalism and labour; we advance hasty generalisations and make absolute systems which are positively announced today only to be abandoned perforce tomorrow; we espouse causes and ardent enthusiasms whose triumph turns to an early disillusionment and then forsake them for others, perhaps for those that we have taken so much trouble to destroy. For a whole century mankind thirsts and battles after liberty and earns it with a bitter expense of toil, tears and blood; the century that enjoys without having fought for it turns away as from a puerile illusion and is ready to renounce the depreciated gain as the price of some new good. And all this happens because our whole thought and action with regard to our collective life is shallow and empirical; it does not seek for, it does not base itself on a firm, profound and complete knowledge. The moral is not the vanity of human life, of its ardours and enthusiasms and of the ideals it pursues, but the necessity of a wiser, larger, more patient search after its true law and aim.” The Human Cycle etc.
::: "Humility before the Divine is also a sine qua non of the spiritual life, and spiritual pride, arrogance, or vanity and self-assurance press always downward. But confidence in the Divine and a faith in one"s spiritual destiny (i.e. since my heart and soul seek for the Divine, I cannot fail one day to reach Him) are much needed in view of the difficulties of the Path.” Letters on Yoga
“Humility before the Divine is also a sine qua non of the spiritual life, and spiritual pride, arrogance, or vanity and self-assurance press always downward. But confidence in the Divine and a faith in one’s spiritual destiny (i.e. since my heart and soul seek for the Divine, I cannot fail one day to reach Him) are much needed in view of the difficulties of the Path.” Letters on Yoga
"Humility before the Divine is also a sine qua non of the spiritual life, and spiritual pride, arrogance, or vanity and self-assurance press always downward.” *Letters on Yoga
“Humility before the Divine is also a sine qua non of the spiritual life, and spiritual pride, arrogance, or vanity and self-assurance press always downward.” Letters on Yoga
" . . . humility is the first necessity, for one who has ego and pride cannot realise the Highest.” *Letters on Yoga
“ . . . humility is the first necessity, for one who has ego and pride cannot realise the Highest.” Letters on Yoga
humility ::: “Of course you can [do yoga without being great]. There is no need of being great. On the contrary humility is the first necessity, for one who has ego and pride cannot realise the Highest.” Letters on Yoga
**"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*
"Ideals are truths that have not yet effected themselves for man, the realities of a higher plane of existence which have yet to fulfil themselves on this lower plane of life and matter, our present field of operation. To the pragmatical intellect which takes its stand upon the ever-changing present, ideals are not truths, not realities, they are at most potentialities of future truth and only become real when they are visible in the external fact as work of force accomplished. But to the mind which is able to draw back from the flux of force in the material universe, to the consciousness which is not imprisoned in its own workings or carried along in their flood but is able to envelop, hold and comprehend them, to the soul that is not merely the subject and instrument of the world-force but can reflect something of that Master-Consciousness which controls and uses it, the ideal present to its inner vision is a greater reality than the changing fact obvious to its outer senses. The Supramental Manifestation*
“Ideals are truths that have not yet effected themselves for man, the realities of a higher plane of existence which have yet to fulfil themselves on this lower plane of life and matter, our present field of operation. To the pragmatical intellect which takes its stand upon the ever-changing present, ideals are not truths, not realities, they are at most potentialities of future truth and only become real when they are visible in the external fact as work of force accomplished. But to the mind which is able to draw back from the flux of force in the material universe, to the consciousness which is not imprisoned in its own workings or carried along in their flood but is able to envelop, hold and comprehend them, to the soul that is not merely the subject and instrument of the world-force but can reflect something of that Master-Consciousness which controls and uses it, the ideal present to its inner vision is a greater reality than the changing fact obvious to its outer senses. The Supramental Manifestation
::: "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
“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 regard the Powers of the Reality as so many Godheads, we can say that the Overmind releases a million Godheads into action, each empowered to create its own world, each world capable of relation, communication and interplay with the others. There are in the Veda different formulations of the nature of the Gods: it is said they are all one Existence to which the sages give different names; yet each God is worshipped as if he by himself is that Existence, one who is all the other Gods together or contains them in his being; and yet again each is a separate Deity acting sometimes in unison with companion deities, sometimes separately, sometimes even in apparent opposition to other Godheads of the same Existence. In the Supermind all this would be held together as a harmonised play of the one Existence; in the Overmind each of these three conditions could be a separate action or basis of action and have its own principle of development and consequences and yet each keep the power to combine with the others in a more composite harmony. As with the One Existence, so with its Consciousness and Force. The One Consciousness is separated into many independent forms of consciousness and knowledge; each follows out its own line of truth which it has to realise. The one total and many-sided Real-Idea is split up into its many sides; each becomes an independent Idea-Force with the power to realise itself. The one Consciousness-Force is liberated into its million forces, and each of these forces has the right to fulfil itself or to assume, if needed, a hegemony and take up for its own utility the other forces. So too the Delight of Existence is loosed out into all manner of delights and each can carry in itself its independent fullness or sovereign extreme. Overmind thus gives to the One Existence-Consciousness-Bliss the character of a teeming of infinite possibilities which can be developed into a multitude of worlds or thrown together into one world in which the endlessly variable…
ignorance ::: “Ignorance is the absence of the divine eye of perception which gives us the sight of the supramental Truth; it is the non-perceiving principle in our consciousness as opposed to the truth-perceiving conscious vision and knowledge.” The Life Divine
“Ignorance is the consciousness of being in the successions of Time, divided in its knowledge by dwelling in the moment, divided in its conception of self-being by dwelling in the divisions of Space and the relations of circumstance, self-prisoned in the multiple working of the unity. It is called the Ignorance because it has put behind it the knowledge of unity and by that very fact is unable to know truly or completely either itself or the world, either the transcendent or the universal reality.” The Life Divine
ignorance ::: the state or fact of being ignorant; lack of knowledge, learning, information. Ignorance, ignorance"s, Ignorance"s, ignorance", world-ignorance, World-Ignorance.
Sri Aurobindo: "Ignorance is the absence of the divine eye of perception which gives us the sight of the supramental Truth; it is the non-perceiving principle in our consciousness as opposed to the truth-perceiving conscious vision and knowledge.” *The Life Divine
"Ignorance is the consciousness of being in the successions of Time, divided in its knowledge by dwelling in the moment, divided in its conception of self-being by dwelling in the divisions of Space and the relations of circumstance, self-prisoned in the multiple working of the unity. It is called the Ignorance because it has put behind it the knowledge of unity and by that very fact is unable to know truly or completely either itself or the world, either the transcendent or the universal reality.” The Life Divine
"Ignorance means Avidya, the separative consciousness and the egoistic mind and life that flow from it and all that is natural to the separative consciousness and the egoistic mind and life. This Ignorance is the result of a movement by which the cosmic Intelligence separated itself from the light of the Supermind (the divine Gnosis) and lost the Truth, — truth of being, truth of divine consciousness, truth of force and action, truth of Ananda. As a result, instead of a world of integral truth and divine harmony created in the light of the divine Gnosis, we have a world founded on the part truths of an inferior cosmic Intelligence in which all is half-truth, half-error. . . . All in the consciousness of this creation is either limited or else perverted by separation from the integral Light; even the Truth it perceives is only a half-knowledge. Therefore it is called the Ignorance.” The Mother
". . . all ignorance is a penumbra which environs an orb of knowledge . . . .”The Life Divine
"This world is not really created by a blind force of Nature: even in the Inconscient the presence of the supreme Truth is at work; there is a seeing Power behind it which acts infallibly and the steps of the Ignorance itself are guided even when they seem to stumble; for what we call the Ignorance is a cloaked Knowledge, a Knowledge at work in a body not its own but moving towards its own supreme self-discovery.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
"Knowledge is no doubt the knowledge of the One, the realisation of the Being; Ignorance is a self-oblivion of Being, the experience of separateness in the multiplicity and a dwelling or circling in the ill-understood maze of becomings: . . . .” The Life Divine*
illumined mind ::: Sri Aurobindo: "This greater Force is that of the Illumined Mind, a Mind no longer of higher Thought, but of spiritual light. Here the clarity of the spiritual intelligence, its tranquil daylight, gives place or subordinates itself to an intense lustre, a splendour and illumination of the Spirit: a play of lightnings of spiritual truth and power breaks from above into the consciousness and adds to the calm and wide enlightenment and the vast descent of peace which characterise or accompany the action of the larger conceptual-spiritual principle, a fiery ardour of realisation and a rapturous ecstasy of knowledge.” *The Life Divine
"The Illumined Mind does not work primarily by thought, but by vision; . . . .” The Life Divine
"As the Higher Mind brings a greater consciousness into the being through the spiritual idea and its power of truth, so the Illumined Mind brings in a still greater consciousness through a Truth-sight and Truth-light and its seeing and seizing power.” The Life Divine*
imprint ::: n. 1. A mark or pattern produced by a stamp or an impression. v. **2. Establish or impress firmly in the mind. 3. To mark or stamp with or as if with pressure. imprints.**
imprison ::: to confine in or as if in a prison. imprisoned, imprisoning.
". . . imperfection is not a thing to be at all deplored, but rather a privilege and a promise, for it opens out to us an immense vista of self-development and self-exceeding.” The Human Cycle etc.*
“… imperfection is not a thing to be at all deplored, but rather a privilege and a promise, for it opens out to us an immense vista of self-development and self-exceeding.” The Human Cycle etc.
impoverished ::: deprived of richness and strength.
imps ::: small demons or devils; mischievous sprites.
inconscient ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Inconscient and the Ignorance may be mere empty abstractions and can be dismissed as irrelevant jargon if one has not come in collision with them or plunged into their dark and bottomless reality. But to me they are realities, concrete powers whose resistance is present everywhere and at all times in its tremendous and boundless mass.” *Letters on Savitri
". . . in its actual cosmic manifestation the Supreme, being the Infinite and not bound by any limitation, can manifest in Itself, in its consciousness of innumerable possibilities, something that seems to be the opposite of itself, something in which there can be Darkness, Inconscience, Inertia, Insensibility, Disharmony and Disintegration. It is this that we see at the basis of the material world and speak of nowadays as the Inconscient — the Inconscient Ocean of the Rigveda in which the One was hidden and arose in the form of this universe — or, as it is sometimes called, the non-being, Asat.” Letters on Yoga
"The Inconscient itself is only an involved state of consciousness which like the Tao or Shunya, though in a different way, contains all things suppressed within it so that under a pressure from above or within all can evolve out of it — ‘an inert Soul with a somnambulist Force".” Letters on Yoga
"The Inconscient is the last resort of the Ignorance.” Letters on Yoga
"The body, we have said, is a creation of the Inconscient and itself inconscient or at least subconscient in parts of itself and much of its hidden action; but what we call the Inconscient is an appearance, a dwelling place, an instrument of a secret Consciousness or a Superconscient which has created the miracle we call the universe.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga :::
"The Inconscient is a sleep or a prison, the conscient a round of strivings without ultimate issue or the wanderings of a dream: we must wake into the superconscious where all darkness of night and half-lights cease in the self-luminous bliss of the Eternal.” The Life Divine
"Men have not learnt yet to recognise the Inconscient on which the whole material world they see is built, or the Ignorance of which their whole nature including their knowledge is built; they think that these words are only abstract metaphysical jargon flung about by the philosophers in their clouds or laboured out in long and wearisome books like The Life Divine. Letters on Savitri :::
"Is it really a fact that even the ordinary reader would not be able to see any difference between the Inconscient and Ignorance unless the difference is expressly explained to him? This is not a matter of philosophical terminology but of common sense and the understood meaning of English words. One would say ‘even the inconscient stone" but one would not say, as one might of a child, ‘the ignorant stone". One must first be conscious before one can be ignorant. What is true is that the ordinary reader might not be familiar with the philosophical content of the word Inconscient and might not be familiar with the Vedantic idea of the Ignorance as the power behind the manifested world. But I don"t see how I can acquaint him with these things in a single line, even with the most. illuminating image or symbol. He might wonder, if he were Johnsonianly minded, how an Inconscient could be teased or how it could wake Ignorance. I am afraid, in the absence of a miracle of inspired poetical exegesis flashing through my mind, he will have to be left wondering.” Letters on Savitri
**inconscient, Inconscient"s.**
index ::: 1. An alphabetized list of names, places, and subjects treated in a printed work, giving the page or pages on which each item is mentioned. 2. A sequential arrangement. 3. Something that reveals or indicates; a sign.
indoctrinated ::: instructed in a doctrine, principle, ideology, etc., esp. imbued with a specific partisan or biased belief or point of view.
indwelling ::: abiding within, as a guiding force, motivating principle, etc.
inept ::: not apt or fitting; inappropriate.
inflexible ::: 1. Unyielding in purpose, principle, or temper; immovable. 2. Not permitting change or variation; unalterable.
"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 its nature and law the Overmind is a delegate of the Supermind Consciousness, its delegate to the Ignorance. Or we might speak of it as a protective double, a screen of dissimilar similarity through which Supermind can act indirectly on an Ignorance whose darkness could not bear or receive the direct impact of a supreme Light. Even, it is by the projection of this luminous Overmind corona that the diffusion of a diminished light in the Ignorance and the throwing of that contrary shadow which swallows up in itself all light, the Inconscience, became at all possible. For Supermind transmits to Overmind all its realities, but leaves it to formulate them in a movement and according to an awareness of things which is still a vision of Truth and yet at the same time a first parent of the Ignorance. A line divides Supermind and Overmind which permits a free transmission, allows the lower Power to derive from the higher Power all it holds or sees, but automatically compels a transitional change in the passage. The integrality of the Supermind keeps always the essential truth of things, the total truth and the truth of its individual self-determinations clearly knit together; it maintains in them an inseparable unity and between them a close interpenetration and a free and full consciousness of each other: but in Overmind this integrality is no longer there. And yet the Overmind is well aware of the essential Truth of things; it embraces the totality; it uses the individual self-determinations without being limited by them: but although it knows their oneness, can realise it in a spiritual cognition, yet its dynamic movement, even while relying on that for its security, is not directly determined by it. Overmind Energy proceeds through an illimitable capacity of separation and combination of the powers and aspects of the integral and indivisible all-comprehending Unity. It takes each Aspect or Power and gives to it an independent action in which it acquires a full separate importance and is able to work out, we might say, its own world of creation. Purusha and Prakriti, Conscious Soul and executive Force of Nature, are in the supramental harmony a two-aspected single truth, being and dynamis of the Reality; there can be no disequilibrium or predominance of one over the other. In Overmind we have the origin of the cleavage, the trenchant distinction made by the philosophy of the Sankhyas in which they appear as two independent entities, Prakriti able to dominate Purusha and cloud its freedom and power, reducing it to a witness and recipient of her forms and actions, Purusha able to return to its separate existence and abide in a free self-sovereignty by rejection of her original overclouding material principle. So with the other aspects or powers of the Divine Reality, One and Many, Divine Personality and Divine Impersonality, and the rest; each is still an aspect and power of the one Reality, but each is empowered to act as an independent entity in the whole, arrive at the fullness of the possibilities of its separate expression and develop the dynamic consequences of that separateness. At the same time in Overmind this separateness is still founded on the basis of an implicit underlying unity; all possibilities of combination and relation between the separated Powers and Aspects, all interchanges and mutualities of their energies are freely organised and their actuality always possible.
instinct ::: adj. Filled or infused with some animating principle (usually followed by with).
interned ::: restricted to or confined within prescribed limits, as prisoners of war, enemy aliens, or combat troops who take refuge in a neutral country. Also fig.
"In the inner sense of the Veda Surya, the Sun-God, represents the divine Illumination of the Kavi which exceeds mind and forms the pure self-luminous Truth of things. His principal power is self-revelatory knowledge, termed in the Veda ``Sight"". His realm is described as the Truth, the Law, the Vast. He is the Fosterer or Increaser, for he enlarges and opens man"s dark and limited being into a luminous and infinite consciousness. He is the sole Seer, Seer of Oneness and Knower of the Self, and leads him to the highest Sight.” The Upanishads*
“In the inner sense of the Veda Surya, the Sun-God, represents the divine Illumination of the Kavi which exceeds mind and forms the pure self-luminous Truth of things. His principal power is self-revelatory knowledge, termed in the Veda ``Sight’’. His realm is described as the Truth, the Law, the Vast. He is the Fosterer or Increaser, for he enlarges and opens man’s dark and limited being into a luminous and infinite consciousness. He is the sole Seer, Seer of Oneness and Knower of the Self, and leads him to the highest Sight.” The Upanishads
In this simultaneous development of multitudinous independent or combined Powers or Potentials there is yet—or there is as yet—no chaos, no conflict, no fall from Truth or Knowledge. The Overmind is a creator of truths, not of illusions or falsehoods: what is worked out in any given overmental energism or movement is the truth of the Aspect, Power, Idea, Force, Delight which is liberated into independent action, the truth of the consequences of its reality in that independence. There is no exclusiveness asserting each as the sole truth of being or the others as inferior truths: each God knows all the Gods and their place in existence; each Idea admits all other ideas and their right to be; each Force concedes a place to all other forces and their truth and consequences; no delight of separate fulfilled existence or separate experience denies or condemns the delight of other existence or other experience. The Overmind is a principle of cosmic Truth and a vast and endless catholicity is its very spirit; its energy is an all-dynamism as well as a principle of separate dynamisms: it is a sort of inferior Supermind,—although it is concerned predominantly not with absolutes, but with what might be called the dynamic potentials or pragmatic truths of Reality, or with absolutes mainly for their power of generating pragmatic or creative values, although, too, its comprehension of things is more global than integral, since its totality is built up of global wholes or constituted by separate independent realities uniting or coalescing together, and although the essential unity is grasped by it and felt to be basic of things and pervasive in their manifestation, but no longer as in the Supermind their intimate and ever-present secret, their dominating continent, the overt constant builder of the harmonic whole of their activity and nature….
intimate ::: n. 1. A close friend or confidant. intimates. adj. 2. Marked by close acquaintance, association, or familiarity. 3. Of or relating to the essential part or nature of something; intrinsic. 4. Very private; closely personal. 5. Familiarly associated. adv. intimately.
iris-coloured ::: a rainbow-like or iridescent appearance; a circle or halo of prismatic colours; a combination or alternation of brilliant colours.
“It could be affirmed as a consequence that there is one all-pervading Life or dynamic energy—the material aspect being only its outermost movement—that creates all these forms of the physical universe, Life imperishable and eternal which, even if the whole figure of the universe were quite abolished, would itself still go on existing and be capable of producing a new universe in its place, must indeed, unless it be held back in a state of rest by some higher Power or hold itself back, inevitably go on creating. In that case Life is nothing else than the Force that builds and maintains and destroys forms in the world; it is Life that manifests itself in the form of the earth as much as in the plant that grows upon the earth and the animals that support their existence by devouring the life-force of the plant or of each other. All existence here is a universal Life that takes form of Matter. It might for that purpose hide life-process in physical process before it emerges as submental sensitivity and mentalised vitality, but still it would be throughout the same creative Life-principle.” The Life Divine
"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 [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 reference to the beings met in the vital world, that seem like human beings but, if one looks closely, they are seen to be Hostiles; often assuming the appearance of a familiar face they try to tempt or attack by surprise, and betray the stamp of their origin — there is also a hint that on earth too they take up human bodies or possess them for their own purpose.” Letters on Savitri
“It is a reference to the beings met in the vital world, that seem like human beings but, if one looks closely, they are seen to be Hostiles; often assuming the appearance of a familiar face they try to tempt or attack by surprise, and betray the stamp of their origin—there is also a hint that on earth too they take up human bodies or possess them for their own purpose.” Letters on Savitri
"It is because of our experience won at a tremendous price that we can urge upon you and others, ``Take the psychic attitude; follow the straight sunlit path, with the Divine openly or secretly upbearing you — if secretly, he will yet show himself in good time, — do not insist on the hard, hampered, roundabout and difficult journey."" Letters on Yoga
“It is because of our experience won at a tremendous price that we can urge upon you and others, ``Take the psychic attitude; follow the straight sunlit path, with the Divine openly or secretly upbearing you—if secretly, he will yet show himself in good time,—do not insist on the hard, hampered, roundabout and difficult journey.’’ Letters on Yoga
“It is indeed as a result of our evolution that we arrive at the possibility of this transformation. As Nature has evolved beyond Matter and manifested Life, beyond Life and manifested Mind, so she must evolve beyond Mind and manifest a consciousness and power of our existence free from the imperfection and limitation of our mental existence, a supramental or truth-consciousness and able to develop the power and perfection of the spirit. Here a slow and tardy change need no longer be the law or manner of our evolution; it will be only so to a greater or less extent so long as a mental ignorance clings and hampers our ascent; but once we have grown into the truth-consciousness its power of spiritual truth of being will determine all. Into that truth we shall be freed and it will transform mind and life and body. Light and bliss and beauty and a perfection of the spontaneous right action of all the being are there as native powers of the supramental truth-consciousness and these will in their very nature transform mind and life and body even here upon earth into a manifestation of the truth-conscious spirit. The obscurations of earth will not prevail against the supramental truth-consciousness, for even into the earth it can bring enough of the omniscient light and omnipotent force of the spirit conquer. All may not open to the fullness of its light and power, but whatever does open must that extent undergo the change. That will be the principle of transformation.” The Supramental Manifestation
jail-delivery ::: forcible and illegal liberation of prisoners from jail.
jewelled ::: Prisoner of speed upon a jewelled wheel,
Jhumur: “As if she is the one that guides man to the way of darkness, a kind of force that pulls—because that it is the work of the priest isn’t it, the link between the divine and human. And here it is the priestess who establishes this linkage, a very strong link between the darkness and the weak mortal who is easily led.”
Jhumur: “It is the very principle of life which is a projection and emanation of the Divine Force. Wings symbolise freedom of movement joining various planes and the coming down of the Angel bringing the divine principles with her.”
Jhumur: “The soul has made this sacrifice of entering into darkness and now it has to pay the price of pain and suffering and work its way up. But each time it makes some kind of forward progress, more darkness, constantly more unconscious movements, imperfections, pile up. One might say the price that the spirit has to pay for having made this daring descent keeps on going up. It is like a very long journey and she [Savitri] has come to strike that out.”
just ::: 1. Guided by truth, reason, justice, and fairness. 2. Done or made according to principle; equitable; proper. 3. Based on right; rightful; lawful. 4. In keeping with truth or fact; true; correct. 5. Given or awarded rightly; deserved, as a sentence, punishment, or reward. 6. In accordance with standards or requirements; proper or right. 7. Only or merely.
keel ::: 1. The principal structural member of a ship or boat, running lengthwise along the center line from bow to stern, to which the frames are attached. 2. A poetic word for ship.
key ::: 1. A small metal instrument specially cut to fit into a lock and move its bolt. 2. Fig. Something that explains a mystery or gives an answer to a mystery, a code etc. 3. Something that is crucial in providing an explanation or interpretation. 4. Fig. Serving as an essential component; "a cardinal rule”. 5. The principal tonality of a composition. 6. Pitch of the voice. keys.
largely ::: 1. Principally; to a great extent. 2. On a large scale or in a large manner.
leaf ::: 1. A usually green, flattened, lateral structure attached to a stem and functioning as a principle organ of photosynthesis and transpiration in most plants. 2. A page of a book or manuscript. lotus-leaf. (See also gold-leaf.)
leap ::: n. 1. An abrupt transition. leaps. v. 2. To spring or bound suddenly upward from or as if from the ground; jump. Also fig. 3. Trans. To spring over; to pass from one side to the other by leaping. Also in phr. to leap bounds (lit. and fig.). 4*.* Fig. To move or pass quickly or abruptly from one condition or subject to another. 5. To beat rapidly as the heart. leaps, leaped, leapt, leaping, arrow-leaps, foam-leap, heaven-leap, lightning-leaps.**
"Life then is the dynamic play of a universal Force, a Force in which mental consciousness and nervous vitality are in some form or at least in their principle always inherent and therefore they appear and organise themselves in our world in the forms of Matter.” The Life Divine
“Life then is the dynamic play of a universal Force, a Force in which mental consciousness and nervous vitality are in some form or at least in their principle always inherent and therefore they appear and organise themselves in our world in the forms of Matter.” The Life Divine
light ::: “… light is primarily a spiritual manifestation of the Divine Reality illuminative and creative; material light is a subsequent representation or conversion of it into Matter for the purposes of the material Energy.” The Life Divine
light ::: Sri Aurobindo: ". . . light is primarily a spiritual manifestation of the Divine Reality illuminative and creative; material light is a subsequent representation or conversion of it into Matter for the purposes of the material Energy.” *The Life Divine
"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.
For do not imagine that light is created by the Suns. The Suns are only physical concentrations of Light, but the splendour they concentrate for us is self-born and everywhere.
God is everywhere and wherever God is, there is Light.” *The Hour of God
"Light is a general term. Light is not knowledge but the illumination that comes from above and liberates the being from obscurity and darkness.” The Mother
The Mother: "The light is everywhere, the force is everywhere. And the world is so small.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15. ::: *Light, light"s, lights, light-petalled, light-tasselled, half-light.
lintel ::: a horizontal structural member, such as a beam or stone, that spans an opening, as between the uprights of a door or window or between two columns or piers.
logic ::: 1. The science that investigates the principles governing correct or reliable inference. 2. The system or principles of reasoning applicable to any branch of knowledge or study. 3. Convincing forcefulness; inexorable truth or persuasiveness. logic"s.
Madhav: “A kakemono is a Japanese painting which is hung on the wall. It is a print in many colours, many designs. And this world picture is compared to a kakemono of significant forms. Each form is significant, each line is meaningful.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “An oracle, as you know, is the speech of prophecy, usually by an inspired priest. It is a supernatural prophecy made through any agent. But this oracle will be tongueless to broadcast it, everybody will know this oracle without its being uttered through a tongue.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “Each of the seven worlds—the earths—were seen in their innate immortal nature. The principle of Sat-Chit-Ananda is embedded in each of them.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “Seven are the planes of existence that are embodied, in principle, in each grade of this creation. The stabs are the wounds inflicted by the Darkness and Falsehood of the Adversary on these seven formulations. The seven sorrows are the result of these seven stabs.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “The earth is imaged to be travelling upon some wheel and it is a ‘jewelled wheel’, a perfectly designed, intricately constructed wheel. It is speeding and the earth is a prisoner of that speed.
Madhav: The Name is a Power. It stands for a particular formulation of Consciousness and Force and when uttered—audibly or otherwise—acts like a spring summoning all that it represents into action.” Readings in Savitri, Vol. I.
Madhav: “This creation is an ordered manifestation of the Divine. There is a central Will, expressing the originating Truth-vision, impelling the whole movement. But also there are special emanations from the Divine charged with specific tasks in the organisation and maintenance of the emerging creation. These are the gods and goddesses, deities, Powers and Personalities that are in charge of their respective domains, on different levels of existence. Each world has its own guardians entrusted by the Supreme Creative Spirit with the work of building and furthering the manifestation of the particular Truth-principle that pushes for expression in that world-formula.” Readings in Savitri Vol. I.
maenad ::: in Grecian mythology, a priestess of Bacchus. See **Bacchante.**
maim ::: 1. To injure, disable, or disfigure, usually by depriving of the use of a limb or other part of the body. 2. To make imperfect or defective; impair. Also fig. maims.
"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.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“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.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
marginal ::: written or printed in the margin of a book.
margin ::: n. 1. A border or edge. 2. The blank space bordering the written or printed area on a page. margins. v. 3. Provides with a margin.
martyr ::: one who makes great sacrifices or suffers much, even death, in order to further a belief, cause, or principle.
master ::: n. 1. One who has the power, knowledge and ability to control, manage, direct; as a teacher, guru, etc. with the authority and qualifications to teach apprentices. 2. A person eminently skilled in something, as an occupation, art, or science. 3. A person who has general authority over others. master"s, masters. *v. 4. To be or become completely proficient or skilled in; become an adept in. masters, mastered. adj. 5. Being master; exercising mastery; dominant. 6. Dominating or predominant. 7. Chief or principle. *master-clue, master-point.
master-spring ::: 1. A compound word denoting the mainspring or principal spring in a piece of equipment. 2. Fig. The prevailing power or motive to use or control something.
material world ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Our material world is the result of all the others, for the other principles have all descended into Matter to create the physical universe, and every particle of what we call Matter contains all of them implicit in itself; their secret action, as we have seen, is involved in every moment of its existence and every movement of its activity. And as Matter is the last word of the descent, so it is also the first word of the ascent; as the powers of all these planes, worlds, grades, degrees are involved in the material existence, so are they all capable of evolution out of it. It is for this reason that material being does not begin and end with gases and chemical compounds and physical forces and movements, with nebulae and suns and earths, but evolves life, evolves mind, must evolve eventually Supermind and the higher degrees of the spiritual existence.” The Life Divine
meditation ::: Sri Aurobindo: "There are two words used in English to express the Indian idea of dhyana , ‘meditation" and ‘contemplation". Meditation means properly the concentration of the mind on a single train of ideas which work out a single subject. Contemplation means regarding mentally a single object, image, idea so that the knowledge about the object, image or idea may arise naturally in the mind by force of the concentration. Both these things are forms of dhyana , for the principle of dhyana is mental concentration whether in thought, vision or knowledge. *Letters on Yoga
meditation ::: “There are two words used in English to express the Indian idea of dhyana , ‘meditation’ and ‘contemplation’. Meditation means properly the concentration of the mind on a single train of ideas which work out a single subject. Contemplation means regarding mentally a single object, image, idea so that the knowledge about the object, image or idea may arise naturally in the mind by force of the concentration. Both these things are forms of dhyana , for the principle of dhyana is mental concentration whether in thought, vision or knowledge. Letters on Yoga
mind, illumined ::: Sri Aurobindo: "This greater Force is that of the Illumined Mind, a Mind no longer of higher Thought, but of spiritual light. Here the clarity of the spiritual intelligence, its tranquil daylight, gives place or subordinates itself to an intense lustre, a splendour and illumination of the Spirit: a play of lightnings of spiritual truth and power breaks from above into the consciousness and adds to the calm and wide enlightenment and the vast descent of peace which characterise or accompany the action of the larger conceptual-spiritual principle, a fiery ardour of realisation and a rapturous ecstasy of knowledge.” *The Life Divine
mind of light ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Mind of Light is a subordinate action of Supermind, dependent upon it even when not apparently springing direct from it, . . . .” *Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
mint ::: 1. A place where the coins of a country are manufactured by authority of the government. v. 2. To form by stamping, punching, or printing. Also fig. mints.
moonbelts ::: broad bands or stripes characteristically distinguished from the surface they cross; tracts or districts long in proportion to their breadths. Also, zones or districts, usually with defining term denoting the principal characteristic.
movement ::: 1. The act or an instance of moving; a change in place or position. A particular manner of moving. 2. Usually, movements, actions or activities, as of a person or a body of persons. ::: movement"s, movements, many-movemented.
Sri Aurobindo: "When we withdraw our gaze from its egoistic preoccupation with limited and fleeting interests and look upon the world with dispassionate and curious eyes that search only for the Truth, our first result is the perception of a boundless energy of infinite existence, infinite movement, infinite activity pouring itself out in limitless Space, in eternal Time, an existence that surpasses infinitely our ego or any ego or any collectivity of egos, in whose balance the grandiose products of aeons are but the dust of a moment and in whose incalculable sum numberless myriads count only as a petty swarm." *The Life Divine
". . . the purest, freest form of insight into existence as it is shows us nothing but movement. Two things alone exist, movement in Space, movement in Time, the former objective, the latter subjective.” The Life Divine
"The world is a cyclic movement (samsâra ) of the Divine Consciousness in Space and Time. Its law and, in a sense, its object is progression; it exists by movement and would be dissolved by cessation of movement. But the basis of this movement is not material; it is the energy of active consciousness which, by its motion and multiplication in different principles (different in appearance, the same in essence), creates oppositions of unity and multiplicity, divisions of Time and Space, relations and groupings of circumstance and Causality. All these things are real in consciousness, but only symbolic of the Being, somewhat as the imaginations of a creative Mind are true representations of itself, yet not quite real in comparison with itself, or real with a different kind of reality.” The Upanishads*
mured ::: immured; imprisoned; shut in, secluded or confined.
“My researches first convinced me that words, like plants, like animals, are in no sense artificial products, but growths,—living growths of sound with certain seed-sounds as their basis. Out of these seed-sounds develop a small number of primitive root-words with an immense progeny which have their successive generations and arrange themselves in tribes, clans, families, selective groups each having a common stock and a common psychological history. For the factor which presided over the development of language was the association, by the nervous mind of primitive man, of certain general significances or rather of certain general utilities and sense-values with articulate sounds. The process of this association was also in no sense artificial but natural, governed by simple and definite psychological laws.” The Secret of the Veda
n. 1. Something judged in relation to its relative worth, merit, or importance. 2. The ideals, principles or standards of a person or society, the personal or societal judgement of what is valuable and important in life; gen. in pl. 3. A standard of estimation or exchange. values. *v. 4. To calculate or reckon the monetary value of; give a specified material or financial value to; assess; appraise. *valued.
"Next it [the Gita] insists with a certain austere emphasis on the acceptance of the Godhead as the divine inhabitant in the human body. For he is the Immanent in all existences, and if the indwelling divinity is not recognised, not only will the divine meaning of individual existence be missed, the urge to our supreme spiritual possibilities deprived of its greatest force, but the relations of soul with soul in humanity will be left petty, limited and egoistic.” Essays on the Gita
“Next it [the Gita] insists with a certain austere emphasis on the acceptance of the Godhead as the divine inhabitant in the human body. For he is the Immanent in all existences, and if the indwelling divinity is not recognised, not only will the divine meaning of individual existence be missed, the urge to our supreme spiritual possibilities deprived of its greatest force, but the relations of soul with soul in humanity will be left petty, limited and egoistic.” Essays on the Gita
Night ::: An Inquisition of the priests of Night
not expected; unforeseen; surprising; unanticipated. unexpectedly.
nurse ::: n. 1. One who tends or looks after another. 2. Fig. One that serves as a nurturing or fostering influence or means. v. 3. To feed at the breast of; suckle. 4. To manage or guide carefully; look after with care; foster. 5. To bear privately in the mind or in the heart. nurses, nursed, nursing, earth-nursed.
o ::: 1. Used before a name or noun in direct address, esp. in solemn or poetic language, to lend earnestness. 2. Used to express surprise or strong emotion.
obverse ::: the front or principal surface of anything.
offspring ::: the immediate descendant or descendants of a person, animal, etc.; progeny.
oh ::: used to express strong emotion, such as surprise, fear, anger, or pain.
oracle ::: 1. A person, such as a priestess, through whom a deity is held to respond when consulted. 2. The response given through such a medium, often in the form of an enigmatic statement or allegory. 3. A command or revelation from God. oracles.
oratory ::: a place for prayer, such as a small private chapel.
ordered ::: 1. Neatly or conveniently arranged; well-organized. 2. Done according to specific principles or procedures; conducted according to certain precepts or rules. ordering.
"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
“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
originals ::: 1. Works that have been composed or created first-hand. 2. Primary forms or types.
orphaned ::: deprived of protection, advantages, benefits, or happiness, previously enjoyed.
“Our being is a roughly constituted chaos into which we have to introduce the principle of a divine order.” The Synthesis of Yoga
“Our material world is the result of all the others, for the other principles have all descended into Matter to create the physical universe, and every particle of what we call Matter contains all of them implicit in itself; their secret action, as we have seen, is involved in every moment of its existence and every movement of its activity. And as Matter is the last word of the descent, so it is also the first word of the ascent; as the powers of all these planes, worlds, grades, degrees are involved in the material existence, so are they all capable of evolution out of it. It is for this reason that material being does not begin and end with gases and chemical compounds and physical forces and movements, with nebulae and suns and earths, but evolves life, evolves mind, must evolve eventually Supermind and the higher degrees of the spiritual existence.” The Life Divine
overmind ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The overmind is a sort of delegation from the supermind (this is a metaphor only) which supports the present evolutionary universe in which we live here in Matter. If supermind were to start here from the beginning as the direct creative Power, a world of the kind we see now would be impossible; it would have been full of the divine Light from the beginning, there would be no involution in the inconscience of Matter, consequently no gradual striving evolution of consciousness in Matter. A line is therefore drawn between the higher half of the universe of consciousness, parardha , and the lower half, aparardha. The higher half is constituted of Sat, Chit, Ananda, Mahas (the supramental) — the lower half of mind, life, Matter. This line is the intermediary overmind which, though luminous itself, keeps from us the full indivisible supramental Light, depends on it indeed, but in receiving it, divides, distributes, breaks it up into separated aspects, powers, multiplicities of all kinds, each of which it is possible by a further diminution of consciousness, such as we reach in Mind, to regard as the sole or the chief Truth and all the rest as subordinate or contradictory to it.” *Letters on Yoga
"The overmind is the highest of the planes below the supramental.” *Letters on Yoga
"In its nature and law the Overmind is a delegate of the Supermind Consciousness, its delegate to the Ignorance. Or we might speak of it as a protective double, a screen of dissimilar similarity through which Supermind can act indirectly on an Ignorance whose darkness could not bear or receive the direct impact of a supreme Light.” The Life Divine
"The Overmind is a principle of cosmic Truth and a vast and endless catholicity is its very spirit; its energy is an all-dynamism as well as a principle of separate dynamisms: it is a sort of inferior Supermind, — although it is concerned predominantly not with absolutes, but with what might be called the dynamic potentials or pragmatic truths of Reality, or with absolutes mainly for their power of generating pragmatic or creative values, although, too, its comprehension of things is more global than integral, since its totality is built up of global wholes or constituted by separate independent realities uniting or coalescing together, and although the essential unity is grasped by it and felt to be basic of things and pervasive in their manifestation, but no longer as in the Supermind their intimate and ever-present secret, their dominating continent, the overt constant builder of the harmonic whole of their activity and nature.” The Life Divine
"The overmind sees calmly, steadily, in great masses and large extensions of space and time and relation, globally; it creates and acts in the same way — it is the world of the great Gods, the divine Creators.” *Letters on Yoga
"The Overmind is essentially a spiritual power. Mind in it surpasses its ordinary self and rises and takes its stand on a spiritual foundation. It embraces beauty and sublimates it; it has an essential aesthesis which is not limited by rules and canons, it sees a universal and an eternal beauty while it takes up and transforms all that is limited and particular. It is besides concerned with things other than beauty or aesthetics. It is concerned especially with truth and knowledge or rather with a wisdom that exceeds what we call knowledge; its truth goes beyond truth of fact and truth of thought, even the higher thought which is the first spiritual range of the thinker. It has the truth of spiritual thought, spiritual feeling, spiritual sense and at its highest the truth that comes by the most intimate spiritual touch or by identity. Ultimately, truth and beauty come together and coincide, but in between there is a difference. Overmind in all its dealings puts truth first; it brings out the essential truth (and truths) in things and also its infinite possibilities; it brings out even the truth that lies behind falsehood and error; it brings out the truth of the Inconscient and the truth of the Superconscient and all that lies in between. When it speaks through poetry, this remains its first essential quality; a limited aesthetical artistic aim is not its purpose.” *Letters on Savitri
"In the overmind the Truth of supermind which is whole and harmonious enters into a separation into parts, many truths fronting each other and moved each to fulfil itself, to make a world of its own or else to prevail or take its share in worlds made of a combination of various separated Truths and Truth-forces.” Letters on Yoga
*Overmind"s.
overtake ::: 1. To catch up with and pass, as in a race; move by. 2. To come upon suddenly or unexpectedly; take by surprise. overtook, overtaken, overtaking.
parable ::: 1. A short allegorical story designed to illustrate or teach some truth, spiritual principle, or moral lesson. 2. A statement or comment that conveys a meaning indirectly by the use of comparison, analogy, or the like, esp. concerning morality or ethics.
party ::: an established political group organized to promote and support its principles and candidates for public office.
plaything ::: 1. A toy. 2. One who is used capriciously and selfishly by another. playthings.
poetry ::: “All poetry is an inspiration, a thing breathed into the thinking organ from above; it is recorded in the mind, but is born in the higher principle of direct knowledge or ideal vision which surpasses mind. It is in reality a revelation. The prophetic or revealing power sees the substance; the inspiration perceives the right expression. Neither is manufactured; nor is poetry really a poiesis or composition, nor even a creation, but rather the revelation of something that eternally exists. The ancients knew this truth and used the same word for poet and prophet, creator and seer, sophos, vates, kavi.” Essays Human and Divine
poetry ::: Sri Aurobindo: "All poetry is an inspiration, a thing breathed into the thinking organ from above; it is recorded in the mind, but is born in the higher principle of direct knowledge or ideal vision which surpasses mind. It is in reality a revelation. The prophetic or revealing power sees the substance; the inspiration perceives the right expression. Neither is manufactured; nor is poetry really a poiesis or composition, nor even a creation, but rather the revelation of something that eternally exists. The ancients knew this truth and used the same word for poet and prophet, creator and seer, sophos, vates, kavi.” Essays Human and Divine
pole ::: fig. One or each of two opposite or contrasted principles or tendencies; ideas; phenomenon, etc. poles.
pontiff ::: any high or chief priest. Also fig.
positions or postures of the body appropriate to or expressive of an action, emotion.
post ::: a long piece of wood or other material set upright into the ground to serve as a marker or support. posts
preen ::: 1. To smooth or clean (feathers) with the beak or bill. 2. To dress or groom (oneself) with elaborate care; primp.
"Progress admittedly does not march on securely in a straight line like a man sure of his familiar way or an army covering an unimpeded terrain or well-mapped unoccupied spaces. Human progress is very much an adventure through the unknown, an unknown full of surprises and baffling obstacles; it stumbles often, it misses its way at many points, it cedes here in order to gain there, it retraces its steps frequently in order to get more widely forward.” *The Renaissance in India
“Progress admittedly does not march on securely in a straight line like a man sure of his familiar way or an army covering an unimpeded terrain or well-mapped unoccupied spaces. Human progress is very much an adventure through the unknown, an unknown full of surprises and baffling obstacles; it stumbles often, it misses its way at many points, it cedes here in order to gain there, it retraces its steps frequently in order to get more widely forward.” The Renaissance in India
prompter ("s) ::: 1. Theat. A person offstage who reminds the actors of forgotten lines or cues. 2. A person, thing, etc., that prompts. prompters, sprite-prompters.
proudly ::: with pride; in a proud manner.
Purani: “He [Sri Aurobindo] does the same [improving spontaneously upon the original in the alchemy of his poetical process] with several Vedic symbols which he employs. It [gold-horned herds] indicates the descent of the ‘gold-horned’ Cows—symbolising the richly-laden Rays of Knowledge—into the Inconscient of the earth, its ‘cave-heart’. Generally in the Veda the action is that of breaking open the Cave of the inconscient and releasing the pen of Cows, the imprisoned Rays of Life for the conscious possessions by the seeker. Here is how a Vedic hymn speaks about it: ‘They drove upwards, the luminous ones,—the good milch-cows, in their stone-pen within the hiding cave.’ Rig Veda IV, 1-13. One sees in Savitri the process reversed and the Master’s vision lays open the original act of involution of the Light into the darkness of the Inconscient.” Sri Aurobindo’s”Savitri”: An Approach and a Study.
puritan ::: someone who adheres to strict religious principles; someone opposed to sensual pleasures.
purple ::: 1. Any of a group of colors with a hue between that of violet and red. 2. Imperial, regal or princely.
questionless ::: blindly adhering, as to a principle or course of action; unquestioning.
question ::: n. 1. An interrogative sentence, phrase, or gesture. v. 2. To pose a question. 3. To challenge the accuracy, probity, or propriety of. 4. To express uncertainty about the validity, truth, etc., of (something); doubt. questions, questioned, questioning.
quest ::: “The quest of man for God, which becomes in the end the most ardent and enthralling of all his quests, begins with his first vague questionings of Nature and a sense of something unseen both in himself and her. Even if, as modern Science insists, religion started from animism, spirit-worship, demon-worship, and the deification of natural forces, these first forms only embody in primitive figures a veiled intuition in the subconscient, an obscure and ignorant feeling of hidden influences and incalculable forces, or a vague sense of being, will, intelligence in what seems to us inconscient, of the invisible behind the visible, of the secretly conscious spirit in things distributing itself in every working of energy. The obscurity and primitive inadequacy of the first perceptions do not detract from the value or the truth of this great quest of the human heart and mind, since all our seekings,—including Science itself,—must start from an obscure and ignorant perception of hidden realities and proceed to the more and more luminous vision of the Truth which at first comes to us masked, draped, veiled by the mists of the Ignorance. Anthropomorphism is an imaged recognition of the truth that man is what he is because God is what He is and that there is one soul and body of things, humanity even in its incompleteness the most complete manifestation yet achieved here and divinity the perfection of what in man is imperfect.” The Life Divine
ransom ::: n. 1. The release of property or a person in return for payment of a demanded price. v. 2. To obtain the release of by paying a certain price. Also fig. **ransomed.**
retreat ::: v. **1. To retire or withdraw, into seclusion, shelter or privacy, or into some place of safety. n. 2. A drawing back; withdrawal. 3. The forced or strategic withdrawal of an army or an armed force before an enemy. 4. A place of refuge, seclusion or privacy. retreats.**
reverse ::: n. **1. The side of a coin or medal that does not carry the principal design. v. 2. To revoke or set aside (a judgment, decree, etc.); annul. 3. To change into something different or contrary; alter completely. 4. To turn and proceed in the opposite direction. reversed, reversing.**
revolt ::: 1. An expression or movement of spirited protest or dissent. 2. An uprising, especially against state authority; a rebellion. revolts.
revolution ::: “ . . . for what we inappropriately call revolution, is only a rapidly concentrated movement of evolution—a yet remote end which in the ordinary course of events could only be realised, if at all, in the far distant future.” The Human Cycle, etc.
righteousness ::: morally upright; without guilt or sin.
right ::: n. 1. Something that is due to a person or governmental body by law, tradition, or nature. 2. That which is morally, legally, or ethically proper. 3. A moral, ethical, or legal principle considered as an underlying cause of truth, justice, morality, or ethics. 4. That which is in accord with fact, reason, propriety, the correct way of thinking, etc. 5. A just or legal claim or title. 6. The side that is normally opposite to that where the heart is; the direction towards that side. 7. in (one"s, it"s) own right. By reason of one"s own ability, ownership, etc.; in or of oneself, as independent of others. Right, right"s. *adj. *8. In accordance with what is good, proper, or just.
rude ::: 1. Rough, harsh or ungentle. 2. Lacking the graces and refinement of civilized life; uncouth; primitive. 3. Roughly made or formed; imperfect in design or execution; of a crude construction. 4. Coarse, vulgar, rough; uncivilised; violent in action.
rule ::: n. 1. Action, procedure, arrangement, etc. 2. Governing power or its possession or use; authority. 3. A usual, customary, or generalized course of action or behaviour. 4. The customary or normal circumstance, occurrence, manner, practice, quality, etc. 5. A thin metal strip of various widths and designs, used to print borders or lines, as between columns. Chiefly fig. rules, rule-maker, self-rule. *v. 6. To control or direct; exercise dominating power, authority, or influence over; govern. *rules, ruled, ruling.
Savitri ::: Purani: “The word ‘Savitri’ is derived from the word ‘Savitru’ which in its turn is derived from the root ‘su’ = ‘to give birth to’. The word ‘Soma’ which indicates an ‘exhilarating drink’, symbolising spiritual ecstasy or delight, is also derived from the same root ‘su’. It links therefore the creation and the delight of creation. Savitru therefore, means the Divine Creator One who gives birth to or brings forth from himself into existence, the creation. In the Veda, Savita is the God of illumination, the God of Creation. Usually, he is represented by the material sun which also illuminates the solar system and is its creator and sustainer in the material sense. Savitri therefore would mean etymologically ‘some one descended from the Sun’, ‘one belonging to the Sun’, ‘an energy derived from the Sun, the Divine Creator’. In our poem, Savitri is the princess who embodies the Divine Grace descended in human birth to work out with the aspiring soul of humanity his divine destiny.”“Savitri“—An Approach and a Study
springing-board ::: or spring-board. A diving-board. Also fig.
springing ::: fig. Appearing or coming into being.
spring ::: n. 1. A small stream of water flowing naturally from the earth. 2. Fig. A source, origin, or beginning. 3. The season of the year, occurring between winter and summer, during which the weather becomes warmer and plants revive. 4. The act or an instance of jumping or leaping. 5. Fig. An actuating force or factor; a motive. Spring, springs, spring-bird"s, master-spring. v. 6. To rise, leap, move, or act suddenly and swiftly, as by a sudden dart or thrust forward or outward, or being suddenly released from a coiled or constrained position. 7. To proceed or originate from a specific source or cause. 8. To come into being by growth, as from a seed or germ, bulb, root, etc.; grow, as plants. springs.
springtides ::: springtime.
spring-time ::: the spring season.
sprite-prompters ::: elves, fairies, or goblins that incite, or move others, often against their will.
scaffold ::: a raised platform used in the execution of condemned prisoner, as by hanging or beheading.
script ::: 1. A kind of writing, a system of alphabetical or other written characters. 2. Handwriting, esp. cursive writing, the characters used in hand-writing (as distinguished from print). 3. A manuscript or document. 4. A manuscript or written text of a play, motion picture, etc. scripts.
seasons ::: one of the four natural divisions of the year, spring, summer, fall and winter, in the North and South Temperate zones. Each season, beginning astronomically at an equinox or solstice, is characterized by specific meteorological or climatic conditions.
secrecy ::: 1. The state or condition of being secret, hidden, or concealed. 2. Privacy; retirement; seclusion. 3. The ability or tendency to keep things secret; the state or quality of being secret. Secrecy, secrecies.
secret ::: n. 1. Something unknown or kept hidden from others or is beyond understanding or explanation; a mystery. 2. A reason or explanation not immediately or generally apparent. secrets. adj. **3. Kept from knowledge or observation; hidden, concealed. 4. Kept from the knowledge of any but the initiated and privileged. 5. Beyond ordinary human understanding; esoteric. 6.** Secluded, remote, sheltered, or withdrawn.
See also printing-house.
See also prison-house.
seed-sounds ::: Sri Aurobindo: "My researches first convinced me that words, like plants, like animals, are in no sense artificial products, but growths, — living growths of sound with certain seed-sounds as their basis. Out of these seed-sounds develop a small number of primitive root-words with an immense progeny which have their successive generations and arrange themselves in tribes, clans, families, selective groups each having a common stock and a common psychological history. For the factor which presided over the development of language was the association, by the nervous mind of primitive man, of certain general significances or rather of certain general utilities and sense-values with articulate sounds. The process of this association was also in no sense artificial but natural, governed by simple and definite psychological laws.” *The Secret of the Veda
sentinel ::: 1. A tower used by the military to watch for the enemy and defend a camp, etc. 2. A person or thing that watches or stands as if watching. 3. A soldier stationed as a guard to challenge all comers and prevent a surprise attack; a sentry. (Sri Aurobindo often employs the word as an adjective.) sentinels.
-shackled ::: bound with a chain, ring, or other fastening as of iron for the ankle or wrist of a prisoner, usually one of a pair, which is fastened to a ring-bolt in the floor or wall of the cell. sense-shackled.
Shruti: “The seven radiances of the Dawn, Usha (infinite consciousness, truth vision), the sevenfold principle of existence, the seven Sisters, rivers. The seven manifesting radiances of the primal light, Usha (Dawn).”
Since the Consciousness-Force of the eternal Existence is the universal creatrix, the nature of a given world will depend on whatever self-formulation of that Consciousness expresses itself in that world. Equally, for each individual being, his seeing or representation to himself of the world he lives in will depend on the poise or make which that Consciousness has assumed in him. Our human mental consciousness sees the world in sections cut by the reason and sense and put together in a formation which is also sectional; the house it builds is planned to accommodate one or another generalised formulation of Truth, but excludes the rest or admits some only as guests or dependents in the house. Overmind Consciousness is global in its cognition and can hold any number of seemingly fundamental differences together in a reconciling vision. Thus the mental reason sees Person and the Impersonal as opposites: it conceives an impersonal Existence in which person and personality are fictions of the Ignorance or temporary constructions; or, on the contrary, it can see Person as the primary reality and the impersonal as a mental abstraction or only stuff or means of manifestation. To the Overmind intelligence these are separable Powers of the one Existence which can pursue their independent self-affirmation and can also unite together their different modes of action, creating both in their independence and in their union different states of consciousness and being which can be all of them valid and all capable of coexistence. A purely impersonal existence and consciousness is true and possible, but also an entirely personal consciousness and existence; the Impersonal Divine, Nirguna Brahman, and the Personal Divine, Saguna Brahman, are here equal and coexistent aspects of the Eternal. Impersonality can manifest with person subordinated to it as a mode of expression; but, equally, Person can be the reality with impersonality as a mode of its nature: both aspects of manifestation face each other in the infinite variety of conscious Existence. What to the mental reason are irreconcilable differences present themselves to the Overmind intelligence as coexistent correlatives; what to the mental reason are contraries are to the Overmind intelligence complementaries. Our mind sees that all things are born from Matter or material Energy, exist by it, go back into it; it concludes that Matter is the eternal factor, the primary and ultimate reality, Brahman. Or it sees all as born of Life-Force or Mind, existing by Life or by Mind, going back into the universal Life or Mind, and it concludes that this world is a creation of the cosmic Life-Force or of a cosmic Mind or Logos. Or again it sees the world and all things as born of, existing by and going back to the Real-Idea or Knowledge-Will of the Spirit or to the Spirit itself and it concludes on an idealistic or spiritual view of the universe. It can fix on any of these ways of seeing, but to its normal separative vision each way excludes the others. Overmind consciousness perceives that each view is true of the action of the principle it erects; it can see that there is a material world-formula, a vital world-formula, a mental world-formula, a spiritual world-formula, and each can predominate in a world of its own and at the same time all can combine in one world as its constituent powers. The self-formulation of Conscious Force on which our world is based as an apparent Inconscience that conceals in itself a supreme Conscious-Existence and holds all the powers of Being together in its inconscient secrecy, a world of universal Matter realising in itself Life, Mind, Overmind, Supermind, Spirit, each of them in its turn taking up the others as means of its self-expression, Matter proving in the spiritual vision to have been always itself a manifestation of the Spirit, is to the Overmind view a normal and easily realisable creation. In its power of origination and in the process of its executive dynamis Overmind is an organiser of many potentialities of Existence, each affirming its separate reality but all capable of linking themselves together in many different but simultaneous ways, a magician craftsman empowered to weave the multicoloured warp and woof of manifestation of a single entity in a complex universe. …
slay ::: 1. To kill or murder; to deprive of life by violence; destroy. slays, slew, slaying, slain, slayer, soul-slaying.
"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
“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
sorrowing ::: sorrowful through loss or deprivation.
soul ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The word ‘soul", as also the word ‘psychic", is used very vaguely and in many different senses in the English language. More often than not, in ordinary parlance, no clear distinction is made between mind and soul and often there is an even more serious confusion, for the vital being of desire — the false soul or desire-soul — is intended by the words ‘soul" and ‘psychic" and not the true soul, the psychic being.” *Letters on Yoga
"The word soul is very vaguely used in English — as it often refers to the whole non-physical consciousness including even the vital with all its desires and passions. That was why the word psychic being has to be used so as to distinguish this divine portion from the instrumental parts of the nature.” *Letters on Yoga
"The word soul has various meanings according to the context; it may mean the Purusha supporting the formation of Prakriti, which we call a being, though the proper word would be rather a becoming; it may mean, on the other hand, specifically the psychic being in an evolutionary creature like man; it may mean the spark of the Divine which has been put into Matter by the descent of the Divine into the material world and which upholds all evolving formations here.” *Letters on Yoga
"A distinction has to be made between the soul in its essence and the psychic being. Behind each and all there is the soul which is the spark of the Divine — none could exist without that. But it is quite possible to have a vital and physical being supported by such a soul essence but without a clearly evolved psychic being behind it.” *Letters on Yoga
"The soul and the psychic being are practically the same, except that even in things which have not developed a psychic being, there is still a spark of the Divine which can be called the soul. The psychic being is called in Sanskrit the Purusha in the heart or the Chaitya Purusha. (The psychic being is the soul developing in the evolution.)” *Letters on Yoga
"The soul or spark is there before the development of an organised vital and mind. The soul is something of the Divine that descends into the evolution as a divine Principle within it to support the evolution of the individual out of the Ignorance into the Light. It develops in the course of the evolution a psychic individual or soul individuality which grows from life to life, using the evolving mind, vital and body as its instruments. It is the soul that is immortal while the rest disintegrates; it passes from life to life carrying its experience in essence and the continuity of the evolution of the individual.” *Letters on Yoga
". . . for the soul is seated within and impervious to the shocks of external events. . . .” *Essays on the Gita
". . . the soul is at first but a spark and then a little flame of godhead burning in the midst of a great darkness; for the most part it is veiled in its inner sanctum and to reveal itself it has to call on the mind, the life-force and the physical consciousness and persuade them, as best they can, to express it; ordinarily, it succeeds at most in suffusing their outwardness with its inner light and modifying with its purifying fineness their dark obscurities or their coarser mixture. Even when there is a formed psychic being able to express itself with some directness in life, it is still in all but a few a smaller portion of the being — ‘no bigger in the mass of the body than the thumb of a man" was the image used by the ancient seers — and it is not always able to prevail against the obscurity or ignorant smallness of the physical consciousness, the mistaken surenesses of the mind or the arrogance and vehemence of the vital nature.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
". . . the soul is an eternal portion of the Supreme and not a fraction of Nature.” The Life Divine
"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
*Soul, soul"s, Soul"s, souls, soulless, soul-bridals, soul-change, soul-force, Soul-Forces, soul-ground, soul-joy, soul-nature, soul-range, soul-ray, soul-scapes, soul-scene, soul-sense, soul-severance, soul-sight, soul-slaying, soul-space,, soul-spaces, soul-strength, soul-stuff, soul-truth, soul-vision, soul-wings, world-soul, World-Soul.
spiral ::: n. 1. A curve on a plane that winds around a fixed centre point at a continuously increasing or decreasing distance from the point. spirals. adj. 2. Coiled round like a spring, with each coil the same size as the one below. 3. Of an ascending or descending path.
spirit ::: 1. The principle of conscious life; the vital principle in humans, animating the body or mediating between body and soul. 2. A supernatural being. 3. The essential of anything. 4. An attitude or principle that inspires, animates, or pervades thought, feeling, or action. 5. A supernatural, incorporeal being, esp. one inhabiting a place, object, etc., or having a particular character. **spirit"s, spirits, spirit-depths, spirit-room, spirit-sense, spirit-space, World-spirit, World-Spirit.
sprang ::: pt. of spring.
sprung ::: pp. and pt. of spring.
squads ::: mil. The smallest military formations, typically comprising a dozen soldiers, used esp. as a drill formation.
Sri Aurobindo: "And though this Spirit of the universe, this One who is all, seems to be turning us on the wheel of the world as if mounted on a machine by the force of Maya, shaping us in our ignorance as the potter shapes a pot, as the weaver a fabric, by some skilful mechanical principle, yet is this spirit our own greatest self and it is according to the real idea, the truth of ourselves, that which is growing in us and finding always new and more adequate forms in birth after birth, in our animal and human and divine life, in that which we were, that which we are, that which we shall be, — it is in accordance with this inner soul-truth that, as our opened eyes will discover, we are progressively shaped by this spirit within us in its all-wise omnipotence.” *Essays on the Gita
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: "Each nation is a Shakti or power of the evolving spirit in humanity and lives by the principle which it embodies.” The Renaissance in India
Sri Aurobindo: "Every man is knowingly or unknowingly the instrument of a universal Power and, apart from the inner Presence, there is no such essential difference between one action and another, one kind of instrumentation and another as would warrant the folly of an egoistic pride. The difference between knowledge and ignorance is a grace of the Spirit; the breath of divine Power blows where it lists and fills today one and tomorrow another with the word or the puissance. If the potter shapes one pot more perfectly than another, the merit lies not in the vessel but the maker. The attitude of our mind must not be ‘This is my strength" or ‘Behold God"s power in me", but rather ‘A Divine Power works in this mind and body and it is the same that works in all men and in the animal, in the plant and in the metal, in conscious and living things and in things apparently inconscient and inanimate."” The Synthesis of Yoga
*Sri Aurobindo: " . . . for what we inappropriately call revolution, is only a rapidly concentrated movement of evolution — a yet remote end which in the ordinary course of events could only be realised, if at all, in the far distant future.” The Human Cycle, etc.
Sri Aurobindo: "History teaches us nothing; it is a confused torrent of events and personalities or a kaleidoscope of changing institutions. We do not seize the real sense of all this change and this continual streaming forward of human life in the channels of Time. What we do seize are current or recurrent phenomena, facile generalisations, partial ideas. We talk of democracy, aristocracy and autocracy, collectivism and individualism, imperialism and nationalism, the State and the commune, capitalism and labour; we advance hasty generalisations and make absolute systems which are positively announced today only to be abandoned perforce tomorrow; we espouse causes and ardent enthusiasms whose triumph turns to an early disillusionment and then forsake them for others, perhaps for those that we have taken so much trouble to destroy. For a whole century mankind thirsts and battles after liberty and earns it with a bitter expense of toil, tears and blood; the century that enjoys without having fought for it turns away as from a puerile illusion and is ready to renounce the depreciated gain as the price of some new good. And all this happens because our whole thought and action with regard to our collective life is shallow and empirical; it does not seek for, it does not base itself on a firm, profound and complete knowledge. The moral is not the vanity of human life, of its ardours and enthusiasms and of the ideals it pursues, but the necessity of a wiser, larger, more patient search after its true law and aim.” *The Human Cycle etc.
Sri Aurobindo: "It could be affirmed as a consequence that there is one all-pervading Life or dynamic energy — the material aspect being only its outermost movement — that creates all these forms of the physical universe, Life imperishable and eternal which, even if the whole figure of the universe were quite abolished, would itself still go on existing and be capable of producing a new universe in its place, must indeed, unless it be held back in a state of rest by some higher Power or hold itself back, inevitably go on creating. In that case Life is nothing else than the Force that builds and maintains and destroys forms in the world; it is Life that manifests itself in the form of the earth as much as in the plant that grows upon the earth and the animals that support their existence by devouring the life-force of the plant or of each other. All existence here is a universal Life that takes form of Matter. It might for that purpose hide life-process in physical process before it emerges as submental sensitivity and mentalised vitality, but still it would be throughout the same creative Life-principle.” *The Life Divine
*Sri Aurobindo: "It is true that when Matter first emerges it becomes the dominant principle; it seems to be and is within its own field the basis of all things, the constituent of all things, the end of all things: but Matter itself is found to be a result of something that is not Matter, of Energy, and this Energy cannot be something self-existent and acting in the Void, but can turn out and, when deeply scrutinised, seems likely to turn out to be the action of a secret Consciousness and Being: when the spiritual knowledge and experience emerge, this becomes a certitude, — it is seen that the creative Energy in Matter is a movement of the power of the Spirit.” The Life Divine
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
Sri Aurobindo: "Of course you can [do yoga without being great]. There is no need of being great. On the contrary humility is the first necessity, for one who has ego and pride cannot realise the Highest.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Pride is only one form of ego — there are ten thousand others. Every action of man is full of ego — the good ones as well as the bad, his humility as much as his pride, his virtues as much as his vices.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: “So too when the seer of the house of Atri cries high to Agni, ‘O Agni, O Priest of the offering, loose from us the cords,’ he is using not only a natural, but a richly-laden image. He is thinking of the triple cord of mind, nerves and body by which the soul is bound as a victim in the great world-sacrifice, the sacrifice of the Purusha; he is thinking of the force of the divine Will already awakened and at work within him, a fiery and irresistible godhead that shall uplift his oppressed divinity and cleave asunder the cords of its bondage; he is thinking of the might of that growing Strength and inner Flame which receiving all that he has to offer carries it to its own distant and difficult home, to the high-seated Truth, to the Far, to the Secret, to the Supreme.” The Secret of the Veda
*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 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 Herds and the Waters are the two principal images of the Veda; the former are the trooping Rays of the divine Sun, herds of the luminous Consciousness;” The Secret of the Veda
*Sri Aurobindo: "The Mask is mentioned not twice but four times in this opening passage and it is purposely done to keep up the central connection of the idea running through the whole. The ambassadors wear this grey Mask, so your criticism cannot stand since there is no separate mask coming as part of a new idea but a very pointed return to the principal note indicating the identity of the influence throughout. It is not a random recurrence but a purposeful touch carrying a psychological meaning.” — 1948 Letters on Savitri*
Sri Aurobindo: "The quest of man for God, which becomes in the end the most ardent and enthralling of all his quests, begins with his first vague questionings of Nature and a sense of something unseen both in himself and her. Even if, as modern Science insists, religion started from animism, spirit-worship, demon-worship, and the deification of natural forces, these first forms only embody in primitive figures a veiled intuition in the subconscient, an obscure and ignorant feeling of hidden influences and incalculable forces, or a vague sense of being, will, intelligence in what seems to us inconscient, of the invisible behind the visible, of the secretly conscious spirit in things distributing itself in every working of energy. The obscurity and primitive inadequacy of the first perceptions do not detract from the value or the truth of this great quest of the human heart and mind, since all our seekings, — including Science itself, — must start from an obscure and ignorant perception of hidden realities and proceed to the more and more luminous vision of the Truth which at first comes to us masked, draped, veiled by the mists of the Ignorance. Anthropomorphism is an imaged recognition of the truth that man is what he is because God is what He is and that there is one soul and body of things, humanity even in its incompleteness the most complete manifestation yet achieved here and divinity the perfection of what in man is imperfect.” The Life Divine
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: “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 word is a sound expression of the idea. In the supra-physical plane when an idea has to be realised, one can by repeating the word-expression of it, produce vibrations which prepare the mind for the realisation of the idea. That is the principle of the Mantras and of Japa. One repeats the name of the Divine and the vibrations created in the consciousness prepare the realisation of the Divine. It is the same idea that is expressed in the Bible: ‘God said, Let there be Light, and there was Light". It is creation by the Word.” *The Future Poetry
Sri Aurobindo: "This material universe is itself only existence as we see it when the soul dwells on the plane of material movement and experience in which the spirit involves itself in form, and therefore all the framework of things in which it moves by the life and which it embraces by the consciousness is determined by the principle of infinite division and aggregation proper to Matter, to substance of form.” The Upanishads
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: "To act according to a standard of Truth or a rule or law of action (dharma) or in obedience to a superior authority or to the highest principles discovered by the reason and intelligent will and not according to one"s own fancy, vital impulses and desires. In yoga obedience to the Guru or to the Divine and the law of the Truth as declared by the Guru is the foundation of discipline.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "We have distinguished a fourfold principle of divine Being creative of the universe, — Existence, Conscious-Force, Bliss and Supermind.” *The Life Divine
startled ::: frightened; surprised greatly; shocked. (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as an adj.)
stature ::: 1. The natural height of a human or animal in an upright position. 2. Degree of development attained; level of achievement. thought-stature.
stereotypes ::: 1. A process, now often replaced by more advanced methods, for making metal printing plates by taking a mold of composed type or the like in papier-mâché or other material and then taking from this mold a cast in type metal. 2. Also fig. Of unchanging, habitually repeated things, set forms; conventions.
::: *"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
“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
strip ::: 1. To take; peel away; remove; sometimes with off. 2. To deprive of honors, rank, office, privileges, or possessions; to divest something of. covering, clothing or the like. strips, stripped.
stunned ::: filled with the emotional impact of overwhelming surprise or shock.
stupefied ::: made dull or torpid; deprived of apprehension, feeling, or sensibility; benumbed, deadened.
subtle Matter ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Much more than half our thoughts and feelings are not our own in the sense that they take form out of ourselves; of hardly anything can it be said that it is truly original to our nature. A large part comes to us from others or from the environment, whether as raw material or as manufactured imports; but still more largely they come from universal Nature here or from other worlds and planes and their beings and powers and influences; for we are overtopped and environed by other planes of consciousness, mind planes, life planes, subtle matter planes, from which our life and action here are fed, or fed on, pressed, dominated, made use of for the manifestation of their forms and forces.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
"Mind therefore is held by the Hindus to be a species of subtle matter in which ideas are waves or ripples, and it is not limited by the physical body which it uses as an instrument.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
"All that manifested from the Eternal has already been arranged in worlds or planes of its own nature, planes of subtle Matter, planes of Life, planes of Mind, planes of Supermind, planes of the triune luminous Infinite. But these worlds or planes are not evolutionary but typal. A typal world is one in which some ruling principle manifests itself in its free and full capacity and energy and form are plastic and subservient to its purpose. Its expressions are therefore automatic and satisfying and do not need to evolve; they stand so long as need be and do not need to be born, develop, decline and disintegrate.” Essays Divine and Human*
surprise ::: Tehmi: “From the Fr. surprende,—overtaken suddenly.”
surprise ::: to encounter suddenly or unexpectedly; take or catch unawares. To ‘take hold of" or affect suddenly or unexpectedly; a desire, emotion, etc.
text ::: 1. The original words of something written or printed, as opposed to a paraphrase, translation, revision, or condensation. 2. The body of a printed work as distinct from headings and illustrative matter on a page or from front and back matter in a book.
"The Avatar comes as the manifestation of the divine nature in the human nature, the apocalypse of its Christhood, Krishnahood, Buddhahood, in order that the human nature may by moulding its principle, thought, feeling, action, being on the lines of that Christhood, Krishnahood, Buddhahood transfigure itself into the divine. The law, the Dharma which the Avatar establishes is given for that purpose chiefly; the Christ, Krishna, Buddha stands in its centre as the gate, he makes through himself the way men shall follow.” Essays on the Gita
“The Avatar comes as the manifestation of the divine nature in the human nature, the apocalypse of its Christhood, Krishnahood, Buddhahood, in order that the human nature may by moulding its principle, thought, feeling, action, being on the lines of that Christhood, Krishnahood, Buddhahood transfigure itself into the divine. The law, the Dharma which the Avatar establishes is given for that purpose chiefly; the Christ, Krishna, Buddha stands in its centre as the gate, he makes through himself the way men shall follow.” Essays on the Gita
the cherishing or pursuit of high or noble principles, purposes, goals, etc.
"The Divine Grace is there ready to act at every moment, but it manifests as one grows out of the Law of Ignorance into the Law of Light, and it is meant, not as an arbitrary caprice, however miraculous often its intervention, but as a help in that growth and a Light that leads and eventually delivers.” Letters on Yoga
“The Divine Grace is there ready to act at every moment, but it manifests as one grows out of the Law of Ignorance into the Law of Light, and it is meant, not as an arbitrary caprice, however miraculous often its intervention, but as a help in that growth and a Light that leads and eventually delivers.” Letters on Yoga
"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 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 epithet ‘wide-winged’ then does not belong to the wind and is not transferred from it, but is proper to the voice of the wind which takes the form of a conscious hymn of aspiration and rises ascending from the bosom of the great priest, as might a great-winged bird released into the sky and sinks and rises again, aspires and fails and aspires again on the ‘altar hills’. Letters on Savitri
"The force is Prakriti or Shakti, the female principle in Nature which is at the root of all action.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“The force is Prakriti or Shakti, the female principle in Nature which is at the root of all action.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
"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 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 gnosis is the effective principle of the Spirit, a highest dynamis of the spiritual existence.” *The Life Divine
“The gnosis is the effective principle of the Spirit, a highest dynamis of the spiritual existence.” The Life Divine
"The greatest motion of poetry comes when the mind is still and the ideal principle works above and outside the brain, above even the hundred petalled lotus of the ideal mind, in its proper empire; for then it is Veda that is revealed, the perfect substance and expression of eternal truth.” Essays Divine and Human*
“The greatest motion of poetry comes when the mind is still and the ideal principle works above and outside the brain, above even the hundred petalled lotus of the ideal mind, in its proper empire; for then it is Veda that is revealed, the perfect substance and expression of eternal truth.” Essays Divine and Human
"The Illumined Mind does not work primarily by thought, but by vision; . . . .” The Life Divine
“The Illumined Mind does not work primarily by thought, but by vision; …” The Life Divine
“The Inconscient is a sleep or a prison, the conscient a round of strivings without ultimate issue or the wanderings of a dream: we must wake into the superconscious where all darkness of night and half-lights cease in the self-luminous bliss of the Eternal.” The Life Divine
"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 intermediate link exists. We call it the Supermind or the Truth-Consciousness, because it is a principle superior to mentality and exists, acts and proceeds in the fundamental truth and unity of things and not like the mind in their appearances and phenomenal divisions.” The Life Divine
“The intermediate link exists. We call it the Supermind or the Truth-Consciousness, because it is a principle superior to mentality and exists, acts and proceeds in the fundamental truth and unity of things and not like the mind in their appearances and phenomenal divisions.” The Life Divine
"The leader of the journey, the captain of the march, the first and most ancient priest of our sacrifice is the Will. This Will is not the wish of the heart or the demand or preference of the mind to which we often give the name. It is that inmost, dominant and often veiled conscious force of our being and of all being, Tapas, Shakti, Sraddha, that sovereignly determines our orientation and of which the intellect and the heart are more or less blind and automatic servants and instruments.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
“The leader of the journey, the captain of the march, the first and most ancient priest of our sacrifice is the Will. This Will is not the wish of the heart or the demand or preference of the mind to which we often give the name. It is that inmost, dominant and often veiled conscious force of our being and of all being, Tapas, Shakti, Sraddha, that sovereignly determines our orientation and of which the intellect and the heart are more or less blind and automatic servants and instruments.” The Synthesis of Yoga
theme ::: 1. A topic of discourse or discussion. 2. A unifying or dominant idea, motif, etc. 3. A principal melodic subject in a musical composition. themes.
“The Mind of Light is a subordinate action of Supermind, dependent upon it even when not apparently springing direct from it, …” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
theory ::: 1. A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena. 2. An assumption based on limited information or knowledge; a conjecture. theory"s, theories.
“The Overmind is a principle of cosmic Truth and a vast and endless catholicity is its very spirit; its energy is an all-dynamism as well as a principle of separate dynamisms: it is a sort of inferior Supermind,—although it is concerned predominantly not with absolutes, but with what might be called the dynamic potentials or pragmatic truths of Reality, or with absolutes mainly for their power of generating pragmatic or creative values, although, too, its comprehension of things is more global than integral, since its totality is built up of global wholes or constituted by separate independent realities uniting or coalescing together, and although the essential unity is grasped by it and felt to be basic of things and pervasive in their manifestation, but no longer as in the Supermind their intimate and ever-present secret, their dominating continent, the overt constant builder of the harmonic whole of their activity and nature.” The Life Divine
"The progress of Life involves the development and interlocking of an immense number of things that are in conflict with each other and seem often to be absolute oppositions and contraries. To find amid these oppositions some principle or standing-ground of unity, some workable lever of reconciliation which will make possible a larger and better development on a basis of harmony and not of conflict and struggle, must be increasingly the common aim of humanity in its active life-evolution, if it at all means to rise out of life"s more confused, painful and obscure movement, out of the compromises made by Nature with the ignorance of the Life-mind and the nescience of Matter. This can only be truly and satisfactorily done when the soul discovers itself in its highest and completest spiritual reality and effects a progressive upward transformation of its life-values into those of the spirit; for there they will all find their spiritual truth and in that truth their standing-ground of mutual recognition and reconciliation. The spiritual is the one truth of which all others are the veiled aspects, the brilliant disguises or the dark disfigurements, and in which they can find their own right form and true relation to each other.” *The Human Cycle, etc.
“The progress of Life involves the development and interlocking of an immense number of things that are in conflict with each other and seem often to be absolute oppositions and contraries. To find amid these oppositions some principle or standing-ground of unity, some workable lever of reconciliation which will make possible a larger and better development on a basis of harmony and not of conflict and struggle, must be increasingly the common aim of humanity in its active life-evolution, if it at all means to rise out of life’s more confused, painful and obscure movement, out of the compromises made by Nature with the ignorance of the Life-mind and the nescience of Matter. This can only be truly and satisfactorily done when the soul discovers itself in its highest and completest spiritual reality and effects a progressive upward transformation of its life-values into those of the spirit; for there they will all find their spiritual truth and in that truth their standing-ground of mutual recognition and reconciliation. The spiritual is the one truth of which all others are the veiled aspects, the brilliant disguises or the dark disfigurements, and in which they can find their own right form and true relation to each other.” The Human Cycle, etc.
the quality or condition of being humble; the opposite of pride or haughtiness.
". . . there are a series of subtler and subtler formulations of substance which escape from and go beyond the formula of the material universe. Without going deeply into matters which are too occult and difficult for our present inquiry, we may say, adhering to the system on which we have based ourselves, that these gradations of substance, in one important aspect of their formulation in series, can be seen to correspond to the ascending series of Matter, Life, Mind, Supermind and that other higher divine triplicity of Sachchidananda. In other words, we find that substance in its ascension bases itself upon each of these principles and makes itself successively a characteristic vehicle for the dominating cosmic self-expression of each in their ascending series.” The Life Divine
“… there are a series of subtler and subtler formulations of substance which escape from and go beyond the formula of the material universe. Without going deeply into matters which are too occult and difficult for our present inquiry, we may say, adhering to the system on which we have based ourselves, that these gradations of substance, in one important aspect of their formulation in series, can be seen to correspond to the ascending series of Matter, Life, Mind, Supermind and that other higher divine triplicity of Sachchidananda. In other words, we find that substance in its ascension bases itself upon each of these principles and makes itself successively a characteristic vehicle for the dominating cosmic self-expression of each in their ascending series.” The Life Divine
"There is a clear distinction in Vedic thought between kavi, the seer and manîshî, the thinker. The former indicates the divine supra-intellectual Knowledge which by direct vision and illumination sees the reality, the principles and the forms of things in their true relations, the latter, the labouring mentality, which works from the divided consciousness through the possibilities of things downward to the actual manifestation in form and upward to their reality in the self-existent Brahman.” The Upanishads*
“There is a clear distinction in Vedic thought between kavi, the seer and manîshî, the thinker. The former indicates the divine supra-intellectual Knowledge which by direct vision and illumination sees the reality, the principles and the forms of things in their true relations, the latter, the labouring mentality, which works from the divided consciousness through the possibilities of things downward to the actual manifestation in form and upward to their reality in the self-existent Brahman.” The Upanishads
“The soul or spark is there before the development of an organised vital and mind. The soul is something of the Divine that descends into the evolution as a divine Principle within it to support the evolution of the individual out of the Ignorance into the Light. It develops in the course of the evolution a psychic individual or soul individuality which grows from life to life, using the evolving mind, vital and body as its instruments. It is the soul that is immortal while the rest disintegrates; it passes from life to life carrying its experience in essence and the continuity of the evolution of the individual.” Letters on Yoga
"The triple principle was doubly recognised, first in the threefold divine principle answering to the later Sachchidananda, the divine existence, consciousness and bliss, and secondly in the threefold mundane principle, Mind, Life, Body, upon which is built the triple world of the Veda and Puranas.” *The Secret of the Veda
“The triple principle was doubly recognised, first in the threefold divine principle answering to the later Sachchidananda, the divine existence, consciousness and bliss, and secondly in the threefold mundane principle, Mind, Life, Body, upon which is built the triple world of the Veda and Puranas.” The Secret of the Veda
"The universe is not merely a mathematical formula for working out the relation of certain mental abstractions called numbers and principles to arrive in the end at a zero or a void unit, neither is it merely a physical operation embodying a certain equation of forces. It is the delight of a Self-lover, the play of a Child, the endless self-multiplication of a Poet intoxicated with the rapture of His own power of endless creation.” The Supramental Manifestation
“The universe is not merely a mathematical formula for working out the relation of certain mental abstractions called numbers and principles to arrive in the end at a zero or a void unit, neither is it merely a physical operation embodying a certain equation of forces. It is the delight of a Self-lover, the play of a Child, the endless self-multiplication of a Poet intoxicated with the rapture of His own power of endless creation.” The Supramental Manifestation
"The Word has its seed-sounds — suggesting the eternal syllable of the Veda, A U M, and the seed-sounds of the Tantriks — which carry in them the principles of things; it has its forms which stand behind the revelatory and inspired speech that comes to man"s supreme faculties, and these compel the forms of things in the universe; it has its rhythms, — for it is no disordered vibration, but moves out into great cosmic measures, — and according to the rhythm is the law, arrangement, harmony, processes of the world it builds. Life itself is a rhythm of God.” The Upanishads
“The Word has its seed-sounds—suggesting the eternal syllable of the Veda, A U M, and the seed-sounds of the Tantriks—which carry in them the principles of things; it has its forms which stand behind the revelatory and inspired speech that comes to man’s supreme faculties, and these compel the forms of things in the universe; it has its rhythms,—for it is no disordered vibration, but moves out into great cosmic measures,—and according to the rhythm is the law, arrangement, harmony, processes of the world it builds. Life itself is a rhythm of God.” The Upanishads
“The world is a cyclic movement (samsâra ) of the Divine Consciousness in Space and Time. Its law and, in a sense, its object is progression; it exists by movement and would be dissolved by cessation of movement. But the basis of this movement is not material; it is the energy of active consciousness which, by its motion and multiplication in different principles (different in appearance, the same in essence), creates oppositions of unity and multiplicity, divisions of Time and Space, relations and groupings of circumstance and Causality. All these things are real in consciousness, but only symbolic of the Being, somewhat as the imaginations of a creative Mind are true representations of itself, yet not quite real in comparison with itself, or real with a different kind of reality.” The Upanishads
“This greater Force is that of the Illumined Mind, a Mind no longer of higher Thought, but of spiritual light. Here the clarity of the spiritual intelligence, its tranquil daylight, gives place or subordinates itself to an intense lustre, a splendour and illumination of the Spirit: a play of lightnings of spiritual truth and power breaks from above into the consciousness and adds to the calm and wide enlightenment and the vast descent of peace which characterise or accompany the action of the larger conceptual-spiritual principle, a fiery ardour of realisation and a rapturous ecstasy of knowledge.” The Life Divine
“This material universe is itself only existence as we see it when the soul dwells on the plane of material movement and experience in which the spirit involves itself in form, and therefore all the framework of things in which it moves by the life and which it embraces by the consciousness is determined by the principle of infinite division and aggregation proper to Matter, to substance of form.” The Upanishads
"Though man is infinitely greater than the plant or the animal, he is not perfect in his own nature like the plant and the animal. This imperfection is not a thing to be at all deplored, but rather a privilege and a promise, for it opens out to us an immense vista of self-development and self-exceeding. Man at his highest is a half-god who has risen up out of the animal Nature and is splendidly abnormal in it, but the thing which he has started out to be, the whole god, is something so much greater than what he is that it seems to him as abnormal to himself as he is to the animal. This means a great and arduous labour of growth before him, but also a splendid crown of his race and his victory. A kingdom is offered to him beside which his present triumphs in the realms of mind or over external Nature will appear only as a rough hint and a poor beginning. The Human Cycle
“Though man is infinitely greater than the plant or the animal, he is not perfect in his own nature like the plant and the animal. This imperfection is not a thing to be at all deplored, but rather a privilege and a promise, for it opens out to us an immense vista of self-development and self-exceeding. Man at his highest is a half-god who has risen up out of the animal Nature and is splendidly abnormal in it, but the thing which he has started out to be, the whole god, is something so much greater than what he is that it seems to him as abnormal to himself as he is to the animal. This means a great and arduous labour of growth before him, but also a splendid crown of his race and his victory. A kingdom is offered to him beside which his present triumphs in the realms of mind or over external Nature will appear only as a rough hint and a poor beginning. The Human Cycle
tions; but here there comes in the Overmind law of each Force working out its own possibilities. The natural possibilities of a world in which an original Inconscience and a division of consciousness are the main principles, would be the emergence of Forces of Darkness impelled to maintain the Ignorance by which they live, an ignorant struggle to know originative of falsehood and error, an ignorant struggle to live engendering wrong and evil, an egoistic struggle to enjoy, parent of fragmentary joys and pains and sufferings; these are therefore the inevitable first-imprinted characters, though not the sole possibilities of our evolutionary existence. Still, because the Non-Existence is a concealed Existence, the Inconscience a concealed Consciousness, the insensibility a masked and dormant Ananda, these secret realities must emerge; the hidden Overmind and Supermind too must in the end fulfil themselves in this apparently opposite organisation from a dark Infinite. …
titan ::: "In Greek mythology, one of a family of gigantic beings, the twelve primordial children of Uranus (Heaven) and Gaea (Earth); also certain of the offspring of these Titans. The names of the twelve Titans, the ancestors of the Olympian gods, were Oceanus, Coeus, Crius, Hyperion, Iapetos, Theia, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoebe, Tethys, and Cronos. Cronos, the youngest of them, ruled the world after overthrowing and castrating Uranus. He swallowed each of his own children at birth but Zeus escaped. Cronos was made to vomit up the others (including Hera, Demeter, Poseidon, and Hades) and, after a protracted struggle, he and the other Titans were vanquished, all of them but Atlas imprisoned in Tartarus, and the reign of Zeus was established. More broadly, the word Titan may be applied to any being of a colossal force or grandiose and lawless self-assertion, or even to whatever is huge or mighty.” *Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works.
“To act according to a standard of Truth or a rule or law of action (dharma) or in obedience to a superior authority or to the highest principles discovered by the reason and intelligent will and not according to one’s own fancy, vital impulses and desires. In yoga obedience to the Guru or to the Divine and the law of the Truth as declared by the Guru is the foundation of discipline.” Letters on Yoga
tongue ::: 1. The fleshy, movable, muscular organ, attached in most vertebrates to the floor of the mouth, that is the principal organ of taste, an aid in chewing and swallowing, and, in humans, an important organ of speech. 2. A spoken language or dialect. 3. Style or quality of utterance 4. Any long thin projection that is transient, as a flame. 5. A long and narrow projecting strip of something. tongues.
torpid ::: deprived of the power of motion or feeling; benumbed.
to seize or obtain possession of (territory, land, etc.) in an unjust or illegal manner; to assume unjust rule, dominion, or authority over, to appropriate wrongfully. usurped.
track ::: n. 1. A mark or succession of marks left by something that has passed. 2. A path made or beaten by or as if by the feet of people or animals; trail. 3. A path along which something moves or has moved, such as a wheel-rut; the wake of a ship; a series of footprints; etc. tracks. v. 4. To follow the tracks of; trail. 5. To observe, plot, or mark the path of something. tracked.
transformation ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Transformation means that the higher consciousness or nature is brought down into the mind, vital and body and takes the place of the lower. There is a higher consciousness of the true self, which is spiritual, but it is above; if one rises above into it, then one is free as long as one remains there, but if one comes down into or uses mind, vital or body — and if one keeps any connection with life, one has to do so, either to come down and act from the ordinary consciousness or else to be in the self but use mind, life and body, then the imperfections of these instruments have to be faced and mended — they can only be mended by transformation.” *Letters on Yoga
"‘Transformation" is a word that I have brought in myself (like ‘supermind") to express certain spiritual concepts and spiritual facts of the integral yoga. People are now taking them up and using them in senses which have nothing to do with the significance which I put into them. Purification of the nature by the ‘influence" of the Spirit is not what I mean by transformation; purification is only part of a psychic change or a psycho-spiritual change — the word besides has many senses and is very often given a moral or ethical meaning which is foreign to my purpose.” *Letters on Yoga
"It is indeed as a result of our evolution that we arrive at the possibility of this transformation. As Nature has evolved beyond Matter and manifested Life, beyond Life and manifested Mind, so she must evolve beyond Mind and manifest a consciousness and power of our existence free from the imperfection and limitation of our mental existence, a supramental or truth-consciousness and able to develop the power and perfection of the spirit. Here a slow and tardy change need no longer be the law or manner of our evolution; it will be only so to a greater or less extent so long as a mental ignorance clings and hampers our ascent; but once we have grown into the truth-consciousness its power of spiritual truth of being will determine all. Into that truth we shall be freed and it will transform mind and life and body. Light and bliss and beauty and a perfection of the spontaneous right action of all the being are there as native powers of the supramental truth-consciousness and these will in their very nature transform mind and life and body even here upon earth into a manifestation of the truth-conscious spirit. The obscurations of earth will not prevail against the supramental truth-consciousness, for even into the earth it can bring enough of the omniscient light and omnipotent force of the spirit conquer. All may not open to the fullness of its light and power, but whatever does open must that extent undergo the change. That will be the principle of transformation.” The Supramental Manifestation
The Mother: "Transformation. The change by which all the elements and all the movements of the being become ready to manifest the supramental Truth.”
"One thing you must know and never forget: in the work of transformation all that is true and sincere will always be kept; only what is false and insincere will disappear.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.
trap ::: n. 1. A contrivance used for catching game or other animals, as a mechanical device that springs shut suddenly. 2. Any device, stratagem, trick, or the like for catching a person unawares. v. 3. To catch in a trap; ensnare.
treasure ::: n. 1. Accumulated or stored wealth in the form of money, jewels, or other valuables. 2. Fig. One or something greatly valued or highly prized. treasures. v. 3. To keep or regard as precious; value highly. 4. To retain carefully or keep in store, as in the mind. treasures, treasured, treasuring.
triple cord of mind ::: Sri Aurobindo: "So too when the seer of the house of Atri cries high to Agni, ‘O Agni, O Priest of the offering, loose from us the cords," he is using not only a natural, but a richly-laden image. He is thinking of the triple cord of mind, nerves and body by which the soul is bound as a victim in the great world-sacrifice, the sacrifice of the Purusha; he is thinking of the force of the divine Will already awakened and at work within him, a fiery and irresistible godhead that shall uplift his oppressed divinity and cleave asunder the cords of its bondage; he is thinking of the might of that growing Strength and inner Flame which receiving all that he has to offer carries it to its own distant and difficult home, to the high-seated Truth, to the Far, to the Secret, to the Supreme.” *The Secret of the Veda
triple heavens ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Vishnu is the wide-moving one. He is that which has gone abroad — as it is put in the language of the Isha Upanishad, sa paryagât, — triply extending himself as Seer, Thinker and Former, in the superconscient Bliss, in the heaven of mind, in the earth of the physical consciousness, tredhâ vicakramânah. In those three strides he has measured out, he has formed in all their extension the earthly worlds; for in the Vedic idea the material world which we inhabit is only one of several steps leading to and supporting the vital and mental worlds beyond. In those strides he supports upon the earth and mid-world, — the earth the material, the mid-world the vital realms of Vayu, Lord of the dynamic Life-principle, — the triple heaven and its three luminous summits, trîni rocanâ. These heavens the Rishi describes as the higher seat of the fulfilling. Earth, the mid-world and heaven are the triple place of the conscious being"s progressive self-fulfilling, trishadhastha, earth the lower seat, the vital world the middle, heaven the higher. All these are contained in the threefold movement of Vishnu.” The Secret of the Veda
trunk ::: the main stem of a tree, usually thick and upright, covered with bark and having branches at some distance from the ground. trunks.
tutors ::: persons employed to instruct others in some branch or branches of learning, esp. private instructors.
twin ::: n. 1. One of two offspring born at the same birth. 2. Either of two persons or things that are identical or very similar; counterpart. 3. One of a pair; identical. twins. adj. 4. Being two identical. 5. Twofold or double. v. 6. To bring two objects, ideas, or people together; unite. lit. and fig. **twinned.**
Two things render that culmination more facile than it would otherwise be. Overmind in the descent towards material creation has originated modifications of itself,—Intuition especially with its penetrative lightning flashes of truth lighting up local points and stretches of country in our consciousness,—which can bring the concealed truth of things nearer to our comprehension, and, by opening ourselves more widely first in the inner being and then as a result in the outer surface self also to the messages of these higher ranges of consciousness, by growing into them, we can become ourselves also intuitive and overmental beings, not limited by the intellect and sense, but capable of a more universal comprehension and a direct touch of truth in its very self and body. In fact flashes of enlightenment from these higher ranges already come to us, but this intervention is mostly fragmentary, casual or partial; we have still to begin to enlarge ourselves into their likeness and organise in us the greater Truth activities of which we are potentially capable. But, secondly, Overmind, Intuition, even Supermind not only must be, as we have seen, principles inherent and involved in the Inconscience from which we arise in the evolution and inevitably destined to evolve, but are secretly present, occult actively with flashes of intuitive emergence in the cosmic activity of Mind, Life and Matter. It is true that their action is concealed and, even when they emerge, it is modified by the medium, material, vital, mental in which they work and not easily recognisable. Supermind cannot manifest itself as the Creator Power in the universe from the beginning, for if it did, the Ignorance and Inconscience would be impossible or else the slow evolution necessary would change into a rapid transformation scene. Yet at every step of the material energy we can see the stamp of inevitability given by a supramental creator, in all the development of life and mind the play of the lines of possibility and their combination which is the stamp of Overmind intervention. As Life and Mind have been released in Matter, so too must in their time these greater powers of the concealed Godhead emerge from the involution and their supreme Light descend into us from above. …
upright :::
uprise :::
uprising :::
unblinded ::: 1. Not blinded or deprived of sight. 2. Fig. Not deluded or deceived; without illusions.
::: "Universe is a diffusion of the divine All in infinite Space and Time, the individual its concentration within limits of Space and Time. Universe seeks in infinite extension the divine totality it feels itself to be but cannot entirely realise; for in extension existence drives at a pluralistic sum of itself which can neither be the primal nor the final unit, but only a recurring decimal without end or beginning.” *The Life Divine
“Universe is a diffusion of the divine All in infinite Space and Time, the individual its concentration within limits of Space and Time. Universe seeks in infinite extension the divine totality it feels itself to be but cannot entirely realise; for in extension existence drives at a pluralistic sum of itself which can neither be the primal nor the final unit, but only a recurring decimal without end or beginning.” The Life Divine
unreadable; not legible; impossible or hard to read or decipher because of poor handwriting, faded print, etc.
verities ::: something, such as a statement, principle, or belief, that is true, especially an enduring truth.
verse ::: 1. A succession of metrical feet written, printed, or orally composed as one line; one of the lines of a poem. 2. A poem, or piece of poetry. 3. A particular type of metrical composition. verses.
virtuous ::: characterized by or possessing virtue or moral excellence; righteous; upright.
“Vishnu is the wide-moving one. He is that which has gone abroad—as it is put in the language of the Isha Upanishad, sa paryagât,—triply extending himself as Seer, Thinker and Former, in the superconscient Bliss, in the heaven of mind, in the earth of the physical consciousness, tredhâ vicakramânah. In those three strides he has measured out, he has formed in all their extension the earthly worlds; for in the Vedic idea the material world which we inhabit is only one of several steps leading to and supporting the vital and mental worlds beyond. In those strides he supports upon the earth and mid-world,—the earth the material, the mid-world the vital realms of Vayu, Lord of the dynamic Life-principle,—the triple heaven and its three luminous summits, trîni rocanâ. These heavens the Rishi describes as the higher seat of the fulfilling. Earth, the mid-world and heaven are the triple place of the conscious being’s progressive self-fulfilling, trishadhastha, earth the lower seat, the vital world the middle, heaven the higher. All these are contained in the threefold movement of Vishnu.” The Secret of the Veda
void ::: n. 1. An empty space. 2. The state of nonexistence. 3. Something experienced as a loss or privation. adj. 4. Containing no matter; empty. 5. Without contents; empty; vacant. 6. Devoid; destitute (usually followed by of). 7. Useless, ineffectual; vain, without content; empty. Void, Void"s.
"We arrive then necessarily at this conclusion that human birth is a term at which the soul must arrive in a long succession of rebirths and that it has had for its previous and preparatory terms in the succession the lower forms of life upon earth; it has passed through the whole chain that life has strung in the physical universe on the basis of the body, the physical principle.” The Life Divine
“We arrive then necessarily at this conclusion that human birth is a term at which the soul must arrive in a long succession of rebirths and that it has had for its previous and preparatory terms in the succession the lower forms of life upon earth; it has passed through the whole chain that life has strung in the physical universe on the basis of the body, the physical principle.” The Life Divine
“We have distinguished a fourfold principle of divine Being creative of the universe,—Existence, Conscious-Force, Bliss and Supermind.” The Life Divine
"We have laid down that the origin, the continent, the initial and the ultimate reality of all that is in the cosmos is the triune principle of transcendent and infinite Existence, Consciousness and Bliss which is the nature of divine being.” The Life Divine
“We have laid down that the origin, the continent, the initial and the ultimate reality of all that is in the cosmos is the triune principle of transcendent and infinite Existence, Consciousness and Bliss which is the nature of divine being.” The Life Divine
well ::: adv. 1. Indeed, certainly, assuredly; without doubt. 2. In a way appropriate to the facts or circumstances; fittingly, properly. 3. Skilfully or proficiently. 4. (usually used with auxiliaries) Suitably; fittingly. adj. 5. Satisfactory, pleasing, or good. 6. Proper; fitting.
well ::: n. 1. A deep hole or shaft sunk into the earth to obtain water, oil, gas, etc. 2. A source, esp. one that provides a continuous supply. 3. An apparent reservoir or source of energy, etc. wells. *v. wells. 4. Rises, springs, or gushes as water, from the earth or some other source (often followed by up). *welled.
"We might say then that there are three elements in the totality of our being: there is the submental and the subconscient which appears to us as if it were inconscient, comprising the material basis and a good part of our life and body; there is the subliminal, which comprises the inner being, taken in its entirety of inner mind, inner life, inner physical with the soul or psychic entity supporting them; there is this waking consciousness which the subliminal and the subconscient throw up on the surface, a wave of their secret surge. But even this is not an adequate account of what we are; for there is not only something deep within behind our normal self-awareness, but something also high above it: that too is ourselves, other than our surface mental personality, but not outside our true self; that too is a country of our spirit. For the subliminal proper is no more than the inner being on the level of the Knowledge-Ignorance luminous, powerful and extended indeed beyond the poor conception of our waking mind, but still not the supreme or the whole sense of our being, not its ultimate mystery.” The Life Divine
“We might say then that there are three elements in the totality of our being: there is the submental and the subconscient which appears to us as if it were inconscient, comprising the material basis and a good part of our life and body; there is the subliminal, which comprises the inner being, taken in its entirety of inner mind, inner life, inner physical with the soul or psychic entity supporting them; there is this waking consciousness which the subliminal and the subconscient throw up on the surface, a wave of their secret surge. But even this is not an adequate account of what we are; for there is not only something deep within behind our normal self-awareness, but something also high above it: that too is ourselves, other than our surface mental personality, but not outside our true self; that too is a country of our spirit. For the subliminal proper is no more than the inner being on the level of the Knowledge-Ignorance luminous, powerful and extended indeed beyond the poor conception of our waking mind, but still not the supreme or the whole sense of our being, not its ultimate mystery.” The Life Divine
wheel ::: n. 1. A solid disk or a rigid circular ring connected by spokes to a hub, designed to turn around an axle passed through the centre. 2. Something resembling such a disk or ring in appearance or movement or having a wheel as its principal part or characteristic. 3. Moving, propelling, or animating agencies. 4. Fig. Signifying the eternal recurrence of all things. Wheel, Wheel"s, wheels, the wheels of Circumstance, the wheels of Doom, the wheel of God, the wheels of life, the wheel of works. v. 5. To turn or cause to turn on or as if on an axis. wheels, wheeled.
whim ::: a sudden or capricious idea; a fancy. whims, world-whim.
wicked ::: evil or morally bad in principle or practice; sinful; iniquitous; malicious. wickedness.
wide-winged ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The epithet ‘wide-winged" then does not belong to the wind and is not transferred from it, but is proper to the voice of the wind which takes the form of a conscious hymn of aspiration and rises ascending from the bosom of the great priest, as might a great-winged bird released into the sky and sinks and rises again, aspires and fails and aspires again on the ‘altar hills". Letters on Savitri
wind ::: air in natural motion, as that moving horizontally at any velocity along the earth"s surface. Wind, wind"s, winds, wind-faces, wind-feet, wind-goddess, wind-haired, wind-lashed, wind-maned, wind-rippled, wind-stirred, priest-wind"s.
wonder ::: n. 1. An event inexplicable by the laws of nature; a miracle; something strange and surprising brought about by a supernatural force. 2. A miraculous deed or event; remarkable phenomenon. 3. The emotion excited by what is strange and surprising; a feeling of surprised or puzzled interest, sometimes tinged with admiration. 4. Something strange, unexpected, or extraordinary. Wonder, wonder"s, Wonder"s, wonders, wonder-book, wonder-couch, wonder-dance, wonder-flecks, wonder-flowers, wonder-hues, wonder-plastics, wonder-rounds, wonder-rush, wonder-tree, wonder-web, wonder-weft, Wonder-worker, Wonder-worker"s, wonder-works, wonder-world, wonder-worlds. *adj. 5. Arousing awe or admiration; wonderful. v. 6. To be filled with admiration, amazement or awe; marvel (often followed by at); to think or speculate curiously (at or about); be curious to know. *wonders, wondered, wondering.
Word ::: “The word is a sound expression of the idea. In the supra-physical plane when an idea has to be realised, one can by repeating the word-expression of it, produce vibrations which prepare the mind for the realisation of the idea. That is the principle of the Mantras and of Japa. One repeats the name of the Divine and the vibrations created in the consciousness prepare the realisation of the Divine. It is the same idea that is expressed in the Bible: ‘God said, Let there be Light, and there was Light’. It is creation by the Word.” The Future Poetry
"Yet in the principle of reason itself there is the assertion of a Transcendence. For reason is in its whole aim and essence the pursuit of Knowledge, the pursuit, that is to say, of Truth by the elimination of error.” *The Life Divine
“Yet in the principle of reason itself there is the assertion of a Transcendence. For reason is in its whole aim and essence the pursuit of Knowledge, the pursuit, that is to say, of Truth by the elimination of error.” The Life Divine
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
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*** WISDOM TROVE ***
*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:I’m Pri-ya again.
I always will be with this man. ~ Karen Marie Moning,#NFDB
2:De los aztecas al PRI, con esa pelota nunca hemos jugado aquí. ~ Carlos Fuentes, #NFDB
3:Ljubav je kao groznica: rađa se i nestaje, a da čovjekova volja pri tome nema nikakvog udjela. ~ Stendhal, #NFDB
4:Hemos vivido con los ojos pelones, sin saber que hacer con la democracia. De los aztecas al PRI, con esa pelote nunca hemos jugado aquí. ~ Carlos Fuentes, #NFDB
5:Apskritai žmonės atrodo prislėgti. Tačiau, kai žmogus yra tyros dvasios ir švarių minčių, jo išvaizda taip pat gyvybinga. ~ Yamamoto Tsunetomo, #NFDB
6:I close my eyes and ride the mindless bliss. It's all I can do. Be. Feel. Live.
I'm Pri-ya again.
I always will be with this man. ~ Karen Marie Moning,#NFDB
7:Madelyne, I would like to speak to you in private after dinner." "Speak to me about what?" Madelyne demanded with a disgruntled look. "Men and their horses," Duncan told her ~ Julie Garwood, #NFDB
8:If you could fuck a book, you would."
"You know what?" Chantal comes over and shoves Pri's head. "I would fuck a book before I fuck some dude who doesn't respect me. I'd fuck a degree, a paycheck, and a damn career! ~ Ibi Zoboi,#NFDB
9:Ja sam apsolutno konzervativna..Mislim da nam je Allah pri rodjenju odredio mjesto i ulogu u svijetu i da je svaki pokušaj da se dovede u pitanje božanski plan osudjen na poraz.
..Bog je pravedan, padaju samo truli plodovi. ~ Keniz Mourad,#NFDB
10:We simply need to let go of any attachments as to how things should or should not be; become aware of our experience in the present as it is, without resistance or judgment ~ Peter Russell READ Seeds of #Awakening:bit.ly/ss-soa-prI:bit.ly/2SkABSW, #NFDB
11:Para nosotros –dice el normalista– votar por el PRI es votar por los Guerreros Unidos, por el PRD significa votar por Los Rojos, por el PAN es votar por Los Caballeros Templarios, Los Zetas, El Cártel del Golfo. Para nosotros son sinónimos… ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
12:But with the incessant peso devaluations at the end of the twentieth century, the PRI became a less openhanded benefactor. Although there was a smaller pie to split, politicians of the era of Carlos Hank González became greedier, leaving fewer scraps for their constituents. ~ David Lida, #NFDB
13:Misli su se nakratko zaljubile u postojanje pa smo ponosni što jesmo. I naši koraci, lišeni sanjalačke stidljivosti, kaljaju sjene, gazeći ih samouvjereno i sigurno. Trenutak budnosti, samo trenutak, i mreže pri proste stvarnosti pucaju pa možemo vidjeti što smo: iluzije vlastite misli. ~ Emil M Cioran, #NFDB
14:Be to, rengos mokytojo pamokymuose kalbama, kad likus dienai iki poetinių varžytuvių, mokinys privalo numaldyti savo protą ir uoliai mokytis eilėraščius iš rinkinio. Tai vadinama susikaupimu ties vienu darbu. Visiems vertėtų dirbti susikaupus. ~ Yamamoto Tsunetomo, #NFDB
15:¿Pero qué es el peronismo? Cualquier argentino que haya intentado explicárselo a un extranjero curioso conoce la dificultad de la respuesta. A mí la más gráfica que se me ocurre es esta: es como si, en México, el PRI se fragmentara en varios pedazos, y unos fueran a parar al Gobierno y otros a la oposición. ~ Andr s Neuman, #NFDB
16:Da se nešto dobro razume, treba najpre ispravno da se imenuje. Ništa nam ne koristi što mnogo znamo o biku ako ga sve vreme zovemo kravom i kao kravu opisujemo i s njim se kao sa kravom ophodimo. Najzad ćemo ga kao kravu upotrebiti i pri muži dobiti tačno onoliko mleka koliko zaslužujemo, a ponekad i papak u čelo. ~ Borislav Peki, #NFDB
17:Šta sam pri tom osećao - ne znam. Moja veština skrivanja od samoga sebe bila je tada najveća. Usavršio sam je do kraja. I ona je, dopunjujući se skladno sa mojom ohološću, tada dostigla sam zenit. Osećao sam samo ono što sam hteo da osećam gotovo sa istom lakoćom sa kojom sam, recimo, govorio samo ono što sam želeo da kažem. ~ Slobodan Seleni, #NFDB
18:U svojim napadajima bijesa neka ti je ova misao pri ruci, jer je blagi spokoj daleko ljudskiji i stoga više muževan. Blagi posjeduju snagu, čvrstoću i hrabrost- ne oni uvrijeđeni i plačljivi. Što je čvršći nadzor nad emocijama, to si bliže moći. Gnjev je znak slabosti, jednako kao i patnja. Oboje su ranjeni, oboje su se predali. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
19:,,Ten vir-var neustály
prenasleduje biednych pozemšťanov,
čo žili hore bez hany i chvály.
Sú spolu s podlým zborom nebešťanov,
čo proti Bohu nešli do zápasu,
no ani s ním' lež sami stáli stranou'
Nebesá nechcú stratiť pri nich z jasu,
a pekla dno čuť nechce o bedači,
pri ktorej hriech by získal istú krásu.', ~ Dante Alighieri,#NFDB
20:Bir daha bir Fae’yle yatarsan seni V’lane’in kişisel Pri-ya’sı yaparım.’’
Öldürecek gibi bakıyordu bana ama yine de yumuşak bir sesle konuşmaya devam etti. ‘’Çok mu kıskandın?’’
‘’Benim olan benimdir.’’
İyice hareketsizleşti. ’’Benim hakkımda böyle mi düşünüyorsun?’’
‘’Kıçının üzerine bahse girerim ki sen benimsin dostum. ~ Karen Marie Moning,#NFDB
21:Unistite moje zelje, izbrisite moje ideale, pokazite mi nesto bolje i ja cu poci za vama. Vi cete mozda reci da tako ne vredi ni nastavljati dalje prijateljstvo, u tom slucaju ja vam mogu odgovoriti to isto. Razmislimo ozbiljno, ako necete da me udostojite svoje paznje, necu vas ni ja dalje pozdravljati pri susretu. Imam ja svoje podzemlje. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
22:Kai tavo protas blaškosi tai šen, tai ten, apmąstymai niekuomet nevirs teisingomis išvadomis. Tik būdamas tvirtos, skaisčios ir nemirtingos dvasios žmogus įstengs protingai nuspręsti įkvėpęs ir iškvėpęs septynis kartus. Tačiau tam jis privalo būti ryžtingas ir pasirengęs nušluoti visa savam kelyje. ~ Yamamoto Tsunetomo, #NFDB
23:The China of the 1970s was a communist dictatorship. The China of the twenty-first century is a one-party state without a firm ideological foundation, more similar to Mexico under the PRI than Russia under Stalin. But the measurement of the political and the economic evolution has not yet been completed, and is one of the weak points of the system. ~ Henry A Kissinger, #NFDB
24:Profesor, naime, nije bio sklon da deli mišljenje humanista kako ljubav oplemenjuje. Ona je teška kao bolest, i kada čovek ima sreće da je preživi, zauvek mu ostaju ožiljci koji probadaju u određeno vreme; pri pomenu nekog imena, u nekom bledom predvečerju, uz muziku koju smo nekada zajedno slušali, čak i pri letimičnom pogledu na ulični sat pod kojim smo se sastajali... ~ Momo Kapor, #NFDB
25:Mogoče je imela prav, mogoče se mu je res gnusila. Ampak gnus ni razlog za ločitev, gnus je obenem najvišja stopnja intimnosti. Končna točka intimnosti. V kar se intimnost neizogibno razvije. Domačnost gnusa, njegova nespremenljivost, poželenje, ki jo izzove. Hrepenenje, da bi se ti drugi še zadnjič lahko zagnusil. In da bi se pri tem vedno malo gnusil tudi samemu sebi. ~ Arnon Grunberg, #NFDB
26:Da, u covjeku se razvio strašan apetit za zivotom. Otkada je postalo izvjesno da ga na nebu ne očekuje drugi život, da su kriteriji za vizu u pakao ili raj poljuljani, te da reinkarnacija u vepra ili štakora nije baš neki bingo, čovjek je odlucio da se zadrži tu gdje jest koliko može, ili drugim riječima da žvaće žvakaću gumu svoga života sto duže i da se pri tom zabavlja napuhujući balončiće. ~ Dubravka Ugre i, #NFDB
27:What I know, brother, is you break every goddamned rule for Mac.”
“Back at you, Ry. Difference is, I’ll help you do it.”
“Lor has never been Pri-ya.” Ryodan shakes his head in disgust. “The princess can’t turn us. Son of a bitch, Mac’s ass is—”
“Mine,” Barrons says flatly. “You will never go there. You have a problem with Mac, you work it out with me. I am her shield, I am her second fucking skin. ~ Karen Marie Moning,#NFDB
28:In my language, there is no word for I. To even come close, you must say, E’tesh’lem vereme pri’lus, which means, This one here who is apart from all. It’s the way we say lonely and alone. It’s the way we say outsider. It’s the way we say weak. Everyone always wonders about I love you. In Ifrek you say, Mev o’tem, or, We are together. “How do you say, I’m tired?” people ask. “Ek’erb nal veesh ly. The time for rest is upon us. ~ Rivers Solomon, #NFDB
29:Čudno, ko zdaj podoživljam čustvene boje tistih časov, dobim vtis, da moja velika mladostniška kriza ni nastopila, kakor se praviloma dogaja, ko sem odraščala v dekle, ampak v otroških letih. Pri dvanajstih, trinajstih štirinajstih sem že imela neko svojo žalostno trdnost... Vse je bilo le ena izmed naštetih malih vlogic, ki sem jih morala odigrati, če sem hotela imeti mir... Niso nas vzgajali za doslednost, temveč za prilagodljivost. ~ Susanna Tamaro, #NFDB
30:Ja sebe ne volim. Nisam baš naklonjen sebi, a još manje imam samopoštovanja. Osim toga, nisam si zanimljiv. Već dugo poznajem vlastite osnovne osobine i naposljetku su mi se zgadile. Kao adolescent i poslije mladić govorio sam o sebi, razmišljao o sebi, bio sam gotovo ispunjen vlastitom osobom. Više to ne činim. Više mi nisu bliske vlastite misli pa se smrznem od dosade pri pomisli da ispričam kakvu vlastitu dogodovštinu. Kad baš moram, lažem. ~ Michel Houellebecq, #NFDB
31:I am a Mexican. The United States lived seventy-five years with the one party system in Mexico - the PRI - without batting an eyelid, never demanding democracy of Mexico. Democracy came because Mexicans fought for democracy and made a democracy out of our history, our possibilities, our perspectives. Democracy is not something that can be exported like Coca-Cola. It has to be bred from the inside, according to the culture, the conditions of each country. ~ Carlos Fuentes, #NFDB
32:Jer savrsenog protivrecja spoj
ne shvata niti mudrac, nit' glupak, nit iko.
Moj prijatelju, vestina je ova
koliko drevna, toliko i nova.
Vazda je covek sluzio se time:
trime i jednim, i jednim i trime
zabludu mesto istine da slavi.
I tako brblja, druge uci tako
neometano, po volji i vesto.
Ko bi jos budalama da se bavi?
Samo li cuje reci, obicno smatra svako
da se pri tom, bez sumnje, mora i misliti nesto. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,#NFDB
33:Ko se povežete v duhovno partnerstvo z drugim človeškim bitjem, prinesete energijo pralika duhovnega partnerstva v fizični prostor. Začnete oblikovati in živeti po vrednotah, zaznavah in dejanjih, ki odražajo enakost z vašim partnerjem in povezanost z njegovim duhovnim razvojem ter vašim lastnim. Odmikati začnete hotenja svoje osebnosti, da bi naredili prostor za potrebe duhovne rasti vašega partnerja in pri tem rastete tudi sami. Tako deluje duhovno partnerstvo. ~ Gary Zukav, #NFDB
34:Ponoćna palača drugi je roman koji sam objavio, 1994., i tvori, zajedno s Princem magle, Rujanskim svjetlima i Marinom, seriju "mladenačkih" romana koje sam napisao prije Sjene vjetra. Iskreno, nikad baš nisam shvatio što znači "mladenački roman". Samo znam da sam, kad sam ih napisao, bio dosta mlađi nego danas i da je pri objavljivanju moja zamisao bila da će roman, ako sam posao obavio dobro, sigurno zainteresirati mlade čitatelje između devet i devedeset godina. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zaf n, #NFDB
35:Že hania ťa, to nie je tvoja chyba, tam, kde je krása, je aj klebeta. Podozrenie, to krásu zdobí iba, vrana si v čistom vzduchu zalieta. Nuž dobrý buď - a potvrdí zlý smrad len tvoju cenu, svet ti spraví zadosť. Najsladšie puky hnusný červ má rád a ty tu zastupuješ číru mladosť. Už absolvoval si jej pokušenia, jedným si uhol, druhým odolal, cenia si ťa, no aj keď si ťa cenia - niet toho, čo by závisť do pút dal. Nemať ten tieň, to podozrenie zlé - v kráľovstve sŕdc si dávno pri žezle. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
36:Već se vidim kako po čitav dan sjedim na svojoj stolici, zadubljena u živote, zaplete i rečenice, omamljena riječima i himerama, doslovce paralizovana srećom i zadovoljstvom, čitajući sve dok se ne smrkne, dok mi slova ne zatitraju pred očima, dok mi misli ne odblude, dok mi bolni mišići više ne budu u stanju držati knjigu. Radost je u očekivanju radosti. Kad čitaš izvrsnu knjigu po prvi put, obuzme te isti osjećaj raskoši kao pri prvom gutljaju soka od narandže na ramazanskom iftaru. ~ Rabih Alameddine, #NFDB
37:The purpose of this White Paper is to examine contemporary standards when it comes to the basic journalistic principles of balance and objectivity. Because the Corporation for Public Broadcasting commissioned this White Paper, the primary focus will be on how public media (e.g. NPR, PBS, APM and PRI) are fulfilling their statutory charge to strictly adhere to standards of objectivity and balance as well as to enumerate the type of ―best practices‖ that will allow public media to meet these standards. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
38:Una manera de que el PRI volviera a gobernar la ciudad sería socavarla desde dentro durante varios años –con independencia de cuántos años retenga la presidencia–, hasta agotar la confianza de quienes residen ahí y de los cruciales sectores financiero y empresarial en la capacidad de la izquierda para crear un gobierno alternativo suficientemente fuerte. Un blanco obvio sería la preciada seguridad de la ciudad; otro sería el suministro de agua, que proviene de fuera del Distrito Federal; pero sin duda hay muchos más. ~ Francisco Goldman, #NFDB
39:Smrt postoji ne kao suprotnost života, već kao njegov deo. To je nesumnjiva isina. Živeći svoj život, mi gajimo smrt. To je, međutim, bio samo jedan deo istine koju je trebalo spoznati. A Naokina smrt naučila me je ovome: nikakva istina ne može da zaleči tugu zbog gubitka voljene osobe. Nikakva istina, nikakva iskrenost, nikakva snaga ni dobrota tu tugu ne može da zaleči. Jedino što možemo jeste da je prevaziđemo učeći nešto iz nje, znajući da nam pri tom to što smo naučili ničemu neće služiti kada nas tuga sledeći put ponovo neočekivano sustigne. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
40:Horace To His Lute
If ever in the sylvan shade
A song immortal we have made,
Come now, O lute, I pri' thee come-Inspire a song of Latium.
A Lesbian first thy glories proved-In arms and in repose he loved
To sweep thy dulcet strings and raise
His voice in Love's and Liber's praise;
The Muses, too, and him who clings
To Mother Venus' apron-strings,
And Lycus beautiful, he sung
In those old days when you were young.
O shell, that art the ornament
Of Phoebus, bringing sweet content
To Jove, and soothing troubles all-Come and requite me, when I call!
~ Eugene Field,#NFDB
41:obrobenou plochou (obr.5.3).Obr. 5.3 Frézovanie polguľovou frézou – stúpanie [63] ap – hĺbka rezu R – polomer frézy vf – rýchlosť posuvu – uhol sklonu frézovanej plochy Ref1 – efektívny polomer frézy pri obrobenej ploche n - frekvencia otáčania vretena Ref2 – efektívny polomer frézy pri obrábanej ploche ap,max – maximálna hĺbka rezu V zmysle definície efektívneho priemeru môžeme považovať polomer Ref2 za efektívny polomer pre frézovanie stúpaním. Je to možné predpokladať z toho dôvodu, že Ref1 nie je závislý od hĺbky rezu ap, ale iba od uhla sklonu plochy . Pre Ref1 platí vzťah: Ref 1 R sin (5.2)66 ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
42:Ne možete zaspati jer ležite posve ukočeni, trudeći se da izbjegnete kontakt s površinama koje nisu prekrivene plahtom i jastučnicom. U pretjeranoj usmjerenosti na krevet, pojavljuje se prvi znak, nesavladiva nelagoda zbog stotina onih koji su ovdje spavali prije vas, ostavivši svoju prašinu i svoj prah u tkanini plahte, zamastivši površinu teškog i skliskog uzglavlja. Prašina drugih ljudi, i drugih vremena, ispunjava sobu, ulazi u sag, ostavlja ljepljive tragove od kreveta do kupaonice. I pri blijedom jutarnjem svjetlu koje dopire s prozora bespomoćno promatramo kako nas prašina zavija kao sitan snijeg. ~ Dubravka Ugre i, #NFDB
43:o e s i t ma k e s e n s e t o c o n ti n u e t o emp h as i z e t h e pro l e t ariat? I argue that it d o e s not, not i f by " p ro l etatiat" o n e h as in mi n d an emp i ri c al s o c i al c lass . Mo re u s e fu l i s t h e i d e a of pro l etaria n i z a t i o n as a p ro c e s s of e x p l o i t at i o n , d i s p o s s e s s i o n , a n d i m m i s eratio n t h a t pro d u c e s t h e v e ry ri c h a s t h e pri v il e g e d c la s s t h at l i v e s off t h e res t of us . I o ffer t h e n o t i o n o f " t h e p e o p l e as t h e res t o f u s , " t h e p e o p l e as a d i v i d e d and d i vi s i v e force , as an ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
44:You might start by thanking me."
For what? For finding something else that was so important to do that it took you all the way from midnight on Samhain ‗til four days later to come for me? I‘m not going to thank you for saving me from something you failed to save me from to begin with."
You look fine to me.
In fact, you‘re better than fine, aren‘t you? You walked right through my wards, without a word. Didn‘t even leave a note by the bedside. Really,after all we shared, Ms. Lane. But do I get any thanks for doing the
impossible and bringing you back from being Pri-ya? No. What do I get? You steal my guns. ~ Karen Marie Moning,#NFDB
45:I would not have believed it, either. No human has ever come back from being made Pri-ya, and, although I am pleased that you have recovered from what was done to you, I am not pleased that I must now compete for you with no glamour, without the glory of my birthright. They were Unseelie, MacKayla, the foulest of the foul, the darkest of my race, the abominations. I am Seelie, and we are vastly different. I had hoped that one day, when you trusted me, you would let me share with you the ecstasy of being one like me. With no pain, MacKayla, and no price. Now that can never be. You have no idea how exquisite the experience might have been and now never will. ~ Karen Marie Moning, #NFDB
46:Kad bih se barem, na samo nekoliko minuta, mogao ponovno pridići na noge smislio bih već nešto. Smjestio bih te negdje, pobrinuo se za to. Samo sapa mi je pri kraju. Osjećam kako curi iz mene, i kako se sve raspada, jedno po jedno. Peso, drži se ti mene. Vratit ću se ja. Samo da prođe ova smetenost, već ću se sabrati. Mislim, ako prođe. Ako ne prođe, uvjerit ćeš se u moju prolaznost, n'est cepas? Samo još malo vremena. Nekoliko minuta, da dođem do daha. Onda ćemo vidjeti. Ili nećemo. Ako nećemo vidjeti, tada će nas okruživati samo tama. Tama, posvuda, sve dokle pogled ne dopire. Sve do mora, do oceanskih dubina ništavila, gdje nema ničega, niti će ikad ičega biti. Samo ja. Čak ni ja. Samo vječnost. ~ Paul Auster, #NFDB
47:Nijedan čovek nije toliko siromašan da ne može jednom na dan da pogleda u nebo i da se seti neke dobre misli pune života. A zarobljenik koji pri odlasku na rad ponavlja u sebi neki dobar stih, ili pevuši tiho neku dobru melodiju, može u duši dublje da oseti utehu i da više poseduje sve ove lepe stvari nego neki zahtevni čovek koji se oseća umorno u velikoj lepoti i slatkom uživanju.
Ti koji su tužan i daleko od svojih, pročitaj povremeno neku dobru izreku, neku pesmu, seti se lepe muzike, lepog predela, nekog čistog i dobrog trenutka u tvom životu! I pogledaj, zar nije tačno, da se kada to uradiš ozbiljno, dešava čudo, da sati postaju vedriji, budućnost prijatnija, život vredniji življenja! ~ Hermann Hesse,#NFDB
48:Kako je čitanje nešto neobično!Kako je čudno to čitanje koje poništava vreme, pretače vrtoglavi prostor, a da pri tom ne zaustavlja dah niti oduzima život čitaocu.
Verujemo da smo nevidljivi, odsutni, iako smo svuda prisutni, čak i tamo gde smo, grozničavi, s tom knjigom u ruci koju gutamo, jedemo očima, kao u nekoj radnji bele magije, da bismo nahranili svoj duh.
A čitanje je zbilja čarobna radnja svesti koja otkriva jednu od najnepoznatijih sposobnosti čovekovih i daje mu veliku moć: sposobnost da bude na dva mesta istovremeno i moć da se usami, da se potpuno odvoji od okoline, da izađe iz svog vlastitog života a da ne izgubi vezu sa životom; ukratko, da saobraća sa svim i svačim, čak i kada više ne veruje ni u šta. ~ Blaise Cendrars,#NFDB
49:Ništa nisam toliko želeo učiniti a da se u isto vreme ne bih toga mogao i odreći. Čak i u detinjstvu, kad mi ništa nije nedostajalo, želeo sam umreti: hteo sam se predati, jer mi se borba činila besmislenom. Shvatao sam da ništa ne mogu dokazati, osmisliti, dodati ili oduzeti produžujući život koji nisam sam tražio. Sve egzistenicje oko mene bile su promašene ili, ako i nisu bile promašene, bile su smešne. Osobito egzistencije onih ljudi koji su uspeli u životu. Muka me hvatala od ljudi koji su uspeli u životu. Imao sam razumevanja za greške, ali me nije zbog toga hvatala muka. Tu je posredi bila prava pravcata negativna osobina, slabost koja bi nabujala već pri pogledu na ljudsku bedu. Nikada nisam nikome pomogao u nadi da time činim dobro; pomogao bih samo zato što drugačije nisam mogao. ~ Henry Miller, #NFDB
50:Myslíte si, že keď vyrastáte s nejakými ľuďmi, poznáte ich. Veď boli pri vás po celý váš život. Poznáte ich hlas, krivky rúk, viete, na čom sa radi smejú. Poznáte ich srdcia. Ale ukáže sa, že nepoznáte ich myšlienky. Teda nie celkom, nie naozaj. Všetci ľudia majú svoje tajomstvá, a nie sú to len záležitosti, ktoré pred vami taja, ale tajomstvá o vás. A oni dúfajú, že sa ich nikdy nedozviete. Môžete s niekým bývať pod jednou strechou, prežívať s ním banálne každodenné zážitky, používať spoločné mydlo, cukorničku, topánky – a predsa by ste to nikdy neuhádli. Myslíte si, že niekoho poznáte. A potom jedného dňa zistíte, že bežíte. Skutočne bežíte, až vám horia pľúca, tŕpnu vám nohy. A ste priveľmi unavení, aby ste zastali a obzreli sa. Ukázalo sa, že ja som bežala celý život. Len som to nevedela. ~ Mary Louise Kelly, #NFDB
51:Užitak je bio paliti. Osobit je užitak bio gledati kako stvari nestaju, kako crne i mijenjaju se. S bakrenom štrcaljkom u rukama, tim velikim udavom koji svoj otrovni petrolej pljuje u svijet, krv mu je udarala u glavi, a ruke su mu bile ruke nekakvog čudesnog dirigenta koji izvodi sve simfonije plamsanja i paljenja kako bi satro ostatke i pougljenjele ostatke povijesti. Sa simboličnim šljemom s brojkom 451 na ravnodušnoj glavi i očima punim narančastog ognja pri pomisli na ono što slijedi, kvrcnuo je upaljač i kuća je poskočila od pohlepne vatre koja je večernje nebo obojila crvenilom, žutilom i crnilom. Koraknuo je u roj krijesnica. Poželio je više od svega da, kao u staroj šali, u ovu peć gurne sljez na štapu dok na verandi i travnjaku poput golubova uzlepetalih krila umiru knjige i u iskričavim kovitlacima uzlijeću i nestaju s vjetrom potamnjelim od paljenja. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
52:Podređenost prirodi današnjih ljudi ne može se odvojiti od društvenog napretka. Rast privredne produktivnosti koja, s jedne strane, stvara uvjete za pravedniji svijet, daje, s druge strane, tehničkom aparatu i grupama koje njime raspolažu neizmjernu nadmoć nad ostalim stanovništvom. Pojedinac je spram ekonomijskih moći posve anuliran. Pri tomu te moći dovode snagu društva nad prirodom do neslućene visine. Dok pojedinac nestaje pred aparatom što ga poslužuje, bolje je opskrbljen nego ikada. U nepravednom stanju nemoć i povodljivost masa rastu sa količinom dobara kojom raspolažu. Materijalno znatan a socijalno ništavan porast životnog standarda nižih odrazuje se u varljivoj proširenosti duha. Pravi predmet duha jest negacija postvarenja. On nestaje tamo gdje se pretvara u kulturno dobro i gdje se isporučuje radi konzumiranja. Poplava precizne informacije i timarene zabave ujedno čini ljude spretnijima i glupljima. ~ Theodor W Adorno, #NFDB
53:Horace Ii, 3.
Be tranquil, Dellius, I pray;
For though you pine your life away
With dull complaining breath,
Or speed with song and wine each day-Still, still your doom is death.
Where the white poplar and the pine
In glorious arching shade combine
And the brook singing goes,
Bid them bring store of nard and wine
And garlands of the rose.
Let's live while chance and youth obtain-Soon shall you quit this fair domain
Kissed by the Tiber's gold,
And all your earthly pride and gain
Some heedless heir shall hold.
One ghostly boat shall some time bear
From scenes of mirthfulness or care
Each fated human soul!-Shall waft and leave his burden where
The waves of Lethe roll.
_So come, I pri' thee, Dellius, mine-Let's sing our songs and drink our wine
In that sequestered nook
Where the white poplar and the pine
Stand listening to the brook._
~ Eugene Field,#NFDB
54:Here I was with Barrons dead. Again.
I knew he wasn’t really dead, or at least he wouldn’t be for long, but my grief was too fresh and my emotions too complicated.
“How long until he—” I broke off, horrified to hear the catch of a sob in my voice.
“Why do you give a fuck?”
“I don’t, I mean, I just—shit!” I turned and beat at the wall with my fists. I didn’t care that my parents could hear the dull thud or that the wall shuddered beneath my blows. I didn’t care what Lor thought of me. I hated Barrons being dead. Hated it. Beyond reason. Beyond my understanding.
I punched until Lor caught my bloody fists and pulled me away.
“How long?” I demanded. “I want to know! Answer me or else!”
He grinned faintly. “What, you gonna feed me bloody runes?”
I scowled. “Do you guys tell each other everything?”
“Not everything. Pri-ya sounded pretty fucking fascinating to me. Never did get all the details. ~ Karen Marie Moning,#NFDB
55:Sidarta pokloni svoju odjeću nekom siromašnom bramanu na ulici. Nosio je još samo pregaču oko bedara i nešiveni ogrtač zemljane boje. Jeo je samo jedanput dnevno i nikad kuvanu hranu. Postio je petnaest dana. Postio je dvadeset i osam dana. Snaga mu se istopila na butinama i obrazima. Vreli snovi sukljali su iz njegovih uvećanih očiju, na sasušenim prstima izrasli su nokti kao kandže, a na podbratku tršava brada. Pogled mu je bio leden pri susretu sa ženama; krivio je usne pun prezira kada bi prolazio kroz grad u kome su ljudi bili lijepo odjeveni. Viđao je trgovce kako trguju, velmože kako dolaze u lov, ožalošćene kako oplakuju svoje mrtve, bludnice kako se nude, ljekare kako se zauzimaju oko bolesnika, sveštenike kako određuju dan za sjetvu, zaljubljene kako vode ljubav, majke kako doje djecu - i sve to nije bilo dostojno njegovog pogleda, sve je bilo lažno, sve je zaudaralo, vonjalo na laž, sve je bila samo obmana uma, varka sreće i ljepote, sve samo prikrivena trulež. Gorak je bio ukus svijeta. Život je bio patnja. ~ Hermann Hesse, #NFDB
56:the ideological defense of “private property” is both vague and misleading. The seizure, or even abolition of private property doesn’t refer to the water bottles or homes that many of us have purchased; private property in the context of anti-capitalist politics refers to the ownership by bosses and landlords of the resources people need to survive. Most people have no access to the tools and supplies required to build their own furniture, provide all their own food, or maintain a home entirely on their own. In a capitalist society, we depend on the market to provide these for us in exchange for money. We work waged jobs, where we receive only a portion of the value we add to the commodities we produce, and go into debt in order to afford them. When anti-capitalists talk about private property, they’re not referring to the possessions consumers have purchased in order to live; they’re referring to those possessions that the wealthy have accumulated in order to rent or sell to those who must work a waged job to survive. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
57:Če se dotakneš drevesa, ni nič drugače, kot če se dotakneš kakšnega drugega živega bitja, pravzaprav je še lepše. Zakaj? Če recimo potrepljam psa po glavi, res da zatipam nekaj toplega in trepetavega, vendar zmeraj čutim, da je zraven še nekaj, kar mu odvrača pozornost, bodisi da mu kruli v želodcu, bodisi da se mu toži po nekomu, bodisi da se samo spominja hudih sanj. Razumeš? V psu je preveč misli in preveč potreb, tako kot pri čoveku. Ali bo lahko miren in zadovoljen, ni odvisno samo od njega. Pri drevesu pa je drugače. Od takrat, ko vzklije, pa do takrat, ko umre, nepremično vztraja na istem mestu. Med vsemi bitji sega s koreninami najbližje srcu Zemlje, s krošnjo pa najbližje nebu. Sokovi v njem se pretakajo od zgoraj navzdol in od spodaj navzgor. Širi se in krči, kakor mu veleva dnevna svetloba. Čaka na dež, čaka na sonce, čaka zdaj na ta letni čas, potem na naslednjega, čaka na smrt. Od vseh stvari, ki mu omogočajo življenje, ni prav nobena odvisna od njegove volje. Obstaja in to je vse. Ali zdaj razumeš, zakaj je božati drevesa lep? Ker so trdna, ker dihajo tako počasi in umirjeno, tako globoko. ~ Susanna Tamaro, #NFDB
58:Tada se moglo videti šta znači i kakva može da bude uzbuna turske čaršije u bosanskim varošima. Po nekoliko godina čaršija radi i ćuti, dosađuje se i životari, pazaruje i računa, upoređuje jednu godinu sa drugom, a pri svemu tome prati sve što se dešava, obaveštava se, »kupuje« vesti i glasove, prenosi ih šapatom od dućana do dućana, izbegavajući svaki zaključak i izraz sopstvenog mišljenja.
Tako se polako i neprimetno stvara i uobličava jedinstven duh čaršije. To je najpre samo jedno opšte i neodređeno raspoloženje, koje se ispoljava samo kratkim pokretima i psovkama za koje se zna na koga se odnose; zatim se postepeno pretvara u mišljenje koje se ne krije; i najposle postaje tvrdo i određeno uverenje o kome više nije potrebno ni govoriti i koje se još samo u delima ispoljava. Povezana i prožeta tim uverenjem, čaršija šapuće, sprema se, čeka, kao što pčeie čekaju čas rojenja. Nemogućno je prozreti logiku tih čaršijskih uzbuna, slepih, besnih, i redovito neplodnih, ali one imaju svoju logiku isto kao što imaju svoju nevidljivu tehniku, zasnovanu na tradiciji i nagonu. Vidi se samo kako buknu, besne, i jenjavaju. ~ Ivo Andri,#NFDB
59:Govorim to ozbiljno. Nije naš zadatak da se približimo jedan drugom, kao što se ne sastaju ni sunce ni mesec, ni more ni kopno. Nas dvojca smo, prijatelju dragi, sunce i mesec, mi smo more i kopno. Naš cilj nije da se slijemo jedan sa drugim već da saznamo jedan drugoga i da jedan u drugom naučimo da vidimo i poštujemo ono što taj drugi jeste: naša suprotnost i dopuna.
Duboko je uvlačio u sebe vlažni, gorki miris vazduha u parku i pri svakom koraku mu se činilo da gura prošlost daleko od sebe, kao čamac koji mu, stigavši na obalu, više ničemu ne služi. U tom ispitivanju i spoznaji nije bilo ni traga ni mirenja sa sudbinom i prkosno, i prožet preduzimljivim žarom, uperio je pogled u novi život koji više nije smeo da se iscrpi u nedoumici i sumornom lutanju; već treba da ga, kao strmi put, smelo povede naviše. On se kasnije, i možda sa više gorčine nego što to obično čine muškarci, oprostio od slatkog sutona mladosti. Sad se siromašan i sam obreo usred bela dana i više nije hteo da izgubi nijedan jedini njegov dragoceni čas.
Sasušeno drvo je zauvek mrtvo, smrznuta ptica se nikad više ne vraća u život, a isto tako ni čovek kad umre. ~ Hermann Hesse,#NFDB
60:... ako otkriješ tajnu, postaješ deo tajne.
Ja sam ovog jutra opet lagala u snu. A laž ima miris.
Svak može da umre, ali svak ne može da se rodi. Oni najbolji ostaju nerođeni.
Poslednjih sedmica i moji snovi zaudaraju. Gusti kao kačamak i crni kao katran. A kroz njih teku ogromne količine vremena, kao reke ponornice, iako pri buđenju nisam starija no inače i ranije. Kao da postoje dva vremena u mom životu. Od jednog se ne stari nego se troši nešto drugo umesto tela. Karma? Jesu li naše telo i duša gorivo? Gorivo čega? Da li je vreme pogon na koji se kreće telo, a Večnost gorivo duše?
Jednina, tačka i sadašnji trenutak, eto od čega je sastavljen ceo tvoj mehanički svet i njegova računica.
U srcu ne postoji prostor, u duši ne postoji vreme...
SNOVI SE ZABORAVE ČIM PROĐEŠ KROZ NAJBLIŽA VRATA. OD NJIH TADA OSTAJE SAMO KOSTUR. ALI, KAKO ZABORAVITI JEZIK NA KOJEM SANJAŠ I S KOJIM SI ODRASTAO?
Ne znam da li znaš da se šume sele? Kada krenu, one polako i dugo putuju tražeći sebi bolje mesto. Najradije s jeseni polaze na put... Kao ptice. Ili kao čovek...
SNOVI NE STARE. ONI SU VEČNI. ONI SU JEDINI VEČITI DEO ČOVEČANSTVA... ~ Milorad Pavi,#NFDB
61:Pisaću, vrlo kratko, o pozorištima. U njima vrvi svet, i gleda toalete. Na galerijama se ljubi. Uostalom, u tome ima tradicija. Visoko gore, sad smešne, još postoje one lože, sa rešetkama, iza kojih se, nekad, činilo sve, i večeralo, gledajući komedije, koje nisu bile bludnije od života. Sad se to retko dešava. Inače, sve ovo ljubakanje po tramvajima, i pod zemljom, i na ulici, dosta je ljupko. Nije to neobuzdanost. To je prosto ovdašnji, razvijen osećaj za reprezentacijom.
Ni umetnost nije više opasna. Ko ima talenta piše lepo i pametno ljubavne drame. Ona, on, i muž. Ponegde je umešano jedno lovačko odelo, ili ma šta što publika voli; iza zavese svira violina, a pri kraju, pod starost, sve se žene smire. Nijedan pesnik ne jauče. To čine još samo Sloveni. Ovde ljudi davno znaju da to nema smisla.
Između činova, na zavesi, javljaju rezultate trka, i, ako se negde sudario voz, koliko je mrtvih. Posle, reklamu lepog boksera Karpantijea, koji je fabrikant posuđa. Posle se komad nastavlja. A posle, svi večeraju javno i poštuju sebe.
Uostalom, ovaj patos, to je zao uticaj Tolstoja na mene, koji je mrzeo kulturu, voleo seljake, išao bos, i jahao skupe konje. ~ Milo Crnjanski,#NFDB
62:Radite svoj posao ne gledajući ni levo ni desno, ni iza sebe ni preda se, ali svoj cilj postavljajte visoko, i tražite malo od sveta oko sebe (što manje, to bolje!), ali mnogo od sebe i svoga dela.
Uveren sam da je većina od nas od početka udarila sebi suviše malen i suviše blizak cilj, i da je više i bolje mogla od onoga što je želela da uradi i postigne.
Želite mnogo, težite smelo i daleko i visoko, jer visoki ciljevi otkrivaju i umnogostručavaju snage u nama.
Težite smelo ka savršenstvu velikih dela, a radite predano i strpljivo na ograničenim i mučnim pojedinostima bez sjajnog vidika, jevtinog samozadovoljstva i tašte veličine. Ciljevima svojim živite, a trosite se neštedimice na sivim i nevidljivim poslovima svakod dana i sata.
Često pomišljajte da je život jači i svet bogatiji nego što mi to u svakom pojedinom trenutku možemo da sagledamo, i ne gubite iz vida da u svakom od nas ima nepoznatih mogućnosti, da u hodu stičemo snage. Hteti daleko i želeti mnogo, kad je reč o postavljanju nesebičnih ciljeva, nije greh, nije opasno.
Pogrešno je i opasno udariti sebi suviše blisku metu, jer to znači izneveriti i sebe i druge, ostati dužan životu.
Budite nepoverljivi i stvarni, strogi prema sebi pri izvođenju svake pojedinosti, skromni pri njihovoj oceni, ali kod postavljanja ciljeva budite hrabri i velikodušni, mislite smelo i gledajte daleko. ~ Ivo Andri,#NFDB
63:Stariji oficir, koji ne voli rodomontade svog mlađeg druga pita, ima li nešto, osim violin, da se vidi u Kremoni ? Ima nešto da se čuje, kažem, u Kremoni. Tamo se rodio jedan veliki Talijan, koji se zvao Monteverdi. Prvi put sam ga slušao, u mladosti, u Parizu. Zatim, sa svojom mladom ženom, u Fiorenci. Vanredno su ga svirali, iako ne meni, nego svima – u Štokholmu. A sa gospođom Martom, sa domaćicom, išli smo, da ga slušamo, i u Rimu, u Svetoj Ceciliji.
Domaćica na to kaže tužno : Nećemo više slušati Monteverdija u Rimu. Rat je. Gleda nas. Pita se gde ćemo kroz godinu dve biti ?
Ljudska reč, čovečji glas, katkad, i pri običnom razgovoru, može da unese u razgovor neku jezu. Duboku. Tako i ta fraza domaćice, sa tim imenom, unosi među nas “nikad više”, jezivo. Došao je kraj jednoj Evropi. Došao je kraj i našem krugu u Rimu. Ona zatim, valjda i sama uplašena, uzvikuje : Dosta s tim – basta ! Uplašili su se smrti buržuji. A smrt je prirodna pojava, kao i rat. Umire bilje, umiru laste, zašto bi ljudi trebalo da budu besmrtni ? Za nama će ostati, lešina, smrad, kaljuga, hemijska formula. Milioni će, međutim, opet živeti. Večno živeti. Nijedna violina u Kremoni ne zvuči lepše, nego detinji plač – prvi. Pošto se zna, među nama, da ta žena nema dece, taj zvuk nam je tim tužniji i neshvatljiviji.
Njen muž, ušeprtljavši, predlaže, da prekinemo te lude razgovore id a se to ostavi, i reši sutra, a da se sad čita, malo, Vergilije. ~ Milo Crnjanski,#NFDB
64:Vsak medsebojni odnos je del stalne učne dinamike. Ko vplivate drug na drugega, je del te dinamike iluzija. Zaradi te iluzije lahko vsaka duša dojame,kaj mora razumeti, da se bo zdravila. Kot predstava v živo predstavlja položaje, ki so potrebni, da bodo postali celoviti tisti vidiki vaše duše, ki potrebujejo zdravljenje. Z iluzijo se učimo- Pripada osebnosti. Iluzijo boste zapustili, ko boste umrli, ko se boste vrnili domov. Vendar lahko osebnost, ki živi v ljubezni in Luči, ki gleda skozi oči svoje duše, če govorimo metaforično, gleda iluzijo, ne da bi jo hkrati potegnilo vanjo. To je osebnost, ki dopusti, da se avtentična moč izrazi. Iluzija je izjemno tesno povezana s potrebami vsake duše. Vsak položaj je vedno namenjen vsaki osebi, ki jo zadeva. Ne morete naleteti ne in tudi ne boste naleteli- niti za hip ne- na nobeno okoliščino, ki ne bi bila neposredno in takoj namenjena potrebi vaše duše, da se zdravi in dosega celovitost. Iluzijo za vsako dušo ustvarjajo njeni nameni. Zato v iluziji vedno mrgoli najustreznejših izkušenj, s katerimi lahko zdravite svojo dušo. Iluzija je prilagodljiva. To pomeni, da posamezne duše, ki so sodelovale pri nastanku iluzij , nimajo svoje neodvisnosti pri tem, kar je v iluziji ustvarjenega skupaj. Pomeni, da ni zaznave, ki se je ne da pozdraviti, kot tudi ni namena, ki se ga ne da spremeniti ali zamenjati z drugim. Bistvo duhovne psihologije je razumevanje, kako iluzija nastane, kako deluje, razumevanje dinamike, ki leži za njo in vloge, ki jo igra pri evoluciji duše. ~ Gary Zukav, #NFDB
65:263. ŠEJTANOVA VARKA U IME POBOŽNOSTI
Ja se, zaista, ne bojim za sebe da će me šejtan zavesti grijehom očitim, međutim, zaista, plašim se da će mi šejtan doći s grijehom koji će biti pokriven odjećom pobožnosti. Šejtan te zavodi ženom, i to na način da ti s početka osjećaš milosti i sažaljenje prema njoj, i zavodi te dunjalukom i to na način da si ti oprezan prema privlačnostima njegovim, i zavodi te druženjem s lošim ljudima, i to na način da se ti nadaš da ćeš im pomoći da na pravi put izađu, i zavodi te licemjerstvom prema grješnim ljudima, i to na način da ih ti želiš na pravi put naputiti, i zavodi te ogovoranjem tvojih neprijatelja, i to na način da ti misliš da time naređuješ dobro i boriš se protiv zla, i zavodi te dijeljenjem i cijepanjem jedinstva džemata, i to na način da ti misliš da samo istinu glasno govoriš, i zavodi te time da ljude na dobro ne pozivaš i stanje njihovo ne popravljaš, i to na način da misliš da samo sebe trebaš boljim činiti, i zavodi te da rad i trud ostaviš, i to na način da ti misliš da vjeruješ u sudbinu i predodređenje, i zavodi te da izučavanje nauke ostaviš, i to na način da se samo ibadetu posvetiš, i zavodi te ostavljanjem džihada, i to na način da ti misliš da ljudi oko tebe ne mogu bez tebe, i zavodi te da sunnet Muhammeda, s.a.v.s., ne slijediš, i to na način da dobre ljude slijediš, i zavodi te samovoljom i tvrdoglavošću, i to na način da ti misliš da će samo Allah, dž.š., i historija suditi, i zavodi te činjenjem nasilja drugima, i to na način da ti misliš da time treba prema onima kojima je nepravda nanesena milostiv biti. ~,#NFDB
66:Pri prvom zahlađenju, relativnom, uostalom, jer nikad nije bilo mraza, a ipak osetnom posle više meseci vrućine, laste, koje su obično letele iznad bulevara uz obalu, iznad trga pred gimnazijom ili po nebu nad siromaškim četvrtima, obrušavajući se uz piskav cvrkut na koji plod fikusa, otpadak na moru ili svež izmet, pojavile bi se isprva pojedinačno u tome hodniku koji je činila ulica Bab-Azun, leteći nisko u susret tramvajima, pa ulećući odjednom da bi nestale na nebu iznad kuća. I odjednom, jednog jutra, bilo ih je na hiljade na svim žicama nad trgom Svete Viktorije i po krovovima kuća. Stiskale su se jedna uz drugu klimajući glavom iznad beličastih grudi, malo pomicale nožice i mrdale repom da načine mesta kojoj pridošlici, prekrivale trotoar svojim sitnim pepeljastim izmetom, proizvodile sve zajedno potmulo pijukanje, iz kog bi probio po koji kratak cvrkut, i to njihovo neprestano zborovanje orilo se od jutra iznad ulice, malo-pomalo sve glasnije, pa gotovo zaglušujuće kad se spusti veče i deca potrče ka tramvajima da se vrate kući, a onda bi odjednom prestalo, na neki nevidljiv znak, i one bi zaspale, oborivši glavice i crno-bele repove. Dva-tri dana su tako doletale iz svih krajeva Sahela, pa i iz daljih, u malim jatima, pokušavale da se smeste između ranije prispelih, pa se malo-pomalo razmeštale po ispustima na fasadama duž ulice, s obe strane glavnog skupa, uz sve brujnije lepršanje krila i sveopšte cvrkutanje, koje je naposletku postajalo zaglušno iznad prolaznika. A onda, jednog jutra, ulica je odjednom bila pusta. Noću, tik pred zoru, laste su zajedno odletale na jug. Za decu je zima tada počinjala, mnogo pre pravog datuma, pošto za njih nije moglo biti leta bez piskavog cvrkuta lasta po još toplom večernjem nebu. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
67:Marcus Varro
Marcus Varro went up and down
The places where old books were sold;
He ransacked all the shops in town
For pictures new and pictures old.
He gave the folk of earth no peace;
Snooping around by day and night,
He plied the trade in Rome and Greece
Of an insatiate Grangerite.
'Pictures!' was evermore his cry -'Pictures of old or recent date,'
And pictures only would he buy
Wherewith to 'extra-illustrate.'
Full many a tome of ancient type
And many a manuscript he took,
For nary purpose but to swipe
Their pictures for some other book.
While Marcus Varro plied his fad
There was not in the shops of Greece
A book or pamphlet to be had
That was not minus frontispiece.
Nor did he hesitate to ply
His baleful practices at home;
It was not possible to buy
A perfect book in all of Rome!
What must the other folk have done -Who, glancing o'er the books they bought,
Came soon and suddenly upon
The vandalism Varro wrought!
How must their cheeks have flamed with red -How did their hearts with choler beat!
We can imagine what they said -We can imagine, not repeat!
Where are the books that Varro made -The pride of dilettante Rome -With divers portraitures inlaid
218
Swiped from so many another tome?
The worms devoured them long ago -O wretched worms! ye should have fed
Not on the books 'extended' so,
But on old Varro's flesh instead!
Alas, that Marcus Varro lives
And is a potent factor yet!
Alas, that still his practice gives
Good men occasion for regret!
To yonder bookstall, pri'thee, go,
And by the 'missing' prints and plates
And frontispieces you shall know
He lives, and 'extra-illustrates'!
~ Eugene Field,#NFDB
68:Nismo slepi prema činjenici da taj pokušaj donekle protivureči ili izgleda da protivureči zakonima i običajima koji vladaju u duhovnom životu. Jer jedno od vrhovnih načela našeg vrhovnog života je upravo gašenje individualnoga, po mogućstvu potpuno svrstavanje pojedinaca u hijerarhiju vaspitne vlasti i nauka."
"Savršena muzika ima svoje uzroke. Ona postaje iz ravnoteže. Ravnoteža postaje iz pravoga, pravo postaje iz smisla sveta. Otuda se o muzici može govoriti samo sa čovekom koji je spoznao smisao sveta.
Muzika počiva na harmoniji između neba i zemlje, na saglasnosti tmine i svetlosti."
"VERUJEM DA JOŠ NIKADA NISAM VIDEO KOLIKO JE LEP. AH, DA, TO MOŽDA DOLAZI OTUDA ŠTO GA PRVI PUT VIDIM KAO NEŠTO ŠTO MORAM NAPUSTITI I OD ČEGA SE MORAM OPROSTITI."
"Svaki od nas je samo čovek, samo pokušaj, uzgrednik. Ali on treba da bude na putu ka savršenom, treba da teži ka središtu, ne ka periferiji. Zapamti: čovek može da bude strogi logičar ili gramatičar, a pritom pun fantazije i muzike. Može se biti muzičar ili igrač staklenih perli, a pri tom sav odan zakonu i poretku. Čovek kakvog mi zamišljamo i želimo, kakav treba da postane prema našem cilju, mogao bi svakog dana svoju nauku ili umetnost zameniti svakom drugom. Iz njega bi u igri staklenih perli obasjavala najkristalnija logika, a u gramatici najstvaralačkija fantazija."
"Onaj ko se više penje i dobija veće zadatke, ne biva slobodniji - on je uvek samo odgovorniji."
"Odricanje od sadašnjice i sutrašnjice u korist savršenog, ali prošlog, to je bila uzvišena vrsta bekstva."
"Nikada nemoj ostavljati utisak kao da radiš, imaj vremena za svakoga ko želi s tobom da razgovara."
"TAKO TO BIVA KAD ČOVEK SVOJU SPOSOBNOST DA VOLI SAKUPI NA JEDAN JEDINI PREDMET. S NJEGOVIM GUBITKOM RUŠI SE SVE, A ČOVEK OSTAJE SAM U RUŠEVINAMA. ~ Hermann Hesse,#NFDB
69:Već u izlogu knjižare uočio si korice s naslovom koji tražiš. Slijedeći taj vidljivi trag, probio si se knjižarom kroz gustu baražnu vatru Knjiga Koje Nisi Pročitao, a koje su te namršteno gledale s pultova i polica nastojeći da te postide. Ali, ti znaš da ne smiješ dopustiti da te zbune i da se ondje hektarima i hektarima prostiru Knjige Koje Možeš I Ne Pročitati, Knjige Koje Služe Drugoj Svrsi, A Ne čitanju, Knjige Koje Si Pročitao A Da Ih Nisi Morao Ni Otvoriti Jer Pripadaju Kategoriji Onoga Što Je Pročitano Još Prije Nego Što Je Napisano. Tako prolaziš prvi pojas utvrda, i na tebe se sručuje pješadija Knjiga Koje Bi, Da Imaš Više Života, Također Rado
Pročitao, Ali, Na Žalost, Dana Koje Ti Je Dano Proživjeti Ima Toliko Koliko Ih Ima. Brzo ih prelaziš i upadaš usred falange Knjiga Koje Namjeravaš Pročitati, Ali Prethodno Moraš Pročitati Druge, Knjige Koje Su Preskupe, Pa Se Nadaš Kupiti Ih Kad Se Budu Prodavale U Pola Cijene,
Knjiga Idem Kao Gore, Kad Ih Tiskaju U Džepnom Izdanju, Knjiga Za Koje Bi Nekoga Morao Zamoliti Da Ti Ih Posudi, Knjiga Koje Su Svi Pročitali, Pa Je, Dakle, Gotovo Isto Kao Da Si Ih I Sam Pročitao. Izbjegavši tim nasrtajima, dolaziš u podnožje tvrđave, gdje se još upiru Knjige Koje Odavno Planiraš Pročitati, Knjige Koje Si Godinama Tražio A Nisi Ih Našao, Knjige Koje Govore o Nečemu Čime Se Trenutno Baviš, Knjige Koje Želiš Imati Da Bi Ti Bile Pri Ruci Za Svaki Slučaj, Knjige Koje Bi Mogao Staviti Na Stranu Da Ih Možda Pročitaš Na Ljeto,
Knjige Koje Ti Nedostaju Da Bi Ih Stavio Do Drugih Knjiga Na Svojoj Polici, Knjige Koje Te Ispunjavaju Iznenadnom Pomamnom I Ne Sasvim Opravdanom Znatiželjom. Eto, uspio si neograničen broj snaga na bojnom polju svesti na količinu koja je, doduše velika, ali ipak prestavlja konačan broj, premda ti to relativno olakšanje kao zamku iz zasjede namještaju
Knjige Koje Si Davno Pročitao, Pa Bi Bilo Vrijeme Da Ih Pročitaš Opet, i Knjige Za Koje Si Uvijek Tvrdio Da Si Ih Pročitao, Pa Bi Bilo Vrijeme Da Ih Pročitaš Doista. Oslobađaš se u hitroj cik-cak liniji i jednim skokom prodireš u tvrđavu Noviteta Kojima Te Privlači Autor Ili Tema. I u unutrašnjosti utvrde možeš praviti breše u redovima neprijatelja, dijeleći ih na Novitete Kojima Autori Ili Teme Nisu Novi (za tebe ili apsolutno), i Novitete Kojima Su Autori Ili Teme Potpuno Nepoznati (barem tebi)... ~ Italo Calvino,#NFDB
70:I stared through the front door at Barrons Books and Baubles, uncertain what surprised me more: that the front seating cozy was intact or that Barrons was sitting there, boots propped on a table, surrounded by piles of books, hand-drawn maps tacked to the walls.
I couldn’t count how many nights I’d sat in exactly the same place and position, digging through books for answers, occasionally staring out the windows at the Dublin night, and waiting for him to appear. I liked to think he was waiting for me to show.
I leaned closer, staring in through the glass.
He’d refurnished the bookstore. How long had I been gone?
There was my magazine rack, my cashier’s counter, a new old-fashioned cash register, a small flat-screen TV/DVD player that was actually from this decade, and a sound dock for my iPod. There was a new sleek black iPod Nano in the dock. He’d done more than refurnish the place. He might as well have put a mat out that said WELCOME HOME, MAC.
A bell tinkled as I stepped inside.
His head whipped around and he half-stood, books sliding to the floor.
The last time I’d seen him, he was dead. I stood in the doorway, forgetting to breathe, watching him unfold from the couch in a ripple of animal grace. He crammed the four-story room full, dwarfed it with his presence. For a moment neither of us spoke.
Leave it to Barrons—the world melts down and he’s still dressed like a wealthy business tycoon. His suit was exquisite, his shirt crisp, tie intricately patterned and tastefully muted. Silver glinted at his wrist, that familiar wide cuff decorated with ancient Celtic designs he and Ryodan both wore.
Even with all my problems, my knees still went weak. I was suddenly back in that basement. My hands were tied to the bed. He was between my legs but wouldn’t give me what I wanted. He used his mouth, then rubbed himself against my clitoris and barely pushed inside me before pulling out, then his mouth, then him, over and over, watching my eyes the whole time, staring down at me.
What am I, Mac? he’d say.
My world, I’d purr, and mean it. And I was afraid that, even now that I wasn’t Pri-ya, I’d be just as out of control in bed with him as I was then. I’d melt, I’d purr, I’d hand him my heart. And I would have no excuse, nothing to blame it on. And if he got up and walked away from me and never came back to my bed, I would never recover. I’d keeping waiting for a man like him, and there were no other men like him. I’d have to die old and alone, with the greatest sex of my life a painful memory.
So, you’re alive, his dark eyes said. Pisses me off, the wondering. Do something about that.
Like what? Can’t all be like you, Barrons.
His eyes suddenly rushed with shadows and I couldn’t make out a single word. Impatience, anger, something ancient and ruthless. Cold eyes regarded me with calculation, as if weighing things against each other, meditating—a word Daddy used to point out was the larger part of premeditation. He’d say, Baby, once you start thinking about it, you’re working your way toward it. Was there something Barrons was working his way toward doing?
I shivered. ~ Karen Marie Moning,#NFDB
71:Ms. Lane.”Barrons’ voice is deep, touched with that strange Old World accent and mildly pissed off. Jericho Barrons is often mildly pissed off. I think he crawled from the swamp that way, chafed either by some condition in it, out of it, or maybe just the general mass incompetence he encountered in both places. He’s the most controlled, capable man I’ve ever known.
After all we’ve been through together, he still calls me Ms. Lane, with one exception: When I’m in his bed. Or on the floor, or some other place where I’ve temporarily lost my mind and become convinced I can’t breathe without him inside me this very instant. Then the things he calls me are varied and nobody’s business but mine.
I reply: “Barrons,” without inflection. I’ve learned a few things in our time together. Distance is frequently the only intimacy he’ll tolerate. Suits me. I’ve got my own demons. Besides I don’t believe good relationships come from living inside each other’s pockets. I believe divorce comes from that.
I admire the animal grace with which he enters the room and moves toward me. He prefers dark colors, the better to slide in and out of the night, or a room, unnoticed except for whatever he’s left behind that you may or may not discover for some time, like, say a tattoo on the back of one’s skull.
“What are you doing?”
“Reading,” I say nonchalantly, rubbing the tattoo on the back of my skull. I angle the volume so he can’t see the cover. If he sees what I’m reading, he’ll know I’m looking for something. If he realizes how bad it’s gotten, and what I’m thinking about doing, he’ll try to stop me.
He circles behind me, looks over my shoulder at the thick vellum of the ancient manuscript. “In the first tongue?”
“Is that what it is?” I feign innocence.
He knows precisely which cells in my body are innocent and which are thoroughly corrupted. He’s responsible for most of the corrupted ones. One corner of his mouth ticks up and I see the glint of beast behind his eyes, a feral crimson backlight, bloodstaining the whites.
It turns me on. Barrons makes me feel violently, electrically sexual and alive. I’d march into hell beside him.
But I will not let him march into hell beside me. And there’s no doubt that’s where I’m going.
I thought I was strong, a heroine. I thought I was the victor. The enemy got inside my head and tried to seduce me with lies.
It’s easy to walk away from lies.
Power is another thing.
Temptation isn’t a sin that you triumph over once, completely and then you’re free. Temptation slips into bed with you each night and helps you say your prayers. It wakes you in the morning with a friendly cup of coffee, and knows exactly how you take it.
He skirts the Chesterfield sofa and stands over me. “Looking for something, Ms. Lane?”
I’m eye level with his belt but that’s not where my gaze gets stuck and suddenly my mouth is so dry I can hardly swallow and I know I’m going to want to. I’m Pri-ya for this man. I hate it. I love it. I can’t escape it.
I reach for his belt buckle. The manuscript slides from my lap, forgotten. Along with everything else but this moment, this man. “I just found it,” I tell him. ~ Karen Marie Moning,#NFDB
72:ŠUBERTIJANA
I
U večernjem sumraku nadomak Njujorka, na vidikovcu
odakle jednim pogledom možeš da obuhvatiš
domove osam miliona ljudi.
Džinovski grad tamo preko je dugački svetlucavi
nanos, spiralna galaksija viđena bočno.
Tu u galaksiji šoljice za kafu klize po pultu,
od prolaznika izlozi prose, metež cipela
što trag ne ostavljaju.
Pentrajuća požarna stepeništa, vrata lifta
što šume istovremeno, a za vratima s jakim
bravama vazda se ukrštaju glasovi.
Dremljiva, oklembešena tela po vagonima metroa,
sudarajuće katakombe.
Takođe znam - mimo statistike - da upravo ovog
časa neko počinje da svira Šuberta u jednoj
sobi onamo i da su za nj ove note stvarnije no
išta drugo.
II
Beskrajno prostranstvo ljudskog mozga skvrčilo
se u veličinu pesnice.
U aprilu lasta se vraća u svoje prošlogodišnje
gnezdo pod olukom istog ambara u istom
zaseoku.
Kreće ona iz Južne Afrike, preseca ekvator, u
šest nedelja preleće dva kontinenta, nepogrešivo
stremeći k toj nestajućoj tački zemaljskih
prostranstava.
I taj što hvata signale čitavog jednog života u
nekoliko posve jednostavnih tonova na pet
struna,
taj što čitavu jednu reku prodeva kroz iglene
uši, debeljuškasti je mladi bečki gospodin
od prijatelja prozvan „Pečurkica“, koji običavaše
da spava s naočarima na nosu
i ustajaše izjutra za svoj pisaći sto ni časak jedan
ne kasneći.
I čudesna stonoga njegovog rukopisa kreće.
III
Gudački kvintet bruji. Vraćam se kroz razgrejanu
šumu s tlom što se poda mnom ugiba,
zgrčen poput embriona, pospan, vrteći se
bestežinski
u vremenu budućem, osetivši iznenada kako i rastinje
poseduje misao.
IV
U nama toliko mnogo vere mora da je kako bismo
današnji dan mogli da proživimo kroz zemlju
ne propavši!
Vere u snežne smetove što se grčevito drže
litica nadnesenih nad selom.
Vere u obećanje tišine i osmeh samorazumevanja,
vere da telegram o nesreći nije za nas i da
nenadanog udarca iznutra neće biti.
Vere u osovinu što nas iznosi na autoput sred za
trista puta uvećanog čeličnog pčelinjeg roja.
Ali ništa od toga nije vredno našeg pouzdanja.
Pet struna kazuju da možemo verovati u nešto
drugo.
U šta? U nešto drukčije, i one nas prate komadić
puta do tamo.
Kao kad se ugasi svetlo u stepeništu i ruka sledi
- pouzdano - hvatajući naslepo gelender u
mraku.
V
Zbijamo se pred klavir i sviramo u četiri ruke
u ef-molu, dvojica kočijaša jednog istog
fijakera – ispada tako nekako malo luckasto.
Čini se kao da naše ruke pokreću napred i nazad
zvoneće tegove u dodiru s protivtežom
nastojeći da narušimo užasnu ravnotežu: radost
i patnja pri tom imaju istu ulogu.
Ana reče: „Ta muzika je tako herojska“, i imala je
pravo.
Ali ti što sa zavišću motre preduzimljivog
čoveka, ti koji potajno gaje samoprezir jer
nisu ubice, ti ne mogaše ovde da prepoznaju
sami sebe.
I mnogi što trguju ljudima i veruju da baš
svakog mogu kupiti, oni ovde ne prepoznaju
sami sebe.
Ne njihovu muziku. Duga melodija koja ostaje to
što jeste u svim varijacijama, katkad
blistajući i preobražavajući se, katkad
hrapava i snažna, sluz puževog traga i žica
čelična.
Istrajni bruji što sledi nas još ovog časa
naviše
duboko. ~ Tomas Transtr mer,#NFDB
1243 Integral Yoga
833 Poetry
268 Occultism
202 Philosophy
176 Christianity
153 Fiction
94 Yoga
88 Psychology
78 Mysticism
37 Philsophy
35 Science
32 Kabbalah
27 Hinduism
21 Mythology
18 Education
14 Theosophy
14 Integral Theory
12 Sufism
8 Cybernetics
7 Buddhism
6 Baha i Faith
1 Thelema
1 Alchemy
813 Sri Aurobindo
549 The Mother
317 Satprem
268 Nolini Kanta Gupta
129 William Wordsworth
111 Aleister Crowley
88 H P Lovecraft
86 Carl Jung
85 Walt Whitman
76 Percy Bysshe Shelley
66 James George Frazer
62 Robert Browning
58 Plotinus
58 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
56 Sri Ramakrishna
52 John Keats
51 William Butler Yeats
41 Friedrich Nietzsche
40 Friedrich Schiller
37 Ralph Waldo Emerson
34 Saint Augustine of Hippo
32 Rabbi Moses Luzzatto
28 Franz Bardon
28 Aldous Huxley
28 A B Purani
27 Swami Krishnananda
27 Anonymous
25 Lucretius
24 Jorge Luis Borges
23 Saint Teresa of Avila
23 Rabindranath Tagore
21 Vyasa
20 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
18 Saint John of Climacus
16 Edgar Allan Poe
14 Rudolf Steiner
13 Ovid
12 Swami Vivekananda
12 Plato
12 Paul Richard
12 Nirodbaran
11 George Van Vrekhem
10 Jalaluddin Rumi
8 Sri Ramana Maharshi
8 Rainer Maria Rilke
8 Norbert Wiener
8 Li Bai
8 Joseph Campbell
7 Jordan Peterson
7 Henry David Thoreau
7 Baha u llah
7 Aristotle
7 Alice Bailey
6 Peter J Carroll
6 Hakim Sanai
6 Hafiz
5 Thubten Chodron
5 Ramprasad
5 Kabir
5 Bokar Rinpoche
5 Al-Ghazali
4 Lewis Carroll
4 Ibn Arabi
3 William Blake
3 Thomas Merton
3 Saint Therese of Lisieux
3 Saint Francis of Assisi
3 R Buckminster Fuller
3 Ken Wilber
3 Hsuan Chueh of Yung Chia
2 Swami Sivananda Saraswati
2 Solomon ibn Gabirol
2 Mirabai
2 Mahendranath Gupta
2 Jorge Luis Borges
2 Jetsun Milarepa
2 Jean Gebser
2 Jayadeva
2 Italo Calvino
2 Ikkyu
2 Farid ud-Din Attar
2 Baba Sheikh Farid
2 Alexander Pope
208 Record of Yoga
134 The Synthesis Of Yoga
129 Wordsworth - Poems
88 Lovecraft - Poems
82 Whitman - Poems
76 Shelley - Poems
68 Magick Without Tears
66 The Golden Bough
62 Browning - Poems
55 The Life Divine
54 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
53 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
52 Keats - Poems
51 Yeats - Poems
51 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
45 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
42 Savitri
42 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
40 Schiller - Poems
40 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
39 Liber ABA
38 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
37 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
37 Emerson - Poems
36 Mysterium Coniunctionis
36 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
35 Letters On Yoga II
32 Letters On Yoga IV
32 General Principles of Kabbalah
32 Agenda Vol 08
31 Thus Spoke Zarathustra
31 Agenda Vol 10
31 Agenda Vol 03
29 Questions And Answers 1956
28 The Perennial Philosophy
28 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
28 Essays On The Gita
27 The Study and Practice of Yoga
27 Agenda Vol 02
27 Agenda Vol 01
26 Questions And Answers 1955
25 Words Of Long Ago
25 The Bible
25 Of The Nature Of Things
25 Agenda Vol 04
24 The Human Cycle
24 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
24 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
23 Tagore - Poems
22 The Practice of Psycho therapy
22 Prayers And Meditations
22 City of God
21 Vishnu Purana
21 Collected Poems
20 The Future of Man
20 Agenda Vol 06
19 Questions And Answers 1953
19 Initiation Into Hermetics
18 The Ladder of Divine Ascent
18 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
18 Questions And Answers 1954
18 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 01
18 Labyrinths
18 Essays Divine And Human
18 Agenda Vol 12
17 Letters On Yoga I
17 Agenda Vol 07
16 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04
16 On Education
16 Agenda Vol 11
15 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
15 Poe - Poems
15 Let Me Explain
15 Agenda Vol 09
14 The Phenomenon of Man
14 Agenda Vol 13
13 Vedic and Philological Studies
13 The Way of Perfection
13 The Secret Of The Veda
13 The Confessions of Saint Augustine
13 On the Way to Supermanhood
13 Metamorphoses
13 Isha Upanishad
13 Goethe - Poems
13 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08
13 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 06
13 Aion
13 Agenda Vol 05
12 Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo
12 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 03
12 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 02
11 Twilight of the Idols
11 Talks
11 Some Answers From The Mother
11 Preparing for the Miraculous
10 Questions And Answers 1929-1931
10 Anonymous - Poems
10 A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah
9 The Problems of Philosophy
9 The Practice of Magical Evocation
9 The Mother With Letters On The Mother
9 The Interior Castle or The Mansions
9 The Divine Comedy
9 Letters On Yoga III
9 Kena and Other Upanishads
9 Hymns to the Mystic Fire
9 Hymn of the Universe
9 5.1.01 - Ilion
8 The Hero with a Thousand Faces
8 Rilke - Poems
8 Li Bai - Poems
8 Cybernetics
8 Crowley - Poems
7 Walden
7 Theosophy
7 Poetics
7 Maps of Meaning
7 Faust
7 A Treatise on Cosmic Fire
6 The Secret Doctrine
6 The Integral Yoga
6 The Blue Cliff Records
6 Rumi - Poems
6 Raja-Yoga
6 Liber Null
6 Letters On Poetry And Art
5 Words Of The Mother II
5 The Red Book Liber Novus
5 The Alchemy of Happiness
5 Tara - The Feminine Divine
5 Knowledge of the Higher Worlds
5 How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator
5 Borges - Poems
4 Writings In Bengali and Sanskrit
4 The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
4 Songs of Kabir
4 Hafiz - Poems
4 Dark Night of the Soul
4 Bhakti-Yoga
4 Beating the Cloth Drum Letters of Zen Master Hakuin
4 Alice in Wonderland
3 Words Of The Mother III
3 Words Of The Mother I
3 The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep
3 The Book of Certitude
3 Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking
3 Sex Ecology Spirituality
3 Sefer Yetzirah The Book of Creation In Theory and Practice
3 Arabi - Poems
2 The Lotus Sutra
2 The Ever-Present Origin
2 The Essentials of Education
2 The Castle of Crossed Destinies
2 Symposium
2 Song of Myself
2 Selected Fictions
2 Milarepa - Poems
2 Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2E
00.00 - Publishers Note B, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
La Mre, prires et Mditations
[Like a flame that burns in silence,
0 0.01 - Introduction, #Agenda Vol 1, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
'Something else' is ominous, perilous, disrupting - it is quite unbearable for all those who resemble the old beast. The story of the Pondicherry 'Ashram' is the story of an old clan ferociously clinging to its 'spiritual' privileges, as others clung to the muscles that had made them kings among the great apes. It is armed with all the piousness and all the reasonableness that had made logical man so 'infallible' among his less cerebral brothers. The spiritual brain is probably the worst obstacle to the new species, as were the muscles of the old orangutan for this fragile stranger who no longer climbed so well in the trees and sat, pensive, at the center of a little, uncertain clearing.
There is nothing more pious than the old species. There is nothing more legal. Mother was searching for the path of the new species as much against all the virtues of the old as against all its vices or laws. For, in truth, 'Something Else' ... is something else.
--
'Are you conscious of your ceils?' She asked us a short time after the little operation of spiritual demolition She had undergone. 'No? Well, become conscious of your cells, and you will see that it gives TERRESTRIAL results.' To become conscious of one's cells? ... It was a far more radical operation than crossing the Maroni with a machete in hand, for after all, trees and lianas can be cut, but what cannot be so easily uncovered are the grandfa ther and the grandmo ther and the whole atavistic pack, not to mention the animal and plant and mineral layers that form a teeming humus over this single pure little cell beneath its millennial genetic program. The grandfa thers and grandmo thers grow back again like crabgrass, along with all the old habits of being hungry, afraid, falling ill, fearing the worst, hoping for the best, which is still the best of an old mortal habit. All this is not uprooted nor entrapped as easily as celestial 'liberations,' which leave the teeming humus in peace and the body to its usual decomposition. She had come to hew a path through all that. She was the Ancient One of evolution who had come to make a new cleft in the old, tedious habit of being a man. She did not like tedious repetitions, She was the adventuress par excellence - the adventuress of the earth. She was wrenching out for man the great Possible that was already beating there, in his primeval clearing, which he believed he had momentarily trapped with a few machines.
She was uprooting a new Matter, free, free from the habit of inexorably being a man who repeats himself ad infinitum with a few improvements in the way of organ transplants or monetary exchanges. In fact, She was there to discover what would happen after materialism and after spiritualism, these prodigal twin brothers. Because Materialism is dying in the West for the same reason that Spiritualism is dying in the East: it is the hour of the new species. Man needs to awaken, not only from his demons but also from his gods. A new Matter, yes, like a new Spirit, yes, because we still know neither one nor the other. It is the hour when Science, like Spirituality, at the end of their roads, must discover what Matter TRULY is, for it is really there that a Spirit as yet unknown to us is to be found. It is a time when all the 'isms' of the old species are dying: 'The age of
--
Day after day, for seventeen years, She sat with us to tell us of her impossible odyssey. Ah, how well we now understand why She needed such an 'outlaw' and an incorrigible heretic like us to comprehend a little bit of her impossible odyssey into 'nothing.' And how well we now understand her infinite patience with us, despite all our revolts, which ultimately were only the revolts of the old species against itself. The final revolt. 'It is not a revolt against the British government which any one can easily do. It is, in fact, a revolt against the whole universal Nature!' Sri Aurobindo had proclaimed fifty years earlier. She listened to our grievances, we went away and we returned. We wanted no more of it and we wanted still more. It was infernal and sublime, impossible and the sole possibility in this old, asphyxiating world. It was the only place one could go to in this barbedwired, mechanized world, where Cincinnati is just as crowded and polluted as Hong Kong. The new species is the last free place in the general prison. It is the last hope for the earth. How we listened to her little faltering voice that seemed to return from afar, afar, after having crossed spaces and seas of the mind to let its little drops of pure, crystalline words fall upon us, words that make you see. We listened to the future, we touched the other thing. It was incomprehensible and yet filled with another comprehension. It eluded us on all sides, and yet it was dazzlingly obvious. The 'other species' was really radically other, and yet it was vibrating within, absolutely recognizable, as if it were THAT we had been seeking from age to age, THAT we had been invoking through all our illuminations, one after another, in Thebes as in Eleusis as everywhere we have toiled and grieved in the skin of a man. It was for THAT we were here, for that supreme Possible in the skin of a man at last. And then her voice grew more and more frail, her breath began gasping as though She had to traverse greater and greater distances to meet us. She was so alone to beat against the walls of the old prison. Many claws were out all around. Oh, we would so quickly have cut ourself free from all this fiasco to fly away with Her into the world's future. She was so tiny, stooped over, as if crushed beneath the 'spiritual' burden that all the old surrounding species kept heaping upon her. They didn't believe, no. For them, She was ninety-five years old + so many days. Can someone become a new species all alone? They even grumbled at Her: they had had enough of this unbearable Ray that was bringing their sordid affairs into the daylight. The Ashram was slowly closing over Her. The old world wanted to make a new, golden little Church, nice and quiet. No, no one wanted TO
BECOME. To worship was so much easier. And then they bury you, solemnly, and the matter is settled - the case is closed: now, no one need bother any more except to print some photographic haloes for the pilgrims to this brisk little business. But they are mistaken. The real business will take place without them, the new species will fly up in their faces - it is already flying in the face of the earth, despite all its isms in black and white; it is exploding through all the pores of this battered old earth, which has had enough of shams - whether illusory little heavens or barbarous little machines.
It is the hour of the REAL Earth. It is the hour of the REAL man. We are all going there - if only we could know the path a little ...
00.01 - The Mother on Savitri, #Sweet Mother - Harmonies of Light, #unset, #Zen
On a few other occasion also, the Mother had spoken to the same sadhak on the value of reading Savitri which he had noted down afterwards. These notes have been added at the end of the main report. A few members of the Ashram had privately read this report in French, but afterwards there were many requests for its English version. A translation was therefore made in November 1967. A proposal was made to the Mother in 1972 for its publication and it was submitted to Her for approval. The Mother wanted to check the translation before permitting its publication but could check only a portion of it.
Do you read Savitri?
00.03 - Upanishadic Symbolism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
First of all, he has the Sun; it is the primary light by which he lives and moves. When the Sun sets, the Moon rises to replace it. When both the Sun and the Moon set, he has recourse to the Fire. And when the Fire, too, is extinguished, there comes the Word. In the end, when the Fire is quieted and the Word silenced, man is lighted by the Light of the Atman. This Atman is All-Knowledge; it is secreted within the life, within the heart: it is selfluminous Vijnamaya preu rdyantar jyoti..
The progression indicated by the order of succession points to a gradual withdrawal from the outer to the inner light, from the surface to the deep, from the obvious to the secret, from the actual and derivative to the real and original. We begin by the senses and move towards the Spirit.
--
The five elements of the ancientsearth, water, fire, air and ether or spaceare symbols taken from the physical world to represent other worlds that are in it and behind it. Each one is a principle that constitutes the fundamental nature of a particular plane of existence.
Earth represents the material world itself, Matter or existence in its most concrete, its grossest form. It is the basis of existence, the world that supports other worlds (dhar, dharitri),the first or the lowest of the several ranges of creation. In man it is his body. The principle here is that of stability, substantiality, firmness, consistency.
Water represents the next rung the vital world, the world life-force (pra). Physiologically also we know that water is the element forming three-fourths of the constituents of a living body and that dead and dry are synonymous terms; it is the medium in which the living cells dwell and through which they draw their sustenance. Water is the veritable sap of lifeit is the emblem of life itself. The principle it represents is that of movement, continuity, perpetuity.
Fire represents the Heart. It is that which gives the inner motive to the forces of life, it is the secret inspiration and aspiration that drive the movements of life. It is the heat of consciousness, the ardour of our central being that lives in the Truth and accepts nothing, nothing but the Truth. It is the pure and primal energy of our divine essence, driving ever upward and onward life's course of evolution.
Air is Mind, the world of thought, of conscious formation; it is where 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, rather than actualities. The Vedic Maruts are thought-gods, and lndra (the Luminous Mind), their king, is called the Fashioner of perfect forms.
--
The Science of the Five Agnis (Fires), as propounded by Pravahan, explains and illustrates the process of the birth of the body, the passage of the soul into earth existence. It describes the advent of the child, the building of the physical form of the human being. The process is conceived of as a sacrifice, the usual symbol with the Vedic Rishis for the expression of their vision and perception of universal processes of Nature, physical and psychological. Here, the child IS said to be the final fruit of the sacrifice, the different stages in the process being: (i) Soma, (ii) Rain, (iii) Food, (iv) Semen, (v) Child. Soma means Rasaphysically the principle of water, psychologically the ' principle of delightand symbolises and constitutes the very soul and substance of life. Now it is said that these five principles the fundamental and constituent elementsare born out of the sacrifice, through the oblation or offering to the five Agnis. The first Agni is Heaven or the Sky-God, and by offering to it one's faith and one's ardent desire, one calls into manifestation Soma or Rasa or Water, the basic principle of life. This water is next offered to the second Agni, the Rain-God, who sends down Rain. Rain, again, is offered to the third Agni, the Earth, who brings forth Food. Food is, in its turn, offered to the fourth Agni, the Father or Male, who elaborates in himself the generating fluid.
Finally, this fluid is offered to the fifth Agni, the Mother or the Female, who delivers the Child.
--
Apart from the question whether the biological phenomenon described is really a symbol and a cloak for another order of reality, and even taking it at its face value, what is to be noted here is the idea of a cosmic cycle, and a cosmic cycle that proceeds through the principle of sacrifice. If it is asked what there is wonderful or particularly spiritual in this rather naf description of a very commonplace happening that gives it an honoured place in the Upanishads, the answer is that it is wonderful to see how the Upanishadic Rishi takes from an event its local, temporal and personal colour and incorporates it in a global movement, a cosmic cycle, as a limb of the Universal Brahman. The Upanishads contain passages which a puritanical mentality may perhaps describe as 'pornographic'; these have in fact been put by some on the Index expurgatorius. But the ancients saw these matters with other eyes and through another consciousness.
We have, in modern times, a movement towards a more conscious and courageous, knowledge of things that were taboo to puritan ages. Not to shut one's eyes to the lower, darker and hidden strands of our nature, but to bring them out into the light of day and to face them is the best way of dealing with such elements, which otherwise, if they are repressed, exert an unhealthy influence on the mind and nature. The Upanishadic view runs on the same lines, but, with the unveiling and the natural and not merely naturalisticdelineation of these under-worlds (concerning sex and food), it endows them with a perspective sub specie aeternitatis. The sexual function, for example, is easily equated to the double movement of ascent and descent that is secreted in nature, or to the combined action of Purusha and Prakriti in the cosmic Play, or again to the hidden fount of Delight that holds and moves the universe. In this view there is nothing merely secular and profane, but all is woven into the cosmic spiritual whole; and man is taught to consider and to mould all his movementsof soul and mind and bodyin the light and rhythm of that integral Reality.11
--
TheChhandyogya12 gives a whole typal scheme of this universal reality and explains how to realise it and what are the results of the experience. The Universal Brahman means the cosmic movement, the cyclic march of things and events taken in its global aspect. The typical movement that symbolises and epitomises the phenomenon, embodies the truth, is that of the sun. The movement consists of five stages which are called the fivefold sma Sma means the equal Brahman that is ever present in all, the Upanishad itself says deriving the word from sama It is Sma also because it is a rhythmic movement, a cadencea music of the spheres. And a rhythmic movement, in virtue of its being a wave, consists of these five stages: (i) the start, (ii) the rise, (iii) the peak, (iv) the decline and (v) the fall. Now the sun follows this curve and marks out the familiar divisions of the day: dawn, forenoon, noon, afternoon and sunset. Sometimes two other stages are added, one at each end, one of preparation and another of final lapse the twilights with regard to the sun and then ,we have seven instead of five smas Like the Sun, the Fire that is to say, the sacrificial Firecan also be seen in its fivefold cyclic movement: (i) the lighting, (ii) the smoke, (iii) the flame, (iv) smouldering and finally (v) extinction the fuel as it is rubbed to produce the fire and the ashes may be added as the two supernumerary stages. Or again, we may take the cycle of five seasons or of the five worlds or of the deities that control these worlds. The living wealth of this earth is also symbolised in a quintetgoat and sheep and cattle and horse and finally man. Coming to the microcosm, we have in man the cycle of his five senses, basis of all knowledge and activity. For the macrocosm, to I bring out its vast extra-human complexity, the Upanishad refers to a quintet, each term of which is again a trinity: (i) the threefold Veda, the Divine Word that is the origin of creation, (ii) the three worlds or fieldsearth, air-belt or atmosphere and space, (iii) the three principles or deities ruling respectively these worldsFire, Air and Sun, (iv) their expressions, emanations or embodimentsstars and birds and light-rays, and finally, (v) the original inhabitants of these worldsto earth belong the reptiles, to the mid-region the Gandharvas and to heaven the ancient Fathers.
Now, this is the All, the Universal. One has to realise it and possess in one's consciousness. And that can be done only in one way: one has to identify oneself with it, be one with it, become it. Thus by losing one's individuality one lives the life universal; the small lean separate life is enlarged and moulded in the rhythm of the Rich and the Vast. It is thus that man shares in the consciousness and energy that inspire and move and sustain the cosmos. The Upanishad most emphatically enjoins that one must not decry this cosmic godhead or deny any of its elements, not even such as are a taboo to the puritan mind. It is in and through an unimpaired global consciousness that one attains the All-Life and lives uninterruptedly and perennially: Sarvamanveti jyok jvati.
Still the Upanishad says this is not the final end. There is yet a higher status of reality and consciousness to which one has to rise. For beyond the Cosmos lies the Transcendent. The Upanishad expresses this truth and experience in various symbols. The cosmic reality, we have seen, is often conceived as a septenary, a unity of seven elements, principles and worlds. Further to give it its full complex value, it is considered not as a simple septet, but a threefold heptad the whole gamut, as it were, consisting of 21 notes or syllables. The Upanishad says, this number does not exhaust the entire range; I for there is yet a 22nd place. This is the world beyond the Sun, griefless and deathless, the supreme Selfhood. The Veda I also sometimes speaks of the integral reality as being represented by the number 100 which is 99 + I; in other words, 99 represents the cosmic or universal, the unity being the reality beyond, the Transcendent.
Elsewhere the Upanishad describes more graphically this truth and the experience of it. It is said there that the sun has fivewe note the familiar fivemovements of rising and setting: (i) from East to West, (ii) from South to North, (iii) from West to East, (iv) from North to South and (v) from abovefrom the Zenithdownward. These are the five normal and apparent movements. But there is a sixth one; rather it is not a movement, but a status, where the sun neither rises nor sets, but is always visible fixed in the same position.
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 where 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 there 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 Southern 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 where all movements cease, where there is no rising and setting, no ebb and flow, no waxing and waning, where there is the immutable, the ever-same unity, is very evidently the Transcendental Brahman. It is That to which the Vedic Rishi refers when he prays for a constant and fixed vision of the eternal Sunjyok ca sryam drie.
It would be interesting to know what the five ranges or levels or movements of consciousness exactly are that make up the Universal Brahman described in this passage. It is the mystic knowledge, the Upanishad says, of the secret delight in thingsmadhuvidy. The five ranges are the five fundamental principles of delightimmortalities, the Veda would say that form the inner core of the pyramid of creation. They form a rising tier and are ruled respectively by the godsAgni, Indra, Varuna, Soma and Brahmawith their emanations and instrumental personalities the Vasus, the Rudras, the Adityas, the Maruts and the Sadhyas. We suggest that these refer to the five well-known levels of being, the modes or nodi of consciousness or something very much like them. The Upanishad speaks elsewhere of the five sheaths. The six Chakras of Tantric system lie in the same line. The first and the basic mode is the physical and the ascent from the physical: Agni and the Vasus are always intimately connected with the earth and -the earth- principles (it can be compared with the Muladhara of the Tantras). Next, second in the line of ascent is the Vital, the centre of power and dynamism of which the Rudras are the deities and Indra the presiding God (cf. Swadhishthana of the Tantras the navel centre). Indra, in the Vedas, has two aspects, one of knowledge and vision and the other of dynamic force and drive. In the first aspect he is more often considered as the Lord of the Mind, of the Luminous Mind. In the present passage, Indra is taken in his second aspect and instead of the Maruts with whom he is usually invoked has the Rudras as his agents and associates.
The third in the line of ascension is the region of Varuna and the Adityas, that is to say, of the large Mind and its lightsperhaps it can be connected with Tantric Ajnachakra. The fourth is the domain of Soma and the Marutsthis seems to be the inner heart, the fount of delight and keen and sweeping aspirations the Anahata of the Tantras. The fifth is the region of the crown of the head, the domain of Brahma and the Sadhyas: it is the Overmind status from where comes the descending inflatus, the creative Maya of Brahma. And when you go beyond, you pass into the ultimate status of the Sun, the reality absolute, the Transcendent which is indescribable, unseizable, indeterminate, indeterminable, incommensurable; and once there, one never returns, neverna ca punarvartate na ca punarvartate.
--
In Yajnavalkya's enumeration, however, it is to be noted, first of all, that he stresses on the number three. The principle of triplicity is of very wide application: it permeates all fields of consciousness and is evidently based upon a fundamental fact of reality. It seems to embody a truth of synthesis and comprehension, points to the order and harmony that reigns in the cosmos, the spheric music. The metaphysical, that is to say, the original principles that constitute existence are the well-known triplets: (i) the superior: Sat, Chit, Ananda; and (ii) the inferior: Body, Life and Mindthis being a reflection or translation or concretisation of the former. We can see also here how the dual principle comes in, the twin godhead or the two gods to which Yajnavalkya refers. The same principle is found in the conception of Ardhanarishwara, Male and Female, Purusha-Prakriti. The Upanishad says 14 yet again that the One original Purusha was not pleased at being alone, so for a companion he created out of himself the original Female. The dual principle signifies creation, the manifesting activity of the Reality. But what is this one and a half to which Yajnavalkya refers? It simply means that the other created out of the one is not a wholly separate, independent entity: it is not an integer by itself, as in the Manichean system, but that it is a portion, a fraction of the One. And in the end, in the ultimate analysis, or rather synthesis, there is but one single undivided and indivisible unity. The thousands and hundreds, very often mentioned also in the Rig Veda, are not simply multiplications of the One, a graphic description of its many-sidedness; it indicates also the absolute fullness, the complete completeness (prasya pram) of the Reality. It includes and comprehends all and is a rounded totality, a full circle. The hundred-gated and the thousand-pillared cities of which the ancient Rishis chanted are formations and embodiments of consciousness human and divine, are realities whole and entire englobing all the layers and grades of consciousness.
Besides this metaphysics there is also an occult aspect in numerology of which Pythagoras was a well-known adept and in which the Vedic Rishis too seem to take special delight. The multiplication of numbers represents in a general way the principle of emanation. The One has divided and subdivided itself, but not in a haphazard way: it is not like the chaotic pulverisation of a piece of stone by hammer-blows. The process of division and subdivision follows a pattern almost as neat and methodical as a genealogical tree. That is to say, the emanations form a hierarchy. At the top, the apex of the pyramid, stands the one supreme Godhead. That Godhead is biune in respect of manifestation the Divine and his creative Power. This two-in-one reality may be considered, according to one view of creation, as dividing into three forms or aspects the well-known Brahma, Vishnu and Rudra of Hindu mythology. These may be termed the first or primary emanations.
Now, each one of them in its turn has its own emanations the eleven Rudriyas are familiar. These are secondary and there are tertiary and other graded emanations the last ones touch the earth and embody physico-vital forces. The lowest formations or beings can trace their origin to one or other of the primaries and their nature and function partake of or are an echo of their first ancestor.
Man, however, is an epitome of creation. He embraces and incarnates the entire gamut of consciousness and com prises in him all beings from the highest Divinity to the lowest jinn or elf. And yet each human being in his true personality is a lineal descendant of one or other typal aspect or original Personality of the one supreme Reality; and his individual character is all the more pronounced and well-defined the more organised and developed is the being. The psychic being in man is thus a direct descent, an immediate emanation along a definite line of devolution of the supreme consciousness. We may now understand and explain easily why one chooses a particular Ishta, an ideal god, what is the drive that pushes one to become a worshipper of Siva or Vishnu or any other deity. It is not any rational understanding, a weighing of pros and cons and then a resultant conclusion that leads one to choose a path of religion or spirituality. It is the soul's natural call to the God, the type of being and consciousness of which it is a spark, from which it has descended, it is the secret affinity the spiritual blood-relation as it were that determines the choice and adherence. And it is this that we name Faith. And the exclusiveness and violence and bitterness which attend such adherence and which go "by the "name of partisanship, sectarianism, fanaticism etc., a;e a deformation in the ignorance on the physico-vital plane of the secret loyalty to one's source and origin. Of course, the pattern or law is not so simple and rigid, but it gives a token or typal pattern. For it must not be forgotten that the supreme source or the original is one and indivisible and in the highest integration consciousness is global and not exclusive. And the human being that attains such a status is not bound or wholly limited to one particular formation: its personality is based on the truth of impersonality. And yet the two can go together: an individual can be impersonal in consciousness and yet personal in becoming and true to type.
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The first boon regards the individual, that is to say, the individual identity and integrity. It asks for the maintenance of that individuality so that it may be saved from the dissolution that Death brings about. Death, of course, means the dissolution of the body, but it represents also dissolution pure and simple. Indeed death is a process which does not stop with the physical phenomenon, but continues even after; for with the body gone, the other elements of the individual organism, the vital and the mental too gradually fall off, fade and dissolve. Nachiketas wishes to secure from Death the safety and preservation of the earthly personality, the particular organisation of mind and vital based upon a recognisable physical frame. That is the first necessity for the aspiring mortalfor, it is said, the body is the first instrument for the working out of one's life ideal. But man's true personality, the real individuality lies beyond, beyond the body, beyond the life, beyond the mind, beyond the triple region that Death lords it over. That is the divine world, the Heaven of the immortals, beyond death and beyond sorrow and grief. It is the hearth secreted in the inner heart where burns the Divine Fire, the God of Life Everlasting. And this is the nodus that binds together the threefold status of the manifested existence, the body, the life and the mind. This triplicity is the structure of name and form built out of the bricks of experience, the kiln, as it were, within which burns the Divine Agni, man's true soul. This soul can be reached only when one exceeds the bounds and limitations of the triple cord and experiences one's communion and identity with all souls and all existence. Agni is the secret divinity within, within the individual and within the world; he is the Immanent Divine, the cosmic godhead that holds together and marshals all the elements and components, all the principles that make up the manifest universe. He it is that has entered into the world and created facets of his own reality in multiple forms: and it is he that lies secret in the human being as the immortal soul through all its adventure of life and death in the series of incarnations in terrestrial evolution. The adoration and realisation of this Immanent Divinity, the worship of Agni taught by Yama in the second boon, consists in the triple sacrifice, the triple work, the triple union in the triple status of the physical, the vital and the mental consciousness, the mastery of which leads one to the other shore, the abode of perennial existence where the human soul enjoys its eternity and unending continuity in cosmic life. Therefore, Agni, the master of the psychic being, is called jtaveds, he who knows the births, all the transmigrations from life to life.
The third boon is the secret of secrets, for it is the knowledge and realisation of Transcendence that is sought here. Beyond the individual lies the universal; is there anything beyond the universal? The release of the individual into the cosmic existence gives him the griefless life eternal: can the cosmos be rolled up and flung into something beyond? What would be the nature of that thing? What is there outside creation, outside manifestation, outside Maya, to use a latter day term? Is there existence or non-existence (utter dissolution or extinctionDeath in his supreme and absolute status)? King Yama did not choose to answer immediately and even endeavoured to dissuade Nachiketas from pursuing the question over which people were confounded, as he said. Evidently it was a much discussed problem in those days. Buddha was asked the same question and he evaded it, saying that the pragmatic man should attend to practical and immediate realities and not, waste time and energy in discussing things ultimate and beyond that have hardly any relation to the present and the actual.
00.04 - The Beautiful in the Upanishads, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Only, to some perhaps the beauty may not appear as evident and apparent. The Spirit of beauty that resides in the Upanishadic consciousness is more retiring and reticent. It dwells in its own privacy, in its own home, as it were, and therefore chooses to be bare and austere, simple and sheer. Beauty means usually the beauty of form, even if it be not always the decorative, ornamental and sumptuous form. The early Vedas aimed at the perfect form (surpaktnum), the faultless expression, the integral and complete embodiment; the gods they envisaged and invoked were gleaming powers carved out of harmony and beauty and figured close to our modes of apprehension (spyan). But the Upanishads came to lay stress upon what is beyond the form, what the eye cannot see nor the vision reflect:
na sandi tihati rpamasya
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The perception of beauty in the Upanishadic consciousness is something elemental-of concentrated essence. It silhouettes the main contour, outlines the primordial gestures. Pregnant and pulsating with the burden of beauty, the mantra here reduces its external expression to a minimum. The body is bare and unadorned, and even in its nakedness, it has not the emphatic and vehement musculature of an athlete; rather it tends to be slim and slender and yet vibrant with the inner nervous vigour and glow. What can be more bare and brief and full to the brim of a self-gathered luminous energy than, for example:
yat prena na praiti yena pra
00.05 - A Vedic Conception of the Poet, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
'Kavi' is an invariable epithet of the gods. The Vedas mean by this attribute to bring out a most fundamental character, an inalienable dharma of the heavenly host. All the gods are poets; and a human being can become a poet only in so far as he attains to the nature and status of a god. Who is then a kavi? The Poet is he who by his poetic power raises forms of beauty in heavenkavi kavitv divi rpam sajat.1Thus the essence of poetic power is to fashion divine Beauty, to reveal heavenly forms. What is this Heaven whose forms the Poet discovers and embodies? HeavenDyaushas a very definite connotation in the Veda. It means the luminous or divine Mind 2the mind purified of its obscurity and limitations, due to subjection to the external senses, thus opening to the higher Light, receiving and recording faithfully the deeper and vaster movements and vibrations of the Truth, giving them a form, a perfect body of the right thought and the right word. Indra is the lord of this world and he can be approached only with an enkindled intelligence, ddhay man,3a faultless understanding, sumedh. He is the supreme Artisan of the poetic power,Tash, the maker of perfect forms, surpa ktnum.4 All the gods turn towards Indra and become gods and poets, attain their Great Names of Supreme Beauty.5 Indra is also the master of the senses, indriyas, who are his hosts. It is through this mind and the senses that the poetic creation has to be manifested. The mind spreads out wide the Poet's weaving;6 the poet is the priest who calls down and works out the right thinking in the sacrificial labour of creation.7 But that creation is made in and through the inner mind and the inner senses that are alive to the subtle formation of a vaster knowledge.8 The poet envisages the golden forms fashioned out of the very profundity of the consciousness.9 For the substance, the material on which the Poet works, is Truth. The seat of the Truth the poets guard, they uphold the supreme secret Names.10 The poet has the expressive utterance, the creative word; the poet is a poet by his poetic creation-the shape faultlessly wrought out that unveils and holds the Truth.11The form of beauty is the body of the Truth.
The poet is a trinity in himself. A triune consciousness forms his personality. First of all, he is the Knower-the Seer of the Truth, kavaya satyadrara. He has the direct vision, the luminous intelligence, the immediate perception.12 A subtle and profound and penetrating consciousness is his,nigam, pracetas; his is the eye of the Sun,srya caku.13 He secures an increased being through his effulgent understanding.14 In the second place, the Poet is not only Seer but Doer; he is knower as well as creator. He has a dynamic knowledge and his vision itself is power, ncak;15 he is the Seer-Will,kavikratu.16 He has the blazing radiance of the Sun and is supremely potent in his self-Iuminousness.17 The Sun is the light and the energy of the Truth. Even like the Sun the Poet gives birth to the Truth, srya satyasava, satyya satyaprasavya. But the Poet as Power is not only the revealer or creator,savit, he is also the builder or fashioner,ta, and he is the organiser,vedh is personality. First of all, he is the Knower-the Seer of the Truth, kavaya satyadrara, of the Truth.18 As Savita he manifests the Truth, as Tashta he gives a perfected body and form to the Truth, and as Vedha he maintains the Truth in its dynamic working. The effective marshalling and organisation of the Truth is what is called Ritam, the Right; it is also called Dharma,19 the Law or the Rhythm, the ordered movement and invincible execution of the Truth. The Poet pursues the Path of the Right;20 it is he who lays out the Path for the march of the Truth, the progress of the Sacrifice.21 He is like a fast steed well-yoked, pressing forward;22 he is the charger that moves straight and unswerving and carries us beyond 23into the world of felicity.
Indeed delight is the third and the supremely intimate element of the poetic personality. Dear and delightful is the poet, dear and delightful his works, priya, priyi His hand is dripping with sweetness,kavir hi madhuhastya.24 The Poet-God shines in his pristine beauty and is showering delight.25 He is filled with utter ecstasy so that he may rise to the very source of the luminous Energy.26? Pure is the Divine Joy and it enters and purifies all forms as it moves to the seat of the Immortals.27Indeed this sparkling Delight is the Poet-Seer and it is that that brings forth the creative word, the utterance of Indra.28
The solar vision of the Poet encompasses in its might the wide Earth and Heaven, fuses them in supreme Delight in the womb of the Truth.29 The Earth is lifted up and given in marriage to Heaven in the home of Truth, for the creation and expression of the Truth in its varied beauty,cru citram.
0.00a - Introduction, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
The Qabalah reveals the nature of certain physical and psychological phenomena. Once these are apprehended, understood and correlated, the student can use the principles of Magic to exercise control over life's conditions and circumstances not otherwise possible. In short. Magic provides the practical application of the theories supplied by the Qabalah.
It serves yet another vital function. In addition to the advantages to be gained from its philosophical application, the ancients discovered a very practical use for the literal Qabalah.
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A simple example is the concept of the Trinity in the Christian religion. The student is frequently amazed to learn through a study of the Qabalah that Egyptian mythology followed a similar concept with its trinity of gods, Osiris the father, Isis the virgin-mother, and Horus the son. The Qabalah indicates similar correspondences in the pantheon of Roman and Greek deities, proving the father-mother (Holy Spirit) - son principles of deity are primordial archetypes of man's psyche, rather than being, as is frequently and erroneously supposed a development peculiar to the Christian era.
At this juncture let me call attention to one set of attri butions by Rittangelius usually found as an appendix attached to the Sepher Yetzirah. It lists a series of "Intelligences" for each one of the ten Sephiros and the twenty-two Paths of the Tree of Life. It seems to me, after prolonged meditation, that the common attri butions of these Intelligences is altogether arbitrary and lacking in serious meaning.
For example, Keser is called "The Admirable or the Hidden Intelligence; it is the primal Glory, for no created being can attain to its essence." This seems perfectly all right; the meaning at first sight seems to fit the significance of Keser as the first emanation from Ain Soph. But there are half a dozen other similar attri butions that would have served equally well. For instance, it could have been called the "Occult Intelligence" usually attri buted to the seventh Path or Sephirah, for surely Keser is secret in a way to be said of no other Sephirah. And what about the "Absolute or Perfect Intelligence." That would have been even more explicit and appro priate, being applicable to Keser far more than to any other of the Paths. Similarly, there is one attri buted to the 16th Path and called "The Eternal or Triumphant Intelligence," so-called because it is the pleasure of the Glory, beyond which is no Glory like to it, and it is called also the Paradise prepared for the Righteous." Any of these several would have done equally well. Much is true of so many of the other attri butions in this particular area-that is the so-called Intelligences of the Sepher Yetzirah. I do not think that their use or current arbitrary usage stands up to serious examination or criticism.
A good many attri butions in other symbolic areas, I feel are subject to the same criticism. The Egyptian Gods have been used with a good deal of carelessness, and without sufficient explanation of motives in assigning them as I did. In a recent edition of Crowley's masterpiece Liber 777 (which au fond is less a reflection of Crowley's mind as a recent critic claimed than a tabulation of some of the material given piecemeal in the Golden Dawn knowledge lectures), he gives for the first time brief explanations of the motives for his attri butions. I too should have been far more explicit in the explanations I used in the case of some of the Gods whose names were used many times, most inadequately, where several paths were concerned. While it is true that the religious coloring of the Egyptian Gods differed from time to time during Egypt's turbulent history, nonetheless a word or two about just that one single point could have served a useful purpose.
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I began the study of the Qabalah at an early age. Two books I read then have played unconsciously a prominent part in the writing of my own book. One of these was "Q.B.L. or the Bride's Reception" by Frater Achad (Charles Stansfeld Jones), which I must have first read around 1926. The other was "An Introduction to the Tarot" by Paul Foster Case, published in the early 1920's. It is now out of print, superseded by later versions of the same topic. But as I now glance through this slender book, I perceive how profoundly even the format of his book had influenced me, though in these two instances there was not a trace of plagiarism. It had not consciously occurred to me until recently that I owed so much to them. Since Paul Case passed away about a decade or so ago, this gives me the opportunity to thank him, overtly, wherever he may now be.
By the middle of 1926 I had become aware of the work of Aleister Crowley, for whom I have a tremendous respect. I studied as many of his writings as I could gain access to, making copious notes, and later acted for several years as his secretary, having joined him in Paris on October 12, 1928, a memorable day in my life.
000 - Humans in Universe, #Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, #R Buckminster Fuller, #Science
000.106 In 1600 the East India Company was founded as a private enter prise by
Queen Elizabeth and a small group of her intimates. The limited legal liability of
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political ideologies have since adopted a prime philosophy that says: "You may not
like our political system, but we are convinced that we have the fairest, most
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national departments of defense with their priority of access to the most advanced
science and technology. The military took command of all the highest performance
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combined with the human discovery of the intertrussing principles of structuring
and the low overall displacement weights involved, made possible for humans to
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comprehension of the fundamental structuring principles and their military
developments and profitable commercial uses. But only vast money investments or
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It is the most highly classified of military and private enter prise secrets. Industry
now converts the ever-increasing work capacity per pound of materials invested
primarily to yield monetary profits for the government-subsidized private-enter prise
producers of weapons.
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their directly received individual cosmic incomes. So too, private enter prise should
no more meter the energy than it meters the air. But all of Earthians' present power
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sustainable physical success on this planet. The prime barrier to humanity's
discovery and comprehension of nature is the obscurity of the mathematical
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structure, the always conceptual-independent-of-size family of primitive, pre-time-
size, least complex polyhedra have the following exact volumes-the vector-
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rhombic dodecahedron 6. When the size information is introduced, it occurs only asfrequency of modular subdivision of each unit vector structuring of the primitive
family's respective 1-, 2-, 3-, 4-, 5-, and 6-tetravolumes. Frequency to the third
power, F 3 , values then multiply the primitive, already-four-dimensional volumetric
values. In physically realized time-size each has therefore 4 + 3 = 7 dimensions, but
0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
SRI RAMAKRISHNA AS A priEST
THE FIRST VISION OF KALI
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At the age of nine Gadadhar was invested with the sacred thread. This ceremony conferred upon him the privileges of his brahmin lineage, including the worship of the Family Deity, Raghuvir, and imposed upon him the many strict disciplines of a brahmin's life. During the ceremony of investiture he shocked his relatives by accepting a meal cooked by his nurse, a sudra woman. His father would never have dreamt of doing such a thing But in a playful mood Gadadhar had once promised this woman that he would eat her food, and now he fulfilled his plighted word. The woman had piety and religious sincerity, and these were more important to the boy than the conventions of society.
Gadadhar was now permitted to worship Raghuvir. Thus began his first training in meditation. He so gave his heart and soul to the worship that the stone image very soon appeared to him as the living Lord of the Universe. His tendency to lose himself in contemplation was first noticed at this time. Behind his boyish light-heartedness was seen a deepening of his spiritual nature.
About this time, on the Sivaratri night, consecrated to the worship of Siva, a dramatic performance was arranged. The principal actor, who was to play the part of Siva, suddenly fell ill, and Gadadhar was persuaded to act in his place. While friends were dressing him for the role of Siva — smearing his body with ashes, matting his locks, placing a trident in his hand and a string of rudraksha beads around his neck — the boy appeared to become absent-minded. He approached the stage with slow and measured step, supported by his friends. He looked the living image of Siva. The audience loudly applauded what it took to be his skill as an actor, but it was soon discovered that he was really lost in meditation. His countenance was radiant and tears flowed from his eyes. He was lost to the outer world. The effect of this scene on the audience was tremendous. The people felt blessed as by a vision of Siva Himself. The performance had to be stopped, and the boy's mood lasted till the following morning.
Gadadhar himself now organized a dramatic company with his young friends. The stage was set in the mango orchard. The themes were selected from the stories of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Gadadhar knew by heart almost all the roles, having heard them from professional actors. His favourite theme was the Vrindavan episode of Krishna's life, depicting those exquisite love-stories of Krishna and the milkmaids and the cowherd boys. Gadadhar would play the parts of Radha or Krishna and would often lose himself in the character he was portraying. His natural feminine grace heightened the dramatic effect. The mango orchard would ring with the loud kirtan of the boys. Lost in song and merry-making, Gadadhar became indifferent to the routine of school.
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At the age of sixteen Gadadhar was summoned to Calcutta by his elder brother Ramkumar, who wished assistance in his priestly duties. Ramkumar had opened a Sanskrit academy to supplement his income, and it was his intention gradually to turn his younger brother's mind to education. Gadadhar applied himself heart and soul to his new duty as family priest to a number of Calcutta families. His worship was very different from that of the professional priests. He spent hours decorating the images and singing hymns and devotional songs; he performed with love the other duties of his office. People were impressed with his ardour. But to his studies he paid scant attention.
Ramkumar did not at first oppose the ways of his temperamental brother. He wanted Gadadhar to become used to the conditions of city life. But one day he decided to warn the boy about his indifference to the world. After all, in the near future Gadadhar must, as a householder, earn his livelihood through the performance of his brahminical duties; and these required a thorough knowledge of Hindu law, astrology, and kindred subjects. He gently admonished Gadadhar and asked him to pay more attention to his studies. But the boy replied spiritedly: "Brother, what shall I do with a mere bread-winning education? I would rather acquire that wisdom which will illumine my heart and give me satisfaction for ever."
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Hindu society during the eighteenth century had been passing through a period of decadence. It was the twilight of the Mussalman rule. There were anarchy and confusion in all spheres. Superstitious practices dominated the religious life of the people. Rites and rituals passed for the essence of spirituality. Greedy priests became the custodians of heaven. True philosophy was supplanted by dogmatic opinions. The pundits took delight in vain polemics.
In 1757 English traders laid the foundation of British rule in India. Gradually the Government was systematized and lawlessness suppressed. The Hindus were much impressed by the military power and political acumen of the new rulers. In the wake of the merchants came the English educators, and social reformers, and Christian missionaries — all bearing a culture completely alien to the Hindu mind. In different parts of the country educational institutions were set up and Christian churches established. Hindu young men were offered the heady wine of the Western culture of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and they drank it to the very dregs.
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Sri Ramakrishna — henceforth we shall call Gadadhar by this familiar name —1 came to the temple garden with his elder brother Ramkumar, who was appointed priest of the Kali temple. Sri Ramakrishna did not at first approve of Ramkumar's working for the sudra Rasmani. The example of their orthodox father was still fresh in Sri Ramakrishna's mind. He objected also to the eating of the cooked offerings of the temple, since, according to orthodox Hindu custom, such food can be offered to the Deity only in the house of a brahmin. But the holy atmosphere of the temple grounds, the solitude of the surrounding wood, the loving care of his brother, the respect shown him by Rani Rasmani and Mathur Babu, the living presence of the Goddess Kali in the temple, and; above all, the proximity of the sacred Ganges, which Sri Ramakrishna always held in the highest respect, gradually overcame his disapproval, and he began to feel at home.
Within a very short time Sri Ramakrishna attracted the notice of Mathur Babu, who was impressed by the young man's religious fervour and wanted him to participate in the worship in the Kali temple. But Sri Ramakrishna loved his freedom and was indifferent to any worldly career. The profession of the priesthood in a temple founded by a rich woman did not appeal to his mind. Further, he hesitated to take upon himself the responsibility for the ornaments and jewelry of the temple. Mathur had to wait for a suitable occasion.
At this time there came to Dakshineswar a youth of sixteen, destined to play an important role in Sri Ramakrishna's life. Hriday, a distant nephew2 of Sri Ramakrishna, hailed from Sihore, a village not far from Kamarpukur, and had been his boyhood friend. Clever, exceptionally energetic, and endowed with great presence of mind, he moved, as will be seen later, like a shadow about his uncle and was always ready to help him, even at the sacrifice of his personal comfort. He was destined to be a mute witness of many of the spiritual experiences of Sri Ramakrishna and the caretaker of his body during the stormy days of his spiritual practice. Hriday came to Dakshineswar in search of a job, and Sri Ramakrishna was glad to see him.
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One day the priest of the Radhakanta temple accidentally dropped the image of Krishna on the floor, breaking one of its legs. The pundits advised the Rani to install a new image, since the worship of an image with a broken limb was against the scriptural injunctions. But the Rani was fond of the image, and she asked Sri Ramakrishna's opinion. In an abstracted mood, he said: "This solution is ridiculous. If a son-in-law of the Rani broke his leg, would she discard him and put another in his place? Wouldn't she rather arrange for his treatment? Why should she not do the same thing in this case too? Let the image be repaired and worshipped as before." It was a simple, straightforward solution and was accepted by the Rani. Sri Ramakrishna himself mended the break. The priest was dismissed for his carelessness, and at Mathur Babu's earnest request Sri Ramakrishna accepted the office of priest in the Radhakanta temple.
^No definite information is available as to the origin of this name. Most probably it was given by Mathur Babu, as Ramlal, Sri Ramakrishna's nephew, has said, quoting the authority of his uncle himself.
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--- SRI RAMAKRISHNA AS A priEST
Born in an orthodox brahmin family, Sri Ramakrishna knew the formalities of worship, its rites and rituals. The innumerable gods and goddesses of the Hindu religion are the human aspects of the indescribable and incomprehensible Spirit, as conceived by the finite human mind. They understand and appreciate human love and emotion, help men to realize their secular and spiritual ideals, and ultimately enable men to attain liberation from the miseries of phenomenal life. The Source of light, intelligence, wisdom, and strength is the One alone from whom comes the fulfilment of desire. Yet, as long as a man is bound by his human limitations, he cannot but worship God through human forms. He must use human symbols. Therefore Hinduism asks the devotees to look on God as the ideal father, the ideal mother, the ideal husband, the ideal son, or the ideal friend. But the name ultimately leads to the Nameless, the form to the Formless, the word to the Silence, the emotion to the serene realization of Peace in Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute. The gods gradually merge in the one God. But until that realization is achieved, the devotee cannot dissociate human factors from his worship. Therefore the Deity is bathed and clothed and decked with ornaments. He is fed and put to sleep. He is propitiated with hymns, songs, and prayers. And there are appro priate rites connected with all these functions. For instance, to secure for himself external purity, the priest bathes himself in holy water and puts on a holy cloth. He purifies the mind and the sense-organs by appro priate meditations. He fortifies the place of worship against evil forces by drawing around it circles of fire and water. He awakens the different spiritual centres of the body and invokes the Supreme Spirit in his heart. Then he transfers the Supreme Spirit to the image before him and worships the image, regarding it no longer as clay or stone, but as the embodiment of Spirit, throbbing with Life and Consciousness. After the worship the Supreme Spirit is recalled from the image to Its true sanctuary, the heart of the priest. The real devotee knows the absurdity of worshipping the Transcendental Reality with material articles — clothing That which pervades the whole universe and the beyond, putting on a pedestal That which cannot be limited by space, feeding That which is disembodied and incorporeal, singing before That whose glory the music of the spheres tries vainly to proclaim. But through these rites the devotee aspires to go ultimately beyond rites and rituals, forms and names, words and praise, and to realize God as the All-pervading Consciousness.
Hindu priests are thoroughly acquainted with the rites of worship, but few of them are aware of their underlying significance. They move their hands and limbs mechanically, in obedience to the letter of the scriptures, and repeat the holy mantras like parrots. But from the very beginning the inner meaning of these rites was revealed to Sri Ramakrishna. As he sat facing the image, a strange transformation came over his mind. While going through the prescribed ceremonies, he would actually find himself encircled by a wall of fire protecting him and the place of worship from unspiritual vibrations, or he would feel the rising of the mystic Kundalini through the different centres of the body. The glow on his face, his deep absorption, and the intense atmosphere of the temple impressed everyone who saw him worship the Deity.
Ramkumar wanted Sri Ramakrishna to learn the intricate rituals of the worship of Kali. To become a priest of Kali one must undergo a special form of initiation from a qualified guru, and for Sri Ramakrishna a suitable brahmin was found. But no sooner did the brahmin speak the holy word in his ear than Sri Ramakrishna, overwhelmed with emotion, uttered a loud cry and plunged into deep concentration.
Mathur begged Sri Ramakrishna to take charge of the worship in the Kali temple. The young priest pleaded his incompetence and his ignorance of the scriptures. Mathur insisted that devotion and sincerity would more than compensate for any lack of formal knowledge and make the Divine Mother manifest Herself through the image. In the end, Sri Ramakrishna had to yield to Mathur's request. He became the priest of Kali.
In 1856 Ramkumar breathed his last. Sri Ramakrishna had already witnessed more than one death in the family. He had come to realize how impermanent is life on earth. The more he was convinced of the transitory nature of worldly things, the more eager he became to realize God, the Fountain of Immortality.
--
The worship in the temple intensified Sri Ramakrishna's yearning for a living vision of the Mother of the Universe. He began to spend in meditation the time not actually employed in the temple service; and for this purpose he selected an extremely solitary place. A deep jungle, thick with underbrush and prickly plants, lay to the north of the temples. Used at one time as a burial ground, it was shunned by people even during the day-time for fear of ghosts. There Sri Ramakrishna began to spend the whole night in meditation, returning to his room only in the morning with eyes swollen as though from much weeping. While meditating, he would lay aside his cloth and his brahminical thread. Explaining this strange conduct, he once said to Hriday: "Don't you know that when one thinks of God one should be freed from all ties? From our very birth we have the eight fetters of hatred, shame, lineage, pride of good conduct, fear, secretiveness, caste, and grief. The sacred thread reminds me that I am a brahmin and therefore superior to all. When calling on the Mother one has to set aside all such ideas." Hriday thought his uncle was becoming insane.
As his love for God deepened, he began either to forget or to drop the formalities of worship. Sitting before the image, he would spend hours singing the devotional songs of great devotees of the Mother, such as Kamalakanta and Ramprasad. Those rhapsodical songs, describing the direct vision of God, only intensified Sri Ramakrishna's longing. He felt the pangs of a child separated from its mother. Sometimes, in agony, he would rub his face against the ground and weep so bitterly that people, thinking he had lost his earthly mother, would sympathize with him in his grief. Sometimes, in moments of scepticism, he would cry: "Art Thou true, Mother, or is it all fiction — mere poetry without any reality? If Thou dost exist, why do I not see Thee? Is religion a mere fantasy and art Thou only a figment of man's imagination?" Sometimes he would sit on the prayer carpet for two hours like an inert object. He began to behave in an abnormal manner
--
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.
Sri Ramakrishna one day fed a cat with the food that was to be offered to Kali. This was too much for the manager of the temple garden, who considered himself responsible for the proper conduct of the worship. He reported Sri Ramakrishna's insane behaviour to Mathur Babu.
--
Mathur had faith in the sincerity of Sri Ramakrishna's spiritual zeal, but began now to doubt his sanity. He had watched him jumping about like a monkey. One day, when Rani Rasmani was listening to Sri Ramakrishna's singing in the temple, the young priest abruptly turned and slapped her. Apparently listening to his song, she had actually been thinking of a law-suit. She accepted the punishment as though the Divine Mother Herself had imposed it; but Mathur was distressed. He begged Sri Ramakrishna to keep his feelings under control and to heed the conventions of society. God Himself, he argued, follows laws. God never permitted, for instance, flowers of two colours to grow on the same stalk. The following day Sri Ramakrishna presented Mathur Babu with two hibiscus flowers growing on the same stalk, one red and one white.
Mathur and Rani Rasmani began to ascribe the mental ailment of Sri Ramakrishna in part, at least, to his observance of rigid continence. Thinking that a natural life would relax the tension of his nerves, they engineered a plan with two women of ill fame. But as soon as the women entered his room, Sri Ramakrishna beheld in them the manifestation of the Divine Mother of the Universe and went into samadhi uttering Her name.
--
In 1858 there came to Dakshineswar a cousin of Sri Ramakrishna, Haladhari by name, who was to remain there about eight years. On account of Sri Ramakrishna's indifferent health, Mathur appointed this man to the office of priest in the Kali temple. He was a complex character, versed in the letter of the scriptures, but hardly aware of their spirit. He loved to participate in hair-splitting theological discussions and, by the measure of his own erudition, he proceeded to gauge Sri Ramakrishna. An orthodox brahmin, he thoroughly disapproved of his cousin's unorthodox actions, but he was not unimpressed by Sri Ramakrishna's purity of life, ecstatic love of God, and yearning for realization.
One day Haladhari upset Sri Ramakrishna with the statement that God is incomprehensible to the human mind. Sri Ramakrishna has described the great moment of doubt when he wondered whether his visions had really misled him: "With sobs I prayed to the Mother, 'Canst Thou have the heart to deceive me like this because I am a fool?' A stream of tears flowed from my eyes. Shortly afterwards I saw a volume of mist rising from the floor and filling the space before me. In the midst of it there appeared a face with flowing beard, calm, highly expressive, and fair. Fixing its gaze steadily upon me, it said solemnly, 'Remain in bhavamukha, on the threshold of relative consciousness.' This it repeated three times and then it gently disappeared in the mist, which itself dissolved. This vision reassured me."
--
Thus the insane priest was by verdict of the great scholars of the day proclaimed a Divine Incarnation. His visions were not the result of an over-heated brain; they had precedent in spiritual history. And how did the proclamation affect Sri Ramakrishna himself? He remained the simple child of the Mother that he had been since the first day of his life. Years later, when two of his householder disciples openly spoke of him as a Divine Incarnation and the matter was reported to him, he said with a touch of sarcasm: "Do they think they will enhance my glory that way? One of them is an actor on the stage and the other a physician. What do they know about Incarnations? Why, years ago pundits like Gauri and Vaishnavcharan declared me to be an Avatar. They were great scholars and knew what they said. But that did not make any change in my mind."
Sri Ramakrishna was a learner all his life. He often used to quote a proverb to his disciples: "Friend, the more I live the more I learn." When the excitement created by the Brahmani's declaration was over, he set himself to the task of practising spiritual disciplines according to the traditional methods laid down in the Tantra and Vaishnava scriptures. Hitherto he had pursued his spiritual ideal according to the promptings of his own mind and heart. Now he accepted the Brahmani as his guru and set foot on the traditional highways.
--
According to the Tantra, Sakti is the active creative force in the universe. Siva, the Absolute, is a more or less passive principle. Further, Sakti is as inseparable from Siva as fire's power to burn is from fire itself. Sakti, the Creative Power, contains in Its womb the universe, and therefore is the Divine Mother. All women are Her symbols. Kali is one of Her several forms. The meditation on Kali, the Creative Power, is the central discipline of the Tantra. While meditating, the aspirant at first regards himself as one with the Absolute and then thinks that out of that Impersonal Consciousness emerge two entities, namely, his own self and the living form of the Goddess. He then projects the Goddess into the tangible image before him and worships it as the Divine Mother.
Sri Ramakrishna set himself to the task of practising the disciplines of Tantra; and at the bidding of the Divine Mother Herself he accepted the Brahmani as his guru. He performed profound and delicate ceremonies in the Panchavati and under the bel-tree at the northern extremity of the temple compound. He practised all the disciplines of the sixty-four principal Tantra books, and it took him never more than three days to achieve the result promised in any one of them. After the observance of a few preliminary rites, he would be overwhelmed with a strange divine fervour and would go into samadhi, where his mind would dwell in exaltation. Evil ceased to exist for him. The word "carnal" lost its meaning. The whole world and everything in it appeared as the lila, the sport, of Siva and Sakti. He beheld held everywhere manifest the power and beauty of the Mother; the whole world, animate and inanimate, appeared to him as pervaded with Chit, Consciousness, and with Ananda, Bliss.
He saw in a vision the Ultimate Cause of the universe as a huge luminous triangle giving birth every moment to an infinite number of worlds. He heard the Anahata Sabda, the great sound Om, of which the innumerable sounds of the universe are only so many echoes. He acquired the eight supernatural powers of yoga, which make a man almost omnipotent, and these he spurned as of no value whatsoever to the Spirit. He had a vision of the divine Maya, the inscrutable Power of God, by which the universe is created and sustained, and into which it is finally absorbed. In this vision he saw a woman of exquisite beauty, about to become a mother, emerging from the Ganges and slowly approaching the Panchavati. Presently she gave birth to a child and began to nurse it tenderly. A moment later she assumed a terrible aspect, seized the child with her grim jaws, and crushed it. Swallowing it, she re-entered the waters of the Ganges.
--
"Brahman", he said, "is the only Reality, ever pure, ever illumined, ever free, beyond the limits of time, space, and causation. Though apparently divided by names and forms through the inscrutable power of maya, that enchantress who makes the impossible possible, Brahman is really One and undivided. When a seeker merges in the beatitude of samadhi, he does not perceive time and space or name and form, the offs pring of maya. Whatever is within the domain of maya is unreal. Give it up. Destroy the prison-house of name and form and rush out of it with the strength of a lion. Dive deep in search of the Self and realize It through samadhi. You will find the world of name and form vanishing into void, and the puny ego dissolving in Brahman-Consciousness. You will realize your identity with Brahman, Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute." Quoting the Upanishad, Totapuri said: "That knowledge is shallow by which one sees or hears or knows another
. What is shallow is worthless and can never give real felicity. But the Knowledge by which one does not see another or hear another or know another, which is beyond duality, is great, and through such Knowledge one attains the Infinite Bliss. How can the mind and senses grasp That which shines in the heart of all as the Eternal Subject?"
--
Sri Ramakrishna, on the other hand, though fully aware, like his guru, that the world is an illusory appearance, instead of slighting maya, like an orthodox monist, acknowledged its power in the relative life. He was all love and reverence for maya, perceiving in it a mysterious and majestic expression of Divinity. To him maya itself was God, for everything was God. It was one of the faces of Brahman. What he had realized on the heights of the transcendental plane, he also found here below, everywhere about him, under the mysterious garb of names and forms. And this garb was a perfectly transparent sheath, through which he recognized the glory of the Divine Immanence. Maya, the mighty weaver of the garb, is none other than Kali, the Divine Mother. She is the primordial Divine Energy, Sakti, and She can no more be distinguished from the Supreme Brahman than can the power of burning be distinguished from fire. She projects the world and again withdraws it. She spins it as the spider spins its web. She is the Mother of the Universe, identical with the Brahman of Vedanta, and with the Atman of Yoga. As eternal Lawgiver, She makes and unmakes laws; it is by Her imperious will that karma yields its fruit. She ensnares men with illusion and again releases them from bondage with a look of Her benign eyes. She is the supreme Mistress of the cosmic play, and all objects, animate and inanimate, dance by Her will. Even those who realize the Absolute in nirvikalpa samadhi are under Her jurisdiction as long as they still live on the relative plane.
Thus, after nirvikalpa samadhi, Sri Ramakrishna realized maya in an altogether new role. The binding aspect of Kali vanished from before his vision. She no longer obscured his understanding. The world became the glorious manifestation of the Divine Mother. Maya became Brahman. The Transcendental Itself broke through the Immanent. Sri Ramakrishna discovered that maya operates in the relative world in two ways, and he termed these "avidyamaya" and "vidyamaya". Avidyamaya represents the dark forces of creation: sensuous desires, evil passions, greed, lust, cruelty, and so on. It sustains the world system on the lower planes. It is responsible for the round of man's birth and death. It must be fought and vanquished. But vidyamaya is the higher force of creation: the spiritual virtues, the enlightening qualities, kindness, purity, love, devotion. Vidyamaya elevates man to the higher planes of consciousness. With the help of vidyamaya the devotee rids himself of avidyamaya; he then becomes mayatita, free of maya. The two aspects of maya are the two forces of creation, the two powers of Kali; and She stands beyond them both. She is like the effulgent sun, bringing into existence and shining through and standing behind the clouds of different colours and shapes, conjuring up wonderful forms in the blue autumn heaven.
--
His body would not have survived but for the kindly attention of a monk who happened to be at Dakshineswar at that time and who somehow realized that for the good of humanity Sri Ramakrishna's body must be preserved. He tried various means, even physical violence, to recall the fleeing soul to the prison-house of the body, and during the resultant fleeting moments of consciousness he would push a few morsels of food down Sri Ramakrishna's throat. Presently Sri Ramakrishna received the command of the Divine Mother to remain on the threshold of relative consciousness. Soon there-after after he was afflicted with a serious attack of dysentery. Day and night the pain tortured him, and his mind gradually came down to the physical plane.
--- COMPANY OF HOLY MEN AND DEVOTEES
--
Without being formally initiated into their doctrines, Sri Ramakrishna thus realized the ideals of religions other than Hinduism. He did not need to follow any doctrine. All barriers were removed by his overwhelming love of God. So he became a Master who could speak with authority regarding the ideas and ideals of the various religions of the world. "I have practised", said he, "all religions — Hinduism, Islam, Christianity — and I have also followed the paths of the different Hindu sects. I have found that it is the same God toward whom all are directing their steps, though along different paths. You must try all beliefs and traverse all the different ways once. Wherever I look, I see men quarrelling in the name of religion — Hindus, Mohammedans, Brahmos, Vaishnavas, and the rest. But they never reflect that He who is called Krishna is also called Siva, and bears the name of the primal Energy, Jesus, and Allah as well — the same Rama with a thousand names. A lake has several ghats. At one the Hindus take water in pitchers and call it 'jal'; at another the Mussalmans take water in leather bags and call it pani'. At a third the Christians call it 'water'. Can we imagine that it is not 'jal', but only 'pani' or 'water'? How ridiculous! The substance is One under different names, and everyone is seeking the same substance; only climate, temperament, and name create differences. Let each man follow his own path. If he sincerely and ardently wishes to know God, peace be unto him! He will surely realize Him."
In 1867 Sri Ramakrishna returned to Kamarpukur to recuperate from the effect of his austerities. The peaceful countryside, the simple and artless companions of his boyhood, and the pure air did him much good. The villagers were happy to get back their playful, frank, witty, kind-hearted, and truthful Gadadhar, though they did not fail to notice the great change that had come over him during his years in Calcutta. His wife, Sarada Devi, now fourteen years old, soon arrived at Kamarpukur. Her spiritual development was much beyond her age and she was able to understand immediately her husband's state of mind. She became eager to learn from him about God and to live with him as his attendant. The Master accepted her cheerfully both as his disciple and as his spiritual companion. Referring to the experiences of these few days, she once said: "I used to feel always as if a pitcher full of bliss were placed in my heart. The joy was indescribable."
--
In 1878 a schism divided Keshab's Samaj. Some of his influential followers accused him of infringing the Brahmo principles by marrying his daughter to a wealthy man before she had attained the marriageable age approved by the Samaj. This group seceded and established the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj, Keshab remaining the leader of the Navavidhan. Keshab now began to be drawn more and more toward the Christ ideal, though under the influence of Sri Ramakrishna his devotion to the Divine Mother also deepened. His mental oscillation between Christ and the Divine Mother of Hinduism found no position of rest. In Bengal and some other parts of India the Brahmo movement took the form of unitarian Christianity, scoffed at Hindu rituals, and preached a crusade against image worship. Influenced by Western culture, it declared the supremacy of reason, advocated the ideals of the French Revolution, abolished the caste-system among its own members, stood for the emancipation of women, agitated for the abolition of early marriage, sanctioned the remarriage of widows, and encouraged various educational and social-reform movements. The immediate effect of the Brahmo movement in Bengal was the checking of the proselytizing activities of the Christian missionaries. It also raised Indian culture in the estimation of its English masters. But it was an intellectual and eclectic religious ferment born of the necessity of the time. Unlike Hinduism, it was not founded on the deep inner experiences of sages and prophets. Its influence was confined to a comparatively few educated men and women of the country, and the vast masses of the Hindus remained outside it. It sounded monotonously only one of the notes in the rich gamut of the Eternal Religion of the Hindus.
--- ARYA SAMAJ
--
But he remained as ever the willing instrument in the hand of God, the child of the Divine Mother, totally untouched by the idea of being a teacher. He used to say that three ideas — that he was a guru, a father, and a master — pricked his flesh like thorns. Yet he was an extraordinary teacher. He stirred his disciples' hearts more by a subtle influence than by actions or words. He never claimed to be the founder of a religion or the organizer of a sect. Yet he was a religious dynamo. He was the verifier of all religions and creeds. He was like an expert gardener, who prepares the soil and removes the weeds, knowing that the plants will grow because of the inherent power of the seeds, producing each its appro priate flowers and fruits. He never thrust his ideas on anybody. He understood people's limitations and worked on the principle that what is good for one may be bad for another. He had the unusual power of knowing the devotees' minds, even their inmost souls, at the first sight. He accepted disciples with the full knowledge of their past tendencies and future possibilities. The life of evil did not frighten him, nor did religious squeamishness raise anybody in his estimation. He saw in everything the unerring finger of the Divine Mother. Even the light that leads astray was to him the light from God.
To those who became his intimate disciples the Master was a friend, companion, and playmate. Even the chores of religious discipline would be lightened in his presence. The devotees would be so inebriated with pure joy in his company that they would have no time to ask themselves whether he was an Incarnation, a perfect soul, or a yogi. His very presence was a great teaching; words were superfluous. In later years his disciples remarked that while they were with him they would regard him as a comrade, but afterwards would tremble to think of their frivolities in the presence of such a great person. They had convincing proof that the Master could, by his mere wish, kindle in their hearts the love of God and give them His vision.
Through all this fun and frolic, this merriment and frivolity, he always kept before them the shining ideal of God-Consciousness and the path of renunciation. He prescribed ascents steep or graded according to the powers of the climber. He permitted no compromise with the basic principles of purity. An aspirant had to keep his body, mind, senses, and soul unspotted; had to have a sincere love for God and an ever mounting spirit of yearning. The rest would be done by the Mother.
His disciples were of two kinds: the householders, and the young men, some of whom were later to become monks. There was also a small group of women devotees.
--
Suresh Mitra, a beloved disciple whom the Master often addressed as Surendra, had received an English education and held an important post in an English firm. Like many other educated young men of the time, he prided himself on his atheism and led a Bohemian life. He was addicted to drinking. He cherished an exaggerated notion about man's free will. A victim of mental depression, he was brought to Sri Ramakrishna by Ramchandra chandra Dutta. When he heard the Master asking a disciple to practise the virtue of self-surrender to God, he was impressed. But though he tried thenceforth to do so, he was unable to give up his old associates and his drinking. One day the Master said in his presence, "Well, when a man goes to an undesirable place, why doesn't he take the Divine Mother with him?" And to Surendra himself Sri Ramakrishna said: "Why should you drink wine as wine? Offer it to Kali, and then take it as Her prasad, as consecrated drink
. But see that you don't become intoxicated; you must not reel and your thoughts must not wander. At first you will feel ordinary excitement, but soon you will experience spiritual exaltation." Gradually Surendra's entire life was changed. The Master designated him as one of those commissioned by the Divine Mother to defray a great part of his expenses. Surendra's purse was always open for the Master's comfort.
--
Narendra began to talk of his doubt of the very existence of God. His friends thought he had become an atheist, and piously circulated gossip adducing unmentionable motives for his unbelief. His moral character was maligned. Even some of the Master's disciples partly believed the gossip, and Narendra told these to their faces that only a coward believed in God through fear of suffering or hell. But he was distressed to think that Sri Ramakrishna, too, might believe these false reports. His pride revolted. He said to himself: "What does it matter? If a man's good name rests on such slender foundations, I don't care." But later on he was amazed to learn that the Master had never lost faith in him. To a disciple who complained about Narendra's degradation, Sri Ramakrishna replied: "Hush, you fool! The Mother has told me it can never be so. I won't look at you if you speak that way again."
The moment came when Narendra's distress reached its climax. He had gone the whole day without food. As he was returning home in the evening he could hardly lift his tired limbs. He sat down in front of a house in sheer exhaustion, too weak even to think. His mind began to wander. Then, suddenly, a divine power lifted the veil over his soul. He found the solution of the problem of the coexistence of divine justice and misery, the presence of suffering in the creation of a blissful Providence. He felt bodily refreshed, his soul was bathed in peace, and he slept serenely.
--
Finally, there was a handful of fortunate disciples, householders as well as youngsters, who were privileged to spend nights with the Master in his room. They would see him get up early in the morning and walk up and down the room, singing in his sweet voice and tenderly communing with the Mother.
--- INJURY TO THE MASTER'S ARM
--
In the beginning of September 1885 Sri Ramakrishna was moved to Syampukur. Here Narendra organized the young disciples to attend the Master day and night. At first they concealed the Master's illness from their guardians; but when it became more serious they remained with him almost constantly, sweeping aside the objections of their relatives and devoting themselves whole-heartedly to the nursing of their beloved guru. These young men, under the watchful eyes of the Master and the leadership of Narendra, became the antaranga bhaktas, the devotees of Sri Ramakrishna's inner circle. They were privileged to witness many manifestations of the Master's divine powers. Narendra received instructions regarding the propagation of his message after his death.
The Holy Mother — so Sarada Devi had come to be affectionately known by Sri Ramakrishna's devotees — was brought from Dakshineswar to look after the general cooking and to prepare the special diet of the patient. The dwelling space being extremely limited, she had to adapt herself to cramped conditions. At three o'clock in the morning she would finish her bath in the Ganges and then enter a small covered place on the roof, where she spent the whole day cooking and praying. After eleven at night, when the visitors went away, she would come down to her small bedroom on the first floor to enjoy a few hours' sleep. Thus she spent three months, working hard, sleeping little, and praying constantly for the Master's recovery.
0.00 - The Book of Lies Text, #The Book of Lies, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
long been out of print. Its re-issue with the author's
own Commentary gives occasion for a few notes. We
--
He said `But you have printed it in the plainest
language'. I said that I could not have done so
--
The Ante primal Triad which is
NOT-GOD
--
COMMENTARY (The Ante primal Triad)
This is the negative Trinity; its three statements are, in an
--
Gimel is the High priestess of the Tarot. This
chapter gives the initiated feminine point of view; it is
--
universe. This folly is due to the pride of reason.
The Adept concentrates the Microcosm in Tiphareth,
--
Krishna was the principal incarnation of the Indian
Vishnu, the preserver, the principal expounder of
Vedantism.
--
This now introduces the principal character of this
book, Laylah, who is the ultimate feminine symbol, to
--
The card Gimel in the Tarot is the High priestess, the Lady of
Initiation; one might even say, the Holy Guardian Angel.
--
It up, and the high priest invokes!
He eats the second Cake.
--
private peculiarities.
The fact remains that in vice, as in everything else,
--
The first plovers' eggs fetch the highest prices; the
flower of virginity is esteemed by the pandar.
--
and "rathe" O.E. for early. "The rathe primrose"-
Milton.
--
printed.
Thus wrote I, since my One Love was torn from me.
--
God! in what prism may any man analyse my Light?
Immortal are the adepts; and ye hey die-They
--
crapulence. The priests of the gods were carefully
chosen, and carefully trained to fulfill the sacrament of
--
also by its shape the Female principle
[133]
--
developed. Abrahadabra is our primal example of an
interlocked word. We assume that the reader has
--
is the "High priestess".
(37) UNT, Hindustani for Camel. I.e. Would that BABALON might look
--
Hi!, Binah, the feminine principle fertilised. (He by Yod.)
Y?, the Abyss.
--
The price of existence is eternal warfare.(39)
Speaking as an Irishman, I prefer to say: The price
of eternal warfare is existence.
And melancholy as existence is, the price is well
worth paying.
--
print; some re prints available.
Liber Legis. The Eqx., I, vii.
0.00 - THE GOSPEL PREFACE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
He was an educationist all his life both in a spiritual and in a secular sense. After he passed out of College, he took up work as headmaster in a number of schools in succession Narail High School, City School, Ripon College School, Metropolitan School, Aryan School, Oriental School, Oriental Seminary and Model School. The causes of his migration from school to school were that he could not get on with some of the managements on grounds of principles and that often his spiritual mood drew him away to places of pilgrimage for long periods. He worked with some of the most noted public men of the time like Iswar Chandra Vidysgar and Surendranath Banerjee. The latter appointed him as a professor in the City and Ripon Colleges where he taught subjects like English, philosophy, history and economics. In his later days he took over the Morton School, and he spent his time in the staircase room of the third floor of it, administering the school and preaching the message of the Master. He was much respected in educational circles where he was usually referred to as Rector Mahashay. A teacher who had worked under him writes thus in warm appreciation of his teaching methods: "Only when I worked with him in school could I appreciate what a great educationist he was. He would come down to the level of his students when teaching, though he himself was so learned, so talented. Ordinarily teachers confine their instruction to what is given in books without much thought as to whether the student can accept it or not. But M., would first of all gauge how much the student could take in and by what means. He would employ aids to teaching like maps, pictures and diagrams, so that his students could learn by seeing. Thirty years ago (from 1953) when the question of imparting education through the medium of the mother tongue was being discussed, M. had already employed Bengali as the medium of instruction in the Morton School." (M The Apostle and the Evangelist by Swami Nityatmananda Part I. P. 15.)
Imparting secular education was, however, only his profession ; his main concern was with the spiritual regeneration of man a calling for which Destiny seems to have chosen him. From his childhood he was deeply pious, and he used to be moved very much by Sdhus, temples and Durga Puja celebrations. The piety and eloquence of the great Brahmo leader of the times, Keshab Chander Sen, elicited a powerful response from the impressionable mind of Mahendra Nath, as it did in the case of many an idealistic young man of Calcutta, and prepared him to receive the great Light that was to dawn on him with the coming of Sri Ramakrishna into his life.
--
Sri Ramakrishna was a teacher for both the Orders of mankind, Sannysins and householders. His own life offered an ideal example for both, and he left behind disciples who followed the highest traditions he had set in respect of both these ways of life. M., along with Nag Mahashay, exemplified how a householder can rise to the highest level of sagehood. M. was married to Nikunja Devi, a distant relative of Keshab Chander Sen, even when he was reading at College, and he had four children, two sons and two daughters. The responsibility of the family, no doubt, made him dependent on his professional income, but the great devotee that he was, he never compromised with ideals and principles for this reason. Once when he was working as the headmaster in a school managed by the great Vidysgar, the results of the school at the public examination happened to be rather poor, and Vidysgar attri buted it to M's preoccupation with the Master and his consequent failure to attend adequately to the school work. M. at once resigned his post without any thought of the morrow. Within a fortnight the family was in poverty, and M. was one day pacing up and down the verandah of his house, musing how he would feed his children the next day. Just then a man came with a letter addressed to 'Mahendra Babu', and on opening it, M. found that it was a letter from his friend Sri Surendra Nath Banerjee, asking whether he would like to take up a professorship in the Ripon College. In this way three or four times he gave up the job that gave him the wherewithal to support the family, either for upholding principles or for practising spiritual Sadhanas in holy places, without any consideration of the possible dire worldly consequences; but he was always able to get over these difficulties somehow, and the interests of his family never suffered. In spite of his disregard for worldly goods, he was, towards the latter part of his life, in a fairly flourishing condition as the pro prietor of the Morton School which he developed into a noted educational institution in the city. The Lord has said in the Bhagavad Git that in the case of those who think of nothing except Him, He Himself would take up all their material and spiritual responsibilities. M. was an example of the truth of the Lord's promise.
Though his children received proper attention from him, his real family, both during the Master's lifetime and after, consisted of saints, devotees, Sannysins and spiritual aspirants. His life exemplifies the Master's teaching that an ideal householder must be like a good maidservant of a family, loving and caring properly for the children of the house, but knowing always that her real home and children are elsewhere. During the Master's lifetime he spent all his Sundays and other holidays with him and his devotees, and besides listening to the holy talks and devotional music, practised meditation both on the Personal and the Impersonal aspects of God under the direct guidance of the Master. In the pages of the Gospel the reader gets a picture of M.'s spiritual relationship with the Master how from a hazy belief in the Impersonal God of the Brahmos, he was step by step brought to accept both Personality and Impersonality as the two aspects of the same Non-dual Being, how he was convinced of the manifestation of that Being as Gods, Goddesses and as Incarnations, and how he was established in a life that was both of a Jnni and of a Bhakta. This Jnni-Bhakta outlook and way of living became so dominant a feature of his life that Swami Raghavananda, who was very closely associated with him during his last six years, remarks: "Among those who lived with M. in latter days, some felt that he always lived in this constant and conscious union with God even with open eyes (i.e., even in waking consciousness)." (Swami Raghavananda's article on M. in Prabuddha Bharata vol. XXXVII. P. 442.)
--
As time went on and the number of devotees increased, the staircase room and terrace of the 3rd floor of the Morton Institution became a veritable Naimisaranya of modern times, resounding during all hours of the day, and sometimes of night, too, with the word of God coming from the Rishi-like face of M. addressed to the eager God-seekers sitting around. To the devotees who helped him in preparing the text of the Gospel, he would dictate the conversations of the Master in a meditative mood, referring now and then to his diary. At times in the stillness of midnight he would awaken a nearby devotee and tell him: "Let us listen to the words of the Master in the depths of the night as he explains the truth of the Pranava." ( Vednta Kesari XIX P. 142.) Swami Raghavananda, an intimate devotee of M., writes as follows about these devotional sittings: "In the sweet and warm months of A pril and May, sitting under the canopy of heaven on the roof-garden of 50 Amherst Street, surrounded by shrubs and plants, himself sitting in their midst like a Rishi of old, the stars and planets in their courses beckoning us to things infinite and sublime, he would speak to us of the mysteries of God and His love and of the yearning that would rise in the human heart to solve the Eternal Riddle, as exemplified in the life of his Master. The mind, melting under the influence of his soft sweet words of light, would almost transcend the frontiers of limited existence and dare to peep into the infinite. He himself would take the influence of the setting and say,'What a blessed privilege it is to sit in such a setting (pointing to the starry heavens), in the company of the devotees discoursing on God and His love!' These unforgettable scenes will long remain im printed on the minds of his hearers." (Prabuddha Bharata Vol XXXVII P 497.)
About twenty-seven years of his life he spent in this way in the heart of the great city of Calcutta, radiating the Master's thoughts and ideals to countless devotees who flocked to him, and to still larger numbers who read his Kathmrita (English Edition : The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna), the last part of which he had completed before June 1932 and given to the press. And miraculously, as it were, his end also came immediately after he had completed his life's mission. About three months earlier he had come to stay at his home at 13/2 Gurdasprasad Chaudhuary Lane at Thakur Bari, where the Holy Mother had herself installed the Master and where His regular worship was being conducted for the previous 40 years. The night of 3rd June being the Phalahrini Kli Pooja day, M.
0.00 - The Wellspring of Reality, #Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, #R Buckminster Fuller, #Science
There is an inherently minimum set of essential concepts and current information, cognizance of which could lead to our operating our planet Earth to the lasting satisfaction and health of all humanity. With this objective, we set out on our review of the spectrum of significant experiences and seek therein for the greatest meanings as well as for the family of generalized principles governing the realization of their optimum significance to humanity aboard our Sun circling planet Earth.
We must start with scientific fundamentals, and that means with the data of experiments and not with assumed axioms predicated only upon the misleading nature of that which only superficially seems to be obvious. It is the consensus of great scientists that science is the attempt to set in order the facts of experience.
--
But, goaded by youth, we older ones are now taking second looks at almost everything. And that promises many ultimately favorable sur prises. The oldsters do have vast experience banks not available to the youth. Their memory banks, integrated and reviewed, may readily disclose generalized principles of eminent importance.
The word generalization in literature usually means covering too much territory too thinly to be persuasive, let alone convincing. In science, however, a generalization means a principle that has been found to hold true in every special case.
The principle of leverage is a scientific generalization. It makes no difference of what material either the fulcrum or the lever consists-wood, steel, or reinforced concrete. Nor do the special-case sizes of the lever and fulcrum, or of the load pried at one end, or the work applied at the lever's other end in any way alter either the principle or the mathematical regularity of the ratios of physical work advantage that are provided at progressive fulcrum-to-load increments of distance outward from the fulcrum in the opposite direction along the lever's arm at which theoperating effort is applied.
Mind is the weightless and uniquely human faculty that surveys the ever larger inventory of special-case experiences stored in the brain bank and, seeking to identify their intercomplementary significance, from time to time discovers one of the rare scientifically generalizable principles running consistently through all the relevant experience set. The thoughts that discover these principles are weightless and tentative and may also be eternal. They suggest eternity but do not prove it, even though there have been no experiences thus far that imply exceptions to their persistence. It seems also to follow that the more experiences we have, the more chances there are that the mind may discover, on the one hand, additional generalized principles or, on the other hand, exceptions that disqualify one or another of the already catalogued principles that, having heretofore held "true" without contradiction for a long time, had been tentatively conceded to be demonstrating eternal persistence of behavior. Mind's relentless reviewing of the comprehensive brain bank's storage of all our special-case experiences tends both to progressive enlargement and definitive refinement of the catalogue of generalized principles that interaccommodatively govern all transactions of Universe.
It follows that the more specialized society becomes, the less attention does it pay to the discoveries of the mind, which are intuitively beamed toward the brain, there to be received only if the switches are "on." Specialization tends to shut off the wide-band tuning searches and thus to preclude further discovery of the all-powerful generalized principles. Again we see how society's perverse fixation on specialization leads to its extinction. We are so specialized that one man discovers empirically how to release the energy of the atom, while another, unbeknownst to him, is ordered by his political factotum to make an atomic bomb by use of the secretly and anonymously published data. That gives much expedient employment, which solves the politician's momentary problem, but requires that the politicians keep on preparing for further warring with other political states to keep their respective peoples employed. It is also mistakenly assumed that employment is the only means by which humans can earn the right to live, for politicians have yet to discover how much wealth is available for distribution. All this is rationalized on the now scientifically discredited premise that there can never be enough life support for all. Thus humanity's specialization leads only toward warring and such devastating tools, both, visible and invisible, as ultimately to destroy all Earthians.
Only a comprehensive switch from the narrowing specialization and toward an evermore inclusive and refining comprehension by all humanity-regarding all the factors governing omnicontinuing life aboard our spaceship Earth-can bring about reorientation from the self-extinction-bound human trending, and do so within the critical time remaining before we have passed the point of chemical process irretrievability.
--
Anticipating, cooperating with, and employing the forces of nature can be accomplished only by the mind. The wisdom manifest in the omni-interorderliness of the family of generalized principles operative in Universe can be employed only by the highest integrity of engagement of the mind's metaphysical intuiting and formulating capabilities.
We are able to assert that this rationally coordinating system bridge has been established between science and the humanities because we have made adequate experimental testing of it in a computerized world-resource-use-exploration system, which by virtue of the proper inclusion of all the parameters-as guaranteed by the synergetic start with Universe and the progressive differentiation out of all the parts-has demonstrated a number of alternate ways in which it is eminently feasible not only to provide full life support for all humans but also to permit all humans' individual enjoyment of all the Earth without anyone profiting at the expense of another and without any individuals interfering with others.
--
The supposed location of the threshold between animate and inanimate was methodically narrowed down by experimental science until it was confined specifically within the domain of virology. Virologists have been too busy, for instance, with their DNA-RNA genetic code isolatings, to find time to see the synergetic significance to society of the fact that they have found that no physical threshold does in fact exist between animate and inanimate. The possibility of its existence vanished because the supposedly unique physical qualities of both animate and inanimate have persisted right across yesterday's supposed threshold in both directions to permeate one another's-previously perceived to be exclusive- domains. Subsequently, what was animate has become foggier and foggier, and what is inanimate clearer and clearer. All organisms consist physically and in entirety of inherently inanimate atoms. The inanimate alone is not only omnipresent but is alone experimentally demonstrable. Belated news of the elimination of this threshold must be interpreted to mean that whatever life may be, it has not been isolated and thereby identified as residual in the biological cell, as had been supposed by the false assumption that there was a separate physical phenomenoncalled animate within which life existed. No life per se has been isolated. The threshold between animate and inanimate has vanished. Those chemists who are preoccupied in synthesizing the particular atomically structured molecules identified as the prime constituents of humanly employed organisms will, even if they are chemically successful, be as remote from creating life as are automobile manufacturers from creating the human drivers of their automobiles. Only the physical connections and development complexes of distinctly "nonlife" atoms into molecules, into cells, into animals, has been and will be discovered. The genetic coding of the design controls of organic systems offers no more explanation of life than did the specifications of the designs of the telephone system's apparatus and operation explain the nature of the life that communicates weightlessly to life over the only physically ponderable telephone system. Whatever else life may be, we know it is weightless. At the moment of death, no weight is lost. All the chemicals, including the chemist's life ingredients, are present, but life has vanished. The physical is inherently entropic, giving off energy in ever more disorderly ways. The metaphysical is antientropic, methodically marshalling energy. Life is antientropic.
It is spontaneously inquisitive. It sorts out and endeavors to understand.
The overconcentration on details of hyperspecialization has also been responsible for the lack of recognition by science of its inherently mandatory responsibility to reorient all our educational curricula because of the synergetically disclosed, but popularly uncomprehended, significance of the 1956 Nobel prize-winning discovery in physics of the experimental invalidation of the concept of "parity" by which science previously had misassumed that positive-negative complementations consisted exclusively of mirror-imaged behaviors of physical phenomena.
Science's self-assumed responsibility has been self-limited to disclosure to society only of the separate, supposedly physical (because separately weighable) atomic component isolations data. Synergetic integrity would require the scientists to announce that in reality what had been identified heretofore as physical is entirely metaphysical-because synergetically weightless. Metaphysical has been science's designation for all weightless phenomena such as thought. But science has made no experimental finding of any phenomena that can be described as a solid, or as continuous, or as a straight surface plane, or as a straight line, or as infinite anything. We are now synergetically forced to conclude that all phenomena are metaphysical; wherefore, as many have long suspected-like it or not-life is but a dream.Science has found no up or down directions of Universe, yet scientists are personally so ill-coordinated that they all still personally and sensorially see "solids" going up or down-as, for instance, they see the Sun "going down." Sensorially disconnected from their theoretically evolved information, scientists discern no need on their part to suggest any educational reforms to correct the misconceiving that science has tolerated for half a millennium.
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Where else might society turn for advice? Unguided by science, society is allowed to go right on filling its childrens' brain banks with large inventories of competence-devastating misinformation. In order to emerge from its massive ignorance, society will probably have to rely exclusively upon its individuals' own minds to survey the pertinent experimental data-as do all great scientist-artists. This, in effect, is what the intuition of world-around youth is beginning to do. Mind can see that reality is evoluting into weightless metaphysics. The wells pring of reality is the family of weightless generalized principles.
It is essential to release humanity from the false fixations of yesterday, which seem now to bind it to a rationale of action leading only to extinction.
0.01f - FOREWARD, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
That seems to be the privilege of man's knowledge.
It is not necessary to be a man to perceive surrounding things
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
This period of outer retirement was one of intense Sadhana and of intellectual activity it was also one during which he acted on external events, though he was not dedicated outwardly to a public cause. About his own retirement he writes: "But this did not mean, as most people supposed, that he [Sri Aurobindo] had retired into some height of spiritual experience devoid of any further interest in the world or in the fate of India. It could not mean that, for the very principle of his Yoga was not only to realise the Divine and attain to a complete spiritual consciousness, but also to take all life and all world activity into the scope of this spiritual consciousness and action and to base life on the Spirit and give it a spiritual meaning. In his retirement Sri Aurobindo kept a close watch on all that was happening in the world and in India and actively intervened, whenever necessary, but solely with a spiritual force and silent spiritual action; for it is part of the experience of those who have advanced in yoga that besides the ordinary forces and activities of the mind and life and body in Matter, there are other forces and powers that can and do act from behind and from above; there is also a spiritual dynamic power which can be possessed by those who are advanced in spiritual consciousness, though all do not care to possess or, possessing, to use it and this power is greater than any other and more effective. It was this force which, as soon as he attained to it, he used at first only in a limited field of personal work, but afterwards in a constant action upon the world forces."[1]
Twice he found it necessary to go out of his way to make public pronouncements on important world-issues, which shows distinctly that renunciation of life is not a part of his Yoga. "The first was in relation to the Second World War. At the beginning he did not actively concern himself with it, but when it appeared as if Hitler would crush all the forces opposed to him and Nazism dominate the world, he began to intervene."[2]
0.01 - Letters from the Mother to Her Son, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
only the principal lines appear, giving a slightly more logical
aspect to circumstances.
0.01 - Life and Yoga, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Rajayoga, for instance, depends on this perception and experience that our inner elements, combinations, functions, forces, can be separated or dissolved, can be new-combined and set to novel and formerly impossible workings or can be transformed and resolved into a new general synthesis by fixed internal processes. Hathayoga similarly depends on this perception and experience that the vital forces and functions to which our life is normally subjected and whose ordinary operations seem set and indispensable, can be mastered and the operations changed or suspended with results that would otherwise be impossible and that seem miraculous to those who have not seized the rationale of their process. And if in some other of its forms this character of Yoga is less apparent, because they are more intuitive and less mechanical, nearer, like the Yoga of Devotion, to a supernal ecstasy or, like the Yoga of Knowledge, to a supernal infinity of consciousness and being, yet they too start from the use of some principal faculty in us by ways and for ends not contemplated in its everyday spontaneous workings. All methods grouped under the common name of Yoga are special psychological processes founded on a fixed truth of Nature and developing, out of normal functions, powers and results which were always latent but which her ordinary movements do not easily or do not often manifest.
But as in physical knowledge the multiplication of scientific processes has its disadvantages, as that tends, for instance, to develop a victorious artificiality which overwhelms our natural human life under a load of machinery and to purchase certain forms of freedom and mastery at the price of an increased servitude, so the preoccupation with Yogic processes and their exceptional results may have its disadvantages and losses. The
The Conditions of the Synthesis
0.02 - II - The Home of the Guru, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
The Master, the Guru, set at rest the puzzled human mind by his illuminating answers, perhaps even more by his silent consciousness, so that it might be able to pursue unhampered the path of realisation of the Truth. Those ancient discourses answer the mind of man today even across the ages. They have rightly acquired as everything of the past does a certain sanctity. But sometimes that very reverence prevents men from properly evaluating, and living in, the present. This happens when the mind instead of seeking the Spirit looks at the form. For instance, it is not necessary for such discourses that they take place in forest-groves in order to be highly spiritual. Wherever the Master is, there is Light. And guru-griha the house of the Master can be his private dwelling place. So much was this feeling a part of Sri Aurobindo's nature and so particular was he to maintain the personal character of his work that during the first few years after 1923 he did not like his house to be called an 'Ashram', as the word had acquired the sense of a public institution to the modern mind. But there was no doubt that the flower of Divinity had blossomed in him; and disciples, like bees seeking honey, came to him. It is no exaggeration to say that these Evening Talks were to the small company of disciples what the Aranyakas were to the ancient seekers. Seeking the Light, they came to the dwelling place of their Guru, the greatest seer of the age, and found it their spiritual home the home of their parents, for the Mother, his companion in the great mission, had come. And these spiritual parents bestowed upon the disciples freely of their Light, their Consciousness, their Power and their Grace. The modern reader may find that the form of these discourses differs from those of the past but it was bound to be so for the simple reason that the times have changed and the problems that puzzle the modern mind are so different. Even though the disciples may be very imperfect representations of what he aimed at in them, still they are his creations. It is in order to repay, in however infinitesimal a degree, the debt which we owe to him that the effort is made to partake of the joy of his company the Evening Talks with a larger public.
***
0.02 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When I read a novel or anything in print I clearly understand, say, eighty per cent. But when someone speaks,
I have great difficulty in following him. I miss more than
--
While inspecting the stores I found that the principle
of keeping all materials without throwing anything away
--
What you did was good, in principle at least, for really so much
depends on one's choice of words and tone of voice.
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.
Afterwards we may more easily find the one common principle and the one common power from which all derive their being and tendency, towards which all subconsciously move and in which, therefore, it is possible for all consciously to unite.
The progressive self-manifestation of Nature in man, termed in modern language his evolution, must necessarily depend upon three successive elements. There is that which is already evolved; there is that which, still imperfect, still partly fluid, is persistently in the stage of conscious evolution; and there is that which is to be evolved and may perhaps be already
--
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.
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Nor are the disturbances created by her process as great as is often represented. Some of them are the crude beginnings of new manifestations; others are an easily corrected movement of disintegration, often fruitful of fresh activities and always a small price to pay for the far-reaching results that she has in view.
We may perhaps, if we consider all the circumstances, come
--
to this conclusion that mental life, far from being a recent appearance in man, is the swift repetition in him of a previous achievement from which the Energy in the race had undergone one of her deplorable recoils. The savage is perhaps not so much the first forefa ther of civilised man as the degenerate descendant of a previous civilisation. For if the actuality of intellectual achievement is unevenly distributed, the capacity is spread everywhere. It has been seen that in individual cases even the racial type considered by us the lowest, the negro fresh from the perennial barbarism of Central Africa, is capable, without admixture of blood, without waiting for future generations, of the intellectual culture, if not yet of the intellectual accomplishment of the dominant European. Even in the mass men seem to need, in favourable circumstances, only a few generations to cover ground that ought apparently to be measured in the terms of millenniums. Either, then, man by his privilege as a mental being is exempt from the full burden of the tardy laws of evolution or else he already represents and with helpful conditions and in the right stimulating atmosphere can always display a high level of material capacity for the activities of the intellectual life.
It is not mental incapacity, but the long rejection or seclusion from opportunity and withdrawal of the awakening impulse that creates the savage. Barbarism is an intermediate sleep, not an original darkness.
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Do such psychological conceptions correspond to anything real and possible? All Yoga asserts them as its ultimate experience and supreme aim. They form the governing principles of our highest possible state of consciousness, our widest possible range of existence. There is, we say, a harmony of supreme faculties, corresponding roughly to the psychological faculties of revelation, inspiration and intuition, yet acting not in the intuitive reason or the divine mind, but on a still higher plane, which see Truth directly face to face, or rather live in the truth of things both universal and transcendent and are its formulation and luminous activity. And these faculties are the light of a conscious existence superseding the egoistic and itself both cosmic and transcendent, the nature of which is Bliss. These are obviously divine and, as man is at present apparently constituted, superhuman states of consciousness and activity. A trinity of transcendent existence, self-awareness and self-delight7 is, indeed, the metaphysical description of the supreme Atman, the self-formulation, to our awakened knowledge, of the Unknowable whether conceived as a pure Impersonality or as a cosmic Personality manifesting the universe. But in Yoga they are regarded also in their psychological aspects as states of subjective existence to which our waking consciousness is now alien, but which dwell in us in a superconscious plane and to which, therefore, we may always ascend.
For, as is indicated by the name, causal body (karan.a), as opposed to the two others which are instruments (karan.a), this crowning manifestation is also the source and effective power of all that in the actual evolution has preceded it. Our mental activities are, indeed, a derivation, selection and, so long as they are divided from the truth that is secretly their source, a deformation of the divine knowledge. Our sensations and emotions have the same relation to the Bliss, our vital forces and actions to the aspect of Will or Force assumed by the divine consciousness, our physical being to the pure essence of that Bliss and
0.03 - III - The Evening Sittings, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
The long period of the Second World War with all its vicissitudes passed through these years. It was a priceless experience to see how he devoted his energies to the task of saving humanity from the threatened reign of Nazism. It was a practical lesson of solid work done for humanity without any thought of return or reward, without even letting humanity know what he was doing for it! Thus he lived the Divine and showed us how the Divine cares for the world, how He comes down and works for man. I shall never forget how he who was at one time in his own words "not merely a non-co-operator but an enemy of British Imperialism" bestowed such anxious care on the health of Churchill, listening carefully to the health-bulletins! It was the work of the Divine, it was the Divine's work for the world.
There were no formal evening sittings during these years, but what appeared to me important in our informal talks was recorded and has been incorporated in this book.
0.03 - Letters to My little smile, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
turn your back on your soul, and that simply out of pride!
Mother, rid me of this discouragement and this revolt,
--
have had in me a kind of pride in my work: "I make
finer things than anyone else here", something like that.
--
made by someone else, my pride received a good hard
blow. Isn't that true? (Mother, here I recall a sentence I
--
Certain conditions in us (and pride is one of them) automatically
invite blows from the surrounding circumstances. And it is up
--
Beware of false pride - it leads only to ruin. And do not
belittle the Divine's love, because without it nothing is worth
0.03 - The Threefold Life, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
In each of these forms Nature acts both individually and collectively; for the Eternal affirms Himself equally in the single form and in the group-existence, whether family, clan and nation or groupings dependent on less physical principles or the supreme group of all, our collective humanity. Man also may seek his own individual good from any or all of these spheres of activity, or identify himself in them with the collectivity and live for it, or, rising to a truer perception of this complex universe, harmonise the individual realisation with the collective aim. For as it is the right relation of the soul with the Supreme, while it is in the universe, neither to assert egoistically its separate being nor to blot itself out in the Indefinable, but to realise its unity with the Divine and the world and unite them in the individual, so the right relation of the individual with the collectivity is neither to pursue egoistically his own material or mental progress or spiritual salvation without regard to his fellows, nor for the sake of the community to suppress or maim his proper development, but to sum up in himself all its best and completest possibilities and pour them out by thought, action and all other means on his surroundings so that the whole race may approach nearer to the attainment of its supreme personalities.
It follows that the object of the material life must be to fulfil, above all things, the vital aim of Nature. The whole aim of the material man is to live, to pass from birth to death with as much comfort or enjoyment as may be on the way, but anyhow to live.
--
But by that very utility such men and the life they lead are condemned to be limited, irrationally conservative and earthbound. The customary routine, the customary institutions, the inherited or habitual forms of thought, - these things are the life-breath of their nostrils. They admit and jealously defend the changes compelled by the progressive mind in the past, but combat with equal zeal the changes that are being made by it in the present. For to the material man the living progressive thinker is an ideologue, dreamer or madman. The old Semites who stoned the living prophets and adored their memories when dead, were the very incarnation of this instinctive and unintelligent principle in Nature. In the ancient Indian distinction between the once born and the twice born, it is to this material man that the former description can be applied. He does Nature's inferior works; he assures the basis for her higher activities; but not to him easily are opened the glories of her second birth.
Yet he admits so much of spirituality as has been enforced on his customary ideas by the great religious outbursts of the past and he makes in his scheme of society a place, venerable though not often effective, for the priest or the learned theologian who can be trusted to provide him with a safe and ordinary spiritual pabulum. But to the man who would assert for himself the liberty of spiritual experience and the spiritual life, he assigns, if he admits him at all, not the vestment of the priest but the robe of the Sannyasin. Outside society let him exercise his dangerous freedom. So he may even serve as a human lightning-rod receiving the electricity of the Spirit and turning it away from the social edifice.
Nevertheless it is possible to make the material man and his life moderately progressive by im printing on the material mind the custom of progress, the habit of conscious change, the fixed idea of progression as a law of life. The creation by this means of progressive societies in Europe is one of the greatest triumphs of Mind over Matter. But the physical nature has its revenge; for the progress made tends to be of the grosser and more outward kind and its attempts at a higher or a more rapid movement bring about great wearinesses, swift exhaustions, startling recoils.
0.04 - The Systems of Yoga, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
HESE relations between the different psychological divisions of the human being and these various utilities and objects of effort founded on them, such as we have seen them in our brief survey of the natural evolution, we shall find repeated in the fundamental principles and methods of the different schools of Yoga. And if we seek to combine and harmonise their central practices and their predominant aims, we shall find that the basis provided by Nature is still our natural basis and the condition of their synthesis.
In one respect Yoga exceeds the normal operation of cosmic
--
For if, leaving aside the complexities of their particular processes, we fix our regard on the central principle of the chief schools of Yoga still prevalent in India, we find that they arrange themselves in an ascending order which starts from the lowest rung of the ladder, the body, and ascends to the direct contact between the individual soul and the transcendent and universal
Self. Hathayoga selects the body and the vital functionings as its instruments of perfection and realisation; its concern is with the gross body. Rajayoga selects the mental being in its different parts as its lever-power; it concentrates on the subtle body. The triple Path of Works, of Love and of Knowledge uses some part of the mental being, will, heart or intellect as a starting-point and seeks by its conversion to arrive at the liberating Truth,
--
The results of Hathayoga are thus striking to the eye and impose easily on the vulgar or physical mind. And yet at the end we may ask what we have gained at the end of all this stupendous labour. The object of physical Nature, the preservation of the mere physical life, its highest perfection, even in a certain sense the capacity of a greater enjoyment of physical living have been carried out on an abnormal scale. But the weakness of Hathayoga is that its laborious and difficult processes make so great a demand on the time and energy and impose so complete a severance from the ordinary life of men that the utilisation of its results for the life of the world becomes either impracticable or is extraordinarily restricted. If in return for this loss we gain another life in another world within, the mental, the dynamic, these results could have been acquired through other systems, through Rajayoga, through Tantra, by much less laborious methods and held on much less exacting terms. On the other hand the physical results, increased vitality, prolonged youth, health, longevity are of small avail if they must be held by us as misers of ourselves, apart from the common life, for their own sake, not utilised, not thrown into the common sum of the world's activities. Hathayoga attains large results, but at an exorbitant price and to very little purpose.
Rajayoga takes a higher flight. It aims at the liberation and perfection not of the bodily, but of the mental being, the control of the emotional and sensational life, the mastery of the whole apparatus of thought and consciousness. It fixes its eyes on the citta, that stuff of mental consciousness in which all these activities arise, and it seeks, even as Hathayoga with its physical material, first to purify and to tranquillise. The normal state of man is a condition of trouble and disorder, a kingdom either at war with itself or badly governed; for the lord, the Purusha, is subjected to his ministers, the faculties, subjected even to his subjects, the instruments of sensation, emotion, action, enjoyment. Swarajya, self-rule, must be substituted for this subjection.
--
its object which our philosophy asserts as the primary cosmic energy and the method of divine action upon the world. By this capacity the Yogin, already possessed of the highest supracosmic knowledge and experience in the state of trance, is able in the waking state to acquire directly whatever knowledge and exercise whatever mastery may be useful or necessary to his activities in the objective world. For the ancient system of
Rajayoga aimed not only at Swarajya, self-rule or subjective empire, the entire control by the subjective consciousness of all the states and activities proper to its own domain, but included
--
Rajayoga in that it does not occupy itself with the elaborate training of the whole mental system as the condition of perfection, but seizes on certain central principles, the intellect, the heart, the will, and seeks to convert their normal operations by turning them away from their ordinary and external preoccupations and activities and concentrating them on the Divine. It
38
--
Lord, with our human life as its final stage, pursued through the different phases of self-concealment and self-revelation. The principle of Bhakti Yoga is to utilise all the normal relations of human life into which emotion enters and apply them no longer to transient worldly relations, but to the joy of the All-Loving, the All-Beautiful and the All-Blissful. Worship and meditation are used only for the preparation and increase of intensity of the divine relationship. And this Yoga is catholic in its use of all emotional relations, so that even enmity and opposition to God, considered as an intense, impatient and perverse form of Love, is conceived as a possible means of realisation and salvation.
This path, too, as ordinarily practised, leads away from worldexistence to an absorption, of another kind than the Monist's, in the Transcendent and Supra-cosmic.
0.05 - The Synthesis of the Systems, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Y THE very nature of the principal Yogic schools, each covering in its operations a part of the complex human integer and attempting to bring out its highest possibilities, it will appear that a synthesis of all of them largely conceived and applied might well result in an integral Yoga. But they are so disparate in their tendencies, so highly specialised and elaborated in their forms, so long confirmed in the mutual opposition of their ideas and methods that we do not easily find how we can arrive at their right union.
An undiscriminating combination in block would not be a synthesis, but a confusion. Nor would a successive practice of each of them in turn be easy in the short span of our human life and with our limited energies, to say nothing of the waste of labour implied in so cumbrous a process. Sometimes, indeed,
--
Yogic disciplines and seizing rather on some central principle common to all which will include and utilise in the right place and proportion their particular principles, and on some central dynamic force which is the common secret of their divergent methods and capable therefore of organising a natural selection and combination of their varied energies and different utilities.
This was the aim which we set before ourselves at first when we entered upon our comparative examination of the methods of
--
Yogic system which is in its nature synthetical and starts from a great central principle of Nature, a great dynamic force of
Nature; but it is a Yoga apart, not a synthesis of other schools.
--
liberating itself by joyous acceptance in power and practice of its own energies, elements and potentialities. But in both paths there was in the end an obscuration of principles, a deformation of symbols and a fall.
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 hitherto 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 rather 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.
We have in this central Tantric conception one side of the truth, the worship of the Energy, the Shakti, as the sole effective force for all attainment. We get the other extreme in the Vedantic conception of the Shakti as a power of Illusion and in the search after the silent inactive Purusha as the means of liberation from the deceptions created by the active Energy. But in the integral conception the Conscious Soul is the Lord, the Nature-Soul is his executive Energy. Purusha is of the nature of Sat, the being of conscious self-existence pure and infinite; Shakti or Prakriti is of the nature of Chit, - it is power of the Purusha's self-conscious existence, pure and infinite. The relation of the two exists between the poles of rest and action. When the Energy is absorbed
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
--
the senses, the principal aim of which is the purgation or stripping of the soul of its
imperfections and the preparation of it for fruitive union. The Passive Night of
--
between the principles of sound reason and the sublimest manifestations of Divine
grace.
0.06 - Letters to a Young Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This prison that separates me from You and from the
Divine must be broken. O Mother, I don't know what I
--
this supreme Grace the price it deserves.
Of each one is asked only what he has, what he is, nothing more,
0.07 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
human beings: the pride and blindness of the physical mind.
8 July 1935
--
overwhelming divine love? Your love itself is a priceless
gift. Why then these other gifts?
0.08 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
is physical energy, we absorb it principally through respiration,
and all that facilitates and improves respiration increases at the
--
In principle, to judge the activities of sleep one needs the same
capacity of discrimination as to judge the waking activities.
0.09 - Letters to a Young Teacher, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
any ambition, pride or desire, and so long as it does not receive
the Divine command to take up the path, it waits patiently,
--
These days they print your symbol and Sri Aurobindo's name on all sorts of things, on all the thousand
and one little trifles of daily life which have to be thrown
01.01 - A Yoga of the Art of Life, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
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
Swalpamapyasya dharmasya tryate mahato bhayt1
01.01 - Sri Aurobindo - The Age of Sri Aurobindo, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Well, the view expressed in these words is not a new revelation. It has been the cry of suffering humanity through the ages. Man has borne his cross since the beginning of his creation through want and privation, through disease and bereavement, through all manner of turmoil and tribulation, and yetmirabile dictuat the same time, in the very midst of those conditions, he has been aspiring and yearning for something else, ignoring the present, looking into the beyond. It is not the prosperous and the more happily placed in life who find it more easy to turn to the higher life, it is not the wealthiest who has the greatest opportunity to pursue a spiritual idea. On the contrary, spiritual leaders have thought and experienced otherwise.
Apart from the well-recognised fact that only in distress does the normal man think of God and non-worldly things, the real matter, however, is that the inner life is a thing apart and follows its own line of movement, does not depend upon, is not subservient to, the kind of outer life that one may happen to live under. The Bible says indeed, "Blessed are the poor, blessed are they that mourn"... But the Upanishad declares, on the other hand, that even as one lies happily on a royal couch, bathes and anoints himself with all the perfumes of the world, has attendants all around and always to serve him, even so, one can be full of the divine consciousness from the crown of the head to the tip of his toe-nail. In fact, a poor or a prosperous life is in no direct or even indirect ratio to a spiritual life. All the miseries and immediate needs of a physical life do not and cannot detain or delay one from following the path of the ideal; nor can all your riches be a burden to your soul and overwhelm it, if it chooses to walk onit can not only walk, but soar and fly with all that knapsack on its back.
01.01 - The One Thing Needful, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
To find the Divine is indeed the first reason for seeking the spiritual Truth and the spiritual life; it is the one thing indispensable and all the resit is nothing without it. The Divine once found, to manifest Him, - that is, first of all to transform one's own limited consciousness into the Divine Consciousness, to live in the infinite Peace, Light, Love, Strength, Bliss, to become that in one's essential nature and, as a consequence, to be its vessel, channel, instrument in one's active nature. To bring into activity the principle of oneness on the material plane or to work for humanity is a mental mistranslation of the Truth - these things cannot be the first true object of spiritual seeking. We must find the Self, the Divine, then only can we know what is the work the Self or the Divine demands from us. Until then our life and action can only be a help or a means towards finding the Divine and it ought not to have any other purpose. As we grow in inner consciousness, or as the spiritual Truth of the Divine grows in us, our life and action must indeed more and more flow from that, be one with that. But to decide beforeh and by our limited mental conceptions what they must be is to hamper the growth of the spiritual Truth within. As that grows we shall feel the Divine Light and Truth, the Divine Power and Force, the Divine Purity and Peace working within us, dealing with our actions as well as our consciousness, making use of them to reshape us into the Divine Image, removing the dross, substituting the pure Gold of the Spirit. Only when the Divine Presence is there in us always and the consciousness transformed, can we have the right to say that we are ready to manifest the Divine on the material plane. To hold up a mental ideal or principle and impose that on the inner working brings the danger of limiting ourselves to a mental realisation or of impeding or even falsifying by a halfway formation the truth growth into the full communion and union with the Divine and the free and intimate outflowing of His will in our life. This is a mistake of orientation to which the mind of today is especially prone. It is far better to approach the Divine for the Peace or Light or Bliss that the realisation of Him gives than to bring in these minor things which can divert us from the one thing needful. The divinisation of the material life also as well as the inner life is part of what we see as the Divine Plan, but it can only be fulfilled by an ourflowing of the inner realisation, something that grows from within outwards, not by the working out of a mental principle.
The realisation of the Divine is the one thing needful and the rest is desirable only in so far as it helps or leads towards that or when it is realised, extends and manifests the realisation. Manifestation and organisation of the whole life for the divine work, - first, the sadhana personal and collective necessary for the realisation and a common life of God-realised men, secondly, for help to the world to move towards that, and to live in the Light - is the whole meaning and purpose of my Yoga. But the realisation is the first need and it is that round which all the rest moves, for apart from it all the rest would have no meaning.
--
... the principle of this Yoga is not perfection of the human nature as it is but a psychic and spiritual transformation of all the parts of the being through the action of an inner consciousness and then of a higher consciousness which works on them, throws out the old movements or changes them into the image of its own and so transmutes lower into higher nature. It is not so much the perfection of the intellect as a transcendence of it, a transformation of the mind, the substitution of a larger greater principle of knowledge - and so with all the rest of the being.
This is a slow and difficult process; the road is long and it is hard to establish even the necessary basis. The old existing nature resists and obstructs and difficulties rise one after another and repeatedly till they are overcome. It is therefore necessary to be sure that this is the path to which one is called before one finally decides to tread it.
01.01 - The Symbol Dawn, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The wide-winged hymn of a great priestly wind
Arose and failed upon the altar hills;
--
Her own calamity its private sign,
Of her pangs she made a mystic poignant sword.
01.02 - Natures Own Yoga, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This process of a developing consciousness in Nature is precisely what is known as Evolution. It is the bringing out and fixing of a higher and higher principle of consciousness, hitherto involved and concealed behind the veil, in the earth consciousness as a dynamic factor in Nature's manifest working. Thus, the first stage of evolution is the status of inconscient Matter, of the lifeless physical elements; the second stage is that of the semi-conscious life in the plant, the third that of the conscious life in the animal, and finally the fourth stage, where we stand at present, is that of the embodied self-conscious life in man.
The course of evolution has not come to a stop with man and the next stage, Sri Aurobindo says, which Nature envisages and is labouring to bring out and establish is the life now superconscious to us, embodied in a still higher type of created being, that of the superman or god-man. The principle of consciousness which will determine the nature and build of this new, being is a spiritual principle beyond the mental principle which man now incarnates: it may be called the Supermind or Gnosis.
For, till now Mind has been the last term of the evolutionary consciousness Mind as developed in man is the highest instrument built up and organised by Nature through which the self-conscious being can express itself. That is why the Buddha said: Mind is the first of all principles, Mind is the highest of all principles: indeed Mind is the constituent of all principlesmana puvvangam dhamm1. The consciousness beyond mind has not yet been made a patent and dynamic element in the life upon earth; it has been glimpsed or entered into in varying degrees and modes by saints and seers; it has cast its derivative illuminations in the creative activities of poets and artists, in the finer and nobler urges of heroes and great men of action. But the utmost that has been achieved, the summit reached in that direction, as exampled in spiritual disciplines, involves a withdrawal from the evolutionary cycle, a merging and an absorption into the static status that is altogether beyond it, that lies, as it were, at the other extreme the Spirit in itself, Atman, Brahman, Sachchidananda, Nirvana, the One without a second, the Zero without a first.
The first contact that one has with this static supra-reality is through the higher ranges of the mind: a direct and closer communion is established through a plane which is just above the mind the Overmind, as Sri Aurobindo calls it. The Overmind dissolves or transcends the ego-consciousness which limits the being to its individualised formation bounded by an outward and narrow frame or sheath of mind, life and body; it reveals the universal Self and Spirit, the cosmic godhead and its myriad forces throwing up myriad forms; the world-existence there appears as a play of ever-shifting veils upon the face of one ineffable reality, as a mysterious cycle of perpetual creation and destructionit is the overwhelming vision given by Sri Krishna to Arjuna in the Gita. At the same time, the initial and most intense experience which this cosmic consciousness brings is the extreme relativity, contingency and transitoriness of the whole flux, and a necessity seems logically and psychologically imperative to escape into the abiding substratum, the ineffable Absoluteness.
--
But the initial illusory consciousness of the Overmind need not at all lead to the static Brahmic consciousness or Sunyam alone. As a matter of fact, there is in this particular processes of consciousness a hiatus between the two, between Maya and Brahman, as though one has to leap from the one into the other somehow. This hiatus is filled up in Sri Aurobindo's Yoga by the principle of Supermind, not synthetic-analytic2 in knowledge like Overmind and the highest mental intelligence, but inescapably unitarian even in the utmost diversity. Supermind is the Truth-consciousness at once static and dynamic, self-existent and creative: in Supermind the Brahmic consciousness Sachchidanandais ever self-aware and ever manifested and embodied in fundamental truth-powers and truth-forms for the play of creation; it is the plane where the One breaks out into the Many and the Many still remain one, being and knowing themselves to be but various self-expressions of the One; it develops the spiritual archetypes, the divine names and forms of all individualisations of an evolving existence.
SRI AUROBINDO
--
It is also to be noted that as mind is not the last limit of the march of evolution, even so the progress of evolution will not stop with the manifestation and embodiment of the Supermind. There are other still higher principles beyond and they too presumably await manifestation and embodiment on earth. Creation has no beginning in time (andi) nor has it an end (ananta). It is an eternal process of the unravelling of the mysteries of the Infinite. Only, it may be said that with the Supermind the creation here enters into a different order of existence. Before it there was the domain of Ignorance, after it will come the reign of Light and Knowledge. Mortality has been the governing principle of life on earth till now; it will be replaced by the consciousness of immortality. Evolution has proceeded through struggle and pain; hereafter it will be a spontaneous, harmonious and happy flowering.
Now, with regard to the time that the present stage of evolution is likely to take for its fulfilment, one can presume that since or if the specific urge and stress has manifested and come up to the front, this very fact would show that the problem has become a problem of actuality, and even that it can be dealt with as if it had to be solved now or never. We have said that in man, with man's self-consciousness or the consciousness of the psychic being as the instrument, evolution has attained the capacity of a swift and concentrated process, which is the process of Yoga; the process will become swifter and more concentrated, the more that instrument grows and gathers power and is infused with the divine afflatus. In fact, evolution has been such a process of gradual acceleration in tempo from the very beginning. The earliest stage, for example, the stage of dead Matter, of the play of the mere chemical forces was a very, very long one; it took millions and millions of years to come to the point when the manifestation of life became possible. But the period of elementary life, as manifested in the plant world that followed, although it too lasted a good many millions of years, was much briefer than the preceding periodit ended with the advent of the first animal form. The age of animal life, again, has been very much shorter than that of the plant life before man came upon earth. And man is already more than a million or two years oldit is fully time that a higher order of being should be created out of him.
--
The Supermind is not merely synthetic. The Supermind is synthetic only on the lowest spaces of itself, where it has to prepare the principles of Overmind,synthesis is necessary only where analysis has taken place, one has dissected everything, put in pieces (analysis), so one has to piece together. But Supermind is unitarian, has never divided up, so it does not need to add and piece together the parts and fragments. It has always held the conscious Many together in the conscious One.
***
01.02 - Sri Aurobindo - Ahana and Other Poems, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Poetry as an expression of thought-power, poetry weighted with intelligence and rationalised knowledge that seems to me to be the end and drive, the secret sense of all the mystery of modern technique. The combination is risky, but not impossible. In the spiritual domain the Gita achieved this miracle to a considerable degree. Still, the power of intelligence and reason shown by Vyasa is of a special order: it is a sublimated function of the faculty, something aloof and other-worldly"introvert", a modern mind would term it that is to say, something a priori, standing in its own au thenticity and self-sufficiency. A modern intelligence would be more scientific, let us use the word, more matter-of-fact and sense-based: the mental light should not be confined in its ivory tower, however high that may be, but brought down and placed at the service of our perception and appreciation and explanation of things human and terrestrial; made immanent in the mundane and the ephemeral, as they are commonly called. This is not an impossibility. Sri Aurobindo seems to have done the thing. In him we find the three terms of human consciousness arriving at an absolute fusion and his poetry is a wonderful example of that fusion. The three terms are the spiritual, the intellectual or philosophical and the physical or sensational. The intellectual, or more generally, the mental, is the intermediary, the Paraclete, as he himself will call it later on in a poem9 magnificently exemplifying the point we are trying to make out the agent who negotiates, bridges and harmonises the two other firmaments usually supposed to be antagonistic and incompatible.
Indeed it would be wrong to associate any cold ascetic nudity to the spiritual body of Sri Aurobindo. His poetry is philosophic, abstract, no doubt, but every philosophy has its practice, every abstract thing its concrete application,even as the soul has its body; and the fusion, not mere union, of the two is very characteristic in him. The deepest and unseizable flights of thought he knows how to clo the with a Kalidasian richness of imagery, or a Keatsean gusto of sensuousness:
01.02 - The Issue, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
And flung back on his naked primal need,
He at length must cast from him his surface soul
--
And the mighty wildness of the primitive earth
And the brooding multitude of patient trees
--
A priestess of immaculate ecstasies
Inspired and ruled from Truth's revealing vault
--
An Inquisition of the priests of Night
In judgment sit on the adventurer soul,
01.02 - The Object of the Integral Yoga, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
... the object of the Yoga is to enter into and be possessed by the Divine Presence and Consciousness, to love the Divine for the Divine's sake alone, to be turned in our nature into nature of the Divine and in our will and works and life to be the instrument of the Divine. Its object is not to be a great Yogi or a superman (although that may come) or to grab at the Divine for the sake of the ego's power, pride or pleasure.
It is not for salvation though liberation comes by it and all else may come; but these must not be our objects. The Divine alone is our object.
To come to this Yoga merely with the idea of being a superman would be an act of vital egoism which would defeat its own object. Those who put this object in the front of their preoccupations invariably come to grief, spiritually and otherwise. The aim of this Yoga is, first, to enter into the divine consciousness by merging into it the separative ego (incidentally, in doing so one finds one's true individual self which is not the limited, vain and selfish human ego but a portion of the Divine) and, secondly, to bring down the supramental consciousness on earth to transform mind, life and body. All else can be only a result of these two aims, not the primary object of the Yoga.
The only creation for which there is any place here is the supramental, the bringing of the divine Truth down on the earth, not only into the mind and vital but into the body and into
01.03 - Mystic Poetry, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Among the ancients, strictly speaking, the later classical Lucretius was a remarkable phenomenon. By nature he was a poet, but his mental interest lay in metaphysical speculation, in philosophy, and unpoetical business. He turned away from arms and heroes, wrath and love and, like Seneca and Aurelius, gave himself up to moralising and philosophising, delving 'into the mystery, the why and the how and the whither of it all. He chose a dangerous subject for his poetic inspiration and yet it cannot be said that his attempt was a failure. Lucretius was not a religious or spiritual poet; he was rather Marxian,atheistic, materialistic. The dialectical materialism of today could find in him a lot of nourishment and support. But whatever the content, the manner has made a whole difference. There was an idealism, a clarity of vision and an intensity of perception, which however scientific apparently, gave his creation a note, an accent, an atmosphere high, tense, aloof, ascetic, at times bordering on the supra-sensual. It was a high light, a force of consciousness that at its highest pitch had the ring and vibration of something almost spiritual. For the basic principle of Lucretius' inspiration is a large thought-force, a tense perception, a taut nervous reactionit is not, of course, the identity in being with the inner realities which is the hallmark of a spiritual consciousness, yet it is something on the way towards that.
There have been other philosophical poets, a good number of them since thennot merely rationally philosophical, as was the vogue in the eighteenth century, but metaphysically philosophical, that is to say, inquiring not merely into the phenomenal but also into the labyrinths of the noumenal, investigating not only what meets the senses, but also things that are behind or beyond. Amidst the earlier efflorescence of this movement the most outstanding philosopher poet is of course Dante, the Dante of Paradiso, a philosopher in the mediaeval manner and to the extent a lesser poet, according to some. Goe the is another, almost in the grand modern manner. Wordsworth is full of metaphysics from the crown of his head to the tip of his toe although his poetry, perhaps the major portion of it, had to undergo some kind of martyrdom because of it. And Shelley, the supremely lyric singer, has had a very rich undertone of thought-content genuinely metaphysical. And Browning and Arnold and Hardyindeed, if we come to the more moderns, we have to cite the whole host of them, none can be excepted.
--
Man's consciousness is further to rise from the mental to over-mental regions. Accordingly, his life and activities and along with that his artistic creations too will take on a new tone and rhythm, a new mould and constitution even. For this transition, the higher mentalwhich is normally the field of philosophical and idealistic activitiesserves as the Paraclete, the Intercessor; it takes up the lower functionings of the consciousness, which are intense in their own way, but narrow and turbid, and gives, by purifying and enlarging, a wider frame, a more luminous pattern, a more subtly articulated , form for the higher, vaster and deeper realities, truths and harmonies to express and manifest. In the old-world spiritual and mystic poets, this intervening medium was overlooked for evident reasons, for human reason or even intelligence is a double-edged instrument, it can make as well as mar, it has a light that most often and naturally shuts off other higher lights beyond it. So it was bypassed, some kind of direct and immediate contact was sought to be established between the normal and the transcendental. The result was, as I have pointed out, a pure spiritual poetry, on the one hand, as in the Upanishads, or, on the other, religious poetry of various grades and denominations that spoke of the spiritual but in the terms and in the manner of the mundane, at least very much coloured and dominated by the latter. Vyasa was the great legendary figure in India who, as is shown in his Mahabharata, seems to have been one of the pioneers, if not the pioneer, to forge and build the missing link of Thought Power. The exemplar of the manner is the Gita. Valmiki's represented a more ancient and primary inspiration, of a vast vital sensibility, something of the kind that was at the basis of Homer's genius. In Greece it was Socrates who initiated the movement of speculative philosophy and the emphasis of intellectual power slowly began to find expression in the later poets, Sophocles and Euripides. But all these were very simple beginnings. The moderns go in for something more radical and totalitarian. The rationalising element instead of being an additional or subordinate or contri buting factor, must itself give its norm and form, its own substance and manner to the creative activity. Such is the present-day demand.
The earliest preoccupation of man was religious; even when he concerned himself with the world and worldly things, he referred all that to the other world, thought of gods and goddesses, of after-death and other where. That also will be his last and ultimate preoccupation though in a somewhat different way, when he has passed through a process of purification and growth, a "sea-change". For although religion is an aspiration towards the truth and reality beyond or behind the world, it is married too much to man's actual worldly nature and carries always with it the shadow of profanity.
--
This, I say, is something different from the religious and even from the mystic. It is away from the merely religious, because it is naked of the vesture of humanity (in spite of a human face that masks it at times) ; it is something more than the merely mystic, for it does not stop being a signpost or an indication to the Beyond, but is itself the presence and embodiment of the Beyond. The mystic gives us, we can say, the magic of the Infinite; what I term the spiritual, the spiritual proper, gives in addition the logic of the Infinite. At least this is what distinguishes modern spiritual consciousness from the ancient, that is, Upanishadic spiritual consciousness. The Upanishad gives expression to the spiritual consciousness in its original and pristine purity and perfection, in its essential simplicity. It did not buttress itself with any logic. It is the record of fundamental experiences and there was no question of any logical exposition. But, as I have said, the modern mind requires and demands a logical element in its perceptions and presentations. Also it must needs be a different kind of logic that can satisfy and satisfy wholly the deeper and subtler movements of a modern consciousness. For the philosophical poet of an earlier age, when he had recourse to logic, it was the logic of the finite that always gave him the frame, unless he threw the whole thing overboard and leaped straight into the occult, the illogical and the a logical, like Blake, for instance. Let me illustrate and compare a little. When the older poet explains indriyani hayan ahuh, it is an allegory he resorts to, it is the logic of the finite he marshals to point to the infinite and the beyond. The stress of reason is apparent and effective too, but the pattern is what we are normally familiar with the movement, we can say, is almost Aristotelian in its rigour. Now let us turn to the following:
Our life is a holocaust of the Supreme. ||26.15||
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To sum up and recapitulate. The evolution of the poetic expression in man has ever been an attempt at a return and a progressive approach to the spiritual source of poetic inspiration, which was also the original, though somewhat veiled, source from the very beginning. The movement has followed devious waysstrongly negative at timeseven like man's life and consciousness in general of which it is an organic member; but the ultimate end and drift seems to have been always that ideal and principle even when fallen on evil days and evil tongues. The poet's ideal in the dawn of the world was, as the Vedic Rishi sang, to raise things of beauty in heaven by his poetic power,kavi kavitv divi rpam sajat. Even a Satanic poet, the inaugurator, in a way, of modernism and modernistic consciousness, Charles Baudelaire, thus admonishes his spirit:
"Flyaway, far from these morbid miasmas, go and purify yourself in the higher air and drink, like a pure and divine liquor, the clear fire that fills the limpid spaces."18
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Poetry, actually however, has been, by and large, a profane and mundane affair: for it expresses the normal man's perceptions and feelings and experiences, human loves and hates and desires and ambitions. True. And yet there has also always been an attempt, a tendency to deal with them in such a way as can bring calm and puritykatharsisnot trouble and confusion. That has been the purpose of all Art from the ancient days. Besides, there has been a growth and development in the historic process of this katharsis. As by the sublimation of his bodily and vital instincts and impulses., man is gradually growing into the mental, moral and finally spiritual consciousness, even so the artistic expression of his creative activity has followed a similar line of transformation. The first and original transformation happened with religious poetry. The religious, one may say, is the profane inside out; that is to say, the religious man has almost the same tone and temper, the same urges and passions, only turned Godward. Religious poetry too marks a new turn and development of human speech, in taking the name of God human tongue acquires a new plasticity and flavour that transform or give a new modulation even to things profane and mundane it speaks of. Religious means at bottom the colouring of mental and moral idealism. A parallel process of katharsis is found in another class of poetic creation, viz., the allegory. Allegory or parable is the stage when the higher and inner realities are expressed wholly in the modes and manner, in the form and character of the normal and external, when moral, religious or spiritual truths are expressed in the terms and figures of the profane life. The higher or the inner ideal is like a loose clothing upon the ordinary consciousness, it does not fit closely or fuse. In the religious, however, the first step is taken for a mingling and fusion. The mystic is the beginning of a real fusion and a considerable ascension of the lower into the higher. The philosopher poet follows another line for the same katharsisinstead of uplifting emotions and sensibility, he proceeds by thought-power, by the ideas and principles that lie behind all movements and give a pattern to all things existing. The mystic can be of either type, the religious mystic or the philosopher mystic, although often the two are welded together and cannot be very well separated. Let us illustrate a little:
The spacious firmament on high,
01.03 - Rationalism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
What is Reason, the faculty that is said to be the proud privilege of man, the sovereign instrument he alone possesses for the purpose of knowing? What is the value of knowledge that Reason gives? For it is the manner of knowing, the particular faculty or instrument by which we know, that determines the nature and content of knowledge. Reason is the collecting of available sense-perceptions and a certain mode of working upon them. It has three component elements that have been defined as observation, classification and deduction. Now, the very composition of Reason shows that it cannot be a perfect instrument of knowledge; the limitations are the inherent limitations of the component elements. As regards observation there is a two-fold limitation. First, observation is a relative term and variable quantity. One observes through the prism of one's own observing faculty, through the bias of one's own personality and no two persons can have absolutely the same manner of observation. So Science has recognised the necessity of personal equation and has created an imaginary observer, a "mean man" as the standard of reference. And this already takes us far away from the truth, from the reality. Secondly, observation is limited by its scope. All the facts of the world, all sense-perceptions possible and actual cannot be included within any observation however large, however collective it may be. We have to go always upon a limited amount of data, we are able to construct only a partial and sketchy view of the surface of existence. And then it is these few and doubtful facts that Reason seeks to arrange and classify. That classification may hold good for certain immediate ends, for a temporary understanding of the world and its forces, either in order to satisfy our curiosity or to gain some practical utility. For when we want to consider the world only in its immediate relation to us, a few and even doubtful facts are sufficient the more immediate the relation, the more immaterial the doubtfulness and insufficiency of facts. We may quite confidently go a step in darkness, but to walk a mile we do require light and certainty. Our scientific classification has a background of uncertainty, if not, of falsity; and our deduction also, even while correct within a very narrow range of space and time, cannot escape the fundamental vices of observation and classification upon which it is based.
It might be said, however, that the guarantee or sanction of Reason does not lie in the extent of its application, nor can its subjective nature (or ego-centric predication, as philosophers would term it) vitiate the validity of its conclusions. There is, in fact, an inherent unity and harmony between Reason and Reality. If we know a little of Reality, we know the whole; if we know the subjective, we know also the objective. As in the part, so in the whole; as it is within, so it is without. If you say that I will die, you need not wait for my actual death to have the proof of your statement. The generalising power inherent in Reason is the guarantee of the certitude to which it leads. Reason is valid, as it does not betray us. If it were such as anti-intellectuals make it out to be, we would be making nothing but false steps, would always remain entangled in contradictions. The very success of Reason is proof of its being a reliable and perfect instrument for the knowledge of Truth and Reality. It is beside the mark to prove otherwise, simply by analysing the nature of Reason and showing the fundamental deficiencies of that nature. It is rather to the credit of Reason that being as it is, it is none the less a successful and trustworthy agent.
01.03 - The Yoga of the King - The Yoga of the Souls Release, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
They were his life's pattern and his privilege.
A pure perception lent its lucent joy:
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The stammer of the primal ignorance;
Answer to that inarticulate questioning,
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Battled for his soul as for a costly prize.
In every hour loosed from the quiver of Time
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Repeated in the privacy of his soul,
A wisdom-cry from rapt transcendences
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Whose priceless value could have saved the world.
A darkness carrying morning in its breast
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Earth's pains were the ransom of its prisoned delight.
A glad communion tinged the passing hours;
01.03 - Yoga and the Ordinary Life, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The principle of life which I seek to establish is spiritual.
Morality is a question of man's mind and vital, it belongs to a lower plane of consciousness. A spiritual life therefore cannot be founded on a moral basis, it must be founded on a spiritual basis. This does not mean that the spiritual man must be immoral - as if there were no other law of conduct than the moral. The law of action of the spiritual consciousness is higher, not lower than the moral - it is founded on union with the Divine and living in the Divine Consciousness and its action is founded on obedience to the Divine Will.
01.04 - Motives for Seeking the Divine, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
That means what? That men, country, Truth and other things besides can be loved for their own sake and not for anything else, not for any circumstance or attendant quality or resulting enjoyment, but for something absolute that is either in them or behind their appearance and circumstance. The Divine is more than a man or woman, a stretch of land or a creed, opinion, discovery or principle. He is the Person beyond all persons, the
Home and Country of all souls, the Truth of which truths are only imperfect figures. And can He then not be loved and sought for his own sake, as and more than these have been by men even in their lesser selves and nature?
01.04 - The Intuition of the Age, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Now, in order to understand the new orientation of the spirit of the present age, we may profitably ask what was the inspiration of the past age, the characteristic note which has failed to satisfy us and which we are endeavouring to transform. We know that that age was the Scientific age or the age of Reason. Its great prophets were Voltaire and the Encyclopaedists or if you mount further up in time, we may begin from Bacon and the humanists. Its motto was first, "The proper study of mankind is man" and secondly, Reason is the supreme organon of knowledge, the highest deity in manla Desse Raison. And it is precisely against these two basic principles that the new age has entered its protest. In face of Humanism, Nietzsche has posited the Superman and in face of Reason Bergson has posited Intuition.
The worship of man as something essentially and exclusively human necessitates as a corollary, the other doctrine, viz the deification of Reason; and vice versa. Humanism and Scientism go together and the whole spirit and mentality of the age that is passing may be summed up in those two words. So Nietzsche says, "All our modern world is captured in the net of the Alexandrine culture and has, for its ideal, the theoretical man, armed with the most powerful instruments of knowledge, toiling in the service of science and whose prototype and original ancestor is Socrates." Indeed, it may be generally asserted that the nation whose prophet and sage claimed to have brought down Philosophia from heaven to dwell upon earth among men was precisely the nation, endowed with a clear and logical intellect, that was the very embodiment of rationality and reasonableness. As a matter of fact, it would not be far, wrong to say that it is the Hellenic culture which has been moulding humanity for ages; at least, it is this which has been the predominating factor, the vital and dynamic element in man's nature. Greece when it died was reborn in Rome; Rome, in its return, found new life in France; and France means Europe. What Europe has been and still is for the world and humanity one knows only too much. And yet, the Hellenic genius has not been the sole motive power and constituent element; there has been another leaven which worked constantly within, if intermittently without. If Europe represented mind and man and this side of existence, Asia always reflected that which transcends the mind the spirit, the Gods and the Beyonds.
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So instead of the rational principle, the new age wants the principle of Nature or Life. Even as regards knowledge Reason is not the only, nor the best instrument. For animals have properly no reason; the nature- principle of knowledge in the animal is Instinct the faculty that acts so faultlessly, so marvellously where Reason can only pause and be perplexed. This is not to say that man is to or can go back to this primitive and animal function; but certainly he can replace it by something akin which is as natural and yet purified and self-consciousillumined instinct, we may say or Intuition, as Bergson terms it. And Nietzsche's definition of the Superman has also a similar orientation and significance; for, according to him, the Superman is man who has outgrown his Reason, who is not bound by the standards and the conventions determined by Reason for a special purpose. The Superman is one who has gone beyond "good and evil," who has shaken off from his nature and character elements that are "human, all too human"who is the embodiment of life-force in its absolute purity and strength and freedom.
This then is the mantra of the new ageLife with Intuition as its guide and not Reason and mechanical efficiency, not Man but Superman. The right mantra has been found, the principle itself is irreproachable. But the interpretation, the application, does not seem to have been always happy. For, Nietzsche's conception of the Superman is full of obvious lacunae. If we have so long been adoring the intellectual man, Nietzsche asks us, on the other hand, to deify the vital man. According to him the superman is he who has (1) the supreme sense of the ego, (2) the sovereign will to power and (3) who lives dangerously. All this means an Asura, that is to say, one who has, it may be, dominion over his animal and vital impulsions in order, of course, that he may best gratify them but who has not purified them. Purification does not necessarily mean, annihilation but it does mean sublimation and transformation. So if you have to transcend man, you have to transcend egoism also. For a conscious egoism is the very characteristic of man and by increasing your sense of egoism you do not supersede man but simply aggrandise your humanity, fashion it on a larger, a titanic scale. And then the will to power is not the only will that requires fulfilment, there is also the will to knowledge and the will to love. In man these three fundamental constitutive elements coexist, although they do it, more often than not, at the expense of each other and in a state of continual disharmony. The superman, if he is to be the man "who has surmounted himself", must embody a poise of being in which all the three find a fusion and harmonya perfect synthesis. Again, to live dangerously may be heroic, but it is not divine. To live dangerously means to have eternal opponents, that is to say, to live ever on the same level with the forces you want to dominate. To have the sense that one has to fight and control means that one is not as yet the sovereign lord, for one has to strive and strain and attain. The supreme lord is he who is perfectly equanimous with himself and with the world. He has not to batter things into a shape in order to create. He creates means, he manifests. He wills and he achieves"God said 'let there be light' and there was light."
As a matter of fact, the superman is not, as Nietzsche thinks him to be, the highest embodiment of the biological force of Nature, not even as modified and refined by the aesthetic and aristocratic virtues of which the higher reaches of humanity seem capable. For that is after all humanity only accentuated in certain other fundamentally human modes of existence. It does not carry far enough the process of surmounting. In reality it is not a surmounting but a new channelling. Instead of the ethical and intellectual man, we get the vital and aesthetic man. It may be a change but not a transfiguration.
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 other 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 others, 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 somewhere in between. Lower in the rung where 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 farther down and land in the domain of versificationalthough here, too, there 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 there is a veil, although a thin transparent veil, yet a veil between which intervenes. With the third of the Brotherhood, Euripides, we slide lower downwe arrive at a predominantly mental transcription of an experience or inner conception; but something of the major breath continues, an aura, a rhythm that maintains the inner contact and thus saves the poetry. In a subsequent age, in Theocritus, for example, poetry became truly very much 'sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought', so much of virtuosity and precocity entered into it; in other words, the poet then was an excessively self-conscious artist. That seems to be the general trend of all literature.
But should there be an inherent incompatibility between spontaneous creation and self-consciousness? As we have seen, a harmony and fusion can and do happen of the superconscious and the normally conscious in the Yogi. Likewise, an artist also can be wakeful and transparent enough so that he is conscious on both the levels simultaneouslyabove, he is conscious of the source and origin of his inspiration, and on the level plain he is conscious of the working of the instrument, how the vehicle transcribes and embodies what comes from elsewhere. The poet's consciousness becomes then divalent as it werethere is a sense of absolute passivity in respect of the receiving apparatus and coupled and immisced with it there is also the sense of dynamism, of conscious agency as in his secret being he is the master of his apparatus and one with the Inspirerin other words, the poet is both a seer (kavih) and a creator or doer (poits).
Not only so, the future development of the poetic consciousness seems inevitably to lead to such a consummation in which the creative and the critical faculties will not be separate but form part of one and indivisible movement. Historically, human consciousness has grown from unconsciousness to consciousness and from consciousness to self-consciousness; man's creative and artistic genius too has moved pari passu in the same direction. The earliest and primitive poets were mostly unconscious, that is to say, they wrote or said things as they came to them spontaneously, without effort, without reflection, they do not seem to know the whence and wherefore and whither of it all, they know only that the wind bloweth as it listeth. That was when man had not yet eaten the fruit of knowledge, was still in the innocence of childhood. But as he grew up and progressed, he became more and more conscious, capable of exerting and exercising a deliberate will and initiating a purposive action, not only in the external practical field but also in the psychological domain. If the earlier group is called " primitives", the later one, that of conscious artists, usually goes by the name of "classicists." Modern creators have gone one step farther in the direction of self-consciousness, a return upon oneself, an inlook of full awareness and a free and alert activity of the critical faculties. An unconscious artist in the sense of the " primitives" is almost an impossible phenomenon in the modern world. All are scientists: an artist cannot but be consciously critical, deliberate, purposive in what he creates and how he creates. Evidently, this has cost something of the old-world spontaneity and supremacy of utterance; but it cannot be helped, we cannot comm and the tide to roll back, Canute-like. The feature has to be accepted and a remedy and new orientation discovered.
The modern critical self-consciousness in the artist originated with the Romantics. The very essence of Romanticism is curiosity the scientist's pleasure in analysing, observing, experimenting, changing the conditions of our reactions, mental or sentimental or even nervous and physical by way of discovery of new and unforeseen or unexpected modes of "psychoses" or psychological states. Goethe, Wordsworth, Stendhal represented a mentality and initiated a movement which led logically to the age of Hardy, Housman and Bridges and in the end to that of Lawrence and Joyce, Ezra Pound and Eliot and Auden. On the Continent we can consider Flaubert as the last of the classicists married to the very quintessence of Romanticism. A hard, self-regarding, self-critical mentality, a cold scalpel-like gaze that penetrates and upturns the reverse side of things is intimately associated with the poetic genius of Mallarm and constitutes almost the whole of Valry's. The impassioned lines of a very modern poet like Aragon are also characterised by a consummate virtuosity in chiselled artistry, conscious and deliberate and willed at every step and turn.
01.04 - The Secret Knowledge, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
In golden privacies of immortal fire.
These signs are native to a larger self
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Heaven's privilege she claims as her own right.
Just is her claim the all-witnessing Gods approve,
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Mind keeps the soul prisoner, we are slaves to our acts;
We cannot free our gaze to reach wisdom's sun.
01.05 - The Yoga of the King - The Yoga of the Spirits Freedom and Greatness, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The Immortal's pride refused the doom to live
A miser of the scanty bargain made
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Overtaken in her mighty privacy
Lay bare to the burning splendour of his will.
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The occult privilege of demigods
And the sure power-pattern of her cryptic signs,
01.06 - On Communism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
As a matter of fact, the individual is not and cannot be such an isolated thing as our egoistic sense would like to have it. The sharp angularities of the individual are being, at every moment, chastened by the very primary conditions of life; and to fail to recognise this is the blindest form of ignorance. It is no easy task to draw exactly the line of distinction between our individual being and our social or communal being. In actual life they are so blended together that in trying to extricate them from each other, we but tear and lacerate them both. The highest wisdom is to take the two together as they are, and by a gradual purifying processboth internal and external, internal in thought and knowledge and will, external in life and actionrestore them to their respective truth and lawSatyam and Ritam.
The individual who leads a severely individual life from the very beginning, whose outlook of the world has been fashioned by that conception, can hardly, if at all, enter at the end the communal life. He must perforce be either a vagabond or a recluse: But the recluse is not an integral man, nor the vagabond an ideal personality. The individual need not be too chaste and shy to associate with others and to give and take as freely and fully as he can. Individuality is not necessarily curtailed or mutilated in this process, but there is this other greater possibility of its getting enlarged and enhanced. Rather it is when you shut yourself up in your own self, that you stick to only one line of your personality, to a single phase of your self and thus limit and diminish yourself; the breadth and height and depth of your self, the cubic completeness of your personality you can attain only through a multiple and variegated stress by which you come in contact with the world and things.
So first the individual and then the commune is not the natural nor the ideal principle. On the other hand, first the commune and then the individual would appear to be an equally defective principle. For first a commune means an organisation, its laws and rules and regulations, its injunctions and prohibitions; all which signifies or comes to signify that every individual is not free to enter its fold and that whoever enters must know how to dovetail himself therein and thus crush down the very life-power whose enhancement and efflorescence is sought. First a commune means necessarily a creed, a dogma, a set form of being and living indelibly marked out from beforehand. The individual has there no choice of finding and developing the particular creed or dogma or mode of being and living, from out of his own self, along his particular line of natural growth; all that is imposed upon him and he has to accept and make it his own by trial and effort and self-torture. Even if the commune be a contractual association, the members having joined together in a common cause to a common end, by voluntarily sacrificing a portion of their personal choice and freedom, even then it is not the ideal thing; the collective soul will be diminished in exact proportion as each individual soul has had to be diminished, be that voluntary or otherwise. That commune is plenary and entire which ensures plenitude and entirety to each of its individuals.
Now how to escape the dilemma? Only if we take the commune and the individual togetheren bloc, as has already been suggested. This means that the commune should be at the beginning a subtle and supple thing, without form and even without name, it should be no more than the circumambient aura the sukshma deha that plays around a group of individuals who meet and unite and move together by a secret affinity, along a common path towards a common goal. As each individual develops and defines himself, the commune also takes a more and more concrete shape; and when at the last stage the individual rises to the full height of his godhead, takes possession of his integral divinity, the commune also establishes its solid empire, vivid and vibrant in form and name.
01.06 - Vivekananda, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A personal reminiscence. A young man in prison, accused of conspiracy and waging war against the British Empire. If convicted he might have to suffer the extreme penalty, at least, transportation to the Andamans. The case is dragging on for long months. And the young man is in a solitary cell. He cannot always keep up his spirits high. Moments of sadness and gloom and despair come and almost overwhelm him. Who was there to console and cheer him up? Vivekananda. Vivekananda's speeches, From Colombo to Almora, came, as a godsend, into the hands of the young man. Invariably, when the period of despondency came he used to open the book, read a few pages, read them over again, and the cloud was there no longer. Instead there was hope and courage and faith and future and light and air.
Such is Vivekananda, the embodiment of Fearlessnessabh, the Upanishadic word, the mantra, he was so fond of. The life and vision of Vivekananda can be indeed summed up in the mighty phrase of the Upanishads, nyam tm balahnena labhya. 'This soul no weakling can attain.' Strength! More strength! Strength evermore! One remembers the motto of Danton, the famous leader in the French Revolution:De l'audance, encore de l'audace, toujours de l'audace!
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 sphere 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 other truths that are infallibly and inevitably deduced from them, that are inherent and implied in them. There 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 others. Such, for instance, are space, time, number, the reality of which it is foolishness and pedantry to I seek to prove. There 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 there is another order, Pascal says, equally I valid and veritable, the order of the Spirit. Here we have another set of fundamentals that have to be accepted and taken for granted, matrix of other 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:
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"We know truth not by reason alone, but by the heart also: it is in the latter way that we know the first principles, and in vain does reasoning, that has no part in it, attempt to combat them... The heart feels... and the reason demon strates afterwards... principles are felt, propositions are deduced. . . . "5
About doubt, Pascal says that the perfect doubter, the Pyrrhonian as he is called, is a fiction. Pascal asks:
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"Nous connaissons la vrit, non seulement par la raison, mais encore par Ie cur; c'est de cette dernire sorte que nous connaissons les premiers principes, et c'est en vain que Ie raisonnement qui n'y a point de part, essaye de leg combattre... Le coeur sent et la raison dmontre ensuite Les principes se sentent, leg propositions se concluent."
"Que Cera done l'homme en cet tat? Doutera-t-il de tout? . . . doutera-t-il s'il doute? doutera-t-il s'il est?. . En fait qu'il n'y ajamais eu de pyrrhonien effectif parfait."
01.08 - A Theory of Yoga, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
There are some primary desires that seek satisfaction in man. They are the vital urges of life, the most prominent among them being the instinct of self-preservation and that of self-reproduction or the desire to preserve one's body by defensive as well as by offensive means and the desire to multiply oneself by mating. These are the two biological necessities that are inevitable to man's existence as a physical being. They give the minimum conditions required to be fulfilled by man in order that he may live and hence they are the strongest and the most fundamental elements that enter into his structure and composition.
It would have been an easy matter if these vital urges could flow on unhindered in their way. There would have been no problem at all, if they met satisfaction easily and smoothly, without having to look to other factors and forces. As a matter of fact, man does not and cannot gratify his instincts whenever and wherever he chooses and in an open and direct manner. Even in his most primitive and barbarous condition, he has often to check himself and throw a veil, in so many ways, over his sheer animality. In the civilised society the check is manifold and is frankly recognised. We do not go straight as our sexual impulsion leads, but seek to hide and camouflage it under the institution of marriage; we do not pounce upon the food directly we happen to meet it and snatch and appro priate whatever portion we get but we secure it through an elaborate process, which is known as the economic system. The machinery of the state, the cult of the kshatriya are roundabout ways to meet our fighting instincts.
What is the reason of this elaboration, this check and constraint upon the natural and direct outflow of the animal instincts in man? It has been said that the social life of man, the fact that he has to live and move as member of a group or aggregate has imposed upon him these restrictions. The free and unbridled indulgence of one's bare aboriginal impulses may be possible to creatures that live a separate, solitary and individual life but is disruptive of all bonds necessary for a corporate and group life. It is even a biological necessity again which has evolved in man a third and collateral primary instinct that of the herd. And it is this herd-instinct which naturally and spontaneously restrains, diverts and even metamorphoses the other instincts of the mere animal life. However, leaving aside for the moment the question whether man's ethical and spiritual ideals are a mere dissimulation of his animal instincts or whether they correspond to certain actual realities apart from and co-existent with these latter, we will recognise the simple fact of control and try to have a glimpse into its mechanism.
There are three lines, as the Psycho-analysts point out along which this control or censuring of the primary instincts acts. First, there is the line of Defence Reaction. That is to say, the mind automatically takes up an attitude directly contrary to the impulse, tries to shut it out and deny altogether its existence and the measure of the insistence of the impulse is also the measure of the vehemence of the denial. It is the case of the lady protesting too much. So it happens that where subconsciously there is a strong current of a particular impulse, consciously the mind is obliged to take up a counteracting opposite impulse. Thus in presence of a strong sexual craving the mind as if to guard and save itself engenders by a reflex movement an ascetic and puritanic mood. Similarly a strong unthinking physical attraction translates itself on the conscious plane as an equally strong repulsion.
Secondly, there is the line of Substitution. Here the mind does not stand in an antagonistic and protestant mood to combat and repress the impulse, but seeks to divert it into other channels, use it to other purposes which do not demand equal sacrifice, may even, on the other hand, be considered by the conscious mind as worthy of human pursuit. Thus the energy that normally would seek sexual gratification might find its outlet in the cultivation of art and literature. It is a common thing in novels to find the heroine disappointed in love taking finally to works of charity and beneficence and thus forgetting her disappointment. Another variety of this is what is known as "drowning one's sorrow in drinking."
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The method of unconscious or subconscious nature is fundamentally that of repression. Apart from Defence Reaction which is a thing of pure coercion, even in Substitution and Sublimation there always remains in the background a large amount of repressed complexes in all their primitive strength. The system is never entirely purified but remains secretly pregnant with those urges; a part only is deflected and camouflaged, the surface only assumes a transformed appearance. And there is always the danger of the superstructure coming down helplessly by a sudden upheaval of the nether forces. The whole system feels, although not in a conscious manner, the tension of the repression and suffers from something that is unhealthy and ill-balanced. Dante's spiritualised passion is a supreme instance of control by Sublimation, but the Divina Comedia hardly bears the impress of a serene and tranquil soul, sovereignly above the turmoils of the tragedy of life and absolutely at peace with itself.
In conscious control, the mind is for the first time aware of the presence of the repressed impulses, it seeks to release them from the pressure to which they are habitually and normally subjected. It knows and recognises them, however ugly and revolting they might appear to be when they present themselves in their natural nakedness. Then it becomes easy for the conscious determination to eliminate or regulate or transform them and thus to establish a healthy harmony in the human vehicle. The very recognition itself, as implied in conscious control, means purification.
Yet even here the process of control and transformation does not end. And we now come to the Fifth Line, the real and intimate path of yoga. Conscious control gives us a natural mastery over the instinctive impulses which are relieved of their dark tamas and attain a purified rhythm. We do not seek to hide or repress or combat them, but surpass them and play with them as the artist does with his material. Something of this katharsis, this aestheticism of the primitive impulses was achieved by the ancient Greeks. Even then the primitive impulses remain primitive all the same; they fulfil, no doubt, a real and healthy function in the scheme of life, but still in their fundamental nature they continue the animal in man. And even when Conscious Control means the utter elimination and annihilation of the primal instinctswhich, however, does not seem to be a probable eventualityeven then, we say, the basic problem remains unsolved; for the urge of nature towards the release and a transformation of the instincts does not find satisfaction, the question is merely put aside.
Yoga, then, comes at this stage and offers the solution in its power of what we may call Transubstantiation. That is to say, here the mere form is not changed, nor the functions restrained, regulated and purified, but the very substance of the instincts is transmuted. The power of conscious control is a power of the human will, i.e. of an individual personal will and therefore necessarily limited both in intent and extent. It is a power complementary to the power of Nature, it may guide and fashion the latter according to a new pattern, but cannot change the basic substance, the stuff of Nature. To that end yoga seeks a power that transcends the human will, brings into play the supernal puissance of a Divine Will.
This is the real meaning and sense of the moral struggle in man, the continuous endeavour towards a transvaluation of the primary and aboriginal instincts and impulses. Looked at from one end, from below up the ascending line, man's ethical and spiritual ideals are a dissimulation and sublimation of the animal impulsions. But this is becauseas we see, if we look from the other end, from above down the descending lineman is not all instinct, he is not a mere blind instrument in the hands of Nature forces. He has in him another source, an opposite pole of being from which other impulsions flow and continually modify the structure of the lower levels. If the animal is the foundation of his nature, the divine is its summit. If the bodily demands form his manifest reality, the demands of the spirit enshrine his higher reality. And if as regards the former he is a slave, as regards the latter he is the Master. It is by the interaction of these double forces that his whole nature has been and is being fashioned. Man does not and cannot give carte blanche to his vital, inclinations, since there is a pressure upon them of higher forces coming down from his mental and spiritual levels. It is these latter which have deviated him from the direct line of the pure animal life.
Thus then we may distinguish three types of control on three levels. First, the natural control, secondly the conscious, i.e. to say the mental the ethical and religious control, and thirdly the spiritual or divine control. Now the spirit is the ultimate truth and reality, behind the forces that act in the mind and in the body, so that the natural control and the ethical control are mere attempts to establish and realise the spiritual control. The animal impulses feel the hidden stress of the divine urges that are their real essence and thus there rises first an unconscious conflict in the natural life and then a conscious conflict in the higher ethical life. But when both of these are transcended and the conflict is carried on to a still higher level, then do we find their real significance and arrive at the consummation to which they move. Yoga is the ultimate transvaluation of physical (and of moral) values, it is the trans-substantiation of life-power into its spiritual substance.
01.08 - Walter Hilton: The Scale of Perfection, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
From the twentieth century back to the fourteenth is a far cry: a far cry indeed from the modern scientific illumination to mediaeval superstition, from logical positivists and mathematical rationalists to visionary mystics, from Russell and Huxley to Ruysbroeck and Hilton. The mystic lore, the Holy Writ, the mediaeval sage says, echoing almost the very words of the Eastern Masters, "may not be got by study nor through man's travail only, but principally by the grace of the Holy Ghost." As for the men living and moving in the worldly way, there are "so mickle din and crying in their heart and vain thoughts and fleshly desires" that it is impossible for them to listen or understand the still small voice. It is the pure soul touched by the Grace that alone "seeth soothfastness of Holy Writ wonderly shewed and opened, above study and travail and reason of man's kindly (i.e. natural) wit."
What is day to us is night to the mystics and what is day to the mystics is night for us. The first thing the mystic asks is to close precisely those doors and windows which we, on the contrary, feel obliged to keep always open in order to know and to live and move. The Gita says: "The sage is wakeful when it is night for all creatures and when all creatures are wakeful, that is night for the sage." Even so this sage from the West says: "The more I sleep from outward things, the more wakeful am I in knowing of Jhesu and of inward things. I may not wake to Jhesu, but if I sleep to the world."
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Here is the Augustinian mantra taken as the motto of The Scale of Perfection: We ascend the ascending grades in our heart and we sing the song of ascension1. The journey's end is heavenly Jerusalem, the House of the Lord. The steps of this inner ascension are easily visible, not surely to the outer eye of the sense-burdened man, but to the "ghostly seeing" of the aspirant which is hazy in the beginning but slowly clears as he advances. The first step is the withdrawal from the outer senses and looking and seeing within. "Turn home again in thyself, and hold thee within and beg no more without." The immediate result is a darkness and a restless darknessit is a painful night. The outer objects of attraction and interest have been discarded, but the inner attachments and passions surge there still. If, however, one continues and persists, refuses to be drawn out, the turmoil settles down and the darkness begins to thin and wear away. One must not lose heart, one must have patience and perseverance. So when the outward world is no more-there and its call also no longer awakes any echo in us, then comes the stage of "restful darkness" or "light-some darkness". But it is still the dark Night of the soul. The outer light is gone and the inner light is not yet visible: the night, the desert, the great Nought, stretches between these two lights. But the true seeker goes through and comes out of the tunnel. And there is happiness at the end. "The seeking is travaillous, but the finding is blissful." When one steps out of the Night, enters into the deepest layer of the being, one stands face to face to one's soul, the very image of God, the perfect God-man, the Christ within. That is the third degree of our inner ascension, the entry into the deepest, purest and happiest statein which one becomes what he truly is; one finds the Christ there and dwells in love and union with him. But there is still a further step to take, and that is real ascension. For till now it has been a going within, from the outward to the inner and the inmost; now one has to go upward, transcend. Within the body, in life, however deep you may go, even if you find your soul and your union with Jesus whose tabernacle is your soul, still there is bound to remain a shadow of the sinful prison-house; the perfect bliss and purity without any earthly taint, the completeness and the crowning of the purgation and transfiguration can come only when you go beyond, leaving altogether the earthly form and worldly vesture and soar into Heaven itself and be in the company of the Trinity. "Into myself, and after... above myself by overpassing only into Him." At the same time it is pointed out, this mediaeval mystic has the common sense to see that the going in and going above of which one speaks must not be understood in a literal way, it is a figure of speech. The movement of the mystic is psychological"ghostly", it is saidnot physical or carnal.
This spiritual march or progress can also be described as a growing into the likeness of the Lord. His true self, his own image is implanted within us; he is there in the profoundest depth of our being as Jesus, our beloved and our soul rests in him in utmost bliss. We are aware neither of Jesus nor of his spouse, our soul, because of the obsession of the flesh, the turmoil raised by the senses, the blindness of pride and egoism. All that constitutes the first or old Adam, the image of Nought, the body of death which means at bottom the "false misruled love in to thyself." This self-love is the mother of sin, is sin itself. What it has to be replaced by is charity that is the true meaning of Christian charity, forgetfulness of self. "What is sin but a wanting and a forbearing of God." And the whole task, the discipline consists in "the shaping of Christ in you, the casting of sin through Christ." Who then is Christ, what is he? This knowledge you get as you advance from your sense-bound perception towards the inner and inmost seeing. As your outer nature gets purified, you approach gradually your soul, the scales fall off from your eyes too and you have the knowledge and "ghostly vision." Here too there are three degrees; first, you start with faith the senses can do nothing better than have faith; next, you rise to imagination which gives a sort of indirect touch or inkling of the truth; finally, you have the "understanding", the direct vision. "If he first trow it, he shall afterwards through grace feel it, and finally understand it."
It is never possible for man, weak and bound as he is, to reject the thraldom of his flesh, he can never purify himself wholly by his own unaided strength. God in his infinite mercy sent his own son, an emanation created out of his substancehis embodied loveas a human being to suffer along with men and take upon himself the burden of their sins. God the Son lived upon earth as man and died as man. Sin therefore has no longer its final or definitive hold upon mankind. Man has been made potentially free, pure and worthy of salvation. This is the mystery of Christ, of God the Son. But there is a further mystery. Christ not only lived for all men for all time, whether they know him, recognise him or not; but he still lives, he still chooses his beloved and his beloved chooses him, there is a conscious acceptance on either side. This is the function of the Holy Ghost, the redeeming power of Love active in him who accepts it and who is accepted by it, the dynamic Christ-Consciousness in the true Christian.
Indeed, the kernel of the mystic discipline and its whole bearingconsists in one and only one principle: to love Jhesu. All roads lead to Rome: all preparations, all trials lead to one realisation, love of God, God as a living person close to us, our friend and lover and master. The Christian mystic speaks almost in the terms of the Gita: Rise above your senses, give up your ego-hood, be meek and humble, it is Jesus within you, who embraces your soul: it is he who does everything for you and in you, give yourself up wholly into his hands. He will deliver you.
The characteristic then of the path is a one-pointed concentration. Great stress is laid upon "oneliness", "onedness":that is to say, a perfect and complete withdrawal from the outside and the world; an unmixed solitude is required for the true experience and realisation to come. "A full forsaking in will of the soul for the love of Him, and a living of the heart to Him. This asks He, for this gave He." The rigorous exclusion, the uncompromising asceticism, the voluntary self-torture, the cruel dark night and the arid desert are necessary conditions that lead to the "onlyness of soul", what another prophet (Isaiah, XXIV, 16) describes as "My privity to me". In that secreted solitude, the "onlistead"the graphic language of the author calls itis found "that dignity and that ghostly fairness which a soul had by kind and shall have by grace." The utter beauty of the soul and its absolute love for her deity within her (which has the fair name of Jhesu), the exclusive concentration of the whole of the being upon one point, the divine core, the manifest Grace of God, justifies the annihilation of the world and life's manifold existence. Indeed, the image of the Beloved is always within, from the beginning to the end. It is that that keeps one up in the terrible struggle with one's nature and the world. The image depends upon the consciousness which we have at the moment, that is to say, upon the stage or the degree we have ascended to. At the outset, when we can only look through the senses, when the flesh is our master, we give the image a crude form and character; but even that helps. Gradually, as we rise, with the clearing of our nature, the image too slowly regains its original and true shape. Finally, in the inmost soul we find Jesus as he truly is: "an unchangeable being, a sovereign might, a sovereign soothfastness, sovereign goodness, a blessed life and endless bliss." Does not the Gita too say: "As one approaches Me, so do I appear to him."Ye yath mm prapadyante.
Indeed, it would be interesting to compare and contrast the Eastern and Western approach to Divine Love, the Christian and the Vaishnava, for example. Indian spirituality, whatever its outer form or credal formulation, has always a background of utter unity. This unity, again, is threefold or triune and is expressed in those great Upanishadic phrases,mahvkyas,(1) the transcendental unity: the One alone exists, there is nothing else than theOneekamevdvityam; (2) the cosmic unity: all existence is one, whatever exists is that One, thereare no separate existences:sarvam khalvidam brahma neha nnsti kincaa; (3) That One is I, you too are that One:so' ham, tattvamasi; this may be called the individual unity. As I have said, all spiritual experiences in India, of whatever school or line, take for granted or are fundamentally based upon this sense of absolute unity or identity. Schools of dualism or pluralism, who do not apparently admit in their tenets this extreme monism, are still permeated in many ways with that sense and in some form or other take cognizance of the truth of it. The Christian doctrine too says indeed, 'I and my Father in Heaven are one', but this is not identity, but union; besides, the human soul is not admitted into this identity, nor the world soul. The world, we have seen, according to the Christian discipline has to be altogether abandoned, negatived, as we go inward and upward towards our spiritual status reflecting the divine image in the divine company. It is a complete rejection, a cutting off and casting away of world and life. One extreme Vedantic path seems to follow a similar line, but there it is not really rejection, but a resolution, not the rejection of what is totally foreign and extraneous, but a resolution of the external into its inner and inmost substance, of the effect into its original cause. Brahman is in the world, Brahman is the world: the world has unrolled itself out of the Brahmansi, pravttiit has to be rolled back into its, cause and substance if it is to regain its pure nature (that is the process of nivitti). Likewise, the individual being in the world, "I", is the transcendent being itself and when it withdraws, it withdraws itself and the whole world with it and merges into the Absolute. Even the Maya of the Mayavadin, although it is viewed as something not inherent in Brahman but superimposed upon Brahman, still, has been accepted as a peculiar power of Brahman itself. The Christian doctrine keeps the individual being separate practically, as an associate or at the most as an image of God. The love for one's neighbour, charity, which the Christian discipline enjoins is one's love for one's kind, because of affinity of nature and quality: it does not dissolve the two into an integral unity and absolute identity, where we love because we are one, because we are the One. The highest culmination of love, the very basis of love, according to the Indian conception, is a transcendence of love, love trans-muted into Bliss. The Upanishad says, where one has become the utter unity, who loves whom? To explain further our point, we take two examples referred to in the book we are considering. The true Christian, it is said, loves the sinner too, he is permitted to dislike sin, for he has to reject it, but he must separate from sin the sinner and love him. Why? Because the sinner too can change and become his brother in spirit, one loves the sinner because there is the possibility of his changing and becoming a true Christian. It is why the orthodox Christian, even such an enlightened and holy person as this mediaeval Canon, considers the non-Christian, the non-baptised as impure and potentially and fundamentally sinners. That is also why the Church, the physical organisation, is worshipped as Christ's very body and outside the Church lies the pagan world which has neither religion nor true spirituality nor salvation. Of course, all this may be symbolic and it is symbolic in a sense. If Christianity is taken to mean true spirituality, and the Church is equated with the collective embodiment of that spirituality, all that is claimed on their behalf stands justified. But that is an ideal, a hypothetical standpoint and can hardly be borne out by facts. However, to come back to our subject, let us ow take the second example. Of Christ himself, it is said, he not only did not dislike or had any aversion for Judas, but that he positively loved the traitor with a true and sincere love. He knew that the man would betray him and even when he was betraying and had betrayed, the Son of Man continued to love him. It was no make-believe or sham or pretence. It was genuine, as genuine as anything can be. Now, why did he love his enemy? Because, it is said, the enemy is suffered by God to do the misdeed: he has been allowed to test the faith of the faithful, he too has his utility, he too is God's servant. And who knows even a Judas would not change in the end? Many who come to scoff do remain to pray. But it can be asked, 'Does God love Satan too in the same way?' The Indian conception which is basically Vedantic is different. There is only one reality, one truth which is viewed differently. Whether a thing is considered good or evil or neutral, essentially and truly, it is that One and nothing else. God's own self is everywhere and the sage makes no difference between the Brahmin and the cow and the elephant. It is his own self he finds in every person and every objectsarvabhtsthitam yo mm bhajati ekatvamsthitah"he has taken his stand upon oneness and loves Me in all beings."2
This will elucidate another point of difference between the Christian's and the Vaishnava's love of God, for both are characterised by an extreme intensity and sweetness and exquisiteness of that divine feeling. This Christian's, however, is the union of the soul in its absolute purity and simplicity and " privacy" with her lord and master; the soul is shred here of all earthly vesture and goes innocent and naked into the embrace of her Beloved. The Vaishnava feeling is richer and seems to possess more amplitude; it is more concrete and less ethereal. The Vaishnava in his passionate yearning seeks to carry as it were the whole world with him to his Lord: for he sees and feels Him not only in the inmost chamber of his soul, but meets Him also in and I through his senses and in and through the world and its objects around. In psychological terms one can say that the Christian realisation, at its very source, is that of the inmost soul, what we call the "psychic being" pure and simple, referred to in the book we are considering; as: "His sweet privy voice... stirreth thine heart full stilly." Whereas the Vaishnava reaches out to his Lord with his outer heart too aflame with passion; not only his inmost being but his vital being also seeks the Divine. This bears upon the occult story of man's spiritual evolution upon earth. The Divine Grace descends from the highest into the deepest and from the deepest to the outer ranges of human nature, so that the whole of it may be illumined and transformed and one day man can embody in his earthly life the integral manifestation of God, the perfect Epiphany. Each religion, each line of spiritual discipline takes up one limb of manone level or mode of his being and consciousness purifies it and suffuses it with the spiritual and divine consciousness, so that in the end the whole of man, in his integral living, is recast and remoulded: each discipline is in charge of one thread as it were, all together weave the warp and woof in the evolution of the perfect pattern of a spiritualised and divinised humanity.
The conception of original sin is a cardinal factor in Christian discipline. The conception, of sinfulness is the very motive-power that drives the aspirant. "Seek tensely," it is said, "sorrow and sigh deep, mourn still, and stoop low till thine eye water for anguish and for pain." Remorse and grief are necessary attendants; the way of the cross is naturally the calvary strewn with pain and sorrow. It is the very opposite of what is termed the "sunlit path" in spiritual ascension. Christian mystics have made a glorious spectacle of the process of "dying to the world." Evidently, all do not go the whole length. There are less gloomy and happier temperaments, like the present one, for example, who show an unusual balance, a sturdy common sense even in the midst of their darkest nights, who have chalked out as much of the sunlit path as is possible in this line. Thus this old-world mystic says: it is true one must see and admit one's sinfulness, the grosser and apparent and more violent ones as well as all the subtle varieties of it that are in you or rise up in you or come from the Enemy. They pursue you till the very end of your journey. Still you need not feel overwhelmed or completely desperate. Once you recognise the sin in you, even the bare fact of recognition means for you half the victory. The mystic says, "It is no sin as thou feelest them." The day Jesus gave himself away on the Cross, since that very day you are free, potentially free from the bondage of sin. Once you give your adherence to Him, the Enemies are rendered powerless. "They tease the soul, but they harm not the soul". Or again, as the mystic graphically phrases it: "This soul is not borne in this image of sin as a sick man, though he feel it; but he beareth it." The best way of dealing with one's enemies is not to struggle and "strive with them." The aspirant, the lover of Jesus, must remember: "He is through grace reformed to the likeness of God ('in the privy substance of his soul within') though he neither feel it nor see it."
If you are told you are still full of sins and you are not worthy to follow the path, that you must go and work out your sins first, here is your answer: "Go shrive thee better: trow not this saying, for it is false, for thou art shriven. Trust securely that thou art on the way, and thee needeth no ransacking of shrift for that that is passed, hold forth thy way and think on Jerusalem." That is to say, do not be too busy with the difficulties of the moment, but look ahead, as far as possible, fix your attention upon the goal, the intermediate steps will become easy. Jerusalem is another name of the Love of Jesus or the Bliss in Heaven. Grow in this love, your sins will fade away of themselves. "Though thou be thrust in an house with thy body, nevertheless in thine heart, where the stead of love is, thou shouldst be able to have part of that love... " What exquisite utterance, what a deep truth!
01.09 - The Parting of the Way, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A Theory of Yoga principle and Personality
01.09 - William Blake: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
We welcome voices that speak of this ancient tradition, this occult Knowledge of a high Future. Recently we have come across one aspirant in the line, and being a contemporary, his views and reviews in the matter will be all the more interesting to us.2 He is Gustave Thibon, a Frenchman-not a priest or even a religious man in the orthodox sense in any way, but a country farmer, a wholly self-educated laque. Of late he has attracted a good deal of attention from intellectuals as well as religious people, especially the Catholics, because of his remarkable conceptions which are so often unorthodox and yet so often ringing true with an old-world au thenticity.
Touching the very core of the malady of our age he says that our modern enlightenment seeks to cancel altogether the higher values and install instead the lower alone as true. Thus, for example, Marx and Freud, its twin arch priests, are brothers. Both declare that it is the lower, the under layer alone that matters: to one "the masses", to the other "the instincts". Their wild imperative roars: "Sweep away this pseudo-higher; let the instincts rule, let the pro-letariat dictate!" But more characteristic, Monsieur Thibon has made another discovery which gives the whole value and speciality to his outlook. He says the moderns stress the lower, no doubt; but the old world stressed only the higher and neglected the lower. Therefore the revolt and wrath of the lower, the rage of Revanche in the heart of the dispossessed in the modern world. Enlightenment meant till now the cultivation and embellishment of the Mind, the conscious Mind, the rational and nobler faculties, the height and the depth: and mankind meant the princes and the great ones. In the individual, in the scheme of his culture and education, the senses were neglected, left to go their own way as they pleased; and in the collective field, the toiling masses in the same way lived and moved as best as they could under the economics of laissez-faire. So Monsieur Thibon concludes: "Salvation has never come from below. To look for it from above only is equally vain. No doubt salvation must come from the higher, but on condition that the higher completely adopts and protects the lower." Here is a vision luminous and revealing, full of great import, if we follow the right track, prophetic of man's true destiny. It is through this infiltration of the higher into the lower and the integration of the lower into the higher that mankind will reach the goal of its evolution, both individually and collectively.
But the process, Monsieur Thibon rightly asserts, must begin with the individual and within the individual. Man must "turn within, feel alive within himself", re-establish his living contact with God, the source and origin from which he has cut himself off. Man must learn to subordinate having to being. Each individual must be himself, a free and spontaneous expression. Upon such individual , upon individuals grouped naturally in smaller collectivities and not upon unformed or ill-formed wholesale masses can a perfect human society be raised and will be raised. Monsieur Thibon insistsand very rightlyupon the variety and diversity of individual and local growths in a unified humanity and not a dead uniformity of regimented oneness. He declares, as the reviewer of the London Times succinctly puts it: "Let us abolish our insensate worship of number. Let us repeal the law of majorities. Let us work for the unity that draws together instead of idolizing the multiplicity that disintegrates. Let us understand that it is not enough for each to have a place; what matters is that each should be in his right place. For the atomized society let us substitute an organic society, one in which every man will be free to do what he alone is qualified and able to do."
0.10 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
out of pride, but as a service and an offering, in order to become
more conscious of the divine will and to give yourself more
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Do you feel capable of being an unequalled prime Minister
of India? I reply: "Certainly not", and I advise you to keep silent
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All the relationships are good in principle and each one expresses
a mode of the Eternal. But each can be perverted and become
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This instinct is based both on masculine pride, the foolish
idea of superiority, and on the still more foolish fear due to the
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unique privilege of living here in the Ashram?
Never forget where you are.
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may be collective or individual, but the principle is the same
- and so is the remedy: to cultivate in oneself order and harmony, peace and equilibrium by surrendering unreservedly to
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message, sent six days prior to the cease-fire, was: "It is for the sake and the triumph
of Truth that India is fighting and must fight until India and Pakistan have become One
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and more towards the principles and ways of ordinary
life? In that case, aren't we straying from the true path?
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Divine Grace, to misuse this unique privilege granted to
us here. But, Mother, why do we do this? For, each one
01.10 - Nicholas Berdyaev: God Made Human, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Nicholas Berdyaev is an ardent worker, as a Russian is naturally expected to be, in the cause of the spiritual rehabilitation of mankind. He is a Christian, a neo-Christian: some of his conclusions are old-world truths and bear repetition and insistence; others are of a more limited, conditional and even doubtful nature. His conception of the value of human person, the dignity and the high reality he gives to it, can never be too welcome in a world where the individual seems to have gone the way of vanished empires and kings and princes. But even more important and interesting is the view he underlines that the true person is a spiritual being, that is to say, it is quite other than the empirical ego that man normally is"not this that one worships" as the Upanishads too declare. Further, in his spiritual being man, the individual, is not simply a portion or a fraction; he is, on the contrary, an integer, a complete whole, a creative focus; the true individual is a microcosm yet holding in it and imaging the macrocosm. Only perhaps greater stress is laid upon the aspect of creativity or activism. An Eastern sage, a Vedantin, would look for the true spiritual reality behind the flux of forces: Prakriti or Energy is only the executive will of the Purusha, the Conscious Being. The personality in Nature is a formulation and emanation of the transcendent impersonality.
There is another aspect of personality as viewed by Berdyaev which involves a bias of the more orthodox Christian faith: the Christ is inseparable from the Cross. So he says: "There is no such thing as personality if there is no capacity for suffering. Suffering is inherent in God too, if he is a personality, and not merely an abstract idea. God shares in the sufferings of men. He yearns for responsive love. There are divine as well as human passions and therefore divine or creative personality must always suffer to the end of time. A condition of anguish and distress is inherent in it." The view is logically enforced upon the Christian, it is said, if he is to accept incarnation, God becoming flesh. Flesh cannot but be weak. This very weakness, so human, is and must be specially characteristic of God also, if he is one with man and his lover and saviour.
01.10 - Principle and Personality, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
object:01.10 - principle and Personality
author class:Nolini Kanta Gupta
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principle and Personality
It is asked of us why do we preach a man and not purely and solely a principle. Our ideal being avowedly the establishment and reign of a new principle of world-order and not gathering recruits for the camp of a sectarian teacher, it seems all the more inconsistent, if not thoroughly ruinous for our cause, that we should lay stress upon a particular individual and incur the danger of overshadowing the universal truths upon which we seek to build human society. Now, it is not that we are unconscious or oblivious of the many evils attendant upon the system of preaching a man the history of the rise and decay of many sects and societies is there to give us sufficient warning; and yet if we cannot entirely give the go-by to personalities and stick to mere and bare principles, it is because we have clear reasons for it, because we are not unconscious or oblivious either of the evils that beset the system of preaching the principle alone.
Religious bodies that are formed through the bhakti and puja for one man, social reconstructions forced by the will and power of a single individual, have already in the inception this grain of incapacity and disease and death that they are not an integrally self-conscious creation, they are not, as a whole, intelligent and wide awake and therefore constantly responsive to the truths and ideals and realities for which they exist, for which at least, their founder intended them to exist. The light at the apex is the only light and the entire structure is but the shadow of that light; the whole thing has the aspect of a dark mass galvanised into red-hot activity by the passing touch of a dynamo. Immediately however the solitary light fails and the dynamo stops, there is nothing but the original darkness and inertiatoma asit tamasa gudham agre.
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Love and admiration for a mahapurusha is not enough, even faith in his gospel is of little avail, nor can actual participation, consecrated work and labour in his cause save the situation; it is only when the principles, the bare realities for which the mahapurusha stands are in the open forum and men have the full and free opportunity of testing and assimilating them, it is only when individuals thus become living embodiments of those principles and realities that we do create a thing universal and permanent, as universal and permanent as earthly things may be. principles only can embrace and unify the whole of humanity; a particular personality shall always create division and limitation. By placing the man in front, we erect a wall between the principle and men at large. It is the principles, on the contrary, that should be given the place of honour: our attempt should be to keep back personalities and make as little use of them as possible. Let the principles work and create in their freedom and power, untrammelled by the limitations of any mere human vessel.
We are quite familiar with this cry so rampant in our democratic age principles and no personalities! And although we admit the justice of it, yet we cannot ignore the trenchant one-sidedness which it involves. It is perhaps only a reaction, a swing to the opposite extreme of a mentality given too much to personalities, as the case generally has been in the past. It may be necessary, as a corrective, but it belongs only to a temporary stage. Since, however, we are after a universal ideal, we must also have an integral method. We shall have to curb many of our susceptibilities, diminish many of our apprehensions and soberly strike a balance between opposite extremes.
We do not speak like politicians or banias; but the very truth of the matter demands such a policy or line of action. It is very well to talk of principles and principles alone, but what are principles unless they take life and form in a particular individual? They are airy nothings, notions in the brain of logicians and metaphysicians, fit subjects for discussion in the academy, but they are devoid of that vital urge which makes them creative agencies. We have long lines of philosophers, especially European, who most scrupulously avoided all touch of personalities, whose utmost care was to keep principles pure and unsullied; and the upshot was that those principles remained principles only, barren and infructuous, some thing like, in the strong and puissant phrase of BaudelaireLa froide majest de la femme strile. And on the contrary, we have had other peoples, much addicted to personalitiesespecially in Asiawho did not care so much for abstract principles as for concrete embodiments; and what has been the result here? None can say that they did not produce anything or produced only still-born things. They produced living creaturesephemeral, some might say, but creatures that lived and moved and had their days.
But, it may be asked, what is the necessity, what is the purpose in making it all a one man show? Granting that principles require personalities for their fructuation and vital functioning, what remains to be envisaged is not one personality but a plural personality, the people at large, as many individuals of the human race as can be consciously imbued with those principles. When principles are made part and parcel of, are concentrated in a single solitary personality, they get "cribbed and cabined," they are vitiated by the idiosyncrasies of the man, they come to have a narrower field of application; they are emptied of the general verities they contain and finally cease to have any effect.
The thing, however, is that what you call principles do not drop from heaven in their virgin purity and all at once lay hold of mankind en masse. It is always through a particular individual that a great principle manifests itself. principles do not live in the general mind of man and even if they live, they live secreted and unconscious; it is only a puissant personality, who has lived the principle, that can bring it forward into life and action, can awaken, like the Vedic Dawn, what was dead in allmritam kanchana bodhayanti. Men in general are by themselves 'inert and indifferent; they have little leisure or inclination to seek, from any inner urge of their own, for principles and primal truths; they become conscious of these only when expressed and embodied in some great and rare soul. An Avatar, a Messiah or a Prophet is the centre, the focus through which a Truth and Law first dawns and then radiates and spreads abroad. The little lamps are all lighted by the sparks that the great torch scatters.
And yet we yield to none in our demand for holding forth the principles always and ever before the wide open gaze of all. The principle is there to make people self-knowing and self-guiding; and the man is also there to illustrate that principle, to serve as the hope and prophecy of achievement. The living soul is there to touch your soul, if you require the touch; and the principle is there by which to test and testify. For, we do not ask anybody to be a mere automaton, a blind devotee, a soul without individual choice and initiative. On the contrary, we insist on each and every individual to find his own soul and stand on his own Truththis is the fundamental principle we declare, the only creedif creed it be that we ask people to note and freely follow. We ask all people to be fully self-dependent and self-illumined, for only thus can a real and solid reconstruction of human nature and society be possible; we do not wish that they should bow down ungrudgingly to anything, be it a principle or a personality. In this respect we claim the very first rank of iconoclasts and anarchists. And along with that, if we still choose to remain an idol-lover and a hero-worshipper, it is because we recognise that our mind, human as it is, being not a simple equation but a complex paradox, the idol or the hero symbolises for us and for those who so will, the very iconoclasm and anarchism and perhaps other more positive things as wellwhich we behold within and seek to manifest.
The world is full of ikons and archons; we cannot escape them, even if we try the world itself being a great ikon and as great an archon. Those who swear by principles, swear always by some personality or other, if not by a living creature then by a lifeless book, if not by Religion then by Science, if not by the East then by the West, if not by Buddha or Christ then by Bentham or Voltaire. Only they do it unwittingly they change one set of personalities for another and believe they have rejected them all. The veils of Maya are a thousand-fold tangle and you think you have entirely escaped her when you have only run away from one fold to fall into another. The wise do not attempt to reject and negate Maya, but consciously accept herfreedom lies in a knowing affirmation. So we too have accepted and affirmed an icon, but we have done it consciously and knowingly; we are not bound by our idol, we see the truth of it, and we serve and utilise it as best as we may.
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01.11 - The Basis of Unity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A modern society or people cannot have religion, that is to say, credal religion, as the basis of its organized collective life. It was mediaeval society and people that were organized on that line. Indeed mediaevalism means nothing more and nothing lessthan that. But whatever the need and justification in the past, the principle is an anachronism under modern conditions. It was needed, perhaps, to keep alive a truth which goes into the very roots of human life and its deepest aspiration; and it was needed also for a dynamic application of that truth on a larger scale and in smaller details, on the mass of mankind and in its day to day life. That was the aim of the Church Militant and the Khilafat; that was the spirit, although in a more Sattwic way, behind the Buddhistic evangelism or even Hindu colonization.
The truth behind a credal religion is the aspiration towards the realization of the Divine, some ultimate reality that gives a permanent meaning and value to the human life, to the existence lodged in this 'sphere of sorrow' here below. Credal paraphernalia were necessary to express or buttress this core of spiritual truth when mankind, in the mass, had not attained a certain level of enlightenment in the mind and a certain degree of development in its life-relations. The modern age is modern precisely because it had attained to a necessary extent this mental enlightenment and this life development. So the scheme or scaffolding that was required in the past is no longer unavoidable and can have either no reality at all or only a modified utility.
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History abounds in instances of racial and cultural immixture. Indeed, all major human groupings of today are invariably composite formations. Excepting, perhaps, some primitiveaboriginal tribes there are no pure races existent. The Briton, the Dane, the Anglo-Saxon, and the Norman have combined to form the British; a Frenchman has a Gaul, a Roman, a Frank in him; and a Spaniard's blood would show an Iberian, a Latin, a Gothic, a Moorish element in it. And much more than a people, a culture in modern times has been a veritable cockpit of multifarious and even incongruous elements. There are instances also in which a perfect fusion could not be accomplished, and one element had to be rejected or crushed out. The complete disappearance of the Aztecs and Mayas in South America, the decadence of the Red Indians in North America, of the Negroes in Africa as a result of a fierce clash with European peoples and European culture illustrate the point.
Nature, on the whole, has solved the problem of blood fusion and mental fusion of different peoples, although on a smaller scale. India today presents the problem on a larger scale and on a higher or deeper level. The demand is for a spiritual fusion and unity. Strange to say, although the Spirit is the true bed-rock of unitysince, at bottom, it means identityit is on this plane that mankind has not yet been able to really meet and coalesce. India's genius has been precisely working in the line of a perfect solution of this supreme problem.
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If it is said that this is an ideal for the few only, not for the mass, our answer to that is the answer of the GitaYad yad acharati sreshthah. Let the few then practise and achieve the ideal: the mass will have to follow as far as it is possible and necessary. It is the very character of the evolutionary system of Nature, as expressed in the principle of symbiosis, that any considerable change in one place (in one species) is accompanied by a corresponding change in the same direction in other contiguous places (in other associated species) in order that the poise and balance of the system may be maintained.
It is precisely strong nuclei that are needed (even, perhaps, one strong nucleus is sufficient) where the single and integrated spiritual consciousness is an accomplished and established fact: that acts inevitably as a solvent drawing in and assimilating or transforming and re-creating as much, of the surroundings as its own degree and nature of achievement inevitably demand.
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principle and Personality Three Degrees of Social Organisation
01.12 - Goethe, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
One view considers Evil as coeval with Good: the prince of Evil is God's peer, equal to him in all ways, absolutely separate, independent and self-existent. Light and Darkness are eternal principles living side by side, possessing equal reality. For, although it is permissible to the individual to pass out of the Darkness and enter into Light, the Darkness itself does not disappear: it remains and maintains its domain, and even it is said that some human beings are meant eternally for this domain. That is the Manichean principle and that also is fundamentally the dualistic conception of chit-achit in some Indian systems (although the principle of chit or light is usually given a higher position and priority of excellence).
The Christian too accepts the dual principle, but does not give equal status to the two. Satan is there, an eternal reality: it is anti-God, it seeks to oppose God, frustrate his work. It is the great tempter whose task it is to persuade, to inspire man to remain always an earthly creature and never turn to know or live in God. Now the crucial question that arises is, what is the necessity of this Antagonist in God's scheme of creation? What is the meaning of this struggle and battle? God could have created, if he had chosen, a world without Evil. The orthodox Christi an answer is that in that case one could not have fully appreciated the true value and glory of God's presence. It is to manifest and proclaim the great victory that the strife and combat has been arranged in which Man triumphs in the end and God's work stands vindicated. The place of Satan is always Hell, but he cannot drag down a soul into his pit to hold it there eternally (although according to one doctrine there are or may be certain eternally damned souls).
Goe the carries the process of convergence and even harmony of the two powers a little further and shows that although they are contrary apparently, they are not contradictory principles in essence. For, Satan is, after all, God's servant, even a very obedient servant; he is an instrument in the hand of the Almighty to work out His purpose. The purpose is to help and lead man, although in a devious way, towards a greater understanding, a nearer approach to Himself.
The Challenge and the Pact
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Satan proposes to lead man down into hell through a sure means, nothing more sure, according to him, viz., love for a woman and a woman's love in return. Nothing like that to make man earth-bound or hell-bound and force out of him the nostalgic cry, "Time must have a stop." A most simple, primal and primeval lyric love will most suit Satan's purpose. Hence the Margaret episode. Love=Passion=Lust=Hell; that is the inevitable equation sequence, and through which runs the magic thread of infatuation. And that charm is invincible. Satan did succeed and was within an ace, as they say, of the final and definitive triumph: but that was not to be, for he left out of account an incalculable element. Love, even human love has, at least can have, a wonderful power, the potency of reversing the natural decree and bring about a supernatural intervention. Human love can at a crucial momentin extremiscall down the Divine Grace, which means God's love for man. And the soul meant for perdition and about to be seized and carried away by Satan finds itself suddenly free and lifted up and borne by Heaven's messengers. Human Jove is divine love itself in earthly form and figure and whatever its apparent aberrations it is in soul and substance that thing. Satan is hoisted with his own petard. That is God's irony.
But Goethe's Satan seems to know or feel something of his fate. He knows his function and the limit too of his function. He speaks of the doomsday for people, but it is his doomsday also, he says in mystic terms. Yes, it is his doomsday, for it is the day of man's liberation. Satan has to release man from the pact that stands cancelled. The soul of man cannot be sold, even if he wanted it.
01.12 - Three Degrees of Social Organisation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Declaration of Rights is a characteristic modern phenomenon. It is a message of liberty and freedom,no doubt of secular liberty and freedomthings not very common in the old world; and yet at the same time it is a clarion that calls for and prepares strife and battle. If the conception of Right has sanctified the individual or a unit collectivity, it has also pari passu developed a fissiparous tendency in human organisation. Society based on or living by the principle of Right becomes naturally and inevitably a competitive society. Where man is regarded as nothing moreand, of course, nothing lessthan a bundle of rights, human aggregation is bound to be an exact image of Darwinian Naturered in tooth and claw.
But Right is not the only term on which an ideal or even a decent society can be based. There is another term which can serve equally well, if not better. I am obviously referring to the conception of duty. I tis an old world conception; it isa conception particularly familiar to the East. The Indian term for Right is also the term for dutyadhikara means both. In Europe too, in more recent times, when after the frustration of the dream of a new world envisaged by the French Revolution, man was called upon again to rise and hope, it was Mazzini who brought forward the new or discarded principle as a mantra replacing the other more dangerous one. A hierarchy of duties was given by him as the pattern of a fulfilled ideal life. In India, in our days the distinction between the two attitudes was very strongly insisted upon by the great Vivekananda.
Vivekananda said that if human society is to be remodelled, one must first of all learn not to think and act in terms of claims and rights but in terms of duties and obligations. Fulfil your duties conscientiously, the rights will take care of themselves; it is such an attitude that can give man the right poise, the right impetus, the right outlook with regard to a collective living. If instead of each one demanding what one considers as one's dues and consequently scrambling and battling for them, and most often not getting them or getting at a ruinous pricewhat made Arjuna cry, "What shall I do with all this kingdom if in regaining it I lose all my kith and kin dear to me?"if, indeed, instead of claiming one's right, one were content to know one's duty and do it as it should be done, then not only there would be peace and amity upon earth, but also each one far from losing anything would find miraculously all that one most needs and must have,the necessary, the right rights and all.
It might be objected here however that actually in the history of humanity the conception of Duty has been no less pugnacious than that of Right. In certain ages and among certain peoples, for example, it was considered the imperative duty of the faithful to kill or convert by force or otherwise as many as possible belonging to other faiths: it was the mission of the good shepherd to burn the impious and the heretic. In recent times, it was a sense of high and solemn duty that perpetrated what has been termed "purges"brutalities undertaken, it appears, to purify and preserve the integrity of a particular ideological, social or racial aggregate. But the real name of such a spirit is not duty but fanaticism. And there is a considerable difference between the two. Fanaticism may be defined as duty running away with itself; but what we are concerned with here is not the aberration of duty, but duty proper self-poised.
One might claim also on behalf of the doctrine of Right that the right kind of Right brings no harm, it is as already stated another name for liberty, for the privilege of living and it includes the obligation to let live. One can do what one likes provided one does not infringe on an equal right of others to do the same. The measure of one's liberty is equal to the measure of others' liberty.
Here is the crux of the question. The dictum of utilitarian philosophers 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 others is so undefinable and variable that a title suit is inevitable in each case. In asserting and establishing and even maintaining one's rights there is always the possibilityalmost the certaintyof encroaching upon others' rights.
What is required is not therefore 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 other higher 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 other tends to be more tolerant and considerate (sattwic): neither can give an absolute certainty of poise, a clear guarantee of perfect harmony.
Indian wisdom has found this other, a fairer terma tertium quid,the mystic factor, sought for by so many philosophers on so many counts. That is the very well- known, the very familiar termDharma. What is Dharma then? How does it accomplish the miracle which to others seems to have proved an impossibility? Dharma is self-law, that is to say, the law of the Self; it is the rhythm and movement of our inner or inmost being, the spontaneous working out of our truth-conscious nature.
We may perhaps view the three terms Right, Duty and Dharma as degrees of an ascending consciousness. Consciousness at Its origin and in its primitive formulation is dominated by the principle of inertia (tamas); in that state things have mostly an undifferentiated collective existence, they helplessly move about acted upon by forces outside them. A rise in growth and evolution brings about differentiation, specialisation, organisation. And this means consciousness of oneself of the distinct and separate existence of each and everyone, in other words, self-assertion, the claim, the right of each individual unit to be itself, to become itself first and foremost. It is a necessary development; for it signifies the growth of self consciousness in the units out of a mass unconsciousness or semi-consciousness. It is the expression of rajas, the mode of dynamism, of strife and struggle, it is the corrective of tamas.
In the earliest and primitive society men lived totally in a mass consciousness. Their life was a blind obedienceobedience to the chief the patriarch or pater familiasobedience to the laws and customs of the collectivity to which one belonged. It was called duty; it was called even dharma, but evidently on a lower level, in an inferior formulation. In reality it was more of the nature of the mechanical functioning of an automaton than the exercise of conscious will and deliberate choice, which is the very soul of the conception of duty.
The conception of Right had to appear in order to bring out the principle of individuality, of personal freedom and fulfilment. For, a true healthy collectivity is the association and organisation of free and self-determinate units. The growth of independent individuality naturally means at first clash and rivalry, and a violently competitive society is the result. It is only at this stage that the conception of duty can fruitfully come in and develop in man and his society the mode of Sattwa, which is that of light and wisdom, of toleration and harmony. Then only a society is sought to be moulded on the principle of co-ordination and co-operation.
Still, the conception of duty cannot finally and definitively solve the problem. It cannot arrive at a perfect harmonisation of the conflicting claims of individual units; for, duty, as I have already said, is a child of mental idealism, and although the mind can exercise some kind of control over life-forces, it cannot altogether eliminate the seeds of conflict that lie imbedded in the very nature of life. It is for this reason that there is an element of constraint in duty; it is, as the poet says, the "stern daughter of the Voice of God". One has to compel oneself, one has to use force on oneself to carry out one's dutythere is a feeling somehow of its being a bitter pill. The cult of duty means rajas controlled and coerced by Sattwa, not the transcendence of rajas. This leads us to the high and supreme conception of Dharma, which is a transcendence of the gunas. Dharma is not an ideal, a standard or a rule that one has to obey: it is the law of self-nature that one inevitably follows, it is easy, spontaneous, delightful. The path of duty is heroic, the path of Dharma is of the gods, godly (cf. Virabhava and Divyabhava of the Tantras).
The principle of Dharma then inculcates that each individual must, in order to act, find out his truth of being, his true soul and inmost consciousness: one must entirely and integrally merge oneself into that, be identified with it in such a manner that all acts and feelings and thoughts, in fact all movements, inner and outerspontaneously and irrepressibly well out of that fount and origin. The individual souls, being made of one truth-nature in its multiple modalities, when they live, move and have their being in its essential law and dynamism, there cannot but be absolute harmony and perfect synthesis between all the units, even as the sun and moon and stars, as the Veda says, each following its specific orbit according to its specific nature, never collide or haltna me thate na tas thatuh but weave out a faultless pattern of symphony.
The future society of man is envisaged as something of like nature. When the mortal being will have found his immortal soul and divine self, then each one will be able to give full and free expression to his self-nature (swabhava); then indeed the utmost sweep of dynamism in each and all will not cause clash or conflict; on the contrary, each will increase the other and there will be a global increment and fulfilmentparasparam bhavayantah. The division and conflict, the stress and strain that belong to the very nature of the inferior level of being and consciousness will then have been transcended. It is only thus that a diviner humanity can be born and replace all the other moulds and types that can never lead to anything final and absolutely satisfactory.
01.13 - T. S. Eliot: Four Quartets, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Highgate, primrose and Ludgate....11
It is true the movement towards transcendence is stronger and apparent in our poet, but the other kindred point-of home and time-is not forgotten. So he says:
01.14 - Nicholas Roerich, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
I speak of Roerich as a Western soul, but more precisely perhaps he is a soul of the mid-region (as also in another sense we shall see subsequently) intermediary between the East and the West. His external make-up had all the characteristic elements of the Western culture, but his mind and temperament, his inner soul was oriental. And yet it was not the calm luminous staticancientsoul that an Indian or a Chinese sage is; it is a nomad soul, newly awakened, young and fresh and ardent, something primitive, pulsating with the unspoilt green sap of life something in the manner of Whitman. And that makes him all the more representative of the young and ardent West yearning for the light that was never on sea or land.
Is it not strange that one should look to the East for the light? There is a light indeed that dwells in the setting suns, but that is the inferior light, the light that moves level with the earth, pins us down to the normal and ordinary life and consciousness: it" leads into the Night, into Nihil, pralaya. It is the light of the morning sun that man looks up to in his forward march, the sun that rises in the East whom the Vedic Rishi invoked in these magnificent lines:
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Indeed, Roerich considers the Himalayas as the very abode, the tabernacle itself thesanctum sanctorumof the Spirit, the Light Divine. Many of Roerich's paintings have mountain ranges, especially snow-bound mountain ranges, as their theme. There is a strange kinship between this yearning artistic soul, which seems solitary in spite of its ardent humanism, and the silent heights, rising white tier upon tier reflecting prism like the fiery glowing colours, the vast horizons, the wide vistas vanishing beyond.
Roerich is one of the prophets and seers who have ever been acclaiming and preparing the Golden Age, the dream that humanity has been dreaming continuously since its very childhood, that is to say, when there will be peace and harmony on earth, when racial, cultural or ideological egoism will no longer divide man and mana thing that seems today a chimera and a hallucinationwhen there will be one culture, one civilisation, one spiritual life welding all humanity into a single unit of life luminous and beautiful. Roerich believes that such a consummation can arrive only or chiefly through the growth of the sense of beauty, of the aesthetic temperament, of creative labour leading to a wider and higher consciousness. Beauty, Harmony, Light, Knowledge, Culture, Love, Delight are cardinal terms in his vision of the deeper and higher life of the future.
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Roerich discovered and elaborated his own technique to reveal that which is secret, express that which is not expressed or expressible. First of all, he is symbolical and allegorical: secondly, the choice of his symbols and allegories is hieratic, that is to say, the subject-matter refers to objects and events connected with saints and legends, shrines and enchanted places, hidden treasures, spirits and angels, etc. etc.; thirdly, the manner or style of execution is what we may term pantomimic, in other words, concrete, graphic, dramatic, even melodramatic. He has a special predilection for geometrical patterns the artistic effect of whichbalance, regularity, fixity, soliditywas greatly utilised by the French painter Czanne and poet Mallarm who seem to have influenced Roerich to a considerable degree. But this Northerner had not the reticence, the suavity, the tonic unity of the classicist, nor the normality and clarity of the Latin temperament. The prophet, the priest in him was the stronger element and made use of the artist as the rites andceremoniesmudras and chakrasof his vocation demanded. Indeed, he stands as the hierophant of a new cultural religion and his paintings and utterances are, as it were, gestures that accompany a holy ceremonial.
A Russian artist (Monsieur Benois) has stressed upon the primitivealmost aboriginalelement in Roerich and was not happy over it. Well, as has been pointed out by other prophets and thinkers, man today happens to be so sophisticated, artificial, material, cerebral that a [all-back seems to be necessary for him to take a new leap forward on to a higher ground. The pure aesthete is a closed system, with a consciousness immured in an ivory tower; but man is something more. A curious paradox. Man can reach the highest, realise the integral truth when he takes his leap, not from the relatively higher levels of his consciousness his intellectual and aesthetic and even moral status but when he can do so from his lower levels, when the physico-vital element in him serves as the s pringing-board. The decent and the beautiful the classic grace and aristocracyform one aspect of man, the aspect of "light"; but the aspect of energy and power lies precisely in him where the aboriginal and the barbarian find also a lodging. Man as a mental being is naturally sattwic, but prone to passivity and weakness; his physico-vital reactions, on the other hand, are obscure and crude, simple and vehement, but they have life and energy and creative power, they are there to be trained and transfigured, made effective instruments of a higher illumination.
All elemental personalities have something of the unconventional and irrational in them. And Roerich is one such in his own way. The truths and realities that he envisages and seeks to realise on earth are elemental and fundamental, although apparently simple and commonplace.
0.12 - Letters to a Student, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
are based on competition and lead to placings and prizes.
Physical education means principally all the various exercises for the development and maintenance of the body.
Naturally, here we have combined the two. But this is mainly
0.13 - Letters to a Student, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Parents who are primarily interested in spiritual realisation
usually do not ask their children to come back to them.
--
And why were primitive men left to their own means?
primitive men were still too close to the animal to be able to
0.14 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Human beings could be classified under four principal categories
according to the attitude they take in life:
--
In principle, everything is possible by uniting consciously with
the Divine Force.
--
If the growth of consciousness were considered as the principal
goal of life, many difficulties would find their solution.
0 1955-09-03, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Mother, it seems that for weeks I have been knocking against myself at every turn, as though I were in a prison, and I cannot get out of it. Mother, I need your Space, your Light, to get out of this walled-in night that is suffocating me.
No matter where I concentrate, in my heart, above my head, between my eyes, I bang everywhere into an unyielding wall; I no longer know which way to turn, what I must do, say, pray in order to be freed from all this at last. Mother, I know that I am not making all the effort I should, but help me to make this effort, I implore your grace. I need so much to find at last this solid rock upon which to lean, this space of light where finally I may seek refuge. Mother, open the psychic being in me, open me to your sole Light which I need so much. Without your grace, I can only turn in circles, hopelessly. O Mother, may I live in you.
0 1955-10-19, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
1) To prostrate oneself at His feet in a surrender of all pride, with a perfect HUMILITY.
2) To unfold ones being before Him, to open entirely ones body from head to toe, as one opens a book, spreading open ones centers so as to make all their movements visible in a total SINCERITY that allows nothing to remain hidden.
0 1956-05-02, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
It is said, The supramental principle is at work
But I have just explained the whole thing to you! (Mother laughs) Its incredible!
0 1956-09-12, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I had had a somewhat similar experience at the time of the union of the supreme creative principle with the physical consciousness. But that was a subtle experience, while this was materialin the body.
I did not have the experience, I did not look at it: I WAS it.
0 1957-10-17, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
And this new vibration in the body has allowed me to understand the mechanism of the transformation. It is not something that comes from a higher Will, not a higher consciousness that imposes itself upon the body: it is the body itself awakening in its cells, a freedom of the cells themselves, an absolutely new vibration that sets disorders righteven disorders that existed prior to the supramental manifestation.
Naturally, all this is a gradual process, but I am hopeful that little by little this new consciousness will grow, gain ground and victoriously resist the old forces of destruction and annihilation, and this Fatality we believed to be so inexorable.
0 1958-06-06 - Supramental Ship, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
The ego becomes more and more conscious and resistant as the being develops. Very primitive, very simple beings, little children will respond first, because they dont have an organized ego. But these big people! People who have worked on themselves, who have mastered themselves, who are organized, who have an ego made of steel, it will be difficult for them.
Unless they go beyond all this and have enough spiritual knowledge to be able to make the ego surrender in which case the realization will naturally be much greaterit will be more difficult to accomplish, but the result will be far more complete.
0 1958-07-02, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
When the Grace acts on the collectivity, each thing, each element, each principle, is put in its place as the result of a karmic logic in the universal movement. This is what gives us the impression of disorder and confusion as we see it.
When the Grace acts on the individual, it gives to each the maximum position according to what he is and what he has realized.
0 1958-07-06, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I am speaking of terrestrial Nature. Through their mental power, men had the choice and the freedom to make pacts with these extraterrestrial vital forces. There is a whole vital world that has nothing to do with the earth, it is entirely independent or prior to earths existence, it is self-existentwell, they have brought that down here! They have made what we see! And such being the case This is what terrestrial Nature told me: It is beyond my control.
So considering all that, Sri Aurobindo came to the conclusion that only the supramental power (Mother 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, there 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.
0 1958-10-10, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
If we consider the body as the tabernacle of the Lord, then medical science, for example, becomes the initiatory ritual of the service of the temple, and doctors of all kinds are the officiating priests in the different rituals of worship. Thus, medicine is really a priesthood and should be treated as such.
The same can be said of physical culture and of all the sciences that are concerned with the body and its workings. If the material universe is considered as the outer sheath and the manifestation of the Supreme, then it can generally be said that all the physical sciences are the rituals of worship.
0 1958-11-04 - Myths are True and Gods exist - mental formation and occult faculties - exteriorization - work in dreams, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
It was the same thing for visions of past lives. I knew NOTHING when I would have the experience, not even the possibility of past lives, and only after having had the experience would I study the question and, for example, even verify certain historical facts that had occurred in my vision but about which I had no prior knowledge.
***
0 1958-11-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I struck upon an almighty s pring that cast me up forthwith into a formless, limitless vast, generator of all creation. It was yes, I have the feeling that it was not the ordinary creation, the primordial creation, but the SUPRAMENTAL creation, for it bore no similarity to the experience of returning to the Supreme, the origin of everything. I had utterly the feeling of being cast into the origin of the supramental creation something that is already (how can it be expressed?) objectified from the Supreme, with the explicit goal of the supramental creation.
That was my feeling.
0 1958-11-26, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Basically, the vast majority of men are like prisoners with all the doors and all the windows shut, so they suffocate (which is quite natural), but they have with them the key that opens the doors and the windows, and they dont use it Certainly, there is a period when they dont know that they have the key, but even long after they do know it, long after they have been told, they hesitate to use it and doubt that it has the power to open the doors and windows, or even that it may be advisable to open them. And even once they feel that After all, it might be a good thing, a fear pursues them: What is going to happen once all these doors and these windows open? They become afraidafraid of losing themselves in this light and in this freedom. They want to remain what they call themselves. They love their falsehood and their slavery. Something in them loves it and remains clinging to it. They feel that without their limits, they would no longer exist.
That is why the journey is so long, so difficult. For if one would truly consent no longer to be, everything would become so easy, so swift, so luminous, so joyousthough perhaps not in the way men conceive of joy and ease. At heart, there are very few beings who are not enamored of struggle. There are very few who would consent to having no darkness or who can conceive of light as anything other than the opposite of obscurity: Without shadow, there would be no painting. Without struggle, there would be no victory. Without suffering, there would be no joy. That is what they think, and as long as they think like that, they are not yet born to the spirit.
0 1958-12-24, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I am following Swamis instructions to the letter. Sometimes it all seems to lack warmth and spontaneity, but I am holding on. I might add that we are living right next to the bazaar, amidst a great racket 20 hours a day, which does not make things easier. So I repeat my mantra as one pounds his fists against the walls of a prison. Sometimes it opens a little, you send me a little joy, and then everything becomes better again.
Swami told me that the mantra to Durga is intended to pierce through into the subconscient. To complement this work, he does his pujas to Kali, and finally one of his friends, X, the High priest of the temple in Rameswaram (who presided over my initiation and has great occult powers), has undertaken to say a very powerful mantra over me daily, for a period of eight days, to extirpate the dark forces from my subconscious. The operation already began four days ago. While reciting his mantra, he holds a glass of water in his hand, then he makes me drink it. It seems that on the eighth day, if the enemy has been trapped, this water turns yellow then the operation is over and the poisoned water is thrown out. (I tell you all this because I prefer that you know.) In any event, I like X very much, he is a very luminous, very good man. If I am not delivered after all this!
In truth, I believe only in the Grace. My mantra and all the rest seem to me only little tricks to try to win over your Grace.
0 1958 12 - Floor 1, young girl, we shall kill the young princess - black tent, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
object:0_1958 12 - Floor 1, young girl, we shall kill the young princess - black tent
author class:The Mother
--
Two or three days after I retired to my room upstairs,1 early in the night I fell into a very heavy sleep and found myself out of the body much more materially than I do usually. This degree of density in which you can see the material surroundings exactly as they are. The part that was out seemed to be under a spell and only half conscious. When I found myself at the first floor where everything was absolutely black, I wanted to go up again, but then I discovered that my hand was held by a young girl whom I could not see in the darkness but whose contact was very familiar. She pulled me by the hand telling me laughingly, No, come, come down with me, we shall kill the young princess. I could not understand what she meant by this young princess and, rather unwillingly, I followed her to see what it was. Arriving in the anteroom which is at the top of the staircase leading to the ground floor, my attention was drawn in the midst of all this total obscurity to the white figure of Kamala2 standing in the middle of the passage between the hall and Sri Aurobindos room. She was as it were in full light while everything else was black. Then I saw on her face such an expression of intense anxiety that to comfort her I said, I am coming back. The sound of my voice shook off from me the semi-trance in which I was before and suddenly I thought, Where am I going? and I pushed away from me the dark figure who was pulling me and in whom, while she was running down the steps, I recognized a young girl who lived with Sri Aurobindo and me for many years and died five years back. This girl during her life was under the most diabolical influence. And then I saw very distinctly (as through the walls of the staircase) down below a small black tent which could scarcely be perceived in the surrounding darkness and standing in the middle of the tent the figure of a man, head and face shaved (like the sannyasin or the Buddhist monks) covered from head to foot with a knitted outfit following tightly the form of his body which was tall and slim. No other cloth or garment could give an indication as to who he could be. He was standing in front of a black pot placed on a dark red fire which was throwing its reddish glow on him. He had his right arm stretched over the pot, holding between two fingers a thin gold chain which looked like one of mine and was unnaturally visible and bright. Shaking gently the chain he was chanting some words which translated in my mind, She must die the young princess, she must pay for all she has done, she must die the young princess.
Then I suddenly realized that it was I the young princess and as I burst into laughter, I found myself awake in my bed.
I did not like the idea of something or somebody having the power to pull me like that so materially out of my body without my previous consent. That is why I gave some importance to the experience.
0 1959-01-14, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I am taking advantage of this situation to work. I have chosen the articles for the Bulletin. They are as follows: 1) Message. 2) To keep silent. 3) Can there be intermediary states between man and super-man? 4) The Anti-Divine. 5) What is the role of the spirit? 6) Karma (I have touched this one up to make it less personal). 7) The Worship of the Supreme in Matter. Now I would like to prepare the first twelve Aphorisms3 for printing. But as you have not yet revised the last two, I am sending them to you. Could you do them when you have finished what you are doing for the Bulletin? It is not urgent, take your time. Do not disturb your real work for this in any way. For, in my eyes, this work of inner liberation is much more important.
You will find in this letter a little money. I thought you might need it for your stamps, etc.
0 1959-01-21, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I would like very much to return to Pondicherry for the February Darshan and once again begin working for you. Today I am sending a second lot to Pavitra and tomorrow I will start on the Aphorisms, for I do not want to make you wait any longer. I will send a third and final lot to Pavitra by the end of the month, in time for printing. I am very touched, sweet Mother, by your attention and the money you are sending me.
Sweet Mother, may my entire life be at your service, may my entire being belong to you. I owe you everything.
0 1959-01-27, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I am not writing you all this to discourage you from coming. But I want you to succeed; for me that is more important than anything else, no matter what the price. So, know for certain that I am with you all the time and more so especially when you repeat your mantra
In constant communion in the effort towards victory; my love and my force never leave you.
0 1959-01-31, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
In principle, X will have finished his purging of me on February 6. So after that date I will do what you wish.
As for my mantra, I say it only partially now, but X will fix an auspicious day to begin it really according to the rules when I am in Pondicherry, for theoretically, one should not move once the work has begun. The 12th of February is an auspicious day, if you decide that I should return by then (or a little before to get things ready); otherwise another date may be fixed later on.
0 1959-05-28, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
So there remains the pure spiritual destiny, pure interiorization. That is what I have been trying to do for the last five years, without much success. There are good periods of collaboration, because one part of my being can be happy in any condition. But in a certain way this achievement remains truncated, especially when you base spiritual life on a principle of integrality. And these three destinies in me have their own good reasons, which are true: they are not inferior, they are not incidental, they are woven from the very threads that created the spiritual life in me. My error is to open the door to revolt when I feel too poignantly one or the other being stifled.
So you see, all this is insoluble. I have only to bow before these unfortunate circumstances. I perceive an injustice somewhere, but I have only to remain silent.
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 there, except perhaps because he felt who my mother 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 other than that, I have no desire to go there, for each time I go to France, I feel like I am entering a prison. Naturally I would be happy for my mothers joy; she is a great soul, but is this reason enough?
Sunday, 14th
0 1960-05-24 - supramental flood, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
The three Supreme principles were very clearly there: Existence, Consciousness (an active, realizing consciousness) and Ananda. A universal vastness that kept going on and on and on
It moves and it doesnt move. How can you explain that? It was in motion, a constant, unceasing motion, and yet there was no shifting of place. I had the perception, or rather there was the perception, of something which WAS forever, which never repeated itself, neither began nor ended, which didnt shift places yet was always in motion.
--
Sat-Chit-Ananda: the three Supreme principles, Existence (Sat), Consciousness (Chit), and Bliss (Ananda).
Samadhi: trance.
0 1960-09-20, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
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.
I have a hard time making X understand that I have work to do when Im with him. He doesnt understand that one can work.
0 1960-10-22, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
There was this Themanlys, my brothers schoolmate; he wrote books, but he was lazy-minded and didnt want to work! So he had passed that job on to me. But it was impossible, you couldnt do a thing with it. And what words! Theon would invent words for the subtle organs, the inner senses; he had found a word for each thinga frightful barbarism! And I took care of everything: I found the printer, corrected the proofsall the work for a long time.
They were stories, narratives, an entire initiation in the form of stories. There was a lot in it, really a lot. She knew many things. But it was presented in such a way that it was unreadable.
0 1960-10-30, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
And this god was very intimately related to you, as if you were melted together; you were like a sacrificial priest and at the same time he was entering into you.
And this lasted quite long (its what I saw most clearly and what I best remember). But there were many, many thingsold things that I know and certainly a VERY INTIMATE relationship which we had in the days of Egypt, at Thebes.
0 1960-11-12, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
You asked me just now if we have a say in the matter. Well, last year I didnt go out; I had no intention of going to the Sportsground or to the theater for the December 2 program, but I was often asked to see that the weather be good. So while I was doing my japa upstairs, I started saying that it shouldnt rain. But they werent in a very good mood! (When I used to go out myself, it had an effect, for it kept the thing in check, and even if it had been raining earlier, that day it would stop.) So they said, But you arent going out, so what does it matter. I said I wascounting on it. Then they answered, Are you prepared to have it rain the next time you go out?Do what you like, I replied. And when I went out on November 24 for the prize distribution, there was a deluge. It came pouring down and we had to run for shelter in the gymnasiumeveryone was splashing around, the band playing on the verandah was half-drenched, it was dreadful!the day before it hadnt rained, the day after it didnt rain. But on that day they had their revenge!
I dont want that to happen this time. Once is enough. So Im going to see about it.
--
Then pay the price.
(silence)
0 1960-11-26, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
You see, Im doing the sadhana really along a a path that has never been trod by anyone. Sri Aurobindo did it in principle. But he gave the charge of doing it in the body to me.
That was the wonderful thing when we were together and all these hostile forces were fighting (they tried to kill me any number of times. He always saved me in an absolutely miraculous and marvelous way). But you see, this seemed to create very great BODILY difficulties for him. We discussed this a great deal, and I told him, If one of us must go, I want that it should be me.
0 1960-12-17, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Its a sort of oscillationreally, its so interestingbetween two extremes, one of which is the all-powerfulness and capital or primordial importance of the Physical, and the other its utter unreality.
And its constantly going back and forth between the two (seesaw motion). And both are equally false, equally true.
0 1961-01-10, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Put this way, there 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.
Love, in its essence and in its origin, is like a white flame obliterating ALL resistances. You can have the experience yourself: whatever the difficulty in your being, whatever the weight of accumulated mistakes, the ignorance, incapacity, bad will, a single SECOND of this Lovepure, essential, suprememelts everything in its almighty flame. One single moment and an entire past can vanish. One single TOUCH of That in its essence and the whole burden is consumed.
0 1961-01-12, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But if we had the vision of the whole, if we were able to contain past, present and future simultaneously (as it is somewhere up above), then we would see how relative these things are and that its mainly the progressing evolutionary Force which gives us this will to reject; yet when these things still had their place, they were quite tolerable. However, to have this experience in a practical sense is impossible unless we have a total vision the vision that is the Supremes alone! Therefore, one must first identify with the Supreme, and then, keeping this identification, one can return to a consciousness sufficiently externalized to see things as they really are. But thats the principle, and in so far as we are able to realize it, we reach a state of consciousness where we can look at all things with the smile of a complete certainty that everything is exactly as it should be.
Of course, people who dont think deeply enough will say, Oh, but if we see that things are exactly as they should be, then nothing will budge. But no! There isnt a fraction of a second when things arent moving: theres a continuous and total transformation, a movement that never stops. Only because its difficult for us to feel that way can we imagine that by our entering certain states of consciousness things would not change. Even if we entered into an apparently total inertia, things would continue to change and we along with them!
--
This is a primary stage. As long as you havent gone beyond this condition, you are unfit for yoga. Because truly, no one in such a rudimentary state is ready for yoga.
***
0 1961-01-24, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
A few days later, Mother rectified: 'I have looked at the experience again and realized that it's not Vedic but pre-Vedic. The experience put me into contact with a civilization prior to the Vedas the Rishis and the Vedas are a kind of transition between that vanished civilization and the Indian civilization which grew out of the Vedic Age. It was yesterday [January 26] that I perceived this, and it was quite interesting.'
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.
0 1961-01-27, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It was about the Word, the primal sound. Sri Aurobindo speaks of it in Savitri: the essence of the Word and how it will express itself, how it will bring in the possibility of a supramental expression that will take the place of languages. I began by speaking to him about the different languages, their limitations and possibilities; and I warned him against the deformations imposed on languages with the idea of making them a more flexible means of expressing something else. I told him how completely ridiculous it all was, and that it didnt correspond at all to the truth. Then little by little I began ascending to the Origin. So yesterday again, I had this same experience: a whole world of knowledge, of consciousness and of CERTAINTYprecluding the least possibility of contradiction, discussion, or opposition; the possibility DOES NOT EXIST, it doesnt exist. And the mind was absolutely silent and immobile, listening with obvious pleasure because these things had never before come into my consciousness; I had never been concerned with them in that way. It was completely newnot new in principle but completely new in action.
The experiences are multiplying.
0 1961-02-04, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Theon always told me that the true interpretation of the Biblical story of the serpent in the Garden of Eden is that humanity wanted to pass from a state of animal-like divinity to the state of conscious divinity by means of mental development, symbolized by eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. And this serpent, which Theon always said was iridescent, reflecting all the colors of the prism, was not at all the spirit of evil, but the power of evolution the force, the power of evolution. And it was natural that this power of evolution would make them taste the fruit of knowledge.
Now, according to Theon, Jehovah was the chief of the Asuras,6 the supreme Asura, the egoistic God who wanted to dominate everything and keep everything under his control. And of course this act made him furious, for it enabled mankind to become gods through the power of an evolution of consciousness. And thats why he banished them from Paradise.
--
We used to go for walks in the nearby countryside to see the tombs (it was a Muslim country). I no longer recall their Arabic name, but there is always a guardian at Muslim tombsa sage, like the fakirs of India, a kind of priest responsible for the tomb. Pilgrims go there as well. Theon was friendly with one particular sage, and would speak with him and tell him things (at these times I would see the mischief in Theons eyes). One day, Theon took me along. (According to Islamic tradition I should have been fully covered, but I always went out in a type of kimono!) Theon addressed the sage in Arabic; I didnt understand what he said, but the sage rose, bowed to me very ceremoniously and went off into another room, returning with three cups of sweetened mint tea (not teacups, they put it in special little glassesextremely sweet tea, almost like mint syrup). The sage was watching me, I was obliged to take it.8
The pine tree story is also from Tlemcen.
0 1961-02-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The physical disorder that had principally attacked Mother's legs.
The following is the exact text of Mother's reply to this American gentleman:
0 1961-03-04, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I used to send him around to the various centers (because he had to do something!), and he would visit, speak to people I dont know about what. And during one of his trips to Delhi he happened to meet Z, who had been sent by the government of India to the Soviet Union, where it seems he delivered an extraordinary speech (it must have been extraordinary, because I have been receiving letters from everywhere, including America, asking for the text of this sensational speech in which he apparently spoke of human unity). So Z returned with the idea of forming a World Union, and J. and Z met. Furthermore, they were encouraged by S.M.7 and even by the prime Minister,8 who probably had a special liking for Z and had given him a lot of encouragement. Thats how things began.
I treated it as something altogether secondary and unimportantwhen people need to gallop, I let them gallop (but I hadnt met Z). Then J. and Z left together on a speaking-tour of Africa and there things began to go sour, because Z was working in one way and J. in another. Finally, they were at odds and came back here to tell me, World Union is off to a good startwith a quarrel! (Mother laughs) Z was saying, Nothing can be done unless we base ourselves EXCLUSIVELY on the teaching of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and they are behind us giving support. And J. said, No, no! We are not sectarian! We accept all ideas, all theories, etc. I replied, and as it happens, I said that Z was right, though with one corrective: he had been saying that people had to recognize us as their guru. No, I said, its absolutely uselessnot only useless, I refuse. I dont want to be anybodys guru. People should simply be told that things are to be done on the basis of Sri Aurobindos thought.9
0 1961-03-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have brought you a whole discourse! (Mother gives Satprem some flowers) First, the goal of the Vedas: Immortality.1 That was their goal: the Truth that led to Immortality. Immortality was their ambition. I dont think it was physical immortality but I am not sure, because they do speak of the forefa thers and this refers to the initiatory tradition prior to the Vedas as well as the Kabbala, and immortality on earth is spoken of there: the earth transformedSri Aurobindos idea. So although they didnt explicitly state it, perhaps they knew.
(Mother gives more flowers) This one is more on the personal side: Friendship with the Divine2, the friendly relationship you can have with the Divineyou understand each other, you dont fear each other, youre good friends! And this one is a wonder! (Mother gives Divine Love Governing the World3) What strength! Its generous, expansive, without narrowness, pettiness, or limitationswhen that comes.
0 1961-03-17, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Along with the mind came individualization, an acute sense of separation and a more or less precise feeling of a freedom of choiceall of that, all these psychological states, are the natural consequences of mental life and open the door to everything we see now, from the worst aberrations to the most rigorous principles. Mans impression of being free to choose between one thing and another is the deformation of a true principle that will be totally realizable only when the soul or psychic being becomes conscious in him; were the soul to govern the being, mans life would truly be a conscious expression of the supreme Will translated individually. But in the normal human state, such a case is still extremely rare and doesnt seem at all natural to ordinary human consciousness it seems almost supernatural!
Man questions himself because the mental instrument is made for seeing all possibilities and because the human being feels he has freedom of choice and the immediate consequences are the notions of good and evil, right and wrong, and all the ensuing miseries. This cant be called a bad thing: its an intermediate stagenot a very pleasant stage, but nevertheless it was certainly inevitable for a total development.
--
He hadnt eaten (probably because no one had given him anything to eat), and when I entered, he asked me if it was possible to have some breakfast. Yes, of course! I said, Ill go get it, expecting to find it ready. Then I had to hunt around to find something: everything was stuffed into cupboards (and misplaced at that), all disarrangeddisgusting, absolutely disgusting. I called someone (who had been napping and came in with sleep-swollen eyes) and told him to prepare Sri Aurobindos breakfast but he had his own fixed ideas and principles (exactly as he is in real life). Hurry up, I told him, Sri Aurobindo is waiting. But hurry? Impossible! He had to do things according to his own conceptions and with a terrible awkwardness and ineptitude. In short, it took an infinite amount of time to warm up a rather clumsy breakfast.
Then I arrived at Sri Aurobindos room with my plates. Oh, said Sri Aurobindo, it has taken so long that I will take my bath first. I looked at my poor breakfast and thought, Well, I went to so much trouble to make it hot and now its going to get cold! All this was so sordid, so sad.
--
And it all exists priMARILY because each individual is shut up in his own little personal formation (Mother forms an eggshell), a formation of the most ordinary mind, the mind that fabricates the details of everyday life; its like being cramped into a narrow prison.
Satprem later asked if this 'on earth' wasn't superfluous and Mother replied: 'This precision is not superfluous; I said "on earth" meaning that man does not belong only to the earth: in his essence, man is a universal being, but he has a special manifestation on earth.'
0 1961-04-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
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 everywhere, 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.
***
--
Its obviously reparable, theres no doubt about that, but at what price? And how it complicates things!
We are told it will be all the more beautiful later I am absolutely sure of this I dont doubt it for a minute, but.
0 1961-04-12, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The other story dates farther back. I was living in another house (we had the whole fifth floor), and once a week I used to hold meetings there with people interested in occultism they came to have me demonstrate or tell them about occult practices. There was a Swedish artist, a French lady and a young French boy, a student and a poet. His parents were decent country people who bled themselves white to pay for his life in Paris. This boy was very intelligent and a true artist, but he was depraved. (We knew about it, but it was his private life and none of our business.) One evening, when four or five of us were to meet, this boy didnt turn up, although he had said he would. We had our meeting anyway and didnt think much about itwe thought he must have been busy elsewhere. Around midnight, when the people were leaving, I open the door. A big black cat was sitting in the doorway and, in a single bound, it jumps on me, just like that, all curled up in a ball. So I calm it down, I look at itAh, the eyes! They were this boys eyes. (I no longer recall his name.) Right away (at the time we were all involved in occultism), we knew something had happened; he had been unable to come and the cat had incarnated his vital force.
The next day, all the newspapers were full of a vile murder: a pimp had murdered this boyit was disgusting! Something utterly vile. And it had happened at the very moment he should have come the concierge had seen him going into the house with this pimp. What happened? Was it just for money or for something elsevice? Or what?
0 1961-04-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Once again, Mother's experience coincides with modern science, which is beginning to discover that time and space are not fixed and INDEPENDENT quantitiesas, from the Greeks right up to Newton, we had been accustomed to believe but a four-dimensional system, with three coordinates of space and one of time, DEPENDENT UPON THE PHYSICAL PHENOMENA DEVELOPING THEREIN. Such is 'Riemann's Space,' used by Einstein in his General Theory of Relativity. Thus, a trajectoryi.e., in principle, a fixed distance, a quantity of space to be traversed-is a function of the time taken to traverse it: there is no straight line between two points, or rather the I straight' line is a function of the rate of speed. There is no 'fixed' quantity of space, but rather rates of speed which determine their own space (or their own measure of space). Space-time is thus no longer a fixed quantity, but, according to science, the PRODUCT ... of what? Of a certain rate of unfolding? But what is unfolding? A rocket, a train, muscles?... Or a certain brain which has generated increasingly perfected instruments adapted to its own mode of being, like a flying fish flying farther and farther (and faster and faster) but finally failing back into its own oceanic fishbowl. Yet what would this space-time be for another kind of fishbowl, another kind of consciousness: a supramental consciousness, for example, which can be instantaneously at any point in 'space'there is no more space! And no more time. There is no more 'trajectory': the trajectory is within itself. The fishbowl is shattered, and the whole evolutionary succession of little fishbowls as well. Thus, as Mother tells it, space and time are a 'PRODUCT Of the movement of consciousness.' A variable space-time, which not only changes according to our mechanical equipment, but according to the consciousness utilizing the equipment, and which ultimately utilizes only itself; consciousness, at the end of the evolutionary curve, has become its own equipment and the sole mechanism of the universe.
***
0 1961-04-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
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 other things (which had nothing to do with me), I come across this: We have the great fortune to have the Mother 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)
--
But then, they [the S.A.S. people] began posing as almost as teachers! Luckily, the draft of their brochure was brought to me. I said, Nothing doing. If you want to talk to people, tell them what you like, its all the same to me, but I am not publishing this. What you have written about me is not to be printed and you are not to distribute it. Im not in the picture. My name, the fact that I am president, is simply to give my guarantee that the money wont go into the pockets of those who collect it but will be used for the Ashram, the running of the Ashram, and thats all. And on this basis alone I give my guarantee. I am in no way going to help people imagine they are doing a yoga! Its absurd.
The other day, I told N. (and I told him loud enough for everyone to hear): We can dispense with a good half of the ashramites straight-away and not lose a single sadhak.4
0 1961-04-29, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
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 there. And there is always someonewhe ther 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 THERE; and this (not the form in wood or stone or metal) is what is worshipped: this Presence.
Europeans dont have the inner sense at all. To them, everything is like this (gesture), a surfacenot even that, a film on the surface. And they cant feel anything behind. But its an absolutely real fact that the Presence is there I guarantee it. People have given me statuettes of various gods, little things in metal, wood or ivory; and as soon as I take one in my hand, the god is there. I have a Ganesh2 (I have been given several) and if I take it in my hand and look at it for a moment, hes there. I have a little one by my bedside where I work, eat, and meditate. And then there is a Narayana3 which comes from the Himalayas, from Badrinath. I use them both as paperweights for my handkerchiefs! (My handkerchiefs are kept on a little table next to my bed, and I keep Ganapati and Narayana on top of them.) And no one touches them but me I pick them up, take a fresh handkerchief, and put them back again. Once I blended some nail polish myself, and before applying it, I put some on Ganapatis forehead and stomach and fingertips! We are on the best of terms, very friendly. So to me, you see, all this is very true.
--
One of my most terrible experiences took place in Venice (the cathedrals there are so beautifulmagnificent!). I remember I was painting they had let me settle down in a corner to paintand nearby there was a (what do they call it?) a confessional. And a poor woman was kneeling there in distresswith such a dreadful sense of sin! So piteous! She wept and wept. Then I saw the priest coming, oh, like a monster, a hard-hearted monster! He went inside; he was like an iron bar. And there was this poor woman sobbing, sobbing; and the voice of the other one, hard, curt. I could barely contain myself.
I dont know why, but I have had this kind of experience so very often: either a hostile force lurking behind and swallowing up everything, or else manruthless man abusing the Power.
--
I remember a good-hearted priest in Pau [Southern France] who was an artist and wanted to have his church decorateda tiny cathedral. He consulted a local anarchist (a great artist) about it. The anarchist was acquainted with Andrs father and me. He told the priest, I recommend these people to do the paintings they are true artists. He was doing the mural decorationsome eight panels in all, I believe. So I set to work on one of the panels. (The church was dedicated to San Juan de Compostello, a hero of Spanish history; he had appeared in a battle between the Christians and the Moors and his apparition vanquished the Moors. And he was magnificent! He appeared in golden light on a white horse, almost like Kalki.6) All the slaughtered and struggling Moors were depicted at the bottom of the painting, and it was I who painted them; it was too hard for me to climb high up on a ladder to paint, so I did the things at the bottom! But anyway, it all went quite well. Then, naturally, the priest received us and invited us to dinner with the anarchist. And he was so nicereally a kind-hearted man! I was already a vegetarian and didnt drink, so he scolded me very gently, saying, But its Our Lord who gives us all this, so why shouldnt you take it? I found him charming. And when he looked at the paintings, he tapped Morisset on the shoulder (Morisset was an unbeliever), and said, with the accent of Southern France, Say what you like, but you know Our Lord; otherwise you could never have painted like that!
Well.
0 1961-05-23, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its obviously a type of filariasis which obstinately refuses to go away, but anyway. It causes only one inconvenience now: it makes the legs very weakvery weak. I go through what seem like terrible gymnastics to climb the stairs. Other than that it doesnt matter. From time to time it pricks, it stings, it bites, it swells up but its nothing.
X said it would go away completely. The doctor said, It will not go away. So my body is observing the phenomenon! (Mother laughs)
0 1961-06-02, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When one does not repeat ones past mistakes, the divine power, the power of the divine Grace, abolishes their consequences their karmain the being. But as long as mistakes are repeated nothing can be abolished, because one re-creates them at every minute. When a person has made a serious error, say, a serious mistake (it can be serious or not, but we are concerned primarily with the serious ones), such mistakes have their consequences in life, a karma which has to be exhausted. The divine Grace, if you call upon it, has the power to abolish that karma, to cut short the consequences but the Grace can only do this when you, within yourself, dont begin all over again, when the mistake committed is not renewed. The past can be completely purified and abolished, on condition that one does not keep making it into a perpetual present.
I have said it there in one sentence, but I didnt want people to believe that they can continue making the same stupid blunder indefinitely and have the Grace indefinitely annul all the consequences.1 It isnt like that! The past can be cleansed to the point where it has no effect of any kind on the future, but only on condition that you stop the wrong vibration in yourself, that you dont reproduce the same vibration indefinitely.
0 1961-06-24, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This is all Xs work. The most unexpected people, people youd think would rather be cursed than come to a place like this, are coming from everywhere, from the most diverse milieus the most materialistic materialists, fanatical communists, as well as all sorts of sannyasis, bhikkus, swamis, priestsoh! People who previously were not at all they werent so much disinterested as actually displeased with the Ashram.
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 where they have built a center and hold meetings.
And its like that almost everywhere.
--
Thats all, mon petitnow Im off to see the priest. What a face hes going to make!
(Mother gets up to leave)
0 1961-07-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Tamas: the principle of inertia and obscurity.
Pralaya: The destruction of a universe at the end of a cycle. According to Hindu cosmology, the formation of each universe begins with an 'age of truth' (satya-yuga) which slowly degenerates, like the stars, till there is no truth left at all; it becomes a 'dark age'(kali-yuga) like ours, and ends with a cataclysm. Then a new universe is reborn out of this cataclysm and the cycle begins again. There is a correspondence here with a modern cosmological theory according to which a phase of contraction, of galaxies collapsing upon themselves, follows a phase of expansion and precedes a new explosion ('Big Bang') of the ' primal egg'and so on, in a recurring and apparently endless and aimless series of cosmic births which, like our own human births, develop, attain some sort of 'summit,' then collapse, always to begin again. According to Theon, our present universe is the seventh but where is the 'beginning'?
0 1961-07-28, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Other traditions speak of the Consciousness, the divine Consciousness, instead of Love. One even finds accounts full of imagery depicting a Being of prismatic light lying in deep sleep in the cave of the Inconscient; and this Descent awakens him to an activity which is still (how to put it?) inner, an immobile activity, an activity by radiation. Countless rays issue from his body and spread throughout the Inconscient, and little by little they awaken in each thing, in each atom, as it were, the aspiration to Consciousness and the beginning of evolution.
I have had this experience.
--
A sudden turn in the path and I come to a grotto which seems fashioned of crystal, scintillating in prismatic radiance.
Standing there between two iridescent pillars is a very tall figure; his face, framed in short blond curls, is that of a very young man; his eyes are sea-green; he is clad in a pale blue tunic, and like wings upon his shoulders are great, snow-white fins. Beholding me, he steps aside against a pillar to let me pass. Scarcely have I crossed the threshold when an exquisite melody strikes my ears. The waters are all iridescent here, the ground aglow with glossy pearls; the portico and the vault, hung gracefully with stalactites, are opaline; delectable perfumes hover everywhere; galleries, niches and alcoves open out on all sides; but directly ahead of me I perceive a great light and towards it I turn my steps. There are great rays of gold, silver, sapphire, emerald and ruby, radiating outward in all directions, born from a center too distant for me to discern; to this center I feel drawn by a powerful attraction.
0 1961-08-02, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes perhaps not in the present state of disorder! But in principle.
Every conscious being?
Yes, in principleeach TRUE soul.
True, meaning formed?
0 1961-09-10, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I feel this so often now. How to put it. I always try not to talktalking bothers me. Yes, its a real nuisance. When I see someone, the first thing I do is to avoid talking. Then, when the Vibration comes, its good; there is a sort of communication, and if the person is the least bit receptive, what comes is like a its subtler than music; its a vibration bringing its own principle of harmony. But people usually get impatient after a while and, wanting something more concrete, oblige me to talk. They always insist on it. Then, being in a certain atmosphere, a certain vibration, I immediately feel something going like this (gesture of a fall to another level), and then hardening. Even when I babble (you see, the very effort of trying to be more subtle makes me babble), even my babblings (laughing) become dry by comparison. There are all sorts of things that are so much fullerfull, packed with an inner richnessand as soon as this is put into words, oh!
The night before last, around 3 in the morning, I was in a place where there were a lot of people from here (you were there), and I was trying to play some music, precisely in order to SAY something. There were three pianos there, which seemed to be interlocked into each other, 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 there in front, so I sat down before it. Well, the most amusing part of it was that the keys (there 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.
0 1961-10-30, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is obviously a Secret, and all the traditions bear witness to it the Rishis, the Mages of Iran, the priests of Chaldea or Memphis or Yucatan.
***
--
It is not sur prising, therefore, that exegetes have seen the Vedas primarily as a collection of propitiatory rites centered around sacrificial fires and obscure incantations to Nature divinities (water, fire, dawn, the moon, the sun, etc.), for bringing rain and rich harvests to the tribes, male progeny, blessings upon their journeys or protection against the thieves of the sunas though these shepherds were barbarous enough to fear that one inauspicious day their sun might no longer rise, stolen away once and for all. Only here and there, in a few of the more modern hymns, was there the apparently inadvertent intrusion of a few luminous passages that might have justifiedjust barely the respect which the Upanishads, at the beginning of recorded history, accorded to the Veda. In Indian tradition, the Upanishads had become the real Veda, the Book of Knowledge, while the Veda, product of a still stammering humanity, was a Book of Worksacclaimed by everyone, to be sure, as the venerable Authority, but no longer listened to. With Sri Aurobindo we might ask why the Upanishads, whose depth of wisdom the whole world has acknowledged, could claim to take inspiration from the Veda if the latter contained no more than a tapestry of primitive rites; or how it happened that humanity could pass so abruptly from these so-called stammerings to the manifold richness of the Upanishadic Age; or how we in the West were able to evolve from the simplicity of Arcadian shepherds to the wisdom of Greek philosophers. We cannot assume that there was nothing between the early savage and Plato or the Upanishads.5
***
Nor was it insignificant that fire, Agni, was the core of the Vedic mysteries: Agni, the inner flame, the soul within us (for who can deny that the soul is fire?), the innate aspiration drawing man towards the heights; Agni, the ardent will within us that sees, always and forever, and remembers; Agni, the priest of the sacrifice, the divine worker, the envoy between earth and heaven (Rig-veda III, 3.2) he is there in the middle of his house (I.70.2). The Fathers who have divine vision set him within as a child that is to be born (IX.83.3). He is the boy suppressed in the secret cavern (V.2.1). He is as if life and the breath of our existence, he is as if our eternal child (I.66.1). O Son of the body (III.4.2), O Fire, thou art the son of heaven by the body of the earth (III.25.1). Immortal in mortals (IV.2. 1), old and outworn he grows young again and again (II.4.5). When he is born he becomes one who voices the godhead: when as life who grows in the mother he has been fashioned in the mother he becomes a gallop of wind in his movement (III.29.11). O Fire, when thou art well borne by us thou becomest the supreme growth and expansion of our being, all glory and beauty are in thy desirable hue and thy perfect vision. O Vastness, thou art the plenitude that carries us to the end of our way; thou art a multitude of riches spread out on every side (II.1.12). O Fire brilliant ocean of light in which is divine vision (III.22.2), the Flame with his hundred treasures O knower of all things born(I.59).
But the divine fire is not our exclusive privilegeAgni exists not only in man: He is the child of the waters, the child of the forests, the child of things stable and the child of things that move. Even in the stone he is there (I.70.2).
***
But we have not yet reached the heart of the Vedic secret. The birth of Agni, the soul (and so many men are still unborn) is merely the start of the voyage. This inner flame seeks, it is the seeker within us, for it is a spark of the great primordial Fire and will never be satisfied until it has recovered its solar totality, the lost sun of which the Veda incessantly speaks. Yet even when we have risen from plane to plane and the Flame has taken successive births in the triple world of our lower existence (the physical, vital and mental world), it will still remain unsatisfiedit wants to ascend, ascend further. And soon we reach a mental frontier where there seems to be nothing to grasp any longer, nor even to see, and nothing remains but to abolish everything and leap into the ecstasy of a great Light. At this point, we feel almost painfully the im prisoning carapace of matter all around us, preventing that apotheosis of the Flame; then we understand the cry, My kingdom is not of this world, and the insistence of Indias Vedantic sagesand perhaps the sages of all worlds and all religions that we must abandon this body to embrace the Eternal. Will our flame thus forever be truncated here below and our quest always end in disappointment? Shall we always have to choose one or the other, to renounce earth to gain heaven?
Yet beyond the lower triple world, the Rishis had discovered a certain fourth, touryam svid; they found the vast dwelling place, the solar world, Swar: I have arisen from earth to the mid-world [life], I have arisen from the mid-world to heaven [mind], from the level of the firmament of heaven I have gone to the Sun-world, the Light (Yajur-veda 17.67). And it is said, Mortals, they achieved immortality (Rig-veda I.110.4). What then was their secret? How did they pass from a heaven of mind to the great heaven without leaving the body, without, as it were, going off into ecstasies?
0 1961-11-05, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Once there (this would also make a great novel), Richard continued writing and sending his manuscripts to Sri Aurobindo. Finally, when the Peace Treaty was signed and it was possible to travel, the English said that if we tried to return to India they would throw us in jail! But it all worked out miraculously, almost becoming a diplomatic incident: the Japanese government decided that if we were put in prison they would protest to the British government! (What a story I could write novels!) In short, Richard returned here with me. And thats when the tragi-comedy began.
I will tell you about it one dayfantastic!
0 1961-11-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Well, one time I was there (Theon used to warn against going beyond this domain, because he said you wouldnt come back), but there I was, wanting to pass over to the other side, whenin a quite unexpected and astounding way I found myself in the presence of the principle, a principle of the human form. It didnt resemble man as we are used to seeing him, but it was an u pright form, standing just on the border between the world of forms and the Formless, like a kind of standard.3 At that time nobody had ever spoken to me about it and Madame Theon had never seen itno one had ever seen or said anything. But I felt I was on the verge of discovering a secret.
Afterwards, when I met Sri Aurobindo and talked to him about it, he told me, It is surely the prototype of the supramental form. I saw it several times again, later on, and this proved to be true.
0 1961-12-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
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
Dear Sir I must begin by telling you that although this text is an excellent essay, it is not, in its present form, a book for the Spiritual Masters series. Let us enumerate the reasons for this. First of all, the general impression is of an ABSTRACT text. I can straight-away imagine your reaction to this and I dread misunderstandings! But putting myself in the readers place, since, once again, it does involve a collection intended for a wide public that we are beginning to know well, I can assure you that this public will not be able to follow page after page of reflections upon what one is bound to call a philosophical and spiritual system. Obviously this impression is caused primarily by the fact that you have begun with twenty-one pages where the reader is assumed to already know of Sri Aurobindos historical existence and the content of the Vedas and the Upanishads, plus I dont know how many other notions of rite, truth, divinity, wisdom, etc., etc. In my view, and the solution is going to appear cruel to you, for you certainly value these twenty-one pages [on the Secret of the Veda], they should purely and simply be deleted, for everything you say there, which is very rich in meaning, can only become clear when one has read what follows. There are many books in which readers can be asked to make the effort entailed in not understanding the beginning until they have read the end: but not books of popular culture. One could envisage an introduction of three or four pages to situate the spiritual climate and cultural world in which Sri Aurobindos thought has taken place, provided, however, that it is sufficiently descriptive, and not a pre-synthesis of everything to be expounded upon in what follows. In a general way you are going to smile, finding me quite Cartesian! But the readership we address is more or less permeated by a widespread Cartesianism, and you can help them, if you like, to reverse their methodology, but on the condition that you make yourself understood right from the start. Generally, you dont make enough use of analysis and, even before analysis, of a description of the realities being analyzed. That is why the sections of pure philosophical analysis seem much too long to us, and, even apart from the abstract character of the chapter on evolution (which should certainly be shorter), one feels at a positive standstill! After having waited patiently, and sometimes impatiently, for some light to be thrown on Sri Aurobindos own experience, one reads with genuine amazement that one can draw on energies from above instead of drawing on them from the material nature around oneself, or from an animal sleep, or that one can modify his sleep and render it conscious master illnesses before they enter the body. All of that in less than a page; and you conclude that the spirit that was the slave of matter becomes again the master of evolution. But how Sri Aurobindo was led to think this, the experiences that permitted him to verify it, those that permit other men to consider the method transmittable, the difficulties, the obstacles, the realizationsdoesnt this constitute the essence of what must be said to make the reader understand? Once again, it is the question of a pedagogy intimately tied in with the spirit of the collection. Let me add as well that I always find it deplorable when a thought is not expressed purely for its own sake, but is accompanied by an aggressive irony towards concepts which the author does not share. This is pointless and harms the ideas being presented, all the more so because they are expressed in contrast with caricatured notions: the allusions you make to such concepts as you think yourself capable of evoking the soul, creation, virtue, sin, salvationwould only hold some interest if the reader could find those very concepts within himself. But, as they are caricatured by your pen, the reader is given the impression of an all too easily obtained contrast between certain ideas admired and others despised. Whereas it would be far more to the point if they corresponded to something real in the religious consciousness of the West. I have too much esteem for you and the spiritual world in which you live to avoid saying this through fear of upsetting you.
Amen.
--
From the practical standpoint, I would much prefer the book to be printed here and for us to make the necessary effort for it to go out and touch as many people as possible. The publisher may be a handy and less troublesome channel, but hes not at all the best onefar from it. THAT I know, because I am constantly seeing your book with Sri Aurobindos perception, and I am absolutely positive that he likes it very much; he has put a lot into it and he sees that it can be an enormous help but not in the short run. There is always the sense of it needing a hundred years to have its full effect. With your publisher, on the other hand, the effects are far more violent, more external and noisy, but they fade far more quickly.
And I feel its rather essential to change all the emphasis on pictures. I let them go because there was nothing else to do, but I must say I wasnt too happy about it.1 it was not a deep understanding, a soul-understanding, that chose the pictures, but a very developed intellect.
0 1961-12-23, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
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 Mother's body, and who uses the people around her for this purpose.
0 1962-01-09, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its a difficult problem to resolve, because at no price do I want to stop the discipline (the tapasya,2 to be precise). I dont want to stop. And both things together are clearly too much for a stupid little bodystupid mainly because it lives in tension.
These past few days Ive had some interesting experiences from this standpoint. I had what is commonly called fever, but it wasnt feverit was a resurfacing from the subconscient of all the struggles, all the tensions this body has had for what will soon be eighty-three years. I went through a period in my life when the tension was tremendous, because it was psychological and vital as well as physical: a perpetual struggle against adverse forces; and during my stay in Japan, particularly oh, it was terrible! So at night, everything that had been part of that life in Japanpeople, things, movements, circumstancesall of it seemed to be surrounding my body in the form of vital3 vibrations, and to be taking the place of my present state, which had completely vanished. For hours during the night, the body was reliving all the terrible tensions it had during those four years in Japan. And I realized how much (because at the time you pay no attention; the consciousness is busy with something else and not concentrated on the body), how much the body resists and is tense. And just as I was realizing this, I had a communication with Sri Aurobindo: But youre keeping it up! he told me. Your body still has the habit of being tense. (Its much less now, of course; its quite different since the inner consciousness is in perfect peace, but the BODY keeps the habit of being tense.) For instance, in the short interval between the time I get up and the time I come down to the balcony,4 when I am getting ready (I have to get this body ready to come down) well, the body is tense about being ready in time. And thats why accidents happen at that moment. So the following morning I said, All right, no more tension, and I was exclusively concerned with keeping my body perfectly tranquil I was no later than usual! So its obviously just one of the bodys bad habits. Everything went off the same as usual, and since then things are better. But its a nasty habit.
0 1962-01-12 - supramental ship, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I mentioned the principal psychological requirement in my answer to that American: a state of perfect equality. This is an ABSOLUTE condition. Over the years since that experience I have observed that no supramental vibration whatsoever can be transmitted without this perfect equality. The slightest contradiction of that equalityin other words, the least movement of ego, of egoistic preference and everything is blocked, transmission stops. This is already quite a large stumbling block.
And, over and above this, for the realization to be total, there are two other conditions, which arent easy either. Intellectually, theyre not too difficult; in fact, for someone who has practiced yoga, followed a discipline (I am not speaking here of just anyone), theyre relatively easy. Psychologically too, given this equality, theres no great difficulty. But as soon as you come to the material plane the physical plane and then to the body, it isnt easy. These two conditions are first, the power to expand, to widen almost indefinitely, enabling you to widen to the dimensions of the supramental consciousness which is total. The supramental consciousness is the consciousness of the Supreme in his totality. By totality, I mean the Supreme in his aspect of Manifestation. Naturally, from a higher point of view, from the viewpoint of the essence the essence of that which in Manifestation becomes the Supermindwhats necessary is a capacity for total identification with the Supreme, not only in his aspect of Manifestation, but in his static or nirvanic aspect, outside of the Manifestation: Nonbeing. But in addition, one must be capable of identifying with the Supreme in the Becoming. And that implies both these things: an expansion that is nothing less than indefinite, and that should simultaneously be a total plasticity enabling one to follow the Supreme in his Becoming. You dont merely have to be as vast as the universe at one point in time, but indefinitely in the Becoming. These are the two conditions. They must be potentially present.
--
But even accepting all these misadventures a priori, things remain difficult because theres a double movement: both a cellular transformation and a capacity for something that could replace expansion with readjustment, a constant intercellular reorganization.3 The way they are now, of course, our bodies are rigid and heavyits unspeakable, actually; if it werent for that we would never grow old. For instance, my vital being is more full of energy, and thus full of youth and power to grow, than when I was twenty. Theres really no comparison. The power is INFINITELY greater yet the body is going to piecesits really something unspeakable. So a way has to be found to bridge this gap between the vital and the material being.
Not that the problem hasnt been partially solved: hatha yogis have solved it, partiallyprovided you do nothing else (thats the trouble). Yet having the knowledge, we should have the power to do whats necessary without making it our exclusive preoccupation. At any rate, this possibility is certainly not altogether unknown; for the first few months after I retired to my room,4 when I had cut all contact with the outside, it was working very well even extraordinarily so! Lots of disorders in my body were surmounted, and I had many fairly precise indications that if I continued like that long enough I would regain everything that had been lost, and with an even better equilibrium. I mean that the functional equilibrium was far superior. Only when I came back into contact with the world did it all come to a halt and begin to deteriorateall the more so as it was aggravated by this discipline of expansion making me constantlyCONSTANTLYabsorb mountains of difficulties to be resolved. And so.
0 1962-01-21, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Up till now, this attitude was probably (not probablycertainly) necessary to prepare things. But now theres a sort of sudden reversal, as if the moment had come for the creative principle, the force, the universal creative Force to say, This too is Me. For it is time for it to disappear. This too is Me: I no longer treat it as an enemy to get rid of; I accept it as Myself, so that it truly does become Me.
And it was preceded by a kind of anguish: Will there always be something that, compared with the state to come, seems antidivine? No: after a long preparation, it becomes capable of feeling divine and thus of being divine.
0 1962-01-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And once the world has become like that, has become the vital world in all its darkness, and they, from this vital world, have created Matter, the supreme Mother sees (laughing) the result of her first four emanations and She turns towards the Supreme in a great entreaty: Now that this world is in such a dreadful state, it has to be saved! We cant just leave it this way, can we? It has to be saved, the divine consciousness must be given back to it. What to do? And the Supreme says, Thrust yourself into a new emanation, an emanation of the ESSENCE of Love, down into the most material Matter. That meant plunging into the earth (the earth had become a symbol and a representation of the whole drama). Plunge into Matter. So She plunged into Matter, and that became the primordial source of the Divine within material substance. And from there (as is so well described in Savitri), She begins to act as a leaven in Matter, raising it up from within.
And as She plunged into the earth, a second series of emanations was sent forth the godsto inhabit the intermediary zones between Sachchidananda and the earth. And these gods (laughing) well, great care was taken to make them perfect, so they wouldnt give any trouble! But they are a bit a bit too perfect, arent they? Yes, a bit too perfect: they never make mistakes, they always do exactly as theyre told. In short, rather lacking in initiative. They do have some, but.
--
Considering it to be of no interest, Satprem unfortunately did not keep a record of his answer. The P. in question died insane, in a so-called "Japanese hospital," and one night (this is most likely the story he was telling Mother here) Satprem found him being held prisoner in a kind of hell. His body was covered with wounds which Satprem treated with balm. He then told P., "But go on, say Mother's mantra!" And the moment Satprem began to recite the mantra, the whole place explodedblown to smithereens. An instantaneous deliverance. A few months later (or it may have been a few years), P. came to see Satprem at night with a bouquet of flowers and a smile, as if to announce that he was taking on a new body.
***
0 1962-02-06, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
At my fullest and most intense momentsmoments when truly what exists is the universe (by universe I mean the Becoming of the Supreme) with the utmost active awareness of the Supremeat such moments I am suddenly caught by that [the static, nirvanic aspect]. Its not a matter of choosing between the two, but rather a question of priorities from the standpoint of action on the lowest level. Instinctively (the instinct of this body, this material base), the choice is aspiration, because this being was built for action; but this cannot be taken as an absolute rule, its almost like a casual preference.
One feels that life Is this aspiration, this anguish, while bliss leads most naturally to the nirvanic side I dont know.
--
In Sri Aurobindo's play, Andromeda, daughter of the King of Syria, is condemned by her own people to be devoured by Poseidon, the Sea-god, for some impiety she had committed against him. The story is actually about the passage of a half- primitive tribe, living in terror of the old dark and cruel gods, to a more evolved and sunlit stage. Perseus, son of Diana and Zeus, and protected by Pallas Athene, goddess of wisdom and intelligence, comes to deliver Andromeda from the rock she is chained to (the rock symbolizes the Inconscient for the Rishis), and founds the religion of Athene, "... the Omnipotent / Made from His being to lead and discipline / The immortal spirit of man, till it attain / To order and magnificent mastery / Of all his outward world" (in the words of Sri Aurobindo). It is the force of progress pitted against the old priests of the old religions, symbolized by the cruel and ambitious Polydaon. Here Mother is scrutinizing an old problem"Always the same problem"that she must have encountered in many existences (Egypt included) and would encounter again eleven years later: the acceptance of the death she is forced into as the Supreme's Will, and then this "love of Life" she twice mentions here.
***
0 1962-02-24, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Tapas: literally, heat. It is the concentrated energy constituting everythingnot generated by some mechanism, but by the very concentration of the power of Consciousness (chit). In Indian tradition, the world was created by Tapas in the form of an egg the primordial eggwhich broke open from the incubating heat of consciousness-force and gave birth to the world. To "become the tapas of things" is to uncover in one's own material, bodily substance that same formidable, supramental seat of energy (what physicists, following Einstein, call atomic energy: E = mc2), the energy that animates the stone and the bird and the universe for then like can act upon like. Mother was reaching that point.
***
0 1962-02-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It depends. Each thing has its method. But the primary method is to want it, to make a decision. Then you are given a description of all these senses and how they function thats a lengthy process. You choose one sense (or several), perhaps the one for which you have the greatest initial aptitude, and you decide. Then you follow the discipline. Its similar to doing exercises for developing muscles. You can even manage to create willpower in yourself.
For the subtler senses, the method is to create an exact image of what you want, make contact with the corresponding vibration and then concentrate and practice. For instance, you practice seeing through an object, or hearing through a sound2 or seeing at a distance. As an example, I was once bedridden for several months, which I found quite boring I wanted to see. I was staying in one room and beyond that room was another little room and after that a sort of bridge; in the middle of the garden the bridge changed into a stairway going down into a very spacious and beautiful studio built in the middle of the garden.3 I wanted to go see what was happening in the studio I was bored stiff in my room! So I stayed very still, shut my eyes and gradually, gradually sent out my consciousness. I did the exercise regularly, day after day, at a set hour. You begin with your imagination, and then it becomes a fact. After a while, I distinctly sensed my vision physically moving: I followed it and saw things going on downstairs I knew absolutely nothing about. I would verify it in the evening, asking, Did it happen like this? Was that how it was?
0 1962-03-03, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
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 1962-03-13, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have my pride, and I want the people who work with me to be content; this gives me more pleasure than anything. Of course, ideally. But one is never truly satisfied, one will never be truly satisfied; one will always go from aspiration to aspiration. But as a base, one should at least feel a sense of purpose in life. You said the very thing that hurts the most!
(Mother gazes at Satprem for a long time)
0 1962-05-13, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The first sign of the return to individuality was a prick of pain, a tiny point (Mother holds between her fingers a minuscule point in the space of her being). Yes, because I have a sore, a sore in a rather awkward place, and it hurts2 (Mother laughs). So I felt the pain: it was the sign of individuality coming back. Other than that, there was nothing any moreno body, no individual, no limits. But its strange, I have made a strange discovery3: I used to think it was the individual (Mother touches her body) who experienced pain and disabilities and all the misfortunes of human life; well, I perceived that what experiences misfortunes is not the individual not my body, but that each misfortune, each pain, each disability has its own individuality as it were, and each one represents a battle.
And my body is a world of battles.
0 1962-05-15, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Some people wanted to get me nominated for the Nobel peace prize; I was asked for a statement and thats what I wrote. I wanted to say that it wasnt this person who did thingsit was all Sri Aurobindo.
They had wanted to give the Nobel prize to Sri Aurobindo, but he left the year before the decision was to be made. And as they dont give the prize to dead people, he never got it. Then they wanted to transfer it to me, and I wrote this note, because the last thing I want is name and fame. Thats all there was to it. They didnt give a peace prize that year.
I believe the whole affair is now buried and forgotten.
0 1962-05-24, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Through yoga I had come to a sort of relationship with the material world based on the notion of the fourth dimension (of the innumerable inner dimensions opened up by yoga) and on the utilization of this attitude and state of consciousness. Using this sense of inner dimensions, and through perfecting the consciousness of the inner dimensions, I used to observe the relation between the material and the spiritual worldsthis was prior to my last experience.
Of course, its been a long time since there has been any question of three dimensionsall that belongs ABSOLUTELY to the world of illusion and falsehood. But now the whole use of the sense of the fourth dimensionalong with all it entailsseems superficial to me! And so much so that I cant recapture it. The other world, the three-dimensional world, is completely unreal; but now that one (what can I say?) seems conventional to me. Like a conventional transcription opening a particular type of approach to you.
--
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.
--
I dont think all these aphorisms were written for publication I dont believe he was thinking of publishing them. He said certain things that were quite private.
So lets classify this one as private!
And the next?
0 1962-05-29, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
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?
0 1962-05-31, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes, these dreams arise from the subconscient; they are primarily subconscious habits. But the pain, the thorns in the garmentits so clear! (Mother laughs) And no way to get comfortable!
In the past, a dream like that would nag me for hours, I would worry, wondering what calamities were going to befall me (this was long, long agoages ago). But that was idiotic, as I later understood; its a certain something in the subconscient, a symbolic form of well, of certain bad psychological habits we have, thats all. And I used to torment myself: How can I get rid of this? (Were all loaded with a multitude of such weaknesses built into the body.) And then through experience I understood I saw it was merely certain bad habits.
--
Mother later specified: "It's like inverting a prism."
Mother is entering into a sort of trance and, almost to the end of this conversation, will be speaking slowly, as if from far away.
0 1962-06-12, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You see, the trouble is hes a man whose principles and education prevent him from believing in progress and transformation. He believes that if you fulfill the conditions you get the siddhi,3 and thats the end of it the goal is reached. He had already attained his goal before meeting us, and then he could have kept his distance, but he became intimately connected with something full of all kinds of difficulties (which we neither ignore nor call for), but its essentially a Power for progressan awesome force for progress. Well, when I saw that, I wondered, How can he possibly bear it? I thought he would keep his distance and not enter the atmosphere, but he did try to enterhe linked up with certain people, and particularly when he started meditating with me (he asked for it, not me), suddenly something responded. And that triggered the conflict in him. One part of his being has gone along with the Movement, while the other is left strandeddoesnt budge. That created a gap.
Of course, one has to be in a terribly superficial consciousness to react the way he did. He had a rather deep contact with you, and there were moments when he understood very well who you arehe knows, he told me so. Consequently, had he truly been in a yogic state, then even if you had done something tactless or wrong, he would have just smiled! He would have said, Oh, hes just impetuous, but I dont mind.
--
The final reckoning for the others isn't known, but for Satprem this incident resulted in definitively and exclusively binding him to Mother, and in particular made him grasp the futility of tons of discipline that simply im prison you more solidly within a "realization"for all realizations are prisons, save only the Supramental, which is light as air. As for the wheelerdealers, who in order to continue scheming in peace wanted to keep X apart from Mother and Satprem ... they seem to have succeeded in their devious intention.
Conversations with the Mother, 1929.
0 1962-06-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Besides, all the Greek gods are various aspects of a single thing: you see it this way, that way, that way, this way (turning her hand, Mother seems to show several facets of a single prism). But its simply one and the same thing.4
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.
--
Everything that happened prior to the experience of A pril 13 has disappeared, as it were, and the usual functioning of the consciousness has been totally annulled; it is trying little by little to create a new mode of operationnot merely trying: it is in the PROCESS of doing so on a truer foundation; a truer foundation, or truer relations, or vibrations, or functionings (I dont know the right word for it: all these things at once). That presence the other day [the tall white Being] was nothing essentially newit had already intervened a good many times; and yet it was new, because the whole functioning was new. Its like my experience two nights ago [the recharging of batteries], I had it for months on end; well, it was new because it was based on a new functioning. And each time (is it out of habit, or to make me understand, to make me see the difference?), each time the old functioning starts up, first of all I really feel I am losing the true contact, that the TRUE thing is escaping, and then I wonder how anybody can function like that without going insane! Thats what strikes me nowthis feeling of going insane! I mean it grates, it scrapes, it makes no senseit misses the point. It is not the TRUE thing, its beside the point. It tries to imitate something inimitable. And so I ask myself, What is this? Am I going crazy? Am I losing my faculties? And then I realize its not that at all! Above theres a state of immutable and UNSHAKABLE concentration, constant and almighty, and with but a drop of That, a spark of That, all problems are solved. Then I see clearly that its only a demonstration to make me see the inadequacy of the old, habitual functioningto really and truly convince me that its inadequate. Its rather hard to bear, actually. Last night I had it, I have seen it again in recent days: it lasts a few secondsjust enough for a satisfactory lesson! It may also happen to make me understand, but afterwards I wonder, Well, if everybody is in this state they dont know it, but its just terrible! And I realize that the LEAST thing, the slightest circumstance, is COMPLETELY distorted, instantly distorted by the way people work it out, the way they cause events to develop.
Thats an ever-present experience.
0 1962-06-30, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
As a child, when I was around ten or twelve years old, I had some rather interesting experiences which I didnt understand at all. I had some history booksyou know, the textbooks they give you to learn history. Well, Id read and suddenly the book would seem to become transparent, or the printed words would become transparent, and Id see other words or even pictures. I hadnt the faintest idea what was happening to me! And it appeared so natural to me that I thought it was the same for everybody. But my brother and I were great chums (he was only a year and a half older), so I would tell him: They talk nonsense in history, you knowit is LIKE THIS; it isnt like that: it is LIKE THIS! And several times the corrections I got on one person or another turned out to be quite exact and detailed. And (I see it now I understood it later on) they were certainly memories. About some passages I would even say, How stupid! It was never that; THIS is what was said. It never happened like that; THIS is how it happened. And the book was simply open before me; I was just reading along like any other child and suddenly something would occur. It was something in me, of course, but I used to think it was in the book!
I found out many, many things about Joan of Arcmany things. And with stunning precision, which made it extremely interesting. I wont repeat them because I dont remember with exactness, and these things have no value unless they are exact. And then, for the Italian Renaissance: Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa; and for the French Renaissance: Franois I, Marguerite de Valois,2 and so forth.
--
There was another time at Blois. They make Anjou wine at Blois. It was the same story: I never drank anything but water or herb tea, but there 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 mother and I researched in museums and archives, and I discovered my name, and the names of the other people involved. I had relived a scene in the Ducal Palace, but relived it in such a such an absolutely intense way (laughinga scene where I was being strangled and thrown into a canal!) that my mother had to hurry me out of there as fast as she could! But that experience I wrote down, so the exact memory has been kept (I didnt write down the other 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 there, during the same period. And as a matter of fact, I had seen a portrait there 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
0 1962-07-04, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The only solution is for people to grow wise, and theyre not wise. They accept a law, a principle, and then, having no wisdom, need to follow it blindly.
Had I taken the responsibility (I purposely didnt, for other reasons), I would have said, Keep him till tomorrow morning. And I would have done something overnight. But naturally, this is one case in a million. You cant make it a general rule.
0 1962-07-21, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But I think it will be primarily a question of individuals, not something general.
Read this; it shows a slightly new side of Sri Aurobindos thought. I mean, he took a sterner tone when addressing Indians, and he gave a fuller account of his experience of the West.
--
The old way of yoga failed to bring about the harmony or unity of Spirit and life: it instead dismissed the world as Maya [Illusion] or a transient Play. The result has been loss of life-power and the degeneration of India. As was said in the Gita, These peoples would perish if I did not do worksthese peoples of India have truly gone down to ruin. A few sannyasins and bairagis [renunciants] to be saintly and perfect and liberated, a few bhaktas [lovers of God] to dance in a mad ecstasy of love and sweet emotion and Ananda [Bliss], and a whole race to become lifeless, void of intelligence, sunk in deep tamas [inertia]is this the effect of true spirituality? No, we must first attain all the partial experiences possible on the mental level and flood the mind with spiritual delight and illumine it with spiritual light, but afterwards we must rise above. If we cannot rise above, to the supramental level, that is, it is hardly possible to know the worlds final secret and the problem it raises remains unsolved. There, the ignorance which creates a duality of opposition between the Spirit and Matter, between truth of spirit and truth of life, disappears. There one need no longer call the world Maya. The world is the eternal Play of God, the eternal manifestation of the Self. Then it becomes possible to fully know and fully realize Godto do what is said in the Gita, To know Me integrally. The physical body, the life, the mind and understanding, the supermind and the Ananda these are the spirits five levels. The higher man rises on this ascent the nearer he comes to the state of that highest perfection open to his spiritual evolution. Rising to the Supermind, it becomes easy to rise to the Ananda. One attains a firm foundation in the condition of the indivisible and infinite Ananda, not only in the timeless Parabrahman [Absolute] but in the body, in life, in the world. The integral being, the integral consciousness, the integral Ananda blossoms out and takes form in life. This is the central clue of my yoga, its fundamental principle.
This is no easy change to make. After these fifteen years I am only now rising into the lowest of the three levels of the Supermind and trying to draw up into it all the lower activities. But when this siddhi will be complete, then I am absolutely certain that through me God will give to others the siddhi of the Supermind with less effort. Then my real work will begin. I am not impatient for success in the work. What is to happen will happen in Gods appointed time. I have no hasty or disorderly impulse to rush into the field of work in the strength of the little ego. Even if I did not succeed in my work I would not be shaken. This work is not mine but Gods. I will listen to no other call; when God moves me then I will move.
--
A prison; a place where everything is regimented down to the last detail.
In Vedic times.
0 1962-07-25, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Is it different for men? I dont know. Sri Aurobindos case was quite special, and apart from him I dont see any convincing example. But generally speaking, what is most developed in a man, along with the mind, is the physical consciousness; the vital is very impulsive, practically ungoverned. Thats my experience of the hundreds and hundreds of men I have met. Theres normally a physical strength built up through games and exercises, and side by side a more or less advanced, but primarily mental development, very mental. The vital is terribly impulsive and barely organized, except in artists, and even there. I lived among artists for ten years and found this ground to be mostly fallow. I mingled with all the great artists of the time, I was like a kid sister to them (it was at the turn of the century, with the Universal Exposition in 1900; and these were the leading artists of the epoch); so I was by far the youngest, much younger than any of themthey were all thirty, thirty-five, forty years old, while I was nineteen or twenty. Well I was much more advanced in their own fieldnot in what I was producing (I was a perfectly ordinary artist), but from the viewpoint of consciousness: observations, experiences, studies.
I am not sure, but it seems to me that the problem of consciousness ought to come first.
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 everywhere, but here (the head) nothing moves, theres no response. And yet I have seen that on the intellectual level there 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 theres 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 theres 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 where 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
But I understand your question. You want to know if this has an effect on all identical vibratory modes in the world. In principle, yes. But the effects may not be immediately visible; in the first place, our field of observation is nothingmaterially, what do we know? Only our immediate surroundings thats nothing. In 1920, for example, I had an experience of that type, which resulted in a symbolic but terrestrial action. It was a vision (I dont remember enough details to make it interesting) where each nation was represented by a symbolic entity, and there was a certain type of horrorof terror, rather. A certain will of terror was trying to manifest in that gathering of all nations. And I was witness to the whole thing. I remember it being a very conscious and rather long and detailed vision with a more intense reality than physical things have (it was in the subtle physical). And after it was over and I had done what needed to be done (I am not saying what because I dont remember all the details, and without accuracy it loses its value), when I came out of it I could say with TOTAL conviction: Terror has been overcome in the world. Of course, its not literally true, plenty of people still feel terror, but a certain type of terror was as if UNDERMINED at the foundations. What had already manifested kept on and is gradually being exhausted, but the terror that was trying to increase and dominate the life of nations was stopped cold.
I have had other similar experienceson Durgas day, for instance, when Sri Aurobindo was still here (you know, thats the day when Durga masters an asura; she doesnt kill him, she masters him). Well, each year one particular type of thing was undermined (and my experiences were never mental: the experience would suddenly come, and AFTERWARDS I would realize it was Durgas day), and each time I used to tell Sri Aurobindo, Looktoday this (or that) thing has been cut off at the roots. Thats how it works with the adverse forcesyes, like something being uprooted from the world. Whatever has already spread out keeps going and follows its karma, but the SOURCE is dried up. Thats also what happened (it was in 1904, I believe) when the Asura of Consciousness and Darkness made his surrender and was converted; he told me, I have millions and millions of emanations, and these will keep on living, but their source has now run dry.4 How much time will it take to exhaust it all? We cant say, but the source has dried up and that is something extremely important. In 1920, that terror was trying to spread all over the world and to become really catastrophic; and then in my inner vision I could see that a whole movement had dried up at its source. This means that little by little, little by little, little by little the karma is being exhausted.
0 1962-09-05, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In principle, after a few thousand births, one should have every possible experience, provided one goes to the trouble of remembering. That would be the advantage of reincarnation; you cant do everything in one lifetime, but with a few thousand lives, its possible to pass through all the states.
One should be able to remember.
0 1962-09-15, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I dont want English. I dont want English! And more and more, I dont want English. For instance, the English translation of Prayers and Meditations is out of print and they wanted to re print it. I said no: If you want, you can re print what Sri Aurobindo HIMSELF translated (theres not much, just a thin volume). That, yes, because Sri Aurobindo translated it. But even at that, its not the same thing as my textits Sri Aurobindos, not mine.
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. Otherwise I would have always kept it locked away. I destroyed whatever was leftthere were five thick volumes in which I had written every single day (there 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.
0 1962-09-26, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This region just overlooks the earth and the mind (including the very highest mind). But evolution I mean TERRESTRIAL evolution, with its particular rhythm which is more condensed, more concentrated and, you could say, more focused than universal evolution as a wholethis terrestrial evolution has, with the human species, created a kind of higher intellectuality capable of passing through the overmental region, the region of the gods, and reaching a higher principle directly.
But this overmental region, this region of the gods with the power to govern the universe and, PARTIALLY, the earth, does have its own reality. You can come into contact with it and use it; the Vedic forefa thers used it, occultists use it, even Tantrics use it. But theres another path which, distrusting the gods, bypasses them through a kind of intellectual asceticism, as it were, wary of forms, of images, and differing expressions, which rises straight as an arrow, proud and pure, towards the supramental Light. That is a living experience.
--
What about Sri Aurobindos experience at Alipore, then? You know, that well-known experience when he saw Narayana in the prisoners, Narayana in the guards, Narayana everywhere?
That is the Supreme. Oneness.
0 1962-10-12, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Theres a person I wont name who has read Sri Aurobindos books and thought he understood them. He has been following a yogic discipline (anyway, he thought he was doing yoga) and he pulled down the Force. The Force responded (Mother laughs). He wound up with a headache! He got frightened and wrote to me in these exact words: This Force is the Lords Force (which is true, quite true), and it has turned into fear. So (Mother laughs) fear is the Lords principal perversion. There you have it. He read in books that the Lord is behind everything, that there is nothing that isnt the Lord; so its the Lord who has become perverted in His manifestation, naturally. The Force of the Lord came to help him and was changed into fear, so the Lords principal perversion is fear!
If you read that, youd say he was going off his rocker.
0 1962-10-16, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And this is just what I am realizing (I dont think its anything unique or exceptional): the closer one draws to the cell itself, the more the cell says, But I am immortal! Only it must become conscious. But this takes place almost automatically: the brain cells are very conscious; the cells of the hands and arms of musicians are very conscious; with athletes and gymnasts, the cells of the entire body are wonderfully conscious. So, being conscious, those cells become conscious of their principle of immortality and say, Why would I want to grow old? Why! They dont want to grow old. It is very interesting.
So all the ideas I used to have about death, all the things I have said about death, practically all the things I have consciously DONE2oh! I have realized that all this, too, belongs to the past, and to a past of Ignorance. Here also, I will probably have other things to say later.
0 1962-11-10, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Thats what I was beginning to see towards the end. It took form gradually, gradually, and it was all there by the time you finished reading. At the beginning my attention was divided between what you were reading and what was going on; afterwards it was entirely focused on what was happening: your sheets of paper falling and landing weightlessly, like birds, and spreading over a floor that wasnt solid (it was there just to give the impression of a room, but you could see through it). And while you were reading, he was gathering them all up, with a long robe trailing behind him. This being was made of practically the same substance as the sheets coming out of the piano (it was a kind of piano, it was playing music, but it was the principle of what you have written). So he gathered up everything, and when he had a stack this big, he said, I am going to take it and show it to them.
It was really lovely.
0 1962-11-17, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
prior to that: complete silence. I say nothing. I try to act, thats all.7
***
0 1962-12-15, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mother shows Satprem some pamphlets printed during Theon's time, "Fundamental Axioms of Cosmic Philosophy," which have just been found among some old papers:)
This is pretty funny! (Laughing, Mother reads:)
--
There used to be the name of the printer and the year it was printed, but its not there any more.
Yes, it is: The Little Tlemcenians Press.
0 1962-12-19, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Even if I speak to someone more intelligent or better informed. Once or twice I said something to Pavitra, to see what would happen: he immediately dogmatizes, makes a mental principle out of it (consistent with Sri Aurobindos teaching, of course!). And it becomes something rigid, like a box. And he tries! He tries, he KNOWS he shouldnt do that, but. Which means one cannot understand unless one has the experienceyou must have the experience of all this somewhere, mon petit, otherwise you couldnt write about it!
But its Sri Aurobindo!
0 1963-02-15, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And, I must say, I was observing this because, originally, the first time I heard of it, this conception shocked me, in the sense that (I dont know, it wasnt an idea, it was a feeling), as though it meant lending reality to something which in my consciousness, for a very long time (at least millennia perhaps, I dont know), had been the Falsehood to be conquered. The Falsehood that must cease to exist. Its the aspect of Truth that must manifest itself, its not all that: doing anything whatsoever just for the fun of it, simply because you have the full power. You have the power to do everything, so you do everything, and knowing that there is a Truth behind, you dont give a damn about consequences. That was something something which, as far back as I can remember, I have fought against. I have known it, but it seems to me it was such a long, long time ago and I rejected it so strongly, saying, No, no! and implored the Lord so intensely that things may be otherwise, beseeched Him that his all-powerful Truth, his all-powerful Purity and his all-powerful Beauty may manifest and put an end to all that mess. And at first I was shocked when Sri Aurobindo told me that; previously, in this life, it hadnt even crossed my mind. In that sense Theons explanation had been much more (what should I say?) useful to me from the standpoint of action: the origin of disorder being the separation of the primal Powers but thats not it! HE is there, blissfully worshipping all this confusion!
And naturally this time around, when I started translating it came back. At first there was a shudder (Mother makes a gesture of stiffening). Then I told myself, Havent you got beyond that! And I let myself flow into the thing. Then I had a series of nights with Sri Aurobindo so marvelous! You understand, I see him constantly and I go into that subtle physical world where he has his abode; the contact is almost permanent (at any rate, thats how I spend all my nights: he shows me the work, everything), but still, after this translation of Savitri he seemed to be smiling at me and telling me, At last you have understood! (Mother laughs) I said, It isnt that I didnt understand, its that I didnt want it! I didnt want, I dont WANT things to be like that any more, for thousands of years I have wanted things to be otherwise!
0 1963-02-19, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Thats what I always tell those who criticize the government: You deserve to be put in the place of the prime Minister, or any other minister, with decisions to make; and with the responsibility placed on you, suppose you suddenly had to decide on things of which you know nothingyoud soon see what fun it is! You see, to govern properly, you have to be you have to be a sage! You should have a universal vision and be above all personal questions. There is not onenot one.
Some are sluggish (theyre the best, because I can make them do what I want them to do); theyre like automatons, so you can get something out of them. But unfortunately they think they are they have the sense of their responsibility, so they think they are very superior then its terrible!
0 1963-02-21, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The boon that we have asked from the Supreme is the greatest that the Earth can ask from the Highest, the change that is most difficult to realise, the most exacting in its conditions. It is nothing less than the descent of the supreme Truth and Power into Matter, the supramental established in the material plane and consciousness and the material world and an integral transformation down to the very principle of Matter. Only a supreme Grace can effect this miracle.
The supreme Power has descended into the most material consciousness but it has stood there behind the density of the physical veil, demanding before manifestation, before its great open workings can begin, that the conditions of the supreme Grace shall be there, real and effective.
0 1963-03-06, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Here we come to the great problem of the road we travel, the eternal Road Sri Aurobindo refers to in Savitri. It is easy to imagine, of course, that what was first objectified had an inclination to objectification. The first point to accept, a logical point considering the principle of evolution, is that the objectification is progressive, it is not complete for all eternity. (silence) Its very hard to express, because we cannot free ourselves from our habit of seeing it as a finite quantity unfolding indefinitely and of thinking that only with a finite quantity can there be a beginning. We always have an idea (at least in our way of speaking) of a moment (laughing) when the Lord decides to objectify Himself. And put that way, the explanation is easy: He objectifies Himself gradually, progressively, with, as a result, a progressive evolution. But thats just a manner of speaking. Because there is no beginning, no end, yet there is a progression. The sense of sequence, the sense of evolution and progress comes only with the Manifestation. And only when we speak of the earth can we explain things truthfully and rationally, because the earth had a beginningnot in its soul, but in its material reality.
A material universe probably has a beginning, too.
--
So looking at it that way, for a given universe, a miracle would mean the sudden appearance of something from another universe. And for the earth (which brings the problem down to a manageable size), a miracle means the sudden appearance of something that doesnt belong to the earth and this entry of a principle that doesnt belong to the earth as a finite world causes a radical and instant change.
But then again, as the saying goes, the ENTIRE whole is found in principle at the very core of each part; so even this miracle isnt possible.
We might say that the sense of miracle can only belong to a finite world, a finite consciousness, a finite conception. It is the abrupt, unexpected entryor appearance or intervention or penetrationof something that did not exist in this physical world. So it follows that any manifestation of a will or consciousness belonging to a realm more infinite and eternal than the earth is necessarily a miracle on the earth. But if you go beyond the finite world or the understanding proper to the finite world, then miracle does not exist. The Lord can play at miracles if He enjoys it, but theres no such thing as a miracleHe plays all possible games.
0 1963-03-09, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It was suggested to me in the form of a vision: I was sitting on a somewhat high chair downstairs, on the ground floor (in the meditation hall where I went in 1960), while people filed past me. But then there should be some sort of distribution, and I am more in favor of something printed than a material object. A material object I am much too poor, in the first place. Something printed.
Its vaguenot vague but incomplete. The details are precise, what I see is precise, but everything isnt there. Only certain points here and there its incomplete.
0 1963-03-19, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I came across a man who had that blue light but I found him rather formidable. He looked after all the religious rites and priests of B.s state. He came here and asked to see me. I saw him on a December 9 (I think) when I paid a visit to the estate at Aryankuppam. I was walking in the gardens when suddenly I felt something pulling at meand none too gently! I turned around and saw a tall man, standing and staring at me. So (I didnt know who he was, no one had told me), I stared back and simply answered his impudence! And pfft! it just fell off. I was sur prised. Later (I had not yet been told who he was), he asked to see me. When he entered the room, I felt I felt a solid being. I dont know how to define it, I had never before felt it in a human beingsolid. As solid as rock. Extraordinarily solidcoagulated, an edifice. And quite powerful, I must say. Not like an arrow (gesture upward) but all around him. Then it was very funny (because theres no doubt he must have had an awesome effect on people instantly, without a word or anything), but I answered in my own way, with something else!
He entered the room wearing some kind of religious headdress, I cant say what, and intending to be very arrogant. He went past me stiffly, and suddenly what do I see but the man do his pranam.2 He stepped back, took off his hat and did his pranam. And stayed that way for nearly a quarter of an hour. And it was interesting, his response was interesting. Then he started talking to me (someone translatedhe spoke in Hindi, I think), asking me to take care of B. I said something in turn, and then thought strongly, Now, time is up, it cant last forever! (He had already been there for more than fifteen minutes.) And suddenly I see him stiffen, put his thing back on his head, and go.
0 1963-03-23, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
One thing, though: suddenly I read (yesterday or the day before) a sermon delivered in the U.S.A. by an American (who is a rabbi, a pastor and even a Catholic priest all at the same time!). He heads a group, a group for the unity of religions. A fairly young man, and a preacher. He gives a sermon every week, I think. He came here with some other Americans, stayed for two days and went back. But then, he sent us the sermons he had given since his return, and in one of them he recounts his spiritual journey, as he calls it (a spiritual journey through China, Japan, Indochina, Malaysia, Indonesia, and so on up to India). What shocked him most in India was the povertyit was an almost unbearable experience for him (thats also what prompted the two persons who were with him to leave, and he left with them): poverty. Personally, I dont know because Ive seen poverty everywhere; I saw it wherever I went, but it seems Americans find it very shocking. Anyway, they came here, and in his sermon he gives his impression of the Ashram. I read it almost with astonishment. That man says that the minute he entered this place, he felt a peace, a calm, a stability he had never felt ANYWHERE else in his life. He met a man (he doesnt say who, he doesnt name him and I couldnt find out), who he says was such a monument of divine peace and quietude that I only wished to sit silently at his side. Who it is, I dont know (theres only Nolini who might, possibly, give that impression). He attended the meditationhe says he had never felt anything so wonderful anywhere. And he left with the feeling this was a unique place in the world from the point of view of the realization of divine Peace. I read that almost with sur prise. And hes a man who, intellectually, is unable to understand or follow Sri Aurobindo (the horizon is quite narrow, he hasnt got beyond the unity of religions, thats the utmost he can conceive of). Well, in spite of that Those who already know all of Sri Aurobindo, who come here thinking they will see and who feel that Peace, I can understand. But thats not the case: he was enthralled at once!
Its the same with people who get cured. That I know, to some extent: the Power acts so forcefully that it is almost miraculousat a distance. The Power I am very conscious of the Power. But, I must say, I find it doesnt act here so well as it does far away. On government or national matters, on the terrestrial atmosphere, on great movements, also as inspirations on the level of thought (in certain people, to realize certain things), the Power is very clear. Also to save people or cure themit acts very strongly. But much more at a distance than here! (Although the receptivity has increased since I withdrew because, necessarily, it gave people the urge to find inside something they no longer had outside.) But here, the response is very erratic. And to distinguish between the proportion that comes from faith, sincerity, simplicity, and what comes from the Power Some people I am able to save (naturally, in my view, its because they COULD be saved), this is something that for a very long time I have been able to foresee. But now I dont try to know: it comes like this (gesture like a flash). If, for instance, I am told, So and so has fallen ill, well, immediately I know if he will recover (first if its nothing, some passing trouble), if he will recover, if it will take some time and struggle and difficulties, or if its fatalautomatically. And without trying to know, without even trying: the two things come together.2 This capacity has developed, first because I have more peace, and because, having more peace, things follow a more normal course. But there were two or three little instances where I said to the Lord (gesture of presenting something, palms open upward), I asked Him to do a certain thing, and then (not very often, it doesnt happen to me often; at times it comes as a necessity, a necessity to present the thing with a commentfrom morning to evening and evening to morning I present everything constantly, thats my movement [same gesture of presenting something] but here, there is a comment, as if I were asking, Couldnt this be done?), and then the result: yes, immediately. But I am not the one who presents the thing, you see: its just the way it is, it just happens that way, like everything else.3 So my conclusion is that its part of the Plan, I mean, a certain vibration is necessary, enters [into Mother], intervenes, and No stories to tell, mon petit! Nothing to fill people with enthusiasm or give them trust, nothing.
0 1963-05-03, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When I lie down, I go from one state to the other with extraordinary speed. And Ive noticed (the thing is just at its beginning, so I cant really say), Ive noticed that in that state, the Movement2 exceeds the force or power that concentrates the cells into an individual form. And that state seems to be all-powerful, although devoid of conscious will or vision (for the moment). Its a state (how can I explain this?) whose characteristics exceed the power that concentrates the cells into an individual body. The effect is automatic (not willed): as soon as something takes the form of a physical pain, it disappears INSTANTLY. But then, and this is most interesting, the second the body reverts to a certain stateits ordinary state, which isnt the ordinary human state, of course, but its ordinary, habitual stateit recaptures the MEMORY of its pain, and along with the memory comes the possibility of reverting to it if a certain number of conditions are not automatically fulfilled. I dont know if what I am saying makes any sense, but thats how the experience is. It is probably the passage from the true thing to the thing no longer truenot what is meant by Falsehood here on earth (thats something else altogether), but a first alteration compared to the pure Vibration. It gives the impression of a wrong habit, what remains is merely a question of a wrong habit. Its not the principle of distortion that works here, but the wrong habit due to the effect of ANOTHER principle. And something is to be found to checkcheck, eliminate, prevent that effect from recurring automatically.
Because it happens CONSTANTLY. Its a constant phenomenon: passing from this to that, this to that, this to that, to such a pointits so strong that a second comes, or a minute, or anyway a certain interval of time (I dont know), when you are neither this nor that; then you have a feeling of nothingness. It lasts just an instant; if it lasted longer, it would probably result in fainting or something, I cant say what. But it happens all the time: this, that (oscillating gesture). And between this and that, there is a passage.
0 1963-05-11, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The drawing starts here (Mother draws the first half of the 8): its the Supreme leaning forward. Then, Nature in its base, Nature in sleep (the base of the 8). And here (the top of the 8), I put two little drawings (as if to symbolize an eye, a nose and a mouth) to evoke the summit of consciousness. So the Supreme is leaning forward like this and Nature rises like this (Mother draws the second half of the 8). All this (the top of the 8) is golden, then it becomes prismatic (the middle of the 8), and deep blue here (the base of the 8), in the most material part of the creation, and the blue becomes lighter and lighter (going upward again), and finally golden. Perpetually.
Eight is the symbol of infinity for mathematicians ().
0 1963-05-15, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its the same idea, that opposition and opposites stimulate progress. Because to say that without Cruelty, Love would be tepid The principle of Love, as it is beyond the Manifest and the Nonmanifest, has nothing to do with either tepidness or cruelty. But Sri Aurobindos idea, it seems, is that opposites are the most effective and rapid way to knead Matter so that it may intensify its manifestation.
As an experience, its absolutely certain: when you come in touch with eternal Love, supreme Love, the first, immediate (what should I say?) perception or sensation (its not an understanding, it is much more concrete) is that even the most enlightened, kneaded, prepared material consciousness is INCAPABLE of manifesting That! The first impression is that sort of incapacity. Then comes the experience of something manifesting a type of not exactly cruelty, because its not cruelty as we conceive it; but in the totality of circumstances, there is a vibration which is felt as a certain intensity of refusal of love as it is manifested here thats exactly the thing: something in the material world refuses the manifestation of love as it exists at present (I dont refer to the ordinary world but to the consciousness at its present highest). Its an experience, I am speaking of something that has taken place. Then the part of the consciousness that has been touched by that opposition calls out directly to Loves origin WITH AN INTENSITY IT COULD NOT HAVE HAD WITHOUT THE EXPERIENCE OF THE REFUSAL. Limits are broken, a flood descends which could NOT manifest before, and something is expressed which was not expressed before.
0 1963-05-18, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Mother seems to have forgotten the red of the vital, which comes between material Nature's violet and the Mind's blue. Thus we have twelve worlds: violet, red, blue (the Mind's three blues), yellow, then the Overmind's prismatic colors, which makes five lower worlds, then finally the three golds of the Supermind and the four whites of the supreme creative Joy or Ananda.
Mother means that there is no proof that the order was restored because of the Lord's intervention rather than by some other, "natural" mechanism.
0 1963-06-15, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But mentally, you know (Mother makes a gesture: completely obtuse). There is a prince of Kashmir who came here once, a young man3; he went to England, and there he wrote a thesis on Sri Aurobindos political life, Sri Aurobindo, Prophet of Indian Nationalism, with a preface by Jawaharlal Nehru. I read the preface, but afterwards, the day after I saw Nehruits awful! Understands nothing, he understands nothing, nothing, nothing, absolutely obtuse. Its very kind, but written by someone who understands nothing. I will tell you the thing: between my first and second visits here, while I was away in Japan and Gandhi was starting his campaign,4 he sent a telegram, then a messenger, to Sri Aurobindo here, asking him to be president of the Congressto which Sri Aurobindo answered No.
Those people never forgave him.
--
It seems (its what I heard, I dont know) that all the prisoners (they had plenty of themmany of the Indians, unfortunately and most of them were released), they all said they had been admirably treated. I heard that from all quarters.
And Nehru, you see (thats what Pavitra told me yesterday, he went to the town hall to listen to Nehrus speech), Nehru is an out-and-out social democrat who believes that the ideal organization for mankind, instead of only an elite being able to progress, is that the entire masses should progress (as if they wanted to! but anyway). Its an ideaeveryone has his own ideas. But then it seems that when the Chinese attacked, it was a violent blow to his conviction: he thought it impossible that the Chinese would do such a thing (!) He was very deeply shattered.
--
I tell you, I am at the mercy of anything! Unless people give prior notice that theyre up to some mischief, nobody will stop them from coming upstairs!
But people like G. are notorious bandits!
0 1963-07-03, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Another time, when I was younger, I was in Italy, in Venice, painting in a corner of St. Marks Cathedral (a marvelous place of great beauty), and I happened to be sitting right next to a confessional. One day, as I sat there painting, I saw the priest arrive and enter the confessional that man completely black, tall, thin, the very face of wickedness and hardness: a pitiless wickedness. He closeted himself in there. After a short while there came a rather young woman, perhaps thirty years old, gentle, very sweetnot intelligent but very sweetentirely dressed in black. She entered the box (he was already shut in and could no longer be seen), and they spoke through a grille. I should add that its far more medieval than in France, it was really it was almost theatrical. She knelt down there, I saw her long gown flowing out, and she was speaking. (I couldnt hear, she was whispering; besides, both of them spoke in Italian, although I understand Italian.) The voices were barely audible, there was no sound. Then all at once, I heard the woman sobbing (she was sobbing in spasms), and it went on till suddenlya collapse: she crumpled in a heap on the floor. Then that man opened the door, shoving aside her body with the door and he strode away without a backward glance. I was young, you know, and if I could have, I would have killed him. What he had just done was monstrous. And he was going away it was a chunk of steel that walked out.
Incidents of that sort have left me with a peculiar impression. The stories of the Inquisition had already given me a sufficient Now, of course, youve heard what I told you [the story of the Asura], and thats really my way of seeing the thing. But there was a time when I might have said, No religion has done more evil in the world than this one.
--
This man [Paul VI] may have been like that priest in Venice. He was a tall young man, couldnt have been more than thirty, very thin, with a face like a knife blade, oh!
Fear is not a negative thing: its a very positive thing, its a special form of power that has always been used by the Asuric forcesits their greatest strength. Their greatest strength is fear.
0 1963-07-24, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
We find it worthwhile to publish here a letter Mother wrote (in English) to prithwi Singh, Sujata's father, just a few days before Sri Aurobindo's letter published at the beginning of this conversation, on August 30, 1945: "I do not see that the Supramental will act in the way you expect from It. Its action will be to effectuate the Divine's Will upon earth whatever that may be. On men Its action will be to turn their will consciously or unconsciously on their part towards the way in which the Divine's Will wants them to go. But I cannot promise you that the Divine's will is to preserve the present human civilisation."
***
0 1963-08-07, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Just this morning, it was the same thing for me. You see, when the difficulty comes, there is a kind of general disorganization in the body, with intense pains, and (I observe, I want to follow the thing) its not at all a progressive abatement followed by recovery, thats not how it works: its absolutely like the reversal of a prismeverything vanishes at one stroke. There remains only that stupid habit the body has of remembering. And in remembering the remembrance makes you feel tired and out of sorts but the thing is over.
The bodys remembrance is yet another thing that will have to be worked upon.
0 1963-08-10, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But its still going on. Now, theres a great battle against all the ideas, the habits, the sensations, the possibilities, everything, concerning deathdeath (laughing), not death in the sense of the consciousness departing (that, of course, people talk about, but those things no longer exist), no: WHAT THE CELLS MUST FEEL.2 And all the possibilities are presented to me With that consciousness (the consciousness accumulated, compressed in all those cells), when the heart stops beating and its understood that, according to human ignorance, you are dead, how does the force that groups all those cells together abdicate its will to hold them all together? Naturally, I was told right away (because the problemall the problemscome from everywhere, and its purposely that I am shown the problem and made to struggle with it; its not just as an idea), I was told right away that that force, that consciousness which holds everything together in really superconscious cells (they dont have at all the ordinary type of consciousness; ordinarily, its the inner, vital being [Mother touches the heart center] thats conscious of oneness, that is, conscious of being a being), that this aggregate of cells is now an aggregate OF ITS OWN WILL, with an organized consciousness which is a sort of collective gathering of that cellular consciousness; well Obviously this is an exceptional condition, but even in the past, in those beings who were very developed outwardly, there was a beginning of willed, conscious cellular gathering, and thats certainly why in ancient Egypt, where occultism was very developed. exceptional beings such as the pharaohs, the high priests, etc., were mummified, so as to preserve the form as long as possible. Even here in India, generally they were petrified (in the Himalayas there were petrifactive s prings). There was a reason.3
And I saw for Sri Aurobindo (although he hadnt yet started this systematic transformation; but still, he was constantly pulling the supramental force down into his body), even in his case, it took five days to show the first slight sign of decomposition. I would have kept his body longer, but the government always meddles in other peoples business, naturally, and they pestered me awfully, saying it was forbidden to keep a body so long and that we should So when the body began to (whats the word?) shrinkit was shrinking and contracting, that is, dehydrating then we had to do it. He had had enough time to come out, since almost everything came into my bodyalmost everything that was material came into my body.
0 1963-08-21, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Regarding an old "Playground Talk," of January 4, 1951, in which Mother said that one of the essential conditions for transformation is an awareness of the inner dimensions: "It's a total reversal of consciousness, which can be compared to what happens to light when it goes through a prism. Or else it's as if you turned a ball inside out, which can be done only in the fourth dimension. You emerge from the ordinary consciousness of the third dimension to enter the higher consciousness of the fourth dimension, and then an infinite number of dimensions. This is the indispensable starting point.")
Thats what I had told you already: the whole basis of the yogic effort is changed now. Formerly, the work was based precisely on that knowledge of inner dimensions I cant recapture that any more, I see it as completely outside me.1
--
These days, I dont know whether it has come to the last battle, but it has descended very deep into the cells worst-lit realm: what still belongs most to the world of Unconsciousness and Inertia and is most foreign to the divine Presence. It is, so to say, the primal substance that was first used by Life, and it has a sort of inability to feel, to experience a reason for that life.
In fact, its something I had never experienced [that absence of meaning]; even in my earliest childhood, when there was no development, I always had a perception (not a mentalized but a vibrant perception) of a Power behind all things which is the Raison dtre of all thingsa Power, a Force, a kind of warmth.
0 1963-08-24, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have reached this conclusion: in principle, what gives rapture is the awareness of and union with the Divine (thats the principle), therefore the awareness of and union with the Divine, whether in the world as it is or in the building of a future world, must be the samein principle. Thats what I keep saying to myself all the time: How is it that you dont have that rapture? I do have it: at the time when the whole consciousness is centered in the union, whenever that is, in the midst of any activity, along with that movement of concentration of the consciousness on the union comes rapture. But I must admit it disappears when I am in that its a world of work, but a very chaotic world, in which I act on everything around meand necessarily I have to receive whats around me in order to act on it. I have reached a state in which all that I receive, even the things considered the most painful, leave me absolutely still and indifferentindifferent, not an inactive indifference: no painful reaction of any kind, absolutely neutral (gesture turned to the Eternal), a perfect equanimity. But within that equanimity, there is a precise knowledge of the thing to be done, the words to be said or written, the decision to be made, anyway all that action involves. All that takes place in a state of perfect neutrality, with a sense of the Power at the same time: the Power goes through me, the Power acts, and neutrality stays but theres no rapture. I dont have the enthusiasm, the joy and plenitude of action, not at all.
And I must say that the state of consciousness that rapture gives would be dangerous in the present state of the world. Because it has almost absolute reactions I can see that that state of rapture has an OVERWHELMING power. But I insist on the word overwhelming, in the sense that its intolerant of, or intolerable to (yes, intolerable to) all thats unlike it! Its the same thing, or almost (not quite the same but almost), as supreme divine Love: the vibration of that ecstasy or rapture is a first hint of the vibration of divine Love, and thats absolutely yes, there is no other word, intolerant, in the sense that it doesnt brook the presence of anything contrary to it.
0 1963-08-28, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
[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 didnt want to comment on it. But its true.
--
And, truly, sincerely, its absolutely all the same to me. Its the same when people write to me, How wonderful: I smile and I think, What can they understand?! I receive letters priceless letters! Positively exuberant, full of bombastic words, and then there are others who tell me very frankly that they are full of doubt, that I quite simply use tricks to run the whole business (!) like any ordinary human intelligence, and that they cant feel anything divine at all behind all thatboth make the same impression on me, the one and the other! (Mother laughs) To me its all the same thing. Its their opinions they have the right to have any opinions they like. To tell the truth, all that we could reply to them is, Have the opinions that make you progress, whether in this way or that, it doesnt matter in the least!
Thats not the point. Maybe its the fear (there is a fear somewhere, I dont know), the fear of opening the intimacy a little too much, a fear from the standpoint of the vibrations.
0 1963-09-04, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But things are rather complex. For the body in its ordinary consciousness, its absolutely normal state is when it doesnt feel itself living. When the body doesnt feel itself living, that means its functioning normally; as soon as it feels itself living in some part of itself, it means that something isnt quite normal, and instinctively (I dont mean the vital or mental consciousness), but its primal consciousness is alarmed, because its not normal (not what it calls normal); and then that sort of alarm (an alarm thats not formulated in thoughts) brings it into contact with a whole world of adverse and defeatist suggestionsoh, there is an INTENSE atmosphere of pessimistic, defeatist, adverse suggestions in which human lives are bathed, as it were. Its even very strong here, very strong I mean in the Ashramvery strong. People who are very sensitive and whose consciousness isnt firmly rooted in faith are very (what shall I say?) very deeply not deeply but intimately attacked by that atmosphere.
And it makes bodies very ill-at-ease.
0 1963-10-16, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is really now a struggle against all that terrestrial formation against, yes, the ignorance and unconsciousness of the earths primal thought.
Its still there; even in those who have developed their higher mind, who are able to emerge from that darkness and ignorance, its still there its still there in a sort of mental or vital subconscient. And its so dark! Thoroughly stupid, you know: it can be given hundreds and thousands of proofs, it remains unaffecteda kind of incapacity to understand. And then it constantly rises to the surface, and I am constantly obliged (gesture of offering to the Heights) to present it: This is still there, that is still there, that And I see very well that the distinction between what goes on in this body and its atmosphere, and what goes on in all other bodies is I dont know if the distinction still exists, but its imperceptible. And the consciousness is aware of all those movements as if they were personal to the physical person. But the physical person (Mother touches her body) isnt just this body I am not yet sure whether the physical person isnt the whole earth (for certain things, it is the whole earth), or whether the physical person is the entirety of all the bodies of the people I am in contact with. During the last hours of the night, that is, between 2 and 4, I see precise forms; but those precise forms are themselves representative, meaning there are TYPES and those types take on the image of someone I am in contact with or was in personal contact with. But to me they are types: Oh, its such and such a type but that can be thousands of people. And the action (its always for an action), the action on the person-type has repercussions on all that he represents.
0 1963-11-04, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
So, from the smallest thing to even terrestrial things I dont want to be personal at all, so I wont give examples, but there were some amusing ones, like, for instance, making people such as presidents, prime ministers, make certain decisionsif the right intermediary is there.
It can even be a terrestrial action.
There are examples, in the terrestrial action, of things that were done just like that: no one ever understood how it was done or why it was donejust like that, so simply, very simply, it all worked out. And in other cases, to obtain a mere visa or permit, you have to move heaven and earth! So, from the smallest thing, the slightest physical discomfort, to the most global action, its all the same principle, it all boils down to the same principle.
Naturally, when you have the experience, its very easy to understand, but its hard to explainby the way, I dont think we can put this in the Bulletin.
0 1963-12-03, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
pride, vanity thats the worst trap. And when they feel that sort of vital force in them [as Y. does], they believe all at once that they have caught the Thing.
The farther I go, the more I feel the opposite: I find everything poorso very poor.
0 1963-12-14, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes, but it has to be understandable, really understandable I am not sure it is. Because when I talk to you, I communicate to you the vibration of the experience, so insofar as you are receptive, you feel it. But it doesnt pass into the printed wordsvery little, very, very little.
People read with their heads, with their brains.
--
The way the world is now physically organized, with the difference and specialization in the forms, in sexes, encourages a kind of opposition between the two poles, the union of which results in creation. So, naturally, each pole has enormous difficulty understanding the other (although it thinks and believes it does), especially understanding the pole I place underneath (gesture signifying the basis of the world), which is the effectively creative pole, that is to say, what is expressed by woman. She feels very well that without this (gesture above) the full understanding isnt there; but this, which is above, doesnt AT ALL understand the creative power of that which is belowit knows it in principle, but doesnt understand it. And there is a lack of adaptation, a sort of conflict, which shouldnt exist. It never existedneverbetween Sri Aurobindo and me, but I could see it didnt exist because he had adopted the attitude of complete surrender to the eternal Mother (the stage, in the creation, of complete surrender). I would see it, and it embarrassed me! It embarrassed me, I thought, But why does he think he has to do that (laughing), as if I couldnt understand! On the contrary, I thirst for the other attitude for identifying myself this way instead of that way (Mother presses her fist upward against her hand above): for identifying myself from below upward instead of from above downward. It was an aspiration, which has been there almost for eternities for the universal creative Force to identify itself with the Creator. And to identify itself not through the descent of the Creator, but through the ascent of the Force the conscious ascent. But Sri Aurobindo willed it that way, so it was that way and then I was very busy with my work. For the thirty years we lived together, it went on that way, perfectly smoothly; and I kept my aspiration quiet because I knew that it was his will. But since he left and I was obliged to do his work, so to speak, things have changed. But I didnt in the least want the Creator, because of my taking up the work, to be obliged to adapt himself to the creative Force (that wont do at all!), and my whole aspiration has been for the creative Force to consciously BECOME the Creator. Its becoming increasingly that way. And at the last meeting [with Sri Aurobindo], for a time (not the whole time, but some time), it was that way. Then I understood; it made me understand the play of all the forces in the two elements the two polesand how they could be joined, through what process that opposition could disappear so that the total Being might exist.
Were on the way. And its growing clearer and clearer. It will be tremendously interesting. But thats for later on.
0 1963-12-31, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Did I give you everything? Did I give you the second calendar [with a photograph of Mother, printed in Calcutta]? The other one, he [Satprem] didnt like it.
(Sujata:) Youre too stern, little Mother!
0 1964-01-15, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And this field of experience also includes the physical mindall the mental constructions that have a direct action on life and on the body; there is there an almost unlimited field of experiences. And everything takes the form not of a speculation or a thought, but of an experience. Ill give you an example to make myself understood. I wont tell you the thing as it occurred, but as I now know it to be. There is in France someone very devoted, born Catholic, and who was seriously ill. He wrote to me asking what he should do; he said that people around him naturally wanted him to receive extreme unction (they thought he was about to die), and he wrote to ask me if it had any influence on the progress of his inner being and whether he should refuse categorically. I knew none of this [as Mother had not yet received the letter], but I had an experience here, in which a priest and altar boys came to give me extreme unction! (Thats how it presented itself to me.) They wanted to give me extreme unction, so I watched I watched, I wanted to see; I thought, Well, before dismissing them abruptly, lets see what it is. (I had no idea why they had come, you understand; someone had sent them to give me extreme unctionnot that I felt particularly sick! But anyhow thats how it was.) So before dismissing them, I watched carefully to find out if really it had a power of action, if extreme unction had the power to disturb the progress of the soul and tie it down to old religious formations. I watched and I saw how thin and tenuous it was, without force; I saw clearly that it could have some force only if the priest who performed it was a conscious soul and did it consciously, in relationship with an inner power or force (vital or other), but that if it was an ordinary man doing his job and giving the sacraments with the ordinary belief and nothing more, it was perfectly harmless.
Once I had seen that, suddenly (it was as if on a screen) the whole story vanished and it was over. It had come only to make me see it, thats all. But it presented itself in that way in order to make me watch intently, seriously, not as a mental consideration: a vision and an experience.
0 1964-01-22, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Still, for actions in this domain, actions of transformation, I dont say solitude because thats sillythere is no such thing as solitude but peace is necessary, that is, the perfect control over the activity: the activity must be kept on a level where it doesnt interfere with the inner work thats the point. That was why, in fact, I was forced (apparently) to remain upstairs, because downstairs it had become it was infernalinfernal, no one can imagine! Its always the same principle: Why not me? And there are 1,300 of them, you understand let alone the visitors who come in their hundreds (some days, there are more than 200 or 300 of them at one time); they hear that there is someone worth seeing, and when I was downstairs and one of the circus showmen ([laughing] excuse me!) came, he would bring a troop along.
Now, its a little better, but it has become Why not me? Mother has seen such and such a category of people, therefore the entire category has a right to be seen! The birthdays1 too, it depends on the ages and occupations: if I see people of a certain age and occupation on their birthdays, all those of about the same age and similar occupation have a RIGHT to comethey have the rightand it is my DUTY to see them. And when I say that I dont have the time theyre upset.
0 1964-01-29, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Inertia transformed into its conscious principle of immortal stability.
It is evidently a change in Inertia itself.
0 1964-03-07, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It wasnt a permeation into the Mind: it was a permeation into Lifeinto Life, into the material, earthly substance, which had become alive. Even plants participated in last nights experience: it isnt something that was the privilege of the mental being, its the whole vital substance (vitalized material substance) of the earth that received this ananda of the power of progressit was triumphant. Triumphant.
And when I came back (it took me perhaps five or six minutes to come back), it was with a sort of quiet certainty that the return was a necessity, and that something else would occur thanks to which it wont be necessary to leave one state for the other (thats the trouble, we still have to leave one state for the other). It hasnt left, but its in the backgroundit should be in the front.
0 1964-07-22, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Unlike in human beings, the action is not governed by feelings or principles, but by the dharma of each being or thing, known through identity.
I will tell you the second experience first, because its a phenomenon of daily experience, a daily observation. And its one of the chief reasons why its impossible for ordinary human beings to understand a being who acts from what we could call divine impulse. Because all human activity is based on reactions, which are themselves the result of feelings and sensations, and, for people who are considered superior and who act according to reason, is based on principles of actioneveryone has his range of principles on which he bases his action (this is so well known that theres not much point in talking about it). But the other fact is interesting: for instance, when a human being loves someone (what he calls love) or doesnt love someone, his reactions to the SAME phenomenon the SAME phenomenonare, not always opposite, but extremely different, to such an extent that ordinary human judgment is based on those reactions. It would be better to take a very precise example: that of disciples and Master. The disciples almost never understand the Master, but they have opinions of him and of his ways of acting; they see and they say, The Master did such and such a thing, he acts with this person in such and such a way and with that other person in such and such other way, therefore he loves this person and doesnt love that one. I am putting it very bluntly, but thats the way it is.
All this is based on experiences of every minute, here.
--
And that essential thing, in its principle, is here, on earth.
See conversations of January 29, 1964 and conversations of March 4, 1964.
0 1964-07-28, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But in this case, there was such a precise action of the Force. And at the same time I had another experience (but a much more personal and subjective one), which confirmed me in my perception Did you read Rodogune by Sri Aurobindo? In Rodogune, there is a scene in which an eremite meets a young prince and utters these words, This man has around him the atmosphere of someone who is going to die. (The prince had just won a great victory, anyway all was for the best, and he had decided to go to such and such a place; thats when the eremite uttered those words.) When I read that, I tried to make contact with that vibration the eremite called the atmosphere of a man who is going to die. And when I received S.s letter telling me that with the talisman, he was sure all would be wellexactly the same vibration. That sort of exultation, of assertion of power and force, and, behind, there was exactly the same vibration. So it confirmed for me what I had seen.
But I was very happy with the American doctors receptivity.
0 1964-08-14, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
People no longer grow crops because its too complicated and with all those taxes (theyve scores of taxes to pay), it costs them much more than they can earn. And as there isnt enough food, there are naturally individuals who try and hoard as much as they can to sell it for as high a price as possible.
The situation in which we ourselves are [at the Ashram], this difficulty, doesnt come from anything else: the governments interference in everything, its meddling in other peoples affairs and putting spokes in the wheels of everything, but everything. Ive got a pile of examples, of proof for every minuteall the proof.
So there are two possibilities: violence, or Transformation. Violence means invasion or revolutionits hanging in the air, it could break out any moment. The government Nehru wasnt worth much, but still for the masses he represented a certain ideal (which he was quite incapable of living up to, but anyway). After him, its finished; the present prime Minister is a man with great goodwill, who has no character, to such a point that in the presence of difficulties he falls illhes ill! Ill, he cant work! Thats where we are.2
Here, in Pondicherry, its the same muddle.
--
Indira Gandhi will come to power in early 1966, after the death of the present prime Minister, Lal Bahadur Shastri.
***
0 1964-10-07, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The best one can do is not to have any prejudices or preconceived ideas or principlesoh, moral principles, fixed codes of conduct, what must be done and what must not be done, and preconceived ideas with regard to morals, with regard to progress, and then all the social and mental conventions theres no obstacle worse than that. I know people who wasted dozens of years trying to overcome one of those mental constructions!
If one can be like this, opentruly open in a simplicity you know, the simplicity of ignorance that knows its ignorant like this (gesture, hands open), ready to receive all that comes then, perhaps, something will happen.
0 1964-10-10, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For instance, I saw recently a sort of exhibition or procession of all the possible theories of humanity explaining the creation (the world, life, existence). All those conceptions came before me one after another, from the seemingly most primitive and most ignorant to the most scientific and they were all (smiling) on the same plane of incomprehension but ALL had the same RIGHT to express the true aspiration that was behind. And it was miraculous! Even the faith of the savage, even the most primitive religions and most ignorant convictions had behind them the same right to express that aspiration. It was wonderful. And then the sense of the superiority of intelligence fell away completely, instantly.
It is the same thing for those oppositions, those contradictions that are called violent and vulgar between the intellectual (and especially scientific) progress of the human species and, by contrast, the apparently foolish stupidity of those who react against conventions1; well, that feeling of inferiority or superiority that you find among so-called reasonable beings, all of that disappeared instantly in a perception of THE WHOLE, in which EVERYTHINGeverythingwas the result of the same Pressure (downward gesture) towards progress. Its like a pressure exerted on Matter (same gesture) to draw the response out of it. And whatever form that response may take, its part of the general Action.
0 1964-10-14, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Thats it! A totally private letter! What right do they have to display it?
But they do that constantly, with everything they cut Sri Aurobindo into bits, they cut Mother into bits, and there you are: its the Law, the Rule, the principle.
Exactly, exactly!
--
True, at that time films were shown only once a week. Nowadays, you know how it is, its the competitiveness: everyone wants to bring films. So one turned to the French embassy, another turned to the British embassy, another to the American embassy, another to the Russian, German, Italian embassies. From all the embassies, theyre pouring in. And how do you make a choice? How do you decide without hurting one or the other? Before, it was agreed that films would be shown only on Saturday, so that on Sunday morning they could get up an hour later if they felt sleepy. Now, in effect, it takes place two or three times a week. But thats the fault of these people! Everyone took pride in bringing films from his embassy. How can you refuse some and accept others?
But to me, those film shows arent the biggest obstacle, I dont think so. Whats much worse is all those comics they readthey spend their time reading those things.
--
I would have nothing to say against that poster if there had been several quotations, with mine among the others; but what I rose up against is that they used it as a circular which they sent to all the Departments! And it was a private letter.
If at least this quotation had been among several others but one should ALWAYS put in the complementary quotationsand they never do.
0 1964-11-12, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Which means that their way of saying or thinking or understanding that all that is has existed from all eternity isnt it isnt all that is as they see it and conceive of it, it isnt even the principle of all that is, it is it is the ONE Truth thats eternal, and the unfolding Its difficult to say. The unfolding follows a law and a process that are quite different from what we conceive or from what we perceive.
Its the same thing again: Truth is there, Falsehood is there (Mother presses her two hands together); perfection is there, imperfection is there (same gesture); theyre perfectly coexistent, in the same place the minute you perceive perfection, imperfection disappears, the Illusion disappears.
0 1964-11-28, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You know that they are printing two calendars, one here and one in Calcutta. In the Calcutta calendar, I look happy and I greet with folded hands; so I wrote underneath, Salut Toi, Vrit [Salute to you, O Truth]. In English (theyre a bit slow, you know!), they wanted something more explicit, so I wrote, Salute to the advent of the Truth. I am going to give the subject to Sunil: Make some music on this.
But still, its a pity for you to give up music.
0 1964-12-02, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Ive had some very precise memorieslived memoriesof a human life on earth, quite primitive (I mean outside any mental civilization), a human life on earth that wasnt an evolutionary life, but the manifestation of beings from another world. I lived in that way for a timea lived memory. I still see it, I still have the image of it in my memory. It had nothing to do with civilization and mental development: it was a blossoming of force, of beauty, in a NATURAL, spontaneous life, like animal life, but with a perfection of consciousness and power that far surpasses the one we have now; and indeed with a power over all surrounding Nature, animal nature and vegetable nature and mineral nature, a DIRECT handling of Matter, which men do not havethey need intermediaries, material instruments, whereas this was direct. And there were no thoughts or reasoning: it was spontaneous (gesture indicating the direct radiating action of will on Matter). I have the lived memory of this. It must have existed on earth because it wasnt premonitory: it wasnt a vision of the future, it was a past memory. So there must have been a moment It was limited to two beings: I dont have the feeling there were many. And there was no childbirth or anything animal, absolutely not; it was a life, yes, a truly higher life in a natural setting, but with an extraordinary beauty and harmony! And I dont have the feeling it was (how can I explain?) something known; the relationships with vegetable life and animal life were spontaneous ones, absolutely harmonious, and with the sensation of an undisputed power (you didnt even feel it was possible for it not to be), undisputed, but without any idea that there were other beings on earth and that it was necessary to look after them or make a demonstrationnothing of the sort, absolutely nothing of mental life, nothing. A life just like that, like a beautiful plant or a beautiful animal, but with an inner knowledge of things, perfectly spontaneous and effortlessan effortless life, perfectly spontaneous. I dont even have the feeling that there was any question of food, not that I remember; but there was the joy of Life, the joy of Beauty: there were flowers, there was water, there were trees, there were animals, and all that was friendly, but spontaneously so. And there were no problems! No problems to be solved, nothing at allone just lived!
An uncomplicated life, definitely.
0 1965-03-06, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
He had deplored (laughing) some accusations of mine against people, especially against the Catholic religion (although he isnt a Catholic at allhe is a staunch Hindu), he thought it wasnt wise from a legal standpoint and that I risked running into trouble (!) So I told him privately, You know, the whole worlds opinion of me, everyones opinion is like zero, I couldnt care less. Then he gaped in horror! And I told him, Here, now you will meditate on this in all humility, and I gave him what youve just read.
But I dont want it to get around. It came strongly on that occasion, like a necessity, I had to say that, but the time hasnt come yet to declare it publicly.
0 1965-04-21, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Exactly, I suddenly remembered in this connection a quotation from Sri Aurobindo that seemed to me interesting. Its in The Human Cycle, at the end of The Human Cycle. Heres what he says: It may well be that, once started, it [the supramental endeavour] may not advance rapidly even to its first decisive stage; it may be that it will take long centuries of effort to come into some kind of permanent birth. But that is not altogether inevitable, for the principle of such changes in Nature seems to be a long obscure preparation followed by a swift gathering up and precipitation of the elements into the new birth, a rapid conversion, a transformation that in its luminous moment figures like a miracle.1
This is very interesting. Yes (laughing), he said this to me a few days ago!
0 1965-04-30, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
How can I explain? (Smiling) It was like a round of inspection of the spiritual sanitary conditions of the different lodgings (1). I am putting it like this, but it was rather curious; it was like a force, yes, or a sort of consciousness that came to inspect the different premises from the standpoint of spiritual healthit was rather curious, interesting. It had started with a visit to my own rooms here; then I asked for the explanation of the principle, if I may say so, on which that inspection was based, and when the explanation was given, I said, Well, lets go and see Satprems home, then. And I even had a sort of feeling that you didnt know (mind you, in fact I knew nothing about it, its just what I saw last night) that the mosquito netting they put at your place is mine, the one that was here before.
Yes.
0 1965-05-19, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Thats why certain minds have postulated that the creation was the result of an error. But we find all the possible conceptions: the perfect creation, then a fault that introduced the error; the creation itself as a lower movement, which must end since it began; then the conception of the Vedas according to what Sri Aurobindo told us about it, which was a progressive and infinite unfolding or discoveryindefinite and infiniteof the All by Himself. Naturally, all these are human translations. For the moment, as long as we express ourselves humanly, its a human translation; but depending on the initial stand of the human translator (that is, a stand that accepts the primordial error, or the accident in the creation, or the conscious supreme Will since the beginning, in a progressive unfolding), the conclusions or the descents in the yogic attitude are different. There are the nihilists, the Nirvanists and the illusionists, there are all the religions (like Christianity) that accept the devils intervention in one form or another; and then pure Vedism, which is the Supremes eternal unfolding in a progressive objectification. And depending on your taste, you are here or there or here, and there are nuances. But according to what Sri Aurobindo felt to be the most total truth, according to that conception of a progressive universe, you are led to say that, every minute, what takes place is the best possible for the unfolding of the whole. The logic of it is absolute. And I think that all the contradictions can only stem from a more or less pronounced tendency for this or that position, that other position; all the minds that accept the intrusion of a fault or an error and the resulting conflict between forces pulling backward and forces pulling forward, can naturally dispute the possibility. But you are forced to say that for someone who is spiritually attuned to the supreme Will or the supreme Truth, what happens is necessarily, every instant, the best for his personal realizationthis is true in all cases. The unconditioned best can only be accepted by one who sees the universe as an unfolding, the Supreme growing more and more conscious of Himself.
(silence)
0 1965-05-29, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Purohit: priest.
A first nucleus near the Great Lake.
When Satprem asked Mother whether this "something" was indeed the supramental Force, Mother answered this: "I'd rather not name it, because they will make a dogma out of it. It [this "something"] is what happened when what we called 'the first supramental manifestation' took place in 1956. I tried my best to prevent it from being turned into a dogma. But if I say, 'On such-and-such date, such-and-such a thing took place,' it will be printed in big characters, and if someone says something else, he will be told, 'You are a heretic.' So I don't want that. But it's undeniable that the atmosphere has changed, there is something new in the atmospherewe can call it 'the descent of the supramental Truth' because for us these words have a meaning, but I don't want to make a declaration about it, because I don't want it to be THE classic or 'true' way to describe the event. That's why I keep it vague, deliberately."
"After all India with her mentality and method has done a hundred times more in the spiritual field than Europe with her intellectual doubts and questionings. Even when a European overcomes the doubt and questioning, he does not find it as easy to go as fast and far as an Indian with the same force of personality because the stir of mind is still greater. It is only when he can get beyond that that he arrives, but for him it is not so easy.
0 1965-06-05, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
That was very amusing (I didnt tell his mother), but I saw him a year or two ago when he arrived from America with his parents. They came here to see me. I saw him, I wasnt thinking of anything, I was simply looking at him (meaning that I was taking him inside me). He wasnt quite like an ordinary child, he had rather princely manners. I noticed it, but nothing special apart from that. I saw him in the morning, then in the afternoon when I rested, I had a vision, that is to say, I relived a life in Egypt. It was ancient Egypt, I saw it from my costume, from the walls, from everything (I dont know if I have noted it there), anyway it wasnt modern. And I clearly was the Pharaohs wife, or his sister (I dont remember now), and suddenly I said to myself, This child is impossible! He keeps doing what he isnt supposed to do! (Mother laughs) So I went out of my room, entered a great hall, and the little child was busy playing in a gutter! (Laughing) Which I found completely disgusting! So his tutor ran up to me immediately to tell me (I must have noted it): Such is the will of Amenhotep.
That is how I knew his name.
--
I. in ancient Egypt. A temple or palace of ancient Egypt. Light-and fresh-colored paintings on the very high walls. Clear light. About the child, very bold, independent and playful, I hear the end of a sentence: Such is the will oftep. The entire name is uttered very clearly, but when I got up (too abruptly), only the syllable tep was retained by the memory of the waking consciousness. It was the tutor speaking to me about the child. I am the Pharaohs wife or the high priestess of the temple, with full authority.
That was my first memory on waking up.
--
There are all kinds of things, because I shove everything in here indiscriminatelybits of notes, private letters, things I never sent.
And whats this?
--
Oh, this is a message I sent mentally to the Government of India! They wanted to lend money to the Lake estate1 and they asked for guarantees, all sorts of dreadful things, as if they really were dealing with a gang of bandits. I refused. I told them, Keep your money, I dont want it at such a price. But I wrote this and for a long time kept it here, on my table (thats my method, I do that for my work). I was very angry and I wrote:
You leave free hand to the bandits
0 1965-06-14, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I remember having read a story, at the time when I used to receive I think it was Le Matin, the newspaper Le Matin. There were novels in it and I used to read the novels to see the state of mind of people. And there was an extraordinary novel in which the main character was a woman who was immortal (she had been condemned to immortality by God knows which deity), and she tried her best to die, without success! It was stupid, the whole thing was stupid, but the standpoint was reversed: she was compelled to be immortal and she said, Oh! When will I be allowed to die?, with the ordinary idea that death is the end, that everything is over and one rests. And she had been told, You will be able to die only when you meet true love. Everything was topsy-turvy. But when I read that, it set me thinking a lot sometimes its the most stupid things that set you thinking the most. And to complete the story you see, she had been someone, then someone else, a priestess in Egypt, anyway all kinds of things, and finally (I dont remember), it was in modern times: she met a young married couple; the husb and was a remarkable man, intelligent (I think he was an inventor); his wife, whom he loved passionately, was a stupid and wicked fool who spoilt all his work, who ruined his whole life and he went on loving her. And thats what (laughing) they gave as example of perfect love!
I read that maybe more than fifty years ago, and I still remember it! Because it set me thinking for a long time. I read that and I said to myself, Heres how people understand things!
--
I must tell you that I was born in a family in which nobody smoked: my father had never smoked and neither had his brothersanyway, no one smoked. So since my early childhood, I hadnt been used to others smoking. Later, when I lived with artists Artists smoke, of course (it seems it gives them inspiration!), but I detested the smell. I didnt say anything because I didnt want to be unpleasant, but I detested it. Then I came hereSri Aurobindo smoked. He smoked deliberately, he smoked in order to say: one can do the yoga while smoking, I say one can smoke and do the yoga, and I smoke. And he smoked. And naturally all the disciples smoked, since Sri Aurobindo smoked. For some time, I even gave them pocket money so they could buy cigars (they smoked cigarsit was ghastly!). Then I came to live in Sri Aurobindos house, we spoke freely, and one day I told him, How awful the smell of smoke is! (laughing) Its disgusting! So he said to me, Oh, you dont like the smell? Oh, no! I said, Not only that, but I had to make a yogic effort to stop it from making me feel sick! The next day, he had stopped. It was over, he never smoked again. That was kind. It wasnt on principle, it was because he didnt want to impose the smell on me. But I had never said anything: it was simply because he asked me just like that, while talking, so I told him. And when he stopped smoking, everyone had to stop toosmoking wasnt allowed anymore, since he didnt smoke anymore.
No, for those who dont smoke (laughing), others smoke is very
But it was the same thing for food, meat and so on. For a long time we ate meat; it was even very funny. Pavitra was a strict vegetarian when he came, and at the time, not only were we not vegetarian but the chickens were killed in the courtyard (!) and (laughing) Pavitra had the room right next to the kitchen the chickens used to be killed under his nose! Oh, poor Pavitra! Then it stopped for a very simple reason (not at all on principle): feeding people with meat is far costlier than being vegetarian! It meant complications. I was personally vegetarian out of tasteeverything is out of taste, not on principle. I became vegetarian at the beginning of the century, oh, a long time ago (yes, it must have been more than sixty years ago), because in my childhood I was forced to eat meat, and it disgusted me (not the idea: it was the taste I didnt like, it disgusted me!) and the doctor said I should be given pickles and all sorts of things to mask the taste. So as soon as I was independent and free, I said, Finished! (laughing) Ah, no! I wont eat meat anymorenot as a rule, since now and then I still take foie gras (thats not vegetarian!) and for a long time I went on eating crayfish or lobster, things like thatno rules, oh, for heavens sake no rules, but taste. But as you said earlier,4 its complications, thats exactly how I felt. And when I moved to this room (you know that they stuck me in bed for I dont know how long I cant manage to find out how long, no one wants to tell me), and when I started eating again, the doctor made me take chicken bouillon; but for that chicken bouillon they had to assassinate one chicken a daythey assassinated one chicken every day for me to have my chicken bouillon. Then, when the hot season came, they told me that the chickens were sick (the heat make them sick) and that, after all, maybe it wasnt so good to eat sick-chicken soup! So I said, Stop it, do stop it! And once I had stopped, ah, my heart was glad: Now (laughing) we dont assassinate chickens anymore! So I said, Finished, we wont do it again. But as it happens, its precisely during that time that I put on two kilos (at the time the doctor used to take my weight), and he said, See, you have put on weight! I told him, But I am not keen to put on weight!
You see (to Sujata), in front of him I speak frankly! (laughing) You should do as I say and not do as I do!
Not on principleno principles: out of taste.
There, mon petit.
0 1965-06-23, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
So in that park I had seen the Pavilion of Love (but I dont like to use that word because men have turned it into something ludicrous); I am referring to the principle of divine Love. But it has been changed: it will be the Pavilion of the Mother; but not this (Mother points to herself): the Mother, the true Mother, the principle of the Mother. (I say Mother because Sri Aurobindo used the word, otherwise I would have put something else I would have put creative principle or realizing principle or something of that sort.) And it will be a small building, not a big one, with just a meditation room downstairs, with columns and probably a circular shape (I say probably because I am leaving it for R. to decide). Upstairs, the top floor will be a room, and the roof will be a covered terrace. Do you know the old Indian Mogul miniatures with palaces in which there are terraces and small roofs supported by columns? Do you know those old miniatures? Ive had hundreds of them in my hands. But this pavilion is very, very lovely: a small pavilion like this, with a roof over a terrace, and low walls against which there will be divans where people can sit and meditate in the open air in the evening or at night. And downstairs, at the very bottom, on the ground floor, simply a meditation rooma place with nothing in it. There would probably be, at the far end, something that would be a living light (perhaps the symbol2 made of living light), a constant light. Otherwise, a very calm, very silent place.
Adjoining it would be a small dwelling (well, a dwelling that would still have three floors), but not of large dimensions, and it would be the house of H., who would act as keepershe would be the keeper of the pavilion (she wrote me a very nice letter, but she didnt understand all this, of course).
0 1965-07-21, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In other words, all the intermediate states of being, also the gods, the entities and all those things. And it spoke with a power and a sort of dignityyes, it was dignity, almost pride, but not an arrogant pride, nothing of the sort. It was the sense of a nobility.
The supreme Lord alone can satisfy me.
0 1965-08-04, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But the minute you step into their hospitals, you are ill! Thats right, its as I say: its the medical atmosphere. Jules Romains said it: A healthy man is a man who doesnt know he is sick. So a priori you are sickit goes without saying that you are sick. And if they dont immediately find whats wrong with you, its because you have the knack of hiding it!
But, oh, how many little experiences Ive had about this, and so interesting! Something is wrong here or there in the body, a small thing; as long as you dont pay attention to itas long, above all, as you dont mention it to anyone and you give it up to the Lord (if it happens to hurt, you give it up to the Lord), its all rightits fine, you arent sick: its a disorder somewhere. If you are unfortunate enough to utter a word about it to anyone, and especially to the doctor, whoever he is, it instantly becomes an illness. And I know why, its because the cells that are in disorder feel all of a sudden they are very important and very interesting persons! So then, as they are very interesting, they must make themselves still more interesting. If they have a movement that isnt harmonious, they exaggerate itit becomes even less harmonious in order to assert itself more.
0 1965-08-18, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But it was visible when he was here: a fantastic pride and ambition that were to end up like this. He has a nasty face, very nasty.
But still, the fact that he declares himself to be the Ashrams envoy is troublesome.
--
A glass prison.
Thats right.
(Ironically) But a large prison, not a small one!
Its coming. Dont be worried, it is coming.
0 1965-09-08, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
According to what he says here, it is the principle of Love that is transformed into flame and finally into light. It isnt the principle of Light that is transformed into flame when it materializes: its the flame that is transformed into light.
The great stars give light because they burn; they burn because they are under the effect of Love.
Love would be the original principle?
That seems to be what he is saying.
--
He said, Savitri, a Legend and a Symbol; its he who made it a symbol. Its the story of the encounter of Savitri, the principle of Love, with Death; and its over Death that she won the victory, not in life. She could not win the victory in life without winning the victory over Death.
I didnt know it was put so clearly here. I had read it, but only once.
0 1965-09-15a, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have received many things. I am beginning to attach importance to them because I have noticed that those things (which I always considered to be currents of thought going past that you catch as they go past) generally correspond to something thats going to happen, and theyre like a way of letting me know in advance. So now I pay some attention to them. Well, I have received many things: for instance, the Chinese idea of taking advantage of the opportunity to become active; then this Indonesia business2 that would also be used as an opportunity to make a move. And it appears, so I was told (I had seen itlots of things come), its a rumor (a rumor that spread up to the Government of India): the prime Minister3 said we were threatened with a joining of China and Indonesia with Pakistan to give volume to the attack. He said it didnt matter. But anyway, its his duty to be optimistic.
It impressed me as as something global. It was awesome. Awesomeso much so that my body was shivering in my bed. It was awesome. I had to do a little sadhana to restore order.
0 1965-09-18, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes, but thats not what the prime Minister says.
The prime Minister They are all afraid.5 Afraid of world opinion.
Yes, exactly.
0 1965-11-03, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is an inner, perfectly harmonious rhythm, and when I can live according to that rhythm everything is quite fine, marvelously fine, even, like the story of my comet; that is, you feel you just have to say, Oh, I would like that, and instantly things are like that; and at the same time, you live in a totality of things that have their usefulness, their necessity, and that dont even clash with the deep principle, but that outwardly impose their rhythm on this Rhythm. So at times its difficult.
Today, for instance, my intention was to have finished by ten clock and to see you quietly, then to go to the music room; I even expressed my intention, but nothing doing! Its not bad will, its a sort of coalition of circumstances.
0 1965-11-10, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The prime Minister has fully approved. But he is a weak man. They are afraid of the United Nations.
Oh, theyre afraid of everything.
0 1965-11-27, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Of course, all those things are known somewhere, intellectually, vaguely, in their principleall that is known, but its quite useless. In everyday practice, you live according to something else, a truer understanding. And there, you seemed to be touching thingsyou saw them, touched themin their higher ordinance.
It came after a vision of plants and the spontaneous beauty of plants (which is something so wonderful!), then of the animal with such a harmonious life (when men dont interfere), and all that was quite in its own place. Then true humanity seen as such, that is to say, the summit of what a balanced mind can produce in beauty, in harmony, in charm, in elegance in life, in taste for lifetaste to live in beautywhile eliminating, naturally, all that is ugly and low and vulgar. That was a lovely humanity. Humanity at its highest, but lovely. And perfectly satisfied as such, because it lives harmoniously. And it may also be like a promise of what almost the totality of humanity will become under the influence of the new creation: as I saw it, it was what the supramental consciousness can do with humanity. There was even a comparison with what humanity has done with animal kind (something extremely mixed, of course, but there have been improvements, betterments, more complete utilizations). Animality under the mental influence has become something else, which naturally has been mixed because the mind is incomplete; similarly there are examples of a harmonious humanity among the well-balanced people, and it appeared to be what humanity could become under the supramental influence.
--
But I clearly see that when the work is done as I am made to do it, it becomes that way very spontaneously. For instance, one of the very concrete things, which shows the problem clearly: humanity has the sex impulse quite naturally, spontaneously and, I may say, legitimately. This impulse will naturally and spontaneously disappear along with animality (a lot of other things will disappear, such as for instance the need to eat, perhaps also the need to sleep the way we do), but the most conscious impulse in a higher humanity, and which has remained as a source of bliss is a big word, but of joy, of delight, is certainly the sexual activity, which will have absolutely no more reason to exist in the functions of nature when the need to create in that way no longer exists. Therefore the capacity to come into contact with the joy in life will go up one rung or will orient itself differently. But what the spiritual aspirants of old had attempted on principlesexual negationis an absurd thing, because it must exist only in those who have gone beyond that stage and no longer have any animality in them. And it must fall off naturally, effortlessly, without struggle, just like that. Making it a focus of conflict, struggle and effort is ridiculous. To be sure, my experience with the Ashram has absolutely proved that to me, because I have seen all the stages and that all the ideas and prohibitions are absolutely useless, that its only when the consciousness stops being human that it falls off quite naturally. There is a transition there that may be somewhat difficult because transitional beings are always in a precarious balance, but inside oneself there is a sort of flame or need thanks to which the transition isnt painfulits not a painful effort, its something that can be done with a smile. But to want to impose that on those who arent ready for that transition is absurd. I have been much reproached for encouraging certain people to marry; there are lots of these children to whom I say, Get married, get married! I am told, What! You encourage them?its common sense.
Its common sense. They are human, but let them not pretend they arent.
--
And then, the Flame When the Flame lights up, everything becomes different. But this Flame is something totally different; its totally different from religious feeling, religious aspiration, religious worship (all that is very fine, its the summit of what man can do and its very fine, its excellent for humanity), but this Flame, the Flame of transformation, is something else. Oh, I remember now that Sri Aurobindo reminded me of something I had written in Japan (which is printed in Prayers and Meditations), and I had never understood what I had written. I always tried to understand and asked myself, What the devil did I mean? I have no idea. It had come like that and I had written it directly. It was about a child and it read, Do not come too near him because you will get burnt. (I dont remember the words at all.) And I always wondered, Whats this child I am referring to? And why should one take care not to come too near him??5 And suddenly, only yesterday or the day before, I understood; suddenly he showed me, he told me, Its this: the child is the beginning of the new creation, it is still in its infancy, so dont touch it if you dont want to be burntbecause it burns.
(silence)
0 1965-12-01, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The passage concerning sanctioned marriages must be cut, and so must the entire reference to the Ashrams composition. All that is too private to be published.
And along that line you may find here and there other sentences that are better omitted.
0 1965-12-07, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It was what people call black magic I dont call it black magic, but it was an adverse formation, which I saw in all its details exactly on December 5. On the 5th itself I saw it, and afterwards I understood. It was extremely interesting, but its impossible to repeat. On the 5th, at the meditation, I knew what it was (the day after you came). Extremely interesting. Maybe one day I will tell it, but its very, very private.
On the afternoon of the 5th, after I had understood clearly and seen everything and done everything, suddenly (you know how Sri Aurobindo used to take away illnesses: it was like a hand that came and took away the disease), it went away just like that, it was taken away, literally taken away like that, and the body was INSTANTLY fine. Oh, you know, I am still flabbergasted.
--
But I can see, lots of people read the Bulletin, and we have to be careful of what we print. So well have to go over this carefully.
Have there been recriminations again?
--
Leave it all, its enough, all that is private, its good for the Agenda.
One day Ill draw a picturea living picture because it will be perfectly livedof the supreme Consciousness, which is both Nothingness and Totality at the same time. And then, the day when I am able to put that experience into words, it will be something with weight. But wait a little, we must wait a little more.
0 1965-12-18, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
How much time will it take? I dont know. What price will have to be paid? I dont know. Yes, certainly, we can picture the end: when we have got the hang, the deeper law or true power that governs those things, ah, then well have the power to do something.
Until then, we have to hold out. Do you know what holding out is? Its being like this (immobile gesture in the Eternal). You are assailed by innumerable ideas, a general defeatism (same gesture)be immobile in an ascending and progressive faith.
0 1966-01-14, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
India's prime minister, during talks in Tashkent with Ayub Khan for the settlement of the Indo-Pakistani conflict.
"India must fight until India and Pakistan have once more become ONE."
0 1966-01-26, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Last night it was about hygienic measures concerning food, and there was such a comical demonstration of how ignorant the precautions we take are and of all sorts of prejudices we have with scenes and pictures that would make priceless comedies on the stage, oh!
It was about shrimps to be eaten (!) and it called to my mind how people are in Europe; they arent at all like here, hounded by the thought of the possible contamination of the food they eat: in Europe, if you see a fruit, you take it and eat it. Shrimps, I remember having bought some on display in a big grocery, but it was on the pavement, outside, anywayyou never gave it a thought. And nothing happens to you! It was very early this morning, and so comical! Like the funniest farcewhoever wrote those farces? (Mother vainly tries to recall the name) I dont remember now. You know, names come on a tangent, and then all the similar sounds come on the other side. I tried to recall the name, something came by on a tangent, and on the other side, there came like a joke, cartilage! (Mother laughs) Whatever is the name of that modern who wrote farces, but wrote them very well?
0 1966-02-26, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
If we follow to its end the idea with which Sri Aurobindo wrote this, Death would be the principle that created Falsehood in the world. Its obviously either Falsehood that created Death, or Death that created Falsehood.
Its rather Falsehood that created Death!
--
All this can be translated philosophically, intellectually and so on. It is told as a story so that the most physical intellectuality may understand. But in principle, its the separation from the Origin that created the whole Disorder. And, as far as I know, in India too the Upanishads say the same thing; Sri Aurobindo, at any rate, says that Disorder came with the sense of Separation. So those are different ways of saying the same thing. In one case, seen in a certain way, its a willed separation; in the other case, its an inevitable consequenceinevitable consequence of of what? I dont know.
Because, according to theogonies, the gods have remained in contact with their Origin and they feel themselves to be the representation of the Origin, as in the Indian theogony in which they say that Shiva is the representative of the SupremeBrahma, the creator, Vishnu, the preserver, Shiva, the transformer and all three are conscious representatives of the Supreme, but partial ones.
0 1966-03-04, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
We are forced to use words, but the thing eludes us. What for us is translated as the eternal principle, the Supreme, God, has neither beginning nor end: we are forced to say, It is, but its not like that, because its beyond the Nonmanifestation and the Manifestation; it is something that we, in the Manifestation, are incapable of understanding and perceiving and That is what has neither beginning nor end. But constantly and eternally, That manifests as something that begins and ends. Only, there are two ways to end, one that is seen as a destruction, an annihilation, and the other that is a transformation; and it would seem that as the Manifestation grows more perfect, the necessity of destruction decreases, to the point when it will disappear and will be replaced by the process of progressive transformation.
But thats quite a human and external way of putting it.
--
The principlenot principle, its not a principle the law seems to be the same for the individual, worlds, and universes.
(long silence)
--
Looking at it from that angle, we could say that the acceptance of limits is what permitted the manifestation. The possibility of the manifestation came with the acceptance of the sense of limit. Its impossible to express. As soon as you start speaking, you always get a sense of something that goes like this (same gesture of reversal), a sort of tipping over, and then its finished, the essence is gone. Then metaphysical sense comes along and says, We might put it this way, we might put it that way. To make sentences: each point contains the Consciousness of the Infinite and of Eternity (these are words, nothing but words). But the possibility of the experience is there. Its a sort of stepping back outside space. We could say for fun that even the stone, evenoh, certainly water, certainly firehas the power of Consciousness: the original (all the words that come are idiotic!), essential, primordial (all this is meaningless), eternal, infinite Consciousness. Its meaningless, to me its like dust thrown on a pane of glass to prevent it from being transparent! Anyway, conclusion: after having lived that experience (I had it repeatedly over the last few days, it remained there sovereignly despite everythingwork, activitiesand it ruled over everything), all attachment to any formula whatever, even those that have stirred peoples for ages, seems childishness to me. And then it becomes just a choice: you choose things to be like this or like that or like this; you say this or that or thisenjoy yourselves, my children if you find it enjoyable.
But it is certain (this is an observation for common use), it is certain that the human mind, in order to have an impulse to act, needs to build a dwelling for itselfa more or less vast one, more or less complete, more or less supple, but it needs a dwelling. (Laughing) But thats not it! That warps everything!
--
It is clearvery clear that what for us is translated as progress, as progressive manifestation, is not only a law of the material manifestation as we know it, but is the very principle of the eternal Manifestation. If we want to climb down again to the level of terrestrial thought, we may say that there is no manifestation without progress. But what WE call progress, whats progress to our consciousness, up above, is it may be anything: a necessity, anything we like. There is a sort of absolute that we dont understand, an absolute of being: thats how it is because thats how it is, thats all. But to our consciousness, its more and more, better and better (and these words are stupid), more and more perfect, better and better perceived. Its the very principle of the manifestation.
And there is an experience, which came very fleetingly but precisely enough to be able to say (very clumsily) that I was about to say, the flavor of the Nonmanifested that the Nonmanifested has a special flavor because of the manifested.
0 1966-03-19, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Indira Gandhi had been nominated prime minister of India two months earlier, on January 19.
Let us recall Mao Tse-tung: "Power comes from the barrel of a gun."
0 1966-04-09, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its quite symbolic, besides: the storm of revolt, of course, the revolt OF THE EARTH against the principle of the Sannyasin. Quite symbolic. And its a magnificent image in the sense that there is great majesty in the appearance.
The vision of the Sannyasin with his back to a bronze door. See Agenda I, November 20, 1958 and November 22, 1958.
0 1966-06-11, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And in fact the body is beginning to be aware of it, and because its beginning to be aware of it, it also begins to feel that whatever the ordeal (as they call it in English), its not too high a price to pay for that.
Its ready, it is ready to bear anything to have That which is beyond all comprehension. There is a fullness of experience that cannot be known anywhere but here [in the body]. Its something that comes (massive gesture taking hold of the entire body). As I said, an absoluteness of sincerityyou simply ARE, thats all.
0 1966-06-18, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But I tell you, only that Vibration seems essential and primordial enough to be really universal.
That Vibration which is both the need and the joy to unite.
0 1966-06-25, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
At that time, when I was deep in occultism, I could have told you in detail, now I dont remember. But I know (thats one thing I still know): an aspiration. An aspiration for the thing You know, when you want to wake up at a precise time and you say to yourself, I want to wake up at such and such a time, it works very well; well, its the same principle. Instead of asking for a precise time, you ask to remember, to remain consciousto remember what has happened. It can act. And also, as I have always said, not to wake up abruptly, that is, not to leap from ones bed, to stay quite still for a while. It happens to me even now: if I wake up and get up abruptly, its after a time, when I enter my concentration again, that the memory comes back.
These two things are enough, they should do.
--
Do you know that Sunil has done some music for Savitri, and he is going to play it for me in early July. I dont think he wants to have an audience, its quite private, because it must be played only in 1968in February 68and he will show me just a small piece to see if its all right. But I thought you would be interested. Ill leave my windows wide open.
I like what he does very much.
0 1966-06-29, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its not true, the Rishis always spoke of Fire, Agni, which is the primordial substance.
But is fire consciousness?
0 1966-07-27, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And at that moment1 (it was a rather difficult moment), there was even in the consciousness it was like a sword of white light that nothing can shake and which gave the cells the sensation, What! But you should be in an ecstasy of joy, now that you know what will bewhat there IS, in principle.
But it has caused a sort of detachment from the gestures, the outside, as if life werent quite realyet real at the same time, but the Reality isnt there. There is the sense of the Presence; thats constant. And thats a good thing to begin with, it strongly counterbalances the sense and perception of all the Distortion. There is even an insistence from this Presence for That alone to exist and to increasingly reduce the reality of the perception of what must not be. There will be a great strength in the being when the perception of what must not be is dimmed, erased as something far away and nonexistent.
0 1966-09-07, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mother laughs) You know, there are lots of people who put money in their walls (they hide it with curtains or papers). Theres a fortune, several crores3 of rupees: millions hidden away in walls! And then they worry themselves sick, they constantly fear a police raid; while if they gave it away, they would become quite respectable people! They wouldnt be scared anymore, they would have a peaceful life. I have the possibility of saying that they are anonymous gifts, as in temples; so thats a way for them to turn honest, it would be all to their advantage, but they are more attached to their money than to their life! I said several times (I know some people who have money hidden in their walls), I let it be known through intermediaries that they only had to put it in a suitcase and come and leave it at my door. And Ill say its an anonymous gift, thats all. And they will be freenot only free, but (smiling) with a blessing, because its for the divine work. No, they are prisoners, prisoners of their money.
And the rather interesting thing is that (without any exception so far) all those who had an opportunity to give me money and didnt want towho didnt want to because of their attachment to their moneylost it. It was taken from them, either by the government or a financial catastrophe or an industrial catastrophe, or simply stolenlost.
0 1966-09-30, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I am absolutely convinced (because Ive had experiences that proved it to me) that the life of this body its life, what makes it move and changecan be replaced by a force; that is to say, a sort of immortality can be created, and the wear and tear can disappear. These two things are possible: the power of life can come, and the wear and tear can disappear. And it can come about psychologically, through total obedience to the divine Impulsion, so that every moment you have the force you need, you do the thing that must be doneall these things, all of them are certitudes. Certitudes. Theyre not a hope, not an imagining: they are certitudes. Of course, you must educate the body and slowly transform and change the habits. It can be done, all that can be done. But the question is, how much time would it take to do away with the necessity (to take just this problem) of the skeleton? This is still very far ahead, it seems to me. Which means many intermediary stages will be needed. Sri Aurobindo said that life can be prolonged indefinitely. Yes, thats clear. But we arent yet built with something that completely escapes dissolution, the necessity of dissolution. Bones are very durable, they can even last a thousand years if conditions are favorable, thats agreed, but it doesnt mean immortality IN priNCIPLE. Do you understand what I mean?
No. Do you think it would have to be a nonphysical substance?
--
Theres only this question: I can conceive of a perpetual change; I could even conceive of a flower that doesnt wither; but its this principle of immortality. Which means, basically, a life that escapes the necessity of renewal: the eternal Force would manifest directly and eternally, and this would still be a physical body (Mother touches the skin of her hands).
I quite understand a progressive change and that this substance could be made into something capable of renewing itself eternally from within outward. That would be immortality. But it seems to me that between what is now, what we are, and that other mode of life, a lot of stages might be necessary. You see, if for instance you ask these cells, with all the consciousness and experience they now have, Is there something you cannot do?, in their sincerity they will answer, No, what the Lord wills, I can do. Thats their state of consciousness. But the appearance is otherwise. The personal experience is like this: all that I do with the Lords Presence, I do effortlessly, without difficulty, without fatigue, without wear and tear, like that (Mother spreads out her arms in a great, harmonious Rhythm), but its still open to the whole influence from outside and the body is forced to do things that arent directly the expression of the supreme Impulsion, hence the fatigue, the friction. So a supramental body suspended in a world thats not the earth is not the thing!
0 1966-10-29, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Ultimately, all beliefs people have about what happens after death Human beings have long tried to know, of course, and some religions thought they had found an explanation. Ive had personal experiences. And now the problem is put in a new way, as if (I say as if because I havent come to the end and I dont know), as if what is perpetuated from life to life werent personalities but STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS, which are immortal and in constant transformation at the same time, and whats transformed through ones lives is the state of consciousness. Some have only one state of consciousness, others have many (there are even certain people who have two nearly opposite states of consciousness, which results in that double personality and those contradictions in life). Some are very simple and have only one, and that results in almost primitive individuals; but they sometimes have a wonderful development in their state of consciousness. That explains many contradictions. Thats what I am clearly shown at the moment: states of consciousness passing through numerous aggregates. And then, there is, there too, a secret to be found for the prolongation of an aggregate, that is, what gives the character not of immortality (which is something very different), but of the indefinite duration of lifeof the FORM, rather (life never stops), of the form. So then, once this study has been done in depth, another secret will have been found.
Its very interesting.
0 1966-11-09, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It began with the stone the stone and one sees very clearly the difference between the stone and plants, plants and animals, animals and men. One sees quite clearly all Matter striving and striving and striving towards the Lord thats the outward journey. It has been like that since the beginning. It climbs up with all its errors, all its confusion, all its falsehoods, all its distortions but its EVERYTHING that climbs up. And the return is what is described in the message I am going to give on 4.5.67 [May 4, 1967]: the prison changed into a divine mansion.3
As a matter of fact, in the book I am writing I show that when one has touched that Light, its the turning point before coming back down; that the truth isnt the end up aboveup above, its one half.
--
In reality, its a threefold movement: the creation, which was the flight from the Divine (according, of course, to the ordinary conception which says that the creation fell, it wandered away from the Divine and men wandered away from the Divine); that was the first movement. But thats because he sees it too closely; he doesnt see that the Divine plunged to the very bottom of the Inconscient. (And thats the question: Why did He plunge to the very bottom of the Inconscient? Thats to be investigated [Mother laughs], one doesnt yet know how to explain it: everyone explains it differently.) He plunged to the very bottom (as for me, I think I know why, but that will be for later). He plunged to the very bottom of the Inconscient: beneath the stone (Mother makes a gesture of immutability, at the very bottom), beneath the mineral; the mineral is already a first awakening of the consciousness. But you have to see it as a whole to understand that its an ascent. If you see human life as it is, the impression is that men become lost in the fall, but thats the result of the Mind; the Mind needed to go through the whole experience, to go down to the very bottom in order to understand everything and bring everything back towards the ascent. For plants, its really an ascent. Thus, according to this vision, there are three movements. But if you see the whole simultaneously, there are only two movements: the first movement is the descent of the Lord into the Inconscient (we cant say anything about that for the moment; once we have emerged from it, well be able to say); the second (the first we can conceive of) is, very, very slowly, through all possible experiences, even the most complete mental denials of the Divine, the ascent towards the Divine. And then, once we have climbed up (Mother makes a gesture of descent), Come, come here: change this prison into the mansion of the Divine.
That will be very good, a very good message for 4.5.67.
Four is manifestation. Five is power. Six is creation, and seven is realization. Four figures in a wonderful sequence. Here is realization (you want realization?), here it is: the prison turned into the Divines mansion. People say, The earth is hopeless, its done for. See! It will be fine.
***
--
"Earth-life is the self-chosen habitation of a great Divinity and his aeonic will is to change it from a blind prison into his splendid mansion and high heaven-reaching temple."
Sri Aurobindo
0 1966-11-19, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Did I tell you last time that in Bihar, the rain started that very evening? I found out how it occurred. Its P. who flew over Bihar, and he saw a desert, devastation: dry, dry, dry, nothing growing, cracked earth. Then he remembered certain experiences here.3 When he reached the airport, he was received officially and said, I would like to see the Chief Minister in private, without anyone else. He saw him and told him an experience he had had and had witnessed here [at Pondicherry]. And he said, Why dont you ask Mother? The other answered quite spontaneously, It would be better if you asked for us! Then he sent his telegram. The same evening it started raining. He wrote, saying, This first rain has been like divine nectar to me. He said that people there were entirely trusting and as well-disposed as could be. And he saw a relation between those droughts, those natural catastrophes, and the forces that stop money from coming; he saw they were affected by that experience of unexpected rain. For example, at the same time (a day or two later), he met some people who arent rich (the husb and has a good position, but they arent rich: they have a family, children). For some reason or other the husb and had been given a compensation of 10,000 rupees by the government, and quite spontaneously and naturally they went and saw P. and said to him, You must give this to Mother. He asked the lady, But why do you give all this? She spontaneously answered, But what would I do with this money? I dont need it. In other words, the true attitude. So it immediately made P. think that something is on the move.
And I saw this note of yesterday as indicative of the key (I mean inwardly, in the universal attitudes). It was all clearly seen: men always believe that the guilty must be punished, that its the way out of the difficulty, but the true way is compassion and mercy. Its not that you are ignorant of the true movement and the false one, but you have SPONTANEOUS mercy, effortlessly and at all times. The vision was very clear that this is how progress is possibleif the fault were always punished, there wouldnt be anyone left to progress!
0 1966-12-31, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But what one sees is the work of a priceless humorist! Things like mens great ambitions, for example, also their self-satisfaction, the opinion they have of themselves, oh, its all so comical! Those lives are shown in relation to (and, so to speak, in contact with) the Truth-Light, and then the difference between peoples movement (or thought or attitude or action, or state of consciousness) and the Truth, the state of Truth, becomes plain to see, oh, if you knew! But its not seen by someone severe or harsh, no, no! Its seen by someone very sharpvery sharpwith a wonderful sense of humor and a charming irony.
It swarms and swarms.
0 1967-01-11, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And the only perception when there is some clash or other in individuals, some shock or other, is always a clear vision of the ego the ego manifesting itself. They say, Its the others fault. I wouldnt say, Oh, so-and-so was angry or Oh, so-and-so No, its his ego; not even his ego: THE EGO, the ego principle the ego principle intervening again. Thats very interesting, because for me the ego has become a sort of impersonal entity, while for everyone, its the acute sense of his personality! Instead of that, its a sort of way of being (which we may call terrestrial, or human), a sort of way of being in greater or lesser quantity here or there or there, and which gives each one the illusion of his personality. Its very interesting.
Yes, but the trouble is, others dont learn their lesson, so So they intrude upon you.
0 1967-01-14, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its inside, its What could we call it? (laughing) The divine principle of duplicity!
Not very reassuring, this flower.
0 1967-01-18, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It seems to me to be the legacy of primordial habits the habits of Matter. This Matter, of course, comes from total unconsciousness, and throughout the ages and all the ways of being, it returns to total consciousness it goes from one extreme to the other; well, its these habits of static immobility that give this need for trance. It shouldnt be necessary. Only (how can I explain?), logically, as things are, it depends on the balance between the bodys capacity of receptivity and its external activity: its obviously far more receptive when it is immobile, because its energies are occupied with the transformation.
There is also another thing which could change the course of events: its that the vital is becoming more and more receptive and collaborative. This whole vital zone, which was the zone of revolt and deliberate opposition to the divine transformation, is becoming more and more collaborative, and with its collaboration (because this vital zone is the zone of movement, action, energy put to use), with its conscious collaboration, the methods of transformation may become different (its something I have been studying these last few days). It may change the methods. But thats a whole world to be learned.
0 1967-01-28, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The other method is much quicker: abolition. (I mean not only material abolition, but abolition of the priNCIPLE of the thing; thats what I said: when you go beyond animality, the material fact no longer has any reason to be, so it falls away.) Thats so to say immediate. But if you carry on until nausea ensues, thats another method!
Carrying on until nausea isnt the most dangerous thing; its covering up this business with spirituality, making a yoga of sexuality.
0 1967-02-18, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
These new thoughts and new experiences, this new logic and new mathematics, are now taught in higher studies, but all the primary and secondary studies have remained in the old formula, so I have been very seriously thinking of opening primary and secondary schools in Auroville, based on the new systemas a trial.
But how is it done? Its a problem that interests me very much: how do you catch this new expression?
0 1967-03-04, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Regarding Sri Aurobindo's Aphorism 126: "The most binding law of Nature is only a fixed process which the Lord of Nature has framed and uses constantly; the Spirit made it and the Spirit can exceed it, but we must first open the doors of our prison-house and learn to live less in Nature than in the Spirit.")
That was precisely the subject of (can we call it meditation?) of this mornings work. It came so clearly. But the experiences arent literary, they cant be expressed.1
0 1967-04-15, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There are other, very interesting examples. Theres a Burmese (you may have heard of this) who has just received a peace prize. He has written an article (he is Burmese, I dont know which language he wrote it in, but it has been published in French in a Swiss newspaper), in which he says what everybody knows, but what everybody forgets too: that if all the money wasted on preparing means of destruction were used for the progress of human well-being, we could work wonders. And he adds (I cant quote him exactly): for that to be possible, mennations and menmust stop distrusting and fearing each other, and live in the sense of unity. And he says, if, for that, HUMAN NATURE HAS TO CHANGE, its high time it changed and we must all work for that to happen.
I am extremely happy to hear this. Here is a man who has caught the true thing.2
--
This is the description (retranslated from the French) of the "cellular level" by Dr. Timothy Leary, psychologist and professor at Harvard University: "Huge aggregates of cells are animated and the consciousness whirls about in strange landscapes for which there exist neither words nor concepts. L.S.D. reveals cellular dialogues imperceptible to the normal state of consciousness, for which we have no appro priate symbolic terms. You become aware of processes you never sensed before. You feel yourself sinking into the soft swamps of your own body's tissues, slowly drifting below dark red aqueducts, floating through endless capillary systems, gently propelled through endless systems of cells, grandfa ther clocks of fibres tirelessly jingling, clinking, tinkling, pumping. This experience is striking when you have it for the first time; it can also be a dreadful, frightening and at the same time marvellous experience..." Then his description of the "pre-cellular level": "Your nervous cells become aware, as Einstein did, that all matter, all structure is nothing but pulsating energy. Your body and the world around you dissolve into a sparkling lattice of white waves. You have penetrated matter's intimate structure and vibrate in harmony with its primeval and cosmic pulse."
Mother is referring to U Thant, secretary-general of the United Nations. U.N.O., A pril 10, 1967: "That a fraction of the amounts that are going to be spent in 1967 on arms could finance economic, social, national and world programs to an extent so far unimaginable is a notion within the grasp of the man in the street. Men, if they unite, are now capable of foreseeing and, to a certain point, determining the future of human development. This, however, is possible only if we stop fearing and harassing one another and if together we accept, welcome and prepare the changes that must inevitably take place. If this means a change in human nature, well, it is high time we worked for it; what must surely change is certain political attitudes and habits man has."
0 1967-04-19, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
"The sense of touch alone is fully developed (in the newborn). That allows it to remain in intimate contact with its mother and prolong the time of gestation, which is a period of intense development in the security of oneness. The least separation may cause an irreparable trauma, that 'fall on the head' which is the usual but abnormal condition of the newborn in civilized peoples. This is well-known to primitive peoples, where the mother keeps the naked child on her naked skin and never parts with it.... Until the other senses are specialized, it is chiefly through the surface of the skin that the child receives its education.... If one wants it to incarnate really, to be friends with matter, its body to become as intimate as its soul, one must invent for it a yoga of caresses and play." (It is worth noting that an attempt to put these alluring and specious theories into practice was to have catastrophic results, as we shall see later in the Agenda: the main effect of the said "caresses" is to attract into the child's body vital forces of a dark order, and "genii of sex" rather than anything else, are likely to be incarnated.)
This is how Mother replied to the disciple who had sent her her study on the formation of the new child: "I have read your work with keen interestit deals with an important aspect of the problem. But a public presentation is impossible. Seeing and reading this, too many young girls would imagine they are destined to give birth to the 'solar child'that would be a disaster." Then Mother added: "In order to realize this work, one must have gone beyond all desire; and unfortunately, this is not generally the case as yet. Whereas ambition and vanity are rather widespread maladies."
0 1967-05-03, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Sri Aurobindo told me that one of the first results would be that governments would come under the supramental influence (not that we would govern! but that governments would be influenced). And lately I have seen three ministers and five members of parliament! And I have received an offering from the prime Minister [Indira Gandhi]. So its going well! Its quite amusing. Some expressly come from Delhi just for a day, to see me and go back. So one hopesone hopes that they will grow a bit wiser(!)
***
--
Yes. My feeling (because Ive studied your problem a good deal I seem as if I couldnt care less, but thats not true! Ive studied your problem a great deal), my feeling is that in your higher mind, the faculty of expression is developedhighly developedso that as soon as the Light touches, it is transformed into ideas, words, concepts, like that. It DOESNT HAVE THE TIME to be visualized. Its not outwardly, but right up above that it is (how can I put it?) particularly and exceptionally active and expressive (something quite rare, because generally, in everyone, its nebulous up above). And because it has developed in that way (which is a higher condition), you are lacking the primary condition which is the vision, the shock of the Light.
So there is only one solution. To me, there is a solution: its the sudden contact with a HIGHER light in the Supermind. Sri Aurobindo said (thats obvious, its always like that) that there are several layers (its not quite like layers, but never mind), several layers of supramental light. The first (the one that has manifested), that one you immediately transformed into conceptions, ideas and words. That is, something a large number of intellectuals are praying and imploring to haveyou had it spontaneously, lets say. So the first contact, the dazzling contact of the Light, that you havent had. But when a HIGHER light comes, you will have it.
0 1967-05-06, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This remedyits good for all earth lifeis to attain and open up to the consciousness of Harmonynot mental or vital harmony, but the essential harmony, the principle of harmony.
Its always the same remedy. Its wonderfully effective if one can apply it, but that is difficult because the human consciousness is very unstable, in constant change. That change is what gives man the sense of life and movement. Its absolutely stupid, but thats how it is!
--
They had wired me that he was dying. So I concentrated (gesture) like that to make contact little by little with this force of harmony, this principle of harmony. And now he tells me that he feels quite fine, quite a new man.
Thats what I did.
--
"Earth-life is one self-chosen habitation of a great Divinity and his aeonic will is to change it from a blind prison into his splendid mansion and high heaven-reaching temple."
Sri Aurobindo, The Hour of God, p.73
0 1967-05-10, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(After a silence) Listen, Ill give you an example. Some two years ago, I had a vision about U.s son. She had brought him to me (he was almost one) and I had just seen him there (in the music room). He struck me as someone I knew very well, but I didnt know who. Then, that same day in the afternoon, I had a vision. A vision of ancient Egypt, that is I was someone, the high priestess or I dont know who. (Because you dont say to yourself, I am so and so! The identification is total, there is no objectivity, so I dont know.) I was inside a wonderful monument, immense, so high! But it was completely bare: there was nothing, except for one place where there were magnificent paintings. Thats where I recognized the paintings of ancient Egypt. I was coming out of my apartments and entering a sort of great hall: there was a kind of gutter to collect water (on the ground) running round the walls. And I saw the child (who was half-naked) playing in it. I was very shocked, I said, What! This is disgusting! (But the feelings, ideas and so on were all expressed in French in my consciousness.) The tutor came, I had him sent for. I scolded him. I heard soundswell, I dont know what I said, I dont remember those sounds. I heard the sounds I uttered, I knew what they meant, but the expression was in French, and I didnt retain a memory of the sounds. I spoke to him, telling him, What! You let this child play in that? And he answered me (I woke up with his answer), saying (I didnt hear the first words, but to my thought it was), Such is the will of Amenhotep. I heard Amenhotep, I remembered it. So I knew the child was Amenhotep.1
Therefore, I know I spoke; I spoke in a language, but I dont remember more. I remembered Amenhotep because I know the word Amenhotep in my active consciousness. But otherwise, the other sounds didnt stay. I dont have the memory of the sounds.
0 1967-05-20, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I go on seeing throngs of people whom I dont know. And with more than half of them, its per-fect-ly useless: curiosity, pride, bragging. Thats all. So they can say, Oh, you know, I saw the Mother. So what!
But the little children continue to be very nice. Very nice. About one in ten or twelve was born under an unlucky star, which means when they were conceived the parents were in a very bad state. It happens. But most of the little ones are nice, really nice; and a few are remarkable.
0 1967-06-30, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
To those who are nice I say, Never mind, you will become Aurovilians. That saves everything. Because the principle has been recognized by UNESCO, theyve recognized the principle: everyone becomes Aurovilian, no more separate nationality. So its very good.
As an idea, its interesting.
--
But as soon as one tries to explain it, there comes a sort of principle of artificiality, and its no longer the thing.
It was there, oh, for (this morning, in detail) for more than an hour (what can I call it?) the substitution of one kind of vibration by another. And on the whole, something simply harmonious, a great simplicity, a great harmony.
0 1967-07-05, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And in Germany, God knows its the same thing. So its not localized. Its the priNCIPLE OF HATRED manifesting, senselessly, without rhyme or reason.
In France, too, it seems there has been a widespread anti-Semitic movement, very violent.
--
For instance, that relationship of simplicity (like that of a child) in which you very simply ask for the thing you feel the need for, but without mental complications; without explanations, without justifications, without all that useless farragosimply, Oh, I would like You have, for instance, quite a special feeling towards someone or something and you would like that someone or something to be perfectly harmonious, happy (which physically is expressed by good health or favourable circumstances), and so, spontaneously, simply, you say, Oh! (you pray), Oh, may it be like that! And it happens. Then the thought (the general human thought): This has happened, therefore its the expression of the Truth. And it becomes a principle: This is true, this is the way things should be. But up above, in that Consciousness that global Consciousness in that total Harmony, those things in themselves, in their material expression (good health, favourable circumstances) are of no more than minor importance, so to say, of almost nonexistent importance: things may be this way or that or this (they may be a hundred different ways), without its making any difference to the Harmony; but this particular way is chosen because of the simple, pure, candid beauty of the aspiration that is lovely, that is powerful in its simplicity. And, you know, without mental complication, without hypocrisy of any sort, without pretence of any sort: very simply, but from a luminous, pure, loving heart, without any egoism, just like that. So thats a lovely light which has its place; and because of it, things may be this way or that (good health, favourable circumstances), it doesnt matter, its unimportant. Human beings attach importance only to the external form, to what has manifested; they say, Oh, this is true, since it isand its a passing breath of air. But the cause of it, its origin has a place in that total, universal Harmony: a disinterested goodwill, love devoid of egoism, trust that doesnt argue or reason, simplicityingenious simplicity for which evil doesnt exist.4 If we could catch hold of that and keep it That trust for which evil doesnt existnot trust in what takes place here: trust up above, in that all-powerful principle of Harmony.
(long silence, then Mother repeats this prayer:)
0 1967-07-15, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I dont know who is there? Well know one day. It gave me the impression of being a force or a principle rather than a person; it didnt have that that cramped character of personality.
The eyes were magnificent, with such consciousness! With the joy of conscious aspirationit was magnificent. Then, afterwards, there was almost a sort of convulsion (it was too much, of course), so I withdrew the Force.
--
I had that experience in Italy when I was fifteen, while travelling with my mother, and it struck me very muchit was very striking indeed! It was the memory of having been strangled in the Doges prison. Quite a story. Afterwards I enquired; I enquired about the names, the facts, the events (I was able to enquire in Italy about what had happenedit was in Venice and it tallied marvellously). But the interesting thing, from an external point of view I was visiting the entire Palazzo ducale with my mother and a group of travellers shown about by a guide: they take you underground, where the prisons were located. Then the guide started telling a story (which didnt interest me) when, all of a sudden, I was seized by a kind of force that came into me, and then, without evenwithout even being aware of it, I went to a corner and saw a written word. It was But then, there came at the same time the memory that I had written it. And the whole scene came back: I was the one who had written that word on the wall (and I saw it, saw it with my physical eyes, the writing was still there; the guide said that all the walls with writings on them made by the Doges prisoners had been kept intact). Then the scene went on: I saw, I had the sensation of people entering and catching hold of me (I was there with a prisoner I wasnt the prisoner: I was visiting him). I was there, and then some people came and seized me and (gesture to the neck) tied me up. And then (I was with a whole group of about ten people listening to the guide, near a small aperture opening onto the canal), then, the sensation of being lifted and thrown through that aperture. Well, you understand, I was fifteen, so naturally! I told my mother, Lets get out of here! (Mother laughs)
It was hard to restrain myself. We left.
But afterwards I made enquiries, I questioned and researched (we had some family there,1 I knew some people), and I found out it was absolutely true. It was a true story, with the names and all (now its all gone). A doge2 had im prisoned his predecessors son as a living danger to him, as he had tried to take his fathers place. So the doge, who had taken the fathers place, sent the son to prison. But the daughter of this doge was in love with the son, and she found a way to go and visit him. Then the doge, in his rage, decided to have her drowned. The whole story was there. And it was really spontaneous: I knew nothing of it (its the kind of story they dont teach you in another country, theyre known only locally).
There you are, I found it very interesting.
0 1967-07-26, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And then, what goings-on The goings-on at the School, oh, those are priceless stories! But yesterday evening, I suddenly became indignant about a boy, the boy who had been accused of copying. He asserted he hadnt copied, and I saw he hadnt (but what I saw was almost worse!), and I said, No more examsa dreadful row everywhere! Then K., who is really a good boy, wrote to me, Should I not rather tell the boy that you decided he hadnt copied, because he must be worrying? I thought, Poor K.! But anyway, it was a nice gesture, so I said yes. Then he called the boy, told him what he had to, also that exams were abolished and the whole matter was over and done with. As soon as the boy left him, he went and told his friends a world of lies: that I had asked K. to apologize, to express regret and reinstate the boy, and a lot of fibs a series of terrible lies (and lies about me). You understand, I had had a movement of sympathy for K. for what he had done; it shows a sort of nobleness of soul in him: he was so convinced, but he accepted what I said and made that gesture because he thought the boy must have been worrying. Then the boys thoroughly disgusting reaction I had to restrain myself (inwardly): I was displeased. I had hoped, on the contrary, that that goodwill would give rise to a somewhat noble response, but all that is a sort of degradation. Yesterday, I was on the point of giving the child an inner slap I stopped myself from doing so, but he has clearly put himself in a bad spot.
Now they write to ask me, How can we know whether the children follow if we dont have exams? I had to explain the difference between a type of individual control based on observation, on a remark, on an unexpected question, etc., which allows the teacher to situate the child, and the other method in which you are forewarned, You will have an exam in eight days and the subject will be on what you have learnedso everyone starts revising what he has learned and preparing himself, and thats that: the one with a good memory is the one who passes. I have explained all that.1
--
For a time I attended a private school: I didnt go to a state school because my mother considered it unfitting for a girl to be in a state school! But I was in a private school, a school of high repute at the time: their teachers were really capable people. The geography teacher, a man of renown, had written books, his books on geography were well-known. He was a fine man. So then, we were doing geography (I enjoyed maps more fully because it all had to be drawn) and one day, the teacher looked at me (he was an intelligent man), he looked at me and asked, Why are towns, the big cities, settled on rivers? I saw the students bewildered look, they were saying to themselves, Lucky the question wasnt put to me! I replied, But its very simple! Its because rivers are a natural means of communication. (Mother laughs) He too was taken aback! Thats how it was, all my studies were like that, I enjoyed myself all the timeenjoyed myself thoroughly, it was great fun!
The teacher of literature He was an old fellow full of all the most conventional ideas imaginable. What a bore he was, oh! So all the students sat there, their noses to the grindstone. He would give subjects for essaysdo you know The Path of Later On and the Road of Tomorrow? I wrote it when I was twelve, it was my homework on his question! He had given a proverb (now I forget the words) and expected to be told all the sensible things! I told my story, that little story, it was written at the age of twelve. Afterwards he would eye me with misgivings! (Laughing) He expected me to make a scene. Oh, but I was a good girl!
0 1967-07-29, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Prakriti-Purusha: the two eternal principles, feminine and masculine, which can be translated as the Becoming and the Being, Nature and Soul, Force and Consciousness....
***
0 1967-08-02, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
No, there are two problems. There is that one on the level of action, and then there is a tre-men-dous pride in the whole family; a terrible pride, its a formation. Thats what was in him yesterday, as if coagulated. So I told him, Have a little more humility, a little more modesty.
One doesnt want to abdicate, you understand.
Its the sense of being nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing when you are in front of call that what you will, it doesnt matter (one may start from the idea of consciousness and go up to the Supreme Lord, it doesnt matter). But its the concrete feeling that as long as you want to remain shut in your little person, you are nothing, while if you abdicate that little person, you become everything. Thats what they dont understand. pride is simply You have a contact with inner eternity, inner omnipotence, but you are shut in your little ego, so the ego imagines itself to be That, and then it asserts itselfsits down and refuses to budge: a colossal I. Its precisely the supreme Truth (laughing) in its deformation.
I tried to make him understand that yesterday, but not like that, I put it very nicely!
--
But he has ideas, principles, preferences and so on, and as such, he can make gross errors as any other human being.
It is through this whole jumble and chaos that the Truth-Consciousness is at work everywhere, on all the points of the earth at once, in all nations, all individualities, without preferences or distinctions, wherever there is a spark of consciousness capable of receiving and manifesting It.
0 1967-08-12, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Theyve asked me for a message. On the 19th, the prince of Kashmir, K.S., is holding a big meeting in Delhi of all the members of the parliament and the government to tell them that there is only one policy worth following, that of Sri Aurobindo. And he wants a message from me. Here it is:
O India, land of Light and spiritual knowledge, wake up to your true mission in the world. Show the way to union and harmony.
0 1967-08-26, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
What should I do? Should I attempt something? I am like an intermediary, you understand. Or should I put it to her bluntly, but with consciousness and force, that she is a prisoner and I really cannot do anything for her?
I wouldnt like her to encroach on your life, thats clear. Because she isnt aware of it, but that may be an adverse formation (she is a completely unconscious instrument). If you were quite sturdy, you understand, with much vital force, I would say, Never mind, well break their necks. But you need to be careful.
0 1967-08-30, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Take writing, for instance: I havent noticed in detail, but when you write over there, you seem to write much more easily. I dont know how to explain it it takes much less time. And things are noted down on paper, but is it paper? It looks like paper, but things are noted down much more directly. Its perhaps the similarity, like when, for example, you use a fountain pen or a pencil: its not exactly a fountain pen or a pencil, its something that looks like it and is (what should I say?) the prototype or principle of that object. But what I mean is that if we were still at the time of the quill or the twig that you dip into ink, I would probably see it like that! Its the ESSENCE or principle of the thing, which in the memory, is translated as a similarity.
But its an action. I am aware of the time only when I return, because I have made it a habit to look at the time when I come back to the material consciousness (there is a watch beside my bed and I look at it), and thats how I can say, It lasted an hour or It lasted two hours. But there, you dont have the sense of time at all, its not the same sense at allwhat matters is the CONTENT of the action, and during those hours, many, many things are done, so many. I meet you very regularly, but many others too, and I am at many places at the same time! And when someone tells me, Oh, I saw you last night, you did this and that, then somewhere up above I say, Oh, its true indeed. Theres a tiny (same gesture of twist), tiny little difference, but the essence of the thing is the same.
0 1967-09-06, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But I noticed it because I said to myself, But why is my attention constantly turned to that? Then I looked carefully and saw that the psychic had been in a tortured body several times, long ago at the time of the Inquisition, but also in political cases (much more recently, probably). Real tortures, you know, those inventions in which men are worse than monstersno animal is more monstrous than human consciousness like that. And it came back with the law, the principle of the thing, of the distortion of consciousness, and once I had understood, I looked at myself (I was wondering, Why? Why is my attention turned to that?), I then looked and I saw. And I started doing the needful so that it may no longer exist in the creationsome things will not exist any longer.
But nothing in the creation that belongs to the mineral world, the plant world, or the animal world, need disappear. There were those monstrous animals: they disappeared materially, but not not the principle of the creation. Its since man came with the mindwhen the mind was twisted, deformed by the adverse forces. That is really ugly.
How can that be dissolved? Torture, for instance, that sort of thing? How can it be dissolved from the earth consciousness so it no longer happens again? How can it be done?
Oh, for all really monstrous things, there is only one forceonly one force that can dissolve them. I knew it in principle, but now I know it in practice: it is the force of Love. Love is truly all-victorious but true Love, not what men call love, not that: true, divine Love.
You see one drop of That in its perfection, and all shadows disappearall disharmony disappears. It can only be in its perfection, in its essential purity.
0 1967-09-16, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You know, in olden days you were put through ordeals they were symbolic things, naturally, but you were aware that they were ordeals, so you were on your guard. But now I remember, in the very beginning, when I started working with Sri Aurobindo, he warned me (I had already noticed it long before) that the circumstances of life are at each minute organized in such a way that the one who is destined to do the work is confronted with his own difficulties, which he must conquer, and with the difficulties of the world he works in, which he must conquer too. If he has the necessary humility to see in himself what must be transformed so he can become capable of doing the Work, then all goes well. Naturally, if he is full of pride and vanity and believes the whole fault lies outside and there is none in him, then naturally things go wrong. And the difficulties become more pronounced. And for as long as I did the work, for (how many years?) the thirty years I worked with Sri Aurobindo and he was there, I was like this (gesture hidden behind Sri Aurobindo), so comfortable, you know I was in front, I seemed to be the one doing the work but for my part, I felt completely protected, behind him like this (same gesture); I was very tranquil, not trying to understand or know or anything I was simply attentive to what had to be done, what had to be done. It was rarely necessary to tell him; sometimes I was faced with a difficulty then I would tell him, but he didnt need to answer: it was immediately understoodthirty years like that.
And when he left, there was a whole part the most material part of the descent of the supramental body down to the mind that visibly came out of his body like that and entered mine, and it was so concrete that I felt the FRICTION of forces passing through the pores of the skin. I remember having said at the time, Well, anyone who has had this experience can, by this experience, bring the proof of afterlife to the world. It was it was as concrete as if it had been material. So naturally, after that it was there in the field of consciousness. But I have seen more and more, more and more, that all that happens, all the people we meet, all that happens to us personally (that is, taking this little body as being the person), all of that is ALWAYS a test: you stand firm or you dont; if you stand firm, you make a progress forward; if you dont, you have to go through it again.
--
Have you heard about the latest decision? In the church, the priest always used to turn his back to the faithful while officiating: he would face the deity and turn his back to the faithful (the original idea was certainly that he represented the faithfuls aspiration and prayer: he addressed himself to the Divine). Now the Pope has said, Turn your altars around, face the public and represent the Divine. Its interesting. They are doing it here now, and the comical part is that theyve asked U. to do the work of turning the altars around. Thats how I know it, its U. who told me; they have asked him to go to all the churches here and turn the altars around. Its a big job because they are embedded.
(silence)
0 1967-09-20, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Someone has taken it into his head to print a brochure for February 21 next year (when Mother will be ninety), so they sent me the brochure and asked me to write a message on the first page. And for that brochure they have solicited(!) the opinion of all prominent people: there is Indira Gandhi, the President of India, and what have you. And everyone says what has always been said millions of times over: A great personality, this and that. All the usual nonsense. So I wrote this:
There is no other consciousness than the Supreme Consciousness.
0 1967-09-30, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And it explains the manner in which he received P. when he went there. P. (an Indian disciple), as you know, paid him a visit; he was taken there by an Italian who had come here (a very nice boy who showed him around Italy and took him to the Pope). The Pope gave him a private audience, and after talking to him, asking questions, replying (it was a whole conversation), he said to P. with a smile, And now what are you going to give me? (They spoke in French.) Then P. said, I have only one thing, which I always keep with me and is infinitely precious to me, but I will give it to you, and he gave him Prayers and Meditations. And the Pope answered, I am going to read them.
So it all fits together.
0 1967-10-04, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
He is going to see Pavitra this morning, and F. has seen him twice. He has come here while travelling around India, and he seems to like the place very much. Here is his face (Mother shows a photo). Is this whom you met? All right. He has written two letters, one to me and one to the prior of his monastery, which he sends for me to read. The two letters together are rather interesting (Mother gives Satprem the first letter):
Mother,
--
P.S. I am enclosing a letter to the prior of Bellefontaine which I sent him in case it could be of use, and which I thought should be communicated to you.
I told F. to ask him to stay on till Friday, so I could show you this today and ask you if you would mind seeing the gentleman and speaking to him (to see how you feel). But if that troubles you F.s impression is good. Here, you may read his letter to the prior:
I have received your answer with joy and am writing again. I am in Aurobindo Ashram, where I thought I would only pass through, but there is a certain something here which attracts me strongly, and I think I have had enough of travelling around. I intend to go to Ramakrishna Mutt at Ootacamund, since I informed them of my visit, but will come back here as early as possible. Everything here is wonderful and spellbinding. One who sees beyond the surface panes might well wonder if the new heaven and the new earth St. John speaks of do not meet here.
There is a big church just a few minutes walk away, and yesterday morning, the 1st of October, the celebrant said, Become citizens of the heavenly city. He could not have hit upon my questionings more precisely. And in the evening, a young Parisian, landed here as pure as a newborn, and the first person he met was that same priest of the big church, who said to him, What have you come here for? There is nothing. The Parisian answered, What about the Ashram? The priest replied, The Ashram? Its a brothel. Because of that insulting declaration (and it is the kindest thing he said [Mother laughs ]), I am petitioning Mother for permission to remain here till the end of my stay in India. I do think there is abomination and desolation in the Holy Place. When will Christs words be acknowledged at last, A tree is recognized by its fruits? Jai-jai!
Signed: Brother A.
0 1967-10-07, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
He also talked to me about peoples fearshis priors, for instance.
He is afraid?
Yes. This prior is a very nice man, sincere, who seeks the truth, but finally he is afraid.
Thats it.
0 1967-10-11, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Oh, they want to build a mental construction, like that, square like a prison, its awful.
But you know when she comes, she is very nice, very kind, very receptive and open, and quite ready to receive and listen, at least in her outer attitude, but it seems she has a group over there, and in that group (I heard it through some sincere people who went there) its terrible! Harsh judgments, you know. And a crushing superiority.
0 1967-10-19, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And the government is rotten. People whose tactics and principle of action are falsehood: to deceive and deceive and deceive. And naturally, to deceive themselves.
You know that these are the Puja days: there were Durgas days, and there will soon be Kalis day. So then, all the Powers are like this (gesture ready to strike), at the slightest hint they would charge down. And one is obliged to hold them (immobilizing gesture), to take great care not to have the least indignation, otherwise
0 1967-12-20, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The same principle is at work (its not a principle, its a way of doing or a way of being), is at work for all things: with fatigue, the onset of illness, that is, the cause of the illness (the internal disorder or the receptivity to the disorder from outside), it works also in the same way. If you add to it the intensity of faith or adoration, then its much easier, but it works in the same way. So what exactly takes place? To the inner perception, the perception of the consciousness, it is a sort of principle of disordera principle, almost a taste for disorder, I dont know, its between a habit and a preference for disorderwhich gets replaced by yes (to be as general as possible), by a vibration of harmony. But that vibration of harmony is full of light, of sweetness, of warmth, intensity, and so wonderfully CALM! So when that takes the place of the other, then all that belongs to the world of disorder is dissolved. AND the rigidity of time disappears.2 Time perhaps we could say (its just a way of speaking), we could say that time is replaced by a succession (Mother remains absorbed for a long time).
And that belongs specifically to the material world.
--
It is quite noteworthy that the same principle is at work for the rigidity of time as well as for illnesses.
***
0 1967-12-27, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is a change. You know ex-brother A. wrote about that priest who abused the Ashram in coarse language the priest received the order to keep quiet and stop talking slanderously. And now its general, no one says anything about the Ashram. Then you know that on the Popes order, all the altars have been turned around; U. was asked to do it, he did it in all of Pondicherrys churches; so the archbishop wrote a note, saying, Please thank the Mother because her children have done a very good work. It means a change, you understand. It means theyve received orders.
And I received such a nice note from this ex-brother A. (because he received a hamper for Christmas), but a lovely, charming little note, that is, something felt, in which he said that the best of himself always makes itself felt in my presence. Really an inner change.
--
If there were a way (thats what I have been working on for some time), a way to make all this youth understand that to destroy isnt constructive they cant give birth to anything whatsoever with this means. They want to change the state of things, its understood they may not see very clearly the direction in which we should go, but that things must change is agreed but still, this method is downright stupid. Theyve again thrown a bomb at that poor Indira! She was at a university, at Santiniketan where she had gone to deliver a speech for the prize distribution (or something of the sort), and they threw a bomb at her. But this time, she was unscathed.
You see, that was the method of the adverse forces to prove the creation was bad: they werent satisfied with the creation and set about doing that thats what they have been doing on a big scale. But it proves nothing! They have established death, established destruction and all forms of violence and hatred, anyway they have changed everything the wrong way round with the thought that, in that way, the world would become a superior worldwhich is idiotic.
0 1967-12-30, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Some things are really interesting. For instance, Id like there to be To begin with, every country will have its pavilion, and in the pavilion, there will be the cuisine of that country, which means that the Japanese will be able to eat Japanese food if they want to(!), etc., but in the township itself, there will be food for vegetarians, food for nonvegetarians, and also a sort of experiment to find tomorrows food. You see, all this work of assimilation which makes you so heavy (it takes up so much time and energy from the being) should be done BEFORE, you should be able to immediately assimilate what you are given, as with things they make now; for instance, they have those vitamins that can be directly assimilated, and also (what do they call it? (Mother tries to remember) I take them every day. Words and I arent on very good terms!) proteins. Nutritive principles that are found in one thing or another and arent bulkyyou need to take a tremendous quantity of food to assimilate very little. So now that they are fairly clever with chemicals, that could be simplified. People dont like it, simply because they take an intense pleasure in eating(!), but when you no longer take pleasure in eating, you need to be nourished and not to waste your time with that. The amount of time lost is enormous: time for eating, time for digesting, and the rest. So I would like to have an experimental kitchen there, a sort of culinary laboratory, to try out. And according to their tastes and tendencies, people would go here or there.
And you dont pay for your food, but you must give your work, or the ingredients: for example, those who had fields would give the produce of their fields; those who had factories would give their products; or else your own work in exchange for food.
0 1968-01-10, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Isnt there an ambiguity? Should we put Truth alone or Alone the Truth? When it comes, its with such precision! But then, when its put into words theres always something that sounds like a wavering. For a half-hour the other day, I sat there wondering, Should I put it this way or that way? For instance, the place of the word alone: The Truth alone, or Truth alone, or Alone Truth to insist on the fact that Truth isnt alone, without anything else, without the collaboration of the rest, but that its only the principle of Truth that has the power to I dont even know how to explain myself!
I dont mean that only Truth is at work, or that when it works it will work alone; I mean that its presence is indispensable (thats very roughly the nuance). To magnify the meaning, I might say either Truth must work alone to do the thing, or Truth alone is capable But then, it becomes heavy and impossible. And what we want is Truth alone is capable, its not that it works alone.
0 1968-01-12, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes, its like that. So I asked him, But whatever is that occult center? He said, Yes, its an inner center for the more advanced disciples, those who are more in the know, and there is in it a sort of high priestess that was Y. [a European disciple].
Oh, its Y.
--
There may be here some debate on this true sense: some, along with the religions we know, will tell you that the true sense isnt here, but in goodness knows what heaven beyond. Its a point of view, but if this material evolution does not hold its own sense within itself, it means we are in the presence of a sinister farce invented by goodness knows what divine masochist. If God exists, he must be a little less foolish than that, and we are entitled to think that this material evolution has a divine sense and that it is the field of a divine manifestation in Matter. Our spiritual discipline must therefore aim at gaining this divine man or perhaps that other, still unknown being who will emerge from us just as we emerged from hominid infancy. What is the place of the sexual function in this evolution? Until now, the progress of consciousness has made use of the progress of species, which means that sexual reproduction has been the key to the proliferation of species so as to reach the form most fit for the manifestation of consciousness. Since the appearance of man two or three million years ago, Nature hasnt produced new species, as if she had found in man the fittest mode of expression. But evolution cannot remain stagnant, or else it no longer is evolution. So it means that the key of evolution no longer lies in the proliferation of species by means of sexual reproduction, but directly in the very power of consciousness. Before man, consciousness was still too buried in its material support; with man, it has disengaged itself sufficiently to assume its true mastery over material Nature and work out its own mutations by itself. From the standpoint of evolutionary biology, this is the end of sexuality. We have reached the stage at which we can switch from natural evolution through sexual power to spiritual evolution through the power of consciousness. Nature generally does not let organs linger that no longer serve her evolutionary design, so we can foresee that the sexual function will atrophy in those who will be able to channel their energy no longer for reproduction but to develop their consciousness. Quite obviously, not all of us have reached that stage, and for a long time Nature will still need sexual power to pursue her evolution in the midst of the human species, that is to say, to lead the rather brute man we still are to a more conscious man, more capable of grasping the true sense of his evolution, and finally wholly capable of switching from natural to spiritual evolution. The inequality of development in individuals is the obvious reason why we cannot make general rules or hand out infallible prescriptions. To each stage its law. But after however long a time, it is equally obvious that, from the point of view of evolutionary biology, the sexual function comes to its end when it has fulfilled its purpose, that is, when it has succeeded in giving birth to a sufficiently conscious man. So we cannot reasonably base a spiritual discipline of accelerated evolution on a principle that runs counter to evolution. Moreover, anyone who has even barely crossed the difficult line, the point X of the transition from natural to spiritual evolution, cannot but realize that all the pseudo-mystic attempts to prettify the sexual relations between man and woman are shams. I have nothing against sexual relations (God knows!), but trying to coat them with a yogic or mystic phraseology is a deceitful illusion, a self-deception. Therefore, in that sense, there is no key to be recoveredit does not exist.
There is a key in the relationship between man and woman, but not in their sexual relations. The so-called left-hand Tantrics (of the Vama Marga) are to true Tantrism what Boccaccios tales are to Christianity, or what the sodden Roman Bacchus is to Dionysos of the Greek mysteries. I know Tantrism, to say the least. As for the Cathars, whom I hold in the highest esteem, it would be doing them little honor to believe that they followed a sort of yoga of sexuality. Through my own experience I have often had the feeling of reliving the Cathars experience, and I see plainly that if some of them attempted to mix sexual relations into the true relationship between man and woman, they soon realized their error. It is a dead-end road, or rather its only end is to show you that it leads you nowhere forward. The Cathars were too sincere and conscious men to persist in a burdening experience. For ultimately, and that is the crux of the matter, the sexual experience in its very nature (whether or not there is backward flow or whatever its mode) automatically fastens you again to the old animal vibrations there is nothing you can do about it: however much love you may put into it, the very function is tied to millennia of animality. It is as if you wanted to plunge into a swamp without stirring up any mudit cannot be done, the milieu is like that. And when one knows how much transparency, clarification and inner stillness it takes to slowly rise to a higher consciousness, or to allow a higher light to enter our waters without being instantly darkened, one fails to see how sexual activity can help you attain that still limpidity in which things can start happening??? The union, the oneness of two beings, the true and complete meeting of two beings does not take place at that level or through those means. That is all I can say. But I have seen that in the silent tranquillity of two beings who have the same aspiration, who have overcome the difficult transition, something quite unique slowly takes place, of which one can have no inkling as long as one is still stuck in the struggles of the flesh, to use a preachers language! I think the Cathars experience begins after that transition. After it, the man-woman couple assumes its true meaning, its effectiveness, if I may say so. Sex is only a first mode of meeting, the first device invented by Nature to break the shell of individual egosafterwards, one grows and discovers something else, not through inhibition or repression, but because something different and infinitely richer takes over. Those who are so eager to preserve sex and to mystify it in order to move on to the second stage of evolution are very much like children clinging to their scootersit isnt more serious than that. There is nothing in it to do a yoga with, nothing also to be indignant about or raise ones eyebrows at. So I have nothing to criticize, I am merely observing and putting things in their place. All depends on the stage one has reached. As for those who want to use sex for such and such a sublime or not-so-sublime reason, well, let them have their experience. As Mother told me on the very same subject no later than yesterday, To tell the truth, the Lord makes use of everything. One is always on the way towards something. One is always on the way, through any means, but what is necessary is, as much as possible, to keep ones lucidity and not to deceive oneself.
--
Satprem omitted the explanation given by the "high priestess," which was that "the she-monkey caresses its young all over the body, including its sex organ, therefore..."
See Agenda 8 of September 13, 1967.
0 1968-02-03, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But when the body is ready, it will be able to let itself go like that WITHOUT BEING DISSOLVED. And thats the work of preparation. The movement, yes, is to let oneself melt entirely. But the result is the egos abolition, that is to say, an UNKNOWN state, you understand, which we may call physically unrealized, because all those who sought Nirvana did so by giving up their body, whereas our work is to make the body, the material substance, capable of melting; but then, the principle of individualization remains, and all the egos drawbacks disappear. Thats the present attempt. How to keep the form without the egos presence?thats the problem. Well, thats how it takes place, little by little, little by little. Thats why it takes time: each element is taken up again, transformed. Thats the marvel, that is it (for the ordinary consciousness, its a miracle): its keeping the form while entirely losing the ego. For the vital and the mind, its easier to understand (for most people its very difficult, but still for those who are ready, its easy to understand, and then the action can be much more rapid), but HERE, this (Mother points to her body), for it not to be dissolved by this movement of fusion? Well, thats precisely the experience, thats it. And there is a slight movement of patience, a movement of its really the deep essence of compassion: the minimum wastage for the maximum effect. That is, one goes as fast as one can, but delays arise from the need to prepare the various elements.
Thats precisely the so interesting curve at present unfolding. At times, you feel as if everything, everything is dissolving, getting disorganized; and I have observed closely: at first the physical consciousness wasnt sufficiently enlightened, and when those inner preparations took place, it would feel, Ah, this must be what heralds death; then, little by little, came the knowledge that it wasnt that at all, it was only the inner preparation to be capable, capable of identification. And then, on the contrary, the very clear vision of this plasticity so particular, this suppleness so extraordinary that if it were realized once its realized, it obviously means the abolition of the necessity of death.
0 1968-02-28, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
So now, till 11:30 we have a nice quiet time like princes and kings! It doesnt often happen. If you have something to tell me, I am listening.
Maybe you are the one who has something to say?
--
I told you that the Soviet consul is enthusiastic! He saw the Charterin English first (in English, there is Divines Consciousness, with the apostrophe1). He said, Its a pity, it evokes the idea of God. And S., who had been there, said, Its not that at all! Theres nothing religious in all this affair. Well show you the French. Then he read conscience divine [divine consciousness], and he was satisfied. He said, This is just what we want to realize, and without these words it would be officially recognized and supported by the Soviet government. Then they asked him to translate it into Russian, but finally whats being read out in Auroville isnt his translation, its the one by T. She has just come, and words dont frighten her. But I sent him my permission: I had it explained to him that words were just a more or less clumsy transcription not only of the idea, but of what is above the idea the principle; that it didnt matter much whether these or those words were used (each one uses the words that suit him best), and that, therefore, I allowed him to use the words that would be acceptable to his government. The Soviet consul said yes, he was very glad. He said, When the Soviet government officially supports something, its serious.Its true, I know it, they are very generous. So I hope it will have a favorable result. And you see, its just what I wanted: in America, for a long time they have been enthusiasticwhich is good, but perhaps they dont understand so well; the Russians, in their nature, are mystic, and as that has been oppressed, suppressed, naturally it has gained a lot of force. And now it tends to want to burst.
But if both together support Auroville, we wont have any more financial hassles!
0 1968-03-20, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes, and he wants to leave everything. But its a problem, because the slightest thing may cause scandals in Italy. The Communists are always ready to seize on the least opportunity: a priest who gives up the frock Not only a priest, but an apprentice bishop of the Roman Curia. So he would like it to take place without scandals. But how should he go about it?
I saw the man, and I found him very good.
0 1968-03-23, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Satprem read Mother the end of the Playground Talk of June 3, 1953, about Karma: "In all religions, when people said that [the consequences of Karma were strict] and gave such absolute rules, as for me, I think it was to take the place of Nature and pull people's strings.... So then they panic, they get terrified...they should just go to the next floor up. What should be given them is the key to open the door. The staircase has a door, and it needs a key. The key is a sufficiently sincere aspiration or a sufficiently intense prayer.... In both there is a magic power, one must know how to use it.... Some detest prayer (if they went to the bottom of their hearts, they would see it's out of pride). And there are those who have no aspiration, who try but can't aspire that's because they don't have the flame of will, they don't have the flame of humility. Both are needed: to change one's Karma, one must have a very great humility and a very great will.")
When did I say that?
0 1968-04-10, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It seems he is a ministers son. I forget who he confided in, but he said his father is (or was) prime minister in [such and such a country], and he himself is a lawyer and manages several peoples fortunes. He said he has to manage something like twenty crores of rupees,1 which means a considerable fortune. But thats all, he didnt say anything else.
He asked me what he should do with his money, so I advised him to go and see A. He said, for instance, that he had shares in lots of businesses, and he asked me, Should I divest myself of all this? I told him, A. will be able to advise you, but at first sight theres no reason to divest yourself; if you get interest, you may give it to the Ashram if you feel devoted to the Ashram, but theres no reason to throw everything overboard.
--
Yes, thats right! But I am referring to the system all the way down, socialistic or communistic, which represents material needs. Basically, it corresponds to a sort of absence of government, because they dont have the power to govern others: they are forced to transfer their power to someone who exercises it, like a Lenin, for instance, because he was a brain. But all that all that has been tried out and has given proof of its incompetence. The only thing that could be competent is the Truth-Consciousness choosing instruments and expressing itself through a certain number of instruments, if one cant be found (just one isnt enough, either, that one would necessarily need to choose a whole collectivity). Those possessing this consciousness may belong to any class of society: its not a privilege arising from birth, but the result of personal effort and development. In fact, that would be an external sign, an evident sign of change on the political level: no question anymore of classes or categories or birth (all that is outdated), but those individualities that have reached a higher consciousness would have the right to govern, whatever class they belong toand no others.
That would be the true vision.
0 1968-05-15, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Last night, at the time of the deepest sleep, I found myself in an infernal world. At first I thought it was the S.S.: tall fellows dressed in black, and I was a prisoner there. It was a world of horrible men, like S.S., but dressed completely in blackmaybe they were priests and not S.S.? I felt like a prisoner there, as in a concentration camp.
Oh!
Tall fellows dressed in black, with cruel faces and lips I thought they were S.S., but maybe they are priests?
(Mother remains silent, then goes into a long contemplation, which she interrupts suddenly to say:)
0 1968-05-22, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
France is in a privileged situation: India first and France afterwards, for reasons of simply of receptivity. France has always tried to be aheadwhich in fact is why this body was born there.
(silence)
0 1968-06-29, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its like a studya really accelerated study, you cant imagine, one minute after another, like this (snowballing gesture)from the standpoint of the work, that is, the purpose of physical existence in a body, and the usefulness of physical presence. And the absolutely clear, precise vision, in minutes detail, of whats real and whats illusory, whats truly necessary and whats only imagination (that of others, but also, at times, ones own). But I would need hours to tell it all. With (is it a basis?) the perception in the consciousness (but a detailed perception I dont mean ideas, it has nothing to do with ideas or principles, etc.: theres no mental translation), the perception of what, in the work, demands or depends on the bodily presence (I am purposely not saying physical presence, because theres a subtle physical presence thats independent of the body), the bodily presence. And then, at the same time, such a clear, precise, detailed vision of the relationship each one has with this body (a relationship which is thought, feelings and physical reactions all at once), and thats what gives the impression of the necessity of bodily presencegives its measure also. So there is, at the same time, the perception of the TRUE usefulness of physical presence and the perception of the reaction in individuals. Its a world! A world, because of the fantastic amount of details. A world unfolding every second. And accompanied by an inner perception, first, of the effect it has on the cells, and then that the cohesion has now really become, I may say, the result of a supreme Will, to the extent that its necessary for lets say for the experience, or the work (anythingwe can call it what we like). In other words, there is the aspect of progress of the cells as an aggregate. There is hardlyhardly, very weakly the sense of a personality or a physical individuality, its hardly that; neither is it a habit of being together, because its very fluid in there: its truly held together by a higher Will with a definite aim in view, but that too is fluidnothing is fixed.
(silence)
0 1968-11-02, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes, he says, I know who it is and Ill send you his photo. I am waiting for the photo. Heres what he writes: V.s vision has come to show me the accuracy of the persons description: it is Msgr. Z, archbishop in the Holy Sees State Secretariat, an intimate friend of the Holy Fathers and his private collaborator.
Oh!
0 1968-11-20, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
P.L. has sent photos of the man supposed to be doing magic. You know that he is an intimate friend of the Popes, his private collaborator, and at the same time archbishop at the State Secretariat of the Holy See. Heres his photo.
Oh, he wears such a big hat!
0 1968-11-27, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It remains to be seen if, for some reason or other, it was necessary or if it was an accident but how could it be an accident! For the moment (theres no thought, so its a little vague), for the moment there is an impression I might put it simply like this: the impression of a TREMENDOUS acquisition of consciousness, which has been gained by paying the very high price of all the suffering and all the disorder. Yesterday or today (I forget when, I think yesterday), at one point the problem was so acute (Mother touches her cheek and throat), and then the divine Consciousness seemed to be saying, In all this suffering, its I who suffer (the Consciousness, you understand), its I who suffer, but in a way different from yours. I dont know how to express it. There was a sort of impression that the divine Consciousness was perceiving what to us was a suffering, that it existedit existed for the divine Consciousness. But not in the same way as it exists for our own consciousness. So then, there was an attempt to make understood the consciousness of the whole at the same time, the simultaneous consciousness of everything to express myself I might just say, the consciousness of suffering (the most acute disorder) and of Harmony (the most perfect Ananda)both together, perceived together. Naturally that changes the nature of suffering.
But all that is very conscious of being some kind of chatter. Its not the translation of what is.
0 1968-12-04, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Oddly, hes an intelligent man. But these people are hypocrites; they think in one way and act according to another principle.
He isnt obtuse, hes a man who can understand.
--
To come back to this man from the Vatican, he belongs to the type of people who have principles of action and can kill their dearest friend (or have him killed) like that, out of conviction. Thats clear.
Its the type of the Grand inquisitors.
0 1968-12-25, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And I carried out two or three tests with him. For example, he boasted he could get me all the money I needed; so I told him, I need; make it come. (He spoke of lakhs and lakhs, crores of rupees.2) I said, Very well, I need this much, make it come.It never came. You understand, I felt he had boasted of having powers. He had been living there (still is) in the midst of quite a primitive population that was wonderstruck by the least expression of power; he was used to being regarded as quite a powerful and superior being, and as soon as he came into contact with us and with people accustomed to Sri Aurobindos visions and to being in another world than this purely vital world, he found himself quite at sea. He stayed away for three years, I think, or two years. Hes coming for his birthday (Ill see him on the 29th), but the last times I gave him meditation, it was well, there are lots and lots of people like that in India. He has a power that only acts in a very ordinary vital. And nothing really superior.
And as regards the quality of vision, there was quite a curious story. K.s mother had come here with a married daughter who had just lost her son (a young man who died suddenly). They came here, she was quite unhappy, and when she came to see me, I saw her son in her own atmosphere. I told her, Your son is with you. If you have the true attitude, you can come into contact with him and feel his presence there. She left from here, went to see X, and as they always do, asked him what he knew about her son. X told her authoritatively, Your son has gone into a shepherd. So naturally, shes lost all confidence in me, because I dont tell her things with a dogmatic authority, while he spoke like that, with assurance; so she felt sure he was right! There may be a small part of her son that went into a shepherd (!), I have no idea; as for me, what I saw was the psychic part. But shes lost all confidence, shes never come to see me again. So thats troublesome. It proves hes quite shut inside himself and inside his own conception.
0 1969-01-22, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I dont know if its always realized in the details, but theres the principle.
Is there really a force?
0 1969-02-05, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
A truer, more universal application, and with the spiritual knowledge: the principle of the position and utilization of individuals on earth. And I dont know why, it particularly interested you. You were with me, with this arrangement of figures, and I showed you (same gesture of the pieces of a puzzle being moved about) two columns here and one column there; but living columns: not on papernot on paper, in the air. I dont know how to explain that, it was in the air, and I arranged, moved the figures about like this (same gesture), and those figures were LIVING, they werent written on a paper.
There were different groups of figures (Mother tries to remember), yes, there were two groups: some were blue (dark blue), and others golden yellow, and (how can I explain?) they werent male-female, but they were two principles, the two principles-the principle of not creation, but conception (gesture coming down from above), and the principle of realization.
When I do that I am wholly conscious: its not a dream (I dont sleep in the ordinary way; I am as if asleep, but I dont sleep; and I dont dream: I ACT), I am wholly conscious, with the same kind of consciousness as the waking consciousness its not a dream. I was doing that, and explaining to you how all those figures were organizing themselves and determining future events.
--
Yes And this vision [with the big control panel], it was like an application of scientific means, but quite different! And it was entirely based on There was no thought, no reasoning, nothing of all that: it was a force going like this (gesture of a descent imposing itself), as it always does, and it impelled the action. So I saw; I saw, I knew I had to do this or that, and though I didnt think at all, I was able to explain why, that is to say, I was able to say in advance that it was FOR such and such a thing. It was the combination of these two colors of figures (maybe its a translation in my consciousness? Anyway), the blue figures and the golden ones. And the priority for action was always the golden figures; the blue ones came as if to fill a gap. It had a shape (same gesture like a moving puzzle), it had a shape. Its odd. its odd, it was so natural, so spontaneous and HABITUAL: nothing in the being remembered it with sur prise, that is to say, it didnt remember as one would remember having dreamt and done somethingnothing of the sort, it was quite natural: I did it like that and was quite aware that I was doing it every night. And if I remember right, it was between midnight and 3 in the morning (a little earlier or later).
But it has a strong action, I mean it COMMANDS the action on earth, and its not subjected in any way or tied down to anything below: its like this (gesture of a descent imposing itself). And it constantly receives the Will or the Power of action from abovenot above, its not above, its (Mother makes a sort of gesture meaning it is everywhere inside) superior in the true sense.
0 1969-02-08, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
7) If the solution is to wait, is it nevertheless necessary to define principles of organization and to prevent the occurrence of an uncontrollable disorder?
All those who want to live and work in Auroville must have:
0 1969-02-26, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You mean that this surrender also entails abandoning all principles of morality.
Yes, of course. But especially this, that morality has never said, Dont see things in relation to yourself. It has said, You mustnt be selfish, you must be good and all that, but never has it criticized this sense of a self existing separately from others, nowhere, while the true attitude demands it.
0 1969-03-12, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
These last few days, there were elections here1 (an awful mess), and I was put in contact with all that. (I should say that the Lieutenant Governor here has very great trust in me, and before it started he came here to get the forcethings arent going too well, anyway theyre rather chaotic, but he said, Oh, Mother is here, which means he feels he is being supported.) So, through him, I was put in contact with all that. And there was a whole series of very interesting experiences. There was a very acute sense of all the conventional in political parties, because under a single political flag there are the most opposite opinions, each one in the name of the same principle! So it became so clear, so clear! Generally I wasnt interested, because I always felt histrionics there, but I was put in contact because of the Governor (wordlessly: he didnt tell me anything, but because of him I wordlessly made contact with the atmosphere), and then I saw to what extent its really an illusiona complete illusion; politics is something in the name of the same principle, people do absolutely opposite things! In the name of the same political principle. Everyone is anxious that HIS party should have the upper hand and it appeared to me that it didnt matter in the least! It was only peoples quality of receptivity that mattered, and also their level of consciousness. As far as the party was concernedanything.
It was a rather interesting study, which was made under the auspices of this new consciousness, and so in quite a general way, and very clearly, very clearly And with the sense of a GREAT power. This Consciousness contains a GREAT power. Especially a psychological power, that is, an immunity to any reaction from outside. Thats interesting. All anxiety, fear, desire, covetousness, all that was a whole world which I had always deliberately kept at arms length because it didnt interest me, but from this new angle some work can be done.
0 1969-04-02, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its like that, you see, its almost wonderful, and then Thats probably so we dont swell with pride and satisfaction, so we know how much change still remains to take place. Of course, when it comes to the physical (Mother looks at her hands), theres no need for any demonstration, its obvious! But its been said and repeated a hundred times: thats what will come last. So
But the inner change is considerableconsiderable. Its considerable: from the point of view of consciousness, it has been the greatest change in my whole existence; Ive had many of them, Ive worked a lot, but nothing in comparison with what has taken place since the 1st of January. To such a point that the body feels like a different person. But its not enough.
0 1969-04-30, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It has an answer for everything, all the time. Now its become quite active. I got a letter from Y. describing the activities of all those young people who have come for Auroville (they have a place of their own now, its the office of =1, somewhere at the back or in front of the Library). They have an apartment where they do all kinds of things, including improvised dances; Y. wrote about that (with much praise, besides), and she asked, But the important thing is to know what Sri Aurobindo and you too think about it? (Mother smiles ironically) Then this Consciousness (laughing) made me answer her, Just see to it that it doesnt degenerate. And it added (I dont remember exactly because it wasnt I who wrote), See that it remains I forget the words. But mon petit, the irony of it was priceless! And I sent it to her.
Constantly, constantly it says or answers something. It obliges me to write: Answer this. Say this. It has taken the place of the mind, you understand.
0 1969-05-03, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This Consciousness is very interesting. It has (smiling) its not scorn, its a sort of faraway indifference for all human ideasall conventions, all principles, all moralities, it finds all of that absolutely grotesque. Now and then, it comes into contact with human ideas (Mother takes a sur prised tone of voice): Ooh! So thats what they think Its amusing!
There are two things. Death, it doesnt at all understand what we mean by that, the importance we attach to it but not at all. And then, money, to this consciousness, is buffoonery: this system of money, the invention of this system, which prevents you from doing anything unless you pull out a banknote, to it, really its buffoonery. Strange, I suddenly realize that the psychic being (dominating gesture behind) the psychic being is almost like a witness, its a witness to the whole evolution of things, and it KNOWS (it understands the deeper reasons, it knows how things are). Its in the body that this Consciousness is so active, and so, every time the body goes on with the little habits from the time when there was a mind and a vital, really it feels it as buffoonery. And the attitude with regard to money is like Death, food and money: this Consciousness feels those are the three awesome things in human life, that human life revolves around those three thingseating, (laughing) dying, and having money and to it, the three are they are passing inventions which derive from a wholly transitory state that doesnt correspond to anything very deep or very permanent. Thats its attitude. And then, it teaches the body to be otherwise.
0 1969-05-31, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Two nights ago, I spent more than three hours with Sri Aurobindo, and I showed him all that was going to descend for Auroville. It was rather interesting. There were games, there was art, there was even cooking! But all that was very symbolic. I explained it to him as if on a table, in front of a large landscape; I explained the principle on whose basis physical exercises and games were going to be organized. It was very clear, very precise, I even did a demonstration, as if showing him on a very small scale: a representation on a very small scale of what was going to be done. I moved people, things (gesture as if on a chessboard). But it was very interesting, and he was interested: he gave kinds of broad laws of organization (I dont know how to explain).
There was art and it was lovely, it was fine. And how to make houses pleasant and beautiful, with what principle of construction. And cooking too, it was very amusing! There were the different manners of presenting a dish; take a fish, for instance, with the different ways of preparing it, and everyone came with his own invention. It went on for more than three hours (three hours of the night, thats huge). I woke up at 4 oclock with that (4 oclock, and I had gone back to bed at I oclock: I to 4 is three hours I can still calculate!). Very interesting.
Yet the conditions on earth seem very far from all that.
0 1969-06-28, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
They preach violence to us, or nonviolence. But these are two faces of the same Falsehood, the yes and no of the same impotence: the little saints have gone bankrupt with the rest, and others want to seize powerwhat power? That of the statesmen? Are we going to fight over the prison keys? Or to build another prison? Or do we really want to get out of it? Power does not flow from the barrel of a gun, neither does freedom flow from the bellies of the dead for thirty million years now, we have been building on corpses, on wars, on revolutions. And the drama is enacted over and over again. Perhaps the time has come to build on something else and find the key to the true Power?
Its magnificent, mon petit!
0 1969-07-19, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But theres an interesting thing Nolini showed me yesterday. Theres a French lady, an astrologer, it seems, who has the reputation of being very skilled;4 she has made a prediction based on the stars, according to which in July this year (that is, this month), India would be in a very great difficulty (just what is happening), but she adds that India would come out of it with a great improvement of consciousness. I havent seen [her prediction] in detail, I dont know, but it seems she almost announces a sort of change of government. But the disorder is there, oh, awful!5 Everybody quarrels! And some people are without any scruples whatsoever. They are all against the prime minister because she wants to nationalize the banks; she wants to nationalize the banks because she has realized that theres a gang of rich men (whom I know and had been denouncing for a very long time) who monopolize everything and cause general miserypeople absolutely devoid of scruples. So then, by nationalizing the banks, she hopes to prevent them from I told you theres a gang of people (Id rather not name them) who have money everywhere, and huge amounts abroad. So they have the country by the throat, because they can cause a bankruptcy here whenever they like. She knows it, and those are people no one has ever dared to touch. But as for her, she has found this solution: if she nationalizes the banks, they wont be able to do their mischief anymore. So theyre furiousfurious. And they have all kinds of means at their disposal.6 And through N.S., she is in constant contact with me, asking for help, for an indication, and so on.
Well see. I was happy with this prediction because All depends on whether shell stand firm. If she stands firm, it will be all right.
--
A split within the Congress Committee between "rightist" and "leftist" elements. Finally, the prime minister, Indira Gandhi, took away the finance portfolio from Morarji Desai, the deputy prime minister, and declared her intention to nationalize banks (which she did two days later). This will lead to a scission in the Congress, and this same faction will overthrow Indira in 1977.
Including Tantrics experts in black magic.
0 1969-07-23, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mother laughs heartily) Oh, this is priceless!
But didnt you see Mridu?5
--
Last night (that was the first time), I was in a place (again in this subtle physical), a place as if atop a rather barren mountain, but where people metthere were even kinds of seats. And I was there to see I dont know who (now I forget), but they were wise and well-known people of India. It seemed (in my vision) that I was there permanently and that those people had come to see me. And they came from every side: all of Indias spiritual sects were represented, and everyone came, sat down, and told me (laughing) the virtues of his creed. It was pricelessly funny! It was I spent a good while, but I really had great fun! Some wore big turbans and were dressed in white, very important people who had had special seats brought for them, and they were quite (Mother puffs herself up) they swaggered, they looked down on others from their lofty heights! Some were almost completely naked, some were there were all sorts, and they were all in a big group like this (gesture in a circle). As for me, I was wearing a little white dress, like that, quite plain (the same shape as this one, but in white); I was sitting in a corner, having great fun but I took up very little room! (Mother makes herself small) It was quite comical. Last night.
A big circle: one group, another group, a third group, a fourth, a fifth, a sixth group and what fuss they made! It had to be seen.
--
The Asram in Pondicherry came into being in this way. Sri Aurobindo at first lived in Pondicherry with a few inmates in his house; afterwards a few more joined him. Later on after the Mother joined him, in 1920 the numbers began so much to increase that it was thought necessary to make an arrangement for lodging those who came and houses were bought and rented according to need for the purpose. Arrangements had also to be made for the maintenance, repair, rebuilding of houses, for the service of food and for decent living and hygiene. All these were private rules by the Mother and entirely at her discretion to increase, modify or alterthere is nothing in them of a public character.
All houses of the Asram are owned either by Sri Aurobindo or by the Mother. All the money spent belongs either to Sri Aurobindo or the Mother. Money is given by many to help in Sri Aurobindos work. Some who are here give their earnings, but it is given to Sri Aurobindo or the Mother and not to the Asram as a public body, for there is no such body.
0 1969-07-30, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
"All that is the most vital and important for you will appear to be abstractions and speculations." A friend of Satprem's in the same publishing house gave him this explanation: "Were you writing about Vietnam, the Black problem, LSD, the Third World or Marcuse, we would a priori be interested, even if we disagreed with you. But capital letters frighten us. Social peace is a topic; Peace isn't."
Gallimard, who will not reply.
0 1969-08-06, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(After studying various matters of printing, Mother abruptly asks:)
Id like to ask you a material detail: have you enough cheese for one week?!
0 1969-08-09, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This Consciousness which has been at work since January insists a lot on the need to become conscious and do things at will: one should be born at will, die at will, fall ill at willwill must be the dominant principle. It insists on that a lot.
I think that would change a lot of things.
0 1969-08-16, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Theres a Chinese in Shantiniketan (I forget his name8) who once came to see Sri Aurobindo; I know him, he spoke to me. He is a philosopher. He had properties in China (he lives in India) and gave everything to the Communists, saying, I give it to you so you dont have to take it! He told me personally (I was downstairs, long ago, Sri Aurobindo was there9), he said to me, China is a very intelligent country; they would be able to understand Sri Aurobindos writings, and I see NOTHING ELSE that could save the world from confusion. Only, naturally, it would have to be in Chinese thats what S.H.10 did, he put it into Chinese, but now its not even printed and cant enter China.
And theyre cutting off the heads of all the intellectuals there,11 theyre demolishing a whole generationstupefying a whole generation.
0 1969-08-20, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In their private lives.
Yes.
0 1969-08-27, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But its very private.
(Satprem reads out the text)
0 1969-08-30, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Dr. S. also has some ideas to replace jails (because we dont have jails, and we cant dump all the dishonest people into the rest of India! That wouldnt be nice). prisons and old peoples homes would have to be replaced with something. Its being studied, something has been found. Its going to be interesting!
And one last thing: a place where all the children could be kept when their parents dont want to look after them, or dont look after them properly. And all of it with no possibility of accident or flight but no prison or hospital, none of that sort of thing.
Its being worked out.
--
Ah, I had an experience like that (I dont know if it was this morning or yesterday morning or in the night, but anyway). For some time, I was in a consciousness in which the separate individuality no longer existed, but the principle (how should I Put it?) the particular principle of each individual persisted in the universal Consciousness. And then, mon petit, everything became so marvelous! It lasted maybe for an hour, a little more or a little less, I dont know, but anyway long enough to (Mother smiles), I mean, to lounge in it. There was no more, NO MORE separation, that had disappeared, but a certain (how to explain?), almost like an outlook; each individuals outlook (not just the outlook, but at the same time the stand in actionstand, that is, the part of the action initiated by that outlook), that persisted. It persisted in the Oneno separation. And then, each thing has its own placewith the whole marvelously effective. At the same time I cant say, words are impotent. At the time of the experience, I remembered a sentence of Sri Aurobindo in which he said that in the end, the Lord is only a child at play (you know it, he put it in a certain way4), and I understood WHY he used those words, it was it was something which our language obviously cant formulate, but to LIVE in that, to live that is you understand, its the impression of so, so perfect an omnipotence, so harmonious, and at the same time, yes, so harmonious that its all smiling. Its inexpressible. Inexpressible. I had the experience, then it went away It got mixed up with the daily work.
And I remember Its interesting because while I was in that state, I remembered the question youd asked me about Pavitra, whether the principle of individuality persists; so something in me said to you, Now you see, its like this! (Mother laughs) I remembered your question, I said, Its like this, there is NO MORE separation, but but this marvel of complexity remains the marvel of a complexity. And the impression is that everything, but everything that is has its own place, but when its in its place, then its perfectly harmonious.
Oh, it was it was a real revelation.
0 1969-09-13, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
RL. has seen something. He thinks what hes seen is me, but in fact its his own mental projection, I think. Anyway, it expresses clearly enough the problem he is facing. Basically, the thought that troubles him is to know whether he would do a better work by leaving the Church than by staying within it. Thats the problem he has been somewhat mulling over, because, for instance, next month in Rome, all the bishops are meeting in a synod, and on that occasion, a number of priests who are recalcitrant or refractory or rebellious, let us say, want to meet in Rome and hold a sort of anti-synod to publicly prod the Church towards a more revolutionary path. So the thought crossed his mind
To join them. No.
--
After that, he had a vision, and he imagines its me he saw, but I dont think so at all. It was on the seashore, a rather desolate and rocky landscape, and there was a sort of cave, a huge cave opening on the shore. From that huge cave there came out monks: a crowd of dark monks wearing cowls and black robes, who came out of that cave in a desolate and windswept landscapeit was dark, sinister. He saw that and felt like running away. And just when he felt like running away, he saw in the crowd someone who was me, dressed like a priest, the only one in the crowd with a luminous face, and I told him: You see, one must stay here to bring the light into here. I said to him, As for me, I would stay on until I became a bishop.
It cant be you.
--
But he says, If I am expelled and get out, I lose all power, I cant do anything anymore. And that was precisely the object of his vision: its by staying there that he can bring-light. Thats his problem. If I get out, I cant do anything anymore. And he told me that all those priests who got out to try and make the Church progress have been expelled by the Church and no longer have any power.
Naturally theyve been expelled by the Church! But the Church isnt the whole world.
--
But those priests meeting in Rome, theyre going to be excommunicated, no?
Oh, theyre already more or less excommunicated, their churches have been closed.
--
Yes, yes, he is a priest.
Hes a priest. Oh, I didnt know. But he doesnt wear a robe?
He must be doing it there.
Oh, hes a priest.
Those priests wear the same dress everywhere, dont they?
Now theyve modernized all that, so they wear pants and a short neck, Protestant fashionthose are their great reforms!
0 1969-09-17, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But theres no law. They can even elect a layman, and in that case, rapidly give him priesthood, then nominate him bishop, archbishop, and so on.
But they arent free at all.
Not at all, theyre in a prison. The example of Celestine V is quite symbolic. But P.L. told me one thing (which struck him very much, besides): the first act of this Pope, when he was nominated, was to go and bow before the grave of Celestine V, the only Pope who abdicated.
Well, well!
0 1969-10-08, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
His reflection about the Ashram is that there is here a privileged substance, with a knowledge he has never seen anywhere else, but which lacks intensity and energy, and also practice.
Practice, yes.
0 1969-10-11, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I wondered if we couldnt publish it too: Men of free minds and free habits are too strong of soul to be the slaves of their party feelings and too robust of mind to submit to any demand for the sacrifice of their principles on the altar of expediency. It is only in a servile nation unaccustomed to the habits of freemen that party becomes a master and not an instrument.
This is fine! Where was it?
--
What happened is that a television reporter went there without knowing what was happening (he went there for something else), and he came upon that. He was so horrified, you know, so disgusted that he resolved to make it stop. And for maybe two years, he has been campaigning all over the worldthrough television and all sorts of means for people to intervene. There was a strong pressure on the prime minister (its in northern Canada and northern Norway, I think, on perpetually frozen islands), and they obtained from Canadas prime minister (charming people!) that instead of clubbing the baby seals supposedly to death, they would throw diesel oil on them, because that asphyxiates them fast. But people found it too costly (such unbelievably low depths, you know!), so they went to the prime minister and asked him to lift his ban and he did it! He allowed them to be slaughtered like that. It seems the mothers (theyve just given birth, you see, theyre suckling the pups) try to defend themso to prevent them from seeing what goes on, they put out their eyes. Well, when I was told that, I saw a humanity sinking into an abyss of ignominy.
Then they brought cards to me (theyre preparing a new movement), cards with big photosthose little ones, if you knew how sweet they are! And intelligent! Theyre first-rate. And I saw the photo before knowing anything of the story; I looked and said, Oh, what a lovely little one! I instantly saw: receptive, admirable, an admirable kid! So there are photos of those little ones, theres a portrait of the crook who arranges the whole thing, a portrait of the reporter, and cards with the portrait of one of those little ones, with at the top, in French and in English, Let baby seals live. Like that. And a place for ones name and signature. And at the back, a place to add something if one wants to. They asked me if I wanted to sign. I said yes. There was one card addressed to Norways fisheries minister, one to Canadas fisheries minister, and one to Canadas prime minister. So I put my stamp: The Mother, Sri Aurobindo Ashram. I didnt add anything, I left the sentence and signed. And well send them.
But when I was told that Why, why? And those women who wear that all those animals suffering, all those animals horror, their terror they wear all that on their backs. And it doesnt give them nightmares! Unbelievable.
0 1969-10-25, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
He told me he was acquiring such a force that he could face any obstacle, and will thus be capable of asserting in front of people the power of the divine force. I first want to become absolutely sure that I can manifest this force at any time and against any obstacle. Then I will show people, in a crowd of a thousand people, through a practical demonstration, by calling ten or fifteen sick people among them and curing them with this force. Then they will perforce be convinced that there is indeed a Force that can do anything. But for that, I must be ready. For eighty percent of the people will be against me, and to convince them I must be really strong, well armed and sure! Once I am ready, no one will be able to stop me. All governments and religions will collapse. I will write to the Pope, asking him what they are preaching now. What did Christ tell us in the Gospels! He told his apostles to go and heal the sick and drive demons away. What are the priests and the Catholics doing today?
I asked him, Are you sure that is your mission?
0 1969-11-08, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its very, very, very good. We must print that.
For the English, Im not absolutely sure of myself, which is why I want someone else to see it again, but in the last analysis Because the connection with Sri Aurobindo is constant, so I can ask him. And more and more, he lets me know English accurately But languages are evolving a lot: French is evolving, English too, a lot. And the strange thing is that languages are moving closer; instead of moving away from each other, theyre moving closer. Theres a world language being prepared somewherenot here, somewhere.
0 1969-11-15, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Sri Aurobindo is in no way bound by the present worlds institutions or current ideas whether in political, social or economic field; it is not necessary for him either to approve or disapprove of them. He does not regard either capitalism or orthodox socialism as the right solution for the worlds future; nor can he admit that the admission of private enter prise by itself makes the society capitalistic, a socialistic economy can very well admit some amount of controlled or subordinated private enter prise as an aid to its own working or a partial convenience without ceasing to be socialistic. Sri Aurobindo has his own views as to how far Congress economy is intended to be truly socialistic or whether that is only a cover, but he does not care to express his views on that point at present.
A pril 15, 1949
0 1969-11-19, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And for us as we are, each point of this Consciousness has the possibility of being conscious of itself AND conscious of the original Unity And thats the work now being accomplished, that is to say, each infinitesimal element of this Consciousness, while retaining this state of consciousness, is now recapturing the total original state of consciousness the result is the original Consciousness conscious of its Unity AND conscious of the whole play: all the innumerable elements of this Unity So for us, it gets expressed as the sense of time: going from the Inconscient to this state of consciousness. And the Inconscient is the projection of the primeval Unity (if we may say soall those words are completely stupid), of the essential unity unconscious of its own Unity thats the Inconscient. And this Inconscient is growing increasingly conscious in beings who are conscious of their infinitesimal existence and AT THE SAME TIMEthrough what we call progress or evolution or transformationwho manage to be conscious of the original Unity.
And that, as it was seen, explained everything.
0 1969-11-22, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have something for next February: I received certain things regarding money and whats going on there, in Delhi.1 The government is shaky; so far, things are all right. Everything tends towards the dissolution of the Congress, but that was foreseen and willed. But then, the Congress president2 is on one side and the prime minister is on the other, each looking at the other Anyway, I think things will work out. But all that is mostly because of money: the most powerful party against the present government, against Indira, is that of financiers. Theyre furious. So then, in this connection, I took up again what I had said long ago:
Money is not meant to make money, money is meant to prepare the earth for the new creation.
0 1969-11-29, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
A rather interesting phenomenon has taken place . The vital and the mind had gone away, and when the Consciousness worked in the body, it reconstituted a vital and a mind WITHIN the body itself. And thats very interesting, because the body has taken extreme interest in learning lots of things: it has asked questions about external things, mathematical things, all those things that specifically belong to the mind. And it has learned them very easily the priNCIPLE of those things has been learned very easily. It immediately felt it needed to learn them.
Its interesting.
--- Grep of noun pri
capri
priacanthidae
priacanthus
priacanthus arenatus
priam
priapism
priapus
price
price-fixing
price-to-earnings ratio
price bracket
price competition
price control
price cut
price cutting
price floor
price freeze
price gouging
price increase
price index
price level
price list
price of admission
price reduction
price support
price tag
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pricelessness
pricing
pricing system
prick
pricker
pricket
pricking
prickle
prickle-weed
prickle cell
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prickliness
prickling
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prickly-seeded spinach
prickly ash
prickly custard apple
prickly heat
prickly lettuce
prickly pear
prickly pear cactus
prickly pine
prickly poppy
prickly shield fern
prickteaser
pride
pride-of-india
pride of barbados
pride of bolivia
pride of california
pride of place
pridefulness
prie-dieu
priest
priest-doctor
priest-penitent privilege
priestcraft
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prig
priggishness
prilosec
prima
prima ballerina
prima donna
primacy
primality
primaquine
primary
primary amenorrhea
primary atypical pneumonia
primary care
primary care physician
primary care provider
primary cell
primary censorship
primary coil
primary color
primary color for light
primary color for pigments
primary colour
primary colour for light
primary colour for pigments
primary dentition
primary dysmenorrhea
primary election
primary feather
primary health care
primary quill
primary school
primary sex character
primary sex characteristic
primary sexual characteristic
primary solid solution
primary subtractive color for light
primary subtractive colour for light
primary syphilis
primary tooth
primary winding
primate
primates
primateship
primatology
primaxin
prime
prime factor
prime interest rate
prime meridian
prime minister
prime mover
prime number
prime of life
prime quantity
prime time
primer
primer coat
primidone
primigravida
priming
priming coat
primipara
primitive
primitive art
primitive person
primitiveness
primitivism
primness
primo
primogenitor
primogeniture
primordial dwarf
primordium
primping
primrose
primrose family
primrose jasmine
primrose path
primula
primula auricula
primula elatior
primula polyantha
primula sinensis
primula veris
primula vulgaris
primulaceae
primulales
primum mobile
primus
primus stove
prince
prince's-feather
prince's-plume
prince's pine
prince-of-wales'-heath
prince-of-wales feather
prince-of-wales fern
prince-of-wales plume
prince albert
prince albert's yew
prince albert yew
prince charles
prince charming
prince consort
prince edward
prince edward island
prince eugene of savoy
prince fumimaro konoe
prince fumimaro konoye
prince klemens wenzel nepomuk lothar von metternich
prince of darkness
prince of smolensk
prince of wales
prince of wales heath
prince otto eduard leopold von bismarck
prince otto von bismarck
prince peter kropotkin
prince philip
prince rupert
princedom
princeling
princess
princess diana
princess feather
princess grace of monaco
princess of wales
princess pine
princess royal
princeton
princeton university
princeton wordnet
princewood
principal
principal axis
principal diagonal
principal investigator
principal sum
principality
principality of andorra
principality of liechtenstein
principality of monaco
principalship
principe
principen
principle
principle of equivalence
principle of liquid displacement
principle of parsimony
principle of relativity
principle of superposition
prinia
prinival
print buffer
print media
print run
print seller
print shop
printed circuit
printed symbol
printer
printer's devil
printer's ink
printer cable
printing
printing business
printing company
printing concern
printing ink
printing machine
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printing press
printing process
printing shop
printing unit
printmaker
printmaking
printout
priodontes
priodontes giganteus
prion
prionace
prionace glauca
prionotus
prionotus carolinus
prior
prioress
priority
priority processing
priorship
priory
priscoan
priscoan aeon
priscoan eon
prism
prism spectroscope
prismatoid
prismoid
prison
prison-breaking
prison camp
prison cell
prison chaplain
prison farm
prison guard
prison house
prison term
prisonbreak
prisoner
prisoner's base
prisoner of war
prisoner of war camp
prisoner of war censorship
pristidae
pristis
pristis pectinatus
pritzelago
pritzelago alpina
privacy
private
private citizen
private corporation
private detective
private enterprise
private eye
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private instructor
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private line
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private parts
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private property
private road
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private security force
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privateer
privateersman
privately held corporation
privateness
privates
privation
privatisation
privatization
privet
privet andromeda
privet hedge
privilege
privilege against self incrimination
privilege of the floor
privine
privy
privy council
privy purse
prix de rome
prix fixe
prix goncourt
prize
prize fight
prize money
prize ring
prize winner
prizefight
prizefighter