1024 Integral Yoga
384 Poetry
135 Occultism
122 Christianity
103 Philosophy
90 Yoga
70 Fiction
53 Psychology
21 Science
21 Hinduism
18 Mysticism
16 Islam
14 Theosophy
13 Philsophy
13 Integral Theory
10 Sufism
9 Education
8 Mythology
7 Buddhism
6 Cybernetics
6 Baha i Faith
4 Zen
1 Thelema
1 Kabbalah
1 Alchemy
643 Sri Aurobindo
515 The Mother
234 Satprem
220 Nolini Kanta Gupta
69 William Wordsworth
64 Aleister Crowley
54 Sri Ramakrishna
52 Carl Jung
41 Plotinus
40 Percy Bysshe Shelley
39 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
39 H P Lovecraft
31 James George Frazer
30 Robert Browning
29 Saint Augustine of Hippo
27 John Keats
23 Friedrich Nietzsche
20 A B Purani
19 Swami Vivekananda
19 Aldous Huxley
16 Muhammad
13 Vyasa
13 Rudolf Steiner
13 Ralph Waldo Emerson
13 Friedrich Schiller
13 Anonymous
12 Saint John of Climacus
12 Paul Richard
12 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
11 William Butler Yeats
11 Rainer Maria Rilke
10 Walt Whitman
10 Swami Krishnananda
9 Sri Ramana Maharshi
9 George Van Vrekhem
8 Swami Sivananda Saraswati
8 Plato
8 Jalaluddin Rumi
7 Franz Bardon
7 Baha u llah
6 Saint Teresa of Avila
6 Norbert Wiener
6 Jorge Luis Borges
6 Alice Bailey
5 Rabindranath Tagore
5 Patanjali
5 Henry David Thoreau
5 Edgar Allan Poe
4 Solomon ibn Gabirol
4 Ovid
4 Nirodbaran
4 Lucretius
4 Kabir
4 Joseph Campbell
4 Jordan Peterson
4 Bokar Rinpoche
4 Al-Ghazali
3 Thubten Chodron
3 Taigu Ryokan
3 Saint Francis of Assisi
3 Li Bai
3 Ken Wilber
3 Ibn Arabi
3 Hsuan Chueh of Yung Chia
3 Hakim Sanai
3 Farid ud-Din Attar
3 Bulleh Shah
2 Shankara
2 Saint Hildegard von Bingen
2 R Buckminster Fuller
2 Ramprasad
2 Peter J Carroll
2 Mahendranath Gupta
2 Lalla
2 Jetsun Milarepa
2 Hakuin
2 Hafiz
2 Genpo Roshi
2 Dante Alighieri
2 Allama Muhammad Iqbal
141 Record of Yoga
129 The Synthesis Of Yoga
75 Prayers And Meditations
69 Wordsworth - Poems
53 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
49 The Life Divine
44 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
40 Shelley - Poems
40 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
39 Lovecraft - Poems
34 Savitri
34 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
34 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
32 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
32 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
31 The Golden Bough
31 Magick Without Tears
31 Liber ABA
31 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
30 Browning - Poems
29 Questions And Answers 1956
27 Keats - Poems
27 Essays On The Gita
27 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
26 Agenda Vol 07
25 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
25 Letters On Yoga II
25 Agenda Vol 03
24 Questions And Answers 1955
24 Questions And Answers 1953
24 Agenda Vol 04
23 Letters On Yoga IV
23 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
22 Agenda Vol 02
20 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
20 Agenda Vol 08
19 Thus Spoke Zarathustra
19 The Perennial Philosophy
18 Words Of Long Ago
18 Questions And Answers 1929-1931
18 Mysterium Coniunctionis
18 City of God
17 The Practice of Psycho therapy
16 Quran
16 Questions And Answers 1954
16 Agenda Vol 06
15 Agenda Vol 09
15 Agenda Vol 01
14 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
14 Essays Divine And Human
14 Collected Poems
14 Agenda Vol 05
13 Vishnu Purana
13 The Human Cycle
13 The Future of Man
13 The Bible
13 Schiller - Poems
13 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 01
13 Letters On Yoga III
13 Letters On Yoga I
13 Emerson - Poems
12 The Secret Of The Veda
12 The Ladder of Divine Ascent
12 The Confessions of Saint Augustine
12 On the Way to Supermanhood
11 Yeats - Poems
11 The Phenomenon of Man
11 Talks
11 Rilke - Poems
11 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04
11 Isha Upanishad
10 Whitman - Poems
10 The Study and Practice of Yoga
10 The Mother With Letters On The Mother
10 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
9 Preparing for the Miraculous
9 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 02
9 On Education
9 Faust
9 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08
9 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 06
9 Agenda Vol 12
9 Agenda Vol 10
8 Vedic and Philological Studies
8 Theosophy
8 Some Answers From The Mother
8 Raja-Yoga
8 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 03
8 Let Me Explain
8 Agenda Vol 11
8 A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah
7 Hymns to the Mystic Fire
7 Hymn of the Universe
7 Amrita Gita
7 Aion
6 The Secret Doctrine
6 Letters On Poetry And Art
6 Kena and Other Upanishads
6 Cybernetics
6 Bhakti-Yoga
6 A Treatise on Cosmic Fire
5 Walden
5 Poe - Poems
5 Patanjali Yoga Sutras
5 Agenda Vol 13
4 Words Of The Mother III
4 Words Of The Mother II
4 Twilight of the Idols
4 Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo
4 The Hero with a Thousand Faces
4 The Alchemy of Happiness
4 Tara - The Feminine Divine
4 Tagore - Poems
4 Of The Nature Of Things
4 Metamorphoses
4 Maps of Meaning
4 Labyrinths
4 Knowledge of the Higher Worlds
4 Initiation Into Hermetics
4 Dark Night of the Soul
4 Crowley - Poems
3 The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma
3 The Way of Perfection
3 The Problems of Philosophy
3 The Practice of Magical Evocation
3 The Lotus Sutra
3 The Interior Castle or The Mansions
3 The Book of Certitude
3 The Blue Cliff Records
3 Songs of Kabir
3 Sex Ecology Spirituality
3 Ryokan - Poems
3 Rumi - Poems
3 Li Bai - Poems
3 How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator
3 Goethe - Poems
3 Arabi - Poems
3 Anonymous - Poems
2 The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep
2 The Integral Yoga
2 The Divine Comedy
2 The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
2 Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking
2 Symposium
2 Milarepa - Poems
2 Liber Null
2 Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2E
2 5.1.01 - Ilion
0 0.01 - Introduction, #Agenda Vol 1, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
'Are you conscious of your ceils?' She asked us a short time after the little operation of spiritual demolition She had undergone. 'No? Well, become conscious of your cells, and you will see that it gives TERRESTRIAL results.' To become conscious of one's cells? ... It was a far more radical operation than crossing the Maroni with a machete in hand, for after all, trees and lianas can be cut, but what cannot be so easily uncovered are the grandfa ther and the grandmo ther and the whole atavistic pack, not to mention the animal and plant and mineral layers that form a teeming humus over this single pure little cell beneath its millennial genetic program. The grandfa thers and grandmo thers grow back again like crabgrass, along with all the old habits of being hungry, afraid, falling ill, fearing the worst, hoping for the best, which is still the best of an old mortal habit. All this is not uprooted nor entrapped as easily as celestial 'liberations,' which leave the teeming humus in peace and the body to its usual decomposition. She had come to hew a path through all that. She was the Ancient One of evolution who had come to make a new cleft in the old, tedious habit of being a man. She did not like tedious repetitions, She was the adventuress par excellence - the adventuress of the earth. She was wrenching out for man the great Possible that was already beating there, in his primeval clearing, which he believed he had momentarily trapped with a few machines.
She was uprooting a new Matter, free, free from the habit of inexorably being a man who repeats himself ad infinitum with a few improvements in the way of organ transplants or monetary exchanges. In fact, She was there to discover what would happen after materialism and after spiritualism, these prodigal twin brothers. Because Materialism is dying in the West for the same reason that Spiritualism is dying in the East: it is the hour of the new species. Man needs to awaken, not only from his demons but also from his gods. A new Matter, yes, like a new Spirit, yes, because we still know neither one nor the other. It is the hour when Science, like Spirituality, at the end of their roads, must discover what Matter TRULY is, for it is really there that a Spirit as yet unknown to us is to be found. It is a time when all the 'isms' of the old species are dying: 'The age of
Capitalism and business is drawing to its close. But the age of Communism too will pass ... 'It is the hour of a pure little cell THAT WILL HAVE TERRESTRIAL REPERCUSSIONS, infinitely more radical than all our political and scientific or spiritualistic panaceas.
This fabulous discovery is the whole story of the AGENDA. What is the passage? How is the path to the new species hewed open? ... Then suddenly, there, on the other side of this old millennial habit - a habit, nothing more than a habit! - of being like a man endowed with time and space and disease: an entire geometry, perfectly implacable and 'scientific' and medical; on the other side ... none of that at all! An illusion, a fantastic medical and scientific and genetic illusion:
--
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.
--
Then we have caught the tail of the Great Possible, we are upon the wayless way, radically in the new, and we flow with the little lizard, the pelican, the big man, we flow everywhere in a world that has lost its old separating skin and its little baggage of habits. We begin seeing otherwise, feeling otherwise. We have opened the gate into an inconceivable clearing. Just a light little vibration that carries you away. Then we begin to understand how it CAN CHANGE, what the mechanism is - a light little mechanism and so miraculous that it looks like nothing. We begin feeling the wonder of a pure little cell, and that a sparkling of joy would be enough to turn the world inside out. We were living in a little thinking fishbowl, we were dying in an old, bottled habit. And then suddenly, all is different. The Earth is free! Who wants freedom?
It begins in a cell.
A pure little cell.
Mother is the joy of freedom.
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00.01 - The Approach to Mysticism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Ignorance, certainly, is not man's ideal conditionit leads to death and dissolution. But knowledge also can be equally disastrous if it is not of the right kind. The knowledge that is born of spiritual disobedience, inspired by the Dark ones, leads to the soul's fall and its calvary through pain and suffering on earth. The seeker of true enlightenment has got to make a distinction, learn to separate the true and the right from the false and the wrong, unmask the luring Mra say clearly and unfalteringly to the dark light of Luciferapage Satana, if he is to come out into the true light and comm and the right forces. The search for knowledge alone, knowledge for the sake of knowledge, the path of pure scientific inquiry and inquisitiveness, in relation to the mystic world, is a dangerous thing. For such a spirit serves only to encourage and enhance man's arrogance and in the end not only limits but warps and falsifies the knowledge itself. A knowledge based on and secured exclusively through the reason and mental light can go only so far as that faculty can be reasonably stretched and not infinitelyto stretch it to infinity means to snap it. This is the warning that Yajnavalkya gave to Gargi when the latter started renewing her question ad infinitum Yajnavalkya said, "If you do not stop, your head will fall off."
The mystic truth has to be approached through the heart. "In the heart is established the Truth," says the Upanishad: it is there that is seated eternally the soul, the real being, who appears no bigger than the thumb. Even if the mind is utilised as an instrument of knowledge, the heart must be there behind as the guide and inspiration. It is precisely because, as I have just mentioned, Gargi sought to shoot uplike "vaulting ambition that o'erleaps itself" of which Shakespeare speaksthrough the mind alone to the highest truth that Yajnavalkya had to pull her up and give the warning that she risked losing her head if she persisted in her questioning endlessly.
--
The mystic's knowledge is a part and a formation of his life. That is why it is a knowledge not abstract and remote but living and intimate and concrete. It is a knowledge that pulsates with delight: indeed it is the radiance that is shed by the purest and intensest joy. For this reason it may be that in approaching through the heart there is a chance of one's getting arrested there and not caring for the still higher, the solar lights; but this need not be so. In the heart there is a golden door leading to the deepest delights, but there is also a diamond door opening up into the skies of the brightest luminosities.
For it must be understood that the heart, the mystic heart, is not the external thing which is the seat of emotion or passion; it is the secret heart that is behind, the inner heartantarhdaya of the Upanishadwhich is the centre of the individual consciousness, where all the divergent lines of that consciousness meet and from where they take their rise. That is what the Upanishad means when it says that the heart has a hundred channels which feed the human vehicle. That is the source, the fount and origin, the very substance of the true personality. Mystic knowledge the true mystic knowledge which saves and fulfilsbegins with the awakening or the entrance into this real being. This being is pure and luminous and blissful and sovereignly real, because it is a portion, a spark of the Divine Consciousness and Nature: a contact and communion with it brings automatically into play the light and the truth that are its substance. At the same time it is an uprising flame that reaches out naturally to higher domains of consciousness and manifests them through its translucid dynamism.
The knowledge that is obtained without the heart's instrumentation or co-operation is liable to be what the Gita describes as Asuric. First of all, from the point of view of knowledge itself, it would be, as I have already said, egocentric, a product and agent of one's limited and isolated self, easily put at the service of desire and passion. This knowledge, whether rationalistic or occult, is, as it were, hard and dry in its constitution, and oftener than not, negative and destructivewi thering and blasting in its career like the desert simoom.
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00.03 - Upanishadic Symbolism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Sun is the first and the most immediate source of light that man has and needs. He is the presiding deity of our waking consciousness and has his seat in the eyecakusa ditya, ditya caku bhtvakii prviat. The eye is the representative of the senses; it is the sense par excellence. In truth, sense-perception is the initial light with which we have to guide us, it is the light with which we start on the way. A developed stage comes when the Sun sets for us, that is to say, when we retire from the senses and rise into the mind, whose divinity is the Moon. It is the mental knowledge, the light of reason and intelligence, of reflection and imagination that govern our consciousness. We have to proceed farther and get beyond the mind, exceed the derivative light of the Moon. So when the Moon sets, the Fire is kindled. It is the light of the ardent and aspiring heart, the glow of an inner urge, the instincts and inspirations of our secret life-will. Here we come into touch with a source of knowledge and realization, a guidance more direct than the mind and much deeper than the sense-perception. Still this light partakes more of heat than of pure luminosity; it is, one may say, incandescent feeling, but not vision. We must probe deeper, mount higherreach heights and profundities that are serene and transparent. The Fire is to be quieted and silenced, says the Upanishad. Then we come nearer, to the immediate vicinity of the Truth: an inner hearing opens, the direct voice of Truth the Wordreaches us to lead and guide. Even so, however, we have not come to the end of our journey; the Word of revelation is not the ultimate Light. The Word too is clothing, though a luminous clothinghiramayam ptram When this last veil dissolves and disappears, when utter silence, absolute calm and quietude reign in the entire consciousness, when no other lights trouble or distract our attention, there appears the Atman in its own body; we stand face to face with the source of all lights, the self of the Light, the light of the Self. We are that Light and we become that Light.
II. The Four Oblations
--
Indeed, it was to this godhead that Nachiketas turned and he wanted to know of it and find it, when faith seized on his pure heart and he aspired for the higher spiritual life. The very opening hymn of the Rig Veda, too, is addressed to Agni, who is invoked as the vicar seated in the front of the sacrifice, the giver of the supreme gifts.
King Yama initiated Nachiketas into the mystery of Fire Worship and spoke of three fires that have to be kindled if one aspires to enter the heaven of immortality.
--
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 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.
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00.05 - A Vedic Conception of the Poet, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
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.
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000 - Humans in Universe, #Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, #R Buckminster Fuller, #Science
such matters had been pure guesses.000.108 A third of a century after Malthus, Darwin attributed biological evolution
to survival of only the fittest species (and individuals within species). Though he
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0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Vaishnavism is exclusively a religion of bhakti. Bhakti is intense love of God, attachment to Him alone; it is of the nature of bliss and bestows upon the lover immortality and liberation. God, according to Vaishnavism, cannot be realized through logic or reason; and, without bhakti, all penances, austerities and rites are futile. Man cannot realize God by self-exertion alone. For the vision of God His grace is absolutely necessary, and this grace is felt by the pure of heart. The mind is to be purified through bhakti. The pure mind then remains for ever immersed in the ecstasy of God-vision. It is the cultivation of this divine love that is the chief concern of the Vaishnava religion.
There are three kinds of formal devotion: tamasic, rajasic, and sattvic. If a person, while showing devotion, to God, is actuated by malevolence, arrogance, jealousy, or anger, then his devotion is tamasic, since it is influenced by tamas, the quality of inertia. If he worships God from a desire for fame or wealth, or from any other worldly ambition, then his devotion is rajasic, since it is influenced by rajas, the quality of activity. But if a person loves God without any thought of material gain, if he performs his duties to please God alone and maintains toward all created beings the attitude of friendship, then his devotion is called sattvic, since it is influenced by sattva, the quality of harmony. But the highest devotion transcends the three gunas, or qualities, being a spontaneous, uninterrupted inclination of the mind toward God, the Inner Soul of all beings; and it wells up in the heart of a true devotee as soon as he hears the name of God or mention of God's attributes. A devotee possessed of this love would not accept the happiness of heaven if it were offered him. His one desire is to love God under all conditions — in pleasure and pain, life and death, honour and dishonour, prosperity and adversity.
--
Totapuri was the bearer of a philosophy new to Sri Ramakrishna, the non-dualistic Vedanta philosophy, whose conclusions Totapuri had experienced in his own life. This ancient Hindu system designates the Ultimate Reality as Brahman, also described as Satchidananda, Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute. Brahman is the only Real Existence. In It there is no time, no space, no causality, no multiplicity. But through maya, Its inscrutable Power, time, space, and causality are created and the One appears to break into the many. The eternal Spirit appears as a manifold of individuals endowed with form and subject to the conditions of time. The Immortal becomes a victim of birth and death. The Changeless undergoes change. The sinless pure Soul, hypnotized by Its own maya, experiences the joys of heaven and the pains of hell. But these experiences based on the duality of the subject-object relationship are unreal. Even the vision of a Personal God
is, ultimately speaking, as illusory as the experience of any other object. Man attains his liberation, therefore, by piercing the veil of maya and rediscovering his total identity with Brahman. Knowing himself to be one with the Universal Spirit, he realizes ineffable Peace. Only then does he go beyond the fiction of birth and death; only then does he become immortal. 'And this is the ultimate goal of all religions — to dehypnotize the soul now hypnotized by its own ignorance.
--
In the burning flame before him Sri Ramakrishna performed the rituals of destroying his attachment to relatives, friends, body, mind, sense-organs, ego, and the world. The leaping flame swallowed it all, making the initiate free and pure. The sacred thread and the tuft of hair were consigned to the fire, completing his severance from caste, sex, and society. Last of all he burnt in that fire, with all that is holy as his witness, his desire for enjoyment here and hereafter. He uttered the sacred mantras giving assurance of safety and fearlessness to all beings, who were only manifestations of his own Self. The rites completed, the disciple received from the guru the loin-cloth and ochre robe, the emblems of his new life.
The teacher and the disciple repaired to the meditation room near by. Totapuri began to impart to Sri Ramakrishna the great truths of Vedanta.
"Brahman", he said, "is the only Reality, ever pure, ever illumined, ever free, beyond the limits of time, space, and causation. Though apparently divided by names and forms through the inscrutable power of maya, that enchantress who makes the impossible possible, Brahman is really One and undivided. When a seeker merges in the beatitude of samadhi, he does not perceive time and space or name and form, the offspring of maya. Whatever is within the domain of maya is unreal. Give it up. Destroy the prison-house of name and form and rush out of it with the strength of a lion. Dive deep in search of the Self and realize It through samadhi. You will find the world of name and form vanishing into void, and the puny ego dissolving in Brahman-Consciousness. You will realize your identity with Brahman, Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute." Quoting the Upanishad, Totapuri said: "That knowledge is shallow by which one sees or hears or knows another
. What is shallow is worthless and can never give real felicity. But the Knowledge by which one does not see another or hear another or know another, which is beyond duality, is great, and through such Knowledge one attains the Infinite Bliss. How can the mind and senses grasp That which shines in the heart of all as the Eternal Subject?"
Totapuri asked the disciple to withdraw his mind from all objects of the relative world, including the gods and goddesses, and to concentrate on the Absolute. But the task was not easy even for Sri Ramakrishna. He found it impossible to take his mind beyond Kali, the Divine Mother of the Universe. "After the initiation", Sri Ramakrishna once said, describing the event, "Nangta began to teach me the various conclusions of the Advaita Vedanta and asked me to withdraw the mind completely from all objects and dive deep into the Atman. But in spite of all my attempts I could not altogether cross the realm of name and form and bring my mind to the unconditioned state. I had no difficulty in taking the mind from all the objects of the world. But the radiant and too familiar figure of the Blissful Mother, the Embodiment of the essence of pure Consciousness, appeared before me as a living reality. Her bewitching smile prevented me from passing into the Great Beyond. Again and again I tried, but She stood in my way every time. In despair I said to Nangta: 'It is hopeless. I cannot raise my mind to the unconditioned state and come face to face with Atman.' He grew excited and sharply said: 'What? You can't do it? But you have to.' He cast his eyes around. Finding a piece of glass he took it up and stuck it between my eyebrows. 'Concentrate the mind on this point!' he thundered. Then with stern determination I again sat to meditate. As soon as the gracious form of the Divine Mother appeared before me, I used my discrimination as a sword and with it clove Her in two. The last barrier fell. My spirit at once soared beyond the relative plane and I lost myself in samadhi."
Sri Ramakrishna remained completely absorbed in samadhi for three days. "Is it really true?" Totapuri cried out in astonishment. "Is it possible that he has attained in a single day what it took me forty years of strenuous practice to achieve? Great God! It is nothing short of a miracle!" With the help of Totapuri, Sri Ramakrishna's mind finally came down to the relative plane.
--
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."
--- PILGRIMAGE
--
Keshab Chandra Sen and Sri Ramakrishna met for the first time in the garden house of Jaygopal Sen at Belgharia, a few miles from Dakshineswar, where the great Brahmo leader was staying with some of his disciples. In many respects the two were poles apart, though an irresistible inner attraction was to make them intimate friends. The Master had realized God as pure Spirit and Consciousness, but he believed in the various forms of God as well. Keshab, on the other hand, regarded image worship as idolatry and gave allegorical explanations of the Hindu deities. Keshab was an orator and a writer of books and magazine articles; Sri Ramakrishna had a horror of lecturing and hardly knew how to write his own name, Keshab's fame spread far and wide, even reaching the distant shores of England; the Master still led a secluded life in the village of Dakshineswar. Keshab emphasized social reforms for India's regeneration; to Sri Ramakrishna God-realization was the only goal of life. Keshab considered himself a disciple of Christ and accepted in a diluted form the Christian sacraments and Trinity; Sri Ramakrishna was the simple child of Kali, the Divine Mother, though he too, in a different way, acknowledged Christ's divinity. Keshab was a householder holder and took a real interest in the welfare of his children, whereas Sri Ramakrishna was a paramahamsa and completely indifferent to the life of the world. Yet, as their acquaintance ripened into friendship, Sri Ramakrishna and Keshab held each other in great love and respect. Years later, at the news of Keshab's death, the Master felt as if half his body had become paralyzed. Keshab's concepts of the harmony of religions and the Motherhood of God were deepened and enriched by his contact with Sri Ramakrishna.
Sri Ramakrishna, dressed in a red-bordered dhoti, one end of which was carelessly thrown over his left shoulder, came to Jaygopal's garden house accompanied by Hriday. No one took notice of the unostentatious visitor. Finally the Master said to Keshab, "People tell me you have seen God; so I have come to hear from you about God." A magnificent conversation followed. The Master sang a thrilling song about Kali and forthwith went into samadhi. When Hriday uttered the sacred "Om" in his ears, he gradually came back to consciousness of the world, his face still radiating a divine brilliance. Keshab and his followers were amazed. The contrast between Sri Ramakrishna and the Brahmo devotees was very interesting. There sat this small man, thin and extremely delicate. His eyes were illumined with an inner light. Good humour gleamed in his eyes and lurked in the corners of his mouth. His speech was Bengali of a homely kind with a slight, delightful stammer, and his words held men enthralled by their wealth of spiritual experience, their inexhaustible store of simile and metaphor, their power of observation, their bright and subtle humour, their wonderful catholicity, their ceaseless flow of wisdom. And around him now were the sophisticated men of Bengal, the best products of Western education, with Keshab, the idol of young Bengal, as their leader.
--
Contact with the Brahmos increased Sri Ramakrishna's longing to encounter aspirants who would be able to follow his teachings in their purest form. "There was no limit", he once declared, "to the longing I felt at that time. During the day-time I somehow managed to control it. The secular talk of the worldly-minded was galling to me, and I would look wistfully to the day when my own beloved companions would come. I hoped to find solace in conversing with them and relating to them my own realizations. Every little incident would remind me of them, and thoughts of them wholly engrossed me. I was already arranging in my mind what I should say to one and give to another, and so on. But when the day would come to a close I would not be able to curb my feelings. The thought that another day had gone by, and they had not come, oppressed me. When, during the evening service, the temples rang with the sound of bells and conch-shells, I would climb to the roof of the kuthi in the garden and, writhing in anguish of heart, cry at the top of my voice: 'Come, my children! Oh, where are you? I cannot bear to live without you.' A mother never longed so intensely for the sight of her child, nor a friend for his companions, nor a lover for his sweetheart, as I longed for them. Oh, it was indescribable! Shortly after this period of yearning the devotees1 began to come."
In the year 1879 occasional writings about Sri Ramakrishna by the Brahmos, in the Brahmo magazines, began to attract his future disciples from the educated middle-class Bengalis, and they continued to come till 1884. But others, too, came, feeling the subtle power of his attraction. They were an ever shifting crowd of people of all castes and creeds: Hindus and Brahmos, Vaishnavas and Saktas, the educated with university degrees and the illiterate, old and young, maharajas and beggars, journalists and artists, pundits and devotees, philosophers and the worldly-minded, jnanis and yogis, men of action and men of faith, virtuous women and prostitutes, office-holders and vagabonds, philanthropists and self-seekers, dramatists and drunkards, builders-up and pullers-down. He gave to them all, without stint, from his illimitable store of realization. No one went away empty-handed. He taught them the lofty .knowledge of the Vedanta and the soul
--
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.
--
But it was in the company of his younger devotees, pure souls yet unstained by the touch of worldliness, that Sri Ramakrishna took greatest joy. Among the young men who later embraced the householder's life were Narayan, Paitu, the younger Naren, Tejchandra, and Purna. These visited the Master sometimes against strong opposition from home.
--- PURNA
--
Baburam Ghosh came to Dakshineswar accompanied by Rakhal, his classmate. The Master, as was often his custom, examined the boy's physiognomy and was satisfied about his latent spirituality. At the age of eight Baburam had thought of leading a life of renunciation, in the company of a monk, in a hut shut out from the public view by a thick wall of trees. The very sight of the Panchavati awakened in his heart that dream of boyhood. Baburam was tender in body and soul. The Master used to say that he was pure to his very bones. One day Hazra in his usual mischievous fashion advised Baburam and some of the other young boys to ask Sri Ramakrishna for some spiritual powers and not waste their life in mere gaiety and merriment. The Master, scenting mischief, called Baburam to his side and said: "What can you ask of me? Isn't everything that I have already yours? Yes, everything I have earned in the shape of realizations is for the sake of you all. So get rid of the idea of begging, which alienates by creating a distance. Rather realize your kinship with me and gain the key to all the treasures.
--- NIRANJAN
--
Hariprasanna, a college student, visited the Master in the company of his friends Sashi and Sarat. Sri Ramakrishna showed him great favour by initiating him into spiritual life. As long as he lived, Hariprasanna remembered and observed the following drastic advice of the Master: "Even if a woman is pure as gold and rolls on the ground for love of God, it is dangerous for a monk ever to look at her."
--- KALI
--
Two more young men, Sarada Prasanna and Tulasi, complete the small band of the Master's disciples later to embrace the life of the wandering monk. With the exception of the elder Gopal, all of them were in their teens or slightly over. They came from middle-class Bengali families, and most of them were students in school or college. Their parents and relatives had envisaged for them bright worldly careers. They came to Sri Ramakrishna with pure bodies, vigorous minds, and uncontaminated souls. All were born with unusual spiritual attributes. Sri Ramakrishna accepted them, even at first sight, as his children, relatives, friends, and companions. His magic touch unfolded them. And later each according to his measure reflected the life of the Master, becoming a torch-bearer of his message across land and sea.
--- WOMAN DEVOTEES
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0.00 - The Book of Lies Text, #The Book of Lies, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
"Household Gods" is an attempt to write pure comedy.
"The Bacchae" of Euripides is another.
--
ceiving that I was but a pure Fool, they let me
pass.
--
Therefore the best king would be pure Chance.
It is pure Chance that rules the Universe; therefore,
and only therefore, life is good.
--
to the pure fool, Parsifal, to resolve this problem.
The word Naught-y suggests not only that the problem is sexual, but does not
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0.02 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
said as a pure and sincere offering on the altar of Divine Truth
that can have a real value.
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0.02 - The Three Steps of Nature, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
If the bodily life is what Nature has firmly evolved for us as her base and first instrument, it is our mental life that she is evolving as her immediate next aim and superior instrument. This in her ordinary exaltations is the lofty preoccupying thought in her; this, except in her periods of exhaustion and recoil into a reposeful and recuperating obscurity, is her constant pursuit wherever she can get free from the trammels of her first vital and physical realisations. For here in man we have a distinction which is of the utmost importance. He has in him not a single mentality, but a double and a triple, the mind material and nervous, the pure intellectual mind which liberates itself from the illusions of the body and the senses, and a divine mind above intellect which in its turn liberates itself from the imperfect modes of the logically discriminative and imaginative reason. Mind in man is first emmeshed in the life of the body, where in the plant it is entirely involved and in animals always imprisoned. It accepts this life as not only the first but the whole condition of its activities and serves its needs as if they were the entire aim of existence. But the bodily life in man is a base, not the aim, his first condition and not his last determinant. In the just idea of the ancients man is essentially the thinker, the Manu, the mental being who leads the life and the body,3 not the animal who is led by them. The true human existence, therefore, only begins when the intellectual mentality emerges out of the material and we begin more and more to live in the mind independent of the nervous and physical obsession and in the measure of that liberty are able to accept rightly and rightly to use the life of the body. For freedom and not a skilful subjection is the true means of mastery. A free, not a compulsory acceptance of the conditions, the enlarged and sublimated conditions of our physical being, is the high human ideal. But beyond this intellectual mentality is the divine.
The mental life thus evolving in man is not, indeed, a
--
The only approximate terms in the English language have other associations and their use may lead to many and even serious inaccuracies. The terminology of Yoga recognises besides the status of our physical and vital being, termed the gross body and doubly composed of the food sheath and the vital vehicle, besides the status of our mental being, termed the subtle body and singly composed of the mind sheath or mental vehicle,5 a third, supreme and divine status of supra-mental being, termed the causal body and composed of a fourth and a fifth vehicle6 which are described as those of knowledge and bliss. But this knowledge is not a systematised result of mental questionings and reasonings, not a temporary arrangement of conclusions and opinions in the terms of the highest probability, but rather a pure self-existent and self-luminous Truth. And this bliss is not a supreme pleasure of the heart and sensations with the experience of pain and sorrow as its background, but a delight also selfexistent and independent of objects and particular experiences, a self-delight which is the very nature, the very stuff, as it were, of a transcendent and infinite existence.
antah.karan.a.
--
Do such psychological conceptions correspond to anything real and possible? All Yoga asserts them as its ultimate experience and supreme aim. They form the governing principles of our highest possible state of consciousness, our widest possible range of existence. There is, we say, a harmony of supreme faculties, corresponding roughly to the psychological faculties of revelation, inspiration and intuition, yet acting not in the intuitive reason or the divine mind, but on a still higher plane, which see Truth directly face to face, or rather live in the truth of things both universal and transcendent and are its formulation and luminous activity. And these faculties are the light of a conscious existence superseding the egoistic and itself both cosmic and transcendent, the nature of which is Bliss. These are obviously divine and, as man is at present apparently constituted, superhuman states of consciousness and activity. A trinity of transcendent existence, self-awareness and self-delight7 is, indeed, the metaphysical description of the supreme Atman, the self-formulation, to our awakened knowledge, of the Unknowable whether conceived as a pure Impersonality or as a cosmic Personality manifesting the universe. But in Yoga they are regarded also in their psychological aspects as states of subjective existence to which our waking consciousness is now alien, but which dwell in us in a superconscious plane and to which, therefore, we may always ascend.
For, as is indicated by the name, causal body (karan.a), as opposed to the two others which are instruments (karan.a), this crowning manifestation is also the source and effective power of all that in the actual evolution has preceded it. Our mental activities are, indeed, a derivation, selection and, so long as they are divided from the truth that is secretly their source, a deformation of the divine knowledge. Our sensations and emotions have the same relation to the Bliss, our vital forces and actions to the aspect of Will or Force assumed by the divine consciousness, our physical being to the pure essence of that Bliss and
Consciousness. The evolution which we observe and of which
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0.03 - Letters to My little smile, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
could also feel the pure and simple joy of the music for its own
sake, and that when you are near me, you also feel the simple
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0.03 - The Threefold Life, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The characteristic energy of pure Mind is change, and the more our mentality acquires elevation and organisation, the more this law of Mind assumes the aspect of a continual enlargement, improvement and better arrangement of its gains and so of a continual passage from a smaller and simpler to a larger and more complex perfection. For Mind, unlike bodily life, is infinite in its field, elastic in its expansion, easily variable in its formations. Change, then, self-enlargement and selfimprovement are its proper instincts. Mind too moves in cycles, but these are ever-enlarging spirals. Its faith is perfectibility, its watchword is progress.
The characteristic law of Spirit is self-existent perfection and immutable infinity. It possesses always and in its own right the immortality which is the aim of Life and the perfection which is the goal of Mind. The attainment of the eternal and the realisation of that which is the same in all things and beyond all things, equally blissful in universe and outside it, untouched by the imperfections and limitations of the forms and activities in which it dwells, are the glory of the spiritual life.
--
The mental life concentrates on the aesthetic, the ethical and the intellectual activities. Essential mentality is idealistic and a seeker after perfection. The subtle self, the brilliant Atman,1 is ever a dreamer. A dream of perfect beauty, perfect conduct, perfect Truth, whether seeking new forms of the Eternal or revitalising the old, is the very soul of pure mentality. But it knows not how to deal with the resistance of Matter. There it is hampered and inefficient, works by bungling experiments and has either to withdraw from the struggle or submit to the grey actuality. Or else, by studying the material life and accepting the conditions of the contest, it may succeed, but only in imposing temporarily some artificial system which infinite Nature either rends and casts aside or disfigures out of recognition or by withdrawing her assent leaves as the corpse of a dead ideal. Few and far between have been those realisations of the dreamer in Man which the world has gladly accepted, looks back to with a fond memory and seeks, in its elements, to cherish.
1 Who dwells in Dream, the inly conscious, the enjoyer of abstractions, the Brilliant.
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0.04 - The Systems of Yoga, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Yet it is always through something which she has formed in her evolution that Nature thus overpasses her evolution. It is the individual heart that by sublimating its highest and purest emotions attains to the transcendent Bliss or the ineffable Nirvana, the individual mind that by converting its ordinary functionings into a knowledge beyond mentality knows its oneness with the
Ineffable and merges its separate existence in that transcendent unity. And always it is the individual, the Self conditioned in its experience by Nature and working through her formations, that attains to the Self unconditioned, free and transcendent.
--
Purusha who is the true lord of the mental kingdom, a pure, glad, clear state of mind and heart is established.
This is the first step only. Afterwards, the ordinary activities of the mind and sense must be entirely quieted in order that the soul may be free to ascend to higher states of consciousness and acquire the foundation for a perfect freedom and self-mastery.
--
By Samadhi, in which the mind acquires the capacity of withdrawing from its limited waking activities into freer and higher states of consciousness, Rajayoga serves a double purpose. It compasses a pure mental action liberated from the confusions of the outer consciousness and passes thence to the higher supra-mental planes on which the individual soul enters into its true spiritual existence. But also it acquires the capacity of that free and concentrated energising of consciousness on
The Systems of Yoga
--
Maya, the phenomenal consciousness. So it is able to arrive at its right identification with the pure and unique Self which is not mutable or perishable, not determinable by any phenomenon or combination of phenomena. From this point the path, as ordinarily followed, leads to the rejection of the phenomenal worlds from the consciousness as an illusion and the final immergence without return of the individual soul in the Supreme.
But this exclusive consummation is not the sole or inevitable result of the Path of Knowledge. For, followed more largely and with a less individual aim, the method of Knowledge may lead to an active conquest of the cosmic existence for the Divine no less than to a transcendence. The point of this departure is the realisation of the supreme Self not only in one's own being but in all beings and, finally, the realisation of even the phenomenal aspects of the world as a play of the divine consciousness and not something entirely alien to its true nature. And on the basis of this realisation a yet further enlargement is possible, the conversion of all forms of knowledge, however mundane, into activities of the divine consciousness utilisable for the perception of the one and unique Object of knowledge both in itself and through the play of its forms and symbols. Such a method might well lead to the elevation of the whole range of human intellect
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0.05 - The Synthesis of the Systems, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
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
The Conditions of the Synthesis
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0.06 - Letters to a Young Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
and me and hide me from your sight. It is in the pure light of
certitude that you can become conscious of my presence.
--
Indeed, nothing brings more happiness than a pure and disinterested love.
The true divine love is above all quarrels. It is the experience of
--
My darling Mamma, I want to lead a pure life and I shall
do all I can to progress towards the divine life.
--
A pure being is always pure, in all circumstances.
You will admit that one can't live with others without
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0.07 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Let pure love be your way.
Be always true to your love and all difficulties will be conquered.
--
said, "Let divine love be your goal. Let pure love be your
way. Be always true to your love and all difficulties will
--
thing as a state of pure love and, if so, how would it be
related to a state of higher knowledge?
The higher Consciousness is a state of pure love but it is also a
state of pure openness to divine knowledge. There is no opposition there between these two kindred things; it is the mind that
makes them separate.
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0.08 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
through the exclusive pursuit of the pure and absolute Truth.
The yoga of devotion is the path that leads to union with
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01.01 - A Yoga of the Art of Life, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
From a certain point of view, from the point of view of essentials and inner realities, it would appear that spirituality is, at least, the basis of the arts, if not the highest art. If art is meant to express the soul of things, and since the true soul of things is the divine element in them, then certainly spirituality, the discipline of coming in conscious contact with the Spirit, the Divine, must be accorded the regal seat in the hierarchy of the arts. Also, spirituality is the greatest and the most difficult of the arts; for it is the art of life. To make of life a perfect work of beauty, pure in its lines, faultless in its rhythm, replete with strength, iridescent: with light, vibrant with delightan embodiment of the Divine, in a wordis the highest ideal of spirituality; viewed the spirituality that Sri Aurobindo practisesis the ne plus ultra of artistic creation
The Gita, II. 40
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01.01 - The New Humanity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This mastery will be effected not merely in will, but in mind and heart also. For the New Man will know not by the intellect which is egocentric and therefore limited, not by ratiocination which is an indirect and doubtful process, but by direct vision, an inner communion, a soul revelation. The new knowledge will be vast and profound and creative, based as it will be upon the reality of things and not upon their shadows. Truth will shine through every experience and every utterance"a truth shall have its seat on our speech and mind and hearing", so have the Vedas said. The mind and intellect will not be active and constructive agents but the luminous channel of a self-luminous knowledge. And the heart too which is now the field of passion and egoism will be cleared of its noise and obscurity; a serener sky will shed its pure warmth and translucent glow. The knot will be rent asunderbhidyate hridaya granthih and the vast and mighty streams of another ocean will flow through. We will love not merely those to whom we are akin but God's creatures, one and all; we will love not with the yearning and hunger of a mortal but with the wide and intense Rasa that lies in the divine identity of souls.
And the new society will be based not upon competition, nor even upon co-operation. It will not be an open conflict, neither will it be a convenient compromise of rival individual interests. It will be the organic expression of the collective soul of humanity, working and achieving through each and every individual soul its most wide-winging freedom, manifesting the godhead that is, proper to each and every one. It will be an organisation, most delicate and subtle and supple, the members of which will have no need to live upon one another but in and through one another. It will be, if you like, a henotheistic hierarchy in which everyone will be the greatest, since everyone is all and all everyone simultaneously.
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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.
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01.02 - Natures Own Yoga, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This has been the highest consummation, the supreme goal which the purest spiritual experience and the deepest aspiration of the human consciousness generally sought to attain. But in this view, the world or creation or Nature came in the end to be looked upon as fundamentally a product of Ignorance: ignorance and suffering and incapacity and death were declared to be the very hallmark of things terrestrial. The Light that dwells above and beyond can be made to shed for a while some kind of lustre upon the mortal darkness but never altogether to remove or change itto live in the full light, to be in and of the Light means to pass beyond. Not that there have not been other strands and types of spiritual experiences and aspirations, but the one we are considering has always struck the major chord and dominated and drowned all the rest.
But the initial illusory consciousness of the Overmind need not at all lead to the static Brahmic consciousness or Sunyam alone. As a matter of fact, there is in this particular processes of consciousness a hiatus between the two, between Maya and Brahman, as though one has to leap from the one into the other somehow. This hiatus is filled up in Sri Aurobindo's Yoga by the principle of Supermind, not synthetic-analytic2 in knowledge like Overmind and the highest mental intelligence, but inescapably unitarian even in the utmost diversity. Supermind is the Truth-consciousness at once static and dynamic, self-existent and creative: in Supermind the Brahmic consciousness Sachchidanandais ever self-aware and ever manifested and embodied in fundamental truth-powers and truth-forms for the play of creation; it is the plane where the One breaks out into the Many and the Many still remain one, being and knowing themselves to be but various self-expressions of the One; it develops the spiritual archetypes, the divine names and forms of all individualisations of an evolving existence.
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01.02 - Sri Aurobindo - Ahana and Other Poems, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
And what an amount of tenderness he has poured into his little poem on childhood, a perfect piece of chiselled crystal, pure and translucent and gleaming with the clear lines of a summer sky:
O thou golden image,
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01.03 - Mystic Poetry, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It is not merely by addressing the beloved as your goddess that you can attain this mysticism; the Elizabethan did that in merry abundance,ad nauseam.A finer temper, a more delicate touch, a more subtle sensitiveness and a kind of artistic wizardry are necessary to tune the body into a rhythm of the spirit. The other line of mysticism is common enough, viz., to express the spirit in terms and rhythms of the flesh. Tagore did that liberally, the Vaishnava poets did nothing but that, the Song of Solomon is an exquisite example of that procedure. There is here, however, a difference in degrees which is an interesting feature worth noting. Thus in Tagore the reference to the spirit is evident, that is the major or central chord; the earthly and the sensuous are meant as the name and form, as the body to render concrete, living and vibrant, near and intimate what otherwise would perhaps be vague and abstract, afar, aloof. But this mundane or human appearance has a value in so far as it is a support, a pointer or symbol of the spiritual import. And the mysticism lies precisely in the play of the two, a hide-and-seek between them. On the other hand, as I said, the greater portion of Vaishnava poetry, like a precious and beautiful casket, no doubt, hides the spiritual import: not the pure significance but the sign and symbol are luxuriously elaborated, they are placed in the foreground in all magnificence: as if it was their very purpose to conceal the real meaning. When the Vaishnava poet says,
O love, what more shall I, shall Radha speak,
--
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 is what I was trying to make out as the distinguishing trait of the real spiritual consciousness that seems to be developing in the poetic creation of tomorrow, e.g., it has the same rationality, clarity, concreteness of perception as the scientific spirit has in its own domain and still it is rounded off with a halo of magic and miracle. That is the nature of the logic of the infinite proper to the spiritual consciousness. We can have a Science of the Spirit as well as a Science of Matter. This is the Thought element or what corresponds to it, of which I was speaking, the philosophical factor, that which gives form to the formless or definition to that which is vague, a nearness and familiarity to that which is far and alien. The fullness of the spiritual consciousness means such a thing, the presentation of a divine name and form. And this distinguishes it from the mystic consciousness which is not the supreme solar consciousness but the nearest approach to it. Or, perhaps, the mystic dwells in the domain of the Divine, he may even be suffused with a sense of unity but would not like to acquire the Divine's nature and function. Normally and generally he embodies all the aspiration and yearning moved by intimations and suggestions belonging to the human mentality, the divine urge retaining still the human flavour. We can say also, using a Vedantic terminology, that the mystic consciousness gives us the tatastha lakshana, the nearest approximative attribute of the attri buteless; or otherwise, it is the hiranyagarbha consciousness which englobes the multiple play, the coruscated possibilities of the Reality: while the spiritual proper may be considered as prajghana, the solid mass, the essential lineaments of revelatory knowledge, the typal "wave-particles" of the Reality. In the former there is a play of imagination, even of fancy, a decorative aesthesis, while in the latter it is vision pure and simple. If the spiritual poetry is solar in its nature, we can say, by extending the analogy, that mystic poetry is characteristically lunarMoon representing the delight and the magic that Mind and mental imagination, suffused, no doubt, with a light or a reflection of some light from beyond, is capable of (the Upanishad speaks of the Moon being born of the Mind).
To sum up and recapitulate. The evolution of the poetic expression in man has ever been an attempt at a return and a progressive approach to the spiritual source of poetic inspiration, which was also the original, though somewhat veiled, source from the very beginning. The movement has followed devious waysstrongly negative at timeseven like man's life and consciousness in general of which it is an organic member; but the ultimate end and drift seems to have been always that ideal and principle even when fallen on evil days and evil tongues. The poet's ideal in the dawn of the world was, as the Vedic Rishi sang, to raise things of beauty in heaven by his poetic power,kavi kavitv divi rpam sajat. Even a Satanic poet, the inaugurator, in a way, of modernism and modernistic consciousness, Charles Baudelaire, thus admonishes his spirit:
"Flyaway, far from these morbid miasmas, go and purify yourself in the higher air and drink, like a pure and divine liquor, the clear fire that fills the limpid spaces."18
That angelic poets should be inspired by the same ideal is, of course, quite natural: for they sing:
--
This is religious poetry, pure and simple, expressing man's earliest and most elementary feeling, marked by a broad candour, a rather shallow monotone. But that feeling is raised to a pitch of fervour and scintillating sensibility in Vaughan's
They are all gone into the world of light
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Mallarme: "Les Fleurs". "Vermilion like the pure toe of the seraph Reddened by the blush of dawns it trampled through."
"Quite broken they are, yet they have eyes that pierce like a drill, shine like those holes in which the water sleeps at night: they have the divine eyes of a little girl."Baudelaire, "Les petites vieilles"
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Envole-toi bien loin de ces miasmes morbides; Va te purifier dans l'air suprieur, Et bois, comme tine pure et divine liqueur, Le feu clair qui remplit les espaces Iimpides. "Elvation" Spleen et Idal.
Keats: "Ode on the Poets".
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01.03 - The Yoga of the King - The Yoga of the Souls Release, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
A pure perception lent its lucent joy:
Its intimate vision waited not to think;
--
And bathed in wells of pure spiritual light;
It wandered in wide fields of wisdom-self
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01.04 - The Poetry in the Making, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Still, it must be noted that Coleridge is a rare example, for the recording apparatus is not usually so faithful but puts up its own formations that disturb and alter the perfection of the original. The passivity or neutrality of the intermediary is relative, and there are infinite grades of it. Even when the larger waves that play in it in the normal waking state are quieted down, smaller ripples of unconscious or half-conscious habitual formations are thrown up and they are sufficient to cause the scattering and dispersal of the pure light from above.
The absolute passivity is attainable, perhaps, only by the Yogi. And in this sense the supreme poet is a Yogi, for in his consciousness the higher, deeper, subtler or other modes of experiences pass through and are recorded with the minimum aberration or diffraction.
--
The consciously purposive activity of the poetic consciousness in fact, of all artistic consciousness has shown itself with a clear and unambiguous emphasis in two directions. First of all with regard to the subject-matter: the old-world poets took things as they were, as they were obvious to the eye, things of human nature and things of physical Nature, and without questioning dealt with them in the beauty of their normal form and function. The modern mentality has turned away from the normal and the obvious: it does not accept and admit the "given" as the final and definitive norm of things. It wishes to discover and establish other norms, it strives to bring about changes in the nature and condition of things, envisage the shape of things to come, work for a brave new world. The poet of today, in spite of all his effort to remain a pure poet, in spite of Housman's advocacy of nonsense and not-sense being the essence of true Art, is almost invariably at heart an incorrigible prophet. In revolt against the old and established order of truths and customs, against all that is normally considered as beautiful,ideals and emotions and activities of man or aspects and scenes and movements of Natureagainst God or spiritual life, the modern poet turns deliberately to the ugly and the macabre, the meaningless, the insignificant and the triflingtins and teas, bone and dust and dustbin, hammer and sicklehe is still a prophet, a violent one, an iconoclast, but one who has his own icon, a terribly jealous being, that seeks to pull down the past, erase it, to break and batter and knead the elements in order to fashion out of them something conforming to his heart's desire. There is also the class who have the vision and found the truth and its solace, who are prophets, angelic and divine, messengers and harbingers of a new beauty that is to dawn upon earth. And yet there are others in whom the two strains mingle or approach in a strange way. All this means that the artist is far from being a mere receiver, a mechanical executor, a passive unconscious instrument, but that he is supremely' conscious and master of his faculties and implements. This fact is doubly reinforced when we find how much he is preoccupied with the technical aspect of his craft. The richness and variety of patterns that can be given to the poetic form know no bounds today. A few major rhythms were sufficient for the ancients to give full expression to their poetic inflatus. For they cared more for some major virtues, the basic and fundamental qualitiessuch as truth, sublimity, nobility, forcefulness, purity, simplicity, clarity, straightforwardness; they were more preoccupied with what they had to say and they wanted, no doubt, to say it beautifully and powerfully; but the modus operandi was not such a passion or obsession with them, it had not attained that almost absolute value for itself which modern craftsmanship gives it. As technology in practical life has become a thing of overwhelming importance to man today, become, in the Shakespearean phrase, his "be-all and end-all", even so the same spirit has invaded and pervaded his aesthetics too. The subtleties, variations and refinements, the revolutions, reversals and inventions which the modern poet has ushered and takes delight in, for their own sake, I repeat, for their intrinsic interest, not for the sake of the subject which they have to embody and clothe, have never been dream by Aristotle, the supreme legislator among the ancients, nor by Horace, the almost incomparable craftsman among the ancients in the domain of poetry. Man has become, to be sure, a self-conscious creator to the pith of his bone.
Such a stage in human evolution, the advent of Homo Faber, has been a necessity; it has to serve a purpose and it has done admirably its work. Only we have to put it in its proper place. The salvation of an extremely self-conscious age lies in an exceeding and not in a further enhancement or an exclusive concentration of the self-consciousness, nor, of course, in a falling back into the original unconsciousness. It is this shift in the poise of consciousness that has been presaged and prepared by the conscious, the scientific artists of today. Their task is to forge an instrument for a type of poetic or artistic creation completely new, unfamiliar, almost revolutionary which the older mould would find it impossible to render adequately. The yearning of the human consciousness was not to rest satisfied with the familiar and the ordinary, the pressure was for the discovery of other strands, secret stores of truth and reality and beauty. The first discovery was that of the great Unconscious, the dark and mysterious and all-powerful subconscient. Many of our poets and artists have been influenced by this power, some even sought to enter into that region and become its denizens. But artistic inspiration is an emanation of Light; whatever may be the field of its play, it can have its origin only in the higher spheres, if it is to be truly beautiful and not merely curious and scientific.
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01.04 - The Secret Knowledge, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The pure perfection her marred nature needs,
A breath of Godhead on her stone and mire.
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Mute, pure, they share not in the evil done;
Else might their strength be marred and could not save.
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His pure transcendent force submits to hers.
In the mystery of her cosmic ignorance,
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01.05 - Rabindranath Tagore: A Great Poet, a Great Man, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The spirit of the age demands this new gospel. Mankind needs and awaits a fresh revelation. The world and life are not an illusion or a lesser reality: they are, if taken rightly, as real as the pure Spirit itself. Indeed, Spirit and Flesh, Consciousness and Matter are not antinomies; to consider them as such is itself an illusion. In fact, they are only two poles or modes or aspects of the same reality. To separate or divide them is a one-sided concentration or abstraction on the part of the human mind. The fulfilment of the Spirit is in its expression through Matter; human life too reaches its highest term, its summum bonum, in embodying the spiritual consciousness here on earth and not dissolving itself in the Transcendence. That is the new Dispensation which answers to the deepest aspiration in man and towards which he has been travelling through the ages in the course of the evolution of his consciousness. Many, however, are the prophets and sages who have set this ideal before humanity and more and more insistently and clearly as we come nearer to the age we live in. But none or very few have expressed it with such beauty and charm and compelling persuasion. It would be carping criticism to point out-as some, purists one may call them, have done-that in poetising and aesthetising the spiritual truth and reality, in trying to make it human and terrestrial, he has diminished and diluted the original substance, in endeavouring to render the diamond iridescent, he has turned it into a baser alloy. Tagore's is a poetic soul, it must be admitted; and it is not necessary that one should find in his ideas and experiences and utterances the cent per cent accuracy and inevitability of a Yogic consciousness. Still his major perceptions, those that count, stand and are borne out by the highest spiritual realisation.
Tagore is no inventor or innovator when he posits Spirit as Beauty, the spiritual consciousness as the ardent rhythm of ecstasy. This experience is the very core of Vaishnavism and for which Tagore is sometimes called a Neo-Vaishnava. The Vaishnava sees the world pulsating in glamorous beauty as the Lila (Play) of the Lord, and the Lord, God himself, is nothing but Love and Beauty. Still Tagore is not all Vaishnava or merely a Vaishnava; he is in addition a modern (the carping voice will say, there comes the dilution and adulteration)in the sense that problems exist for himsocial, political, economic, national, humanitarianwhich have to be faced and solved: these are not merely mundane, but woven into the texture of the fundamental problem of human destiny, of Soul and Spirit and God. A Vaishnava was, in spite of his acceptance of the world, an introvert, to use a modern psychological phrase, not necessarily in the pejorative sense, but in the neutral scientific sense. He looks upon the universe' and human life as the play of the Lord, as an actuality and not mere illusion indeed; but he does not participate or even take interest in the dynamic working out of the world process, he does not care to know, has no need of knowing that there is a terrestrial purpose and a diviner fulfilment of the mortal life upon earth. The Vaishnava dwells more or less absorbed in the Vaikuntha of his inner consciousness; the outer world, although real, is only a symbolic shadowplay to which he can but be a witness-real, is only a nothing more.
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01.05 - The Yoga of the King - The Yoga of the Spirits Freedom and Greatness, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
As thus it rose, to meet him bare and pure
A strong Descent leaped down. A Might, a Flame,
--
So now his spirit shone out wide, blank, pure:
His wakened mind became an empty slate
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01.06 - On Communism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A commune is a group of individuals having a common self and a common life-intuition. A common self presupposes the realisation by each individual of his deepest being the self which is at once distinct from and instinct with other selves; a common life-intuition presupposes the awakening of each individual to his inmost creative urge, which, pure and true and vast as it is, fulfils itself in and through other creative urges.
A commune, further, is not only a product or final achievement; it is also a process, an instrument to bring about the desired end. A group of individuals come to have a common self and a common life-intuition in and through the commune; and in and through the commune does each individual progress to the realisation of his deepest self and the awakening of his inmost life-intuition.
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01.07 - Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
One is not sure if such reasoning is convincing to the intellect; but perhaps it is a necessary stage in conversion. At least we can conclude that Pascal had to pass through such a stage; and it indicates the difficulty his brain had to undergo, the tension or even the torture he made it pass through. It is true, from Reason Pascal went over to Faith, even while giving Reason its due. Still it seems the two were not perfectly synthetised or fused in him. There was a gap between that was not thoroughly bridged. Pascal did not possess the higher, intuitive, luminous mind that mediates successfully between the physical discursive ratiocinative brain-mind and the vision of faith: it is because deep in his consciousness there lay this chasm. Indeed,Pascal's abyss (l' abme de Pascal) is a well-known legend. Pascal, it appears, used to have very often the vision of an abyss about to open before him and he shuddered at the prospect of falling into it. It seems to us to be an experience of the Infinity the Infinity to which he was so much attracted and of which he wrote so beautifully (L'infiniment grand et l'infiniment petit)but into which he could not evidently jump overboard unreservedly. This produced a dichotomy, a lack of integration of personality, Jung would say. Pascal's brain was cold, firm, almost rigid; his heart was volcanic, the faith he had was a fire: it lacked something of the pure light and burned with a lurid glare.
And the reason is his metaphysics. It is the Jansenist conception of God and human nature that inspired and coloured all his experience and consciousness. According to it, as according to the Calvinist conception, man is a corrupt being, corroded to the core, original sin has branded his very soul. Only Grace saves him and releases him. The order of sin and the order of Grace are distinct and disparate worlds and yet they complement each other and need each other. Greatness and misery are intertwined, united, unified with each other in him. Here is an echo of the Manichean position which also involves an abyss. But even then God's grace is not a free agent, as Jesuits declare; there is a predestination that guides and controls it. This was one of the main subjects he treated in his famous open letters (Les Provinciales) that brought him renown almost overnight. Eternal hell is a possible prospect that faces the Jansenist. That was why a Night always over-shadowed the Day in Pascal's soul.
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01.08 - A Theory of Yoga, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
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.
--
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.
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01.08 - Walter Hilton: The Scale of Perfection, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
From the twentieth century back to the fourteenth is a far cry: a far cry indeed from the modern scientific illumination to mediaeval superstition, from logical positivists and mathematical rationalists to visionary mystics, from Russell and Huxley to Ruysbroeck and Hilton. The mystic lore, the Holy Writ, the mediaeval sage says, echoing almost the very words of the Eastern Masters, "may not be got by study nor through man's travail only, but principally by the grace of the Holy Ghost." As for the men living and moving in the worldly way, there are "so mickle din and crying in their heart and vain thoughts and fleshly desires" that it is impossible for them to listen or understand the still small voice. It is the pure soul touched by the Grace that alone "seeth soothfastness of Holy Writ wonderly shewed and opened, above study and travail and reason of man's kindly (i.e. natural) wit."
What is day to us is night to the mystics and what is day to the mystics is night for us. The first thing the mystic asks is to close precisely those doors and windows which we, on the contrary, feel obliged to keep always open in order to know and to live and move. The Gita says: "The sage is wakeful when it is night for all creatures and when all creatures are wakeful, that is night for the sage." Even so this sage from the West says: "The more I sleep from outward things, the more wakeful am I in knowing of Jhesu and of inward things. I may not wake to Jhesu, but if I sleep to the world."
Close the senses. Turn within. And then go forward, that is to say, more and more inward. In that direction lies your itinerary, the journey of your consciousness. The sense-ridden secular man, who goes by his physical eye, has marked in his own way the steps of his forward march and progress. His knowledge and his power grew as he proceeded in his survey from larger masses of physical objects to their component molecules and from molecules to their component atoms and from atoms once more into electrons and protons or energy-points pure and simple, or otherwise as, in another direction, he extended his gaze from earth to the solar system, from the solar system to other starry systems, to far-off galaxies and I from galaxies to spaces beyond. The record of this double-track march to infinityas perceived or conceived by the physical sensesis marvellous, no doubt. The mystic offers the spectacle of a still more marvellous march to another kind of infinity.
Here is the Augustinian mantra taken as the motto of The Scale of Perfection: We ascend the ascending grades in our heart and we sing the song of ascension1. The journey's end is heavenly Jerusalem, the House of the Lord. The steps of this inner ascension are easily visible, not surely to the outer eye of the sense-burdened man, but to the "ghostly seeing" of the aspirant which is hazy in the beginning but slowly clears as he advances. The first step is the withdrawal from the outer senses and looking and seeing within. "Turn home again in thyself, and hold thee within and beg no more without." The immediate result is a darkness and a restless darknessit is a painful night. The outer objects of attraction and interest have been discarded, but the inner attachments and passions surge there still. If, however, one continues and persists, refuses to be drawn out, the turmoil settles down and the darkness begins to thin and wear away. One must not lose heart, one must have patience and perseverance. So when the outward world is no more-there and its call also no longer awakes any echo in us, then comes the stage of "restful darkness" or "light-some darkness". But it is still the dark Night of the soul. The outer light is gone and the inner light is not yet visible: the night, the desert, the great Nought, stretches between these two lights. But the true seeker goes through and comes out of the tunnel. And there is happiness at the end. "The seeking is travaillous, but the finding is blissful." When one steps out of the Night, enters into the deepest layer of the being, one stands face to face to one's soul, the very image of God, the perfect God-man, the Christ within. That is the third degree of our inner ascension, the entry into the deepest, purest and happiest statein which one becomes what he truly is; one finds the Christ there and dwells in love and union with him. But there is still a further step to take, and that is real ascension. For till now it has been a going within, from the outward to the inner and the inmost; now one has to go upward, transcend. Within the body, in life, however deep you may go, even if you find your soul and your union with Jesus whose tabernacle is your soul, still there is bound to remain a shadow of the sinful prison-house; the perfect bliss and purity without any earthly taint, the completeness and the crowning of the purgation and transfiguration can come only when you go beyond, leaving altogether the earthly form and worldly vesture and soar into Heaven itself and be in the company of the Trinity. "Into myself, and after... above myself by overpassing only into Him." At the same time it is pointed out, this mediaeval mystic has the common sense to see that the going in and going above of which one speaks must not be understood in a literal way, it is a figure of speech. The movement of the mystic is psychological"ghostly", it is saidnot physical or carnal.
This spiritual march or progress can also be described as a growing into the likeness of the Lord. His true self, his own image is implanted within us; he is there in the profoundest depth of our being as Jesus, our beloved and our soul rests in him in utmost bliss. We are aware neither of Jesus nor of his spouse, our soul, because of the obsession of the flesh, the turmoil raised by the senses, the blindness of pride and egoism. All that constitutes the first or old Adam, the image of Nought, the body of death which means at bottom the "false misruled love in to thyself." This self-love is the mother of sin, is sin itself. What it has to be replaced by is charity that is the true meaning of Christian charity, forgetfulness of self. "What is sin but a wanting and a forbearing of God." And the whole task, the discipline consists in "the shaping of Christ in you, the casting of sin through Christ." Who then is Christ, what is he? This knowledge you get as you advance from your sense-bound perception towards the inner and inmost seeing. As your outer nature gets purified, you approach gradually your soul, the scales fall off from your eyes too and you have the knowledge and "ghostly vision." Here too there are three degrees; first, you start with faith the senses can do nothing better than have faith; next, you rise to imagination which gives a sort of indirect touch or inkling of the truth; finally, you have the "understanding", the direct vision. "If he first trow it, he shall afterwards through grace feel it, and finally understand it."
It is never possible for man, weak and bound as he is, to reject the thraldom of his flesh, he can never purify himself wholly by his own unaided strength. God in his infinite mercy sent his own son, an emanation created out of his substancehis embodied loveas a human being to suffer along with men and take upon himself the burden of their sins. God the Son lived upon earth as man and died as man. Sin therefore has no longer its final or definitive hold upon mankind. Man has been made potentially free, pure and worthy of salvation. This is the mystery of Christ, of God the Son. But there is a further mystery. Christ not only lived for all men for all time, whether they know him, recognise him or not; but he still lives, he still chooses his beloved and his beloved chooses him, there is a conscious acceptance on either side. This is the function of the Holy Ghost, the redeeming power of Love active in him who accepts it and who is accepted by it, the dynamic Christ-Consciousness in the true Christian.
Indeed, the kernel of the mystic discipline and its whole bearingconsists in one and only one principle: to love Jhesu. All roads lead to Rome: all preparations, all trials lead to one realisation, love of God, God as a living person close to us, our friend and lover and master. The Christian mystic speaks almost in the terms of the Gita: Rise above your senses, give up your ego-hood, be meek and humble, it is Jesus within you, who embraces your soul: it is he who does everything for you and in you, give yourself up wholly into his hands. He will deliver you.
--
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 im pure 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."
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01.09 - The Parting of the Way, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This passage from the self-conscient to the super-conscient does not imply merely a shifting of the focus of consciousness. The transmutation of consciousness involves a purer illumination, a surer power and a wider compass; it involves also a fundamental change in the very mode of being and living. It gives quite a different life-intuition and a different life-power. The change in the motif brings about a new form altogether, a re-casting and re-shaping and re-energising of the external materials as well. As the lift from mere consciousness to self-consciousness meant all the difference between an animal and a man, so the lift again from self-consciousness to super-consciousness will mean the difference of a whole world between man and the divine creature that is to be.
Indeed it is a divine creature that should be envisaged on the next level of evolution. The mental and the moral, the psychical and the physical transfigurations which must follow the change in the basic substratum do imply such a mutation, the birth of a new species, as it were, fashioned in the nature of the gods. The vision of angels and Siddhas, which man is having ceaselessly since his birth, may be but a prophecy of the future actuality.
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0.10 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
like the Divine whom he adores, and thus his love becomes purer
and purer. To adore the Divine in the one whom one loves has
often been suggested as a solution, but unless one's heart and
thought are very pure, it can lead to deplorable abasements.
It would seem that in your situation, the best solution would
--
creator, a pure artist, a poet par excellence! So I tell myself that my judgments, my appreciations are influenced
by my devotion for the Master - and not everyone is
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atmosphere of the Ashram is not pure enough to be invulnerable
to falsehood.
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same which, in its pure form, constitutes the dynamis
towards transformation."23
--
Those who are pure - that is to say, exclusively under the
Divine influence - have no fear.
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01.10 - Principle and Personality, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It is asked of us why do we preach a man and not purely and solely a principle. Our ideal being avowedly the establishment and reign of a new principle of world-order and not gathering recruits for the camp of a sectarian teacher, it seems all the more inconsistent, if not thoroughly ruinous for our cause, that we should lay stress upon a particular individual and incur the danger of overshadowing the universal truths upon which we seek to build human society. Now, it is not that we are unconscious or oblivious of the many evils attendant upon the system of preaching a man the history of the rise and decay of many sects and societies is there to give us sufficient warning; and yet if we cannot entirely give the go-by to personalities and stick to mere and bare principles, it is because we have clear reasons for it, because we are not unconscious or oblivious either of the evils that beset the system of preaching the principle alone.
Religious bodies that are formed through the bhakti and puja for one man, social reconstructions forced by the will and power of a single individual, have already in the inception this grain of incapacity and disease and death that they are not an integrally self-conscious creation, they are not, as a whole, intelligent and wide awake and therefore constantly responsive to the truths and ideals and realities for which they exist, for which at least, their founder intended them to exist. The light at the apex is the only light and the entire structure is but the shadow of that light; the whole thing has the aspect of a dark mass galvanised into red-hot activity by the passing touch of a dynamo. Immediately however the solitary light fails and the dynamo stops, there is nothing but the original darkness and inertiatoma asit tamasa gudham agre.
--
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.
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01.11 - The Basis of Unity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
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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01.12 - Goethe, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The angels weave the symphony that is creation. They represent the various notes and rhythmsin their higher and purer degrees that make up the grand harmony of the spheres. It is magnificent, this music that moves the cosmos, and wonderful the glory of God manifest therein. But is it absolutely perfect? Is there nowhere any flaw in it? There is a doubting voice that enters a dissenting note. That is Satan, the Antagonist, the Evil One. Man is the weakest link in the chain of the apparently all-perfect harmony. And Satan boldly proposes to snap it if God only let him do so. He can prove to God that the true nature of his creation is not cosmos but chaos not a harmony in peace and light, but a confusion, a Walpurgis Night. God acquiesces in the play of this apparent breach and proves in the end that it is part of a wider scheme, a vaster harmony. Evil is rounded off by Grace.
The total eradication of Evil from the world and human nature and the remoulding of a terrestrial life in the substance and pattern of the Highest Good that is beyond all dualities is a conception which it was not for Goe the to envisage. In the order of reality or existence, first there is the consciousness of division, of trenchant separation in which Good is equated with not-evil and evil with not-good. This is the outlook of individualised consciousness. Next, as the consciousness grows and envelops the whole existence, good and evil are both embraced and are found to form a secret and magic harmony. That is the universal or cosmic consciousness. And Goethe's genius seems to be an outflowering of something of this status of consciousness. But there is still a higher status, the status of transcendence in which evil is not simply embraced but dissolved and even transmuted into a supreme reality of which it is an aberration, a reflection or projection, a lower formulation. That is the mystery of a spiritual realisation to which Goe the aspired perhaps, but had not the necessary initiation to enter into.
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01.14 - Nicholas Roerich, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A Russian artist (Monsieur Benois) has stressed upon the primitivealmost aboriginalelement in Roerich and was not happy over it. Well, as has been pointed out by other prophets and thinkers, man today happens to be so sophisticated, artificial, material, cerebral that a [all-back seems to be necessary for him to take a new leap forward on to a higher ground. The pure aesthete is a closed system, with a consciousness immured in an ivory tower; but man is something more. A curious paradox. Man can reach the highest, realise the integral truth when he takes his leap, not from the relatively higher levels of his consciousness his intellectual and aesthetic and even moral status but when he can do so from his lower levels, when the physico-vital element in him serves as the springing-board. The decent and the beautiful the classic grace and aristocracyform one aspect of man, the aspect of "light"; but the aspect of energy and power lies precisely in him where the aboriginal and the barbarian find also a lodging. Man as a mental being is naturally sattwic, but prone to passivity and weakness; his physico-vital reactions, on the other hand, are obscure and crude, simple and vehement, but they have life and energy and creative power, they are there to be trained and transfigured, made effective instruments of a higher illumination.
All elemental personalities have something of the unconventional and irrational in them. And Roerich is one such in his own way. The truths and realities that he envisages and seeks to realise on earth are elemental and fundamental, although apparently simple and commonplace.
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0.11 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
with pure Being it is quite unconscious. Very few persons are
conscious of this relation. It is usually the result of Yoga.
--
Only the pure in soul can walk in light."7
What a joy it would be to possess the required purity!
--
"Not only is there hope for godheads pure;
The violent and darkened deities
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0.12 - Letters to a Student, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Love of Nature is usually the sign of a pure and healthy being uncorrupted by modern civilisation. It is in the silence of a
peaceful mind that one can best commune with Nature.
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0 1956-05-02, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Quite simply, the habit of a purely superficial way of seeing.
Sweet Mother, what should be our attitude towards this New Consciousness?
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0 1958-01-22, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
The diamond light of Bliss has the power to melt all hostile forces. Nothing can resist it. No consciousness, no being, no hostile will can draw near it without immediately being dissolved, for it is the Divine light in its pure creative power.
***
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0 1958-07-02, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
In The Synthesis of Yoga, Sri Aurobindo says that this idea of good and bad, of pure and im pure, is a notion needed for action; but the purists, such as Chaitanya, Ramakrishna and others, do not agree. They do not agree that it is indispensable for action. They simply say: your acceptance of action as a necessary thing is contrary to your perception of the Divine in all things.
How can the two be reconciled?
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0 1958-10-04, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Before, I always had the negative experience of the disappearance of the ego, of the oneness of Creation, where everything implying separation disappearedan experience that, personally, I would call negative. Last Wednesday, while I was speaking (and thats why at the end I could no longer find my words), I seemed suddenly to have left this negative phenomenon and entered into the positive experience: the experience of BEING the Supreme Lord, the experience that nothing exists but the Supreme Lordall is the Supreme Lord, there is nothing else. And at that moment, the feeling of this infinite power that has no limit, that nothing can limit, was so overwhelming that all the functions of the body, of this mental machine that summons up words, all this was I could no longer speak French. Perhaps the words could have come to me in Englishprobably, because it was easier for Sri Aurobindo to express himself in English, and thats how it must have happened: it was the part embodied in Sri Aurobindo (the part of the Supreme that was embodied in Sri Aurobindo for its manifestation) that had the experience. This is what joined back with the Origin and caused the experience I was well aware of it. And that is probably why its transcription through English words would have been easier than through French words (for at these moments, such activities are purely mechanical, rather like automatic machines). And naturally the experience left something behind. It left the sense of a power that can no longer be qualified,5 really. And it was there yesterday evening.
The difficultyits not even a difficulty, its just a kind of precaution that is taken (automatically, in fact) in order to For example, the volume of Force that was to be expressed in the voice was too great for the speech organ. So I had to be a little attentive that is, there had to be a kind of filtering in the outermost expression, otherwise the voice would have cracked. But this isnt done through the will and reason, its automatic. Yet I feel that the capacity of Matter to contain and express is increasing with phenomenal speed. But its progressive, it cant be done instantly. There have often been people whose outer form broke because the Force was too strong; well, I clearly see that it is being dosed out. After all, this is exclusively the concern of the Supreme Lord, I dont bother about itits not my concern and I dont bother about itHe makes the necessary adjustments. Thus it comes progressively, little by little, so that no fundamental disequilibrium occurs. It gives the impression that ones head is swelling so tremendously it will burst! But then if there is a moment of stillness, it adapts; gradually, it adapts.
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0 1958-11-11, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
This vision of the Inconscient (Mother remains gazing for a moment) it was the MENTAL Inconscient. Because the starting point was mental. A special Inconscientrigid, hard, resistantwith all that the mind has brought into our consciousness. But it was far worse, far worse than a purely material Inconscient! A mentalized Inconscient, as it were. All this rigidity, this hardness, this narrowness, this fixitya FIXITYcomes from the presence of the mind in creation. When the mind was not manifested, the Inconscient was not like that! It was formless and had the plasticity of something that is formless the plasticity has gone.
It is a terrible image of the Minds action in the Inconscient.
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0 1958-11-15, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
It can be expressed in this way (but its quite approximate, more than diminished or deformed): its as if our entire spiritual life were made of silver, whereas the supramental life is made of goldas if our entire spiritual life here were a vibration of silver, not gold but simply a light, a light that goes right to the summit, an absolutely pure light, pure and intense; but in the other, in the supramental world, there is a richness and a power that make all the difference. This whole spiritual life of the psychic being and of all our present consciousness that appears so warm, so full, so wonderful, so luminous to the ordinary consciousness, well, all this splendor seems poor in comparison to the splendor of the new world.
I can explain the phenomenon like this: successive reversals such that an EVER NEW richness of creation will take place from stage to stage, making whatever came before seem so poor in comparison. What to us seems supremely rich compared to our ordinary life, appears so poor compared to this new reversal of consciousness. Such was my experience.
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0 1958-11-22, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I dont know. Thats not how I see it, in any case To live in the forest physically, an intense physical life where one is free, where one is pure, where one is far away Above all, to stop this thing from grinding on, finished with the head, and finished with thinking whatever it might be. If there is a yoga, it would be done spontaneously, naturally, physically, and without the least questioning from up thereabove all, a complete cessation of that (the head).
The first tantric guru whom the disciple joined in Ceylon and with whom he travelled in the Himalayas.
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0 1959-05-19 - Ascending and Descending paths, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I have also come to realize that for this sadhana of the body, the mantra is essential. Sri Aurobindo gave none; he said that one should be able to do all the work without having to resort to external means. Had he reached the point where we are now, he would have seen that the purely psychological method is inadequate and that a japa is necessary, because only japa has a direct action on the body. So I had to find the method all alone, to find my mantra by myself. But now that things are ready, I have done ten years of work in a few months. That is the difficulty, it requires time
And I repeat my mantra constantlywhen I am awake and even when I sleep. I say it even when I am getting dressed, when I eat, when I work, when I speak with others; it is there, just behind in the background, all the time, all the time.
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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.
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0 1959-10-15, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Sweet Mother, I have such a yearning for everything in my consciousness to harmonize and for the tantric discipline, the japa, etc., not to separate me from you. I want to be your child, open to you, without any contradictions. I would like so much to find your almost physical Presence within me again, as before. May all be clear, pure, one.
I would wish to be like Sujata, completely transparent, your child with her at your feet. Mother, help me. I need you. Sujata is healing something that was very painful in me, as though it were flayed or wounded, and which threw me into revolt. With this calming influence, I would like to begin a new life of self-giving. This change of residence is for me like the symbol of another change. Oh, Mother! may the painful road be over, and may all be achieved in the joy of your Will.
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0 1960-05-24 - supramental flood, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
These experiences are always absolute, as long as they last; then, through certain signs that I know (I am accustomed to it), I notice that the body consciousness begins closing up again. Or rather, somethingevidently a Supreme Wisdomdecides its sufficient for this time and that the body has had enough. It ought not to break, which is why certain precautions are taken. So this comes in several little stages that I know quite well. The final one is always a bit unpleasant because my body gets into rather peculiar positions as a result of the work. As its only a sort of machine, towards the end I have some difficulty straightening my knees, for example, or opening my fingers I think they even make a noise, like something forced into one position whose life has become purely spontaneous and mechanical. There are plenty of people like that, plenty, who enter into trance and then can no longer get out by themselves; they get themselves into a certain position and someone has to free them. This has never happened to me; I have always managed to extricate myself. But yesterday evening, the experience lasted a very long time. There was even a little cracking at the end, as when people have rheumatism.
And during all this time, approximately three hours, the consciousness was completely, completely different. It was here, however; it was not outside the earth, it was on earth, but it was completely differenteven the body consciousness was different. And what remained was very mechanical; it was a body, but it could just as well have been anything. All this power of consciousness that for more than seventy years Ive gradually pushed into each of the bodys cells so that each cell could become conscious (and it goes on constantly, constantly), all this seemed to have withdrawn there only remained one almost lifeless thing. However, I could raise myself up from my bed and even drink a glass of water, but it was all so bizarre. And when I went back to bed, it took nearly forty-five minutes for the body to regain its normal state. Only after I had entered into another type of samadhi2 and again come out of it did my consciousness fully return. It is the first time I have had an experience of this kind.
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0 1960-10-19, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I can tell you why, but in a purely superficial way Because for him to do IMMEDIATELYwithout leaving his body, that iswhat he had to do, well
(silence)
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0 1960-10-22, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Im going to tell you what I sawits very interesting. First, emanating from here (Mother indicates the chest), a florescence of every color like a peacocks tail spread wide; but it was made of light, and it was very, very delicate, very fine, like this (gesture). Then it rose up and formed what truly seemed like a luminous peacock, up above, and it remained like that. Then, from here (the chest), what looked like a sword of white light climbed straight up. It went up very high and formed a kind of expanse, a very vast expanse, which was like a callthis lasted the longest. And then, in response, a veritable rain, like (no, it was much finer than drops) a golden lightwhite and goldenwith various shades, at times more towards white, at times more golden, at times with a tinge of pink. And all this was descending, descending into you. And here (the chest), it changed into this same deep blue light, with a powdering of green light inside itemerald green. And at that moment, when it reached here (the level of the heart), a number of little divinities of living golda deep, living goldcame, like this, and then looked at you. And just as they looked at you, there was the image of the Mother right at the very center of younot as she is commonly portrayed but as she is in the Indian consciousness Very serene and pure and luminous. And then that changed into a temple, and inside the temple there seemed to be an image of Sri Aurobindo and an image of me but living images in a powdering of light. Then it grew into a magnificent edifice and settled in with an extraordinary power. And it remained motionless.
That is the representation of your japa.
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0 1960-11-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I have experienced all kinds of things in life, but I have always felt a sort of lightso INTANGIBLE, So perfectly pure (not in the moral sense, but pure light!)and it could go anywhere, mix everywhere without ever really getting mixed with anything. I felt this flame as a young childa white flame. And NEVER have I felt disgust, contempt, recoil, the sense of being dirtiedby anything or anyone. There was always this flamewhite, white, so white that nothing could make it other than white. And I started feeling it long ago in the past (now my approach is entirely differentit comes straight from above, and I have other reasons for seeing the Purity in everything). But it came back when I met Z (because of the contact with him)and I felt nothing negative, absolutely nothing. Afterwards, people said, Oh, how he used to be this, how he used to be that! And now look at him! See what hes become! Someone even used the word rotten that made me smile. Because, you see, that doesnt exist for me.
What I saw is this world, this realm where people are like that, they live that, for its necessary to get out from below and this is a wayits a way, the only way. It was the only way for the vital formation and the vital creation to enter into the material world, into inert matter. An intellectualized vital, a vital of ideas, an artist; it even fringes upon or has the first drops of Poetrythis Poetry which upon its peaks goes beyond the mind and becomes an expression of the Spirit. Well, when these first drops fall on earth, it stirs up mud.
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0 1960-11-15, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I dont know if its due to Zs visit1 or simply if the time had come and things converged (because thats what generally happens), but a whole period of the past is coming up again and its not a purely personal past, for it includes all the acquaintances I used to have, a whole collection of things that represents not only my individual life but something rather collective (as it always is; each of us is always a collectivity but we arent aware of it, and if anything were taken away, it would unbalance the whole). A whole set of things that were absolutely wiped clean from the memory (it must have been buried somewhere in the subconscient or the semi-conscientin any case, something more unconscious than the subconscient), and it has all come back up. Oh, things such things If just two weeks ago someone had asked me, Do you remember that? I would have replied, No, not at all! And its coming from every side. Oh, such mediocrity! (mediocre in the way of consciousness, experiences and activities) and so gray, so dull, so flat! Only this morning, while getting ready for the balcony, I thought, Is it possible to live like that?!
And then it became so clear that behind all this there was always the same luminous Presence, this Presence that is everywhere, always, watching over everything.
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0 1961-01-10, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The second step is to be POSITIVELY conscious of the supreme Goodness and Beauty behind all things and supporting all things, permitting them to exist. Once you have seen Him, you can perceive Him behind the mask and the distortioneven ugliness, even cruelty, even evil are a disguise for that Something which is essentially good or beautiful, luminous, pure.
With this comes TRUE collaboration. For when you have this vision, this awareness, when you live in this consciousness, you also get the power to PULL That into the manifestation on earth and put it into contact with what, for the time being, distorts and disguises; thus the deformation and disguise are gradually transformed by the influence of the Truth behind.
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0 1961-01-12, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You have this experience when for some reason or other, depending on the case, you come into contact with the universal consciousness not in its limitless essence but on any level of Matter. There is an atomic consciousness, a purely material consciousness and an even more generally prevailing psychological consciousness. When, through interiorization or a sort of withdrawal from the ego you enter into contact with that zone of consciousness we can call psychological terrestrial or human collective (there is a difference: human collective is restricted, while terrestrial includes many animal and even plant vibrations; but in the present case, since the moral notion of guilt, sin and evil belongs exclusively to human consciousness, let us simply say human collective psychological consciousness); when you contact that through identification, you naturally feel or see or know yourself capable of any human movement whatsoever. To some extent, this constitutes a Truth-Consciousness, or at such times the egoistical sense of what does or doesnt belong to you, of what you can or cannot do, disappears; you realize that the fundamental construction of human consciousness makes any human being capable of doing anything. And since you are in a truth-consciousness, you are aware at the same time that to feel judgmental or disgusted or revolted would be an absurdity, for EVERYTHING is potentially there inside you. And should you happen to be penetrated by certain currents of force (which we usually cant follow: we see them come and go but we are generally unaware of their origin and direction), if any one of these currents penetrates you, it can make you do anything.
If one always remained in this state of consciousness, keeping alive the flame of Agni, the flame of purification and progress, then after some time, not only could one prevent these movements from taking an active form in oneself and becoming expressed physically, but one could act upon the very nature of the movement and transform it. Needless to say, however, that unless one has attained a very high degree of realization it is virtually impossible to keep this state of consciousness for long. Almost immediately one falls back into the egoistic consciousness of the separate self, and all the difficulties return: disgust, the revolt against certain things and the horror they create in us, and so on.
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0 1961-01-19, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
No. Its purely physical. Its because people. When I came down, I felt fine. Only they kept me standing there, on and on. When I am seated, its all right; but beyond a certain point, speaking also becomes difficult.
***
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0 1961-01-22, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
These seem to be the forces ruling the subconscious mechanisms or reactions of the body: all the automatism produced by evolution and atavismwhat might be termed evolutionary habits. This is the 'descending path,' which started forty years earlier, as Mother said (or the 'physical plunge' referred to by Sri Aurobindo), leading to the pure cellular consciousness.
Japa: the continuous repetition of a mantra. Mother's mantra is a song of the cells, the sole material or physical process used by her for awakening the cells and stabilizing the Supramental Force in her body.
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0 1961-01-24, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
At midnight I was lying in bed. (And I remained there from midnight until I oclock fully awake. I dont know if my eyes were open or closed, but I was wide awake, NOT IN TRANCEI could hear all the noises, the clocks, and so forth.) Then, lying flat, my entire body (but a slightly enlarged body, exceeding the purely physical form) became ONE vibration, extremely rapid and intense but immobile. I dont know how to explain this, because it did not move in space but was a vibration (that is, it wasnt motionless); yet it was motionless in space. And the exact form of my body was absolutely the most brilliant white Light of the supreme Consciousness, the consciousness OF the Supreme. It was IN the body and it was as though in EACH cell there was a vibration, and it was all part of a single BLOCK of vibration. It extended this much beyond the body (gesture indicating about six centimeters). I was absolutely immobile in my bed. Then, WITHOUT MOVING, without shifting, it began consciously to rise upwithout moving, you understand: I remained like this (Mother holds her two joined and motionless hands at the level of her forehead, as if her entire body were mounting in prayer)consciously like an ascension of this consciousness6 towards the supreme Consciousness.
The body was stretched out flat.
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0 1961-02-11, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In the present case, of course, the body is always saying, I am ready for everything I will do anything at all; yet I still cant say that it has this. Its trying to be completely pure according to the spiritual conceptit doesnt sense its separate personality. More and more, year after year, it has been striving to feel only the divine Presence, the divine Life, the divine Force and the divine Will, all within itself; and to feel that without them it is nothing, it doesnt exist. This is fully realized in its consciousness (the conscious part). In the subconscient and inconscient,5 obviously it is not realized otherwise, logically, it shouldnt be ill.
The whole disorder evidently originates from the subconscient and inconscient; all the more so as it came with various indications (sent by the hostile forces but this can always be useful, provided you are careful) saying, Yes, everything is going well in your higher centers, but(because the different points of attack have clearly followed the order of the centers). Four or five days ago, or maybe a week, before this latest difficulty occurred, I saw little beings coming out of the subconscient and saying, Ah! Your legs havent had any trouble for a long time! Its the turn of the lower centers! I swept it all away, of course, but.
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0 1961-02-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its a rather amusing sensation, a combination of sensation and feeling, that the ordinary human attitude towards things multiplies and magnifies the difficulties to FANTASTIC proportions; while if they simply had the true attitudea NORMAL attitude, quite simple, uncomplicatedahh, all life would be much easier. For the body feels the vibrations (those very vibrations which concentrate to form a body), it feels their nature and sees that its normal reaction, a peaceful and confident reaction, makes things so much easier! But as soon as this agitation of anxiety, fear, discontent comes in, the reaction of a will that doesnt want any of it oh, right away it becomes like water boiling: pff! pff! pff! like a machine. While if the difficulty is accepted with confidence and simplicity, its reduced to its minimum, and I mean purely materially, in the material vibration itself.
Almost (I say almost because the body hasnt had every experience), but almost all pains can be reduced to something absolutely negligible. (Of course, some pains it hasnt had, but it has had a sufficient number!) Its this anxiety resulting from a semi-mental vibration (the first stirrings of Mind) that complicates everything, everything! For example, take this difficulty I mentioned of climbing the stairs: in the doctors consciousness or anyone elses, pain causes it. According to their ordinary reasoning, pain is what tenses the nerves and muscles so one can no longer walk but this is absolutely FALSE. Pain does not prevent my body from doing anything at all. Pain isnt a factor, or rather its a factor that can be easily dealt with. Its not that: it is Matter; Matter (probably cellular matter, or) losing its capacity to respond to the will, to will-power. But why? I dont know! It depends upon the particular disorganization; but why is it like that? I dont know. Now each time I climb the stairs, I am trying to find the means of infusing Will in such a way that this lack of response doesnt last but I still havent found it. Although theres all this accumulated force and power and will (a tremendous accumulation, I am BATHED in it, the whole body is bathed in it!), yet for some reason it doesnt respond. Here and there, groups of cells fail to respond, and the Force cannot act. So what must be found is.
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0 1961-03-04, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But your name is there as President of the Sri Aurobindo Society, they said. My name is there to give an entirely material guarantee that the money donated will really and truly be used for the Work to be done and for nothing else; its only a moral and purely practical guarantee. These people arent even asked to understand what Sri Aurobindo has said but simply to participate. Its a different matter for those in World Union, who are working for an ideal: they want to prepare the world to receive (laughing) the Supermind! Let them prepare it! It doesnt matter, they will achieve nothing at all, or very little. Its unimportant. Thats my point of view and I have told them so.
In addition, I told them it was preferable not to hold any functions herethey can be held at Tapogiri in the Himalayas, or elsewhere and this is understood. They did hold a seminar here (a perfect fiasco, besides), but it had been arranged a long time ago. They invited people who promised to come (I think very few showed up in the end), and it was of very secondary importance. Nevertheless, I told them, This is the last time; dont do it here any more. At Tapogiri, as often as you like: its a beautiful spot in the mountains, a health resort, people go there in the summer for the fresh air and to sit around and chat!
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0 1961-03-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yesterday I sent you something (there wasnt much of it, just a taste): its a bit of the pistachio puree they make for me. Concentrated food.6 Its funny I have got it into my head to make you a gourmand! (Mother laughs) Good-bye, mon petit.
Gomphrena globosa (purple Amaranth).
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0 1961-03-11, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have a recollection of this life, for I relived it when I first became conscious of the life of the entire earth; but I cant say how long it lasted or what area it covered I dont know. I only remember the conditions at that time, the state of material Nature and the human form and human consciousness, and this state of harmony with all the other elements of the earth: harmony with animal life and a great harmony with plant lifethere was a kind of spontaneous knowledge of how to use the things of Nature, the qualities of plants, fruits and all that vegetal nature could offer. There was no aggressiveness, no fear, no contradictions or frictions, and no perversion the mind was pure, simple, luminous, uncomplicated.
It was certainly with the progress of evolution, the march of evolution, when the mind began to develop for and in itself, that ALL the complications, all the deformations began. Indeed, this story of Genesis that seems so childish does contain a truth. The old traditions like Genesis resembled the Vedas in that each letter6 was the symbol of a knowledge; it was the pictorial rsum of a traditional knowledge, just as the Veda contains a pictoral rsum of the knowledge of its time. But whats more, even the symbol had a reality in the sense that there was truly a period when life upon earth (the first manifestation of mentalized Matter in human forms) was still in complete harmony with all that preceded it. It was only later that.
--
Matter was very simple and very harmonious and very luminous not complex enough. This complexity is what ruined everything, but it will lead to an INFINITELY more conscious realizationinfinitely more conscious. And when the earth again becomes as harmonious, simple, luminous, puresimple, pure, purely divine then, with this complexity added, something can be achieved.
(Mother gets up to leave)
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0 1961-03-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It was mainly on your right side I banged on it. But strangely enough, it didnt break it became supple, but then it lost its beauty. (It was so beautiful, as though sculptured!) I tried to pass through it, but to do so (this is what I found interesting), instead of passing through at this level (the chest), the psychic plane the level of the souls vibration I had to climb up above and then descend; and finally, without even realizing it, I found myself inside I had entered through sheer force of concentration. There, at the vital level, the emotional vital (solar plexus), I put two flowers: one very large Endurance in the Most Material Vital [zinnia] and another flower like the one X just gave me [cosmos] but bigger and pure white (it concerns sexual movements, light in sexual movements). But curiously enough, I passed inside through a trance; I was quite busy trying to make it more fluid when all at once, poof! I found myself inside. But since I entered through a trance it became completely objective: no more thought, nothing. And I saw I had put these two flowers there (at the levels of the abdomen and chest), one more active, a very large, dark purple Endurance flower, and another much smaller, pure white, slightly lower down. While I was watching this I think the clock must have struck something pulled me and it all faded away.
And I found it interesting that when I received your letter yesterday evening I concentrated for a moment, almost out of curiosity: Why doesnt he ever feel he has an experience? Why doesnt he feel anything? I wanted to know precisely what type of experience would give you the feeling of having an experience!
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0 1961-06-24, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
As soon as I came upon Theons teaching (even before meeting him personally), and read and understood all kinds of things which I hadnt known before, I began to work quite systematically. Every night, at the same hour, I was working to constructbetween the purely terrestrial atmosphere and the psychic atmospherea path of protection across the vital, so that people wouldnt have to pass through it (for those who are conscious but without knowledge its a very difficult passageinfernal.) I was preparing this path, doing this work (it must have been around 1903 or 1904, I dont remember exactly) for months and months and months. All sorts of extraordinary things happened during that timeextraordinary. I could tell long stories.
Then, when I went to Tlemcen, I told Madame Theon about it. Yes, she told me, it is part of the work you have come on earth to do. Everyone with even a slightly awakened psychic being who can see your Light will go to your Light at the moment of dying, no matter where they die, and you will help them to pass through. And this work is constant. Constant. It has given me a considerable number of experiences concerning what happens to people when they leave their bodies. Ive had all sorts of experiences, all kinds of examplesits really very interesting.
--
And now I know why this sort of impersonalization of the material individuality is so important. It is very important for the exactness of this action, so that it is onlyONLY the purest divine Will (if it can be put that way), expressing itself with a minimum of admixture. Any individualization or personalization results in admixture. But the divine Will acts like this (direct gesture).
Oh, it was magnificent at the balcony this morning!
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0 1961-06-27, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Actually, as soon as one is not totally, totally tied down by the physical sense organs. For example, I am more and more frequently experiencing changes in the quality of vision. Quite recently, yesterday or the day before, I was sitting in the bathroom drying my face before going out and I raised my eyes (I was sitting before a mirror, although I dont usually look at myself); I raised my eyes and looked, and I saw many things (Mother laughs, greatly amused). At that moment, I had an experience which made me say to myself, Ah! Thats why, from the physical, purely material standpoint, my vision seems to be a bit blurred. Because what I was seeing was MUCH clearer and infinitely more expressive than normal physical sight. And I recalled that it is with these clearer eyes that I see and recognize all my people at balcony darshan. (From the balcony I recognize all my people.) And its that vision (but with open eyes!) which. It is of another order.
I am going to study what Sri Aurobindo says when I come to it in The Yoga of Self-Perfection. He says there comes a time when the senses changeits not that you employ the senses proper to another plane (we have always known we had senses on all the different planes); its quite different from that: the senses THEMSELVES change. He foretells this changehe says it will occur. And I believe it begins in the way I am experiencing it now.
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0 1961-07-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
65Because God is invincibly great, He can afford to be weak; because He is immutably pure, He can indulge with impunity in sin; He knows eternally all delight, therefore He tastes also the delight of pain; He is inalienably wise, therefore He has not debarred Himself from folly.
Can God truly be said to be weak or to fail? Does this actually happen, or is it simply the Lords play?
--
Its like the word purityone could lecture endlessly on the difference between divine purity and what people call purity. Divine purity (at the lowest level) is to admit but one influence the divine Influence (but this is at the lowest level, and already terribly distorted). Divine purity means that only the Divine existsnothing else. It is perfectly pureonly the Divine exists, nothing other than He.
And so on.
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0 1961-07-15, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For the past two days there has been the feeling of not knowing anythingNOTHING at all. I have had this feeling for a very long time, but now it has become extremely acute, as it always does at times of crisis, at times when things are on the verge of changingor of getting clarified, or of exploding, or. From the purely material standpointchemically, biologically, medically, therapeutically speaking I dont believe many people do know (there may be some). But it doesnt seem very clear to mein any case, I dont know. Yogically (I dont mean spiritually: that was the first stage of my sadhana), its very easy to be a saint! Oh, even to be a sage is very easy. I feel I was born with itits spontaneous and natural for me, and so simple! You know all that has to be done, and doing it is as easy as knowing it. Its nothing. But this transformation of Matter! What has to be done? How is it to be done? What is the path?
Is there a path? Is there a procedure? Probably not.
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0 1961-07-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This eye [hemorrhage], for instance, resulted from such a disorder, a very dark force that someone allowed to enter, not deliberately, not knowingly, but through weakness and ignorance, always mingled, of course, with desire and ego and all the rest. (Without desire and ego, such things would find no access but desire and ego are very widespread.) At any rate, that was plainly the cause and I sensed it immediately. Sometimes when it comes, it creeps up like this (Mother brings her hand to her throat), a black shadow strangling you. Yet inwardly nothing is affected at all, to such an extent that if I didnt pay attention to the purely external reaction, I wouldnt know anything had happened (its the great Play); but externally the indication is immediate: half an hour later I had this eye hemorrhage. I was struggling against a wholly undesirable intrusion, and I knew italthough from an outer point of view, the cause was insignificant. Its not always the events we consider serious or important that produce the most harmful effectsfar from it. Sometimes its an altogether INSIGNIFICANT intrusion of falsehood, for some quite insignificant reasonwhat is commonly labeled a stupidity. This stems from the fact that the adverse forces are always lying in wait, ready to rush in at the least sign of weakness.
The incomprehension generated by doubt (the kind of doubt that always results from an egoistic movement) is very dangerous. Very dangerous. Its not even necessary to be in a psychic consciousness even for an enlightened vital consciousness, it produces no effect; but HERE, in this material swarm.
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0 1961-07-28, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Presently I find myself between two rock walls of sapphire blue, upon a path flecked with silver; and the water becomes ever purer and more luminous.
A sudden turn in the path and I come to a grotto which seems fashioned of crystal, scintillating in prismatic radiance.
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0 1961-08-05, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Nymphea (Water Lily), pure white with golden center.
For the preparation of Satprem's book on Sri Aurobindo.
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0 1961-10-02, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And then, from a purely external and practical standpoint, I said, Illnesses are the falsehoods of the body (there is no question of lie here, it is a matter of falsehood; in French we have only the one word mensonge) and each doctor (here, of course, one would have to insert a little qualification: each sincere, honest doctor who truly wants to cure), each true doctor is a soldier in the great army of those who fight for Truth.3
That was the sentence I wrote for my doctor.
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0 1961-11-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I am telling you this because, as soon as I got your letter, I replied with what Ill read to you now; then I was immediately faced with something I couldnt formulate, the kind of thing that gives you the feeling of the unknown (all I knew was my own experience). So I did the usual thingbecame blank, turned towards the Truth; and I questioned Sri Aurobindo and beyondasking, if there were something to be known, that it be told to me. Then I dropped it, I paid no more attention. And only as I was coming here today was I told I cant really use the word told, but anyway, what was communicated to me concerning your question was that the difference between the two processes [the Rishis and the present one] is purely subjective, depending upon the way the experience is registered. I dont know if I can make myself clear. There is something which is the experience and which will be the Realization; and what appears to be a different, if not opposite, process is simply a subjective mental notation of one SINGLE experience. Do you follow?
Thats what I was told.
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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.
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0 1961-12-23, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is something deeper. And within this deeper thing there was: quiet, quiet, quiet, we will wait; and the impression (but vague, distant and uncertain) of some attempt being made to introduce a very good possibility into the atmosphere. I never see on the purely physical plane, you know (its always on the subtle physical, the plane of possibilities thats more real to me; the purely physical generally eludes me, but I see the subtle physical clearly), and I was seeing I dont know, it was like something higher, from above, trying to make someone enter the field of possibilities, a brain that would suddenly be touched by the book and reverse the situation. I dont know who, I dont know what, I dont know how. Ah, you know that yellow rose I just gave you? Its fringed in pink. Well, what came was like a slender pink fringe winding through the atmosphere of this situation.
Its possibleall is possible!
--
And in the experience there was no difference between my physical and my inner being (actually, its that way more and more for me); even physically, externally, there was a kind of love full of adoration, and so spontaneousnot even any sense of wonder! And there was such a formidable Power in it, formidable from the standpoint of the entire earth. It lasted one hour. After an hour, the experience slowly began to fade (it had to fade for purely practical reasons). But it left me so confident of a radical changenot a total change, for it wasnt permanent but so radical that even outwardly, way down below in me, something was saying, Ah, how will the meditations with X be now? I caught Myself not thinking, not myself: someone thought like that, somewhere way down below. This pulled me out of the experience and I wondered, Thats strange, whos thinking like that? It was one of the personalities4 (in terms of work, its the one that gives each action its proper place), someone way down below, spontaneously feeling: But thats going to change the meditations! What will they be like now? When I returned and began to look at things with the usual discernment, I told myself that perhaps there actually will be a change.
But truly, EVERYTHING was changed at that moment: something was achieved. It was the perception of Power the Power that comes from Love (what Love is to the Supreme Consciousness, which has nothing to do with what we usually mean by the word love). And it was it was simple! None of those complications resulting from thought, intellect, understandingall that was gone, all gone. A formidable Power! And it made me understand one thing, that the state I had been put in (by the Lord of Yoga, in fact) was for obtaining the particular power that comes through an identity with all material things, a power possessed by certain personsnot always yogis, certain mediums, for instance. I saw it with Madame Theon: she would will a thing to come to her instead of going to the thing herself; instead of going to get her sandals when she wanted them, she made the sandals come to her. She did this through a capacity to radiate her mattershe exercised a will over her matterher central will acted upon matter anywhere, since she WAS THERE. With her, then, I saw this power in a methodical, organized way, not as something accidental or spasmodic (as it is with mediums), but as an organization of Matter. And so I began to understand: With this comes the power to put each thing in its place! provided one is universal enough.
--
And if to this material capacity of identification, of exercising the will, is added that Something which was there during my experience and is truly the expression. I dont know if its the supreme expression, but for the time being its certainly the highest I know of. (Its far superior to pure Knowledge through identity, to knowing the thing because one IS itits infinitely more powerful than that.) its something formidable! It has the power to change everything and how!
One IS simply Thatone vibration of THAT.
--
It translates itself into Love. And of course I am not at all speaking of the human, physical quagmire; I am speaking of the most wonderfully beautiful and pure Love imaginable. This Power is the origin of that Love, and it is in the Supreme.
(Mother sits at the organ)
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0 1962-01-12 - supramental ship, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And so long as you can keep that absolute immobility in the mind, the inspiration is absolutely pureit comes pure. When you can catch and hold onto this while youre speaking, then what comes to you is unmixed too, it stays pure.
This is an extremely delicate functioning, probably because were not used to it the slightest movement, the slightest mental vibration disrupts everything. But as long as it lasts, its perfectly pure. And in a supramentalized life this has to be the CONSTANT state. Mentalized will should no longer intervene; because you may well have a spiritual will, your life may be the constant expression of spiritual will (its what happens to all who feel themselves guided by the Divine within), but it still comes through a mental transcription. Well, as long as its that way, its not the supramental life. The supramental life NO LONGER goes through the mind the mind is an immobile zone of transmission. The least little twitch is enough to upset everything.
(silence)
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0 1962-01-21, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Dont try to be among the pure. Accept to be with those who are in darkness and, in total love, offer it all.
(silence)
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0 1962-01-24, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Not only is there hope for godheads pure;
The violent and darkened deities
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0 1962-02-03, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But Sujata, for example, was completely, COMPLETELY free of the whole (what shall I say?) what could be called the unhappy aspect of her karmacompletely free. For I know the people around me and what they carry with them very well, and there was nothingjust one thing remained, the one part that was rather constructive, so I had left that totally intact. And when the events of her past life were revealed to her, I took the greatest care to destroy the revelation as it was being given. And I did it ruthlessly. You see, it was like dumping a load of mud on someone completely unsullied, and I didnt let it happen (I couldnt stop what entered through her physical brain, but inwardly I utterly annihilated it). The only thing I left untouched was the constructive part of the bond that had existed between you two, and so when she met you, she. Thats all I left, because it was good, pure, lovelyit was good. But all the rest. And you saw how strongly I protested when I was told she had committed suicide. No, no, no! I said; even if somebody with perfect knowledge were to tell me so, Id still say NO.
She is untainted by all that pure and I wont stand for someone pure to be soiled. She was so much my child that after her death everything was carefully cleansed, arranged, put back in place, organized, purified. So she returned unblemished and pure, and I dont want her soiled.
You see, a grace is actually working to drive those karmas away sometimes far, far away and its no good to call them back.
--
For some time now I have been running into difficulties with my morning japa. Its complex. I wont go into details, but certain things seemed to be trying to interfere, either preventing me from going on to the end, or plunging me into a kind of trance that brought everything to a halt. So I began wondering what it was and why. A very, very long curve was involved, but the result of my observations is the following. (All this is purely from the bodys standpoint; I mean it doesnt concern the conscious, living, independent being that would remain the same even without the bodyto be exact, the being whose life, consciousness, freedom and action do not depend on the body. I am speaking here of that which needs the body for its manifestation; that alone was in question.)
There has been a kind of perception of a variety of bodily activities, a whole series of them, having to do exclusively (or so it seems) with the maintenance of the body. Some are on the borderlinesleep, for instance: one portion of it is necessary for good maintenance of the body, and another portion puts it in contact with other parts and activities of the being; but one portion of sleep is exclusively for maintaining the bodys balance. Then there is food, keeping clean, a whole range of things. And according to Sri Aurobindo, spiritual life shouldnt suppress those things; whatever is indispensable for the bodys well-being must be kept up. For ordinary people, all other bodily activities are used for personal pleasure and benefit. The spiritual man, on the other hand, has given his body to serve the Divine, so that the Divine may use it for His work and perhaps, as Sri Aurobindo said, for His joyalthough given the present state of Matter and the body, that seems to me unlikely or at best very intermittent and partial, because this body is much more a field of misery than a field of joy. (None of this is based on speculation, but on personal experience I am relating my personal experience.) But with work, its different: when the body is at work, its in full swing. Thats its joy, its needto exist only to serve Him. To exist only to serve. And of course, to reduce maintenance to a bare minimum while trying to find a way for the Divine to participate in the very restricted, limited and meager possibilities of joy this maintenance may give. To associate the Divine with all those movements and things, like keeping clean, sleeping (although sleep is different, its already a lot more interesting); but especially with personal hygiene, eating and other absolutely indispensable things, the attempt is to associate them with the Divine Presence so that they may be as much an expression of divine joy as possible. (This is realized to a certain extent.)
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0 1962-02-13, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It was so lovely last night! We had come upon a region all mantled in snow, pure white, and all the arctic animals were there. He wore a white robe. I walked by his side, and he began to repeat my mantra, saying, See how it is. Glorious!
And the animals the animals and all the things receiving the Influence [of the mantra] and changing.6
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0 1962-02-24, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The Manifestation is always said to begin with Sachchidananda: first Sat, pure Existence; then Chit, the awareness of this Existence; and then Ananda, the Delight of Existence which makes it go on. But between Chit and Ananda there is Tapas that is, Chit realizing itself. And when you become this tapas, this tapas of things, you have the knowledge that gives the power to change.9 The tapas of things is what governs their existence in the Manifestation.
You see, I am expressing this for the first time, but I began to live it a while back. When you are THERE, you have a feeling of (what shall I say?) of such formidable power! The universal power, really. You have the sense of total mastery over the universe.
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0 1962-02-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This is so because the original Will is reflected, as it were, in different realms, and in each realm the organization and relation of the images are changed. The world we live in is a world of imagesnot THE thing itself in its essence, but its reflection. We could say that in our material existence we are merely a reflection, an image of what we are in our essential reality. And the modalities of these reflections are what introduce all the errors and all the falsifications (what is seen in its essence is perfectly true and pure, existing from all eternity, while images are essentially variable). And according to the amount of falsehood introduced into the vibrations, the amount of distortion and alteration increases. Each circumstance, each event and each thing can be said to have one pure existenceits true existence and a considerable number of im pure or distorted existences in the various realms of being. There is a substantial beginning of distortion, for instance, in the intellectual realm (indeed, the mental realm holds a considerable amount of distortion), and it increases as all the emotional and censorial realms interfere. Arriving at the material plane, the vision is most often unrecognizable. Completely distorted. To such a point that its sometimes very hard to realize that this is the material expression of thattheres not much resemblance any longer!
This approach to the problem is rather new and can provide the key to many things.
--
Some people also have the faculty of predicting things already existing on earth but at a distance, far from physical eyestheyre generally those who have the capacity to expand and extend their consciousness. Their vision is slightly more subtle than physical vision, and depends on an organ subtler than its purely material counterpart (what could be called the life of this organ). So, by projecting their consciousness, and having the will to see, they can clearly see things that already exist but are beyond our ordinary field of vision. Those who have this capacitysincere people who tell what they see, not blufferssee with perfect precision and exactness.
Ultimately, absolute sincerity is the great deciding factor for those who predict or foresee. Unfortunately, because of peoples curiosity, their insistence and the pressure they exert (which very few can resist), an almost involuntary mechanism of inner imagination comes to add just that small missing element to something not seen with precision or exactness. Thats what causes flaws in prediction. Very few have the courage to say, Ah no, I dont know this, I dont see that, this eludes me. They dont even have the courage to say it to themselves! So then, with a tiny drop of imagination, which acts almost subconsciously, the vision or information gets rounded outit can turn out to be anything at all! Very few people can resist this tendency. I have known many, many psychics, many extraordinarily gifted beings, and only a handful were able to stop just at the point where their knowledge stopped. Or else they embellish. Thats what gives these faculties their slightly dubious quality. One would have to be a great saint, a great sage, and completely free from other peoples influences (I dont speak of those who seek fame: they fall into the most flagrant traps); because even goodwillwanting to satisfy people, please them, help themis enough to distort the vision.
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0 1962-05-15, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And when I said, I have left the body,4 it certainly didnt mean I have left the physical consciousness my overall contact with the terrestrial world has remained the same. It concerns only the purely bodily aspect, the specific concretization or concentration of substance giving each of us a different bodya different APPEARANCE.
And a rather illusory appearance, besides. As soon as you rise to a certain height (I saw it quite clearly during that progressive reconcretization5), this appearance quickly loses its reality. Our external appearance is very, very illusory. Our particular form (this ones form, that ones form), the form we see with our physical eyes is very superficial, you know. From the vital world onwards, its completely different.
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0 1962-05-31, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But to say its these particular Words exclusively would be ridiculous. What counts is the sincerity of the aspiration, the exactness of the expression and the power; that is, the power that comes from the mantra being accepted. This is something very interesting: the mantra has been ACCEPTED by the supreme Power as an effective tool, and so it automatically contains a certain force and power.5 But it is a purely personal phenomenon (the expression is the same, but the vibrations are personal). A mantra leading one person straight to divine realization will leave another person cold and flat.
What is your experience when you say your mantra? You once told me you felt good saying it.
--
For me, the most concrete approach to this is through the vibration of pure Love; not love for something, a love you give or receive, but Love in itself: Love. It is something self-existent. And it is certainly the most concrete approach for me. (But it isnt exclusiveit contains everything else within itself; it doesnt exclude all the other approaches, all the other contacts.)
You see, throughout my childhood and youth and the whole beginning of my yoga, there was a sort of refusal in my being to use the word God, because of all the falsehood behind that word (Sri Aurobindo rid me of that; in the same way he got rid of all limitations, he rid me of that one too). But its not a word that comes to me spontaneously.
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0 1962-06-02, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But whats strikingits connected to what I was telling you the other dayis that I was going to see some people who were on the other side of a river. Ordinarily the river water wasnt clean and you needed a boat or something to cross; but yesterday I was in a special state I just sat down on the water and said, I am going there. And then, quite naturally, a current of pure, crystal clear water simply took me where I wanted to go. It was a very pleasant sensation I was sitting on the water, all smiles, and prrt! I was taken to the other side. Oh, very good! I thought. Will it continue? And so once again I said, I am going there (that is, back to this side) and prrt! Back I came.
Then someone came. There are symbolic people in these dreams; they seem to be made up of various parts of the beings of those around me, people who have a particular relationship with me and bring a particular help to the Work. They are symbolic characters and always the same: one of them is tall and thin, some are small, there are young ones, old ones. I cant say its this person or that person, but rather that something IN this or that person is represented in these characters. And one of them is like a big brotherhe helps out in certain circumstances; if theres a boat, for instance, the big brother steers it. So he came up to me and said, Yes, I know the method, and began to try. Stop, for heavens sake! I said. Youll spoil everything; to make it work I have to say: I WANT TO GO THERE. When he began trying to bring me across with his own methods, the water grew muddy again and I started to sink! No no no! I protested. Dont do that, thats notit at all! THAT has to (although I wasnt formulating it to myself, what I meant was the sense of a certain higher Will) THAT has to say: I WANT TO GO THERE; then it works.
--
Last night I spent almost all my time in such a building. And all the people who help the work were symbolized there but its always a material help, either work or money or. I remember being particularly struck by one character last night. (Again, there were a lot of aggravations, but someone or something was always on the scene when I arrived and it all sorted itself outit was the exact opposite of the dreams I was talking about the other day: all the difficulties sorted themselves out when I arrived.) Then I came to a rather difficult place to cross (you had to flounder about on slippery scaffoldings) and suddenly, facing me, there was a man (of course, it was probably a symbol rather than a man, but it might really be someone physical). He was one of the workers, a master mason (when I woke up this morning, I thought of the symbolism of Freemasonry and wondered if it might give a clue to the experience). Nearby, people were coming to supervise, observe, direct, people who thought themselves highly superior but they were never any help in solving practical problems! They were creating more problems than they were helping to solve. Anyway, this master mason appeared to be around fifty, with a beautiful facea workers face, beautiful and concentrated. There was a difficult place to cross, and he had worked the thing out very efficiently, with a lot of care. Then, when it was all done and I was able to go on my way, I felt a great surge of love go out to him, with neither gesture nor word and he received it, he felt and received it. His face lit up and he implored me, with wonderful humility, Never let me forget this moment, the most beautiful moment of my life. (I dont know what language he used because it didnt come to me in words.) It was such an intense experience. His humility, his receptivity, his response were all so beautiful and pure that when I woke upwhen I came out of the experience, at any rate I was left with a most delightful impression.
What he represents might be partly manifested by somebody here. A beautiful face a man around fifty. Or it may be symbolic: such characters are sometimes put together with features from several people, to make it very clear that they represent a state of consciousness and not an individual. Its far more often a state of consciousness than an individual.
--
But from the purely material standpoint, its elementary: if you so much as turn your head on awaking, everything fades away. You have to stay absolutely still, in a sort of peaceful concentration. And then you wait.
If you sometimes remember a word or a gesture, a color or an image, hang on to it and dont move.
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0 1962-06-06, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For example, just now I was sitting and waiting for you. When I have nothing to do I cant stay one second without immediately turning withininstead of the consciousness being turned outside, its turned within and well, I noticed that the body, which was sitting and waiting, had the feeling of going into something woolly, rounded, soft. And in both cases I was motionless. I was simply sitting here waiting. Its like going from something crisp, clear, precise (forget about thought or vision: this is pure sensation), from something crisp, precise, defined, into something soft, mellow like a light white smokenot milky white, but soft, transparent and oh, such peace. As if nothing in the world could resist that peace.
It happened in a split second: I was sitting, waiting for you, thinking you were about to come; but the door wasnt opening, so automatically the body went like this (inward-turning gesture). And since it happened so suddenly, I noticed the difference in the way the body felt. What it normally feels is a formidable willvery tranquil, very peaceful, free of tension or agitation, yet so direct and clear, concentrated (not concentrated: coagulated) that it is almost hard. And thats what controls the body, thats what the body obeys. And when thats not there, its the other state: smooth, mellow, soft, woolly and what peace! As if nothing in the world could disturb it.
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0 1962-07-14, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You know, theres the same vibration here as in to die unto death. Its something yes, I think we could say it is His Presence His creative Power. It is a special vibration. Dont you feel something like like a pure superelectricity?
When we touch That, we see that its everywhere, but we are unaware of it.
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0 1962-07-25, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its the Shakti. He said, you know (I am still translating it), that the shakti drawn up from below (this is what happens in the individual process) is already what could be called a veiled shakti (it has power, but it is veiled). While the Shakti drawn down from above is a pure Shakti; and if it can be brought down carefully and slowly enough so that it isnt (how shall I put it?) polluted or, in any case, obscured as it enters matter, then the result is immediately much better. As he has explained, if you start out with this feeling of a great power in yourself (because its always a great power no matter where it awakens), theres inevitably a danger of the ego meddling in. But if it comes pure and you are very careful to keep it pure, not to rush the movement but let it purify as it descends, then half the work is done.
Its a problem. When you contact the Supraconscient and the Shakti emerges at the crown of the head, its something rising from below, isnt it? Is it then another movement, an ascending movement?
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0 1962-08-08, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Intellectually, I dont at all believe in taking others misfortunes upon oneself thats childish. But certain vibrations in the world must be accepted, exhausted and transformed. Inwardly, thats the work I have been doing all my lifeconsciously, gloriously. But now its on a purely physical level, independent of all the realities of other worlds: its in the body, you see. And this has given me a key, one of the necessary keys to the Work.
Maybe there will be something else another time.
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0 1962-08-28, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have already explained this to you on several occasions: instead of SHIFTING from one to the other, its as if one were permeated by the other, like this (Mother slips the fingers of her right hand in between the fingers of her left hand), and you can almost feel both simultaneously. Its one of the results of whats going on these days. A very slight concentration, for example, is all it takes to feel both at the same time, which leads me to a near conviction that true change in the physical results from a kind of PENETRATION. The most material physical substance no longer has that unreceptive sort of density, a density that resists penetration: it is becoming porous, and thus can be penetrated. Several times, in fact, Ive had the experience of one vibration quite naturally changing the quality of the other the subtle physical vibration was bringing about a sort of almost a transformation, or in any case a noticeable change in the purely physical vibration.
That seems to be the process, or at least one of the most important processes.
--
You see, the subtle physical seems to DOSE OUT its power and light and capacity of consciousness according to the amount of receptivity in the purely physical vibration. Thats why the effects stretch over a long period of time. Its being done very, very gradually. But its an almost continuous work. Only when theres some bodily activity and the consciousness must turn outwards (not in the same way as before, thats impossible, but still in a way that seems like a continuation of the old consciousness), then, if the work continues at all, its invisible and maybe it doesnt continue. I dont know. But as soon as all activity stops and the body is concentrated or immobileperhaps no more than simply passive that penetration is perceptible: its visible. Visible. And its not like something more subtle penetrating something less subtle without altering it; the essential point is that this penetration actually changes the composition. Its not merely a degree of subtlety, its a change in the internal composition. Ultimately, this action probably has an effect on the atomic level. And thats how the practical possibility of transformation can be accounted for.
Its an experience I have all the time.
--
Its a very modest work, very modest, even from a purely intellectual vantage point. Its different from the sensation of knowing things because you ARE them, which gives you joy, a sense of progress. Its not even like that! It is VERY humble, a very humble and unglamorous work, but which keeps on very regularly, with extreme regularity and STUBBORNNESS.
It will surely stretch over a long period of time.
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0 1962-08-31, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It can be, its possible. Its possible, I dont say it isnt; it is possible, it can happen, but more and more, the life allotted to this body is to do things without knowing it, to change the world without seeing it, and to to ignore all that, to be absolutely unconcerned with the results. And (to be perfectly explicit) I have a feeling that to have access to the highest and purest Power, the very notion of result must disappear completely the Supreme Power has no sense of result AT ALL. The sense of result is yet another rift between the essential, supreme Power, and the consciousness. In other words, its because the consciousness begins to separate slightly [from its identity with the Supreme Power], that the sense of result is created, but otherwise it doesnt exist.
Its as if everything had to be to be the Action, the eternal Action at each second of the Manifestation THE thing. At each pulsationwhich corresponds to time in the ManifestationTHAT alone is THE thing. And the idea of something having a result is already a distortion.
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0 1962-09-05, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Of course, I am not speaking of what the universal Mother can know, thats quite another category! I am speaking of the experience of the psychic being, the purely terrestrial experience. Well, very few things seem in fact, none of them seem alien or unknown to me. The human state of mind, ah yes! Since my early childhood, I have been flabbergasted by the way people think and feelit seemed monstrous. But as for the circumstances and events of life, thats all more or less old hat.
The experiences that left the most acute impressions on me (Mother makes a poignant gesture)you know, the kind of things that make you say, Oh, no, not that again, Ive had enough!are connected with my lives as a monarch: empress, queen and the like oh! Those are painful impressions, the most painful of all. And I have a keen memory of a resolution taken in my last life as an empress: Never again! I said. Ive had enough, I want no more of it! Id rather be not even Id rather be, I chose deliberately: I WANT to be an obscure being in an obscure family, free at last to do what I want! And thats the first thing I remembered this time: Yes, its an obscure family, an obscure being in an obscure milieu, so I may be free to do what I want; there isnt a horde of people watching me and spying on everything I do and plaguing me with rules about what I ought to be doing.
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0 1962-09-26, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I am unfamiliar with the purely Hindu traditions, but the gods are the beings the Vedas and people of Vedic times were in touch wi that least I think so. I learned what I know about the gods before coming here, through the other tradition, the Chaldean. But Thon used to say that this tradition and the Vedic (which he knew well) were outgrowths of a more ancient tradition common to both. The story goes, according to him, that the first Emanations, who were perfectly independent, separated themselves from the Supreme in their action, creating all the disorder thats what caused the creations disorder. Afterwards the gods were emanated, to repair the evil that had been wrought and to organize the world according to the supreme Will. Of course, this is a childlike way of putting it, but its comprehensible. So all these gods work in harmony and order. Thats what the ancient tradition says.
As far as Ive understood, the Indian tradition has embraced everything that came from the first Emanations, since all the gods of destruction, of unconsciousness and of suffering are included in its pantheon.
--
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.
Sri Aurobindo preached the integral yoga which includes everything, so one can have all the experiences. Indeed, the universe was clearly created as a field of experience. Some people prefer the short, straight and narrow paths thats their business. Others like to dawdle along the wayand thats their business! And some are drawn to have all the experiences, and thus they often wander for a long time through the overmental world. And of course, the vast majority of those who have RELIGIOUS aspirations are thus put in touch with various deities, where they stopits enough for them.
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0 1962-10-06, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But any transformation in the being, on any plane, always has repercussions on the planes below. There is always an action. Even those things which seem purely intellectual certainly have an effect on the structure of the brain.
And these kinds of revelations happen only in a silent mindor at least a mind at rest. Unless the mind is absolutely tranquil and still, it doesnt come. Or if it does come, you dont even notice anything with all the racket youre making! And of course, these experiences help the tranquillity, the silence and receptivity to become better and better established. This sense of something utterly immobile, but not closedimmobile, but open and receptivegets more established the more you have these experiences. There is a big difference between a dead, lackluster, unresponsive silence and the receptive silence of a quieted mind. It makes a big difference. And it results from these experiences. All the progress we make is always, quite naturally, the result of truths coming down from above.
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0 1962-10-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
No, what you find there are thought formations that are expressed in each persons brain in his own language. There are thought combinations for novels, plays, even philosophical systems. They are combinations of pure thought, not formulated in any language, but they are automatically expressed in each ones brain according to his particular language. It is the domain of pure thought. Thats where you work when you want to work for the whole earth; you dont send out thoughts formulated in words, you send out a pure thought, which then formulates itself in any language in any brain: in all those who are receptive. These formations are at anyones disposalnobody can say, Its MY idea, its MY book. Anyone capable of ascending to that zone can get hold of the formations and transcribe them materially. I once made an experiment of that kind; I wanted to see what would happen, so I made a formation myself and let it go off on its way. And in the same year, two quite different people, who didnt even know each other, one in England and the other in America, got hold of my formation; the one in England wrote a book, while the one in America created a play. And circumstances so arranged themselves that both the book and the play found their way to me.
Higher up, there is a fourth zone, a zone of colored lights, plays of colored lights. Thats the order: first form, then sound, then ideas, then colored lights. But that zone is already more distant from humanity; it is a zone of forces, a zone which appears as colored lights. No formscolored lights representing forces. And one can combine these forces so that they work in the terrestrial atmosphere and bring about certain events. Its a zone of action, independent of form, sound and thought; it is above all that. A zone of active power and might you can use for a particular purposeif you have the capacity to do so.
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0 1962-10-30, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
They are people with no feelings. I dont know if theyve picked up a psychic being since theyve been on earth (there are all kinds of mixtures, you see; theres no such thing as a pure race any more), but they are still ice-cold. Difficult.
They could come into contact with Sri Aurobindos thought but not their troops! I dont know whether the new Chinese are much interested in philosophy. Its better they dont come!
--
You probably enter into the state of pure Existence. First mental silence, then pure Existence, Existence outside of the Manifestation: the state of Sat.
It is pure Existence, outside of the Manifestation.
Whenever weve meditated together, Ive always had the impression that you entered into that sort of rather blissful silence; its something permanent, yes, but not an annihilation. Its Sat the Sat that comes before Chit-Tapas.3 In other words it can last an eternity with no sense of time, and be an infinity with no sense of space.
--
pure existence, outside of the Manifestation. It is wonderfully luminous, immobile, tranquil, and a sort of bliss devoid of any vibration, beyond vibration.
It is very useful.
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0 1962-11-07, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mother again speaks of the experience of SAT or pure Existence in the background of consciousness, and describes the movement of consciousness needed to enter that state:)
Its somewhat similar to collecting ones thoughts. Its part concentration, part interiorization, and both togetherlike drawing back, but without movement.
--
Thats really what it is: to go beyond this present condition and enter a state where everything is stabilized. You cant say immobilized, because that would mean the opposite of movementit isnt the opposite of movement! Its something else. You immediately have the sense of Eternity; not of something endlessly developing, no: everything stops. But everything stops implies the sense of something that moves, yet you no longer have that sense.1 And yet it is Existence, it is BEING: Being, pure Existence; full consciousness without an objectwithout an object of consciousness. pure Existence without any development.
And its always here, it never leaves you, its always here; you dont have to go off looking for itit is always here. If you start thinking about it, you might say: without that, there can be no world; without that, there can be neither time nor space nor movement nor consciousness nothing. Therefore, it is everywhere.
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0 1962-11-17, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In Xs case, his personal contact rises to the heights, but its purely personal. While his overall vision (I am not saying universal: overall) stops at the vital-physical plane, with a touch of the mental, and THATS ALL. Theres a contradiction between his personal possibility, which reaches very high (although on quite a tenuous peak), and his overall vision. When his attention turns outward, it is very limited; it may be terrestrial, but its its crusted over, so to speak.
So thats the explanation I gave. But the truth.
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0 1962-11-23, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And just last time, when I told you I wasnt very well, it happened during the night, and it was the equivalent of what you write here, but purely material, in the body. In your book you describe it rather psychologically, like a phenomenon of consciousness, that is; but here its a phenomenon of the cells. So hurry to bring me the triumph! (Mother laughs) I was telling myself just this morning how exhausting it was, this perpetual battleoh, what a battle.
So when you write of the victory, perhaps I too will do a victory dance!
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0 1962-11-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
One day, I dont remember on what occasion, I saw what had motivated the forefa thers who wrote the Vedas: it was the need for immortality; they were in quest of immortality.6 From there, I went on to Buddha and saw what had set the Buddha on his way: this kind of need for permanence, purely and simply; the vision of the impermanence of things had profoundly troubled him, and he felt the need for Permanence. His whole quest was to find the Permanent (why was he so anxious to have the Permanent?). There are a few things like that in human nature, in the deep human need. And then I saw another such need: a need for the Certitude which is security. I dont know how to explain it. Because I had the experience of it, I saw it was one of the human needs; and I understood it very intensely, for when I met Sri Aurobindo, this Certitude is what made me feel I had found the Truth I needed. And I didnt realize how DEEP this need was until he left his bodyjust then, at the moment of the transition. Then the entire physical consciousness felt its certitude and security collapse. At that moment I saw (we spoke about it with Nolini a year later and he had had exactly the same impression), I saw this was similar to Buddhas experience when he realized that everything was impermanent and so all of life collapsed in other words, Something Else HAD to be found. Well, at that moment. Id already had all my experiences, but with Sri Aurobindo, for the thirty years I lived with him (a little more than thirty years), I lived in an absolute, an absolute of securitya sense of total security, even physical, even the most material security. A sense of absolute security, because Sri Aurobindo was there. And it held me up, you know, like this (gesture of being carried): not for ONE MINUTE in those thirty years did it leave me. That was why I could do my work with a Base, really, a Base of absolutenessof eternity and absoluteness. I realized it when he left: THAT suddenly collapsed.
And then I understood that it is one of lifes needs (there are several); and its what spurs the human being to get out of his present state and find another one. These needs are (whats the word?) the seeds, the germs of evolution. They compel us to progress. The whole time Sri Aurobindo was here, as I said, individual progress was automatic: all the progress Sri Aurobindo made, I made. But I was in a state of eternity, of absoluteness, with a feeling of such security, in every circumstance. Nothing, nothing unfortunate could happen, for he was there. So when he left, all at oncea fall into a pit. And thats what projected me wholly (Mother gestures forward).
--
Sat: pure Being or Existence.
The August 15 Darshan.
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0 1963-01-12, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Ill soon have finished my translation [of The Synthesis of Yoga], I have only a few more pages to go, ten or so. Its very incomplete, I mean its a translation. Meaning: correct; but at times the sentence comes out very different, at other times its a pure Anglicism.
Its a strange phenomenon: as soon as I sit down to translate, in the space of one or two seconds, no more, I become a different person. I writeit isnt I who write, I know its Sri Aurobindo.
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0 1963-01-14, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Taking life seriously generally consists of two movements: the first is to give importance to things that probably have none, and the second is to want life to be limited to a certain number of qualities considered to be pure and worthy. With some (for instance, those Sri Aurobindo refers to here: the prudish or the puritans), that virtue becomes dry, barren, gray, aggressive, and almost always finds fault in all that is joyful, free and happy.
The only way to make life perfect (I mean here life on earth, of course) is to look at it from a sufficient height to see it in its totality, not only its present totality, but over the whole past, present and future: what it has been, what it is, what it must beyou must be able to see it all at once. Because thats the only way to put everything in its place. Nothing can be done away with, nothing SHOULD be done away with, but each thing must find its own place in total harmony with the rest. Then all those things that appear so evil, so reprehensible and unacceptable to the puritan mind would become movements of joy and freedom in a totally divine life. And then nothing would stop us from knowing, understanding, feeling and living this wonderful Laughter of the Supreme who takes infinite delight in watching Himself live infinitely.
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0 1963-01-30, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
So I made a resolve (because its neither to be published nor to be shown, but its a marvelous delight): I will simply keep it the way I keep the Agenda. I have a feeling that, later, perhaps (how can I put it?) when people can be less mental in their activity, it will put them in touch with that light [of Savitri]you know, immediately I enter something purely white and silent, light and alive: a sort of beatitude.
This other passage is what I translated the first time:
--
So I will go on. If there are corrections, they can only come through the same process, because at this point to correct anyhow would spoil it all. There is also the mixing (for the logical mind) of future and present tenses but that too is deliberate. It all seems to come in another way. And well, I cant say, I havent read any French for ages, I have no knowledge of modern literatureto me everything is in the rhythm of the sound. I dont know what rhythm they use now, nor have I read what Sri Aurobindo wrote in The Future Poetry. They tell me that Savitris verse follows a certain rule he explained on the number of stresses in each line (and for this you should pronounce in the pure English way, which somewhat puts me off), and perhaps some rule of this kind will emerge in French? We cant say. I dont know. Unless languages grow more fluid as the body and mind grow more plastic? Possible. Language too, maybe: instead of creating a new language, there may be transitional languages, as, for instance (not a particularly fortunate departure, but still), the way American is emerging from English. Maybe a new language will emerge in a similar way?
In my case it was from the age of twenty to thirty that I was concerned with French (before twenty I was more involved in vision: painting; and sound: music), but as regards language, literature, language sounds (written or spoken), it was approximately from twenty to thirty. The Prayers and Meditations were written spontaneously with that rhythm. If I stayed in an ordinary consciousness I would get the knack of that rhythm but now it doesnt work that way, it wont do!
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0 1963-03-06, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But the number of miracles Sri Aurobindo performed in the Mind is incalculable. Of course, only if you had a very honest, sincere and pure vision could you see them I saw them. Others too saw them. But he refused (this I know), he refused to perform any vital or material miracle, because of the admixture.
My own experience is like this: in the worlds present state, a direct miracle (vital or material, that is) must necessarily involve a number of fallacious elements which we cannot acceptthose miracles are necessarily fallacious miracles. And we cannot accept that. At least I always refused to do so. Ive seen what people call miracles. I saw many with Madame Thon, for instance, but it allowed a host of things to exist that to me are inadmissible.
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0 1963-03-09, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There were hosts of instances. But people are so blind, you know, so bogged down in their ordinary consciousness, that they always have ready explanations. They can always explain it away. Only those who had faith and aspiration and something very pure in them, that is, those who really wanted to know, were aware of it.
Which means there is a difference between the miracle taking place through or in the mind, and the miracle taking place directly in the physical and vital. For instance, all those who perform miracles like levitation, moving objects, generating lights (Mother keeps silent for a while, then drops the subject). Its a field that I dont find very living, it doesnt interest me very much.2
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0 1963-04-06, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But there too, a shift is taking place (what I told you once: those abrupt experiences that do not settle in but are first contacts2). After the lesson was drawn from this story, suddenly something arose in the body consciousness which isnt ONE bodys consciousness but a general body consciousnessan aspiration, something so pure, so sweet so sweet something like an entreaty that Truth and Light may at last be manifested here, in this. Not here in this (Mother touches her own body): it was everywhere.
Then there was a contact3there was a contactand a pale blue Light, very sweet, very bright, and an Assurance.
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0 1963-04-20, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The only thing Ive done since I started meditating with you is a broadening, because at the beginning, it was a bit limited.2 Its extremely difficult to have this white peace together with breadth. Sri Aurobindo said to me (when I told him about all those experiences), he always said to me that to have this FULL silenceconcrete, white, pure, absolutely pureTOGE THER WITH IMMENSITY there are not many who can have it. But I must say that I have broadened your silence a lot, quite a lot. Now I no longer feel hemmed in I dont like to feel hemmed in! I no longer feel like that: its a spreading out.
Its good. kilo, dont complain of what you have, some people work many LIVES to get that.
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0 1963-05-03, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
From the standpoint of sensitivity or sensation (I dont know what to call it), when the body rests and enters the static state of pure Existence Before, it was (or gave) a sense of total immobilitynot something motionless: a non-movement, I dont know; not the opposition between something motionless and something in motion, not that the absence of any possibility of movement. But now, as it happens, the body has the sense not only of a terrestrial movement, but of a universal movement so fantastically rapid that it is imperceptible, beyond perception. As if beyond Being and Non-Being, there were a something thats both I mean, that doesnt move WITHIN a space but is both beyond immobility and beyond movement, in the sense that its so rapid as to be absolutely imperceptible to ALL the senses (I dont mean merely the physical senses), all the senses in all the worlds.
This is something new.
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.
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0 1963-05-15, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is a particular aspect of the creation (a very modern aspect, maybe): a need to get out of disorder and confusionof disharmony and confusion. A confusion, a disorder which assumes all forms, turns into struggles, pointless efforts and wasted energy. It depends on which level you stand on, but materially, in action, it means unnecessary complications, wasted energy and materials, waste of time, incomprehension, misunderstanding, confusion, disorderwhat in ancient days they called deforma in sharp and unnecessary zigzags). Its one of the things farthest from the harmony of a purely divine actionwhich is somethition, crookedness in the Vedas (I dont know the French word for it, its something crooked which, instead of shooting straight to the goal, weaves its wayng so simple. It looks like childs play and directdirect, without those absurd and completely useless twists and turns. Well, it is clearly the same phenomenon: that disorder is a way to stimulate the need for pure and divine simplicity.
The body feels strongly, very strongly that everything could be so simple, so simple!
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0 1963-05-18, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You suffer from, say, a physical trouble, purely physical (morally speaking, it goes without saying, the thing is quite clear; I mean something purely material). Something is disorganized in the working or the structure of the organs. The result is pain. At first you endure, then out of endurance comes perfect equality, and out of perfect equality comes ecstasyits perfectly possible; its not only possible, it has been proved. But the experiment should be carried through TO THE END to know whether ecstasy has the power to restore the bodys order, or whether it ends in dissolution: you are in ecstasy and die in ecstasy. That is, you leave your body while in ecstasy. Is that so? Its not only possible, its perfectly obvious. But thats not what we want! We want to restore order, to eliminate disorder IN MATTERdoes ecstasy have the power to restore order in the physical working and triumph over the forces of dissolution?
The only way to find out is to make the experiment!
--
You saw last time how I lost my balance. When you touched my foot, there came down a not a column, it was a tornado! Of a light so white, so white! Not transparentsparkling white, white like milk. But such a powerful mass! It came so violently that I lost my balance. Thats all, I only lost my balance. And it remained there, it was thereyou saw how I stood a moment without raising my head, it was because I was looking at it. It was it was MUCH MORE SOLID THAN MATTER. Something very peculiar, it was solid! More solid, MORE MATERIAL THAN MATTER. And a power, a weight, a densityextraordinary! Like a great column, and everything became pure white. Absolutely white. Nothing but white, everywhere. It stayed on a few seconds. And the power of it threw me off balance.
I was in no condition to tell you all this at the time!
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0 1963-06-08, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There were no psychological perceptions (what I call psychological perceptions are, for instance, vibrations of love, vibrations of peace, vibrations of light, vibrations of knowledge, of power), they werent there in that form, it wasnt that. Still, all that must have been there, because there were many things, many things that were all one thing, but one thing which assumed different forms; but I didnt see the forms, I didnt see the colors. It was only a question of pure sensation. A pure vibratory sensation: only vibrations, vibrations, vibrations, on a colossal scale.
It is a new experience.
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0 1963-06-29, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There were some workmen, in particular a young man who was extraordinary I dont think they are purely human beings. But its a long story.
But clay, that was something really newand lovely! Pink. Pink, a warm, golden pink. They were cutting out [of the clay] rooms, stairways, ship decks and funnels, captains cabins. Sri Aurobindo himself is as he was, but more with a harmony of form: very, very broad here (in the chest), broad and solid. And very agile: he comes and goes, sits down, gets up, always with great majesty. His color is a sort of golden bronze, a color like the coagulation of his supramental gold, of his golden supramental being; as if it were very concentrated and coagulated to fashion his appearance; and it doesnt reflect light: it seems as if lit from within (but it doesnt radiate), and it doesnt cast any shadows. But perfectly natural, it doesnt surprise you, the most natural thing in the world: thats the way he is. Ageless; his hair has the same color as his body: he has hair, but you cant say if its hair, its the same color; the eyes too: a golden look. Yet its perfectly natural, nothing surprising. He sits down just as he used to, with his leg as he used to put it [the right leg in front], and at the same time, when he gets up, he is agile: he comes and goes. Then when he went out of the house (he had told me he would have to go, he had an appointment with someone: he had promised to see two people, he had to go), he went out into a big garden, and down to the boatwhich wasnt exactly a boat, it was a flat boatand he had to go to the captains cabin (he had to see the captain about some work), but it was with that boat that he was returning to his room elsewherehe has a room elsewhere. Then after a while I thought, Ill follow him so I can see. So I followed him; as long as I saw him in front of me I followed him. And when I came to the boat, I saw it was entirely built out of pink clay! Some workmen were working thereadmirable workmen. So Sri Aurobindo went down quite naturally, down into the ship under construction, without (I dont think there were any stairs), and I followed him down. Then I saw him enter the captains room; as he had told me he had some work to do, I thought (laughing), I dont want to meddle in others business! Ill go back home (and I did well, I was already late in waking up!), Ill go back home. And I saw one of the workmen leaving (as Sri Aurobindo had come back to the ship, they stopped the work). He was leaving. I called him, but he didnt know my language or any of the languages I know; so I called him in thought and asked him to pull me up, as I was below and there was a sheer wall of slippery clay. Then he smiled and with his head he said, I certainly dont mind helping you, but it isnt necessary! You can climb up all by yourself. And indeed he held out his hand, I took it (I only touched him slightly), and climbed up all by myself without the slightest difficulty I was weightless! I didnt have to pull at his hand, he didnt pull me up. And as soon as I was up, I went back home I woke up and found myself in my bed five minutes later than my usual time.
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0 1963-07-03, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But I think not think, I see that his belief is, first, simply a question of habit, because he was born in that religion, and then a question of political necessity I dont think he has the conviction that it is the pure Truth. Whereas the previous Pope really believed in it. This one knows too much in his supraconscient to believe that Christianity is the pure and exclusive Truth. Only, you see, when youre lucky enough to be the Pope, youve got to believe that the Pope is the Pope! Try to imagine, look at the global situation from a distance: of course the whole world isnt Catholic, but there are Catholics all over the world.
What seems bizarre to those who have gone beyond the petty, purely terrestrial limitshuman terrestrial limitsis that belief in a SINGLE divine manifestation on the earth; all the religions are based on that, everyone says, Christ was the only one, or Buddha was the only one, or elsewhere Mohammed was the only one, and so forth. Well, that only one is something IMPOSSIBLE as soon as you rise a little above the ordinary earth atmosphere it appears childish. You can understand the thing and accept it only as a sort of recurrent movement of the divine Consciousness on the earth.
Of course, officially there is only Christ; maybe for this man [Paul VI], he is still the greatest, but I would be surprised if he thought Christ was the only one. Only, Christ has to be the only oneyoud cut out your own tongue rather than say hes not!
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0 1963-07-06, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In other words, one domain after another, one difficulty after another, one kind of obstacle after another (obstacles that are either subconscious or in the most material consciousness or the lower vital), it all comes for an ACTION. An action which is very sustained and varied; even when some other thing (some other difficulty or problem) is in the foreground, predominant in the consciousness, everything is there [in the surrounding atmosphere], and all the time there is that Light (Mother makes a gesture of cleaning in the atmosphere) which has always been with meof which I became totally conscious with Madame Thon, who told me what it wasa Light I have always kept with me, a white Light, absolutely pure, so dazzlingly white that eyes cannot look at it, a Light which is
(long silence Mother goes off into that Light, her eyes closed)
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0 1963-07-20, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I had decided I would study the thing very carefully, absolutely objectively, in order to be surebecause I had around me all the waves of all the impressions, well-disposed as well as ill-disposed, and I found all that whirl ridiculous. I conducted my observation in a most scientific and objective way: the whole, entire effect is purely mental. The whole whirlmental.
There you have it.
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0 1963-07-24, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But it has always seemed to me impossible unless there comes as its support and foundation and guard the Divine Truthwhat I call the supramental and its Divine Power. Otherwise Love itself blinded by the confusions of this present consciousness may stumble in its human receptacles and, even otherwise, may find itself unrecognised, rejected or rapidly degenerating and lost in the frailty of mans inferior nature. But when it comes in the divine truth and power, Divine Love descends first as something transcendent and universal and out of that transcendence and universality it applies itself to persons according to the Divine Truth and Will, creating a vaster, greater, purer personal love than any the human mind or heart can now imagine. It is when one has felt this descent that one can be really an instrument for the birth and action of the Divine Love in the world.
(XXIII.753)
--
The importance of the body is obvious; it is because he has developed or been given a body and brain capable of receiving and serving a progressive mental illumination that man has risen above the animal. Equally, it can only be by developing a body or at least a functioning of the physical instrument capable of receiving and serving a still higher illumination that he will rise above himself and realise, not merely in thought and in his internal being but in life, a perfectly divine manhood. Otherwise either the promise of Life is cancelled, its meaning annulled and earthly being can only realise Sachchidananda by abolishing itself, by shedding from it mind, life and body and returning to the pure Infinite, or else man is not the divine instrument, there is a destined limit to the consciously progressive power which distinguishes him from all other terrestrial existences and as he has replaced them in the front of things, so another must eventually replace him and assume his heritage.
(The Life Divine, XVIII.231)
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0 1963-08-10, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its true that the doctor himself said ([laughing], the doctor1 symbolizes Doubt with a capital D) that if you teach your body to bear pain, it grows more and more enduring and doesnt get disrupted so fast thats a concrete result. People who know how not to be thoroughly upset as soon as they have a pain here or there, who are able to bear quietly and keep their balance, it seems that in their case the bodys capacity to bear disorder without breaking down increases. Thats very important. You remember, in a previous Agenda I asked myself the question from a purely practical and physical point of view, and it does seem to be true. Inwardly, I have been told many a timetold and shown with all sorts of little experiences that the body can bear far more than people think, provided they dont add fear or anxiety to the pain; if you can get rid of that mental factor, the body, left to itself, without either fear or fright or anxiety for what will happenwithout anguishcan bear a great deal.
The second step is that once the body has decided to bear pain (it really takes the decision to do so), instantly the acuteness, the acute sensation in the pain vanishes. I am speaking on an absolutely material level.
And if you have calm (it requires an inner calm, which is another factor), if you have inner calm, then the pain turns into an almost pleasant sensationnot pleasant in the ordinary sense of the word, but there comes an almost comfortable impression. Once again, I am speaking on a purely physical, material level.
The last stage: when the cells have faith in the divine Presence and the divine sovereign Will and trust that all is for the good, then ecstasy comes the cells open up, become luminous and ecstatic.
--
The last one is probably not within everybodys reach (!) but the first three are quite obvious I know it works like that. The only point that bothered me (I told you once) is that it isnt a purely psychological experience and that enduring pain causes wear and tear in the body. But I inquired with the doctor (I casually made him talk), and he told me that if the body is taught very young to bear pain, its capacity to bear increases so much that it can effectively withstand illnesses, which means that the illness doesnt follow its course, it aborts. Thats precious.
The last experience (which Ive had these last few days), in which apparently there was a hitch (it wasnt really one) was a sort of demonstration. I told you what it was, you remember: its like a purge of all the vibrations that are false vibrations, that arent the pure and simple response to the supreme Influence (all that in the cells still responds to the vibrations of falsehood, either from habit or from the people around or the food takenfifty thousand things). Then, with an aspiration or a decision, almost a prayer for purification coming from the body, something happens which, naturally, upsets the balance; the imbalance in turn brings about a general discomfort. The form discomfort takes is habitually the same: first, pains and all kinds of sensations I need not describe; if that state goes on developing, if it is allowed to assume its full proportions, it results in the past it resulted in a faint. But this time, I followed the process for about two hours from the moment I got up: the struggle between the new balance, the new Influence that was getting established, and the resistance of all the existing elements forced to go away. That created a sort of conflict. The consciousness remained very clear the consciousness of the BODY remained very clear, very quiet, perfectly trusting. So for two hours I was able to follow the process (while going on with all my usual activities, without changing anything), until I felt, or rather was told sufficiently clearly that the Lord wanted my body to be completely immobile for a while so that He might complete His work. But I am not all alone: there are other people here to help me and watch over everything (but I dont say or explain anything to them, those are things I dont talk about I dont say what goes on, I dont say anything), so I sat there wondering, Is it really and truly indispensable? (Mother laughs) Then I felt the Lord exert a little more pressure, which heightened the intensity of the conflict, so that I had all the signs of fainting I understood (!) I stood up, let my body moan a little to make it plain it didnt feel too well (!) and I stretched out. Then I was immobile, and in that immobility, I saw the work that was being donea work that cannot be done if you go on moving about. I saw the work. It took nearly half an hour; in half an hour it was over. Which means there is really there is a fact I cannot doubt, even if all the surrounding thoughts and forces contradict it: I cannot doubt that the consciousness is increasing more and more the consciousness in the body. It is growing more and more precise, luminous, exactQUIETvery peaceful. Yet very conscious of a TREMENDOUS battle against millennial habits. Do you follow?
When it was over, I saw that even physically, bodily, there is a strength: the result is an increased strength. A very clearly increased strength.
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0 1963-09-18, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I dont know whether its listening or seeing: its something in between. For a very long time, all my contacts with the invisible were visual contacts, but now there is sound too. So this is how it works: I simply have to be attentive, that is to say, not actively busy with something else. If I stay still, it comes: its exactly like a rivulet, a tiny rivulet flowing out of a mountain; its very clear and pure like pure water, very transparent, and very white and luminous at the same time. It comes (gesture as of pearls of water dropping) and it arranges itself here, just above the head, in the form of words. It arranges itself, and someone, I dont know who (probably Sri Aurobindo! because its someone with a poetic power), looks after the sound and the placement of the words, and puts them in the proper order. Finally, after a little while, its complete. And then I write it downits very amusing.
Thats what happened with the English translation: I had said with authority, It will not be translated. Then this morning, when I wasnt thinking of anything at all, it came all on its own. That is to say, to be precise, I was telling the fact to someone who knows English better than French, so I said it in English, and once it was said I noticed, Well, well! Ah, thats it, thats right! It was the experience that had expressed itself in English.
--
If I observe very carefully, I have the impression that the mind of Matter Sri Aurobindo refers to,5 you know, the thought of Matter, isnt yet pure, its still mixed; so it only takes one wrong movement for everything to come undone. And in people, that material mind lives in its wrong movement constantlyexcept a flash once in a while: a reversal. But here [in Mother], there still remains a habit; a habit (almost like a mere memory) of the wrong movement. And it only has to recur even as tiny as a pinpoint for brrt! everything to fall back into the old rut.
But when I see the care Ive taken for so many years to purify that fellow, I am a little (what should I say?) I cant say frightened or anxious, but (I cant even say pessimistic), but the condition of people who havent done all the yoga Ive done for years, how difficult it must be! Because the bodys cells obey that material mind, which, in its natural state, is a mass of stupid ignorance that thinks its so smart, oh! An almost foul mass of stupidity, and it thinks its so smart! It thinks it knows everything.
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0 1963-09-25, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Love is a mighty vibration coming straight from the One. And only the very pure and very strong are capable of receiving and manifesting it.
Then an explanation on what I mean by pure, the very pure and very strong:
To be pure is to be open only to the Supremes influence, and to no other.
Far more difficult than what people consider purity to be! Which is something quite artificial and false.
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0 1963-10-16, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Every time a new truth has attempted to manifest upon earth, it has been immediately attacked, corrupted and diverted by pseudo-spiritual forceswhich did represent a certain spirituality at a given time, but precisely the one that the new truth wants to go beyond. To give but one example of those sad spiritual diversions which clutter History, Buddhism was largely corrupted in a sizable part of Asia by a whole Tantric and magic Buddhism. The falsity lies not in the old spirituality which the new truth seeks to go beyond, but in the eternal fact that the Past clings to its powers, its means and its rule. As Mother said in her simple language, Whats wrong is to remain stuck there. And Sri Aurobindo with his ever-present humor: The traditions of the past are very great in their own place, in the past. We could expect the phenomenon to recur today. In India, Tantrism represents a powerful discipline from the Past and it was inevitable that Mother should experience the better and the worse of that system in her attempt to transform all the means and elements of the old earththis Agenda has made abundant mention of a certain X, symbol of Tantrism. Now, as it happens, we are witnessing the same phenomenon of diversion, and today this same Tantrism is seeking to divert the new truth by convincing as many adepts as possible not to say Mothers Mantra, which is too advanced for ordinary mortals, and to say Tantric mantras in its stead. This is purely and simply an attempt to take Mothers place. One has to be quite ignorant of the mechanism of forces not to understand that saying a mantra of the old gods puts you under the influence and into the orbit of precisely that which resists the new truth. Mother had foreseen the phenomenon and forewarned me in the following conversation. Unfortunately, until recently, I always wanted to believe that Tantrism would be converted. Nothing of the sort. It is attempting to take Mothers place and lead astray those who are not sincere enough to want ONE SINGLE THING: the new world.
***
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0 1963-10-19, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The Help is ever present, in the sense that you unquestionably feel that the Force acts (the Force, that is, the supreme Consciousness and supreme Knowledge), the Force acts with a sort of pressure on all people and all circumstances, in a favorable direction so that what happens may truly be the bestand the best hierarchically; in other words, the highest and purest (you know my definition of pure) is a sort of center in relation to which things get organized; they get organized hierarchically, each with its right to progress, but as if to favor whats closest to and most expressive of the Divine that is going on constantly, I see hundreds of examples of it all the time. Yet, from the point of view of outer circumstances, there is such a tension that you feel you are close to catastrophe.
Sri Aurobindo told me that there are three difficulties, and they are the three things that have to be conquered for the earth to be ready (this is from the purely outward point of view, I am not speaking of psychological factors): government, money, health.
Of the three, health is the most directly connected to the inner transformation, but not completely so because it constantly depends on what comes in from outside: influences, vibrations the contagion from the outside. You have to eat: everything you receive along with foodits fantastic! Theres so much that eating represents a considerable work the physical digestion is nothing, but the work of assimilation and adaptation of all the rest is considerable. Consequently, of the three, health is the most directly under the influence of the inner progress, but, as I said, not completely so. Therefore, that too has to be conquered.
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0 1963-11-04, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But all the experiences nowadays, one after the otherall the PHYSICAL experiences, of the bodypoint to the same conclusion: everything depends on the proportion between the elements that respond exclusively to the Supremes Influence, the half-and-half elements, on the road to transformation, and the elements that still follow Matters old vibratory process. The latter appear to be decreasing in number, to a great extent, but there are still enough of them to bring about unpleasant effects or unpleasant reactionsthings that are untransformed, that still belong to ordinary life. But all problems, whether psychological or purely material or chemical, all problems boil down to this: they are nothing but questions of vibrations. And there is the perception of that totality of vibrations and of what we could call (in a very rough and approximative way) the difference between the constructive and the destructive vibrations. We can say (to put it very simply) that all the vibrations that come from the One and express Oneness are constructive, while all the complications of the ordinary, separative consciousness lead to destruction.
(long silence)
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0 1963-11-20, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Ive witnessed the most complete panorama of all the idiotic things in this life,1 they were shown to me as in a complete panorama: passing from one to another, seeing each of them separately and how they combined with each other. And then: Why? Why should one choose this? (A childs question, which one asks immediately.) And immediately, the answer: But the more (lets say central to be clearer) the more central the origin and the more pure in its essence, the greater the ignoble complexity below, as we could call it. Because the lower down you go, the more it takes an essential light to change things.
Once youve been told this very nicely, youre satisfied, you stop worryingits all right, you take things as they are: Thats how things are, its my work and I do it; I ask only one thing, it is to do my work, all the rest doesnt matter.
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0 1963-12-14, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
That way, you can gauge precisely how much is left of the old habit of personal reaction, especially in the emotive part of the universal being: its the emotive part that still remains the most personal, even more so than the purely physical, material part. As soon as the emotive part comes into play, it personalizes, because it ENJOYS individual reactions; it is the part that LOVES to feel it loves, that LOVES to feel its own emotions, and because of it there remains a faint personal coloration. And when there occurs a somewhat darker or backward movement, the body is indignant and doesnt understand that its part of the whole, that the whole must go forward together and you cant separate a piece of it to perfect itit cant be done! Its impossible. Its not that it shouldnt be doneit CANNOT be done. Everything goes together.
(silence)
--
The best way to communicate your experience would be to give some of these recordings for people to hear, because then the thing is pure, its you, YOUR vibration.
Not quite, but anyway, almost.
--
Its obviously somewhere where he explains transformation. The bodys cells must burn with the divine Flame. And you feel ityou FEEL it. Its when they begin to be aflame, to burn with a flame that is clearer and clearer, purer and purerwhen all the smoke is gone.
***
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0 1964-01-04, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But I gave you your name because There are many people who are very, very different apparently and are in relation with very different aspects of the Mother, yet who all, for a reason which I know, will find the fullness of their being only when, Truth having been fulfilled on earth, divine Love will be able to manifest purely thats why I called you Satprem. And there are other people, whom I know very well, who appear to be at the other end (how can I put it?) of the realization of their character (they are entirely different in origin, entirely different in influence), and yet who have exactly the same character with regard to something else, which I will tell only when the time comes. And its only when divine Love can manifest in its absoluteness that they will have the fullness of their being. So that for the moment they have, like you, but for very different reasons, the feeling that things dont move, nothing gets done, nothing changes you know, that all your efforts are useless; or else, for a few who do not have a sufficiently developed higher mind, they dont have faith: they think, Oh, its all promises, but (vague gesture, up above).
You are saved from that difficulty by the fact that up above you understand fully. But thats very rareyou should be infinitely grateful! (Mother laughs)
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0 1964-03-18, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But its my method for Savitri, too, its a long time since I stopped translating: I follow the thought up to a point, and then, instead of thinking this way (same gesture of tipping to the right), I think that way (to the left), thats all. So its not pure English, not pure French either.
Personally I would like it to be neither English nor French, to be something else! But for the moment, what words are to be used? I clearly feel that to me, both in English and French (and maybe in other languages if I knew any), words have another meaning, a slightly unusual and far more PRECISE meaning than they do in languages as we know themfar more precise. Because, to me, a word means exactly a certain experience, and I clearly see that people understand quite differently; so I feel their understanding as something hazy and imprecise. Every word corresponds to an experience, to a particular vibration.
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0 1964-04-04, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You gave me two recordings of Wanda Landowska and I have listened to them. In one of them, theres a passage which is a pure marvel.1
Isnt it!
--
Its so beautiful! Ive never heard anything so pure.
pure, yes, absolutely pure!
Thats a divine means of expression. Its really a divine manifestation on earth.
Yes, very pure and simple.
I have always wondered why I wasnt born a musician.
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0 1964-07-22, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Human love, what people call love, even at its best, even taking it in its purest essence, is something that goes to one person, but not to another: you love SOME people (sometimes even you love only certain qualities in some people); you love SOME people, and that means its partial and limited. And even for those who are incapable of hatred there is a number of people and things that they are indifferent to: there is no love (in most cases). That love is limited, partial and defined. Its unstable, moreover: man (I mean the human being) is unable to feel love in a continuous way, always with the same intensityat certain times, for a moment, it becomes very intense and powerful, and at other times it grows dim; sometimes, it falls completely asleep. And thats under the best conditions I am not speaking of all the degradations, I am speaking of the feeling people call love, which is the feeling closest to true love; thats how it is: partial, limited, unstable and fluctuating.
Then, immediately, without transition, it was as if I was plunged in a bath of the Supremes Love with the sensation of something limitless; in other words, when you have the perception of space, that something is everywhere (its beyond the perception of space, but if you have the perception of space, its everywhere). And its a kind of homogenous vibratory mass, IMMOBILE, yet with an unparalleled intensity of vibration, which can be described as a warm, golden light (but its not that, its much more marvelous than that!). And then, its everywhere at once, everywhere always the same, without alternations of high and low, unchanging, in an unvarying intensity of sensation. And that something which is characteristic of divine nature (and is hard to express with words) is at the same time absolute immobility and absolute intensity of vibration. And That loves. There is no Lord, there are no things; there is no subject, no object. And That loves. But how can you say what That is? Its impossible. And That loves everywhere and everything, all the time, all at the same time.
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0 1964-08-26, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
During your lifetime, during the lifetime of the one who works, you would have to create a body, you would have to emanate a body whose properties would be different from those of the purely animal body.
Yes, but thats before death.
--
Consequently, its a waste. We are consoled by being told, No, death isnt a waste, because everything goes into the general workits not true! Its not true, its a pure waste.
Its true on the mental or vital level, but on the physical level its not true.
On the physical level, its a pure waste. The mind and vital are another affair, thats not interesting: we have known for a very long time that their life doesnt depend on the body it depends on the body only in order to manifest. Thats another affair. I am speaking of the body, thats what interests me: the bodys cells. Well, death is a waste and thats that.
Yes. Yes, the transformation must be done in one lifetime.
--
But the cells are an already very developed thing, in the sense that they are a form of LIFE in Matter; they are a form of life, theyre not purely material, inert Matter.
You see, as long as all those things are on the psychological plane, its very comfortable; very comfortable in the sense that you have the key, not only the key to the understanding, but the key to the actionas long as you remain on that plane. But as soon as it becomes very material, you feel you know ABSOLUTELY nothing, that with all that they know, nothing has been found yethave they found the way of creating life out of inert matter? I havent heard of it.
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0 1964-09-16, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In this connection, there has been a whole period of study of this subject, on the purely physical level. To rise above all possibility of error, you tend to eliminate the opportunities for error; for instance, if you dont want to utter unnecessary words, you stop speaking. People who make a vow of silence imagine it gives a control over speech thats not true! It only eliminates the opportunities to speak, and therefore of saying unnecessary things. For food, its the same problem: how to eat only just what is needed? In the transitional state we find ourselves in, we no longer want to live that wholly animal life based on material exchanges and food, but it would be folly to think we have reached the state in which the body can live on without any food at all (still, there is already a big difference, since they are trying to find the nutritional essence in foods in order to reduce their volume); but the natural tendency is fastingwhich is a mistake!
For fear of acting wrongly, we stop doing anything; for fear of speaking wrongly, we stop saying anything; for fear of eating for the pleasure of eating, we stop eating anything thats not freedom, its simply reducing the manifestation to its minimum. And the natural outcome is Nirvana. But if the Lord wanted only Nirvana, there would be only Nirvana! He obviously conceives the coexistence of all opposites and that, to Him, must be the beginning of a totality. So, of course, you may, if you feel that you are meant for that, choose only one of His manifestations, that is to say, the absence of manifestation. But thats still a limitation. And its not the only way of finding Him, far from it!
--
There are scores of very convincing details, but, naturally, as they are details or very personal things, I cant talk about them. But on the basis of the proof or proofs of repeated experiences, I am forced to say this: when that Power of pure Lovea wonderful Power, beyond any expressionas soon as it begins to manifest fully, freely, a great many things seem to collapse instantly: they cant hold on. They cant hold on, theyre dissolved. Then then everything comes to a stop. And that stop, which we might believe to be a disgrace, is on the contrary an infinite Grace!
Just the ever so slightly concrete and tangible perception of the difference between the vibration in which we live normally and almost continuously and that Vibration, just the realization of that infirmity, which I call nauseousit really gives you a feeling of nauseais enough to stop everything.
--
It was Buddhas wisdom when he said, The middle path: not too much on this side, not too much on that side, dont fall on this side, dont fall on that sidea bit of everything, and a balanced but pure path.
Purity and sincerity are the same thing.
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0 1964-09-18, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And I said to myself, But then then there are in that certain things we still have a long, long, long way to go to truly understand them. Because that spark of Light is something very, very purevery intense and very pure and it contains an absolute. And since it contains that (I havent always felt it; I have felt other things, I have felt a great light, I have felt a great power, I have felt something that already explained everything, but this is something else, its something which is beyond), so I concluded (laughing), Well, we still have a long way to go before we can understand Sri Aurobindo!
It was rather comforting.
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0 1964-09-23, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Nights, for instance, are a long awareness, a great action, a discovery of all kinds of things, a taking stock of the situation as it is but there arent any problems! But the minute the body (I cant say wakes up because it isnt asleep: its only in a state of rest sufficiently complete for its personal difficulties not to interfere), but from time to time, what well call waking up takes place, that is to say, the purely physical consciousness comes back and the whole problem comes back instantly. Instantly the problem is there. And without your remembering it: the problem doesnt come back because you remember it, its that the problem is there, in the very cells.
And in the morning, oh! All mornings are difficult. Its odd: life as a whole goes by with almost dizzying speedweeks and months go by like thatand mornings, about three hours every morning, last like a century! Each minute is won at the cost of an effort. It is the time of the work in the body, for the body, and not just one body: for instance, all the vibrations from sick people, all those problems of life come from everywhere. And for those three hours, there is tension, struggle, acute seeking for what should be done or for the attitude to be taken. Its at that time that I have tested the power of the mantra. For those three hours, I repeat my mantra automatically, without stopping; and every time the difficulty increases, a kind of Power comes into those words and acts on Matter. And thats how I know: without the mantra, that work couldnt be done. But thats why I say it has to be YOUR mantra, not something you received from whomever the mantra that arose spontaneously from your deeper being (gesture to the heart), from your inner guide. Thats what holds out. When you dont know, when you dont understand, when you dont want to let the mind intervene and you are THAT is there; the mantra is there; and it helps you to get through. It helps to get through. It saves the situation at critical moments, its a considerable support, considerable.
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0 1964-09-26, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Thats the first step. You see, he puts the problem from a purely mental standpoint: to tell whats conventionally called the truth (which isnt true), or to tell whats conventionally called a lie (which may not at all be what you think it is: it isnt a lie, but simply the contradiction or opposite of what you consider to be the truthsame thing). But in order to find the solution, you have to climb up therewhere you SEE, where you can see in a totally concrete way that that truth isnt absolute and that lie isnt absolute, that there is something elseano ther way of seeingin which things are no longer like that.
And then then if you could speak the True Thing, the right word (word or sentence), have the thought which is the TRUE thought in every casewhat marvelous power you would have over your patient! It would be magnificent.
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0 1964-09-30, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Sri Aurobindo said that all the Tantrics start from below; they start right down below, and so right down below, thats how things must be, obviously. While with him, you went from above downward, so that you dominated the situation. But if you start right down below, its obvious that, right down below, thats how things are: anything thats a little stronger or a little vaster or a little truer or a little purer than ordinary Nature brings about a reaction, a revolt, a contradiction and a struggle.
I prefer the other method. Though probably it isnt within everyones reach.
--
Previously, the whole action always used to come from here (radiating gesture above the head), in the highest, vastest and purest Light; but for a few days now, whenever something or other goes wrong, when, for instance, people dont do what they should or their reactions are wrong, or when there are difficulties in circumstances, anyway when things grate and Disorder gets worse, now there comes into me a sort of Power, a VERY MATERIAL Power, which goes like this (gesture of pummeling), which goes at things and pushes terribly hardoh, what a pressure it makes! And it comes without my willing it, it goes without my knowing it.
Naturally, the inner Power is put into action (that Power which obviously is always increasing), but it never used to be exerted in that way, in detail, on tiny things of that sort, like someones wrong attitude or an action that doesnt conform to the Truth, anyway lots of things pitiable things, which I used to watch: I would smile, put the Truth-Light on them (gesture from above), and would leave them. But now, its not that way: that comes, and its like something that comes and says to people, things, circumstances and individuals (in an imperative tone): You shall do what the Lord willsyou shall do what He wills. And beware! you shall do what He wills. (Mother laughs)
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0 1964-10-17, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I am not aware of what people nowadays think they know, but, for example, when the animal reign dominated the earth, before it appeared and to make it appear, were there ever any catastrophes? Of course, you can vaguely feel an earth that slowly grows colder and is first purely mineral, then plants appear little by littleyou see that very well (Ive even seen very interesting photographs), but is it the fact of growing colder that itself caused catastrophes? Earthquakes, submersions, floods?
Yes, there was a period of great foldings.
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0 1964-10-24a, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And it made me understand that one of the most considerable obstacles is that deviation of aspiration into a thirst for something. But who doesnt deviate? You see, I always start by looking at myself and at all that I know of this beings conscious life (thats my first observation), and all the images come; well, the self-offering, the perfectly pure aspiration that doesnt expect any resultabsolutely free from the slightest idea of result the aspiration in its essential purity thats not frequent. Its not frequent.
Now the conditions are totally different, but I see the mass of aspirations, of approaches, and I always compare with my attitude towards Sri Aurobindo at that time, when it was he who, to me, represented the Intermediary; well, I understand I understand that the absolutely pure thing, that is, free of all mixture with the ego consciousness (its the ego consciousness), free of all mixture with the ego consciousness, is its still rare.
And its this mixture with the ego consciousness (I am speaking here not from the personal, but from the general standpoint) that, when the words were written, was swept away by something as powerful as a hurricane, without the violence of a hurricanescattered, dissolved, swept away! All those things that were pressing, against which I constantly had to strive in order to move onswept away! And they didnt come back completely.
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0 1964-11-14, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is another thing. Recently, one day, I suddenly I am extremely sensitive to the composition of the air, from my earliest childhood: airs, if I may say so, they each had their own taste, their own color and quality, and I would recognize them to such a point that sometimes I would say, Oh, the air of (I was a child, of course), the air of this country or the air of that place has come here. It was like that. I was extremely sensitive to the quality of pure air, that is, without the elements that come from the decomposition of life and especially from the places where people are crowded together. It was like that to an extremely sharp degree: for instance, if I was moved from one place to another, I could be suddenly cured of an illness from the change of air. When I met Thon, it became conscious, an object of study, and it still goes on. Perhaps a few days ago (I cant say, time has no meaning), but not very long ago, I said, Theres something new in the air. And something very unpleasant, extremely pernicious; I felt that that something (I didnt say anything to anyone, naturally) had a peculiar, extremely subtle odor, not a physical one, and had the power to separate vital vibrations from physical vibrations that is to say, an extremely noxious element.
Immediately I set to work (it lasted for hours), and the night was spent counteracting it: I tried to find which higher vibration could counteract it, until I succeeded in clarifying the atmosphere. But the memory remained very precise. And very recently (maybe a day or two ago), they told me that the Chinese had chosen an Indian territory, in the North, to test a certain kind of atomic bomb, and that they had exploded a certain bomb there. When they told me this, the memory of my odor abruptly came back.1
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0 1964-11-28, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But its not a purely individual question.
Indeed, no! Oh, no, its interdependent with so many things.
--
It begins with something he calls aspirationoh, its beautiful! I have rarely heard something with so pure and so beautiful an inspiration. All of a sudden, a sound comes, which is exactly the sound you hear up above. And it isnt too mixed (the fault I find with all classical music is all the accompaniment which is there to give more substance, but which spoils the purity of the inspiration: to me, its padding), well, with Sunil, the padding isnt there. He doesnt claim to be making music, of course, and the padding isnt there, so its truly beautiful.
I have decided not to play this year for January 1st. Even last year, I very much hesitated to play because I was absolutely conscious of the inadequacy the poorness and inadequacyof the physical instrument; but there was a sort of reasonable wisdom which knew how a refusal to play would be interpreted [by the disciples], so I playedwithout satisfaction, and it wasnt worth much. But the music I heard yesterday was so much THAT, SO much what I would like to play, that I said to myself, Well, now it would be unreasonable to want to keep in a personal manifestation something that has a much better means of expression [Sunil]. So I have decided to say No for January 1st. But I will see if Sunil couldnt prepare something on the theme of next years message, something that would be recorded and played for everyone, in an anonymous wayno need to say, Its by this or that person, its music, thats all.
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0 1965-02-19, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In other words, the Highest you can attain in your aspiration and in your invocation the purest, the highest. The purest, I mean, to be exclusively under the influence of the Supreme. So I wrote:
the supreme invocation
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0 1965-02-24, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But there is something interesting here. I have noticed this: if you try EVERY SECOND to discern the impulse of your action, how difficult it is! To discern whether it comes from the ego, whether it comes from darkness, whether it comes from the Light. And when you want to express as purely as possible what exclusively comes from the Supreme, you have to work at it every second and it is there was a time (not so long ago) when I used to consider it was materially practically impossiblenot in the main lines or in the great movements that come from the higher parts of the being, but in all that is purely material, absolutely material. And all of a sudden, at the beginning of this year, with this Salute to the advent of the Truth5 there came a sort of very sharp inner sense, very sharp, very precise, and so QUIET, So quiet, which gave the power to clearly see the origin of a material impulse or a material reaction, EVEN IN VERY SMALL THINGS. It was very interesting. So I studied carefully, and it has become almost automatic.
Previously it took an inner discomfort, a feeling of some friction to make me aware that it wasnt the true thing; but now it isnt like that: it is seen BEFOREHAND in the space of half a second.
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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)
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0 1965-05-29, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
That has been the object of my work all these last few days: how to get at that refusal to know? It has been there for a long time. And its the sequel to what Sri Aurobindo said in one of his letters: he says that India, with its methods, has done much more for spiritual life than Europe with all her doubts and questions.4 Thats exactly the point. Its a kind of refusala refusal to accept a certain method of knowing that isnt the purely material method, and a negation of the experience, of the reality of the experiencehow can they be convinced of it? And then, there is Kalis method, which is to give a sound thrashing. But its a lot of damage for little result, if you ask me.
No, it is still a big problem.
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0 1965-06-02, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Oh, listen, it was Y.s birthday the other day. I told her to come. She came: her face was exactly like her monkeys! She sat down in front of me, we exchanged a few words, then I concentrated and closed my eyes, and then I opened my eyesshe had the face of the ideal madonna! So beautiful! And as I had seen the monkey (the monkey wasnt ugly, but it was a monkey, of course), and then that, Ah! it struck me, I thought, What wonderful plasticity. A face oh, a truly beautiful face, perfectly harmonious and pure, with such a lovely aspirationoh, a beautiful face! Then I looked a few times: it was no longer one or the other, it was it was something (what she usually is, I mean), and it was behind the veil. But those two visions were without the veil.
And for me thats how it is, I dont see people, I no longer see (but that has been going on for a long time), I no longer see the way people do, the way they are used to seeing. At times someone tells me, Have you noticed, so-and-so is like this or like that? I answer, No, I havent seen anything. And at other times I see things no one else sees! Its a much more complete development than simply switching from one vision to the other.
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0 1965-06-30, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But the room in which he was I still remember that sense of light, such a clear, clear light, so pure, through the windowyou could see nothing but light.
(silence)
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0 1965-07-10, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But did I tell you the story of I. who was with Dilip? Before meeting Dilip, she had been with a guru, a sannyasin or whatever, and he was absolutely furious at her leaving him, so he cursed her. His curse gave her a sort of thrombosis (you know, when the blood stops flowing and coagulates), anyway it was here, in the neck, near the right arm, I think, and it was very painfulit was even dangerous. She told me about it. I in turn told Sri Aurobindo about it and Sri Aurobindo told me to protect her. I sent my light to the gentleman. That man, frightful things happened to him! He died of a horrible disease. I. went and saw him at that time, a little before he died, and the man (who was conscious) told her, Here is what your Mother has done with me. He had been conscious. Then I saw that my affair was perfectly objective, because I had never said a word about it to anyone, nothing. And above all, that light had gone through Sri Aurobindo. I quite simply did that, I put the light, and the gentleman left for the curse to stop. And as he wasnt too pure, it resulted in a horrible disease.
Now, my children, good-bye.
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0 1965-07-14, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its the one that came first. After it, there came the old story of being purewhat does being pure mean? It doesnt mean all kinds of old moral ideas, no.
To be pure is to refuse
In other words, there was the sensation of something very activevery active: being passive wasnt enough, it was necessary to be very active.
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0 1965-08-07, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I didnt intend to tell you all this, but anyway that is how I see the problem. To start writing pages on that is pure chatter (of course, their whole affair will be nothing but pure chatter,1 but thats no reason to do as they do). And at the same time, its a good lesson: we are showing goodwillWell, I am giving you the truth here; if thats not what you were expecting, too bad for you. Its a very good lesson.
If they have some intelligence, they will publish it. If they publish it, it will be good for everyone. I havent told you this little story which resembles yours: some two years ago, The Illustrated Weekly asked questions on where India stood, and in their questionnaire they had asked for the answers to be put in as few words as possible. Very well. As for me, I answered with one word, two words, three words, because things can be put in very few words.2 They published it in a box in the middle of peoples answers, which were columns long! Mon petit, it seems it had more effect than all the rest. They said to themselves, It has forced us to think. It will be the same thing for you if you have the courage to put just what has to be put, in as few words as possible: the thing as exact as possible.
--
Sri Aurobindo opens a door in this world stifled by its material or heavenly excesses. He tells us, first, that there is something to be discovered and that we are rich, richer than we may ever think with our headswe are like beggars sitting on a gold mine. But we must get down into the mine. And he tells us that we have the power, if only we are pure enough to seize it. The power over Death and over Life and over Matter, for the Spirit is in us and it is here below that It wants to conquer:
Heavens touch fulfils but cancels not our earth.4
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0 1965-08-21, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And at night it corresponds to thoroughly strange activities: a completely new way of seeing, feeling and observing people and things. Last night, for example, for over two hours there was a clear visionan active vision (through action, that is)of the way in which human consciousnesses make the most simple things complicated and difficult. It was fantasticfantastic. And then, this consciousness was spontaneously impelled by the divine Presence, but it followed the others human movements with the clear perception of the simple thing and of the way in which it becomes complicated. It was symbolic, with images; an activity in images in the sense that it wasnt purely material, physical as we know it here, but in a symbolic, imaged physical (in which the material world is seen as clay). It was very interesting.
Only, there was a very great intensity of transformation, and (how can I explain?) Its like a shift in the directing will. And then, there was materially, physically, a sort of surprise, and a need to identify with the new directionits a little difficult. Its difficult to explain, too. Its no longer the same thing that makes you actact or anything, of course: move, walk, anything. It isnt the same center any longer. And then if, by habit, you try to reconnect with the old center, oh, that creates a great disorder, and you must be very careful not to let habit, the old habit, express itself and manifest.
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0 1965-08-31, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The physical mind is the mind of the physical personality formed by the body. It grows with the body, but it isnt the mind of Matter: it is the mind of the physical being. For instance, it is the mind that makes ones character: the bodily, physical character, which is in large part formed by atavism and education. What is called physical mind is all that. Yes, its the result of atavism, of education and of the formation of the body; thats what makes the physical character. For example, some people are patient, some are strong and so onphysically, I mean, not for vital or mental reasons, but purely physically everyone has a character. Thats the physical mind. And it is part of any integral yoga: you discipline this physical mind. I have done it for more than sixty years.
But then, that mind, for instance, which is spontaneously defeatist, which has all sorts of fears and worries, which sees the worst, repeats the same things forever, is that the physical mind or the material mind?
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0 1965-10-16, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
So that means I cant say its hypocrisy, but its a purely mental attitude that doesnt correspond to the consciousness of the being. Because for me there is a very sure indication: when I dont say anything to someone (that is, I dont use the intermediary of the mind) but see that his sensation, his feeling, his state of consciousness are in harmony with mine, I know its going well. And when that person tells me, Yes, I want what you want, its true. But when its simply a purely mental, superficial attitude and when because I say, Its like that, outwardly they repeat, Its like that, but inwardly everything seethes because they feel differently
For instance, for precise problems, a decision to be made, the problem is put to me; I dont answer materially right away, I send the answer like this (gesture of inner communication), then I wait. Well, it has happened (rather rarely, but anyway it has happened) that the person wrote to me, I have received the answer, its this and that. Then I say, Thats good. But when I write words and because I write words, they say the same thing, it doesnt prove anything. Its an artificial obedience.
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0 1965-10-30, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Something amusing has happened. You know that there is a new comet?1 This morning around four, I saw the comet, and suddenly I found myself in a state above the earth, and I saw a being who seemed to be associated with this comet. He had red hair (but not an aggressive red), a white body, but not pure white: a golden white, as if he were naked, but he didnt give an impression of being naked, or of wearing any clothes either (I have noticed this several times already), sexlessnei ther man nor woman. And it was a young being, charming, full of a sort of joy, like the joy that came a little in the music just now, and he was spreading in the earth atmosphere a sort of substance that was heavier than Matternot heavier, but denser and jelly-like. It was as though he had taken advantage of the comet passing near the earth to spread that substance. And at the same time, I was told it was to help for the transformation of the earth. And he showed me how to make that substance circulate in the atmosphere.
It was charming: a young being, full of joy, as if dancing, and spreading that substance everywhere.
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0 1965-11-27, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its the same thing with foodit will be the same thing. And there will probably be a transition in which our food will be less and less purely material. Thats what they are after nowadays: all their vitamins and tablets are an instinctive research for a less down-to-earth food, which certainly will serve as a transition.
There are lots of things like that. Since the 24th [the darshan day] I have been living in this new consciousness and have seen the picture of a lot of things. There are even experiences I had gone through which Ive understood now. Like for instance when I fasted for ten days (completely, without even a drop of water), without a thought for food (I didnt have time to eat), and it wasnt a struggle: it was a decision. And at that time there was a faculty in me which developed little by little, and when for example I breathed in flowers, it was nourishing. I saw it: you get nourished in a subtler way.
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0 1965-12-25, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its only when the central vibration remains pure and is expressed in its original purity, which is a spreading out (what can I call it? Its something radiating out, a vibration spreading out in a glory, a vibration blossoming out, yes, a radiant blossoming out), then it remains true. And materially its expressed by self-giving, self-forgetfulness, the generosity of the soul. And thats the only true movement. But what people are used to calling love is as removed from the central vibration of true Love as hatred; only, the one turns in on itself, shrivels up and hardens, while the other strikes thats what makes the whole difference.
And this isnt seen with ideas: its seen with vibrations. Its very interesting.
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0 1965-12-31, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You know (shall I be frank?), its purely a vital dissatisfaction. And I know that, because it has been (how can I put it?) my great difficulty with you. It was a hundred, a thousand times more violent formerly; now its beginning to calm down. Its a vital thats very intense in its desires (which may not be ordinary desires at all), but with a sort of almost aggressive intensity, and essentially dissatisfied. It was very, very strong before, years ago; now it has quieted down. But every time the vital comes into play (and one is obliged to let the vital play because of the physical health; one cant calm it down totally because that would make the physical body suffer), its like that. It gives me, if you like, the impression of a cats vital! Cats have a wonderful vital (laughing), far, far more clever and intense than human beings have, but the cat claws, you know, and the feeling is: Im not happy, thats that. Im not happy! (Mother laughs)
No, but for instance, the first years when I was here, almost every night I had a sort of sign that I was moving along,1 making headwaytrifling signs, nothing to speak of: a car taking me along, a walk in a mountain, mere nothings, but they were telling me, Oh, good, Im getting on. Its all right, Im moving along. But for years now, not only have I had no sign, but all I see is negative things: I see pits, I see accidents, I see infernos, I see But I never see a sign telling me, Oh, yes, Im making headway. Its all right, Im getting alongnot that, never. So am I making headway? I dont know. What I am asking for is an encouragement, just a little gesture telling me, Yes, youre getting along, its all right. Youre getting along, dont fret.
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0 1966-01-14, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Ah, yes! Its pure hell. Its Falsehood in every detail.
Yes, thats right.
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0 1966-02-26, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The pure sensation has the experience of the two vibrations [the false and the true, the twisted and the straight vibrations], but the transition from one to the other is still a mystery. Its a mystery, because it cannot be explained: neither when it goes this way (gesture to the false direction) nor when it goes that way (gesture to the true direction).
So there is something that says like Thon, Learn to BE that way [on the true side] and stay that way. But there is an impression that the stay that way must depend on knowing why one is that way or how one is that way?
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0 1966-03-09, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Thats a purely human and superficial perception. I dont at all feel that I have lost anything, on the contrary! I have the sense of a state much superior to the one I had.
Even from the material standpoint?
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0 1966-03-26, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its only the incapacity, the clumsiness, the lack of faith we mix into it that takes away His power. The minute we are truly pure, that is, under His influence alone, there are no limits, no limitsnothing, nothing, there is nothing, no law of Nature that can resist, nothing, nothing.
Only, the whole thing is that the time must have come, there must be only That leftall the rest spoils, whatever it is, even the highest, purest, noblest, most beautiful and marvelous things: all that spoils. Only That.
(Mother opens Savitri:)
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0 1966-04-16, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The last rung is the absolutely pure Thing. And the power the creative and transforming power of that Vibration is unimaginable! While you are living it, nothing is impossible. Its unimaginable.
At first one loves only when one is loved.
--
And finally one loves purely and simply without any other need or joy than that of loving.
That, to me, according to my personal experience, is really omnipotence.
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0 1966-06-02, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its no longer in the foreground (it was in the foreground for an hour or two to make me understand), now its a bit further in the background. But, you understand, previously the body used to feel that its whole existence was based on the Will, the surrender to the supreme Will, and endurance. If it was asked, Do you find life pleasant?, it didnt dare to say no, because but it didnt find it pleasant. Life wasnt for its own pleasure and it didnt understand how it could give pleasure. There was a concentration of will in a surrender striving to be as perfectpainstakingly perfectas possible, and a sense of endurance: holding on and holding out. That was the basis of its existence. Then, when there were transitional periods which are always difficult, like, for instance, switching from one habit to another, not in the sense of changing habits but of switching from one support to another, from one impulsion to another (what I call the transfer of power), its always difficult, it occurs periodically (not regularly but periodically) and always when the body has gathered enough energy for its endurance to be more complete; then the new transition comes, and its difficult. There was that will and that endurance, and also, Let Your Will be done, and Let me serve You as You want me to, as I should serve You, let me belong to You as You want me to, and also, Let there remain nothing but You, let the sense of the person disappear (it had indeed disappeared to a considerable extent). And there was this sudden revelation: instead of that base of enduranceholding on at any costinstead of that, a sort of joy, a very peaceful but very smiling joy, very smiling, very sweet, very smiling, very charmingcharming! So innocent, something so pure and so lovely: the joy which is in all things, in everything we do, everything, absolutely everything. I was shown last night: everything, but everything, there isnt one vibration that isnt a vibration of joy.
Thats the first time.
So then, the result (laughing) is that the body is a little better! It no longer feels that tension so much. But it has been advised to be very peaceful, very peaceful, above all no excitement, no joy as one usually has it (the vital joy that is aware of itself and expresses itself), not that, nothing of all that: very peaceful, very peaceful. Its something so pure, oh! So translucent, transparent, light.
Its the first time I have felt this physically. Meaning its the first time these cells have had this experience.
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0 1966-06-11, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Constantly. But I dont know, I am waiting for, hoping for something that will be pure or true. But I constantly feel that artificiality.
Thats right.
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0 1966-06-18, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is only one thing, ONE vibration that seems to be really universal: the Vibration of Love. I am not saying its manifestation, no, nothing of the sort! But the something which is pure Love. That seems to me to be universal.
But as soon as you try to express it, its over.
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0 1966-07-09, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But not just a brain, precisely. That Power can express itself, as in the past, in a mental or overmental way; it can express itself vitally through force; it can express itself through muscles; but how can it express itself physically (because you often speak of a material power), purely, directly? Whats the difference between the Action up above and true Action here?
Every time I have been conscious of the Power, the experience has been similar. The Will from above is expressed by a vibration, which certainly gets clothed in vital power but acts in a subtle physical. There is a perception of a certain quality of vibration, which is difficult to describe but gives a sense of something coagulated (not broken up), something that feels denser than air, extremely homogeneous, with a golden luminosity, an AWESOME power of propulsion, and which expresses a certain willit doesnt have the nature of human will but more the nature of vision than that of thought: its like a vision imposing itself in order to be realized, in a domain very close to material Matter, but invisible except to the inner vision. And That, that Vibration, exerts a pressure on people, on things, on circumstances, in order to fashion them according to its vision. And its irresistible. Even people who think the opposite, who want the opposite, do what is willed without wanting it; even things that are opposed in their very nature are turned around.
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0 1966-07-30, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It came in the wake of a sort of purely physical attack or fit extremely painful, during which I had almost the revelation of why the cells cease to be organized. Its fairly recent since it was yesterday, and it needs to sink in before it can be expressed. But I had a strong impression that I was on the verge of a supreme secret of physical dissolution.
When it becomes (I dont know how many experiences it will take to be quite clear), but when it becomes quite clear, then
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0 1966-08-13, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Theyve already begun discussing what the citys political situation will beeven before the first stone has been laid! And one of them, the one with a Communist creed (he is the one who has the greatest energy and power of realization), is scandalized: he wrote to me yesterday, saying he couldnt take part in something that wasnt purely democratic! So I answered him this (Mother hands Satprem her note):
Auroville must be at the service of the Truth, beyond all social, political and religious convictions.
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0 1966-08-17, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
pure means pure of ego, pure of all desire, all preference, all idea: all that must be goneone must be supple, like that, and let oneself be driven along.
And he gave me the experience at the same time.
--
For my part, I go on dictating or hearing passages! Its very interesting. But theres no continuity: one sentence, one scene, two or three words. Strange. Its as if on a screen. And when you read last time, I recognized (how can I put it?) impressionsimpressions of images and wordsin what you read. But for me, it has no continuity; its something passing by, as if behind a screen, and at some point, toc! contact is made: I hear or say words, I see an image. And I can see that it goes on behind the screen; then another word, another image comes through the screen. And its always in that sort of immense, immense place, endless, very quiet, very luminous. Its a very pure, very quiet, very peaceful atmosphere. And something seems to fall from there as if in drops.
Its very interesting.
--
"Truth cannot be formulated in words, but it can be lived, provided one is pure and plastic enough."
During the previous conversation, Satprem read out to Mother a few pages from The Sannyasin.
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0 1966-08-31, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And immediately after that, the certitudeso peaceful that everything was necessaryeverything, but everything: from the most marvelous for the human consciousness to the most horrible, the most repulsiveeverything was necessary. But strangely, all those things, all those experiences, all that life is what becomes unrealunreal, worse than an act you put on for yourself: unreal. And it is in its unreality that it was necessary for the consciousness. All appreciations are purely human purely human because they alter the measure, the proportion. Even physical suffering, material suffering, which is one of the things most difficult to feel as illusory: a lamentable act you put on for yourself, for the cells. And I am speaking from experience, with convincing examples. Its very interesting.
***
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0 1966-09-14, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It was like that. And then, from the skythere was a vast sky going all the way up from below (it was like a painting), a very clear, very luminous, very pure skyfrom the sky there came innumerable hundreds of things that looked like birds flying towards him, and he drew them to him with a gesture. They generally were pale blue or white; now and then, something like the tip of a wing or the top of a crest was somewhat dark, but that was accidental. They came and came in their hundreds, and he gathered them with a gesture, then sent them towards the earth: he was standing on a steep slope, and he sent them into the valley below. And there, they turned into (Mother laughs) opinions! They became opinions! Some were dark, others light-colored, brown, blue.
They were like kinds of birds flying towards the earth, like that. But it was a pictureit wasnt a picture: it moved. It was very amusing!
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0 1966-09-17, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And this simplicity, this lack of complication and sophistication, is what gives these things great value, in the sense that it gives them perfect sincerity and simplicity. In anything expressed mentally, vitally, intellectually, there is always MORE in the form, in the word, in the expression, MORE than in the experienceit gets enlarged and rounded out (!) What is said is more than what is meant to be said. While here, its the perfectly pure experience, which feels the words as a sort of shrinking, a diminishing, and at the same time as bringing in a complication that doesnt exist in the experience the experience is very simple, very simple: it is truly pure. And anything one says is like adding something that lessens its purity and simplicity.
So, saying these things is good for oneself, its good for someone who is in the same state of heart, but for the public (Mother shakes her head) its doomed to incomprehension.
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0 1966-09-28, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
All this is like microscopic studies of the phenomena of consciousness independent of mental intervention. The need to use words to express ourselves brings in that mental intervention, but in the experience it doesnt exist. And its very interesting because the pure experience holds a content of truth, of reality, which disappears as soon as the mind intervenes. There is a flavor of true reality which totally eludes expression for that reason. Its the same difference as between an individual and his portrait, between a fact and the story told about it. Thats how it is. But its far more subtle.
So then, to return to the letter, when you are conscious of this Forcethis Force, this Compassion in its essential reality and see how it can be exerted through a conscious individual, you have the key to the problem.
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0 1966-09-30, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Multiply a thousand times what very small children feel. (I am talking about those who are exclusively physical, human beings, not those who are reincarnations.) When they are purely physical beings, they cant approach me, mon petit! They start crying and trembling! Yet I love them and welcome them with all my tenderness and as much calm as possible they start trembling and then get frightened, its too strong. With those who carry something else in themselves, the reincarnations, its different: they open out, they are happy; but when theres nothing but this, that is, the external substance Ive seen adults come (I did the experiment: I charge the atmosphere, the Lord is present), well, Ive seen forty-year-old men enter that and brrt! literally run away, disregarding all social courtesy, and after having ASKED to come, you understand! Anyway everything was there to allow them to behave decentlyimpossible, they couldnt.
But even in my case, having the experience of you, knowing you well, at times its fearsome.
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0 1966-10-05, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It came like that, in a quite childlike form, but very, very pure. And two days later, when it was necessary for the money to come, for me to have money, just as everything seemed quite impossible, Amrita suddenly came in, telling me, Here, so-and-so has sent a cheque for such-and-such an amount.Exactly the amount needed. And I think it was the first time that person had sent money. It was quite unexpected, absolutely a miraclea miracle for children. The required amount, just at the required time, and absolutely unexpected. Then I had a good laugh. And I said to myself, How silly we can be! We dont know that everything happens exactly as it has to.
I cant say that I worry (I never do), but I was wondering sometimes I wonder, Is it going to go on, or I am not quite sure of whats going to happen, because I never try to know nor do I desire to know, but I dont feel I am told. (I think this is another mental stupidity and when nothing is formulated, it means things are all right and as they should be.) But, of course, there is a childishness that would like to be told, Do this this way and that that way, and this But it doesnt work! Its not like that!
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0 1966-10-12, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Even now, as soon as I remain quiet with you when you are here, there is always a sort of limitless immensity, with such a pure, tranquil light. And its white, but a white that might have some blue in it, but so pale that its white. Thon gave a name to this region (he had special names for all those regions), I dont remember, but above it, there were only the regions he called pathetism (quite a barbarous name), which were regions belonging to the unmanifested divine Love. I myself experienced the passage through all these regions, and this one [the region of white light in which the meditation took place] was the very last belonging to the light I dont recall, he used to put together all the regions of light, and then, beyond them, the regions basically, they were regions of divine Love, but unmanifested, that is to say, not manifested as it is on earth. Those were the last regions before reaching the Supreme. And this one [in the meditation] was the last one belonging to the essence of light, that is, Knowledge. And it is oh, theres such peace, such tranquillity and such LIMPIDITY in itespecially that sense of limpidity and transparency. A tranquillity thats more than peace, but it isnt inert immobility, I dont know how to express it. It absolutely gives the sense of a vibration of extreme intensity, but ab-so-lute-ly tranquil, tranquil, luminous, without almost with a sense of motionlessness. And so limpid, so transparent!
Whenever I remain outside action like that and you are here, thats always what comes, always. Last time also, when I saw those two curves of your being the curve of the past and the curve of the future meeting on your birthdaywell, it was again in this light.
--
Thons teaching wasnt at all metaphysical and intellectual: everything was expressed in a sort of pictorial objectification; and as I said the other day about that vision [of the birds], its a richer expression, less limited than the purely intellectual and metaphysical expression. Its more alive.
And thats pleasant I like meditating with you. Its not meditating, its a silent and very pleasant contemplation-concentration. Thats why, when you are here, I sit without uttering a word!
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0 1966-11-03, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is the soul. There is the soul, which is quite simply an emanation of we can call it the supreme Consciousness, supreme Reality, supreme Truth, anything, whatever they like, its all the same to meany words they like. But anyway, the soul is an emanation of That, a direct emanation. In the body, That becomes clothed in the psychic being. The psychic being is a being which is progressively formed throughout all the existences. So are you talking about the soul, are you talking about the psychic being (which is first an embryo and eventually becomes a conscious, perfectly independent being), or are you simply talking of the life of an individual consciousness after death? Because thats yet another thing. There are proofs of that; but in that case, its a quite vital consciousness of an inferior order, and it may happen to immediately come back into another body through some combination of circumstances (it was into the same family that the father had come back), and to come back with the memory. Otherwise, according to the experiences of those who have studied the question, its only the psychic being in the process of being formed that retains the memory of its former existences. But it retains the memory of the material, purely physical existence ONLY FOR THOSE MOMENTS WHEN IT PARTICIPATED. So, instead of all those stories that are told (and are made up), you only have memories like that (Mother draws a series of points in space with her fingertips), which may be more or less detailed, more or less complete, but which are only fragmentary memories of the MOMENT when the psychic physically manifested. Lots of people do have this sort of memory, but they dont know what it is. Most of the time they regard it as dreams or imaginings. Those who know (that is to say, who are conscious of what goes on in their physical consciousness) can see that its memories.
The number of memories of this kind Ive had is almost incalculable. But it doesnt have the same character as the memories of the higher consciousness (then its not a memory: its a sort of vision the higher beings2 have of life; but thats something else). The memories I speak of are memories of the psychic being, they have a different character: a rather personal character, I mean there is the sense of a PERSON remembering something. While the others, the visions from above, are memories of an acting consciousness. But the memories of the psychic being arent mentalized, that is, if for instance at the time of the recollection you werent paying attention to the way you were dressed or the surroundings, you dont remember them. You only remember what took place and especially what took place from the point of view of the consciousness and the feelings and the inner movements.
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0 1966-11-19, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This notation, you know, was purely and simply a question of vibration; it was the vibration of mental arrogance (which is perceptible, clear, absolutely clear). It came and took up the whole space (Mother makes a gesture of puffing up), it took up a lot of space! It took up the whole space, and then, this very tranquil, very calm Action, so noiseless, without ado, unassuming; it goes like this (gesture of imperturbable descent), with perfect simplicity and it was absolutely blocked, it couldnt get through! So I wrote this note.
They know what should not be done
--
And the habit of constantly complaining about difficulties, oh, how futile, useless all that seemeda waste of time. We waste our time protesting against what mustnt bewe just shouldnt think about it! We shouldnt be conscious of it, thats all! It should be outside the consciousness; when we are able to have a purely luminous consciousness, this perfectly harmonious, luminous, benevolent consciousness free, ultimately, from all that we drag along from a difficult past.
Thats it: the power to free oneself from the past, not to drag that behind foreverto surge into the light and stay there.
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0 1966-11-30, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes, a great many. I have been told this several times, but naturally There are a great many of those so-called swamis and sadhus who are quite simply tricksters, but they have a rudimentary occult knowledge in a field where, unfortunately, it takes very little knowledge to be able to do a lot of mischief. There are lots of themnot one or two, but lots. And I know people who went and saw them, who begged them and tried to make them intervene [against Mother]. They have turned either against people around me or against myself. Not many against myself, but one or two of them think they are the lords of the world, and therefore completely immune, so they have tried, but It can cause a little friction, thats all, its nothing. But when its directed towards people around me, its more difficult to counter because there is always theres always a slight response. They arent pure enough. Then it gives me a lot of trouble. Thats what happened last time, it was towards all those around me: it gave me a lot of work.
With C. [Mothers attendant, who had fallen sick] I did think it was something of the sort, because two days beforeh and I was warned about a formation: a formation which came with a grimacing face and told me, Its over and done with all C.s fine work. You know, they are very small consciousnesses with a big spitefulness, and also some rage or otherwhy? Towards something they dont understand. And then, they use a rather rudimentary occult knowledge. I did what had to be done, but in the beginning I didnt think it was exactly magic: there were lots of reasons. Then, yesterday, C. himself had a dream in which someone was chasing after him (someone or something, he didnt know exactly what), and he ran and ran to escape. He ran till he woke up, and he woke up completely out of breath, as exhausted as if he had really run. Then I said to myself that what I had thought was correct.
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0 1966-12-07, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When the words come quite spontaneously, its good, but Its an odd phenomenon: sometimes the pure experience alone is therewhat is it? You cant formulate it; in order to formulate it, you are immediately forced to use words, and words diminish. But I remember, at the time of the experience, I spoke, hardly hearing what I said, but I had the experience. (The experience was wonderfully clear, powerful, immenseuniversal, you know.) Then I listened to myself speaking, and I saw that first shrinkage. Then I began sensing the other mind making a tremendous effort to try and understand (!), and so I let the expression shrink a little more: I was obliged to let it shrink so as to make myself understood. And I followed all those phases of successive shrinkages. But at the time, the speech was very powerful: it was exactly Sri Aurobindos style and way of speaking, and very powerful. Now its only a vague impression, like a memory. But one always hasalways, in every case, even in the best conditions, even in a case like this one in which the formulation is given by Sri Aurobindo the sense of a shrinkage. A shrinkage in the sense that much escapes; its slightly hardened, weakened, diminished, and there are also certain subtleties that escape they escape, they evaporate, they are too subtle to be concretized in words. And if one had a will for a perfect expression, it would certainly be very disappointing. I quite understand; if you want your book to reach the peak of its perfection, its impossible. Its impossible to be realized, one feels the difference with whats up above and thats very disappointing.
I am constantly disappointed.
--
At any rate, because of the immensity of the work to be done, from an outward standpoint it looks like a quite thankless task. But thats only a purely superficial vision. Waves come to me like that from the world, from a whole class of the manifestation, saying, Ah, no! I dont want to bother about that, I just want to live peacefully, as well as I can. Well see once the world has been transformed, then we can start bothering about it. And thats among the most developed classes, the most intellectual, they are like that: Oh, very well, well see when its done. Which means they dont have the spirit of sacrifice. Thats what Sri Aurobindo says (I keep coming across quotations from Sri Aurobindo all the time), he says that to do the Work one must have the spirit of sacrifice.
But its true that, for instance, those few seconds (which come to me now and then and with increasing frequency), if you look at those few seconds calmly, well, theyre worth a great deal of effort. Having that is worth quite a few years of struggle and effort, because that is beyond anything perceptible, comprehensible, even beyond anything possible for life as it is now. Its its unimaginable.
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0 1966-12-17, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Mussolinis death might have mitigated things. But its not out of punishment: theres never any punishment, never any faultnever the shadow of a fault anywhere! Its purely a question of vibrations.
Why not Rome, then?
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0 1966-12-21, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes, but your mind is active the mind is active. You see, Sri Aurobindo could do it because his mind no longer existed; it was perfectly, perfectly still and inspiration went through it as through pure air. But your mind In fact, thats the discipline you have to do, because your mind is in the habit of becoming active again. Its good if what comes from above goes through like that, but on condition that the mind be perfectly still. If you like, to put things differently, its to learn to keep your mind still, while writing at the same time.
***
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0 1966-12-31, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its the same thing with my eyes. I have started seeing things with my eyes open, and, oh! Peoples state, their thoughts, and especially the state of their vital (because its a vision of the physical, a very subtle, very vitalized physical, and its a representation of things in pictures). And their state shows itself as if you knew (Mother laughs) the things one can see! A myriad of forms, faces, expressions. Youd think its an album by the sharpest humorist imaginable. Its extraordinarily humorous and sharp in the perception and the sense of how ridiculous people are. Then, in the middle of all that, suddenly a beautiful form, a beautiful picture, a beautiful expression appears; something so beautiful, so pure, so wonderfully noble! And it all turns round and round, constantly. Its very amusing, really.
I had always complained it was a realm in which I didnt see. I mostly saw (in the past), I mostly saw mentallymental visionsand also, naturally, I saw all the way up (but that was organized), and to some extent in the vital, especially at night, but anyway The vision was highly developed, very clear and precise, but physically (physically, I mean in the subtle physical and physically), I had never seen with open eyes: I always saw the stark reality as it is, never anything else, and I had always complained about it. Until suddenly it came: one day I started seeing, and then! (Mother laughs) Now I am obliged to calm it down, because (laughing) its too much. But its unbelievableunbelievable how full of forms the air is, and such expressive forms! Its as if, yes, a humorist, a caricaturist, even, were constantly making the subtle representation of what goes on materially.
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0 1967-02-15, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Thon, for his part, insisted very much on adverse forces, while Sri Aurobindo didnt talk about them. So when I came here I asked him, But do hostile beings and adverse forces exist? He said to me, Yes, they exist, but in order to master them its easier to regard them as being outside, rather than inside as a part of your nature. He insisted on the One: everything is the One distorted to a greater or lesser extent, even the adverse forces. What we call adverse forces are, at bottom, distortions of consciousness. When those distortions predominate in a being, that is to say, when his nature obeys distorted influences and no longer responds to the divine influence, we may call it a hostile being (they do exist, God knows!). But here in India, they have insisted above all on the notion of Oneness. Of course, at the origin of the worlds a separation took place, but its mainly the Tantrics who have insisted on that; they say that in order to re-form Godhead, the two poles must be reunited. All this is words, a manner of speaking that fills the gaps and complements each other. And depending on the individuals, the times and countries, there were manners of speaking more or less pure, some closer than others. But all said and done We could say that the Lord enjoys narrating Himself in all possible ways.
And when you are on the very lowest rung of the ladder of consciousness, those manners of speaking become increasingly concrete, absolute, hard, and exclusive of all that isnt themselves: those are religions. Oh, by the way, it seems the Pope was approached about Auroville and he asked if there would be a Catholic church! They put the question to me. I said, No. No churches, no temples.
--
What I asked for was to give the students, as a preparation, a class on the history of religions, from the purely historical, external and intellectual standpoint. There is no question of dealing with the subject from the spiritual angle.
At any rate, nothing useful can be done before carefully reading all that Sri Aurobindo has said on the subject (Synthesis of Yoga: in the Yoga of Knowledge he deals with religions; the first chapters of Essays on the Gita; Foundations of Indian Culture; Thoughts and Aphorisms, and many others too). Therefore start reading first.
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0 1967-04-15, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is something interesting in this cellular consciousness: they have a sense of sincerity which is MUCH sharper, and what they call in English exacting, than in the vital and the mind (even the material vital and mind). There is a sort of absoluteness in the sincerity which is very remarkable, and they have a rigorousness between them which is quite wonderful. Its extremely interesting. If anything, any part, any movement, tries to cheat, they catch it like this (gesture of nipping it and wringing its neck), and in such a sharp and precise way. In all the vital or mental movements, there is always a kind of (sinuous gesture) suppleness, something that tries to adaptwhile here, oh its like this (inflexible gesture). So when there is invocation, prayer, self-giving, surrender, trust, all those things become so pureso pure, so crystalline, you know, that oh!
And precisely, there is a growing conviction that a perfection realized in Matter is a perfection that is FAR MORE perfect than anywhere else. Thats what gives it a stability it has nowhere else. If there is something somewhere (when there is a great offering and then a joyous self-giving, joyous surrender), if there is something that comes in with even the slightest self-interest for instance, a suffering in some little corner (a pain or disorder), which hopes for or wishes or expects some improvement then it gets caught like this (same gesture of nipping and wringing its neck) and its told, Oh, insincere one! Give yourself unconditionally. Then its magnificent.
--
Especially all pretence, all exaggeration, all vanity, oh, its all looked at as through the ingenuous eyes of a very pure child (its much better than that! The comparison is invidious).
(silence)
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0 1967-05-17, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its the same thing as magnetic force. Its all the same Force! Basically it seems to be the expression of the Power, mixed according to the states (gesture in levels): the mental, the vital, or the purely material form where it would become electricity.2
I think thats what it is.
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0 1967-05-24, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I know it is the Russian explanation of the recent trend to spirituality and mysticism that it is a phenomenon of capitalist society in its decadence. But to read an economic cause, conscious or unconscious, into all phenomena of mans history is part of the Bolshevik gospel born of the fallacy of Karl Marx. Mans nature is not so simple and one-chorded as all thatit has many lines and each line produces a need of his life. The spiritual or mystic line is one of them and man tries to satisfy it in various ways, by superstitions of all kinds, by ignorant religionism, by spiritism, demonism and what not, in his more enlightened parts by spiritual philosophy, the higher occultism and the rest, at his highest by the union with the All, the Eternal or the Divine. The tendency towards the search of spirituality began in Europe with a recoil from the nineteenth centurys scientific materialism, a dissatisfaction with the pretended all-sufficiency of the reason and the intellect and a feeling out for something deeper. That was a pre-war [of 1914] phenomenon, and began when there was no menace of Communism and the capitalistic world was at its height of insolent success and triumph, and it came rather as a revolt against the materialistic bourgeois life and its ideals, not as an attempt to serve or sanctify it. It has been at once served and opposed by the post-war disillusionmentopposed because the post-war world has fallen back either on cynicism and the life of the senses or on movements like Fascism and Communism; served because with the deeper minds the dissatisfaction with the ideals of the past or the present, with all mental or vital or material solutions of the problem of life has increased and only the spiritual path is left. It is true that the European mind having little light on these things dallies with vital will-o-the-wisps like spiritism or theosophy or falls back upon the old religionism; but the deeper minds of which I speak either pass by them or pass through them in search of a greater Light. I have had contact with many and the above tendencies are very clear. They come from all countries and it was only a minority who hailed from England or America. Russia is differentunlike the others it has lingered in mediaeval religionism and not passed through any period of revoltso when the revolt came it was naturally anti-religious and atheistic. It is only when this phase is exhausted that Russian mysticism can revive and take not a narrow religious but the spiritual direction. It is true that mysticism revers, turned upside down, has made Bolshevism and its endeavour a creed rather than a political theme and a search for the paradisal secret millennium on earth rather than the building of a purely social structure. But for the most part Russia is trying to do on the communistic basis all that nineteenth-century idealism hoped to get atand failedin the midst of or against an industrial competitive environment. Whether it will really succeed any better is for the future to decide for at present it only keeps what it has got by a tension and violent control which is not over.
Sri Aurobindo
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0 1967-06-07, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
No, hes not the man. He doesnt strike me as being pure and straight. He isnt a straight man.
(After a silence) He is still in the state in which one tries to please people.
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0 1967-06-14, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Therefore, we could correctly say that there are kinds of GRADATIONS in death. Gradations in life and gradations in death: there are beings that are more or less alive, or if we want to put it negatively, there are beings that are more or less dead. Oh! But for those who know, and who know that this material form can manifest a supramental light, well, those who dont have the supramental light in them are already a little dead. Thats how it is. So there are gradations. What people are accustomed to call death is just a purely external phenomenon, because its something they cant deny: it falls to pieces.
But I have seen people who were supposedly dead (not many in my family because it wasnt the custom to let the children see them, and once I was grown-up there were only very few occasions), but I have seen a few here. And they werent all in the same state at allnot at all.
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0 1967-06-24, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The importance of the body is obvious; it is because he has developed or been given a body and brain capable of receiving and serving a progressive mental illumination that man has risen above the animal. Equally, it can only be by developing a body or at least a functioning of the physical instrument capable of receiving and serving a still higher illumination that he will rise above himself and realise, not merely in thought and in his internal being but in life, a perfectly divine manhood. Otherwise either the promise of Life is cancelled, its meaning annulled and earthly being can only realise Sachchidananda by abolishing itself, by shedding from it mind, life and body and returning to the pure Infinite, or else man is not the divine instrument, there is a destined limit to the consciously progressive power which distinguishes him from all other terrestrial existences and as he has replaced them in the front of things, so another must eventually replace him and assume his heritage.
(The Life Divine, XVIII.231)
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0 1967-07-05, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
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:)
--
This is the pure cellular mind.
***
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0 1967-07-22, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Ah, yes, thats what they base themselves on. But it makes no difference! Two of the teachers of technology have shown how, from the purely technical standpoint, it was possible to evaluate without the need for exams. No, you see, I know, I did my studies there, in France, there were lots of exams and I know how it is. I attended (I was young at the time, but that makes no difference), I attended exams like the ones taken for certificates, I saw the pupils who were there, I saw how they answered. Its one of my very concrete experiences: the ones that pass are NOT AT ALL the most intelligent ones! Never. They are the ones that repeat parrot fashion. They repeat very nicely. They have no understanding of what they say.
Anyhow, I think well get somewhere.
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0 1967-07-29, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And so the conclusion. Ive always heard it said (I dont know if its true) that men think in a certain way and women in another. On an external level, the difference is not visible, but the attitude the mental attitudeis perhaps different. The mental attitude on the Prakriti side is always action, always action; the mental attitude on the Purusha3 side is conception: conception, overall vision, and also observation, as though it observed what the Prakriti had done and saw how it was done. Now I understand that. Thats how it is. Naturally, no man (here on earth) is exclusively masculine and no woman is exclusively feminine, because it has all been mixed together again and again. Similarly, I dont think any one race is absolutely pure: all that is over, its been mingled together (it is another way to re-create Oneness). But there have been TENDENCIES; Its like that note about Israelites and Muslims, its just a manner of speaking; if I were told, This is what you said, I would reply, Yes, I said that, but I can also say something else and many other things! Its a way of selecting certain things and bringing them to the fore with an action in view (its always with an action in view). But for the moment, everything is like that, everywhere mixed and mingled together with a view to general unificationno one nationality is pure and separate from the others, that no longer exists. But to a certain vision, each thing has its essential role, its raison dtre, its place in universal history. Its like that very strong impression that the Chinese are lunar, that when the moon grew cold, some beings managed to come to the earth, and those beings are at the origin of the Chinese nation; but now there only remains a tracea trace which is the memory of that distinctiveness. And its everywhere the same thing: if you look at the individuals of every nation, you find in every nation that everything is there, but with the memory the memory of a specificness which has been its raison dtre in the great terrestrial unfolding.
(Mother goes into contemplation)
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0 1967-08-19, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You understand, behind this whole earth evolution, there is, more or less consciously (its an unexpressed need rather than a precise consciousness), the need to live the Divineor to put it differently, the need to live divinely. And it is clear that what was expressed as different religions were solutions found individually (found, and perhaps partially lived); and here [in India], there was this solution: in order to really become the Divine again, there should be no more creation. That was the Nirvanic solution. And instinctivelyinstinctivelymankind felt death to be the negation of the Divine. But like all negation, it had the capacity to lead and open the way. The solution of Christianity wasnt completely new, it was the adaptation of an ancient solution: a life in other worldswhich was expressed by that quite childish conception of paradise. But that was a conception for public use: a life in the presence of the Divine, exclusively taken up with the Divine, and so one sang and Touchingly simple. Anyway, they conceived of a world (not a material one) in which a divine life had been realized. In the ancient Indian traditions, there had also been a first hint of already divine worlds, as a sort of reaction to that Nirvanismif we want to be divine, we must stop being, or if the Divine wants to be pure, he must stop manifesting! So they were all somewhat clumsy attempts to find the means, and perhaps at the same time inner preparations, to make people capable of really making contact with the Divine. Then there was that great reaction of the cult of Matter, which has been VERY useful to knead it and make it less unconscious of itself: it has forcibly brought consciousness back into Matter. So perhaps all that has sufficiently prepared the moment of the coming of Total Manifestation (gesture of descent).
This morning, during the experience, the body felt the whole bliss of the condition, but it was very conscious of its incapacity to manifest and very conscious in such a perfect peace, like this (gesture with the palms of the hands open upward), in which there wasnt even the intensity of the need. It was simply a vision of how things were, how the condition was. And it was something like this: the conditions of the earth are such, the conditions of the substance are such that a local and momentary manifestation, as an example, is not impossible, but the transformation that would make possible the new Manifestation of the supramental being and not just as an isolated case, but with its place and role in earth lifedoes not appear to be immediate. That was the impression.
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0 1967-08-26, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It is from the universal and spiritual point of view that, not exactly good as people understand it, but the True, the Truth, will have the final word, that is well known. In other words, the Divine will eventually be victorious. That is what has been said, what all those who have lived a spiritual life have said and it is an absolute fact. When people transpose it, they say, I am a good boy, I live according to what I think to be true, consequently life should be a bed of roses for me! (Mother laughs) To begin with, self-appreciation is always dubious, and then, in the world as it now is, everything is mixed and what openly manifests to the half-blind human consciousnesses is not the Law of pure Truththey wouldnt even understand it. To put it more precisely, what is constantly realized is the supreme vision, but its realization in this mixed material world isnt seen by the ignorant human vision as the triumph of good (of what men call good and true). Butto put it humorouslyits not the Lords fault, its mens fault! That is, the Lord knows what he is doing, but men dont understand it.
In a true world, everything would perhaps be the same as now, but it would be seen differently.
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0 1967-08-30, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Oh, a whole region has been clarified, and not only clarified but with the key to the cure or the transformation. From the psychological, internal point of view, it has explained a great deal of thingsa great deal. It brings down considerably the number of cases of real mental derangement and cases of real lies, that is, the cases when one deliberately and consciously says the contrary of what is that must not be as frequent as we think. Many people say incorrect things like that (floating gesture), but they have perceptions in another world than the purely material world, with too close a mingling and without sufficient discernment to be aware of the mingling. Sri Aurobindo used to say that real bad will, real hostility and real falsehood are fairly rare cases (real in the sense of absolute in themselves, and conscious, deliberatedeliberate, absolute, conscious); thats rare. And that, he said, is what is described as hostile beings. But all the rest is a sort of illusion of the consciousness, consciousnesses that interfere with one another (Mother intertwines the fingers of her two hands in a to and fro movement), but without a precise discernment between the different consciousnesses, which are like this (same gesture), intermingled, each going in and out of the other.
(silence)
So the result has been to see the immensity of the problem to be solved, of the path to be followed, and of the transformation to be worked out. When you look at it from the purely psychological standpoint, its relatively easy and swift, but when you come down to this (Mother touches her body), to the outer form and so-called matter, oh, its a whole world! Each lesson its as if you were given lessons, and its so interesting! Lessons with all the consequences and explanations. You spend one day or two days like that over a tiny little discovery. And you see that after that, after that day or those hours of work, there is a change in the body consciousness: the light is there, its changedchanged, the reactions are not the same. But (Mother gestures to express a world of toil).
And the Presence the Presence becomes more and more intimate, more and more concrete, and at such times at times (Mother makes a gesture like a swelling) its so concrete as to be as if absolute. Then (gesture of being covered again) another state of consciousness comes and everything has to begin all over again.
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0 1967-09-06, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
A head as big as this He was smiling, and showing us both something that was the symbolic image of these Talks. It was very interesting! His head was big like this (about fifty centimetres), wholly luminous with that supramental light which is its golden, but with red in itnot red: pink, but its inexpressible. Its almost like a flame, but not dazzling; and it gives the sense of a forcea really all-powerful force. He was there like this (gesture between Mother and Satprem), between the two of us, with his hand outstretched (it was all the same colour), and in his hand was a cube. And that cube was all those Talks. So he showed the cube, which was of a transparent light (how can I put it?) a steady transparent lightnot still, but steady. And there were kinds of veins in it: blue veins, silvery veins It was a cube, you see, a perfect cube, but it was all moving about: blue, silvery, red veins, and sometimes too, a small dark line. And he was showing it as if to say, Here is how it is. The whole thing was a cube of colourless, transparent light purely transparent and purely luminous; and there were kinds of currents passing through it: sometimes in one corner (but it was shifting about, not still), and it was now dark blue (not dark, but bluereally blue), now silvery, now white, and in places, from time to time, here or there (gesture to various points), there was in a corner or at an edge (laughing), a small black line!
He held it out in his hand and laughed!
--
But he meant (it certainly looked like that), he meant that the whole thing was the cubea well-organized cube, with a transparent light, very pure, very luminous, like that, and then (laughing) it was all moving about inside it!
I saw him in profile (he was just between us), I saw him in profile, and his hand, which I saw, was just in between us, like that, and he showed that so we would both see itand he smiled and smiled. I think he wanted to laugh!
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0 1967-09-20, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But then, it has nothing to do with thought, or even with sensation: its purely material (Mother touches the skin of her hands), and its the difference between a progressive and unbroken harmony that has no reason to stop, which becomes more and more conscious, more and more harmonious, and also more and more we say blissful, happy and all that but its not that! Its something something SO NATURAL, so natural and with the rhythm of eternity. So it is THAT, and then suddenly (gesture of reversal) you fall back into exactly the SAME THING, everything is the same, yet everything is the opposite!
To such an extent that you have a perception, a material perception, inexpressible because its hardly mentalized, of a perfect Harmony which can, in the consciousness, turn into a serious illness! Things of that sort.
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0 1967-09-30, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
What is nearer to the souls of Indians than poverty of spirit, sweetness, peace, mercy, and pureness of heart? he asked.
While the leaders of the West are politicians, in the land of India they are mystics and sages.
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0 1967-10-04, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
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.
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0 1967-10-30, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I also worry a lot over this book, this Sannyasin that I am rewriting. That difficulty of a pure transcription.
(After a long silence) For my part, I have always felt that writing was your way of doing the sadhana. That is, not meditating or anything of the sort, but writing, is your way of doing the sadhana. When you write, I see a sort of transmutation taking place in you. Not only something you call personal, something which is your way of writing or your book, not only that, but formulating things in the most accurate, the most precise fashion, is your way of doing the sadhana. Its a sadhana up above.
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0 1967-11-22, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I remember, for instance, all that the doctors do: they give you vitamins, this and that. All right. So as soon as I had taken those vitamins, I saw that sort of physical mind start stirring and stirring and stirring: Vitamins, I said, I dont want them, they excite the brain. Then they changed and gave me something at another time, and that was good. And all that, all of it was simply THE BODY: all that it knew, all the experiences it had had, all the mastery from what was in all the states of being, from the vital to the mind and above, all of that was gone! And this poor body was left to itself. Then, naturally, little by little something was rebuilt. For a long time I remained unable unable to do hardly anything (a little bit, but hardly anything), but gradually it was all rebuilt, rebuilt, rebuilt: a conscious, purely conscious beingwhich is now chattering away! (It was unable to express itself.)
Yes, I understand. I understand. Well, perhaps that is what Sri Aurobindo meant when he said to me, Your body is at present the only one on earth that can do this work. I thought it was a kindness on his part. But its true that it was cut off, I knew it I saw itcut off, the states of being were sent away: Go away, you are not wanted anymore. Then the body had to rebuild a life for itself. And instead of having to go through all those states of being as it did before, through successive awakenings (gesture of ascent from degree to degree, in the way of the yogis of old), right to the top, the topmost beyond the form, now its no longer that at all, the body no longer needs anything of all that, it simply has (gesture of a rising aspiration opening out like a flower). Something within opened and developed, which caused that idiotic mind to become organized and capable of falling silent in an aspiration. And then then there was the direct Contact, without intermediaries the direct contact. That it now has constantly. Constantly, constantly, constantly, the direct contact. And its THE BODY: it doesnt go through all kinds of things and states of being, not at all, its direct.
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0 1967-12-16, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Sri Aurobindo said it, of course. He said it, he wrote it in black and white (I forget the exact words): The pure divine love can manifest safely only in a in a ground (its not ground ) of Truth. I dont remember now. If we wanted to put it poetically, wed say, in a land of Truth.
So before we can proclaim, Love, manifest yourself, win the Victory, the ground of Truth must be ready.
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0 1968-01-12, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Thats it, its always a sign in people who have a purely mental constructive power: they want to bend words to express what they want. I told her, It doesnt matter, whatever you may say, everyone will take the phrase to have its usual meaning.
(In an aggressive tone) But THIS IS what it means.
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0 1968-02-03, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In my life, I have been given so many, so many experiences, as proof that EVERYTHING is possible. For instance, when I was twenty-two, one night, after an experience I had in the night (I forget the details of it) at the time women wore dresses that exactly touched the ground, just touched it without resting on it (gesture of skimming the ground), and in my experience at night, I had grown tallin the morning, there was one inch between the dress and the ground! Which means that the body had grown one inch WITH THE NIGHTS EXPERIENCE. You see, in the nights experience I had grown tall (I dont remember the details), and in the morning And Ive been given that material verification for many such experiences, so as to be sure, so the body may be convinced without having to repeat the experiences over and over again. So it KNOWS, it knows there is nothing impossible, it knows impossible doesnt mean anything. But it doesnt depend on an individual will, you understand. The Consciousness which rules things is a marvel of wisdom, patience, compassion, endurance. When there is destruction or disorder, it means its absolutely unavoidable, absolutelybecause matters resistance in the individual or in things is so strong that it quite naturally brings about disorder or destruction. But that doesnt form part of the Action, the supreme Action, which is a marvel. The body has understood that; it has understood, it is patient. Only, from time to time (how can I put it?) There are people whom I prevent from dyingseveral people. I dont yet have the consciousness, the conscious power to cure them, but the possibility is there and I maintain it above them. That is to say, its not all-powerful in the sense that a certain receptivity, a certain response, a certain attitude are necessary which arent always there (human natures are very fluctuating, there are ups and downs and more ups and downs, and that makes the work very difficult), but at times, during a down spell, when a being suffers or sags, there is something in the consciousness [of Mother], a compassion (how can I explain that?) Affliction and all those movements are movements of weakness, but that is something at once very strong and very sweet, almost like sorrow, and the whole, entire consciousness in the body rises like a prayer and an aspirationa pure prayer: Why are things still in this pitiful state, why? Why? And it instantly has an effect [in the sick person]. Unfortunately, the effect doesnt last; it doesnt last because certain conditions in others are still necessary. But its wonderful, you know! Its something so wonderful. And it makes one understand the necessity of a presence on this side, a presence capable of feeling, understanding still IN THE OTHER WAY, so the suffering of others may be a reality. And that also is taken into account, that also means time is needed, patience is needed. Now the body knows ittheres no longer any impatience; there is only, now and then, that sort of sorrow, especially when beings are full of aspiration, goodwill, faith, and in spite of it this suffering is still there, clinging. That on one side, and on the other, one thing: there is still a sort of horror and reprobation of acts of cruelty, of THE cruelty; thats And then, there is this awesome Poweryou feel, you can feel that a mere nothing, a simple little movement would, oh, bring about a catastrophe. So you have to keep that still, still, still so what happens may always be the best.
Now stupidity, imbecility, ignorance, all those things are looked at with a patience which waits for them to grow. But bad will and crueltyespecially viciousness, cruelty, what LOVES to cause suffering thats still difficult, one still has to keep a hold on oneself. In figurative language (not language, but a way of being), its Kali that wants to strike, and I have to tell her, Keep still, keep still. But thats a human transcription. All those gods, all those beings are real, they exist, but its a transcription. True truth is beyond all that.
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0 1968-04-06, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But of course! I understand that very well! I see it so clearly, in such a universal way. You see, a sentence like this (Mother shows her note) ought to be said to only one individual, that is, Its like this FOR YOUyou must choose between overcoming your weakness or habit and living in Auroville, the two cant go together. But then, it becomes a purely individual question; to another you may well not need to say it.
Thats why the most general formula is to say that any self-forgetfulness is contrary to life in Auroville. One doesnt go to Auroville to forget, or to forget oneselfany self-forgetfulness, in any form.
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0 1968-04-10, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The first thing to be accepted and recognized by all is that the invisible, higher power (higher in the sense that it belongs to a plane of consciousness which, although veiled to most, one can gain, a consciousness one may call as one likes, any name that doesnt matter but which is integral and pure in the sense that its not mendacious, its based on the Truth), that this power is capable of governing material things for everyone in a MUCH TRUER, happier and more beneficial way than any material power. Thats the first point. Once everyone agrees on it
And its not something you can pretend to have; a being cant pretend to have it: either he has it or he doesnt, because (laughing) if its a pretense, life will use the slightest opportunity to make it obvious! And moreover, it wont give you any material powerhere also, Thon said something in this regard, he said, Those who are all the way up (he was referring to the TRUE hierarchy, the hierarchy based precisely on each ones power of consciousness), one who is all the way up (one or those) necessarily has the least amount of needs; his material needs decrease as his capacity of material vision increases. And its perfectly true. Its automatic and spontaneous; its not the result of an effort: the vaster the consciousness and the more things and realities it embraces, the smaller the material needs becomeautomatically sobecause they lose all their importance and value. Its reduced to a minimal need of material necessities, which will itself change with the progressive development of Matter.
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0 1968-04-27, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But it shows that his vital is still not pure enough to be strong enough. The vital forces there [in the Vatican] are EXTREMELY powerful.
But he told me that as soon as he goes out of his body, his body is devoured by wild beasts.
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0 1968-05-15, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I felt it immediately and was able to resist for a very long time, but then the atmosphere here isnt pure enough.
It makes use of one or the other.
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0 1968-05-22, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I dont know. De Gaulle5 is open to something more than the purely material force. Is he capable? I dont know. At any rate, he is among the best instruments.
Its clearly (not in the detail of it, but in the direction of the movement), clearly a will to have done with the past and to open the door to the future.
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0 1968-05-29, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
If we consider that a child must only learn, know and be aware of what can keep him pure of all lower, crude, violent and degrading movements, then we should eliminate at one stroke the entire contact with the rest of mankind, beginning with all those accounts of wars, murders, conflicts and deceits that are called History; we should eliminate the present contact with family, parents and friends; and we should constantly control the childs contact with all the vital impulses of his own being.
This idea is what led to monastic life shut in a convent, or to ascetic life in the cave or the forest.
--
That is infinitely more difficult than fleeing or closing ones eyes so as not to see but it is the only really effective way, the way of those who are truly strong and pure and capable of manifesting the Truth.
You can show this letter to those who share your indignation.
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0 1968-06-15, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I dont know, but if you say, a disequilibrium between various functionings, then it seems to be purely physical. I feel something is missing to say that its a disequilibrium in the PSYCHOLOGICAL being or functioning?
(long silence)
--
What you say here gives an impression that an illness has purely physical causes. So it might be necessary to add somewhere the word consciousness or psychological. You say, Its always a disequilibrium in the being, a disequilibrium between various functionings, a disequilibrium between forces. It gives an impression of being something purely material.
There are no such things as purely material forces.
If you like, the only distinction that may be made is between a greater or lesser degree of consciousness. And the appearance of materiality is in proportion to the unconsciousness.
--
Because it all appears to be purely material! It seems to me we should add a word giving an inner sense.
Yes, for this body, its what we might call purely material: theres no vital or mental intervention. What generally happens to people is that the vital intervenes and so does the mind that never, ever happens [in Mother]. That belongs to the past, theres no question of it any longer. Everything takes place purely in the physical consciousness. So for the ordinary consciousness, its disequilibriums between the various functionings of breathing, digestion, blood circulation and so on. But for me, all that has become the expression of something else.
Yes!
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0 1968-06-18, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Question) One thing is strange. One never feels sex-vibrations when touching Europeans while one can hardly touch Orientals without feeling it either at the time or by memory afterwards. Does this means that the Europeans are purer than Orientals?
(Sri Aurobindo) No they are not purer, but they live more in the mental and less in the vital
Well, not anymore! Since the war everything has changed.
Therefore sex is with most of them, less passionate and preoccupying than with most Indians. This is at least true of the English and Americans, not perhaps quite so true of the southern peoples. But still it is a fact that one can meet Europeans more easily in a purely mental way. Vivekananda had noticed this about American women and writes of it in one of his letters.
Not since the war.
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0 1968-06-29, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
At the same time, a very precise perception. You know, once (years ago) I was asked, What is purity? I answered, Purity is to be exclusively under the influence of the Supreme Lord and to receive nothing but from him. Then, a year or two later, while reading Sri Aurobindo, I found a sentence in English which said exactly the same thing in other words1 (a sentence I had never read and didnt know). I saw that same sentence yesterday evening (I have a calendar with quotations from Sri Aurobindo). They [the cells] are growing purer and purer, and the extent to which they arent is pointed out very clearly, in an absolutely precise, distinct way, as if with the point of a needle, on the spot that isnt pure. And it hurts! It always corresponds to a painwhile the same physical condition goes on. Take an exposed nerve in a tooth: normally, it should hurt constantly; at times, in an almost general way, it doesnt exist, but just when the purity isnt total, whew! It hurts excruciatingly! And in a few seconds it may pass. So it all exclusively depends on Thateverything. Its a proof, the most concrete proof!
"Purity is to accept no other influence but only the influence of the Divine."
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0 1968-07-10, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
My whole life long, I complained that my visions werent more material than vital visions: they started from the vital and went up higher and higher, but below the vital, there was nothing. And now, its a continual vision of the subtle physicalconstant, I see both together: the physical and the subtle physical. Only, the physical, purely physical vision is much disturbed by the other vision. You understand, its more a CONSCIOUSNESS of things than purely and merely a vision. And Ive noticed, when I have someone in front of me, for instance, with some, when I look at them they grow more and more precise and clear; others become more and more blurred TO MY PHYSICAL VISION. It must depend on their state of consciousness. Some grow extremely precise, especially the eyes, and in their eyes I see the consciousness the eyes are perfectly visible. Others, on the contrary, become blurred like that; with some, even, in place of their eyes Ive seen two black plates. As if they wanted to put a veil. Its very interesting.
Oh, physically I see clearly enough to do everything, but I cant read. Even my vision of pictures is a little I dont know if its deteriorated or transformed: what I see isnt the picture as it is exactly, but maybe as it wanted to be. A slight difference.
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0 1968-08-30, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(After a silence) Yes, youre right, its better to say its a purely physical questionover there, there are no more ordeals! Only the body needs them.
(Then Satprem reads Mother the Notes on the Way put together from the last conversation. Mother is unsure whether publishing those experiences is appropriate.)
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0 1968-12-14, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its completely silent here (gesture to the forehead); I just turn (gesture upward) and wait, and I think what comes first is the purest, that is, the least mixed with activities; afterwards, its as if here in the atmosphere it got mixed with mental vibrations.
***
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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.
--
And then You know that from every side Ive been trying to get Sri Aurobindo published [in France], in particular The Human Cycle. At last I got a letter from a certain J. B., who writes: For a long time now, a publisher (F.) has been asking me to create a collection in his publishing house. I thought of a few books, mostly foreign ones, grouped around a title such as Towards the spiritual mutation and focused on the present researches, individual and clumsy, often dangerous, but sincere and undertaken in a spirit quite different from that of the former generation, the spirit of a certain youth I am in contact with. The idea is to show these young people that their attempts and aspirations are legitimate, even if they have discovered them through drugs, since in many cases drugs alone have been able to unmoor them from the Cartesian rationalist bedrock, to put before them experiences that, at least, are positive, and to offer them directions and models. In other words, the aspect of amateurism and exoticism found in Z [another publisher] would be replaced here by a practical and technical side, wide open to all spiritual researches, whatever they may be, to all duly controlled metapsychical experiments, serious psychedelic experiments (I have T. Leary in mind, for instance), new theologies Naturally, there would be room, a major place, for the Oriental endeavor. In sum, it would involve all researches and attempts to crack open that sort of corset within which the Western mind has been going in circles for such a long time. That does not in the least rule out, on the contrary, certain scientific worksof pure sciencein which, out of intrinsic necessity, this Cartesianism has already been singularly shaken. Of course, all that would make for quite an ill-assorted backdrop for Sri Aurobindos thought, a backdrop you will regard as unworthy of it. The planned Collection might be called Spiritual Adventures.
We can try.
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0 1969-03-12, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is also quite a clear perception of the individual reaction; for instance, the way faith manifests in people, in different individuals, the coloration it takes, the amount of (what should I say?) ignorance or falsehood added to it, and the amount that remains pure. Theres constantly, constantly a work of that kind, all the time. I find it very interesting.
And it is beginning to understand why this is like this, why that is like that.
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0 1969-04-09, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I had felt your reaction. It does not surprise me. It is precisely one of the general difficulties to be conquered. Perhaps the most hardened one (it seems especially localized in France): the intellectual difficulty It is really a veil that blocks ones view and makes one read or understand things on a very narrow range. It almost seems as if people are looking through a slit and catch a thin layer, tiny and bright, and all the rest eludes them: mountaintops are cut off, abysses are filled, and there remains one pure line. And if one happens to try and open them to a broader view, the line of sight gets lost in the mists or muggy vapors you mention. A curious phenomenon. I do not know if you trust me, but I will tell you that every sentence of Sri Aurobindo is the expression or translation of a precise experience, and not only is it like a world enclosed in a few words, but it also contains the vibration of the experience, almost the quality of light of the particular world he contacts; and through the words one contacts, or can very well contact, the experience. I tell you, Sri Aurobindo is full of marvels pure marvelsand I discover new ones every time I read his texts again, I say to myself, Oh, how well he saw this! And if there happens to be some haziness, I am sure a discovery remains to be made there. Sri Aurobindo never used one word too much. As soon as he comes to the mentally obviouswhat would be for you precisely the starting point of a brilliant developmen the cuts off. He smiles and leaves you hanging in midairoh, he is surprisingly discreet, as you yourself put it, for a man who wrote thousands of pages!
You have not stepped into Sri Aurobindo. On the other hand, I quite understand if intellectuals so easily step into Zen! But I do not want to compare merits. With Sri Aurobindo, I am content to see and smile. You have better understood my book, you say it has brought you more than Sri Aurobindo but of course! That does not surprise me, I am afraid: I simply entered the regions of the mentally obvious he neglected, I climbed down a number of degrees. The lines of force you felt are simply the little strings I hung here and there to try and hook people on to the true lines of force that seem to elude them completely, because they see and feel just at the level of the mental slit. But I will tell you again, if you have the least trust in me, that Sri Aurobindo is a tremendous giant and not one word of his is without a full meaning. Some time ago I wanted to have a music lover (a Westerner nurtured on true music like myself, formed in music) listen to a music of genius composed by an Indian; well, this poor boy could make no sense of it! He could not hear! His musical slit was open at one particular level, and he literally could not hear what was abovea true marvel, immense streams of music flowing straight from the Origin of Music.6 For him, it had no structure, it was shapeless musicwhereas I saw, I could see that marvel, I knew where it was coming from, I could touch that world, and as soon as that high musical tension slackened in the least, I instantly felt that it came down to touch a center on a lower level. It was the same thing in Egypt. For weeks I lived in an ecstatic state in Upper Egypt; I was with people who were looking at ruins, seeing beautiful statueswhile for me those statues were living, those places talked to me, those so-called ruins were full of overflowing life.
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0 1969-04-16, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(F.B.:) Theres a group which sings something rather humorous, and at the end they say, O Mother, tell me more, tell me more Its fantastic! Because the inspiration is so pure, and they really ask, O Mother, tell me more
(Mother laughs)
--
And to become very pure and devoted.
Its good. So you must take up that mission.
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0 1969-05-10, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Within, there isnt the assertion of a yes or a no: nothing at all, theres nothing, its like this (neutral, immobile gesture). Theres only a constant Presence. A constant Presence, and its in this Presence that the body takes refuge. But you know There are other things [i.e., good ones] that come too, but those other things there are perhaps oh, they happen perhaps once or twice in twenty-four hours: all of a sudden, a light that is pure Like that, something pure, which makes what we might call a minute of eternity Thats good. But its rare.
The body knows a lot, a lot of things about what happens (I think, in fact, about all that happens within its sphere of activity), but its forbidden to say them. And those things are put in such a way that they cant be said, because the way theyre put, they wouldnt make any sense for others. Dont speak, dont speak.
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0 1969-07-19, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The physical appears to be less imperative, less Previously, there was the impression that, all right, it wasnt a dream as people call it, but a more subtle and less precise consciousness, and that the physical consciousness was quite concrete and precise (Mother gestures as if to knock against something). But now this distinction the other consciousness has become almost more concrete and real than the physical consciousness; the purely material consciousness is more wobbly: the impression of something not too not too steadynot too steady, its odd.12
Thats odd; its new, it began two days ago.
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0 1969-08-27, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
So well see the druid! That makes the fourth person: we have a healer of cancer coming; we have a healer pure and simple coming; we have (Mother tries to remember) ah, yes, a Persian inventor who has made extraordinary inventions for education (he sent a paper), especially for childrens education; he is coming in September.
All that will be very amusing!
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0 1969-09-20, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But to correctly perceive what That wants, one has to be very pure.
Yes. And ABOVE ALL without any mental preferences: its mostly the mind that stands in the way Material desires, things of that sort, it doesnt care, but mental ideas, rigid conceptions, oh! It doesnt seem to be touched by that, its not interested.
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0 1969-10-25, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Near you, A.R. says that he only feels a difference in intensity of the same Thing. I tried to explain to him that it was not quite the same thing, but he irrefutably says that there is only ONE Thing with varying intensities, and that you only let That flow through more purely than others do. And as we spoke of Avatars, he said: There cannot be a difference between an Avatar and a realized Yogi, or if there is a difference, it means that the Yogi isnt truly realized.
In short, we both turned round an indefinable differencewhich may be the Grace.
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0 1969-11-19, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
All human reactions, even the highest, the purest, the noblest, it all seemed so childish! Theres a sentence Sri Aurobindo wrote somewhere, which kept coming back to me (one day, I forget where, he wrote something, a rather long sentence), and in it, there was, And when I feel jealous, I know that the old man is still there.1 I read it more than thirty years ago maybeyes, about thirty years agoand I remember that when I read jealous, I thought, How can Sri Aurobindo be jealous! Then, thirty years later, I understood what he meant by being jealousits not at all what people call jealous, its quite another state of consciousness, which I saw clearly. And this morning, it came back: And when I feel jealous, I know that the old man is still there. This morning, I understood. Being jealous, for him, isnt what we call being jealous. Its this infinitesimal fragment which we call the individual, this infinitesimal parcel of consciousness, which puts itself at the center, which becomes the center of the perception. And then it perceives things coming like this (gesture to oneself) or going like this (gesture away from oneself), and all that doesnt come to it gives it a sort of perception that Sri Aurobindo called jealousy: the perception that things go towards diffusion instead of coming towards centralization. Thats what he called being jealous. So then, he said, When I feel jealous (thats what he meant), I know that the old man is still there, which means that that infinitesimal fragment of consciousness can STILL be at the center of itself: its the center of action, the center of perception, the center of sensation.
(silence)
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0 1970-02-25, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Sri Aurobindo says that the soul is naked and unashamed,2 and you are asked, Isnt the soul always pure? So you reply:
The soul wears no disguise, it shows itself as it is and cares nothing for peoples judgement, because it is the faithful servant of the Divine whose home it is.
--
Aphorism 350"Only the soul that is naked and unashamed can be pure and innocent, even as Adam was in the primal garden of humanity."
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0 1970-03-25, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Theres something very interesting on a psychological level: its that material needs decrease in proportion to the spiritual growth. Not (as Sri Aurobindo said), not through asceticism, but because the focus of attention and concentration of the being moves to a different domain. The purely material being, quite conceivably, finds only material things pleasing; with all those who live in the emotive being and the outer mind, the interest of the being is turned to for instance, things of beauty, as with those who want to live surrounded by beautiful things, who want to use nice things. Now that appears to be the human summit, but its quite what we might call a central region (gesture hardly above ground level), its not at all a higher region. But the way the world is organized, people without aesthetic needs go back to a very primitive lifewhich is wrong. We need a place where life where the very setting of life would be, not an individual thing, but a beauty that would be like the surroundings natural to a certain degree of development.
Now, as things are organized, to be surrounded by beautiful things you need to be rich, and thats a source of imbalance, because wealth usually goes with quite an average degree of consciousness, even mediocre at times. So theres everywhere an imbalance and a disorder. We would need a place of beautya place of beauty in which people can live only if they have reached a certain degree of consciousness. And let it not be decided by other people, but quite spontaneously and naturally. So how to do that?
--
All that was automatic has almost disappearedwhich has caused a great reduction from the standpoint of capacities; its replaced by a consciousness with a certain power, which didnt exist previously: thats an improvement. But all things considered, well, if I take the ordinary stand, I can no longer do what I used to do when I was twenty, quite obviously. Perhaps I know a hundred thousand times more than I knew, but This body, the body itself knows: it feels, its capable of knowing all that it didnt know then. But from a purely material standpoint (Mother shakes her head, pointing to her bodys incapacity). Could it come back? I dont know. Theres a question mark there. I dont know. And it could last only if the capacities came back; as Sri Aurobindo very wisely put it, who would want to go on in a body that keeps losing all its capacities?3 You know, sight isnt clear anymore, you dont hear clearly anymore, cant speak clearly anymorev anyway you cant walk freely, you can no longer carry a weightall kinds of things.
Would this, as it is, THIS (Mother pinches the skin of her hands), would it be capable of being transformed by the Force? Can it be done?Well know when its done and not before!
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0 1970-03-28, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
421There are four stages in the pain God gives to us; when it is only pain; when it is pain that causes pleasure; when it is pain that is pleasure; and when it is purely a fiercer form of delight.
You answer:
--
That experience I had it in 1912 (1912 or 13, I dont remember), in Paris. I was in Paris. Once, I had an anxiety about someone who was to travel to Paris and arrive at a certain time; time was passing and passing, and the person didnt arrive. Then, at one point, I had a sort of anguish, I wondered what had happened. And that anguish suddenly You see, I was already conscious of my psychic being (I had been for a long time), and that anguish suddenly became extraordinarily intense, and it made (bursting gesture) like fireworksa marvel! So I understand what he means by a fierce form of delight. But it was purely psychological, it wasnt physical. 1912 or 13.
But physically, the bodys whole experience now is that it only has to to give itself unreservedly, to abandon itself totally to the divine Presence, and the pain, any pain at all, disappears.
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0 1970-04-04, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For quite some time lately, for weeks, night and day there has been a sort of demonstration of all that remains mixed in the body: old influences, old vibrations, old and in the new way. So then, when the new way is pure, without mixture, there is still in the body consciousness (Mother shows surprise) a sense of marvel at something that still appears impossible.
It gives the distance between what is and what must be.
--
Oh, yes! (Mother laughs) Oh, yes. And all things other than the purely material, all psychological, moral things, all that seems so childish! Oh, what fuss you make about nothing! Wait till you know how it is THERE (Mother points to the body). Thats all.
Yes (laughing), I think thats the great adventure!
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0 1970-05-09, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And you know, its simply a movement like this (gesture of slight reversal or tipping over) and I was really miserable, you might say (I mean on the purely physical level: nausea and everything imaginable, CONSTANT, constant), and then it went like this (same gesture of slight reversal): a bliss For the BODY.
That experience which one has, or used to have in the consciousness (vitally, mentally, all that), when you have that experience once, its over, you are free but there remained the body: miserable, you know, it suffered frightfully (it wasnt violent but worse than that, constant), and then, just this (same gesture): bliss.
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0 1970-05-27, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
No. That cant be materialized, it would be impossible! I think its a means of action, that is to say, it responds more clearly and strongly to the will. It seems more receptive. Its more supple, more expressive too. But materialized, it would appear like pure chaos.
It seems to me to be the symbolic place of physical life. For example, within a small space, you can have a very wide action, which reaches very far. In that way there were, as though in adjacent rooms, people who live very far, in North India or in another country or They were just in different rooms, but I was able to move from one room to another; so it looks like (Mother gestures showing a concentration or a restricted field). It doesnt have the same concrete reality, its symbolic.
--
Maybe, yes. Whats trying to take place is a stronger and more direct influence on purely material circumstances. Yes, this is it: action on this subtle physical has an effect according to the laws of the material world in the material world.
You see, amidst many other things (it lasted a long time and was a very complex thing), but as one example amidst other things, it had to do with the consequences, even current ones, of certain things Amrita did when he was here and handled money. But I spoke to him and arranged things with him as if he were present, not as if he had left.
--
The only thing conceivable almost immediately is for a human being to feed on pure air, just as there are beings that feed on water (they live in water and feed on it). Its conceivable that human beings could feed on pure air. Some yogis used to do it.
Are there beings that feed on water alone?
--
Simply plankton: tiny particles that live in water. It is said that there are yogis who can feed on pure air. Ancient texts refer to that.
That would be really convenient!
--
From a purely scientific point of view, I dont know how the child is formed in the mothers womb. In our system, food is almost dematerialized in order to be used, so for the childs formation, is it the same thing?
Yes, its the same food thats used for the child.
--
But what is it? From a purely scientific point of view, a chemical point of view?
Its molecules and atoms. Various arrangements of molecules and atoms.3
--
Which means that for the time being, the production of those atoms must go through a process of materialization, then of dematerialization, and then [of materialization again]. You understand, dense matter is an appearance. So? Thats what I dont understand, theres something I dont understand from a purely scientific point of view.
Yes, if you absorb, say, a carrot or a potato, theres a large part of useless waste, and theres the essence of the thing.
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0 1970-10-07, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Mother, I pray for the transmission to be pure and faithful. Thats what gives me anguish.
(Mother nods her head) Its good.
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0 1970-10-17, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Oh, I pray a lot to receive purely.
(silence)
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0 1971-04-14, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Theres only. Its only by clinging desperately to the Divine but to the purest and most powerful Divine that we can avoid a general conflagration. Its terrible.
Theres an impression that not a single minute should be lost, that we should constantly, constantly cling to the Divine to compel his descent here. Otherwise otherwise its terrible.
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0 1971-04-17, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Now, you have completely confused the psychic and the spiritual. The psychic, the soul, the Fire within, Agni, does not belong to the mental bubble or to any bubble: it is the Divine in matter. It is that little Fire which opens the door to the great solar Fire of the New Consciousness. It is the instrument of the yoga of the superman (when I speak of turning on the psychic switch, I am there taking the word in the vulgar and ridiculous sense of people seeking visionary and occult experiencesnot in the true sense). Others in every age have had the experience of the psychic, of the inner Fire, but aside from the Rishis, no one used it to transform matter; the religions have made a purely devotional and mystical thing out of it. As for the spiritual, that includes all the planes of consciousness above the ordinary mind. It is the path of ascent. And that is where I repeatedly and emphatically, and from experience, say that those great Experiences, which have to be turned into spiritual summits, are part of the mental bubble (including the overmind): they are the rarefied summits on which the being thins out into a marvelous whiteness, immense, royal, without a ripple of trouble, in an eternal peacewhich can last for millenniums without its changing the world one iota, by definition. But the spiritual is not the supramental, and when one touches the supramental, it seems to be almost a whole other Spirit, it is so compact, warm, powerful, present, embodied and radiantly solid in broad daylight. That is the Radiance which Sri Aurobindo and Mother came to bring down on earththey said over and over that their yoga was new, new, newand it is through the simple little fire inside us that we can enter into direct contact with That, without sitting in the lotus position or leaving life. When one touches That, the spiritual heights seem pale. That is all I have to say. So we do not at all need to be superyogis to have this contact, and those who have found Nirvana, or what have you, have not advanced one inch toward That, because the clue to That is not up there at all or outside, but in your own small capacity of flame.
So if instead of splitting hairs, you set out boldly on the road, afire, you would perhaps discover that we are indeed at the Hour of God and that a single spark of sincere effort, at ones own level, opens doors which have been closed for millenniums.
--
One could say that it is far more difficult to go from the mental to the supramental life than to go from a certain psychic emotion in life something that is like a reflection, a luminous emanation of the divine Presence in matterto the supramental consciousness; it is much easier to go from that into the supramental consciousness than to go from the highest intellectual speculation to any supramental vibration. Perhaps it is the word that misleads us! Perhaps it is because we call it supramental that we expect to reach it through a higher intellectual mental activity. But the reality is quite different. With this very high and pure and lofty intellectual activity, one seems to go towards a kind of cold, powerless abstraction, an icy light that is surely very remote from life and still further away from the experience of the supramental reality.
The new substances that is spreading and acting in the world contains a warmth, a power, a joy so intense that all intellectual activity seems cold and dry beside it. And that is why the less one talks about these things, the better it is. A single instant, a single impulse of deep and true love, a single minute of deep communion with the divine Grace brings you much closer to the goal than all possible explanations.
--
Its as if our entire spiritual life were made of silver, whereas the supramental life is made of goldas if our entire spiritual life here were a silvery vibration, not cold but simply a light, a light that goes right to the summit, an absolutely pure light pure and intense but in the other, in the supramental world, there is a richness and a power that makes all the difference. This whole spiritual life of the psychic being and of all our present consciousness, which seems so warm, so full, so wonderful, so luminous to the ordinary consciousness, well, all this splendor seems poor in comparison to the splendor of the new world.
I can explain the phenomenon like this: successive reversals will bring about such an EVER-NEW richness of creation from stage to stage, that it will make whatever came before seem very poor in comparison. What to us seems supremely rich compared to our ordinary life appears very poor when compared to this new reversal of consciousness.
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0 1971-05-08, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But you see, even those who are here attribute purely human feelings and reactions to me. So.
But Mother, Im hopeful.
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0 1971-05-22, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I would like. You see, the Will comes, but then all the formations come in and decay its execution I would like I would like my atmosphere to be a limpid transmitter, utterly limpid. I dont even try to know what it is, because that too introduces an ordinary human element. A limpid, limpid transmitter: let it come like this (gesture of direct descent), pure, in all its purityeven if it is overwhelming.
At bottom we dont know why one thing is like this, another thing is like that, and our vision is even if our vision is worldwide, it is so small, so smallso exclusive: we want this, we do not want that. First and FOREMOST to be an instrument: we must be LIMPID, limpid, things must pass through undistorted and unobstructed.
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0 1971-07-10, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The experience in the body is very interesting. All so-called moral, intellectual, psychological suffering, in other words, the suffering of the consciousness that is not purely material, seems childish to the body. Yesterday, it had (what shall I say? I dont know how to explain it). It doesnt feel things in relation to itself, it feels things (silence) IN others, but with a general consciousness, not a personal one; and it has such a horror of physical suffering, that is to say illnesses, accidents, that it wondered why, why the world exists like that.1 It then understood why some people dont want to have a body anymore (that always seemed absurd before), it understood why. It was such an intense experience! It had an aspiration, something like a prayer, but its not a prayer: May the world change! May the world change. It HAS to changeor else disappear. The idea of disappearing had not come before, it seemed it used to think that the world was moving towards a harmonious perfection; but, you see, its long the length of time is terrible! There was an aspiration of incredible intensity for the transformation. Everything looks so dreadful because because the transformation must, MUST take place. That anyone can be satisfied with a world like this is impossibleits impossible to a physical consciousness that is conscious of the Divine. Its impossible, it absolutely has to change. And that was so vivid I was gripped by it all night and all day, even while seeing people, with such an intensity: it must change, it must change.
The being, the inner consciousness can say and be conscious that that suffering is unreal, but the physical consciousness cantit cant, it HAS to change. Its not a matter of merging with a consciousness, leaving this physical consciousness to disappear: it has to change, it has to change. I cant put it into words, I cant say it.
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0 1971-07-21, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I dont know, even my words distort the thing, but its its something I feel is so simple, so luminous, so pureso absolute. And then, we make of it what we can see around us: a complicated and almost incomprehensible life.
But what about you, dont you have any news?
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0 1971-08-21, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Only those with a physical body have the kind of reactionspleasure, displeasurewe have in physical life. The others no longer have it. That seems to disappear with the purely physical consciousness.
(silence)
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0 1971-08-28, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
First of all, I am convinced that the need to see things, to think them, is purely human and is a transitory device. It is a transitory phase, which seems terribly long to us, but in fact is rather short.
Even our consciousness is an adaptation of the Consciousness THE Consciousness, the true consciousness is something else.
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0 1971-12-01, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You see, I am witnessing natures transformation. When I have nothing to do and I sit very quiet, its very clear. I see three things: the nature being transformed, or rather the new nature, what we can call the supramental way of seeing things (its getting clearer and clearer; the memory of the old nature remains but is fading more and more, to such a point that sometimes its almost incredible, it seems fantastic to have been like that). Then theres the physical deterioration that comes with age: for example, the physical inability to do what I used to do, the body getting old. But the aging is pureLY physical, I mean, I sit here all day long and have trouble moving about, things like that, but from the standpoint of perception, consciousness, theres no diminution. On the contrary, its getting clearer and clearer and more and more precise. But, for instance, I have trouble speaking (Mother touches her chest, she is out of breath), its hard for me to speak; I cant speak easily, its hard. Things like that. That makes three things.
But when I am very quiet (at night, for instance), the new consciousness becomes clearer and clearer, but words cannot easily express it because its a kind of (how shall I say?) its almost as if a new mind were being formed (but not a mental one). And so speech, words are a poor means, while the direct communication is getting more and more precise and strong. Thats why I cant speak. Its purely physical. But the foundation of the physical poise, I mean the physical health, is changing, that is, its being shifted: what used to be the condition of good health is practically gone; it is gradually replaced by another condition, but which isnt there yet; so everything is in (gesture of instability), everything is no longer this, is not yet that. Thats how it is. Its inexpressible. Thats why I cant express myself.
(silence)
--
And then, for sight, for instance, sometimes I see more clearly with my eyes closed than with them open, and the vision is the SAME, physical, purely physical vision; but a physical that seems more complete, I dont know what words to use. For instance, when I write; sometimes with my eyes closed I see what I write or see the same thing, but I see it (what shall I say? I could be wordy, but I dont like that). You know, its as if what you see were more complete, yet its the same thing, but containing more than the purely physical vision.
I write birthday cards, and Sri Aurobindo. I was about to say I have the feeling that Sri Aurobindo makes me write, but its not like that, its much better than that! But when I start to write, for example, I close my eyes, and I see better what I am writing. Champaklal asks me to sign the cards, and he tells me that I sometimes write 3 or 4 cards in a row with my eyes completely closed, then my handwriting is much straighter and much more where the writing should be.
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0 1972-03-29a, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I call on you rather than any other contemporary writer because I think your works embody the very anguish of the West, an anguish I have bitterly experienced all the way to the German concentration camps at the age of twenty, and then in a long and uneasy wandering around the world. Insofar as I have always turned to you, daring and searching with each of your characters what surpasses man, I am again turning to you because I have a feeling that, more than anyone else, you can understand Sri Aurobindos message and perhaps draw a new impetus from it. I am also thinking of a whole generation of young people who expect much from you: more than an ideal of pure heroism, which only opens the doors (as does all self-offering) on another realm of man we have yet to explore, and more than a fascination with death, which also is only a means and not an end, although its brutal nakedness can sometimes open a luminous breach in the bodily prisonwhere we seem to have been immured alive and we emerge into a new dimension of our being. For we tend too often to forget that it is for living that your heroes think so constantly of death; also I think that the young people I mentioned want the truth of Tchen and Katow, the truth of Hernandez, Perken and Moreno [characters in Malrauxs novels] beyond their death.
It may seem strange to speak of you in an Indian Ashram that one would consider far removed from the world and the agonizing problems and struggles of the Human Condition, but as a matter of fact Sri Aurobindos Ashram is concerned with this earthly life; it wants to transform it instead of fleeing it as all traditional Indian and Western religions do, forever proclaiming that His kingdom is not of this world. Knowing that there exists a fundamental reality beyond man, religions have focussed on that other realm to find the key to man just as your heroes focus on their death to discover the fundamental reality that will be able to stand in the face of death. But religion has not justified this life, except as a transition toward a Beyond which is supposedly the supreme goal; and your heroesthough so close to lifes throbbing heart that at times it seems to explode and reveal its poignant secretfinally plunge into death, as if to free themselves from an Absolute they cannot live in the flesh.
--
I think I am correctly interpreting the feeling of my young Indian friends when I say that they see the heroes of your novels as raw mystics, to use Claudels description of Rimbaud. This may seem a surprising attribute, considering your heroes atheism, but that is because we have too often confused mysticism or spirituality with religion, as Sri Aurobindo stresses. One need not believe in a personal, extracosmic God to be a mystic. (That is certainly why religion has from time to time taken upon itself to bum alive all the non-regular mystics.) Here we touch upon a huge confusion rooted in religions. Through their monks, sannyasins and ascetics, religions have shown us a purely contemplative, austere and lifeless side of mysticismindeed those mystics, like the religions they practice, live in a negation of life; they go through this vale of tears with their eyes exclusively fixed on the Beyond. But true mysticism is not so limited as that, it seeks to transform life, to reveal the Absolute hidden in it; it seeks to establish the kingdom of God in man, as Sri Aurobindo wrote, and not the kingdom of a Pope, clergy or sacerdotal class. If the modem world lives in conflict and anguish, if it is torn between being and doing, it is because religion has driven away God from this world, severed him from his creation and flung him back to some distant heaven or empty nirvana, thus denying any possibility of human perfection on this earth and digging an unbridgeable gulf between being and doing, between mystics sunk in their dreams and this world abandoned to the forces of evil, to Satan and all those who consent to get their hands dirty.
That contradiction is powerfully expressed in your books, it is striking to my Indian students. And they are surprised, for the urge to do something at all coststo do anything at all, as long as we do something, as one often hears in Europewithout this action being based on a being which it expresses and of which it is but the material translation, appears to them a strange attitude. Neither the despair, the silence or the revolt, nor the absurd pointlessness that sometimes surrounds the death of many of your heroes escape them. They feel that your heroes flee from themselves rather than express themselves. This torment between being and doing can be found in each one of them. They have apparently renounced to be something in order to do something, as one character stresses in Hope, but are they not desperately seeking to be through their actions, a being that they will capture only as time is abolished, in death? The same obsession seems to run through each of them: from Perken, who wants to leave his scar on the map, to outlive himself through twenty tribes, who fights against time as one fights against cancer, to Tchen, who shuts himself in the world of terrorism: an eternal world where time does not exist, and to Katow, who whispers to himself, O prisons, where time stops. In that respect, these characters clearly symbolize the impotence of a religion that has not been able to give the earth its meaning and plenitude.
--
Sri Aurobindo has constantly stressed that, through progressive evolutionary cycles, humanity must go beyond the purely ethical and religious stage, just as it must go beyond the infrarational and rational stage, in order to reach a new spiritual and suprarational ageotherwise we will simply remain doomed to the upheavals, conflicts and bloody sacrifices that shake our times, for living according to a code of morality is always a tragedy, as one of the characters in Hope notes.
The tragedies we are experiencingcommunism, Nazismare not rooted, as the Swedish magazine implies, in the weakening or disappearance of religion, it is religion itself which is the source of the disequilibrium insofar as it is fossilized in dogmas, as it clings to a power it possesses in a human cycle drawing to its close, and as it refuses to open itself to a new deeper notion in man which would at long last reconcile heaven and earth. As a result, men go elsewhere to seek what religion is unable to provide: in communism or any other ism, so great and persistent is their thirst for the Absolute for that? abides under one name or another and that very thirst is the surest sign of a fullness to come.
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0 1972-03-29b, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In liquid form, yes. There is glucose or very pure fruit juicewhich is more or less the same thing.
Thats almost all I take: glucose and fruit juice.
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0 1972-04-05, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The third person was Mothers helper, Champaklal, who had also been Sri Aurobindos attendant. A pure-hearted man, simple and utterly devoted There is nothing to say about him, except my respect. He had come from his Gujarati village straight to the Ashram, some fifty years earlier, at the age of eighteen. There was nothing between his village and Sri Aurobindo. He understood nothing of what was happeninghe simply served and did as he was bidden.
The fourth and last person was Mothers new attendant. She is going to appear in the following conversation. I was particularly blind about her because she was young and affectionate but she was completely under Pranabs thumb and ruled by her passions. I had, of course, noticed that she was listening in on my conversations with Mother, thus subtly clouding the atmosphere, invisibly breaking in upon Mothers free expression; for, needless to say, Mother sensed all that went on in the atmosphere. How many times did she stop in the middle of a sentence, invisibly interrupted: I cant speak that was not just because she was short of breath. Hence, the atmosphere of our conversations was no longer what it had been for the last fifteen years, until 1970. But in addition, we were responsible for a new and sad turn of events. We knew that Mother frequently spoke about Auroville, or with one disciple or another, and we regretted the loss of those wordsto us each of her words seemed to have so much importance for the world, even if we were not yet fully able to understand all that she was saying. So with her approval, we managed to obtain a small, easy-to-operate cassette recorder. It had been agreed with Mother that her attendant would record all the important conversations in Mothers room, then pass them on to me to be added to the Agenda. At first, I noticed that the attendant was keeping the tapes, but an innate shyness kept me from saying anything lest I appear to monopolize things or seem pushing, and also I didnt know exactly whose instructions she was obeying. Then, gradually, the attendant stopped giving me the recordings altogether, even those of Mother with Sujata. At that point, the situation in Mothers room was so fragile that I didnt want to say anything, for fear of sparking an outburst that would have ultimately bounced on Mother. I was already feeling also the invisible barrier against Sujata, whose name was systematically crossed off the list of visitors under one pretext or another, along with those of the few young women who were the Ashrams positive and silentelements. And how could we possibly argue when Sujata was told, Mother cannot see you Mother is sick? Once, Sujata mentioned it to Mother, but when the same incident occurred three, four, ten times, there was nothing to be said. Without knowing why, I too was feeling my own meetings with Mother threatened and precarious. In fact, we were alone, facing an obscure league of opposition. Why the opposition? There is no answerexcept human pettiness, which does not understand and hates everything that exceeds it. Even Mothers own son was jealous of my place near her, not to mention the others, the liars pure and simple, as Mother used to call them, who were, and still are, directing the Ashram. Finally, much later, I discovered that the notorious cassette recorder, whose recordings I was no longer even receiving, was clandestinely used to record my own conversations with Motheron whose behalf?
That was the end. The atmosphere had become so rotten that, obviously, it could not last much longerMo ther was suffocating there. I later discovered in my own body and from direct experience that all bad thoughts are agonizing to the body, they create a sort of oppression as if you were short of air. Yet, even when they closed Mothers door on me, a year and a month later almost to the day, on May 19, 1973, I COULD NOT believe it was the end. I was convinced that this was the last stage, that Mother was finally going to shake off the old slavery to food: the last tie to the old physiology. But, as we now know, her bodyguard would not let her. In his speech on December 4, 1973, he declared, In the beginning [from May 20], She refused to take any food or drink, but somehow we persuaded Her to take them.2 She did fight as much as she could, and then. At times, I seemed to hear her faltering little voice up there: Where is Satprem? Where is Satprem? and then silence. Had I attempted to force the barrier, this Agenda would never have seen the light of day. In a way, the following conversation is therefore prophetic.
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0 1972-06-07, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Thats what is now pressing all the time like this (gesture of pressure and descent). In spite of an apparent weakness (which is purely illusory), theres a tremendous Force here.
Yes, certainly.
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0 1973-01-10, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The possibility of suffering, for examplesuffering from pain, suffering a purely physical fact (all the nonphysical things are: Mother makes an immutable and peaceful gesture to indicate the inner states), but something purely physical: really, the capacity for suffering must disappear. Not that I dont want to suffer, but it isnt a nice gift to give people!
Five years.
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02.01 - A Vedic Story, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
IX) The offerings that precede, the offerings that follow, offerings pure and simpleall forceful, may you enjoy. May this sacrifice be yours entirely. The four quarters bow down to you, O Agni!
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02.01 - Metaphysical Thought and the Supreme Truth, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Indian position. Even those who see that mental Thought must be overpassed and admit a supramental "Other", do not seem to escape from the feeling that it must be through mental Thought, sublimating and transmuting itself, that this other Truth must be reached and made to take the place of the mental limitation and ignorance. And again Western thought has ceased to be dynamic; it has sought after a theory of things, not after realisation. It was still dynamic amongst the ancient Greeks, but for moral and aesthetic rather than spiritual ends. Later on, it became yet more purely intellectual and academic; it became intellectual speculation only without any practical ways and means for the attainment of the Truth by spiritual experiment, spiritual discovery, a spiritual transformation. If there were not this difference, there would be no reason for seekers like yourself to turn to the East for guidance; for in the purely intellectual field, the Western thinkers are as competent as any Eastern sage.
It is the spiritual way, the road that leads beyond the intellectual levels, the passage from the outer being to the inmost Self, which has been lost by the over-intellectuality of the mind of Europe.
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02.01 - Our Ideal, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A movement of involution through a series of termsof consciousnessof gradually diminishing facial value has made the Spirit terminate in Matter. If it is so, it stands to reason that a movement of evolution, a return journey would make Matter culminate in Spirit. Thus the very fact of Spirit having become Matter, of Matter being a mode of the Spirit, at once creates the possibility of Matter being transmuted into Spirit. Now even granting such a possibility, it may be argued yet that the thing achieved is a resolution of Matter into Spirit; it means the destruction of the characteristic form and consistency that is called Matter. We know, thanks to modern Science, that Matter can be transmuted into pure energy, but then it loses its materiality, it is dematerialised.
That is what some of the old spiritual disciplines taught. Even if there is no unbridgeable gulf between Spirit and Matter, they said, even if they are not incommensurables but form one reality, Spirit is the reality in essence, Matter is an inferior formulation. Matter has unrolled itself out of the infinite, it can only be and it has got to be rolled back again into the Spirit.
Here comes the second cardinal principle in Sri Aurobindo's vision of the reality, viz, that an inferior formulation of the Spirit, an involute on a lower plane is not essentially or truly, even in its outer and dynamic nature and character, a mere temporary or by-the-way reality, an epiphenomenon; its sole function is not simply to impede, diminish and obscure the real reality so that it has to be gradually rejected and eliminated on the way back to the source. As a matter of fact, an inferior formulation has a double function; in the line of descent it limits, obscures, deviates and in the end falsifies the higher reality; at the same time, however, it concretises, energises, incarnates what it obscures. But in the ascending line, that is to say, in the movement of reversal from the inferior to the superior, the movement need not be always that of disincarnation and dissolution, it may be that of purification and illumination and fulfilment. The analogy will not be, then, that of Matter being dematerialised into pure energy but that of Matter being transformed into a radiant substance, not losing itself in the process of radiation, being wholly made of the undying luminous stuff.
Such a movement of transforming evolution is not merely a possibility or a probability: it is a fact of Nature. Indeed, natural evolution means nothing less than that. First of all, evolution means the reversibility of Nature; for, it is the backward movement of an involutionary process. We have said that the supreme truth and realitysat-cit-ananda, as it is calledmultiplied and concretised itself gradually through various steps and stages of a diminishing power of expression or an increasing entropy of self-concealment: the main grades being the Supermind, the Overmind, the Higher Mind, the Mind, Life and lastly the body or Matter. Having arrived at the extreme end that Matter represents,the farthest apparently from the original source, the movement turns round and seeks to go up the ladder through the same gradations it has traversed. But this process of reversal is not merely a resolution and dissolution, it is a process of greater fulfilment and synthetisation, of sublimation as well as of integration.
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02.01 - The World-Stair, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The lucent clarity of a pure regard
And saw a shadow of the Unknowable
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02.01 - The World War, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Not that spiritual men have not served and worked for the welfare of the world; but their work could not be wholly effective, it was mixed, maimed, temporary in effect. This could not be otherwise, for their activity proceeded from inferior and feebler sources of inspiration and consciousness other than those that are purely spiritual. Firstly, little more was possible for them than to exercise an indirect influence; their spiritual realisation could bring into the life of the world only a reminiscence, an echo, just a touch and a ray from another world. Or, secondly, when they did take part in worldly affairs, their activity could not rise much beyond the worldly standard; it remained enclosed within the sphere of the moral and the conventional, took such forms as, for example, charity and service and philanthropy. Nothing higher than ideas and ideals confined to the moral, that is to say, the mental plane, could be brought into play in the world and its practical lifeeven the moral and mental idea itself has often been mistaken for true spirituality. Thus the very ideal of governing or moulding our worldly preoccupations according to a truly spiritual or a supramental or transcendental consciousness was a rare phenomenon and even where the ideal was found, it is doubtful whether the right means and methods were discovered. Yet the sole secret of changing man's destiny and transmuting the world lies in the discovery and application of a supreme spiritual Conscious-Power.
Humanists once affirmed that nothing that concerned man was alien to them, all came within their domain. The spiritual man too can make the affirmation with the same or even a greater emphasis. Indeed the spiritual consciousness in the highest degree and greatest compass must needs govern and fashion man in his entire being, in all his members and functions. The ideal, as we have said, has seldom been accepted; generally it has been considered as a chimera and an impossibility. That is why, we repeat, even to this day the world has its cup of misery full to the brimaniryam asukham.
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As we see it we believe that the whole future of mankind, the entire value of earthly life depends upon the issue of the present deadly combat. The path that man has followed so long tended steadily towards progress and evolutionhow-ever slow his steps, however burdened with doubt and faintness his mind and heart in the ascent. But now the crucial parting of the ways looms before him. The question is, will the path of progress be closed to him for ever, will he be compelled to revert to a former unregenerate state or even something worse I than that? Or will he remain free to follow that path, rise gradually and infallibly towards perfection, towards a purer, I fuller, higher and vaster luminous life? Will man come down' to live the life of a blind helpless slave under the clutches of I the Asura or even altogether lose his soul and become the legendary demon who carries no head but only a decapitated trunk?
We believe that the war of today is a war between the Asura and men, human instruments of the gods. Man certainly is a weaker vessel in comparison with the Asuraon this material plane of ours; but in man dwells the Divine and against the divine force and might, no asuric power can ultimately prevail. The human being who has stood against the Asura has by that very act sided with the gods and received the support and benediction of the Divine. The more we become conscious about the nature of this war and consciously take the side of the progressive force, of the divine force supporting it, the more will the Asura be driven to retire, his power diminished, his hold relaxed. But if through ignorance and blind passion, through narrow vision and obscurant prejudice we fail to distinguish the right from the wrong side, the dexter from the sinister, surely we shall invite upon mankind utter misery and desolation. It will be nothing less than a betrayal of the Divine Cause.
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02.02 - Lines of the Descent of Consciousness, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The absolute in its triple or triune status (not in its supreme being but as we see it prior to manifestation) is in essence and principle an infinity and unity. Indeed, it is the infinite unity, and its fundamental character is a supreme and utter equalitysamam brahma. It is then a status or statis, that is to say, a state of perfectly stable equilibrium in which there is no movement of difference or distinction, no ripple of high and low or ebb and flow, no mark of quantity or quality. It is a stilled sea of self-identity, a vast limitless or pure consciousness brooding in trance and immobility. And yet in the bosom of this ineffable and inviolable equality, in the very hush and lull there lies secreted an urge, a pressure, a possibility towards activity, variation and even an eventual inequality. For the presence and possibility of dynamism is posited by the very infinity of the Infinite, since without it, the Infinite would be incapable of motion, expression and fulfilment of its Force.
There is thus inherent in the vast inalienable equality of the absolute Reality, a Force which can bring out centres of pressure, nuclei of dynamism, nodes of modulation. It is precisely round these centres of precipitation that the original and basic unity crystallises itself and weaves a pattern of harmonious multiplicity. Consciousness, by self-pressure,tapas taptv turns its even and undifferentiated pristine equanimity into ripples and swirls, eddies and vortices of delight, matrices of creative activity. Thus the One becomes Many by a process of self-concentration and self-limitation.
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Between the Overmind and the Mind proper, varying according to the degree of immixture of the two, according to the degree of descent and of emergence of one and the other respectively, there are several levels of consciousness of which three main ones have been named and described by Sri Aurobindo. The first one nearest to the Overmind and the least contaminated by the Mind is pure Intuition; next, the intermediary one is called the Illumined Mind, and last comes the Higher Mind. They are all powers of the Overmind functioning in the Mind. The higher ranges are always more direct, intense, synthetic, dynamic than the lower ones where consciousness is slower, duller, more uncertain, more disintegrated. The lower the consciousness descends the more veiled it becomes, losing more and more the directness, the sureness, the intensity and force and the synthetic unity native to the highest ranges of our consciousness and being.
A further descent into obscurity occurs when consciousness passes from Mind to Life. Darkness is almost visible here: there is a greater withdrawal on the part of each unit from its surrounding reality, a narrower concentration upon one's own separative existenceshades of the prison-house have gathered close around. The light, already dulled and faint in the mind, has become a lurid glare here. Passion has arisen and desire and hunger and battle and combat.
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This is, so far then, the original and primal line of descent. It is the line down which the absolute Reality, the absolute Consciousness and the absolute Delight have turned into unreality and unconsciousness and un delight. But it is not all loss and debit. There is a credit side too. For it is only in this way, viz, by the manifestation of utter Ignorance, that the supreme Absolute has become concrete, the Formless has entered into form, the Bodiless has found a body: what was originally an indeterminate equal Infinity of pure consciousness, has become determinate and dynamic in the individual multiplicity of corporeal consciousness. What is the sense in all that, what is the gain or upshot? We shall presently see.
When consciousness has reached the farthest limit of its opposite, when it has reduced itself to absolutely unconscious and mechanical atoms of Matter, when the highest has descended into and become the lowest, then, by the very force of its downward drive, it has swung round and begun to mount up again. As it could not proceed farther on the downward gradient, having reached the extreme and ultimate limit of inconscience, consciousness had to turn round, as it were, by the very pressure of its inner impetus. First, then, there is a descent, a gradual involution, a veiling and closing up; next, an ascent, a gradual evolution, unfoldment and expression. We now see, however, that the last limit at the bottomMatteralthough appearing to be unconscious, is really not so: it is inconscient. That is to say, it holds consciousness secreted and involved within itself; it is, indeed, a special formulation of consciousness. It is the exclusive concentration of consciousness upon single points in itself: it is consciousness throwing itself out in scattered units and, by reason of separative identification with them and absorption into them, losing itself, forgetting itself in an absolute fixation of attention. The phenomenon is very similar to what happens when in the ordinary consciousness a worker, while doing a work, becomes so engrossed in it that he loses consciousness of himself, identifies himself with the work and in fact becomes the work, the visible resultant being a mechanical execution.
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We have thus far followed the course of the break-up of Personality, from the original one supreme Person, through a continuous process of multiplication and disintegration, of parcellation and crystallisation into more and more small self-centred units, until we reach the final pulverisation as purely material physico-chemical atoms. Now with the reversal of consciousness, in its return movement, we have again a process of growth and building up of individuality and personality, with the awakening and ascension of consciousness from level to level on the physical plane and in the material embodiment, there occurs too an evolution of the personal aspect of the reality.
We say that at the lowest level of involution, in Matter, where consciousness has zero magnitude, there is no personality or individuality. It is all a mechanical play of clashing particles that constantly fly apart or come together according to the force or the resultant of forces that act upon them. An individuality means a bounded form as its basis of reaction and a form that tends to persist and grow by assimilation; it means a centre of a definite manner and pattern of reaction. Individuality, in its literal sense, designates that which cannot be divided (in + dividus). Division is only another name for death for the particular entity. Even in the case of cell-division or self-division of some lower organisms, in the first instance the original living entity disappears and, secondly, the succeeding: entities, created by division, always re-form themselves again into integral wholes. A material particle, on the other hand, is divisible ad infinitum. We have been able to divide even an atom (which means also that which cannot be divided) to such an extent as to reduce it to a mere charge of energy, nay, we have sublimated it to a geometrical point. Individualisation starts with the coming of life. It is a ganglion of life-force round which a particular system of action and reaction weaves itself. The characteristic of individuality is that each one is unique, each relates itself to others and to the environment in its own way, each expresses itself, puts forth its energy, receives impacts from outside in a manner that distinguishes it from others. It is true this character of individuality is not very pronounced in the earlier or rudimentary forms of life. Still it is there: it grows and develops slowly along the ladder of evolution. Only in the higher animals it attains a clear and definite norm and form.
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Thus naturally there appear gradations of the human personality; as the consciousness in the human being rises higher and higher, the psychic centre organises a higher and higher a richer, wider, deeper personality. The first great conversion, the first turning of the human personality to a new mode of life and living, that is to say, living even externally according to the inner truth and reality, the first attempt at a conscious harmonisation of the psychic consciousness with its surface agents and vehicles is what is known as spiritual initiation. This may happen and it does happen even when man lives in his normal mental consciousness. But there is the possibility of growth and evolution and transformation of personality in higher and a higher spiritual degree through the upper reaches of the higher Mind, the varying degrees of the Overmind and finally the Supermind. These are the spheres, the fields, even the continents of the personality, but the stuff, the substance of the personality, the inner nucleus of consciousness-force is formed, first, by the flaming aspiration, the upward drive within the developing and increasing psychic being itself, and secondly, by the descent, to a greater and greater degree, of the original Being from which it emanated. The final coalescence of the fully and integrally developed psychic being with the supreme splendour of its very source, the Jivatman, occurs in the Supermind. When this happens the supramental personality becomes incarnate in the physical body: Matter in the material plane is transformed into a radiant substance made of pure consciousness, the human personality becomes a living form of the Divine. Thus the wheel comes full circle: creation returns to the point from which it started but with an added significance, a new fulfilment.
The mystery of rebirth in the evolution of the human personality is nothing but the mystery of the developing psyche. At first this psyche or soul is truly a being: no bigger than the thumb it is the hardly audible still small voice. The experiences of lifesweet or bitter, happy or unhappy, good or bad, howsoever they may appear to the outward eye and perceptionall the dialectics of a terrestrial existence contri bute to the growth and development of the psychic consciousness. Each span of life means a special degree or mode of growth necessitated by the inner demand and drive of the divine Individual seated within the heart. The whole end in view of this secret soul is to move always towards and be united again with its Oversoul, its original and high archetype in the Divine Consciousness: the entire course of its earthly evolution is chalked out and patterned by the exact need of its growth. Whatever happens in each particular life, all the currents of all the lives converge and coalesce, and serve the psychic consciousness to swell in volume and intensity and be one with the Divine Consciousness. Or, in a different imagery, one can say that the multifarious experiences of various lives are as fuel to the Inner Firethis Psychic Agni which is just a spark or a thin tongue at the outset of the human evolutionary course; but with the addition of fuel from life to life this Fire flames up, indeed, becomes ultimately a conflagration that bums and purifies the entire outer vehicle and transforms it into radiant mattera fit receptacle, incarnation of the supernal Light. The mounting Fire (the consciousness-energy secreted in the earth-bound heart of Matter) finally flares up, discloses itself in its full amplitude and calls and attracts into it the incandescent supramental Solar Sphere which is the type and pattern it has to embody and express. This is the marriage of Heaven and Earth, of which the mystics all over the earth in all ages spoke and sangto which the Vedic Rishi refers when he declares:
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We have spoken of four lines of Descent in the evolution and organisation of consciousness. There yet remains a fifth line. It is more occult. It is really the secret of secrets, the Supreme Secret. It is the descent of the Divine himself. The Divine, the supreme Person himself descends, not indirectly through emanations, projections, partial or lesser formulations, but directly in his own plenary self. He descends not as a disembodied force acting as a general movement, possessing, at the most, other objects and persons as its medium or instrument, but in an embodied form and in the fullness of his consciousness. The Indian word for Divine Incarnation, avatra, literally means he who has descended. The Divine comes down himself as a terrestrial being, on this material plane of ours, in order to raise the terrestrial and material Nature to a new status in her evolutionary courseeven so He incarnated as the Great Boar who, with his mighty tusk, lifted a solid mass of earth from out of the waters of the Deluge. It is his purpose to effect ascension of consciousness, a transmutation of being, to establish a truly New Order, a New Dharma, as it is termed dharmasamsthpanrthya. On the human level, he appears as a human person for two purposes. First of all, he shows, by example, how the ascension, the transmutation is to be effected, how a normal human being can rise from a lower status of consciousness to a higher one. The Divine is therefore known as the Lord of Yoga for Yoga is the means and method by which one consciously uplifts oneself, unites oneself with the Higher Reality. The embodied Divine is the ideal and pattern: he shows the path, himself walks the path and man can follow, if he chooses. The Biblical conception of the Son of GodGod made fleshas the intermediary between the human and the Divine, declaring, I am the Way and the Goal, expresses a very similar truth. The Divine takes a body for anotheroccultreason also. It is this: Matter or terrestrial life cannot be changedchanged radically, that is to say, transformed by the pure spiritual consciousness alone, lying above or within; also it is not sufficient to bring about only that much of change in terrestrial life which can be effected by the mere spiritual force acting in a general way. It looks as if the physical transformation which is what is meant by an ascension or emergence in the evolutionary gradient were possible only by a physical impact embodying and canalising the spiritual force: it is with his physical body that the Divine Incarnation seems to push and lift up physical Nature to a new and higher status.
The occult seers declare that we are today on the earth at such a crisis of evolution. Earth and Man and man's earthly life need to be radically transfigured. The trouble and turbulence, the chaos and confusion that are now overwhelming this earth, indicate the acute tension before the release, the dtente of a NEW MANIFESTATION.
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02.02 - Rishi Dirghatama, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
About the Word, the mystery which Dirghatama unveils is an extraordinary revelationso curious, so illuminating. In later times many lines of spiritual discipline have adopted his scheme and spread it far and wide. Dirghatama himself was an uncommon wizard of words. The truths he saw and clothed in mantras have attained, as I have already said, general celebrity. He says: "The Word is off our categories. It has four stations or levels or gradations." The Rishi continues: "Three of them are unmanifested, unbodied; only the fourth one is manifest and bodied, on the tongue of man." This terminology embodying a fundamental principle has had many commentaries and explanations. Of these the most well-known is that given by the Tantras. They have named the fourfold words as (1) par, supreme; (2) payant, the seeing one; (3) madhyam, the middle one or the one within and (4) vaikhar, the articulate word. In modern language we may say that the first one is the self-vibration of the Supreme Being or Consciousness; the second is the vibration of the higher-mind or the pure intelligence; the third is the vibration of the inner heart; and the fourth the vibration of physical sound, of voice. In philosophical terms of current English we may name these as (1) revelatory, (2) intuitive, (3) inspirational and (4) vocal.
Now in conclusion I will just speak of the fundamental vision of the rishi. His entire realisation, the whole Veda of his life, he has, it appears, pressed into one single k We have heard it said that the entire range of all scriptures is epitomised in the Gita and the Gita' itself is epitomised in one slokasarvadharmn parityajya... Even so we may say that Rishi Dirghatama has summarised his experience, at least the fundamental basic one, and put it into a sutra. It is the famous k with which he opens his long hymn to Surya:
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02.02 - The Kingdom of Subtle Matter, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
To its pure idea and firm inviolate type
In an absolute creation's flawless skill.
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02.03 - The Glory and the Fall of Life, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But none could offer a pure felicity;
Only a flickering zest they left behind
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Yet pure and bright from the Timeless was her birth,
A lost world-rapture lingers in her eyes,
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And smote them with pure loveliness and bliss.
A breathless summit region drew his gaze
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Heaven's joys might have been earth's if earth were pure.
There could have reached our divinised sense and heart
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A purer, fierier sense had there its home,
A burning urge no earthly limbs can hold;
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A celestial bacchanal for ever pure,
Unstayed by faintness as in mortal frames
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Return sheer joy to joy, pure light to light.
For its tormented will to think and live
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02.04 - Two Sonnets of Shakespeare, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Shakespeare has treated love in a novel way; he has given a new figure to that common familiar sentiment. And incidentally he has given a new sense and bearing to Death. From a human carnal base there is a struggle, an effort here to rise into something extracorporeal; that is, something outside and independent of the body and impersonal. The sense of the first sonnet is this: the body decays and dies, even as bleak winter seizes upon the beauties of Nature or black Night swallows up the light of the day. But love lingers stillas the song of sweet birdsand the dying cadence of love curiously invokes and evokes a resurgent love in the beloved. The second sonnet hymns the soul's conquest over Death. The soul is that which is sinless in the sinful, it is the pure, the unsullied the immortal lovein this filth and dirt of a mortal body with its crude passions. Death eats away the body, but in this way the soul grows and eats away Death. This is the final epiphany, the death of Death and the resurgence of the soul divine in its love divine.
Sonnet 73
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02.05 - Robert Graves, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
But really it does not matter if the deity is small. For, if the worship is sincere and the offering pure, they ultimately reach the Divine. Did not Sri Krishna say in the Gita that whom-soever you may worship and in whatever way, that in the end' reaches him? The importance and significance of worship do not depend upon their size and scale: a little water, a leaf, a flower may more than do.
The small gods are small, but do not slight themthey are powerful. They are powerful because they are deities of the earth. In fact, like gods and goddesses in heaven, there are gods and goddesses on earth also. The gods in heaven are high and far away, but these unobtrusive deities are near to our hearth and home. The Greeks referred to the Olympian gods, of high caste and rank as it were,like Jupiter and Apollo and to those others who dwelt on the lowly earth and embraced its water and land, its rivers and trees and fields the nymph, the satyr, and Pan and dryad and naiad. What are the powers and functions of these unearthly beings? They on their part are guarding the gate to heaven, questioning the pilgrim of their divine destination. Well, the sentinels have to be appeased first, satisfied and convinced. Surely the sands burn hotter than the sun!
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Then mount at last on wings into pure air,
Peering down with regal eye upon
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Of course, in Sri Aurobindo we reach the inner and higher world through a luminous path, through worlds of light, ranging one upon another. It is a journey through pure air and clear light. Conversely the poet of the toadstool leads one by the passage of an acid drunkenness and a half-conscious drowse. If the goal here is a delight and a freedom they are arrived at after traversing a purgatory or undergoing a troubled purification. But this too leads verily to a world of the gods.
This "little slender lad, whose flesh is bitter, lightning engendered, born from dungs of mares" is perhaps a symbol of our human receptacle. We have to carry this mortal frame with its clay feet and make the effort towards self-transcendence: the alchemy's other name is self-purification and self-perfection. This tender shoot is a mysterious chemical storehouse, its fermentation and purification and use awaken in us the sleeping divine will, give a clear vision, guide us through the secret worlds and ultimately to the home of Immortality. The Vedic Rishis sang to the Soma creeper or god Soma,Tatra mm. amtam kdhi, O Somadeva, carry us where thou flowest down and there make us immortal. For there abound all delight, all ecstasy, all enjoyment, all lure and the supreme Desire ofdesirenanda, moda, mud, pramud, kma4are these not the five fruits of heaven the poet of the West mentions?
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02.05 - The Godheads of the Little Life, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
In her tranquil beauty is his purest bliss.
46.14
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02.06 - The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Life, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Translation of God's pure original text,
He thinks to read the Scripture Wonderful,
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02.07 - George Seftris, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
But as I have said terror and pity are invoked not for themselves but for the sake of purification. They serve to wash and cleanse the troubled sentiments and bring in a purer clearer atmosphere. When we have passed through those heavy and cruel feelings, we arrive at a kindlier note. Thus,
Then I heard footsteps upon the pebbles
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02.07 - India One and Indivisable, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Indeed, what we see rampant in India today is the mediaeval spirit. This reversion to an olderan extinct, we ought to have been able to saytype of mentality is certainly a fall, a lowering of the collective consciousness. It bas got to be remedied and set right. Whatever the motive forces that lie at the back of the movement, motives of fear or despair or class interest or parochial loyalty, motives of idealism, misguided and obscurantist, they have to be taken by the horns and dominated and eliminated. A breath of modernism, some pure air of clear perception and knowledge and wider consciousness must blow through the congested hectic atmosphere of the Indian body politic.
It will do no good to anyone to try to Balkanise India. The Balkan malady is no longer tolerated even in its homeland; it cannot be transported to India in this century and after this Great War. To be and remain free and strong and invincible, India must be and remain indivisible. The strength of the United States of America, of the United Soviets of the Russias, of the British Commonwealth (pace Churchill) lies precisely in each one of them being a large unified aggregate, all members pooling their resources together. India cannot maintain her freedom, nor utilise her freedom to its utmost effectivity unless she is one and indivisible. The days of small peoples, of isolated independence are gonegone for ever even like Thebes and Nineveh, like Kosala of Dasarathi and Mathura of Yadupati.
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02.07 - The Descent into Night, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Released into a calmer purer air,
They dared at length to brea the and smile once more.
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02.08 - Jules Supervielle, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The poet speaks obliquely but the language he speaks by itself is straight, clear, simple, limpid. No rhetoric is there, no exaggeration, no effort at effect; the voice is not raised above the normal speech level. That is indeed the new modern poetic style. For according to the new consciousness prose and poetry are not two different orders, the old order created poetry in heaven, the new poetry wants it upon earth; level with earth, the common human speech, the spoken tongues give the supreme intrinsic beauty of poetic cadence. The best poetry embodies the quintessence of prose-rhythm, its pure spontaneousand easy and felicitous movement. In English the hiatus between the poetic speech and prose is considerable, in French it is not so great, still the two were kept separate. In England Eliot came to demolish the barrier, in France a whole company has come up and very significant among them is this foreigner from Spain who is so obliquely simple and whose Muse has a natural yet haunting magic of divine things:
Elle lve les yeux et la brises'arrte
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02.08 - The World of Falsehood, the Mother of Evil and the Sons of Darkness, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Then life beat pure in the corporeal frame;
The infernal Gleam died and could slay no more.
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02.10 - The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Little Mind, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
And its pure heightened figure of Time's joy,
Tossed upon waves of flawless happiness,
--
In her high works of pure intelligence,
In her withdrawal from the senses’ trap,
--
Aloof and pure in her impartial poise.
68.61
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Here all is mixed and marred, there pure and whole;
Yet each is a passing step, a moment’s phase.
--
A pure Thought-Mind surveyed the cosmic act.
69.7
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02.10 - Two Mystic Poems in Modern Bengali, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The body, the body-consciousness, our poet says here, is to be a confluence, where all the streams of consciousness, all the movements of the being, flow in: movements of life-force, movements of the mind, secret urges of the subliminal physical consciousness pure and im pure, things foreign to its nature, things that are its own, elements friendly and unfriendly, all assemble in a market-place, as it were, the result being a huge horrid discordant music, a groaning, a bellowing of a queer orchestra the bass, the lowest note of the system that the human vehicle is.
There is a call for all the parts of the being to precipitate to the very foundation of the being, coalesce and evoke a wild and weird, doleful and discordant symphonya painful cry. Unrealised dreams, that had faded into oblivion, are now like possessed beings and hang like bats on darkling branches:they are about to begin their phantom dance. Even so, the body, the material precipitate into which they gather, gives them a basic unity. These elements with their ardour and zeal kindle a common Fire. There is a divine Flame, Agni, burning within the flesh, burning brighter and brighter, making the bones whiter and whiter, as it were the purificatory Flame,Pvaka, of which the Vedic Rishis spoke, Master of the House, ghapati, dwelling in the inner heart of the human being, impelling it to rise to purer and larger Truth. But here our modern poet replaces the Heart by the Liver and makes of this organ the central altar of human aspiration and inspiration. We may remember in this connection that the French poet Baudelaire gave a similar high position and functionto the other collateral organ, the spleen. The modern Bengali poet considers that man's consciousness, even his poetic inspiration, is soaked in the secretion of that bilious organ. For man's destiny here upon earth is not delight but grief, not sweetness but gall and bitterness; there is no consolation, no satisfaction here; there is only thirst, no generosity but narrowness, no consideration for others, but a huge sinister egoism.
The cry of our poet is a cry literally deprifundis, a deep cavernous voice surging, spectral and yet sirenlike, out of the unfathomed underground abysses.
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Something of the purer atmosphere of the heights and heavens we brea the in our second poem. We move no more here in the darker left-handed labyrinthine path, but swim in a lighter clearer air through which passes the right-handed path. Here it is in its serene simplicity:
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02.11 - Hymn to Darkness, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
She at whose feet lies low the Supreme in his pure whiteness.
Why should she herself be black?
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02.11 - The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Mind, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
And drank again his pure and mighty source.
Immutable in rhythmic calm and joy
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Burning their way to a pure absolute sky.
August and few the sovereign Kings of Thought
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Adored and pure and still on his heart's throne,
His splendid property cherished and apart
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02.12 - The Heavens of the Ideal, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Heavens of unchanging Good pure and unborn,
Heights of the grandeur of Truth's ageless ray,
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02.12 - The Ideals of Human Unity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Nationhood, however, developed into such a firm, solid, self-conscious and selfishly aggressive entity that it has now become almost a barrier to a further enlargement of the unit towards a still greater and wider unification of mankind. But nature cannot be baulked, its straight urge hampered; it takes to by-ways and indirect routes and roundabout channels for its fulfilment. On three different lines a greater and larger unification of mankind has been attempted that goes beyond the unification brought about by the ideal of the country or people or nation. First, the political, that leads to the formation of Empires. But the faults and errors in this type of larger unit have been made very evident. It acts as a steam-roller, no doubt, crushing out and levelling parochial differences and local narrownesses; but it also means the overgrowth of a central organismcalled the metropolisat the expense of other member organisms forming part of the larger collectivity, viz., colonies and dependencies and subject races, which must in the end bring about a collapse and disruption of the whole structure. The Roman Empire was the typical example of this experiment. Next, there was what can be called the racial line. Many attempts have been made in this direction, but nothing very successful has taken shape. Pan-Slavism, Pan-Arabism, Pan-Jewry are some of the expressions of this movement. It has the fatal fault of a basis that is uncertain and doubtful: for a pure race is a myth and in modern conditions the cry must necessarily be a cry in the wilderness. Many races and peoples have in the course of human history been thrown together, they have to live together, are compelled to lead a common social, political, economic and cultural life. That indeed was the genesis of nationhood. The hegemony of a so-called Nordic race over the world was one of the monsters produced by this attempt, a reductio ad absurdum of the principle.
The third is the religious principle. Religion, that is to say, institutional religion has also sought to unify mankind on a larger basis, as large indeed as the world itself. The aim of Christendom, of Islam was frankly a conquest of the whole human race for the one jealous Lord. Buddhism and Hinduism did not overtly or with a set purpose attempt any such worldwide proselytism, but their influence and actual working had almost a similar effect:at least in the case of the former, it was like a flood throwing down many local boundaries, overflooding distant countries, and peoples, giving them all one unified religious life and culture. But here too we meet the same objectionable feature as there is in the attempt at unity through the racial principle. For religious imperialism cannot succeed in unifying humanity, as amply demonstrated by the Roman Catholic Church; and like political imperialism it was more or less an experiment in the line, effecting nothing beyond a moral atmosphere. Even a federation of religions, contemplated by some idealists, seems hardly a practicable proposition; for it is only a mental conception and has no compelling vital force in it. At best it is only a sign-post, a pointer to the goal Nature and humanity have been endeavouring to evolve and realise.
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02.14 - Panacea of Isms, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
So the cry is for greater human values. Man needs food and shelter, goes without saying, but he yearns for other things also, air and light: he needs freedom, he needs culturehigher thoughts, finer emotions, nobler urges the field and expression of personal worth. The acquisition of knowledge, the creation of beauty, the pursuit of philosophy, art, literature, and science in their pure forms and for their own sake are things man holds dear to his heart. Without them life loses its charm and significance. Mind and sensibility must be free to roam, not turned and tied to the exclusive needs and interests of physical life, free, that is to say, to discover and create norms and ideals and truths that are values in themselves and also lend values to the matter-of-fact terrestrial life. It is not sufficient that all men should have work and wages, it is not sufficient that I all should have learnt the three R's, it is not sufficient that they should understand their rightssocial, political, economic and claim and vindicate them. Nor is it sufficient for men to r become merely useful or indispensablealthough happy and I contentedmembers of a collective body. The individual must be free, free in his creative joy to bring out and formulate, in thought, in speech, in action, in all the modes of expression, the truth, the beauty, the good he experiences within. An all-round culture, a well-developed mind, a well-organised life, a well-formed body, a harmonious working of all the members of the system at a high level of consciousness that is man's need, for there lies his self-fulfilment. That is the ideal of Humanismwhich the ancient Grco-Roman culture worshipped, which was again revived by the Renaissance and which once again became a fresh and living force after the great Revolution and is still the high light to which Science and modern knowledge turns.
The More Beyond
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02.14 - The World-Soul, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Transfigured into beats divine and pure.
One who could love without return for love,
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Air was the breath of a pure infinite.
A fragrance wandered in a coloured haze
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Along a road of pure interior light,
Alone between tremendous Presences,
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02.15 - The Kingdoms of the Greater Knowledge, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
One with self's inlook into its own pure vasts,
He saw the splendour of the spirit's realms,
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And objects are its pure spiritual shapes;
Spirit no more is hid from its own view,
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03.01 - The New Year Initiation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The hour has come when a choice has to be made, radical and definitive. Lord, give us the strength to reject the falsehood and emerge in Thy truth, pure and worthy of Thy victory1943
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03.01 - The Pursuit of the Unknowable, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
A pure existence safe from thought and mood,
A consciousness of unshared immortal bliss,
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03.02 - Aspects of Modernism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The scientific spirit, in one word, is rationalisationrationalisation of Mind as well as of Life. With regard to Mind, rationalisation means to get knowledge exclusively on the data of the senses; it is the formulation, in laws and principles, of facts observed by the physical organs, these laws and principles being the categories of the arranging, classifying, generalising faculty, called reason; its methodology also demands that the laws are to be as few as possible embracing as many facts as possible. Rationalisation of life means the government of life in accordance with these laws, so that the wastage in natural life due to the diversity and disparity off acts may be eliminated, at least minimised, and all movements of life ordered and organised in view of a single and constant purpose (which is perhaps the enhancement of the value of life). This rationalisation means further, in effect, mechanisation or efficiency, as its protagonists would prefer to call it. However, mechanistic efficiency, whether in the matter of knowledge or of lifeof mind or of morals was the motto of the early period of the gospel of science, the age of Huxley and Haeckel, of Bentham and the Mills. The formula no longer holds good either in the field of pure knowledge or in its application to life; it does not embody the aspiration and outlook of the contemporary mind, in spite of such inveterate rationalists as Russell and Wells or even Shaw (in Back to Methuselah, for example), who seem to be already becoming an anachronism in the present age.
The contemporary urge is not towards rationalisation, but rather towards irrationalisation. Orthodox science itself is taking greater and greater cognisance today of the irrational movements of nature, even of physical nature. Intuition and instinct are now welcomed as surer and truer instruments of knowledge and action than reason.
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03.02 - Yogic Initiation and Aptitude, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The inner soul the psychicvery often undergoes a secret preparation, develops and comes forward but just waits, as it were, behind the thin though opaque screen; and because of that it gives no objective indication of its growth and readiness. We see no patent sign of what is usually known as fitness or aptitude or capacity. Otherwise how to explain the conversion of a profligate and dilettante like Augustine, or of a rebel like Paul, or of scamps like Jagai-Madhai. Often the purest gold hides in the basest ore, the diamond is coal turned, as it were, inside out. This, one would say, is the Divine Grace that blows where it listsmakes of the dumb a prattler, of the lame a mountain-climber. Yet, but what is this Divine Grace and how does it move and act? It does not act on all and sundry, it does not act on all equally. What is the reason? Appearances often belie the reality: a contrary mask is put on, it would appear, deliberately, with a set purpose. The: sense and significance of this mystery? The hard, obscure, obstinate, rebel outer crust may continue long but it is corroded from within and one day, all on a sudden, it crumbles and dissolves and becomes in a new avatar the vehicle and receptacle of the very thing it opposed and denied.
Virtues are not indications of the fire of the inner soul, nor are vices irremediable obstacles to its growth. The inner soul, we have said, feeds upon allit is indeed fire, the omnivorous, sarvabhuk,virtues and vices and everything else and gather strength from everywhere. The mystery of miracles, of a sudden change or reversal or revolution in consciousness and way of life lies in the omnipotency of the psychic being. The psychic being has the power of making the apparently impossible, for this reason that it is a portion of the almighty Divine, it is the supreme Conscious-Power crystallised and canalised in a centre for the sake of manifestation. It is a particle from the Being, a spark of the Consciousness, a ripple from the Delight cast into the fastnesses of Matter and the, material body. Now, it is the irresistible urge of this particle, this spark, this ripple to grow and expand, to become in the end the Vast the Ocean and the Sun and the sphere of Infinityto become that not merely in an essential status but in a dynamic and apparent becoming also. The little soul, originally no bigger than a thumb, goes forward through one life after another enlarging and intensifying itself till it recovers and establishes its parent reality in this material body here below, till it unveils what is latent within itself, what is its own, what is itself,its integral self-fulfilment, the Divine integrality.
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03.03 - A Stainless Steel Frame, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
What is needed then is an army of souls: individuals, either separately or in groups, who have contacted their inmost reality, their divinity, in some way or othermen with a new consciousness and aspiration, a new life and realisation. They will live in the midst of the general degeneration and disintegration, not aloof and immured in their privacy of purity, but take part in the normal activities of everyday life, still acting from the height and depth of the pure consciousness prove by their very living that one can be in the world and yet not of it, doing what is necessary for the maintenance and enhancement of life and yet not stooping to the questionable ways that are supposed to be necessary and inevitable. In other words, they will disprove that safety and success and prosperity in life can be had only if one follows the lead of Evil, if one sells one's soul. On the contrary, by living out one's divine essence one will have conquered the worldihaiva tairjitam. At every moment, in all circumstances one follows the voice of the highest in oneself. If it is that and no other inferior echo, then one becomes fearless and immortal and all-conquering.
Such souls living and moving among men with little faith and in circumstances adverse and obscure will forge precisely the new steel frame, the stainless-steel frame upon which the new society will be securely based.
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03.03 - Modernism - An Oriental Interpretation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Rousseau brought in the positive element that determined the new poise of humanity. It was the advent of the heart, the coming in of the Romantic the man of sentiment and sensibility. 1 But life had not yet had its chance. Life, pure life the biological domainfirst declared its autonomy in art, for example, through the Realists and Naturalists. These pioneers, however, could bring forward mainly the facts, the constituents, the materials that compose life. The stuff was found, but the movement, life's own rhythm, was not there. It was new wine, but more or less in the old bottle. Zola or Maupassant or the Goncourts sought to express a life intrinsic and independent, but the instrument, the mould was still the old one; the manner and the movement, germane to mind and heart, continued to persist.
That mould was broken, and something of the mystery of Life's own rhythm first revealed by the Impressionists. But the Impressionists were too vague and had too much of a generalised sense to enter into the core of the matter. They touched life, caressed its contour and periphery and larger lines, but did not penetrate it, grasp and grip it, bring out the kernel, as it were, break it and express if in its atomic structure and movement. This is what is being done today.
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03.03 - The House of the Spirit and the New Creation, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Bliss was the pure undying truth of things.
All Nature was a conscious front of God:
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Where sense can build a world of pure delight:
The home of a perpetual happiness,
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03.04 - The Body Human, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The spirit, the pure self in man is formless; but his soul the spirit cast into the evolutionary mould in manifestationhas a form: it possesses a personal identity of its own. Each soul or Psyche is a contoured consciousness, as it were: it is not a vague indefinite charge of consciousness, but consciousness having magnitude and dimensions. And the physical body is a visible formula, a graph of that magnitude, an imagea faithful image or shadow thrown upon the wall of this cave of earthly life,of a reality above and outside, as Plato conceived the phenomenon. And the human appearance too is an extension or projection of an inner and essential reality which brings out or takes up that configuration when fronting the soul in its evolutionary march through terrestrial life. A mystic poet says:
All dreams of the soul
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03.04 - The Vision and the Boon, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
And pure perfection and a shadowless bliss
Are this afflicted creature's mighty fate.
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03.04 - Towardsa New Ideology, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
We had in India a fairer word than "duty", a deeper and more luminous mantra: it is dharma. The expression has certainly "'fallen on evil days and on evil tongues"; it smells today of medievalism and obscurantism and whatever is not "forward" and "radical". Still we hark back to it: it is high time that we should resuscitate the old word mantrain spite of its musty covering, it carries the purest nugget of gold.
Indeed, Right, Duty and Dharma are three terms that represent the three stages of an ascending consciousness in its play of forces. At the base and beginning the original and primary state of consciousness is dominated by the mode of inertia (tamas); in that state things are an inchoate mass and are simply jumbled together; they are moved and acted upon helplessly by forces that are outside them. A rise in the scale of growth and evolution occurs when things begin to be organised, that is to say, differentiated and coordinated. And this means at the outset the self-assertion of each and every unit, the claim and the right of the individual to be itself first and foremost. It is a necessary development, for it signifies the growth of self-conscious units out of a general unconsciousness. It is the appearance of rajas, the mode of life and activity. Right belongs to this field and level: it is the lever that serves to bring out the individual nuclei from a general formlessness, it is the force that crystallises and organises the separative centres for separate fulfilment in life. And naturally it is the field also of competition and conflict. This is a stage and has to be transcended, from the domain of differentiation and contrariety one has to rise to the domain of co-ordination and co-operation. Here comes in the concept of duty which seeks to remedy the ills of the modus of rights in two ways, first, by replacing the movement of taking by that of giving, orienting the consciousness from the sense of self-sufficiency and self-importance towards that of submission and humbleness; secondly, by the recognition of the just rights of others also against one's own. Duty represents the mode of sattwa in action.
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The system of varnas and ashramas of ancient Indiaeven if it be supposed that it never existed actually in its purest ideal formserves as a graphic example of how man as a social being should create and organise his existence in order that that existence might be rendered as perfect and integrally sound as things can be. That system we hold forth as only an illustration; we do not mean that it is a pattern of life that should be or could be implanted on our present day social circumstances. These are certainly very different and demand different groupings and hierarchies that must naturally grow out of them.
It should be noted that in contemporary life stress is laid upon one side, one part and one function of human nature which cover only a superficialhowever useful and necessaryarea. Man is not a political animal (even in the Aristotelian sense); and it is an error to say that he is an economic animal. These notions divide man's integral being into various sectional views only; they seek to cut out and suppress all other members excepting the favoured one. The politically militant bourgeois ideal of the Nazi or the Fascist and the economically militant ideal of the proletarian are equally guilty of this lapse. Even the ideal of man as a rational being does not go far enough to be able to save man and mankind. All of them evoke conflict, some deliberately, and the resolution of the conflict ends in suppression, amputation and atrophy.
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03.05 - Some Conceptions and Misconceptions, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
As we have said, super-consciousness does not confine itself to the supreme status alone, to the domain of pure infinity, but it comes down and embraces the most inferior status too, the status of the finite. Precisely because it is infinity, it is not bound to its infinity but can express its infinity in and through infinite limits.
II
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We can, however, make a distinction between limitation and delimitation or individuation. Limitation is a movement of Ignorance: it is the result of exclusive concentration. It creates separateness, forgets the unity. Delimitation, on the contrary, is a movement of knowledge, of pure consciousness dynamic. It creates diversity, multiplicity maintained in unity.
It is to be added that the limitation in Ignorance is after all apparent; that does not mean it is unreal or illusory, in the sense of Mayavada. Here is the distinction: Mayavada holds all formation as my, illusory, makes no difference between limitation and delimitation: according to it, all delimitation is ignorant and illusory limitation; none has real or essential existence. In Sri Aurobindo's view limitation is real, as also delimitation: only the former is a temporary reality, it is the latter itself but under certain conditions. Again, Mayavada speaks of the Brahman, the Absolute or Transcendent as the sole and true reality: it is the Stable, the Unmoving, the utter Unity cancelling, negating all movement and multiplicity. Sri Aurobindo views the highest reality as dynamic also, permeating the multiplicity and becoming the multiplicity, becoming or existing as the multiplicity in a movement of Knowledge, becoming and appearing also at first in a movement and mode of Ignorance as the material multiplicity but gradually transmuting this ignorant multiplicity into a movement and embodiment of Knowledge. For the Knowledge was always there in and behind the Ignorance, secretly informing and guiding, moulding and transforming it.
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03.05 - The Spiritual Genius of India, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
That is not to say that other peoples of the world are soulless, and that India alone may claim to possess the treasure. But no other people has lived so much in and from the soul, none other has sacrificed so much for the sake of this one thing needful. The soul-consciousness in other nations lies veiled behind the more pressing activities and immediate occupations of the external nature; at the most, what is characteristic in them is the soul, not in its pure and fundamental being, but expressed, and therefore encased and limited, within some particular mode of becoming. In India, on the other hand, the external activities and operations have never altogether swamped or clouded this soul-consciousness; they have been either subjugated to it as minor auxiliaries or totally sacrificed as obstacles. The Indian's soul is not imbedded in some far-off region of his unconscious nature; he has succeeded in raising it up and bringing it forward to the level of his waking consciousnessas the gold-tusked Divine Boar lifted the Earth out of the dark depths of the primeval deluge to the light of the Day.
The French, for example, have developed as a people a special characteristic and mental turn that has set its pervading impress upon their culture and civilisation, upon their creations and activities; that which distinguishes them is a fine, clear and subtle, rational, logical, artistic and literary mind. France, it has often been said, is the head of modern Europe. The Indians are not in the same way a predominantly intellectual race, in spite of the mighty giants of intellect India has always produced, and still produces. Nor are they a literary race, although a rich and grandiose literature, unrivalled in its own great qualities, is their patrimony. It was the few, a small minority, almost a closed circle, that formed in India the elite whose interest and achievement lay in this field; the characteristic power, the main life-current of the nation, did not flow this way, but followed a different channel. Among the ancients the Greeks, and among the moderns the French alone, can rightfully claim as their special genius, as the hallmark of their corporate life, a high intellectual and literary culture. It is to this treasure,a serene and yet vigorous and organized rational mind, coupled with a wonderful felicity of expression in speech,that one turns when one thinks of the special gift that modern France and ancient Greece have brought to the heritage of mankind.
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The most significant fact in the history of India is the unbroken continuity of the line of her spiritual masters who never ceased to appear even in the midst of her most dark and distressing ages. Even in a decadent and fast disintegrating India, when the whole of her external life was a mass of ruins, when her political and economical and even her cultural life was brought to stagnation and very near to decomposition, this undying Fire in her secret heart was ever alight and called in the inevitable rebirth and rejuvenation. Ramakrishna, with Vivekananda as his emanation in life dynamic and material, symbolises this great secret of India's evolution. The promise that the Divine held out in the Gita to Bharata's descendant finds a ready fulfilment in India, in Bharata's land, more perhaps than anywhere else in the world; for in India has the. Divine taken birth over and over again to save the pure in heart, to destroy the evil-doer and to establish the Right Law of life.
Other peoples may be the arms and the feet and the head of Humanity, but India is its heart, its soul for she cherishes always within her the Truth that lives for ever, the flaming God-head, the Immortal awake in mortality, as say the Vedas, amto martyeu tv .
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03.06 - Divine Humanism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Indian spirituality envisages precisely such a transcendence. According to it, the liberated soul, one who lives in and with the Brahman or the Supreme Divine, is he who has discarded the inferior human nature and has taken up the superior divine nature. He has conquered the evil of the lower nature, certainly; but also he has gone beyond the good of that nature. The liberated man is seated above the play of the three Gunas that constitute the inferior hemisphere of manifestation, apar prakti, Human intelligence, human feeling, human sentiment, human motive, even at their best and purest, do not move him. Humanism has naturally no meaning for him. He is no longer human, but supra-human; his being and becoming are the spontaneous expression of a universal and transcendent consciousness. He may not always live and move externally in the non-human way; but even when he appears human in his life and action, his motives are not humanistic, his consciousness lies anchored somewhere else, in the transcendent Will of the Divine that makes him be and do whatever it chooses, human or otherwise.
And yet there is a humanism that is proper to Indiait is not 'human humanism', but, as it is called, 'divine humanism'. That is to say, the human formula is maintained, but a new significance, a transcendent connotation is put into it. The general contour of the instrumentation is preserved, but the substance is transmuted. The brain, the heart and the physical consciousness not only change their direction, but their very nature and character. And the Divine Himself is conceived as such a Divine Person for the norm of the human personality in this view is an eternal verity in the divine consciousness.
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03.07 - Brahmacharya, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It must be understood that this discipline is not merely for those who wish to follow a religious or spiritual life, but for all without exception. Brahmacharya is the first ashrama, order or stage of life with which one begins one's organisation of life; one has to pass through it to others leading to greater and higher degrees of fulfilment. It forms the foundation, prepares the necessary ground upon which the life structure can safely be raised and maintained. It is the secret fund of strength, the source of pure energies that vitalises life, enhances its values, makes it worth living.
The energy that one stores by continence, regular habits and self-discipline increases also in that way. Sometimes special methodskriyaare adopted to help the process, Asana or Pranayama, for example. But an inner and a more psychological procedure is needed, a concentration of will and consciousnessa kind of dhyana, in other wordsin order to be able to take the next step in discipline. For after the storage and increase of energy comes the sublimation of energy, that is to say, the physico-vital energy transmuted into the energy of mental substance, medh. Sublimation means also the increase of brain-power, an enhancement in the degree and quality of its capacity. This has nothing to do with the volume of knowledge enclosed (the mass of information to which we referred before) the growth is with regard to the very stuff of the mind from within, the natural strength of intelligence that can be applied to any field of knowledge with equal success and felicity.
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03.08 - The Standpoint of Indian Art, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Indian art, too, possesses a perspective and an anatomy; it, too, has a focus of observation which governs and guides the composition, in the ensemble and in detail. Only, it is not the physical eye, but an inner vision, not the angle given by the retina, but the angle of a deeper perception or consciousness. To understand the difference, let us ask ourselves a simple question: when we call back to memory a landscape, how does the picture form itself in the mind? Certainly, it is not an exact photograph of the scenery observed. We cannot, even if we try, re-form in memory the objects in the shape, colour and relative positions they had when they appeared to the physical eye. In the picture represented to the mind's eye, some objects loom large, others are thrown into the background and others again do not figure at all; the whole scenery is reshuffled and rearranged in deference to the stress of the mind's interest. Even the structure and build of each object undergoes a change; it does not faithfully re-copy Nature, but gives the mind's version of it, aggrandizing certain parts, suppressing others, reshaping and recolouring the whole aspect, metamorphosing the very contour into something that may not be "natural" or anatomical figure at all. Only we are not introspective enough to observe this phenomenon of the mind's alchemy; we think we are representing with perfect exactitude in the imagination whatever is presented to the senses, whereas in fact we do nothing of the kind; our idea that we do it is a pure illusion.
All art is based upon this peculiar virtue of the mind that naturally and spontaneously transforms or distorts the objective world presented to its purview. The question, then, is only of the degree to which the metamorphosis has been carried. At the one end, there is the art of photography, in which the degree of metamorphosis is at its minimum; at the other, there seems to be no limit, for the mind's capacity to dissolve and recreate the world of sense-perception is infinite and many modern schools of European art have gone even beyond the limit that the "unnatural" Indian art did not consider it necessary to transgress. Now, the classical artist selects a position as close as he can to the photographer, tries to give the mind's view of Nature and creation, as far as possible, in the style and norm of the sense-perceptions. He takes his stand upon these and from there reaches out towards whatever imaginative reconstructions are justified within the bounds laid out by them. The general ground-plan is, almost rigorously, the form given by the physical eye. The art of the East, and even, to a large extent, the art of mediaeval Europe, followed a different line. Here the scheme of the sense-perceptions was rejected, the artist sought to build on other foundations. His procedure was, first, to get a focus within the mind, to discover a psychological standpoint, and from there and in accordance with the subtler laws and conventions of an inner vision create a world that is unique and stands by itself. The aim was always to build from within, at the most, from within outwards, but not from without, not even from without inwards. This inner world has its own laws and they differ from the laws of optics which govern the physical sight; but there is no reason why it should be called unnatural. It is unnatural only in the sense that it does not copy physical Nature; it is quite natural in the 1 sense that it is a faithful reproduction of another, a psychological Nature.
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A Greek Apollo or Venus or a Madonna of Raphael is a human form idealized to perfection,moulded to meet the criterion of beauty which the physical eye demands. The purely sthetic appeal of such forms consists in the balance and symmetry, the proportion and adjustment, a certain roundedness and uniformity and regularity, which the physical eye especially finds beautiful. This beauty is akin to the beauty of diction in poetry.
Apart from the beauty of the mere form, there is behind it and informing it what may be called the beauty of character, the beauty revealed in the expression of psychological movement. It corresponds to the beauty of rhythm in poetry. Considered sthetically, the beauty of character, in so far as it is found in what we have called formal art, is a corollary,an ornamental and secondary theme whose function is to heighten the effect of the beauty of form, or create the atmosphere and environment necessary for its display.
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Character in the European sense means that part of nature which is dynamically expressed in conduct, in behaviour, in external movements. But there is another sense in which the term would refer to the inner mode of being, and not to any outer exemplification in activity, any reaction or set of reactions in the kinetic system, nor even to the mental state, the temperament, immediately inspiring it, but to a still deeper status of consciousness. A Raphael Madonna, for example, purposes to pour wholly into flesh and blood the beauty of motherhood. A Japanese Madonna (a Kwanon), on the other hand, would not present the "natural" features and expressions of motherhood; it would not copy faithfully the model, however idealized, of a woman viewed as mother. It would endeavour rather to bring out something of the subtler reactions in the "nervous" world, the world of pure movements that is behind the world of form; it would record the rhythms and reverberations attendant upon the conception and experience of motherhood somewhere on the other side of our wakeful consciousness. That world is made up not of forms, but of vibrations; and a picture of it, therefore, instead of being a representation in three-dimensional space, would be more like a scheme, a presentation in graph, something like the ideography of the language of the Japanese themselves, something carrying in it the beauty characteristic of the calligraphic art. 2
An Indian Madonna owes its conception to an experience at the very other end of consciousness. The Indian artist does not at all think of a human mother; he has not before his mind's eye an idealized mother, nor even a subtilized feeling of motherhood. He goes deep into the very origin of things, and, from there seeks to bring out that which belongs to the absolute I and the universal. He endeavours to grasp the sense that : motherhood bears in its ultimate truth and reality. Beyond the form, beyond even the rhythm, he enters into bhva, the: spiritual substance of things. An Indian Madonna (Ganesh-janani, for example) is not solely or even primarily a human I mother, but the mother, universal and transcendent, of sentientand insentient creatures and supersentient beings. She embodies not the human affection only, but also the parallel sentiment that finds play in the lower and in the higher creations as well. She expresses in her limbs not only the gladness of the mother animal tending its young, but also the exhilaration that a plant feels in the uprush of its sap while giving out new shoots, and, above all, the supreme nanda which has given birth to the creation itself. The lines that portray such motherhood must have the largeness, the sweep, the au thenticity of elemental forces, the magic and the mystery of things behind the veil.
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03.09 - Art and Katharsis, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Art does not tend towards the Good in the manner of the moralist. It does not teach or preach that virtue is to be pursued and vice to be shunned, that a good deed is rewarded and a wrong one punished. Poetic justice, of the direct and crude style, is a moral code or dogma, and, if imposed upon the sthetic movement, serves only to fetter and curb and twist it. Art opens the vision to a higher good than what the conventions of moral idealism can frame. Great art does not follow the lines laid down by the ethical mentality, not only because this mentality cannot embody the true truth, but also because it does not give us the Good which art should aim at, that is to say, the purest and the highest good.
Aristotle speaks of the purifying function of the tragic art. How is the purification effected? By the evocation of the feelings of pity and terror. For such feelings widen the sympathies, pull us out of our small egoistic personal ephemeral pleasures and put us in contact with what is to be shared and enjoyed in wide commonalty. Tragedy, in this way, initiates the spectator into the enjoyment that is born not of desire and gain but of detachment and freedom.
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even if they make us sad do not depress the soul; it is a divine sadness fraught with a profound calm and a strange poignant sweetness of secret delight. The rhythm and the sound and the suggestions so insinuate themselves into our nerve and blood that these seem to be sublimatedas if by a process of oxygenationto a finer substance, a purer and more limpid and vibrant valency. A consciousness opens in our very flesh and marrow that enables us to pierce the veil of things and pass beyond and understandsee and experience the why and the how and the whither of it all. It is a consciousness cosmic in its purview and disposition, which even like the Creator could contemplate all and declare it all as good. Indeed, this is the Good which Art at its highest seeks to envisage and embody the summum bonum that accompanies a summit consciousness. It is idle to say that all or most poets have this revelatory vision of the SeerRishi but a poet is a poet in so far as he is capable of this vision; otherwise he remains more or less either a moralist or a mere sthete.
Whatever is ugly and gross, all the ills and evils of life that is to say, what appears as such to our external mind and senseswhen they have passed through the crucible of the poet's consciousness undergoes a sea-change and puts on an otherworldly beauty and value. We know of the alchemy of poetic transformation that was so characteristic of Wordsworth's manner and to which the poet was never tired of referring, how the physical and brute natureeven a most insignificant and meaningless and unshapely object in it attains a spiritual sense and beauty when the poet takes it up and treasures it in his tranquil and luminous and in-gathered consciousness, his "inward eye". A crude feeling, a raw passion, a tumult of the senses, in the same way, sifted through the poetic perception, becomes something that opens magic casements, glimpses the silence of the farthest Hebrides, wafts us into the bliss of the invisible and the beyond.
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03.09 - Buddhism and Hinduism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
(II) The first principle that Vedic Knowledge posits is Sat, Being, pure Existence, Reality. The first principle according to Buddhism is Asat, Non-Being, Non-Reality.
This creation has a fundamental basic reality. Behind the fleeting appearances there is a solid truth of Being. Everything else may pass away but That abides for ever. This is Hindu or Vedic tradition.
The Buddha says, take off the elements that compose the creation one by one, nothing would remain in the end. Creation is only an agglomeration of discrete elements; there is nothing behind them or within them that is permanent and holding them together. When names and forms go, at the end there is only dissolution, pure and simple, Nothing, Nihil.
(III) This metaphysical position is faithfully translated, one may point out here, in their respective logical positions of the two.
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03.09 - Sectarianism or Loyalty, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Uddhava might have had numberless teachers and instructors, but the Guru of his soul was Sri Krishna alone, none other. We may learn many things from many places, from books, from nature, from persons; intuitions and inspirations may come from many quarters, inside and outside, but the central guidance flows from one source only and one must be careful to keep it unmixed, undefiled, clear and pure. When one means nothing more than playing with ideas and persons and places, there is no harm in being a globe-trotter; but as soon as one becomes serious, means business, one automatically stops short, finds and sticks to his Ishta, even like the Gopis of Sri Krishna who declared unequivocally that they would not move out of Brindaban even by a single step.
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03.10 - Hamlet: A Crisis of the Evolving Soul, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In Macbeth we move up one step farther; human consciousness attains here a higher level. Something of the mental being enters into the purely vital creature: instead of the Eater, the man with the mere stomach, we have here the Ruler, the Tyrant, the human being with its will and its arms that execute the will: the dominating motive is no longer hunger and greed and cruelty for cruelty's sake, but power and position and lordship, and the driving force, not blind passion and dark furysheer unconsciousness but deliberate resolution, foreseeing calculation and steady purposiveness; the Rakshasa gives place to the Asura. The Asura is the incarnation of conscious egotism, the will to dominate, to be the sole master and monarch; he is the self-aggrandising vaulting ambition. He does not seek to possess things for their own sake, not so much to enjoy them as to hold them as symbols of his royalty, of his personal worth and majesty. In Macbeth we have the world of the Asuraa creation of the mode of rajas.
Hamlet is the third stage; it is a vision of sattva-guna and a creation attempted by that vision. The human consciousness that was imprisoned in the vital mind, is released here into the higher or pure mind. The soul escapes from its sheath of sheer hunger and desire and egoism and self-aggrandisementyearns for light, more light. Lear is a dark mass of unconsciousness, crude and violent, even like the naked and raging elements into whose arms he is thrown; Macbeth is the beginning of consciousness in which one is conscious of one's own self alone, and keenly and deliberately attached to it,here light has dawned, but a lurid light. Hamlet is consciousness that is seeking to transcend the barrier of the little self and its narrow and vulgar appetites and impulses. Man here comes into touch with something that is impersonal, other-regarding, afar; he has grown interests that are not merely mundane, utilitarian, pragmatic, self-centred, but abstract, metaphysical, beyond the individual's own and immediate concern: he has now ideals and aspirationshe is a seeker of the true, the good, the beautiful. He has been initiated into the divinedaivanature. Culture, refinement, sensibility, understandingall the graces of a truly rational being make Hamlet the very flower of an evolving humanity.
Over against the personality of Hamlet stands another which represents false height, the wrong perfection, the counterfeit ideal. Polonius is humanity arrested in its path of straight development and deviated into a cut-de-sac of self-conceit and surface urbanity, apparent cleverness and success and pretentious and copy-book morality. When one has outgrown the barbarian, one runs the risk of becoming a snob or philistine. It is a side table-land, as it were, on mid-heights, the standard perhaps of a commoner humanity, but which the younger ideal has to transcend or avoid or even to destroy, so that it may find itself and live its own life. To the philistine too the mere biological man is a taboo, but he seeks to confine human nature into a scheme of codes and maxims and lifeless injunctions and prohibitions. He is also the man of Reason but without the higher inflatus, the living and creative Something More the poetry, the vision, the dream that would transfigure the merely pragmatic, practical, worldly wise the bourgeoisinto the princely aristocratic idealist, elevate the drab terre terre To-day into the glory of a soaring To-morrow.
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03.10 - The Mission of Buddhism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Buddhism has sometimes been called the rebel child of Hinduism. The word need not be a term of abuse. A rebel is not always a mere destroyer, a pure negator. A negation can be only a form of stating something positive, an affirmation of a truth and reality. Not unoften a rebel means a call back to a truth that has been neglected, inadequately treated or completely omitted and by-passed; it is an urgent demand that that which has been forgotten and left behind, uncared for and undeveloped, must now be taken up again and brought forward, made a full-grown and mature element in a greater and more perfect organisation of human consciousness.
Buddhism cried halt because of two omissions: it turned man's mind to two new directions. In our eagerness to reach the spiritual and the supra-sensual, we gave scant recognition to the mental and the rational; and yet mind and reason should be the very basis of the life spiritual. And in the pursuit of God and the gods and the things divine, we became blind to human problems, things concerning man in the human way. The earlier vision gives us a happy picture of humanity. The world moves, it was said, from delight to delight, it was born in delight and it consummates in delight. One sang of immortality, of the solar light, of men being children of Heaven and Beatitude. That this material structure on which man leads his precarious existence is a texture of age and disease and death, that misery and undelight is of the very substance of human life was a hard fact that did not get due recognition. Perhaps it was an earlier, that is to say, a younger humanity
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Yes, it was the age, almost a golden age, when man lived with his sense married to the Dawn, spontaneous in his reflexes, prime-sautier, intuitive and imaginative, full of a natural, unspoilt, unsophisticated happiness and hopefulness. But the Age of Reason had to come, and man's maturer nature, perhaps some "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought". Such an age of Reason and Ratiocination and pure brain power was ushered in by Buddha in India, and almost contemporaneously by Socrates in Greece and Confucius in China. The rational, that is to say, the scientific or analytical attitude to things appeared in the human consciousness for the first time in its fullness and almost exclusive sway. Neither the Vedas nor the Upanishads knew of logic as an instrumenta necessary instrument for knowledge and expression. The old-world method was, as I said, intuitive, experiential, empirical, dogmatic. Also the atmosphere of that world, the stress of the consciousness was theocratic; what the new world brought in was what is called humanistic.
We say then that it was a necessity: it was a necessity that the rational, logical, ratiocinative, analytic mentality should be brought out and given its play and place. It is perhaps an inferior power of the mind or consciousness, but it is a strong power and has its use and utility. It is the power that gives the form and pattern for the display of consciousness and intelligence in outward expression and external living; it is a firm weapon that gives control over these inferior ranges of consciousness. The leap from the sense-consciousness or the elements of consciousness, from a mental growth just adequate and not too specialised, straight into the supra-sensuous and the transcendent had been an inevitable necessity, so that the human consciousness might get the first taste of its supreme status and value: a similar necessity brought to the fore this element of the mind, the mind's own powerof judgement and willso that there might be a greater and wider integration of human nature and also that the higher realities may be captured in our normal consciousness. Even for the withdrawal of the mind from the outer objects to the inner sources, the mind itself can be used with much effect. And Buddha showed it magnificently. And of course, Shankara too who followed in his footsteps.
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They speak of the coming of a new Buddha (Maitreya) with the close of the cycle now, ushering another cycle of new growth and achievement. It is said also that humanity has reached its apex, a great change-over is inevitable: seers and savants have declared that man will have to surpass himself and become superman in order to fulfil what was expected of him since his advent upon earth. If we say that the preparation for such a consummation was taken up at the last stage by the Buddha and Buddhism, and the Buddhistic inspiration, we will not be wrong. It was a cycle of ascending tapasya for the human vehicle: it was a seeking for the pure spirit which meant a clearance of the many ignorances that shrouded it. It was also an urge of the spirit to encompass in its fold a larger and larger circle of humanity: it meant that the spiritual consciousness is no more an aristocratic or hermetic virtue, but a need in which the people, the large mass, have also their share, maybe in varying degrees.
A new humanity broad-based to encompass the whole earth, expressing and embodying the light and power and joy of spiritual heights, forming a happy world state, may very well announce in the new age the descent of a supreme truth and principle of existence here below.
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03.11 - Modernist Poetry, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Indeed it has been pointed out that the second great characteristic of modern art is the curious and wondrous amalgam in it of the highly serious and the keenly comic. It is not, however, the Shakespearean manner; for in that old-world poet, the two are merely juxtaposed, but they remain separate; very often they form an ill-assorted couple. At best, it is a mechanical mixture the sthetic taste of each remains distinct, although they are dosed together. In a modern poet, in Pound, or to a greater degree, in Eliot, the tragic and the comic, the serious and the flippant, the climax and the bathos are blended together, chemically fused, as part and parcel of a single whole. Take, for example, the lines from Ezra Pound quoted above, the obvious pun (Greek tin' or tina, meaning "some one" and English "tin"), the cheap claptrap, it may be explained, is intentional: the trick is meant to bring out a sense of lightness and even levity in the very heart of seriousness and solemnity. The days of Arnold's high seriousness, of grand style pure and severe, are gone. Today the high lights are no longer set on a high pedestal away and aloof, they are brought down and immixed with the low lights and often the two are indistinguishable from each other. The grand style rides always on the crest of the waves, the ballad style glides in the trough; but the modern style has one foot on either and attempts to make that gait the natural and normal manner of the consciousness and poetic movement. Here, for example, is something in that manner as Eliot may be supposed to illustrate:
At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives
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03.12 - The Spirit of Tapasya, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Real Tapasya, however, is not in relation to the body and its comforts and discomforts; it is in relation to the inner being, the consciousness and its directives and movements. Tapasya, austerity, consists in reacting to the downward pull of the ordinary consciousness, turning and attuning it to the rhythm of higher levels. To oppose the force of gravitation, to move ceaselessly towards purer and luminous heights of being and consciousness, that is Tapasya, Askesis, true asceticism.
Virgil, the great poet of a diviner order in human life, expressed the idea most beautifully and aptly in those well-known lines, one of the characteristic passages showing his genius at its best:
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03.15 - Origin and Nature of Suffering, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Suffering there is, some say, because the soul takes delight in it: if there was not the soul's delight behind, there would not be any suffering at all. There are still two other positions with regard to suffering which we do not deal with in the present context, namely, (1) that it does not exist at all, the absolute Ananda of the Brahman being the sole reality, suffering, along with the manifested world of which it is a part, is illusion pure and simple, (2) that suffering exists, but it comes not from soul or God but from the Anti-divine: it is at the most tolerated by God and He uses it as best as He can for His purpose. That, however, is not our subject here. We ask then what delight can the soul take when the body is suffering, say, from cancer. If it is delight, it must be of a perverse variety. Is it not the whole effort of mankind to get rid of pain and suffering, make of our life and of the world, if possible, a visible play of pure and undefiled Ananda?
On the other hand, we do find that suffering is not always mere suffering, that it can be turned into a thing of joy; it is a fact proved in the lives of many a martyr and many a saint. Many indeed are those who have not only borne suffering passively but have welcomed it and courted it with happiness and delight. If it is said it is a perverse kind of pleasure, and if one wishes to hang it by calling it masochism, well, we do not solve the problem in that way, we seek to hide it behind a big word; it is at the most a point of view. What agrees with one's temperament (or prejudices) one calls natural and what one does not like appears to him perverse. Another person may have a different temperament and accordingly a different vocabulary.
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True, but even this is an intermediate state. For there is another in which suffering is not merely suppressed but sublimated, wholly transmuted: there is then nothing else but delight, pure and entire. That is the soul state, the state of permanent dwelling in the Spirit. Now, we come back to the question why or how does the soul, being all delight, become in life the very opposite of its essential nature, a thing of misery, why does the spirit descend or condescend to take the form of matter: it is an old-world and eternal problem that has been asked and faced and answered in various ways through the ages.
Here is, briefly, how we view the question. The soul accepts a mortal life of pain and suffering, welcomes an apparent denial of its essential nature for two reasons: (1) to grow and increase in consciousness through such experiences,pain and suffering being one variety of the fuel that tends the Fire that is our soul; and (2) to transfer its inalienable purity into Matter, by its secret pressure and influence gradually transform earthly life into a movement of its own divine state, the state of inviolable Bliss.
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03.15 - Towards the Future, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Pursuing the mathematical imagery we may describe the Buddhist equation as desire raised to the power of zero equals Nirvana: D=Zero. Buddha thought like that. He thought annihilation of desire means annihilation of existence, for he equated desire with existence. But mathematics tells us that anything raised to the power of zero is not zero but one, that is, the unit, the pure existenceSat (or Sachchidananda as the Vedantists say.
Science and mathematics tell us today of a truth or just point to a truth which a spiritual realisation reveals. It is, as I have already said, the mystery of transformation, or transubstantiation as the Christian faith figures it.
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04.01 - The March of Civilisation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This knowledge remained at the outset scattered, hidden, confined to a few, a company of adepts: it had almost no direct contact with the main current of life. Its religious aspect too was so altered and popularised as to represent and serve the secular life. The systematisation and propagation of that knowledgeat least the aspiration for that knowledgewas attempted on an effective scale in the Hebrew Old Testament. But then a good amount of externalities, of the Inferior Knowledge was mixed up with the inner urge and the soul perception. The Christ with his New Testament came precisely with the mission of cleaning the Augean stables, in place of the dross and coverings, the false and deformed godheads, to instal something of the purest ray of the inner consciousness, the unalloyed urge of the soul, the demand of our spiritual personality. The Church sought to build up society on that basis, attempting a fusion of the spiritual and the temporal power, so that instead of a profane secular world, a mundane or worldly world, there maybe established God's own world, the City of God.
The drive towards the building of Heaven upon earth and with earth, the materialisation of the Spirit on a cosmic scale, the remodelling of the whole human society in spiritual terms was the secret inspiring the other Semitic Revelation, that of Mohammed. The Arab Master sought to bring down and establish and express in life-force what the Rabi of Bethlehem saw and felt in the inner heartone was a lover, the other a servant warrior of God.
Turning to India we find a fuller and completerif not a globalpicture of the whole movement. India, we may say, is the spiritual world itself: and she epitomised the curve of human progress in a clearer and more significant manner. Indian history, not its political but its cultural and spiritual history, divides itself naturally into great movements with corresponding epochs each dwelling upon and dealing with one domain in the hierarchy of man's consciousness. The stages and epochs are well known: they are(l) Vedic, (2) Upanishadic, (3) Darshanasroughly from Buddha to Shankara, (4) Puranic, (5) Bhagavataor the Age of Bhakti, and finally (6) the Tantric. The last does not mean that it is the latest revelation, the nearest to us in time, but that it represents a kind of complementary movement, it was there all along, for long at least, and in which the others find their fruition and consummation. We shall explain presently. The force of consciousness that came and moved and moulded the first and the earliest epoch was Revelation. It was a power of direct vision and occult will and cosmic perception. Its physical seat is somewhere behind and or just beyond the crown of the head: the peak of man's manifest being that received the first touch of Surya Savitri (the supreme Creative Consciousness) to whom it bowed down uttering the invocation mantra of Gayatri. The Ray then entered the head at the crown and illumined it: the force of consciousness that ruled there is Intuition, the immediate perception of truth and reality, the cosmic consciousness gathered and concentrated at that peak. That is Upanishadic knowledge. If the source and foundation of the Vedic initiation was occult vision, the Upanishad meant a pure and direct Ideation. The next stage in the coming down or propagation of the Light was when it reached further down into the brain and the philosophical outlook grew with rational understanding and discursive argumentation as the channel for expression, the power to be cultivated and the limb to be developed. The Age of the Darshanas or Systems of Philosophy started with the Buddha and continued till it reached its peak in Shankaracharya. The age sought to give a bright and strong mental, even an intellectual body to the spiritual light, the consciousness of the highest truth and reality. In the Puranic Age the vital being was touched by the light of the spirit and principally on the highest, the mental level of that domain. It meant the advent of the element of feeling and emotiveness and imagination into the play of the Light, the beginning of their reclamation. This was rendered more concrete and more vibrant and intense in the next stage of the movement. The whole emotional being was taken up into the travailing crucible of consciousness. We may name it also as the age of the Bhagavatas, god-lovers, Bhaktas. It reached its climax in Chaitanya whose physical passion for God denoted that the lower ranges of the vital being (its physical foundations) were now stirred in man to awake and to receive the Light. Finally remains the physical, the most material to be worked upon and made conscious and illumined. That was the task of the Tantras. Viewed in that light one can easily understand why especial stress was laid in that system upon the esoteric discipline of the five m's (pancha makra),all preoccupied with the handling and harnessing of the grossest physical instincts and the most material instruments. The Tantric discipline bases itself upon Nature Power coiled up in Matter: the release of that all-conquering force through a purification and opening into the consciousness of the Divine Mother, the transcendent creatrix of the universe. The dynamic materialising aspect of consciousness was what inspired the Tantras: the others forming the Vedantic line, on the whole, were based on the primacy of the static being, the Purusha, aloof and withdrawing.
The Indian consciousness, we say, presented the movement as an intensive and inner, a spiritual process: it dealt with the substance itself, man's very nature and sought to know it from within and shape it consciously. In Europe where the frontal consciousness is more stressed and valued, the more characteristic feature of its history is the unfoldment and metamorphosis of the forms and expressions, the residuary powers, as it were, of man's evolving personality, individual and social.
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04.02 - A Chapter of Human Evolution, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Mind of Reason is a kind of steel-frame for other movements of consciousness pure ideas, imaginations or instinctive and sensory notions, or even secret intimations and visions of deeper truths and greater realitiesto take body, to find a local habitation and name and be firmly stabilised for experience or utilisation in physical life. There was indeed a hiatus in the human consciousness of the earlier period. Take, for example, the earliest human civilisation at its best, of which we have historical record, the Vedic culture of India: human consciousness is here at its optimum, its depth and height is a thing of wonder. But between that world, an almost occult world and this world of the physical senses there is a gap. That world was occult precisely because of this gap. The physical life and mind could translate and represent the supra-physical only in figures and symbols; the impact was direct, but it expressed itself in hieroglyphs. Life itself was more or less a life of rites and ceremonies, and mind a field of metaphors and legends and parables. The parable, the myth was an inevitability with this type of consciousness and in such a world. The language spoken was also one of images and figures, expressing ideas and perceptions not in the abstract but as concrete objects, represented through concrete objects. It is the Mind of Reason that brought in the age of philosophy, the age of pure and abstract ideas, of the analytic language. A significant point to note is that it was in the Greek language that the pre-position, the backbone almost of the analytical language, started to have an independent and autonomous status. With the Greeks dawned the spirit of Science.
In India we meet a characteristic movement. As I said the Vedas represented the Mythic Age, the age when knowledge was gained or life moulded and developed through Vision and Revelation (Sruti, direct Hearing). The Upanishadic Age followed next. Here we may say the descending light touched the higher reaches of the Mind, the mind of pure, fundamental, typical ideas. The consciousness divested itself of much of the mythic and parabolic apparel and, although supremely immediate and intuitive, yet was bathed with the light of the day, the clear sunshine of the normal wakeful state. The first burgeoning of the Rational Mind proper, the stress of intellect and intellectuality started towards the end of the Upanishadic Age with the Mahabharata, for example and the Brahmanas. It flowered in full vigour, however, in the earlier philosophical schools, the Sankhyas perhaps, and in the great Buddhist illuminationBuddha being, we note with interest, almost a contemporary of Socrates and also of the Chinese philosopher or moralist Confuciusa triumvirate almost of mighty mental intelligence ruling over the whole globe and moulding for an entire cycle human culture and destiny. The very name Buddha is significant. It means, no doubt, the Awakened, but awakened in and through the intelligence, the mental Reason, buddhi. The Buddhist tradition is that the Buddhist cycle, the cycle over which Buddha reigns is for two thousand and five hundred years since his withdrawal which takes us, it seems, to about 1956 A.D.
The Veda speaks of Indra who became later on the king of the gods. And Zeus too occupies the same place in Greek Pantheon. Indra is, as has been pointed out by Sri Aurobindo, the Divine Mind, the leader of thought-gods (Maruts), the creator of perfect forms, in which to clo the our truth-realisations in life. The later traditional Indra in India and the Greek Zeus seem to be formulations on a lower level of the original archetypal Indra, where the consciousness was more mentalised, intellectualised, made more rational, sense-bound, external, pragmatic. The legend of Athena being born straight out of the head of Zeus is a pointer as to the nature and character of the gods. The Roman name for Athena, Minerva, is significantly derived by scholars from Latin mens, which means, as we all know, mind.
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