TERMS STARTING WITH
speakable ::: a. --> Capable of being spoken; fit to be spoken.
Able to speak.
speaker 1. "audio, hardware" {loudspeaker}. 2. The person who is (assumed to be) talking. (1996-12-01)
speaker ::: n. --> One who speaks.
One who utters or pronounces a discourse; usually, one who utters a speech in public; as, the man is a good speaker, or a bad speaker.
One who is the mouthpiece of others; especially, one who presides over, or speaks for, a delibrative assembly, preserving order and regulating the debates; as, the Speaker of the House of Commons, originally, the mouthpiece of the House to address the king; the
speakership ::: n. --> The office of speaker; as, the speakership of the House of Representatives.
speakest ::: a native English form of the verb, to speak, now only in formal and poetic usage.
speaking ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Speak ::: a. --> Uttering speech; used for conveying speech; as, man is a speaking animal; a speaking tube.
Seeming to be capable of speech; hence, lifelike; as, a speaking likeness.
speakst ::: a native English form of the verb, to speak, now only in formal and poetic usage.
speak ::: v. i. --> To utter words or articulate sounds, as human beings; to express thoughts by words; as, the organs may be so obstructed that a man may not be able to speak.
To express opinions; to say; to talk; to converse.
To utter a speech, discourse, or harangue; to adress a public assembly formally.
To discourse; to make mention; to tell.
To give sound; to sound.
spear ::: 1. A weapon consisting of a long shaft with a sharply pointed end. 2. A ray of light. spears.
speared ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Spear
spearer ::: n. --> One who uses a spear; as, a spearer of fish.
spearfish ::: n. --> A large and powerful fish (Tetrapturus albidus) related to the swordfish, but having scales and ventral fins. It is found on the American coast and the Mediterranean.
The carp sucker.
spearhead ::: fig. The driving force in a given action, endeavour, or movement; the leading force in a military thrust.
spearhead ::: n. --> The pointed head, or end, of a spear.
spearing ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Spear
spearman ::: n. --> One who is armed with a spear.
spearmen ::: pl. --> of Spearman
spearmint ::: n. --> A species of mint (Mentha viridis) growing in moist soil. It vields an aromatic oil. See Mint, and Mentha.
spear ::: n. --> A long, pointed weapon, used in war and hunting, by thrusting or throwing; a weapon with a long shaft and a sharp head or blade; a lance.
Fig.: A spearman.
A sharp-pointed instrument with barbs, used for stabbing fish and other animals.
A shoot, as of grass; a spire.
The feather of a horse. See Feather, n., 4.
spear-point ::: the head and sharpened point of a spear or something resembling it. Also fig.** spear-points.**
spearwood ::: n. --> An Australian tree (Acacia Doratoxylon), and its tough wood, used by the natives for spears.
spearwort ::: n. --> A name given to several species of crowfoot (Ranunculus) which have spear-shaped leaves.
speary ::: a. --> Having the form of a spear.
spec {specification}
spece ::: n. --> Species; kind.
specht ::: n. --> A woodpecker.
special ::: 1. Surpassing what is common or usual; exceptional. 2. Distinct among others of a kind.
special ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to a species; constituting a species or sort.
Particular; peculiar; different from others; extraordinary; uncommon.
Appropriate; designed for a particular purpose, occasion, or person; as, a special act of Parliament or of Congress; a special sermon.
Limited in range; confined to a definite field of action,
special-case To write unique code to handle input to or situations arising in a program that are somehow distinguished from normal processing. This would be used for processing of mode switches or interrupt characters in an interactive interface (as opposed, say, to text entry or normal commands), or for processing of {hidden flags} in the input of a batch program or {filter}. [{Jargon File}]
specialisation A reduction in generality, usually for the sake of increased efficiency. If a piece of code is specialised for certain values of certain variables (usually function arguments), this is known as "{partial evaluation}". In a language with {overloading} (e.g. {Haskell}), an overloaded function might be specialised to a non-overloaded instance at compile-time if the types of its arguments are known.
specialism ::: n. --> Devotion to a particular and restricted part or branch of knowledge, art, or science; as, medical specialism.
specialist ::: n. --> One who devotes himself to some specialty; as, a medical specialist, one who devotes himself to diseases of particular parts of the body, as the eye, the ear, the nerves, etc.
specialist ::: one who devotes himself or herself to one subject or to one particular branch of a subject or pursuit.
specialities ::: pl. --> of Speciality
speciality ::: n. --> A particular or peculiar case; a particularity.
See Specialty, 3.
The special or peculiar mark or characteristic of a person or thing; that for which a person is specially distinguished; an object of special attention; a special occupation or object of attention; a specialty.
An attribute or quality peculiar to a species.
specialization ::: n. --> The act of specializing, or the state of being spezialized.
The setting apart of a particular organ for the performance of a particular function.
specialize ::: v. t. --> To mention specially; to particularize.
To apply to some specialty or limited object; to assign to a specific use; as, specialized knowledge.
To supply with an organ or organs having a special function or functions.
specially ::: adv. --> In a special manner; particularly; especially.
For a particular purpose; as, a meeting of the legislature is specially summoned.
special reference to the psychic or the psychidsed dial, menial and physical consciousness. Usually indicate a psychic activity.
specialties ::: pl. --> of Specialty
specialty ::: n. --> Particularity.
A particular or peculiar case.
A contract or obligation under seal; a contract by deed; a writing, under seal, given as security for a debt particularly specified.
That for which a person is distinguished, in which he is specially versed, or which he makes an object of special attention; a speciality.
specie ::: --> abl. of L. species sort, kind. Used in the phrase in specie, that is, in sort, in kind, in (its own) form. ::: n. --> Coin; hard money.
species ::: a class of individuals or objects grouped by virtue of their common attributes.
species ::: n. --> Visible or sensible presentation; appearance; a sensible percept received by the imagination; an image.
A group of individuals agreeing in common attributes, and designated by a common name; a conception subordinated to another conception, called a genus, or generic conception, from which it differs in containing or comprehending more attributes, and extending to fewer individuals. Thus, man is a species, under animal as a genus; and man, in its turn, may be regarded as a genus with respect to
specifiable ::: a. --> Admitting specification; capable of being specified.
specifical ::: a. --> Specific.
specifically ::: adv. --> In a specific manner.
specificalness ::: n. --> The quality of being specific.
specific ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to a species; characterizing or constituting a species; possessing the peculiar property or properties of a thing which constitute its species, and distinguish it from other things; as, the specific form of an animal or a plant; the specific qualities of a drug; the specific distinction between virtue and vice.
Specifying; definite, or making definite; limited; precise; discriminating; as, a specific statement.
Exerting a peculiar influence over any part of the body;
specificate ::: v. t. --> To show, mark, or designate the species, or the distinguishing particulars of; to specify.
specification "jargon" (spec) A document describing how some system should work. (2001-02-06)
specification ::: n. --> The act of specifying or determining by a mark or limit; notation of limits.
The designation of particulars; particular mention; as, the specification of a charge against an officer.
A written statement containing a minute description or enumeration of particulars, as of charges against a public officer, the terms of a contract, the description of an invention, as in a patent; also, a single article, item, or particular, an allegation of a
specific markup In computerised document preparation, a method of adding formatting commands to the text to control layout, such as new line, new page, centre text etc. Compare {generic markup}. (2001-02-06)
specified ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Specify
specifying ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Specify
specify ::: v. t. --> To mention or name, as a particular thing; to designate in words so as to distinguish from other things; as, to specify the uses of a plant; to specify articles purchased.
specimen ::: n. --> A part, or small portion, of anything, or one of a number of things, intended to exhibit the kind and quality of the whole, or of what is not exhibited; a sample; as, a specimen of a man&
speciocities ::: pl. --> of Speciosity
speciosity ::: n. --> The quality or state of being specious; speciousness.
That which is specious.
specious ::: 1. Having the ring of truth or plausibility but actually false. 2. Apparently good or right thought lacking real merit; superficially pleasing or plausible. 3. Plausible but false.
specious ::: a. --> Presenting a pleasing appearance; pleasing in form or look; showy.
Apparently right; superficially fair, just, or correct, but not so in reality; appearing well at first view; plausible; as, specious reasoning; a specious argument.
specked ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Speck
specking ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Speck
speckled-belly ::: n. --> The gadwall.
speckled-bill ::: n. --> The American white-fronted goose (Anser albifrons).
speckled ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Speckle ::: a. --> Marked or variegated with small spots of a different color from that of the rest of the surface.
speckledness ::: n. --> The quality of being speckled.
speckle ::: n. --> A little or spot in or anything, of a different substance or color from that of the thing itself. ::: v. t. --> To mark with small spots of a different color from that of the rest of the surface; to variegate with spots of a different color from the ground or surface.
speckling ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Speckle
speck ::: n. --> The blubber of whales or other marine mammals; also, the fat of the hippopotamus.
A small discolored place in or on anything, or a small place of a color different from that of the main substance; a spot; a stain; a blemish; as, a speck on paper or loth; specks of decay in fruit.
A very small thing; a particle; a mite; as, specks of dust; he has not a speck of money.
A small etheostomoid fish (Ulocentra stigmaea) common in the
specksioneer ::: n. --> The chief harpooner, who also directs in cutting up the speck, or blubber; -- so called among whalers.
speck ::: something that seems small due to distance or by comparison.
speckt ::: n. --> A woodpecker. See Speight.
specollum ::: n. --> See Stylet, 2.
spectacle ::: a public display or performance, esp. a showy or ceremonial one.
spectacled ::: a. --> Furnished with spectacles; wearing spectacles.
Having the eyes surrounded by color markings, or patches of naked skin, resembling spectacles.
spectacle ::: n. --> Something exhibited to view; usually, something presented to view as extraordinary, or as unusual and worthy of special notice; a remarkable or noteworthy sight; a show; a pageant; a gazingstock.
A spy-glass; a looking-glass.
An optical instrument consisting of two lenses set in a light frame, and worn to assist sight, to obviate some defect in the organs of vision, or to shield the eyes from bright light.
spectacular ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to a shows; of the nature of a show.
Adapted to excite wonder and admiration by a display of pomp or of scenic effects; as, a spectacular celebration of some event; a spectacular play.
Pertaining to spectacles, or glasses for the eyes.
spectant ::: a. --> Looking forward.
spectation ::: n. --> Regard; aspect; appearance.
spectator ::: 1. A person viewing anything; onlooker; observer. 2. An observer or an event. spectators. (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as an adj.)
spectatorial ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to a spectator.
spectator ::: n. --> One who on; one who sees or beholds; a beholder; one who is personally present at, and sees, any exhibition; as, the spectators at a show.
spectatorship ::: n. --> The office or quality of a spectator.
The act of beholding.
spectator :::
spectatress ::: n. --> Alt. of Spectatrix
spectatrix ::: n. --> A female beholder or looker-on.
specter ::: n. --> Alt. of Spectre
spectioneer ::: n. --> Same as Specsioneer.
spectral ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to a specter; ghosty.
Of or pertaining to the spectrum; made by the spectrum; as, spectral colors; spectral analysis.
spectral ::: having the character of a visible incorporeal spirit or phantom; ghostly, unsubstantial, unreal.
spectrally ::: adv. --> In the form or manner of a specter.
spectra ::: pl. --> of Spectrum
spectre ::: n. --> Something preternaturally visible; an apparition; a ghost; a phantom.
The tarsius.
A stick insect.
See Specter.
spectrological ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to spectrology; as, spectrological studies or experiments.
spectrology ::: n. --> The science of spectrum analysis in any or all of its relations and applications.
spectrometer ::: n. --> A spectroscope fitted for measurements of the luminious spectra observed with it.
spectrophotometer ::: n. --> An instrument for measuring or comparing the intensites of the colors of the spectrum.
spectroscope ::: n. --> An optical instrument for forming and examining spectra (as that of solar light, or those produced by flames in which different substances are volatilized), so as to determine, from the position of the spectral lines, the composition of the substance.
spectroscopic ::: a. --> Alt. of Spectroscopical
spectroscopical ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to a spectroscope, or spectroscopy.
spectroscopist ::: n. --> One who investigates by means of a spectroscope; one skilled in the use of the spectroscope.
spectroscopy ::: n. --> The use of the spectroscope; investigations made with the spectroscope.
spectrum ::: n. --> An apparition; a specter.
The several colored and other rays of which light is composed, separated by the refraction of a prism or other means, and observed or studied either as spread out on a screen, by direct vision, by photography, or otherwise. See Illust. of Light, and Spectroscope.
A luminous appearance, or an image seen after the eye has been exposed to an intense light or a strongly illuminated object. When the object is colored, the image appears of the complementary color, as
specula ::: pl. --> of Speculum
specular ::: a. --> Having the qualities of a speculum, or mirror; having a smooth, reflecting surface; as, a specular metal; a specular surface.
Of or pertaining to a speculum; conducted with the aid of a speculum; as, a specular examination.
Assisting sight, as a lens or the like.
Affording view.
speculated ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Speculate
speculate ::: v. i. --> To consider by turning a subject in the mind, and viewing it in its different aspects and relations; to meditate; to contemplate; to theorize; as, to speculate on questions in religion; to speculate on political events.
To view subjects from certain premises given or assumed, and infer conclusions respecting them a priori.
To purchase with the expectation of a contingent advance in value, and a consequent sale at a profit; -- often, in a
speculating ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Speculate
speculation ::: conjectural consideration of a matter; conjecture or surmise.
speculation ::: n. --> The act of speculating.
Examination by the eye; view.
Mental view of anything in its various aspects and relations; contemplation; intellectual examination.
The act or process of reasoning a priori from premises given or assumed.
The act or practice of buying land, goods, shares, etc., in expectation of selling at a higher price, or of selling with
speculatist ::: n. --> One who speculates, or forms theories; a speculator; a theorist.
speculative ::: a. --> Given to speculation; contemplative.
Involving, or formed by, speculation; ideal; theoretical; not established by demonstration.
Of or pertaining to vision; also, prying; inquisitive; curious.
Of or pertaining to speculation in land, goods, shares, etc.; as, a speculative dealer or enterprise.
speculative evaluation "parallel" A technique used in {parallel processing} where some evaluation may be started before it is known whether it is needed (Eager evaluation). This may result in some wasted processing and may introduce unnecessary non-terminating processes but it can reduce the overall run time by making some needed results available earlier than they would be otherwise. Opposite: {conservative evaluation}. (1995-05-05)
speculative execution "processor" A technique allows a {superscalar} processor to keep its {functional units} as busy as possible by executing instructions before it is known that they will be needed. The {Intel P6} uses speculative execution. Compare {branch prediction}, {speculative evaluation}. (1995-05-05)
speculatorial ::: a. --> Speculatory; speculative.
speculator ::: n. --> One who speculates. Specifically: (a) An observer; a contemplator; hence, a spy; a watcher.
One who forms theories; a theorist.
One who engages in speculation; one who buys and sells goods, land, etc., with the expectation of deriving profit from fluctuations in price.
speculator ::: one who risks losses in a commercial venture for the possibility of considerable gains.
speculatory ::: a. --> Intended or adapted for viewing or espying; having oversight.
Exercising speculation; speculative.
speculist ::: n. --> One who observes or considers; an observer.
speculum ::: pl. --> of Speculum ::: n. --> A mirror, or looking-glass; especially, a metal mirror, as in Greek and Roman archaeology.
A reflector of polished metal, especially one used in reflecting telescopes. See Speculum metal, below.
sped ::: --> imp. & p. p. of Speed. ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Speed
speece ::: n. --> Species; sort.
speechful ::: a. --> Full of speech or words; voluble; loquacious.
speechification ::: n. --> The act of speechifying.
speechified ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Speechify
speechifier ::: n. --> One who makes a speech or speeches; an orator; a declaimer.
speechifying ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Speechify ::: n. --> The act of making a speech or speeches.
speechify ::: v. i. --> To make a speech; to harangue.
speeching ::: n. --> The act of making a speech.
speechless ::: a. --> Destitute or deprived of the faculty of speech.
Not speaking for a time; dumb; mute; silent.
speechmaker ::: n. --> One who makes speeches; one accustomed to speak in a public assembly.
speech ::: n. --> The faculty of uttering articulate sounds or words; the faculty of expressing thoughts by words or articulate sounds; the power of speaking.
he act of speaking; that which is spoken; words, as expressing ideas; language; conversation.
A particular language, as distinct from others; a tongue; a dialect.
Talk; mention; common saying.
speech recognition "application" (Or voice recognition) The identification of spoken words by a machine. The spoken words are digitised (turned into sequence of numbers) and matched against coded dictionaries in order to identify the words. Most systems must be "trained," requiring samples of all the actual words that will be spoken by the user of the system. The sample words are digitised, stored in the computer and used to match against future words. More sophisticated systems require voice samples, but not of every word. The system uses the voice samples in conjunction with dictionaries of larger vocabularies to match the incoming words. Yet other systems aim to be "speaker-independent", i.e. they will recognise words in their vocabulary from any speaker without training. Another variation is the degree with which systems can cope with connected speech. People tend to run words together, e.g. "next week" becomes "neksweek" (the "t" is dropped). For a voice recognition system to identify words in connected speech it must take into account the way words are modified by the preceding and following words. It has been said (in 1994) that computers will need to be something like 1000 times faster before large vocabulary (a few thousand words), speaker-independent, connected speech voice recognition will be feasible. (1995-05-05)
speech synthesis The generation of an sound waveform of human speech from a textual or phonetic description. See also {speech recognition}. There are demonstrations which {say a number (http://cs.yale.edu/cgi-bin/saynumber.au)} or {say a phrase (http://wwwtios.cs.utwente.nl/say/form/)}.
speech-thought ::: same as vaṅmaya thought.
speeded ::: --> of Speed
speeder ::: n. --> One who, or that which, speeds.
A machine for drawing and twisting slivers to form rovings.
speedful ::: a. --> Full of speed (in any sense).
speedfully ::: adv. --> In a speedful manner.
speedily ::: adv. --> In a speedy manner.
speediness ::: n. --> The quality or state of being speedy.
speeding ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Speed
speedless ::: a. --> Being without speed.
speed ::: n. --> Prosperity in an undertaking; favorable issue; success.
The act or state of moving swiftly; swiftness; velocity; rapidly; rate of motion; dispatch; as, the speed a horse or a vessel.
One who, or that which, causes or promotes speed or success.
To go; to fare.
To experience in going; to have any condition, good or ill; to fare.
To fare well; to have success; to prosper.
speedometer A pattern of lights displayed on a linear set of LEDs (today) or nixie tubes (yesterday, on ancient mainframes). The pattern is shifted left every N times the operating system goes through its {main loop}. A swiftly moving pattern indicates that the system is mostly idle; the speedometer slows down as the system becomes overloaded. The speedometer on Sun Microsystems hardware bounces back and forth like the eyes on one of the Cylons from the wretched "Battlestar Galactica" TV series. Historical note: One computer, the GE 600 (later Honeywell 6000) actually had an *analog* speedometer on the front panel, calibrated in instructions executed per second. [{Jargon File}]
speedwell ::: n. --> Any plant of the genus Veronica, mostly low herbs with pale blue corollas, which quickly fall off.
speedy ::: superl. --> Not dilatory or slow; quick; swift; nimble; hasty; rapid in motion or performance; as, a speedy flight; on speedy foot.
speer ::: n. --> A sphere. ::: v. t. --> To ask.
speet ::: v. t. --> To stab.
speight ::: n. --> A woodpecker; -- called also specht, spekt, spight.
speir ::: v. i. --> To ask. See Spere.
speiskobalt ::: n. --> Smaltite.
speiss ::: n. --> A regulus consisting essentially of nickel, obtained as a residue in fusing cobalt and nickel ores with silica and sodium carbonate to make smalt.
spekboom ::: n. --> The purslane tree of South Africa, -- said to be the favorite food of elephants.
spekehouse ::: n. --> The parlor or reception room of a convent.
speke ::: v. i. & t. --> To speak.
speking ::: n. --> The act of uttering words.
Public declamation; oratory.
spelding ::: n. --> A haddock or other small fish split open and dried in the sun; -- called also speldron.
spelicans ::: n. pl. --> See Spilikin.
spelk ::: n. --> A small stick or rod used as a spike in thatching; a splinter.
spell ::: 1. A word or formula believed to have magic power. 2. Fig. An influence that can control the mind or character; fascination. 3. A state or period of enchantment.
spellable ::: a. --> Capable of being spelt.
spellbound ::: a. --> Bound by, or as by, a spell.
spelled ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Spell
of Spell
speller ::: n. --> One who spells.
A spelling book.
spellful ::: a. --> Abounding in spells, or charms.
spell {incantation}
spelling flame "messaging" A {Usenet} posting ostentatiously correcting a previous article's spelling, possibly as a way of casting scorn on the point the article was trying to make, instead of actually responding to that point (compare {dictionary flame}). Of course, people who are more than usually slovenly spellers are prone to think *any* correction is a spelling flame. It's an amusing comment on human nature that spelling flames themselves often contain spelling errors. [{Jargon File}] (1994-11-22)
spelling ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Spell
of Spell ::: n. --> The act of one who spells; formation of words by letters; orthography.
spellken ::: n. --> A theater.
spell ::: n. --> A spelk, or splinter.
The relief of one person by another in any piece of work or watching; also, a turn at work which is carried on by one person or gang relieving another; as, a spell at the pumps; a spell at the masthead.
The time during which one person or gang works until relieved; hence, any relatively short period of time, whether a few hours, days, or weeks.
spells ::: 1. To decipher something; comprehend by studying. 2. To amount to; to signify, imply, or involve.
spellwork ::: n. --> Power or effect of magic; that which is wrought by magic; enchantment.
spelter ::: n. --> Zinc; -- especially so called in commerce and arts.
spelt ::: --> of Spell
imp. & p. p. of Spell. Spelled. ::: n. --> A species of grain (Triticum Spelta) much cultivated for food in Germany and Switzerland; -- called also German wheat.
Spelter.
spelunc ::: n. --> A cavern; a cave.
spence ::: n. --> A place where provisions are kept; a buttery; a larder; a pantry.
The inner apartment of a country house; also, the place where the family sit and eat.
spencer ::: n. --> One who has the care of the spence, or buttery.
A short jacket worn by men and by women.
A fore-and-aft sail, abaft the foremast or the mainmast, hoisted upon a small supplementary mast and set with a gaff and no boom; a trysail carried at the foremast or mainmast; -- named after its inventor, Knight Spencer, of England [1802].
spend ::: 1. To pay out, disperse, or expend; dispose of (money, wealth, resources, etc.). 2. To employ (labour, thought, words, time, etc.) as on some object or in some proceeding. 3. To use up lavishly; squander. 4. To allow or cause to flow; to shed. 5. To use up or exhaust one"s energy. spends, spent, spending.
spender ::: n. --> One who spends; esp., one who spends lavishly; a prodigal; a spendthrift.
spending ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Spend ::: n. --> The act of expending; expenditure.
spendthrift ::: n. --> One who spends money profusely or improvidently; a prodigal; one who lavishes or wastes his estate. Also used figuratively. ::: a. --> Prodigal; extravagant; wasteful.
spendthrift ::: wastefully extravagant.
spendthrifty ::: a. --> Spendthrift; prodigal.
spend ::: v. t. --> To weigh or lay out; to dispose of; to part with; as, to spend money for clothing.
To bestow; to employ; -- often with on or upon.
To consume; to waste; to squander; to exhaust; as, to spend an estate in gaming or other vices.
To pass, as time; to suffer to pass away; as, to spend a day idly; to spend winter abroad.
To exhaust of force or strength; to waste; to wear away;
spenserian ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to the English poet Spenser; -- specifically applied to the stanza used in his poem "The Faerie Queene."
spent ::: 1. Depleted of energy, force, or strength; exhausted. 2. Having come to an end; passed. (Also, pt. and pp. of spend.)
spent ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Spend ::: a. --> Exhausted; worn out; having lost energy or motive force.
Exhausted of spawn or sperm; -- said especially of fishes.
sperable ::: a. --> Within the range of hpe; proper to be hoped for. ::: n. --> See Sperable.
sperage ::: n. --> Asperagus.
sperate ::: a. --> Hoped for, or to be hoped for.
spere ::: v. i. --> To search; to pry; to ask; to inquire. ::: n. --> A sphere.
sperge ::: n. --> A charge of wash for the still.
sperling ::: n. --> A smelt; a sparling.
A young herring.
spermaceti ::: n. --> A white waxy substance obtained from cavities in the head of the sperm whale, and used making candles, oilments, cosmetics, etc. It consists essentially of ethereal salts of palmitic acid with ethal and other hydrocarbon bases. The substance of spermaceti after the removal of certain impurities is sometimes called cetin.
spermalist ::: n. --> See Spermist.
spermaphore ::: n. --> That part of the ovary from which the ovules arise; the placenta.
spermary ::: n. --> An organ in which spermatozoa are developed; a sperm gland; a testicle.
spermathecae ::: pl. --> of Spermatheca
spermatheca ::: n. --> A small sac connected with the female reproductive organs of insects and many other invertebrates, serving to receive and retain the spermatozoa.
spermatia ::: pl. --> of Spermatium
spermatical ::: a. --> Spermatic.
spermatic ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to semen; as, the spermatic fluid, the spermatic vessels, etc.
spermatin ::: n. --> A substance allied to alkali albumin and to mucin, present in semen, to which it is said to impart the mucilaginous character.
spermatism ::: n. --> The emission of sperm, or semen.
spermatium ::: n. --> One of the motionless spermatozoids in the conceptacles of certain fungi.
spermatize ::: v. i. --> To yield seed; to emit seed, or sperm.
spermato- ::: --> Alt. of Spermo-
spermatoa ::: pl. --> of Spermatoon
spermatoblast ::: n. --> Same as Spermoblast.
spermatocyte ::: n. --> Same as Spermoblast.
spermatogemma ::: n. --> Same as Spermosphere.
spermatogenesis ::: n. --> The development of the spermatozoids.
spermatogenetic ::: a. --> Relating to, or connected with, spermatogenesis; as, spermatogenetic function.
spermatogenous ::: a. --> Sperm-producing.
spermatogonium ::: n. --> A primitive seminal cell, occuring in masses in the seminal tubules. It divides into a mass (spermosphere) of small cells (spermoblast), which in turn give rise to spermatozoids.
spermatoid ::: a. --> Spermlike; resembling sperm, or semen.
spermatoon ::: n. --> A spermoblast.
spermatophore ::: n. --> Same as Spermospore.
A capsule or pocket inclosing a number of spermatozoa. They are present in many annelids, brachiopods, mollusks, and crustaceans. In cephalopods the structure of the capsule is very complex.
spermatophorous ::: a. --> Producing seed, or sperm; seminiferous; as, the so-called spermatophorous cells.
spermatorrhea ::: n. --> Alt. of Spermatorrhoea
spermatorrhoea ::: n. --> Abnormally frequent involuntary emission of the semen without copulation.
spermatospore ::: n. --> Same as Spermospore.
spermatozoa ::: pl. --> of Spermatozoon
spermatozoid ::: n. --> The male germ cell in animals and plants, the essential element in fertilization; a microscopic animalcule-like particle, usually provided with one or more cilia by which it is capable of active motion. In animals, the familiar type is that of a small, more or less ovoid head, with a delicate threadlike cilium, or tail. Called also spermatozoon. In plants the more usual term is antherozoid.
spermatozooid ::: n. --> A spermatozoid.
spermatozoon ::: n. --> Same as Spermatozoid.
spermic ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to sperm, or semen.
spermidia ::: pl. --> of Spermidium
spermidium ::: n. --> An achenium.
spermist ::: n. --> A believer in the doctrine, formerly current, of encasement in the male (see Encasement), in which the seminal thread, or spermatozoid, was considered as the real animal germ, the head being the true animal head and the tail the body.
sperm ::: n. --> The male fecundating fluid; semen. See Semen.
Spermaceti.
spermoblast ::: n. --> One of the cells formed by the division of the spermospore, each of which is destined to become a spermatozoid; a spermatocyte; a spermatoblast.
spermococcus ::: n. --> The nucleus of the sperm cell.
spermo- ::: --> Combining forms from Gr. spe`rma, -atos, seed, sperm, semen (of plants or animals); as, spermatoblast, spermoblast.
spermoderm ::: n. --> The covering of a seed; -- sometimes limited to the outer coat or testa.
spermogonium ::: n. --> A conceptacle of certain lichens, which contains spermatia.
spermologist ::: n. --> One who treats of, or collects, seeds.
spermophile ::: n. --> Any ground squirrel of the genus Spermophilus; a gopher. See Illust. under Gopher.
spermophore ::: n. --> A spermatophore.
spermophyta ::: n. pl. --> Plants which produce seed; phaenogamia. These plants constitute the highest grand division of the vegetable kingdom.
spermophyte ::: n. --> Any plant which produces true seeds; -- a term recently proposed to replace ph/nogam.
spermophytic ::: a. --> Capable of producing seeds; ph/nogamic.
spermoplasma ::: n. --> The protoplasm of the sperm cell.
spermosphere ::: n. --> A mass or ball of cells formed by the repeated division of a male germinal cell (spermospore), each constituent cell (spermoblast) of which is converted into a spermatozoid; a spermatogemma.
spermospore ::: n. --> The male germinal or seminal cell, from the breaking up of which the spermoblasts are formed and ultimately the spermatozoids; a spermatospore.
sperm ::: the male reproductive cell. (esp. of vertebrates).
spermule ::: n. --> A sperm cell.
sperm whale ::: --> A very large toothed whale (Physeter macrocephalus), having a head of enormous size. The upper jaw is destitute of teeth. In the upper part of the head, above the skull, there is a large cavity, or case, filled with oil and spermaceti. This whale sometimes grows to the length of more than eighty feet. It is found in the warmer parts of all the oceans. Called also cachalot, and spermaceti whale.
sperre ::: v. t. --> To shut in; to support; to inclose; to fasten.
sperrylite ::: n. --> An arsenide of platinum occuring in grains and minute isometric crystals of tin-white color. It is found near Sudbury, Ontario Canada, and is the only known compound of platinum occuring in nature.
sperse ::: v. t. --> To disperse.
sper ::: v. t. --> Alt. of Sperre
spessartite ::: n. --> A manganesian variety of garnet.
spetches ::: n. pl. --> Parings and refuse of hides, skins, etc., from which glue is made.
spet ::: v. t. --> To spit; to throw out. ::: n. --> Spittle.
spewed ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Spew
spewer ::: n. --> One who spews.
spewiness ::: n. --> The state of being spewy.
spewing ::: p. pr.& vb. n. --> of Spew
spew ::: to force out with loathing, as if by vomiting.
spew ::: v. t. --> To eject from the stomach; to vomit.
To cast forth with abhorrence or disgust; to eject. ::: v. i. --> To vomit.
To eject seed, as wet land swollen with frost.
spewy ::: a. --> Wet; soggy; inclined to spew.
Speakeasy Simple array-oriented language with numerical integration and differentiation, graphical output, aimed at statistical analysis. ["Speakeasy", S. Cohen, SIGPLAN Notices 9(4), (Apr 1974)]. ["Speakeasy-3 Reference Manual", S. Cohen et al. 1976].
Speak not my secret name to hostile Time
Spearman&
Spec A specification language. It expresses {black box} interface specifications for large distributed systems with {real-time} constraints. It incorporates conceptual models, {inheritance} and the event model. It is a descendant of {MSG.84}. ["An Introduction to the Specification Language Spec", V. Berzins et al, IEEE Software 7(2):74-84 (Mar 1990)].
SPECbase_fp92 A variant of {SPECfp92} that reports "baseline" results, using stricter run rules. (1994-11-14)
SPECbase_int92 A variant of {SPECint92} that reports "baseline" results, using stricter run rules. (1994-11-14)
SPECbaserate A variant of {SPECrate} that reports "baseline" results, using stricter run rules. See {SPECrate_base_fp92}, {SPECrate_base_int92}. (1994-11-14)
SPEC "benchmark, body" Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. A non-profit corporation registered in California formed to "establish, maintain and endorse a standardized set of relevant {benchmarks} that can be applied to the newest generation of high-performance computers" (from SPEC's bylaws). The founders believe that the user community will benefit greatly from an objective series of applications-oriented tests, which can serve as common reference points and be considered during the evaluation process. SPEC develops suites of {benchmarks} intended to measure computer performance. These are available to the public for a fee covering development and administration costs. The current (14 Nov 94) SPEC benchmark suites are: {CINT92} (CPU intensive integer benchmarks); {CFP92} (CPU intensive floating-point benchmarks); SDM (UNIX Software Development Workloads); SFS (System level file server (NFS) workload). {Results (ftp://ftp.cdf.toronto.edu/pub/spectable)}. SPEC also publishes a quarterly report of SPEC news and results, The SPEC Newsletter. Some issues are {here (http://performance.netlib.org/performance/html/spec.html)}. There is a {FAQ} about SPEC {here (http://performance.netlib.org/performance/html/specfaq.html)}. (1994-11-14)
SPEC CFP92 "benchmark" A {benchmark} suite from {SPEC} containing 14 programs performing {floating-point} computations. 12 are written in {Fortran} and two in {C}. They can be used to estimate the performance of CPU, memory system, and compiler code generation. The individual programs are Circuit Design, Simulation (2x), Quantum Chemistry (3x), Electromagnetism, Geometric Translation, Optics, Robotics, Medical Simulation, Quantum Physics, Astrophysics, NASA Kernels. The benchmark suite can be used either for speed measurement, resulting in {SPEC ratios}, or for throughput measurement, resulting in {SPEC rates} (1994-11-15)
SPEC CINT92 "benchmark" A {benchmark} suite from {SPEC}, which contains six benchmarks in {C} performing integer computations. They can be used to estimate the performance of CPU, memory system, and compiler code generation. The individual programs are Logic Design (2x), Interpreter, Data Compression, Spreadsheet. The approximate size of the suite is 85500 lines of source code without comments. The benchmark suite can be used either for speed measurement, resulting in {SPEC ratios}, or for throughput measurement, resulting in {SPEC rates} (1994-11-15)
SPECfp92 "benchmark" A {benchmark} result derived from the results of a set of CPU intensive floating-point benchmarks from {SPEC} (the {geometric mean} of the 14 {SPEC ratios} of {CFP92}). SPECfp92 can be used to estimate a machine's single-tasking performance on {floating-point} code. {Results (ftp://ftp.nosc.mil/pub/aburto/specfp92.tbl)}. (1994-11-14)
Special Interest Group (SIG) One of several technical areas, sponsored by the {Association for Computing Machinery}. Well-known SIGs include SIGPLAN (the Special Interest Group on Programming Languages), SIGARCH (the Special Interest Group for Computer Architecture) and SIGGRAPH (the Special Interest Group for Computer Graphics). (1994-10-27)
SPECIAL "language, specification" A specification language, developed at {SRI} around 1976, used to specify the {abstract machines} in {Hierarchical Design Methodology} (HDM). ["SPECIAL - A Specification and Assertion Language", L. Robinson et al, TR CSL-46, SRI, Jan 1977]. (2012-07-08)
Species: A relatively narrow class -- or better class concept -- thought of as included (in the sense of class inclusion, ⊂) within a wider class -- or class concept -- the genus. -- A.C.
Specifically, naturalism usually refers to the doctrines and practices of the 19th century school of realism which arose as the literary analogue of positivism, and whose great masters were Flaubert, Zola, and de Maupassant. The fundamental dogma of the movement, as expressed by Zola in "Le Roman experimental" and "Les Romanciers naturalistes", states that naturalism is "the scientific mdhod applied to literature". Zola maintains that the task of the artist is to report and explain what happens in nature, art must aim at a literal transcript of reality, and the artist attains this by making an analytic study of character, motives, and behavior. Naturalism argues that all judgments of good and bad are conventional, with no real basis in nature, so art should seek to understand, not to approve or condemn. Human behavior is regarded as largely a function of environment and circumstances, and the novelist should exhibit these in detail, with no false idealizing of character, no glossing over of the ugly, and no appeal to supposed hidden forces. -- I.J.
Specificative: (in Schol.) Any concrete thing is taken specificatively or denominatively when the predicate which is attributed to it belongs to it by reason of the concrete subject itself: if we say: the philosopher sleeps, philosopher is taken specificatively, for he sleeps as man. -- H.G.
SPECint92 "benchmark" A {benchmark} result derived from the results of a set of integer benchmarks from {SPEC} (geometric mean of the 6 {SPEC ratios} of {CINT92}) which can be used to estimate a machine's single-tasking performance on integer code. SPECint92 obsoletes SPECint89. {Results (ftp://ftp.nosc.mil/pub/aburto/specin92.tbl)}. See also {SPECbase_int92}. (1994-11-14)
Specious Present: (Lat speciosus, from species, look or apprehend) The psychological or felt present is a spread of duration embraced within the mind's momentary experience. Contrasts with the physical present which is an ideal limit or boundary between the past and the future. -- L.W.
SPECmark89 "benchmark" An old {SPECmark} {benchmark} result derived from a set of {floating-point} and integer {benchmarks}. It is the {geometric mean} of ten {SPEC ratios} of the outdated 1989 {SPEC} benchmark suite. The use of SPECmark89 is strongly discouraged, having been superseded by {CINT92} and {CFP92}. (1994-11-29)
SPECmark "benchmark" The average of a set of {floating-point} and integer {SPEC} {benchmark} results. While the old average {SPECmark89} has been popular with the industry and the press, {SPEC} has intentionally *not* defined an average "SPECmark92" over all {CPU} {benchmarks} of the 1992 suites ({CINT92} and {CFP92}), for the following reasons: With 6 integer ({CINT92}) and 14 {floating-point} ({CFP92}) benchmarks, the average would be biased too much toward floating-point. Customers' workloads are different, some integer-only, some floating-point intensive, some mixed. Current processors have developed their strengths in a more diverse way (some more emphasizing integer performance, some more floating-point performance) than in 1989. Some SPECmark results are available {here (ftp://ftp.cdf.toronto.edu/pub/spectable)}. See also {SPECint92}, {SPECfp92}, {SPECrate_int92}, {SPECrate_fp92}. (1994-11-15)
SPECOL ["SPECOL - A Computer Enquiry Language for the Non-Programmer", B.T. Smith, Computer J 11:121 (1968)].
SPECrate_base_fp92 "benchmark" A variant of {SPECrate_fp92} that reports "baseline" results, using stricter run rules. (1994-11-15)
SPEC rate "benchmark" Results of the throughput measurement using {SPEC} {benchmark} suites {CINT92} and {CFP92}. With the throughput measurement method, several copies of a given benchmark are executed. The method is particularly suitable for {multiprocessor} systems. The results, called SPEC rate, express how many jobs of a particular type (characterised by the individual benchmark) can be executed in a given time (The SPEC reference time happens to be a week, the execution times are normalized with respect to a {VAX 11/780}). The SPEC rates therefore characterise the capacity of a system for compute-intensive jobs of similar characteristics. See also {SPEC ratio}. (1994-11-14)
SPECrate_fp92 "benchmark" A {benchmark} result derived from the results of a set of {floating-point} benchmarks (the {geometric mean} of 14 {SPEC rates} from {CFP92}) run multiple times simultaneously, which can be used to estimate a machine's overall {multi-tasking} throughput for {floating-point} code. It is typically used on {multiprocessor} machines. SPECrate_fp92 obsoletes SPECfpThruput89. (1994-11-14)
SPECrate_int92 "benchmark" The integer {SPECrate} derived from the results of a set of integer benchmarks (the {geometric mean} of six {SPEC rates} from {CINT92}) run multiple times simultaneously, and can be used to estimate a machine's overall {multi-tasking} throughput for integer code. It is typically used on {multiprocessor} machines. SPECrate_int92 obsoletes SPECintThruput89. See also {SPECbaserate}. (1994-11-14)
SPEC ratio "benchmark" Results for each individual {benchmark} of the {SPEC} benchmark suites, for example {CINT92} and {CFP92}, expressed as the ratio of the wall clock time to execute one single copy of the benchmark, compared to a fixed "SPEC reference time", which was chosen early-on as the execution time on a {VAX 11/780}. See also {SPEC rate}. (1994-11-14)
Spectral Band Replication "audio, compression" (SBR) Guessing the nontransmitted higher frequency range of a compressed audio file by some helper bits (transmiited with the stream) and the transmitted base band. SBR allows a restoration (not reconstruction) of the upper frequency range without lots of bits. It was developed by {Coding Technology (http://codingtechnology.com/)}, and is useful for medium and high quality coding at low and medium data rates. It is used by {Digital Radio Mondiale} and {MP3 Pro}. (2004-12-10)
Spectrum {ZX Spectrum}
Speculation in Jewry rose again in the ninth century in the lands of the East, particularly in Babylonia, when Judaism once more met Greek philosophy, this time dressed in Arabic garb. The philosophic tradition of the ancients transmitted through the Syrians, to the young Arabic nation created a disturbance in the minds of the devotees of the Koran who, testing its principles by the light of the newly acquired wisdom, found them often wanting. As a result, various currents of thought were set in motion. Of these, the leading was the Kalamitic or the Mutazilite philosophy, (q.v.) of several shades, the general aim ot which was both to defend doctrines of religion against heresies and also to reconcile them with the principles of reason.
Speculative Idealism: Doctrine, founded on the coherence theory of truth, that Reality comprises one Self, Mind, or spiritual pnnciple. See Coherence, Internal theory of Relations, Pantheism, Organicism, Dialectic, W. T. Harris. -- W.L.
Speculum: (Lat. mirror) In ordinary language a mirror. Special meanings in optics, astronomy, surgery, and in ornithology. In medieval philosophy, mind is the speculum of nature and God. -- V F.
Speech Application Programming Interface "programming, standard" (SAPI) {Microsoft}'s standard {API} for speech synthesis and {speech recognition} in {Windows 95}. The idea is to let developers try out and use various low-level speech software from any number of verndors, while retaining the same API. Mike Rozak is the lead of the SAPI project at Microsoft. Numerous major speech vendors have announced SAPI-support plans. {SRAPI}, the competing speech recognition API by {Lotus}/WordPerfect, is fast becoming obsolete. (1996-03-04)
Speech comes from the throat centre, but it is associated with whatever is the governing centre or level of the consciousness — wherever one thinks from. If one rises above the head, then thought takes place above the head and one can speak from there, that is to say, the direction of the speech is from there.
Speech is a formation which in the past has worked much more as an expression of the vital in man than of the mental will. Speech breaks out as the expression of the vital and its habits, without caring to wait for the control of the mind ; the tongue has been spoken of as the unruly membet- Not to he under the control of the impulse to speech, to be able to do without it as a necessity and to speak only when one sees that it is li^t to do so and only what one sees to be right to say, is a very necessary part of yogic self-control.
Speech is a thing which in most people is largely automatic and not under control. It is the vigllanoe that establishes the control, so one must be on guard. Only, the more it
Speech is usually the expression of the superficial nature ; therefore to throw oneself out too much in such speech wastes the energy and prevents the inward listening which brings the word of true knowledge. Not only a truer knowledge, but a greater power comes to one in the quietude and silence of the mind.
Speech Recognition Application Program Interface "programming" (SRAPI) {Novell, Inc.}'s high level {API} for {speech recognition} which will be rolled out with {WordPerfect} 7.0 and {Perfect Office} 7.0. SRAPI is in competition with {SAPI} from {Microsoft}, a high level API which currently addresses command and control (but not yet dictation). [Byte; March 1996; page 30; "Battle of the Dictaion APIs"]. (1996-03-12)
Speech Situation: (1) A situation in which a complete utterance is made by a speaker and correctly interpreted, by a hearer to whom it is addressed, as referring to some feature of the immediate environment.
SPEECH. ::: The organ of speech Is an instrument of the pbysicabmental or expressive exiemalising mind.
Speedcoding 3 "language" [Listed in CACM 2(5):16, May 1959]. (2000-03-27)
Speedcoding "language" A {pseudocode} {interpreter} for mathematics on {IBM 701} and {IBM 650} written by John Backus in 1953. [Sammet 1969, p. 130]. (2000-03-27)
SPEED Early system on LGP-30. Listed in CACM 2(5):16 (May 1959).
SPEEDEX Early system on {IBM 701}. Listed in CACM 2(5):16 (May 1959).
Spencer, Herbert: (1820-1903) was the great English philosopher who devoted a life time to the formulation and execution of a plan to follow the idea of development as a first principle through all the avenues of human thought. A precursor of Darwin with his famous notion of all organic evolution as a change "from homogeneity to heterogenity," from the simple to the complex, he nevertheless was greatly influenced by the Darwinian hypothesis and employed its arguments in his monumental works in biology, psychology, sociology and ethics. He aimed to interpret life, mind and society in terms of matter, motion and force. In politics, he evidenced from his earliest writings a strong bias for individualism. See Evolutionism, Charles Darwin. -- L.E.D.
Spens, Will: An English educator (born 1882), who as Master of Corpus Christi College in Cambridge, has written widely on educational theory. In philosophy and theology, he has developed a theory of Christian doctrine as based on religious experience, which it generalizes and states in terms whose adequacy is determined by their capacity to nourish and develop that experience (Belief and Practice); he has also written on sacramental theology, including several essays (chiefly in the symposium Essays, Catholic and Critical) on the Eucharist; here his view is that by the "real presence" is meant the congeries of opportunities of experiencing through material means the spiritual reality of Christ. -- W.N.P.
Sperry Corporation "company" The company which merged with the {Burroughs Corporation} to form {Unisys Corporation}. Divisions included {Sperry Univac}, Sperry Flight Systems, and others. Some of these were sold off after the merger. (1995-03-27)
Sperry Univac "company" One of the divisions of {Sperry Corporation} at the time that company merged with the {Burroughs Corporation} to form {Unisys Corporation}. [Connection with the {Univac} computer?] (1994-11-22)
SPE {Software Practice and Experience}
TERMS ANYWHERE
1. A curved or angular piece of metal or other hard substance for catching, pulling, holding, or suspending something. 2.* Fig.* That by which any one is attracted or ensnared and caught; a snare; a catch.
1. A gradation or variety of a colour; tint. 2. Colour. 3. Form or appearance. 4. The complexion, appearance or aspect of a person. hues, hued, hueless, hue-robed, hue-winged, hundred-hued, many-hued.
1. A visible scene, esp. one extended to a distance; vista. 2. The appearance of things relative to one another as determined by their distance from the viewer. 3. A mental view or outlook. perspectives.
1. Settled securely, permanently and unconditionally. 2. Placed or settled in a secure position or condition; installed. 3. Brought about or set up or accepted; especially long established. established.
1. Specified or set apart for a religious purpose; consecrated. 2. Saintly; godly; pious; devout. holier.
1. The face of a building, especially the principal face. 2. An artificial or deceptive front.
1. To hesitate or waver in action, purpose, intent, etc. 2. To move unsteadily; stumble. 3. To speak hesitatingly or brokenly. 4. To move unsteadily as a faltering breeze. falters, faltered, faltering, faltering-limbed.
1. To make or be like; resemble or simulate. 2. To copy the actions, appearance, mannerisms, or speech of; mimic. imitates, imitated, imitating.
1. To or at a greater extent or degree or a more advanced stage. 2. More distant in especially space, degree or time.
1. To put or bring together so as to make continuous or form a unit. 2. To bring together in a particular relation or for a specific purpose, action, etc.; unite. 3. To become united, associated, or combined; associate or ally oneself (with). 4. Be or become joined or united or linked. 5. To take part with others. 6. To enlist in one of the armed forces. joins, joined, joining.
1. Touchstone; a very smooth, fine-grained, black or dark-coloured variety of quartz or jasper (also called basanite), used for testing the quality of gold and silver alloys by the colour of the streak produced by rubbing them upon it; a piece of such stone used for this purpose. 2. *fig.* That which serves to test or try the genuineness or value of anything; a test, criterion.
abandon ::: 1. To give oneself up, devote oneself to (a person or thing); to yield oneself without restraint. 2. To withdraw one"s support or help from, especially in spite of duty, allegiance, or responsibility; desert: leave behind. 3. To give up; discontinue; withdraw from. abandons, abandoned, abandoning.
A being of the lower vital plane who by the medium of a living human being or by some other means or agency is able to materialise itself sufficiently so as to appear and act in a visible form or speak with an audible voice or, without so appearing, to move about material things, e.g., furniture or to materialise objects or to shift them from place to place. This accounts for what are called poltergeists , phenomena of stone-throwing, tree-inhabiting Bhutas, and other well-known phenomena.
a breaker or destroyer of images, especially those set up for religious veneration.
absolute ::: adj. 1. Free from all imperfection or deficiency; complete, finished; perfect, consummate. 2. Of degree: Complete, entire; in the fullest sense. 3. Having ultimate power, governing totally; unlimited by a constitution or the concurrent authority of a parliament; arbitrary, despotic. 4. Existing without relation to any other being; self-existent; self-sufficing. 5. Capable of being thought or conceived by itself alone; unconditioned. 6. Considered independently of its being subjective or objective. n. 7. Something that is not dependent upon external conditions for existence or for its specific nature, size, etc. (opposed to relative). Absolute, Absolute"s, absolutes, absoluteness.
aspect ::: 1. Appearance to the eye or mind; look. 2. Nature; quality, character. 3. A way in which a thing may be viewed or regarded; interpretation; view. 4. Part; feature; phase. aspects.
access ::: 1. The ability, right, or permission to approach, enter, speak with, or use; admittance. 2. A way or means of approach; an entrance, channel, passage, or doorway.
accountant ::: one who inspects and audits accounts.
achievement ::: something accomplished, esp. by superior ability, special effort, great courage, etc. achievements.
adj. 1. Not imprisoned or enslaved; being at liberty. 2. Unconstrained; unconfined. 3. Unobstructed; clear. 4. Ready or generous in using or giving; liberal; lavish. 5. Exempt from external authority, interference, restriction, etc., as a person or one"s will, thought, choice, action, etc.; independent; unrestricted. 6. Exempt or released from something specified that controls, restrains, burdens, etc. (usually followed by from or of). 7. Given readily or in profusion. freer, thought-free, world-free. *adv. *8. In a free manner; without constraints; unimpeded. v. 9. To make free; set at liberty; release from bondage, imprisonment, or restraint. 10. To disengage or clear something from an entanglement. 11. To relieve or rid of a burden, an inconvenience or an obligation. freed. set free. Released; liberated; freed.
adj. **1. Void or empty space. 2. Having a cavity, gap, or space within. 3. Fig. Without substance or character; devoid of truth or validity; specious. n. 3. A void space. 4. A cavity, opening, space, or burrow. hollows.**
admirable ::: worthy of admiration; inspiring approval or respect; excellent.
admonishing ::: 1. Reproving or scolding, especially in a mild or good-willed manner. 2. Urging to a duty; reminding.
adoration ::: 1. The act of paying honour, as to a divine being; worship. 2. Reverent homage. 3. Fervent and devoted love. **adoration"s.*Sri Aurobindo: "Especially in love for the Divine or for one whom one feels to be divine, the Bhakta feels an intense reverence for the Loved, a sense of something of immense greatness, beauty or value and for himself a strong impression of his own comparative unworthiness and a passionate desire to grow into likeness with that which one adores.” Letters on Yoga*
adore ::: 1. To worship as a deity, to pay divine honours to. 2. To reverence or honour very highly; to regard with the utmost respect and affection. adores, adored, adoring, adorer, adorer"s.
adversity ::: the condition of adverse fortune or fate; a state opposed to well-being or prosperity; misfortune, distress, trial, or affliction.
algebra ::: the branch of mathematics that deals with general statements of relations, utilizing letters and other symbols to represent specific sets of numbers, values, vectors, etc., in the description of such relations. 2. Any special system of notation adapted to the study of a special system of relationship.
::: "All energies put into activity — thought, speech, feeling, act — go to constitute Karma. These things help to develop the nature in one direction or another, and the nature and its actions and reactions produce their consequences inward and outward: they also act on others and create movements in the general sum of forces which can return upon oneself sooner or later. Thoughts unexpressed can also go out as forces and produce their effects. It is a mistake to think that a thought or will can have effect only when it is expressed in speech or act: the unspoken thought, the unexpressed will are also active energies and can produce their own vibrations, effects or reactions.” Letters on Yoga*
"Along with purity and as a help to bring it about, concentration. Purity and concentration are indeed two aspects, feminine and masculine, passive and active, of the same status of being; purity is the condition in which concentration becomes entire, rightly effective, omnipotent; by concentration purity does its works and without it would only lead to a state of peaceful quiescence and eternal repose.” The Synthesis of Yoga
alter ::: to make otherwise or different in some respect; to make some change in character, shape, condition, position, quantity, value, etc. without changing the thing itself for another; to modify, to change the appearance of. alters, altered, altering.
ambrosia ("s) ::: something especially delicious or delightful to taste or smell, divinely sweet; in Classical Mythology, the food of the gods.
"An Avatar, roughly speaking, is one who is conscious of the presence and power of the Divine born in him or descended into him and governing from within his will and life and action; he feels identified inwardly with this divine power and presence.” Letters on Yoga
::: "An incarnation is something more, something special and individual to the individual being. It is the substitution of the Person of a divine being for the human person and an infiltration of it into all the movements so that there is a dynamic personal change in all of them and in the whole nature; not merely a change of the character of the consciousness or general surrender into its hands, but a subtle intimate personal change. Even when there is an incarnation from the birth, the human elements have to be taken up, but when there is a descent, there is a total conscious substitution.” Letters on Yoga
another ::: adj. 1. Being one more or more of the same; further; additional. 2. Very similar to; of the same kind or category as. 3. Different; distinct; of a different period, place, or kind. pron. **4. A person other than oneself or the one specified. 5. One more; an additional one. another"s**.
apace ::: with speed; quickly; swiftly.
"A philosophy of change?(1) But what is change? In ordinary parlance change means passage from one condition to another and that would seem to imply passage from one status to another status. The shoot changes into a tree, passes from the status of shoot to the status of tree and there it stops; man passes from the status of young man to the status of old man and the only farther change possible to him is death or dissolution of his status. So it would seem that change is not something isolated which is the sole original and eternal reality, but it is something dependent on status, and if status were non-existent, change also could not exist. For we have to ask, when you speak of change as alone real, change of what, from what, to what? Without this ‘what" change could not be. ::: —Change is evidently the change of some form or state of existence from one condition to another condition.” Essays Divine and Human
appearance ::: 1. The act or fact of coming forward into view ; becoming visible. 2. The state, condition, manner, or style in which a person or object appears; outward look or aspect. 3. Outward show or seeming; semblance. appearances.
approve ::: 1. To confirm or sanction formally; ratify. 2. To speak or think favourably of; pronounce or consider agreeable or good; judge favourably. approves, approved.
a preliminary statement, especially the introduction to a formal document that serves to explain its purpose.
apsaras ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Apsaras are the most beautiful and romantic conception on the lesser plane of Hindu mythology. From the moment that they arose out of the waters of the milky Ocean, robed in ethereal raiment and heavenly adornment, waking melody from a million lyres, the beauty and light of them has transformed the world. They crowd in the sunbeams, they flash and gleam over heaven in the lightnings, they make the azure beauty of the sky; they are the light of sunrise and sunset and the haunting voices of forest and field. They dwell too in the life of the soul; for they are the ideal pursued by the poet through his lines, by the artist shaping his soul on his canvas, by the sculptor seeking a form in the marble; for the joy of their embrace the hero flings his life into the rushing torrent of battle; the sage, musing upon God, sees the shining of their limbs and falls from his white ideal. The delight of life, the beauty of things, the attraction of sensuous beauty, this is what the mystic and romantic side of the Hindu temperament strove to express in the Apsara. The original meaning is everywhere felt as a shining background, but most in the older allegories, especially the strange and romantic legend of Pururavas as we first have it in the Brahmanas and the Vishnoupurana.
apse ::: a usually semicircular or polygonal, often vaulted recess, especially the termination of the sanctuary end of a church.
a punctuation mark ( - ) used between the parts of a compound word or name or between the syllables of a word, especially when divided at the end of a line of text or the parts of a word divided for any purpose. Hence, fig. A joining or connecting link.
arenas ::: central stages, rings, areas, or the like, used for sports or other forms of entertainment, surrounded by seats for spectators.
argosies ::: fleets of large merchant ships, especially with rich cargo.
armour ::: 1. Any covering worn as a defense against weapons, especially a metallic sheathing, suit of armour, mail. 2. Any quality, characteristic, situation, or thing that serves as protection. armours, armoured.* n. 1. Weapons. v. 2. Provides with weapons or whatever will add strength, force or security; supports; fortifies. *armed, arming.
arrange ::: 1. To put into a specific order or relation; dispose. 2. To settle the order, manner, and circumstantial relations of (a thing to be done); to prepare or plan beforehand. arranged, arranging, self-arranged.
artificer ::: 1. One who is skilful or clever in devising ways of making things; inventor. 2. A skilful or artistic worker; craftsperson. artificers.
artisan ::: one skilled in an applied art; craftsperson. artisans.
::: "As for immortality, it cannot come if there is attachment to the body, — for it is only by living in the immortal part of oneself which is unidentified with the body and bringing down its consciousness and force into the cells that it can come. I speak of course of yogic means. The scientists now hold that it is (theoretically at least) possible to discover physical means by which death can be overcome, but that would mean only a prolongation of the present consciousness in the present body. Unless there is a change of consciousness and change of functionings it would be a very small gain.” Letters on Yoga
ashes ::: 1. Bodily remains, especially after cremation or decay. 2. Fig. Ruins; esp. the residue of something destroyed; remains.
"As soon as we become aware of the Self, we are conscious of it as eternal, unborn, unembodied, uninvolved in its workings: it can be felt within the form of being, but also as enveloping it, as above it, surveying its embodiment from above, adhyaksa; it is omnipresent, the same in everything, infinite and pure and intangible for ever. This Self can be experienced as the Self of the individual, the Self of the thinker, doer, enjoyer, but even so it always has this greater character; its individuality is at the same time a vast universality or very readily passes into that, and the next step to that is a sheer transcendence or a complete and ineffable passing into the Absolute. The Self is that aspect of the Brahman in which it is intimately felt as at once individual, cosmic, transcendent of the universe. The realisation of the Self is the straight and swift way towards individual liberation, a static universality, a Nature-transcendence. At the same time there is a realisation of Self in which it is felt not only sustaining and pervading and enveloping all things, but constituting everything and identified in a free identity with all its becomings in Nature. Even so, freedom and impersonality are always the character of the Self. There is no appearance of subjection to the workings of its own Power in the universe, such as the apparent subjection of the Purusha to Prakriti. To realise the Self is to realise the eternal freedom of the Spirit.” The Life Divine
assume ::: 1. To take upon oneself, to adopt an aspect, form, or attribute. 2. To take on titles, offices, duties, responsibilities. 3. To take on as one"s own, to adopt. assumes, assumed, assuming.
a structure for supporting or enclosing something else, especially a skeletal support used as the basis for something being constructed. Also fig.
::: "A transcendent Bliss, unimaginable and inexpressible by the mind and speech, is the nature of the Ineffable. That broods immanent and secret in the whole universe and in everything in the universe. Its presence is described as a secret ether of the bliss of being, of which the Scripture says that, if this were not, none could for a moment breathe or live. And this spiritual bliss is here also in our hearts.” The Synthesis of Yoga
At times he calls himself the ‘Lord of Nations." It is he who sets all wars in motion and only by thwarting his plans could the last war be won . . . This one does not want to be converted, not at all. He wants neither the physical transformation not the supramental world, for that would spell his end. The Mother"s talk of 26 March 1959.
auspice-hour ::: an auspice is any divine or prophetic token; a favourable sign or propitious circumstance, esp. an indication of a happy future. Sri Aurobindo combines the word ‘hour" with auspice to emphasize a special moment.
a vaguely defined deity symbolizing maternity, the fertility of the earth, and femininity in general; the central figure in the religions of ancient Anatolia, the Near East, and the eastern Mediterranean, later sometimes taking the form of a specific goddess.
babel ::: "The reference is to the mythological story of the construction of the Tower of Babel, which appears to be an attempt to explain the diversity of human languages. According to Genesis, the Babylonians wanted to make a name for themselves by building a mighty city and tower ‘with its top in the heavens". God disrupted the work by so confusing the language of the workers that they could no longer understand one another. The tower was never completed and the people were dispersed over the face of the earth.” (Encyclopaedia Britannica) Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works Sri Aurobindo: "The legend of the Tower of Babel speaks of the diversity of tongues as a curse laid on the race; but whatever its disadvantages, and they tend more and more to be minimised by the growth of civilisation and increasing intercourse, it has been rather a blessing than a curse, a gift to mankind rather than a disability laid upon it. The purposeless exaggeration of anything is always an evil, and an excessive pullulation of varying tongues that serve no purpose in the expression of a real diversity of spirit and culture is certainly a stumbling-block rather than a help: but this excess, though it existed in the past, is hardly a possibility of the future. The tendency is rather in the opposite direction. In former times diversity of language helped to create a barrier to knowledge and sympathy, was often made the pretext even of an actual antipathy and tended to a too rigid division. The lack of sufficient interpenetration kept up both a passive want of understanding and a fruitful crop of active misunderstandings. But this was an inevitable evil of a particular stage of growth, an exaggeration of the necessity that then existed for the vigorous development of strongly individualised group-souls in the human race. These disadvantages have not yet been abolished, but with closer intercourse and the growing desire of men and nations for the knowledge of each other"s thought and spirit and personality, they have diminished and tend to diminish more and more and there is no reason why in the end they should not become inoperative.” The Human Cycle
balance ::: n. **1. A state of equilibrium or equipoise; mental, psychological or emotional. 2. A weighing device, especially one consisting of a rigid beam horizontally suspended by a low-friction support at its center, with identical weighing pans hung at either end, one of which holds an unknown weight while the effective weight in the other is increased by known amounts until the beam is level and motionless. 3. An undecided or uncertain state in which issues are unresolved. v. 4. To have an equality or equivalence in weight, parts, etc.; be in equilibrium. adj. 5. Being in harmonious or proper arrangement or adjustment, proportion. 6. Mental steadiness or emotional stability; habit of calm behaviour, judgement. balanced, balancing.**
bank ::: 1. The slope of land adjoining a body of water, especially adjoining a river, lake, or channel. 2. A slope, as of a hill. 3. A long raised mass, esp. of earth. 4. A piled-up mass, as of snow or clouds. banks, cloud-bank.
banned ::: prohibited, especially by official decree.
bards ::: an ancient Celtic order of minstrel poets who composed and recited verses celebrating the legendary exploits of chieftains and heroes. 2. Poets, especially lyric poets.
barren ::: 1. Unproductive of results or gains; unprofitable. 2. Lacking vegetation, especially useful vegetation. 3. Devoid of something specified.
battened ::: thrived and prospered, especially at another"s expense; grew fat. battening
battered ::: damaged especially by blows or hard usage.
bazaar ::: a market consisting of a street lined with shops and stalls, especially one in the Orient.
beast ::: 1. An animal other than a human, especially a large four-footed mammal. 2. Fig. Animal nature as opposed to intellect or spirit. 3. A large wild animal. 4. A domesticated animal used by man. (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as an adj.) beast"s, Beast"s, beasts, wild-beast. ::: —the Beast. Applied to the devil and evil spirits.
beat ::: n. 1. A stroke or blow. 2. A regular sound or stroke. 3. The rhythmic contraction and expansion of the arteries with each beat of the heart. 4. A pulsating sound. 5. A forceful flapping of wings. beats, nerve-beat, hammer-beats, heart-beats, heart-beats", moment-beats, rhyme-beats. v. 6. To strike or pound with repeated blows. 7. To shape or break by repeated blows, as metal. 8. To sound in pulsations. 9. To throb rhythmically; pulsate, as the heart. 10. To flap, especially wings. 11. To strike with or as if with a series of violent blows, dash or pound repeatedly against, as waves, wind, etc. beats, beaten, beating. *adj. *sun-beat.
"Beauty is Ananda taking form — but the form need not be a physical shape. One speaks of a beautiful thought, a beautiful act, a beautiful soul. What we speak of as beauty is Ananda in manifestation; beyond manifestation beauty loses itself in Ananda or, you may say, beauty and Ananda become indistinguishably one.” The Future Poetry
binding posts ::: stakes, stout poles, columns, or the like, that are set upright in or on the ground; (with prefixed word indicating special purpose).
bizarrerie ::: strangeness or grotesqueness, especially strange or unconventional behaviour.
blaspheme ::: to speak in an irreverent, contemptuous or disrespectful manner; curse; (esp. God, a divine being or sacred things).
blessing ::: 1. Something promoting or contributing to happiness, well-being, or prosperity; a boon. 2. A ceremonial prayer invoking divine protection, grace, etc.
body ::: 1. The entire material or physical structure of an organism, especially of a human or animal as differentiated from the soul. 2. The entire physical structure of a human being. 3. A mass of matter that is distinct from other masses. 4. Substance. 5. An agent or entity. 6. The mass of a thing. 7. A mass of matter that is distinct from other masses. 8. The largest or main part of anything; the foundation; central part. body"s, bodies.
bow ::: a weapon consisting of a curved, flexible strip of material, especially wood, strung taut from end to end and used to launch arrows.
breath ::: 1. The air inhaled and exhaled in respiration. Also fig. 2. A momentary stirring of air, a slight gust. 3. Spirit or vitality; life. 4. The vapour, heat, or odour of exhaled air. Also fig. **5. A slight suggestion; hint; whisper. Breath,* *breath-fastened.**
breathe ::: 1. To be alive; live. 2. To take air, oxygen, etc., into the lungs and expel it; inhale and exhale; respire. Also fig. 3. To control the outgoing breath in producing voice and speech sounds. 4. To utter, especially quietly. 5. To make apparent or manifest; express; suggest. 6. To exhale (something); emit. 7. To impart as if by breathing; instil. 8. To move gently or blow lightly, as air. breathes, breathed, breathing. ::: To breathe upon fig. To taint; corrupt.
breeds ::: a group of organisms within a species, esp. a group of domestic animals, originated and maintained by man and having a clearly defined set of characteristics.
brood ::: n. 1. Offspring; progeny; in one family. 2. A breed, species, group, kind or race with common qualities. v. 3. To think deeply on; dwell or meditate upon, contemplate. broods, brooded.
bruised ::: hurt, especially psychologically, beaten; pounded; crushed.
speakest ::: a native English form of the verb, to speak, now only in formal and poetic usage.
speakst ::: a native English form of the verb, to speak, now only in formal and poetic usage.
spear ::: 1. A weapon consisting of a long shaft with a sharply pointed end. 2. A ray of light. spears.
spearhead ::: fig. The driving force in a given action, endeavour, or movement; the leading force in a military thrust.
spear-point ::: the head and sharpened point of a spear or something resembling it. Also fig.** spear-points.**
special ::: 1. Surpassing what is common or usual; exceptional. 2. Distinct among others of a kind.
bureau ::: 1. A chest of drawers, especially a dresser for holding clothes, often with a desk top. 2. An office, usually of large organization, that is responsible for a specific duty such as administration, public business, etc.
business ::: 1. One"s rightful or proper concern or interest. 2. A specific occupation or pursuit; an action in which one is engaged.
"But in the path of knowledge as it is practised in India concentration is used in a special and more limited sense. It means that removal of the thought from all distracting activities of the mind and that concentration of it on the idea of the One by which the soul rises out of the phenomenal into the one reality.” The Synthesis of Yoga*
"By Force I mean not mental or vital energy but the Divine Force from above — as peace comes from above and wideness also, so does this Force (Shakti). Nothing, not even thinking or meditating can be done without some action of Force. The Force I speak of is a Force for illumination, transformation, purification, all that has to be done in the yoga, for removal of hostile forces and the wrong movements — it is also of course for external work, whether great or small in appearance does not matter — if that is part of the Divine Will. I do not mean any personal force egoistic or rajasic.” Letters on Yoga
"By individual we mean normally something that separates itself from everything else and stands apart, though in reality there is no such thing anywhere in existence; it is a figment of our mental conceptions useful and necessary to express a partial and practical truth. But the difficulty is that the mind gets dominated by its words and forgets that the partial and practical truth becomes true truth only by its relation to others which seem to the reason to contradict it, and that taken by itself it contains a constant element of falsity. Thus when we speak of an individual we mean ordinarily an individualisation of mental, vital, physical being separate from all other beings, incapable of unity with them by its very individuality. If we go beyond these three terms of mind, life and body, and speak of the soul or individual self, we still think of an individualised being separate from all others, incapable of unity and inclusive mutuality, capable at most of a spiritual contact and soul-sympathy. It is therefore necessary to insist that by the true individual we mean nothing of the kind, but a conscious power of being of the Eternal, always existing by unity, always capable of mutuality. It is that being which by self-knowledge enjoys liberation and immortality.” The Life Divine
bystander ::: one who is present at an event without participating in it; onlooker; spectator.
cadence ::: 1. Balanced, rhythmic flow, as of poetry or oratory. 2. Music. A sequence of notes or chords that indicates the momentary or complete end of a composition, section, phrase, etc. 3. The flow or rhythm of events. 4. A recurrent rhythmical series; a flow, esp. the pattern in which something is experienced. 5. A slight falling in pitch of the voice in speaking or reading. cadences.
calculus ::: a method of calculation, esp. one of several highly systematic methods of treating problems by a special system of algebraic notations, as differential or integral calculus.
canvas ::: 1. A piece of such fabric on which a painting, especially an oil painting, is executed. 2. A painting executed on such fabric, esp. an oil painting. 3. The background against which events unfold. canvases, canvas-strips.
cap ::: a special head covering worn to indicate rank, occupation, or membership in a particular group.
careful ::: 1. Attentive to potential danger, error, or harm; cautious. 2. Exercising caution or showing care or attention to; circumspect.
caul ::: a portion of the amnion (A thin, tough, membranous sac) especially when it covers the head of a foetus at birth.
cause ::: 1. A person or thing that acts, happens, or exists in such a way that some specific thing happens as a result; the producer of an effect. 2. A basis for an action or response; a reason. 3. Grounds for action; motive; justification. 4. Good or sufficient reason. 5. The principle, ideal, goal, or movement to which a person or group is dedicated. Cause.
cave ::: 1. A hollow or natural passage under or into the earth, especially one with an opening to the surface. 2. A hollow in the side of a hill or cliff, or underground of any kind; a cavity. Cave, caves, death-cave, deep-caved, cave-heart.
ceiling ::: 1. An upper limit, especially as set by regulation. 2. The upper interior surface of a room.
censer ::: a vessel in which incense is burned, especially during religious services.
"Certainly, ideals are not the ultimate Reality, for that is too high and vast for any ideal to envisage; they are aspects of it thrown out in the world-consciousness as a basis for the workings of the world-power. But they are primary, the actual workings secondary. They are nearer to the Reality and therefore always more real, forcible and complete than the facts which are their partial reflection.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Certainly, ideals are not the ultimate Reality, for that is too high and vast for any ideal to envisage; they are aspects of it thrown out in the world-consciousness as a basis for the workings of the world-power. But they are primary, the actual workings secondary. They are nearer to the Reality and therefore always more real, forcible and complete than the facts which are their partial reflection. Reflections themselves of the Real, they again are reflected in the more concrete workings of our existence. The Supramental Manifestation
chant ::: n. **1. A short, simple series of syllables or words that are sung on or intoned to the same note or a limited range of notes. 2. A song or melody. v. 3. To sing, especially in the manner of a chant. chants, chanted, chanting, chantings.**
characterized by an attitude of ready accessibility (especially about one"s actions or purposes); without concealment; not secretive.
check ::: v. 1. To investigate, examine or verify as to correctness; examine carefully or in detail; to ascertain the truth about. 2. To inspect so as to determine accuracy, authenticity, quality, or other condition; test. checked.* n. *3. A person or thing that stops, limits, slows, or restrains.
chequered ::: 1. Marked by numerous and various shifts and changes. 2. Marked by dubious episodes; suspect in character or quality. 3. Diversified in colour, variegated.
child ::: 1. A person between birth and full growth. 2. A baby or infant. 3. A person who has not attained maturity. 4. One who is childish or immature. 5. An individual regarded as strongly affected by another or by a specified time, place, or circumstance. 6. Any person or thing regarded as the product or result of particular agencies, influences, etc. Child, child"s, children, Children, children"s, child-god, Child-Godhead, child-heart, child-heart"s, child-laughter, child-soul, child-sovereign, child-thought, flame-child, foster-child, God-child, King-children.
choric ::: of, like, for, or in the manner of a chorus, esp. of singing, dancing, or the speaking of verse.
chrysoprase ::: a brittle, translucent, semiprecious chalcedony (q.v.), a variety of the silica mineral quartz. It owes its bright apple-green colour to colloidally dispersed hydrated nickel silicate. Valued in ancient times as it shone in the dark.
cipher ::: n. 1. Something having no influence or value; a zero; a nonentity. 2. A secret method of writing, as by transposition or substitution of letters, specially formed symbols, or the like. unintelligible to all but those possessing the key; a cryptograph. ciphers. *v. 3. To put in secret writing; encode. *ciphers. Note: Sri Aurobindo also spelled the word as Cypher, the old English spelling.
claim ::: n. 1. A demand for something as rightful or due. 2. Something claimed in a formal or legal manner as a right or title. claims. *v. *3. To demand, ask for, assert, or take as one"s own or one"s due. 4. To state to be true, especially when open to question; assert or maintain. claims, claimed, claiming, claimest, claimst, death-claimed, trance-claimed.
clamouring ::: 1. Raising an outcry for; seeking, demanding, or calling importunately for, or to do a thing. 2. Making a clamour; shouting, or uttering loud and continued cries or calls; raising an outcry, making a noise or din of speech.
clasp ::: n. 1. A grip or grasp of the hand, also reciprocal. 2. Union. 3. An embrace or hug. Also fig. v. 4. To seize, grasp, or grip with the hand. **5. To hold in a tight embrace. clasps, clasped, clasping.**
clothe ::: 1. To cover as if with clothing. 2. To present in a specific form. 3. To furnish or invest with power or authority or endue or endow attributes, qualities. 4. To cover or envelop (something) so as to change its appearance, as the face of the earth. clothes, clothed.
cloud ::: 1. A visible collection of particles of water or ice suspended in the air, usually at an elevation above the earth"s surface. 2. Any similar mass, esp. of smoke or dust. 3. Something fleeting or unsubstantial. 4. Anything that obscures or darkens something, or causes gloom, trouble, suspicion, disgrace, etc. clouds, clouds", cloud-veils.
coilas ::: (Most often spelled Kailas.) "One of the highest and most rugged mountains of the Himalayan range, located in the southwestern part of China. It is an important holy site both to the Hindus, who identify it with the paradise of Shiva and also regard it as the abode of Kubera, and to the Tibetan Buddhists, who identify it with Mount Sumeru, cosmic centre of the universe.” Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works
collaboration ::: co-operation; working together harmoniously, especially in a joint intellectual effort.
columned ::: having or resembling pillars; having pillars of a specified kind.
combat ::: n. 1. Fighting, especially armed battle; strife. combats. v. 2. To oppose in battle; fight against.
command ::: n. 1. An order; mandate. 2. The possession or exercise of controlling authority. Command. v. 3. To direct with specific authority or prerogative; order. 4. To give orders. 5. To have or exercise authority or control over; be master of; have at one"s bidding or disposal. commands, commanded.
commerce ::: 1. The buying and selling of goods, especially on a large scale, as between cities or nations. 2. Intellectual exchange or social interaction. 3. Intellectual or spiritual interchange; communion.
composer ::: one who composes, especially a person who composes music.
computed ::: determined by mathematics, especially by numerical methods.
conclaves ::: 1. Secret or confidential meetings. 2. Assemblies or gatherings, esp. those that have special authority, power, or influence.
concupiscence ::: strong desire, especially sexual desire; lust.
condemned ::: 1. Pronounced judgment against; sentenced. 2. Forced into a specific state or activity. condemning.
conditions ::: circumstances that are indispensable to the appearance or occurrence of another; prerequisites.
confidence ::: 1. Full trust or faith in a person or thing. 2. A feeling of assurance, especially of self-assurance.
confront ::: 1. To come up against; encounter. 2. To come face to face with, especially with defiance or hostility. **confronts, confronting.**
conjunction ::: 1. The state of being joined. 2. Astronomy: The position of two celestial bodies on the celestial sphere when they have the same celestial longitude, especially a configuration in which a planet or the Moon lies on a straight line from Earth to or through the Sun.
conquer ::: 1. To defeat or subdue by force, especially by force of arms. 2. To overcome (an enemy, army, etc.); defeat. 3. To overcome or surmount by physical, mental, or moral force. conquers, conquered, conquering.
*consciousforce. ::: Sri Aurobindo: "In actual fact Mind measures Time by event and Space by Matter; but it is possible in pure mentality to disregard the movement of event and the disposition of substance and realise the pure movement of Conscious-Force which constitutes Space and Time; these two are then merely two aspects of the universal force of Consciousness which in their intertwined interaction comprehend the warp and woof of its action upon itself. And to a consciousness higher than Mind which should regard our past, present and future in one view, containing and not contained in them, not situated at a particular moment of Time for its point of prospection, Time might well offer itself as an eternal present. And to the same consciousness not situated at any particular point of Space, but containing all points and regions in itself, Space also might well offer itself as a subjective and indivisible extension, — no less subjective than Time.” The Life Divine
consonant ::: a speech sound produced by a partial or complete obstruction of the air stream by any of various constrictions of the speech organs, such as (p), (f), (r), (w), and (h).
contract ::: an agreement between two or more parties, especially one that is written and enforceable by law.
contrast ::: a difference, especially a strong dissimilarity, between entities or objects compared.
convention ::: a method, practice or procedure widely observed in a group, especially to facilitate social interaction; a custom. conventions.
cosmic mind ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Nevertheless, the fact of this intervention from above, the fact that behind all our original thinking or authentic perception of things there is a veiled, a half-veiled or a swift unveiled intuitive element is enough to establish a connection between mind and what is above it; it opens a passage of communication and of entry into the superior spirit-ranges. There is also the reaching out of mind to exceed the personal ego limitation, to see things in a certain impersonality and universality. Impersonality is the first character of cosmic self; universality, non-limitation by the single or limiting point of view, is the character of cosmic perception and knowledge: this tendency is therefore a widening, however rudimentary, of these restricted mind areas towards cosmicity, towards a quality which is the very character of the higher mental planes, — towards that superconscient cosmic Mind which, we have suggested, must in the nature of things be the original mind-action of which ours is only a derivative and inferior process.” *The Life Divine
"If we accept the Vedic image of the Sun of Truth, . . . we may compare the action of the Higher Mind to a composed and steady sunshine, the energy of the Illumined Mind beyond it to an outpouring of massive lightnings of flaming sun-stuff. Still beyond can be met a yet greater power of the Truth-Force, an intimate and exact Truth-vision, Truth-thought, Truth-sense, Truth-feeling, Truth-action, to which we can give in a special sense the name of Intuition; . . . At the source of this Intuition we discover a superconscient cosmic Mind in direct contact with the supramental Truth-Consciousness, an original intensity determinant of all movements below it and all mental energies, — not Mind as we know it, but an Overmind that covers as with the wide wings of some creative Oversoul this whole lower hemisphere of Knowledge-Ignorance, links it with that greater Truth-Consciousness while yet at the same time with its brilliant golden Lid it veils the face of the greater Truth from our sight, intervening with its flood of infinite possibilities as at once an obstacle and a passage in our seeking of the spiritual law of our existence, its highest aim, its secret Reality.” The Life Divine
"There is one cosmic Mind, one cosmic Life, one cosmic Body. All the attempt of man to arrive at universal sympathy, universal love and the understanding and knowledge of the inner soul of other existences is an attempt to beat thin, breach and eventually break down by the power of the enlarging mind and heart the walls of the ego and arrive nearer to a cosmic oneness.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
"[The results of the opening to the cosmic Mind:] One is aware of the cosmic Mind and the mental forces that move there and how they work on one"s mind and that of others and one is able to deal with one"s own mind with a greater knowledge and effective power. There are many other results, but this is the fundamental one.” Letters on Yoga
"The cosmic consciousness has many levels — the cosmic physical, the cosmic vital, the cosmic Mind, and above the higher planes of cosmic Mind there is the Intuition and above that the overmind and still above that the supermind where the Transcendental begins. In order to live in the Intuition plane (not merely to receive intuitions), one has to live in the cosmic consciousness because there the cosmic and individual run into each other as it were, and the mental separation between them is already broken down, so nobody can reach there who is still in the separative ego.” Letters on Yoga*
cosmic Spirit ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Cosmic Spirit or Self contains everything in the cosmos — it upholds cosmic Mind, universal Life, universal Matter as well as the overmind. The Self is more than all these things which are its formulations in Nature.” *Letters on Yoga
"[The Divine in one of its three aspects] . . . is the Cosmic Self and Spirit that is in and behind all things and beings, from which and in which all is manifested in the universe - although it is now a manifestation in the Ignorance.” Letters on Yoga
". . . the cosmic spirit, the one self inhabiting the universe, . . . .” *The Life Divine
"For the cosmic Spirit inhabits each and all, but is more than all; . . . .”The Life Divine
costume ::: n. A style of dress, including garments, accessories, and hairstyle, especially as characteristic of a particular country, period, or people. costumes. *v. 2. To furnish with a mode of attire, set of garments; dress. *costuming.
cottage ::: a small, humble, single-storied house, especially in the country.
coursed ::: proceeded or moved swiftly along a specified course or path. coursing.
covet ::: 1. To desire wrongfully, inordinately, or without due regard for the rights of others. 2. To wish for, especially eagerly. coveted.
cowl ::: n. 1. The hood or hooded robe worn especially by a monk. 2. A hood, especially a loose one; garment. v. 3. To cover with or as with a cowl.
craft ::: 1. An art, trade, or occupation requiring special skill, esp. manual skill. 2. Skill; dexterity. 3. Skill or ability used for bad purposes; cunning; deceit; guile; fraud; evasion or deception. crafts.
crescendo ::: music. A gradual increase, especially in the volume or intensity of sound in a passage.
crime ::: an evil act; serious offense, especially one in violation of morality or law. crimes.
crouch ::: 1. To stoop, especially with the knees bent esp. in fear, humility or submission. 2. (of animals) to lie close to the ground, in fear, readiness for action etc. crouches, crouched, crouching.
crush ::: 1. Fig. To conquer by force. 2. To put down; subdue completely 3. To hug, especially with great force. crushed.
crypt ::: 1. An underground vault or chamber, especially one beneath a church that is used as a burial place. 2. A cellar, vault or tunnel. 3. A location for secret meetings, etc. crypts.
crystal ::: 1. A mineral, especially a transparent form of quartz, having a crystalline structure, often characterized by external planar faces. 2. Resembling crystal; transparent as water or a liquid. 3. Fig. Sometimes used to describe the eyes.
cult ::: 1. Obsessive, especially faddish, devotion to or veneration for a person, principle, or thing. 2. A specific system of religious worship, esp. with reference to its rites and deity. 3. A group or sect bound together by veneration of the same thing, person, ideal. cults.
cyclic ::: 1. Of, relating to, or characterized by cycles. 2. Recurring or moving in specific chronological cycles.
deafened ::: made deaf, especially momentarily by a loud noise. Also fig.
dealt ::: took action with respect to a thing or person (followed by with).
debate ::: 1. A discussion involving opposing points; an argument. 2. A formal contest in which the affirmative and negative sides of a proposition are advocated by opposing speakers.
desperate ::: actuated by a feeling of hopelessness; that leaves little or no room for hope; such as to be despaired of; extremely dangerous or serious.
denizens ::: inhabitants; occupants; residents, especially of plants or animals and people established in a place to which they are not native.
desert ::: v. To withdraw from, especially in spite of a responsibility or duty; forsake; abandon. deserting.
design ::: n. 1. Purpose, aim, intention, especially with reference to a Divine Creator. 2. Plan or scheme. 3. A combination of details or features; pattern or motif. design"s, designs. *v. 4. To work out the structure or form of (something). 5. To plan and make (something) artistically or skilfully. *designed, designing.
detail ::: 1. A minor or an inconsequential item or aspect; a minutia. 2. An individual part or item; a particular. details.
device ::: 1. Something devised or framed by art or inventive power; an invention, contrivance for some particular purpose. 2. A plan or scheme, especially a malign one. 3. Something elaborately or fancifully designed. devices.
diameter ::: a straight line segment passing through the center of a figure, especially of a circle or sphere, and terminating at the periphery.
dispensation ("s) ::: the divine ordering of worldly affairs.
dispenser ::: one who bestows or administers.
diligent ::: quietly and steadily persevering especially in detail or exactness while serving others.
dingy ::: 1. Of a dark, dull, or dirty colour or aspect; lacking brightness or freshness. 2. Shabby; dismal.
dire ::: 1. Causing or involving great fear or suffering; dreadful; terrible. 2. Indicating trouble, disaster, misfortune, or the like. 3. Urgent; desperate. direr.
dismissed ::: sent away; dispersed; disbanded; expelled.
dissolve ::: 1. To cause to disappear or vanish; dispel. ::: 2. To cause to fade away. dissolved, dissolving.
divine Comedy ::: a stage-play of a light and amusing character, with a happy conclusion to its plot. Its mediaeval use for a narrative poem with an agreeable ending. (Probably taken from Italian; cf. the Divine Comedy, the great tripartite poem of Dante, called by its author La Commedia, because in the conclusion, it is prosperous, pleasant, and desirable.)
divine life ::: Sri Aurobindo: "A life of gnostic beings carrying the evolution to a higher supramental status might fitly be characterised as a divine life; for it would be a life in the Divine, a life of the beginnings of a spiritual divine light and power and joy manifested in material Nature.” *The Life Divine ::: "The ascent to the divine Life is the human journey, the Work of works, the acceptable Sacrifice. This alone is man"s real business in the world and the justification of his existence, without which he would be only an insect crawling among other ephemeral insects on a speck of surface mud and water which has managed to form itself amid the appalling immensities of the physical universe.” The Life Divine
dogged ::: followed or tracked like a dog, especially with hostile intent; hounded. dogs, dogging.
domain ::: 1. A sphere of activity, concern, or function; a field. 2. A region characterized by a specific feature, type of growth or wildlife, etc. domains.
doom ::: 1. Fate, especially a tragic or ruinous one. 2. Inevitable destruction or ruin. 3. A judgement, decision, or sentence, esp. an unfavourable one. doom"s, doomed, doom-crack.
dot ::: n. 1. A small round mark made with or as with a pen, etc.; spot; speck; point. 2. Anything relatively small or specklike. dots. *v.* 3. To scatter or intersperse (with dots or something resembling dots). 4. To stud or diversify with or as if with dots, as trees dotting the landscape. dotted, dotting.
dove ::: 1. Any bird of the family Columbid, esp. the smaller species with pointed tails. 2. A pure white member of this species, used as a symbol of innocence, gentleness, tenderness, and peace. dove"s, doves.
dragon of the dark foundation ::: Sri Aurobindo: "All this action and struggle and ascension is supported by Heaven our Father and Earth our Mother, Parents of the Gods, who sustain respectively the purely mental and psychic and the physical consciousness. Their large and free scope is the condition of our achievement. Vayu, Master of life, links them together by the mid-air, the region of vital force. And there are other deities, — Parjanya, giver of the rain of heaven; Dadhikravan, the divine war-horse, a power of Agni; the mystic Dragon of the Foundations; Trita Aptya who on the third plane of existence consummates our triple being; and more besides.” The Secret of the Veda
drain ::: v. 1. To deplete (a person or a thing) gradually, especially to the point of complete exhaustion. n. 2. A gradual depletion of energy or resources. 3. Something (a ditch, trench, waterpipe etc.) designed to carry away water. drained.
drift ::: n. 1. A driving movement or force; impulse; impetus; pressure. 2. A gradual deviation from an original course, model, method, or intention. 3. Tendency, trend, meaning, or purport. 4. A bank or pile, as of sand or snow, heaped up by currents of air or water. 5. Something moving along in a current of air or water. 6. Any group of stars having a random distribution of velocities; usually applied to a group of stars with an apparent systematic motion towards some point in the sky. v. 7. To be carried along by or as if by currents of air or water. 8. To move leisurely or sporadically from place to place, especially without purpose. drifts, drifted, drifting, sleet-drift, slow-drifting.
dumb ::: 1. Lacking the power of speech. 2. Producing no sound; silent; mute. dumbness.
dumbness ::: the condition of lacking the power of speech; being dumb; muteness.
durga ::: "In Hindu religion, the goddess who is the Energy of Shiva and the conquering and protecting aspect of the Universal Mother. She is the slayer of many demons including Mahisasura. Durga is usually depicted in painting and sculpture riding a lion, having eight or ten arms, each holding the special weapon of one or another of the gods who gave them to her for her battles with demons. (A; Enc. Br.)” *Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works.
earth ::: 1. The realm of mortal existence; the temporal world. 2. The softer, friable part of land; soil, especially productive soil. **Earth, earth"s, earth-beauty"s, earth-being"s, earth-beings, earth-bounds, earth-bride, earth-fact, earth-force, Earth-Goddess, earth-hearts, earth-habit"s, earth-heart, earth-instruments, earth-kind, earth-life, earth-light, earth-made, earth-matter"s, earth-mind, earth-mind"s, earth-myth, earth-nature, earth-nature"s, Earth-Nature"s, earth-nursed, earth-pain, Earth-plasm, earth-poise, earth-scene, earth-scene"s, earth-seat, earth-shapes, earth-stage, earth-stuff, earth-time, earth-time"s, earth-use, earth-vision, earth-ways, summer-earth.
edged ::: 1. Having or provided with an edge or border. ::: 2. Having a cutting edge or especially an edge or edges as specified (often used in combination). 3. keen-edged. Sharpness with reference to the mind.
eliminate ::: 1. To get rid of; to omit or exclude. 2. To wipe out someone or something, especially by using drastic methods.
elude ::: 1. To avoid or escape by speed, cleverness, trickery, etc.; evade. 2. To escape the understanding, perception, or appreciation of. eludes.
empowered ::: 1. To invest with power, especially legal power or official authority. 2. To equip or supply with an ability; enable; make powerful.
emptied ::: holding or containing nothing of meaning, or certain specified qualities.
enchanted ::: 1. Possessing a magical influence or quality. 2. Under a spell; bewitched; magical. 3. Utterly delighted or captivated; fascinated; charmed. enchantment, enchantment"s, enchantments.
enchanter ::: something that delights, often as with sorcery or a spell.
encyclopaedia ::: a book or set of books containing articles on various topics, usually in alphabetical arrangement, covering all branches of knowledge or, less commonly, all aspects of one subject.
entwined ::: clasped as a twining plant; wrapped around; enfolded, embraced. Also fig.
environs ::: a surrounding area, especially of a city.
equal ::: adj. 1. As great as; the same as (often followed by to or with). 2. Having the same quantity, value, or measure as another. 3. Evenly proportioned or balanced. 4. Tranquil; equable; undisturbed. 5. Impartial; just; equitable. n. 6. One who is equal to another in any specified quality. v. **7. To become equal or level with. equalled.**
"Equality is the chief support of the true spiritual consciousness and it is this from which a sadhak deviates when he allows a vital movement to carry him away in feeling or speech or action. Equality is not the same thing as forbearance, — though undoubtedly a settled equality immensely extends, even illimitably, a man"s power of endurance and forbearance. Letters on Yoga
::: Equality means a quiet and unmoved mind and vital, it means not to be touched or disturbed by things that happen or things said or done to you, but to look at them with a straight look, free from the distortions created by personal feeling, and to try to understand what is behind them, why they happen, what is to be learnt from them, what is it in oneself which they are cast against and what inner profit or progress one can make out of them; it means self-mastery over the vital movements, — anger and sensitiveness and pride as well as desire and the rest, — not to let them get hold of the emotional being and disturb the inner peace, not to speak and act in the rush and impulsion of these things, always to act and speak out of a calm inner poise of the spirit.” *Letters on Yoga
::: "Erinyes, in Greek mythology, the goddesses of vengeance, usually represented as three winged maidens, with snakes in their hair. They pursued criminals, drove them mad, and tormented them in Hades. They were spirits of punishment, avenging wrongs done especially to kindred. In Roman literature they were called Furies.” *Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works*
estate ::: 1. The situation or circumstances of one"s life. 2. Social position or rank, especially of high order. 3. A person"s total possessions (property, money etc.). 4. A landed property, usually, of considerable size. estates.
ethics ::: 1. A system of moral principles. 2. The branch of philosophy dealing with values relating to human conduct, with respect to the rightness and wrongness of certain actions and to the goodness and badness of the motives and ends of such actions. **ethics".
evangelist ::: 1. A preacher of the Christian gospel. 2. Any zealous advocate of a cause. (Employed by Sri Aurobindo as an adjective.)
examined ::: looked at, inspected, or scrutinized carefully or in detail; investigated the condition or qualities of anything.
expenditure ::: the act of expending something, especially funds; disbursement; consumption.
expense ::: something spent or used to attain a goal or accomplish a purpose.
experiment ::: n. **1. A test, trial, or tentative procedure; an act or operation for the purpose of discovering something unknown or of testing a principle, supposition, etc. v. 2.* To try something new, especially in order to gain experience. experiments. adj.* experimenting.
exploits ::: acts or deeds, especially brilliant or heroic ones.
expose ::: 1. To lay open to something specified. 2. To lay open to the action or influence of. 3. To lay open to danger, attack, harm, etc. 4. To make visible or apparent. 5. To reveal or unmask (a crime, fraud, impostor, etc.). exposes, exposed.
feats ::: notable acts or deeds, especially acts of courage; exploits.
fig. Hearts filled with despair; disillusionment; devastating sorrow, especially from disappointment or tragedy in love.
figure ::: n. 1. The form or shape of anything; appearance, aspect. 2. The human form, esp. as regards size or shape. 3. A representation or likeness of the human form.4. An emblem, type, symbol. 5. An amount or value expressed in numbers. 6. A written symbol other than a letter. v. 7. To compute or calculate. 8. To represent by a pictorial or sculptured figure, a diagram, or the like; picture or depict. 9. To shape to; symbolize; represent. figures, figured, figuring, figure-selves.**
flatter ::: 1. To compliment excessively and often insincerely, especially in order to win favour. 2. To try to please by complimentary remarks or attention. 3. To show to advantage. 4. To please the eye or ear; beguile. flatters, flattered, flattering.
flee ::: 1. To run away, as from trouble or danger. 2. To run away from; forsake. 3. To move swiftly; fly; speed. 4. To pass swiftly away; vanish. flees, fled, fleeing, fleest.
float ::: 1. To remain suspended within or on the surface of a fluid without sinking. 2. To move or progress smoothly as on a stream. 3. To move or cause to move buoyantly, lightly, or freely across a surface or through air, water, etc.; drift. 4. To move lightly and gracefully. 5. Fig. To move or seem to move lightly and faintly before the eyes. floats, floated, floating.
floating ::: adj. 1. Being buoyed up on water or other liquid. 2. Having little or no attachment; moving from one place to another. 3. Continually changing especially as from one abode or occupation to another. 4. Being suspended in or as in a liquid with freedom to move; also, to move freely through (something).
folded ::: 1. Enclosed, wrapped, enveloped. 2. Clasped as in prayer. 3. Brought (the arms, hands, etc.) together in an intertwined or crossed manner; clasped, crossed.
force, divine ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Divine Force can act on any plane — it is not limited to the supramental Force. The supramental is only one aspect of the power of the Divine.” *Letters on Yoga
forge ::: n. 1. A special fireplace, hearth, or furnace in which metal is heated before shaping. v. 2. To form (metal, for example) by heating in a forge and beating or hammering into shape. 3. To form or make, esp. by concentrated effort or energy; shape, fabricate, fashion, mould. 4. To imitate (handwriting, a signature, etc.) fraudulently; to counterfeit; to commit forgery. forged.
" . . . for there is only one thing essential, needful, indispensable, to grow conscious of the Divine Reality and live in it and live it always.” Letters on Yoga
fortune ::: 1. The chance happening of fortunate or adverse events; luck. 2. Success, luck, prosperity. fortune"s.
found ::: 1. To set up or establish on a firm basis or for enduring existence; to originate, create, initiate. 2. To establish or set up, especially with provision for continuing existence. Also fig. (All other references are to the word as the pp. or pt. of find. **half-found*.*) founds, founded.**
front ::: n. 1. That part or side that is forward, prominent, or most often seen or used. 2. Outward aspect or bearing as when dealing with a situation. 3. Demeanour or bearing, especially in the presence of danger or difficulty. 4. At a position before, in advance of, facing, or confronting; at the head of. 5. The most forward line of a combat force. 6. A position of leadership in a particular endeavour or field. front"s, fronts. v. 7. To look out on; face. 8. To meet face to face; in opposition; confront. fronts, fronted, fronting.
fruit ::: 1. The part of a plant that produces the seed, especially when eaten as food. 2. The result or consequence of an action or effort. 3. Result; outcome. fruits.
funnel ::: a shaft, flue, or stack for ventilation or the passage of smoke, especially the smokestack of a ship or locomotive.
furious ::: 1. Full of fury, violent passion, or rage; extremely angry; enraged. 2. Of unrestrained energy, speed, etc.
gaol ::: a prison, esp. one for the detention of persons awaiting trial or convicted of minor offences. (A variant spelling of jail. In British official use the form with G is still current; in literary and journalistic use both the G and the J form is now admitted as correct; in the U.S. the J form is standard.) gaoled.
garland ::: a wreath or festoon, especially one of plaited flowers or leaves, worn on the body or draped as a decoration.
gate of horn ::: the ivory gate, the gate of horn: In Greek legend, those through which false and true dreams respectively come forth.
gesture ::: 1. A motion of the limbs or body made to express or help express thought or to emphasize speech. 2. The act of moving the limbs or body as an expression of thought or emphasis. 3. An act or a remark made as a formality or as a sign of intention or attitude. gesture"s, gestures.
glossary ::: a list of terms in a special subject, field, or area of usage, with accompanying definitions; a partial dictionary.
glowing ::: shining brightly, brilliantly and steadily, especially without a flame; luminous.
gospel ::: 1. A doctrine regarded as of prime importance. 2. Any revelation from heaven.
god ::: a being conceived as the perfect, omnipotent, omniscient originator and ruler of the universe, the principal object of faith and worship in monotheistic religions. gods, gods", God"s, Gods, God-bliss, God-born, god-chant, God-child, god-children, God-ecstasy, God-face, God-frame, God-Force, God-given, god-haunts, God-instinct"s, God-joy, God-Light, god-kind, God-knowledge, God-language, God-light, god-mind, god-phase, God-spark, god-speech, God-state, god-touch, God-vision"s, god-wings, child-god, dream-god"s, half-god, Sun-god"s.
"God speaks to the heart when the brain cannot understand him.” *Essays Divine and Human
gold-leaf ::: gold beaten into extremely thin sheets used especially for gilding.
grace ::: n. **1. Elegance or beauty of form, manner, motion, or action. 2. Favour or goodwill. 3. A manifestation of favour, especially by a superior. 4. Theol. a. The freely given, unmerited favour and love of God. b. The influence or spirit of God operating in humans to regenerate or strengthen them. c. A virtue or excellence of divine origin. d. The condition of being in God"s favour or one of the elect. 5. Divine love and protection bestowed freely on people. v. 6. To lend or add grace to; adorn. graced, graceful, graceless.**
grammared ::: classified, as the different parts of speech in a language.
grasp ::: v. 1. To seize and hold firmly; lit. and fig. 2. To take hold of intellectually; comprehend. grasps, grasped, grasping.* n. 3. A hold or grip. 4. Fig. Total rule, possession or control. 5. Capacity or power to understand or comprehend. 6. One"s power of seizing and holding; reach. 7. The act of grasping or gripping, as with the hands or arms. 8. One"s arms or hands, in embracing or gripping. ::: to grasp at: To try to seize someone or something. Also fig.*
gravitation ::: the force of attraction between all masses in the universe; especially the attraction of the earth"s mass for bodies near its surface.
greed ::: an excessive desire to acquire or possess more than what one needs or deserves, especially with respect to material wealth.
greedy ::: excessively desirous of acquiring or possessing, especially wishing to possess more than what one needs.
grey matter ::: the brownish-gray nerve tissue, especially of the brain and spinal cord, composed of nerve cell bodies and their dendrites and some supportive tissue. Also fig.
groping ::: showing or reflecting a desire to understand, especially something that proves puzzling.
guest ::: Sri Aurobindo: " When the Rishis speak of Indra or Agni or Soma in men, they are speaking of the god in his cosmic presence, power or function. This is evident from the very language when they speak of Agni as the immortal in mortals, the immortal Light in men, the inner Warrior, the Guest in human beings.” *Letters on Yoga
guise ::: outward appearance or aspect; semblance.
hang ::: 1. To fasten or attach (pictures, etc.) to a wall. 2. To suspend (something) around or in front of anything. 3.* Fig. To remain unresolved or uncertain. 4. To make (an idea, form, etc.) dependent on the situation, structure, concept, or the like, usually derived from another source. 5. To fasten or be fastened from above, esp. by a cord, chain, etc.; suspend. 6. To be suspended or poised; hover. 7. To bend forward or downward; to lean over. *hangs, hung, hanging, flower-hung, shadow-hung. ::: hung on: Remained clinging, usually implying expectation or unwillingness to sever one"s connection.
haste ::: n. 1. Swiftness of motion; speed; hurry, rush. v. 2. To move or act swiftly; hurry. ::: to make haste: To hurry.
hasty ::: characterized by speed; rapid.
having a specified kind of heart, lit. and fig. (now used only in combination). dim-hearted, Rich-hearted, sensuous-hearted, swift-hearted. See also hard-hearted, iron-hearted, stone-hearted.
haze ::: 1. An aggregation in the atmosphere of very fine, widely dispersed, solid or liquid particles, or both, giving the air an opalescent appearance that subdues colours. 2. Reduced visibility in the air as a result of condensed water vapour, dust, etc., in the atmosphere. 3. Vagueness of obscurity, as of the mind or perception; confused or vague thoughts, feelings, etc.
headlong ::: 1. With the head leading; headfirst. 2. At breakneck speed or with uncontrolled force. 3. In an impetuous manner; rashly.
heave ::: n. 1. The act of lifting something with great effort. heavings. v. 2. To rise up or swell, as if pushed up; bulge. 3. An upward movement (especially a rhythmical rising and falling). heaves, heaved.
herald ::: Sri Aurobindo employs the word as an adjective pertaining to an aspect of heraldry, i.e. a heraldic emblazonment or device; armorial bearings; heraldic symbolism.
hermetic ::: 1. Having to do with the occult sciences, especially alchemy; magical. 2. Made airtight by fusion or sealing. 3. Not affected by outward influence or power; isolated.
hero ::: 1. One who is distinguished by exceptional courage, nobility, fortitude, etc. 2. A person noted for feats of courage or nobility of purpose, especially one who has risked or sacrificed his or her life (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as an adj.) hero"s, heroes.
hesitating ::: 1. Pausing in uncertainty; wavering, vacillating. 2. Faltering in speech; expressing with hesitation.
hideous ::: repulsive, especially to the sight; revoltingly ugly.
"Human speech is only a secondary expression and at its highest a shadow of the divine Word, of the seed-sounds, the satisfying rhythms, the revealing forms of sound that are the omniscient and omnipotent speech of the eternal Thinker, Harmonist, Creator. The highest inspired speech to which the human mind can attain, the word most unanalysably expressive of supreme truth, the most puissant syllable or mantra can only be its far-off representation.” The Upanishads
hung fluttering or suspended in the air; hovering.
"If you go deep enough, into a sufficiently complete silence from all outer things, you will find within you that flame about which I often speak, and in this flame you will see your destiny.} You will see the aspiration of centuries which has been concentrated gradually, to lead you through countless births to the great day of realisation — that preparation which has been made through thousands of years, and is reaching its culmination.” Questions and Answers MCW Vol. 6*.
"I may say that the opening upwards, the ascent into the Light and the subsequent descent into the ordinary consciousness and normal human life is very common as the first decisive experience in the practice of yoga and may very well happen even without the practice of yoga in those who are destined for the spiritual change, especially if there is a dissatisfaction somewhere with the ordinary life and a seeking for something more, greater or better.” Letters on Yoga*
imperial ::: 1. Of, relating to, or suggestive of an empire or a sovereign, especially an emperor or empress. 2. Regal; majestic. 3. Something magnificent or outstanding in size or quality.
inane ::: something that is empty or void, especially the void of infinite space.
inarticulate ::: 1. Lacking the ability to express oneself, esp. in clear and effective speech. 2. Not articulate; not uttered or emitted with expressive or intelligible modulations.
incline ::: n. 1. A steep slope or rise. *v. 2. To bow, nod, or bend (the head, body, etc.). 3. To dispose (a person) in mind, habit, etc. (usually followed by to). 4. To listen, especially willingly or favourably. *inclined, inclining.
inconscience ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Inconscience is an inverse reproduction of the supreme superconscience: it has the same absoluteness of being and automatic action, but in a vast involved trance; it is being lost in itself, plunged in its own abyss of infinity.” *The Life Divine
"All aspects of the omnipresent Reality have their fundamental truth in the Supreme Existence. Thus even the aspect or power of Inconscience, which seems to be an opposite, a negation of the eternal Reality, yet corresponds to a Truth held in itself by the self-aware and all-conscious Infinite. It is, when we look closely at it, the Infinite"s power of plunging the consciousness into a trance of self-involution, a self-oblivion of the Spirit veiled in its own abysses where nothing is manifest but all inconceivably is and can emerge from that ineffable latency. In the heights of Spirit this state of cosmic or infinite trance-sleep appears to our cognition as a luminous uttermost Superconscience: at the other end of being it offers itself to cognition as the Spirit"s potency of presenting to itself the opposites of its own truths of being, — an abyss of non-existence, a profound Night of inconscience, a fathomless swoon of insensibility from which yet all forms of being, consciousness and delight of existence can manifest themselves, — but they appear in limited terms, in slowly emerging and increasing self-formulations, even in contrary terms of themselves; it is the play of a secret all-being, all-delight, all-knowledge, but it observes the rules of its own self-oblivion, self-opposition, self-limitation until it is ready to surpass it. This is the Inconscience and Ignorance that we see at work in the material universe. It is not a denial, it is one term, one formula of the infinite and eternal Existence.” *The Life Divine
"Once consciousnesses separated from the one consciousness, they fell inevitably into Ignorance and the last result of Ignorance was Inconscience.” Letters on Yoga
*inconscience.
inconscient ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Inconscient and the Ignorance may be mere empty abstractions and can be dismissed as irrelevant jargon if one has not come in collision with them or plunged into their dark and bottomless reality. But to me they are realities, concrete powers whose resistance is present everywhere and at all times in its tremendous and boundless mass.” *Letters on Savitri
". . . in its actual cosmic manifestation the Supreme, being the Infinite and not bound by any limitation, can manifest in Itself, in its consciousness of innumerable possibilities, something that seems to be the opposite of itself, something in which there can be Darkness, Inconscience, Inertia, Insensibility, Disharmony and Disintegration. It is this that we see at the basis of the material world and speak of nowadays as the Inconscient — the Inconscient Ocean of the Rigveda in which the One was hidden and arose in the form of this universe — or, as it is sometimes called, the non-being, Asat.” Letters on Yoga
"The Inconscient itself is only an involved state of consciousness which like the Tao or Shunya, though in a different way, contains all things suppressed within it so that under a pressure from above or within all can evolve out of it — ‘an inert Soul with a somnambulist Force".” Letters on Yoga
"The Inconscient is the last resort of the Ignorance.” Letters on Yoga
"The body, we have said, is a creation of the Inconscient and itself inconscient or at least subconscient in parts of itself and much of its hidden action; but what we call the Inconscient is an appearance, a dwelling place, an instrument of a secret Consciousness or a Superconscient which has created the miracle we call the universe.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga :::
"The Inconscient is a sleep or a prison, the conscient a round of strivings without ultimate issue or the wanderings of a dream: we must wake into the superconscious where all darkness of night and half-lights cease in the self-luminous bliss of the Eternal.” The Life Divine
"Men have not learnt yet to recognise the Inconscient on which the whole material world they see is built, or the Ignorance of which their whole nature including their knowledge is built; they think that these words are only abstract metaphysical jargon flung about by the philosophers in their clouds or laboured out in long and wearisome books like The Life Divine. Letters on Savitri :::
"Is it really a fact that even the ordinary reader would not be able to see any difference between the Inconscient and Ignorance unless the difference is expressly explained to him? This is not a matter of philosophical terminology but of common sense and the understood meaning of English words. One would say ‘even the inconscient stone" but one would not say, as one might of a child, ‘the ignorant stone". One must first be conscious before one can be ignorant. What is true is that the ordinary reader might not be familiar with the philosophical content of the word Inconscient and might not be familiar with the Vedantic idea of the Ignorance as the power behind the manifested world. But I don"t see how I can acquaint him with these things in a single line, even with the most. illuminating image or symbol. He might wonder, if he were Johnsonianly minded, how an Inconscient could be teased or how it could wake Ignorance. I am afraid, in the absence of a miracle of inspired poetical exegesis flashing through my mind, he will have to be left wondering.” Letters on Savitri
**inconscient, Inconscient"s.**
inconsequent ::: 1. Characterized by lack of proper sequence in thought, speech, or action. 2. Without worth or consequence; trivial. inconsequence, Inconsequence.
inconstant ::: changing or varying, especially often and without discernible pattern or reason.
"Indian devotion has especially seized upon the most intimate human relations and made them stepping-stones to the supra-human. God the Guru, God the Master, God the Friend, God the Mother, God the Child, God the Self, each of these experiences — for to us they are more than merely ideas, — it has carried to its extreme possibilities.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
indoctrinated ::: instructed in a doctrine, principle, ideology, etc., esp. imbued with a specific partisan or biased belief or point of view.
infant ::: n. **1. A child during the earliest period of its life, especially before he or she can walk; baby. 2. Anything in the first stage of existence or progress. Infant, infant"s, Infants. adj. 3.** Anything in the first stage of existence or progress.
inferno ::: a place or condition suggestive of hell, especially with respect to human suffering or death; the infernal regions. Inferno"s.
inscribe ::: to mark (a surface) with words, characters, etc., especially in a durable or conspicuous way. inscribed.
insolence ::: contemptuously rude or impertinent behavior or speech.
instinct ::: 1. A natural or innate impulse, inclination, or tendency. 2. An inborn pattern of activity or tendency to action common to a given biological species. 3. A natural aptitude or gift. 4. Natural intuitive power. instinct"s, instincts, instinct-driven, instinctive.
"In Supermind being, consciousness of knowledge and consciousness of will are not divided as they seem to be in our mental operations; they are a trinity, one movement with three effective aspects. Each has its own effect. Being gives the effect of substance, consciousness the effect of knowledge, of the self-guiding and shaping idea, of comprehension and apprehension; will gives the effect of self-fulfilling force. But the idea is only the light of the reality illumining itself; it is not mental thought nor imagination, but effective self-awareness. It is Real-Idea.” The Life Divine
intelligent ::: 1. Indicating high intelligence; perceptive. 2. Having the capacity for thought and reason especially to a high degree.
". . . in the Avatar there is the special manifestation, the divine birth from above, the eternal and universal Godhead descended into a form of individual humanity, âtmânam srjâmi, and conscious not only behind the veil but in the outward nature.” Essays on the Gita
"In the spiritual sense, however, sacrifice has a different meaning — it does not so much indicate giving up what is held dear as an offering of oneself, one"s being, one"s mind, heart, will, body, life, actions to the Divine. It has the original sense of ‘making sacred" and is used as an equivalent of the word yajna. When the Gita speaks of the ‘sacrifice of knowledge", it does not mean a giving up of anything, but a turning of the mind towards the Divine in the search for knowledge and an offering of oneself through it. It is in this sense, too, that one speaks of the offering or sacrifice of works. The Mother has written somewhere that the spiritual sacrifice is joyful and not painful in its nature. On the spiritual path, very commonly, if a seeker still feels the old ties and responsibilities strongly he is not asked to sever or leave them, but to let the call in him grow till all within is ready. Many, indeed, come away earlier because they feel that to cut loose is their only chance, and these have to go sometimes through a struggle. But the pain, the struggle, is not the essential character of this spiritual self-offering.” Letters on Yoga
intolerant ::: 1. Unable or unwilling to endure or support. 2. Unwilling to tolerate differences in opinions, practices, or beliefs, especially religious beliefs. intolerance.
intones ::: speaks or recites in a singing voice, esp. in monotone; chants. intoning.
intuitive knowledge ::: Sri Aurobindo: " For the highest intuitive Knowledge sees things in the whole, in the large and details only as sides of the indivisible whole; its tendency is towards immediate synthesis and the unity of knowledge.” *The Life Divine
"The intuitive knowledge on the contrary, however limited it may be in its field or application, is within that scope sure with an immediate, a durable and especially a self-existent certitude.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"All intuitive knowledge comes more or less directly from the light of the self-aware spirit entering into the mind, the spirit concealed behind mind and conscious of all in itself and in all its selves, omniscient and capable of illumining the ignorant or the self-forgetful mind whether by rare or constant flashes or by a steady instreaming light, out of its omniscience.” The Synthesis of Yoga*
::: "I regard the spiritual history of mankind and especially of India as a constant development of a divine purpose, not a book that is closed, the lines of which have to be constantly repeated.” Letters on Yoga
isle ::: an island, especially a small one. isles.
jail ::: american spelling of the British gaol. See also gaol. (In Savitri both spellings are used.)
jar ::: 1. A harsh, grating sound. 2. A sudden unpleasant effect upon the mind or feelings; shock. 3. A quarrel or disagreement, especially a minor one. jars, jarring.
javelin ::: a light spear thrown with the hand. Also fig. javelins.
judgment ::: 1. The capacity to assess situations or circumstances shrewdly and to draw sound conclusions. 2. An opinion or estimate formed after consideration or deliberation, especially a formal or authoritative decision. judgments.
kali ::: hinduism. One of the manifestations and titles of the wife of Shiva and mother goddess Devi, especially in her role as a goddess of death and destruction. **Kali"s.
key ::: 1. A small metal instrument specially cut to fit into a lock and move its bolt. 2. Fig. Something that explains a mystery or gives an answer to a mystery, a code etc. 3. Something that is crucial in providing an explanation or interpretation. 4. Fig. Serving as an essential component; "a cardinal rule”. 5. The principal tonality of a composition. 6. Pitch of the voice. keys.
keyed ::: adj. **1. Secured, fastened, or fitted with a key or something compared to a key, with its power of locking or unlocking; opening up or closing, the way to something. v. 2.** Regulated or adjusted (actions, thoughts, speech, etc.) to a particular state or activity; brought into conformity.
kingdom ::: 1. A territory, state, people, or community ruled or reigned over by a king or queen. 2. Fig. The eternal spiritual sovereignty of God; the realm of this sovereignty. 3. A realm or sphere in which one thing is dominant or supreme. 4. Anything conceived as constituting a realm or sphere of independent action or control. 5. A realm or province of nature, especially one of the three broad divisions of natural objects: the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms. 6. Rarely, in reference to the realm and rule of evil forces. kingdom"s, kingdoms.
knot ::: 1. A fastening made by tying together lengths of material, such as rope, in a prescribed way. 2. A unifying bond, a tie, especially a marriage bond. 3. A compact intersection of interlaced material, such as cord, ribbon, or rope. 4. A unified mass or cluster. knots, Nature-knot.
lacking moral discipline or ignoring legal restraint, especially in sexual conduct.
lame ::: 1. Crippled. 2. Disabled so that movement, especially walking, is difficult or impossible. lamed.
lance ::: a long wooden shaft with a pointed metal head, used as a weapon by knights and horsemen in charging at full speed.
landings ::: the act or process of coming to land or rest, especially after a voyage or flight.
lead ::: v. 1. To go in advance; act as a guide; show the way. 2. To guide in direction, course, action, opinion, etc. 3. Of a way, road, etc.: To serve as a passage for, conduct (a person) to or into a place; hence, to have a specified goal or direction. 4. To pass or go through; live. 5. To result in; tend toward (often followed by to). 6. To indicate, as a clue, guide or indication of a route way, course. leads, leading, leadst.* n. 7. Anything or anyone who guides or directs by leading; going in front. ::: (Note: See also *sounding leads.)
lease ::: a contract granting use or occupation of property during a specified period in exchange for a specified compensation.
legend ::: an unverified story handed down from earlier times, especially one popularly believed to be historical.
(License is now the preferred spelling for the noun as well as the verb.) Given official approval or legal permission to do, act, or own a specified thing.
like a dwarf, especially in being abnormally small; diminutive.
line ::: 1. *Gen.* Text consisting of a row of words written across a page. 2. A chronological or ancestral series, esp. of people. 3. A course of progress or movement; a route. 4. A manner or course of procedure determined by a specified factor. 5. A sequence of related things that leads to a certain ending. 6. A border or boundary. 7. A narrow continuous mark, as one made by a pencil, pen, or brush across a surface.
lineaments ::: distinctive shapes, contours, or lines, especially of the face.
linger ::: 1. To be slow in leaving, especially out of reluctance; tarry. 2. To be tardy in acting; procrastinate. 3. To remain present although waning or gradually dying. 4. To dwell in contemplation, thought, or enjoyment. lingers, lingered, lingering.
linked ::: connected, especially by or as if by links. fine-linked.
lover ::: 1. Someone who loves a specified person, thing, ideal, etc. 2. A person who is in love with another. Lover, lover"s, Lover"s, lovers.
luminous ::: 1. Emitting light, especially emitting self-generated light. 2. Full of light; illuminated; radiant; resplendent; lucid. luminousness, luminosity, half-luminous, luminous-eyed.
lurk ::: 1. To lie in wait, as in ambush. 2. To exist unperceived or unsuspected. lurks, lurked, lurking.
lyre ::: a musical instrument of ancient Greece consisting of a sound box made typically from a turtle shell, with two curved arms connected by a yoke from which strings are stretched to the body, used especially to accompany singing and recitation. lyres.
malady ::: 1. Any disorder or disease of the body, esp. one that is chronic or deep-seated. 2. Any unwholesome, unhealthy, morbid or desperate condition. maladies.
Man alive, your proposed emendations are an admirable exposition of the art of bringing a line down the steps till my poor "slow miraculous” above-mind line meant to give or begin the concrete portrayal of an act of some hidden Godhead finally becomes a mere metaphor thrown out from its more facile mint by a brilliantly imaginative poetic intelligence. First of all, you shift my "dimly” out of the way and transfer it to something to which it does not inwardly belongs make it an epithet of the gesture or an adverb qualifying its epithet instead of something that qualifies the atmosphere in which the act of the Godhead takes place. That is a preliminary havoc which destroys what is very important to the action, its atmosphere. I never intended the gesture to be dim, it is a luminous gesture, but forcing its way through the black quietude it comes dimly. Then again the bald phrase "a gesture came” without anything to psychicise it becomes simply something that "happened”, "came” being a poetic equivalent for "happened”, instead of the expression of the slow coming of the gesture. The words "slow” and "dimly” assure this sense of motion and this concreteness to the word"s sense here. Remove one or both whether entirely or elsewhere and you ruin the vision and change altogether its character. That is at least what happens wholly in your penultimate version and as for the last its "came” gets another meaning and one feels that somebody very slowly decided to let out the gesture from himself and it was quite a miracle that it came out at all! "Dimly miraculous” means what precisely or what "miraculously dim” — it was miraculous that it managed to be so dim or there was something vaguely miraculous about it after all? No doubt they try to mean something else — but these interpretations come in their way and trip them over. The only thing that can stand is the first version which is no doubt fine poetry, but the trouble is that it does not give the effect I wanted to give, the effect which is necessary for the dawn"s inner significance. Moreover, what becomes of the slow lingering rhythm of my line which is absolutely indispensable? Letters on Savitri
manufacture ::: n. 1. The making or producing of anything; generation; or the thing produced, product. 2. Fictitious invention, fabrication, concoction. manufactures. *v. 3. To make or produce by hand or machinery, especially on a large scale. *manufactured.
many-sided ::: having many aspects, talents, or interests.
master ::: a respectful term of address, esp. as used by disciples when addressing or referring to a religious teacher.
meanness ::: the quality or state of being selfish or stingy; the aspect of being small-minded; miserly.
mediator ::: one that mediates, especially one that reconciles differences between disputants. mediators.
melt ::: 1. To become liquid; dissolve; evaporate; disperse. 2. To pass, change, or blend gradually (often followed by into). 3. To remake or refashion into something else. melted, melting.
**Mended, repaired, or put together, especially hastily, clumsily, or poorly.
mere ::: being nothing more than what is specified.
mime ::: to imitate (a person or manner), especially for satirical effect. mimes.
mind ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The ‘Mind" in the ordinary use of the word covers indiscriminately the whole consciousness, for man is a mental being and mentalises everything; but in the language of this yoga the words ‘mind" and ‘mental" are used to connote specially the part of the nature which has to do with cognition and intelligence, with ideas, with mental or thought perceptions, the reactions of thought to things, with the truly mental movements and formations, mental vision and will, etc., that are part of his intelligence.” *Letters on Yoga
"Mind in its essence is a consciousness which measures, limits, cuts out forms of things from the indivisible whole and contains them as if each were a separate integer.” The Life Divine
"Mind is an instrument of analysis and synthesis, but not of essential knowledge. Its function is to cut out something vaguely from the unknown Thing in itself and call this measurement or delimitation of it the whole, and again to analyse the whole into its parts which it regards as separate mental objects.” The Life Divine
"The mind proper is divided into three parts — thinking Mind, dynamic Mind, externalising Mind — the former concerned with ideas and knowledge in their own right, the second with the putting out of mental forces for realisation of the idea, the third with the expression of them in life (not only by speech, but by any form it can give).” Letters on Yoga
"The difference between the ordinary mind and the intuitive is that the former, seeking in the darkness or at most by its own unsteady torchlight, first, sees things only as they are presented in that light and, secondly, where it does not know, constructs by imagination, by uncertain inference, by others of its aids and makeshifts things which it readily takes for truth, shadow projections, cloud edifices, unreal prolongations, deceptive anticipations, possibilities and probabilities which do duty for certitudes. The intuitive mind constructs nothing in this artificial fashion, but makes itself a receiver of the light and allows the truth to manifest in it and organise its own constructions.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"He [man] 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.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"Our mind is an observer of actuals, an inventor or discoverer of possibilities, but not a seer of the occult imperatives that necessitate the movements and forms of a creation. . . .” *The Life Divine
"The human mind is an instrument not of truth but of ignorance and error.” Letters on Yoga
"For Mind as we know it is a power of the Ignorance seeking for Truth, groping with difficulty to find it, reaching only mental constructions and representations of it in word and idea, in mind formations, sense formations, — as if bright or shadowy photographs or films of a distant Reality were all that it could achieve.” The Life Divine
The Mother: "The true role of the mind is the formation and organization of action. The mind has a formative and organizing power, and it is that which puts the different elements of inspiration in order for action, for organizing action. And if it would only confine itself to that role, receiving inspirations — whether from above or from the mystic centre of the soul — and simply formulating the plan of action — in broad outline or in minute detail, for the smallest things of life or the great terrestrial organizations — it would amply fulfil its function. It is not an instrument of knowledge. But is can use knowledge for action, to organize action. It is an instrument of organization and formation, very powerful and very capable when it is well developed.” Questions and Answers 1956, MCW Vol. 8.*
minstrels ::: medieval entertainers who traveled from place to place, especially to sing and recite poetry.
misspelt ::: spelled incorrectly.
misspent ::: spent wrongly or unwisely; wasted.
mischiefs ::: damage, destruction, or injury caused by specific persons or things.
mislaid ::: lost temporarily; especially put in an unaccustomed or forgotten place, misplaced.
mislead ::: to lead into error of thought or action, especially by intentionally deceiving. misled, misleaders.
mist ::: 1. A cloudlike aggregation of minute globules of water suspended in the atmosphere at or near the earth"s surface reducing the visibility to a lesser degree than fog. 2. Something that dims, obscures or blurs. mists.
mock ::: v. **1. To attack or treat with ridicule, contempt, or derision; to jeer, scoff. 2. To ridicule or jeer by imitation of speech or action. 3. To frustrate the hopes of; disappoint; delude. mocks, mocked, mocking, mockst. adj. 4.** Feigned; not real; sham; counterfeit; imitation.
moment ::: n. **1. An indefinitely short period of time; an instant. 2. Now, the present instant. 3. A particular period of importance, influence, or significance in a series of events or developments 4. A specific instant or point in time. moment"s, moments, moments", momentless, moment-beats, moment-ridden. v. moments. 5.** Brings significance to the moment.
monstrous ::: 1. Extraordinarily great; huge; immense. 2. Frightful or hideous, especially in appearance; extremely ugly; frightful; hideous. 3. Shocking or revolting; outrageous. monstrously.
mother ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The One whom we adore as the Mother is the divine Conscious Force that dominates all existence, one and yet so many-sided that to follow her movement is impossible even for the quickest mind and for the freest and most vast intelligence. The Mother is the consciousness and force of the Supreme and far above all she creates.” The Mother ::: "The one original transcendent Shakti, the Mother stands above all the worlds and bears in her eternal consciousness the Supreme Divine.
"That which we call Nature or Prakriti is only her [the Mother"s] most outward executive aspect; she marshals and arranges the harmony of her forces and processes, impels the operations of Nature and moves among them secret or manifest in all that can be seen or experienced or put into motion of life.” *The Mother
: "The Mother comes in order to bring down the Supramental and it is the descent which makes her full manifestation here possible.” *Letters on the Mother
"When one does sadhana, the inner consciousness begins to open and one is able to go inside and have all kinds of experiences there. As the sadhana progresses, one begins to live more and more in this inner being and the outer becomes more and more superficial. At first the inner consciousness seems to be the dream and the outer the waking reality. Afterwards the inner consciousness becomes the reality and the outer is felt by many as a dream or delusion, or else as something superficial and external. The inner consciousness begins to be a place of deep peace, light, happiness, love, closeness to the Divine or the presence of the Divine, the Mother.” Letters on Yoga ::: **mighty Mother, World-Mother, World-Mother"s.**
mother, universal ::: Sri Aurobindo: "What people mean by the formless svarûpa of the Mother, — they means usually her universal aspect. It is when she is experienced as a universal Existence and Power spread through the universe in which and by which all live. When one feels that Presence one begins to feel a universal peace, light, power, bliss without limits — that is her svarûpa.” *The Mother
"The Mahashakti, the universal Mother, works out whatever is transmitted by her transcendent consciousness from the Supreme and enters into the worlds that she has made; her presence fills and supports them with the divine spirit and the divine all-sustaining force and delight without which they could not exist.” The Mother
moving rapidly, changing location rapidly; moving or acting with speed or haste.
murmur ::: n. 1. A low, continuous sound, as of a brook, the wind or trees, or of low, indistinct voices. 2. An indistinct, whispered, or confidential complaint; a mutter. 3. A mumbled or subdued expression of discontent. murmurs, murmurs", murmurings. *v. 4. To make a low, continuous, indistinct sound or succession of sounds. 5. To say in a low indistinct voice; utter indistinctly. 6. To complain in low mumbling tones; grumble. murmurs, murmured, murmuring, many-murmured. adj. *murmurous.
mute ::: 1. Not emitting or having sound of any kind. 2. Silent; refraining from speech or utterance. 3. Unable to speak. muteness.
mystery ::: 1. A spiritual truth that is incomprehensible to reason and knowable only through divine revelation. 2. Something that is not fully understood or that baffles or eludes the understanding; an enigma. 3. A mysterious character or quality. 4. The skills, lore, practices and secret rites that are peculiar to a particular activity or group and are regarded as the special province of initiates. Mystery, mystery"s, Mystery"s, mysteries, mystery-altar"s. (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as an adj.)
n. 1. A competition of speed, as in running or riding. 2. A strong or swift current of water. race-fields. *v. 3. To run, move or go swiftly. 4. To engage in a contest of speed; run a race. *raced, racing.
n. 1. A fashioned ornament for personal adornment, especially of a precious metal set with gems. 2. Something resembling a jewel in appearance, ornamental effect, or the like, as a star. jewels, jewel-faces", jewel-lamp, jewel-lamps, jewel-rhythm. *v. 3. Fig. To adorn, as with jewels. *jewelled.
n. **1. A manner of walking or running. 2. Fig. The relative speed of progress or change. 3. A rate of activity, progress, growth, performance; tempo. 4. Fig. The rate of speed at which an activity or movement proceeds. v. 5. To walk with slow regular strides. 6. To walk with regular slow or fast paces or steps. paces, paced, pacing.**
n. 1. A structure serving as a dwelling for one or more persons, especially for a family. 2.* Fig. An abode; dwelling-place. houses, marvel-house. v. 3. To be a receptacle for or repository of. 4. To shelter, keep, or store in or as if in a house; to give shelter to. *housed, housing. ::: See also dwelling-house.
naked ::: 1. Having no clothing on the body; nude. 2. Being without addition, concealment, disguise, or embellishment. 3. Exposed to harm; vulnerable. 4. Plain, simple, unadorned. 5. Not accompanied or supplemented by anything else. 6. Devoid of a specified quality, characteristic, or element. 7. With no qualification or concealment; stark, plain. 8. Unsupported by authority or financial or other consideration. World-naked.
narad ::: "A well-known Rishi and Vaishnava Bhakta who moves about in the various worlds playing on a lute and having a special role in bringing about events according to the Divine Will.” *Glossary and Index of Proper Names In Sri Aurobindo"s Works
neutrality ::: the state or position of being impartial or not allied with or committed to either party or viewpoint in a conflict, especially a war or armed conflict.
non-Being ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Non-Being is only a word. When we examine the fact it represents, we can no longer be sure that absolute non-existence has any better chance than the infinite Self of being more than an ideative formation of the mind. We really mean by this Nothing something beyond the last term to which we can reduce our purest conception and our most abstract or subtle experience of actual being as we know or conceive it while in this universe. This Nothing then is merely a something beyond positive conception. And when we say that out of Non-Being Being appeared, we perceive that we are speaking in terms of Time about that which is beyond Time.” The Life Divine ::: Non-Being"s, Non-being"s, non-being, non-being"s,
"Nothing can be more remarkable and suggestive than the extent to which modern Science confirms in the domain of Matter the conceptions and even the very formulae of language which were arrived at, by a very different method, in the Vedanta, — the original Vedanta, not of the schools of metaphysical philosophy, but of the Upanishads. And these, on the other hand, often reveal their full significance, their richer contents only when they are viewed in the new light shed by the discoveries of modern Science, — for instance, that Vedantic expression which describes things in the Cosmos as one seed arranged by the universal Energy in multitudinous forms.(1) Significant, especially, is the drive of Science towards a Monism which is consistent with multiplicity, towards the Vedic idea of the one essence with its many becomings.” The Life Divine
occasion ::: a special or important time or event.
Oh, a tremendous power—tremendous. The first time I heard it … The first time I heard it … There was a certain Bernard who had spent a year in India, in the Himalayas, and he was visited by yogis whom he didn"t know (he lived in a hut in the Himalayas, all alone). One yogi came to see him; he didn"t say anything, he just sat by his side and then left. And that yogi simply told him, "Om …” Then he came back to France, recounted his experiences in India, and he said that. Me, I knew absolutely nothing of India at the time, and when he uttered the word OM … (Mother brings her arms down), it came: a Force like this, my whole, entire body, everything vibrated in an extraordinary way! It was like a revelation—everything, but everything started vibrating. Then I said, "At last, here"s the true sound!” Yet I knew nothing, absolutely nothing, neither what it meant nor anything.
oligarchies ::: governments by the few, especially by small factions of persons or families; those making up such governments.
ominous ::: 1. Of or being an omen, especially an evil one. 2. Foreboding evil.
OM ::: Sri Aurobindo: "OM is the one universal formulation of the energy of sound and speech, that which contains and sums up, synthesises and releases all the spiritual power and all the potentiality of Vak and Shabda and of which the other sounds, out of whose stuff words of speech are woven, are supposed to be the developed evolutions.” *Essays on the Gita
"One can speak of the chakras only in reference to yoga. In ordinary people the chakras are not open, it is only when they do sadhana that the chakras open. For the chakras are the centres of the inner consciousness and belong originally to the subtle body. So much as is active in ordinary people is very little — for in them it is the outer consciousness that is active.” Letters on Yoga
opposite ::: adj. **1. Contrary or radically different in some respect common to both, as in nature, qualities, direction, result, or significance; opposed. 2. Situated, placed, or lying face to face with something else or each other, or in corresponding positions with relation to an intervening line, space, or thing. n. 2. One that is opposite or contrary to another. opposites, Opposites.**
ordered ::: 1. Neatly or conveniently arranged; well-organized. 2. Done according to specific principles or procedures; conducted according to certain precepts or rules. ordering.
ore ::: a mineral or an aggregate of minerals from which a valuable constituent, especially a metal, can be profitably mined or extracted.
outburst ::: a sudden and violent expression of emotion; a sudden spell of activity, energy, etc. outbursts.
outline ::: n. 1. A line marking the outer contours or boundaries of an object or figure. 2. A style of drawing in which objects are delineated in contours without shading. 3. A general description covering the main points of a subject outlines, world-outline. v. 4. To give the main features or various aspects of; summarize. Also fig. outlined.
outlook ::: 1. A mental attitude or view; point of view. 2. The view or prospect from a particular place.
outstretched ::: 1. Fully extended especially in length. 2. Extended in area or compass. outstretching.
overmind ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The overmind is a sort of delegation from the supermind (this is a metaphor only) which supports the present evolutionary universe in which we live here in Matter. If supermind were to start here from the beginning as the direct creative Power, a world of the kind we see now would be impossible; it would have been full of the divine Light from the beginning, there would be no involution in the inconscience of Matter, consequently no gradual striving evolution of consciousness in Matter. A line is therefore drawn between the higher half of the universe of consciousness, parardha , and the lower half, aparardha. The higher half is constituted of Sat, Chit, Ananda, Mahas (the supramental) — the lower half of mind, life, Matter. This line is the intermediary overmind which, though luminous itself, keeps from us the full indivisible supramental Light, depends on it indeed, but in receiving it, divides, distributes, breaks it up into separated aspects, powers, multiplicities of all kinds, each of which it is possible by a further diminution of consciousness, such as we reach in Mind, to regard as the sole or the chief Truth and all the rest as subordinate or contradictory to it.” *Letters on Yoga
"The overmind is the highest of the planes below the supramental.” *Letters on Yoga
"In its nature and law the Overmind is a delegate of the Supermind Consciousness, its delegate to the Ignorance. Or we might speak of it as a protective double, a screen of dissimilar similarity through which Supermind can act indirectly on an Ignorance whose darkness could not bear or receive the direct impact of a supreme Light.” The Life Divine
"The Overmind is a principle of cosmic Truth and a vast and endless catholicity is its very spirit; its energy is an all-dynamism as well as a principle of separate dynamisms: it is a sort of inferior Supermind, — although it is concerned predominantly not with absolutes, but with what might be called the dynamic potentials or pragmatic truths of Reality, or with absolutes mainly for their power of generating pragmatic or creative values, although, too, its comprehension of things is more global than integral, since its totality is built up of global wholes or constituted by separate independent realities uniting or coalescing together, and although the essential unity is grasped by it and felt to be basic of things and pervasive in their manifestation, but no longer as in the Supermind their intimate and ever-present secret, their dominating continent, the overt constant builder of the harmonic whole of their activity and nature.” The Life Divine
"The overmind sees calmly, steadily, in great masses and large extensions of space and time and relation, globally; it creates and acts in the same way — it is the world of the great Gods, the divine Creators.” *Letters on Yoga
"The Overmind is essentially a spiritual power. Mind in it surpasses its ordinary self and rises and takes its stand on a spiritual foundation. It embraces beauty and sublimates it; it has an essential aesthesis which is not limited by rules and canons, it sees a universal and an eternal beauty while it takes up and transforms all that is limited and particular. It is besides concerned with things other than beauty or aesthetics. It is concerned especially with truth and knowledge or rather with a wisdom that exceeds what we call knowledge; its truth goes beyond truth of fact and truth of thought, even the higher thought which is the first spiritual range of the thinker. It has the truth of spiritual thought, spiritual feeling, spiritual sense and at its highest the truth that comes by the most intimate spiritual touch or by identity. Ultimately, truth and beauty come together and coincide, but in between there is a difference. Overmind in all its dealings puts truth first; it brings out the essential truth (and truths) in things and also its infinite possibilities; it brings out even the truth that lies behind falsehood and error; it brings out the truth of the Inconscient and the truth of the Superconscient and all that lies in between. When it speaks through poetry, this remains its first essential quality; a limited aesthetical artistic aim is not its purpose.” *Letters on Savitri
"In the overmind the Truth of supermind which is whole and harmonious enters into a separation into parts, many truths fronting each other and moved each to fulfil itself, to make a world of its own or else to prevail or take its share in worlds made of a combination of various separated Truths and Truth-forces.” Letters on Yoga
*Overmind"s.
overthrow ::: to bring about the downfall or destruction of, especially by force or concerted action.
parallels ::: having comparable parts, analogous aspects, or readily recognized similarities.
passer-by ::: a person who passes by, especially casually or by chance. passers-by.
passion ::: n. 1. Suffering. 2. A powerful emotion, such as love, joy, hatred, or anger. 3. An abandoned display of emotion, especially of anger. 4. Strong sexual desire; lust. 5. Violent anger. 6. The sufferings of Jesus in the period following the Last Supper and including the Crucifixion, as related in the New Testament. passion"s, passions, world-passion. adj. **passioning. v. 7. To be affected by intense emotions such as love, joy, hatred, anger, etc. passions, passioned, passioning, passion-tranced. ::: **
patch ::: a small area of ground covered by specific vegetation.
pavement ::: a hard surface formed of stones, concrete, asphalt, etc. especially as a thoroughfare.
perspective
perceive ::: 1. To achieve understanding of; apprehend. 2. To become aware of directly through any of the senses, especially sight or hearing. perceives, perceived.
perish ::: 1. To die or be destroyed, especially in a violent or untimely manner. 2. To pass from existence; disappear gradually. perishes, perished.
plot ::: 1. The pattern of events or main story in a narrative or drama. 2. A secret plan to accomplish a purpose (often hostile or illegal); a scheme. 3. A small piece of ground, generally used for a specific purpose. plots.
poise ::: 1. A state of balance or equilibrium; stability. lit. and fig. 2. A dignified, self-confident manner or bearing; composure; self-possession. 3. A state or condition of hovering or being suspended; suspense or indecision. poised, self-poised, wide-poised.
portal ::: a doorway, entrance, or gate, especially one that is large and imposing.
post ::: 1. An assigned position or station, as of a guard or sentry. 2 . Fig. A place to which someone is assigned for duty. posts. 3. Specific positions taken at a military base. posts.
posting ::: travelling with great speed or rapidly.
powered ::: having or using or propelled by means of power or power of a specified kind.
powers ::: Sri Aurobindo: "These are the forces and beings that are interested in maintaining the falsehoods they have created in the world of the Ignorance and in putting them forward as the Truth which men must follow. In India they are termed Asuras, Rakshasas, Pishachas (beings respectively of the mentalised vital, middle vital and lower vital planes) who are in opposition to the Gods, the Powers of Light. These too are Powers, for they too have their cosmic field in which they exercise their function and authority and some of them were once divine Powers (the former gods, purve devah , as they are called somewhere in the Mahabharata) who have fallen towards the darkness by revolt against the divine Will behind the cosmos.” Letters on Yoga
precisian ::: one who is strict and precise in adherence to established rules, forms, or standards, especially with regard to religious observance or moral behaviour.
prepare ::: to make ready beforehand for a specific purpose, as for an event or occasion. prepares, prepared, preparing.
presence ::: 1. The state or fact of being present; current existence or occurrence. 2. A divine, spiritual, or supernatural spirit or influence felt or conceived as present. 3. The immediate proximity of someone or something.
Sri Aurobindo: "It is intended by the word Presence to indicate the sense and perception of the Divine as a Being, felt as present in one"s existence and consciousness or in relation with it, without the necessity of any further qualification or description. Thus, of the ‘ineffable Presence" it can only be said that it is there and nothing more can or need be said about it, although at the same time one knows that all is there, personality and impersonality, Power and Light and Ananda and everything else, and that all these flow from that indescribable Presence. The word may be used sometimes in a less absolute sense, but that is always the fundamental significance, — the essential perception of the essential Presence supporting everything else.” *Letters on Yoga
"Beyond mind on spiritual and supramental levels dwells the Presence, the Truth, the Power, the Bliss that can alone deliver us from these illusions, display the Light of which our ideals are tarnished disguises and impose the harmony that shall at once transfigure and reconcile all the parts of our nature.” Essays Divine and Human
"But if we learn to live within, we infallibly awaken to this presence within us which is our more real self, a presence profound, calm, joyous and puissant of which the world is not the master — a presence which, if it is not the Lord Himself, is the radiation of the Lord within.” *The Life Divine
"The true soul secret in us, — subliminal, we have said, but the word is misleading, for this presence is not situated below the threshold of waking mind, but rather burns in the temple of the inmost heart behind the thick screen of an ignorant mind, life and body, not subliminal but behind the veil, — this veiled psychic entity is the flame of the Godhead always alight within us, inextinguishable even by that dense unconsciousness of any spiritual self within which obscures our outward nature. It is a flame born out of the Divine and, luminous inhabitant of the Ignorance, grows in it till it is able to turn it towards the Knowledge. It is the concealed Witness and Control, the hidden Guide, the Daemon of Socrates, the inner light or inner voice of the mystic. It is that which endures and is imperishable in us from birth to birth, untouched by death, decay or corruption, an indestructible spark of the Divine.” *The Life Divine
"If we need any personal and inner witness to this indivisible All-Consciousness behind the ignorance, — all Nature is its external proof, — we can get it with any completeness only in our deeper inner being or larger and higher spiritual state when we draw back behind the veil of our own surface ignorance and come into contact with the divine Idea and Will behind it. Then we see clearly enough that what we have done by ourselves in our ignorance was yet overseen and guided in its result by the invisible Omniscience; we discover a greater working behind our ignorant working and begin to glimpse its purpose in us: then only can we see and know what now we worship in faith, recognise wholly the pure and universal Presence, meet the Lord of all being and all Nature.” *The Life Divine
"The presence of the Spirit is there in every living being, on every level, in all things, and because it is there, the experience of Sachchidananda, of the pure spiritual existence and consciousness, of the delight of a divine presence, closeness, contact can be acquired through the mind or the heart or the life-sense or even through the physical consciousness; if the inner doors are flung sufficiently open, the light from the sanctuary can suffuse the nearest and the farthest chambers of the outer being.” *The Life Divine
"There is a secret divine Will, eternal and infinite, omniscient and omnipotent, that expresses itself in the universality and in each particular of all these apparently temporal and finite inconscient or half-conscient things. This is the Power or Presence meant by the Gita when it speaks of the Lord within the heart of all existences who turns all creatures as if mounted on a machine by the illusion of Nature.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
"For what Yoga searches after is not truth of thought alone or truth of mind alone, but the dynamic truth of a living and revealing spiritual experience. There must awake in us a constant indwelling and enveloping nearness, a vivid perception, a close feeling and communion, a concrete sense and contact of a true and infinite Presence always and everywhere. That Presence must remain with us as the living, pervading Reality in which we and all things exist and move and act, and we must feel it always and everywhere, concrete, visible, inhabiting all things; it must be patent to us as their true Self, tangible as their imperishable Essence, met by us closely as their inmost Spirit. To see, to feel, to sense, to contact in every way and not merely to conceive this Self and Spirit here in all existences and to feel with the same vividness all existences in this Self and Spirit, is the fundamental experience which must englobe all other knowledge.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
"One must have faith in the Master of our life and works, even if for a long time He conceals Himself, and then in His own right time He will reveal His Presence.” *Letters on Yoga
"They [the psychic being and the Divine Presence in the heart] are quite different things. The psychic being is one"s own individual soul-being. It is not the Divine, though it has come from the Divine and develops towards the Divine.” *Letters on Yoga
"For it is quietness and inwardness that enable one to feel the Presence.” *Letters on Yoga
"Beyond mind on spiritual and supramental levels dwells the Presence, the Truth, the Power, the Bliss that can alone deliver us from these illusions, display the Light of which our ideals are tarnished disguises and impose the harmony that shall at once transfigure and reconcile all the parts of our nature.” *Essays Divine and Human
The Mother: "For, in human beings, here is a presence, the most marvellous Presence on earth, and except in a few very rare cases which I need not mention here, this presence lies asleep in the heart — not in the physical heart but the psychic centre — of all beings. And when this Splendour is manifested with enough purity, it will awaken in all beings the echo of his Presence.” Words of the Mother, MCW, Vol. 15.
pride ::: 1. An excessively high opinion of oneself; conceit. 2. A sense of one"s own proper dignity or value; self-respect. 3. Display, pomp, or splendour. 4. A feeling of pleasure or satisfaction taken in an achievement, possession, or association. 5. Mettle or spirit in horses.
priestess ::: a woman who presides over religious rites, especially in pagan religions. Also fig. and transf.
princess ::: a woman member of a royal family other than the monarch, especially a daughter of a monarch.
prism ::: a transparent solid body, often having triangular bases, used for dispersing light into a spectrum or for reflecting rays of light. Also fig.
privilege ::: 1. A special advantage or immunity or benefit not enjoyed by all. 2. The advantages and immunities enjoyed by a small usually powerful group or class, esp. to the disadvantage of others.
prospect ::: outlook or view.
prophet ::: 1. A person who speaks by divine inspiration or as the interpreter through whom the will of a god is expressed. 2. A person who predicts the future. prophet"s, prophets. (Sri Aurobindo often employs the word as an adjective.) prophet-passion, prophet-speech.
proud ::: 1. Having, proceeding from, or showing a high opinion, dignity, importance, or superiority. 2. Feeling or showing justifiable self-respect. 3. Feeling pleasurable satisfaction over an act, possession, quality, or relationship by which one measures one"s stature or self-worth. 4. Of lofty dignity or distinction. 5. Majestic; magnificent. 6. In a bad sense: filled with or showing excessive self-esteem. 7. Highly honourable or creditable.
rape ::: the crime of forcing another person to submit to sex acts, especially sexual intercourse.
rapid ::: 1. Moving, acting, or occurring with great speed. 2. Characterized by speed; moving with or capable of moving with high speed. 3. Done or occurring in a brief period of time.
realm ::: 1. A kingdom. 2. The region, sphere, or domain within which anything occurs, prevails, or dominates. 3. The special province or field of someone or something. **realms.
respect ::: to feel or show deferential regard for.
reconnaissance ::: an inspection or exploration of an area to gather information.
reconnoitred ::: inspected, examined, explored. reconnoitring.
record ::: n. **1. An account, as of information or facts, set down especially in writing as a means of preserving knowledge. 2. Information or knowledge preserved in writing or the like. records. v. 3. To set down or register in some permanent form. records, recorded.**
refrain ::: a phrase, verse, or group of verses repeated at intervals throughout a song or poem, especially at the end of each stanza. Also fig.
regards as resulting from a specified cause; considers as caused by something or someone. attributing.
region ::: fig. A realm or sphere of activity or interest; a specified place. regions.
reign ::: n. 1. Dominating power or influence. 2. Exercise of sovereign power, as by a monarch. 3. Poet. Dominance or widespread influence in a specific sphere. v. 4. To exercise sovereign power. 5. To be predominant or prevalent. reigns, reigned.
resiled ::: Sri Aurobindo: "It is a perfectly good English word, meaning originally to leap back, rebound (like an elastic) — so to draw back from, recoil, retreat (in military language it means to fall back from a position gained or to one"s original position): but it is specially used for withdrawing from a contract, agreement, previous statement.” Letters on Savitri.
response ::: 1. A reply or an answer. 2. Fig. A reaction, as that of an organism or a mechanism, to a specific stimulus. responses.
rest ::: 1. That or those remaining. 2. The part that is left or remains; remainder; residue. 3. With complement. To continue to be, remain, or be left in a specified condition.
retarding ::: delaying or slowing down (the progress, speed, or development) of (something); hindering.
revel ::: n. 1. Boisterous festivity. 2. A spectacular dance performed in processions and pageants. revels. v. 3. To take great pleasure or delight. 4. To indulge in boisterous festivities; to take part in noisy festivities; make merry. revels, revelled. adj. revelling.
revere ::: to regard with respect tinged with awe; venerate. revered.
reviewing ::: considering retrospectively; looking back on.
revolt ::: 1. An expression or movement of spirited protest or dissent. 2. An uprising, especially against state authority; a rebellion. revolts.
rhapsodist ::: one who recited epic and other poetry, especially professionally, in ancient Greece. (Sri Aurobindo employs the word as an adj.)
rocked ::: 1. Moved back and forth or from side to side, especially gently or rhythmically, as a cradle. Also fig. 2. Swayed violently, as from a blow, shock or other impact. 3. Effected deeply; stunned; moved or swayed powerfully, as with emotion. rocks.
routed ::: dispersed in defeat.
sacred ::: 1. Devoted or dedicated to a deity or to some religious purpose; consecrated. 2. Reverently dedicated to some person, purpose, or object; consecrated, hallowed. 3. Secured against violation, infringement, etc., as by reverence or sense of right; sacrosanct. 4. Entitled to veneration or religious respect by association with divinity or divine things; holy; venerable; divine.
sanctuary ::: 1. An especially sacred or holy place. 2. Any place of refuge; asylum.
savour ::: 1. A specific taste or smell. v. **2. To derive or receive pleasure from; get enjoyment from; take pleasure in. savoured**
scale ::: n. 1. A progressive or graduated series or classification. 2. An ascending or descending collection of pitches proceeding by a specified scheme of intervals. 3. A standard of measurement or judgment; a criterion. 4. Relative or proportionate size or extent; degree, proportion. slow-scaled. *v. 5. To climb; ascend; move upward; mount. *scales.
scan ::: 1. To examine (especially look at with the eyes) the particulars or points of minutely; scrutinize. 2. To peer out at or observe repeatedly or sweepingly, as a large expanse; survey. scans, scanned, scanning.
scattered ::: adj. 1. Refracted and dispersed in all directions, as of light. 2. Lacking orderly continuity. 3. Distributed or occurring at widely spaced and usually irregular intervals.
scatter ::: n. 1. The act of scattering or causing to separate and go in different directions. v. 2. To throw loosely about; distribute at irregular intervals. 3. To separate and go in different directions; disperse. scatters, scattered, scattering.
scene ::: 1. The place where an action or event occurs. 2. A view or picture presented to the eye (or to the mind) of a place, concourse, incident, series of actions or events, assemblage of objects, etc. 3. The place in which the action of a play, movie, or other narrative occurs; a setting. 4. A subdivision of an act of a play marked by the entrance or departure of one or more actors. 5. An action, episode, complication of events, or situation, in real life. 6. Fig. A view or prospect of something to come. scenes, scene-shifters, earth-scene, earth-scene"s, life-scene, soul-scene, world-scene.
scheme ::: 1. A plan, design, or program of action to be followed. 2. A systematic plan of action to achieve a specific end. 3. A diagram, map, or the like. schemes, schemed, scheme-lines, world-scheme.
screen ::: n. 1. A moveable or fixed device, usually consisting of a covered frame, that provides shelter, serves as a partition, etc. 2. Something interposed as a partition so as to conceal from view. 3. A window or door insertion or framed wire or plastic mesh used to keep out insects and permit air flow. 4. A specially prepared, light reflecting, flat vertical surface for the reception of images as from a slide or motion picture projector. screens. v. 5. To conceal from view with or as if with a screen. screens, screened.
scroll ::: a roll, as of parchment or papyrus, used especially for writing a document.
sculptor ::: 1. One who shapes, molds, or fashions especially with artistry or precision. 2. An artist who carves or models in stone, clay, wood, etc.
seasons ::: one of the four natural divisions of the year, spring, summer, fall and winter, in the North and South Temperate zones. Each season, beginning astronomically at an equinox or solstice, is characterized by specific meteorological or climatic conditions.
seated ::: 1. Located or established in a specified place. 2. Fixed or established firmly in a specified place, position or situation. 3. Installed in a position of office or authority.
seat ::: n. 1. Something such as a chair or bench, that may be sat on. 2. A chair for the king, bishop, etc., the throne of God or the angels; specifically as a center of authority. 3. A place in which something belongs, occurs, or is established; site; location. 4. A place in which administrative power or the like is centred. 5. A sitting body, court of justice. 6. The office or authority of a ruler or power such as a king, etc. seats, earth-seat. *v. 7. To set firmly in place or cause to sit down. 8. To establish (a person or thing) in a position of authority or dignity. *seats.
secretion ::: 1. A functionally specialized substance (especially one that is not waste) released from a gland or cell. 2. The product of this act or process, such as saliva, mucus, tears, bile, or a hormone that is secreted. secretion"s.
sects ::: groups, parties, or factions united by a specific doctrine or under doctrinal leaders.
seem ::: 1. To have an aspect of truth and probability. 2. To give the impression of being; to appear to be, to be apparently. 3. To appear to be, feel or do something. 4. To appear to one"s own senses, mind, observation, judgement, etc. seems, seemed.
self-diffusing ::: diffusing. Pouring or sending forth as from a centre of dispersion; spreading abroad over a surface, or through a space or region; spreading widely, shedding abroad, dispersing, disseminating.
self-revealing ::: displaying, exhibiting, or disclosing one"s inner feelings, thoughts, etc.; esp. the inner nature, qualities aspects, etc. of the self.
sense ::: n. 1. Any of the faculties, as sight, hearing, smell, taste, or touch, by which humans and animals perceive stimuli originating from outside or inside the body. 2. Meaning, signification. 3. A more or less vague perception or impression. 4. Any special capacity or perception, estimation, appreciation, etc. 5. A mental or spiritual discernment, realization, or recognition of a dream, or of anything cryptic or symbolical. sense"s, senses, senses", sense-appeal, sense-formed, sense-life"s, sense-pangs, sense-pleasures, sense-railed, sense-shackled, soul-sense. v. 6. To apprehend, detect, or perceive, without or in advance of the evidence of the senses; to perceive instinctively. 7. To be inwardly aware; conscious of. sensed, sensing. *adj. *sensed.
separate ::: v. 1. To set apart. 2. To put, bring or force apart, (two or more persons or things, or one from another); to disunite, disconnect, make a division between, part. 3. To sort, part or divide something previously combined or mixed. 4. To part or be parted from; depart or draw apart from; become divided; disunited. separates, separated. adj. 5. Detached, disconnected, or disjoined. 6. Withdrawn or divided from something else so as to have an independent existence by itself. 7. Being or standing apart; distant or dispersed. 8. Considered or reckoned by itself (although mentioned as one of several); single, individual. 9. Belonging or peculiar to one, not common to or shared with the other or the others. separateness.
serried ::: pressed or crowded together, especially in rows, as troops in serried ranks.
shade ::: 1. The comparative darkness caused by the interception or screening of rays of light from an object, place, or area. 2. A place or an area of comparative darkness, as one sheltered from the sun. 3. A shadow. 4. A spectre; a shadow. 5. Something that provides a shield or protection from a direct source of light. 6. A colour that varies slightly from a standard colour due to a difference in hue, saturation, or luminosity. 7. Fig. Something resembling a ghost or a disembodied spirit; something insubstantial or fleeting. 8. shades. Darkness gathering at the close of day. Shade, shades.
shadowy ::: 1. Abounding in shadow; shady. 2. Full or dark with shadows; enveloped in shadow; obscured by shadows. 3. Unsubstantial, illusory; transitory, fleeting; unreal, imaginary. 4. Resembling a shadow in faintness; slightness; faintly perceptible, indistinct, vague. 5. Spectral, ghostly. Shadowy.
sheath ::: 1. A covering or case; an inclosing pocket, bag, or envelope, specifically one fitting closely. 2. Biol. A closely enveloping part or structure, as in an animal or plant. **sheaths.
shiva ::: "The ‘auspicious one"; a name of the third deity of the Hindu Trinity; . . . represented mostly as ‘the pure and white, the ascetic, the still, contemplative Yogin". The name Shiva is not found in the Vedas; however, the name Rudra occurs both in the singular and the plural. This Rudra of the Vedas developed in the course of time into Shiva, considered in the Puranic tradition mainly as the destroying or dissolving Power. He has a third eye in the middle of the forehead, a fiery glance from which once reduced Kamadeva to ashes. In his creative aspect he is represented as a Linga (phallus), symbolising the male procreative energy in nature. It is under the form of the Linga that Shiva is mostly worshipped. His abode is on Mt. Kailash, Parvati is his spouse and the Trisula (the trident) his weapon.” *Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works
signature ::: 1. The name of a person or a mark or sign representing his name, marked by himself or by an authorized deputy. 2. The act of signing one"s name. 3. Any unique, distinguishing aspect, feature, or mark of any kind. signatures.
silver ::: 1. The metal characterized in a pure state by its lustrous white colour and regarded as a valuable possession or medium of exchange; hence, silver coin; also money in general. 2. Having a soft, clear, resonant, melodious sound. 3. Resembling silver, especially in having a lustrous shine; silvery. Chiefly poet. **silver-grey, silver-winged, moon-silver.**
sink ::: n. 1. A cesspool; a covered cistern into which waste water and sewage flow. Also fig. 2. An area of ground that slopes below the level of the surrounding land. v. 3. To descend to the bottom; submerge. 4. To fall, drop, or descend gradually to a lower level. 5. To decline or cause to decline in moral value, pass into a lower state or condition. etc. 6. To fall or drop to a lower level, especially to go down slowly or in stages; subside, as land. 7. To diminish or appear to move downward, as the sun or moon in setting. 8. To become lower in volume or pitch; gradually become fainter. sunk.
sin ::: n. 1. A transgression of a religious or moral law, especially when deliberate. 2. Any reprehensible action, behaviour, etc.; serious fault or offence. Sin, sins. *v. *3. To commit a sinful act.
sire ::: the male parent of an animal, especially a domesticated mammal such as a horse.
skill ::: 1. Proficiency, facility, special ability or dexterity that is acquired or developed through training or experience. 2. Competent excellence in performance; proficiency; dexterity.
skilled ::: possessing or demonstrating accomplishment, skill, or special training or experience.
slave ::: 1. One bound in servitude as the property of a person or household, 2. One who is abjectly subservient to a specified person or influence. 3. Fig. One who is under the domination of some habit or influence. slaves, body-slave, slave-girl.
slumber ::: 1. Sleep. often poet. **2. A natural and periodic state of rest during which consciousness of the world is suspended. 3. Fig. A dormant or quiescent state. slumber"s. v. 4. To pass time in sleep or drowse. 5. To be in a state of inactivity, negligence, or dormancy. slumbers, slumbered.* (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as an adj.*)
smith ::: someone who works metal (especially by hammering it when it is hot and malleable). king-smith.
snatches ::: 1. Brief spells of effort, activity or experience. 2. Short passages, a few words, of a song, etc.; small portions, a few bars, of a melody or tune.
sod ::: the ground, especially when covered with grass. Freq. poet.
soft ::: 1. Mild and pleasant; in a relaxed manner. 2. Smooth and agreeable to the touch; not rough or coarse. 3. Not hard or sharp. 4. Mild and pleasant weather. 5. Not loud, harsh, or irritating to the ear; melodious. 6. Of a gentle disposition; tender. 7. Not burdensome or demanding; borne or done easily and without hardship. 8. Of words, speech, etc.: Smooth, soothing; expressive of what is tender or peaceful. (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as an adv.: Gently, carefully, tenderly; in such a manner as to avoid causing pain or injury; without force or violence; with gentle action.) soft-winged.
solemn ::: 1. Performed, executed, or associated with religious ceremony. 2. Characterized by dignified or serious formality, as proceedings; of a formal or ceremonious character. 3. Grave or sober, as a person, the face, speech, tone, or mood. 4. Gravely or sombrely impressive; causing serious thoughts or a grave mood.
solicitor ::: one who entreats, earnestly or respectfully requests, or petitions; one who solicits or begs favours; a pleader, intercessor, advocate.
"Soma is the Gandharva, the Lord of the hosts of delight, and guards the true seat of the Deva, the level or plane of the Ananda; gandharva itthâ padam asya rakshati. He is the Supreme, standing out from all other beings and over them, other than they and wonderful, adbhuta, and as the supreme and transcendent, present in the worlds but exceeding them, he protects in those worlds the births of the gods, pâti devânâm janimâni adbhutah. The ‘births of the gods" is a common phrase in the Veda by which is meant the manifestation of the divine principles in the cosmos and especially the formation of the godhead in its manifold forms in the human being.” The Secret of the Veda
somewhere ::: at, in, or to a place not specified or known.
sophist ::: one who reasons or argues adroitly and speciously rather than soundly.
soul ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The word ‘soul", as also the word ‘psychic", is used very vaguely and in many different senses in the English language. More often than not, in ordinary parlance, no clear distinction is made between mind and soul and often there is an even more serious confusion, for the vital being of desire — the false soul or desire-soul — is intended by the words ‘soul" and ‘psychic" and not the true soul, the psychic being.” *Letters on Yoga
"The word soul is very vaguely used in English — as it often refers to the whole non-physical consciousness including even the vital with all its desires and passions. That was why the word psychic being has to be used so as to distinguish this divine portion from the instrumental parts of the nature.” *Letters on Yoga
"The word soul has various meanings according to the context; it may mean the Purusha supporting the formation of Prakriti, which we call a being, though the proper word would be rather a becoming; it may mean, on the other hand, specifically the psychic being in an evolutionary creature like man; it may mean the spark of the Divine which has been put into Matter by the descent of the Divine into the material world and which upholds all evolving formations here.” *Letters on Yoga
"A distinction has to be made between the soul in its essence and the psychic being. Behind each and all there is the soul which is the spark of the Divine — none could exist without that. But it is quite possible to have a vital and physical being supported by such a soul essence but without a clearly evolved psychic being behind it.” *Letters on Yoga
"The soul and the psychic being are practically the same, except that even in things which have not developed a psychic being, there is still a spark of the Divine which can be called the soul. The psychic being is called in Sanskrit the Purusha in the heart or the Chaitya Purusha. (The psychic being is the soul developing in the evolution.)” *Letters on Yoga
"The soul or spark is there before the development of an organised vital and mind. The soul is something of the Divine that descends into the evolution as a divine Principle within it to support the evolution of the individual out of the Ignorance into the Light. It develops in the course of the evolution a psychic individual or soul individuality which grows from life to life, using the evolving mind, vital and body as its instruments. It is the soul that is immortal while the rest disintegrates; it passes from life to life carrying its experience in essence and the continuity of the evolution of the individual.” *Letters on Yoga
". . . for the soul is seated within and impervious to the shocks of external events. . . .” *Essays on the Gita
". . . the soul is at first but a spark and then a little flame of godhead burning in the midst of a great darkness; for the most part it is veiled in its inner sanctum and to reveal itself it has to call on the mind, the life-force and the physical consciousness and persuade them, as best they can, to express it; ordinarily, it succeeds at most in suffusing their outwardness with its inner light and modifying with its purifying fineness their dark obscurities or their coarser mixture. Even when there is a formed psychic being able to express itself with some directness in life, it is still in all but a few a smaller portion of the being — ‘no bigger in the mass of the body than the thumb of a man" was the image used by the ancient seers — and it is not always able to prevail against the obscurity or ignorant smallness of the physical consciousness, the mistaken surenesses of the mind or the arrogance and vehemence of the vital nature.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
". . . the soul is an eternal portion of the Supreme and not a fraction of Nature.” The Life Divine
"The true soul secret in us, — subliminal, we have said, but the word is misleading, for this presence is not situated below the threshold of waking mind, but rather burns in the temple of the inmost heart behind the thick screen of an ignorant mind, life and body, not subliminal but behind the veil, — this veiled psychic entity is the flame of the Godhead always alight within us, inextinguishable even by that dense unconsciousness of any spiritual self within which obscures our outward nature. It is a flame born out of the Divine and, luminous inhabitant of the Ignorance, grows in it till it is able to turn it towards the Knowledge. It is the concealed Witness and Control, the hidden Guide, the Daemon of Socrates, the inner light or inner voice of the mystic. It is that which endures and is imperishable in us from birth to birth, untouched by death, decay or corruption, an indestructible spark of the Divine.” The Life Divine
*Soul, soul"s, Soul"s, souls, soulless, soul-bridals, soul-change, soul-force, Soul-Forces, soul-ground, soul-joy, soul-nature, soul-range, soul-ray, soul-scapes, soul-scene, soul-sense, soul-severance, soul-sight, soul-slaying, soul-space,, soul-spaces, soul-strength, soul-stuff, soul-truth, soul-vision, soul-wings, world-soul, World-Soul.
sound ::: n. 1. The sensation stimulated in the organs of hearing by such vibrations in air or other medium. 2. A particular instance, quality, or type of sound. 3. Any auditory effect; any audible vibrational disturbance. 4. The auditory effect produced by a specific articulation or set of related articulations (as a letter or word). sounds, sound-vexed, seed-sounds, thought-sounds. *v. 5. sounds, soundst. Gives forth a sound as a call or summons. *6. sounded. Resonated with a certain quality or intensity.
Space. Sri Aurobindo: "It is possible in pure mentality to disregard the movement of event and the disposition of substance and realise the pure movement of Conscious-Force which constitutes Space and Time; these two are then merely two aspects of the universal force of Consciousness which in their intertwined interaction comprehend the warp and woof of its action upon itself. And to a consciousness higher than Mind which should regard our past, present and future in one view, containing and not contained in them, not situated at a particular moment of Time for its point of prospection, Time might well offer itself as an eternal present. And to the same consciousness not situated at any particular point of Space, but containing all points and regions in itself, Space also might well offer itself as a subjective and indivisible extension, — no less subjective than Time.” The Life Divine
spasms ::: sudden brief spells of great energy, activity, feeling, etc.; flashes, spurts.
"Spirituality respects the freedom of the human soul, because it is itself fulfilled by freedom; and the deepest meaning of freedom is the power to expand and grow towards perfection by the law of one"s own nature, dharma.” The Human Cycle
Sri Aurobindo: "Beauty is the special divine Manifestation in the physical as Truth is in the Mind, Love in the heart, Power in the vital.” *The Future Poetry
Sri Aurobindo: "But when I speak of the Divine Will, I mean something different, — something that has descended here into an evolutionary world of Ignorance, standing at the back of things, pressing on the Darkness with its Light, leading things presently towards the best possible in the conditions of a world of Ignorance and leading it eventually towards a descent of a greater power of the Divine, which will be not an omnipotence held back and conditioned by the law of the world as it is, but in full action and therefore bringing the reign of light, peace, harmony, joy, love, beauty and Ananda, for these are the Divine Nature.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Concentration is a gathering together of the consciousness and either centralising at one point or turning on a single object, e.g., the Divine; there can also be a gathered condition throughout the whole being, not at a point. In meditation it is not indispensable to gather like this, one can simply remain with a quiet mind thinking of one subject or observing what comes in the consciousness and dealing with it.” *Letters on Yoga
::: Sri Aurobindo: ". . . Durga, the conquering and protecting aspect of the Universal Mother.” *Letters on Yoga
*Sri Aurobindo: "In other words, ethics is a stage in evolution. That which is common to all stages is the urge of Sachchidananda towards self-expression. This urge is at first non-ethical, then infra-ethical in the animal, then in the intelligent animal even anti-ethical for it permits us to approve hurt done to others which we disapprove when done to ourselves. In this respect man even now is only half-ethical. And just as all below us is infra-ethical, so there may be that above us whither we shall eventually arrive, which is supra-ethical, has no need of ethics. The ethical impulse and attitude, so all-important to humanity, is a means by which it struggles out of the lower harmony and universality based upon inconscience and broken up by Life into individual discords towards a higher harmony and universality based upon conscient oneness with all existences. Arriving at that goal, this means will no longer be necessary or even possible, since the qualities and oppositions on which it depends will naturally dissolve and disappear in the final reconciliation.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "It could be affirmed as a consequence that there is one all-pervading Life or dynamic energy — the material aspect being only its outermost movement — that creates all these forms of the physical universe, Life imperishable and eternal which, even if the whole figure of the universe were quite abolished, would itself still go on existing and be capable of producing a new universe in its place, must indeed, unless it be held back in a state of rest by some higher Power or hold itself back, inevitably go on creating. In that case Life is nothing else than the Force that builds and maintains and destroys forms in the world; it is Life that manifests itself in the form of the earth as much as in the plant that grows upon the earth and the animals that support their existence by devouring the life-force of the plant or of each other. All existence here is a universal Life that takes form of Matter. It might for that purpose hide life-process in physical process before it emerges as submental sensitivity and mentalised vitality, but still it would be throughout the same creative Life-principle.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "It is an achievement to have got rid so rapidly and decisively of the shimmering mists and fogs which modern intellectualism takes for Light of Truth. The modern mind has so long and persistently wandered – and we with it – in the Valley of the False Glimmer that it is not easy for anyone to disperse its mists with the sunlight of clear vision.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "The Being is one, but this oneness is infinite and contains in itself an infinite plurality or multiplicity of itself: the One is the All; it is not only an essential Existence, but an All-Existence. The infinite multiplicity of the One and the eternal unity of the Many are the two realities or aspects of one reality on which the manifestation is founded.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "The reason itself is only a special kind of application, made by a surface regulating intelligence, of suggestions which actually come from a concealed, but sometimes partially overt and active power of the intuitive spirit.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"The Absolute is in itself indefinable by reason, ineffable to the speech; it has to be approached through experience.” The Life Divine*
"The Absolute neither creates nor is created, — in the current sense of making or being made; we can speak of creation only in the sense of the Being becoming in form and movement what it already is in substance and status.” *The Life Divine
"The ascent to the divine Life is the human journey, the Work of works, the acceptable Sacrifice. This alone is man"s real business in the world and the justification of his existence, without which he would be only an insect crawling among other ephemeral insects on a speck of surface mud and water which has managed to form itself amid the appalling immensities of the physical universe.” The Life Divine
"the basic syllable OM, which is the foundation of all the perfect creative sounds of the revealed word; OM is the one universal formulation of the energy of sound and speech, that which contains and sums up, synthesises and releases, all the spiritual power and all the potentiality of Vak (speech, the goddess Speech) and Shabda (sound, vibration, word). The mantra of the divine consciousness brings its light of revelation, the Mantra of the divine Power, its will of effectuation, the Mantra of the divine Ananda is equal fulfilment of the spiritual delight of existence. All word and thought are an outflowing of he great OM, - OM, the Word, the Eternal Manifest in the forms of sensible objects; manifest in that conscious play of creative self-conception of which forms and objects are the figures, manifest behind in the self-gathered superconscient power of the Infinite, OM is the sovereign source, seed, womb of thing and idea, form and name – it is itself, integrally, the supreme Intangible, the original Unity, the timeless Mystery self- existent above all manifestation in supernal being.” SABCL Volume 13 – Page 315*
"The colours of the lotuses and the numbers of petals are respectively, from bottom to top: — (1) the Muladhara or physical consciousness centre, four petals, red; (2) the abdominal centre, six petals, deep purple red; (3) the navel centre, ten petals, violet; (4) the heart centre, twelve petals, golden pink; (5) the throat centre, sixteen petals, grey; (6) the forehead centre between the eye-brows, two petals, white; (7) the thousand-petalled lotus above the head, blue with gold light around. The functions are, according to our yoga, — (1) commanding the physical consciousness and the subconscient; (2) commanding the small vital movements, the little greeds, lusts, desires, the small sense-movements; (3) commanding the larger life-forces and the passions and larger desire-movements; (4) commanding the higher emotional being with the psychic deep behind it; (5) commanding expression and all externalisation of the mind movements and mental forces; (6) commanding thought, will, vision; (7) commanding the higher thinking mind and the illumined mind and opening upwards to the intuition and overmind. The seventh is sometimes or by some identified with the brain, but that is an error — the brain is only a channel of communication situated between the thousand-petalled and the forehead centre. The former is sometimes called the void centre, sunya , either because it is not in the body, but in the apparent void above or because rising above the head one enters first into the silence of the self or spiritual being.” Letters on Yoga*
the cosmological theory holding that the universe is expanding, based on the interpretation of the color shift in the spectra of all the galaxies as being the result of the Doppler effect and indicating that all galaxies are moving away from one another.
"The Divine Force can act on any plane — it is not limited to the supramental Force. The supramental is only one aspect of the power of the Divine.” Letters on Yoga
"The divinisation of the nature of which we speak is a metamorphosis, not a mere growth into some kind of super-humanity, but a change from the falsehood of our ignorant nature into the truth of God-nature.” The Hour of God
"The elementary state of material Force is, in the view of the old Indian physicists, a condition of pure material extension in Space of which the peculiar property is vibration typified to us by the phenomenon of sound. But vibration in this state of ether is not sufficient to create forms. There must first be some obstruction in the flow of the Force ocean, some contraction and expansion, some interplay of vibrations, some impinging of force upon force so as to create a beginning of fixed relations and mutual effects. Material Force modifying its first ethereal status assumes a second, called in the old language the aerial, of which the special property is contact between force and force, contact that is the basis of all material relations. Still we have not as yet real forms but only varying forces. A sustaining principle is needed. This is provided by a third self-modification of the primitive Force of which the principle of light, electricity, fire and heat is for us the characteristic manifestation. Even then, we can have forms of force preserving their own character and peculiar action, but not stable forms of Matter. A fourth state characterised by diffusion and a first medium of permanent attractions and repulsions, termed picturesquely water or the liquid state, and a fifth of cohesion, termed earth or the solid state, complete the necessary elements.” The Life Divine*
::: "The first condition of inner progress is to recognise whatever is or has been a wrong movement in any part of the nature, — wrong idea, wrong feeling, wrong speech, wrong action, — and by wrong is meant what departs from the truth, from the higher consciousness and higher self, from the way of the Divine. Once recognised it is admitted, not glossed over or defended, — and it is offered to the Divine for the Light and Grace to descend and substitute for it the right movement of the true Consciousness.” *Letters on Yoga
"The general power of Delight is love and the special mould which the joy of love takes is the vision of beauty.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
"The Ideal is an eternal Reality which we have not yet realised in the conditions of our own being, not a non-existent which the Eternal and Divine has not yet grasped and only we imperfect beings have glimpsed and mean to create.” The Life Divine
The Ineffable: *Sri Aurobindo: "It is this essential indeterminability of the Absolute that translates itself into our consciousness through the fundamental negating positives of our spiritual experience, the immobile immutable Self, the Nirguna Brahman, the Eternal without qualities, the pure featureless One Existence, the Impersonal, the Silence void of activities, the Non-being, the Ineffable and the Unknowable. On the other side it is the essence and source of all determinations, and this dynamic essentiality manifests to us through the fundamental affirming positives in which the Absolute equally meets us; for it is the Self that becomes all things, the Saguna Brahman, the Eternal with infinite qualities, the One who is the Many, the infinite Person who is the source and foundation of all persons and personalities, the Lord of creation, the Word, the Master of all works and action; it is that which being known all is known: these affirmatives correspond to those negatives. For it is not possible in a supramental cognition to split asunder the two sides of the One Existence, — even to speak of them as sides is excessive, for they are in each other, their co-existence or one-existence is eternal and their powers sustaining each other found the self-manifestation of the Infinite.” The Life Divine
"The intuitive knowledge on the contrary, however limited it may be in its field or application, is within that scope sure with an immediate, a durable and especially a self-existent certitude.” The Synthesis of Yoga
the linguistic usage that is grammatical and natural to native speakers of a language.
::: "The Lord of Beings is that which is conscious in the conscious being, but he is also the Conscious in inconscient things, the One who is master and in control of the many that are passive in the hands of Force-Nature. He is the Timeless and Time; he is Space and all that is in Space; he is Causality and the cause and the effect: He is the thinker and his thought, the warrior and his courage, the gambler and his dice-throw. All realities and all aspects and all semblances are the Brahman; Brahman is the Absolute, the transcendent and incommunicable, the Supracosmic Existence that sustains the cosmos, the Cosmic Self that upholds all beings, but It is too the self of each individual: the soul or psychic entity is an eternal portion of the Ishwara; it is his supreme Nature or Consciousness-Force that has become the living being in a world of living beings. The Brahman alone is, and because of It all are, for all are the Brahman; this Reality is the reality of everything that we see in Self and Nature. Brahman, the Ishwara, is all this by his Yoga-Maya, by the power of his Consciousness-Force put out in self-manifestation: he is the Conscious Being, Soul, Spirit, Purusha, and it is by his Nature, the force of his conscious self-existence that he is all things; he is the Ishwara, the omniscient and omnipotent All-ruler, and it is by his Shakti, his conscious Power, that he manifests himself in Time and governs the universe.” The Life Divine*
"The message of the Gita is the gospel of the Divinity in man who by force of an increasing union unfolds himself out of the veil of the lower Nature, reveals to the human soul his cosmic spirit, reveals his absolute transcendences, reveals himself in man and in all beings. The potential outcome here of this union, this divine Yoga, man growing towards the Godhead, the Godhead manifest in the human soul and to the inner human vision, is our liberation from limited ego and our elevation to the higher nature of a divine humanity.” Essays on the Gita ::: *Divinity"s.
::: The Mother: "Of all the aspects of the Mother, Kali most powerfully expresses vibrant and active love, and despite her sometimes terrible aspect, she carries in herself the golden splendour of an all-powerful love.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15*.
"The mystic feels real and present, even ever present to his experience, intimate to his being, truths which to the ordinary reader are intellectual abstractions or metaphysical speculations.” Letters on Savitri
"The Non-Manifestation is not a Non-Existence. Non-Existence is a term created by the mind and has no absolute significance; there is no such thing as an absolute Nihil or Zero. It is agreed even by the philosophies of the Nihil, Tao or Zero (Sunya) that the Non-Existence of which they speak is a Nought in which all is and from which all comes. Tao, Nihil or Zero is not different from the Absolute or the Supreme Brahman of Vedanta; it is only another way of describing or naming it. The Supreme is an Existence beyond what we know of our existence and therefore only it can seem to our mind as a Zero, a Nihil, a Non-Existence.” Essays Divine and Human*
"The progress of Life involves the development and interlocking of an immense number of things that are in conflict with each other and seem often to be absolute oppositions and contraries. To find amid these oppositions some principle or standing-ground of unity, some workable lever of reconciliation which will make possible a larger and better development on a basis of harmony and not of conflict and struggle, must be increasingly the common aim of humanity in its active life-evolution, if it at all means to rise out of life"s more confused, painful and obscure movement, out of the compromises made by Nature with the ignorance of the Life-mind and the nescience of Matter. This can only be truly and satisfactorily done when the soul discovers itself in its highest and completest spiritual reality and effects a progressive upward transformation of its life-values into those of the spirit; for there they will all find their spiritual truth and in that truth their standing-ground of mutual recognition and reconciliation. The spiritual is the one truth of which all others are the veiled aspects, the brilliant disguises or the dark disfigurements, and in which they can find their own right form and true relation to each other.” *The Human Cycle, etc.
"There are different kinds of knowledge. One is inspiration, i.e. something that comes out of the knowledge planes like a flash and opens up the mind to the Truth in a moment. That is inspiration. It easily takes the form of words as when a poet writes or a speaker speaks, as people say, from inspiration.” Letters on Yoga
". . . the Self is a fundamental aspect of Brahman, but with a certain stress on its impersonality;. . . .” The Life Divine
"The serpent is the symbol of energy — especially of the Kundalini Shakti which is the divine Force coiled up in the lowest (physical) centre, Muladhara, and when it rises it goes up through the spine and joins the higher consciousness above.” Letters on Yoga
"The Word has its seed-sounds — suggesting the eternal syllable of the Veda, A U M, and the seed-sounds of the Tantriks — which carry in them the principles of things; it has its forms which stand behind the revelatory and inspired speech that comes to man"s supreme faculties, and these compel the forms of things in the universe; it has its rhythms, — for it is no disordered vibration, but moves out into great cosmic measures, — and according to the rhythm is the law, arrangement, harmony, processes of the world it builds. Life itself is a rhythm of God.” The Upanishads
"We speak of the evolution of Life in Matter, the evolution of Mind in Matter; but evolution is a word which merely states the phenomenon without explaining it. For there seems to be no reason why Life should evolve out of material elements or Mind out of living form, unless we accept the Vedantic solution that Life is already involved in Matter and Mind in Life because in essence Matter is a form of veiled Life, Life a form of veiled Consciousness.” The Life Divine
"We now begin to have reason for concluding that the Flame, which is only another aspect of Light, is the Vedic symbol for the Force of the divine consciousness, of the supramental Truth.” The Secret of the Veda
::: "What do you call meditation? Shutting the eyes and concentrating? It is only one method for calling down the true consciousness. To join with the true consciousness or feel its descent is the only thing important and if it comes without the orthodox method, as it always did with me, so much the better. Meditation is only a means or device, the true movement is when even walking, working or speaking one is still in sadhana.” *Letters on Yoga
"What we have called specifically the Mind of Light is indeed the last of a series of descending planes of consciousness in which the Supermind veils itself by a self-chosen limitation or modification of its self-manifesting activities, but its essential character remains the same: there is in it an action of light, of truth, of knowledge in which inconscience, ignorance and error claim no place.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga*
KEYS (10k)
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
3 William Shakespeare
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:Tu qui sedes in tenebris spe tua gaude: orta stella matutina, sol non tardabit. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
2:The first time you meet that someone special, you can count on them one day being dead and in the ground. ~ Chuck Palahniuk, #NFDB
3:A fost odata ca niciodata un incer care zacea pe moarte in ceata. Si un diavol s-a aplecat spe el si i-a zambit. ~ Laini Taylor, #NFDB
4:First, we are born in the same galaxy. Born of the same species. Our lifetimes overlap. The meetings between humans are so unlikely as to be miraculous. To laugh, to cry, and to fall in love. Everyone is made up of a collection of 1% chances. Thus, I am dazzled by the fact that there are so many miracles in this world. ~ Hikaru Nakamura, #NFDB
5:Wall Street that Enron was an aggressive user of structured finance devices such as special purpose entities (that’s the SPE in Hecker’s song), securitizations, and off-balance-sheet partnerships. “If there was a whiz-bang structure somebody had, the place to sell it was down there on Smith Street, because they were buying,” says one banker. Andy Fastow’s team, says another banker, were “black belts in structured finance.” “It started out as pure, clear, legitimate deals,” says a former senior Enron executive. “And each deal gets a little bit messier and messier. We started out just taking one hit of cocaine, and the next thing you know, we’re importing the stuff from Colombia. ~ Bethany McLean, #NFDB
6:In addi t ion, the pr a c - t i t ione r should compl e t e the pr e l imina ry pr a c t i c e s and achieve a thorough grounding in the founda t iona l pa ths of the sut r a s , whi ch includes the deve lopment of the a l t rui s t i c int ent ion to a t t a in enl ight enment (bodhicitta), the deve lopment of c a lm abiding- the s t abi l i s a t ion of a t t ent ion on an int e rna l obj e c t of medi t a t ion- and the deve lopment of pene t r a t ive ins ight - an ana lyt i c a l medi t a t ive s t a t e tha t dissects the na tur e of its obj e c t , its r e l a t ionships , cha r a c - teristics and func t ion. The deve lopment of c a lm abiding and pene t r a t ive ins ight a r c the me ans by whi ch the pr a c t i t ione r c an cul t iva t e his or he r unde r s t anding of empt ine s s , whi ch is an appr e c i a t ion of the tot a l abs enc e of inhe r ent exi s t enc e and selfident i ty wi th r e spe c t to all phenomena ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
7:Comment faire comprendre l’intérêt d’une connaissance toute spéculative à des gens pour qui l’intelligence n’est qu’un moyen d’agir sur la matière et de la plier à des fins pratiques, et pour qui la science, dans le sens restreint où ils l’entendent, vaut surtout dans la mesure où elle est susceptible d’aboutir à des applications industrielles ? Nous n’exagérons rien ; il n’y a qu’à regarder autour de soi pour se rendre compte que telle est bien la mentalité de l’immense majorité de nos contemporains ; et l’examen de la philosophie, à partir de Bacon et de Descartes, ne pourrait que confirmer encore ces constatations. Nous rappellerons seulement que Descartes a limité l’intelligence à la raison, qu’il a assigné pour unique rôle à ce qu’il croyait pouvoir appeler métaphysique de servir de fondement à la physique, et que cette physique elle-même était essentiellement destinée, dans sa pensée, à préparer la constitution des sciences appliquées, mécanique, médecine et morale, dernier terme du savoir humain tel qu’il le concevait ; les tendances qu’il affirmait ainsi ne sont-elles pas déjà celles-là mêmes qui caractérisent à première vue tout le développement du monde moderne ? Nier ou ignorer toute connaissance pure et supra-rationnelle, c’était ouvrir la voie qui devait mener logiquement, d’une part, au positivisme et à l’agnosticisme, qui prennent leur parti des plus étroites limitations de l’intelligence et de son objet, et, d’autre part, à toutes les théories sentimentalistes et volontaristes, qui s’efforcent de chercher dans l’infra-rationnel ce que la raison ne peut leur donner. ~ Ren Gu non, #NFDB
8:Northern Farmer: New Style
Dosn't thou 'ear my 'erse's legs, as they canters awaäy?
Proputty, proputty, proputty--that's what I 'ears 'em saäy.
Proputty, proputty, proputty--Sam, thou's an ass for thy paaïns:
Theer's moor sense i' one o' 'is legs, nor in all thy braaïns.
Woä--theer's a craw to pluck wi' tha, Sam; yon 's parson's 'ouse-Dosn't thou knaw that a man mun be eäther a man or a mouse?
Time to think on it then; for thou'll be twenty to weeäk.
Proputty, proputty--woä then, woä--let ma 'ear mysén
speäk.
Me an' thy muther, Sammy, 'as been a'talkin' o' thee;
Thou's beän talkin' to muther, an' she beän a tellin' it me.
Thou'll not marry for munny--thou's sweet upo' parson's lass-Noä--thou 'll marry for luvv--an' we boäth of us thinks tha an ass.
Seeä'd her todaäy goä by--Saäint's-daäy--they
was ringing the bells.
She's a beauty, thou thinks--an' soä is scoors o' gells,
Them as 'as munny an' all--wot's a beauty?--the flower as blaws.
But proputty, proputty sticks, an' proputty, proputty graws.
Do'ant be stunt; taäke time. I knaws what maäkes tha sa mad.
Warn't I craäzed fur the lasses mysén when I wur a lad?
But I knaw'd a Quaäker feller as often 'as towd ma this:
"Doänt thou marry for munny, but goä wheer munny is!"
An' I went wheer munny war; an' thy muther coom to 'and,
Wi' lots o' munny laaïd by, an' a nicetish bit o' land.
Maäybe she warn't a beauty--I niver giv it a thowt-But warn't she as good to cuddle an' kiss as a lass as 'ant nowt?
Parson's lass 'ant nowt, an' she weänt 'a nowt when 'e 's deäd,
Mun be a guvness, lad, or summut, and addle her breäd.
Why? for 'e 's nobbut a curate, an' weänt niver get hissén clear,
An' 'e maäde the bed as 'e ligs on afoor 'e coom'd to the shere.
An' thin 'e coom'd to the parish wi' lots o' Varsity debt,
Stook to his taäil thy did, an' 'e 'ant got shut on 'em yet.
An' 'e ligs on 'is back i' the grip, wi' noän to lend 'im a shuvv,
Woorse nor a far-welter'd yowe: fur, Sammy, 'e married for luvv.
401
Luvv? what's luvv? thou can luvv thy lass an' 'er munny too,
Maäkin' 'em goä togither, as they've good right to do.
Couldn I luvv thy muther by cause 'o 'er munny laaïd by?
Naäy--fur I luvv'd 'er a vast sight moor fur it: reäson why.
Ay, an' thy muther says thou wants to marry the lass,
Cooms of a gentleman burn: an' we boäth on us thinks tha an ass.
Woä then, proputty, wiltha?--an ass as near as mays nowt-Woä then, wiltha? dangtha!--the bees is as fell as owt.
Breäk me a bit o' the esh for his 'eäd, lad, out o' the fence!
Gentleman burn! what's gentleman burn? is it shillins an' pence?
Proputty, proputty's ivrything 'ere, an', Sammy, I'm blest
If it isn't the saäme oop yonder, fur them as 'as it 's the best.
Tis'n them as 'as munny as breaks into 'ouses an' steäls,
Them as 'as coats to their backs an' taäkes their regular meäls,
Noä, but it 's them as niver knaws wheer a meäl's to be 'ad.
Taäke my word for it Sammy, the poor in a loomp is bad.
Them or thir feythers, tha sees, mun 'a beän a laäzy lot,
Fur work mun 'a gone to the gittin' whiniver munny was got.
Feyther 'ad ammost nowt; leastways 'is munny was 'id.
But 'e tued an' moil'd issén dead, an' 'e died a good un, 'e did.
Looök thou theer wheer Wrigglesby beck cooms out by the 'ill!
Feyther run oop to the farm, an' I runs oop to the mill;
An' I 'll run oop to the brig, an' that thou 'll live to see;
And if thou marries a good un I 'll leäve the land to thee.
Thim's my noätions, Sammy, wheerby I means to stick;
But if thou marries a bad un, I 'll leäve the land to Dick.-Coom oop, proputty, proputty--that's what I 'ears 'im saäy-Proputty, proputty, proputty--canter an' canter awaäy.
~ Alfred Lord Tennyson,#NFDB
1911 Integral Yoga
945 Poetry
262 Occultism
254 Philosophy
182 Fiction
173 Christianity
118 Yoga
93 Mysticism
83 Psychology
41 Philsophy
36 Science
28 Hinduism
20 Mythology
17 Sufism
17 Education
16 Theosophy
16 Integral Theory
13 Kabbalah
8 Cybernetics
6 Buddhism
6 Baha i Faith
1 Thelema
1 Taoism
1 Alchemy
1203 The Mother
804 Satprem
699 Sri Aurobindo
348 Nolini Kanta Gupta
117 Aleister Crowley
115 William Wordsworth
115 H P Lovecraft
92 Walt Whitman
83 Percy Bysshe Shelley
83 Carl Jung
78 Friedrich Nietzsche
67 John Keats
63 James George Frazer
60 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
56 Sri Ramakrishna
56 Robert Browning
51 Plotinus
47 William Butler Yeats
46 Friedrich Schiller
41 Ralph Waldo Emerson
40 Rabindranath Tagore
34 Swami Krishnananda
34 Saint Augustine of Hippo
29 A B Purani
28 Jorge Luis Borges
27 Saint Teresa of Avila
27 Anonymous
26 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
25 Saint John of Climacus
25 Aldous Huxley
24 Swami Vivekananda
24 Franz Bardon
23 Rudolf Steiner
23 Lucretius
20 Vyasa
19 Edgar Allan Poe
17 Aristotle
14 Jalaluddin Rumi
13 Rabbi Moses Luzzatto
13 Ovid
12 Plato
12 Nirodbaran
11 Paul Richard
11 George Van Vrekhem
10 Kabir
9 Hafiz
8 Sri Ramana Maharshi
8 Norbert Wiener
7 Swami Sivananda Saraswati
7 Joseph Campbell
7 Henry David Thoreau
7 Basava
7 Baha u llah
6 Li Bai
6 Jordan Peterson
6 Farid ud-Din Attar
6 Al-Ghazali
5 Thubten Chodron
5 Rainer Maria Rilke
5 Peter J Carroll
5 Patanjali
5 Bokar Rinpoche
4 Ibn Arabi
4 Hakim Sanai
4 Alice Bailey
3 Thomas Merton
3 R Buckminster Fuller
3 Omar Khayyam
3 Lewis Carroll
3 Ken Wilber
3 Hsuan Chueh of Yung Chia
2 Yuan Mei
2 William Blake
2 Saint Therese of Lisieux
2 Saint Hildegard von Bingen
2 Saint Francis of Assisi
2 Mirabai
2 Mahendranath Gupta
2 Kahlil Gibran
2 Jorge Luis Borges
2 Jean Gebser
2 Italo Calvino
2 H. P. Lovecraft
2 Genpo Roshi
2 Baba Sheikh Farid
2 Allama Muhammad Iqbal
2 Alfred Tennyson
2 Abu-Said Abil-Kheir
139 Record of Yoga
115 Wordsworth - Poems
115 Lovecraft - Poems
94 The Synthesis Of Yoga
88 Agenda Vol 01
87 Whitman - Poems
83 Shelley - Poems
78 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
74 Agenda Vol 10
70 Agenda Vol 13
70 Agenda Vol 08
69 Agenda Vol 03
68 Thus Spoke Zarathustra
67 Magick Without Tears
67 Keats - Poems
64 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
63 The Golden Bough
59 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
59 Agenda Vol 09
57 Agenda Vol 04
56 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
56 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
56 Browning - Poems
55 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
55 Agenda Vol 11
54 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
54 Agenda Vol 02
53 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
48 Questions And Answers 1956
48 Agenda Vol 12
48 Agenda Vol 07
47 Yeats - Poems
47 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
46 The Life Divine
46 Schiller - Poems
44 Letters On Yoga IV
43 Savitri
43 Liber ABA
41 Emerson - Poems
41 Agenda Vol 06
40 Letters On Yoga II
39 Tagore - Poems
39 Agenda Vol 05
38 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
37 Questions And Answers 1953
34 The Study and Practice of Yoga
33 Questions And Answers 1955
33 Prayers And Meditations
33 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
32 The Divine Comedy
32 Mysterium Coniunctionis
31 Questions And Answers 1954
30 Collected Poems
29 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
27 The Bible
25 The Perennial Philosophy
25 The Ladder of Divine Ascent
24 Letters On Yoga I
23 Words Of Long Ago
23 The Practice of Psycho therapy
23 Of The Nature Of Things
23 Essays On The Gita
22 The Future of Man
22 Letters On Yoga III
22 Labyrinths
22 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08
22 City of God
20 Vishnu Purana
18 The Human Cycle
18 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
18 Poe - Poems
17 Questions And Answers 1929-1931
17 Poetics
17 On Education
16 The Way of Perfection
16 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 01
16 Faust
16 Essays Divine And Human
15 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
14 The Secret Of The Veda
14 The Phenomenon of Man
14 On the Way to Supermanhood
14 Let Me Explain
13 The Confessions of Saint Augustine
13 Some Answers From The Mother
13 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04
13 Metamorphoses
13 Letters On Poetry And Art
13 General Principles of Kabbalah
13 Aion
12 Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo
12 The Practice of Magical Evocation
12 Theosophy
12 Talks
12 Initiation Into Hermetics
11 Vedic and Philological Studies
11 Twilight of the Idols
11 Preparing for the Miraculous
11 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 03
11 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 02
11 Crowley - Poems
11 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 06
10 The Interior Castle or The Mansions
10 Rumi - Poems
10 Hymn of the Universe
10 Goethe - Poems
10 Dark Night of the Soul
10 Bhakti-Yoga
10 A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah
9 Words Of The Mother II
9 The Problems of Philosophy
9 The Mother With Letters On The Mother
9 Knowledge of the Higher Worlds
9 Isha Upanishad
9 5.1.01 - Ilion
8 The Blue Cliff Records
8 Raja-Yoga
8 Kena and Other Upanishads
8 Cybernetics
8 Anonymous - Poems
7 Words Of The Mother III
7 Walden
7 The Hero with a Thousand Faces
7 Songs of Kabir
7 Hymns to the Mystic Fire
6 The Secret Doctrine
6 The Alchemy of Happiness
6 Maps of Meaning
6 Li Bai - Poems
6 Hafiz - Poems
6 Borges - Poems
5 Words Of The Mother I
5 The Red Book Liber Novus
5 Tara - The Feminine Divine
5 Rilke - Poems
5 Patanjali Yoga Sutras
5 Liber Null
5 How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator
5 Amrita Gita
4 The Integral Yoga
4 The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
4 Song of Myself
4 A Treatise on Cosmic Fire
4 Arabi - Poems
3 The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep
3 The Lotus Sutra
3 The Book of Certitude
3 Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking
3 Sex Ecology Spirituality
3 Sefer Yetzirah The Book of Creation In Theory and Practice
3 Beating the Cloth Drum Letters of Zen Master Hakuin
3 Alice in Wonderland
2 The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma
2 The Prophet
2 The Ever-Present Origin
2 The Essentials of Education
2 The Castle of Crossed Destinies
2 Symposium
2 Selected Fictions
2 God Exists
2 Agenda Vol 1
2 Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2E
0 0.01 - Introduction, #Agenda Vol 1, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This AGENDA ... One day, another species among men will pore over this fabulous document as over the tumultuous drama that must have surrounded the birth of the first man among the hostile hordes of a great, delirious Paleozoic. A first man is the dangerous contradiction of a certain simian logic, a threat to the established order that so genteelly ran about amid the high, indefeasible ferns - and to begin with, it does not even know that it is a man. It wonders, indeed, what it is. Even to itself it is strange, distressing. It does not even know how to climb trees any longer in its usual way
- and it is terribly disturbing for all those who still climb trees in the old, millennial way. Perhaps it is even a heresy. Unless it is some cerebral disorder? A first man in his little clearing had to have a great deal of courage. Even this little clearing was no longer so sure. A first man is a perpetual question. What am I, then, in the midst of all that? And where is my law? What is the law? And what if there were no more laws? ... It is terrifying. Mathematics - out of order. Astronomy and biology, too, are beginning to respond to mysterious influences. A tiny point huddled in the center of the world's great clearing. But what is all this, what if I were 'mad'? And then, claws all around, a lot of claws against this uncommon creature. A first man ... is very much alone. He is quite unbearable for the pre-human 'reason.' And the surrounding tribes growled like red monkies in the twilight of Guiana.
--
Never had this precarious invention had any other aim through millions of species than to discover that which surpassed his own species, perhaps the means to change his species - a light and lawless species. After rediscovering a million years in the great, rhythmic night, a man was still something to be invented. It was the invention of himself, where all was not yet said and done.
And then, and then ... a singular air, an incurable lightness, was beginning to fill his lungs. And what if we were a fable? And what are the means?
--
It was at this point that we met Mother, at this intersection of the anthropoid rediscovered and the 'something' that had set in motion this unfinished invention momentarily ensnared in a gilded machine. For nothing was finished, and nothing had been invented, really, that would instill peace and wideness in this heart of no species at all.
And what if man were not yet invented? What if he were not yet his own species?
A little white silhouette, twelve thousand miles away, solitary and frail amidst a spiritual horde which had once and for all decided that the meditating and miraculous yogi was the apogee of the species, was searching for the means, for the reality of this man who for a moment believes himself sovereign of the heavens or sovereign of a machine, but who is quite probably something completely different than his spiritual or material glories. Another, a lighter air was throbbing in that breast, unburdened of its heavens and of its prehistoric machines. Another Epic was beginning.
Would Matter and Spirit meet, then, in a third PHYSIOLOGICAL position that would perhaps be at last the position of Man rediscovered, the something that had for so long fought and suffered in quest of becoming its own species? She was the great Possible at the beginning of man. Mother is our fable come true. 'All is possible' was her first open sesame.
Yes, She was in the midst of a spiritual 'horde,' for the pioneer of a new species must always fight against the best of the old: the best is the obstacle, the snare that traps us in its old golden mire.
As for the worst, we know that it is the worst. But then we come to realize that the best is only the pretty muzzle of our worst, the same old beast defending itself, with all its claws out, with its sanctity or its electronic gadgets. Mother was there for something else.
'Something else' is ominous, perilous, disrupting - it is quite unbearable for all those who resemble the old beast. The story of the Pondicherry 'Ashram' is the story of an old clan ferociously clinging to its 'spiritual' privileges, as others clung to the muscles that had made them kings among the great apes. It is armed with all the piousness and all the reasonableness that had made logical man so 'infallible' among his less cerebral brothers. The spiritual brain is probably the worst obstacle to the new species, as were the muscles of the old orangutan for this fragile stranger who no longer climbed so well in the trees and sat, pensive, at the center of a little, uncertain clearing.
There is nothing more pious than the old species. There is nothing more legal. Mother was searching for the path of the new species as much against all the virtues of the old as against all its vices or laws. For, in truth, 'Something Else' ... is something else.
We landed there, one day in February 1954, having emerged from our Guianese forest and a certain number of dead-end peripluses; we had knocked upon all the doors of the old world before reaching that point of absolute impossibility where it was truly necessary to embark into something else or once and for all put a bullet through the brain of this slightly superior ape. The first thing that struck us was this exotic Notre Dame with its burning incense sticks, its effigies and its prostrations in immaculate white: a Church. We nearly jumped into the first train out that very evening, bound straight for the Himalayas, or the devil. But we remained near Mother for nineteen years. What was it, then, that could have held us there? We had not left Guiana to become a little saint in white or to enter some new religion. 'I did not come upon earth to found an ashram; that would have been a poor aim indeed,' She wrote in 1934. What did all this mean, then, this 'Ashram' that was already registered as the owner of a great spiritual business, and this fragile, little silhouette at the center of all these zealous worshippers? In truth, there is no better way to smother someone than to worship him: he chokes beneath the weight of worship, which moreover gives the worshipper claim to ownership. 'Why do you want to worship?' She exclaimed. 'You have but to become! It is the laziness to become that makes one worship.' She wanted so much to make them
--
We had our bellyful of adventure at last: if you go astray in the forest, you get delightfully lost yet still with the same old skin on your back, whereas here, there is nothing left to get lost in! It is no longer just a matter of getting lost - you have to CHANGE your skin. Or die. Yes, change species.
Or become one more nauseating little worshipper - which was not on our program. 'We are the enemy of our own conception of the Divine,' She told us one day with her mischievous little smile.
--
TRULY to the conquest of the new. The 'new' is painful, discouraging, it resembles nothing we know! We cannot hoist the flag of an unconquered country - but this is what is so marvelous: it does not yet exist. We must MAKE IT EXIST. The adventure has not been carved out: it is to be carved out. Truth is not entrapped and fossilized, 'spiritualized': it is to be discovered. We are in a nothing that we must force to become a something. We are in the adventure of the new species. A new species is obviously contradictory to the old species and to the little flags of the alreadyknown. It has nothing in common with the spiritual summits of the old world, nor even with its abysms - which might be delightfully tempting for those who have had enough of the summits, but everything is the same, in black or white, it is fraternal above and below. SOMETHING ELSE is needed.
'Are you conscious of your ceils?' She asked us a short time after the little operation of spiritual demolition She had undergone. 'No? Well, become conscious of your cells, and you will see that it gives TERRESTRIAL results.' To become conscious of one's cells? ... It was a far more radical operation than crossing the Maroni with a machete in hand, for after all, trees and lianas can be cut, but what cannot be so easily uncovered are the grandfa ther and the grandmo ther and the whole atavistic pack, not to mention the animal and plant and mineral layers that form a teeming humus over this single pure little cell beneath its millennial genetic program. The grandfa thers and grandmo thers grow back again like crabgrass, along with all the old habits of being hungry, afraid, falling ill, fearing the worst, hoping for the best, which is still the best of an old mortal habit. All this is not uprooted nor entrapped as easily as celestial 'liberations,' which leave the teeming humus in peace and the body to its usual decomposition. She had come to hew a path through all that. She was the Ancient One of evolution who had come to make a new cleft in the old, tedious habit of being a man. She did not like tedious repetitions, She was the adventuress par excellence - the adventuress of the earth. She was wrenching out for man the great Possible that was already beating there, in his primeval clearing, which he believed he had momentarily trapped with a few machines.
She was uprooting a new Matter, free, free from the habit of inexorably being a man who repeats himself ad infinitum with a few improvements in the way of organ transplants or monetary exchanges. In fact, She was there to discover what would happen after materialism and after spiritualism, these prodigal twin brothers. Because Materialism is dying in the West for the same reason that Spiritualism is dying in the East: it is the hour of the new species. Man needs to awaken, not only from his demons but also from his gods. A new Matter, yes, like a new Spirit, yes, because we still know neither one nor the other. It is the hour when Science, like Spirituality, at the end of their roads, must discover what Matter TRULY is, for it is really there that a Spirit as yet unknown to us is to be found. It is a time when all the 'isms' of the old species are dying: 'The age of
Capitalism and business is drawing to its close. But the age of Communism too will pass ... 'It is the hour of a pure little cell THAT WILL HAVE TERRESTRIAL REPERCUSSIONS, infinitely more radical than all our political and scientific or spiritualistic panaceas.
This fabulous discovery is the whole story of the AGENDA. What is the passage? How is the path to the new species hewed open? ... Then suddenly, there, on the other side of this old millennial habit - a habit, nothing more than a habit! - of being like a man endowed with time and space and disease: an entire geometry, perfectly implacable and 'scientific' and medical; on the other side ... none of that at all! An illusion, a fantastic medical and scientific and genetic illusion:
death does not exist, time does not exist, disease does not exist, nor do 'scar' and 'far' - another way of being IN A BODY. For so many millions of years we have lived in a habit and put our own thoughts of the world and of Matter into equations. No more laws! Matter is FREE. It can create a little lizard, a chipmunk or a parrot - but it has created enough parrots. Now it is SOMETHING
--
Day after day, for seventeen years, She sat with us to tell us of her impossible odyssey. Ah, how well we now understand why She needed such an 'outlaw' and an incorrigible heretic like us to comprehend a little bit of her impossible odyssey into 'nothing.' And how well we now understand her infinite patience with us, despite all our revolts, which ultimately were only the revolts of the old species against itself. The final revolt. 'It is not a revolt against the British government which any one can easily do. It is, in fact, a revolt against the whole universal Nature!' Sri Aurobindo had proclaimed fifty years earlier. She listened to our grievances, we went away and we returned. We wanted no more of it and we wanted still more. It was infernal and sublime, impossible and the sole possibility in this old, asphyxiating world. It was the only place one could go to in this barbedwired, mechanized world, where Cincinnati is just as crowded and polluted as Hong Kong. The new species is the last free place in the general Prison. It is the last hope for the earth. How we listened to her little faltering voice that seemed to return from afar, afar, after having crossed spaces and seas of the mind to let its little drops of pure, crystalline words fall upon us, words that make you see. We listened to the future, we touched the other thing. It was incomprehensible and yet filled with another comprehension. It eluded us on all sides, and yet it was dazzlingly obvious. The 'other species' was really radically other, and yet it was vibrating within, absolutely recognizable, as if it were THAT we had been seeking from age to age, THAT we had been invoking through all our illuminations, one after another, in Thebes as in Eleusis as everywhere we have toiled and grieved in the skin of a man. It was for THAT we were here, for that supreme Possible in the skin of a man at last. And then her voice grew more and more frail, her breath began gasping as though She had to traverse greater and greater distances to meet us. She was so alone to beat against the walls of the old prison. Many claws were out all around. Oh, we would so quickly have cut ourself free from all this fiasco to fly away with Her into the world's future. She was so tiny, stooped over, as if crushed beneath the 'spiritual' burden that all the old surrounding species kept heaping upon her. They didn't believe, no. For them, She was ninety-five years old + so many days. Can someone become a new species all alone? They even grumbled at Her: they had had enough of this unbearable Ray that was bringing their sordid affairs into the daylight. The Ashram was slowly closing over Her. The old world wanted to make a new, golden little Church, nice and quiet. No, no one wanted TO
BECOME. To worship was so much easier. And then they bury you, solemnly, and the matter is settled - the case is closed: now, no one need bother any more except to print some photographic haloes for the pilgrims to this brisk little business. But they are mistaken. The real business will take place without them, the new species will fly up in their faces - it is already flying in the face of the earth, despite all its isms in black and white; it is exploding through all the pores of this battered old earth, which has had enough of shams - whether illusory little heavens or barbarous little machines.
It is the hour of the REAL Earth. It is the hour of the REAL man. We are all going there - if only we could know the path a little ...
This AGENDA is not even a path: it is a light little vibration that seizes you at any turning - and then, there it is, you are IN IT. 'Another world in the world,' She said. One has to catch the light little vibration, one has to flow with it, in a nothing that is like the only something in the midst of this great debacle. At the beginning of things, when still nothing was FIXED, when there was not yet this habit of the pelican or the kangaroo or the chimpanzee or the XXth century biologist, there was a little pulsation that beat and beat - a delightful dizziness, a joy in the world's great adventure; a little never-imprisoned spark that has kept on beating from species to species, but as if it were always eluding us, as if it were always over there, over there - as if it were something to become,
something to be played forever as the one great game of the world; a who-knows-what that left this sprig of a pensive man in the middle of a clearing; a little 'something' that beats, beats, that keeps on breathing beneath every skin that has ever been put on it - like our deepest breath, our lightest air, our air of nothing - and it keeps on going, it keeps on going. We must catch the light little breath, the little pulsation of nothing. Then suddenly, on the threshold of our clearing of concrete, our head starts spinning incurably, our eyes blink into something else, and all is different, and all seems surcharged with meaning and with life, as though we had never lived until that very minute.
00.01 - The Approach to Mysticism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
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 Shake speare speaksthrough the mind alone to the highest truth that Yajnavalkya had to pull her up and give the warning that she risked losing her head if she persisted in her questioning endlessly.
For true knowledge comes of, and means, identity of being. All other knowledge may be an apprehension of things but not comprehension. In the former, the knower stands apart from the object and so can envisage only the outskirts, the contour, the surface nature; the mind is capable of this alone. But comprehension means an embracing and penetration which is possible when the knower identifies himself with the object. And when we are so identified we not merely know the object, but becoming it in our consciousness, we love it and live it.
00.01 - The Mother on Savitri, #Sweet Mother - Harmonies of Light, #unset, #Zen
On the 18th January 1960; when a young sadhak met the Mother for a personal interview, She said to him: "I shall give you something special; be prepared." The next day, when he again met Her, She spoke in French first about how to kindle the psychic Flame and then in this connection started speaking about Sri Aurobindo`s great epic Savitri and continued to speak at length.
The sadhak, after returning from the Mother, wanted to note down immediately what She had said, but he could not do so because he felt a great hesitation due to his sense of incapacity to transcribe exactly the Mother`s own words.
--
You know, before writing Savitri Sri Aurobindo said to me, *I am impelled to launch on a new adventure; I was hesitant in the beginning, but now I am decided. Still, I do not know how far I shall succeed. I pray for help.* And you know what it was? It was - before beginning, I warn you in advance - it was His way of speaking, so full of divine humility and modesty. He never... *asserted Himself*. And the day He actually began it, He told me: *I have launched myself in a rudderless boat upon the vastness of the Infinite.* And once having started, He wrote page after page without intermission, as though it were a thing already complete up there and He had only to transcribe it in ink down here on these pages.
In truth, the entire form of Savitri has descended "en masse" from the highest region and Sri Aurobindo with His genius only arranged the lines - in a superb and magnificent style. Sometimes entire lines were revealed and He has left them intact; He worked hard, untiringly, so that the inspiration could come from the highest possible summit. And what a work He has created! Yes, it is a true creation in itself. It is an unequalled work. Everything is there, and it is put in such a simple, such a clear form; verses perfectly harmonious, limpid and eternally true. My child, I have read so many things, but I have never come across anything which could be compared with Savitri. I have studied the best works in Greek, Latin, English and of course French literature, also in German and all the great creations of the West and the East, including the great epics; but I repeat it, I have not found anywhere anything comparable with Savitri. All these literary works seems to me empty, flat, hollow, without any deep reality - apart from a few rare exceptions, and these too represent only a small fraction of what Savitri is. What grandeur, what amplitude, what reality: it is something immortal and eternal He has created. I tell you once again there is nothing like in it the whole world. Even if one puts aside the vision of the reality, that is, the essential substance which is the heart of the inspiration, and considers only the lines in themselves, one will find them unique, of the highest classical kind. What He has created is something man cannot imagine. For, everything is there, everything.
00.02 - Mystic Symbolism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Mystics all over the world and in all ages have clothed their sayings in proverbs and parables, in figures and symbols. To speak in symbols seems to be in their very nature; it is their characteristic manner, their inevitable style. Let us see what is the reason behind it. But first who are the Mystics? They are those who are in touch with supra-sensual things, whose experiences are of a world different from the common physical world, the world of the mind and the senses.
These other worlds are constituted in other ways than ours. Their contents are different and the laws that obtain there are also different. It would be a gross blunder to attempt a chart of any of these other systems, to use an Einsteinian term, with the measures and conventions of the system to which our external waking consciousness belongs. For, there "the sun shines not, nor the moon, nor the stars, neither these lightnings nor this fire." The difficulty is further enhanced by the fact that there are very many unseen worlds and they all differ from the seen and from one another in manner and degree. Thus, for example, the Upanishads speak of the swapna, the suupta, and the turya, domains beyond the jgrat which is that where the rational being with its mind and senses lives and moves. And there are other systems and other ways in which systems exist, and they are practically innumerable.
If, however, we have to speak of these other worlds, then, since we can speak only in the terms of this world, we have to use them in a different sense from those they usually bear; we must employ them as figures and symbols. Even then they may prove inadequate and misleading; so there are Mystics who are averse to all speech and expression they are mauni; in silence they experience the inexpressible and in silence they communicate it to the few who have the capacity to receive in silence.
But those who do speak, how do they choose their figures and symbols? What is their methodology? For it might be said, since the unseen and the seen differ out and out, it does not matter what forms or signs are taken from the latter; for any meaning and significance could be put into anything. But in reality, it does not so happen. For, although there is a great divergence between figures and symbols on the one hand and the things figured and symbolised on the other, still there is also some link, some common measure. And that is why we see not unoften the same or similar figures and symbols representing an identical experience in ages and countries far apart from each other.
We can make a distinction here between two types of expression which we have put together indiscriminately, figures and symbols. Figures, we may say, are those that are constructed by the rational mind, the intellect; they are mere metaphors and similes and are not organically related to the thing experienced, but put round it as a robe that can be dropped or changed without affecting the experience itself. Thus, for example, when the Upanishad says, tmnam rathinam viddhi (Know that the soul is the master of the chariot who sits within it) or indriyi haynhu (The senses, they say, are the horses), we have here only a comparison or analogy that is common and natural to the poetic manner. The particular figure or simile used is not inevitable to the idea or experience that it seeks to express, its part and parcel. On the other hand, take this Upanishadic perception: hirayamayena patrea satyasyphitam mukham (The face of the Truth lies hidden under the golden orb). Here the symbol is not mere analogy or comparison, a figure; it is one with the very substance of the experience the two cannot be separated. Or when the Vedas speak of the kindling of the Fire, the rushing of the waters or the rise of the Dawn, the images though taken from the material world, are not used for the sake of mere comparison, but they are the embodiments, the living forms of truths experienced in another world.
When a Mystic refers to the Solar Light or to the Fire the light, for example, that struck down Saul and transformed him into Saint Paul or the burning bush that visited Moses, it is not the physical or material object that he means and yet it is that in a way. It is the materialization of something that is fundamentally not material: some movement in an inner consciousness precipitates itself into the region of the senses and takes from out of the material the form commensurable with its nature that it finds there.
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Man being an embodied soul, his external consciousness (what the Upanishad calls jgrat) is the milieu in which his soul-experiences naturally manifest and find their play. It is the forms and movements of that consciousness which clo the and give a concrete habitation and name to perceptions on the subtler ranges of the inner existence. If the experiences on these planes are to be presented to the conscious memory and to the brain-mind and made communicable to others through speech, this is the inevitable and natural process. Symbols are a translation in mental and sensual (and vocal) terms of experiences that are beyond the mind and the sense and the speech and yet throw a kind of echoing vibrations upon these lesser levels.
***
0 0.02 - Topographical Note, #Agenda Vol 1, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It was only in 1958 that we began having the first tape-recorded conversations, which, properly speaking, constitute Mother's Agenda. But even then, many of these conversations were lost or only partly noted down. Or else we considered that our own words should not figure in these notes and we carefully omitted all our questions - which was absurd. At that time, no one - neither Mother, nor ourself - knew that this was 'the Agenda' and that we were out to explore the 'Great Passage.'
Only gradually did we become aware of the true nature of these meetings. Furthermore, we were constantly on the road, so much so that there are sizable gaps in the text. In fact, for seven years,
--
From 1960, the Agenda took its final shape arid grew for thirteen years, until May 1973, filling thirteen volumes in all (some six thousand pages), with a change of setting in March 1962 at the time of the Great Turning in Mother's yoga when She permanently retired to her room upstairs, as had Sri Aurobindo in 1926. The interviews then took place high up in this large room carpeted in golden wool, like a ship's stateroom, amidst the rustling of the Copper Pod tree and the cawing of crows. Mother would sit in a low rosewood chair, her face turned towards Sri Aurobindo's tomb, as though She were wearing down the distance separating that world from our own. Her voice had become like that of a child, one could hear her laughter. She always laughed, this Mother. And then her long silences. Until the day the disciples closed her door on us. It was May 19, 1973. We did not want to believe it. She was alone, just as we were suddenly alone. Slowly, painfully, we had to discover the why of this rupture. We understood nothing of the jealousies of the old species, we did not yet realize that they were becoming the 'owners' of Mother - of the Ashram, of Auroville, of
Sri Aurobindo, of everything - and that the new world was going to be denatured into a new
00.03 - Upanishadic Symbolism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Now, before any explanation is attempted it is important to bear in mind that the Upanishads speak of things experiencednot merely thought, reasoned or argued and that these experiences belong to a world and consciousness other than that of the mind and the senses. One should naturally expect here a different language and mode of expression than that which is appropriate to mental and physical things. For example, the world of dreams was once supposed to be a sheer chaos, a mass of meaningless confusion; but now it is held to be quite otherwise. Psychological scientists have discovered a methodeven a very well-defined and strict methodin the madness of that domain. It is an ordered, organised, significant world; but its terminology has to be understood, its code deciphered. It is not a jargon, but a foreign language that must be learnt and mastered.
In the same way, the world of spiritual experiences is also something methodical, well-organized, significant. It may not be and is not the rational world of the mind and the sense; but it need not, for that reason, be devoid of meaning, mere fancifulness or a child's imagination running riot. Here also the right key has to be found, the grammar and vocabulary of that language mastered. And as the best way to have complete mastery of a language is to live among the people who speak it, so, in the matter of spiritual language, the best and the only way to learn it is to go and live in its native country.
Now, as regards the interpretation of the story cited, should not a suspicion arise naturally at the very outset that the dog of the story is not a dog but represents something else? First, a significant epithet is given to itwhite; secondly, although it asks for food, it says that Om is its food and Om is its drink. In the Vedas we have some references to dogs. Yama has twin dogs that "guard the path and have powerful vision." They are his messengers, "they move widely and delight in power and possess the vast strength." The Vedic Rishis pray to them for Power and Bliss and for the vision of the Sun1. There is also the Hound of Heaven, Sarama, who comes down and discovers the luminous cows stolen and hidden by the Panis in their dark caves; she is the path-finder for Indra, the deliverer.
My suggestion is that the dog is a symbol of the keen sight of Intuition, the unfailing perception of direct knowledge. With this clue the Upanishadic story becomes quite sensible and clear and not mere abracadabra. To the aspirant for Knowledge came first a purified power of direct understanding, an Intuition of fundamental value, and this brought others of the same species in its train. They were all linked together organically that is the significance of the circle, and formed a rhythmic utterance and expression of the supreme truth (Om). It is also to be noted that they came and met at dawn to chant, the Truth. Dawn is the opening and awakening of the consciousness to truths that come from above and beyond.
It may be asked why the dog has been chosen as the symbol of Intuition. In the Vedas, the cow and the horse also play a large part; even the donkey and the frog have their own assigned roles. These objects are taken from the environment of ordinary life, and are those that are most familiar to the external consciousness, through which the inner experiences have to express themselves, if they are to be expressed at all. These material objects represent various kinds of forces and movements and subtle and occult and spiritual dynamisms. Strictly speaking, however, symbols are not chosen in a subtle or spiritual experience, that is to say, they are not arbitrarily selected and constructed by the conscious intelligence. They form part of a dramatization (to use a term of the Freudian psychology of dreams), a psychological alchemy, whose method and process and rationale are very obscure, which can be penetrated only by the vision of a third eye.
I. The Several Lights
The Brihadaranyaka speaks of several lights that man possesses, one in the absence of another, for his illumination and guidance.
First of all, he has the Sun; it is the primary light by which he lives and moves. When the Sun sets, the Moon rises to replace it. When both the Sun and the Moon set, he has recourse to the Fire. And when the Fire, too, is extinguished, there comes the Word. In the end, when the Fire is quieted and the Word silenced, man is lighted by the Light of the Atman. This Atman is All-Knowledge; it is secreted within the life, within the heart: it is selfluminous Vijnamaya preu rdyantar jyoti..
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And they who are thus lifted up into the Higher Orbit are freed from the bondage to the cycle of rebirth. They enjoy the supreme Liberation that is of the Spirit; and even when they descend into the Inferior Path, it is to work out as free agents, as vehicles of the Divine, a special purpose, to bring down something of the substance and nature of the Solar reality into the lower world, enlighten and elevate the lower, as far as it is allowed, into the higher.
IV. The Triple Agni
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We have, in modern times, a movement towards a more conscious and courageous, knowledge of things that were taboo to puritan ages. Not to shut one's eyes to the lower, darker and hidden strands of our nature, but to bring them out into the light of day and to face them is the best way of dealing with such elements, which otherwise, if they are repressed, exert an unhealthy influence on the mind and nature. The Upanishadic view runs on the same lines, but, with the unveiling and the natural and not merely naturalisticdelineation of these under-worlds (concerning sex and food), it endows them with a per spective sub specie aeternitatis. The sexual function, for example, is easily equated to the double movement of ascent and descent that is secreted in nature, or to the combined action of Purusha and Prakriti in the cosmic Play, or again to the hidden fount of Delight that holds and moves the universe. In this view there is nothing merely secular and profane, but all is woven into the cosmic spiritual whole; and man is taught to consider and to mould all his movementsof soul and mind and bodyin the light and rhythm of that integral Reality.11
The central secret of the transfigured consciousness lies, as we have already indicated, in the mystic rite or law of Sacrifice. It is the one basic, fundamental, universal Law that upholds and explains the cosmic movement, conformity to which brings to the thrice-bound human being release and freedom. Sacrifice consists essentially of two elements or processes: (i) The offering or self giving of the lower reality to the higher, and, as a consequence, an answering movement of (ii) the descent of the higher into the lower. The lower offered to the higher means the lower sublimated and integrated into the higher; and the descent of the higher into the lower means the incarnation of the former and the fulfilment of the latter. The Gita elaborates the same idea when it says that by Sacrifice men increase the gods and the gods increase men and by so increasing each other they attain the supreme Good. Nothing is, nothing is done, for its own sake, for an egocentric satisfaction; all, even movements relating to food and to sex should be dedicated to the Cosmic BeingVisva Purusha and that alone received which comes from Him.
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Still the Upanishad says this is not the final end. There is yet a higher status of reality and consciousness to which one has to rise. For beyond the Cosmos lies the Transcendent. The Upanishad expresses this truth and experience in various symbols. The cosmic reality, we have seen, is often conceived as a septenary, a unity of seven elements, principles and worlds. Further to give it its full complex value, it is considered not as a simple septet, but a threefold heptad the whole gamut, as it were, consisting of 21 notes or syllables. The Upanishad says, this number does not exhaust the entire range; I for there is yet a 22nd place. This is the world beyond the Sun, griefless and deathless, the supreme Selfhood. The Veda I also sometimes speaks of the integral reality as being represented by the number 100 which is 99 + I; in other words, 99 represents the cosmic or universal, the unity being the reality beyond, the Transcendent.
Elsewhere the Upanishad describes more graphically this truth and the experience of it. It is said there that the sun has fivewe note the familiar fivemovements of rising and setting: (i) from East to West, (ii) from South to North, (iii) from West to East, (iv) from North to South and (v) from abovefrom the Zenithdownward. These are the five normal and apparent movements. But there is a sixth one; rather it is not a movement, but a status, where the sun neither rises nor sets, but is always visible fixed in the same position.
Some Western and Westernised scholars have tried to show that the phenomenon described here is an exclusively natural phenomenon, actually visible in the polar region where the sun never sets for six months and moves in a circle whose plane is parallel to the plane of the horizon on the summer solstice and is gradually inclined as the sun regresses towards the equinox (on which day just half the solar disc is visible above the horizon). The sun may be said there to move in the direction East-South-West-North and again East. Indeed the Upanishad mentions the positions of the sun in that order and gives a character to each successive station. The Ray from the East is red, symbolising the Rik, the Southern Ray is white, symbolising the Yajur, the Western Ray is black symbolising the Atharva. The natural phenomenon, however, might have been or might not have been before the mind's eye of the Rishi, but the symbolism, the esotericism of it is clear enough in the way the Rishi speaks of it. Also, apart from the first four movements (which it is already sufficiently difficult to identify completely with what is visible), the fifth movement, as a separate descending movement from above appears to be a foreign element in the context. And although, with regard to the sixth movement or status, the sun is visible as such exactly from the point of the North Pole for a while, the ring of the Rishi's utterance is unmistakably spiritual, it cannot but refer to a fact of inner consciousness that is at least what the physical fact conveys to the Rishi and what he seeks to convey and express primarily.
Now this is what is sought to be conveyed and expressed. The five movements of the sun here also are nothing but the five smas and they refer to the cycle of the Cosmic or Universal Brahman. The sixth status where all movements cease, where there is no rising and setting, no ebb and flow, no waxing and waning, where there is the immutable, the ever-same unity, is very evidently the Transcendental Brahman. It is That to which the Vedic Rishi refers when he prays for a constant and fixed vision of the eternal Sunjyok ca sryam drie.
It would be interesting to know what the five ranges or levels or movements of consciousness exactly are that make up the Universal Brahman described in this passage. It is the mystic knowledge, the Upanishad says, of the secret delight in thingsmadhuvidy. The five ranges are the five fundamental principles of delightimmortalities, the Veda would say that form the inner core of the pyramid of creation. They form a rising tier and are ruled re spectively by the godsAgni, Indra, Varuna, Soma and Brahmawith their emanations and instrumental personalities the Vasus, the Rudras, the Adityas, the Maruts and the Sadhyas. We suggest that these refer to the five well-known levels of being, the modes or nodi of consciousness or something very much like them. The Upanishad speaks elsewhere of the five sheaths. The six Chakras of Tantric system lie in the same line. The first and the basic mode is the physical and the ascent from the physical: Agni and the Vasus are always intimately connected with the earth and -the earth-principles (it can be compared with the Muladhara of the Tantras). Next, second in the line of ascent is the Vital, the centre of power and dynamism of which the Rudras are the deities and Indra the presiding God (cf. Swadhishthana of the Tantras the navel centre). Indra, in the Vedas, has two a spects, one of knowledge and vision and the other of dynamic force and drive. In the first a spect he is more often considered as the Lord of the Mind, of the Luminous Mind. In the present passage, Indra is taken in his second a spect and instead of the Maruts with whom he is usually invoked has the Rudras as his agents and associates.
The third in the line of ascension is the region of Varuna and the Adityas, that is to say, of the large Mind and its light sperhaps it can be connected with Tantric Ajnachakra. The fourth is the domain of Soma and the Marutsthis seems to be the inner heart, the fount of delight and keen and sweeping aspirations the Anahata of the Tantras. The fifth is the region of the crown of the head, the domain of Brahma and the Sadhyas: it is the Overmind status from where comes the descending inflatus, the creative Maya of Brahma. And when you go beyond, you pass into the ultimate status of the Sun, the reality absolute, the Transcendent which is indescribable, unseizable, indeterminate, indeterminable, incommensurable; and once there, one never returns, neverna ca punarvartate na ca punarvartate.
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Besides this metaphysics there is also an occult a spect in numerology of which Pythagoras was a well-known adept and in which the Vedic Rishis too seem to take special delight. The multiplication of numbers represents in a general way the principle of emanation. The One has divided and subdivided itself, but not in a haphazard way: it is not like the chaotic pulverisation of a piece of stone by hammer-blows. The process of division and subdivision follows a pattern almost as neat and methodical as a genealogical tree. That is to say, the emanations form a hierarchy. At the top, the apex of the pyramid, stands the one supreme Godhead. That Godhead is biune in re spect of manifestation the Divine and his creative Power. This two-in-one reality may be considered, according to one view of creation, as dividing into three forms or a spects the well-known Brahma, Vishnu and Rudra of Hindu mythology. These may be termed the first or primary emanations.
Now, each one of them in its turn has its own emanations the eleven Rudriyas are familiar. These are secondary and there are tertiary and other graded emanations the last ones touch the earth and embody physico-vital forces. The lowest formations or beings can trace their origin to one or other of the primaries and their nature and function partake of or are an echo of their first ancestor.
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Man has two souls corresponding to his double status. In the inferior, the soul looks downward and is involved in the current of Impermanence and Ignorance, it tastes of grief and sorrow and suffers death and dissolution: in the higher it looks upward and communes and joins with the Eternal (the cosmic) and then with the Absolute (the transcendent). The lower is a reflection of the higher, the higher comes down in a diminished and hence tarnished light. The message is that of deliverance, the deliverance and reintegration of the lower soul out of its bondage of worldly ignorant life into the freedom and immortality first of its higher and then of its highest status. It is true, however, that the Upanishad does not make a trenchant distinction between the cosmic and the transcendent and often it speaks of both in the same breath, as it were. For in fact they are realities involved in each other and interwoven. Indeed the triple status, including the Individual, forms one single totality and the three do not exclude or cancel each other; on the contrary, they combine and may be said to enhance each other's reality. The Transcendence expresses or deploys itself in the cosmoshe goes abroad,sa paryagt: and the cosmic individualises, concretises itself in the particular and the personal. The one single spiritual reality holds itself, a spects itself in a threefold manner.
The teaching of Yama in brief may be said to be the go spel of immortality and it consists of the knowledge of triple immortality. And who else can be the best teacher of immortality than Death himself, as Nachiketas pointedly said? The first immortality is that of the physical existence and consciousness, the preservation of the personal identity, the individual name and formthis being in itself as expression and embodiment and instrument of the Inner Reality. This inner reality enshrines the second immortality the eternity and continuity of the soul's life through its incarnations in time, the divine Agni lit for ever and ever growing in flaming consciousness. And the third and final immortality is in the being and consciousness beyond time, beyond all relativities, the absolute and self-existent delight.
00.04 - The Beautiful in the Upanishads, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
it cannot be defined or figured in the terms of the phenomenal consciousness. In speaking of it, however, the Upanishads invariably and repeatedly refer to two attributes that characterise its fundamental nature. These two a spects have made such an impression upon the consciousness of the Upanishadic seer that his enthusiasm almost wholly plays about them and is centred on them. When he contemplates or communes with the Supreme Object, these seem to him to be the mark of its au thenticity, the seal of its high status and the reason of all the charm and magic it possesses. The first a spect or attri bute is that of light the brilliance, the solar effulgenceravituly-arpa the bright, clear, shadow less Light of lightsvirajam ubhram jyotim jyoti The second a spect is that of delight, the bliss, the immortality inherent in that wide effulgencenandarpam amtam yad vibhti.
And what else is the true character, the soul of beauty than light and delight? "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever." And a thing of joy is a thing of light. Joy is the radiance rippling over a thing of beauty. Beauty is always radiant: the charm, the loveliness of an object is but the glow of light that it emanates. And it would not be a very incorrect mensuration to measure the degree of beauty by the degree of light radiated. The diamond is not only a thing of value, but a thing of beauty also, because of the concentrated and undimmed light that it enshrines within itself. A dark, dull and dismal thing, devoid of interest and attraction becomes aesthetically precious and significant as soon as the artist presents it in terms of the values of light. The entire art of painting is nothing but the expression of beauty, in and through the modalities of light.
0.00a - Introduction, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
The age-old advice, "Know thyself," is more imperative than ever. The tempo of science has accelerated to such a degree that today's discoveries frequently make yesterday's equations obsolescent almost before they can be chalked up on a blackboard. Small wonder, then that every other hospital bed is occupied by a mental patient. Man was not constructed to spend his life at a crossroads, one of which leads he knows not where, and the other to threatened annihilation of his species.
In view of this situation it is doubly reassuring to know that, even in the midst of chaotic concepts and conditions there still remains a door through which man, individually, can enter into a vast store-house of knowledge, knowledge as dependable and immutable as the measured tread of Eternity.
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When planning to visit a foreign country, the wise traveler will first familiarize himself with its language. In studying music, chemistry or calculus, a specific terminology is essential to the understanding of each subject. So a new set of symbols is necessary when undertaking a study of the Universe, whether within or without. The Qabalah provides such a set in unexcelled fashion.
But the Qabalah is more. It also lays the foundation on which rests another archaic science- Magic. Not to be confused with the conjurer's sleight-of-hand, Magic has been defined by Aleister Crowley as "the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with will." Dion Fortune qualifies this nicely with an added clause, "changes in consciousness."
000 - Humans in Universe, #Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, #R Buckminster Fuller, #Science
to survival of only the fittest species (and individuals within species). Though he
denied there was any economic significance in his theory of evolution, the
0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
About his parents Sri Ramakrishna once said: "My mother was the personification of rectitude and gentleness. She did not know much about the ways of the world; innocent of the art of concealment, she would say what was in her mind. People loved her for her open-heartedness. My father, an orthodox brahmin, never accepted gifts from the sudras. He spent much of his time in worship and meditation, and in repeating God's name and chanting His glories. Whenever in his daily prayers he invoked the Goddess Gayatri, his chest flushed and tears rolled down his cheeks. He spent his leisure hours making garlands for the Family Deity, Raghuvir."
Khudiram Chattopadhyaya and Chandra Devi, the parents of Sri Ramakrishna, were married in 1799. At that time Khudiram was living in his ancestral village of Dereypore, not far from Kamarpukur. Their first son, Ramkumar, was born in 1805, and their first daughter, Katyayani, in 1810. In 1814 Khudiram was ordered by his landlord to bear false witness in court against a neighbour. When he refused to do so, the landlord brought a false case against him and deprived him of his ancestral property. Thus dispossessed, he arrived, at the invitation of another landlord, in the quiet village of Kamarpukur, where he was given a dwelling and about an acre of fertile land. The crops from this little property were enough to meet his family's simple needs. Here he lived in simplicity, dignity, and contentment.
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Gadadhar was seven years old when his father died. This incident profoundly affected him. For the first time the boy realized that life on earth was impermanent. Unobserved by others, he began to slip into the mango orchard or into one of the cremation grounds, and he spent hours absorbed in his own thoughts. He also became more helpful to his mother in the discharge of her household duties. He gave more attention to reading and hearing the religious stories recorded in the Puranas. And he became interested in the wandering monks and pious pilgrims who would stop at Kamarpukur on their way to Puri. These holy men, the custodians of India's spiritual heritage and the living witnesses of the ideal of renunciation of the world and all-absorbing love of God, entertained the little boy with stories from the Hindu epics, stories of saints and prophets, and also stories of their own adventures. He, on his part, fetched their water and fuel and
served them in various ways. Meanwhile, he was observing their meditation and worship.
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At the age of sixteen Gadadhar was summoned to Calcutta by his elder brother Ramkumar, who wished assistance in his priestly duties. Ramkumar had opened a Sanskrit academy to supplement his income, and it was his intention gradually to turn his younger brother's mind to education. Gadadhar applied himself heart and soul to his new duty as family priest to a number of Calcutta families. His worship was very different from that of the professional priests. He spent hours decorating the images and singing hymns and devotional songs; he performed with love the other duties of his office. People were impressed with his ardour. But to his studies he paid scant attention.
Ramkumar did not at first oppose the ways of his temperamental brother. He wanted Gadadhar to become used to the conditions of city life. But one day he decided to warn the boy about his indifference to the world. After all, in the near future Gadadhar must, as a householder, earn his livelihood through the performance of his brahminical duties; and these required a thorough knowledge of Hindu law, astrology, and kindred subjects. He gently admonished Gadadhar and asked him to pay more attention to his studies. But the boy replied spiritedly: "Brother, what shall I do with a mere bread-winning education? I would rather acquire that wisdom which will illumine my heart and give me satisfaction for ever."
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corners of the temple compound are two nahabats, or music towers, from which music flows at different times of day, e specially at sunup, noon, and sundown, when the worship is performed in the temples. Three sides of the paved courtyard — all except the west — are lined with rooms set apart for kitchens, store-rooms, dining-rooms, and quarters for the temple staff and guests. The chamber in the northwest angle, just beyond the last of the Siva temples, is of special interest to us; for here Sri Ramakrishna was to spend a considerable part of his life. To the west of this chamber is a semicircular porch overlooking the river. In front of the porch runs a foot-path, north and south, and beyond the path is a large garden and, below the garden, the Ganges. The orchard to the north of the buildings contains the Panchavati, the banyan, and the bel-tree, associated with Sri Ramakrishna's spiritual practices. Outside and to the north of the temple compound proper is the kuthi, or bungalow, used by members of Rani Rasmani's family visiting the garden. And north of the temple garden, separated from it by a high wall, is a powder-magazine belonging to the British Government.
--- SIVA
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Rani Rasmani spent a fortune for the construction of the temple garden and another fortune for its dedication ceremony, which took place on May 31, 1855.
Sri Ramakrishna — henceforth we shall call Gadadhar by this familiar name —1 came to the temple garden with his elder brother Ramkumar, who was appointed priest of the Kali temple. Sri Ramakrishna did not at first approve of Ramkumar's working for the sudra Rasmani. The example of their orthodox father was still fresh in Sri Ramakrishna's mind. He objected also to the eating of the cooked offerings of the temple, since, according to orthodox Hindu custom, such food can be offered to the Deity only in the house of a brahmin. But the holy atmosphere of the temple grounds, the solitude of the surrounding wood, the loving care of his brother, the re spect shown him by Rani Rasmani and Mathur Babu, the living presence of the Goddess Kali in the temple, and; above all, the proximity of the sacred Ganges, which Sri Ramakrishna always held in the highest re spect, gradually overcame his disapproval, and he began to feel at home.
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Ramkumar wanted Sri Ramakrishna to learn the intricate rituals of the worship of Kali. To become a priest of Kali one must undergo a special form of initiation from a qualified guru, and for Sri Ramakrishna a suitable brahmin was found. But no sooner did the brahmin speak the holy word in his ear than Sri Ramakrishna, overwhelmed with emotion, uttered a loud cry and plunged into deep concentration.
Mathur begged Sri Ramakrishna to take charge of the worship in the Kali temple. The young priest pleaded his incompetence and his ignorance of the scriptures. Mathur insisted that devotion and sincerity would more than compensate for any lack of formal knowledge and make the Divine Mother manifest Herself through the image. In the end, Sri Ramakrishna had to yield to Mathur's request. He became the priest of Kali.
--
And, indeed, he soon discovered what a strange Goddess he had chosen to serve. He became gradually enmeshed in the web of Her all-pervading presence. To the ignorant She is, to be sure, the image of destruction; but he found in Her the benign, all-loving Mother. Her neck is encircled with a garland of heads, and Her waist with a girdle of human arms, and two of Her hands hold weapons of death, and Her eyes dart a glance of fire; but, strangely enough, Ramakrishna felt in Her breath the soothing touch of tender love and saw in Her the Seed of Immortality. She stands on the bosom of Her Consort, Siva; it is because She is the Sakti, the Power, inseparable from the Absolute. She is surrounded by jackals and other unholy creatures, the denizens of the cremation ground. But is not the Ultimate Reality above holiness and unholiness? She appears to be reeling under the spell of wine. But who would create this mad world unless under the influence of a divine drunkenness? She is the highest symbol of all the forces of nature, the synthesis of their antinomies, the Ultimate Divine in the form of woman. She now became to Sri Ramakrishna the only Reality, and the world became an unsubstantial shadow. Into Her worship he poured his soul. Before him She stood as the transparent portal to the shrine of Ineffable Reality.
The worship in the temple intensified Sri Ramakrishna's yearning for a living vision of the Mother of the Universe. He began to spend in meditation the time not actually employed in the temple service; and for this purpose he selected an extremely solitary place. A deep jungle, thick with underbrush and prickly plants, lay to the north of the temples. Used at one time as a burial ground, it was shunned by people even during the day-time for fear of ghosts. There Sri Ramakrishna began to spend the whole night in meditation, returning to his room only in the morning with eyes swollen as though from much weeping. While meditating, he would lay aside his cloth and his brahminical thread. Explaining this strange conduct, he once said to Hriday: "Don't you know that when one thinks of God one should be freed from all ties? From our very birth we have the eight fetters of hatred, shame, lineage, pride of good conduct, fear, secretiveness, caste, and grief. The sacred thread reminds me that I am a brahmin and therefore superior to all. When calling on the Mother one has to set aside all such ideas." Hriday thought his uncle was becoming insane.
As his love for God deepened, he began either to forget or to drop the formalities of worship. Sitting before the image, he would spend hours singing the devotional songs of great devotees of the Mother, such as Kamalakanta and Ramprasad. Those rhapsodical songs, describing the direct vision of God, only intensified Sri Ramakrishna's longing. He felt the pangs of a child separated from its mother. Sometimes, in agony, he would rub his face against the ground and weep so bitterly that people, thinking he had lost his earthly mother, would sympathize with him in his grief. Sometimes, in moments of scepticism, he would cry: "Art Thou true, Mother, or is it all fiction — mere poetry without any reality? If Thou dost exist, why do I not see Thee? Is religion a mere fantasy and art Thou only a figment of man's imagination?" Sometimes he would sit on the prayer carpet for two hours like an inert object. He began to behave in an abnormal manner
, most of the time unconscious of the world. He almost gave up food; and sleep left him altogether.
--
A garbled report of Sri Ramakrishna's failing health, indifference to worldly life, and various abnormal activities reached Kamarpukur and filled the heart of his poor mother with anguish. At her repeated request he returned to his village for a change of air. But his boyhood friends did not interest him any more. A divine fever was consuming him. He spent a great part of the day and night in one of the cremation grounds, in meditation. The place reminded him of the impermanence of the human body, of human hopes and achievements. It also reminded him of Kali, the Goddess of destruction.
--- MARRIAGE AND AFTER
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Sri Ramakrishna, much impressed with his devotion, requested Jatadhari to spend a few days at Dakshineswar. Soon Ramlala became the favourite companion of Sri Ramakrishna too. Later on he described to the devotees how the little image would dance gracefully before him, jump on his back, insist on being taken in his arms, run to the fields in the sun, pluck flowers from the bushes, and play pranks like a naughty boy. A very sweet relationship sprang up between him and Ramlala, for whom he felt the love of a mother.
One day Jatadhari requested Sri Ramakrishna to keep the image and bade him adieu with tearful eyes. He declared that Ramlala had fulfilled his innermost prayer and that he now had no more need of formal worship. A few days later Sri Ramakrishna was blessed through Ramlala with a vision of Ramachandra, whereby he realized that the Rama of the Ramayana, the son of Dasaratha, pervades the whole universe as Spirit and Consciousness; that He is its Creator, Sustainer, and Destroyer; that, in still another a spect, He is the transcendental Brahman, without form, attribute, or name.
While worshipping Ramlala as the Divine Child, Sri Ramakrishna's heart became filled with motherly tenderness, and he began to regard himself as a woman. His speech and gestures changed. He began to move freely with the ladies of Mathur's family, who now looked upon him as one of their own sex. During this time he worshipped the Divine Mother as Her companion or handmaid.
--- IN COMMUNION WITH THE DIVINE BELOVED
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is, ultimately speaking, as illusory as the experience of any other object. Man attains his liberation, therefore, by piercing the veil of maya and rediscovering his total identity with Brahman. Knowing himself to be one with the Universal Spirit, he realizes ineffable Peace. Only then does he go beyond the fiction of birth and death; only then does he become immortal. 'And this is the ultimate goal of all religions — to dehypnotize the soul now hypnotized by its own ignorance.
The path of the Vedantic discipline is the path of negation, "neti", in which, by stern determination, all that is unreal is both negated and renounced. It is the path of jnana, knowledge, the direct method of realizing the Absolute. After the negation of everything relative, including the discriminating ego itself, the aspirant merges in the One without a Second, in the bliss of nirvikalpa samadhi, where subject and object are alike dissolved. The soul goes beyond the realm of thought. The domain of duality is transcended. Maya is left behind with all its changes and modifications. The Real Man towers above the delusions of creation, preservation, and destruction. An avalanche of indescribable Bliss sweeps away all relative ideas of pain and pleasure, good and evil. There shines in the heart the glory of the Eternal Brahman, Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute. Knower, knowledge, and known are dissolved in the Ocean of one eternal Consciousness; love, lover, and beloved merge in the unbounded Sea of supreme Felicity; birth, growth, and death vanish in infinite Existence. All doubts and misgivings are quelled for ever; the oscillations of the mind are stopped; the momentum of past actions is exhausted. Breaking down the ridge-pole of the tabernacle in which the soul has made its abode for untold ages, stilling the body, calming the mind, drowning the ego, the sweet joy of Brahman wells up in that superconscious state. Space disappears into nothingness, time is swallowed in eternity, and causation becomes a dream of the past. Only Existence is. Ah! Who can describe what the soul then feels in its communion with the Self?
Even when man descends from this dizzy height, he is devoid of ideas of "I" and "mine"; he looks on the body as a mere shadow, an outer sheath encasing the soul. He does not dwell on the past, takes no thought for the future, and looks with indifference on the present. He surveys everything in the world with an eye of equality; he is no longer touched by the infinite variety of phenomena; he no longer reacts to pleasure and pain. He remains unmoved whether he — that is to say, his body — is worshipped by the good or tormented by the wicked; for he realizes that it is the one Brahman that manifests Itself through everything. The impact of such an experience devastates the body and mind. Consciousness becomes blasted, as it were, with an excess of Light. In the Vedanta books it is said that after the experience of nirvikalpa samadhi the body drops off like a dry leaf. Only those who are born with a special mission for the world can return
from this height to the valleys of normal life. They live and move in the world for the welfare of mankind. They are invested with a supreme spiritual power. A divine glory shines through them.
--
Totapuri arrived at the Dakshineswar temple garden toward the end of 1864. Perhaps born in the Punjab, he was the head of a monastery in that province of India and claimed leadership of seven hundred sannyasis. Trained from early youth in the disciplines of the Advaita Vedanta, he looked upon the world as an illusion. The gods and goddesses of the dualistic worship were to him mere fantasies of the deluded mind. Prayers, ceremonies, rites, and rituals had nothing to do with true religion, and about these he was utterly indifferent. Exercising self-exertion and unshakable will-power, he had liberated himself from attachment to the sense-objects of the relative universe. For forty years he had practised austere discipline on the bank of the sacred Narmada and had finally realized his identity with the Absolute. Thenceforward he roamed in the world as an unfettered soul, a lion free from the cage. Clad in a loin-cloth, he spent his days under the canopy of the sky alike in storm and sunshine, feeding his body on the slender pittance of alms. He had been visiting the estuary of the Ganges. On his return journey along the bank of the sacred river, led by the inscrutable Divine Will, he stopped at Dakshineswar.
Totapuri, discovering at once that Sri Ramakrishna was prepared to be a student of Vedanta, asked to initiate him into its mysteries. With the permission of the Divine Mother, Sri Ramakrishna agreed to the proposal. But Totapuri explained that only a sannyasi could receive the teaching of Vedanta. Sri Ramakrishna agreed to renounce the world, but with the stipulation that the ceremony of his initiation into the monastic order be performed in secret, to spare the feelings of his old mother, who had been living with him at Dakshineswar.
--
Totapuri had no idea of the struggles of ordinary men in the toils of passion and desire. Having maintained all through life the guilelessness of a child, he laughed at the idea of a man's being led astray by the senses. He was convinced that the world was maya and had only to be denounced to vanish for ever. A born non-dualist, he had no faith in a Personal God. He did not believe in the terrible a spect of Kali, much less in Her benign a spect. Music and the chanting of God's holy name were to him only so much nonsense. He ridiculed the spending of emotion on the worship of a Personal God.
--- KALI AND MAYA
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Totapuri returned to Dakshineswar and spent the remaining hours of the night meditating on the Divine Mother. In the morning he went to the Kali temple with Sri Ramakrishna and prostrated himself before the image of the Mother. He now realized why he had spent eleven months at Dakshineswar. Bidding farewell to the disciple, he continued on his way, enlightened.
Sri Ramakrishna later described the significance of Totapuri's lessons:
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Sri Ramakrishna accepted the divinity of Buddha and used to point out the similarity of his teachings to those of the Upanishads. He also showed great re spect for the Tirthankaras, who founded Jainism, and for the ten Gurus of Sikhism. But he did not speak of them as Divine Incarnations. He was heard to say that the Gurus of Sikhism were the reincarnations of King Janaka of ancient India. He kept in his room at Dakshineswar a small statue of Tirthankara Mahavira and a picture of Christ, before which incense was burnt morning and evening.
Without being formally initiated into their doctrines, Sri Ramakrishna thus realized the ideals of religions other than Hinduism. He did not need to follow any doctrine. All barriers were removed by his overwhelming love of God. So he became a Master who could speak with authority regarding the ideas and ideals of the various religions of the world. "I have practised", said he, "all religions — Hinduism, Islam, Christianity — and I have also followed the paths of the different Hindu sects. I have found that it is the same God toward whom all are directing their steps, though along different paths. You must try all beliefs and traverse all the different ways once. Wherever I look, I see men quarrelling in the name of religion — Hindus, Mohammedans, Brahmos, Vaishnavas, and the rest. But they never reflect that He who is called Krishna is also called Siva, and bears the name of the Primal Energy, Jesus, and Allah as well — the same Rama with a thousand names. A lake has several ghats. At one the Hindus take water in pitchers and call it 'jal'; at another the Mussalmans take water in leather bags and call it pani'. At a third the Christians call it 'water'. Can we imagine that it is not 'jal', but only 'pani' or 'water'? How ridiculous! The substance is One under different names, and everyone is seeking the same substance; only climate, temperament, and name create differences. Let each man follow his own path. If he sincerely and ardently wishes to know God, peace be unto him! He will surely realize Him."
In 1867 Sri Ramakrishna returned to Kamarpukur to recuperate from the effect of his austerities. The peaceful countryside, the simple and artless companions of his boyhood, and the pure air did him much good. The villagers were happy to get back their playful, frank, witty, kind-hearted, and truthful Gadadhar, though they did not fail to notice the great change that had come over him during his years in Calcutta. His wife, Sarada Devi, now fourteen years old, soon arrived at Kamarpukur. Her spiritual development was much beyond her age and she was able to understand immediately her husband's state of mind. She became eager to learn from him about God and to live with him as his attendant. The Master accepted her cheerfully both as his disciple and as his spiritual companion. Referring to the experiences of these few days, she once said: "I used to feel always as if a pitcher full of bliss were placed in my heart. The joy was indescribable."
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On January 27, 1868, Mathur Babu with a party of some one hundred and twenty-five persons set out on a pilgrimage to the sacred places of northern India. At Vaidyanath in Behar, when the Master saw the inhabitants of a village reduced by poverty and starvation to mere skeletons, he requested his rich patron to feed the people and give each a piece of cloth. Mathur demurred at the added expense. The Master declared bitterly that he would not go on to Benares, but would live with the poor and share their miseries. He actually left Mathur and sat down with the villagers. Whereupon Mathur had to yield. On another occasion, two years later, Sri Ramakrishna showed a similar sentiment for the poor and needy. He accompanied Mathur on a tour to one of the latter's estates at the time of the collection of rents. For two years the harvests had failed and the tenants were in a state of extreme poverty. The Master asked Mathur to remit their rents, distribute help to them, and in addition give the hungry people a sumptuous feast. When Mathur grumbled, the Master said: "You are only the steward of the Divine Mother. They are the Mother's tenants. You must spend the Mother's money. When they are suffering, how can you refuse to help them? You must help them." Again Mathur had to give in. Sri Ramakrishna's sympathy for the poor sprang from his perception of God in all created beings. His sentiment was not that of the humanist or philanthropist. To him the service of man was the same as the worship of God.
The party entered holy Benares by boat along the Ganges. When Sri Ramakrishna's eyes fell on this city of Siva, where had accumulated for ages the devotion and piety of countless worshippers, he saw it to be made of gold, as the scriptures declare. He was visibly moved. During his stay in the city he treated every particle of its earth with utmost re spect. At the Manikarnika Ghat, the great cremation ground of the city, he actually saw Siva, with ash-covered body and tawny matted hair, serenely approaching each funeral pyre and breathing into the ears of the corpses the mantra of liberation; and then the Divine Mother removing from the dead their bonds. Thus he realized the significance of the scriptural statement that anyone dying in Benares attains salvation through the grace of Siva. He paid a visit to Trailanga Swami, the celebrated monk, whom he later declared to be a real paramahamsa, a veritable image of Siva.
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Totapuri, coming to know of the Master's marriage, had once remarked: "What does it matter? He alone is firmly established in the Knowledge of Brahman who can adhere to his spirit of discrimination and renunciation even while living with his wife. He alone has attained the supreme illumination who can look on man and woman alike as Brahman. A man with the idea of sex may be a good aspirant, but he is still far from the goal." Sri Ramakrishna and his wife lived together at Dakshineswar, but their minds always soared above the worldly plane. A few months after Sarada Devi's arrival Sri Ramakrishna arranged, on an auspicious day, a special worship of Kali, the Divine Mother. Instead of an image of the Deity, he placed on the seat the living image, Sarada Devi herself. The worshipper and the worshipped went into deep samadhi and in the transcendental plane their souls were united. After several hours Sri Ramakrishna came down again to the relative plane, sang a hymn to the Great Goddess, and surrendered, at the feet of the living image, himself, his rosary, and the fruit of his life-long sadhana. This is known in Tantra as the Shorasi Puja, the "Adoration of Woman". Sri Ramakrishna realized the significance of the great statement of the Upanishad: "O Lord, Thou art the woman. Thou art the man; Thou art the boy. Thou art the girl; Thou art the old, tottering on their crutches. Thou pervadest the universe in its multiple forms."
By his marriage Sri Ramakrishna admitted the great value of marriage in man's spiritual evolution, and by adhering to his monastic vows he demonstrated the imperative necessity of self-control, purity, and continence, in the realization of God. By this unique spiritual relationship with his wife he proved that husband and wife can live together as spiritual companions. Thus his life is a synthesis of the ways of life of the householder and the monk.
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In the nirvikalpa samadhi Sri Ramakrishna had realized that Brahman alone is real and the world illusory. By keeping his mind six months on the plane of the non-dual Brahman, he had attained to the state of the vijnani, the knower of Truth in a special and very rich sense, who sees Brahman not only in himself and in the transcendental Absolute, but in everything of the world. In this state of vijnana, sometimes, bereft of body-consciousness, he would regard himself as one with Brahman; sometimes, conscious of the dual world, he would regard himself as God's devotee, servant, or child. In order to enable the Master to work for the welfare of humanity, the Divine Mother had kept in him a trace of ego, which he described — according to his mood — as the "ego of Knowledge", the "ego of Devotion", the "ego of a child", or the "ego of a servant". In any case this ego of the Master, consumed by the fire of the Knowledge of Brahman, was an appearance only, like a burnt string. He often referred to this ego as the "ripe ego" in contrast with the ego of the bound soul, which he described as the "unripe" or "green" ego. The ego of the bound soul identifies itself with the body, relatives, possessions, and the world; but the "ripe ego", illumined by Divine Knowledge, knows the body, relatives, possessions, and the world to be unreal and establishes a relationship of love with God alone. Through this "ripe ego" Sri Ramakrishna dealt with the world and his wife. One day, while stroking his feet, Sarada Devi asked the Master, "What do you think of me?" Quick came the answer: "The Mother who is worshipped in the temple is the mother who has given birth to my body and is now living in the nahabat, and it is She again who is stroking my feet at this moment. Indeed, I always look on you as the personification of the Blissful Mother Kali."
Sarada Devi, in the company of her husband, had rare spiritual experiences. She said: "I have no words to describe my wonderful exaltation of spirit as I watched him in his different moods. Under the influence of divine emotion he would sometimes talk on abstruse subjects, sometimes laugh, sometimes weep, and sometimes become perfectly motionless in samadhi. This would continue throughout the night. There was such an extraordinary divine presence in him that now and then I would shake with fear and wonder how the night would pass. Months went by in this way. Then one day he discovered that I had to keep awake the whole night lest, during my sleep, he should go into samadhi — for it might happen at any moment —, and so he asked me to sleep in the nahabat."
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First, he was an Incarnation of God, a specially commissioned person, whose spiritual experiences were for the benefit of humanity. Whereas it takes an ordinary man a whole life's struggle to realize one or two phases of God, he had in a few years realized God in all His phases.
Second, he knew that he had always been a free soul, that the various disciplines through which he had passed were really not necessary for his own liberation but were solely for the benefit of others. Thus the terms liberation and bondage were not applicable to him. As long as there are beings who consider themselves bound. God must come down to earth as an Incarnation to free them from bondage, just as a magistrate must visit any part of his district in which there is trouble.
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Second, the three great systems of thought known as Dualism, Qualified Non-dualism, and Absolute Non-dualism — Dvaita, Visishtadvaita, and Advaita — he perceived to represent three stages in man's progress toward the Ultimate Reality. They were not contradictory but complementary and suited to different temperaments. For the ordinary man with strong attachment to the senses, a dualistic form of religion, prescribing a certain amount of material support, such as music and other symbols, is useful. A man of God-realization transcends the idea of worldly duties, but the ordinary mortal must perform his duties, striving to be unattached and to surrender the results to God. The mind can comprehend and describe the range of thought and experience up to the Visishtadvaita, and no further. The Advaita, the last word in spiritual experience, is something to be felt in samadhi. for it transcends mind and speech. From the highest standpoint, the Absolute and Its manifestation are equally real — the Lord's Name, His Abode, and the Lord Himself are of the same spiritual Essence. Everything is Spirit, the difference being only in form.
Third, Sri Ramakrishna realized the wish of the Divine Mother that through him She should found a new Order, consisting of those who would uphold the universal doctrines illustrated in his life.
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By far the ablest leader of the Brahmo movement was Keshab Chandra Sen (1838-1884). Unlike Raja Rammohan Roy and Devendranath Tagore, Keshab was born of a middle-class Bengali family and had been brought up in an English school. He did not know Sanskrit and very soon broke away from the popular Hindu religion. Even at an early age he came under the spell of Christ and professed to have experienced the special favour of John the Baptist, Christ, and St. Paul. When he strove to introduce Christ to the Brahmo Samaj, a rupture became inevitable with Devendranath. In 1868 Keshab broke with the older leader and founded the Brahmo Samaj of India, Devendra retaining leadership of the first Brahmo Samaj, now called the Adi Samaj.
Keshab possessed a complex nature. When passing through a great moral crisis, he spent much of his time in solitude and felt that he heard the voice of God, When a devotional form of worship was introduced into the Brahmo Samaj, he spent hours in singing kirtan with his followers. He visited England land in 1870 and impressed the English people with his musical voice, his simple English, and his spiritual fervour. He was entertained by Queen Victoria. Returning to India, he founded centres of the Brahmo Samaj in various parts of the country. Not unlike a professor of comparative religion in a European university, he began to discover, about the time of his first contact with Sri Ramakrishna, the harmony of religions. He became sympathetic toward the Hindu gods and goddesses, explaining them in a liberal fashion. Further, he believed that he was called by God to dictate to the world God's newly revealed law, the New Di spensation, the Navavidhan.
In 1878 a schism divided Keshab's Samaj. Some of his influential followers accused him of infringing the Brahmo principles by marrying his daughter to a wealthy man before she had attained the marriageable age approved by the Samaj. This group seceded and established the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj, Keshab remaining the leader of the Navavidhan. Keshab now began to be drawn more and more toward the Christ ideal, though under the influence of Sri Ramakrishna his devotion to the Divine Mother also deepened. His mental oscillation between Christ and the Divine Mother of Hinduism found no position of rest. In Bengal and some other parts of India the Brahmo movement took the form of unitarian Christianity, scoffed at Hindu rituals, and preached a crusade against image worship. Influenced by Western culture, it declared the supremacy of reason, advocated the ideals of the French Revolution, abolished the caste-system among its own members, stood for the emancipation of women, agitated for the abolition of early marriage, sanctioned the remarriage of widows, and encouraged various educational and social-reform movements. The immediate effect of the Brahmo movement in Bengal was the checking of the proselytizing activities of the Christian missionaries. It also raised Indian culture in the estimation of its English masters. But it was an intellectual and eclectic religious ferment born of the necessity of the time. Unlike Hinduism, it was not founded on the deep inner experiences of sages and prophets. Its influence was confined to a comparatively few educated men and women of the country, and the vast masses of the Hindus remained outside it. It sounded monotonously only one of the notes in the rich gamut of the Eternal Religion of the Hindus.
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Sri Ramakrishna, dressed in a red-bordered dhoti, one end of which was carelessly thrown over his left shoulder, came to Jaygopal's garden house accompanied by Hriday. No one took notice of the unostentatious visitor. Finally the Master said to Keshab, "People tell me you have seen God; so I have come to hear from you about God." A magnificent conversation followed. The Master sang a thrilling song about Kali and forthwith went into samadhi. When Hriday uttered the sacred "Om" in his ears, he gradually came back to consciousness of the world, his face still radiating a divine brilliance. Keshab and his followers were amazed. The contrast between Sri Ramakrishna and the Brahmo devotees was very interesting. There sat this small man, thin and extremely delicate. His eyes were illumined with an inner light. Good humour gleamed in his eyes and lurked in the corners of his mouth. His speech was Bengali of a homely kind with a slight, delightful stammer, and his words held men enthralled by their wealth of spiritual experience, their inexhaustible store of simile and metaphor, their power of observation, their bright and subtle humour, their wonderful catholicity, their ceaseless flow of wisdom. And around him now were the sophisticated men of Bengal, the best products of Western education, with Keshab, the idol of young Bengal, as their leader.
Keshab's sincerity was enough for Sri Ramakrishna. Henceforth the two saw each other frequently, either at Dakshineswar or at the temple of the Brahmo Samaj. Whenever the Master was in the temple at the time of divine service, Keshab would request him to speak to the congregation. And Keshab would visit the saint, in his turn, with offerings of flowers and fruits.
--- OTHER BRAHMO LEADERS
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Pratap Chandra Mazumdar, the right-hand man of Keshab and an accomplished Brahmo preacher in Europe and America, bitterly criticized Sri Ramakrishna's use of uncultured language and also his austere attitude toward his wife. But he could not escape the spell of the Master's personality. In the course of an article about Sri Ramakrishna, Pratap wrote in the "Theistic Quarterly Review": "What is there in common between him and me? I, a Europeanized, civilized, self-centred, semi-sceptical, so-called educated reasoner, and he, a poor, illiterate, unpolished, half-idolatrous, friendless Hindu devotee? Why should I sit long hours to attend to him, I, who have listened to Disraeli and Fawcett, Stanley and Max Muller, and a whole host of European scholars and divines? . . . And it is not I only, but dozens like me, who do the same. . . . He worships Siva, he worships Kali, he worships Rama, he worships Krishna, and is a confirmed advocate of Vedantic doctrines. . . . He is an idolater, yet is a faithful and most devoted meditator on the perfections of the One Formless, Absolute, Infinite Deity. . . . His religion is ecstasy, his worship means transcendental insight, his whole nature burns day and night with a permanent fire and fever of a strange faith and feeling. . . . So long as he is spared to us, gladly shall we sit at his feet to learn from him the sublime precepts of purity, unworldliness, spirituality, and inebriation in the love of God. . . . He, by his childlike bhakti, by his strong conceptions of an ever-ready Motherhood, helped to unfold it [God as our Mother] in our minds wonderfully. . . . By associating with him we learnt to realize better the divine attributes as scattered over the three hundred and thirty millions of deities of mythological India, the gods of the Puranas."
The Brahmo leaders received much inspiration from their contact with Sri Ramakrishna. It broadened their religious views and kindled in their hearts the yearning for God-realization; it made them understand and appreciate the rituals and symbols of Hindu religion, convinced them of the manifestation of God in diverse forms, and deepened their thoughts about the harmony of religions. The Master, too, was impressed by the sincerity of many of the Brahmo devotees. He told them about his own realizations and explained to them the essence of his teachings, such as the necessity of renunciation, sincerity in the pursuit of one's own course of discipline, faith in God, the performance of one's duties without thought of results, and discrimination between the Real and the unreal.
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-melting love of the Purana. Twenty hours out of twenty-four he would speak without out rest or respite. He gave to all his sympathy and enlightenment, and he touched them with that strange power of the soul which could not but melt even the most hardened. And people understood him according to their powers of comprehension.
^The word is generally used in the text to denote one devoted to God, a worshipper of the Personal God, or a follower of the path of love. A devotee of Sri Ramakrishna is one who is devoted to Sri Ramakrishna and follows his teachings. The word "disciple", when used in connexion with Sri Ramakrishna, refers to one who had been initiated into spiritual life by Sri Ramakrishna and who regarded him as his guru.
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Kedarnath Chatterji was endowed with a spiritual temperament and had tried various paths of religion, some not very commendable. When he met the Master at Dakshineswar he understood the true meaning of religion. It is said that the Master, weary of instructing devotees who were coming to him in great numbers for guidance, once prayed to the Goddess Kali: "Mother, I am tired of speaking to people. Please give power to Kedar, Girish, Ram, Vijay, and Mahendra to give them the preliminary instruction, so that just a little teaching from me will be enough." He was aware, however, of Kedar's lingering attachment to worldly things and often warned him about it.
--- HARISH
Harish, a young man in affluent circumstances, renounced his family and took shelter with the Master, who loved him for his sincerity, singleness of purpose, and quiet nature. He spent his leisure time in prayer and meditation, turning a deaf ear to the entreaties and threats of his relatives. Referring to his undisturbed peace of mind, the Master would say: "Real men are dead to the world though living. Look at Harish. He is an example." When one day the Master asked him to be a little kind to his wife, Harish said: "You must excuse me on this point. This is not the place to show kindness. If I try to be sympathetic to her, there is a possibility of my forgetting the ideal and becoming entangled in the world."
--- BHAVANATH
Bhavanath Chatterji visited the Master while he was still in his teens. His parents and relatives regarded Sri Ramakrishna as an insane person and tried their utmost to prevent him from becoming intimate with the Master. But the young boy was very stubborn and often spent nights at Dakshineswar. He was greatly attached to Narendra, and the Master encouraged their friendship. The very sight of him often awakened Sri Ramakrishna's spiritual emotion.
--- BALARAM BOSE
Balaram Bose came of a wealthy Vaishnava family. From his youth he had shown a deep religious temperament and had devoted his time to meditation, prayer, and the study of the Vaishnava scriptures. He was very much impressed by Sri Ramakrishna even at their first meeting. He asked Sri Ramakrishna whether God really existed and, if so, whether a man could realize Him. The Master said: "God reveals Himself to the devotee who thinks of Him as his nearest and dearest. Because you do not draw response by praying to Him once, you must not conclude that He does not exist. Pray to God, thinking of Him as dearer than your very self. He is much attached to His devotees. He comes to a man even before He is sought. There is none more intimate and affectionate than God." Balaram had never before heard God spoken of in such forceful words; every one of the words seemed true to him. Under the Master's influence he outgrew the conventions of the Vaishnava worship and became one of the most beloved of the disciples. It was at his home that the Master slept whenever he spent a night in Calcutta.
--- MAHENDRA OR M.
--
One day Girish felt depressed because he was unable to submit to any routine of spiritual discipline. In an exalted mood the Master said to him: "All right, give me your power of attorney. Henceforth I assume responsibility for you. You need not do anything." Girish heaved a sigh of relief. He felt happy to think that Sri Ramakrishna had assumed his spiritual responsibilities. But poor Girish could not then realize that He also, on his part, had to give up his freedom and make of himself a puppet in Sri Ramakrishna's hands. The Master began to discipline him according to this new attitude. One day Girish said about a trifling matter, "Yes, I shall do this." "No, no!" the Master corrected him. "You must not speak in that egotistic manner. You should say, 'God willing, I shall do it.'" Girish understood. Thenceforth he tried to give up all idea of personal responsibility and surrender himself to the Divine Will. His mind began to dwell constantly on Sri Ramakrishna. This unconscious meditation in time chastened his turbulent spirit.
The householder devotees generally visited Sri Ramakrishna on Sunday afternoons and other holidays. Thus a brotherhood was gradually formed, and the Master encouraged their fraternal feeling. Now and then he would accept an invitation to a devotee's home, where other devotees would also be invited. Kirtan would be arranged and they would spend hours in dance and devotional music. The Master would go into trances or open his heart in religious discourses and in the narration of his own spiritual experiences. Many people who could not go to Dakshineswar participated in these meetings and felt blessed. Such an occasion would be concluded with a sumptuous feast.
But it was in the company of his younger devotees, pure souls yet unstained by the touch of worldliness, that Sri Ramakrishna took greatest joy. Among the young men who later embraced the householder's life were Narayan, Paitu, the younger Naren, Tejchandra, and Purna. These visited the Master sometimes against strong opposition from home.
--
Purna was a lad of thirteen, whom Sri Ramakrishna described as an Isvarakoti, a soul born with special spiritual qualities. The Master said that Purna was the last of the group of brilliant devotees who, as he once had seen in a trance, would come to him for spiritual illumination. Purna said to Sri Ramakrishna during their second meeting, "You are God Himself incarnated in flesh and blood." Such words coming from a mere youngster proved of what stuff the boy was made.
--- MAHIMACHARAN AND PRATAP HAZRA
--
In a state of mental conflict and torture of soul, Narendra came to Sri Ramakrishna at Dakshineswar. He was then eighteen years of age and had been in college two years. He entered the Master's room accompanied by some light-hearted friends. At Sri Ramakrishna's request he sang a few songs, pouring his whole soul into them, and the Master went into samadhi. A few minutes later Sri Ramakrishna suddenly left his seat, took Narendra by the hand, and led him to the screened verandah north of his room. They were alone. Addressing Narendra most tenderly, as if he were a friend of long acquaintance, the Master said: "Ah! You have come very late. Why have you been so unkind as to make me wait all these days? My ears are tired of hearing the futile words of worldly men. Oh, how I have longed to pour my spirit into the heart of someone fitted to receive my message!" He talked thus, sobbing all the time. Then, standing before Narendra with folded hands, he addressed him as Narayana, born on earth to remove the misery of humanity. Grasping Narendra's hand, he asked him to come again, alone, and very soon. Narendra was startled. "What is this I have come to see?" he said to himself. "He must be stark mad. Why, I am the son of Viswanath Dutta. How dare he speak this way to me?"
When they returned to the room and Narendra heard the Master speaking to others, he was surprised to find in his words an inner logic, a striking sincerity, and a convincing proof of his spiritual nature. In answer to Narendra's question, "Sir, have you seen God?" the Master said: "Yes, I have seen God. I have seen Him more tangibly than I see you. I have talked to Him more intimately than I am talking to you." Continuing, the Master said: "But, my child, who wants to see God? People shed jugs of tears for money, wife, and children. But if they would weep for God for only one day they would surely see Him." Narendra was amazed. These words he could not doubt. This was the first time he had ever heard a man saying that he had seen God. But he could not reconcile these words of the Master with the scene that had taken place on the verandah only a few minutes before. He concluded that Sri Ramakrishna was a monomaniac, and returned home rather puzzled in mind.
During his second visit, about a month later, suddenly, at the touch of the Master, Narendra felt overwhelmed and saw the walls of the room and everything around him whirling and vanishing. "What are you doing to me?" he cried in terror. "I have my father and mother at home." He saw his own ego and the whole universe almost swallowed in a nameless void. With a laugh the Master easily restored him. Narendra thought he might have been hypnotized, but he could not understand how a monomaniac could cast a spell over the mind of a strong person like himself. He returned home more confused than ever, resolved to be henceforth on his guard before this strange man.
But during his third visit Narendra fared no better. This time, at the Master's touch, he lost consciousness entirely. While he was still in that state, Sri Ramakrishna questioned him concerning his spiritual antecedents and whereabouts, his mission in this world, and the duration of his mortal life. The answers confirmed what the Master himself had known and inferred. Among other things, he came to know that Narendra was a sage who had already attained perfection, and that the day he learnt his real nature he would give up his body in yoga, by an act of will.
--
The Master wanted to train Narendra in the teachings of the non-dualistic Vedanta philosophy. But Narendra, because of his Brahmo upbringing, considered it wholly blasphemous to look on man as one with his Creator. One day at the temple garden he laughingly said to a friend: "How silly! This jug is God! This cup is God! Whatever we see is God! And we too are God! Nothing could be more absurd." Sri Ramakrishna came out of his room and gently touched him. spellbound, he immediately perceived that everything in the world was indeed God. A new universe opened around him. Returning home in a dazed state, he found there too that the food, the plate, the eater himself, the people around him, were all God. When he walked in the street, he saw that the cabs, the horses, the streams of people, the buildings, were all Brahman. He could hardly go about his day's business. His parents became anxious about him and thought him ill. And when the intensity of the experience abated a little, he saw the world as a dream. Walking in the public square, he would strike his head against the iron railings to know whether they were real. It took him a number of days to recover his normal self. He had a foretaste of the great experiences yet to come and realized that the words of the Vedanta were true.
At the beginning of 1884 Narendra's father suddenly died of heart-failure, leaving the family in a state of utmost poverty. There were six or seven mouths to feed at home. Creditors were knocking at the door. Relatives who had accepted his father's unstinted kindness now became enemies, some even bringing suit to deprive Narendra of his ancestral home. Actually starving and barefoot, Narendra searched for a job, but without success. He began to doubt whether anywhere in the world there was such a thing as unselfish sympathy. Two rich women made evil proposals to him and promised to put an end to his distress; but he refused them with contempt.
Narendra began to talk of his doubt of the very existence of God. His friends thought he had become an atheist, and piously circulated gossip adducing unmentionable motives for his unbelief. His moral character was maligned. Even some of the Master's disciples partly believed the gossip, and Narendra told these to their faces that only a coward believed in God through fear of suffering or hell. But he was distressed to think that Sri Ramakrishna, too, might believe these false reports. His pride revolted. He said to himself: "What does it matter? If a man's good name rests on such slender foundations, I don't care." But later on he was amazed to learn that the Master had never lost faith in him. To a disciple who complained about Narendra's degradation, Sri Ramakrishna replied: "Hush, you fool! The Mother has told me it can never be so. I won't look at you if you speak that way again."
The moment came when Narendra's distress reached its climax. He had gone the whole day without food. As he was returning home in the evening he could hardly lift his tired limbs. He sat down in front of a house in sheer exhaustion, too weak even to think. His mind began to wander. Then, suddenly, a divine power lifted the veil over his soul. He found the solution of the problem of the coexistence of divine justice and misery, the presence of suffering in the creation of a blissful Providence. He felt bodily refreshed, his soul was bathed in peace, and he slept serenely.
--
Nitya Niranjan Sen was a disciple of heroic type. He came to the Master when he was eighteen years old. He was a medium for a group of spiritualists. During his first visit the Master said to him: "My boy, if you think always of ghosts you will become a ghost, and if you think of God you will become God. Now, which do you prefer?" Niranjan severed all connexions with the spiritualists. During his second visit the Master embraced him and said warmly: "Niranjan, my boy, the days are flitting away. When will you realize God? This life will be in vain if you do not realize Him. When will you devote your mind wholly to God?" Niranjan was surprised to see the Master's great anxiety for his spiritual welfare. He was a young man endowed with unusual spiritual parts. He felt disdain for worldly pleasures and was totally guileless, like a child. But he had a violent temper. One day, as he was coming in a country boat to Dakshineswar, some of his fellow passengers began to speak ill of the Master. Finding his protest futile, Niranjan began to rock the boat, threatening to sink it in mid stream. That silenced the offenders. When he reported the incident to the Master, he was rebuked for his inability to curb his anger.
--- JOGINDRA
--
Jogindranath came of an aristocratic brahmin family of Dakshineswar. His father and relatives shared the popular mistrust of Sri Ramakrishna's sanity. At a very early age the boy developed religious tendencies, spending two or three hours daily in meditation, and his meeting with Sri Ramakrishna deepened his desire for the realization of God. He had a perfect horror of marriage. But at the earnest request of his mother he had had to yield, and he now believed that his spiritual future was doomed. So he kept himself away from the Master.
Sri Ramakrishna employed a ruse to bring Jogindra to him. As soon as the disciple entered the room, the Master rushed forward to meet the young man. Catching hold of the disciple's hand, he said: "What if you have married? Haven't I too married? What is there to be afraid of in that?" Touching his own chest he said: "If this [meaning himself] is propitious, then even a hundred thousand marriages cannot injure you. If you desire to lead a householder's life, then bring your wife here one day, and I shall see that she becomes a real companion in your spiritual progress. But if you want to lead a monastic life, then I shall eat up your attachment to the world." Jogin was dumbfounded at these words. He received new strength, and his spirit of renunciation was re-established.
--
Sashi and Sarat were two cousins who came from a pious brahmin family of Calcutta. At an early age they had joined the Brahmo Samaj and had come under the influence of Keshab Sen. The Master said to them at their first meeting: "If bricks and tiles are burnt after the trade-mark has been stamped on them, they retain the mark for ever. Similarly, man should be stamped with God before entering the world. Then he will not become attached to worldliness." Fully aware of the future course of their life, he asked them not to marry. The Master asked Sashi whether he believed in God with form or in God without form. Sashi replied that he was not even sure about the existence of God; so he could not speak one way or the other. This frank answer very much pleased the Master.
Sarat's soul longed for the all-embracing realization of the Godhead. When the Master inquired whether there was any particular form of God he wished to see, the boy replied that he would like to see God in all the living beings of the world. "But", the Master demurred, "that is the last word in realization. One cannot have it at the very outset." Sarat stated calmly: "I won't be satisfied with anything short of that. I shall trudge on along the path till I attain that blessed state." Sri Ramakrishna was very much pleased.
--
She spent about two months in uninterrupted communion with God, the Baby Gopala never leaving her for a moment. Then the intensity of her vision was lessened; had it not been, her body would have perished. The Master spoke highly of her exalted spiritual condition and said that such vision of God was a rare thing for ordinary mortals. The fun-loving Master one day confronted the critical Narendranath with this simple-minded woman. No two could have presented a more striking contrast. The Master knew of Narendra's lofty contempt for all visions, and he asked the old lady to narrate her experiences to Narendra. With great hesitation she told him her story. Now and then she interrupted her maternal chatter to ask Narendra: "My son, I am a poor ignorant woman. I don't understand anything. You are so learned. Now tell me if these visions of Gopala are true." As Narendra listened to the story he was profoundly moved. He said, "Yes, mother, they are quite true." Behind his cynicism Narendra, too, possessed a heart full of love and tenderness.
--- THE MARCH OF EVENTS
--
During the week-ends the householders, enjoying a respite from their office duties, visited the Master. The meetings on Sunday afternoons were of the nature of little festivals. Refreshments were often served. Professional musicians now and then sang devotional songs. The Master and the devotees sang and danced, Sri Ramakrishna frequently going into ecstatic moods. The happy memory of such a Sunday would linger long in the minds of the devotees. Those whom the Master wanted for special instruction he would ask to visit him on Tuesdays and Saturdays. These days were particularly auspicious for the worship of Kali.
The young disciples destined to be monks, Sri Ramakrishna invited on week-days, when the householders were not present. The training of the householders and of the future monks had to proceed along entirely different lines. Since M. generally visited the Master on week-ends, the Go spel of Sri Ramakrishna does not contain much mention of the future monastic disciples.
Finally, there was a handful of fortunate disciples, householders as well as youngsters, who were privileged to spend nights with the Master in his room. They would see him get up early in the morning and walk up and down the room, singing in his sweet voice and tenderly communing with the Mother.
--- INJURY TO THE MASTER'S ARM
One day, in January 1884, the Master was going toward the pine-grove when he went into a trance. He was alone. There was no one to support him or guide his footsteps. He fell to the ground and dislocated a bone in his left arm. This accident had a significant influence on his mind, the natural inclination of which was to soar above the consciousness of the body. The acute pain in the arm forced his mind to dwell on the body and on the world outside. But he saw even in this a divine purpose; for, with his mind compelled to dwell on the physical plane, he realized more than ever that he was an instrument in the hand of the Divine Mother, who had a mission to fulfil through his human body and mind. He also distinctly found that in the phenomenal world God manifests Himself, in an inscrutable way, through diverse human beings, both good and evil. Thus he would speak of God in the guise of the wicked, God in the guise of the pious. God in the guise of the hypocrite, God in the guise of the lewd. He began to take a special delight in watching the divine play in the relative world. Sometimes the sweet human relationship with God would appear to him more appealing than the all-effacing Knowledge of Brahman. Many a time he would pray: "Mother, don't make me unconscious through the Knowledge of Brahman. Don't give me Brahmajnana, Mother. Am I not Your child, and naturally timid? I must have my Mother. A million salutations to the Knowledge of Brahman! Give it to those who want it." Again he prayed: "O Mother let me remain in contact with men! Don't make me a dried-up ascetic. I want to enjoy Your sport in the world." He was able to taste this very rich divine experience and enjoy the love of God and the company of His devotees because his mind, on account of the injury to his arm, was forced to come down to the consciousness of the body. Again, he would make fun of people who proclaimed him as a Divine Incarnation, by pointing to his broken arm. He would say, "Have you ever heard of God breaking His arm?" It took the arm about five months to heal.
--- BEGINNING OF HIS ILLNESS
In April 1885 the Master's throat became inflamed. Prolonged conversation or absorption in samadhi, making the blood flow into the throat, would aggravate the pain. Yet when the annual Vaishnava festival was celebrated at Panihati, Sri Ramakrishna attended it against the doctor's advice. With a group of disciples he spent himself in music, dance, and ecstasy. The illness took a turn for the worse and was diagnosed as "clergyman's sore throat". The patient was cautioned against conversation and ecstasies. Though he followed the physician's directions regarding medicine and diet, he could neither control his trances nor withhold from seekers the solace of his advice. Sometimes, like a sulky child, he would complain to the Mother about the crowds, who gave him no rest day or night. He was overheard to say to Her; "Why do You bring here all these worthless people, who are like milk diluted with five times its own quantity of water? My eyes are almost destroyed with blowing the fire to dry up the water. My health is gone. It is beyond my strength. Do it Yourself, if You want it done. This (pointing to his own body) is but a perforated drum, and if you go on beating it day in and day out, how long will it last?"
But his large heart never turned anyone away. He said, "Let me be condemned to be born over and over again, even in the form of a dog, if I can be of help to a single soul." And he bore the pain, singing cheerfully, "Let the body be preoccupied with illness, but, O mind, dwell for ever in God's Bliss!"
--
The Holy Mother — so Sarada Devi had come to be affectionately known by Sri Ramakrishna's devotees — was brought from Dakshineswar to look after the general cooking and to prepare the special diet of the patient. The dwelling space being extremely limited, she had to adapt herself to cramped conditions. At three o'clock in the morning she would finish her bath in the Ganges and then enter a small covered place on the roof, where she spent the whole day cooking and praying. After eleven at night, when the visitors went away, she would come down to her small bedroom on the first floor to enjoy a few hours' sleep. Thus she spent three months, working hard, sleeping little, and praying constantly for the Master's recovery.
At Syampukur the devotees led an intense life. Their attendance on the Master was in itself a form of spiritual discipline. His mind was constantly soaring to an exalted plane of consciousness. Now and then they would catch the contagion of his spiritual fervour. They sought to divine the meaning of this illness of the Master, whom most of them had accepted as an Incarnation of God. One group, headed by Girish with his robust optimism and great power of imagination, believed that the illness was a mere pretext to serve a deeper purpose. The Master had willed his illness in order to bring the devotees together and promote solidarity among them. As soon as this purpose was served, he would himself get rid of the disease. A second group thought that the Divine Mother, in whose hand the Master was an instrument, had brought about this illness to serve Her own mysterious ends. But the young rationalists, led by Narendra, refused to ascribe a
--
Yet one is not sure whether the Master's soul actually was tortured by this agonizing disease. At least during his moments of spiritual exaltation — which became almost constant during the closing days of his life on earth — he lost all consciousness of the body, of illness and suffering. One of his attendants (Latu, later known as Swami Adbhutananda.) said later on: "While Sri Ramakrishna lay sick he never actually suffered pain. He would often say: 'O mind! Forget the body, forget the sickness, and remain merged in Bliss.' No, he did not really suffer. At times he would be in a state when the thrill of joy was clearly manifested in his body. Even when he could not speak he would let us know in some way that there was no suffering, and this fact was clearly evident to all who watched him. People who did not understand him thought that his suffering was very great. What spiritual joy he transmitted to us at that time! Could such a thing have been possible if he had 'been suffering physically? It was during this period that he taught us again these truths: 'Brahman is always unattached. The three gunas are in It, but It is unaffected by them, just as the wind carries odour yet remains odourless.' 'Brahman is Infinite Being, Infinite Wisdom, Infinite Bliss. In It there exist no delusion, no misery, no disease, no death, no growth, no decay.' 'The Transcendental Being and the being within are one and the same. There is one indivisible Absolute Existence.'"
The Holy Mother secretly went to a Siva temple across the Ganges to intercede with the Deity for the Master's recovery. In a revelation she was told to prepare herself for the inevitable end.
0.00 - The Book of Lies Text, #The Book of Lies, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
and speRMA, and is the exclamation of wonder or ecstasy,
which is the ultimate nature of things.
--
In line 2, speech with Silence.
In line 3, the Logos is declared as the Negative.
--
This chapter gives a list of those special messengers
of the Infinite who initiate periods. they are called
--
Destroy therefore the Eight Parts of speech; the
Ninth is nigh unto Truth.
--
speech, the interjection, the meaningless utterance of
ecstasy, being the only thing worth saying; yet even this
--
call Silence is Its speech.
This Abyss is also called "Hell", and "The Many".
--
But THAT which neither is silent, nor speaks, re-
joices therein.
--
does not mislead as speech does.
Also, speech is a symptom of Thought.
Yet, silence is but the negative side of Truth; the
--
Then thou art not lost in love; speak not of love.
Love Alway Yieldeth: Love Alway Hardeneth.
--
that is Ass-headed did he dare not speak.
[76]
--
Grand Master did not speak.
The Eagle may be identified, though not too closely,
--
manifestation of magical force, the spermatozoon in the
conical phallus. For wheels, see Chapter 78.
--
This is the special number of Horus; it is the Hebrew
blood, and the multiplication of the 4 by the 11, the
--
no Ego, and speak only in the third person, regard
these as ignorant, on account of their assumption of
--
O my darling! We should not have spent Ninety
Pounds in that Three Weeks in Paris!...Slash the
--
555 is HADIT, HAD spelt in full. 156 is
BABALON.
--
wounded by his own spear, the spear that had made him
king.
--
AYIN is spelt O I N, thus replacing the A in A I N by an O, the letter of the
Devil, or Pan, the phallic God.
--
towards his attitude to complete freedom of speech and
action. He refuses to listen to the ostensible criticism of
--
lotus of the Sahasrara. "Lily" is spelt with a capital to
connect with Laylah.
--
that of Horus, a sign specially revealed by him per-
sonally, at the Equinox of the Gods. (It is the flame
--
Thoth, the god of Magick, is the inventor of speech;
Christ is the Logos.
--
With this gift a man can spend his seventy years in
peace.
--
Emphasise gift, then man, then spend, then seventy
years, and lastly peace, and change the intonations
--
(38) These eggs being speckled, resemble the wander-
ing mind referred to.
--
How? Not by speed, nor strength, nor power to stay,
But by the Silence that succeeds the Neigh!
--
speaking as an Irishman, I prefer to say: The price
of eternal warfare is existence.
--
Even in the coffin of its hopes, and spend
All the force won by its old woe and stress
--
the circle of the conditions of the speaker.
Any yet again! Do we not find that the most robust
0.00 - THE GOSPEL PREFACE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
But, all doctrinal writing is in some measure formal and impersonal, while the autobiographer tends to omit what he regards as trifling matters and suffers from the further disadvantage of being unable to say how he strikes other people and in what way he affects their lives. Moreover, most saints have left neither writings nor self-portraits, and for knowledge of their lives, their characters and their teachings, we are forced to rely upon the records made by their disciples who, in most cases, have proved themselves singularly incompetent as reporters and biographers. Hence the special interest attaching to this enormously detailed account of the daily life and conversations of Sri Ramakrishna.
"M", as the author modestly styles himself, was peculiarly qualified for his task. To a reverent love for his master, to a deep and experiential knowledge of that master's teaching, he added a prodigious memory for the small happenings of each day and a happy gift for recording them in an interesting and realistic way. Making good use of his natural gifts and of the circumstances in which he found himself, "M" produced a book unique, so far as my knowledge goes, in the literature of hagiography. No other saint has had so able and indefatigable a Boswell. Never have the small events of a contemplative's daily life been described with such a wealth of intimate detail. Never have the casual and unstudied utterances of a great religious teacher been set down with so minute a fidelity. To Western readers, it is true, this fidelity and this wealth of detail are sometimes a trifle disconcerting; for the social, religious and intellectual frames of reference within which Sri Ramakrishna did his thinking and expressed his feelings were entirely Indian. But after the first few surprises and bewilderments, we begin to find something peculiarly stimulating and instructive about the very strangeness and, to our eyes, the eccentricity of the man revealed to us in "M's" narrative. What a scholastic philosopher would call the "accidents" of Ramakrishna's life were intensely Hindu and therefore, so far as we in the West are concerned, unfamiliar and hard to understand; its "essence", however, was intensely mystical and therefore universal. To read through these conversations in which mystical doctrine alternates with an unfamiliar kind of humour, and where discussions of the oddest a spects of Hindu mythology give place to the most profound and subtle utterances about the nature of Ultimate Reality, is in itself a liberal, education in humility, tolerance and su spense of judgment. We must be grateful to the translator for his excellent version of a book so curious and delightful as a biographical document, so precious, at the same time, for what it teaches us of the life of the spirit.
--
He was an educationist all his life both in a spiritual and in a secular sense. After he passed out of College, he took up work as headmaster in a number of schools in succession Narail High School, City School, Ripon College School, Metropolitan School, Aryan School, Oriental School, Oriental Seminary and Model School. The causes of his migration from school to school were that he could not get on with some of the managements on grounds of principles and that often his spiritual mood drew him away to places of pilgrimage for long periods. He worked with some of the most noted public men of the time like Iswar Chandra Vidysgar and Surendranath Banerjee. The latter appointed him as a professor in the City and Ripon Colleges where he taught subjects like English, philosophy, history and economics. In his later days he took over the Morton School, and he spent his time in the staircase room of the third floor of it, administering the school and preaching the message of the Master. He was much re spected in educational circles where he was usually referred to as Rector Mahashay. A teacher who had worked under him writes thus in warm appreciation of his teaching methods: "Only when I worked with him in school could I appreciate what a great educationist he was. He would come down to the level of his students when teaching, though he himself was so learned, so talented. Ordinarily teachers confine their instruction to what is given in books without much thought as to whether the student can accept it or not. But M., would first of all gauge how much the student could take in and by what means. He would employ aids to teaching like maps, pictures and diagrams, so that his students could learn by seeing. Thirty years ago (from 1953) when the question of imparting education through the medium of the mother tongue was being discussed, M. had already employed Bengali as the medium of instruction in the Morton School." (M The Apostle and the Evangelist by Swami Nityatmananda Part I. P. 15.)
Imparting secular education was, however, only his profession ; his main concern was with the spiritual regeneration of man a calling for which Destiny seems to have chosen him. From his childhood he was deeply pious, and he used to be moved very much by Sdhus, temples and Durga Puja celebrations. The piety and eloquence of the great Brahmo leader of the times, Keshab Chander Sen, elicited a powerful response from the impressionable mind of Mahendra Nath, as it did in the case of many an idealistic young man of Calcutta, and prepared him to receive the great Light that was to dawn on him with the coming of Sri Ramakrishna into his life.
This epoch-making event of his life came about in a very strange way. M. belonged to a joint family with several collateral members. Some ten years after he began his career as an educationist, bitter quarrels broke out among the members of the family, driving the sensitive M. to despair and utter despondency. He lost all interest in life and left home one night to go into the wide world with the idea of ending his life. At dead of night he took rest in his sister's house at Baranagar, and in the morning, accompanied by a nephew Siddheswar, he wandered from one garden to another in Calcutta until Siddheswar brought him to the Temple Garden of Dakshineswar where Sri Ramakrishna was then living. After spending some time in the beautiful rose gardens there, he was directed to the room of the Paramahamsa, where the eventful meeting of the Master and the disciple took place on a blessed evening (the exact date is not on record) on a Sunday in March 1882. As regards what took place on the occasion, the reader is referred to the opening section of the first chapter of the Go spel.
The Master, who divined the mood of de speration in M, his resolve to take leave of this 'play-field of deception', put new faith and hope into him by his gracious words of assurance: "God forbid! Why should you take leave of this world? Do you not feel blessed by discovering your Guru? By His grace, what is beyond all imagination or dreams can be easily achieved!" At these words the clouds of despair moved away from the horizon of M.'s mind, and the sunshine of a new hope revealed to him fresh vistas of meaning in life. Referring to this phase of his life, M. used to say, "Behold! where is the resolve to end life, and where, the discovery of God! That is, sorrow should be looked upon as a friend of man. God is all good." ( Ibid P.33.)
After this re-settlement, M's life revolved around the Master, though he continued his professional work as an educationist. During all holidays, including Sundays, he spent his time at Dakshineswar in the Master's company, and at times extended his stay to several days.
It did not take much time for M. to become very intimate with the Master, or for the Master to recognise in this disciple a divinely commissioned partner in the fulfilment of his spiritual mission. When M. was reading out the Chaitanya Bhagavata, the Master discovered that he had been, in a previous birth, a disciple and companion of the great Vaishnava Teacher, Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, and the Master even saw him 'with his naked eye' participating in the ecstatic mass-singing of the Lord's name under the leadership of that Divine personality. So the Master told M, "You are my own, of the same substance as the father and the son," indicating thereby that M. was one of the chosen few and a part and parcel of his Divine mission.
--
Though his children received proper attention from him, his real family, both during the Master's lifetime and after, consisted of saints, devotees, Sannysins and spiritual aspirants. His life exemplifies the Master's teaching that an ideal householder must be like a good maidservant of a family, loving and caring properly for the children of the house, but knowing always that her real home and children are elsewhere. During the Master's lifetime he spent all his Sundays and other holidays with him and his devotees, and besides listening to the holy talks and devotional music, practised meditation both on the Personal and the Impersonal a spects of God under the direct guidance of the Master. In the pages of the Go spel the reader gets a picture of M.'s spiritual relationship with the Master how from a hazy belief in the Impersonal God of the Brahmos, he was step by step brought to accept both Personality and Impersonality as the two a spects of the same Non-dual Being, how he was convinced of the manifestation of that Being as Gods, Goddesses and as Incarnations, and how he was established in a life that was both of a Jnni and of a Bhakta. This Jnni-Bhakta outlook and way of living became so dominant a feature of his life that Swami Raghavananda, who was very closely associated with him during his last six years, remarks: "Among those who lived with M. in latter days, some felt that he always lived in this constant and conscious union with God even with open eyes (i.e., even in waking consciousness)." (Swami Raghavananda's article on M. in Prabuddha Bharata vol. XXXVII. P. 442.)
Besides undergoing spiritual disciplines at the feet of the Master, M. used to go to holy places during the Master's lifetime itself and afterwards too as a part of his Sdhan.
--
M. spent his weekends and holidays with the monastic brethren who, after the Master's demise, had formed themselves into an Order with a Math at Baranagore, and participated in the intense life of devotion and meditation that they followed. At other times he would retire to Dakshineswar or some garden in the city and spend several days in spiritual practice taking simple self-cooked food. In order to feel that he was one with all mankind he often used to go out of his home at dead of night, and like a wandering Sannysin, sleep with the waifs on some open verandah or footpath on the road.
After the Master's demise, M. went on pilgrimage several times. He visited Banras, Vrindvan, Ayodhy and other places. At Banras he visited the famous Trailinga Swmi and fed him with sweets, and he had long conversations with Swami Bhaskarananda, one of the noted saintly and scholarly Sannysins of the time. In 1912 he went with the Holy Mother to Banras, and spent about a year in the company of Sannysins at Banras, Vrindvan, Hardwar, Hrishikesh and Swargashram. But he returned to Calcutta, as that city offered him the unique opportunity of associating himself with the places hallowed by the Master in his lifetime. Afterwards he does not seem to have gone to any far-off place, but stayed on in his room in the Morton School carrying on his spiritual ministry, speaking on the Master and his teachings to the large number of people who flocked to him after having read his famous Kathmrita known to English readers as The Go spel of Sri Ramakrishna.
This brings us to the circumstances that led to the writing and publication of this monumental work, which has made M. one of the immortals in hagiographic literature.
--
Besides the prompting of his inherent instinct, the main inducement for M. to keep this diary of his experiences at Dakshineswar was his desire to provide himself with a means for living in holy company at all times. Being a school teacher, he could be with the Master only on Sundays and other holidays, and it was on his diary that he depended for 'holy company' on other days. The devotional scriptures like the Bhagavata say that holy company is the first and most important means for the generation and growth of devotion. For, in such company man could hear talks on spiritual matters and listen to the glorification of Divine attri butes, charged with the fervour and conviction emanating from the hearts of great lovers of God. Such company is therefore the one certain means through which Sraddha (Faith), Rati (attachment to God) and Bhakti (loving devotion) are generated. The diary of his visits to Dakshineswar provided M. with material for re-living, through reading and contemplation, the holy company he had had earlier, even on days when he was not able to visit Dakshineswar. The wealth of details and the vivid description of men and things in the midst of which the sublime conversations are set, provide excellent material to re-live those experiences for any one with imaginative powers. It was observed by M.'s disciples and admirers that in later life also whenever he was free or alone, he would be pouring over his diary, transporting himself on the wings of imagination to the glorious days he spent at the feet of the Master.
During the Master's lifetime M. does not seem to have revealed the contents of his diary to any one. There is an unconfirmed tradition that when the Master saw him taking notes, he expressed apprehension at the possibility of his utilising these to publicise him like Keshab Sen; for the Great Master was so full of the spirit of renunciation and humility that he disliked being lionised. It must be for this reason that no one knew about this precious diary of M. for a decade until he brought out selections from it as a pamphlet in English in 1897 with the Holy Mother's blessings and permission. The Holy Mother, being very much pleased to hear parts of the diary read to her in Bengali, wrote to M.: "When I heard the Kathmrita, (Bengali name of the book) I felt as if it was he, the Master, who was saying all that." ( Ibid Part I. P 37.)
--
In 1905 he retired from the active life of a Professor and devoted his remaining twenty-seven years exclusively to the preaching of the life and message of the Great Master. He bought the Morton Institution from its original proprietors and shifted it to a commodious four-storeyed house at 50 Amherst Street, where it flourished under his management as one of the most efficient educational institutions in Calcutta. He generally occupied a staircase room at the top of it, cooking his own meal which consisted only of milk and rice without variation, and attended to all his personal needs himself. His dress also was the simplest possible. It was his conviction that limitation of personal wants to the minimum is an important aid to holy living. About one hour in the morning he would spend in in specting the classes of the school, and then retire to his staircase room to pour over his diary and live in the divine atmosphere of the earthly days of the Great Master, unless devotees and admirers had already gathered in his room seeking his holy company.
In appearance, M. looked a Vedic Rishi. Tall and stately in bearing, he had a strong and well-built body, an unusually broad chest, high forehead and arms extending to the knees. His complexion was fair and his prominent eyes were always tinged with the expression of the divine love that filled his heart. Adorned with a silvery beard that flowed luxuriantly down his chest, and a shining face radiating the serenity and gravity of holiness, M. was as imposing and majestic as he was handsome and engaging in appearance. Humorous, sweet-tongued and eloquent when situations required, this great Maharishi of our age lived only to sing the glory of Sri Ramakrishna day and night.
--
As time went on and the number of devotees increased, the staircase room and terrace of the 3rd floor of the Morton Institution became a veritable Naimisaranya of modern times, resounding during all hours of the day, and sometimes of night, too, with the word of God coming from the Rishi-like face of M. addressed to the eager God-seekers sitting around. To the devotees who helped him in preparing the text of the Go spel, he would dictate the conversations of the Master in a meditative mood, referring now and then to his diary. At times in the stillness of midnight he would awaken a nearby devotee and tell him: "Let us listen to the words of the Master in the depths of the night as he explains the truth of the Pranava." ( Vednta Kesari XIX P. 142.) Swami Raghavananda, an intimate devotee of M., writes as follows about these devotional sittings: "In the sweet and warm months of April and May, sitting under the canopy of heaven on the roof-garden of 50 Amherst Street, surrounded by shrubs and plants, himself sitting in their midst like a Rishi of old, the stars and planets in their courses beckoning us to things infinite and sublime, he would speak to us of the mysteries of God and His love and of the yearning that would rise in the human heart to solve the Eternal Riddle, as exemplified in the life of his Master. The mind, melting under the influence of his soft sweet words of light, would almost transcend the frontiers of limited existence and dare to peep into the infinite. He himself would take the influence of the setting and say,'What a blessed privilege it is to sit in such a setting (pointing to the starry heavens), in the company of the devotees discoursing on God and His love!' These unforgettable scenes will long remain imprinted on the minds of his hearers." (Prabuddha Bharata Vol XXXVII P 497.)
About twenty-seven years of his life he spent in this way in the heart of the great city of Calcutta, radiating the Master's thoughts and ideals to countless devotees who flocked to him, and to still larger numbers who read his Kathmrita (English Edition : The Go spel of Sri Ramakrishna), the last part of which he had completed before June 1932 and given to the press. And miraculously, as it were, his end also came immediately after he had completed his life's mission. About three months earlier he had come to stay at his home at 13/2 Gurdasprasad Chaudhuary Lane at Thakur Bari, where the Holy Mother had herself installed the Master and where His regular worship was being conducted for the previous 40 years. The night of 3rd June being the Phalahrini Kli Pooja day, M.
had sent his devotees who used to keep company with him, to attend the special worship at Belur Math at night. After attending the service at the home shrine, he went through the proof of the Kathmrita for an hour. Suddenly he got a severe attack of neuralgic pain, from which he had been suffering now and then, of late. Before 6 a.m. in the early hours of 4th June 1932 he passed away, fully conscious and chanting: 'Gurudeva-Ma, Kole tule na-o (Take me in your arms! O Master! O Mother!!)'
SWMI TAPASYNANDA
0.00 - The Wellspring of Reality, #Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, #R Buckminster Fuller, #Science
We are in an age that assumes the narrowing trends of specialization to be logical, natural, and desirable. Consequently, society expects all earnestly responsible communication to be crisply brief. Advancing science has now discovered that all the known cases of biological extinction have been caused by over specialization, whose concentration of only selected genes sacrifices general adaptability. Thus the specialist's brief for pinpointing brevity is dubious. In the meantime, humanity has been deprived of comprehensive understanding. specialization has bred feelings of isolation, futility, and confusion in individuals. It has also resulted in the individual's leaving responsibility for thinking and social action to others.
specialization breeds biases that ultimately aggregate as international and ideological discord, which, in turn, leads to war.
--
There is an inherently minimum set of essential concepts and current information, cognizance of which could lead to our operating our planet Earth to the lasting satisfaction and health of all humanity. With this objective, we set out on our review of the spectrum of significant experiences and seek therein for the greatest meanings as well as for the family of generalized principles governing the realization of their optimum significance to humanity aboard our Sun circling planet Earth.
We must start with scientific fundamentals, and that means with the data of experiments and not with assumed axioms predicated only upon the misleading nature of that which only superficially seems to be obvious. It is the consensus of great scientists that science is the attempt to set in order the facts of experience.
--
The human brain is a physical mechanism for storing, retrieving, and re-storing again, each special-case experience. The experience is often a packaged concept.
Such packages consist of complexedly interrelated and not as-yet differentially analyzed phenomena which, as initially unit cognitions, are potentially re-experienceable. A rose, for instance, grows. has thorns, blossoms, and fragrance, but often is stored in the brain only under the single word-rose.
--
The word generalization in literature usually means covering too much territory too thinly to be persuasive, let alone convincing. In science, however, a generalization means a principle that has been found to hold true in every special case.
The principle of leverage is a scientific generalization. It makes no difference of what material either the fulcrum or the lever consists-wood, steel, or reinforced concrete. Nor do the special-case sizes of the lever and fulcrum, or of the load pried at one end, or the work applied at the lever's other end in any way alter either the principle or the mathematical regularity of the ratios of physical work advantage that are provided at progressive fulcrum-to-load increments of distance outward from the fulcrum in the opposite direction along the lever's arm at which theoperating effort is applied.
Mind is the weightless and uniquely human faculty that surveys the ever larger inventory of special-case experiences stored in the brain bank and, seeking to identify their intercomplementary significance, from time to time discovers one of the rare scientifically generalizable principles running consistently through all the relevant experience set. The thoughts that discover these principles are weightless and tentative and may also be eternal. They suggest eternity but do not prove it, even though there have been no experiences thus far that imply exceptions to their persistence. It seems also to follow that the more experiences we have, the more chances there are that the mind may discover, on the one hand, additional generalized principles or, on the other hand, exceptions that disqualify one or another of the already catalogued principles that, having heretofore held "true" without contradiction for a long time, had been tentatively conceded to be demonstrating eternal persistence of behavior. Mind's relentless reviewing of the comprehensive brain bank's storage of all our special-case experiences tends both to progressive enlargement and definitive refinement of the catalogue of generalized principles that interaccommodatively govern all transactions of Universe.
It follows that the more specialized society becomes, the less attention does it pay to the discoveries of the mind, which are intuitively beamed toward the brain, there to be received only if the switches are "on." specialization tends to shut off the wide-band tuning searches and thus to preclude further discovery of the all-powerful generalized principles. Again we see how society's perverse fixation on specialization leads to its extinction. We are so specialized that one man discovers empirically how to release the energy of the atom, while another, unbeknownst to him, is ordered by his political factotum to make an atomic bomb by use of the secretly and anonymously published data. That gives much expedient employment, which solves the politician's momentary problem, but requires that the politicians keep on preparing for further warring with other political states to keep their re spective peoples employed. It is also mistakenly assumed that employment is the only means by which humans can earn the right to live, for politicians have yet to discover how much wealth is available for distribution. All this is rationalized on the now scientifically discredited premise that there can never be enough life support for all. Thus humanity's specialization leads only toward warring and such devastating tools, both, visible and invisible, as ultimately to destroy all Earthians.
Only a comprehensive switch from the narrowing specialization and toward an evermore inclusive and refining comprehension by all humanity-regarding all the factors governing omnicontinuing life aboard our spaceship Earth-can bring about reorientation from the self-extinction-bound human trending, and do so within the critical time remaining before we have passed the point of chemical process irretrievability.
Quite clearly, our task is predominantly metaphysical, for it is how to get all of humanity to educate itself swiftly enough to generate spontaneous social behaviors that will avoid extinction.
--
There could be produced a synergetic understanding of humanity's cosmic functioning, which, until now, had been both undiscovered and unpredictable due to our deliberate and exclusive preoccupation only with the separate statistics of separate events. As a typical consequence of the latter, we observe our society's persistent increase of educational and employment specialization despite the already mentioned, well-documented scientific disclosure that the extinctions of biological species are always occasioned by over specialization. specialization's preoccupation with parts deliberately forfeits the opportunity to apprehend and comprehend what is provided exclusively by synergy.
Today's news consists of aggregates of fragments. Anyone who has taken part in any event that has subsequently appeared in the news is aware of the gross disparity between the actual and the reported events. The insistence by reporters upon having advance "releases" of what, for instance, convocation speakers are supposedly going to say but in fact have not yet said, automatically discredits the value of the largely prefabricated news. We also learn frequently of prefabricated and prevaricated events of a complex nature purportedly undertaken for purposes either of suppressing or rigging the news, which in turn perverts humanity's tactical information resources. All history becomes su spect. Probably our most polluted resource is the tactical information to which humanity spontaneously reflexes.
Furthermore, today's hyper specialization in socioeconomic functioning has come to preclude important popular philosophic considerations of the synergetic significance of, for instance, such historically important events as the discovery within the general region of experimental inquiry known as virology that the as-yet popularly assumed validity of the concepts of animate and inanimate phenomena have been experimentally invalidated. Atoms and crystal complexes of atoms were held to be obviously inanimate; the protoplasmic cells of biological phenomena were held to be obviously animate. It was deemed to be common sense that warm- blooded, moist, and soft-skinned humans were clearly not to be confused with hard, cold granite or steel objects. A clear-cut threshold between animate and inanimate was therefore assumed to exist as a fundamental dichotomy of all physical phenomena. This seemingly placed life exclusively within the bounds of the physical.
The supposed location of the threshold between animate and inanimate was methodically narrowed down by experimental science until it was confined specifically within the domain of virology. Virologists have been too busy, for instance, with their DNA-RNA genetic code isolatings, to find time to see the synergetic significance to society of the fact that they have found that no physical threshold does in fact exist between animate and inanimate. The possibility of its existence vanished because the supposedly unique physical qualities of both animate and inanimate have persisted right across yesterday's supposed threshold in both directions to permeate one another's-previously perceived to be exclusive- domains. Subsequently, what was animate has become foggier and foggier, and what is inanimate clearer and clearer. All organisms consist physically and in entirety of inherently inanimate atoms. The inanimate alone is not only omnipresent but is alone experimentally demonstrable. Belated news of the elimination of this threshold must be interpreted to mean that whatever life may be, it has not been isolated and thereby identified as residual in the biological cell, as had been supposed by the false assumption that there was a separate physical phenomenoncalled animate within which life existed. No life per se has been isolated. The threshold between animate and inanimate has vanished. Those chemists who are preoccupied in synthesizing the particular atomically structured molecules identified as the prime constituents of humanly employed organisms will, even if they are chemically successful, be as remote from creating life as are automobile manufacturers from creating the human drivers of their automobiles. Only the physical connections and development complexes of distinctly "nonlife" atoms into molecules, into cells, into animals, has been and will be discovered. The genetic coding of the design controls of organic systems offers no more explanation of life than did the specifications of the designs of the telephone system's apparatus and operation explain the nature of the life that communicates weightlessly to life over the only physically ponderable telephone system. Whatever else life may be, we know it is weightless. At the moment of death, no weight is lost. All the chemicals, including the chemist's life ingredients, are present, but life has vanished. The physical is inherently entropic, giving off energy in ever more disorderly ways. The metaphysical is antientropic, methodically marshalling energy. Life is antientropic.
It is spontaneously inquisitive. It sorts out and endeavors to understand.
0.01f - FOREWARD, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
Thirdly, to stress the special character of the Essay I am pre-
senting.
0.01 - I - Sri Aurobindos personality, his outer retirement - outside contacts after 1910 - spiritual personalities- Vibhutis and Avatars - transformtion of human personality, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
The question which Arjuna asks Sri Krishna in the Gita (second chapter) occurs pertinently to many about all spiritual personalities: "What is the language of one whose understanding is poised? How does he speak, how sit, how walk?" Men want to know the outer signs of the inner attainment, the way in which a spiritual person differs outwardly from other men. But all the tests which the Gita enumerates are inner and therefore invisible to the outer view. It is true also that the inner or the spiritual is the essential and the outer derives its value and form from the inner. But the transformation about which Sri Aurobindo writes in his books has to take place in nature, because according to him the divine Reality has to manifest itself in nature. So, all the parts of nature including the physical and the external are to be transformed. In his own case the very physical became the transparent mould of the Spirit as a result of his intense Sadhana. This is borne out by the impression created on the minds of sensitive outsiders like Sj. K. M. Munshi who was deeply impressed by his radiating presence when he met him after nearly forty years.
The Evening Talks collected here may afford to the outside world a glimpse of his external personality and give the seeker some idea of its richness, its many-sidedness, its uniqueness. One can also form some notion of Sri Aurobindo's personality from the books in which the height, the universal sweep and clear vision of his integral ideal and thought can be seen. His writings are, in a sense, the best representative of his mental personality. The versatile nature of his genius, the penetrating power of his intellect, his extraordinary power of expression, his intense sincerity, his utter singleness of purpose all these can be easily felt by any earnest student of his works. He may discover even in the realm of mind that Sri Aurobindo brings the unlimited into the limited. Another side of his dynamic personality is represented by the Ashram as an institution. But the outer, if one may use the phrase, the human side of his personality, is unknown to the outside world because from 1910 to 1950 a span of forty years he led a life of outer retirement. No doubt, many knew about his staying at Pondicherry and practising some kind of very special Yoga to the mystery of which they had no access. To some, perhaps, he was living a life of enviable solitude enjoying the luxury of a spiritual endeavour. Many regretted his retirement as a great loss to the world because they could not see any external activity on his part which could be regarded as 'public', 'altruistic' or 'beneficial'. Even some of his admirers thought that he was after some kind of personal salvation which would have very little significance for mankind in general. His outward non-participation in public life was construed by many as lack of love for humanity.
But those who knew him during the days of the national awakening from 1900 to 1910 could not have these doubts. And even these initial misunderstandings and false notions of others began to evaporate with the growth of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram from 1927 onwards. The large number of books published by the Ashram also tended to remove the idea of the other-worldliness of his Yoga and the absence of any good by it to mankind.
0.01 - Life and Yoga, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
HERE are two necessities of Nature's workings which seem always to intervene in the greater forms of human activity, whether these belong to our ordinary fields of movement or seek those exceptional spheres and fulfilments which appear to us high and divine. Every such form tends towards a harmonised complexity and totality which again breaks apart into various channels of special effort and tendency, only to unite once more in a larger and more puissant synthesis. Secondly, development into forms is an imperative rule of effective manifestation; yet all truth and practice too strictly formulated becomes old and loses much, if not all, of its virtue; it must be constantly renovated by fresh streams of the spirit revivifying the dead or dying vehicle and changing it, if it is to acquire a new life. To be perpetually reborn is the condition of a material immortality. We are in an age, full of the throes of travail, when all forms of thought and activity that have in themselves any strong power of utility or any secret virtue of persistence are being subjected to a supreme test and given their opportunity of rebirth. The world today presents the a spect of a huge cauldron of Medea in which all things are being cast, shredded into pieces, experimented on, combined and recombined either to perish and provide the scattered material of new forms or to emerge rejuvenated and changed for a fresh term of existence. Indian Yoga, in its essence a special action or formulation of certain great powers of Nature, itself specialised, divided and variously formulated, is potentially one of these dynamic elements of the future life of humanity. The child of immemorial ages, preserved by its vitality and truth into our modern times, it is now emerging from the secret schools and ascetic retreats in which it had taken refuge and is seeking its place in the future sum of living human powers and utilities. But it has first to rediscover itself, bring to the surface
The Conditions of the Synthesis
--
Rajayoga, for instance, depends on this perception and experience that our inner elements, combinations, functions, forces, can be separated or dissolved, can be new-combined and set to novel and formerly impossible workings or can be transformed and resolved into a new general synthesis by fixed internal processes. Hathayoga similarly depends on this perception and experience that the vital forces and functions to which our life is normally subjected and whose ordinary operations seem set and indi spensable, can be mastered and the operations changed or su spended with results that would otherwise be impossible and that seem miraculous to those who have not seized the rationale of their process. And if in some other of its forms this character of Yoga is less apparent, because they are more intuitive and less mechanical, nearer, like the Yoga of Devotion, to a supernal ecstasy or, like the Yoga of Knowledge, to a supernal infinity of consciousness and being, yet they too start from the use of some principal faculty in us by ways and for ends not contemplated in its everyday spontaneous workings. All methods grouped under the common name of Yoga are special psychological processes founded on a fixed truth of Nature and developing, out of normal functions, powers and results which were always latent but which her ordinary movements do not easily or do not often manifest.
But as in physical knowledge the multiplication of scientific processes has its disadvantages, as that tends, for instance, to develop a victorious artificiality which overwhelms our natural human life under a load of machinery and to purchase certain forms of freedom and mastery at the price of an increased servitude, so the preoccupation with Yogic processes and their exceptional results may have its disadvantages and losses. The
--
God. Therefore we see in India that a sharp incompatibility has been created between life in the world and spiritual growth and perfection, and although the tradition and ideal of a victorious harmony between the inner attraction and the outer demand remains, it is little or else very imperfectly exemplified. In fact, when a man turns his vision and energy inward and enters on the path of Yoga, he is popularly supposed to be lost inevitably to the great stream of our collective existence and the secular effort of humanity. So strongly has the idea prevailed, so much has it been emphasised by prevalent philosophies and religions that to escape from life is now commonly considered as not only the necessary condition, but the general object of Yoga. No synthesis of Yoga can be satisfying which does not, in its aim, reunite God and Nature in a liberated and perfected human life or, in its method, not only permit but favour the harmony of our inner and outer activities and experiences in the divine consummation of both. For man is precisely that term and symbol of a higher Existence descended into the material world in which it is possible for the lower to transfigure itself and put on the nature of the higher and the higher to reveal itself in the forms of the lower. To avoid the life which is given him for the realisation of that possibility, can never be either the indi spensable condition or the whole and ultimate object of his supreme endeavour or of his most powerful means of self-fulfilment. It can only be a temporary necessity under certain conditions or a specialised extreme effort imposed on the individual so as to prepare a greater general possibility for the race. The true and full object and utility of Yoga can only be accomplished when the conscious
Yoga in man becomes, like the subconscious Yoga in Nature, outwardly conterminous with life itself and we can once more, looking out both on the path and the achievement, say in a more perfect and luminous sense: "All life is Yoga."
0.02 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It is not quite that. In each case there is, probably, a special
reason. What is constant is a difference of appreciation in the
--
but truly speaking it does not count for much. I believe rather
in the influence of atmospheres. Each one has around him an
--
Yes, here everyone thinks only of spending, spending, spending
as much as he can; no one thinks of saving and avoiding waste.
--
stop speaking immediately; call upon Sweet Mother to
make you aware of the hidden deformation. Is it all right,
--
not to mention. Either the person you are speaking to does
not understand at all and takes you for a fool suffering from
--
And don't speak about me unless it is unavoidable. I am
putting a copy of the Conversations in the tray for Mr. Z.
--
When I read a novel or anything in print I clearly understand, say, eighty per cent. But when someone speaks,
I have great difficulty in following him. I miss more than
--
- I was speaking in a much more general way. All of you, in
your relationships with one another, have much to change and
--
Before displaying the notice you will speak to the workers
(masons, carpenters, painters, coolies, etc.) whom you positively
--
best if X or Y speaks to them in your presence.
And from July 1st we shall also have to think about reducing
--
It is here that on your side a freedom of movement and speech
arising from an affectionate confidence must come in: if there is
--
itself without my needing to speak about it, and in fact this often
happens - it is only when the mind and vital get in the way, for
--
When I speak to you so frankly, I am giving you a great proof
of confidence.
--
opinions - I mean, just as Y and I speak together. But
I am sorry to say that X keeps me at a distance and
remains aloof, and when he does speak I find him rather
difficult.
0.02 - The Three Steps of Nature, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Yoga, a specialising and separative tendency which, like all things in Nature, had its justifying and even imperative utility and we seek a synthesis of the specialised aims and methods which have, in consequence, come into being.
But in order that we may be wisely guided in our effort, we must know, first, the general principle and purpose underlying this separative impulse and, next, the particular utilities upon which the method of each school of Yoga is founded. For the general principle we must interrogate the universal workings of Nature herself, recognising in her no merely specious and illusive activity of a distorting Maya, but the cosmic energy and working of God Himself in His universal being formulating and inspired by a vast, an infinite and yet a minutely selective
Wisdom, prajna prasr.ta puran. of the Upanishad, Wisdom that went forth from the Eternal since the beginning. For the particular utilities we must cast a penetrative eye on the different methods of Yoga and distinguish among the mass of their details the governing idea which they serve and the radical force which gives birth and energy to their processes of effectuation.
0.03 - III - The Evening Sittings, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Sri Aurobindo was never a social man in the current sense of the term and definitely he was not a man of the crowd. This was due to his grave temperament, not to any feeling of superiority or to repulsion for men. At Baroda there was an Officers' Club which was patronised by the Maharajah and though Sri Aurobindo enrolled himself as a member he hardly went to the Club even on special occasions. He rather liked a small congenial circle of friends and spent most of his evenings with them whenever he was free and not occupied with his studies or other works. After Baroda when he went to Calcutta there was hardly any time in the storm and stress of revolutionary politics to permit him to lead a 'social life'. What little time he could spare from his incessant activities was spent in the house of Raja Subodh Mallick or at the Grey Street house. In the Karmayogin office he used to sit after the office hours till late chatting with a few persons or trying automatic writing. Strange dictations used to be received sometimes: one of them was the following: "Moni [Suresh Chakravarty] will bomb Sir Edward Grey when he will come as the Viceroy of India." In later years at Pondicherry there used to be a joke that Sir Edward took such a fright at the pro spect of Moni's bombing him that he never came to India!
After Sri Aurobindo had come to Pondicherry from Chandernagore, he entered upon an intense period of Sadhana and for a few months he refused to receive anyone. After a time he used to sit down to talk in the evening and on some days tried automatic writing. Yogic Sadhan, a small book, was the result. In 1913 Sri Aurobindo moved to Rue Franois Martin No. 41 where he used to receive visitors at fixed times. This was generally in the morning between 9 and 10.30.
--
He came dressed as usual in dhoti, part of which was used by him to cover the upper part of his body. Very rarely he came out with chaddar or shawl and then it was "in deference to the climate" as he sometimes put it. At times for minutes he would be gazing at the sky from a small opening at the top of the grass-curtains that covered the verandah upstairs in No. 9, Rue de la Marine. How much were these sittings dependent on him may be gathered from the fact that there were days when more than three-fourths of the time passed in complete silence without any outer suggestion from him, or there was only an abrupt "Yes" or "No" to all attempts at drawing him out in conversation. And even when he participated in the talk one always felt that his voice was that of one who does not let his whole being flow into his words; there was a reserve and what was left unsaid was perhaps more than what was spoken. What was spoken was what he felt necessary to speak.
Very often some news-item in the daily newspaper, town-gossip, or some interesting letter received either by him or by a disciple, or a question from one of the gathering, occasionally some remark or query from himself would set the ball rolling for the talk. The whole thing was so informal that one could never predict the turn the conversation would take. The whole house therefore was in a mood to enjoy the freshness and the delight of meeting the unexpected. There were peals of laughter and light talk, jokes and criticism which might be called personal, there was seriousness and earnestness in abundance.
0.03 - Letters to My little smile, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I spent the whole day in this state of dullness because I
no longer imagine things as before.
--
I asked the doctor, "Why do you speak to Z about Y?"
He said, "Z was asking me what happened to Y. He no
--
Well, it is a success! It is a good account with hardly any mistakes, and I am glad to know exactly how you spent your day.
It will be good to continue like this.
--
I shall tell You how I usually spend my evenings.
After seeing You go up to the terrace, I go and have
--
I also spent a little more time, two or three minutes."
Then it was lunchtime, so we went to take our plates.
--
so I speak only about important things, with her as well
as with others; that is to say, if she asks me something I
--
Mother, is it good or bad not to be able to speak like
that? I want to know, because if it is not good I don't
want it; I will go on speaking as before.
It is very good to remain silent and concentrated in your aspiration; and I am sure that if you keep a deep affection for X in your
--
every day. When you have something special or important or
interesting to write to me, you will write.
--
I am speaking of your inner eyes, not the physical ones.
"Turn your faculty of feeling inward instead of letting it
--
I simply asked whether you wanted to speak, so as not to insist
unnecessarily. You were mistaken if you thought I was showing
0.03 - The Threefold Life, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But such seclusion is justified only by some special activity.
Mind finds fully its force and action only when it casts itself upon life and accepts equally its possibilities and its resistances as the means of a greater self-perfection. In the struggle with the difficulties of the material world the ethical development of the individual is firmly shaped and the great schools of conduct are formed; by contact with the facts of life Art attains to vitality, Thought assures its abstractions, the generalisations of the philosopher base themselves on a stable foundation of science and experience.
0.04 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
How can you speak of that! Do you know how the cart-men
here kill their bullocks in a few months or in even less time?
0.05 - Letters to a Child, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
you and even more specially when you are working on your
painting and music. Are you aware that you are making a great
--
You should not speak to others about what I write or say to
you, because they become jealous and their jealousy creates a
--
too glad to speak of it to you. Shake off this childish depression
and contemplate the Sun that is rising in your heart!
--
I have told you this because the anxiety you speak of comes
from the fact that you are far too concerned about yourself. It
--
that? Is there any special reason? Will you tell me one
thing: why are you now so far away from me?
--
Each time that you feel restless you ought to repeat, speaking
inside yourself without exterior sound and thinking of me at the
0.05 - The Synthesis of the Systems, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Y THE very nature of the principal Yogic schools, each covering in its operations a part of the complex human integer and attempting to bring out its highest possibilities, it will appear that a synthesis of all of them largely conceived and applied might well result in an integral Yoga. But they are so disparate in their tendencies, so highly specialised and elaborated in their forms, so long confirmed in the mutual opposition of their ideas and methods that we do not easily find how we can arrive at their right union.
An undiscriminating combination in block would not be a synthesis, but a confusion. Nor would a successive practice of each of them in turn be easy in the short span of our human life and with our limited energies, to say nothing of the waste of labour implied in so cumbrous a process. Sometimes, indeed,
Hathayoga and Rajayoga are thus successively practised. And in a recent unique example, in the life of Ramakrishna Paramhansa, we see a colossal spiritual capacity first driving straight to the divine realisation, taking, as it were, the kingdom of heaven by violence, and then seizing upon one Yogic method after another and extracting the substance out of it with an incredible rapidity, always to return to the heart of the whole matter, the realisation and possession of God by the power of love, by the extension of inborn spirituality into various experience and by the spontaneous play of an intuitive knowledge. Such an example cannot be generalised. Its object also was special and temporal, to exemplify in the great and decisive experience of a master-soul the truth, now most necessary to humanity, towards which a world long divided into jarring sects and schools is with difficulty labouring, that all sects are forms and fragments of a single integral truth and all disciplines labour in their different ways towards one supreme experience. To know, be and possess
42
--
Yoga each select their own point of departure or their own gate of escape. They specialise certain activities of the lower
Prakriti and turn them towards the Divine. But the normal action of Nature in us is an integral movement in which the full complexity of all our elements is affected by and affects all our environments. The whole of life is the Yoga of Nature. The
--
Strength, often unobserved and behind the veil, substitutes itself for our weakness and supports us through all our failings of faith, courage and patience. It "makes the blind to see and the lame to stride over the hills." The intellect becomes aware of a Law that beneficently insists and a succour that upholds; the heart speaks of a Master of all things and Friend of man or a universal Mother who upholds through all stumblings. Therefore this path is at once the most difficult imaginable and yet, in comparison with the magnitude of its effort and object, the most easy and sure of all.
There are three outstanding features of this action of the higher when it works integrally on the lower nature. In the first place it does not act according to a fixed system and succession as in the specialised methods of Yoga, but with a sort of free, scattered and yet gradually intensive and purposeful working determined by the temperament of the individual in whom it operates, the helpful materials which his nature offers and the obstacles which it presents to purification and perfection. In a sense, therefore, each man in this path has his own method of
Yoga. Yet are there certain broad lines of working common to all which enable us to construct not indeed a routine system, but
0.06 - INTRODUCTION, #Dark Night of the Soul, #Saint John of the Cross, #Christianity
And the second is of the spiritual part; of this speaks the second stanza,
which follows; and of this we shall treat likewise, in the second and the third
--
he will 'treat more fully . . . since very little has been said of this, either in speech or
in writing, and very little is known of it, even by experience.' 7
--
To judge by his language alone, one might suppose at times that he is speaking of
mathematical, rather than of spiritual operations.
--
which the Saint speaks in these words: 'The night which we have called that of
sense may and should be called a kind of correction and restraint of the desire
0.06 - Letters to a Young Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You have no special will, for You want nothing.
I know perfectly well what I want or rather what the divine Will
--
All the stars (spiritually speaking) are the same. I mean that one
may call human beings grains of dust if one likes, or compare
--
You speak here of vital love, but certainly not of psychic love
and still less of the Divine Love.
--
passion, and it is of this we are speaking; it is this impassioned
love which human beings feel for one another that must be
--
forms, they were to speak of things as they are, it would come
to something like this: "Continue to drink in order to stop being a drunkard" or better: "Continue to kill to stop being a
--
I am speaking of the peace experienced by those who are utterly
insensible and indifferent to the misfortunes of the world and
--
one speaks.
It is never good to tell a lie, but here its results cannot but be
0.07 - DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL, #Dark Night of the Soul, #Saint John of the Cross, #Christianity
Begins the exposition of the stanzas which treat of the way and manner which the soul follows upon the road of the union of love with God. Before we enter upon the exposition of these stanzas, it is well to understand here that the soul that utters them is now in the state of perfection, which is the union of love with God, having already passed through severe trials and straits, by means of spiritual exercise in the narrow way of eternal life whereof Our Saviour speaks in the Go spel, along which way the soul ordinarily passes in order to reach this high and happy union with God. Since this road (as the Lord Himself says likewise) is so strait, and since there are so few that enter by it,19 the soul considers it a great happiness and good chance to have passed along it to the said perfection of love, as it sings in this first stanza, calling this strait road with full propriety 'dark night,' as will be explained hereafter in the lines of the said stanza. The soul, then, rejoicing at having passed along this narrow road whence so many blessings have come to it, speaks after this manner.
BOOK THE FIRST
0.07 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Nothing special to you. It is the same difficulty that exists for all
human beings: the pride and blindness of the physical mind.
--
Mystery do you cast this sweet spell on us?
The only mystery, the only spell is my love - my love which is
spread over my children and calls down upon them the Divine's
--
in her child, that only speaks of the goodness of the
Mother's heart.
0.08 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
unless one is specially gifted with an innate intuitive faculty.
In any case, I always advise reading a little at a time, keeping
--
on the photo, one enters into relation with that special a spect or
different personality which the photo has captured and whose
--
organising the evolution of the universe; and more specifically,
since the formation of the earth they have served as messengers
--
leading one's life properly, not to speak of "mastery", which is
truly something exceptional on earth.
0.09 - Letters to a Young Teacher, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
and speak only when it is indi spensable.
1 June 1960
--
Sri Aurobindo speaks of a "central knot of desires"
which must be cut. How can one do it, where should
--
Sri Aurobindo speaks of a "period of assimilation".
What is it, Mother?
--
If you are speaking of calendars with photographs, it is preferable to cut out the photos, and if you do not want to keep them,
give them to X who makes good use of them.
--
things we use. That is what I mean when I speak of living with
re spect.
01.01 - Sri Aurobindo - The Age of Sri Aurobindo, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The ideal or perhaps one should say the policy of Real-politick is the thing needed in this world. To achieve something actually in the physical and material field, even a lesser something, is worth much more than speculating on high flaunting chimeras and indulging in day-dreams. Yes, but what is this something that has to be achieved in the material world? It is always an ideal. Even procuring food for each and every person, clothing and housing all is not less an ideal for all its concern about actuality. Only there are ideals and ideals; some are nearer to the earth, some seem to be in the background. But the mystery is that it is not always the ideal nearest to the earth which is the easiest to achieve or the first thing to be done first. Do we not see before our very eye show some very simple innocent social and economic changes are difficult to carry outthey bring in their train quite disproportionately gestures and movements of violence and revolution? That is because we seek to cure the symptoms and not touch the root of the disease. For even the most innocent-looking social, economic or political abuse has at its base far-reaching attitudes and life-urgeseven a spiritual outlook that have to be sought out and tackled first, if the attempt at reform is to be permanently and wholly successful. Even in mundane matters we do not dig deep enough, or rise high enough.
Indeed, looking from a standpoint that views the working of the forces that act and achieve and not the external facts and events and arrangements aloneone finds that things that are achieved on the material plane are first developed and matured and made ready behind the veil and at a given moment burst out and manifest themselves often unexpectedly and suddenly like a chick out of the shell or the young butterfly out of the cocoon. The Gita points to that truth of Nature when it says: "These beings have already been killed by Me." It is not that a long or strenuous physical planning and preparation alone or in the largest measure brings about a physical realisation. The deeper we go within, the farther we are away from the surface, the nearer we come to the roots and sources of things even most superficial. The spiritual view sees and declares that it is the Brahmic consciousness that holds, inspires, builds up Matter, the physical body and form of Brahman.
01.01 - The New Humanity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Another humanity is rising out of the present human species. The beings of the new order are everywhere and it is they who will soon hold sway over earth, be the head and front of the terrestrial evolution in the cycle that is approaching as it was with man in the cycle that is passing away. What will this new order of being be like? It will be what man is not, also what man is. It will not be man, because it will overstep the limitations and incapacities inherent in man; and it will be man by the realisation of those fundamental aspirations and yearnings that have troubled and consoled the deeper strata the soulin him throughout the varied experiences of his terrestrial life.
The New Man will be Master and not slave. He will be master, first, of himself and then of the world. Man as he actually is, is but a slave. He has no personal voice or choice; the determining soul, the Ishwara, in him is sleep-bound and hushed. He is a mere plaything in the hands of nature and circumstances. Therefore it is that Science has become his supreme Dharmashastra; for science seeks to teach us the moods of Nature and the methods of propitiating her. Our actual ideal of man is that of the cleverest slave. But the New Man will have found himself and by and according to his inner will, mould and create his world. He will not be in awe of Nature and in an attitude of perpetual apprehension and hesitation, but will ground himself on a secret harmony and union that will declare him as the lord. We will recognise the New Man by his very gait and manner, by a certain kingly ease and dominion in every shade of his expression.
--
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.
01.01 - The Symbol Dawn, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Then the divine afflatus, spent, withdrew,
Unwanted, fading from the mortal's range.
--
Once more the rumour of the speed of Life
Pursued the cycles of her blinded quest.
01.02 - Natures Own Yoga, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Upanishads speak of a solar and a lunar Path in the spiritual consciousness. Perhaps they have some reference to these two linesone through the Mayic consciousness of the Overmind enters into the static Bliss, ecstatic Nihil, and the other mounts still farther to the solar status which is a mass, a sea, an infinity of that light and ecstasy but which can at the same time express and embody itself as the creative Truth-consciousness (srya svitr ).
In the Supermind things exist in their perfect spiritual reality; each is consciously the divine reality in its transcendent essence, its cosmic extension, its, spiritual individuality; the diversity of a manifested existence is there, but the mutually exclusive separativeness has not yet arisen. The ego, the knot of separativity, appears at a later and lower stage of involution; what is here is indivisible nexus of individualising centres of the one eternal truth of being. Where Supermind and Overmind meet, one can see the multiple godheads, each distinct in his own truth and beauty and power and yet all together forming the one supreme consciousness infinitely composite and inalienably integral. But stepping back into Supermind one sees something moreOneness gathering into itself all diversity, not destroying it, but annulling and forbidding the separative consciousness that is the beginning of Ignorance. The first shadow of the Illusory Consciousness, the initial possibility of the movement of Ignorance comes in when the supramental light enters the penumbra of the mental sphere. The movement of Supermind is the movement of light without obscurity, straight, unwavering, unswerving, absolute. The Force here contains and holds in their oneness of Reality the manifold but not separated lines of essential and unalloyed truth: its march is the inevitable progression of each one assured truth entering into and upholding every other and therefore its creation, play or action admits of no trial or stumble or groping or deviation; for each truth rests on all others and on that which harmonises them all and does not act as a Power diverging from and even competing with other Powers of being. In the Overmind commences the play of divergent possibilities the simple, direct, united and absolute certainties of the supramental consciousness retire, as it were, a step behind and begin to work themselves out through the interaction first of separately individualised and then of contrary and contradictory forces. In the Overmind there is a conscious underlying Unity but yet each Power, Truth, A spect of that Unity is encouraged to work out its possibilities as if it were sufficient to itself and the others are used by it for its own enhancement until in the denser and darker reaches below Overmind this turns out a thing of blind conflict and battle and, as it would appear, of chance survival. Creation or manifestation originally means the concretisation or devolution of the powers of Conscious Being into a play of united diversity; but on the line which ends in Matter it enters into more and more obscure forms and forces and finally the virtual eclipse of the supreme light of the Divine Consciousness. Creation as it descends' towards the Ignorance becomes an involution of the Spirit through Mind and Life into Matter; evolution is a movement backward, a return journey from Matter towards the Spirit: it is the unravelling, the gradual disclosure and deliverance of the Spirit, the ascension and revelation of the involved consciousness through a series of awakeningsMatter awakening into Life, Life awakening into Mind and Mind now seeking to awaken into something beyond the Mind, into a power of conscious Spirit.
--
Now, with regard to the time that the present stage of evolution is likely to take for its fulfilment, one can presume that since or if the specific urge and stress has manifested and come up to the front, this very fact would show that the problem has become a problem of actuality, and even that it can be dealt with as if it had to be solved now or never. We have said that in man, with man's self-consciousness or the consciousness of the psychic being as the instrument, evolution has attained the capacity of a swift and concentrated process, which is the process of Yoga; the process will become swifter and more concentrated, the more that instrument grows and gathers power and is infused with the divine afflatus. In fact, evolution has been such a process of gradual acceleration in tempo from the very beginning. The earliest stage, for example, the stage of dead Matter, of the play of the mere chemical forces was a very, very long one; it took millions and millions of years to come to the point when the manifestation of life became possible. But the period of elementary life, as manifested in the plant world that followed, although it too lasted a good many millions of years, was much briefer than the preceding periodit ended with the advent of the first animal form. The age of animal life, again, has been very much shorter than that of the plant life before man came upon earth. And man is already more than a million or two years oldit is fully time that a higher order of being should be created out of him.
The Dhammapada, I. 1
01.02 - Sri Aurobindo - Ahana and Other Poems, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
What is the world that Sri Aurobindo sees and creates? Poetry is after all passion. By passion I do not mean the fury of emotion nor the fume of sentimentalism, but what lies behind at their source, what lends them the force they have the sense of the "grandly real," the vivid and pulsating truth. What then is the thing that Sri Aurobindo has visualised, has endowed with a throbbing life and made a poignant reality? Victor Hugo said: Attachez Dieu au gibet, vous avez la croixTie God to the gibbet, you have the cross. Even so, infuse passion into a thing most prosaic, you create sublime poetry out of it. What is the dead matter that has found life and glows and vibrates in Sri Aurobindo's passion? It is something which appears to many poetically intractable, not amenable to aesthetic treatment, not usually, that is to say, nor in the supreme manner. Sri Aurobindo has thrown such a material into his poetic fervour and created a sheer beauty, a stupendous reality out of it. Herein lies the greatness of his achievement. Philosophy, however divine, and in spite of Milton, has been regarded by poets as "harsh and crabbed" and as such unfit for poetic delineation. Not a few poets indeed foundered upon this rock. A poet in his own way is a philosopher, but a philosopher chanting out his philosophy in sheer poetry has been one of the rarest spectacles.1 I can think of only one instance just now where a philosopher has almost succeeded being a great poet I am referring to Lucretius and his De Rerum Natura. Neither Shake speare nor Homer had anything like philosophy in their poetic creation. And in spite of some inclination to philosophy and philosophical ideas Virgil and Milton were not philosophers either. Dante sought perhaps consciously and deliberately to philosophise in his Paradiso I Did he? The less Dante then is he. For it is his Inferno, where he is a passionate visionary, and not his Paradiso (where he has put in more thought-power) that marks the nee plus ultra of his poetic achievement.
And yet what can be more poetic in essence than philosophy, if by philosophy we mean, as it should mean, spiritual truth and spiritual realisation? What else can give the full breath, the integral force to poetic inspiration if it is not the problem of existence itself, of God, Soul and Immortality, things that touch, that are at the very root of life and reality? What can most concern man, what can strike the deepest fount in him, unless it is the mystery of his own being, the why and the whither of it all? But mankind has been taught and trained to live merely or mostly on earth, and poetry has been treated as the expression of human joys and sorrows the tears in mortal things of which Virgil spoke. The savour of earth, the thrill of the flesh has been too sweet for us and we have forgotten other sweetnesses. It is always the human element that we seek in poetry, but we fail to recognise that what we obtain in this way is humanity in its lower degrees, its surface formulations, at its minimum magnitude.
--
It is the bare truth, "truth in its own home", as I have said already using a phrase of the ancient sages, that is formulated here without the prop of any external symbolism. There is no veil, no mist, no uncertainty or ambiguity. It is clarity itself, an almost scientific exactness and precision. In all this there is something of the straightness and fullness of vision that characterised the Vedic Rishis, something of their supernal genius which could mould speech into the very expression of what is beyond speech, which could sublimate the small and the finite into forms of the Vast and the Infinite. Mark how in these aphoristic lines embodying a deep spiritual experience, the inexpressible has been expressed with a luminous felicity:
Delight that labours in its opposite,
--
To humanise the Divine, that is what we all wish to do; for the Divine is too lofty for us and we cannot look full into his face. We cry and supplicate to Rudra, "O dire Lord, show us that other form of thine that is benign and humane". All earthly imageries we lavish upon the Divine so that he may appear to us not as something far and distant and foreign, but, quite near, among us, as one of us. We take recourse to human symbolism often, because we wish to palliate or hide the rigours of a supreme experience, not because we have no adequate terms for it. The same human or earthly terms could be used differently if we had a different consciousness. Thus the Vedic Rishis sought not to humanise the Divine, their purpose was rather to divinise the human. And their allegorical language, although rich in terrestrial figures, does not carry the impress and atmosphere of mere humanity and earthliness. For in reality the symbol is not merely the symbol. It is mere symbol in regard to the truth so long as we take our stand on the lower plane when we have to look at the truth through the symbol; but if we view it from the higher plane, from truth itself, it is no longer mere symbol but the very truth bodied forth. Whatever there is of symbolism on earth and its beauties, in sense and its enjoyments, is then transfigured into the expression of the truth, of the divinity itself. We then no longer speak in human language but in the language of the gods.
We have been speaking of philosophy and the philosophic manner. But what are the exact implications of the words, let us ask again. They mean nothing more and nothing lessthan the force of thought and the mass of thought content. After all, that seems to be almost the whole difference between the past and the present human consciousness in so far at least as it has found expression in poetry. That element, we wish to point out, is precisely what the old-world poets lacked or did not care to possess or express or stress. A poet meant above all, if not all in all, emotion, passion, sensuousness, sensibility, nervous enthusiasm and imagination and fancy: remember the classic definition given by Shake speare of the poet
Of imagination all compact.. . .
--
Poetry as an expression of thought-power, poetry weighted with intelligence and rationalised knowledge that seems to me to be the end and drive, the secret sense of all the mystery of modern technique. The combination is risky, but not impossible. In the spiritual domain the Gita achieved this miracle to a considerable degree. Still, the power of intelligence and reason shown by Vyasa is of a special order: it is a sublimated function of the faculty, something aloof and other-worldly"introvert", a modern mind would term it that is to say, something a priori, standing in its own au thenticity and self-sufficiency. A modern intelligence would be more scientific, let us use the word, more matter-of-fact and sense-based: the mental light should not be confined in its ivory tower, however high that may be, but brought down and placed at the service of our perception and appreciation and explanation of things human and terrestrial; made immanent in the mundane and the ephemeral, as they are commonly called. This is not an impossibility. Sri Aurobindo seems to have done the thing. In him we find the three terms of human consciousness arriving at an absolute fusion and his poetry is a wonderful example of that fusion. The three terms are the spiritual, the intellectual or philosophical and the physical or sensational. The intellectual, or more generally, the mental, is the intermediary, the Paraclete, as he himself will call it later on in a poem9 magnificently exemplifying the point we are trying to make out the agent who negotiates, bridges and harmonises the two other firmaments usually supposed to be antagonistic and incompatible.
Indeed it would be wrong to associate any cold ascetic nudity to the spiritual body of Sri Aurobindo. His poetry is philosophic, abstract, no doubt, but every philosophy has its practice, every abstract thing its concrete application,even as the soul has its body; and the fusion, not mere union, of the two is very characteristic in him. The deepest and unseizable flights of thought he knows how to clo the with a Kalidasian richness of imagery, or a Keatsean gusto of sensuousness:
--
speaking sweetly, speaking meetly!
Every word deserves a kiss.12
01.02 - The Issue, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Were the spectators of that mighty strife.
3.20
--
Muttered incessantly their muffled spell.
3.21
--
A work she had to do, a word to speak:
Writing the unfinished story of her soul
01.03 - Mystic Poetry, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
When the Spirit speaks its own language in its own name, we have spiritual poetry. If, however, the Spirit speaksfrom choice or necessity-an alien language and manner, e.g., that of a profane consciousness, or of the consciousness of another domain, idealistic or philosophical or even occult, puts on or imitates spirit's language and manner, we have what we propose to call mystic poetry proper. When Samain sings of the body of the dancer:
Et Pannyre deviant fleur, flamme, papillon! ...
--
O love, what more shall I, shall Radha speak,
Since mortal words are weak?
--
one can explain that it is the Christ calling the Church or God appealing to the human soul or one can simply find in it nothing more than a man pining for his woman. Anyhow I would not call it spiritual poetry or even mystic poetry. For in itself it does not carry any double or oblique meaning, there is no suggestion that it is applicable to other fields or domains of consciousness: it is, as it were, monovalent. An allegory is never mysticism. There is more mysticism in Wordsworth, even in Shelley and Keats, than in spenser, for example, who stands in this re spect on the same ground as Bunyan in his The Pilgrim's Progress. Take Wordsworth as a Nature-worshipper,
Breaking the silence of the seas
--
I am anticipating however, I shall come to the point presently again. I was speaking of spiritual poetry. Listen once more to these simple, transparent, yet vibrant lines:
But how shall body not seem a hollow space
--
Among the ancients, strictly speaking, the later classical Lucretius was a remarkable phenomenon. By nature he was a poet, but his mental interest lay in metaphysical speculation, in philosophy, and unpoetical business. He turned away from arms and heroes, wrath and love and, like Seneca and Aurelius, gave himself up to moralising and philosophising, delving 'into the mystery, the why and the how and the whither of it all. He chose a dangerous subject for his poetic inspiration and yet it cannot be said that his attempt was a failure. Lucretius was not a religious or spiritual poet; he was rather Marxian,atheistic, materialistic. The dialectical materialism of today could find in him a lot of nourishment and support. But whatever the content, the manner has made a whole difference. There was an idealism, a clarity of vision and an intensity of perception, which however scientific apparently, gave his creation a note, an accent, an atmosphere high, tense, aloof, ascetic, at times bordering on the supra-sensual. It was a high light, a force of consciousness that at its highest pitch had the ring and vibration of something almost spiritual. For the basic principle of Lucretius' inspiration is a large thought-force, a tense perception, a taut nervous reactionit is not, of course, the identity in being with the inner realities which is the hallmark of a spiritual consciousness, yet it is something on the way towards that.
There have been other philosophical poets, a good number of them since thennot merely rationally philosophical, as was the vogue in the eighteenth century, but metaphysically philosophical, that is to say, inquiring not merely into the phenomenal but also into the labyrinths of the noumenal, investigating not only what meets the senses, but also things that are behind or beyond. Amidst the earlier efflorescence of this movement the most outstanding philosopher poet is of course Dante, the Dante of Paradiso, a philosopher in the mediaeval manner and to the extent a lesser poet, according to some. Goe the is another, almost in the grand modern manner. Wordsworth is full of metaphysics from the crown of his head to the tip of his toe although his poetry, perhaps the major portion of it, had to undergo some kind of martyrdom because of it. And Shelley, the supremely lyric singer, has had a very rich undertone of thought-content genuinely metaphysical. And Browning and Arnold and Hardyindeed, if we come to the more moderns, we have to cite the whole host of them, none can be excepted.
We left out the Metaphysicals, for they can be grouped as a set apart. They are not so much metaphysical as theological, religious. They have a brain-content stirring with theological problems and speculations, replete with scintillating conceits and intricate fancies. Perhaps it is because of this philosophical burden, this intellectual bias that the Metaphysicals went into obscurity for about two centuries and it is precisely because of that that they are slowly coming out to the forefront and assuming a special value with the moderns. For the modern mind is characteristically thoughtful, intro spective"introvert"and philosophical; even the exact physical sciences of today are rounded off in the end with metaphysics.
The growth of a philosophical thought-content in poetry has been inevitable. For man's consciousness in its evolutionary march is driving towards a consummation which includes and presupposes a development along that line. The mot d'ordre in old-world poetry was "fancy", imaginationremember the famous lines of Shake speare characterising a poet; in modern times it is Thought, even or perhaps particularly abstract metaphysical thought. Perceptions, experiences, realisationsof whatever order or world they may beexpressed in sensitive and aesthetic terms and figures, that is poetry known and appreciated familiarly. But a new turn has been coming on with an increasing insistencea definite time has been given to that, since the Renaissance, it is said: it is the growing importance of Thought or brain-power as a medium or atmosphere in which poetic experiences find a sober and clear articulation, a definite and strong formulation. Rationalisation of all experiences and realisations is the keynote of the modern mentality. Even when it is said that reason and rationality are not ultimate or final or significant realities, that the irrational or the submental plays a greater role in our consciousness and that art and poetry likewise should be the expression of such a mentality, even then, all this is said and done in and through a strong rational and intellectual stress and frame the like of which cannot be found in the old-world frankly non-intellectual creations.
--
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.
--
speak to me heart to heart words intimate,
And all Thy formless glory turn to love
--
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:
--
Poetry, actually however, has been, by and large, a profane and mundane affair: for it expresses the normal man's perceptions and feelings and experiences, human loves and hates and desires and ambitions. True. And yet there has also always been an attempt, a tendency to deal with them in such a way as can bring calm and puritykatharsisnot trouble and confusion. That has been the purpose of all Art from the ancient days. Besides, there has been a growth and development in the historic process of this katharsis. As by the sublimation of his bodily and vital instincts and impulses., man is gradually growing into the mental, moral and finally spiritual consciousness, even so the artistic expression of his creative activity has followed a similar line of transformation. The first and original transformation happened with religious poetry. The religious, one may say, is the profane inside out; that is to say, the religious man has almost the same tone and temper, the same urges and passions, only turned Godward. Religious poetry too marks a new turn and development of human speech, in taking the name of God human tongue acquires a new plasticity and flavour that transform or give a new modulation even to things profane and mundane it speaks of. Religious means at bottom the colouring of mental and moral idealism. A parallel process of katharsis is found in another class of poetic creation, viz., the allegory. Allegory or parable is the stage when the higher and inner realities are expressed wholly in the modes and manner, in the form and character of the normal and external, when moral, religious or spiritual truths are expressed in the terms and figures of the profane life. The higher or the inner ideal is like a loose clothing upon the ordinary consciousness, it does not fit closely or fuse. In the religious, however, the first step is taken for a mingling and fusion. The mystic is the beginning of a real fusion and a considerable ascension of the lower into the higher. The philosopher poet follows another line for the same katharsisinstead of uplifting emotions and sensibility, he proceeds by thought-power, by the ideas and principles that lie behind all movements and give a pattern to all things existing. The mystic can be of either type, the religious mystic or the philosopher mystic, although often the two are welded together and cannot be very well separated. Let us illustrate a little:
The spacious firmament on high,
--
Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!26
01.03 - Sri Aurobindo and his School, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Evidently the eminent politician and his school of activism are labouring under a Himalayan confusion: when they speak of Sri Aurobindo, they really have in their mind some of the old schools of spiritual discipline. But one of the marked a spects of Sri Aurobindo's teaching and practice has been precisely his insistence on putting aside the inert and life-shunning quietism, illusionism, asceticism and monasticism of a latter-day and decadent India. These ideals are perhaps as much obstacles in his way as in the way of the activistic school. Only Sri Aurobindo has not had the temerity to say that it is a weakness to seek refuge in contemplation or to suggest that a Buddha was a weakling or a Shankara a poltroon.
This much as regards what Sri Aurobindo is not doing; let us now turn and try to understand what he is doing. The distinguished man of action speaks of conquering Nature and fighting her. Adopting this war-like imagery, we can affirm that Sri Aurobindo's work is just such a battle and conquest. But the question is, what is nature and what is the kind of conquest that is sought, how are we to fight and what are the required arms and implements? A good general should foresee all this, frame his plan of campaign accordingly and then only take the field. The above-mentioned leader proposes ceaseless and unselfish action as the way to fight and conquer Nature. He who speaks thus does not know and cannot mean what he says.
European science is conquering Nature in a way. It has attained to a certain kind and measure, in some fields a great measure, of control and conquest; but however great or striking it may be in its own province, it does not touch man in his more intimate reality and does not bring about any true change in his destiny or his being. For the most vital part of nature is the region of the life-forces, the powers of disease and age and death, of strife and greed and lustall the instincts of the brute in man, all the dark aboriginal forces, the forces of ignorance that form the very groundwork of man's nature and his society. And then, as we rise next to the world of the mind, we find a twilight region where falsehood masquerades as truth, where prejudices move as realities, where notions rule as ideals.
--
And, properly speaking, it is not at all a school, least of all a mere school of thought, that is growing round Sri Aurobindo. It is rather the nucleus of a new life that is to come. Quite naturally it has almost insignificant proportions at present to the outward eye, for the work is still of the nature of experiment and trial in very restricted limits, something in the nature of what is done in a laboratory when a new power has been discovered, but has still to be perfectly formulated in its process. And it is quite a mistake to suppose that there is a vigorous propaganda carried on in its behalf or that there is a large demand for recruits. Only the few, who possess the call within and are impelled by the spirit of the future, have a chance of serving this high attempt and great realisation and standing among its first instruments and pioneer workers.
***
01.03 - The Yoga of the King - The Yoga of the Souls Release, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
And counsels came couched in celestial speech,
And honeyed pleadings breathed from occult lips
--
The voice that only by speech can move the mind
Became a silent knowledge in the soul;
--
A music spoke transcending mortal speech.
As if from a golden phial of the All-Bliss,
--
Her power fallen speechless grew more intimate;
She looked upon the seen and the unforeseen,
--
She broke in with inspired speech for scythe
And plundered the Unknowable's vast estate.
--
Her shining minutes of celestial speech,
Passed through the masked office of the occult mind,
--
And sanctuary of prophetic speech
And sat upon the tripod seat of mind:
--
Dropped carelessly in creation's spendthrift work,
Left in the chantiers of the bottomless world
--
Was the spectator of the mobile scene:
The beauty and the ceaseless miracle
01.04 - Motives for Seeking the Divine, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Divine and do His work or His will and I am satisfied, even if the use of Power entails suffering also." It is possible to shun bliss as a thing too tremendous or ecstatic and ask only or rather for peace, for liberation, for Nirvana. You speak of self-fulfilment,
- one may regard the Supreme not as the Divine but as one's highest Self and seek fulfilment of one's being in that highest Self; but one need not envisage it as a self of bliss, ecstasy, Ananda - one may envisage it as a self of freedom, vastness, knowledge, tranquillity, strength, calm, perfection - perhaps too calm for a ripple of anything so disturbing as joy to enter. So even if it is for something to be gained that one approaches the Divine, it is not a fact that one can approach Him or seek union only for the sake of Ananda and nothing else.
--
I have written all that only to explain what we mean when we speak of seeking the Divine for himself and not for anything else - so far as it is explicable. Explicable or not, it is one of the most dominant facts of spiritual experience. The call to selfgiving is only an expression of this fact. But this does not mean that I object to your asking for Ananda. Ask for that by all means, so long as to ask for it is a need of any part of your being
- for these are the things that lead on towards the Divine so long as the absolute inner call that is there all the time does not push itself to the surface. But it is really that that has drawn from the beginning and is there behind - it is the categorical spiritual imperative, the absolute need of the soul for the Divine.
01.04 - Sri Aurobindos Gita, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The supreme secret of the Gita, rahasyam uttamam, has presented itself to diverse minds in diverse forms. All these however fall, roughly speaking, into two broad groups of which one may be termed the orthodox school and the other the modem school. The orthodox school as represented, for example, by Shankara or Sridhara, viewed the Gita in the light of the spiritual discipline more or less current in those ages, when the purpose of life was held out to be emancipation from life, whether through desireless work or knowledge or devotion or even a combination of the three. The Modern School, on the other hand, represented by Bankim in Bengal and more thoroughly developed and systematised in recent times by Tilak, is inspired by its own Time-Spirit and finds in the Gita a go spel of life-fulfilment. The older interpretation laid stress upon a spiritual and religious, which meant therefore in the end an other-worldly discipline; the newer interpretation seeks to dynamise the more or less quietistic spirituality which held the ground in India of later ages, to set a premium upon action, upon duty that is to be done in our workaday life, though with a spiritual intent and motive.
This neo-spirituality which might claim its sanction and authority from the real old-world Indian disciplinesay, of Janaka and Yajnavalkyalabours, however, in reality, under the influence of European activism and ethicism. It was this which served as the immediate incentive to our spiritual revival and revaluation and its impress has not been thoroughly obliterated even in the best of our modern exponents. The bias of the vital urge and of the moral imperative is apparent enough in the modernist conception of a dynamic spirituality. Fundamentally the dynamism is made to reside in the lan of the ethical man,the spiritual element, as a consciousness of supreme unity in the Absolute (Brahman) or of love and delight in God, serving only as an atmosphere for the mortal activity.
01.04 - The Intuition of the Age, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
So instead of the rational principle, the new age wants the principle of Nature or Life. Even as regards knowledge Reason is not the only, nor the best instrument. For animals have properly no reason; the nature-principle of knowledge in the animal is Instinct the faculty that acts so faultlessly, so marvellously where Reason can only pause and be perplexed. This is not to say that man is to or can go back to this primitive and animal function; but certainly he can replace it by something akin which is as natural and yet purified and self-consciousillumined instinct, we may say or Intuition, as Bergson terms it. And Nietzsche's definition of the Superman has also a similar orientation and significance; for, according to him, the Superman is man who has outgrown his Reason, who is not bound by the standards and the conventions determined by Reason for a special purpose. The Superman is one who has gone beyond "good and evil," who has shaken off from his nature and character elements that are "human, all too human"who is the embodiment of life-force in its absolute purity and strength and freedom.
This then is the mantra of the new ageLife with Intuition as its guide and not Reason and mechanical efficiency, not Man but Superman. The right mantra has been found, the principle itself is irreproachable. But the interpretation, the application, does not seem to have been always happy. For, Nietzsche's conception of the Superman is full of obvious lacunae. If we have so long been adoring the intellectual man, Nietzsche asks us, on the other hand, to deify the vital man. According to him the superman is he who has (1) the supreme sense of the ego, (2) the sovereign will to power and (3) who lives dangerously. All this means an Asura, that is to say, one who has, it may be, dominion over his animal and vital impulsions in order, of course, that he may best gratify them but who has not purified them. Purification does not necessarily mean, annihilation but it does mean sublimation and transformation. So if you have to transcend man, you have to transcend egoism also. For a conscious egoism is the very characteristic of man and by increasing your sense of egoism you do not supersede man but simply aggrandise your humanity, fashion it on a larger, a titanic scale. And then the will to power is not the only will that requires fulfilment, there is also the will to knowledge and the will to love. In man these three fundamental constitutive elements coexist, although they do it, more often than not, at the expense of each other and in a state of continual disharmony. The superman, if he is to be the man "who has surmounted himself", must embody a poise of being in which all the three find a fusion and harmonya perfect synthesis. Again, to live dangerously may be heroic, but it is not divine. To live dangerously means to have eternal opponents, that is to say, to live ever on the same level with the forces you want to dominate. To have the sense that one has to fight and control means that one is not as yet the sovereign lord, for one has to strive and strain and attain. The supreme lord is he who is perfectly equanimous with himself and with the world. He has not to batter things into a shape in order to create. He creates means, he manifests. He wills and he achieves"God said 'let there be light' and there was light."
01.04 - The Poetry in the Making, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
When we say one is conscious, we usually mean that one is conscious with the mental consciousness, with the rational intelligence, with the light of the brain. But this need not be always so. For one can be conscious with other forms of consciousness or in other planes of consciousness. In the average or normal man the consciousness is linked to or identified with the brain function, the rational intelligence and so we conclude that without this wakeful brain activity there can be no consciousness. But the fact is otherwise. The experiences of the mystic prove the point. The mystic is conscious on a level which we describe as higher than the mind and reason, he has what may be called the overhead consciousness. (Apart from the normal consciousness, which is named jagrat, waking, the Upanishad speaks of three other increasingly subtler states of consciousness, swapna, sushupti and turiya.)And then one can be quite unconscious, as in samadhi that can be sushupti or turiyaorpartially consciousin swapna, for example, the external behaviour may be like that of a child or a lunatic or even a goblin. One can also remain normally conscious and still be in the superconscience. Not only so, the mystic the Yogican be conscious on infraconscious levels also; that is to say, he can enter into and identify with the consciousness involved in life and even in Matter; he can feel and realise his oneness with the animal world, the plant world and finally the world of dead earth, of "stocks and stones" too. For all these strands of existence have each its own type of consciousness and all different from the mode of mind which is normally known as consciousness. When St. Francis addresses himself to the brother Sun or the sister Moon, or when the Upanishad speaks of the tree silhouetted against the sky, as if stilled in trance, we feel there is something of this fusion and identification of consciousness with an infra-conscient existence.
I said that the supreme artist is superconscious: his consciousness withdraws from the normal mental consciousness and becomes awake and alive in another order of consciousness. To that superior consciousness the artist's mentalityhis ideas and dispositions, his judgments and valuations and acquisitions, in other words, his normal psychological make-upserves as a channel, an instrument, a medium for transcription. Now, there are two stages, or rather two lines of activity in the processus, for they may be overlapping and practically simultaneous. First, there is the withdrawal and the in-gathering of consciousness and then its reappearance into expression. The consciousness retires into a secret or subtle worldWords-worth's "recollected in tranquillity"and comes back with the riches gathered or transmuted there. But the purity of the gold thus garnered and stalled in the artistry of words and sounds or lines and colours depends altogether upon the purity of the channel through which it has to pass. The mental vehicle receives and records and it can do so to perfection if it is perfectly in tune with what it has to receive and record; otherwise the transcription becomes mixed and blurred, a faint or confused echo, a poor show. The supreme creators are precisely those in whom the receptacle, the instrumental faculties offer the least resistance and record with absolute fidelity the experiences of the over or inner consciousness. In Shake speare, in Homer, in Valmiki the inflatus of the secret consciousness, the inspiration, as it is usually termed, bears down, sweeps away all obscurity or contrariety in the recording mentality, suffuses it with its own glow and puissance, indeed resolves it into its own substance, as it were. And the difference between the two, the secret norm and the recording form, determines the scale of the artist's creative value. It happens often that the obstruction of a too critically observant and self-conscious brain-mind successfully blocks up the flow of something supremely beautiful that wanted to come down and waited for an opportunity.
Artists themselves, almost invariably, speak of their inspiration: they look upon themselves more or less as mere instruments of something or some Power that is beyond them, beyond their normal consciousness attached to the brain-mind, that controls them and which they cannot control. This perception has been given shape in myths and legends. Goddess Saraswati or the Muses are, however, for them not a mere metaphor but concrete realities. To what extent a poet may feel himself to be a mere passive, almost inanimate, instrumentnothing more than a mirror or a sensitive photographic plateis illustrated in the famous case of Coleridge. His Kubla Khan, as is well known, he heard in sleep and it was a long poem very distinctly recited to him, but when he woke up and wanted to write it down he could remember only the opening lines, the rest having gone completely out of his memory; in other words, the poem was ready-composed somewhere else, but the transmitting or recording instrument was faulty and failed him. Indeed, it is a common experience to hear in sleep verses or musical tunes and what seem then to be very beautiful things, but which leave no trace on the brain and are not recalled in memory.
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 di spersal of the pure light from above.
--
The three or four major orders I speak of in reference to conscious artistry are exampled characteristically in the history of the evolution of Greek poetry. It must be remembered, however, at the very outset that the Greeks as a race were nothing if not rational and intellectual. It was an element of strong self-consciousness that they brought into human culture that was their special gift. Leaving out of account Homer who was, as I said, a primitive, their classical age began with Aeschylus who was the first and the most spontaneous and intuitive of the Great Three. Sophocles, who comes next, is more balanced and self-controlled and pregnant with a reasoned thought-content clothed in polished phrasing. We feel here that the artist knew what he was about and was exercising a conscious control over his instruments and materials, unlike his predecessor who seemed to be completely carried away by the onrush of the poetic enthousiasmos. Sophocles, in spite of his artistic perfection or perhaps because of it, appears to be just a little, one remove, away from the purity of the central inspiration there is a veil, although a thin transparent veil, yet a veil between which intervenes. With the third of the Brotherhood, Euripides, we slide lower downwe arrive at a predominantly mental transcription of an experience or inner conception; but something of the major breath continues, an aura, a rhythm that maintains the inner contact and thus saves the poetry. In a subsequent age, in Theocritus, for example, poetry became truly very much 'sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought', so much of virtuosity and precocity entered into it; in other words, the poet then was an excessively self-conscious artist. That seems to be the general trend of all literature.
But should there be an inherent incompatibility between spontaneous creation and self-consciousness? As we have seen, a harmony and fusion can and do happen of the superconscious and the normally conscious in the Yogi. Likewise, an artist also can be wakeful and transparent enough so that he is conscious on both the levels simultaneouslyabove, he is conscious of the source and origin of his inspiration, and on the level plain he is conscious of the working of the instrument, how the vehicle transcribes and embodies what comes from elsewhere. The poet's consciousness becomes then divalent as it werethere is a sense of absolute passivity in re spect of the receiving apparatus and coupled and immisced with it there is also the sense of dynamism, of conscious agency as in his secret being he is the master of his apparatus and one with the Inspirerin other words, the poet is both a seer (kavih) and a creator or doer (poits).
--
Whether the original and true source of the poet's inspiration lies deep within or high above, all depends upon the mediating instrument the mind (in its most general sense) and speech for a successful transcription. Man's ever-growing consciousness demanded also a conscious development and remoulding of these two factors. A growth, a heightening and deepening of the consciousness meant inevitably a movement towards the spiritual element in things. And that means, we have said, a twofold change in the future poet's make-up. First as regards the substance. The revolutionary shift that we notice in modern poets towards a completely new domain of subject-matter is a signpost that more is meant than what is expressed. The superficialities and futilities that are dealt with do not in their outward form give the real trend of things. In and through all these major and constant preoccupation of our poets is "the pain of the present and the passion for the future": they are, as already stated, more prophets than poets, but prophets for the moment crying in the wildernessalthough some have chosen the path of denial and revolt. They are all looking ahead or beyond or deep down, always yearning for another truth and reality which will explain, justify and transmute the present calvary of human living. Such an acute tension of consciousness has necessitated an overhauling of the vehicle of expression too, the creation of a mode of expressing the inexpressible. For that is indeed what human consciousness and craft are aiming at in the present stage of man's evolution. For everything, almost everything that can be normally expressed has been expressed and in a variety of ways as much as is possible: that is the history of man's aesthetic creativity. Now the eye probes into the unexpressed world; for the artist too the Upanishadic problem has cropped up:
By whom impelled does the mind fall to its target, what is the agent that is behind the eye and sees through the eyes, what is the hearing and what the speech that their re spective sense organs do not and cannot convey and record adequately or at all?
Like the modern scientist the artist or craftsman too of today has become a philosopher, even a mystic philosopher. The subtler and higher ranges of consciousness are now the object of inquiry and investigation and expression and revelation for the scientist as well as for the artist. The external sense-objects, the phenomenal movements are symbols and signposts, graphs and pointer-readings of facts and realities that lie hidden, behind or beyond. The artist and the scientist are occult alchemists. What to make of this, for example:
--
Well, it is sheer incantation. It is word-weaving, rhythm plaiting, thought-wringing in order to pass beyond these frail materials, to get into contact with, to give some sense of the mystery of existence that passeth understanding. We are very far indeed from the "natural" poets, Homer or Shake speare, Milton, or Virgil. And this is from a profane, a mundane poet, not an ostensibly religious or spiritual poet. The level of the poetic inspiration, at least of the poetic view and aspiration has evidently shifted to a higher, a deeper degree. We may be speaking of tins and tinsel, bones and dust, filth and misery, of the underworld of ignorance and ugliness,
All things uncomely and broken, all things worn out and old,
01.04 - The Secret Knowledge, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Our spirit sits alone and speaks to its gulfs.
A wider consciousness opens then its doors;
--
He sees the secret things no words can speak
And knows the goal of the unconscious world
--
A Word speaks to her heart she cannot hear,
A Fate compels whose form she cannot see.
--
The idea, the speech that labels more than it lights;
A trembling gladness that is less than bliss
--
A Strength not forced to stumble by its speed,
A Joy that drags not sorrow as its shade.
--
A Voice ill-heard shall speak, the soul obey,
A Power into mind's inner chamber steal,
--
Missing its aim is all that it can speak
Or a fragment of the universal word.
--
He speaks no words or hides behind the wings.
He takes birth in her world, waits on her will,
--
Active, inspired by her he speaks and moves;
His deeds obey her heart's unspoken demands:
--
Her Word that in the silence speaks to our hearts,
Her silence that transcends the summit Word,
--
And the far speaks and the unknown grows near:
He crosses the boundaries of the unseen
01.05 - Rabindranath Tagore: A Great Poet, a Great Man, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Tagore is in direct line with those bards who have sung of the Spirit, who always soared high above the falsehoods and uglinesses of a merely mundane life and lived in the undecaying delights and beauties of a diviner consciousness. Spiritual reality was the central theme of his poetic creation: only and naturally he viewed it in a special way and endowed it with a special grace. We know of another God-intoxicated man, the Jewish philosopher Spinoza, who saw things sub specie aeternitatis, under the figure or mode of eternity. Well, Tagore can be said to see things, in their essential spiritual reality, under the figure or mode of beauty. Keats indeed spoke of truth being beauty and beauty truth. But there is a great difference in the outlook and inner experience. A worshipper of beauty, unless he rises to the Upanishadic norm, is prone to become sensuous and pagan. Keats was that, Kalidasa was that, even Shelley was not far different. The spiritual vein in all these poets remains secondary. In the old Indian master, it is part of his intellectual equipment, no doubt, but nothing much more than that. In the other two it comes in as strange flashes from an unknown country, as a sort of irruption or on the peak of the poetic afflatus or enthousiasmos.
The world being nothing but Spirit made visible is, according to Tagore, fundamentally a thing of beauty. The scars and spots that are on the surface have to be removed and mankind has to repossess and clo the itself with that mantle of beauty. The world is beautiful, because it is the image of the Beautiful, because it harbours, expresses and embodies the Divine who is Beauty supreme. Now by a strange alchemy, a wonderful effect of polarisation, the very spiritual element in Tagore has made him almost a pagan and even a profane. For what are these glories of Nature and the still more exquisite glories that the human body has captured? They are but vibrations and modulations of beauty the delightful names and forms of the supreme Lover and Beloved.
01.05 - The Nietzschean Antichrist, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Nietzsche as the apostle of force is a name now familiar to all the world. The hero, the warrior who never tamely accepts suffering and submission and defeat under any condition but fights always and fights to conquersuch is the ideal man, according to Nietzsche,the champion of strength, of greatness, of mightiness. The dominating personality infused with the supreme "will to power"he is Ubermensch, the Superman. Sentiment does not move the mountains, emotion diffuses itself only in vague aspiration. The motive power, the creative fiat does not dwell in the heart but somewhere higher. The way of the Cross, the path of love and charity and pity does not lead to the kingdom of Heaven. The world has tried it for the last twenty centuries of its Christian civilisation and the result is that we are still living in a luxuriant abundance of misery and sordidness and littleness. This is how Nietzsche thinks and feels. He finds no virtue in the old rgimes and he revolts from them. He wants a speedy and radical remedy and teaches that by violence only the Kingdom of Heaven can be seized. For, to Nietzsche the world is only a clash of forces and the Superman therefore is one who is the embodiment of the greatest force. Nietzsche does not care for the good, it is the great that moves him. The good, the moral is of man, conventional and has only a fictitious value. The great, the non-moral is, on the other hand, divine. That only has a value of its own. The good is nothing but a sort of makeshift arrangement which man makes for himself in order to live commodiously and which changes according to his temperament. But the great is one with the Supreme Wisdom and is absolute and imperative. The good cannot create the great; it is the great that makes for the good. This is what he really means when he says, "They say that a good cause sanctifies war but I tell thee it is a good war that sanctifies all cause." For the goodness of your cause you judge by your personal predilections, by your false conventionalities, by a standard that you set up in your ignoranceBut a good war, the output of strength in any cause is in itself a cause of salvation. For thereby you are the champion of that ultimate verity which conduces to the ultimate good. Do not shrink, he would say, to be even like the cyclone and the avalanche, destructive, indeed, but grand and puissant and therefore truer emblems of the BeyondJenseitsthan the weak, the little, the pitiful that do not dare to destroy and by that very fact cannot hope to create.
This is the Nietzsche we all know. But there is another a spect of his which the world has yet been slow to recognise. For, at bottom, Nietzsche is not all storm and fury. If his Superman is a Destroying Angel, he is none the less an angel. If he is endowed with a supreme sense of strength and power, there is also secreted in the core of his heart a sense of the beautiful that illumines his somewhat sombre a spect. For although Nietzsche is by birth a Slavo-Teuton, by culture and education he is pre-eminently Hellenic. His earliest works are on the subject of Greek tragedy and form what he describes as an "Apollonian dream." And to this dream, to this Greek aesthetic sense more than to any thing else he sacrifices justice and pity and charity. To him the weak and the miserable, the sick and the maimed are a sort of blot, a kind of ulcer on the beautiful face of humanity. The herd that wallow in suffering and relish suffering disfigure the a spect of the world and should therefore be relentlessly mowed out of existence. By being pitiful to them we give our tacit assent to their persistence. And it is precisely because of this that Nietzsche has a horror of Christianity. For compassion gives indulgence to all the ugliness of the world and thus renders that ugliness a necessary and indi spensable element of existence. To protect the weak, to sympathise with the lowly brings about more of weakness and more of lowliness. Nietzsche has an aristocratic taste par excellencewhat he aims at is health and vigour and beauty. But above all it is an aristocracy of the spirit, an aristocracy endowed with all the richness and beauty of the soul that Nietzsche wants to establish. The beggar of the street is the symbol of ugliness, of the poverty of the spirit. And the so-called aristocrat, die millionaire of today is as poor and ugly as any helpless leper. The soul of either of them is made of the same dirty, sickly stuff. The tattered rags, the crouching heart, the effeminate nerve, the unenlightened soul are the standing ugliness of the world and they have no place in the ideal, the perfect humanity. Humanity, according to Nietzsche, is made in order to be beautiful, to conceive the beautiful, to create the beautiful. Nietzsche's Superman has its perfect image in a Grecian statue of Zeus cut out in white marble-Olympian grandeur shedding in every lineament Apollonian beauty and Dionysian vigour.
01.05 - The Yoga of the King - The Yoga of the Spirits Freedom and Greatness, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
And the formulas of their stupendous speech,
Till heaven and hell become purveyors to earth
--
Led to its end by an all-seeing speech
That garbed the initial and original thought
01.06 - On Communism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Communism is the synthesis of collectivism and individualism. The past ages of society were characterised more or less by a severe collectivism. In ancient Greece, more so in Sparta and in Rome, the individual had, properly speaking, no separate existence of his own; he was merged in the State or Nation. The individual was considered only as a limb of the collective being, had to live and labour for the common weal. The value attached to each person was strictly in reference to the output that the group to which he belonged received from him. Apart from this service for the general unit the body politicany personal endeavour and achievement, if not absolutely discouraged and repressed, was given a very secondary place of merit. The summum bonum of the individual was to sacrifice at the altar of the res publica, the bonum publicum. In India, the position and function of the State or Nation was taken up by the society. Here too social institutions were so constituted and men were so bred and brought up that individuality had neither the occasion nor the incentive to express itself, it was a thing that remained, in the Kalidasian phrase, an object for the ear onlysrutau sthita. Those who sought at all an individual aim and purpose, as perhaps the Sannyasins, were put outside the gate of law and society. Within the society, in actual life and action, it was a sin and a crime or at least a gross imperfection to have any self-regarding motive or impulse; personal preference was the last thing to be considered, virtue consisted precisely in sacrificing one's own taste and inclination for the sake of that which the society exacts and sanctions.
Against this tyranny of the group, this absolute rule of the collective will, the human mind rose in revolt and the result was Individualism. For whatever may be the truth and necessity of the Collective, the Individual is no less true and necessary. The individual has his own law and urge of being and his own secret godhead. The collective godhead derides the individual godhead at its peril. The first movement of the reaction, however, was a run to the other extremity; a stern collectivism gave birth to an intransigent individualism. The individual is sacred and inviolable, cost what it may. It does not matter what sort of individuality one seeks, it is enough if the thing is there. So the doctrine of individualism has come to set a premium on egoism and on forces that are disruptive of all social bonds. Each and every individual has the inherent right, which is also a duty, to follow his own impetus and impulse. Society is nothing but the battle ground for competing individualities the strongest survive and the weakest go to the wall. Association and co-operation are instruments that the individual may use and utilise for his own growth and development but in the main they act as deterrents rather than as aids to the expression and expansion of his characteristic being. In reality, however, if we probe sufficiently deep into the matter we find that there is no such thing as corporate life and activity; what appears as such is only a camouflage for rigorous competition; at the best, there maybe only an offensive and defensive alliancehumanity fights against nature, and within humanity itself group fights against group and in the last analysis, within the group, the individual fights against the individual. This is the ultimate Law-the Dharma of creation.
01.06 - Vivekananda, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A personal reminiscence. A young man in prison, accused of conspiracy and waging war against the British Empire. If convicted he might have to suffer the extreme penalty, at least, transportation to the Andamans. The case is dragging on for long months. And the young man is in a solitary cell. He cannot always keep up his spirits high. Moments of sadness and gloom and despair come and almost overwhelm him. Who was there to console and cheer him up? Vivekananda. Vivekananda's speeches, From Colombo to Almora, came, as a godsend, into the hands of the young man. Invariably, when the period of despondency came he used to open the book, read a few pages, read them over again, and the cloud was there no longer. Instead there was hope and courage and faith and future and light and air.
Such is Vivekananda, the embodiment of Fearlessnessabh, the Upanishadic word, the mantra, he was so fond of. The life and vision of Vivekananda can be indeed summed up in the mighty phrase of the Upanishads, nyam tm balahnena labhya. 'This soul no weakling can attain.' Strength! More strength! Strength evermore! One remembers the motto of Danton, the famous leader in the French Revolution:De l'audance, encore de l'audace, toujours de l'audace!
The go spel of strength that Vivekananda spread was very characteristic of the man. For it is not mere physical or nervous bravery, although that too is indi spensable, and it is something more than moral courage. In the speeches referred to, the subject-matter (as well as the manner to a large extent) is philosophical, metaphysical, even abstract in outlook and treatment: they are not a call to arms, like the French National Anthem, for example; they are not merely an ethical exhortation, a moral lesson either. They speak of the inner spirit, the divine in man, the supreme realities that lie beyond. And yet the words are permeated through and through with a vibration life-giving and heroic-not so much in the explicit and apparent meaning as in the style and manner and atmosphere: it is catching, even or precisely when he refers, for example, to these passages in the Vedas and the Upanishads, magnificent in their poetic beauty, sublime in their spiritual truth,nec plus ultra, one can say, in the grand style supreme:
Yasyaite himavanto mahitv
--
The consciousness that breathed out these mighty words, these heavenly sounds was in itself mighty and heavenly and it is that that touches you, penetrates you, vibrates in you a kindred chord, "awakening in you someone dead" till thenmrtam kcana bodhayant. More than the matter, the thing that was said, was the personality, the being who embodied the truth expressed, the living consciousness behind the words and the speech that set fire to your soul. Indeed it was the soul that Vivekananda could awaken and stir in you. Any orator, any speaker with some kind of belief, even if it is for the moment, in what he says, by the sheer force of assertion, can convince your mind and draw your acquiescence and adhesion. A leader of men, self-confident and bold and fiery, can carry you off your feet and make you do brave things. But that is a lower degree of character and nature, ephemeral and superficial, that is touched in you thereby. The spiritual leader, the Guide, goes straight to the spirit in youit is the call of the deep unto the deep. That was what Vivekananda meant when he said that Brahman is asleep in you, awaken it, you are the Brahman, awaken it, you are free and almighty. It is the spirit consciousness Sachchidananda that is the real man in you and that is supremely mighty and invincible and free absolutely. The courage and fearlessness that Vivekananda gave you was the natural attribute of the lordship of your spiritual reality. Vivekananda spoke and roused the Atman in man.
Vivekananda spoke to the Atman in man, he spoke to the Atman of the world, and he spoke specially to the Atman of India. India had a large place in Vivekananda's consciousness: for the future of humanity and the world is wedded to India's future. India has a great mission, it has a spiritual, rather the spiritual work to do. Here is India's work as Vivekananda conceived it in a nutshell:
"Shall India die? Then from the world all spirituality will be extinct." And wherefore is this call for the life spiritual? Thus the aspiring soul would answer:
01.07 - Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Pascal's place in the evolution of European culture and consciousness is of considerable significance and importance. He came at a critical time, on the mounting tide of rationalism and scepticism, in an age when the tone and temper of human mentality were influenced and fashioned by Montaigne and Rochefoucauld, by Bacon and Hobbes. Pascal himself, born in such an atmosphere of doubt and disbelief and disillusionment, had sucked in a full dose of that poison; yet he survived and found the Rock of Ages, became the clarion of Faith against Denial. What a spectacle it was! This is what one wrote just a quarter of a century after the death of Pascal:
"They can no longer tell us that it is only small minds that have piety. They are shown how it has grown best in one of the the greatest geometricians, one of the subtlest metaphysicians, one of the most penetrating minds that ever existed on earth. The piety of such a philosopher should make the unbeliever and the libertine declare what a certain Diocles said one day on seeing Epicurus in a temple: 'What a feast, what a spectacle for me to see Epicurus in a temple! All my doubts vainsh, piety takes its place again. I never saw Jupiter's greatness so well as now when I behold Epicurus kneeling down!"1
What characterises Pascal is the way in which he has bent his brainnot rejected it but truly bent and forced even the dry "geometrical brain" to the service of Faith.
--
Pascal's faith had not the calm, tranquil, serene, luminous and happy self-possession of an Indian Rishi. It was ardent and impatient, fiery and vehement. It had to be so perhaps, since it was to stand against his steely brain (and a gloomy vital or life force) as a counterpoise, even as an antidote. This tension and schism brought about, at least contri buted to his neuras thenia and physical infirmity. But whatever the effect upon his inner consciousness and spiritual achievement, his power of expression, his literary style acquired by that a special quality which is his great gift to the French language. If one speaks of Pascal, one has to speak of his language also; for he was one of the great masters who created the French prose. His prose was a wonderful blend of clarity, precision, serried logic and warmth, colour, life, movement, plasticity.
A translation cannot give any idea of the Pascalian style; but an inner echo of the same can perhaps be caught from the thought movement of these characteristic sayings of his with which we conclude:
--
"Ils ne peuvent plus nous dire qu'il n'y a que de petits esprits qui aient de la pit: car on leur en fait voir de la mieux pouss dans run des plus grands go-mtres, l'un des plus subtils mtaphysiciens, et des plus pntrants esprits que aient jamais t au monde. La pit d'un tel philosophe devrait faire dire aux indvots et awe libertins ce que dit un jour un certain Diocls, en voyant Epicure dans un temple: 'Quelle fte,' s'criait-il, 'quelle spectacle pour moi, de voir Epicure dans un temple! Tous mes soupons s'vanouissent: la pit reprend sa place; et je ne vis jamais mieux la grandeur de Jupiter que depuis que je vois Epicure genoux!' " aBayle: Nouvelle de la Rpublique des Lettres.
"La dernire dmarche de la raison, c'est de connatre qu'il y a une infinit de chases qui la surpassent. Elle est bien faible si elle ne va jusque-l
01.08 - Walter Hilton: The Scale of Perfection, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
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."
--
Indeed, the kernel of the mystic discipline and its whole bearingconsists in one and only one principle: to love Jhesu. All roads lead to Rome: all preparations, all trials lead to one realisation, love of God, God as a living person close to us, our friend and lover and master. The Christian mystic speaks almost in the terms of the Gita: Rise above your senses, give up your ego-hood, be meek and humble, it is Jesus within you, who embraces your soul: it is he who does everything for you and in you, give yourself up wholly into his hands. He will deliver you.
The characteristic then of the path is a one-pointed concentration. Great stress is laid upon "oneliness", "onedness":that is to say, a perfect and complete withdrawal from the outside and the world; an unmixed solitude is required for the true experience and realisation to come. "A full forsaking in will of the soul for the love of Him, and a living of the heart to Him. This asks He, for this gave He." The rigorous exclusion, the uncompromising asceticism, the voluntary self-torture, the cruel dark night and the arid desert are necessary conditions that lead to the "onlyness of soul", what another prophet (Isaiah, XXIV, 16) describes as "My privity to me". In that secreted solitude, the "onlistead"the graphic language of the author calls itis found "that dignity and that ghostly fairness which a soul had by kind and shall have by grace." The utter beauty of the soul and its absolute love for her deity within her (which has the fair name of Jhesu), the exclusive concentration of the whole of the being upon one point, the divine core, the manifest Grace of God, justifies the annihilation of the world and life's manifold existence. Indeed, the image of the Beloved is always within, from the beginning to the end. It is that that keeps one up in the terrible struggle with one's nature and the world. The image depends upon the consciousness which we have at the moment, that is to say, upon the stage or the degree we have ascended to. At the outset, when we can only look through the senses, when the flesh is our master, we give the image a crude form and character; but even that helps. Gradually, as we rise, with the clearing of our nature, the image too slowly regains its original and true shape. Finally, in the inmost soul we find Jesus as he truly is: "an unchangeable being, a sovereign might, a sovereign soothfastness, sovereign goodness, a blessed life and endless bliss." Does not the Gita too say: "As one approaches Me, so do I appear to him."Ye yath mm prapadyante.
--
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 de sperate. Once you recognise the sin in you, even the bare fact of recognition means for you half the victory. The mystic says, "It is no sin as thou feelest them." The day Jesus gave himself away on the Cross, since that very day you are free, potentially free from the bondage of sin. Once you give your adherence to Him, the Enemies are rendered powerless. "They tease the soul, but they harm not the soul". Or again, as the mystic graphically phrases it: "This soul is not borne in this image of sin as a sick man, though he feel it; but he beareth it." The best way of dealing with one's enemies is not to struggle and "strive with them." The aspirant, the lover of Jesus, must remember: "He is through grace reformed to the likeness of God ('in the privy substance of his soul within') though he neither feel it nor see it."
If you are told you are still full of sins and you are not worthy to follow the path, that you must go and work out your sins first, here is your answer: "Go shrive thee better: trow not this saying, for it is false, for thou art shriven. Trust securely that thou art on the way, and thee needeth no ransacking of shrift for that that is passed, hold forth thy way and think on Jerusalem." That is to say, do not be too busy with the difficulties of the moment, but look ahead, as far as possible, fix your attention upon the goal, the intermediate steps will become easy. Jerusalem is another name of the Love of Jesus or the Bliss in Heaven. Grow in this love, your sins will fade away of themselves. "Though thou be thrust in an house with thy body, nevertheless in thine heart, where the stead of love is, thou shouldst be able to have part of that love... " What exquisite utterance, what a deep truth!
01.09 - The Parting of the Way, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The differentia, in each case, lies in the degree and nature of consciousness, since it is consciousness that forms the substance and determines the mode of being. Now, the inorganic is characterised by un-consciousness, the vegetable by sub-consciousness, the animal by consciousness and man by self-consciousness. Man knows that he knows, an animal only knows; a plant does not even know, it merely feels or senses; matter cannot do that even, it simply acts or rather is acted upon. We are not concerned here, however, with the last two forms of being; we will speak of the first two only.
We say, then, that man is distinguished from the animal by his having consciousness as it has, but added to it the consciousness of self. Man acts and feels and knows as much as the animal does; but also he knows that he acts, he knows that he feels, he knows that he knowsand this is a thing the animal cannot do. It is the awakening of the sense of self in every mode of being that characterises man, and it is owing to this consciousness of an ego behind, of a permanent unit of reference, which has modified even the functions of knowing and feeling and acting, has refashioned them in a mould which is not quite that of the animal, in spite of a general similarity.
--
As a matter of fact it is not so. The glimpses of a higher form of consciousness we can see even now present in self-consciousness. We have spoken of the different stages of evolution as if they were separate and distinct and incommensurate entities. They may be described as such for the purpose of a logical understanding, but in reality they form a single progressive continuum in which one level gradually fuses into another. And as the higher level takes up the law of the lower and evolves out of it a characteristic function, even so the law of the higher level with its characteristic function is already involved and envisaged in the law of the lower level and its characteristic function. It cannot be asserted positively that because man's special virtue is self-consciousness, animals cannot have that quality on any account. We do see, if we care to observe closely and dispassionately, that animals of the higher order, as they approach the level of humanity, show more and more evident signs of something which is very much akin to, if not identical with the human characteristic of self-consciousness.
So, in man also, e specially of that order which forms the crown of humanityin poets and artists and seers and great men of actioncan be observed a certain characteristic form of consciousness, which is something other than, greater than the consciousness of the mere self. It is difficult as yet to characterise definitely what that thing is. It is the awakening of the self to something which is beyond itselfit is the cosmic self, the oversoul, the universal being; it is God, it is Turiya, it is sachchidanandain so many ways the thing has been sought to be envisaged and expressed. The consciousness of that level has also a great variety of names given to it Intuition, Revelation, cosmic consciousness, God-consciousness. It is to be noted here, however, that the thing we are referring to, is not the Absolute, the Infinite, the One without a second. It is not, that is to say, the supreme Reality the Brahmanin its static being, in its undivided and indivisible unity; it is the dynamic Brahman, that status of the supreme Reality where creation, the diversity of Becoming takes rise, it is the Truth-worldRitam the domain of typal realities. The distinction is necessary, as there does seem to be such a level of consciousness intermediary, again, between man and the Absolute, between self-consciousness and the supreme consciousness. The simplest thing would be to give that intermediate level of consciousness a negative namesince being as yet human we cannot foresee exactly its composition and function the super-consciousness.
--
Indeed it is a divine creature that should be envisaged on the next level of evolution. The mental and the moral, the psychical and the physical transfigurations which must follow the change in the basic substratum do imply such a mutation, the birth of a new species, as it were, fashioned in the nature of the gods. The vision of angels and Siddhas, which man is having ceaselessly since his birth, may be but a prophecy of the future actuality.
This then, it seems to us, is the immediate problem that Nature has set before herself. She is now at the parting of the ways. She has done with man as an essentially human being, she has brought out the fundamental possibilities of humanity and perfected it, so far as perfection may be attained within the cadre by which she chose to limit herself; she is now looking forward to another kind of experiment the evolving of another life, another being out of her entrails, that will be greater than the humanity we know today, that will be superior even to the supreme that has yet been actualised.
01.09 - William Blake: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
We welcome voices that speak of this ancient tradition, this occult Knowledge of a high Future. Recently we have come across one aspirant in the line, and being a contemporary, his views and reviews in the matter will be all the more interesting to us.2 He is Gustave Thibon, a Frenchman-not a priest or even a religious man in the orthodox sense in any way, but a country farmer, a wholly self-educated laque. Of late he has attracted a good deal of attention from intellectuals as well as religious people, e specially the Catholics, because of his remarkable conceptions which are so often unorthodox and yet so often ringing true with an old-world au thenticity.
Touching the very core of the malady of our age he says that our modern enlightenment seeks to cancel altogether the higher values and install instead the lower alone as true. Thus, for example, Marx and Freud, its twin arch priests, are brothers. Both declare that it is the lower, the under layer alone that matters: to one "the masses", to the other "the instincts". Their wild imperative roars: "Sweep away this pseudo-higher; let the instincts rule, let the pro-letariat dictate!" But more characteristic, Monsieur Thibon has made another discovery which gives the whole value and speciality to his outlook. He says the moderns stress the lower, no doubt; but the old world stressed only the higher and neglected the lower. Therefore the revolt and wrath of the lower, the rage of Revanche in the heart of the dispossessed in the modern world. Enlightenment meant till now the cultivation and embellishment of the Mind, the conscious Mind, the rational and nobler faculties, the height and the depth: and mankind meant the princes and the great ones. In the individual, in the scheme of his culture and education, the senses were neglected, left to go their own way as they pleased; and in the collective field, the toiling masses in the same way lived and moved as best as they could under the economics of laissez-faire. So Monsieur Thibon concludes: "Salvation has never come from below. To look for it from above only is equally vain. No doubt salvation must come from the higher, but on condition that the higher completely adopts and protects the lower." Here is a vision luminous and revealing, full of great import, if we follow the right track, prophetic of man's true destiny. It is through this infiltration of the higher into the lower and the integration of the lower into the higher that mankind will reach the goal of its evolution, both individually and collectively.
But the process, Monsieur Thibon rightly asserts, must begin with the individual and within the individual. Man must "turn within, feel alive within himself", re-establish his living contact with God, the source and origin from which he has cut himself off. Man must learn to subordinate having to being. Each individual must be himself, a free and spontaneous expression. Upon such individual , upon individuals grouped naturally in smaller collectivities and not upon unformed or ill-formed wholesale masses can a perfect human society be raised and will be raised. Monsieur Thibon insistsand very rightlyupon the variety and diversity of individual and local growths in a unified humanity and not a dead uniformity of regimented oneness. He declares, as the reviewer of the London Times succinctly puts it: "Let us abolish our insensate worship of number. Let us repeal the law of majorities. Let us work for the unity that draws together instead of idolizing the multiplicity that disintegrates. Let us understand that it is not enough for each to have a place; what matters is that each should be in his right place. For the atomized society let us substitute an organic society, one in which every man will be free to do what he alone is qualified and able to do."
--
Viewed in this light, Blake's memorable mantra attains a deeper and more momentous significance. For it is not merely Earth the senses and life and Matter that are to be uplifted and affianced to Heaven, but all that remains hidden within the bowels of the Earth, the subterranean regions of man's consciousness, the slimy viscous undergrowths, the darkest horrors and monstrosities that man and nature hide in their subconscient and inconscient dungeons of material existence, all these have to be laid bare to the solar gaze of Heaven, burnt or transmuted as demanded by the law of that Supreme Will. That is the Hell that has to be recognised, not rejected and thrown away, but taken up purified and transubstantiated into the body of Heaven itself. The hand of the Highest Heaven must extend and touch the Lowest of the lowest elements, transmute it and set it in its rightful place of honour. A mortal body reconstituted into an immemorial fossil, a lump of coal revivified into a flashing carat of diamond-that shows something of the process underlying the nuptials of which we are speaking.
The Life Divine
0.10 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It was a very fine day - very special. There was an
important meeting at the Playground, so I was hurrying there. But near the Playground in front of Standard
--
We speak very often of the psychic and the soul, but
I understand nothing about them. What are these two
--
One can speak only of what one has seen with one's own eyes -
and even then... What knowledge do you possess that gives you
--
The freedom I speak of is the freedom to follow the will of the
soul, not all the whims of the mind and vital.
The freedom I speak of is an austere truth which strives to
surmount all the weaknesses and desires of the lower, ignorant
--
The freedom I speak of is the freedom to consecrate oneself
wholly and without reserve to one's highest, noblest, divinest
--
perpetuation of the species.
10 May 1963
--
comes to the same thing - I am speaking of the inner attitude,
of the excessive importance one gives to food, and of greediness.
--
I was not speaking of external things and mental faculties! True
love is in the soul (all the rest is vital attraction or mental and
--
to find such a body that we need not speak of it.
Apart from that, one must act for the best and not attach
--
and spend five or six hours a day in yogic practices.
Japa such as you describe it cannot have much effect except
--
it says because it speaks without violence or insistence - it is a
murmur in the depths of our heart which is easy to ignore.
--
Because of the rhythm of the universal forces, a person is supposed to have a special receptivity on his birthday each year.
He can therefore take advantage of this receptivity by making good resolutions and fresh progress on the path of his
--
Sri Aurobindo sent a special messenger to Delhi advising Indian leaders to accept,
as a first step towards independence, Sir Stafford Cripps' proposal of Dominion status
--
You speak (in Conversations) of the plunge we must
take in order to have the true spiritual experience. Is it
--
that in order not to feel pain one must, so to speak, cut
the nerve that conveys this sensation to the brain. How
--
The Mother replied to this question orally; she was speaking to someone other than
the captain.
--
Are there many people - I am not speaking of those who
have a religion: they learn a catechism when they are young and
--
also see extravagant spending by certain individuals and
certain departments. Moreover, these expenditures are
--
departments are spending extravagantly that there is a financial
crisis!...
--
Aurobindo speaks of the influence of the Divine Compassion and the Divine Grace.32 But what is the difference between the two?
The compassion seeks to relieve the suffering of all, whether
--
The Mother replied to this question orally; she was speaking to someone other than
the captain.
--
and always they struck me by their special character. It was as
if one had, one cannot exactly say an emotion, but a certain
01.10 - Nicholas Berdyaev: God Made Human, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
There is another a spect of personality as viewed by Berdyaev which involves a bias of the more orthodox Christian faith: the Christ is inseparable from the Cross. So he says: "There is no such thing as personality if there is no capacity for suffering. Suffering is inherent in God too, if he is a personality, and not merely an abstract idea. God shares in the sufferings of men. He yearns for responsive love. There are divine as well as human passions and therefore divine or creative personality must always suffer to the end of time. A condition of anguish and distress is inherent in it." The view is logically enforced upon the Christian, it is said, if he is to accept incarnation, God becoming flesh. Flesh cannot but be weak. This very weakness, so human, is and must be specially characteristic of God also, if he is one with man and his lover and saviour.
Eastern spirituality does not view sorrow and sufferingevilas an integral part of the Divine Consciousness. It is born out of the Divine, no doubt, as nothing can be outside the Divine, but it is a local and temporal formation; it is a disposition consequent upon certain conditions and with the absence or elimination of those conditions, this disposition too disappears. God and the Divine Consciousness can only be purity, light, immortality and delight. The compassion that a Buddha feels for the suffering humanity is not at all a feeling of suffering; pain or any such normal human reaction does not enter into its composition; it is the movement of a transcendent consciousness which is beyond and purified of the normal reactions, yet overarching them and entering into them as a soothing and illumining and vivifying presence. The healer knows and understands the pain and suffering of his patient but is not touched by them; he need not contract the illness of his patient in order to be in sympathy with him. The Divine the Soulcan be in flesh and yet not smirched with its mire; the flesh is not essentially or irrevocably the ooze it is under certain given conditions. The divine physical body is composed of radiant matter and one can speak of it even as of the soul that weapons cannot pierce it nor can fire burn it.
***
01.10 - Principle and Personality, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
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, e specially 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 personalitiese specially 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.
01.11 - Aldous Huxley: The Perennial Philosophy, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The neatness of the commentary cannot be improved upon. Only with regard to the "ironical ring" of which Huxley speaks, it has just to be pointed out, as he himself seems to understand, that the "we" referred to in the phrase does not mean humanity in general that 'splashes about in the lower ooze' but those who have a sufficiently developed inner spiritual life.
There is a quotation from Lao Tzu put under the heading "Grace and Free Will": "It was when the Great Way declined that human kindness and morality arose".
--
"'Listen to this!' shouted Monkey. 'After all the trouble we had getting here from China, and after you specially ordered that we were to be given the scriptures, Ananda and Kasyapa made a fraudulent delivery of goods. They gave us blank copies to take away; I ask you, what is the good of that to us?' 'You needn't shout,' said the Buddha, smiling. 'As a matter of fact, it is such blank scrolls as these that are the true scriptures. But I quite see that the people of China are too foolish and ignorant to believe this, so there is nothing for it but to give them copies with some writing on.' "
A sage can smile and smile delightfully! The parable illustrates the well-known Biblical phrase, 'the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life'. The monkey is symbolical of the ignorant, arrogant, fussy human mind. There is another Buddhistic story about the monkey quoted in the book and it is as delightful; but being somewhat long, we cannot reproduce it here. It tells how the mind-monkey is terribly agile, quick, clever, competent, moving lightning-fast, imagining that it can easily go to the end of the world, to Paradise itself, to Brahmic status. But alas! when he thought he was speeding straight like a rocket or an arrow and arrive right at the target, he found that he was spinning like a top at the same spot, and what he very likely took to be the very fragrance of the topmost supreme heaven was nothing but the aroma of his own urine.
***
01.11 - The Basis of Unity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
India's historical development is marked by a special characteristic which is at once the expression of her inmost nature and the setting of a problem which she has to solve for herself and for the whole human race. I have spoken of the diversity and divergence of affiliations in a modern social unit. But what distinguishes India from all other peoples is that the diversity and divergence have culminated here in contradictoriness and mutual exclusion.
The first extremes that met in India and fought and gradually coalesced to form a single cultural and social whole were, as is well known, the Aryan and the non-Aryan. Indeed, the geologists tell us, the land itself is divided into two parts structurally quite different and distinct, the Deccan plateau and the Himalayan ranges with the Indo-Gangetic plain: the former is formed out of the most ancient and stable and, on the whole, horizontally bedded rocks of the earth, while the latter is of comparatively recent origin, formed out of a more flexible and weaker belt (the Himalayan region consisting of a colossal flexing and crumpling of strata). The disparity is so much that a certain group of geologists hold that the Deccan plateau did not at all form part of the Asiatic continent, but had drifted and dashed into it:in fact the Himalayas are the result of this mighty impact. The usual division of an Aryan and a Dravidian race may be due to a memory of the clash of the two continents and their races.
--
If it is said that this is an ideal for the few only, not for the mass, our answer to that is the answer of the GitaYad yad acharati sreshthah. Let the few then practise and achieve the ideal: the mass will have to follow as far as it is possible and necessary. It is the very character of the evolutionary system of Nature, as expressed in the principle of symbiosis, that any considerable change in one place (in one species) is accompanied by a corresponding change in the same direction in other contiguous places (in other associated species) in order that the poise and balance of the system may be maintained.
It is precisely strong nuclei that are needed (even, perhaps, one strong nucleus is sufficient) where the single and integrated spiritual consciousness is an accomplished and established fact: that acts inevitably as a solvent drawing in and assimilating or transforming and re-creating as much, of the surroundings as its own degree and nature of achievement inevitably demand.
01.12 - Goethe, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
But Goethe's Satan seems to know or feel something of his fate. He knows his function and the limit too of his function. He speaks of the doomsday for people, but it is his doomsday also, he says in mystic terms. Yes, it is his doomsday, for it is the day of man's liberation. Satan has to release man from the pact that stands cancelled. The soul of man cannot be sold, even if he wanted it.
The Cosmic Rhythm
01.12 - Three Degrees of Social Organisation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
We may perhaps view the three terms Right, Duty and Dharma as degrees of an ascending consciousness. Consciousness at Its origin and in its primitive formulation is dominated by the principle of inertia (tamas); in that state things have mostly an undifferentiated collective existence, they helplessly move about acted upon by forces outside them. A rise in growth and evolution brings about differentiation, specialisation, organisation. And this means consciousness of oneself of the distinct and separate existence of each and everyone, in other words, self-assertion, the claim, the right of each individual unit to be itself, to become itself first and foremost. It is a necessary development; for it signifies the growth of self consciousness in the units out of a mass unconsciousness or semi-consciousness. It is the expression of rajas, the mode of dynamism, of strife and struggle, it is the corrective of tamas.
In the earliest and primitive society men lived totally in a mass consciousness. Their life was a blind obedienceobedience to the chief the patriarch or pater familiasobedience to the laws and customs of the collectivity to which one belonged. It was called duty; it was called even dharma, but evidently on a lower level, in an inferior formulation. In reality it was more of the nature of the mechanical functioning of an automaton than the exercise of conscious will and deliberate choice, which is the very soul of the conception of duty.
--
The principle of Dharma then inculcates that each individual must, in order to act, find out his truth of being, his true soul and inmost consciousness: one must entirely and integrally merge oneself into that, be identified with it in such a manner that all acts and feelings and thoughts, in fact all movements, inner and outerspontaneously and irrepressibly well out of that fount and origin. The individual souls, being made of one truth-nature in its multiple modalities, when they live, move and have their being in its essential law and dynamism, there cannot but be absolute harmony and perfect synthesis between all the units, even as the sun and moon and stars, as the Veda says, each following its specific orbit according to its specific nature, never collide or haltna me thate na tas thatuh but weave out a faultless pattern of symphony.
The future society of man is envisaged as something of like nature. When the mortal being will have found his immortal soul and divine self, then each one will be able to give full and free expression to his self-nature (swabhava); then indeed the utmost sweep of dynamism in each and all will not cause clash or conflict; on the contrary, each will increase the other and there will be a global increment and fulfilmentparasparam bhavayantah. The division and conflict, the stress and strain that belong to the very nature of the inferior level of being and consciousness will then have been transcended. It is only thus that a diviner humanity can be born and replace all the other moulds and types that can never lead to anything final and absolutely satisfactory.
01.13 - T. S. Eliot: Four Quartets, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Divine Love is a greater fire than the low smouldering fire that our secular unregenerate life is. One has to choose and declare his adhesion. Indeed, the stage of conversion, the crucial turn from the ordinary life to the spiritual life Eliot has characterised in a very striking manner. We usually say, sometimes in an outburst of grief, sometimes in a spirit of sudden disgust and renunciation that the world is dark and dismal and lonesome, the only thing to do here is to be done with it. The true renunciation, that which is deep and abiding, is not, however, so simple a thing, such a short cut. So our poet says, but the world is not dark enough, it is not lonesome enough: the world lives and moves in a superficial half-light, it is neither real death nor real life, it is death in life. It is this miserable mediocrity, the shallow uncertainty of consciousness that spells danger and ruin for the soul. Hence the poet exclaims:
. . . . Not here
--
The Word was made flesh and the Word was made Poetry. To express the supreme Word in life, that is the work of the sage, the Rishi. To express the Word in speech, that is the labour of the Poet. Eliot undertook this double function of the poet and the sage and he found the task difficult. The poet has to utter the unutterable, if he is to clo the in words the mystic experience of the sage in him. That is Eliot's ambition:
.... Words, after speech, reach
Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern,
--
And a lower and more facile inspiration tempts the poet and he often speaks with a raucous voice, even as the Arch-tempter sought to lure the Divine Word made flesh:
... Shrieking voices
01.14 - Nicholas Roerich, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
I speak of Roerich as a Western soul, but more precisely perhaps he is a soul of the mid-region (as also in another sense we shall see subsequently) intermediary between the East and the West. His external make-up had all the characteristic elements of the Western culture, but his mind and temperament, his inner soul was oriental. And yet it was not the calm luminous staticancientsoul that an Indian or a Chinese sage is; it is a nomad soul, newly awakened, young and fresh and ardent, something primitive, pulsating with the unspoilt green sap of life something in the manner of Whitman. And that makes him all the more representative of the young and ardent West yearning for the light that was never on sea or land.
Is it not strange that one should look to the East for the light? There is a light indeed that dwells in the setting suns, but that is the inferior light, the light that moves level with the earth, pins us down to the normal and ordinary life and consciousness: it" leads into the Night, into Nihil, pralaya. It is the light of the morning sun that man looks up to in his forward march, the sun that rises in the East whom the Vedic Rishi invoked in these magnificent lines:
--
The stress of the inner urge to the heights and depths of spiritual values and realities found special and significant expression in his paintings. It is a difficult problem, a problem which artists and poets are tackling today with all their skill and talent. Man's consciousness is no longer satisfied with the customary and the ordinary actions and reactions of life (or thought), with the old-world and time-worn modes and manners. It is no more turned to the apparent and the obvious, to the surface forms and movements of things. It yearns to look behind and beyond, for the secret mechanism, the hidden agency that really drives things. Poets and artists are the vanguards of the age to come, prophets and pioneers preparing the way for the Lord.
Roerich discovered and elaborated his own technique to reveal that which is secret, express that which is not expressed or expressible. First of all, he is symbolical and allegorical: secondly, the choice of his symbols and allegories is hieratic, that is to say, the subject-matter refers to objects and events connected with saints and legends, shrines and enchanted places, hidden treasures, spirits and angels, etc. etc.; thirdly, the manner or style of execution is what we may term pantomimic, in other words, concrete, graphic, dramatic, even melodramatic. He has a special predilection for geometrical patterns the artistic effect of whichbalance, regularity, fixity, soliditywas greatly utilised by the French painter Czanne and poet Mallarm who seem to have influenced Roerich to a considerable degree. But this Northerner had not the reticence, the suavity, the tonic unity of the classicist, nor the normality and clarity of the Latin temperament. The prophet, the priest in him was the stronger element and made use of the artist as the rites andceremoniesmudras and chakrasof his vocation demanded. Indeed, he stands as the hierophant of a new cultural religion and his paintings and utterances are, as it were, gestures that accompany a holy ceremonial.
A Russian artist (Monsieur Benois) has stressed upon the primitivealmost aboriginalelement in Roerich and was not happy over it. Well, as has been pointed out by other prophets and thinkers, man today happens to be so sophisticated, artificial, material, cerebral that a [all-back seems to be necessary for him to take a new leap forward on to a higher ground. The pure aesthete is a closed system, with a consciousness immured in an ivory tower; but man is something more. A curious paradox. Man can reach the highest, realise the integral truth when he takes his leap, not from the relatively higher levels of his consciousness his intellectual and aesthetic and even moral status but when he can do so from his lower levels, when the physico-vital element in him serves as the springing-board. The decent and the beautiful the classic grace and aristocracyform one a spect of man, the a spect of "light"; but the a spect 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.
0.11 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
this speed, it seems more than possible, almost evident,
that what Sri Aurobindo wrote in a letter is a prophetic
--
Have things advanced at the required speed?
Yes.
--
than approximations, ways of speaking.
10 March 1967
--
to their accounts. One of them refuses to speak to me
about it and the other says, "Have trust in God, you will
--
Naturally, this is a way of speaking which corresponds to a
Reality that is difficult to put into words.
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one should get rid of the sense of property and spend his
money according to the Divine command within, from
--
While speaking about the "Transcendent Mother" (and
the upper petal of the Transformation flower), You said,
--
Sri Aurobindo speaks of Savitri's firmness of purpose in
the following line:
0.12 - Letters to a Student, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Him all that one has spent and much more.
All the remedies suggested by the mind, even the most
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only thing or does becoming conscious of one's movements, of one's speech, etc. also count?
Series Twelve - To a Student
--
What does Sri Aurobindo mean when he speaks of
change of consciousness?
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difference will be we can hardly know until the new species
appears on earth.
0.13 - Letters to a Student, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
How should one spend the Darshan days, December
fifth and ninth, and one's birthday?
--
Sri Aurobindo spent his whole life working to free men from
the bondage of religions. Do you want to contradict his work
--
What is this great change that you speak of? And
how can we be of help to it?
0.14 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In this way the more one spends the more one receives, and
one becomes an inexhaustible channel rather than a vessel that
0 1954-08-25 - what is this personality? and when will she come?, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
But Im not at all discouraged, I just find it rather laughable. Only there are other far more serious things; for example, when you try to deceive yourselves that is not so pretty. One should not mix up cats and kings. You should call a cat a cat and a king a king and human instinct, human instinctand not speak about things divine when they are utterly human, nor pretend to have supramental experiences when you are living in a blatantly ordinary consciousness.
If you look at yourselves straight in the face and you see what you are, then if by chance you should resolve to But what really astounds me is that you dont even seem to feel an intense NEED to do this! But how can we know? Because you DO know, you have been told over and over again, it has been drummed into your heads. You KNOW that you have a divine consciousness within you. And yet you can go on sleeping night after night, playing day after day, doing your lessons ad infinitum and still not be not have a BURNING desire and will to come into contact with yourselves!With yourselves, yes, the you just there, inside (motion towards the center of the chest) Really, its beyond me!
--
And how many years have you all been here, half-asleep? Naturally, youre happy to think about it now and thene specially when I speak to you about it or sometimes when you read. But THATthat fire, that will which plows through all barriers, that concentration which can triumph over EVERYTHING
Now who was it that asked me what you should do?
0 1955-04-04, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Perhaps being far away from the Ashram for a while will help you feel the special atmosphere that exists here and that cannot be found anywhere else to the same extent.
In any event, my blessings will always be with you to help you find, at long last, this inner Presence which alone gives joy and stability.
0 1956-04-04, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Mother, two months ago I had a clear mental perception of what was asked of me: to spend the rest of my life here. This is the source of my difficulties and of the inner hell I have been living through ever since. Each time I try to emerge, there is this image that rises up in me: your-whole-life and this casts me into a violent conflict. When I came here, I thought of staying for two or three years; for me the Ashram was a means of realization, not an end.
I understand now that as long as my whole being has not ACCEPTED that it must finish its life here, there is no way out nor any recovery possible. Through my mental force alone, this acceptance is impossible; I have been turning infernally in circles these past two months, and the mind is in league with the vital. Therefore, a force greater than mine must help me accept that my way is here. I need you, Mother, for without you I am lost. I need you to tell me that the Truth of my being is indeed here and that I am truly ready to follow this path. Mother, I beseech you, help me to see the truth of my being, give me some sign that my way is here and not elsewhere. I beg of you, Mother, help me to know.
0 1956-05-02, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
When the mind came down upon earth, something like a million years went by between the manifestation of the mind in the earth atmosphere and the appearance of the first man. But it will go faster this time because man is waiting for something, he has a vague idea: he is awaiting in some way or another the advent of the superman. Whereas the apes were certainly not awaiting the birth of man, they never thought of it for the excellent reason that they probably dont think very much! But man has thought about it and is waiting, so it will go faster. But faster probably still means thousands of years. We shall speak of this again in a few thousand years!
(silence)
--
I am not speaking of people from outside who have never thought about it, who have never felt concerned and who do not even know that there may be something like the Supermind to receive, in fact. I am speaking of people who have built their lives upon this aspiration (and I dont doubt their sincerity for a minute), who have workedsome of them for thirty years, some for thirty-five, others somewhat lessall the while saying, When the supermind comes When the supermind comes That was their refrain: When the supermind comes Consequently, they were really in the best possible frame of mind, one could not have dreamt of a better predisposition. How is it, then, that their inner preparation was so lets just say incomplete, that they did not feel the Vibration immediately, as soon as it came, through a shock of identity?
Individually, each ones goal was to make himself ready, to enter into a more or less intimate individual relationship with this Force, so as to help the process; or else, if he could not help, at least be ready to recognize and be open to the Force when it would manifest. Then instead of being an alien element in a world in which your OWN inner capacity remains unmanifest, you suddenly become THAT, you enter directly, fully, into the very atmosphere: the Force is there, all around you, permeating you.
--
I hasten to tell you that some did recognize it, but they were so few But as for those who ask these questions, who even took the trouble to come here, who took the train to gulp this down as you gulp down a soft drink, how can they possibly feel anything whatsoever if they have not prepared themselves at all? Yet they are already speaking of profiting: We want to benefit from it
After all, if they have even a tiny bit of sincerity (not too much, its tiring!), a tiny bit of sincerity, it is quite possible (I am joking), it is quite possible that they might get a few good kicks to make them go faster! It is possible. In fact, I think thats what will happen.
--
What I call a descent takes place in the individual consciousness. In the same way, we speak of ascent (there is no ascent really, there is no high or low, no direction: its all a manner of speaking)we speak of ascent when we feel ourselves rising up towards something, and we call it a descent when, after having caught this thing, we bring it down into ourselves.
But when the doors are opened and the flood pours in, it can no longer be called a descent: it is a Force that spreads everywhere. Understood? Ah!
0 1956-09-12, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I would have been incapable of speaking, words seemed so petty, narrow, ignorant.
I saw (how shall I put it?) the successive preparations which took place, in certain anterior beings, in order to achieve this.
0 1956-09-14, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
My friends keep telling me that I am not ready and that, like R,1 whom they knew, I should go and spend some time in society. They say that my idea of going to the Himalayas is absurd, and they advise me to return to Brazil for a few years to stay with W W is an elderly American millionaire the only good rich man I knowwho wanted to make me an heir, as it were, to his financial affairs and who treats me rather like a son. He was quite disappointed when I came back to India. My friends tell me that if I have to go through a period in the outside world, the best way to do it is to remain near someone who is fond of me, while at the same time ensuring a material independence for the future.
These questions of money do not interest me. In fact, nothing interests me except this something I feel within me. The only question for me is to know whether I am truly ready for the Yoga, or if my failings are not the sign of some immaturity. Mother, you alone can tell me what is right.
0 1956-10-07, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
And what is the Ashram? (I dont even mean in terms of the Universeon Earth only.) A speck. And why should this speck receive exceptional treatment? Perhaps if people here had realized the supermind. But are they so exceptional as to expect exceptional treatment?
As Sri Aurobindo says, people see God as a magnified man: he is the Demiurge, Jehovahwhat I call the Lord of Falsehood.
--
Which is why things go amiss when people try to force me to act: I am outside of myself, so to speak. As soon as I come back here, with no one around, then I see.
I have called for a greater package of Grace and asked that the truth of things prevail. We shall see what happens.
0 1956-10-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
One is never anything but a divine apprentice: the Divine of yesterday is only an apprentice to the Divine of tomorrow No, I am not speaking of a progressive manifestation that is much farther below.
When I am at my highest, I am already too high for the manifestation.
0 1956-11-22, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
For weeks on end, I have been spending nearly all my nights battling with serpents. Last night, I was attacked by three different kinds of serpents, each more venomous and repugnant than the other???
Signed: Bernard
0 1957-04-09, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
For I SEE that, were I to give in now, I would be done forthere would be no alternative but to live out the rest of my days in the Ashram. But everything in me rebels at this idea. The idea of winding up as General Secretary of the Ashram, like Pavitra, makes my skin crawl. It is absurd, and I apologize for speaking this way, Mother, for I admire Pavitra but I cant help it, I cant do it, I do not want to end up like that.
For more than a year now, I have been hypnotized by the idea that if I give in, I will be condemned to remain here. Once more, forgive me for speaking so absurdly, for of course I know it is not a condemnation; and yet a part of me feels that it would be.
Thus I am so tense that I do not even want to close my eyes to meditate for fear of yielding. And I fall into all kinds of errors that horrify me, simply because the pressure is too strong at times, and I literally suffocate. Mother, I am not cut out to be a disciple.
0 1957-07-03, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
First, I could tell you that to do a collective yoga, there has to be a collectivity! And I could speak to you about the different conditions required to be a collectivity. But last night (smiling), I had a symbolic vision of our collectivity.
This vision took place early in the night and woke me up with a rather unpleasant feeling. Then I fell back to sleep and forgot about it; but a little while ago, when I was thinking of the question put to me, it returned. It returned with a great intensity and so imperatively that now, just as I wanted to tell you what kind of collectivity we wish to realize according to the ideal described by Sri Aurobindo in the last chapter of The Life Divinea gnostic, supramental collectivity, the only kind that can do Sri Aurobindos integral yoga and be realized physically in a progressive collective body becoming more and more divine the recollection of this vision became so imperative that I couldnt speak.
Its symbolism was very clear, though of quite a familiar nature, as it were, and because of its very familiarity, unmistakable in its realism Were I to tell you all the details, you would probably not even be able to follow: it was rather intricate. It was a kind of (how can I express it?)an immense hotel where all the terrestrial possibilities were lodged in different apartments. And it was all in a constant state of transformation: parts or entire wings of the building were suddenly torn down and rebuilt while people were still living in them, such that if you went off somewhere within the immense hotel itself, you ran the risk of no longer finding your room when you wanted to return to it, for it might have been torn down and was being rebuilt according to another plan! It was orderly, it was organized yet there was this fantastic chaos which I mentioned. And all this was a symbola symbol that certainly applies to what Sri Aurobindo has written here1 regarding the necessity for the transformation of the body, the type of transformation that has to take place for life to become a divine life.
0 1957-10-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
There is no question of my abandoning the path and I remain convinced that the only goal in life is spiritual. But I need things to help me along the way: I am not yet ripe enough to depend upon inner strength alone. And when I speak of the forest or a boat, it is not only for the sake of adventure or the feeling of space, but also because they mean a discipline. Outer constraints and difficulties help me, they force me to remain concentrated around that which is best in me. In a sense, life here is too easy. Yet it is also too hard, for one must depend on ones own discipline I do not yet have that strength, I need to be helped by outer circumstances. The very difficulty of life in the outside world helps me to be disciplined, for it forces me to concentrate all my vital strength in effort. Here, this vital part is unemployed, so it acts foolishly, it strains at the leash.
I doubt that a new experience outside can really resolve things, but I believe it might help me make it to the next stage and consolidate my inner life. And if you wish, I would return in a year or two.
0 1957-10-17, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
We live perennially with a burden on our shoulders, something that bows our heads down, and we feel pulled, led by all kinds of external forces, we dont know by whom or what, nor where tothis is what men call Fate, Destiny. When you do yoga, one of the first experiences the experience of the kundalini, as it is called here in Indiais precisely one in which the consciousness rises, breaks through this hard lid, here, at the crown of the head, and at last you emerge into the Light. Then you see, you know, you decide and you realizedifficulties may still remain, but truly speaking one is above them. Well, as a result of the supramental manifestation, it is THIS experience that came into the body. The body straightened its head up and felt its freedom, its independence.
During the flu epidemic, for example, I spent every day in the midst of people who were germ carriers. And one day, I clearly felt that the body had decided not to catch this flu. It asserted its autonomy. You see, it was not a question of the higher Will deciding, no. It didnt take place in the highest consciousness: the body itself decided. When you are way above in your consciousness, you see things, you know things; but in actual fact, once you descend again into matter, it is like water running through sand. In this re spect, things have changed, the body has a DIRECT power, independent of any outer intervention. Even though it is barely visible, I consider this to be a very important result.
And this new vibration in the body has allowed me to understand the mechanism of the transformation. It is not something that comes from a higher Will, not a higher consciousness that imposes itself upon the body: it is the body itself awakening in its cells, a freedom of the cells themselves, an absolutely new vibration that sets disorders righteven disorders that existed prior to the supramental manifestation.
0 1957-12-21, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Humility, a perfect humility, is the condition for all realization. The mind is so cocksure. It thinks it knows everything, understands everything. And if ever it acts through idealism to serve a cause that appears noble to it, it becomes even more arrogant more intransigent, and it is almost impossible to make it see that there might be something still higher beyond its noble conceptions and its great altruistic or other ideals. Humility is the only remedy. I am not speaking of humility as conceived by certain religions, with this God that belittles his creatures and only likes to see them down on their knees. When I was a child, this kind of humility revolted me, and I refused to believe in a God that wants to belittle his creatures. I dont mean that kind of humility, but rather the recognition that one does not know, that one knows nothing, and that there may be something beyond what presently appears to us as the truest, the most noble or disinterested. True humility consists in constantly referring oneself to the Lord, in placing all before Him. When I receive a blow (and there are quite a few of them in my sadhana), my immediate, spontaneous reaction, like a spring, is to throw myself before Him and to say, Thou, Lord. Without this humility, I would never have been able to realize anything. And I say I only to make myself understood, but in fact I means the Lord through this body, his instrument. When you begin living THIS kind of humility, it means you are drawing nearer to the realization. It is the condition, the starting point.
***
0 1958-01-01, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
During one of our classes (October 30, 1957), I spoke of the limitless abundance of Nature, this tireless Creatrice who takes the multitude of forms, mixes them together, separates them again and reforms them, again undoes them, again destroys them, in order to move on to ever new combinations. As I said, it is a huge cauldron. Things get churned up in it and somehow something emerges; if its defective, it is thrown back in and something else is taken out One form, two forms or a hundred forms make no difference to her, there are thousands upon thousands of formsand one year, a hundred years, a thousand years, millions of years, what difference does it make? Eternity lies before her! She quite obviously enjoys herself and is in no hurry. If you speak to her of pressing on or of rushing through some part of her work or other, her reply is always the same: But what for? Why? Arent you enjoying it?
The evening I told you these things, I totally identified myself with Nature and I entered into her play. And this movement of identification brought forth a response, a new kind of intimacy between Nature and myself, a long movement of drawing ever nearer which culminated in an experience that came on November 8.
--
I have one thing to add: we must not misinterpret the meaning of this experience and imagine that henceforth everything will take place without difficulties or always in accordance with our personal desires. It is not at this level. It does not mean that when we do not want it to rain, it will not rain! Or when we want some event to take place in the world, it will immediately take place, or that all difficulties will be abolished and everything will be like a fairy tale. It is not like that. It is something more profound. Nature has accepted into her play of forces the newly manifested Force and has included it in her movements. But as always, the movements of Nature take place on a scale infinitely surpassing the human scale and invisible to the ordinary human consciousness. It is more of an inner, psychological possibility that has been born in the world than a spectacular change in earthly events.
I mention this because you might be tempted to believe that fairy tales are going to be realized upon earth. The time has not yet come.
0 1958-02-03b - The Supramental Ship, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
The supramental world exists in a permanent way, and I am there permanently in a supramental body. I had proof of this today when my earthly consciousness went there and consciously remained there between two and three oclock in the afternoon: I now know that for the two worlds to join in a constant and conscious relationship what is missing is an intermediate zone between the existing physical world and the supramental world as it exists. This zone has yet to be built, both in the individual consciousness and in the objective world, and it is being built. When formerly I used to speak of the new world that is being created, I was speaking of this intermediate zone. And similarly, when I am on this side that is, in the realm of the physical consciousness and I see the supramental power, the supramental light and substance constantly permeating matter, I am seeing and participating in the construction of this zone.
I found myself upon an immense ship, which is the symbolic representation of the place where this work is being carried out. This ship, as big as a city, is thoroughly organized, and it had certainly already been functioning for quite some time, for its organization was fully developed. It is the place where people destined for the supramental life are being trained. These people (or at least a part of their being) had already undergone a supramental transformation because the ship itself and all that was aboard was neither material nor subtle-physical, neither vital nor mental: it was a supramental substance. This substance itself was of the most material supramental, the supramental substance nearest the physical world, the first to manifest. The light was a blend of red and gold, forming a uniform substance of luminous orange. Everything was like that the light was like that, the people were like thateverything had this color, in varying shades, however, which enabled things to be distinguished from one another. The overall impression was of a shadowless world: there were shades, but no shadows. The atmosphere was full of joy, calm, order; everything worked smoothly and silently. At the same time, I could see all the details of the education, the training in all domains by which the people on board were being prepared.
--
What I can say is that the criterion or the judgment was based EXCLUSIVELY on the substance constituting the peoplewhe ther they belonged completely to the supramental world or not, whether they were made of this very special substance. The criterion adopted was neither moral nor psychological. It is likely that their bodily substance was the result of an inner law or an inner movement which, at that time, was not in question. At least it is quite clear that the values are different.
When I came back, along with the memory of the experience, I knew that the supramental world was permanent, that my presence there is permanent, and that only a missing link is needed to allow the consciousness and the substance to connectand it is this link that is being built. At that time, my impression (an impression which remained rather long, almost the whole day) was of an extreme relativityno, not exactly that, but an impression that the relationship between this world and the other completely changes the criterion by which things are to be evaluated or judged. This criterion had nothing mental about it, and it gave the strange inner feeling that so many things we consider good or bad are not really so. It was very clear that everything depended upon the capacity of things and upon their ability to express the supramental world or be in relationship with it. It was so completely different, at times even so opposite to our ordinary way of looking at things! I recall one little thing that we usually consider bad actually how funny it was to see that it is something excellent! And other things that we consider important were really quite unimportant there! Whether it was like this or like that made no difference. What is very obvious is that our appreciation of what is divine or not divine is incorrect. I even laughed at certain things Our usual feeling about what is anti-divine seems artificial, based upon something untrue, unliving (besides, what we call life here appeared lifeless in comparison with that world); in any event, this feeling should be based upon our relationship between the two worlds and according to whether things make this relationship easier or more difficult. This would thus completely change our evaluation of what brings us nearer to the Divine or what takes us away from Him. With people, too, I saw that what helps them or prevents them from becoming supramental is very different from what our ordinary moral notions imagine. I felt just how ridiculous we are.
(Then Mother speaks to the children)
There is a continuation to all this, which is like the result in my consciousness of the experience of February 3, but it seems premature to read it now. It will appear in the April issue [of the Bulletin], as a sequel to this.
0 1958-05-10, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
This morning, I suddenly looked at my body (usually, I dont look at it I am inside it, working), I looked at my body and said to myself, Lets see, what would a witness say about this body?the witness Sri Aurobindo speaks of in The Synthesis of Yoga. Nothing very remarkable. So I formulated it like this (Mother reads a written note):
This body has neither the uncontested authority of a god nor the imperturbable calm of the sage.
0 1958-05-30, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
This again belongs to the dualities that Sri Aurobindo speaks of in (The Synthesis of Yoga, these dualities that are being reabsorbed. I dont know if he spoke of this particular one; I dont think so, but its the same thing. Its again a certain way of seeing. He has written of the Personal-Impersonal duality, Ishwara-Shakti, Purusha-Prakriti but there is still one more: Divine and anti-divine.
***
0 1958-07-02, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I recall that once I tried to speak of this, but no one followed me, no one understood, so I did not insist. I left it open and never pursued it further, for they could not decipher anything or find any meaning in what I was saying. But now I could give a very simple answer: Let the Supreme do the work. It is He who has to progress, not you!
Ramdas does not at all consider that the world as it is, is good.
0 1958-07-06, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
And it is always like that. I never ask for anything, but if by chance I say to myself, Hmm, wouldnt it be nice to have that, mountains of them pour in! So last year, I made an experiment, I told Nature, Listen, my little one, you say that you will collaborate, you told me I would never lack anything. Well then, to put it on a level of feelings, it would really be fun, it would give me joy (in the style of Krishnas joy), to have A LOT of money to do everything I feel like doing. Its not that I want to increase things for myself, no; you give me more than I need. But to have some fun, to be able to give freely, to do things freely, to spend freely I am asking you to give me a crore of rupees1 for my birthday!
She didnt do a thing! Nothing, absolutely nothing: a complete refusal. Did she refuse or was she unable to? It may be that I always saw that money was under the control of an asuric force. (I am speaking of currency, cash; I dont want to do business. When I try to do business, it generally succeeds very well, but I dont mean that. I am speaking of cash.) I never asked her that question.
You see, this is how it happened: theres this Ganesh2 We had a meditation (this was more than thirty years ago) in the room where Pro sperity3 is now distributed. There were eight or ten of us, I believe. We used to make sentences with flowers; I arranged the flowers, and each one made a sentence with the different flowers I had put there. And one day when the subject of pro sperity or wealth came up, I thought (they always say that Ganesh is the god of money, of fortune, of the worlds wealth), I thought, Isnt this whole story of the god with an elephant trunk merely a lot of human imagination? Thereupon, we meditated. And who should I see walk in and park himself in front of me but a living being, absolutely alive and luminous, with a trunk that long and smiling! So then, in my meditation, I said, Ah! So its true that you exist!Of course I exist! And you may ask me for whatever you wish, from a monetary standpoint, of course, and I will give it to you!
--
Once someone even asked Santa Claus! A young Muslim girl who had a special liking for Father Christmas I dont know why, as it was not part of her religion! Without saying a word to me, she called on Santa Claus and told him, Mother doesnt believe in you; you should give Her a gift to prove to Her that you exist. You can give it to Her for Christmas. And it happened! She was quite proud.
But it only happened like that once. And as for Ganesh, that was the end of it. So then I asked Nature. It took her a long time to accept to collaborate. But as for the money, I shall have to ask her about it; because for me personally, it is still going on. I think, Hmm, wouldnt it be nice to have a wristwatch like that. And I get twenty of them! I say to myself, Well, if I had that and I get thirty of them! Things come in from every side, without my even uttering a word I dont even ask, they just come.
--
For the last, for money, he told me, I still dont know exactly what it depends on. Then one day I entered into trance with this idea in mind, and after a certain journey I came to a place like a subterranean grotto (which means that it is in the subconscient, or perhaps even in the inconscient) which was the source, the place and the power over money. I was about to enter into this grotto (a kind of inner cave) when I saw, coiled and upright, an immense serpent, like an all black python, formidable, as big as a seven-story house, who said, You cannot pass!Why not? Let me pass!Myself, I would let you pass, but if I did, they would immediately destroy me.Who, then, is this they?They are the asuric4 powers who rule over money. They have put me here to guard the entrance, precisely so that you may not enter.And what is it that would give one the power to enter? Then he told me something like this: I heard (that is, he himself had no special knowledge, but it was something he had heard from his masters, those who ruled over him), I heard that he who will have a total power over the human sexual impulses (not merely in himself, but a universal power that is, a power enabling him to control this everywhere, among all men) will have the right to enter. In other words, these forces would not be able to prevent him from entering.
A personal realization is very easy, it is nothing at all; a personal realization is one thing, but the power to control it among all men that is, to control or master such movements at will, everywhereis quite another. I dont believe that this condition has been fulfilled. If what the serpent said is true and if this is really what will vanquish these hostile forces that rule over money, well then, it has not been fulfilled.
--
Therefore, its an affair between the asuras and the human species. To transform itself is the only solution left to the human speciesin other words, to tear from the asuric forces the power of ruling over the human species.
You see, the human species is a part of Nature, but as Sri Aurobindo has explained, from the moment mind expressed itself in man, it put him into a relationship with Nature very different from the relationship all the lower species have with her. All the lower species right up to man are completely under the rule of Nature; she makes them do whatever she wants, and they can do nothing without her consent. Whereas man begins to act and to live as an equal; not as an equal in terms of power, but from the standpoint of consciousness (he is beginning to do so since he has the capacity to study and to find out Natures secrets). He is not superior to her, far from it, but he is on an equal footing. And so he has acquiredthis is a fac the has acquired a certain power of independence that he immediately used to put himself under the influence of the hostile forces, which are not terrestrial but extra-terrestrial.
I am speaking of terrestrial Nature. Through their mental power, men had the choice and the freedom to make pacts with these extraterrestrial vital forces. There is a whole vital world that has nothing to do with the earth, it is entirely independent or prior to earths existence, it is self-existentwell, they have brought that down here! They have made what we see! And such being the case This is what terrestrial Nature told me: It is beyond my control.
So considering all that, Sri Aurobindo came to the conclusion that only the supramental power (Mother brings down her hands) as he said, will be able to rule over everything. And when that happens, it will be all overincluding Nature. For a long time, Nature rebelled (I have written about it often). She used to say, Why are you in such a hurry? It will be done one day. But then last year, there was that extraordinary experience.5 And it was because of that experience that I told her, Well, now that we agree, give me some proof; I am asking you for some proofdo it for me. She didnt budge, absolutely nothing.
Perhaps it is a kind of it can hardly be called an intuition, but a kind of divination of this idea that made people speak of selling ones soul to the devil for money, of money being an evil force, which produces this shrinking on the part of all those who want to lead a spiritual life but as for that, they shrink from everything, not only from money!
Perhaps it would not be necessary to have this power over all men, but in any event, it should be great enough to act upon the mass. It is likely that once a certain movement has been mastered to some degree, what the mass does or doesnt do (this whole human mass that has barely, barely emerged into even the mental consciousness) will become quite irrelevant. You see, the mass is still under the great rule of Nature. I am referring to mental humanity, predominantly mental, which developed the mind but misused it and immediately set out on the wrong pathfirst thing.
0 1958-07-19, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Every fruit should be eaten in a special way.
At heart, this is the symbol of the earthly Paradise and the tree of Knowledge: by biting into the fruit of Knowledge, one loses the spontaneity of movement and begins objectivizing, learning, questioning. So as soon as they ate of this fruit, they were full of sin.
--
Truly, the human species is at a point in the spiral which is not very pretty.
But isnt a dog more conscious, more evolved than a tiger, or higher in the spiral that is, nearer the Divine?
0 1958-07-21, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
But instead of using the energy in this way, they immediately throw it out. They start stirring about, reacting, working, speaking They feel full of energy and they throw it all out! They cant keep anything. So naturally, since the energy was not sent to be wasted like that but for an inner use, they feel absolutely flat, run down. And it is universal. They dont know, they do not know how to make this movementto turn within, to use the energy (not to keep it, it doesnt keep), to use it to repair the damage done to the body and to go deeply within to find the reason for this accident or illness, and there to change it by an aspiration, an inner transformation. Instead of that, right away they start speaking, stirring about, reacting, doing this or that!
In fact, the immense majority of human beings feel they are living only when they waste their energy. Otherwise, it does not seem to them to be life.
--
Naturally, if a special work is given to someone along with the energy to do this work, its very good as long as it is being used towards the end for which it was given.
But as soon as a man feels energetic, he immediately rushes into action. Or else, those who dont have the sense of doing something useful start gossiping. And still worse, those who have no control over themselves become intolerant and start arguing! If someone contradicts their will, they feel full of energy and they mistake that for a godlike wrath!
0 1958-08-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
What problems come up! If there were a plague or cholera, for example, would the supramental Force in the cells, the supramental realization, be able to restore order out of the disorder that allows the epidemic to be? I dont mean on an individual levelindividually, if you are in a certain consciousness, you can remain untouched I am not speaking of that, I am speaking impersonally, as it were.
We know nothing. We believe we know, but as soon as it is a question of that (the body), we know nothing. As soon as we are in the subtle physical, we know everything, we live in bliss but here, we know nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing.
0 1958-09-16 - OM NAMO BHAGAVATEH, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
So each one must find something that acts on himself, individually. I am only speaking of the action on the physical plane, because mentally, vitally, in all the inner parts of the being, the aspiration is always, always spontaneous. I am referring only to the physical plane.
The physical seems to be more open to something that is repetitious for example, the music we play on Sundays, which has three series of combined mantras. The first is that of Chandi, addressed to the universal Mother:
--
The second is addressed to Sri Aurobindo (and I believe they have put my name at the end). It incorporates the mantra I was speaking of:
Om namo namah shrimirambikayai
--
For me, on the days when I have no special preoccupations or difficulties (days I could call normal, when I am normal), everything I do, all the movements of this body, all, all the words I utter, all the gestures I make, are accompanied and upheld by or lined, as it were, with this mantra:
OM NAMO BHAGAVATEH OM NAMO BHAGAVATEH
0 1958-09-19, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Ever since my childhood, I have spent my time veiling myself: one veil over another veil over another veil, so as to remain invisible. Because to see me without the true attitude is the great sin. Anyway, sin in the sense Sri Aurobindo defines itmeaning that things are no longer in their place.
***
0 1958-10-01, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
(Mother speaks of an experience She had during, the Wednesday class at the playground:)
It was so strong, so strong that it was really inexpressible. The negative experience of no longer being an individual, or in other words, the dissolution of the ego, took place a long time ago and still takes place quite often: the ego completely vanishes. But this was a positive experience of being not just the universe in its totality, but something elseineffable, yet concrete, absolutely concrete! Unutterable1and yet utterly concrete: the divine Person beyond the Impersonal.
The experience lasted for only a few minutes. And I knew, then, that all our words all our words are empty. But circumstances were such that I had to speak
Later, Mother added: 'Because I do not say everything; when I am in that state, there is a lethargy of expression!
0 1958-10-04, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Do all our vibrations reach you or must they have a special intensity?
It must be strong enough to pull me from my concentration or my activity. If I knew when you concentrate or do your puja,1 I could tune into you, and shell I would know more; otherwise, my inner life is too l am not at all passive inwardly, you see, I am very active, so I dont usually receive your vibrations unless they impose themselves strongly or unless I have decided beforeh and to be attentive to what is coming from someone or other. If I know that at a given moment something is going to happen, then I open a door, as it were. But its difficult to speak of these things.
When you left on your journey,2 for example, I made a specie! concentration for all to go well so that nothing untoward happen to you. I even made a formation and asked for a constant, special help over you. Then I renewed my concentration every day, which is how I came to notice that you were invoking me very regulary. I Saw you everyday, everyday, with a very regular precision. It was something that imposed itself on me, but it imposed itself only because l had initially made a formation to follow you.
For people here in the Ashram, my work is not the same. It is more like a kind of atmosphere that extends everywherea very conscious atmospherewhich I let work for each one according to his need. I dont have a special action for each person, unless something requires my special attention. When I would tune into you while you were travelling, I clearly saw your image appear before me, as though you were looking at me, but now that you have returned here, I no longer see it. Rather, I receive a sensation or an impression; and as these sensations and impressions are innumerable, its rather like one element among many. It no longer imposes itself in such an entirely distinct way nor does it appear before me in the same manner, as a clear image of yourself, as though you wanted to know something.
As soon as I am alone, I enter into a very deep concentration,a state of consciousness, a kind of universal activity. Is it deep? What is it? It is far beyond all the mental regions, far, far beyond, and it is constant. As soon as I am alone or resting somewhere, thats how it is.
--
In the outer, practical domain, I might suddenly think of someone, so I know that this person is calling or thinking of me. When you left on your trip, I created a special link-up so that if ever, at any moment, you called me for anything, I would know it instantly, and I remained attentive and alert. But I do that only in exceptional cases. Generally speaking, when I havent made this special link-up, things keep coming in and coming in and coming in and coming in, and the answer goes out automatically, here or there or there or therehundreds and hundreds of things that I dont keep in my memory because then it would really be frightful. I dont keep these things in my consciousness; it is rather a work that is done automatically.
When you asked me if X4 were thinking of me, I consulted my atmosphere and saw that it was true, that even many times a day Xs thoughts were coming. So I know that he is concentrating on me, or something: it simply passes through me, and I answer automatically. But I dont particularly pay attention to X, unless you ask me a question about him, in which case I deliberately tune into him, then observe and determine whether its like this or like that. Whereas this vision the other day was something that thrust itself on me; I was in another region altogether, in my inner contemplation, my concentrationa very strong concentrationwhen I was forced to enter into contact with this being whose vision I had and who was obviously a very powerful being. After telling me what he had to tell me, he went away in a very peculiar way, not at all suddenly as most people appear and disappear, not at all like that. When I first saw him, there was a living form the being himself was there but upon leaving (probably to see the effect, to find out whether he had truly succeeded in making himself understood), he left behind a kind of image of himself. Afterwards, this image blurred and it left only a silhouette, an outline, then it disappeared altogether leaving only an impression. That was the last thing I saw. So I kept the impression and analyzed it to find out exactly what was involved; all this was filed away, and then it was over. I began my concentration once again.
--
Before, I always had the negative experience of the disappearance of the ego, of the oneness of Creation, where everything implying separation disappearedan experience that, personally, I would call negative. Last Wednesday, while I was speaking (and thats why at the end I could no longer find my words), I seemed suddenly to have left this negative phenomenon and entered into the positive experience: the experience of BEING the Supreme Lord, the experience that nothing exists but the Supreme Lordall is the Supreme Lord, there is nothing else. And at that moment, the feeling of this infinite power that has no limit, that nothing can limit, was so overwhelming that all the functions of the body, of this mental machine that summons up words, all this was I could no longer speak French. Perhaps the words could have come to me in Englishprobably, because it was easier for Sri Aurobindo to express himself in English, and thats how it must have happened: it was the part embodied in Sri Aurobindo (the part of the Supreme that was embodied in Sri Aurobindo for its manifestation) that had the experience. This is what joined back with the Origin and caused the experience I was well aware of it. And that is probably why its transcription through English words would have been easier than through French words (for at these moments, such activities are purely mechanical, rather like automatic machines). And naturally the experience left something behind. It left the sense of a power that can no longer be qualified,5 really. And it was there yesterday evening.
The difficultyits not even a difficulty, its just a kind of precaution that is taken (automatically, in fact) in order to For example, the volume of Force that was to be expressed in the voice was too great for the speech organ. So I had to be a little attentive that is, there had to be a kind of filtering in the outermost expression, otherwise the voice would have cracked. But this isnt done through the will and reason, its automatic. Yet I feel that the capacity of Matter to contain and express is increasing with phenomenal speed. But its progressive, it cant be done instantly. There have often been people whose outer form broke because the Force was too strong; well, I clearly see that it is being dosed out. After all, this is exclusively the concern of the Supreme Lord, I dont bother about itits not my concern and I dont bother about itHe makes the necessary adjustments. Thus it comes progressively, little by little, so that no fundamental disequilibrium occurs. It gives the impression that ones head is swelling so tremendously it will burst! But then if there is a moment of stillness, it adapts; gradually, it adapts.
Only, one must be careful to keep the sense of the Unmanifest sufficiently present so that the various things the elements, the cells and all thathave time to adapt. The sense of the Unmanifest, or in other words, to step back into the Unmanifest.6 This is what all those who have had experiences have done; they always believed that there was no possibility of adaptation, so they left their bodies and went off.
--
Money belongs to the one who spends it; that is an absolute law. You may pile up money, but it doesnt belong to you until you spend it. Then you have the merit, the glory, the joy, the pleasure of spending it!
Money is meant to circulate. What should remain constant is the progressive movement of an increase in the earths productionan ever-expanding progressive movement to increase the earths production and improve existence on earth. It is the material improvement of terrestrial life and the growth of the earths production that must go on expanding, enlarging, and not this silly paper or this inert metal that is amassed and lifeless.
Money is not meant to generate money; money should generate an increase in production, an improvement in the conditions of life and a progress in human consciousness. This is its true use. What I call an improvement in consciousness, a progress in consciousness, is everything that education in all its forms can providenot as its generally understood, but as we understand it here: education in art, education in from the education of the body, from the most material progress, to the spiritual education and progress through yoga; the whole spectrum, everything that leads humanity towards its future realization. Money should serve to augment that and to augment the material base for the earths progress, the best use of what the earth can giveits intelligent utilization, not the utilization that wastes and loses energies. The use that allows energies to be replenished.
In the universe there is an inexhaustible source of energy that asks only to be replenished; if you know how to go about it, it is replenished. Instead of draining life and the energies of our earth and making of it something parched and inert, we must know the practical exercise for replenishing the energy constantly. And these are not just words; I know how its to be done, and science is in the process of thoroughly finding outit has found out most admirably. But instead of using it to satisfy human passions, instead of using what science has found so that men may destroy each other more effectively than they are presently doing, it must be used to enrich the earth: to enrich the earth, to make the earth richer and richer, more active, generous, productive and to make all life grow towards its maximum efficiency. This is the true use of money. And if its not used like that, its a vicea short circuit and a vice.
But how many people know how to use it in this way? Very few, which is why they have to be taught. What I call teach is to show, to give the example. We want to be the example of true living in the world. Its a challenge I am placing before the whole financial world: I am telling them that they are in the process of withering and ruining the earth with their idiotic system; and with even less than they are now spending for useless thingsmerely for inflating something that has no inherent life, that should be only an instrument at the service of life, that has no reality in itself, that is only a means and not an end (they make an end of something that is only a means)well then, instead of making of it an end, they should make it the means. With what they have at their disposal they could oh, transform the earth so quickly! Transform it, put it into contact, truly into contact, with the supramental forces that would make life bountiful and, indeed, constantly renewedinstead of becoming withered, stagnant, shrivelled up: a future moon. A dead moon.
We are told that in a few millions or billions of years, the earth will become some kind of moon. The movement should be the opposite: the earth should become more and more a resplendent sun, but a sun of life. Not a sun that burns, but a sun that illuminesa radiant glory.
0 1958-11-04 - Myths are True and Gods exist - mental formation and occult faculties - exteriorization - work in dreams, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
It should be said that we are speaking of the Puranic gods, because the Christians, for example, do not understand what this can mean. They have an entirely different conception of the gods.
It could apply to the old Greek mythology, though.
--
Once you have worked in this field, you realize that when you have studied a subject, when you have mentally understood something, it gives a special tonality to the experience. The experience may be quite spontaneous and sincere, but the simple fact of having known this subject and of having studied it gives a particular tonality; on the other hand, if you have learned nothing of the subject, if you know nothing at all, well, when the experience comes, the notation of it is entirely spontaneous and sincere. It can be more or less adequate, but it is not the result of a former mental formation.
What happened in my life is that I never studied or knew things until AFTER having the experienceonly BECAUSE OF the experience and because I wanted to understand it would I study things related to it.
--
In Sri Aurobindo's and Mother's terminology, 'psychic' or 'psychic being' means the soul or the portion of the Supreme in man which evolves from life to life until it becomes a fully self-conscious being. The soul is a special capacity or grace of human beings on earth.
The film on August 5.
0 1958-11-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I found my message for the 1st of January It was quite unforeseen. Yesterday morning, I thought, All the same, I have to find my message, but what? I was absolutely like that, neutral, nothing. Then yesterday evening at the class (of Friday, November 7) I noticed that these children who had had a whole week to prepare their questions on the text had not found a single one! A terrible lethargy! A total lack of interest. And when I had finished speaking, I thought to myself, But what IS there in these people who are interested in nothing but their personal little affairs? So I began descending into their mental atmosphere, in search of the little light, of that which responds And it literally pulled me downwards as into a hole, but in such a material way; my hand, which was on the arm of the chair, began slipping down, my other hand went like this (to the ground), my head, too! I thought it was going to touch my knees!
And I had the impression It was not an impression I saw it. I was descending into a crevasse between two steep rocks, rocks that appeared to be made of something harder than basalt, BLACK, but metallic at the same time, with such sharp edgesit seemed that a mere touch would lacerate you. It appeared endless and bottomless, and it kept getting narrower, narrower and narrower, narrower and narrower, like a funnel, so narrow that there was almost no more roomnot even for the consciousness to pass through. And the bottom was invisible, a black hole. And it went down, down, down, like that, without air, without light, except for a sort of glimmer that enabled me to make out the rock edges. They seemed to be cut so steeply, so sharply Finally, when my head began touching my knees, I asked myself, But what is there at the bottom of this this hole?
--
Suddenly, while I was speaking (it was while I was speaking), I felt, Well really, can anything be done with such material? Then, quite naturally, when I stopped speaking, oh!I felt that I was being pulled! Then I understood. Because I had asked myself the question, But what is HAPPENING in there behind all those forms? I cant say that I was annoyed, but I said to myself, Well really, this has to be shaken up a bit! And just as I had finished, something pulled meit pulled me out of my body, I was literally pulled out of my body.
And then, down into this hole I still see what I saw then, this crevasse between two rocks. The sky was not visible, but on the rock summits I saw something like the reflection of a glimmera glimmercoming from something beyond, which (laughing) must have been the sky! But it was invisible. And as I descended, as if I were sliding down the face of this crevasse, I saw the rock edges; and they were really black rocks, as if cut with a chisel, cuts so fresh that they glistened, with edges as sharp as knives. There was one here, one there, another there, everywhere, all around. And I was being pulled, pulled, pulled, I went down and down and downthere was no end to it, and it was becoming more and more compressing.1 It went down and down
And so, physically, the body followed. My body has been taught to express the inner experience to a certain extent. In the body there is the body-force or the body-form or the body-spirit (according to the different schools, it bears a different name), and this is what leaves the body last when one dies, usually taking a period of seven days to leave.2 With special training, it can acquire a conscious lifeindependent and consciousto such a degree that not only in a state of trance (in trance, it frequently happens that one can speak and move if one is slightly trained or educated), but even in a cataleptic state it can produce sounds and even make the body move. Thus, through training, the body begins to have somnambulistic capacitiesnot an ordinary somnambulism, but it can live an autonomous life.3 This is what took place, yesterday evening it was like that I had gone out of my body, but my body was participating. And then I was pulled downwards: my hand, which had been on the arm of the chair, slipped down, then the other hand, then my head was almost touching my knees! (The consciousness was elsewhere, I saw it from outsideit was not that I didnt know what I was doing, I saw it from outside.) So I said, In any case, this has to stop somewhere because if it continues, my head (laughing) is going to be on the ground! And I thought, But what is there at the bottom of this hole?
Scarcely had these words been formulated when there I was, at the bottom of the hole! And it was absolutely as if a tremendous, almighty spring were there, and then (Mother hits the table) vrrrm! I was cast out of the abyss into a vastness. My body immediately sat straight up, head on high, following the movement. If someone had been watching, this is what he would have seen: in a single bound, vrrrm! Straight up, to the maximum, my head on high.
--
I dont think I am mistaken, for there was such a superabundant feeling of power, of warmth, of gold It was not fluid, it was like a powdering. And each of these things (they cannot be called specks or fragments, nor even points, unless you understand it in the mathematical sense, a point that occupies no space) was something equivalent to a mathematical point, but like living gold, a powdering of warm gold. I cannot say it was sparkling, I cannot say it was dark, nor was it made of light, either: a multitude of tiny points of gold, nothing but that. They seemed to be touching my eyes, my face and with such an inherent power and warmthit was a splendor! And then, at the same time, the feeling of a plenitude, the PEACE of omnipotence It was rich, it was full. It was movement at its ultimate, infinitely swifter than all one can imagine, and at the same time it was absolute peace, perfect tranquillity.
(Mother resumes her message)
0 1958-11-11, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
This is why I arrive at a verbal expression progressively, gropingly; these are not literary gropingsit is aimed at being precise, specific and concise at the same time.
When I write something, I dont expect people to understand it, but I try to avoid the least possible distortion of the experience or the image in this kind of shrinking towards expression.
--
This vision of the Inconscient (Mother remains gazing for a moment) it was the MENTAL Inconscient. Because the starting point was mental. A special Inconscientrigid, hard, resistantwith all that the mind has brought into our consciousness. But it was far worse, far worse than a purely material Inconscient! A mentalized Inconscient, as it were. All this rigidity, this hardness, this narrowness, this fixitya FIXITYcomes from the presence of the mind in creation. When the mind was not manifested, the Inconscient was not like that! It was formless and had the plasticity of something that is formless the plasticity has gone.
It is a terrible image of the Minds action in the Inconscient.
0 1958-11-15, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Truly speaking, perhaps one is never rid of the hostile forces as long as one has not permanently emerged into the Light, above the lower hemisphere. There, the term hostile forces loses its meaning; they become only forces of progress, they force you to progress. But to see things in this way, you have to get out of the lower hemisphere, for below, they are very real in their opposition to the divine plan.
It was said in the ancient traditions that one could not live for more than twenty days in this higher state without leaving ones body and returning to the supreme Origin. Now this is no longer true.
--
Meanwhile, we should acknowledge that we dont have the key, it is not yet in our hands. Or rather, we know quite well where it is, and there is only one thing to do: the perfect surrender Sri Aurobindo speaks of, the total surrender to the divine Will whatever happens, even in the dark of night.
There is night and sun, night and sun, and night again, many nights, but one must cling to this will for surrender, cling as through a storm, and put everything into the hands of the Supreme Lord. Until the day when the Sun shall shine forever, the day of total Victory.
0 1958-11-22, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Mother specified: 'The subconscious memory of the past creates a kind of irresistible desire to escape from the difficulty, and you recommence the same foolishness, or an even greater foolishness.'
The disciple wanted to leave for the forest, the Congo, to do the most unlikely things there.
0 1958-11-27 - Intermediaries and Immediacy, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
The spiritual action is direct, but it may not be immediate (anyway, thats my experience). Sri Aurobindo said that with the supramental presence, it becomes immediate and I have experienced this. But this would then mean that the supramental Power automatically commands all these intermediaries, whereas if its not present, even the highest spiritual power would need a specialized knowledge to act in this realm, a knowledge equivalent to an occult or initiatory knowledge of all these realms. This is why I told X, Well, you taught me many things while you were here. There is always something to learn.
Of course, when the Supramental is here, it will be very different. I see it clearly: in moments when it is there, everything is turned inside out, and all this belongs to a world to the world of preparation. It is like a preparation, a long preparation.
0 1958-12-15 - tantric mantra - 125,000, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
At the new moon, when I felt very down, he gave me the first tantric mantraa mantra to Durga. For a period of 41 days, I must repeat it 125,000 times and go every morning to the Temple, stand before Parvati and recite this mantra within me for at least one hour. Then I must go to the sanctuary of Shiva and recite another mantra for half an hour. Practically speaking, I have to repeat constantly within me the mantra to Durga in a silent concentration, whatever I may be doing on the outside. In these conditions, it is difficult to think of you and this has created a slight conflict in me, but I believe that your Grace is acting through Swami and through Durga, whom I am invoking all the time I remember what you told me about the necessity for intermediaries and I am obeying Swami unreservedly.
Mother, things are far from being what they were the first time in Rameswaram, and I am living through certain moments that are hell the enemy seems to have been unleashed with an extraordinary violence. It comes in waves, and after it recedes, I am literally SHATTEREDphysically, mentally and vitally drained. This morning, while going to the temple, I lived through one of these moments. All this suffering that suddenly sweeps down upon me is horrible. Yes, I had the feeling of being BACKED UP AGAINST A WALL, exactly as in your vision I was up against a wall. I was walking among these immense arcades of sculptured granite and I could see myself walking, very small, all alone, alone, ravaged with pain, filled with a nameless despair, for nowhere was there a way out. The sea was nearby and I could have thrown myself into it; otherwise, there was only the sanctuary of Parvati but there was no more Africa to flee to, everything closed in all around me, and I kept repeating, Why? Why? This much suffering was truly inhuman, as if my last twenty years of nightmare were crashing down upon me. I gritted my teeth and went to the sanctuary to say my mantra. The pain in me was so strong that I broke into a cold sweat and almost fainted. Then it subsided. Yet even now I feel completely battered.
0 1958-12-28, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
X is at the summit of tantric initiation, and his power is not the fruit of a simple knowledge. He holds it directly from the Divine, and these things have been in his family traditionally from ten generations. No black magic can resist his power. His action is not brutal, he does not mechanically apply formulas, he holds this Science and knows how to apply it like an expert chemist, always in Light, Love and sweetness. If you agree that he come to see you, he will immediately know the source of these attacks upon you and will even be able to make the attacking force speak. He has this power. Of course, neither X nor Swami will divulge this to anyone, and everything will be kept secret. You have only to send word, or a telegram: No objection.
The work can be done from here also, but naturally it will not be quite as effective. In that case, you would have to set a specific time to synchronize the action in Rameswaram and Pondicherry. Swami can also do something in his pujas. It is for you to decide, but I hope you will not want to prolong this battle unnecessarily.
On my side, within my little field, I am taking the bull by the horns and henceforth the enemy will no longer have my complicity. May all my being be turned solely towards your Lightand be your help, your instrument, your knight.
0 1958 12 - Floor 1, young girl, we shall kill the young princess - black tent, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Two or three days after I retired to my room upstairs,1 early in the night I fell into a very heavy sleep and found myself out of the body much more materially than I do usually. This degree of density in which you can see the material surroundings exactly as they are. The part that was out seemed to be under a spell and only half conscious. When I found myself at the first floor where everything was absolutely black, I wanted to go up again, but then I discovered that my hand was held by a young girl whom I could not see in the darkness but whose contact was very familiar. She pulled me by the hand telling me laughingly, No, come, come down with me, we shall kill the young princess. I could not understand what she meant by this young princess and, rather unwillingly, I followed her to see what it was. Arriving in the anteroom which is at the top of the staircase leading to the ground floor, my attention was drawn in the midst of all this total obscurity to the white figure of Kamala2 standing in the middle of the passage between the hall and Sri Aurobindos room. She was as it were in full light while everything else was black. Then I saw on her face such an expression of intense anxiety that to comfort her I said, I am coming back. The sound of my voice shook off from me the semi-trance in which I was before and suddenly I thought, Where am I going? and I pushed away from me the dark figure who was pulling me and in whom, while she was running down the steps, I recognized a young girl who lived with Sri Aurobindo and me for many years and died five years back. This girl during her life was under the most diabolical influence. And then I saw very distinctly (as through the walls of the staircase) down below a small black tent which could scarcely be perceived in the surrounding darkness and standing in the middle of the tent the figure of a man, head and face shaved (like the sannyasin or the Buddhist monks) covered from head to foot with a knitted outfit following tightly the form of his body which was tall and slim. No other cloth or garment could give an indication as to who he could be. He was standing in front of a black pot placed on a dark red fire which was throwing its reddish glow on him. He had his right arm stretched over the pot, holding between two fingers a thin gold chain which looked like one of mine and was unnaturally visible and bright. Shaking gently the chain he was chanting some words which translated in my mind, She must die the young princess, she must pay for all she has done, she must die the young princess.
Then I suddenly realized that it was I the young Princess and as I burst into laughter, I found myself awake in my bed.
0 1959-01-06, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
X continues his work on me daily; it is to last 41 days in all. He told me that he wants to undo the things of several births. When it is over, he will explain it all to me. I do not know how to tell you how luminous and good this man is, he is a very great soul. He is also giving me Sanskrit lessons, and little by little, each evening, speaks to me of the Tantra.
His action upon you is to continue for another five days, after which he is positive that you will be entirely saved. According to him, it is indeed a magic attack originating in Pondicherry, and perhaps even from someone in the Ashram!! He told me that this evil person would finally be forced to appear before you I am learning many interesting things from him.
--
I have followed the vicissitudes of your struggle step by step and I know that it has been terrible, but my confidence in the outcome has not wavered for I know you are in good hands. I am so happy that X is taking good care of you, teaching you Sanskrit, speaking to you of the Tantra. It is just what I wanted.
His action here has been very effective and really very interesting. I still do not know whether someone has really done black magic, and the villain has yet to appear before me. But already several days ago the malefic influence completely disappeared without leaving any trace in the atmosphere. Also their mantric intervention did not stop at that, for it has had another most interesting result. I am preparing a long letter for Swami to explain all this to him
0 1959-01-14, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
In this regard, perhaps you know that X is the tenth in the line of Bhaskaraya (my spelling of this name is perhaps not correct), the great Tantric of whom you had a vision, who could comm and the coming of Kali along with all her warriors. It is from X that Swami received his initiation.
Your last letter gave us great pleasure, knowing that you have finally recovered physically. But we deeply hope that you will not again take up the countless activities that formerly consumed all your timeso many people come to you egoistically, for prestige, to be able to say that they are on familiar terms with you. You know this, of course
0 1959-01-21, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I will therefore give you initiation this Friday or Saturday, on the day of the full moon or the day before. This first stage will last three months during which you will have to repeat 1 lakh2 times the mantra that I will give you. At the end of three months, I will come to see you in Pondicherryor you will come here for a fortnight, and as soon as I have received the message from my guru, I will give you the second stage that will last three months as well. At the end of these three months, you will receive the full initiation. X warned me that the first stage I am to receive provokes attacks and tests but that all this disappears with the second stage. Forewarned is forearmed. For what reason I do not know, but X told me that the particular nature of my initiation should remain secret and that he will say nothing about it to Swami, and he added (in speaking of the speed of the process), But you will not be less than the Swami. (!!) There, I wanted you to knowbesides, you were present in Xs vision. All this happened at a time when I was in the most de sperate crisis I have ever known. Sweet Mother, there is no end to expressing my gratitude to you, and yet with the least trial, I am reduced to nothing. Why have you so much grace for me?
I would like very much to return to Pondicherry for the February Darshan and once again begin working for you. Today I am sending a second lot to Pavitra and tomorrow I will start on the Aphorisms, for I do not want to make you wait any longer. I will send a third and final lot to Pavitra by the end of the month, in time for printing. I am very touched, sweet Mother, by your attention and the money you are sending me.
0 1959-01-27, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
So X will to do a special work for you for eleven days, and if at the end of this period the suffering still persists, he will send me to Pondicherry to deliver something directly into your hands. I, too, would like very much to do something to alleviate your suffering.
By a special grace, X gave me both stages of the tantric initiation at the same time, although they are normally separated by several years; then if all goes well, he will give me the full initiation in 6 months. I have thus received a mantra, along with the power of realizing it. X told me that a realization should come at the beginning of the fifth month if I repeat the mantra strictly according to his instructions, but he again told me that the hostile forces would do all they could to prevent me from saying my mantra: mental suggestions and even illness. X has understood that I have work at the Ashram, and he has exempted me from the outer forms (pujas and other rituals), but nevertheless I must repeat my mantra very accurately every day (3,333 times, that is, a little more than 3 hours uninterrupted in the mornings, and more than 2 hours in the evening). I must therefore organize myself in such a way as to get up very early in the morning in Pondicherry, for in no case will your work suffer.
Apart from this, he has not yet entirely finished the work of purging that he has been doing on me for over a month, but I believe that everything will be completed in a short time from now.
--
My body would also like to have a mantra to repeat. Those it has are not enough for it anymore. It would like to have one to hasten its transformation. It is ready to repeat it as many times as needed, provided that it does not have to be out loud, for it is very rarely alone and does not want to speak of this to anyone. Truly, the Ashram atmosphere is not very favorable for this kind of thing. You will have to take precautions so as not to be disturbed or interrupted in an inopportune way. Domestic servants, curious people, so-called friends can all serve as instruments of the hostile forces to put a spoke in the wheels. I will do my best to protect you, but you will have a lot to do yourself and will have to be as firm as an iron rod.
I am not writing you all this to discourage you from coming. But I want you to succeed; for me that is more important than anything else, no matter what the price. So, know for certain that I am with you all the time and more so e specially when you repeat your mantra
0 1959-01-31, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I have reflected for a long time on that passage in your letter where you say that your body needs a mantra to hasten its transformation. Certainly X can do something in this realm, but I have not yet spoken to him (and I shall not speak of this to Swami).
X knows very little about your true work and what Swami has been able to explain to him is rather inadequate, for I do not believe that he himself understands it very well. So I shall have to try to make myself understood quite clearly to X and tell him exactly and simply what it is you need. The word transformation is too abstract. Each mantra has a very specific actionat least I believe soand I must be able to tell X in a concrete way the exact powers or capacities you are now seeking, and the general goal or the particular results required. Then he will find the mantra or mantras that apply.
My explanations will have to be simple, for X speaks English with difficulty, thus subtleties are out of the question. (I am teaching him a little English while he is teaching me Sanskrit, and we manage to understand each other rather well all the same. He understands more than he can speak.)
I do not want to mention this to Swami, as X is not very happy about the way Swami seizes upon every occasion to appropriate things, and particularly mantras (I will explain this to you when we meet again). It is e specially the way he says I. Nothing very seriousit is Swamis bad side, though he has good ones too. You know that, however.
So I would like to speak to X knowledgeably, in a very precise way, and I am waiting only for you to tell me what I should say. The thing is too important to be approached lightly and vaguely.
As for my return to Pondicherry, I would like you yourself to decide. I am anxious to see you again, but I also think that it is not necessary to rush things, and the Darshan periods are heavy for you.
--
I have received your letter of the 31st. In a number of ways it confirms my experience of these past days. We shall speak of all this when you return.
I have reflected a great deal on a possible mantra, and I have also seen the difficulty of receiving something that does not have a narrowing effect One must at least have an idea of the possibility (at least) of the supermind to understand what I need
--
As for the rest, we shall speak of it here.
So, until we meet soon.
0 1959-03-10 - vital dagger, vital mass, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I spent a nighta night of battlewhen, for some reason or other, a multitude of vital formations of all kinds entered into the room: beings, things, embryos of beings, residues of beingsall kinds of things And it was a frightful assault, absolutely disgusting.
In this swarming mass, I noticed the presence of some slightly more conscious willswills of the vital plane and I saw how they try to awaken a reaction in the consciousness of human beings to make them think or want, or if possible, do certain things.
0 1959-03-26 - Lord of Death, Lord of Falsehood, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
This Titan has been specially sent to attack this body, but he cant do it directly, so he uses people in my entourage. It is something fated: all those around me, who are close to me, and e specially those capable of love, have been attacked by him; a few have succumbed, such as that girl in my entourage who was absorbed by him. He follows me like a shadow, and each time there is the least little opening in someone near me, he is there.
The power of this Titan comes from an Asura. There are four Asuras. Two have already been converted, and the other two, the Lord of Death and the Lord of Falsehood, made an attempt at conversion by taking on a physical bodythey have been intimately associated with my life. The story of these Asuras would be very interesting to recount The Lord of Death disappeared; he lost his physical body, and I dont know what has become of him.1 As for the other, the Lord of Falsehood, the one who now rules over this earth, he tried hard to be converted, but he found it disgusting!
At times he calls himself the Lord of Nations. It is he who sets all wars in motion, and only by thwarting his plans could the last war be won This one does not want to be converted, not at all. He wants neither the physical transformation nor the supramental world, for that would spell his end. Besides, he knows We talk to each other; beyond all this, we have our relationship. For after all, you see (laughing), I am his mother! One day he told me, I know you will destroy me, but meanwhile, I will create all the havoc possible.
This Asura of Falsehood is the one who delegated the Titan that is always near me. He chose the most powerful Titan there is on earth and sent him specially to attack this body. So even if one manages to enchain or kill this Titan, it is likely that the Lord of Falsehood will delegate another form, and still another, and still another, in order to achieve his aim.
In the end, only the Supramental will have the power to destroy it. When the hour comes, all this will disappear, without any need to do anything.
0 1959-04-07, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
The other point also has its element of truthwe shall speak of it later.
With all my love, I envelope you, my child, and I tell you, Have courage, the victory is certainnot a compromise or partial victory, but integral.
0 1959-05-19 - Ascending and Descending paths, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
The thing can still be brought down as far as the mental and vital planes (although Sri Aurobindo said that thousands of lifetimes would be needed merely to bring it down to the mental plane, unless one practiced a perfect surrender1). With Sri Aurobindo, we went down below Matter, right into the Subconscient and even into the Inconscient. But after the descent comes the transformation, and when you come down to the body, when you attempt to make it take one step forwardoh, not even a real step, just a little step!everything starts grating; its like stepping on an anthill And yet the presence, the help of the supreme Mother, is there constantly; thus you realize that for ordinary men such a task is impossible, or else millions of lives would be needed but in truth, unless the work is done for them and the sadhana of the body done for the entire earth consciousness, they will never achieve the physical transformation, or else it will be so remote that it is better not even to speak of it. But if they open themselves, if they give themselves over in an integral surrender, the work can be done for themthey have only to let it be done.
The path is difficult. And yet this body is full of good will; it is filled with the psychic in every one of its cells. Its like a child. The other day, it cried out quite spontaneously, O my Sweet Lord, give me the time to realize You! It did not ask to hasten the process, it did not ask to lighten its work; it only asked for enough TIME to do the work. Give me the time!
--
And I repeat my mantra constantlywhen I am awake and even when I sleep. I say it even when I am getting dressed, when I eat, when I work, when I speak with others; it is there, just behind in the background, all the time, all the time.
In fact, you can immediately see the difference between those who have a mantra and those who dont. With those who have no mantra, even if they have a strong habit of meditation or concentration, something around them remains hazy and vague. Whereas the japa imparts to those who practice it a kind of precision, a kind of solidity: an armature. They become galvanized, as it were.
0 1959-05-25, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Only someone who loves you and has the knowledge can find the true solution to the problem. X1 fulfills these conditions excellently. Go to him and simply be what you are, without blackening nor embellishing, with the sincerity and simplicity of a child. He knows your soul and its aspiration; speak to him of your physical life and of your need for space, solitude, untamed nature, the simple and free life. He will understand and, in his wisdom, will see the best thing to do.
And what he decides will be done.
0 1959-05-28, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
3) There is also the destiny that feels human love as something divine, something that can be transfigured and become a very powerful driving force. I did not believe it possible, except in dreams, until the day I met someone here. But you do not believe in these things, so I shall not speak of it further. I can gag this also and tell myself that one day all will be filled in the inner divine love. But that does not prevent this other need in me from living and from finding that life is dry and from saying, Why this outer manifestation if all life is in the inner realms? But neither can I stifle this with reasoning.
So there remains the pure spiritual destiny, pure interiorization. That is what I have been trying to do for the last five years, without much success. There are good periods of collaboration, because one part of my being can be happy in any condition. But in a certain way this achievement remains truncated, e specially 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.
--
I did not utter the words that you heard I wanted to speak to you of my experience during the night, but I was paralyzed because I clearly felt that you no longer understood me. As soon as I received your letter, I concentrated on you in an effort to help you, and when night fell, just at the hour I enter into contact with X, I called for his helpwhereupon he sent me this little Kali whom he had already sent once before. So I went to your house, I took you in my arms and pressed you tightly to my heart to keep you as sheltered as possible from blows, and I let Kali do her warrior dance against this titan who is always trying to possess you, creating this rebelliousness in you. She must have at least partially succeeded in her work, because very early in the morning the titan went away somewhat discomfited, but while leaving, he flung this at me as he went by: You will regret it, for you would have had less trouble if he had left. I flung his suggestion back in his face with a laugh and told him, Take that, along with all the rest of your ugly person! I have no need of it! And the atmosphere cleared up.
I wanted to tell you all this, but I couldnt because you were still far away from me and it would have seemed like boasting. Also the misunderstanding created by the distance made you hear other words than those I uttered.
0 1959-06-03, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
This was a first, hasty conversation, and we did not discuss things at length. I said nothing. I have no confidence in my reactions when I am in the midst of my crises of complete negation. And truly speaking, at the time of my last crisis in Pondicherry, I do not know if it was really Xs occult working that set things right, for personally (but perhaps it is an ignorant impression), I felt that it was thanks to Sujata and her childlike simplicity that I was able to get out of it.
In any event, since I left Pondicherry, I have been living like a kind of robot (it began in the train); I am empty, void of the least feeling for whomever it may be. I keep going by a kind of acquired momentum, but actually I feel completely anesthetized.
--
Certainly his political rage is not only understandable but justified. However, when one begins looking at things from the external viewpoint of the manifestation, they are not as simple as that. I cannot speak of all this in detail, but as an example I can tell you that here in Pondicherry, those who are maneuvering (and not without some hope) to oust the Congress are our worst enemies, the enemy of all that is disinterested and spiritual, and if they come to power, they would be capable of anything in their hate.
For all these world events, I always leave it to the Divine vision and wisdom, and I say to the Supreme: Lord, may Thy Will be done.
0 1959-06-07, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
2) X gave me certain details about his powers of prediction, but perhaps it would be better not to speak of this in a letter. On that occasion, he told me that he did not want to keep any secrets from me: I want you to know everything. I want you to be chief disciple in my tradition. When the time comes, you will understand what I mean. With you I have full connection, not only connection in my mind, but in my blood and body.
On another occasion, he said to me, I am ALWAYS taking care of you. And when I asked him why he was taking such trouble for me, he replied, Because I have orders. This attention that comes to me from you and him surprises me, for I do not feel that I am good, and upon the least occasion I know that I am seriously prepared to quit everything because something in me is profoundly revolted by this excess of suffering, by a lack of love and flowering, by an excess of solitude. Yesterday evening, it was still fully there, with all my approval, and at such a time no one in the world can hold me back. It is this POINT OF SUFFERING that makes me want to turn my back on everything. Not to commit suicide: to turn my back.
0 1959-06-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I should write you what X has revealed about my last three lives, but I have neither the courage nor the desire to again speak of myself.
Your child,
--
P.S. X asked me questions about my family. I was prompted to speak to him of my mother (seeing her photo, you had said that you knew her very well, if you recall). He immediately said, You MUST go and see your mother. You will go in August and quickly come back by plane beginning September! Of course, I told him that all this seems like the highest fantasy to me, and that to begin with I had no money and would surely not ask you anything for that. He said, I shall ask my Mother. She will arrange everything.
***
0 1959-06-13a, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
X has decided that he wants to speak to you himself about my former existences and about what he has seen for the immediate future. He has therefore asked me to say nothing to you. Perhaps there are also elements he did not want to speak of to me. (X told me that now he feels capable of speaking in English with you.)
Another thing: we happened to talk of Sri Aurobindo and Lele.1 Concerning Lele, X told me, He was a devotee of the Bhaskaraya School; this is why there is close connection I do not know if this is so, but X seemed to know.
0 1959-06-25, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
X told me to tell you what he has seen of my previous lives (but my impression is that he did not tell me everything and that there are elements about which he wants to speak to you personally).
To begin with, I must tell you a dream that I had here in Rameswaram a few days after my arrival. I was being pursued and I fled like an assassinit is a dream I have had hundreds of times for years, but in this dream, there was a new element: while being pursued, I climbed a kind of stairway to try to escape when suddenly, in a flash, I saw a feminine form hurtling into a void. I saw only the lower half of her body (with a kind of mauve-colored saree), because she was already falling. And I had the horrible sensation of having pushed this woman into the void, and I fled. I climbed, I climbed these stairs with my pursuers close at my heels, and the image of this falling woman gave me a horrible feeling. When I reached the top of the stairs, I tried to close a door behind me to stop my pursuers, but there they were, it was too late and I woke up.
0 1959-07-10, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Please excuse me, but I cannot come to meet you. My heart is broken. I would not know how to speak to you.
A moment ago I barely found the strength not to kill myself. Destiny has repeated itself once again, but this time it was not I who rejected her, as in past existences, it is she who rejected me: Too late. For a moment, I thought I was going to go crazy too, so much pain did I have then finally I said, May Thy Will be done, (that of the Supreme Lord) and I kept repeating, Thy Grace is there, even in the greatest suffering. But I am broken, rather like a living dead man. So be happy, for I will never wear the white robe that Guruji gave me.
0 1959-10-06 - Sri Aurobindos abode, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
In fact, when I walk back and forth in my room, I dont cut myself off from the rest of the worldalthough it would be so much more convenient! All kinds of things come to mesuggestions, wills, aspirations. But automatically I make a movement of offering: things come to me and just as they are about to touch my head, I turn them upwards and offer them to the Light. They dont enter into me. For example, if someone speaks to me while I am saying my japa, I hear quite well what is being said, I may even answer, but the words remain a little outside, at a certain distance from the head. And yet sometimes, there are things that insist, more defined wills that present themselves to me, so then I have to do a little work, but all that without a pause in the japa. If that happens, there is sometimes a change in the quality of my japa, and instead of being fully the power, fully the light, it is certainly something that produces results, but results more or less sure, more or less long to fructify; it becomes uncertain, as with all things of this physical world. Yet the difference between the two japas is imperceptible; its not a difference between saying the japa in a more or less mechanical way and saying it consciously, because even while I work I remain fully conscious of the japa I continue to repeat it putting the full meaning into each syllable. But nevertheless, there is a difference. One is the all-powerful japa; the other, an almost ordinary japa There is a difference in the inner attitude. Perhaps for the japa to become true, a kind of joy, an elation, a warmth of enthusiasm has to be added but e specially joy. Then everything changes.
Well, it is the same thing, the same imperceptible difference, when it comes to entering the world of Truth. On one side there is the falsehood, and on the other, close by, like the lining of this one, the true life. Only a little difference in the inner quality, a little reversal, is enough to pass to the other side, into the Truth and Light.
--
This other world you speak of, this world of Truth, is it the supramental world?
My feeling is that this life which Sri Aurobindo is living right now is not the full satisfaction of the supramental life for him.
0 1959-10-15, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
2) X spoke to me of the Ashrams financial difficulties and said I shall tell you the secret why there are such difficulties. I think he is going to speak to me today or tomorrow. In any case, he told me that he was working (I am preparing) to change these conditions, and he asked me if there had been any improvement as yet. I replied that I did not believe the situation had changed very much. He spoke as well of certain people in the Ashram, but I will tell you about this in person. He had a rather amusing way of speaking about people, people who pretend to worship the Mother but who keep their mind as a dustbin!
7) X wants to send me back to Pondicherry this Sunday (Sunday the 18th, arriving Monday the 19th morning). He says it is useless for me now to remain here any longer since his house is not ready and he can do nothing. But, he said, I will have you come to my house for 3 months and I shall give you a training by which you can know Past, Present and Future, and have the same qualifications as me!
8) He gave me certain methods to follow, about which I shall speak to you in person.
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.
0 1959-11-25, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
That is what Sri Aurobindo means when he speaks of an intolerable ecstasy1; it is not an intolerable ecstasy: it is an unflinching ecstasy.
Thoughts and Aphorisms:
0 1960-03-03, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Experiences are coming at a furious pacefabulous experiences. If I were to speak now, its certain that I would not at all speak as I used to. Thats why we must date all these Questions and Answers, at least all which come before the [Supramental] Manifestation of February 1956, so that there will be a clear cut between those before and those after.
Only a few days ago, on the morning of the 29th, I had one of those experiences that mark ones life. It happened upstairs in my room. I was doing my japa, walking up and down with my eyes wide open, when suddenly Krishna camea gold Krishna, all golden, in a golden light that filled the whole room. I was walking, but I could not even see the windows or the rug any longer, for this golden light was everywhere with Krishna at its center. And it must have lasted at least fifteen minutes. He was dressed in those same clothes in which he is normally portrayed when he dances. He was all light, all dancing: You see, I will be there this evening during the Darshan.1 And suddenly, the chair I use for darshan came into the room! Krishna climbed up onto it, and his eyes twinkled mischievously, as if to say, I will be there, you see, and therell be no room for you.
--
And there are many, many experiences like this. It is only a small, a very small beginning. This one in particular came to mark the new stage: four years have elapsed, and now four years to come. Because everything has focused on this body to prepare it, everything has concentrated on itNature, the Master of the Yoga, the Supreme, everything So only when its over, not before, will it really be interesting to speak of all this. But maybe it will never be over, after all. Its a small beginning, very small.
The Darshan on February 29, 1960, the first anniversary of the Supramental Manifestation.
0 1960-04-07, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
This inner fusion you speak of as a truth to be realized is already accomplished, absolutely perceptible to me. For long I have felt you as an integral part of my being; it seems to me that only some surface eddies prevent you also from feeling and living it.
But I am convinced it will come. Meanwhile, I am trying to make you feel my presence not as an impersonal force but as a real and concrete presence, and I am happy to have succeeded in part.
0 1960-04-13, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
My friend here gave me the book Templier et Alchimiste [Templar and Alchemist] to read; its published by the group he is going to join in France. They too speak of the transmutation of matter and proclaim the end of homo sapiens and the birth of the superman.
I long to be with you and work on the book on Sri Aurobindo I want to put all my soul into it and, with your grace, create something inflaming.
0 1960-04-14, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Our turn will come in twenty to thirty years. To win, we need an element of surprise. The bourgeoisie should be lulled to sleep. Therefore, we must first launch the most spectacular peace movement that has ever existed, replete with inspiring proposals and extraordinary concessions. The stupid and decadent capitalist countries will cooperate joyfully in their own destruction. They will jump at this new opportunity for friendship. As soon as their guard is down, we shall crush them beneath our closed fist.
(Quoted in the Revue Militaire d Information, December 1959.)
0 1960-05-06, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Sri Aurobindo speaks of this Secret almost everywhere, e specially in his Essays on the Gita. He tells us that in the Gita itself one gets glimpses of this thing which is beyond the Impersonal, beyond even the Personal behind the Impersonal, beyond the Transcendent.
Well, I saw this Secret I saw that the Supreme only becomes perfect in terrestrial matter, on earth.
Becomes is just a way of speaking, of course, for everything already is, and the Supreme is what He is. But we live in time, in a successive unfoldment, and it would be absurd to say that at present Matter is the expression of a perfect Divine.
I saw this Secret (which is getting more and more perceptible as the Supramental becomes clear), I saw it in the everyday, outer life, precisely in this very physical life which all spirituality rejects a kind of accuracy or exactitude right down to the atom.
0 1960-05-16, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I was sick two days ago with a cold and fever. I know whya point to be transformed. The body may have put too much zeal into it, so it teetered a little. But thanks to that, I had an interesting experience. X 1 had put his force on me to speed up the healing. And of course, according to each ones nature, the force gets colored, so to speakit clothes itself in a different color. In me, this was translated by a new physical experience which lasted from 4 in the morning till 6:30, when I had to start speaking with people and deal with outer things. It was a kind of eternity, a kind of absolute PHYSICAL immobility which contained no possibility of illness within itas a matter of fact, nothing remained in this immobility, it was a sort of nirvana. But it did not keep me from going through all my usual motions of getting dressed.
I spent the whole day yesterday trying to understand this experience.
And in that kind of physical eternity (which lasted two and a half hoursits a long time for an experience), I was aware of something missing, something not there: the joy of the consciousness. Because throughout my life I have developed the habit of being conscious of everything, always, at each second. And the joy of the consciousness was not there. So I thanked the Grace that made me see that this kind of nirvana was quite simply physical tamas.2
0 1960-05-24 - supramental flood, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
And what was really very lovely was the ACCURACY and the power which directed the forces. I watched this for three quarters of an hour: for each thing that presented itself (it could have been someone thinking, something taking place, anything at all), a special little concentration of this flood went exactly onto that point, like a special insistence.
And all this was absolutely egoless, without any personal reaction, nothing; there was nothing but the consciousness of the Supreme Action. It was the only thing existing.
--
And during the time my experience lasted, I had no feeling of anything exceptional, but rather simply the fact that after all its preparation, the body consciousness was ready for a total identification with Thatin my consciousness its always the same, a perpetual, constant and eternal state in that it never leaves me. Its like that, and it never varies. What diminishes the immensity of the Vibration are the limitations of the material consciousness which can color it and even sometimes change it by giving it a personal appearance. Thus, when I see someone and speak to him, for example, when my eyes concentrate on the person, I have almost the sensation of this flood flowing from me towards the person or of it passing through me to go onto the person. There is an awareness of the eyes, the body. And it is this which limits or even changes a little the immensity of the thing But already this feeling has almost disappeared; this immensity seems to be acting almost constantly. There are moments when I am less interiorized, when I am more on the surface, and it feels like its passing through a bodymoments when the body consciousness comes back a little. And this is what diminishes the thing.
This experience last night also enabled me to understand what X had felt during one of our meditations. He had explained his experience by way of saying that I was this mystic tree whose roots plunge into the Supreme and whose branches spread forth over the world,3 and he said that one of these branches had entered into himand it had been a unique experience. He had said, this is the Mother.
--
I was reluctant to speak (because of this problem that remains hanging: to make it permanent, even in the active consciousness), and I said to myself that if I speak, it will create difficulties for me in finding the solution But its all right. I shall simply have to make a still greater effort, because something always evaporates when you speak.
Sat-Chit-Ananda: the three Supreme Principles, Existence (Sat), Consciousness (Chit), and Bliss (Ananda).
0 1960-05-28 - death of K - the death process- the subtle physical, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I know it. I know that this consciousness of the form exists since I have actually gone out of it. Once, long back, I was in a so-called cataleptic state, and after awhile, while still in this state, the body began living again2; that is, it was capable of speaking and even moving (it was Theon who gave me this training). The body managed to get up and move. And yet, everything had gone out of it!
Once everything had gone out, it naturally became cold, but the body consciousness manages to draw a little energy from the air, from this or that And I spoke in that state. I spoke I spoke very well, and besides, I recounted all I was seeing elsewhere.
0 1960-06-04, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Once Im relaxed, I have developed the habit of repeating my mantra. But its very strange with these mantras I dont know how it is for others; Im speaking of my own mantra, the one I myself foundit came spontaneously. Depending on the occasion, the time, depending on what I might call the purpose for repeating it, it has quite different results. For example, I use it to establish the contact while walking back and forth in my roommy mantra is a mantra of evocation; I evoke the Supreme and establish the contact with the body.
This is the main reason for my japa. Theres a power in the sound itself, and by forcing the body to repeat the sound, you force it to receive the vibration at the same time. But Ive noticed that if something in the bodys working gets disturbed (a pain or disorder, the onset of some illness) and I repeat my mantra in a certain waystill the same words, the same mantra, but said with a certain purpose and above all in a movement of surrender, surrender of the pain, the disorder, and a call, like an openingit has a marvelous effect. The mantra acts in just the right way, in this way and in no other. And after a while everything is put back in order. And simultaneously, of course, the precise knowledge of what lies behind the disorder and what I must do to set it right comes to me. But quite apart from this, the mantra acts directly upon the pain itself.
--
Its tamas that gives you a bad sleep. There are two kinds of bad sleep that which makes you heavy and leaden, as if the result of all your effort the day before were wasted, and that which exhausts you, as if you had spent the whole time fighting. And Ive observed that if you cut your sleep up into sections (it becomes a habit), the nights get better. In other words, you must be able to come back to your normal consciousness and your normal aspiration at certain intervals, come back to the call of your consciousness But you must not use an alarm clock. When in trance, its not good to be jolted.
Just as you are drifting off, you can make a formation and say, I shall wake up at such-and-such time (children do it very easily).
You should count on at least three hours for the first part of your sleep; for the last part, one hour is enough. But the first should be a minimum of three hours. In fact, it is best to remain in bed for at least seven hours; with six, you dont have the time to do much (of course, Im speaking from the standpoint of sadhana, to make the nights useful).
But for years together I only slept 2 hours a night in all. I mean that my night consisted of 2 hours. And I went straight to Sat-Chit-Ananda and then came back: 2 hours were spent like that. But the body was tired. That lasted more than five or six years while Sri Aurobindo was still in his body. And during the day, I was all the time going into trance for the least thing (it was trance, not sleep I was conscious). But I clearly saw that the body was affected, for it had no time to burn its toxins.2
There would be many interesting things to tell about sleep, because its one of the things Ive studied the mostto speak of how I became conscious of my nights, for instance. (I learned this with Theon, and now that I know all these things of India, I realize that he knew a GREAT deal.) But it bothers me a lot to say II this, I that. Id rather speak of these things in the form of a treatise or an essay on sleep, for example. Sri Aurobindo always spoke of his experiences but rarely did he say Iit always sounds like boasting.
Sri Aurobindo said that the true or yogic reason for sleep is to put the consciousness back into contact with Sat-Chit-Ananda (I used to do this without knowing it). For some people the contact is established immediately, while for others it takes eight, nine, ten hours to do it. But really, normally you should not wake up till the contact has been established, and thats why its very bad to wake up in an artificial way (with an alarm clock, for example), because then the night is wasted.
0 1960-06-07, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Something changes, of course, but its so phew! I mean, at the speed its going, it will take us millions of years to make any perceptible progress. We might just as well say its not moving.
These days Ive been feeling very clearly this thing that doesnt move.
--
It gives me the impression of something like Yes, thats it, like a cavemanOh (Mother speaks mockingly), surely one of the cave artists or poets or writers! The intellectual life of the caves, I mean! But the cave happens to be low and when youre in it, you are like this (Mother stoops over), but the whole time you want to stand up straight. That makes you furious. Thats exactly the feeling it gives menot a cave meant for a man standing on his two feet; its a cave for a lion or for for any four-legged animal.
Its symbolic. Im speaking symbolically.
And so
--
No, no thats not what I mean. Im speaking of the relationship I have with you, the true onewhat I was telling you about just a moment ago. Because, you see, Im going to tell you everything! (Mother laughs) I have the impression that it would go much faster if I could pick you up, put you here (Mother touches her heart), carry you here and tell you, Calm yourself, listen! But its not possible (alas). Youre always fast on your feet with your head touching this very low ceiling. Myself, I cant be like that. Im not even sure (laughing) if my feet would get in!
Anyway, my child, its not that Im not trying I am trying. And its not that you cantyou can. Thats the problem You know, its as if you were stubbornly trying to turn the key the wrong way in the lock.
0 1960-06-11, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
The same thing occurs, there is the same difference, when I say something and when I see it (for example, when I look at one of those essential problems that will be solved only when the world changes). When I look at that in silence, there is a power of life and truthwhich evaporates when its put into words. It becomes diminished, impoverished and of course distorted. When you write or speak, the experience disintegrates, its inevitable.
We need a new language.
For instance, if I have a vision (not a vision with pictures, not that, but something without any form or sound or words or the THING itself, when I live the thing), and then later I speak of it to someone I have a very tangible feeling of having to pull something to make it visible, perceptible and communicable the splendor goes.
We need new organs of expression It will come.
0 1960-06-Undated, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Excuse me if I speak too frankly.
Signed: Satprem
0 1960-07-12 - Mothers Vision - the Voice, the ashram a tiny part of myself, the Mothers Force, sparkling white light compressed - enormous formation of negative vibrations - light in evil, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I heard the Voice and awoke with the feeling of this Power, this Light, this Force of realization concentrated here which sets everything in motion (as always, it is always the same, a Power in motion). It was a dazzling white light. But then, what I found funny was that there I was, quite in my natural state, and this, the Ashram, was a tiny, tiny part of myself. And throughout the whole experience, it remained like thata very tiny part of myself. Everything else was I cant say deconcentrated, but an entirely general, overall activity, as it normally is every night. And I saw the Ashram quite clearlyit was something special, made for special reasons, but whereas I seemed to have an immense body, that was very small, very small. It went on for an hour. Thats what I found amusing; the other things just happen, and they may be interesting, but this was so spontaneous; I was watching it (I dont know where my head was), I was looking down from above so tiny, so tiny.
What was me was up above, and the Ashram was It began just here (the navel) and went that way (downwards), and it was encircled, to show that it was a special formationencircled in the inconscience of the terrestrial creation. And I was everything else, with the usual vibrations of power and light. And then one current and another current and another were passing into it, into this formation, and they kept going in and in and in, accumulating. They kept going in, and yet they did not come out, they did not leave. It was not an undulatory movement, but rather a pulsating movementit had no beginning, it didnt go out, and yet it kept moving. Its very difficult to describe.
The formation represented by the Ashram was located approximately here, at the height of the navel in relation to what I was but although the body was not delimited, it had certain attributes or undefined forms, each one of which was situated in relation to the other as though each represented one part of the body; each was symbolic of either an activity or a part of the world or a mode of manifestation. So the formation started from about here, near the navel, and went down towards the appendix Here, Ill draw you a sketch:
--
It reminded me of tantric things. I have seen tantric formations and how forces are systematically separated by themeach vibration, each color. Its very interesting. They are all one, and yet each is distinct. That is, they are separated in order to be distinguished and for each one to be used individually. Each one represents a particular action for obtaining something in particular. This is the special knowledge the tantrics have, I believe. Or its the reflection of their knowledge. And my impression is that when they do their pujas or say their mantras, what they are trying to do is recombine all that into the white light. Im not sure. I know they use each one separately for a separate purpose, but when they speak of their puja succeeding, it may mean that they have been able to recombine the light. But I say this very guardedly. For I would have to see X do his puja one day to really knowfrom afar Im not so sure. Its merely an impression.
This is what I am constantly seeing now, but along with this Divine Force or this Divine Consciousness that Sri Aurobindo speaks of when he says, Mothers Force is with you. When it comes, it is sparkling white, perfectly white and perfectly luminous. And as it accumulates inside, it makes living vibrations of every color. And it goes on and on and on. Sometimes it lasts half an hour, three-quarters of an hour, an hournothing goes out. And it keeps constantly entering. And it piles up. Its as if it is all being accumulated or compressed together.
So, the observing mind, the intelligence that watches, looked at all thisAh, thats what its like (an intelligence that watches without interfering in the least). Its like a spectator talking to himself.
So in my vision, my body was as big as the universe, and that (the Ashram) was so tiny, so tiny.
0 1960-07-23 - The Flood and the race - turning back to guide and save amongst the torrents - sadhana vs tamas and destruction - power of giving and offering - Japa, 7 lakhs, 140000 per day, 1 crore takes 20 years, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
It was as if the doors of destruction had been flung open. Floodsfloods as vast as an oceanwere rushing down onto something the earth? A formidable current pouring down at an insane speed, with an unstoppable power. It was brackish waternot transparent, but brackish. And it was imperative to reach a certain spot BEFORE the water. Had the water reached there ahead of me, nothing could have been done. Whereas if I got there first (I say I, but it was not I with this body), if I got to the other side before the water, I would be completely safe; and from this safe position, I would be able, I would have a chance to help those left behind.
And this vehicle was going faster than the flood (I saw and felt it by its motion)a formidable flood, but the vehicle was going still faster. It was so wonderful. In places there were some e specially difficult and dangerous spots, but I ALWAYS got there before the water, just before the water barred the way. And we kept going and going and going. Then, with a final effort (there was no effort, really, it was willed), with a final push, we made it to the other side and the water came rushing just behind! It rushed down at a fantastic speed. We had made it. Then, just on the other side, it changed color. It was it changed in color to a predominant blue, this powerful blue which is the force, the organizing force in the most material world. So there we were, and the vehicle stopped. And then, after having been looking straight ahead the whole time we were speeding along, I turned around and said, Ah, now I can start helping those who are behind.
Here, Ill draw you a little sketch:
--
The water was flowing off towards the right. From time to time there were these fissured dips or depressions along the vehicles path where the water rushed through, and in fact it must have rushed through each one just as soon as I had sped past. It was most dangerous, for if you had reached there a second too late, the water would already have flooded in and you would no longer have been able to get across; it was such that with even only a few drops, you would no longer get across. Not that they were very wide, but And the water was pouring in (pouring in our words are very small), it was pouring in, and I could see it ahead, but then the vehicle would arrive at full speed and instead of stopping, in a wild roller coaster-like movement it would plunge through, vroom!just in time, exactly like a roller coaster. I always arrived just in time to get through. And then again the same thing, broken here and there (in this way there were many fissures, though Ive only drawn two; there were quite a few, five or six at least), and again we would dart across, then race on until we would reach the spot where I have drawn the water turning.
Right at the end, there was a place where the water had to turn to run downthis was the Great Passage. If you got caught in that, it was all over. You had to reach this spot and cross over before the water came. It was the only place you could get across. Then a last plunge, and like an arrow shot from a bow, full speed ahead, I crossed over and there I was.
And once on the other side, without even a rise in ground level (I dont know why), it was immediately safe. And the current went on and on, waves upon waves, on and on, as far as the eye could see, but it was canalized here at the Great Turning; and as soon as it went past this point, the inundation was total, it spread out over something over the earth. And the current turnedit turned but I was already on the other side. And down below, everything was finished, the water rushed down everywhere. Only, as soon as I was on the other side, it could not touch me the water could not get across, it was stopped by something invisible, and it turned away.
--
The vehicles path was not on earth, but up above (probably in interstellar regions!), a special path for this vehicle. And I didnt know where the water was coming from; I couldnt see its origin, which was off beyond the horizon. But it came raging down in torrentsnot precipitously like a waterfall, but rather like a rushing torrent. My path passed between the torrents of water and the earth below. And I saw the water before me, everywhere, in front and behindit was so extraordinary, for it looked like it was everywhere, you see, except along my path (and even then, there was some seepage). Water speeding everywhere. But there was a kind of conscious will in this onrush, and I had to reach the Great Passage before this conscious will. This water resembled something physical, but there was a consciousness, a conscious will, and I had to it was like a battle between the will I represented and that will. And I passed each fissure just in time. Only when I reached the Great Turning did I see the will that impelled this water. And I reached there just before it. And passed through at a fantastic speedlike lightning. Even time ceased I crossed over like a flash of lightning. And then, suddenly, respite and it was blue. A square.
At the time, I didnt know what it all meant. Then this morning, I thought, It must have something to do with the world situation.
--
What was pleasing, and really quite interesting, was this tremendous speed, like an arrow, and I always arrived in time, just in time, just in time. Once I had crossed over to the other side (I clearly felt that nothing would be left, for it was such a powerful deluge), the danger was finished, there was no longer ANY possibility at all of being touchedthis was the main feeling. Everything was stopped. Nothing could touch.
I turned around and saw all this water rushing down, and I thought, Now lets see if we can do something here. There was someone behind who interested me, someone or somethingit was still something; it was very likable and had something of the blue color that was here on the other side. Not really individuals, but more like beings representative of something that was following me quite closely. When I was there, it also was there, but it could not keep up, it kept losing groundas my speed increased, its decreased. It could not keep up. But it interested me in a special way. Oh, hes so close (he or it); he might just make it, I thought. And at that moment, I saw that all this destructive will with its instrument of water, symbolically water, had rushed past and was spreading out everywhere. But there was still a chance of saving all those who were along this path. And thats immediately what I thought of, it was my first wish: Lets see if they can still get across, if I can manage to get them across. I remembered some e specially dangerous spots (while speeding past, I had remarked, Oh, here we might still be able to do this, there that could still be donemy consciousness moved at the same speed, and I noted everything along the way), and once I was firmly there on the other side, I started sending back messages.
Down below, the water was having a grand time; it was it was hopeless. But here, along this path, there was still a hope, even even after the water had passed; I probably had a certain power at my disposal to help others cross these fissured places. But because I woke up, I didnt see what it was. So that stopped everything. Probably because I woke up rather abruptly, I could not see what it meant.
--
But when human beings are involved, I believe that visions take on a special formits a special image. Not an inundation like this. That was very, very impersonal. They were forces. A feeling of floodgates bursting open, of something being held back, retained or prevented, then suddenly
The vehicle and the forward movement are the sadhana, beyond the shadow of a doubt. I understood that the speed of sadhana was greater than the speed of the forces of destruction. And it ended in certain victory, there is not a shadow of doubt. This feeling of POWER once I was firmly grounded there [in the square], enough power to help others.
These were universal forces. I cant say it means war. Ive foreseen many warswidespread wars, local wars, so many warsand up to now they have never been presented to me in that form. Theyve always come as a fireflames, flames, the home burning. Not as an inundation.
--
Its more and more a universal yoga the whole earth and it is like that day and night, when I walk and when I speak and when I eat. Its constantly like that. As if the whole earth were its like kneading dough to make it rise.
But when I read his Yoga of Self-Perfection and see simply what we are phew! What yeast we would need to make all that rise!
0 1960-07-26 - Mothers vision - looking up words in the subconscient, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I had taken out a dictionary. There, its this one, I said. Someone was next to me, but this someone is always symbolic: each activity takes on a special form which may resemble someone or other. (The people around me for the work here are like families in those worlds there; they are types, that iseach person represents a typeso then I know that Im in contact with all the people of this same type. If they were conscious, they would know that I was there telling them something in particular. But its not a person, its a type and not a type of character, but a type of activity and relationship with me.)
I was with a certain type, and I was looking for a word, I wanted to conjugate the verb vaincre [to conquer]: je vaincs, tu vaincs, il vaincgood, now nous vainquons, how do you spell that, nous vainquons? It was so funny! And I was looking it up in the dictionaryvainquons, how do you spell that?
And at the same time, I had the feeling of something completely arbitrary, and all this kind of knowledge seemed so unreala completely arbitrary convention corresponding to nothing luminous anywhere.
--
Then when I woke up, I immediately said to myself, Hmm, its truehow would I spell that? It took me half a minute to remember. It was really funny!
Coming at the end of the night as it did, it means that its an exploration in some part or another of a subconscious mental activity. And you can make so many discoveries there it is unbelievable! But its lovely. And rarely unpleasant. There was a time when it was very unpleasant, oppressive, full of effort and resistance. I would want to go somewhere, but it would be impossible; I toiled and struggled, but everything would go wrong the straight paths would suddenly plunge into an abyss, and Id have to cross the abyss. For years it was like that. Just recently, I looked back over this whole period But now it is over. Now its something its lovely, its enjoyable, its a little it has a childlike simplicity.
However, its not a personal subconscient, but a its more than the Ashram. For me, the Ashram is not a separate individualityexcept in that vision the other day,1 which is what surprised me. Its hardly that. Rather, it is still this Movement of everything, of everything that is included. So its like entering into the subconscient of the whole earth, and it takes on forms which are quite familiar images to me, but they are absolutely symbolic and very, very funny! It took a moment to see that vainquons is spelled q-u-o-n-s. And I wasnt sure! I meant to ask Pavitra for a dictionary which gives verb conjugations, for then if Im stuck on something while writing, I can look it up.
The other day I wrote somethingit was a letter I gave Pavitra to read. I think theres a spelling mistake, he said. Its quite possible, I answered, I make plenty of them. He looked it up in a splendid dictionary and, as a matter of fact, it was a mistake. I meant to ask him for a dictionary this morning.
Its very simple, actually; its a convention, a conventional construction somewhere in the subconscious brain, and you write automatically. But if you want to try to bring the light of a slightly higher reason into it, its terrible. It becomes meaningless, and you forget everything.
You have to be inside this automatic convention to remember; its very difficult (Mother laughs). So I make a lot of spelling mistakes (under her breath, in a mischievous tone) I think Ill ask him for his dictionary (laughter)!
Vaincre! I wanted to write to someone to proclaim the Victory. The idea was very clear, it was really lovely. Then, in a second, I was stoppedHow do you spell vainquons? And how do you spell vaincs? The person next to me didnt know a thingnothing. Its spelled v-a-i-n, he said. So I said, No, I dont think so! (laughter) It went on like that, you know, it was so funny!
Are you good at spelling?
Oh, it depends. When I dont pay attention, its all right. I usually dont make mistakesnot too many!
0 1960-08-10 - questions from center of Education - reading Sri Aurobindo, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
What I call studying is to take Sri Aurobindos books, where he quotes or speaks of one thing or another, then have the corresponding bookswhen he quotes something, you must take the book it corresponds to; when he speaks of something, you must study the writings on that subject. This is what I call studying. Then, after having read the corresponding works, you compare them with what Sri Aurobindo has said, and in this way there may be a beginning of understanding. If someone is very studious, he can review all that has ever been written or taught by going through Sri Aurobindos books. I mean this for someone who loves working.
I SEE this state of mind, this mental attitude Oh! Its its so repugnant. People are so afraid of taking sides, so afraid of appearing biased; they are so afraid of appearing to have faith, so afraid Oh, its disgraceful.
--
But its e specially for the spelling of verbs. I believe I know how to conjugate!
(Pavitra:) It has everythinghow to play bridge, how to play tennis, the art of carving a chicken
0 1960-08-27, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
The little basket I put them in can no longer close! I take 45 minutes every morning upstairs to write letters. And I receive six, seven, eight, ten letters a day, so how can I manage? In the end, Sri Aurobindo spent the whole night writing letterstill he went blind.
Myself, I cant afford to do that, I have other things to do. And Im not keen on going blind either. I need my eyes, they are my work instruments.
0 1960-09-02, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
He looked quite ecstatic while speaking of his experience.
In conclusion, he said, Where is the Mother and where is X? meaning, I suppose, that all separation had disappeared.
0 1960-09-20, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
And life itself has responded by bringing people forward to form a nucleus. Of course, we clearly saw that this would make the work a bit more complex and difficult (it gives me a heavy responsibility, an enormous material work), but from the overall point of view for the Workits indi spensable and even inevitable. And in any case, as we were later able to verify, each one represents simultaneously a possibility and a special difficulty to resolve. I have even said, I believe, that each one here is an impossibility.3
But this way of seeing is too far removed from the state of mind and spiritual education in which X has lived,4 of course, for him to understand. Nor am I in favor of proselytizing (to convince X); it would disturb him quite needlessly. He has not come here for that. He came here for something special, something I wanted which he brought, and I have learnt it. Now its excellent, he is a part of the group in his own fashion, thats all. And in a certain way, his presence here is having a very good effect on a whole category of people who had not been touched but who are now becoming more and more favorably inclined. It was difficult to reach all the traditionalists, for example, the people attached to the old spiritual forms; well, they seem now to have been touched by something.
When Amrita,5 seized with zeal, wanted to make him understand what we were doing here and what Sri Aurobindo had wanted, it almost erupted into an unpleasant situation. So after that, I decided to identify myself with him to see I had never done this, because normally I only do it when I am responsible for someone, in order to truly help someone, and Ive never felt any responsibility in regard to X. So I wanted to see his inner situation, what could and could not be done. That was the day you saw him coming down from our meditation in an ecstatic state, when he told you that all separation between him and me had dropped awayit was to be expected, I anticipated as much!
--
Along the way, I once went down into this physical mind for awhile to try to set it right, to organize it a little (it was done rather quickly, I didnt stay there long). So when I went inside X, I saw It was rather curious, for its the opposite of the method we follow. In his material consciousness (physical and vital), he has trained himself to be impersonal, open, limitless, in communication with all the universal forces. In the physical mind, silence, immobility. But in the speculative mind, the one there at the very top of the head what an organization, phew! All the tradition in its most superb organization, but such a ri-gi-dity! And it had a pretty quality of light, a silver blueVERY pretty. Oh, it was very calm, wonderfully calm and quiet and still. But what a ceiling it had!the outer form resembled rigid cubes. Everything inside was beautiful, but that There was a very large cube right at the top, I recall, bordered by a purple line, which is a line of powerall this was quite luminous. It looked like a pyramid; the smaller cubes formed a kind of base, the lower part of which faded into something cloudy, and then this passed imperceptibly downwards to a more material realm, or in other words, the physical mind. The cube on top was the largest and most luminous, and the least yieldingeven inflexible, you could say. The others were somewhat less defined, and at the bottom it was very blurred. But up at the top!thats where I wanted to go, right to the top.
When I got there, I felt a moment of anguish; my feeling was that nothing could be done. Not for him in particular, but universally, for all those in his categoryit seemed hopeless.6 If that was perfection, then nothing more could be done. This lasted only a second, but it was painful. And then I tried that is, I wanted to bring my consciousness down into the highest cubethis eternal, universal and infinite consciousness which is the first and foremost expression of the manifestation but nothing doing. It was impossible. I tried for several minutes and saw that it was absolutely impossible. So I had to make a curious movement (I couldnt get through it, it was impassable), I had to come back down into the so-called lower consciousness (not lower, actuallyit was vast and impersonal), and from there I came out and regained my equilibrium. This is what gave me that splitting headache I told you about. I came out of there as if I were carrying the weight the weight of an irreducible absoluteit was dreadful. Unfortunately, I was unable to rest afterwards, and as people were waiting to see me, I had to talkwhich is very tiring for me. And this produced a bubbling in my head, like a this dark blue light of power in matter was there, shot through with streaks of white and gold, and all this was flashing back and forth in my head, this way and that way I thought I was going to have a stroke! (Mother laughs)
--
I felt better that night because I was concentrated, but my head was still hurting a little. Then the following day I said to myself, or rather I told him inwardly, Whether you like it or not, I am bringing down whats up above; it is the only way I can feel comfortable! And I told you what happenedas soon as I sat down I was so surprised, for he didnt start doing what he had done the day before; I myself did the same thing, I participated, so to speak, in his will (so as to find out), but with the resolve to remain consciously in contact with the highest consciousness, as always, and to bring it down. And it came in a marvelous flood. He was quite happy, he did not protest! All the pain was gone, there was nothing left, it was perfect. Only towards the end of the meditation did he again want to start doing his little trick of enclosing my physical mind in this construction, but it didnt last I watched all this from above.
And he isnt aware of this, actually, he isnt aware at all. If he were told, he would absolutely deny it for him, its an opening onto Infinity! But in fact, its always like that, we are always shut in, each of useach one is enclosed inside certain limits which he doesnt feel, for should he feel it, he would get out! Oh, I know this feeling very well, for when I was with Sri Aurobindo I was open in this way (gesture towards the heights), and I always had this feeling of Yes, my child He tolerated me the way I was and waited for it to change. Thats truly how things are, you know. And now I feel my limits, which are the limits of the world as it is at present, but beyond that theres an unmanifested immensity, eternity and infinityto which we are closed. It merely seeps init is not the great opening. What I am trying to bring about is the great opening. Only when it has opened wide will there really be the (how should I put it?) the irreducible thing, and all the worlds resistance, all its inertia, even its obscurity will be unable to swallow it up the determining and transforming thing I dont know when it will come.
--
Of course not! A disciplined work, which to us seems important, is to him basically an ignorance. What is true to such a person is a contemplative, ecstatic lifealong with a sentiment of compassion and charity, so that nonetheless you spend a bit of your time helping out the poor brutes! But the true thing is ecstatic contemplation. As for those who are advanced and yet still attach some importance to workits irrational!
The only way I can make him understand that I have work to do is to tell him, Mother asked me to do it; then he keeps quiet.
--
Oh, I had tried for years I had tried to catch silence in my head I never succeeded. I could detach myself from it, but it would keep on turning But at that moment, all the mental constructions, all the mental, speculative structures none of it remaineda big hole.
And such a peaceful, such a luminous hole!
Afterwards, I kept very still so as not to disturb it. I didnt speak, above all I refrained from thinking and held it, held it tight against me I said to myself, make it last, make it last, make it last
Later on, I heard Sri Aurobindo saying that there were two people here to whom he had done this and as soon as there was silence, they panicked: My God, Ive gone stupid!! And they threw it all overboard by starting to think again.
--
I didnt speak of it to anyone, but it caused me some concern. And just the next day the machine broke down! When I was informed, immediately I thought It was then repaired, and again it broke downthree times. Then the following night, just before ten oclock I should mention that during the day I had thought, But why not attract these forces to our side, take them and satisfy them, give them some peace and joy and use them? I thought about it, concentrated a little, but then I didnt bother any further. At ten oclock that evening, they came upon mein a flood! They kept coming and coming. And I was busy with them the whole time. They were not ugly (not so luminous either! ), they were wholesome, straightforwardhonest forces. So I worked on them. This began exactly at 9:30, and for one hour I was busy working. After an hour, Id had enough: Listen, this is quite fine, youre very nice, but I cant spend all my time like this! We shall see what to do later for it absorbed my whole consciousness. They kept coming and coming (you understand what that means to a body?!). So at 10:30 I told them, Listen, my little ones, be quiet now, thats enough for today At 10:30, the machine broke down!
I found out, of course, because they log everything at the factory, so when they came to inform me of the breakdown the next morning, I asked them what time it had happenedexactly 10:30.
0 1960-10-02a, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Before going to bed, sometimes I say to myself, I will do what is necessary to spend my night in these great currents of force(because there is a way to do it). And then I think, Oh, what an egotist you are, my girl! So sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesntwhen theres something important to do, it doesnt happen. But all I have to do is concentrate in a certain way before going to sleep to spend my whole night in these very far from here, very far I cant say very far from the earth, for surely its in an intermediate zone between the forces from above and the earths atmosphere. Thats what it mainly is, in any case. Its a great universal current as well, but mainly its what descends and comes onto the earth, and it is permeating the earths atmosphere all the time, all the time, and it comes with this wide, overall visionit makes for wonderful nights I no longer bother about people at allat least not as such, but in a more impersonal way.
(silence)
--
This, too, Sri Aurobindo had explained to me. I used to tell him, Yes, you always speak of lifes delight, life for the sake of its delight. But as soon as I had the notion, as soon as I was put in the presence of the Supreme, it was: For Youexclusively what You want. You are the sole, the unique and exclusive reason for being. And that has remained, and this movement is so strong that even when you see, now I have ecstasy and ananda in abundanceeverything comes, everything. But even then, even when that is there, something in me always turns towards the Supreme and says, Does this TRULY serve You? Is it what You expect of me, what You want from me?
This has protected me from all seeking for pleasure in life. It was a wonderful protection, because pleasure always seemed so futile to meyes, futile; for the sake of your personal satisfaction. Later, I even understood how foolish it is, for you can never be satisfiedthough when youre small you dont yet know that. I never liked it: But is it really useful, does it serve some purpose? And I still have this attitude in regard to my nights. I have this widening of the consciousness, this impersonalization, this wonderful joy of being above all that. But at the same time I also have, Im here in this body, on earth, to do something I mustnt forget it. And this is what I have to do. But probably Im wrong!
0 1960-10-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I also read On the Veda where Sri Aurobindo speaks of the difference between the modern mind and the ancient mind; and its quite obvious, e specially from the linguistic point of view. Sanskrit was certainly much more fluid, a better instrument for a more global, more comprehensive light, a light containing more things within itself.
In these modern languages, its as if things are passed through a sieve and broken up into separate little bits, so then you have all the work of putting them back together. And something is always lost.
0 1960-10-11, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
The day before yesterday, I spent the whole night looking on. I had read the passage by Sri Aurobindo in The Synthesis on supramental time (wherein past, present and future coexist in a global consciousness). While youre in it, its marvelous! You understand things perfectly. But when youre not in it Above all, theres this problem of how to keep the force of ones aspiration, the power of progress, this power which seems so inevitableso inevitable if existence (lets simply take terrestrial existence) is to mean anything and its presence to be justified. (This ascending movement towards a progressive better that will be eternally better)How is this to be kept when you have the total vision this vision in which everything coexists. At that moment, the other becomes something like a game, an amusement, if you will. (Not everyone finds it amusing!) And when you contain all that, why allow yourself the pleasure of succession? Is this pleasure of succession, of seeing things one after the other, equal to this intensity of the will for progress? Words are foolish!
The effort to see and to understand this gripped me all night. And when I woke up this morning, I thanked the Lord; I said to Him, Obviously, if You were to keep me totally in that consciousness, I could no longer I could no longer do my work! How could I do my work? For I can only say something to people when I feel it or see it, when I see that its what must be said, but if I am simultaneously in a consciousness in which Im aware of everything that has led to that situation, everything that is going to happen, everything Im going to say, everything the others going to feel then how could I do it!
--
The mental silence Sri Aurobindo gave you in 1914, about which you were speaking the other day
It has never left. I have always kept it. Like a smooth white surface turned upwards. And at any moment at all You see, we speak like a machine, but there nothing moves; at any moment at all it can turn towards the heights. Its ALWAYS turned like that, but we can become aware of it being like that. Then, if we listen, we can hear what comes from above. My active consciousness, which was here (Mother points to her forehead), has settled above, and it has never again moved from there.
I told this to Xor rather had someone tell himto see his reaction. And I realized that he did not understand in the least! Once Amrita asked him how he himself SAW and KNEW things. So he tried to explain; he told Amrita that he had to pull his consciousness upwards by a gradual effort, to go beyond the heart, beyond the throat center to pull it right up here (the top of the head), and once there, youre divine, you know! All of a sudden, I understood that when I said it was there, above the head, it must have seemed absolutely impossible to him! For him, its the crown of the head1 (what they call the thousand-petalled lotus), just at the top of the head, whereas in my experience it opens, it rises and you go above, and then you settle there For a number of years it even changed my [physical] visionit was as if I were looking at things from above. It returns from time to time, too, as if suddenly I were seeing from above instead of from here, at eye level.
--
The tantrics recognize seven chakras,2 I believe. Theon said he knew of more, specifically two below the body and three above. That is my experience as well I know of twelve chakras. And really, the contact with the Divine Consciousness is there (Mother motions above the head), not here (at the top of the head). One must surge up above.
Doing japa seems to exert a pressure on my physical consciousness, which goes on turning! How can I silence it? As soon as my concentration is not absolute, the physical mind starts upit grabs at anything, anything at all, any word, fact or event that comes along, and it starts turning, turning. If you stop it, if you put some pressure on it, then it springs back up two minutes later And there is no inner consent at all. It chews on words, it chews on ideas or feelingsinterminably. What should I do?
--
I myself use it for a very special reason, because You see, I invoke (the words are a bit strange) the Lord of Tomorrow. Not the unmanifest Lord, but the Lord as he will manifest tomorrow, or in Sri Aurobindos words, the divine manifestation in its supramental form.
So the first sound of my mantra is the call to that, the evocation. With the second sound, the bodys cells make their surrender, they give themselves. And with the third sound comes the identification of this [the body] with That, which produces the divine life. These are my three sounds.
And in the beginning, during the first months that I was doing the japa, I felt them I had an almost detailed awareness of these myriads of cells opening to this vibration; the vibration of the first sound is an absolutely special vibration (you see, above, there is the light and all that, but beyond this light there is the original vibration), and this vibration was entering into all the cells and was reproduced in them. It went on for months in this way.
Even now, when something or other is not all right, I have only to reproduce the thing with the same type of concentration as at the beginning for, when I say the japa, the sound and the words together the way the words are understood, the feel of the wordscreate a certain totality. I have to reproduce that. And the way its repeated is evolving all the time. The words are the same, however, the original sound is the same, but its all constantly evolving towards a more comprehensive realization and a more and more complete STATE. So when I want to obtain a certain result, I reproduce a certain type of this state. For example, if something in the body is not functioning right (it cant really be called an illness, but when somethings out of order), or if I wish to do some specific work on a specific person for a specific reason, then I go back to a certain state of repetition of my mantra, which acts directly on the bodys cells. And then the same phenomenon is reproducedexactly the same extraordinary vibration which I recognized when the supramental world descended. It comes in and vibrates like a pulsation in the cells.
But as I told you, now my japa is different. It is as if I were taking the whole world to lift it up; no longer is it a concentration on the body, but rather a taking of the whole world the entire world sometimes in its details, sometimes as a whole, but constantly, constantlyto establish the Contact (with the supramental world).
But what you are speaking of, this sort of sound-mill, this milling of words interminably repeating the same thing, Ive suddenly caught it two or three times (not very often and with long intervals). It has always seemed fantastic to me! How is it stopped? Always in the same way. Its something that takes place outside, actually; its not insideits outside, on the surface, generally somewhere here (Mother indicates the temples), and the method is to draw your consciousness up above, to go there and remain therewhite. Always this whiteness, white like a sheet of paper, flat like a plate of glass. An absolutely flat and white and motionless surfacewhite! White like luminous milk, turned upwards. Not transparent: white.
When this mill starts turningusually it comes from this side (Mother indicates the right side of the head)it takes hold of any sound or any word at all, and then it starts turning, harping on the same thing. This has happened to me a dozen times perhaps, but it doesnt come from me; it comes from outside, from someone or something or some particular work. So then you take itas if you were picking it up with pincers, and then (She lifts it upwards), then I hold it there, in this motionless whiteno need to keep it there for long!
--
(Concerning an old Question and Answer of July 4, 1956 at the Playground in which Mother speaks of her first realization of the Divine, in Paris)
Just as the shooting star flashed past, there sprang from my consciousness: To realize the divine union, for my body! And before twelve months were out, it was done.
--
I am just finishing The Synthesis of Yoga, and what Sri Aurobindo says is exactly what has happened to me throughout my life. And he explains how you can still make mistakes as long as you are not supramentalized. Sri Aurobindo describes all the ways by which images are sent to youand they are not always images or reflections of the truth of things past, present or future; there are also all the images that come from human mental formations and all the various things that want to be considered. It is very, very interesting. And interestingly enough, in these few pages I have found a description of the work I have spent my whole life doing, trying to SIFT out all we see.
I can only be sure of something once a certain type of picture comes, and then the whole world could tell me, But things didnt happen like that; I would reply, Sorry, but I see it. And that type of picture is certain, for I have studied it, I have studied their differences in quality and the texture of the pictures. It is very interesting.
--
Mentally we say, Oh, that cant go. And even I am often inclined to say, Dont publish this, dont speak of something or other. Then I realize how silly it is! There is something that uses everything. Even what may seem useless to usor perhaps worse than useless, harmfulmight be just the thing to give someone the right shock.
Original English.
0 1960-10-22, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
But I wasnt speaking to you with words Everything I see at night has a special color and a special vibration. Its strange, but it looks sketched When I said that to you, for example, there was a kind of patch,1 a white patch, as I recallwhite, exactly like a piece of white papera patch with a pink border around it, then this same blue light I keep telling you aboutdeep blueencircling the rest, as it were. And beyond that, it was swarminga swarming of black and dark gray vibrations in a terrible agitation. When I saw this, I said to you, You must repeat your mantra once in my presence so that I may see if there is anything I can do about this swarming. And then I dont know whyyou objected, and this objection was red, like a tongue of fire lashing out from the white, like this (Mother draws an arabesque). So I said, No, dont worry, it doesnt matter, I wont disturb a thing2! (Mother laughs mischievously)
All this took place in a realm which is constantly active, everywhere; it is like a permanent mental transcription of everything that physically takes place They arent actually thoughts; when I see this, I dont really get the impression of thinking, but its a transcription its the result of thoughts on a certain mental atmosphere which records things.
And I see it all the time now. If someone is speaking or if Im doing something, I see the two things at the same time I see the physical thing, his words or my action, and then this colored, luminous transcription at the same time. The two things are superimposed. For example, when someone speaks to me, it gets translated into some kind of picture, a play of light or color (which is not always so luminous!)this is why most of the time, in fact, I dont even know what has been said to me. I recall the first time this phenomenon happened, I said to myself, Ah, so thats what these modern artists see! Only, as they themselves arent very coherent, what they see is not very coherent either!
And thats how it worksit is translated by patches and moving forms, which is how it gets registered in the earths memory. So when things from this realm enter into peoples active consciousness, they get translated into each ones language and the words and thoughts that each one is accustomed tobecause that doesnt belong to any language or to any idea: it is the exact IMPRINT of what is happening.
--
But if I were to pass that on to them, theyd all think they were becoming rattle-brained, that they were losing their faculties, that their energy was spent. For they only feel energy when they spend it. They are incapable of feeling energy in immobility they have to be stirring about, they have to be spending it. Or else, it has to be pounded into them.
I looked at this problem yesterday; it occupied me for much of the day. And Im sure this head came to give me the solution. For me, its very easyat once three seconds, and everything stops, everything. But the others are stubborn! And yet Im positive, Im positive, I tell them, But relax; why are you on pins and needles like that? Relax! Its the only way to overcome your fatigue. But they immediately start feeling that theyll lose their faculties and become inert the opposite of life!
--
The experience I havewhat I mean by I is this aggregate here (Mother indicates her body), this particular individualityis that the more quiet and calm it is, the more work it can do and the faster the work can be done. What is most disturbing and time consuming are all these agitated vibrations that fall on me (truly speaking, each person who comes throws them on me). And this is what makes the work difficultit stirs up a whirlwind. And you cant do anything in this whirlwind, its impossible. If you try to do something material, your fingers stumble; if you try to do something intellectual, your thoughts get all entangled and you no longer see clearly. Ive had the experience, for example, of wanting to look up a word in the dictionary while this agitation was in the atmosphere, and everything jumps up and down (yet the lighting is the same and Im using the same magnifying glass), I no longer see a thing, its all jumping! I go page by page, but the word simply doesnt exist in the dictionary! Then I remain quiet, I do this (Mother makes a gesture of bringing down the Peace) and after half a minute I open the dictionary: the very spot, and the word leaps out at me! And I see clearly and distinctly. Consequently I have now the indisputable proof that if you want to do anything properly, you must FIRST be calm but not only be calm yourself; you must either isolate yourself or be capable of imposing a calm on this whirlwind of forces that comes upon you all the time from all around.
All the teachers are wanting to quit the schoolweary! Which means theyll begin the year with half the teachers gone. They live in constant tension, they dont know how to relax thats really what it is. They dont know how to act without agitation.
I think thats what this head came to tell me, and its precisely whats wrong in the Ashrameverything here is done in agitation, absolutely everything. So its constantly a comedy of errors; someone speaks, the other doesnt listen and responds all wrong, and nothing gets done. Someone asks one thing, another answers to something elsebah! Its a dreadful con-fu-sion.
(silence)
0 1960-10-25, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
So of course they were terribly worried; they wondered what had happened. I had someone write to X, I concentrated, and four days later the boy (the brothers friend, that is) returned in a lamentable state: white, emaciated, barely able to speak. Then he recounted his story:
On his way to the grandmo thers house, he passed by the station and went in to drink something. While drinking, two persons who were there started playing with some balls in front of him. He WATCHED. But suddenly, he felt very uneasy; he wanted to leave and ran towards an exit that opened onto the tracksit was closed and he could not get out. And these two people were just behind him; suddenly he lost consciousness: I dont know what happened to me after that.
He woke up in a railway station somewhere between Bombay and Poona, and he began telling them that he was hungry (he was with those same two persons). They punched him in the stomach and put a handkerchief over his nosehe again passed out! At Poona, he woke up again (hed lost his appetite by then!), and again they put the handkerchief over his nose. And it went on like thatthey kept on punching him a lot. When he woke up in the country on the outskirts of Poona, four men were around him arguing in a language he didnt know (his language is Gujarati). They were probably speaking in some other language, I dont know which oneit seems they were very dark. He didnt understand, but from various signs they made he could see that they were arguing about whether to kill him or not. Finally, they told him (probably in a language he could understand), Either you join our gang, or well kill you. He grunted in reply so as not to commit himself. The others decided to wait for their chief (thus the chief wasnt there): Well decide after he comes. Then just to make sure, they punched him a few more times in the belly and put the handkerchief over his noseout!
Sometime later (he doesnt know how long, for until he returned he had no sense of time), he woke up in a rather dark, low-roofed house way out in the country; there were five persons now, not four. They were busy eating, so he was careful not to budge. Mainly they were drinking (they have prohibition there). Four of them were already dead drunk. So he got up to have a look. The fifth one, whom he hadnt seen before (he must have been the chief), was not yet totally drunk; when he saw the boy stirring, he let out a fearful growlso the poor boy threw himself flat in the corner and lay stillhe waited. After awhile, the fifth one (after downing another bottle) was also dead drunk. So now that he saw them all fast asleep, he got up very cautiously and he said he ran for an hour and a half! A boy pummelled as he had been, who hadnt eaten for four days! I think thats a miracle.
--
Finally, they had him work as a waiter in a small caf in Ahmedabad, near the station. One day it even happened that his brother and his brothers friend stopped by (he vaguely recalls having seen them) but he was incapable of speaking to them or of getting them to recognize him. Another time, he tried to leave and headed towards the station, but after awhile he could no longer walk, he was suddenly stopped by something (he doesnt know what), and he had to go back. Thats how it wasquite a unique state. But one day, a friend of the brother stopped at this caf to drink something, and this same boy served him. He had changed a lot, but the other fellow recognized him all the same and asked, Whats your name? He saw that the boy seemed dazed and couldnt answer. So he didnt say anything but ran immediately to where the elder brother lived; they came back, took the boy into a corner and doused his face with seltzer water. It seems that then he started becoming more alive. Then they led him away and informed the police.
I dont have any more details yet
--
I found out the details: this boy had to go to the station, but on his way, he went into a shoe store just next to the station to buy a pair of sandals. As he entered, he saw a man there choosing a pair of womens shoes for himself! This seemed strange to him: Whats this man doing buying and he WATCHEDsuddenly, nothing more. He lost consciousness and no longer knew what happened to him. And thats how the story begana man selecting womens shoes in a shop! He must do strange thingsprobably intentionallyto attract peoples attention. Naturally, out of curiosity, the boy started watching, and that was thatall of a sudden, blank, nothing more! And long afterwards he found himself far away in a train with this man. Hes here now with his mother they came to thank me. Its he who gave me the details. Hes a nice boy, but all this has left him with some anxiety, e specially when he speaks of it. Hes trying to forget. He told me hed like to join the army and asked my permission. The boy feels a need for force and he has the idea that to be part of such a force would be good for him. (Of course, he didnt tell me all this, hes not that conscious. But thats what he feels the need to be supported by an organization of force.) So I encouraged him. I told him it was a good idea. His mother wasnt very happy! She feared he was leaping from the frying pan into the fire!
Another curious detail is that after having taken away all his appetite and having put him in the caf as a waiter, they told him, Now you must eat, so he tried to eat, and for four days he vomited up everything he put init was completely black! After that, he was able to start eating a little. Its a fantastic story!
--
I had X informed. But I didnt tell him my difficulty (this mantra they threw on me to kill me), I didnt speak of that at all. For he had insisted, from the beginning he had said, Mother must see to it, only Mothers grace can save them. And I understood their attack came just at the time of Durga Puja, so I understood that Durga had to intervene. So thats the story.
Things are not going so well for X either; everywhere its grating. It was probably very important I am hopeful that it can bring some change.
--
(No sooner had Mother finished telling this story than, by a curious coincidence, someone brought her a portrait drawn by P.K., one of the Ashram artists. Several days earlier, at about two in the morning during an uncommonly violent lightning storm, P.K. had suddenly SEEN amidst the flashes of lightning in the sky a rather terrible, demoniacal head in front of his very eyes. Having nothing else available, he hastily drew his vision in chalk on a schoolchilds slate, which is the portrait Mother speaks of here:)
Well, well! So P.K. is clairvoyant! Its him, for surethis is the being behind those people. Thats why they had so much power. And he came here because of tha the was furious. Quite a demon!
--
Only, there is all that comes from outside thats what is most dangerous. Constantly, constantlywhen you eat, you catch it oh, what a mass of vibrations! The vibrations of the thing you eat when it was living (they always remain), the vibrations of the person who cooked it, vibrations of All the time, all the time, they never stopyou breathe, they enter. Of course, when you start talking to someone or mixing with people, then you become a bit more conscious of what is coming, but even just sitting still, uninvolved with othersit comes! There is an almost total interdependenceisolation is an illusion. By reinforcing your own atmosphere (Mother gestures, as if building a wall around her), you can hold these things off TO A CERTAIN EXTENT, but simply this effort to keep them at a distance creates (Im thinking in English and speaking in French) disturbances.8 Anyway, now all this has been SEEN.
But I know in an absolute way that once this whole mass of the physical mind is mastered and the Brahmic consciousness is brought into it in a continuous way, you CAN you become the MASTER of your health.
--
In occult language, a 'formation' is a concentration of power towards a specific end. In this case, the tantric guru's formation to save the nephew.
The yearly ritual worship in honor of Durga, the universal Mother.
0 1960-10-30, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
But I found this interesting, so I began looking, and I LIVED the scene, all kinds of scenes of initiation, worship, etc., for quite some time. When that lifted, a light much stronger than the last time (during the last meditation) came down, in a wonderful silence. (I might add that the first thing I did, at the beginning, was to try to establish a silence around you, to insulate you from other things so as to keep your mind quiet; it kept jumping a little, but once this light came down ) And it came down with a very hieratic quality and (how can I put this?) Egyptian in charactervery occult, very occult, very, very distinct, very specific, like this (gesture indicating a block of silence descending).
And then there came a long moment of absolutely motionless contemplation with something that now escapes meit may come back.
--
According to tradition, Anubis, the jackal-headed god, helped Isis to rebuild the body of her spouse, Osiris, who had been killed and dismembered by his brother Set. Osiris was the first god to rule over men. Owing to certain special rites, Isis, helped by Anubis, succeeded in bringing him back to life. So we are not very far from the legend of Savitri and Satyavan.
L'Orpailleur, which had just been published. The man's description, as a matter of fact, bears a striking resemblance to the publisher.
0 1960-11-05, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I have so totally forgotten a whole world of incidents and events that when someone reminds me of something (the people around me have lived with me, so theyve seen things and remember them), I get the feeling that they are speaking of someone or something elseit no longer has any connection with me at all. And its the same with everything, whether near or far, which has brought to my consciousness whatever it had to bring, lost its utility anddisappeared. Only, these memories probably still have some utility for the others, so they remain. But for me its completely erased, absolutely, as if it had never been.
Its the only way to forget.
0 1960-11-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
The mistake we make is to remain there too long, for if you spend your whole life in that, well, youll probably need many more lifetimes. But once the chance to get out of it comes, you can look at it with a smile and say, Yes, its really a sort of love for fiction!people love fiction, they want fiction, they need fiction! Otherwise its boring and all much too flat.
All this came to me yesterday. I kept Z with me for more than half an hour, nearly 45 minutes. He told me some very interesting things. What he said was quite good and I encouraged him a great dealsome action on the right lines which will be quite useful, and then a book unfortunately mixed with an influence from that artificial world (but actually, even that can be used as a link to attract people). He must have spoken to you about this. He wants to write a kind of dialogue to introduce Sri Aurobindos ideasits a good idealike the conversations in Les Hommes de Bonne Volont by Jules Romain. He wants to do it, and I told him it was an excellent idea. And not only one typehe should take all types of people who for the moment are closed to this vision of life, from the Catholic, the fervent believer, right to the utmost materialist, men of science, etc. It could be very interesting.
--
And, even with Sri Aurobindo, even with him I didnt speak of these things for I wouldnt waste his time, and I found it quite useless to burden him with all this. I would tell him I always described my visions and experiences at night I always recounted that to him. And he would remember (I myself would forget; the next day, the whole thing would be gone), he would remember; then sometimes, long afterwards, even years afterwards, he would say, Ah, yes! You had seen that back then. He had a wonderful memory. While myself, I would already have forgotten. But those were the only things I told him, and even then only when I saw that it had a very sure, very superior quality. I didnt bother him with a whole jumble of words. But otherwise . even Nolini,4 who understands well I never, never felt even the (its not the need) not even the POSSIBILITY.
I dont want to tell you this too precisely, to expand on it, for these things cannot be explained. I want you tonot know nor think it, but feel it suddenly, like a little electric shock within that leaps forth.
0 1960-11-12, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
speaking of which, I looked at Ts most recent questions on the Aphorisms again. All these children havent the least sense of humor, so Sri Aurobindos paradoxes throw them into a kind of despair! The last aphorism went something like this: When I could read a wearisome book from one end to the other with pleasure, then I knew I had conquered my mind.2 So T asked me How can you read a wearisome book with pleasure?!! I had to explain it to her. And on top of that, I have to take on a rather serious tone, for were I to reply in the same ironic fashion, they would be totally drowned! It throws them into a terrible confusion!
Its a lack of plasticity in the mind, and they are bound by the expression of things; for them, words are rigid. Sri Aurobindo explained it so well in The Secret of the Veda; he shows how language evolves and how, before, it was very supple and evocative. For example, one could at once think of a river and of inspiration. Sri Aurobindo also gives the example of a sailboat and the forward march of life. And he says that for those of the Vedic age it was quite natural, the two could go together, superimposed; it was merely a way of looking at the same thing from two sides, whereas now, when a word is said, we think only of this word all by itself, and to get a clear picture we need a whole literary or poetic imagery (with explanations to boot!). Thats exactly the case with these children; theyre at a stage where everything is rigid. Such is the product of modern education. It even extracts the subtlest nuance between two words and FIXES it: And above all, dont make any mistake, dont use this word for that word, for otherwise your writings no good. But its just the opposite.
--
But its explained very well in Savitri! All these things have their laws and their conventions (and truly speaking, a really FORMIDABLE power is needed to change anything of their rights, for they have rightswhat they call laws) Sri Aurobindo explains this very well when Savitri, following Satyavan into death, argues with the god of Death.3 Its the Law, and who has the right to change the Law? he says. And then comes this wonderful passage at the end where she replies, My God can change it. And my God is a God of Love. Oh, how magnificent!
And by force of repeating this to him, he yields She replies in this way to EVERYTHING.
--
But three times now, Ive really felt that I was on the verge of falling apart. The first time it brought a fever, a fever so I dont know, as if I had at least 115!I was roasting from head to toe; everything became red hot, and then it was over. That was the day when suddenlysuddenly I was You see, I had said to myself, All right, you must be peaceful, lets see what happens, so then I brought down the Peace, and immediately I was able to pass into a second of unconsciousness and I woke up in the subtle physical, in Sri Aurobindos abode.4 There he was. And then I spent some time with him, explaining the problem.
But that was really an experience, a decisive experience (it was many months ago, perhaps more than a year ago).
0 1960-11-15, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
So I understood that this must correspond to a certain realm of experience; I understood all those who say, If it has to be like this, if it can never be otherwise, then (this opposition, this abyss between a TRUE life, a TRUE consciousness, a TRUE activity, something living, powerful, fulfilling and life as it now is), if there must always be this difference between the physical expression as it is or as it can be in the present circumstances, and the true life, then For if despite everythingdespite this tremendous distance Ive covered in my life (these memories go back more than sixty years) and all the evolutionary effort upwards I have made since that time IN MATTER (Im not speaking of leaving Matter behind, but IN MATTER, IN action)if that doesnt further reduce this gap between the true consciousness and the possible material realization, then I understand I understand why people say, Its hopeless. (Of course, this hopeless is meaningless to me.)
But I (how can I put this?) I lived their experience, I lived it; and even events which seem quite extraordinary when seen from afar, which is the way they appear to most people, even historical things which have furthered the earths transformation and its upheavals the crucial events, the great works, you might sayare woven from the SAME fabric, they are the SAME thing! When you look at all this from afar, on the whole it can make an impression, but the life of each minute, of each hour, of each second is woven from this SAME fabric, drab, dull, insipid, WITHOUT ANY TRUE LIFEa mere reflection of life, an illusion of lifepowerless, void of any light or anything that resembles joy in the least. Oh! if it has always to remain like that, then we dont want any of it.
--
It all began the day I received the news of Zs arrival. All right, I thought, heres a chunk of life sent back to me for clarifying. I must work on it. But it didnt stop there Its strange how all this past had been swept clean I could no longer remember dates, I couldnt even remember when Z had been here before, I no longer knew what had happened, it had all been wiped cleanwhich means that it had all been pushed down into the subconscient. I didnt even know how I used to speak to him when I saw him, nothing, it was all gone. All that had remained alive were one or two movements or facts which were clearly connected to the psychic life, the psychic consciousness but just one or two or three such memories; all the rest was gone.
So a whole slice of my life came back, but it didnt stop there! It keeps extending back further and further, and memories keep on coming, things that go back sixty years now, even beyond, seventy, seventy-five yearsthey are all coming back. And so it all has to be put in order.
--
I had seen this earlier from another angle. In the beginning, when I started having the consciousness of immortality and when I brought together this true consciousness of immortality and the human conception of it (which is entirely different), I saw so clearly that when a human (even quite an ordinary human, one who is not a collectivity in himselfas is a writer, for example, or a philosopher or statesman) projects himself through his imagination into what he calls immortality (meaning an indefinite duration of time) he doesnt project himself alone but rather, inevitably and always, what is projected along with himself is a whole agglomeration, a collectivity or totality of things which represent the life and the consciousness of his present existence. And then I made the following experiment on a number of people; I said to them, Excuse me, but lets say that through a special discipline or a special grace your life were to continue indefinitely. What you would most likely extend into this indefinite future are the circumstances of your life, this formation you have built around yourself that is made up of people, relationships, activities, a whole collection of more or less living or inert things.
But that CANNOT be extended as it is, for everything is constantly changing! And to be immortal, you have to follow this perpetual change; otherwise, what will naturally happen is what now happensone day you will die because you can no longer follow the change. But if you can follow it, then all this will fall from you! Understand that what will survive in you is something you dont know very well, but its the only thing that can survive and all the rest will keep falling off all the time Do you still want to be immortal?Not one in ten said yes! Once you are able to make them feel the thing concretely, they tell you, Oh no! Oh no! Since everything else is changing, the body might as well change too! What difference would it make! But what remains is THAT; THAT is what you must truly hold on to but then you must BE THAT, not this whole agglomeration. What you now call you is not THAT, its a whole collection of things..
0 1960-11-26, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Your force cured me in one hour in a spectacular way. I would understand if you had merely cured my flu, for thats something more general, and with a good general vibration it can be removed; but the force acted with an astonishing precision and accuracy: first it wiped out my flu, then it touched a toothache thats been hurting for the last three days, and in five minutes that was gone. Finally, I had a pulled ligament which for three or four years now has periodically given me pain (a thigh ligament where it joins the pelvis, to be precise) and this last week it was hurting so much that I found it difficult to sit cross-legged for meditation. And then I felt the force come and touch just there, exactly at this point, and the pain vanished. And yet the problem was of an organic nature, not some general illness!
(Mother remains silent a moment, then says:)
--
It was still there when I went down for Darshan, and in spite of all my will to be friendly and pleasant, I was like a rock, looking at that I cant speak of it now, for its the key to SOMETHING VERY GREAT.
(silence)
--
Dont write all this down, erase it, because Ill speak of it lateronce its over, when Ive reached the end. I dont want it to fall into anyones hands by accident. And for you, keep it in your consciousness.
(silence)
--
And then, at the same time, some rather interesting things are happening. Imagine, X is starting to understand certain things that is, in his own way he is discovering the progress I am making; hes discovering it as a received teaching (through subtle channels). He wrote a letter to Amrita two or three days ago in which he translates in his own language, with his own words and his own way of speaking, exactly my most recent experiencesthings that I have conquered in a general way.
This interests me, for these things do not at all enter through the mind (he doesnt receive a thing there, hes closed there). So in his letter he says that this thing or that is necessary (he describes it in his own words), and he adds, This is why we must be so grateful to have among us the the great Mother7 (as he puts it), the great Mother who knows these things.Good! I said to myself. (It had to do with something specific concerning the capacity for discrimination in the outside world, the different qualities and different functions of different beings, all of which depends on ones inner construction, as it were.) So I see that even this, even these physical experiences, is received (and yet I hadnt tried, I had never tried to make him receive it); it merely works like this, you see (gesture of a widespread diffusion), and the experience is veryhow should I say?drastic, with a kind of (power of radiation). Imperative.
Original English.
0 1960-12-17, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Nature is a marvelous inventoreverything She does is beautiful. I dont believe that man has succeeded in producing anything so perfect. Later, its true, some new species were developed by him, but nevertheless Nature still remains the origin.
Yes, ugliness seems to begin with man.
--
Even stones are beautiful; they are always beautiful in one way or another. When life appeared, there were some forms that were a little difficult, but not to that extent, not like certain human mental creations. Of course, there may have been some animal species which were rather but they were more monstrous than actually ugly. And most probably, it only seems like that to our consciousness. But the mind And its the same for all these ideas of sin, of wrong, of all thatits a falsehood. But it was man who invented falsehood, wasnt it? The mind invented falsehood: to deceive! to deceive! And its a curious fact that animals domesticated by man have also learned to lie!
The curve
--
This realm that Im now investigating, oh! I spend whole nights visiting certain places, and there I meet people I know here materially [in the Ashram]. So many are PERFECTLY satisfied with their their infirmities, their incapacities, their ugliness, their powerlessness.
And they protest when you want them to change!
--
To have the exact curve or the REAL history, wed have to note down everything at each minute, for its a CONSTANT work thats taking place. You see, the outer activities are becoming almost automatic, whereas this goes on behind Im speaking, yet at the same time this is going on behind.
Its a sort of oscillationreally, its so interestingbetween two extremes, one of which is the all-powerfulness and capital or primordial importance of the Physical, and the other its utter unreality.
--
It goes back and forth between the two all the timea kind of curve like an electric arc between them; it goes up, it goes down, it falls and then climbs back up. In a flash comes the clear vision that the universal realization will be achieved along with the perfection of the material, TERRESTRIAL world. (I say terrestrial, for the earth is still something unique; the rest of the universe is differentso this blown up speck of dust becomes of capital importance!) Then, at another moment, eternity for which all the universes are simply the expression of a second, and in which all this is a sort ofnot even an interesting game, but rather a breathing in and out, in and out And at such a moment, all the importance we give to material things seems so fantastically idiotic! And it goes in and out In this state, everything is obvious and indisputable. And in the other state, everything is obvious and indisputable. But between the two there is EVERY combination and every possibility.
(silence)
--
The speck of dust, there, which you sweep away, or ecstatic contemplationits ALL THE SAME.
***
0 1960-12-20, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
For a while, there was a Muslim girl close to me (not a believer, but her origins were Muslim; in other words, she wasnt at all Christian) who had a special fondness for Santa Claus! She had seen pictures of him, read some books, etc. Then one year while she was here, she got it into her head that Santa Claus had to bring me something. He has to bring you something for Christmas, she told me.
Try, I replied.
I dont know what all she did, but she prayed to him to bring me money. She fixed a certain sum. And on Christmas Eve, exactly this sum was given to me! And it was a large sum, several thousand rupees. Exactly the amount she had specified. And it came on that very day in quite an unexpected way.
I found it very interesting.
--
(Soon afterwards, concerning the last conversation of December 17a speck of dust which you sweep away, or ecstatic contemplation, Its all the same)
If I could only note all this down Its been so interesting all morning, right from the starton the balcony, then upstairs while walking for my japa! And it was on this same theme (experience of the speck of dust) This habit people have (e specially in India, but more or less everywhere among those who have a religious nature), this habit of doing all things religious with re spect and compunction and no mixing of things, above all there should be no mixing; in some circumstances, at certain times, you MUST NOT think of God, for then it would be a kind of blasphemy.
Theres the religious attitude, and then theres ordinary life where people do thingsworking, living, eating, enjoying life; they regard these as the essentials, and as for the rest, well, when theres time they think about it. But what Sri Aurobindo brought down, precisely I remember at Tlemcen, Theon used to say that there was a whole world of things, such as eating, for example, or taking care of your body, that should be done automatically, without giving it any importanceits not the time to think of things divine.(!) Thats what he preached. So you have the religious attitude of all the religious types, and then ordinary life I found both of them equally unsatisfactory. Then I came here and told Sri Aurobindo my feeling; I said that if someone is truly in union with the Divine, it CANNOT change no matter what he does (the quality of what youre doing may change, but the union cant change no matter what youre doing). And when he said that this was the truth, I felt a relief. And that feeling has stayed with me all through my life.
0 1961-01-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And I am how to put it? Nothing we say is ever absolutely true, but, to stretch it a bit, while I am not worried, not perturbed, not discouraged, I feel I cant get anything done; I spend all my time, all my time, seeing people, receiving and answering lettersdoing nothing. I havent touched my translation1 for over a week. T. sent me her notebook with questions and I had it for two weeks before I found time to answer.2 Nothing is ready for the Bulletin except what you have done.
Its a pity you have no time to do your work.
--
The notebook in which a young woman disciple asked questions on Sri Aurobindo's Thoughts and Aphorisms. Later, Mother preferred answering verbally Satprem's questions on the aphorisms. This allowed her to speak of her experiences freely without the restrictions imposed by a written reply. These 'Commentaries on the Aphorisms' were later partially published in the Bulletin under the title Propos. Here they are republished chronologically in their unabridged form.
Where Sri Aurobindo's body lies, in the Ashram courtyard.
0 1961-01-10, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It is quite elementary: never take notice of evil, never speak of the evil present in others, never perpetuate the vibrations of evil by observation, criticism or giving undue attention to the evil deed. This is what Buddha taught: each time you mention an evil you help spread it.
This skirts the issue.
--
Then why dont you just speak? T or Z could come and listen to youthey would be overjoyed!
Oh no, my child, you dont see at all! To speak I must have a receptive atmosphere! The idea of talking aloud all alone in my room would never occur to me. Sound doesnt come: what comes is a direct transmission and if I manage to connect it to my hand and write its transmitted, although it always gets somewhat pulled down. I can be doing anything at all, it doesnt matter, but it must be something that doesnt monopolize my attention, like brushing my hair in the morning for example: then it comes directly and nothing stops it! But I would never think of uttering a word! That only happens when I find some receptivity in front of me, something I can use.
What I say to people depends entirely upon their inner state. Thats precisely why I had such enormous difficulty at the Playground3the atmosphere was so mixed! It was a STRUGGLE to find someone receptive so I could speak. And if Im in the presence of people who understand nothing, I cant say a word. On the other hand, some people come prepared to receive and then suddenly it all comes but usually theres no tape-recorder!
I have replied endlessly, I have given all sorts of explanations about the organization of the School, about World Union,4 about the true way to organize industry (its true functioning)so many things! If all that were compiled we could publish brochures! Sometimes Ive spoken three-quarters of an hour non-stop to people who listened with delight and were receptive but quite incapable of making a written report of it. At times like that we could have used one of your machines! But when things are organized in advance, it may well be that nothing comes out at allmentalizing stops the flow. If I is in front of me, I cant say anything to her because she doesnt understand. I already have trouble writing to herwhat I have to say is always brought down a bit; but if she were here in the room and I had to speak to her, nothing at all would come out!
No, when we feel like it and when she doesnt raise any question about an aphorismat least not an impossible questionwell do this: I will speak here, its much easier for me. This way things come that I havent seen before; while when I write like that, they are usually things Ive seen on other occasions (not that I try to recall them, they are there and simply come back). But when theres a new contact, something new always comes.
***
(A little later, Mother made the following remark concerning the Agenda of December 13, 1960, where she speaks of the physical Minds. disbelief and defeatist reactions as intimately linked to the bodys illnesses.)
This defeatist Mind is still functioning and in full swing!
0 1961-01-12, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In another aphorism, Sri Aurobindo says (I no longer recall his exact words) that sin is simply something no longer in its place. In this perpetual Becoming nothing is ever reproduced and some things disappear, so to speak, into the past; and when its time for them to disappear, they seemto our very limited consciousness evil and repulsive: we revolt against them because their time is past.
But if we had the vision of the whole, if we were able to contain past, present and future simultaneously (as it is somewhere up above), then we would see how relative these things are and that its mainly the progressing evolutionary Force which gives us this will to reject; yet when these things still had their place, they were quite tolerable. However, to have this experience in a practical sense is impossible unless we have a total vision the vision that is the Supremes alone! Therefore, one must first identify with the Supreme, and then, keeping this identification, one can return to a consciousness sufficiently externalized to see things as they really are. But thats the principle, and in so far as we are able to realize it, we reach a state of consciousness where we can look at all things with the smile of a complete certainty that everything is exactly as it should be.
--
In this aphorism, Sri Aurobindo speaks of those who hate sinners that one mustnt hate sinners.
Its the same problem seen from another angle, but the solution is the same.
--
Consider the case of a woman with many friends, and these friends are very fond of her for her special capacities, her pleasant company, and because they feel they can always learn something from her. Then all of a sudden, through a quirk of circumstances, she finds herself socially ostracizedbecause she may have gone off with another man, or may be living with someone out of wedlockall those social mores with no value in themselves. And all her friends (I dont speak of those who truly love her), all her social friends who welcomed her, who smiled so warmly when passing her on the street, suddenly look the other way and march by without a glance. This has happened right here in the Ashram! I wont give the details, but it has happened several times when something conflicted with accepted social norms: the people who had shown so much affection, so much kindness oh! Sometimes they even said, Shes a lost woman!
I must say that when this happens here. In the world at large it seems quite normal, but when this happens here it always gives me a bit of a shock, in the sense that I say to myself, So theyre still at that level!
0 1961-01-19, #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.
***
0 1961-01-22, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mother had been unwell the past few days. She speaks here of the causes behind the physical disorder.)
Ah! How are you?
--
Later, Mother specified: 'These are elements in the material substance entirely possessed by adverse forces and opposed to the transformation.'
On the previous day, January 21, Saraswati Puja, Mother had given a message and photos to each disciple.
0 1961-01-24, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It lasted the remainder of the night and all day long I had considerable trouble containing an overwhelming power that spontaneously created reactions utterly disproportionate to a human body and made me speak in a way that. When something was not going well: wham! Such an instantaneous and strong reply that it looked like anger. And I found it difficult to control the movementit had happened already in the morning and it very nearly happened again in the afternoon. That last attack has weakened me terribly! I told myself, I dont have the strength to contain this Power; its difficult to remain calm and controlled. That was my first thought, so I insisted upon calm.
Then yesterday afternoon, when I went upstairs to walk,1 a couple of things occurrednot personal, but of a general natureconcerning, for instance, certain old-fashioned conventions having to do with women and their particular nature (not psychological, physical)old ideas like that which had always seemed utterly stupid to me suddenly provoked a kind of reprobation completely out of proportion to the fact itself. Then one or two other things2 happened in regard to certain people, certain circumstances (nothing to do with me personally: it came from here and there). Then suddenly, I saw a Force coming (coming, well, manifesting) which was the same as that thing I had felt within me but even bigger; it began whirling upon the earth and within circumstances oh, like a cyclone of compact power moving forward with the intention of changing all this! It had to change. At all costs, it must change!
--
When I got up today, I was going over all this to myself, and my first instinct was not to speak of it, to observe and see what would happen; but then I received a distinct and precise Command to tell it to you this morning. The experience had to be noted down just as it occurred, recorded in its exact form.
In the body now, there is a very clear not only a certitude, but a feeling that a certain omnipotence is not far away, and that very soon when it sees (it sees it! There is only one It in this whole affair, which is neither he nor she nor), when it sees that something must be, it automatically will be.
0 1961-01-27, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I was perfectly conscious (now when I say I, it refers to my body, I am not speaking of the whole higher consciousness), the body was perfectly conscious of its suffering, the reason for its suffering, the cause of its suffering, everything and it did not suffer. You understand, the two perceptions were there together: the body saw the disorder, saw the suffering just as it would have felt it a few weeks earlier, it saw all that (saw, knew I dont know how to express itit was conscious, it was aware) and it did not suffer. The two awarenesses were absolutely simultaneous.
There is now a kind of VERY PRECISE knowledge of the whole inner mechanism for all thingsand what has to be done materially. This is developing, as a flower blossoms: you see one petal open and then another and then another; it is proceeding like that, slowly, taking its time. Its the same process for the Power.
To illustrate this, an interesting thing came upyesterday, I think. (All these experiences come to show me the difference, as if to give proof of the change.) Someone had had a dream about me whi spered to him by the adverse forces for specific reasons (I wont go into the details). He was much affected by it, so he wrote down the dream and gave it to me. I was carrying his letter along with all the others, as I usually do, but suddenly I knew I had to read it right away: I read it. Then I saw the whole thing with such clarity, precision, accuracy: how it had come about, how the dream had been produced, its effect the whole functioning of all the forces. As I read along and it went on unfolding, I did what was necessary for him (he was present at the time) in order to undo what the adverse forces had done. Then at the end, when I had finished, said everything, explained what it was all about and what had to be done, something SO CATEGORICAL came into me (I cannot verbalize this kind of experience, it is what I call the difference in power: something categorical). I took the letter, uttered a few words (which I wont repeat) and said, You see, its like this: so much for that, and I ripped the letter a first time. Then, thats for that, I tore it a second time and so on. I ripped it up five times and the fifth time I saw that their power was destroyed.
I have done these things beforeits a knowledge I already hadand it always had its effect when I did them; its not that I am passing from powerlessness to power, not at all. But its this kind of yes, something definite, absolutea kind of absolute in vision, in knowledge, in action and ABOVE ALL in powera kind of absolute that doesnt need to conquer obstacles and resistances, but ANNULS the resistance automatically. Then I saw that something had truly changed.
--
Well, yesterday I saw R. He was asking me questions about his work and particularly about the knowledge of languages (hes a scholar, you know, and very familiar with the old traditions). This put me in contact with that whole world and I began speaking to him a little about what I had already said to you concerning my experience with the Vedas. And all at once, in the same [absolute] way as I told you, when I entered into contact with that world a whole domain seemed to open up, a whole field of knowledge from the standpoint of languages, of the Word, of the essential Vibration, that vibration which would be able to reproduce the supramental consciousness. It all came, so clear, so clear, luminous, indisputable but unfortunately there was no tape recorder!
It was about the Word, the primal sound. Sri Aurobindo speaks of it in Savitri: the essence of the Word and how it will express itself, how it will bring in the possibility of a supramental expression that will take the place of languages. I began by speaking to him about the different languages, their limitations and possibilities; and I warned him against the deformations imposed on languages with the idea of making them a more flexible means of expressing something else. I told him how completely ridiculous it all was, and that it didnt correspond at all to the truth. Then little by little I began ascending to the Origin. So yesterday again, I had this same experience: a whole world of knowledge, of consciousness and of CERTAINTYprecluding the least possibility of contradiction, discussion, or opposition; the possibility DOES NOT EXIST, it doesnt exist. And the mind was absolutely silent and immobile, listening with obvious pleasure because these things had never before come into my consciousness; I had never been concerned with them in that way. It was completely newnot new in principle but completely new in action.
The experiences are multiplying.
--
Yes. While speaking, you see, I went back to the origin of sound (Sri Aurobindo describes it very clearly in Savitri: the origin of sound, the moment when what we called the Word becomes a sound). So I had a kind of perception of the essential sound before it becomes a material sound. And I said, When this essential sound becomes a material sound, it will give birth to the new expression which will express the supramental world. I had the experience itself at that moment, it came directly. I spoke in English and Sri Aurobindo was concretely, almost palpably, present.
Now it has gone away.
0 1961-01-29, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But if while speaking with Sujata you feel that something might help her, I have no objection to your telling hersimply say that its between the two of you.
So far, I havent said anything. You know how I am: I keep quiet, I dont say a word.
0 1961-01-31, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(After the work, Mother begins speaking of her translation of The Synthesis of Yoga.)
A few days ago I had an experience related to this. For some time I had been unable to work because I was unwell and my eyes were very tired. And two or three days ago, when I resumed the translation, I suddenly realized that I was seeing it quite differently! Something had happened during those days (how to put it?) the position of the translation work in relation to the text was different. My last sentence was all I had with me, because I file my papers as I go along, so I went back to it along with the corresponding English sentence. Oh, look! I said, Thats how it goes! And I made all the corrections quite spontaneously. The position really seemed different.
--
Oh, yes, this is very, very annoying, my child! You dont need to tell me! I have never in my life had enough time. Whatever I do, whether I am speaking to someone, organizing something, doing a particular work, the time is always too short, and I have the feeling, Oh, if I could only do that quietly! Anything, no matter what, becomes interesting if it can be done calmly, with the right attitude and the right concentration. Yet we are perpetually hurried by the next thing coming along.
But this is a shortcoming. And I know it, I know it I will find the solution. And when I have found it, it will be.
--
In the equations of Einstein's Theory of Relativity, quantities as 'immutable' as the mass of a body, the frequency of a vibration, or the time separating two events, are linked to the speed of the system where the physical event takes place. Recent experiments in outer space have allowed the validity of Einstein's equations to be verified. Thus a clock on a satellite in constant rotation around the Earth will measure sixty seconds between two audio signals, while an identical clock on Earth measures sixty-one seconds between the same two signals: time 'slows down' as speed increases. It is like the story of the space traveler returning to Earth less aged than his twin: you pass into another 'frame of reference.'
It is striking that Mother's body-experiences very often parallel recent theories of modern physics, as if mathematical equations were the means of formulating in human language certain complex phenomena, remote from our day to day reality, which Mother was living spontaneously in her bodyperhaps 'at the speed of light.'
***
0 1961-02-04, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Here, I have brought you two flowers. They have two different yet very typically Indian fragrances: this one is Straightforwardness,1 and this is Simplicity.2 I have always found that this one (Mother holds out the Simplicity) has a cleansing fragrance: when you brea the it, ah, everything becomes cleanits wonderful! (Mother breathes in the flowers fragrance.) Once I cured myself of the onset of a cold with itthis can be done when you catch it at the very beginning. It fills you completely, the nose, the throat. And this [Straightforwardness] is right at the other end of the spectrum. I find it very, very powerfulstrange, isnt it?
Its not at all sweet-smelling.
--
One could almost say that of all animals, the serpent is the most sensitive to hypnotic or magnetic power. If you have it (magnetic power comes from the most material vital), you can easily gain a mastery over snakes; all the people who like snakes have it and use it to make snakes obey them. Thats how I got out of my encounter with the cobra at Tlemcen7do you know the story? Theon had told me about this power and I was aware of it in myself, so I was able to make the cobra obey and he left. Afterwards (Ive told this story, too), I was visited by the King of Serpents I mean the spirit of the species. He came to me in Tlemcen after this and another incident when I helped a cat overpower a little asp (there are asps over there like Cleopatras, very dangerous)a big russet angora cat. At first it started to play with the asp, but then naturally grew furious. The asp struck at the cat, but the cat leapt aside with such swiftness that the asp missed it (I watched this going on for more than ten minutes, it was extraordinary). Just as the snake darted by, the cat would swat at it with all his claws outand the asp got scratched each time, so that little by little it ran out of energy, and at the end. I stopped the cat from eating it that part was disgusting!
Then after these two incidents, I received a visit one night from the King of Serpents. He was wearing a superb crown on his headsymbolic, of course, but anyway, he was the spirit of the species. He had the appearance of a cobra, and he was wonderful! A formidable beast, and wonderful! He said he had come to make a pact with me: I had demonstrated my power over his species, so he wanted to come to an understanding. All right, I said, what do you propose? I not only promise that serpents wont harm you, he replied, but that they will obey you. But you must promise me something in return: never to kill one of them. I thought it over and said, No, I cant make this promise, because if ever one of yours attacks one of mine (a being that depends upon me), my pact with you could not stop me from protecting him. I can assure you that I have no bad feelings and no intention of killingkilling is not on my program! But I cant commit myself, because it would restrict my freedom of decision. He left without replying, so it remains status quo.
I have had several experiences demonstrating my power over snakes (not so much as over catswith cats its extraordinary!). Long ago, I often used to take a drive and then stop somewhere for a walk. One day after my walk, as I was getting back into the car to drive away (the door was still open), a very large snake came out, right from the spot I had just left. He was furious and heading straight towards the open door, ready to strike (luckily I was alone, neither the driver nor Pavitra were there, otherwise). When the snake had come quite near, I looked at him closely and said, What do you want? Why have you come here? There was a pause. Then he fell down flat and off he went. I hadnt made a move, only asked him, What do you want? Why have you come here? You know, they have a way of suddenly falling back, going limp, and prrt! Gone!
--
We used to go for walks in the nearby countryside to see the tombs (it was a Muslim country). I no longer recall their Arabic name, but there is always a guardian at Muslim tombsa sage, like the fakirs of India, a kind of priest responsible for the tomb. Pilgrims go there as well. Theon was friendly with one particular sage, and would speak with him and tell him things (at these times I would see the mischief in Theons eyes). One day, Theon took me along. (According to Islamic tradition I should have been fully covered, but I always went out in a type of kimono!) Theon addressed the sage in Arabic; I didnt understand what he said, but the sage rose, bowed to me very ceremoniously and went off into another room, returning with three cups of sweetened mint tea (not teacups, they put it in special little glassesextremely sweet tea, almost like mint syrup). The sage was watching me, I was obliged to take it.8
The pine tree story is also from Tlemcen.
--
No. Besides, there are things. There are things I dont want to speak of because (and I havent said them, either) because, after all, he taught me a lot.
(long silence)
--
Lately, the nights are being spent in a subconscious realm that absolutely must be clarified; its precisely the realm where one feels helpless, foolish, ignorant, utterly unprogressive, bound up in all sorts of stupidities. It all must be clarified.
These nights, I have been having experiences which, if I didnt know what I do or hadnt had the experiences Ive had, would be very discouraging: how to get out of it? Seekers have always had the very same impression: that we are all incurable imbeciles. And always the same solution, to flee life and escape this folly. Now I see it from another angle.
0 1961-02-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It has been good for it (not externally, but inwardly, for its state of consciousness: the body-consciousness), it has done the body some good, but. Now its like this (Mother opens her hands in a gesture of total surrender). For each blow it receives (its a bludgeoning, my child!), for each blow, it remains like this (same gesture). Yesterday, to make it happy, I wrote down something like this (concerning its latest difficulty): If this present difficulty is useful (its the body addressing the Lord, and the Lord. its a perpetual adoration: all the cells vibrate, vibrate with the joy of Love; yet despite that ), if this or that difficulty is useful for Your Workso be it. But if it is an effect of my stupidity (its the body speaking), if its an effect of my own stupidity, then I beseech You to cure me of this stupidity as quickly as possible.
It doesnt ask to be cured of the illness! It doesnt ask, it is ready; All right, it says. As long as I can keep going, I will keep going. As long as I can last, I will last. But thats not what Im asking for: I am asking to be cured of my stupidity. I believe this is what enables it to yes, what gives it the necessary endurance.
--
Yes. It is better to speak of victory than (Mother laughs) to speak of difficulties!
(silence)
0 1961-02-11, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The body doesnt ask (its so docile), it doesnt even ask for its sufferings to stopit adapts to them. Its mainly my contact with people that makes the thing difficult: when I am all alone upstairs, everything goes well, quite well. But when I spend one or one and a half hours in the afternoon seeing people, afterwards I feel exhausted. That, obviously, is whats making the thing difficult. But the body doesnt complain. It doesnt complain, its ready. The other day when it went back upstairs, it felt a bitwell, at the end of its resources, as though it had pushed itself to the limit. It said to the Lord (and it said this so clearly, as though the consciousness of the cells were speaking; I noted it down): If this (I cant call it an illness there is no illness! Its a condition of general disequilibrium), if this condition is necessary for Your Work, then so be it, let it go on. But if its an effect of my stupidity (you see, its the BODY saying, If its because I dont understand or I am not adapting or not doing what I should or not taking the proper attitude), if it is an effect of my stupidity, then truly I pray that. It asks only to changeto know and to change!
It is attached to nothing: none of its habits, none of its ways of being-nothing. It says in all sincerity, I ask only for the Light, only to change. That is its state. it has never, never said, Oh, Im tired, Ive had enough! Bah! Its not like that. It is attached to nothing for a long, long time it has ceased to have desiresit is attached to nothing at all, to nothing. There isnt a single thing for which it says, Oh, I cant do without that! Not one. It doesnt care-if something comes, it takes it; if it doesnt come, the body doesnt think about it. In other words, its truly good-natured. But if this isnt sufficient, then it doesnt know and it says, If there is something I cant do or I dont know or I am not doing It asks for nothing more than to make the necessary effort!
--
You see, theres a curious fluctuation possibly indicating that your dream is part of the present attack which continues with such violence. The night before last, between midnight and half-past, there was a formidable attack. When I emerged from it, I felt that something had lifted, a victory had been won and that the bodys condition had improved. It happens like that, the horizon clears and this Certainty comes with. (The presence is always hereSri Aurobindo and I are together almost every night but the night when I saw that formation, the illness spell over the Ashram, Sri Aurobindo was quite sick in his bed, just as I saw him in 1950.) So when it lifts, all is well: once again there is harmony, there is joy, there is force and again the whole thing continues, the effort continues, consciously. Yet there is a kind of fluctuation: it will go on like that for a few moments or a few hours and then suddenly everything becomes muddled again and I am beset by a fatigue. A fatigue which is I cant say almost unbearable, because nothing in the consciousness feels it to be unbearable but it makes me like this (Mother clenches her fist tightly in a tension to hold on).
For example, at five-thirty in the evening, after Ive spent an hour and a half here with people, its a labor to climb the stairs; and by the time I get upstairs, I feel strained to the breaking point. Then I begin to walk (I dont stop, I dont rest), I immediately begin to walk with my japa, and within half an hour, pfft! it has lifted.
But the bodys fatigue doesnt go: its there its contained but it is there.
--
But truly speaking, the minute one completely emerges from the ordinary mind, NO EXTERIOR SIGN IS A PROOF, absolutely none. There is absolutely no standard to go byneither splendid good health nor good equilibrium, nor an almost general disorganizationnone of these. All depends exclusivelyexclusivelyon what the Lord has decided. Exclusively. Consequently, if one remains very quiet, one is sure to know what He has decided.
When I am perfectly tranquil, I immediately live in a beatific joy where questions dont arisethere are no questions! One asks for nothingone LIVES! One lives happily, and thats all. Theres no, Will it be like this? Will it be like that?how childish! There are no questions, questions dont arise. One is a beatitude manifesting, that is all.
--
Something from that experiencean effect, a vibratory effect, so to speakhas not left. But the totality of the experience is not here the whole time, its not established. I had a reminder of it one night, but not for very long; all at once, for a brief moment, this same vibration came, and my entire body was nothing other than this Vibration.
It didnt last longer than a quarter of an hour and it wasnt as total.
--
This particular period was very bad last year too.6 There was a tremendous opposition because of February 29th [first anniversary of the supramental manifestation]. But always a little before Darshans7 or days for special blessings there is a new outbreak of adverse attacksalways.
Well, mon petit, we have done nothing but talk. Its time to go and we havent done anything!
0 1961-02-14, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Sri Aurobindo speaks here of the higher soul.1 Yet we cant translate it by me suprieure, as if there were an inferior soul, can we?
Sri Aurobindo wants to make the distinction between the progressive soul (the soul which has experiences and progresses from life to life), what can be called the lower soul, and the higher soul, that is, the eternal, immutable and divine soulessentially divine. He wrote this when he was in contact with certain Theosophical writings, before I introduced Theons vocabulary to him. For Theon, there is the divine center which is the eternal soul, and the psychic being; similarly, to avoid using the same word in both cases, Sri Aurobindo speaks in later writings of the psychic being and of the divine center or central being the essential soul.
What if we translate it la partie suprieure de lme, [the higher part of the soul], rather than me suprieure?
0 1961-02-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
[Barringtonia speciosa.]
Dont you find it beautiful?
--
To give a rather curious example, there was a kind of spell of illness over the Ashram, stemming mainly from peoples thoughts, from their way of thinking. It was quite widespread and it was horrible, gloomy, full of fear, pettiness, blind submission, oh! Everyone was in a state of expectation.1 In short, the atmosphere was such that there was an attempt to prevent me from leaving my room I had to sneak out! It was disgusting! Well, on the very night I saw the spell over the Ashram, Sri Aurobindo was lying sick in his bed, just as I had seen him in 1950. Normally, we spend almost every night together, doing this, seeing that, arranging things, talkingits a kind of second life behind this one, and it makes existence pleasant. But that night when I had to sneak out of my room (in my nightgown!), and people were trying to find me to (laughing) force me back into bed, he was lying sick in bedand this struck me hard, for it means these things still affect him in his consciousness. He was in a kind of trance and not at all well. It didnt last, but nonetheless.
Oh, the things that can collect there,2 ugh!
--
The day victory is won, all this will become infinitely interesting. But why speak of it if the victory isnt won? It just makes another lengthy description of failures.
I dont believe in failure.
--
I tell you this because just now as we were speaking about the book and you were saying it would come all at once in a single flow, I saw a kind of globe, like a suna sun shedding a twinkling dust of incandescent light (the sun was moving forward and this dust came twinkling in front of it), like this (gesture). It came towards you, then made a circle around you as if to say, Here is the formation. It was magnificent! There was a creative warmth in it, a warmth like the sunsa power of Truth. And here again, I was given the same impression: that what Sri Aurobindo has come to bring is not a teaching, not even a revelation, but a FORMIDABLE action coming direct from the Supreme.
It is something pouring over the world.
--
(After another digression, Mother again speaks of her experience of January 24, which triggered a backlash of subconscious difficulties.)
A great deal has been brought to light since that experience. It has been the starting point for such turmoil, even physically, such strong jolts that I might have wondered, Was I dreaming or was it real?. And more and more I am coming to understand that this is the INDI speNSABLE preparation in the most material world for that experience to become definitively established, to express itself outwardly, constantlythis is obvious.
--
Anyhow. Only Sri Aurobindo can speak of Sri Aurobindo. And as for their notes, its still Sri Aurobindo A la Z, or Sri Aurobindo A la A, and all the more so since Sri Aurobindo wrote in very different ways depending upon the person he was writing to (gesture indicating different levels).
Well, if you feel the time will be found, it will surely be found.
0 1961-02-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You can easily make a speech using flowers and I have noticed that this can effectively replace the old Vedic images, for instance, which no longer hold meaning for us, or the ambiguous phraseology of the ancient initiations. Flower language is much better because it contains the Force and is extremely plasticsince its not formulated in words, each one is free to arrange and receive it according to his own capacity. You can make long speeches using flowers!
I have nothing more to say now, except that the same situation prevails.
--
Theres an American living in Madras, a rather important man, it seems, and an intimate friend of Kennedy, the new President. He has read and reread all of Sri Aurobindos books and is extremely interested. He wrote to Kennedy that he would like him to come here so he can bring him to the Ashram. This man has posed a very interesting question, drawing an analogy. Deep in a forest, a deer goes to quench its thirst; no one is aware of it, yet someone who has made a special study of deer hunting would know by the tracks that the deer had passed bynot only what particular type of deer, but its age, size, sex, etc. Similarly, there must be people with a spiritual knowledge analogous to that of hunters, who can detect, perceive, that a person is in touch with the Supermind, while ordinary people know nothing about it and wouldnt notice. So he asks, I would like to know by what signs such a person can be recognized?
It is a very intelligent question.
--
The second sign is a sense of ABSOLUTENESS in knowledge. As I have already told you, I had this with my experience of January 24. This state CANNOT be obtained through any region of the mind, even the most illumined and exalted. Its not a certainty, its (Mother lowers both hands like an irresistible block descending), a kind of absoluteness, without even any possibility of hesitation (theres no question of doubt), or anything like that. Without (how to say it ?). All mental knowledge, even the highest, is a conclusive knowledge, as it were: it comes as a conclusion of something elsean intuition, for instance (an intuition gives you a particular knowledge, and this knowledge is like the conclusion of the intuition). Even revelations are conclusions. Theyre all conclusions the word conclusion comes to me, but I dont know how to express it. This isnt the case, however, with the supramental experiencea kind of absolute. The feeling it gives is altogether uniquefar beyond certainty, it is (Mother again makes the same irresistible gesture) it is a FACT, things are FACTS. It is very, very difficult to explain. But with that one naturally has a complete power the two things always go together. (In my reply to this man I didnt speak of power because the power is almost a consequence and I didnt want to speak of consequences.) But the fact remains: a kind of absoluteness in knowledge springing from identityone is the thing one knows and experiences: one is it. One knows it because one is it.
When these two signs are present (both are necessary, one is incomplete without the other), when a person possesses both, then you can be sure he has been in contact with the Supermind. So people who speak about receiving the Light well, (laughing) its a lot of hot air! But when both signs are present, you can be sure of your perception.12
(silence)
--
Even absolute is not strong enough (Mother makes a gesture of a solid block descending). That is why one speaks of an irrevocable, irremediable absolute but I dont know how to express it. And NOTHING BUT this Absolute exists, there is nothing else. There is only that.
And everything is there in it.
--
Its a curious thing speaking evidently helps me follow the experience. But I cant just begin speaking all alone up in my room! And talking to a tape recorder is useless. Up to now, it certainly flows the best with youby far. I havent tried with others, although occasionally Ive said something to Nolini, but his receptivity is fuzzy (I dont know whether you can understand this impression: its as though my. words were going into cotton-wool). Once, as I told you, I spoke with R., and with him I felt that three quarters of it was absolutely lostand as a matter of fact it was. But with you I begin to SEE, and the need to formulate makes me concentrate on my vision. And this I experience with you more than I ever have with anyone. So.
So you are bearing the consequences!
--
Barringtonia speciosa ('Supramental Action').
***
0 1961-03-04, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I used to send him around to the various centers (because he had to do something!), and he would visit, speak to people I dont know about what. And during one of his trips to Delhi he happened to meet Z, who had been sent by the government of India to the Soviet Union, where it seems he delivered an extraordinary speech (it must have been extraordinary, because I have been receiving letters from everywhere, including America, asking for the text of this sensational speech in which he apparently spoke of human unity). So Z returned with the idea of forming a World Union, and J. and Z met. Furthermore, they were encouraged by S.M.7 and even by the Prime Minister,8 who probably had a special liking for Z and had given him a lot of encouragement. Thats how things began.
I treated it as something altogether secondary and unimportantwhen people need to gallop, I let them gallop (but I hadnt met Z). Then J. and Z left together on a speaking-tour of Africa and there things began to go sour, because Z was working in one way and J. in another. Finally, they were at odds and came back here to tell me, World Union is off to a good startwith a quarrel! (Mother laughs) Z was saying, Nothing can be done unless we base ourselves EXCLUSIVELY on the teaching of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and they are behind us giving support. And J. said, No, no! We are not sectarian! We accept all ideas, all theories, etc. I replied, and as it happens, I said that Z was right, though with one corrective: he had been saying that people had to recognize us as their guru. No, I said, its absolutely uselessnot only useless, I refuse. I dont want to be anybodys guru. People should simply be told that things are to be done on the basis of Sri Aurobindos thought.9
So they kept pulling in opposing directions. Eventually they tried to set something up (which still didnt hold together), and finally they wrote me a little more clearly. (There is one very nice man involved, Y. He isnt particularly intellectual but has a lot of common sense and a very faithful hearta very good man.) Y asked me some direct questions, without beating around the bush, and I replied directly: World Union is an entirely superficial thing, without any depth, based on the fact that Sri Aurobindo said the masses must be helped to follow the progress of the elitewell, let them go ahead! If they enjoy it, let them go right ahead! I didnt say it exactly like that (I was a bit more polite!), but that was the gist of it.
--
Oh, Ive had all sorts of examples! All these errors serve as tests. Take the case of P.: for a long time, whenever someone arrived from the outside world and asked to be instructed, he was sent to P.s room. (I didnt send them, but they would be told, Go speak to P.!) And P. is the sectarian par excellence! He would tell people, Unless you acknowledge Sri Aurobindo as the ONLY one who knows the truth, you are good for nothing! Naturally (laughing), many rebelled! (You see, out of lazinessso as not to be bothered with seeing people or answering their questionsone says, Go find so-and-so, go ask so-and-so, and passes off the work to another.) Well, it was finally understood that this wasnt very tactful, and perhaps it would be better not to send visitors to P., since so many had been put off. But actually. I was told about it afterwards and I replied, Let people read and see for THEMSELVES whether or not it suits them! What difference does it make if theyre put off! If they are, it means they NEED to be put off! Well see later. Some of them have come full circle and returned. Others never came backbecause they werent meant to. Thats how it goes. Basically, all this has NO importance. Or we could put it in another way: everything is perfectly all right.
(silence)
0 1961-03-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have brought you a whole discourse! (Mother gives Satprem some flowers) First, the goal of the Vedas: Immortality.1 That was their goal: the Truth that led to Immortality. Immortality was their ambition. I dont think it was physical immortality but I am not sure, because they do speak of the forefa thers and this refers to the initiatory tradition prior to the Vedas as well as the Kabbala, and immortality on earth is spoken of there: the earth transformedSri Aurobindos idea. So although they didnt explicitly state it, perhaps they knew.
(Mother gives more flowers) This one is more on the personal side: Friendship with the Divine2, the friendly relationship you can have with the Divineyou understand each other, you dont fear each other, youre good friends! And this one is a wonder! (Mother gives Divine Love Governing the World3) What strength! Its generous, expansive, without narrowness, pettiness, or limitationswhen that comes.
--
Mon petit, I dont claim to be totally universal, but in any case I am open enough to receive. You see, given the quantity of material I have taken into my consciousness, its quite natural that the body bears the consequences. There is nothing, not one wrong movement, that my body doesnt feel5; generally, though, things are automatically set in order (gesture indicating that Mother automatically purifies and masters the vibrations coming to her). But there are timese specially when it coincides with a revolt of adverse forces who dont want to give up their domain and enter into battle with all their mightwhen I must admit its hard. If I had some hours of solitude it would be easier. But particularly during the period of my Playground activities, I was badgered, harassed; I would rush from one thing to the next, one thing to the next, I had no nights to speak ofnights of two and a half or three hours rest, which isnt enough, theres no time to put things in order.
Under those conditions I could only hold the thing like this (same gesture of muzzling the illness or holding it in abeyance).
0 1961-03-11, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When was it? Not last night, but the night before, I was with you; and while I was with you I heard the clock strike. I didnt count, but I told myself, Its 4 oclock! and got out of bed. One hour later I saw that it was 4 a.m.: I had risen at 3, and by then we had been together for quite a long time. I had gone where? I dont know. I was living some place (certainly somewhere in the Mind) and we were together, we had been working together, doing all sorts of things and spending a lot of time together I dont know for how long because time there isnt the same.
Then I had to return here that is, to my home in India, to Sri Aurobindos home: I had to return to Sri Aurobindos home. Pavitra was also working there and he didnt want to let me leave; when he saw me going he came and tried to stop me. You, on the contrary, were helping. Shall I take anything with me or not? I asked myself Oh, I dont need anything, Ill go all alone. That worried you a little because of the journey ahead, and you said, There will be many complications. It doesnt matter! I replied (laughing). But if you only knew how living and concrete it was! The impressions were so there was the feeling of making a long voyageit was a LONG voyage, as if I were crossing the sea (but not physically), a long voyage. I remember setting off (I was with you, you were there) and telling myself, At last hes here! At last I have found a reasonable being who doesnt try to stop me from doing what I must do! I had (laughing mischievously) a very high opinion of you, thats why I am telling you this!
--
But if you can witness a discussion as an impartial spectator (I mean even if you are involved in the discussion), you can always gain a lot from it by considering a question or a problem from several points of view; and by trying to reconcile opposing opinions, you can broaden your ideas and rise to a more comprehensive synthesis.
What is the best way to make others understand what you feel to be true?
--
From an historical viewpoint (not psychological, but historical), based on my memories (only I cant prove it, nothing can be proved, and I dont believe any truly historical proof has come down to usor in any case, it hasnt been found yet), but according to my memories. (Mother shuts her eyes as if she were going off in search of her memories; she will speak all the rest of the time with eyes closed.) Certainly at one period of the earths history there was a kind of earthly paradise, in the sense that there was a perfectly harmonious and perfectly natural life: the manifestation of Mind was in accordwas STILL in complete accord and in total harmony with the ascending march of Nature, without perversion or deformation. This was the first stage of Minds manifestation in material forms.
How long did it last? Its hard to say. But for man it was a life like a sort of flowering of animal life. My memory is of a life where the body was perfectly adapted to its natural surroundings. The climate was in harmony with the needs of the body, the body with the demands of the climate. Life was wholly spontaneous and natural, as a more luminous and conscious animal life would be, with absolutely none of the complications and deformations brought in later by the mind as it developed.
--
Theon used to say it wasnt (how to put it?) inevitable. In the total freedom of the manifestation, this voluntary separation from the Origin is the cause of all the disorder. How to explain it? Words express these things so poorly. We can call it inevitable because it happened! But outside of this creation, a creation can be imagined (or could have been) where this disorder would not have occurred. Sri Aurobindo saw it in approximately the same way: a sort of accident, as it were but an accident allowing the manifestation a far greater and more total perfection than if it had never occurred. But this is all still in the realm of speculation, and useless speculation at that. In any case, the experience, the feeling, is that all at once (Mother makes the gesture of a brutal fall) oh!
For the earth it probably happened like that, all at once: a sort of ascent, then the fall. But the earth is a tiny concentrationuniversally, its something else.
0 1961-03-14, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Mother goes on to the work and listens to the reading of an old Talk of September 26, 1956, to be used in the Bulletin. In it she speaks of moments of opening in the yoga:
Then there are days when you are in contact with the divine Consciousness, with the Grace, and all is tinged, colored by this Presence, and things which usually seem dull to you become charming and pleasant all is alive, all is vibrant. At other moments you are clouded, closed, you no longer feel anything, everything loses its flavor you are like a walking block of wood.
--
Generally speaking, the progress is undeniable, but the physical body has a terrible need of rest. Its annoying, for it prevents me from working.
How to explain it? Its rather strange: the cells attitude and their state of consciousness is changing with extraordinary rapidity; yet from the ordinary viewpoint of health, there is no corresponding progress, quite the contrary. One could say things arent going too well, but I see clearly that its not true. I see that it isnt true, its only an appearance but reconciling the two is difficult.
--
And within oh! Its like waves, constantly, the equivalent of those nuances of color I was speaking about, waves of this joy of life, the joy of life rippling past, touching; but instead of being. At times, you see, the body is in a sort of equilibrium (what we, in our ordinary outer consciousness, call equilibrium that is, good health), and then this joy is constant, like swells on the sea (Mother shapes great waves): it seems to flow on behind everything; it comes and shows its face for a moment, then vanishes. In the very tiny things of lifeyes, physical life the joy of these things, the joy life contains, this luminous, special kind of vibration, rises up as if to remind us that its here; it is here, it mustnt be forgotten, its here but its kept down by this tension.
Then, from time to time, everything seems to be on the edge of a precipice; the body doesnt fall simply because it keeps its balance but without this higher state of perfect faith, one would surely fall!
0 1961-03-17, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Satprem later asked if this 'on earth' wasn't superfluous and Mother replied: 'This precision is not superfluous; I said "on earth" meaning that man does not belong only to the earth: in his essence, man is a universal being, but he has a special manifestation on earth.'
Here, Mother had a passage deleted.
0 1961-03-21, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Last night I had two consecutive experiences showing with extreme precision that black magic is at the root of all this (Mother is speaking of both general and personal difficulties, in the Ashram and in her body).
First of all, on the mental plane (the physical-mind, the material mind) I saw an individual. I am not entirely certain of his identity (when I saw him last night I didnt associate him with anyone in particular) but from his outer appearance he is evidently a sannyasi. He was pursuing me, blocking my way and trying to stop me from doing my work (it was a long, long affair). But I was very conscious and could foresee everything he was about to do, so it had no effect. After a long while I emerged from this I had something else to do and I leftand on my way home he was everywhere, hiding and trying to catch me; but he didnt succeed in doing anything. And I knew he had been acting in this manner for a long time.
Then I woke up (I always wake up three or four times during the night) and when I went back to bed I had an attack of what the doctor and I have taken to be filariasis but a strange type of filariasis, for as soon as I master it in one spot it appears in another, and when I master it there it reappears somewhere else. Last night it was in the arms (it lasted quite a while, between 2:30 and 4 a.m.); but I was fully conscious, and each time the attack came, I went like this (gestures over the arms, to drive away the attack) and my arms were not affected at all. When it was over, I consciously entered the most material subtle physical, just beyond the body. I was sitting in my room there (an immense, cubic room) reading or writing something, when I heard the door open and close, but I was busy and didnt pay attention, presuming it was one of the people usually around me. Then suddenly I had such an unpleasant sensation in my body that I raised my head and looked, and I saw someone there. Do you know how the magicians in Europe dress, in short satin breeches and a shirt? He was wearing something like that. He was Indian, tall and rather dark, with slicked-down hairwhat you would normally call a handsome young man. He seemed to have been drawn1 there becausehe was standing in front of me staring into space, not looking at me. And the moment I saw him, there was the same sensation in all my cells as I have with what Ive been calling filariasis (its a special, minute kind of pain) and simultaneously all the cells felt disgusta tremendous will of rejection. Then I sat up straight (I didnt stand up) and said to him as forcefully as possible, How do you dare to come in here! I said it so loudly that the noise woke me up! I dont know what happened then, but things went much better afterwards.
The moment I saw this person I knew he was only an instrument, but a well-paid instrumentsomeone paid a great deal to have him do that! I would recognize him again among hundreds I can still see him I see him more clearly than with physical eyes. He is an unintelligent man with no personal animosity, merely a very well-paid instrumentsomeone is hiding behind him, using him as a screen.
--
I had told N. to knock at the door when he arrived with X, but he didnt do itluckily I heard the door opening. I stood up, still in that state and almost fell over! X must have thought I was having a spell of weakness or something, because I was holding onto the arms of the chair, and when I took his flowers, my hands were trembling I wasnt in my body. And afterwards, ah, what a concentration! We remained in it for about thirty-five minutes. It was SOLIDan extraordinary solidity! I didnt want to waste time waiting for it to subside before coming here, and you must have seen how I was when I arrived: like a sleepwalker! I said to the people I passed in the corridor, Im coming back, Im coming back! Thats all I could say, like an idiot.
(silence)
0 1961-03-27, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
He doesnt speak about these things with N. Perhaps N. has confused two different times or. Because Xs way of expressing himself can seem very vague when you dont know him well, e specially when it concerns time and place. This attack may not have occurred during the meditation with you, but beforeh and or elsewhere.
I dont know, because N. said quite categorically: X told me that on arriving for this mornings meditation he had some difficulties and it took him five minutes to get over it; an adverse force was present. N. was quite positive and I even made him repeat it. Are you sure, I asked him, that it didnt happen when X came to you? No, N. replied, X met that force THERE. He said THERE! Yet that it could have been there, with all the force, light and peace that descended is incomprehensible to me. Because the first thing I do when I sit down is to make a thorough cleaning.
--
Ill try to speak with X and find out exactly what happened.
That risks a terrible misunderstanding; be careful. Perhaps he wont even remember what he said anymore. Its difficult with X because he doesnt say things with his mindit just comes like that, and then he forgets. You know how it is. Something may have made him speak. For instance, I know that with N. he almost always says unpleasant things about people and situations and this entirely results from N.s atmosphere. I have told N., He speaks like that because of your inner attitude. To one person he will say one thing, to another something completely different on the same subjectit depends a great deal on who hes talking to. No, I havent told you all this for you to speak with X about it, I have told you because it has posed a serious problem for me.
Its best to wait and see. I put a certain force into that note I wrote this morning (I wrote it at a very early hour) and you know that a formation4 is created when I write; I willed it to go to himand he may have received it. Well see what happens. Its better not to speak of it because it might speaking is too external.
On other occasions (as I have told you) I had difficulties with X on the mental plane; now all that has cleared up, cleared up very well. But this present situation is on another plane, so lets wait. Perhaps probably it will clear up.
--
The absolute certainty of the Victory is unquestionable; but I am not speaking at the scale of our bounded mind. Its up to us to CHANGE TACKthis is whats expected of us, to change tack and not keep going round in circles.
There you are, petit.
0 1961-04-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It speeds up the work, but at the same time it makes it a bit taxing.
As for him, even now his way of working consists in eliminating all obstaclesjust the opposite of what Sri Aurobindo was doing. Sri Aurobindo used to envelop them, like this (Mother opens her arms to embrace everything), and then act upon them so that they would no longer be obstacles. But the first thing X said when he first came to the Ashram was, Oh, there are a lot of elements which shouldnt be here! And he would talk about a purge: eliminate, eliminate, eliminate. But if you eliminate everything from life which is unresponsive to the Divine, what will be left?
0 1961-04-12, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Cats are vital forces, incarnations of vital forces. The King of the Cats that is, the spirit of the speciesis a being of the vital world.
For instance, cats can very easily incarnate the vital force of a dead person. I have had two absolutely astounding experiences of this.
--
I had a nice photo of him with a Sanskrit dedication, placed on top of a kind of wardrobe in my bedroom. I open the door and the photo falls. (There was no draft or anything.) It fell and the glass broke into smithereens. Immediately I said, Oh! Something has happened to Fontenay. (That was his name: Charles de Fontenay.) After that I came back down from my room, and then I hear a miaowing at the door (the door opened onto a large garden courtyard1). I open the door: a cat bursts in and jumps on me, like that (Mother thumps her breast). I speak to him: What is it, whats the matter? He drops to the ground and looks at meFontenays eyes! Absolutely! No one elses. And he just stayed put, he didnt want to go. I said to myself, Fontenay is dead.
The news came a week later. But the newspapers gave the date when they had moved out of the trenches and been killedit had been on that day.
--
I had another cat I called Big Boy. Oh, how beautiful he was! Enormous! A tail like the train of a gown. He was beautiful! Since there were all kinds of cats prowling around, including a big fierce tomcat who was extremely vicious, I was very afraid for this one when he was little and I got him used to spending his nights inside (which is hard for a cat to do). I forbade him to go out. So he spent his nights inside and when I got up in the morning, he got up too and came and sat down in front of me. Then I would say, All right, Big Boy, you can go, and he would jump out the window and go off but never before. And this is the one who was poisoned.
Because later on he would go roaming about; he had become terribly strong and would prowl around everywhere. At that time I was living in the Library house, and he would go off as far as the Ashram street (the Ashram didnt belong to us yet, the house was owned by all kinds of people), but when I would go out on the terrace across from Champaklals kitchen and call, Big boy! Big Boy! although he couldnt hear it, he could sense it, and he would come back galloping, galloping. He always came back, unfailingly. The day he didnt come back, I got worried; the servant went looking for himand found him moaning, vomiting, poisoned. He brought him to me. Oh, really! it was. He was so nice! He wasnt a thief or anythinghe was a wonderful cat. Someone had laid out poison for god knows what cat, and he ate it. I showed him to Sri Aurobindo and said, He has been killed.
--
And she used to count her little ones. She knew perfectly well how many she had. I just had to tell her, Keep only two or threealthough the first time there were only three, which was still too many, yet it was absolutely impossible not to let her keep them all. But later on I had to chide her. I didnt take them from her, but I would speak to her, convince her: Its too much, youll be ill. Just keep these. See how nice these two are. Take care of them.
Oh, what lovely cat stories! That was a whole period for many, many years. Many years.
Mind you, I would never have considered having any, but two cats were already there when I came to the house. They were not very interesting cats, but they became the parents of the one I just told you about (those boys who were living with Sri Aurobindo had already had some experience; they knew quite a few things about cats), and that was the origin of all the cats I had here. But people (you know how simplistic they always are!) believed I had some special attachment for cats, so then of course everybody started keeping cats! It was no use my telling them, No, its a particular study were making I wanted to see, to learn certain things, and I learned what I had to but now that I have moved to another house, the cat era is over; the old friends are gone, only the younger generation is left. I gave them all away and said) Thats enough. But its hard to make people understandsome people here have 25 cats! Thats unreasonable! Its not the way to deal with cats. You have to look after them as I did, and then it becomes interesting.
There was one I know I SAW it: when he died there was already the embryo of a psychic being, ready for a human incarnation. I made them progress like wildfire.
0 1961-04-15, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
After that, I spend hours concentrated in prayernot exactly prayer but (gesture palms turned upwards), like that, beseeching.
What has been achieved now is that I am absolutely detached from EVERYTHING. From everything, beginning with my body and including the work, ideas, conceptions, even the [people], all, all of them. It all seems to me so utterly dull and nonexistent.
--
I could say something formidable (Mother is about to speak, then restrains herself). But its not true, its not like that. If I say it, it will become something else.
Its better to say nothing.
--
But you know, what seems to have gone is all this illusory enthusiasm we confuse with. Sri Aurobindo speaks of it very often, and each time I read that sentence of his its like an icy shower (Mother laughs). I no longer know the exact wording, but he uses two words: illusory hopes all the human illusory hopes. It goes plunk! Well, all that has entirely gone. When I saw it I deliberately rejected it. Yes, I said to myself, we are always trying to cheer ourselves up with hopes.
(Mother turns towards the tape recorder) Dont keep all that. Its not worth it, dont keep it. Its quite useless. Take it out.
0 1961-04-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
According to my experience both things are simultaneous, so to speak. Its we who introduce the notion of time, but the notion of time doesnt exist on the other side.
For example, if I were asked how much time it takes for a thing decided upon there to be realized here, I would answer that it is absolutely indeterminate. That is my experience. I always give the following example because its so clear: Thirty-five years before India became free, I saw that she was free. It was already done. And I have also seen things which for us are almost instantaneous something is decided there and realized almost instantly here. And there are all sorts of possibilities between these two extremes, because the notion of time is not at all the sameso we cant judge. It is facile to say that what you are seeing will happen in a year or in a week or in an hour but in fact, this is impossible. It depends upon the case and certain factors which are part of the whole.
--
We think its BECAUSE we do such and such a thing that something else happens. (And how frequently, too!) People are constantly saying and writing: do this and that will happen. But the fact that this person speaks and the other one acts is also absolutely decreed.
If we could really get this into our heads, it would probably make them swim.
--
Let me tell you about a recent occurrence. E. had sent a telegram saying that she had a perforated intestine (but it must have been something else because they operated on her only after several days, and when you are not operated on immediately in such cases, you die). Anyway, it was very serious and she was on the threshold of death that much is certain. She wrote me a letter the day before the operation (what is interesting is that now she doesnt even remember what she wrote). It was a magnificent letter saying that she was conscious of the Divine Presence and of the Divine Plan. Tomorrow they will operate on me, she said. And I am entirely aware that this operation has ALREADY been done, that it is a fact accomplished by the Divine Will; otherwise it could be a fatal ordeal. And she said she was conscious of the supreme Wills action, in a perfect peace. It was a magnificent letter. And the whole thing went off almost miraculously; she recovered in such a miraculous way that the surgeon himself said, I must congratulate you, to which she replied, How surprising! You did the operation! Yes, he said, we did the operation, but it is your body that willed to be healed, and I congratulate you for your bodys willpower. Of course she wrote to me that she knew who had been there to see that all went well. And this feeling of the thing being already accomplished is a beginning of the consciousness Sri Aurobindo speaks of in the Yoga of Self-Perfection, where one is simultaneously both here and there. Because, as Sri Aurobindo says, some people have managed to be entirely there, but what he has called the realization is to be both there and here simultaneously.
Of course, one might wonder what the meaning of everything here is, if it has all been already accomplished above, on an occult plane, and we are merely re-enacting it.
--
Only, as I have told you, practically speaking this experience can be dangerous. When it came, you see, one part of me was having the experience, and one part wasnt yet ready for it. Well, I was awake enough to tell myself, The part experiencing this prevails and keeps the rest calm, yet if the preparation had not been adequate, it could have produced an imbalance. And if by mischance someone without sufficient strength had the possibility of picking up something of that, well, he would lose his head.
This has made it very clear to me why certain things can illuminate some people (I have clearly seen it) and drive others utterly madcompletely destroy their balance. You might say to me, Then its because they had to go mad! Yes, evidently.
--
When I used to speak at the Playground, I tried to explain this one day I was facing the same problem: what really is? And clearly, it is utterly impossible to understand with the mind. But I had a vision of a kind of infinite Eternity through which the Supreme Consciousness voyages7; and the path this Consciousness travels is what we call the manifestation. And this vision explained absolute freedom, it explained how both thingsabsolute freedom and absolute determinismcould coexist in an absolute way. The image in my vision was of an eternal Infinity in which that Consciousness voyagesone cant even say freely, because freely would imply that it could be otherwise.
All who experience this say that the first movement of the manifestation, or the creation (creation, manifestation, objectification: all these words are imperfect) is CHIT, Consciousness that becomes Power. Consequently, Consciousness goes voyaging along in SAT, in Beingstatic, eternal, infinite and necessarily outside time and space and this movement of Consciousness is what produces time and space within this Infinity and Eternity.8 This leads to the understanding that things can simultaneously be absolutely free and absolutely determined.
--
Yet for a time I was in contact with all these gods and all these things, and they had an entirely concrete reality for me; but now I read and I understand, but I cannot live it. And I dont know why. It still hasnt triggered the experience. You see, experience for me the constant, total and permanent Experienceis that there is nothing other than the Supremeonly the Supreme that the Supreme alone exists. So when they speak of Agni or Varuna or Indra it doesnt strike a chord. However, what the Vedas succeed in doing very well is to give you the perception of your infirmity and ineptitude, of the dismal state we are in now; it succeeds wonderfully in doing that!
Yesterday, this ardor of the Flame was thereburning all to offer all. It was absolutely concrete, an intensity of vibrations; I could see the vibrationsall the movements of obscurity and ignorance were cast into that. And I recall a time when I was translating these hymns to Agni with Sri Aurobindo, and Agni was real for me. Well, yesterday it wasnt that, it wasnt the god Agni, it was a STATE OF BEING. It was a state of the Supreme, and as such, it was intimate, clear, intense, vibrant and living.
--
And its The Supremes Will FOR THE EARTHwhich is quite a special thing. I am in a universal consciousness at the moment and the earth seems to me to be a very tiny thing, like this (Mother sketches a tiny ball in the air) in the process of being transformed. But this is from the standpoint of the Work, its another matter.
But for those who are here, we can say, It is what the Supreme Lord is preparing for the earth. He sent Sri Aurobindo to prepare it; Sri Aurobindo called it the supramental realization, and to facilitate communication we can use the same words. Well, this movement (gesture of a rising flame) towards That must be constantconstant, total. All the rest is none of our business, and the less we meddle with it mentally, the better. But THAT, that Flame, is indi spensable. And when it goes out, light it again; when it falters, rekindle itall the time, all the time, ALL THE TIMEwhen sleeping, walking, reading, moving around, speaking all the time.
The rest doesnt matter, one can do anything (it depends on people and their ways of thinking). You can just ask people like X, they will tell you: You can do anything at allit doesnt matter in the least. Only you mustnt feel its you doing it, thats all. You have to feel that Nature does it. But I dont much approve of this system.
--
Once again, Mother's experience coincides with modern science, which is beginning to discover that time and space are not fixed and INDEPENDENT quantitiesas, from the Greeks right up to Newton, we had been accustomed to believe but a four-dimensional system, with three coordinates of space and one of time, DEPENDENT UPON THE PHYSICAL PHENOMENA DEVELOPING THEREIN. Such is 'Riemann's Space,' used by Einstein in his General Theory of Relativity. Thus, a trajectoryi.e., in principle, a fixed distance, a quantity of space to be traversed-is a function of the time taken to traverse it: there is no straight line between two points, or rather the I straight' line is a function of the rate of speed. There is no 'fixed' quantity of space, but rather rates of speed which determine their own space (or their own measure of space). Space-time is thus no longer a fixed quantity, but, according to science, the PRODUCT ... of what? Of a certain rate of unfolding? But what is unfolding? A rocket, a train, muscles?... Or a certain brain which has generated increasingly perfected instruments adapted to its own mode of being, like a flying fish flying farther and farther (and faster and faster) but finally failing back into its own oceanic fishbowl. Yet what would this space-time be for another kind of fishbowl, another kind of consciousness: a supramental consciousness, for example, which can be instantaneously at any point in 'space'there is no more space! And no more time. There is no more 'trajectory': the trajectory is within itself. The fishbowl is shattered, and the whole evolutionary succession of little fishbowls as well. Thus, as Mother tells it, space and time are a 'PRODUCT Of the movement of consciousness.' A variable space-time, which not only changes according to our mechanical equipment, but according to the consciousness utilizing the equipment, and which ultimately utilizes only itself; consciousness, at the end of the evolutionary curve, has become its own equipment and the sole mechanism of the universe.
***
0 1961-04-22, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I had a vision last night which lasted for a long timeit was rather interestingabout your work concerning Sri Aurobindo: the plane where its situated, what place Sri Aurobindo gives it and the HELP he is giving you. It was very, very interesting. I no longer recall all the details, but broad bands of a bluish-white light seemed to be spreading out in special forms (Mother sketches spirals in the air), showing how it would touch the earths mental atmosphere. It was truly interesting.
And Sri Aurobindo spoke of it as my work with you. I told him that I myself was doing nothing! But he told me it was my work with you.
0 1961-04-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But these people just cant get out of their education! Here is a lady [A. Bailey], quite renowned, it seems (shes dead now), who became the disciple of a Tibetan lama and she still speaks of Christ as the sole Avatar! She just cant get out of it!
And each one has the absolute Truth!
--
Our habitual state of consciousness is to do something FOR something. The Rishis, for example, composed their hymns with an end in view: life had a purpose for them, the end was to find Immortality or Truth. But at any level whatsoever, there is always a goal. Even we speak of the supramental realization as the goal.
Just recently, though, I dont know what happened, but something seemed to take hold of me (how to say it?) this perception of the Supreme who is everything, everywhere, who does everythingwhat has been, what is, what will be, what is being doneeverything. And suddenly there was a kind of not a thought or a feeling, it wasnt that; it was rather like a state: the unreality of the goalnot unreality, uselessness. Not even uselessness: the nonexistence of the goal. And even what I was saying just nowthis will to make the experiment lingering in the body even this has gone!
0 1961-04-29, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Let me repeat that when we speak of Sri Aurobindo, it is not a question of teaching nor even of revelation, but of an Action from the Supreme; upon this, no religion whatsoever can be founded.
This is the first blast.
--
Of course, my mother was such an out-and-out materialist, thank God, that it was impossible to speak to her of invisible thingsshe took them as evidence of a deranged brain! Nothing counted for her but what could be touched and seen. But this was a divine grace I had no opportunity to say anything. I kept my experience to myself. But it was one of my first contacts with. I learned later that it was an entity from the past who had come back into me through the aspiration arising from the music.
But I have rarely had an experience in churches. Rather the opposite: I have very often had the painful experience of the human effort to find solace, a divine compassion falling into very bad hands.
--
At the age of eighteen, I remember having such an intense need in me to KNOW. Because I was having experiences I had all kinds of experiences but my surroundings offered me no chance to receive an intellectual knowledge which would have given me the meaning of it all: I couldnt even speak of them. I was having experience after experience. For years, I had experiences during the night (but I was very careful never to speak about them!)memories from past lives, all sorts of things, but without any base of intellectual knowledge. (Of course, the advantage of this was that my experiences were not mentally contrived; they were entirely spontaneous.) But I had such a NEED in me to know! I remember living in a house (one of these houses with a lot of apartments), and in the apartment next door were some young Catholics whose faith was very they were very convinced. And seeing all that, I remember saying to myself one day while brushing my hair, These people are lucky to be born into a religion and believe unquestioningly! Its so easy! You have nothing to do but believehow simple that makes it. I was feeling like this, and then when I realized what I was thinking (laughing), well, I gave myself a good scolding: Lazybones!
To know, know, KNOW! You see, I knew nothing, really, nothing but the things of ordinary life: external knowledge. I had learned everything I had been given to learn. I not only learned what I was taught but also what my brother was taughthigher mathematics and all that! I learned and I learned and I learned and it was NOTHING. None of it explained anything to menothing. I couldnt understand a thing!
0 1961-05-19, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There are successive curves, each second of which would have to be noted down; and in the course of one of these curves, something is suddenly found. For example, at the beginning of The Yoga of Self-Perfection, Sri Aurobindo reviews other yogas, beginning with Hatha Yoga. I had just translated this when I remembered Sri Aurobindo saying that Hatha Yoga was very effective but that it amounted to spending your whole life training your body, which is an enormous time and effort spent on something not essentially very interesting. Then I looked at it and said to myself, But after all, (I was looking at life as it is, as people ordinarily live it) one spends at least 90% of ones life merely to PRESERVE ones body, to keep it going! All this attention and concentration on an instrument which is put to hardly any use. Anyway, I was looking at it with that attitude, when suddenly all the cells of my body responded, in such a spontaneous and WARM way. How to say it? Something so so moving. They told me, But its the Lord who is looking after Himself in us! Each one was saying: But its the Lord who is looking after Himself in us!
It was truly lovely. Then I gave my reason a good poke: How stupid can you be! You always forget the essential.
--
Its not the body complaining, it doesnt complain at all I am the one who complains! I think that its doing its best, but its thwarted by this type of (one can scarcely speak of a mind) this kind of mind-like activity in matter3 interfering. t is sordid. I havent yet been able to eliminate it completely.
There are moments when its brought to a dead halt. Oh, sometimes while I walk for the japa everything is held like this (gesture of all being dominated from above and immobilized), inflexibly.
0 1961-05-30, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its probably worse for me than for others because of all these people around me, clinging like leeches. But even for an ordinary being it is a swarm; it keeps on coming and comingyou would need to spend all your time fanning it away!
***
0 1961-06-02, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I know why I gave no explanations as I was speaking: because of the intensity of the experience. There is something like it in Prayers and Meditations. I remember an experience I had in Japan which is noted there. (Mother looks through Prayers and Meditations and reads a passage dated November 25, 1917:)2
Thou art the sure friend who never fails,
--
It was a series of experiences resulting from external circumstances. And then I speak of the tears shed, not for oneself but for others. (Mother reads a passage dated July 12, 1918:)
But a few days ago did I know, did I hear:
--
What is necessary is to abandon EVERYTHING. Everything: all power, all comprehension, all intelligence, all knowledge, everything. To become perfectly nonexistent, thats the important thing. But the very atmosphere makes things difficultwhat people expect of you, what they want of you, what they think of youits very bothersome. You have to spend all your time fanning it away.
In one of the handwritten notes left by Mother, we found the following: 'Sri Aurobindo told me: Never give them the impression that they can do whatever they like, they will always be protected.'
0 1961-06-06, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
No. I had finished reading the Veda and wanted to take up The Life Divine, but as I had never read On Himself,1 I chose it instead. I read the first chapter dealing with his life in England and to me it all seemed. Oh, why speak of all these things in connection with Sri Aurobindo? Why? I know quite well that he himself has repliedor rather rectified inexact things people had said about him but it made such a painful impression on me! Such a painful impression.
Something must definitely be done which is free of that whole useless jumble about who his father was and so forthpah! I dont like that sort of thing.
--
(After the work, Mother remains absorbed for a long time, then speaks:)
What is bewildering is the subtlety of the problem.
--
Mother is alluding to two extracts from Questions and Answers (dated June 19 and July 17, 1957) which she has just reviewed for inclusion in the Bulletin. In them she speaks of the causes of illness and of using the conscious will for physical development.
***
0 1961-06-17, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Whenever there was a special force descending, or an opening, or a supramental manifestation, we would know it at the same time, in the same manner. And we didnt even need to talk about it; we would sometimes exchange a word or two concerning the consequences, the practical effects on the work, but thats all. I never had this with anyone except Sri Aurobindo.
There have been times when I did things for people and they sensed exactly what I had done. It has happened. It is rather rare, but still it has happened.
0 1961-06-24, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is a boy here, V., who is e specially interested in what happens at the moment of death (this seems to be one reason why he has reincarnated). Hes a conscious boy, a remarkable clairvoyant, and he has a power. And we have had (how to put it?) some quite interesting correlations of experiences concerning people who pass away here. Extremely interesting and extraordinarily precise: he sends word to me, I reply, and at night when the disincarnated person comes he says, Mother has done this and says to do that, and the person does it. And we dont need to speaksuch precision!
This happens in sleep?
--
Have I told you about the experience I had the day I suddenly found myself in Sri Aurobindos home in the subtle physical?7Well, its as if I took a step and entered a far more concrete world than the physicalmore concrete because things contain more truth. I spent a good while there with Sri Aurobindo and then, when it was over, I took another step and I found myself back here slightly dumbfounded. It took me quite some time to regain my bearings here, because it was this world that seemed unreal to me, not the other.
But its simply thatyou take a step, and you enter another room. And when you live in your soul there is a continuity, because the soul remembers, it keeps the whole memory; it remembers all occurrences, even outer occurrences, all the outer movements it has been associated with. So its a continuous, uninterrupted movement, here and there, from one room to another, from one house to another, from one life to another.
--
I have to goa high-priest is waiting for me! Yes, the man in charge of all the temples of Gujarat, thoroughly orthodoxhe has come to the Ashram for some mysterious reason and he wants to see me. Is it really necessary? I asked. He wanted an interview, he wants to speak to me (naturally hell be speaking god knows whatGujarati!). I had him told, I cant hear, Im deaf! Its very convenient Im deaf, I cant hear. If he wants to receive a flower from me (I didnt say make a pranam,8 because that would be scandalous!), he can come and Ill give him a flower. I told him eleven oclockits that time now.
This is all Xs work. The most unexpected people, people youd think would rather be cursed than come to a place like this, are coming from everywhere, from the most diverse milieus the most materialistic materialists, fanatical communists, as well as all sorts of sannyasis, bhikkus, swamis, priestsoh! People who previously were not at all they werent so much disinterested as actually displeased with the Ashram.
0 1961-06-27, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Practically speaking, there can be no absolute falsehood, since the Divine is behind everything.
Its like asking if certain elements will disappear from the universe. What can it mean, the destruction of a universe? Once we are out of our stupidity, what can we call destruction? Only the form is destroyed, the appearance (that, yesall appearances are destroyed, one after the other). It is also said (its written everywhere) that the adverse forces will either be converted that is, become aware of their own divinity and become divineor be destroyed. But what does destroyed mean? Their form? Their form of consciousness can be dissolved, but what about the something which brings itand everything elseinto existence? How can that something be destroyed? This, mon petit, is difficult to comprehend. The universe is a conscious objectification of That which exists from all eternity. Well, how can the All cease to be? The infinite and eternal All, without limits of any kindhow can anything be thrown out of it? There is nowhere to go! (You can rack your brains over it, you know!) Go where? There is only THAT.
--
Therefore, to speak of an absolute falsehood disappearing would simply mean that a whole set of things will live eternally in the past but not belong to the coming manifestations, thats all.
You cant get out of THAT, can you? There you are!
--
Yes, reincarnate from now, so to speak, into a past epoch of history.
This, too, is a manner of speaking.
Reincarnate? No. One can relive the past; that, yesvery well, very well.
I have had an oft repeated experience of reliving the past1 (its a phenomenon of consciousness, possible because everything is preserved and continues to exist somewhere), with a kind of willwhich would be the sign of a powerto change it. I dont know, but at the moment of reliving it, instead of reliving the past just as it had been preserved, a power to make it different was introduced. I am not speaking of the power to change the consequences of the past (that is obvious and functions all the time)it wasnt that; it was the power to change the circumstances themselves (circumstances not quite material but of the subtle physical, with a predominantly psychological content). And since the will was there, from the standpoint of consciousness it actually happened that is, instead of circumstances developing in one direction, they developed in another. So it must correspond to something real, otherwise I would not have had the experience. It wasnt a product of the imagination; it wasnt something one thinks of and would really like to be differentit wasnt that; it was a phenomenon of consciousness: my consciousness was reliving certain circumstances (which are still quite living and obviously continue to exist within their own domain), but reliving them with the power and the knowledge acquired between that past moment and the present, and with a power to change the past moment. A new power entered the scene and turned the circumstance being relived in a new direction. I have had this experience many times and it has always surprised meits not a phenomenon of mental imagination, which is something else entirely.
It opens the door to everything.
--
I have what could be called a tactile sensation that the contents of the subtle atmosphere are increasing. This atmosphere is not part of material space as we conceive of or see it physically, where one thing has to give place to another (Mother changes the position of an eraser on the table)and even that (laughing) I believe is an illusion! It only SEEMS like that to us! Its not on the wholly material plane, but just behind or within (how to put it?), and its contents are increasing. And as its happening within inner dimensions, it can augment, so to speak, indefinitely; things become more and more interwoven, if you see what I meanwhere there was one phenomenon of consciousness there may now be hundreds, interwoven with each other in the inner dimensions; which means, for example, considering only our tiny planet, that the earth is becoming more and more compact and rich with all that has been since the beginning of its formationbecause its all there, it is all still there.
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.
0 1961-07-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes the explanation of his yoga and of what he wants us to realize. After reading it yesterday evening I said to him, How do you expect it to be done in this!(Mother laughingly indicates her own body.) No, no, no! he replied, Thats not it! What is needed now is to learn how to last. Well speak of this again, he told me, in two or three hundred years. Ah! (laughing) Very well! I said. Learn to last, he told me.
Well, were going to learn how to last.
--
I quite understand. But when one speaks of the Lila, the divine play, it implies that He in some way remains in the background and doesnt really get into the act, as they say that Hes no really part of the game, but simply watches.
Yes, yes He is! He is totally involved in it. He Himself is the Play.
It must be remembered that there are all these gradations of consciousness: when we speak of God and his Play we are speaking of God in his transcendent state, beyond everything, beyond all the degrees of matter; when we speak of the Play we are speaking of God in his material state. So we say that God transcendent is watching and playingin Himself, by Himself, with Himselfhis material game.
But all languageall language!is a language of Ignorance. All means of expression, all that is said and all the ways of saying it, are bound to partake of that ignorance. And thats why its so difficult to express something concretely true; to do so would require extremely lengthy explanations, themselves, of course, fully erroneous. Sri Aurobindos sentences are sometimes very long for precisely this reasonhe is trying to get away from this ignorant language.
--
All the believers, all the faithful (those from the West in particular) think in terms of something else when they speak of GodHe cannot be weak, ugly, imperfect, He is something immaculate but this is wrong thinking. They are dividing, separating. For subconscious thought (I mean thinking without reflecting, instinctively, out of habit, without observing oneself thinking), what is generally considered perfection is precisely what is seen or felt or postulated as being virtuous, divine, beautiful, admirable but its not that at all! Perfection means something in which nothing is missing. The divine perfection is a totality. The divine perfection is the Divine in his wholeness, with nothing left out. The divine perfection is the whole of the Divine, with nothing subtracted from it. For the moralists it is the exact opposite: divine perfection is nothing but the virtues they stand for!
From the true standpoint, the divine perfection is the whole (Mother makes a global gesture), and the fact that within this whole nothing can be missing is precisely what makes it perfect.1 Consequently, perfection means that each thing is in its place, exactly what it should be, and that relationships among things are also exactly what they should be.
--
speak about your experience.
I risk repeating myself.
0 1961-07-12, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But Perfection is only one side, one special way of approaching the Divine. There are innumerable sides, angles, a spectsinnumerable ways to approach the Divine. When I am walking, for example, doing japa, I have the sense of Unity (I have spoken to you of all the things I mention when I am upstairs walking: will, truth, purity, perfection, unity, immortality, eternity, infinity, silence, peace, existence, consciousness the list goes on). And when one follows a particular tack and does succeed in reaching or approaching or contacting the Divine, one realizes through experience that these many approaches differ only in their most external forms the contact itself is identical. Its like looking through a kaleidoscopeyou revolve around a center, a globe, and see it under various a spects; but as soon as the contact is established, its identical.
The number of approaches is practically infinite. Each one senses the path which accords with his temperament.
0 1961-07-15, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And it has become acute since.1 No, I dont read these days, because Ive had a hemorrhage in this eye. There have been too many letters, and its difficult for me to decipher handwriting the result is this hemorrhage. So I have gone on strike. All right, I said, I wont read any letters for a week. People can write as much as they please, its all the same to me Im not reading any more. But just before stopping (I stopped reading for only three days), I read a passage where Sri Aurobindo speaks of his own experience and his own work and explains in full what he means by the supramental transformation. This passage confirmed and made me understand many experiences I had after that experience of the bodys ascent [January 24, 1961] (the ascent of the body-consciousness, followed by the descent of the supramental force into the body); immediately afterwards, everything (how to put it?) outwardly, according to ordinary consciousness, I fell ill; but its stupid to speak this way I did not fall ill! All possible difficulties in the bodys subconscient rose up en masseit had to happen, and it surely happened to Sri Aurobindo, too. How well I understood! How well, indeed. And its no joke, you know! I had wondered why these difficulties had hounded him so ferociouslynow I understand, because I am being attacked in the same relentless fashion.
Actually, it springs from everything in material consciousness that can still be touched by the adverse forces; that is, not exactly the body-consciousness itself but, one could say, material substance as it has been organized by the mind the initial mentalization of matter, the first stirrings of mind in life making the passage from animal to human. (The same complications would probably exist in animals, but as there is no question of trying to supramentalize animals, all goes well for them.) Well, something in there protests, and naturally this protest creates disorder. These past few days I have been seeing. No one has ever followed this path! Sri Aurobindo was the first, and he left without telling us what he was doing. I am literally hewing a path through a virgin forestits worse than a virgin forest.
For the past two days there has been the feeling of not knowing anythingNOTHING at all. I have had this feeling for a very long time, but now it has become extremely acute, as it always does at times of crisis, at times when things are on the verge of changingor of getting clarified, or of exploding, or. From the purely material standpointchemically, biologically, medically, therapeutically speaking I dont believe many people do know (there may be some). But it doesnt seem very clear to mein any case, I dont know. Yogically (I dont mean spiritually: that was the first stage of my sadhana), its very easy to be a saint! Oh, even to be a sage is very easy. I feel I was born with itits spontaneous and natural for me, and so simple! You know all that has to be done, and doing it is as easy as knowing it. Its nothing. But this transformation of Matter! What has to be done? How is it to be done? What is the path?
Is there a path? Is there a procedure? Probably not.
--
More accurately, they represent the unconsciousness of Matter. Hostilewe say hostile, but of course this is just a manner of speaking.
You see (Mother is about to say something, then decides not to). Now is not the time to speak of these things.
We will see.
--
That was the basic problembecause the identification of the two [Sri Aurobindo and Mother] was almost childs play, it was nothing: for me to merge into him or him to merge into me was no problem, it wasnt difficult. We had some conversations on precisely this subject, because we saw that (there were many other things, too, but this isnt the time to speak of them) the prevailing conditions were such that I told him I would leave this body and melt into him with no regret or difficulty; I told him this in words, not just in thought. And he also replied to me in words: Your body is indi spensable for the Work. Without your body the Work cannot be done. After that, I said no more. It was no longer my concern, and that was the end of it.
This was said in 1949, just a little more than a year before he left.
--
In the final analysis, everything obviously depends upon the Supremes Will because, if one looks deeply enough into the question, even physical laws and resistances are nothing for Him. But this kind of direct intervention takes place only at the extreme limit; if His Will is to be expressed in opposition, as it were, to the whole set of laws governing the Manifestationwell, that only comes at the very last second. Sri Aurobindo has expressed this so well in Savitri, so well! At least three times in the book he has expressed this Will that abolishes all established laws, all of them, and all the consequences of these laws, the whole formidable colossus of the Manifestation, so that in the face of it all, That can express itself and this takes place at the very last second, so to speak, at the extreme limit of possibility.
I must say that there was a time when, as Sri Aurobindo had entrusted his work to me, there was a kind of tension to do it (it cant be called an anxiety); a tension in the will. This too has now ended (Mother stretches her arms into the Infinite). Its finished. But there MAY still be something tense lurking somewhere in the subconscient or the inconscient I dont know, its possible. Why? I dont know. I mean I have never been told, at any time, neither through Sri Aurobindo nor directly, whether or not I would go right to the end. I have never been told the contrary, either. I have been told nothing at all. And if at times I turn towards Thatnot to question, but simply to know the answer is always the same: Carry on, its not your problem; dont worry about it. So now I have learned not to worry about it; I am consciously not worried about it.
0 1961-07-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In his cosmogony, Theon accounted for the successive pralayas2 of the different universes by saying that each universe was an a spect of the Supreme manifesting itself: each universe was built upon one a spect of the Supreme, and all, one after the other, were withdrawn into the Supreme. He enumerated all the successively manifested a spects, and what an extraordinarily logical sequence it was! I have kept it some place, but I no longer know where. Nor do I remember exactly what number this universe has in the sequence, but this time it was supposed to be the universe which would not be withdrawn, which would, so to speak, follow an indefinite progression of Becoming. And this universe is to manifest Equilibrium, not a static but a progressive equilibrium.3 Equilibrium, as he explains it, is each thing exactly in its place: each vibration, each movement, each and so on down the lineeach form, each activity, each element exactly in its place in relation to the whole.
This is quite interesting to me because Sri Aurobindo says the same thing: that nothing is bad, simply things are not in their placetheir place not only in space but in time, their place in the universe, beginning with the planets and stars, each thing exactly in its place. Then when each thing, from the most colossal to the most microscopic, is exactly in place, the whole Will PROGRESSIVELY express the Supreme, without having to be withdrawn and emanated anew. On this also, Sri Aurobindo based the fact that this present creation, this present universe, will be able to manifest the perfection of a divine worldwhat Sri Aurobindo calls the Supermind.
--
It makes you sense so clearly that things in themselves dont count. What we call things in themselves are of no true importance! What really counts is the relationship of consciousness to these things. And theres a formidable power in this, since in one instance you touch something and drop or mishandle it, while in the other its so lovely, it works so smoothly. Even the most difficult movements are made without difficulty. Its an unheard-of power! We dont give it importance because it has no grandiose effects, its not spectacular. Yes, there are indeed states of grace when one is in the presence of a great difficulty and suddenly has all the power needed to face ityes, but thats something else. I am speaking of a power active in ordinary life.
There was an instance of this the other day: someone in a completely detestable mood wrote me a letter; it was impossible, I couldnt reply I didnt know what to say. I simply applied the Force and remained like this (gesture of an offering to the Light). I said, We shall see. Several hours later (I knew I was going to see this person) I didnt even know if I was going to say I had read the letteror rather if what I was going to say would result from having read it. I had come to that pointnothing. But that very morning a little circumstance occurred that changed everything! And when I met the person I knew immediately what had to be said, what had to be done, and everything worked out.
--
Note that modern astronomy is divided between the theory of endless phases of contraction-explosion-expansion, and the theory of a universe in infinite expansion starting with a 'Big Bang,' which seems quite as catastrophic, since the universe is then plunging at vertiginous speed into an increasingly cold, empty, and fatal infinity, like a bullet released from all restraints of gravity, until... until what? According to astronomers, an exact measurement of the quantity of matter in a cubic meter of the present universe (one atom for every 400 liters of space) should enable us to decide between these two theories and learn which way it will be best for us to die. If there is more than one atom per 400 liters of space, this quantity of matter will create sufficient gravitation to halt the present expansion of galaxies and induce a contraction, ending with an explosion within an infinitesimal space. If there is less than one atom per 400 liters of space, the quantity of matter and thus the gravitational effect will be insufficient to retain the galaxies within their invisible net, and everything will spin off endlesslyunless we discover, with Mother, a third position, that of a 'progressive equilibrium,' in which the quantity of matter in the universe proves in fact to be a quantity of consciousness, whose contraction or expansion will be regulated by the laws of consciousness.
When the veil of falsehood has gone: the supramental consciousness.
0 1961-07-28, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Other traditions speak of the Consciousness, the divine Consciousness, instead of Love. One even finds accounts full of imagery depicting a Being of prismatic light lying in deep sleep in the cave of the Inconscient; and this Descent awakens him to an activity which is still (how to put it?) inner, an immobile activity, an activity by radiation. Countless rays issue from his body and spread throughout the Inconscient, and little by little they awaken in each thing, in each atom, as it were, the aspiration to Consciousness and the beginning of evolution.
I have had this experience.
I have had the experience of being missioned, so to speak, in a form of Love and Consciousness combineddivine Love in its supreme purity, divine Consciousness in its supreme purity and emanated DIRECTLY, without passing through all the intermediate states, directly into the nethermost depths of the Inconscient. And there I had the impression of being, or rather of finding a symbolic Being in deep sleep so veiled that he was almost invisible. Then, at my contact, the veil seemed to be rent and, without his awakening, there was a sort of radiation spreading out. I can still see my vision.2
(silence)
--
The way Theon told it, there was first the universal Mother (he didnt call her the universal Mother, but Sri Aurobindo used that name), the universal Mother in charge of creation. For creating she made four emanations: Consciousness or Light; Life; Love or Beatitude and (Mother tries in vain to remember the fourth) I must have cerebral anemia today! In India they speak only of three: Sat-Chit-Ananda (Sat is Existence, expressed by Life; Chit is Consciousness, expressed by Power; Ananda is Bliss, synonymous with Love). But according to Theon, there were four (I knew them by heart). Well, these emanations (Theon narrated it in such a way that someone not a philosopher, someone with a childlike mind, could understand), these emanations, conscious of their own power, separated themselves from their Origin; that is, instead of being entirely surrendered to the supreme Will and expressing only. Ah, the fourth emanation is Truth! Instead of carrying out only the supreme Will, they seem to have acquired a sense of personal power. (They were personalities of sorts, universal personalities, each representing a mode of being.) Instead of remaining connected, they cut the linkeach acted on his own, to put it simply. Then, naturally, Light became darkness, Life became death, Bliss became suffering and Truth became falsehood. And these are the four great Asuras: the Asura of Inconscience, the Asura of Falsehood, the Asura of Suffering and the Asura of Death.
Once this had occurred, the divine Consciousness turned towards the Supreme and said (Mother laughs): Well, heres what has happened. Whats to be done? Then from the Divine came an emanation of Love (in the first emanation it wasnt Love, it was Ananda, Bliss, the Delight of being which became Suffering), and from the Supreme came Love; and Love descended into this domain of Inconscience, the result of the creation of the first emanation, Consciousness Consciousness and Light had become Inconscience and Darkness. Love descended straight from the Supreme into this Inconscience; the Supreme, that is, created a new emanation, which didnt pass through the intermediate worlds (because, according to the story, the universal Mother first created all the gods who, when they descended, remained in contact with the Supreme and created all the intermediate worlds to counterbalance this fallits the old story of the Fall, this fall into the Inconscient. But that wasnt enough). Simultaneously with the creation of the gods, then, came this direct Descent of Love into Matter, without passing through all the intermediate worlds. Thats the story of the first Descent. But youre speaking of the descent heralded by Sri Aurobindo, the Supramental Descent, arent you?
Not only that. For example, Sri Aurobindo says that when Life appeared there was a pressure from below, from evolution, to make Life emerge from Matter, and simultaneously a descent of Life from its own plane. Then, when Mind emerged out of Life, the same thing from above happened again. Why this intervention from above each time? Why dont things emerge normally, one after another, without needing a descent?
--
Take the experience of Mind, for example: Mind, in the evolution of Nature, gradually emerging from its involution; well and this is a very concrete experience these initial mentalized forms, if we can call them that, were necessarily incomplete and imperfect, because Natures evolution is slow and hesitant and complicated. Thus these forms inevitably had an aspiration towards a sort of perfection and a truly perfect mental state, and this aspiration brought the descent of already fully conscious beings from the mental world who united with terrestrial formsthis is a very, very concrete experience. What emerges from the Inconscient in this way is an almost impersonal possibility (yes, an impersonal possibility, and perhaps not altogether universal, since its connected with the history of the earth); but anyway its a general possibility, not personal. And the Response from above is what makes it concrete, so to speak, bringing in a sort of perfection of the state and an individual mastery of the new creation. These beings in corresponding worlds (like the gods of the overmind,4 or the beings of higher regions) came upon earth as soon as the corresponding element began to evolve out of its involution. This accelerates the action, first of all, but also makes it more perfectmore perfect, more powerful, more conscious. It gives a sort of sanction to the realization. Sri Aurobindo writes of this in SavitriSavitri lives always on earth, with the soul of the earth, to make the whole earth progress as quickly as possible. Well, when the time comes and things on earth are ready, then the divine Mother incarnates with her full powerwhen things are ready. Then will come the perfection of the realization. A splendor of creation exceeding all logic! It brings in a fullness and a power completely beyond the petty shallow logic of human mentality.
People cant understand! To put oneself at the level of the general public may be all very well5 (personally I have never found it so, although its probably inevitable), but to hope that they will ever understand the splendor of the Thing. They have to live it first!
--
Ever westward I advance, without weariness or hesitation. spectacle succeeds spectacle in incredible variety; here upon a rock of lapis lazuli stretch fine and delicate seaweed like long blond or violet tresses; here great, rose-hued fortress walls, all streaked with silver; here flowers seem chiseled from enormous diamonds; here goblets, as beautiful as if carved by the most gifted sculptor, are filled with what appear to be droplets of emerald, alternately vibrant with light and shadow.
Presently I find myself between two rock walls of sapphire blue, upon a path flecked with silver; and the water becomes ever purer and more luminous.
--
Now I see that these rays emanate from a recumbent oval of white light encircled by a superb rainbow, and I sense that the one whom the light hides from my view is plunged into a profound repose. For long I remain at the outer edge of the rainbow, trying to pierce through the light and see the one who is sleeping encircled by such splendor. Unable to discern anything, I enter the rainbow, and thence into the white and shining oval. Here I see a marvelous being: stretched on what seems to be a mass of white eiderdown, his supple body, of incomparable beauty, is garbed in a long, white robe. His head rests on his folded arm, but of that I can see only his long hair, the hue of ripened wheat, flowing over his shoulders. A great and gentle emotion sweeps through me at this magnificent spectacle, and a deep reverence as well.
Has the sleeper sensed my presence? For now he awakens and rises in all his grace and beauty. He turns towards me and his eyes meet mine, mauve and luminous eyes with a gentle, an infinitely tender expression. Wordlessly he bids me a sublime welcome and my whole being joyously responds. Taking my hand, he leads me to the couch he has just left. I stretch out on this downy whiteness, and his harmonious visage bends over me; a sweet current of force enters wholly into me, invigorating, revitalizing each cell.
--
In Sri Aurobindo's terminology, the 'Overmind' represents the highest level of the mind, the world of the gods and origin of all the revelations and highest artistic creations the world that has ruled mental man till now. in his gradations of the worlds, Sri Aurobindo speaks of two hemispheres, the upper hemisphere and the lower. The Overmind is the line between these two hemispheres, 'This line is the intermediary overmind which, though luminous itself, keeps from us the full indivisible supramental Light, but in receiving it divides, distributes, breaks up into separated a spects, powers, multiplicities of all kinds.' In the words of the Upanishad, 'The face of the Truth is covered by a golden lid.'
Mother is referring to the book Satprem will write on Sri Aurobindo, which prompted the questions posed in this conversation.
0 1961-08-02, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When one descends into the subconscient, a time comes when its no longer personal the whole world is there! Then what can we do? Im not speaking of you, but what can people like us do to change it? Its a Sisyphean labor! Vibrations from the whole world keep coming in at each instant. How can we change it?
No, you have to approach the problem from the other direction.
Evolution begins with the Inconscient, complete Inconscience; and from this Inconscient a Subconscient gradually emerges that is, a half or quarter-consciousness. There are two different things here. Consider life on earth (because the process is slightly different in the universe); earth-life begins with total Inconscience and little by little what was involved within it works out and changes this Inconscience into semi-consciousness or subconsciousness. At the same time, there is an individual working that awakens the INDIVIDUAL inconscient to an individual semiconsciousness, and here, of course, the individual has controlalthough its not actually individualized because individualization begins with consciousness. The subconscient of plants or animals, for example, isnt individualized; what we call an animals behavior doesnt arise from individualization but from the genius of the species. Consequently, the individual subconscient is something already evolved out of the general Subconscient. But when one descends to accomplish a work of transformationto bring Light into the different layers of life, for instanceone descends into a cosmic, terrestrial Subconscient, not an individual Subconscient. And the work of transformation is done within the wholenot through individualization, but through the opposite movement, through a sort of universalization.
No, what I mean is that as we progress, we automatically become universalized.
--
Broadly speaking, does this mean that physical Matter will become conscious?
Yes, in a certain way. It will become receptive. The mode of life wont necessarily change, but the form of life will change. Matter will become responsive. Do we say that in French?
--
Years ago, when Sri Aurobindo and I descended together from plane to plane (or from mode of life to mode of life) and reached the Subconscient, we saw that it was no longer individual: it was terrestrial. The rest the mind, the vital and of course the bodyis individualized; but when you descend below this level, thats no longer the case. There is indeed something between the conscious life of the body and this subconscious terrestrial lifeelements are thrown out1 as a result of the action of individual consciousness upon the subconscious substance; this creates a kind of semiconsciousness, and that stays. For example, when people are told, You have pushed your difficulty down into the subconscient and it will resurface, this does not refer to the general Subconscient, but to something individualized out of the Subconscient through the action of individual consciousness and remaining down there until it resurfaces. The process is, so to speak, interminable, even the personal part of it.
Every night, you know, I continue to see more and more astounding things emerging from the Subconscient to be transformed. Its a kind of mixturenot clearly individualizedof all the things that have been more or less closely associated in life. For example, some people are intermingled there. One relives things almost as in a dream (although these are not dreams), one relives it all in a certain setting, within a certain set of symbolic, or at any rate expressive, circumstances. Just two days ago I had to deal with someone (I am actively at work there and I had to do something with him), and upon seeing this person, I asked myself, is he this one or that one? As I became less involved in the action and looked with a more objective consciousness, the witness-consciousness, I saw that it was simply a mixture of both personseverything is mixed in the Subconscient. Already when I lived in Japan there were four people I could never distinguish during my nighttime activitiesall four of them (and god knows they werent even acquainted!) were always intermingled because their subconscious reactions were identical.
--
speaking of individualization, theres a question Ive been wondering about: when one speaks of the central being, this central being is not something here in physical life, is it? Its above.
It is above and within and everywhere! (Mother laughs)
--
I just translated a passage where Sri Aurobindo speaks of the enjoyment and possession of the One by the multitude, of the multitude by the One, and of the multitude by the multitude.4 Such a play must then involve an innumerable diversityinnumerable!
Then why have those who had realizations in the past, who found the true Self, all said it meant the dissolution of the individual, that no personality remained?
--
In all the traditions here in India (and in other countries and other religions as well), most of the time these gods behave impossibly! This is simply because they have no psychic being. The psychic being is the one thing belonging specifically to terrestrial life; it has been given as a grace to repair, to undo what had been done.
Yes, but arent the gods conscious of the Divine?
--
It was at that time that he decided to stop dealing with people and retire to his room. So he called everyone together for one last meeting. Before then, he used to go out on the verandah every day to meet and talk with all who came to see him (this is the origin of the famous Talks with Sri Aurobindo9Mother is about to say something severe, then reconsidersanyway) I was living in the inner rooms and seeing no one; he was going out onto the verandah, seeing everyone, receiving people, speaking, discussing I saw him only when he came back inside.
After a while, I too began having meditations with people. I had begun a sort of overmental creation, to make each god descend into a beingthere was an extraordinary upward curve! Well, I was in contact with these beings and I told Krishna (because I was always seeing him around Sri Aurobindo), This is all very fine, but what I want now is a creation on earthyou must incarnate. He said Yes. Then I saw him I saw him with my own eyes (inner eyes, of course), join himself to Sri Aurobindo.
--
These people had always been very intimate with Sri Aurobindo, so they asked: Why, why, Why? He replied, It will be explained to you. I had no intention of explaining anything, and I left the room with him, but Datta began speaking. (She was an Englishwoman who had left Europe with me; she stayed here until her deatha person who received inspirations.) She said she felt Sri Aurobindo speaking through her and she explained everything: that Krishna had incarnated and that Sri Aurobindo was now going to do an intensive sadhana for the descent of the Supermind; that it meant Krishnas adherence to the Supramental Descent upon earth and that, as Sri Aurobindo would now be too occupied to deal with people, he had put me in charge and I would be doing all the work.
This was in 1926.
--
Shiva, on the other hand, refused. No, he said, I will come only when you have finished your work. I will not come into the world as it is now, but I am ready to help. He was standing in my room that day, so tall (laughing) that his head touched the ceiling! He was bathed in his own special light, a play of red and gold magnificent! Just as he is when he manifests his supreme consciousnessa formidable being! So I stood up and (I too must have become quite tall, because my head was resting on his shoulder, just slightly below his head) then he told me, No, Im not tying myself to a body, but I will give you ANYTHING you want. The only thing I said (it was all done wordlessly, of course) was: I want to be rid of the physical ego.
Well, mon petit (laughing), it happened! It was extraordinary! After a while, I went to find Sri Aurobindo and said, See what has happened! I have a funny sensation (Mother laughs) of the cells no longer being clustered together! Theyre going to scatter! He looked at me, smiled and said, Not yet. And the effect vanished.
0 1961-08-05, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
First of all, in the Questions and Answers you speak of the reversal of consciousness. Is this synonymous with the psychic realization? Because in one Conversation you connect the two things: the reversal of consciousness and the discovery of the psychic being.
Its the result of this discovery. In fact, its the result of union with the psychic being.
Another detail. In several places, Sri Aurobindo speaks of the circumconscient or environmental consciousness through which we enter into contact with the external world. Is this the same as the subtle physical, the subtle envelope? What is this circumconscient?
Its the encircling consciousness. Isnt it called the milieu in French?
--
Does he speak of it as being something personal?
Yes, there is subconscient, conscient, subliminal and circumconscient.
--
Perhaps I should bring you the passage where he speaks about it.
Yes, because I dont quite understand.
--
Then comes what Theon called the nervous sub-level, which lies between this subtle physical and the vital. And it acts as a protection: if it is stable, harmonious and strong, it protects youit protects you even physicallyfrom contagious diseases, for instance, and even from accidents. I experienced it when I was living at Val-de-Grce. It was the year I resolved to attain union with the psychic being and I was concentrated on this from morning to night and night to morning. Every day I spent some time in the Luxembourg Gardens. They were right near the house, but to get there I had to go all the way down Rue du Val-de-Grce and cross Boulevard Saint Michel, where there were streetcars, automobiles, buses the whole circus. I would remain in my concentration the whole time, and once, while crossing the boulevard, I felt a shock about this far from my body [slightly more than arms length], so spontaneously I jumped backjust enough for the streetcar to pass by. I hadnt heard anything; I was totally absorbed, and without that warning I would surely have been run over; instead, I jumped back just in time, and the streetcar sped by. I understood then that this nervous sheath was something entirely concrete, because what I had felt was not an idea of danger but a shocka material SHOCK.
So its true that as long as this envelope is strong and undamaged, you are protected. But for instance, if you are over-tired or worried or flusteredanything that brings disorder into the atmosphere seems to make holes in this envelope, and all kinds of things can enter.
Perhaps this is what Sri Aurobindo is speaking of.
But isnt this the subtle physical?
--
Once when I was at Tlemcen with Theon (this happened twice, but Im not sure about the second time because I was alone), my body was in a cataleptic state and I was in conscious trance. It was a peculiar kind of catalepsy in the sense that my body could speak, though very slowly Theon had taught me how to do it. But this is because the life of the form always remains (this is what takes seven days to leave the body) and it can even be trained to make the body move the being is no longer there, but the life of the form can make the body move (in any case, utter words). However, this state is not without danger, the proof being that while I was working in trance, for some reason or other (which I no longer remember, but obviously due to some negligence on the part of Theon who was there to watch over me), the cord I dont know what to call itwent snap! The link was cut, malevolently,5 and when it was time and I wanted to return, I could no longer re-enter my body. But I was still able to warn him: The cord is cut. Then he used his power and knowledge to help me come back but it was no joke! It was very difficult.6 And this is when I had the experience of the two different states, because the part that had gone out was now without the bodys support the link was cut. Then I knew. Of course, I was in a special state; I was doing a fully conscious work with all the vital power, and I was in control not only of my surroundings but. You see, what happens is a kind of reversal of consciousness: you begin to belong to another world; you feel this quite distinctly. Theon instantly told me to concentrate (I was finding it all interestingMo ther laughs I was making experiments and getting ready to go wandering off, but he was terribly scared that I would die on him!). He begged me to concentrate, so I concentrated on my body.
When I re-entered, it hurt terribly, terriblyan excruciating pain, like plunging into a hell.
--
We are not sure, finally, if this envelope and the circumconscient are one and the same thing, but this is how Sri Aurobindo speaks of it: 'The first thing one sees when one has broken the barrier is the vital-physical body. It is around the physical body and with the physical it forms as it were the "nervous envelope." The force of a disease has to break through it to reach the bodyexcept for the attacks on the most material parts. You can then feel the disease coming and also feel in the nervous envelope the part of the body which it is going to, or intending to, attack because what is in the nervous envelope has a material counterpart in the body. Thus it is the vital-physical which is first attacked and then the force takes the form of a disease in the system. I had myself the experience of fever all around the body.'
A.B. Purani, Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo, Volume I, p. 232
0 1961-08-11, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And it is strangely indifferent to any scale of values or circumstances. Sometimes when I am meeting and speaking with someone, when I am seeing someone, this great universal Light of a perfect whiteness comes streaming in. Well, I must admit, this also occurs for the merest trifles, when Im tasting some cheese somebody has sent me, for example, or arranging objects in a cupboard, or deciding what things Im going to use or have to organize. It doesnt come in the same massive way as when it comes directly. When it comes directly its a mass, passing through and going out like that (Mother shows the Light descending directly from above like a mass and passing through her head in order to spread out everywhere). In these small things its pulverized, as though it came through an atomizer, but its that same sparkling white light, utterly white. Then, whatever Im doing, theres a sensation in the body thats like lying on a sea of something very soft, very intimate, very deep and eternal, immutable: the Lord. And all the bodys cells are joyously saying, You, You, You, You.
Thats my present condition.
--
Thats all, petit. Once again Ive bored you with my stories instead of speaking with you about your book.
Ah, no!
0 1961-08-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Nowadays I always spend a part of the night in the realm of expression, a realm where generally I never used to go at all. Its a very lovely place, very human in the sense that its not a scene from Nature: there are huge rooms and great, highly intellectual arrangements; yet its very lovely, with such a clear and limpid atmosphereall in clear shades (Mother gives up trying to describe it). Oh, its so luminous and lovely, very well organized, as far as the eye can see; it seems as big as the earth. The rooms are roofless, just imagine! Huge roofless rooms flooded with light, and transparent partitions. And the people inside seem very, very awarenot a lot of people, but extremely studious and attentive, and they are creating arrangements of things. They must be people writing books. They are making compositionsoh, if you knew how lovely it was! Its as if they were taking colors and more or less geometrical forms and placing them in relation to one another. There are huge pigeonholes where everything is in order, and yet without doors, not closed upwide open and still completely protected. An interesting place. I dont usually go there Ive gone maybe two or three times in my life, without paying much attention but lately, because of this book you are writing, Sri Aurobindo is taking me there all the time.
And there are people with no countryhe takes me to a place where the people have no country, no race, no special costume they seem very universal. And they move around harmoniously, silently, as though they were gliding and with precision, everything is extremely precise. Some of them have even shown me things: there were some lovely colored papers! But these colors are unearthly, somehow transparent. They were arranging it all, demonstrating and explaining to me how it has to be arranged to give the maximum effect.
I have seen you there several times. You were wearing something similar to what you are wearing now [dhoti]: not European they wear the costume of no particular country. Its usually white, but not made of cloth. Its all on a VERY luminous, very orderly, very clear mental plane-no objects lying around, only things like sheets of paper, which seem to be ideas or compositions of ideas, but no clutter. Its vast, vast, so vast you can see no end to it! And up above its wide open, and a light is constantly descending. What you walk on is a little more solid, but not much more. Its an interesting place.
0 1961-09-16, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Sri Aurobindo says, in one of the letters quoted in On Himself, All the same, you would not expect us to spend all our time acting like the head of the family and reconciling all your stupid quarrels.
Yes!
0 1961-09-23, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And I think that Savitri is the most important thing to speak about.
From time to time I use a line from Savitri, placing it in the book like an open window. Thats all I can do.
0 1961-10-02, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I was holding one of these flowers [Integral Generosity1] in my hand when I saw Z, and I explained to him what I meant by integral generosity. The effect of the ego, I told him, is to shrivel the being. Its the cause of aging, it dries you up the being shrivels under it like a withering flower. And as I was speaking to him, the experience came; all I remember now is the idea, but the idea is nothing the experience itself was there.
I know that at a certain moment I was making the distinction between the two states, between the person the individual, personal beingturning towards the Lord, imploring Him to reveal His Will, and then this experience of becomingby extending oneself, by opening, by enlarging, by merging into the creationof BECOMING the Will of the Lord, the Supremes Will. No longer any need to implore Him, to know His Will and receive it like something foreign to youyou become that Will.
--
This concentration on finding the mechanism sprang from the fact that there were disorders in the body which were vanishing and then reappearingpermanent cure seemed impossible. So I told myself, Somewhere, probably in the subconscient, something must be justifying their presence. Then, after concentrating and searching and concentrating some more, suddenly a memory rose up from the subconscient (a memory which is a kind of continued existence under a certain form), the memory of a particular set of movements and actions (not physical movements, but attitudes) that go back many years and had never attracted my attention. None of it had ever been included in the general clearing-out because, like so many other things, it all seemed to be due to normal, ongoing circumstances. But thats just where I saw (what to call it?) the hue, the taint of Falsehood. Its very subtle. These are very subtle things. But suddenly, oh! It caught hold of me and created a revolution in the whole being. All those vibrations were cast up and transformedan extraordinary thing. It stirred up much more commotion and revolution than I had ever expected. And ah! A relief. Something was clarified, bringing a brilliant, new comprehension, and then quite interesting physical results. Before this, I was really feeling rather poorly, extremely tired, with the impression of a decline into decrepituderelatively speaking! (It was in a very superficial part of the being, but it was enough to be disagreeable.) And all of itpfft! Gone in a single stroke.
And that very day, I had this experience with the possessed personit all came together. And then afterwards, a sort of mastery over the problem and the impression of a breakthroughan opening up of the WAY to change, which is this enlargement. First, the movement of generosity (not that shriveling movement, but its exact opposite the movement of expansion), and from there you go on to universality, and from universality to Totality.
0 1961-10-15, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Normally one would have said that my body was in trance; yet it could move, it could speaksince I did speak to you; but nevertheless, it was a peculiar feeling (which I still have somewhat), like having a head too large for my body. Its not painful or disagreeable, but Im not used to it.
After our meeting yesterday, as soon as I saw clearly and could objectify it, I immediately sent all this to you (I didnt write because I had no time, but I told it all to you), for I felt that, not knowing what had happened, you might have thought I wasnt listening, or I dont know what!
--
After speaking of the descent of the Supermind, he said that an INTERMEDIARY must be prepared between our present mental state (even the most elevated higher mind) and the supramental region, because if one entered directly into Gnosis, well, it would produce such an abrupt change that our physical constitutions would be unable to support itan intermediary is needed. The experiences Ive had make me absolutely convinced of it; twice the supramental world took veritable possession of me and both times it was as if the bodytruly the physical bodywas going to completely disintegrate, due to what you could almost call the opposition of the two conditions.
And yesterday again I clearly saw (Mother touches this mass in her head). My eyes are full of it my eyes are full, you know, and I see that as it works to settle itself in here, it produces this little vibrationa twinkling of vibrationswhich seems to be indi spensable for it to enter into this Matter.
--
But how to speak of all this to people! How to speak of it? They are a million miles away.
Simply awaken hope in them the Hope. A hope based on the certainty of an experience. You know, if they could imagine the Supreme Himself coming and saying, Listen now, Im here to tell you that this is the way it is, get ready.
0 1961-10-30, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(The day before and at the beginning of this conversation, Satprem read aloud some passages of his manuscript relating to the Veda. Then Mother chose the photograph of Sri Aurobindo for the frontispiece. She speaks slowly, as though from a great distance, in a semi-trance.)
Thats how I first saw him, at the head of the staircase.
--
Curious, this impression the feeling of the body and the atmosphere when I was propelled into the future. Its something more more compact, denser than the physical: the New Creation. One always tends to think of it as something more ethereal, but its not! Theon spoke of it, but he didnt express himself very well; his way of speaking didnt have the power of revelation (it was based on experience, but the experience wasnt his, it was Madame Theons. She was a marvelous woman from the standpoint of experienceunique but with no real intelligence oh, she was intelligent and cultivated, but no more than that, and it didnt amount to much). But they really had come as forerunners, and Theon always insisted, It will have a greater density. Scientifically, this seems like heresy, for density is not used in that sense but this was what he said, A greater density. And the impression I get of this atmosphere is of something more compactmore compact and at the same time without heaviness or thickness. All this is evidently absurd scientificallyyet there is a feeling of compactness.
It was like that yesterday something so solid was with me (Mother touches her head); how to put it? Its solid, but not in the way we usually speak of solidity! Its not like that.
And my head became heavy.
--
When he first read the Vedastranslated by Western Sanskritists or Indian pandits they appeared to Sri Aurobindo as an important document of [Indian] history, but seemed of scant value or importance for the history of thought or for a living spiritual experience.2 Fifteen years later, however, Sri Aurobindo would reread the Vedas in the original Sanskrit and find there a constant vein of the richest gold of thought and spiritual experience.3 Meanwhile, Sri Aurobindo had had certain psychological experiences of my own for which I had found no sufficient explanation either in European psychology or in the teachings of Yoga or of Vedanta, and which the mantras of the Veda illuminated with a clear and exact light.4 And it was through these experiences of his own that Sri Aurobindo came to discover, from within, the true meaning of the Vedas (and e specially the most ancient of the four, the Rig-veda, which he studied with special care). What the Vedas brought him was no more than a confirmation of what he had received directly. But didnt the Rishis themselves speak of Secret words, clairvoyant wisdoms, that reveal their inner meaning to the seer (Rig-veda IV, 3.16)?
It is not surprising, therefore, that exegetes have seen the Vedas primarily as a collection of propitiatory rites centered around sacrificial fires and obscure incantations to Nature divinities (water, fire, dawn, the moon, the sun, etc.), for bringing rain and rich harvests to the tribes, male progeny, blessings upon their journeys or protection against the thieves of the sunas though these shepherds were barbarous enough to fear that one inauspicious day their sun might no longer rise, stolen away once and for all. Only here and there, in a few of the more modern hymns, was there the apparently inadvertent intrusion of a few luminous passages that might have justifiedjust barely the re spect which the Upanishads, at the beginning of recorded history, accorded to the Veda. In Indian tradition, the Upanishads had become the real Veda, the Book of Knowledge, while the Veda, product of a still stammering humanity, was a Book of Worksacclaimed by everyone, to be sure, as the venerable Authority, but no longer listened to. With Sri Aurobindo we might ask why the Upanishads, whose depth of wisdom the whole world has acknowledged, could claim to take inspiration from the Veda if the latter contained no more than a tapestry of primitive rites; or how it happened that humanity could pass so abruptly from these so-called stammerings to the manifold richness of the Upanishadic Age; or how we in the West were able to evolve from the simplicity of Arcadian shepherds to the wisdom of Greek philosophers. We cannot assume that there was nothing between the early savage and Plato or the Upanishads.5
--
But we have not yet reached the heart of the Vedic secret. The birth of Agni, the soul (and so many men are still unborn) is merely the start of the voyage. This inner flame seeks, it is the seeker within us, for it is a spark of the great primordial Fire and will never be satisfied until it has recovered its solar totality, the lost sun of which the Veda incessantly speaks. Yet even when we have risen from plane to plane and the Flame has taken successive births in the triple world of our lower existence (the physical, vital and mental world), it will still remain unsatisfiedit wants to ascend, ascend further. And soon we reach a mental frontier where there seems to be nothing to grasp any longer, nor even to see, and nothing remains but to abolish everything and leap into the ecstasy of a great Light. At this point, we feel almost painfully the imprisoning carapace of matter all around us, preventing that apotheosis of the Flame; then we understand the cry, My kingdom is not of this world, and the insistence of Indias Vedantic sagesand perhaps the sages of all worlds and all religions that we must abandon this body to embrace the Eternal. Will our flame thus forever be truncated here below and our quest always end in disappointment? Shall we always have to choose one or the other, to renounce earth to gain heaven?
Yet beyond the lower triple world, the Rishis had discovered a certain fourth, touryam svid; they found the vast dwelling place, the solar world, Swar: I have arisen from earth to the mid-world [life], I have arisen from the mid-world to heaven [mind], from the level of the firmament of heaven I have gone to the Sun-world, the Light (Yajur-veda 17.67). And it is said, Mortals, they achieved immortality (Rig-veda I.110.4). What then was their secret? How did they pass from a heaven of mind to the great heaven without leaving the body, without, as it were, going off into ecstasies?
0 1961-11-05, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
As soon as you enter the occult world, its fantastic what can exist and be lived there but thats for later, when the time comes to speak of such things.
At any rate, you understand that Im not very keen on having Richard introduced into the book the simple fact of mentioning him attracts him.3
He was a pastor at Lille, in France, for perhaps ten years; he was quite a practicing Christian, but he dropped it all as soon as he began to study occultism. He had first specialized in theological philosophy in order to pass the pastoral examinations, studying all the modem philosophy of Europe (he had a rather remarkable metaphysical brain). Then I met him in connection with Theon and the Cosmic Review, and I led him into occult knowledge. Afterwards, there were all sorts of uninteresting stories. He became a lawyer during the early period of our relationship and I learned Law along with him I could even have passed the exam! Then the divorce stories began: he divorced his wife; they had three children and he wanted to keep them, but to do so he had to be legally married, so he asked me to marry himand I said yes. I have always been totally indifferent to these things. Anyway, when I met him I knew who he was and I decided to convert him the whole story revolves around that.
As a matter of fact, the books he wrote (e specially the first one, The Living Ether) were based on my knowledge; he put my knowledge into French and beautiful French, I must say! I would tell him my experiences and he would write them down. Later he wrote The Gods (it was incomplete, one-sided). Then he became a lawyer and entered politics (he was a first-class orator and fired his audiences with enthusiasm) and was sent to Pondicherry to help a certain candidate who couldnt manage his election campaign single-handed. And since Richard was interested in occultism and spirituality, he took this opportunity to seek a Master, a yogi. When he arrived, instead of involving himself in politics, the first thing he did was announce, I am seeking a yogi. Someone said to him, Youre incredibly lucky! The yogi has just arrived. It was Sri Aurobindo, who was told, Theres a Frenchman asking to see you. Sri Aurobindo wasnt particularly pleased but he found the coincidence rather interesting and received him. This was in 1910.
--
I have noticed that as soon as one speaks of Richard one is unwittingly led to tell lies. Thats why I am so terribly careful to avoid the subject.
The first issue began with The Wherefore of the Worlds (the English following the French), and in it Richard attributed the origin of the world to Desire. They were in perpetual disagreement on this subject, Richard saying, It is Desire, and Sri Aurobindo, The initial force of the Manifestation is Joy. Then Richard would say, God DESIRED to know Himself, and Sri Aurobindo, No, God had the Joy of knowing Himself. And it went on and on like that!
--
This man clearly led a rather loose life. Right after he left here he spent some time in the Himalayas and became a Sannyasi. Then he went to France and from France to England. In England he married againbigamy! I didnt care, of course (the less he showed up in my life, the better), but he was in a fix! One day I suddenly received some official letters from a lawyer telling me I had initiated divorce proceedings against Richard. it seems I had a lawyer over there! A lawyer I had never asked for, whose name I didnt know, a lawyer I didnt even know existedmy lawyer! The trial was taking place at Nice, and I was accusing Richard of abandoning me without any means of support! (That was nothing new I had paid all the expenses from the first day we met! But anyway.) Naturally, he couldnt plead that he was a bigamist; nor could he have me accuse him of being a bigamist, because it was true! So it seemed he hadnt been paying my expenses; but then I wasnt claiming anything from him in the case, no alimonya little incoherent, all that. After a few months I was finally informed that I was divorced, which was rather convenient for me as far as the bank was concerned. I had a marriage contract stipulating that our properties were separate; since I was the one with the money (he had nothing), I wanted to be free to do with it as I pleased. But the French were impossible in such matters: the woman was considered the minor party, so even if the money was the wifes and not the husbands, she couldnt withdraw it without his authorization. I dont know if its still like that, but in those days the husb and always had to countersignan annoying situation! I got around this in Japan (the banker there found the rule stupid and told me to ignore it), but the bank here can be a pain in the neck, so it was good to get this cleared up.
He remarried two or three more times. By now (I believe) he is the father of quite a large family, with grandchildren and perhaps great-grandchildren. He lives in America. Someone once told me he was dead, but I could sense that he wasnt. Then, out of the blue, E. arrived, full of admiration, telling me she had met Richard and how stunningly he could preach to people.
--
Here in Pondicherry, those last days might have become tragic (but of course it was impossible). There was the great argument (for he was perfectly aware of who I was): But after all, he would tell me, since you are the eternal Mother, why have you chosen Aurobindo as Avatar? Choose me! You must choose meme! It was the Asura speaking through him. I would smile and not discuss it. Thats not how its done! I would tell him (laughing). Then one day he said, Ah, so you dont want to. (gesture to the throat) Well, if you dont choose me, then. He was a strong fellow with powerful hands. I kept quite calm and said inwardly, My Lord, my Lord. I called Sri Aurobindo and I saw him come, like that (gesture enveloping Mother and immobilizing everything). Then Richards hands loosened their grip.
There were marks on my neck.
--
Occasionally some people were slightly conscious. For instance, during the last war I spent all my nights hovering above Paris (not integrally, but a part of myself) so that nothing would happen to the city. Later it came out that several people had seen what seemed to be a great white Force with an indistinct form hovering above Paris so that it wouldnt be destroyed.
Throughout the war Sri Aurobindo and I were in such a CONSTANT tension that it completely interrupted the yoga. And that is why the war started in the first placeto stop the Work. At that time there was an extraordinary descent of the Supermind; it was coming like that (massive gesture), a descent! Exactly in 39. Then the war broke out and stopped everything cold. For had we personally continued [the work of transformation] we were not sure of having enough time to finish it before the other one crushed the earth to a pulp, setting the whole Affair back centuries. The FIRST thing to be done was stop the action of the Lord of Nations.
--
Even when I had that experience [the first supramental manifestation of February 29, 1956], when the Lord said, The time has come, well, it was not a complete descent; it was the descent of the Consciousness, the Light, and a part, an a spect of the Power. It was immediately absorbed and swallowed up by the world of Inconscience, and from that moment on it began to work in the atmosphere. But it was not THE thing that comes and gets permanently established; when that happens, we wont need to speak of itit will be obvious!
Although the experience of 56 was one more forward step, its not. Its not final.
0 1961-11-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I know my own experience and I can speak of it in detail; and according to what Sri Aurobindo told me, it was the same for himalthough he NEVER wrote of it anywhere. But since it has been my experience, I naturally feel that its the simplest method.
There is also what Theon and Madame Theon used to say. They never spoke of Supermind, but they said the same thing as the Vedas, that the world of Truth must incarnate on earth and create a new world. They even picked up the old phrase from the Go spels, new heavens and a new earth,1 which is the same thing the Vedas speak of. Madame Theon had this experience and she gave me the indication (she didnt actually teach me) of how it was to be done. She would go out of her body and become conscious in the vital world (there were many intermediary states, too, if one cared to explore them). After the vital came the mental: you consciously went out of the vital body, you left it behind (you could see it) and you entered the mental world. Then you left the mental body and entered into. They used different words, another classification (I dont remember it), but even so, the experience was identical. And like that, she successively left twelve different bodies, one after another. She was extremely developed, you seeindividualized, organized. She could leave one body and enter the consciousness of the next plane, fully experience the surroundings and all that was there, describe it and so on, twelve times.
I learned to do the same thing, and with great dexterity; I could halt on any plane, do what I had to do there, move around freely, see, observe, and then speak about what I had seen. And my last stage, which Theon called pathtisme,2 a very barbaric but very expressive word, bordered on the Formlesshe sometimes used the Jewish terminology, calling the Supreme The Formless. (From this last stage one passed to the Formless there was no further body to leave behind, one was beyond all possible forms, even all thoughtforms.) In this domain [the last stage before the Formless] one experienced total unityunity in something that was the essence of Love; Love was a manifestation more dense, he would always say (there were all sorts of different densities); and Love was a denser expression of That, the sense of perfect Unityperfect unity, identitywith no longer any forms corresponding to those of the lower worlds. It was a Light! An almost immaculate white light, yet with something of a golden-rose in it (words are crude). This Light and this Experience were truly wonderful, inexpressible in words.
Well, one time I was there (Theon used to warn against going beyond this domain, because he said you wouldnt come back), but there I was, wanting to pass over to the other side, whenin a quite unexpected and astounding way I found myself in the presence of the principle, a principle of the human form. It didnt resemble man as we are used to seeing him, but it was an upright form, standing just on the border between the world of forms and the Formless, like a kind of standard.3 At that time nobody had ever spoken to me about it and Madame Theon had never seen itno one had ever seen or said anything. But I felt I was on the verge of discovering a secret.
--
Ignore the spelling mistakes!
Now, if theres something else you want to ask me, perhaps it will come.
--
Besides, according to what Ive been told (not physically), I believe that the Rishis practiced going into trance. But I suppose they wanted to achieve what Sri Aurobindo speaks of: a PHYSICAL transformation of the physical body permitting one to LIVE this consciousness instead of the ordinary consciousness. Did they ever do it? I dont know. The Veda simply recounts what the forefa thers have done. But who are these forefa thers?
But surely this supramental consciousness is something to be found in the body?8
0 1961-12-20, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For example, the importance of the departure2: how he was present the whole time I was away; how he guided my entire life in Japan; how. Of course, it would be seen in the mirror of my own experience, but it would be Sri Aurobindonot me, not my reactions: him; but through my experience because thats all I can speak of.
There would be interesting things even for.
--
But between these two meetings he participated in a whole series of experiences, experiences of gradually growing awareness. This is partly noted in Prayers and Meditations (I have cut out all the personal segments). But there was one experience I didnt speak of there (that is, I didnt describe it, I put only the conclusion)the experience where I say Since the man refused I was offering participation in the universal work and the new creation and the man didnt want it, he refused, and so I now offer it to God.6
I dont know, Im putting it poorly, but this experience was concrete to the point of being physical. It happened in a Japanese country-house where we were living, near a lake. There was a whole series of circumstances, events, all kinds of thingsa long, long story, like a novel. But one day I was alone in meditation (I have never had very profound meditations, only concentrations of consciousness Mother makes an abrupt gesture showing a sudden ingathering of the entire being); and I was seeing. You know that I had taken on the conversion of the Lord of Falsehood: I tried to do it through an emanation incarnated in a physical being [Richard]7, and the greatest effort was made during those four years in Japan. The four years were coming to an end with an absolute inner certainty that there was nothing to be done that it was impossible, impossible to do it this way. There was nothing to be done. And I was intensely concentrated, asking the Lord, Well, I made You a vow to do this, I had said, Even if its necessary to descend into hell, I will descend into hell to do it. Now tell me, what must I do?The Power was plainly there: suddenly everything in me became still; the whole external being was completely immobilized and I had a vision of the Supreme more beautiful than that of the Gita. A vision of the Supreme.8 And this vision literally gathered me into its arms; it turned towards the West, towards India, and offered meand there at the other end I saw Sri Aurobindo. It was I felt it physically. I saw, sawmy eyes were closed but I saw (twice I have had this vision of the Supremeonce here, much later but this was the first time) ineffable. It was as if this Immensity had reduced itself to a rather gigantic Being who lifted me up like a wisp of straw and offered me. Not a word, nothing else, only that.
--
A book like that (sufficiently veiled, of course), written in the simplest way possible (like I wrote The Science of Living, I believe)and its fine, you speak to people in their own language. Above all, no philosophy! None! You simply tell some extraordinary stories in the same way you would tell an ordinary story. But the Story is there, thats the most important thing.
It started in my infancy the Story was already there.
--
Without without great speculations.
There are many things like that in Sri Aurobindos book, On Himself, many things.
0 1961-12-23, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But while these things are happening, we shouldnt speak of them.
So nonetheless, we still need a Bulletin!
--
But it will take a long time. We mustnt imagine that it will be done in the blink of an eye I am ready to spend years on it (if it comes quicker, so much the better).
But its the key. The key.
--
It translates itself into Love. And of course I am not at all speaking of the human, physical quagmire; I am speaking of the most wonderfully beautiful and pure Love imaginable. This Power is the origin of that Love, and it is in the Supreme.
(Mother sits at the organ)
0 1962-01-09, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And so I looked. Is it something particular to this body? I wondered. To everyone who has lived closely with it, my body gives the impression of two things: a very concentrated, very stubborn will, and such endurance! Sri Aurobindo used to tell me he had never dreamed a body could have such endurance. And thats probably why. But I dont want to curtail this ability in any way, because it is a CELLULAR will, and a cellular endurance toowhich is quite intriguing. Its not a central will and central endurance (thats something else altogether)its cellular. Thats why Sri Aurobindo used to tell me this body had been specially prepared and chosen for the Workbecause of its capacity for obstinate endurance and will. But thats no reason to exercise this ability uselessly! So I am making sure it relaxes now; I tell it constantly, Now, now! Just let go! Relax, have some fun, wheres the harm in it? I have to tell it to be quiet, very quiet. And its very surprised to hear that: Ah! Can I live that way? I dont have to hurry? I can live that way?
So thats why I am resting. Am I better or not? Things are always the same. Were I to start doing what I was doing before, which I KNEW all along was absolutely unreasonable. Its not that I didnt know it; I did know and I wasnt happy about it, because I knew I was doing something I shouldnt. I have no intention of starting again, but if I had said, I am withdrawing for good, it would have been. If you knew how MANY things have gone slack [in the Ashram]! And how many people I am telling off: Well, you wouldnt have done that a week ago! Oh, thats an experience in itselfto see what peoples so-called faithfulness depends on.
--
Later, when he withdrew and put me in front, there was naturally a bit more activity, as well as the semblance of responsibility but it was only a semblance. What security! A sense of total, total security for thirty years. Not once. There was just a single scratch, so to speak, when he had that accident and broke his leg. There was a formation at work (an adverse force) and he wasnt taking sufficient precautions for himself because it was directed against both of us, and more e specially against me (it had tried once or twice to fracture my skull, things like that). Well, he was so intent on keeping it from seriously touching my body that it managed to sneak in and break his leg. That was a shock. But he straightened everything out again almost immediatelyit all fell back into place and went on like that till the end.
And the feeling was so strong that even during his illness (which lasted for months, you know), I had a sense of perfect security; so much so that the idea of his life being really affected in the least by this illness couldnt even occur to me! I didnt want to believe it when the doctor said, Its over. I didnt want to believe it. And as long as I stayed in the room with me in the room he couldnt leave his body. And so there was a terrible tension in himon the one hand the inner will to depart, and then this thing holding him there in his body: the fact that I knew he was alive and could only be alive. He had to signal me to go to my room, supposedly to rest (I didnt rest); and no sooner had I left his room than he was gone.
--
Whats really almost miraculous is that I can speak of it even now.
***
--
The criterion or the judgment [for passing the tests] was based EXCLUSIVELY on the substance constituting the peoplewhe ther they belonged completely to the supramental world or not, whether they were made of this very special substance. The criterion adopted was neither moral nor psychological. It is likely that their bodily substance was the result of an inner law or an inner movement which, at that time, was not in question. At least it is quite clear that the values are different.
And then you add:
--
Here is the text of Sri Aurobindo's letter: "There is a confusion here. The Mother's grace is one thing, the call to change another, the pressure of nearness to her is yet another. Those who are physically near to her are not so by any special grace or favour, but by the necessity of their work that is what everybody here refuses to understand or believe, but it is the fact: that nearness acts automatically as a pressure, if for nothing else, to adapt their consciousness to hers which means change, but it is difficult for them because the difference between the two consciousnesses is enormous e specially on the physical level and it is on the physical level that they are meeting her in the work."
Centenary Edition, Vol. XXV, p. 297
0 1962-01-12 - supramental ship, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And, over and above this, for the realization to be total, there are two other conditions, which arent easy either. Intellectually, theyre not too difficult; in fact, for someone who has practiced yoga, followed a discipline (I am not speaking here of just anyone), theyre relatively easy. Psychologically too, given this equality, theres no great difficulty. But as soon as you come to the material plane the physical plane and then to the body, it isnt easy. These two conditions are first, the power to expand, to widen almost indefinitely, enabling you to widen to the dimensions of the supramental consciousness which is total. The supramental consciousness is the consciousness of the Supreme in his totality. By totality, I mean the Supreme in his a spect of Manifestation. Naturally, from a higher point of view, from the viewpoint of the essence the essence of that which in Manifestation becomes the Supermindwhats necessary is a capacity for total identification with the Supreme, not only in his a spect of Manifestation, but in his static or nirvanic a spect, outside of the Manifestation: Nonbeing. But in addition, one must be capable of identifying with the Supreme in the Becoming. And that implies both these things: an expansion that is nothing less than indefinite, and that should simultaneously be a total plasticity enabling one to follow the Supreme in his Becoming. You dont merely have to be as vast as the universe at one point in time, but indefinitely in the Becoming. These are the two conditions. They must be potentially present.
Down to the vital, we are still in the realm of things that are more than feasible they are done. But on the material level it results in my misadventures of the other day.2
--
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.
--
So we can say that the Supermind can express itself through a terrestrial consciousness only when there is a constant state of perfect equalityequality arising out of spiritual identification with the Supreme: all becomes the Supreme in perfect equality. And it must be automatic, not an equality obtained through conscious will or intellectual effort or an understanding preceding the state itselfnone of that. It has to be spontaneous and automatic; one must no longer react to what comes from outside as though it were coming from outside. That pattern of reception and reaction must be replaced by a state of constant perception and (I dont mean identical in all cases, because each thing necessarily calls forth its own particular reaction) but practically free from all rebound, you might say. Its the difference between something coming from outside and striking you, making you react, and something freely circulating and quite naturally generating the vibrations needed for the overall action. I dont know if I am making myself clear. Its the difference between a vibratory movement circulating within an IDENTICAL field of action, and a movement from an outside source, touching you and getting a reaction (this is the usual state of human consciousness). But once the consciousness is identified with the Supreme, all movements are, so to speak, innerinner in the sense that nothing comes from outside; there are only things circulating, which, through similarity or necessity, naturally generate or change the vibrations within the circulatory milieu.
I am very familiar with this, because I am now constantly in that state. I never have the feeling of something coming from outside and bumping into me; theres rather the sense of multiple and sometimes contradictory inner movements, and of a constant circulation generating the inner changes necessary to the movement.
--
Mother later clarified the meaning of this sentence: "I saw that to follow the Supreme in the Becoming one has to be able to expand, because the universe expands in the Becoming the amount of expansion in the universe is not matched by an equal amount of dissolution. So it is really necessary to be able to grow, as a child grows, to expand; but at the same time, for things to progress, this process of expansion demands a constant inner reorganization. As the quantity is increased (if we can speak of quantity here), so must the quality be simultaneously maintained by an ongoing internal reorganization of intercellular relationships."
In December 1958.
0 1962-01-15, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I used to dictate. Thon taught me to speak while in trance (that is, he had taught my BODY to express itself), and I would tell him everything I was doing while doing it. And he never noted any of it down I su spect he did it on purpose: he wasnt interested in making revelations. So its all lost. But had it been noted down, hour by hour, minute by minute, it would have made an extraordinary scientific document on the occultextraordinary! He never noted it down.
But that vital being who was given a bodydid it live on earth for any length of time?
0 1962-01-21, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And this is all from the terrestrial, not the individual standpoint (for the individual standpoint, its quite clear): I am speaking from the terrestrial standpoint.
And there was the sudden vision of all the error, all the incomprehension, all the ignorance, all the darkness andeven worseall the ill will in the earths consciousness, which felt responsible for the prolongation of those adverse forces and beings and offered them up in a great it was more than an aspiration, it was a sort of holocaust, so that the adverse forces might disappear, might no longer have any reason to exist, no longer need to be there to point out all that has to change.
--
It was the same experience when I told Sri Aurobindo that India was free; it was the Universal Mother speaking from what could be called Her originit was from that level and the thing took thirty-five years to come down on Earth.
When I had the experience that the time had come for the supramental Force to descend on Earth, I followed the effects of that descent, I followed the effects and the consequences in my consciousness. But to ordinary eyes it was something like what happened with Indias liberationits possible, of course, that the Supermind did come down, but for the moment its effects are more than veiled.
0 1962-01-24, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its difficult for me to speak during these experiences because French comes to me more spontaneously, and the experiences all happen in EnglishSri Aurobindos power is so much with them.
All right, mon petitwhen do I see you again?
0 1962-01-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Well, if you speak this way to philosophers and metaphysicians, theyll look at you as if to say, You must be a real simpleton to believe all that claptrap! But these things are not to be taken as concrete truths they are simply splendid images. Through them I really did come in contact, very concretely, with the truth of what caused the worlds distortion, much better than with all the Hindu stories, far more easily.
Buddhism and all similar lines of thought took the shortest path: The desire to exist is what has caused all the trouble. If the Lord had refrained from having this desire, there would have been no world! Its childish, very childish, really a much too human way of looking at the problem.
--
It was written in English and I am the one who translated it into Frenchinto horrible French, perfectly ghastly, because I put in all the new words Theon had dreamed up. He had made a detailed description of all the faculties latent in man, and it was remarkable but with such barbarous words! You can make up new words in English and get away with it, but in French its utterly ridiculous. And there I was, very conscientiously putting them all in! Yet in terms of experience, it was splendid. It really was an experienceit came from Madame Theons experiences in exteriorization. She had learned what Theon also taught me, to speak while youre in the seventh heaven (the body goes on speaking, rather slowly, in a rather low voice, but it works quite well). She would speak and a friend of hers, another English woman who was their secretary, would note it all down as she went along (I think she knew shorthand). And afterwards it was made into stories, told as stories. It was all shown to Sri Aurobindo and it greatly interested him. He even adopted some of the words into his own terminology.
The divisions and subdivisions of the being were described down to the slightest detail and with perfect precision. I went through the experience again on my own, without any preconceived ideas, just like that: leaving one body after the other, one body after the other, and so on twelve times. And my experienceapart from certain quite negligible differences, doubtless due to differences in the receiving brainwas exactly the same.
--
You speak of exteriorizationcouldnt you show me a simple way of learning to do it?
You cant do it on your own, its dangerous.
0 1962-02-03, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Besides, if you remember the beginning of Savitri (I read it only recently, I hadnt known it), in the second canto, speaking of Savitri, he says she has come (he puts it poetically, of course!) to (laughing) kick out all the rulesall the taboos, the rules, the fixed laws, all the closed doors, all the impossibilitiesto undo it all.
I went one better; I didnt even know the rules so I didnt need to fight them! All I had to do was ignore them, so they didnt exist that was even better.
--
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 indi spensable 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 e specially with personal hygiene, eating and other absolutely indi spensable things, the attempt is to associate them with the Divine Presence so that they may be as much an expression of divine joy as possible. (This is realized to a certain extent.)
Now where does japa fit into all this?
--
Naturally, if theres also an awareness of the idea behind it, if one does japa as a very active CONSCIOUS invocation, then its effects are greatly multiplied. But the basis is the magic of sound. This is a fact of experience, and its absolutely true. The sound OM, for instance, awakens very special vibrations (there are other such sounds as well, but of course that one is the most powerful of all).
It is an attempt to divinize material substance.
From another, almost identical point of view, it fills the physical atmosphere with the Divine Presence. So time spent in japa is time consecrated to helping the material substance enter into more intimate rapport with the Divine.
And if one adds to this, as I do, a mantric program, that is, a sort of prayer or invocation, a program for both personal development and helping the collective, then it becomes a truly active work. Then theres also what I call external work: contact with others, reading and answering letters, seeing and speaking to people, and finally all the activities having to do with the organization and running of the Ashram (in meditation this work becomes worldwide, but physically, materially, it is limited for the moment to the Ashram).
In the course of my observation, I also saw the position of X and people like him, who practically spend their lives doing japa, plus meditation, puja,4 ceremonies (I am talking only about sincere people, not fakers). Well, thats their way of working for the world, of serving the Divine, and it seems the best way to themperhaps even the only way but its a question of mental belief. In any case, its obvious that even a bit of not exactly puja, but some sort of ceremony that you set yourself to dohabitual gestures symbolizing and expressing a particular inner statecan also be a help and a way of offering yourself and relating to the Divine and thus serving the Divine. I feel its important looked at in this waynot from the traditional viewpoint, I cant stand that traditional viewpoint; I understand it, but it seems to me like putting a brake on true self-giving to the Divine. I am speaking of SELF-IMPOSED japa and rules (or, if someone gives you the japa, rules you accept with all your heart and adhere to). These self-imposed rules should be followed as a gesture of love, as a way of saying to the Divine, I love You. Do you see what I mean? Like arranging flowers in a certain way, burning incense, dozens of little things like that, made beautiful because of what is put into themit is a form of self-giving.
Now, I think that doing japa with the will and the idea of getting something out of it spoils it a little. You spoil it. I dont much like it when somebody says, Do this and you will get that. Its trueits true, but its a bit like baiting a fish. I dont much like it.
--
In fact, without knowing anything, Satprem had sensed a kind of warrior, very luminous and white, reminding him of the god Kartik, son of the Universal Mother, armed with a spear. Later, Mother said that her vital being was a "diamond-warrior."
Japa: the continuous repetition of a mantra.
0 1962-02-06, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And that is exactly what I have seen in the light of the events described in Perseus. If you dont take the problem generally but specifically, down to the least detail. But it evaporates as soon as you formulate it. Only when you feel it concretely, when you get a grip on it, can you grasp both things.
(silence)
--
Generally speaking, the antidivine is easily understood, but in the minute details of daily life, how do you choose between this and that? What is the truth behind the thing you choose and the one you dont choose? And you know, my standpoint is totally beyond any question of egoistic, individual will that isnt the problem here. Its not that.
As soon as you try to say it, it evaporates.
--
But whats impossible to express is the nonexistence of a being, an individual being. When I say I, theres no knowing what it means. Its not the totality either. Not the totality, not the entire universe, specially not the earth, the poor little earth, which I always see as a tiny thing adrift in the universe. So what is it?
(silence)
--
Intellectually speaking, its the Supreme and.
The Shakti.
0 1962-02-09, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Take Z, for instanceshe told me that Maharshi1 wrote in his book that if I were Hindu and did asanas every day, all India would be at my feet! This has certainly been Zs biggest difficulty: it was easy to come here, she could speak to me perfectly freely, I didnt behave mysteriously. So of course, it was too simple!
***
0 1962-02-13, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Actually, I have noticed one thing: nowadays if I spontaneously say something the way I see it, without trying to adapt myself to people, they dont understandits difficult to understand. And I am not speaking of people who know nothing, but of those who have lived and thought with me.
My vision of things the SAME thingshas become very, very different. Very different. When you read these Talks to me its exactly as though I were listening to someone else saying things I am transported back into a different persons consciousness. But at least its accessible, while now.
--
In fact, in the Agenda conversations of 1958 and '59 (never noted by Satprem because he believed them too "personal"), Mother mentioned this as one of the main reasons for encouraging his tantric discipline. He even set out for the Himalayas, like a knight of yore, with the idea of bringing back to Mother the secrets of transformation; and Mother indicated to him the spot where one of her former bodies lay in a Himalayan cave, petrified by a mineral spring. But the secret of the new species can manifestly not be found through any "trick" tantric or otherwiseone's very nature must change. No one could help Mother because if someone "knew," it would already be done.
Mother means that it wasn't possible for Sri Aurobindo to continue.
0 1962-02-24, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Because. Ive noticed there are always several ways of explaining things. But certainly one very common explanation would be that it was some type of magic spell for my health too.
The last time X came, I was very ill the day he arrived and he was called to my room upstairsactually I wanted him to come upstairs for several reasons, so he could see certain things. But he didnt see a thing, or if he did, he was reluctant to say so. Oh, its a physical ailment, he said (it isnt true, I had no physical ailmentperhaps he didnt want to say it), its a physical ailment; something may be acting from outside, but it doesnt amount to much. But it seems to me the formation was made a long time ago I was always feeling attacked and it must have been skillfully made!4
--
I should mention that three or four days before my birthday something apparently very troublesome happened5 (it could have been troublesome, anyway), and it made me wonder: Will I be able to do what I have to on the 21st? I wasnt happy about it. No, I said, I cant let these people down when theyre expecting so much from this day; thats not right. So throughout the 20th I stayed exclusively concentrated in a very, very deep, very interiorized invocation, not in the least superficial, far from all emotions and sentiments something really at the summit of the being. And I remained in contact with That, for everything to be truly for the best, free from any false movement in Matter whatsoever. And that night I was CLEARLY cured; I mean I followed the action and saw myself really and truly cured. When I got up in the morning, I got up cured. All the things I constantly had to do, all the tapasyas just to keep going, were no longer necessarysomeone had taken charge of everything, and it was all over and done with. And on the morning of the 21st, with a crowd of two thousand and some hundred people, it went perfectly smoothly, without the slightest hitch. Then in the afternoon I had that very special experience for my legs.
So on the 21st morning I could say quite spontaneously and unhesitatingly, Today the Lord has given me the gift of healing me. (I was speaking in English about the things people had given me, and I said, and the Lord has given me the gift of healing me.)
This explanation is clear; and the healing was the result of tapasya. Its self-explanatory. Something was even saying to my body, to the bodys SUBSTANCE, O unbelieving substance, now you wont be able to say there are no miracles. Throughout all the work that was being done on the 20th, something was saying (I dont know who, because it doesnt come like something foreign to me any more, its like a Wisdom, it seems like a Wisdom, something that knows: not someone in particular, but that which knows, whatever its form), something that knows was insisting to the body, by showing it certain things, vibrations, movements, From now on, O unbelieving substance, you cant say there are no miracles. Because the substance itself is used to each thing having its effect, to illnesses following a particular course and certain things even being necessary for it to be cured. This process is very subtle, and it doesnt come from the intellect, which can have a totally different interpretation of it; its rather a kind of consciousness ingrained in physical substance, and thats what was being addressed and being shown certain movements, certain vibrations and so forth: You see, from now on you cant say there are no miracles. In other words, a direct intervention of the Lord, who doesnt follow the beaten path, but does things in His own way.
There was also that attack (it was rather serious and threw the doctor into a fit of anxiety) which took place, I think, the day before sari distribution.6 The next morning, throughout the distribution, someone else seemed to have taken possession of my body and to be doing what had to be done, taking care of all the difficulties; I was comfortable, serene, simply like a carefree spectator. I had nothing to worry about, someone was. (What someone? Someone, something, I dont know, theres no more difference, its not delineated like that any more; but anyway, it was a being, a force, a consciousness perhaps a part of myself, I dont know; none of this is clear-cut; its quite precise, but not divided, very smoothMo ther makes a rounded gestureno breaks.) Something, then, a will or a force or a consciousness plainly a powerhad taken possession of the body and was doing all the work, looking after everything. I was witnessing everything, smiling. But its gone now. It came specifically for that work (I was in pretty bad shape); when the work was over, it dissolvedit didnt leave abruptly but it became inactive. Afterwards, I felt rather confident. Well in any case, I thought, something similar could happen on the 21st, since it just happened now.
The 19th was so-so, and on the 20th I was concentrated all day long: no contacts with anyone, nothing external, only an intense invocation as intense and concentrated as when youre trying to melt into the Lord at death. It was like that. The same movement of identification, but at its core a will for everything to work out in a good way here [on the material plane]. In a good way I mean I said to the Lord, YOUR Good, the true Good, not. The true Good, a victorious Good, a real progress over the way life is usually lived. And I stayed in this unwavering concentration the whole day, all the time, all the time: even when I spoke, it was something very external speaking. And then at night when I went to bed I felt something had changed the body felt completely different. When I got up in the morning, all the pains and disorders and dangers had vanished. Lord, I said, You have given me a gift of health.
And with this change, the bodily substance, the very stuff of the cells, was constantly being told, Dont you forget, now you see that miracles CAN happen. In other words, the way things work out in physical substance may not at all conform to the laws of Nature. Dont forget, now! It kept coming back like a refrain: Dont forget, now! This is how it is. And I saw how necessary this repetition was for the cells: they forget right away and try to find explanations (oh, how stupid can you be!). Its a sort of feeling (not at all an individual way of thinking), its Matters way of thinking. Matter is built like that, its part of its make-up. We call it thinking for lack of a better word, but its not thinking: it is a material way of understanding things, the way Matter is able to understand.
--
I began three days ago, but I keep getting entangled with the traditional formation around it: Oh, its dangerous, its dangerous, be careful. So this morning I thought Id better speak to you about it.
Are you doing it without instructions?
--
How much time do you spend on it?
Eight to ten minutes, three times a day before my japa.
0 1962-02-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You have nothing special to say?
(Mother shakes her head)
--
Ultimately, absolute sincerity is the great deciding factor for those who predict or foresee. Unfortunately, because of peoples curiosity, their insistence and the pressure they exert (which very few can resist), an almost involuntary mechanism of inner imagination comes to add just that small missing element to something not seen with precision or exactness. Thats what causes flaws in prediction. Very few have the courage to say, Ah no, I dont know this, I dont see that, this eludes me. They dont even have the courage to say it to themselves! So then, with a tiny drop of imagination, which acts almost subconsciously, the vision or information gets rounded outit can turn out to be anything at all! Very few people can resist this tendency. I have known many, many psychics, many extraordinarily gifted beings, and only a handful were able to stop just at the point where their knowledge stopped. Or else they embellish. Thats what gives these faculties their slightly dubious quality. One would have to be a great saint, a great sage, and completely free from other peoples influences (I dont speak of those who seek fame: they fall into the most flagrant traps); because even goodwillwanting to satisfy people, please them, help themis enough to distort the vision.
(Smiling) Are you satisfied? Have I answered everything?
0 1962-03-03, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Theres a big difference between people who think about what they write and those who write without thinking. With the latter, even when their handwriting is ostensibly clear, there is a faint cloud and I understand nothing the words seem to dance. Its the same for speech; people who speak without thinking simply make a humming noise the words pour out but I understand nothing.
Nine years later, Mother will remember and on December 11, 1971, find it, on the contrary, very good to say for the time had come.
0 1962-03-06, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Really, I dont understand anything any more. I dont understand. I have absolute faith in Something Else thats always been there, it doesnt waver. But there seems to be no progress. I see nothing ahead of me, nothing behind me, nothing. I dont know, Ive already been here a good number of years and I dont feel Ive made an inch of progress, nothing I see nothing. Not that Im losing faith, thats my only reason for living; without this certainty of Something Else, I would kill myself. But practically speaking.
There are periods like that.
--
My feeling is that if you try to hurry, to rush, to speed things up a little, it jams, it becomes like stoneit turns to stone again. It took the stone a long time to become a man. So I dont want that. You cant get too impatientits not even impatience, but pressure. Beyond a certain pressure, it turns to stone. So I understand people who attain realization and, blissfully enjoying it, kick the whole thing out: Fine, Ill do without it!
Thats what has always happened.
0 1962-03-11, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
No, I really dont agree! Objectively speaking, its extremely instructive to see the difficulties you have passed through.
It may be instructive, but it cant be published; its much too personal.
--
By neglecting to explain this a spect [in this Talk], I passed over a large part of the topic in silence. I usually dont speak of those things, or else mention them only in passingit terrifies people and they immediately start wondering, Oh, is it really a god? Is it this is it that? Could it be a devil in disguise? They panic.
Only its perfectly true that to deal with those realms one must either be fully protected by a guru, a real guru, a man with knowledge, or else have purity (not saintliness), an unmixed vital and mental purity. Very, very often, bhaktas [devotees] of Sri Aurobindo or mewhen they are sincere, truly sincere, that is, people of great spiritual purityhave dozens of beings appear to them, saying, I am Sri Aurobindo. It happens all the time, with all the right external appearancesits very easy for such beings to put on a disguise. It takes the inner psychic purity not to be deceivedyou invariably FEEL something that makes it impossible for you to be duped. But otherwise, many, many people are taken in.
I dont like to talk about this because people here have no discrimination; they would be left with nothing but fear and would no longer believe in anything, forever asking me, Oh, isnt this a trick? Which paralyzes everything. Thats why I didnt speak about that in this Talk.
You do say a couple of words about it.
--
The great ones know (I am not speaking of the multitude of minor beings, but the others; there are millions of emanationsemanations by the truckload!but only a few great ones), they know enough to be aware of their own position in the universe and that they will come to an end. They know there is such a thing as the Supreme (although they deny it), and that they are cut off from the Supreme, and that they will come to an end. But they have taken a stand against the Work, the Action, the Progress, and are intent on destroying as much as they can.
Some of them get converted. Their conversion means a great entity joining the divine Work but that seldom happens.
Yes, but what about the minor gods? You often speak of a little Kali or a little Durga; are these beings beneficent?
Ah, they arent from the vital at all! Not at all! They are manifestations of Overmind2 beings, projected into the vital world for a specific action. But they arent vital beings: they have an Origin, they are still linked to a being from another world. Oh, no, not at all!
The same goes for all those beings the Tantrics deal withtheir origin is not vital, they belong to Nature. They are personified natural forces obedient to the laws of Nature. In other words, they originate from below, not from the vital but the physical world. They are vital forces in the physical, but not of vital origin.
--
In fact, practically speaking, thats why these things used to be kept secret: one should get knowledge ONLY when its accompanied by discrimination enabling one to distinguish the origin of what is seen or received. One without the other makes for a dangerous weapon.
Some people have even been driven insane, through their own constant fearout of fear they refused all protection. I tell you, only those with a great devotion and a great love are not deceiveda great devotion gives you an immediate sense of things; when your devotion goes like this (shrinking gesture), you know what it means. But your devotion must be sincere and very strong; its the only protection.
--
No, I prefer not to put these things in the Bulletin; I would rather not speak of occult matters. I understand more and more, now that I am grappling with material difficulties that used to be nonexistent (in the material world, I mean), they didnt exist for me before. The material domain was something happening far below and I didnt bother with it at all. Even when I was practicing occultism in the most material world, I looked on it from above; there was this sort of inner light, this Presence I was born with it, so naturally I had no problems. But now that I am in the thick of this work, I dont want to speak of that, its too dangerous.
That teaching should really be given under the seal of secrecy, and given along with the necessary power and discrimination for going through the experiences without danger. And that means the gurus constant personal care and attention.
0 1962-03-13, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I was speaking about newspapers and magazines and the outside world. I said, I dont want the outside world to scoff at something sacred. Thats all.
Of course.
--
Because it comes from very highits not from here, not at all; it was decided on high, and a long, LONG time ago. Before you came here, I was constantly feeling. Besides, it hadnt been so long without Sri Aurobindo; when Sri Aurobindo was here I had nothing to say, and if I did speak it was almost by chance. Thats all. What had to be said was said by him. And when he left and I began to read his books (which I hadnt read before), I told myself, Well, what do you know! There was absolutely no need for me to say anything. And I had less and less desire to speak. The minute I met you, I began to get interested. Ah, I thought, collaboration! Something interesting can be done.
None of this is random chance. Its not that were taking advantage of circumstances, not at all; it was DECREED.
0 1962-04-03, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Since March 16, Mother has been going through a grave ordeal that threatened her physical existence. Even so, she went down to the balcony on the 18th and 20th of March, which were to be the last times. She has not left her room since then. All her conversations with Satprem will henceforth take place in her upstairs room. The latest attack occurred the previous night, April 2-3, and took the form of a total cardiac arrest. Despite her condition, this morning Mother has found the strength to speak. She speaks in English. Her words have been noted down from memory.)
Just between eleven and twelve [last night] I had an experience by which I discovered that there is a group of peoplepurposely their identity was not revealed to mewanting to create a kind of religion based on the revelation of Sri Aurobindo. But they have taken only the side of power and force, a certain kind of knowledge and all which could be utilized by Asuric forces. There is a big Asuric being that has succeeded in taking the appearance of Sri Aurobindo. It is only an appearance. This appearance of Sri Aurobindo has declared to me that the work I am doing is not his. It has declared that I have been a traitor to him and to his work and has refused to have anything to do with me.
0 1962-04-13, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There are many things I will speak of later.
Mother gives the first part of this message in English.
Here Mother begins speaking French.
Glory to You, Lord, Triumphant One supreme.
0 1962-05-08, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
1) That he will make a special four-day puja here, in order to help.
2) That he has understood: it has come to his [inner] knowledge that the present period is terrible.
0 1962-05-13, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It was something expressing itself, manifesting itself through these gusts. Something that was EVERYTHING. There was nothing else, there was really nothing but THAT. So to speak of high, low, descent wont do at all.
If you like, we could put the process of return.
0 1962-05-15, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But thats my experience. Yesterday I observed it with special care, to be able to tell you about it.
But are you making a distinction between the body-consciousness and the physical consciousness?
--
And when I said, I have left the body,4 it certainly didnt mean I have left the physical consciousness my overall contact with the terrestrial world has remained the same. It concerns only the purely bodily a spect, 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.
--
(Mother then starts working on the next Bulletin. She asks Satprem to speak slowly and distinctly:)
Theres a sort of universal cloud between me and other people I seem to see through a veil and hear through a kind of cloud. Thats why I ask people to be very clear.
--
Striking though the parallel may be, there is still a fundamental difference between these mathematical concepts and Mothers experience. In the first case, we are dealing with conceptual instruments used by the human mind to better explain and master the world: no one has actually seen electromagnetic wavesnot to speak of gravitational ones! They are images, convenient models, invisible and nonexistent in themselves. They exist only through their effects: a beam of sunlight, which is an electromagnetic wave, strikes our retina and enables us to distinguish a flower; by means of gravitational waves, Newtons apple falls from the tree but no one has lived the reality of those waves. The way Mother grasps reality, on the contrary, is first and foremost through lived experience. She is the movement, she is the wave: I walk around the room, and that is what is walking. Here we touch upon a stupendous mystery and a formidable question: How is it possible for a material and cellular body to be the wave that at once constitutes and carries the worlds along in its infinite undulating movement and governs the existence of atoms and galaxies? How is it possible to be an infinite and ubiquitous electromagnetic wave while remaining within the narrow confines of a human body?
In being THAT, it might be said, Mother thus resolves the famous question of the unified-field theory, the theory to which Einstein devoted the last years of his life in vain, that would describe the movements of both planets and atoms in a single mathematical equation. Mothers body-consciousness is one with the movement of the universe, Mother lives the unified-field theory in her body. In so doing she opens up to us not merely one more physical theory, but the very path to a new species on earth, a species that will physically and materially live on the scale of the universe. The posthuman species might not simply be one with a few organs more or less, but rather one capable of being at every point in the universe. A sort of material ubiquity. It may not be so much a new as an ubiquitous species, a species that embraces everything, from the blade of grass under our feet to the far galaxies. A multifarious, undulating existence. A resume or epitome of evolution, really, which at the end of its course again becomes each point and each species and each movement of its own evolution.
There was, in fact, a whole group of Ashram people (they might be called the Ashram "intelligentsia") who, influenced by Subhas Bose, were strongly in favor of the Nazis and the Japanese against the British. (It should be recalled that the British were the invaders of India, and thus many people considered Britain's enemies to be automatically India's friends.) It reached the point where Sri Aurobindo had to intervene forcefully and write: "I affirm again to you most strongly that this is the Mother's war.... The victory of one side (the Allies) would keep the path open for the evolutionary forces: the victory of the other side would drag back humanity, degrade it horribly and might lead even, at the worst, to its eventual failure as a race, as others in the past evolution failed and perished.... The Allies at least have stood for human values, though they may often act against their own best ideals (human beings always do that); Hitler stands for diabolical values or for human values exaggerated in the wrong way until they become diabolical.... That does not make the English or Americans nations of spotless angels nor the Germans a wicked and sinful race, but...." (July 29, 1942 and Sept. 3, 1943, Cent. Ed., Vol. XXVI.394 ff.) And on her side also, Mother had to publicly declare: "It has become necessary to state emphatically and clearly that all who by their thoughts and wishes are supporting and calling for the victory of the Nazis are by that very fact collaborating with the Asura against the Divine and helping to bring about the victory of the Asura.... Those, therefore, who wish for the victory of the Nazis and their associates should now understand that it is a wish for the destruction of our work and an act of treachery against Sri Aurobindo." (May 6, 1941, original English.)
0 1962-05-18, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And I have the definite impression that that so-called illness was the external and ILLUSORY form of an indi spensable process of transformation; without that so-called illness there could be no transformationit is not an illness, I KNOW it: when people speak of illness, something in me laughs and says, What a bunch of geese!
It is not an illness.
0 1962-05-24, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
As a matter of fact, it had occurred to me that we might just have to skip over or omit or forget about certain aphorisms,2 e specially the ones on doctors and medicine. (Not that I question the truth in themnot at all! But I question whether its appropriate to speak of them now.) And this one, too its better not to publish it.
I dont think all these aphorisms were written for publication I dont believe he was thinking of publishing them. He said certain things that were quite private.
--
I dont think we can speak of this one either. No, I dont think so.
What we should actually do is make a selection and only talk about aphorisms that give us an opportunity to explain a few things. But these two. People arent ready to understand. And besides, they dont fit the style of the Bulletin. What we need is a combat magazine, a journal that combats all the ordinary ideas; then all these aphorisms (the ones on doctors, for instance) would be like yes, like commanders in the battle. A journal with the goal of demolishing the old idols. Something along those lines. It would be very interesting to do such a magazinea combat magazine.
But it cant be an Ashram organ. It should look like a literary review (it cant be politicalyoud be thrown in jail the day after it came out!). It shouldnt be presented as something practical, but merely as literary or philosophical speculation; that wouldnt matter at all, but it would give the journal a certain security which, as a combat magazine, it would need.
Its something that could very well be planned and prepared for 65 or 67. It could probably be done in 67. And then, for each issue (I dont know how many issues a year there would be) we could take one of these aphorisms (like the one on Europe, for example) and go into it all the way.
0 1962-05-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For Sujata its not quite so simple. From a strictly external standpoint, I have no doubt that it would be both pleasant and instructive. But Sujata is in a rather special relationship [with me]in fact, she does the yoga without doing it; I mean she benefits automatically from the yoga that Sri Aurobindo and I do. And this would risk being damaged.
I dont say for certain; I dont know. But there is a risk. Anyway as I said, from the external angle, the being would certainly be enriched.
--
What youre asking of Sujata is nothing short of sacrifice. Not outwardly, perhaps, but it would be a sacrifice for her. She would be sacrificing something to you, something very precious. To help you she would have to sacrifice her own realization. Well, that in itself has a place in the spectrum of realizations.
I understand.
--
(After a silence) Among those who have gone beyond the stage of needing successive reincarnations to develop their psychic beings, among those whose souls are conscious, fully developed, there are some who (what shall I say?) who are chosen or destined to participate in a certain terrestrial action. And in the process of reincarnation, there is always always some degree of confusion and disarray, you see. I can speak of my own case, if you like; despite every precaution, certain kinds of confusion couldnt be avoided and of course this complicated the work. It was the same for Sri Aurobindo. And all this confusion sometimes greatly disrupts the work.
But there are a certain number of beingsnot manywho have come back on earth ONLY to take part in a particular work, in a particular way. And outer things, personal and individual things, are virtually sacrificed to that. Certain faculties, for instance, whose source is the higher entity, faculties that in an ordinary life would result in a measure of power or fame or success or realization, are placed under conditions where their outer effect is subordinated to the needs of a particular work.
--
But it may not be unimportant to take a few precautions and make use of certain external aids. Thats why I cant say, Dont mind your bodyjust keep going and everything will be all right. No. spending two or three months in the mountains, for example, might help you. It might. But I dont see anything, mind you; I dont know.
And this blockage in my meditationsis it also due to this special work? I have a sort of feeling that Ive already had those yogic realizations, you see
Yes, of course!
0 1962-05-29, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I was brought up by an ascetic, a stoic; my mother was a woman like an iron bar, you know. When my brother and I were small she spent her time telling us over and over that we werent on earth to have fun; that its constant hell, but you have to put up with it, and the only possible satisfaction lies in doing your duty!
A splendid education, mon petit!
0 1962-05-31, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
One day I will certainly use the same method on those room changes, but for that it will have to become very clear and distinct, well defined in the consciousness. Because that change of room (intellectually you would call it a change of consciousness, but that means nothing at all; were dealing here with something very, very material) I have sometimes gone through it without experiencing ANY CHANGE OF EFFECT, which probably means I was centered not in the material consciousness but in a higher consciousness dwelling and looking on from elsewherea witness consciousness and I was in a state where everything flows flows like a river of tranquil peace. Truly, its marvelousall creation, all life, all movements, all things, and everything like a single mass, with the body in the midst of it all, blending homogeneously with the whole and it all flows on like a river of peace, peaceful and smiling, on to infinity. And then oops! You trip (gesture of inversion2) and once again find yourself SITUATEDyou ARE somewhere, at some specific moment of time; and then theres a pain here, a pain there, a pain. And sometimes I have seen, I have witnessed the change from the one to the other WITHOUT feeling the pains or experiencing the thing concretely, which means that I wasnt at all in the body, I wasnt BOUND to the body I was seeing, only seeing, just like a witness. And its always accompanied by the kind of observation an indulgent (but not blind) friend might make: But why? Why that again? Thats how it comes. Whats the use of that? And I cant catch hold of what makes it happen.
It will come.
--
It is plainly something hooked up with other people and reacting to them. But this hook-up is something I cannot undoits the product of years of work, years of universalization, and I am not going to spend my time undoing it now! I dont want to. I dont want to find anything for myself alone; I have no personal interest whatsoever. I havent stayed on for that. I have to find the mechanism. Moreover, I have been doing just the opposite: every time I am in that state I spread it around, I pass it on. But that may be why these old habits come in.
***
--
And its the same thing: whats needed is the path of vastness, widening, relaxation, ease, of BLOSSOMING in the vitalnot so much a censorial vital as as gentleness, a certain sweetness. The vital blossoming into beauty: sweetness and beauty. I dont want to speak of sentiments because oh, that lands us right in a quagmire! No, but a sweetness and charm and beauty but not there (in the head): here. And then restnot a stiff and stony and stagnant rest, a rest within the undulation. You let yourself float.3
(silence)
--
I am speaking now of a BODILY sensation.
That, in any event, is how whats speaking to you here manages to get to the true room.
It seems to take time, the way I am telling it now, but actually a minute or two of silence and its done.
--
Mother later specified: "It's like inverting a prism."
Mother is entering into a sort of trance and, almost to the end of this conversation, will be speaking slowly, as if from far away.
Interestingly enough, physicists also say that the wave movement does not displace matter. For example, the concentric ripples caused on the surface of a pond by the fall of a pebble do not carry the water molecules along with them: a cork floating on the water rises and falls with the undulatory rhythm without traveling on the pond.
Mother is not speaking here of only her mantra but of all mantras. As she later added: "No mantra has any effect unless it is ACCEPTED by the Power being addressed. When (like the Tantrics, for example) you do a mantra for a certain deity, if this deity accepts the mantra, that gives it power; but if the deity doesn't accept your mantra, it has no power at all. This isn't something I got out of a book, I know it from my own experience but I believe it has been explained in Tantric texts."
In the substance of the body.
0 1962-06-02, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
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.
--
And I know I was in a state of knowledge, because I suddenly knew who certain people herepeople I have known for a very, very long timewere the reincarnations of (I had never tried to find that out, it just came). I was almost calling them by their former names. Yes, a special state, a state of knowledge but not spiritual knowledge: a knowledge related to the material world. In such visions, water always represents the vital. When everything is harmonious with the water, it means the vital is harmonious.
It was delightful (it happened around 1:30 in the afternoon): sitting on the water the way you would sit on a chair! And the water was so clear, crystal clear, transparent, rippled with tiny waves; the depths were dark blue, but the surface was perfectly clear, transparent, almost colorless. Then when the big brother came, boasting that he knew how to do it too, and would take me across, the water began to get muddy, as river water always isa dirty grayish yellow.
--
Yes, it has effectsfar and near. The people nearest to me dont seem to be the most receptive; but with them the action is much more complex and SOLIDI mean instead of a sudden experience thats almost, as I said, out of proportion to their normal condition, something is being progressively BUILT. I constantly find myself in the midst of constructions, immense constructions in the making. It was like that last night; I had to flounder about in something like cement, a kind of batter. And then I meet all sorts of people who are also more or less symbolic, but who sometimes have the features of a specific person. Its a whole WORLD of circumstances, symbolic down to the most minute details. I remember everything, but I would have to describe a whole world and an apparently uninteresting world, at that (outwardly uninteresting, I mean); but it gives me the key, from every point of view, to the present state of things, to the world now in the making.
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.
--
First of all, materially speaking, when you wake up you must ALWAYS KEEP STILL. You have to teach your body. You know, you mustnt even (gesture) move your head. Keep completely still. And stay like that, su spended between sleep and waking, with a very TRANQUIL will to remember.
You may succeed immediately, but it may also take time.
0 1962-06-06, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And as far as I remember (because I never remember fully), this sort of haziness, as it were, was my constant state at the start of that so-called illness; everything was that waypeople, things, life, the universe. Thats how it was, with only that special Vibration, so soft, so enveloping. And it has stayed, it is still here.
It doesnt take me any time, the time factor doesnt enter into it at allits a sort of inner resolution: this way or that way (Mother turns the palms of her hands in and out). People say, Oh, youve been waiting! No, I never wait; its either action or a sort of blissful peace (same in and out gesture). And I am talking about the body, not the spirit the spirit is elsewhere. Elsewhere. The BODY feels like that.
--
But one thing has happened practically without my noticing it. In the past, before that experience [April 13], the body used to feel the struggle against the forces of wear and tear (different organs wearing out, losing their endurance, their power of reaction, and certain movements, for instance, becoming less easy to make). Thats what the body felt, although the body-consciousness never sensed any aging, never, none that simply didnt exist. But in actual material fact, there was some difficulty. And now, looking at it in the ordinary way, externally, superficially, you might say there has been a great deterioration; well, the body doesnt feel that way at all! What it feels is that a particular movement, effort, gesture or action belongs to the worldthis world of ignorance and isnt being performed in the true way: its not the true movement, done in the true way. And its sensation or perception is that the state I was speaking of, soft, with no angles, has to develop along a certain line and produce effects on the body that will make true action possible, action expressing the true will. With no difference on the surface, perhaps (I dont know about that yet) but done in another way. And I am not talking about grandiose things, mind you, but of everyday activities: getting up, walking, taking a bath. I no longer have a feeling of incapacity, but a feeling of (whats the word for it?) an unwillingnessa bodily unwillingnessto do things in the old way.
There is another way to be found.
--
I am speaking of the smallest thingstake brushing the teeth; theres a difference between the way I brush my teeth now and the way I used to. (In appearance, I suppose its the same thing.)
And I have difficulty (its almost an unwillingness too) seeing things the way others see them. Its difficult for me, not spontaneous: it would take an effort I dont care to make.
--
We can readily imagine a world where you would live in that state Ive been speaking of, and which would develop according to its own laws. But would the existence of such a world cancel out this one?
So you see, here we face a problem that has yet to be solved.
--
Events can be changed: wherever the state of consciousness comes into play, you can change events. I have had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of examples of that, as I have had the experience of changing a persons state of consciousness3 and the resulting circumstances of that state of consciousness. All that belongs to the realm of psychological life; but what I am speaking of is this (Mother vigorously strikes the table).
There is indeed the case of Madame Thons sandals, which came and put themselves on her feet instead of her feet going and putting themselves in the sandals, but that that belongs to yet another realm. It wasnt what you would call a natural phenomenon: she was applying her will and her action, and the substance of the sandals was becoming receptive. But does that mean the world will be that way? I dont know.
0 1962-06-09, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
So you speak of power, but in fact.
(long silence)
--
I can affirm that this notion of subjective and objective still belongs to the world of illusion. The CONTENT of the experience is what may be either microscopic or universal, depending on the specific quality of the power being expressed, or its field of action. The limitation of power can be voluntary and deliberate; it can be a willed, and not an imposed limitation, which means that the Will-Force may come from the Origin but deliberately limit itself, limit its field of action. But it is the same power and the same substance.
Ultimately there is but one power and one substance. There are varying modalitiescountless modalitiesof power and substance, but there is but ONE power and ONE substance, as there is but ONE consciousness and ONE truth.
0 1962-06-12, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When I spoke to him, you know, when I went to see him, it was just after my japa and I was in a state of absolute inner calmabsolute, with not a. I simply felt he had to be helped, because he was saying things that were going against him. So I had this feeling, a very strong feeling of affection, but an affection that states things clearly and unemotionally. I was very calm when I said all that. I did get upset afterwards, but I was upset mainly because he immediately had such an incredible reaction! So then I was at a loss. But the way I put things to him. Really, if he had the least. But even a man who has never done any yoga would have felt I was speaking from my heart, candidly. Even a man with no spiritual culture would have felt that. So how could he take it in such a way!
I am not sure he did.
--
Yes. Because I had seen you couldnt see it, but I saw that if you were to speak to him it would be catastrophic! (Mother laughs) And as soon as I saw that, I told you Dont say anything.
But I did it KNOWINGLY, because I saw he needed help.
--
No, the Grace has made him an object of special attention, thrusting him into a world which, externally, was not his own. In a matter of a few years he has made a journey of several lifetimes, so it has been a little bit difficult. Truly, in a few years he has inwardly traveled many lifetimes. And he has had to face the necessity of an enormous progress, all the more difficult because he hadnt mentally accepted or foreseen it. So he doesnt understand any more, poor man! If I could only take him in my arms like a baby and say to him, My poor little dear, my dear little child and make him feel good, then all would be well. But its not possible theres a whole spiritual construction. So I do it from a distance, wordlessly, in silence. But what gets through all that crust? I dont know! Over and over, I keep saying one thing: To divine Love, all human confusions and misunderstandings are unknown. There. Well, we will see. Wherever divine Love is present, human confusions and misunderstandings cannot exist, cannot enter.
Thats the only solution.
--
Only one thing depends on the body: speech, expression who knows? (Mother gazes at Satprem for a long time, as though she were considering an unknown possibility.)
Ah, thats enough for today!
0 1962-06-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Previously, when I had an experience, I took great care to keep everything quiet and still so that it wouldnt be interrupted; but afterwards it was always made use of by the mind in its typical way (not exactly typical, but typical to the mind), and this appeared to be inevitable. But now it doesnt work in the same way: its limited to a few inevitable interventions; I mean people speak to me or I to them (I keep as silent as I can, but they still chatter away about every possible subject and I am obliged to answer), and its limited to that. But as it is, even that as soon as I am a bit concentrated, even that seems so not wrong or distorted, not that, but INADEQUATE. It expresses absolutely nothing, thats all I can say.
The TRUE thing escapes completely.
--
(Later, Mother again speaks of her vision of the tall white being armed with a kind of halberd:)
What was standing there was a manifestation of one of my states of being, a part of my vital being, or rather one of my innumerable vital beingsbecause I have quite a few! And this one is particularly interested in things on earth.
--
But this one [the tall white Being] is not of human origin; it was not formed in a human life: it is a being that had already incarnated, and is one of those who presided over the formation of this present being [Mother]. But, as I said, I saw it: it was sexless, neither male nor female, and as intrepid as the vital can be, with a calm but absolute power. Ah, I found a very good description of it in one of Sri Aurobindos plays, when he speaks of the goddess Athena (I think its in Perseus, but I am not sure); she has that kind of its an almighty calm, and with such authority! Yes, its in Perseuswhen she appears to the Sea-God and forces him to retreat to his own domain. Theres a description there that fits this Being quite well.3
Besides, all the Greek gods are various a spects of a single thing: you see it this way, that way, that way, this way (turning her hand, Mother seems to show several facets of a single prism). But its simply one and the same thing.4
--
During the whole time Sri Aurobindo was here, the four entities he speaks of, the four A spects of the Mother,5 were always present. And I was constantly obliged to tell one or the other of them, Now keep calm, now, now, calm downthey were always inclined to intervene!
Did I ever tell you? Last time I went down for the pujas (was it last year or the year before? I remember nothing any more, you know: it all gets swept away, brrt!). Yes, it was the year before last, in 60, after that anniversary.6 (Durga used to come every year, two or three days before the Durga puja.) I was walking as usual and she came; that was when she made her surrender to the Supreme. Those divinities dont have the sense of surrender. Divinities such as Durga and the Greek gods (although the Greek gods are a bit dated now; but the gods of India are still very much alive!). Well, they are embodimentswhat you might almost call localizationsof something eternal, but they lack the sense of surrender to the Supreme. And while I was walking, Durga was therereally, it was beautiful! Durga, with that awesome power of hers, forever bringing the adverse forces to heel and she surrendered to the Supreme, to the point of no longer even recognizing the adverse forces: ALL is the Supreme. It was like a widening of her consciousness.
--
Someone reads me a letter, for instance, and I have to answer; and there, superimposed, are both functionings: the ordinary reaction coming from above (nothing from here: it comes from above but its the ordinary reaction) and if I follow that and start writing, after a moment comes a kind of sensation that its inadequate; and then theres the other functioning which is not yet (whats the word? I should be speaking in English!) handy, not yet at my disposal. I have to keep myself quiet, then it starts operating [the new functioning]. But when theres something to be done, the two are superimposed and I have to keep the old one quiet for the other to come. And the other one ohh, it has some unexpected ways! I answer a letter, for example, or I want to say something to someone: my old way is an expression of what comes from above (it is luminous enough, but ADAPTED) but then theres that sensation of inadequacyit wont do. All right. I step back and something else comes; and what comes, I must admit its enough to drive people crazy! Its so MUCH SOMETHING ELSE!
I wrote a letter like that yesterday; I took a piece of paper and wrote in my habitual way, my old way. While I was writing, the feeling that it wasnt right came in; then I added a comment, written in the same manner, with the vision from above (a comment on a letter written by the person I was writing to). When that was done, the feeling of inadequacy lingered, so I took another piece of paperit was blue and wrote something and that still wasnt it. So I ended up taking yet another piece of paper and writing something else again then I put all three in one envelope! I hope that person has a solid head! But at the same time something was telling me, It will do him good; so I let it go.
--
This is just the kind of thing I am being told (told is a way of speakingit is a knowledge; it is indisputable, much more indisputable than words and all that sort of thing): one day it will be concretely visible, people will see it. I am waiting! (Mother laughs) I am waiting for that.
But if I have to wait for that to show myself, well then it will take quite some time.
0 1962-06-30, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
None of those beings, those gods and deities of various pantheons, have the same rapport with the Supreme that man has; for man has a psychic being, in other words, the Supremes presence within him. These gods are emanationsindependent emanationscreated for a special purpose and a particular action which they fulfill SPONTANEOUSLY; they do it not with a sense of constant surrender to the Divine but simply because thats what they are, and why they are, and all they know is what they are. They dont have the conscious link with the Supreme that man hasman carries the Supreme within himself.
That makes a considerable difference.
--
Human experience, with this direct incarnation of the Supreme,9 is ultimately a UNIQUE experience, which has given a new orientation to universal history. Sri Aurobindo speaks of thishe speaks of the difference between the Vedic era, the Vedic way of relating to the Supreme, and the advent of Vedanta (I think its Vedanta): devotion, adoration, bhakti, the God within.10 Well, this a spect of rapport with the Supreme could exist ONLY WITH MAN, because man is a special being in universal History the divine Presence is in him. And several of those great gods have taken human bodies JUST TO HAVE THAT.11 But not many of themthey were so fully aware of their own perfect independence and their almightiness that they didnt NEED anything (unlike man, you see, struggling to escape his slavery): they were absolutely free.
And thats why. How many times Durga came! She would always come, and I had my eye on her (!), because in her presence I could clearly sense that there wasnt that rapport with the Supreme (she just didnt need it, she didnt need anything). And it wasnt that something acted on her consciously, deliberately, to obtain that result: it has been a contagion. I remember how she used to come, and my aspiration would be so intense, my inner attitude so concentrated and one day there was such a sense of power, of immensity, of ineffable bliss in the contact with the Supreme (it was a day when Durga was there), and she seemed to be taken and absorbed in it. And through that bliss she made her surrender.
0 1962-07-04, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The other day, Pavitra said to me in passing, Modern science would neither follow nor believe us. According to him, scientists acknowledge only essential hypotheses, and not having the experience, would take our science for a set of non-essential hypotheses. I didnt argue, or else I would have told him, We dont make any hypotheses, far from it, we simply state our experiences. They are free to disbelieve us or to think were half crazy or hallucinating thats up to them, its their business. But we dont make hypotheses, we speak of things we know and have experienced.
For several hours afterwards I had a vision of this state of mind and found absolutely no need to make hypotheses (you see, Pavitra was speaking of hypothesizing the existence of different states of being). Its just as I told you: I have passed that stage; I dont need inner dimensions any more.1 And observing this materialistic state of mind, it occurred to me that, on the basis of their own experiments, they are bound to admit onenessat least the oneness of matter; and to admit oneness is enough to obtain the key to the whole problem!
Once again it made me realize that this last experience [of April 13] may in reality have come to free me from ALL past knowledge, and that to live the Truth none of it is needed. I need neither all this terminology nor Sri Aurobindos terminology nor, of course, anyone elses; I dont need all these classifications, I dont need all sorts of experiences I need ONE experience, the one I have. And I have it in all things and in all circumstances: the experience of eternal, infinite, absolute Oneness manifesting in the finite, the relative and the temporal. And the process of change I am pursuing seems less and less of a problem; after looking like the ultimate problem, it doesnt seem to be one any more, because but that that cant be utteredit pleases Him to be that way, so He is that way.
--
As you know, N.S. has left his body. It was the result of an accident (he had a weak heart, and he worried about it). He took a fall, probably because he fainted, and fractured his skull: loss of consciousness due to cerebral hemorrhage (thats modern science speaking!). When the accident occurred, he came to me (not in a precise form, but in a state of consciousness I immediately recognized), and stayed here motionless, in complete trust and blissful peacemotionless in every state of being, absolutely (gesture of surrender) total, total trust: what will be, will be; what is, is. No questions, not even a need to know. A cosy peace a great ease.
They tried, fought, operated: no movement, nothing moved. Then one day they declared him dead (by the way, according to doctors, when the body dies the heart beats on faintly for a few seconds; then it stops and its all over). In his case, those faint beats (not strong enough to pump blood) continued for half an hour the kind of heartbeats typical of the trance state. (They all seem to be crassly ignorant! But anyway, it doesnt matter.) And they all said, even the doctors, Oooh, he must be a great yogi, this only happens to yogis! I have no idea what they mean by that. But I do know that although those heartbeats arent strong enough to pump blood through the body (thus putting the body into a cataleptic state), they do suffice to maintain life, and thats how yogis can remain in trance for months on end. Well, I dont know what type of doctors they are (probably very modern), but theyre ignorant of this fact. Anyway, according to them he had those pulsations for half an hour (normally they last a few seconds). All right. Hence their remarks. And he was here the whole while, immutable. Then suddenly I felt a kind of shudder; I lookedhe was gone. I was busy and didnt note the time, but it was in the afternoon, thats all I know. Later I was told that they had decided to cremate him, and had done so at that time.
--
It had its good qualities (I seem bent on speaking in the past tenseits spontaneous), qualities it was built and chosen for. For practical purposes, this body was very necessary, but when it comes to manifesting!
But had it been truly expressive, something really eloquent, probably there would have been more reluctance to to give it free rein.
--
What kind of conclusions can be drawn from N.S.s experience? What does it open the door to, practically speaking?
It depends on the case.
--
His time had come the instant the accident happened, I knew it was time for him to leave his body. His time had come, but the circumstances had been arranged (had been arrangedyou know, I dont say by whom), circumstances had been arranged to derive the utmost benefit. This made me understand a lot of things. Practically speaking, you need a lot of experiences to learn anything.
But to learn, to profit from such experiences, one must already be on the other side. Up to that point [April 13], I had learned plenty of things, but I was learning them from this side of the fence. Now I am on the other side of the fence. Not entirely, but in large part, at least.
0 1962-07-07, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But after this prologue, I intend to tackle the problem practically, to speak of the moment when people reach the limits of the mind, when they start going round in circles and find nothing; then I will tell them of zones beyond the mind, and of what can be discovered when one goes within: mental silence. Ill talk about a practical discipline. That was my idea. My idea isnt to give an abstract explanation but to take up yoga from a practical angle: try to do this, and heres what you may expectmental transformation, change in the vital, dreams, etc. All practical things. Id like to explore the psychological a spect.
Thats good. From the standpoint of the Work, of what you create, of course its very good, very interesting; it needs to be said, it MUST be said. But is the gentleman who wrote you that letter capable of understanding anything of it? Thats where I put a question mark.
0 1962-07-11, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It has never faded, its always there (gesture behind the head), and at any moment I can immerse myself in it all over again. But what a difference when, after THAT, you come back to an awareness of what is speaking, at least as tremendous a difference as with that to die unto death. Similarly, that to die unto death contained the full Power of THAT.1 It was clear and stunningly powerful. And the same impression: easy, easy. Theres really no question of hard or easyits spontaneous, NATURAL, and so smiling. And that to die unto death was filled with such JOY! Such joy. I could almost have said, Its plain as day! Dont you see how plain it is! But thats it: we have only to die unto death, and that will be that!
(silence)
--
This is the difference, the radical difference, since the experience of [April 13]: there is nothing but the Lord. All the rest what is it? No more than a habit of speaking (not even a habit of thinking, thats all gone), a habit of speaking; so the less one speaks, the happier one is. Otherwise nothing. And what else could there be? It is He who sees, He who wills, He who acts.
Then everything comes spontaneously, easily, with such great simplicity.
0 1962-07-14, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mother listens to Satprem read a passage from the last conversation in which she says: This is the radical difference since the experience of April 13: there is nothing but the Lord. All the rest what is it? No more than a habit of speaking (not even a habit of thinking, thats all gone). Otherwise nothing. And what else could there be? It is He who sees, He who wills, He who acts.)
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.
--
No, I am not speaking of what one is when one has died unto death, not that. I mean normally, physicallyhow many years before 2000?
Umm.
--
Ever since Einstein's Theory of Relativity, we have known that such an experience of time's relative nature is "physically" feasible. We need only consider the example of time aboard a spaceship approaching the speed of light: time "slows down," and the same event will take less time aboard the spaceship than on earth. In this instance, speed is what makes time slow down. In Mother's experience (which is every bit as "physical"), the "intensity of the Presence" seems to be the origin of time change. In other words, consciousness is what makes time slow down. Thus we are witnessing two experiences with identical physical results, but formulated in different languages. In one, we speak of " speed," in the other of "consciousness." But what is speed, after all?... (Moreover, the implications of this "language" difference are quite colossal, for it would indeed be simpler to press on a "consciousness button" than on an accelerator that had to take us to the speed of light.) speed is a question of distance. Distance is a question of two legs or two wings: it implies a limited phenomenon or a limited being. When we say "at the speed of light," we imagine our two legs or our two wings moving very, very fast. And all the phenomena of the universe are seen and conceived of in relation to these two legs, these two wings or this rocketship they are creations of our present-day biped biology. But for a being (a supramental being, of the future biology) containing everything within himself, who is immediately everywhere, without distance, where is " speed"? ... The only " speed of light" is biped. speed increases and time slows down, they say. The future biology says: consciousness intensifies and time slows down or ceases to existdistances are abolished, the body doesn't age. And the world's whole physical cage collapses. "Time is a rhythm of consciousness," says Mother. We change rhythm and the physical world changes. Might this be the whole problem of transformation?
Asked later about this unfinished sentence, Mother said, "I stopped because it was an impression and not a certainty. We'll talk about it again later." Was Mother hinting at a stage when she would live in both times simultaneously?...
0 1962-07-18, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I can bring it on at will simply by putting myself in a certain state. But then I notice that someone (someone well, thats a way of speaking) is dosing it out, allowing the contact for a certain length of time or in a certain amount; and theres nothing to be done about it, its an Order from above. A mere hint of impatience would spoil everything the power to establish the contact would probably be lost. I have never done this and I dont intend to.
(silence)
--
But now the body the body itself, its very own selffeels it is WITHIN things or WITHIN people or WITHIN an action. There are no more limits, none of this (Mother touches the skin of her hands as if all separation had disappeared). Take this example: someone accidentally bumps me (it does happen) with an object or a part of his body. Well, it is NEVER something external: it happens INSIDE the bodys consciousness is much larger than my body. Yesterday, the table leg bumped my foot; so there was the ordinary outward reaction (it operates automatically and in a curious way the body jumped), and then the body-consciousness now I am speaking of the body-consciousness saw that an unexpected and involuntary collision of two objects had taken place INSIDE ITSELF. And it also saw that if it made a certain movement of concentration at that particular spot, inside itself, some pain or damage would result; but if it made the other movement of (how shall I put it?) of union, of abolishing all separation (which it can do very well), well, then the results of the blow would be annulled. And thats what happened, I did it. I was simply sitting down, and I let my body cope with the whole thing (while I watched with keen interest); and I noticed it really did feel the blow inside and not outsideit wasnt that something from outside had struck it, but that there had been an unexpected, or rather an unforeseen and involuntary collision of two things inside itself. And I clearly followed how the body made a more complete movement of identification (you see, someone with the sense of separation had moved the table, so the sense of separation accompanied the blow, and then of course there was all the regret,2 and so on and so forth); well, the body simply went into its usual state where theres no sense of separation, and the effect vanished instantaneously. Had I been asked, Where were you hit, what spot?, I couldnt have told, I dont know. All I know, because of words I heard spoken, is that the table leg bumped into my foot. But where? I cant say; I couldnt have said even five minutes after the incidentit had utterly disappeared, and disappeared through a VOLUNTARY movement.
This body-consciousness has a will; it is constantly, constantly calling upon the Lords will: Lord, take possession of this, take possession of that, take. Theres no question of taking possession of the will, that was done ages ago, but: Take possession of these cells, those cells, this, that. It is the BODYS aspiration. Well, the blow wasnt caused by this will acting in the body; the blow didnt come directly from the body, but from something that had slipped in through an unconscious element; and the body simply erased, or absorbed, digested this unconsciousness and the thing vanished without a trace!
--
For instance, sometimes He tells me (of course its not external; its an extremely delicate working, and sort of automatic; no time elapses between the order and its execution: theyre not two movements but one single thing) when He says speak, or when He says Keep silentlike the other day when, as you pointed out, I stopped in the middle of a sentenceits that all of a sudden (Mother makes a gesture as if she were unable to speak, or as if suddenly held by silence). At other times it pours out like its doing now. And I dont hear an order, I dont feel an order: I LIVE the Order; and its so patently the Lords that it seems stupid to even mention it.
Oh, such humorous things happen. The other day I saw T. Her old mother lives in Moscow; shes very old and on her deathbed, and has asked T. to come see her. So T. is going to go there. Its a risky adventure. She wrote to ask if she could see me before leaving (I dont see anyone and I had no intention of receiving her, but it was decided in spite of me and I let her come). She had been told not to speak, but thats impossible for such a chatterbox! So she began by lamenting (probably thinking it was the thing to do) over my serious illness and god knows what else I didnt listen. I simply told her, No, its not that, its the yoga. Then, with the effervescence of an ignorant child: Yoga! But you shouldnt be doing yoga! You shouldnt be. Just then, the Lords face came (the Lords face often takes on Sri Aurobindos appearancean idealized Sri Aurobindo, not exactly as he was physically), and it came here (right up against Mothers face), and it was blue. Then It made my finger touch her cheek, like this (Mother seems to tap T.s cheek), and It told that child, Little children dont know what theyre talking about. And it was so thoroughly Him! He was speaking and I saw only Him, his appearance: Little children dont know what theyre talking about.
I dont know how I looked (I was enjoying myself enormously), but she must have felt something (she didnt say a word), she must at least have felt something strange because a shudder went through her being. And I was told that when she left, she said, I may come back before I leave, but I wont ask to see Mother! (Mother laughs.)
--
"The regret of the person who bumped me," Mother specified. "This person's state of consciousness entered the body along with the blow. And this kind of regret for having given a blow was an ego movement. All these vibrations accompanied the blow and that's what the body had to annul in order to annul the result."
***
0 1962-07-21, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The other day, speaking of Europe, you said that the Old World is truly old.
Ah, look at thisyesterday someone read me a letter Sri Aurobindo wrote to Barin in April 1920, a few days before I returned from Japan. It was written in Bengalitremendously interesting! He speaks of the state of the world, particularly India, and of how he envisaged a certain part of his action after completing his yoga. Its extremely interesting. And theres some very high praise for Europe. Sri Aurobindo says something like this: You all think Europe is over and done with, but thats not true, its not finished yet. In other words, its power is still alive.
This was in 1920.
--
First, about your yoga. You wish to give me the charge of your yoga and I am willing to take it, but that means to give its charge to Him who is moving by His divine Shakti [Energy], whether secretly or openly, both you and me. But you must know that the necessary result of this will be that you will have to walk in the special path which He has given to me, the path which I call the path of the Integral Yoga. What I began with, what Lele1 gave me, was a seeking for the path, a circling in many directionsa first touch, a taking up, a handling and scrutiny of this or that in all the old partial yogas, some sort of complete experience of one and then the pursuit of another.
Afterwards, when I came to Pondicherry, this unsteady condition came to an end. The Guru of the world who is within us then gave me complete directions for my pathits complete theory, the ten limbs of the body of this Yoga. These past ten years He has been making me develop it in experience, and this is not yet finished. It may take another two years, and as long as it is not finished I doubt if I shall be able to return to Bengal. Pondicherry is the appointed place for my yoga siddhi [realization], except indeed one part of it, and that is action. The centre of my work is Bengal, although I hope that its circumference will be all India and the whole earth.
I shall write and tell you afterwards what this way of yoga is. Or if you come here I shall speak to you about it. In this matter the spoken word is better than the written. At present I can only say that its root-principle is to make a harmony and unity of complete knowledge, complete works and complete Bhakti [Devotion], to raise all this above the mind and give it its complete perfection on the supramental level of Vijnana [Gnosis]. This was the defect of the old yoga the mind and the Spirit it knew, and it was satisfied with the experience of the Spirit in the mind. But the mind can grasp only the divided and partial; it cannot wholly seize the infinite and indivisible. The minds means to reach the infinite are Sannyasa [Renunciation], Moksha [Liberation] and Nirvana, and it has no others. One man or another may indeed attain this featureless Moksha, but what is the gain? The Brahman, the Self, God are ever present. What God wants in man is to embody Himself here in the individual and in the community, to realize God in life.
The old way of yoga failed to bring about the harmony or unity of Spirit and life: it instead dismissed the world as Maya [Illusion] or a transient Play. The result has been loss of life-power and the degeneration of India. As was said in the Gita, These peoples would perish if I did not do worksthese peoples of India have truly gone down to ruin. A few sannyasins and bairagis [renunciants] to be saintly and perfect and liberated, a few bhaktas [lovers of God] to dance in a mad ecstasy of love and sweet emotion and Ananda [Bliss], and a whole race to become lifeless, void of intelligence, sunk in deep tamas [inertia]is this the effect of true spirituality? No, we must first attain all the partial experiences possible on the mental level and flood the mind with spiritual delight and illumine it with spiritual light, but afterwards we must rise above. If we cannot rise above, to the supramental level, that is, it is hardly possible to know the worlds final secret and the problem it raises remains unsolved. There, the ignorance which creates a duality of opposition between the Spirit and Matter, between truth of spirit and truth of life, disappears. There one need no longer call the world Maya. The world is the eternal Play of God, the eternal manifestation of the Self. Then it becomes possible to fully know and fully realize Godto do what is said in the Gita, To know Me integrally. The physical body, the life, the mind and understanding, the supermind and the Ananda these are the spirits five levels. The higher man rises on this ascent the nearer he comes to the state of that highest perfection open to his spiritual evolution. Rising to the Supermind, it becomes easy to rise to the Ananda. One attains a firm foundation in the condition of the indivisible and infinite Ananda, not only in the timeless Parabrahman [Absolute] but in the body, in life, in the world. The integral being, the integral consciousness, the integral Ananda blossoms out and takes form in life. This is the central clue of my yoga, its fundamental principle.
0 1962-07-25, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
First I was planning to speak about consciousness, what consciousness is; then I realized it would be better to speak of the vital first. Before anything can be achieved, the vital has to be quieted.
Not necessarily.
--
But if I speak of consciousness it will lead me to speak of the ascent of consciousness, followed by the supraconscient. Can I speak about all that before the vital?
Yes.
--
Then at a very young age (about eight or ten), along with my studies I began to paint. At twelve I was already doing portraits. All a spects of art and beauty, but particularly music and painting, fascinated me. I went through a very intense vital development during that period, with, just like in my early years, the presence of a kind of inner Guide; and all centered on studies: the study of sensations, observations, the study of technique, comparative studies, even a whole spectrum of observations dealing with taste, smell and hearinga kind of classification of experiences. And this extended to all facets of life, all the experiences life can bring, all of themmiseries, joys, difficulties, sufferings, everythingoh, a whole field of studies! And always this presence within, judging, deciding, classifying, organizing and systematizing everything.
Then conscious yoga made a sudden entry into the picture when I met Thon; I must have been about twenty-one. Lifes orientation changed, a whole series of experiences took place, with the development of the vital giving interesting occult results.
--
Is it different for men? I dont know. Sri Aurobindos case was quite special, and apart from him I dont see any convincing example. But generally speaking, what is most developed in a man, along with the mind, is the physical consciousness; the vital is very impulsive, practically ungoverned. Thats my experience of the hundreds and hundreds of men I have met. Theres normally a physical strength built up through games and exercises, and side by side a more or less advanced, but primarily mental development, very mental. The vital is terribly impulsive and barely organized, except in artists, and even there. I lived among artists for ten years and found this ground to be mostly fallow. I mingled with all the great artists of the time, I was like a kid sister to them (it was at the turn of the century, with the Universal Exposition in 1900; and these were the leading artists of the epoch); so I was by far the youngest, much younger than any of themthey were all thirty, thirty-five, forty years old, while I was nineteen or twenty. Well I was much more advanced in their own fieldnot in what I was producing (I was a perfectly ordinary artist), but from the viewpoint of consciousness: observations, experiences, studies.
I am not sure, but it seems to me that the problem of consciousness ought to come first.
--
Generally speaking, those who practice yoga have either a fully developed, independent psychic being which has taken birth again to do the Divines work, or else a psychic being in its last incarnation wanting to complete its development and realize itself.
This is what aspires, this is what has the contact.
So, when youre told become conscious of your psychic being, its for the being formed by external Nature to contact the divine Presence through the psychic being. Then the psychic takes charge of the whole being; in fact, it is the inner Guide. Well, when I was a little child, this person (which wasnt a person, but an expression of a certain consciousness and will) was actually the psychic presence; there was something else behind, but thats a rather special case. And what happened to me happens to everyone whose psychic being has deliberately incarnated: the psychic being guides your life, and if you let it act freely, it arranges ALL circumstancesits truly wonderful! I have seennot only for myself but for so many people who also had conscious psychic beings that everything is arranged with a view to not at all your personal egoistic satisfaction, but your ultimate progress and realization. And all circumstances of life, even those you call disastrous, are there to lead you where you have to go as swiftly as possible.
Yours is more than a psychic being. As I have told you, your psychic being is accompanied by something which has come for a special purpose, with a particular intellectual powera luminous, conscious powerwhich has come from regions higher than the mind, regions Sri Aurobindo calls the Overmind, to do a special work. It is here (gesture enveloping the chest and head) and, along with the psychic, its trying to organize everything. This, in your psychic, is what you are feeling. It must have great power. Dont you feel a kind of luminous force?
Oh, yes, I feel it!
--
Thats why its hard for me to speak about it; I dont know whats coming from above and whats coming from below.
To speak about it.
You know, everything I have just told you is. One always feels on the verge of or nearly or almost. Theres something bordering on but always tangential to the Truthnever to the point, always beside it. As soon as we speak, its an approximation.
We would have to say it all in one breath.
--
I had tried to get complete mental silenceyou know, what you just described,3 this kind of mental stillness he speaks of (when you have it, anything can pass through your head without causing the least ripple), but I had never succeeded. I had tried, but couldnt do it. I could be silent when I wanted to, but as soon as I stopped thinking solely of that, stopped wanting only that, the invasion resumed and the work had to be done all over again.
Thats all I had told him (not in great detail, in a few words). Then I sat down near him and he began talking with Richard, about the world, yoga, the futureall kinds of thingswhat was going to happen (he already knew the war would break out; this was 1914, war broke out in August, and he knew it towards the end of March or early April). So the two of them talked and talked and talkedgreat speculations. It didnt interest me in the least, I didnt listen. All these things belonged to the past, I had seen it all (I too had had my visions and revelations). I was simply sitting beside him on the floor (he was sitting in a chair with Richard facing him across a table, and they were talking). I was just sitting there, not listening. I dont know how long they went on, but all at once I felt a great Force come into mea peace, a silence, something massive! It came, did this (Mother sweeps her hand across her forehead), descended and stopped here (gesture at the chest).4 When they finished talking, I got up and left. And then I noticed that not a thought remained I no longer knew anything or understood anything, I was absolutely BLANK. So I gave thanks to the Lord and thanked Sri Aurobindo in my heart.
And I was very careful not to disturb it; I held it like that for I dont know how long, eight or ten days. Nothingnot one idea, not one thought, nothinga complete BLANK. In other words, from the outside, it must have looked like total idiocy.
--
Mother specified: "It encompassed the three active mental centers [the forehead, between the eyebrows, and the throat]."
The former governor of "French India" with whom Satprem came to work in the Pondicherry government. Actually, Satprem most probably saw Sri Aurobindo in 1946 and not in '48.
0 1962-07-31, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have the feeling that, consciously or unconsciously (I dont know which), this gentleman has become a tool of Catholic resistance. It is very strong in the Old World and in America as well, although there its more Christian than specifically Catholic. But its terribly strong in France: it tries to take advantage of every opening and to block whatever might take a new turn.
It will give way.
--
Their main complaint was, You are abstract. So if we want to be concrete, we have to speak of experiences.
No, to them concrete means telling what Sri Aurobindo did physically. Thats what they call concrete. Psychology is something abstract for them.
0 1962-08-08, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Well, wellwhy has that returned? I wondered. And then I saw that this body has been built in such a way that it instinctively ATTRACTS ordeals, painful experiences. And in the face of such formations, it is always passive, consenting, accepting, and totally confident in the ultimate outcome, with such an ingrained certitude that even at the moment of greatest difficulty, it will be helped and saved, and that the purpose behind all those ordeals is to speed up, to gain time, and to exhaust all the I cant say the evil possibilities, but all the hindrancesthings that hamper, block the way and seem to negate the goalso that they are pushed back into the past and no longer hinder progress.
Once I saw that, the formation went away. It had come just to show me that. And once again the body gave its eternal assent: no matter what its burdened with, it will always be ready to receive and to bear it.
I never thought this would have any consequences, but it did!1 Something probably needed to be exhausted. So physically speaking, yesterday was a pretty bad dayoh, only quite externally! In fact, the body was luminously conscious, profoundly happy and joyous, to the point where all suffering becomes negligibleyou dont notice it. And so it was a real opportunity for the whole entourage to make progress. That helps.
Superficially, it [the bodys characteristic of attracting ordeals] could be called a sort of karma, but thats not what it is. Its actually like one of the pivotsnot a central one, but one of the pivots of the bodys invisible action, of its consciousness. And it is expressed by attracting certain circumstances. A whole range of things having to do with the physical body has thus become very clear and precise to meand thats what the body was made for: to go full speed ahead.
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.
--
Its not that I receive bad vibrations, but that the physical substance is not entirely (how can I explain?) in the proper movement or rhythm. For instance, between the vision of that old formation I spoke of and this (I cant call it a toothache, but anyway, something went wrong) there was no visible connection to speak of. The toothache wasnt caused by a particular vibration, its rather as if one thing or another provided the opportunity for absorbing a certain quantity or type of vibration (its more a quantity than a typeprobably both), a vibratory MODE, in order to put it in contact with THE vibratory mode the divine one.
But I understand your question. You want to know if this has an effect on all identical vibratory modes in the world. In principle, yes. But the effects may not be immediately visible; in the first place, our field of observation is nothingmaterially, what do we know? Only our immediate surroundings thats nothing. In 1920, for example, I had an experience of that type, which resulted in a symbolic but terrestrial action. It was a vision (I dont remember enough details to make it interesting) where each nation was represented by a symbolic entity, and there was a certain type of horrorof terror, rather. A certain will of terror was trying to manifest in that gathering of all nations. And I was witness to the whole thing. I remember it being a very conscious and rather long and detailed vision with a more intense reality than physical things have (it was in the subtle physical). And after it was over and I had done what needed to be done (I am not saying what because I dont remember all the details, and without accuracy it loses its value), when I came out of it I could say with TOTAL conviction: Terror has been overcome in the world. Of course, its not literally true, plenty of people still feel terror, but a certain type of terror was as if UNDERMINED at the foundations. What had already manifested kept on and is gradually being exhausted, but the terror that was trying to increase and dominate the life of nations was stopped cold.
0 1962-08-14, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You must learn to be immobile, silent, and let the Lord speak through you; its much better than deciding in advance, much better. Personally, the Lord has never failed me. I have found myself hundreds of times in very difficult situations; I wouldnt do anything, I would say, All right, lets see what happens! And of course, what happened was always for the best. And I had nothing to do with itit wasnt me, it was the Lord.
The less one explains, the less one plans, the betteralways, always.
--
Just after speaking with you the other day, I looked closely to make absolutely sure, and I saw that even for the body even for the body it takes a little effort, its an effort to feel like something separate, an individuality. It finds it constricting, as if it were shut up in a box!
The feeling is rather one of vibrations gathered together and coagulated somewhere and even at that, theres a very supple inner play, for it spreads out like this (Mother makes a gesture of diffusion or expansion all around her) through a sort of subtilization or etherization. And its limitlesshow could it have any limits! It goes like this (same radiating gesture)these same vibrations are everywhere, in all bodies and all things. What people call this body is merely the result of a willed concentration organized in a specific way; thats how it spontaneously feels, all the time (not that its observing itself, but if something forces it to observe itself, thats what it spontaneously feels). And the delimitation that exists in all beings, and which WAS in this body (was it this body? Havent the cells changed? I dont know), which once existed in what people call this body, has completely disappeared. Before (thirty years or so ago), it used to feel like something separate moving among other separate things thats all gone.
I have tried several times, telling myself, Ah, lets have a good lookis there anything, anywhere, that feels that separation? (I am looking at the body from above.) Theres nothingtruly? Are you one hundred percent spontaneously sincere? Nothing at all? Its impossible to find a thing. Impossible.
For all the states of being, the mental, the vital, and even the subtle physical, that sense of separation has long been gone. But now I am speaking of the body. I say I, of course but what says I is its something as vast as the universe. And it CANNOT be otherwise. Its not that I want it this way, or because I insist on it, its not the result of a tapasya or not at all: it CANNOT BE OTHERWISE, thats how it is. Its my spontaneous way of being. The experience has become completely (how to put it?) externalized.
And thats what makes the ESSENTIAL difference for this body. Thats why it feels different from other bodies. Its (Mother shakes her head) no, its not the same thing, it distinctly feels its not the samebecause its reactions are different!
Perhaps there once was a jiva. I dont know, I dont remember; all I remember now is ultimately, an evolving universe, with a special concentration on the affairs of the earth, because the Lord has decided that the time has come to to change something. Thats all. To change something.
(silence)
--
One of our children, V., a courageous boy, went up there all by himself. In winter its completely isolated, theres nothing nearby. It was May and still frightfully cold, it seems, snow still covered the ground. And the man was sitting there stark naked as though it were perfectly natural! He even asked the boy, Do you want to spend the night here? That was a bit too much!
Anyway, V. went there, sat down next to him, and after a while the man went into a sort of trance and began to tell V. about his life (the boys life, not his own!). So V. was interested and wanted to know more. Where do I come from? he asked. The man answered, Oh, from an ashram by the sea the sea is there. Then he began to speak (I must mention that outwardly he knew nothing about Sri Aurobindo or me or the Ashram, absolutely nothing at all), and he told V. that a great sage and the Mother were there, and that they wanted to do something on earth that had never been done before something very difficult. Then, I dont know whether he mentioned I was alone now (I have no idea), but he said, Oh, she has had to withdraw2 because the people around her dont understand and life there has become very difficult. It will be very difficult until 1964.
Perhaps he was reading the boys mind (I dont know), but not his conscious mind. And he said several times, They want to do something that has never been done before, its very difficultvery difficultand thats why they came, to do that.
--
There were many other things, but it seems he speaks a particular Hindi which is very hard to understand. But this was quite clear, and he said it several times.
It interested me.
0 1962-08-18, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Then Mother speaks of the collective meditation held on August 15, Sri Aurobindos ninetieth birthday.)
Mon petit, we had a meditation here on the 15th, at ten oclock.2 At a quarter to ten, I was sitting here at the table in a total silence. And then I cant say Sri Aurobindo came, for he is always here, but he manifested in a special way. Concretely, in the subtle physical, he became so tall that, sitting cross-legged as they do here, he covered the whole compoundeven extended a bit beyond it! He was literally sitting upon the compound; so to the extent that the people meditating were not closed, they were all inside him. He was sitting like that (not on their heads!), and I could feel (I was here, you see) the FRICTION of his presence in the subtle physicalan utterly physical friction! And I saw him (as you well know, I am not shut up in here [the body]), I saw him sitting there, very tall and perfectly proportioned; and then he started gently, gently descendingthis descent is what caused the frictiongently, very gently, so as not to give people a shock. Then he settled there and stayed for a little more than half an hour, a few minutes more, like that, absolutely still, but fully concentrated on all the people they were inside him.
I was sitting here smiling, almost almost laughing, really; you could feel him like that everywhere (Mother touches her whole body), everywhere. And with such peace! Such peace, such force, such power. And a sense of eternity, immensity, and absoluteness. A sense of absoluteness, as if all were fulfilled, so to speak, and one lived in Eternity.
It was compelling. One had to be just plain dense not to feel it.
0 1962-08-28, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And its growing more and more prominent. I spend almost every night in that realm; and even during the day, as soon as the body is motionless, theres this perception of the two vibrations, and of the physical vibration almost becoming porous.
It seems to be the process, or certainly one important process, for the physical transformation.
--
All the powers, all the siddhis, all the realizations, all these things are the grand extravaganza the great spiritual spectacle. But this isnt like that. Its very modest, very modest, very unobtrusive, very humble, nothing showy about it. It takes years and years and years of silent, quiet and extremely careful work before there can be any visible and tangible results, before anything can be noticed, even for the [Mothers] individual consciousness.
As for those who want to go quickly, if they try going quickly in this realm, theyll be thrown off balance.
0 1962-08-31, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Because the other end is the new creation, so its clear that. How MANY steps will it take, how many incomplete or imperfect things, approximations, attemptshow many MINUSCULE realizations for you to simply acknowledge, Yes, indeed, were on the way? For how many oh, you could practically say centuries will it be like this before the glorious body of a supramental being appears? Something came yesterday evening (it seemed like mere excitation to me); it was a power of creative imagination attempting to visualize supramental forms, beings that live in other worlds, and all sorts of things like that. I saw many things. But it seemed so like champagne bubbles! Thats all very nice, I said, for widening my power of imagination so I can present these forms to the Lord. But its not necessary! (Mother laughs) It really seemed so. There was a time when I considered it a great creative power (and many things that I saw in those moments of super-creativity, super-imagination, were actually realized years later on earth), and this time it came again (perhaps to give me a little fun, a little spectacle along the way), it came and I looked at it; I could see all its power, I could see it was something trying to materialize in the future, and I said, What histrionics! Why go through all these theatrics? Jugglers.
And it was supramental light, it originated in supramental light. How beings from other worlds would relate with the future beings, and all sorts of similar thingsbedtime stories.
But the vibration was there, you see, high above and all around the earth, very powerful (it was all around the earth) and very strong, it seemed to be coming from other parts of the universe and trying to enter the earths atmosphere to help it participate in those new combinations. And it all seemed like childishness to me the whole universe seemed to be living in childishness. There was something so tranquil hereso tranquil, so calm and unhurried, not interested in showing anything off, but capable of living in an eternity of quiet effort and progress. It was here, immobile, watching all these things. Finally (the spectacle lasted all evening) when I lay down in bed for the night, I said to the Lord, I dont need diversions, I dont need to see encouraging things I only want to work calmly, quietly, IN You. You, You are the worker; You are here and You alone exist. You are the realizer. Then all grew silent, still, motionlessand the excitement waned.
So you see, theres excitement in the universe too, if youre not careful! But my impression is that it simply complicates thingsit clouds the issue, you know, it complicates things. Then you have to wait for the bubbles to subside before you can calmly set off again on your way towards the goal.
0 1962-09-05, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Before reading his manuscript on Sri Aurobindo to Mother, Satprem asks her to correct any inaccuracies in the text, since he doesn't have the direct experience of everything he speaks of.)
I dont have the experience of some of these things.
--
Of course, I am not speaking of what the universal Mother can know, thats quite another category! I am speaking of the experience of the psychic being, the purely terrestrial experience. Well, very few things seem in fact, none of them seem alien or unknown to me. The human state of mind, ah yes! Since my early childhood, I have been flabbergasted by the way people think and feelit seemed monstrous. But as for the circumstances and events of life, thats all more or less old hat.
The experiences that left the most acute impressions on me (Mother makes a poignant gesture)you know, the kind of things that make you say, Oh, no, not that again, Ive had enough!are connected with my lives as a monarch: empress, queen and the like oh! Those are painful impressions, the most painful of all. And I have a keen memory of a resolution taken in my last life as an empress: Never again! I said. Ive had enough, I want no more of it! Id rather be not even Id rather be, I chose deliberately: I WANT to be an obscure being in an obscure family, free at last to do what I want! And thats the first thing I remembered this time: Yes, its an obscure family, an obscure being in an obscure milieu, so I may be free to do what I want; there isnt a horde of people watching me and spying on everything I do and plaguing me with rules about what I ought to be doing.
--
(Satprem reads a passage from his manuscript in which he speaks of illnesses, including yogic illnesses, that can result from some inner discrepancy when the various parts of the consciousness are unevenly developed.)
These illnesses are not of the same nature as the others, because GENERALLY (I am not making any absolute rule), generally their origin is not found to be viruses or bacteria, but a kind of disorder what is it called? They have a splendid word for it now. You know, an incapacity to bear something, a lack of harmony.
--
The other things, exteriorization and so forth, are innate, just as some people are born artists or painters or aviators. Its one of Natures special combinations. Ive known some downright stupid girls who could exteriorize remarkably well and be fully conscious of their experiences in the subtle physical or the mind or the material vital (when one is undeveloped its more often in the material vital than the subtle physical). And they would tell you all about what they saw. But incapable of yoga.
Natures fancies, I tell you.
--
I remember that one of the first things I asked Sri Aurobindo when I came here, after innumerable experiences and innumerable realizations, was, Why am I so mediocre? Everything I do is mediocre, all my realizations are mediocre, theres never anything remarkable or exceptionalits just average. It isnt low, but its not high eithereverything is average. And thats really how I felt. I painted: it wasnt bad painting, but many others could do as well. I played music: it wasnt bad music, but you couldnt say, Oh, what a musical genius! I wrote: it was perfectly ordinary. My thoughts slightly excelled those of my friends, but nothing exceptional; I had no special gift for philosophy or whatever. Everything I did was like that: my body had its skills, but nothing fantastic; I wasnt ugly, I wasnt beautiful you see, everything was mediocre, mediocre, mediocre, mediocre. Then he told me, It was indi spensable.
All right, so I kept quietand very quickly, within a few weeks, I understood.
--
For a long, long time, that was also the one thing I felt was worth living forConsciousness. When I met Thon and came to understand the mechanism, I also understood why I wasnt conscious at a certain level. I think Ive told you how I spent ten months one year working to connect two layerstwo layers of consciousness; the contact wasnt established and so I couldnt have the spontaneous experience of a whole spectrum of things. Madame Thon told me, Its because theres an undeveloped layer between this part and that part. I was very conscious of all the gradations: Thon had explained it all in the simplest terms, so you didnt need to be, as I said, a genius to understand. He had made a quadruple division, and each of them was divided into four, and then again into four, making innumerable divisions of the being; but with that mental simplification you could make in-depth psychological studies of your own being. And so by observation and elimination I eventually discovered that between this and that (gesture indicating two levels of Mothers consciousness), there was an undeveloped layerit wasnt conscious. So I worked for ten months on nothing but that: absolutely no results. I didnt care, I kept right on, telling myself, Well, it may take me fifty years to get anywhere, who knows. And then I left for the country (I was living in Paris at the time). I lay down on the grass, and all at once, with the contact of earth and grass, poof! There was a sort of inner explosion the link was established, and full consciousness came, along with all the ensuing experiences. Well, I said to myself, it was worth all the trouble!
And I am sure thats how the work is done, slowly, imperceptibly, like a chick being formed in the egg: you see the shell, you see only the shell, you dont know whats inside, whether its just an egg or a chick (normally, I meanof course, you could see through with special instruments) and then the beak goes peck-peck! And then cheep! Out comes the chick, just like that. Its the same thing exactly for the contact with the psychic being. For months on end, sometimes years, you may be sitting before a closed door, push, push, pushing, and feeling, feeling the pressure (it hurts!), and theres nothing, no results. Then all at once, you dont know why or how, you sit down and poof! Everything bursts wide open, everything is ready, everything is doneits over, you emerge into a full psychic consciousness and become intimate with your psychic being. Then everything changeseverything changesyour life completely changes, its a total reversal of your whole existence.
In the end, its best not to worry, not to get agitated or depressed (thats the worst of all), not to get worked up or impatient or disgustedjust be calm and say, It will come when it comes, but with an unyielding stubbornness. Do what you feel has to be done, and keep on with it, keep on even if it seems utterly futile.
--
This "elsewhere" which is neither "higher" nor "deeper within" seems to correspond to the displacement along a LEVEL path Mother was speaking of: the other Matter.
See conversation of July 14, 1962
0 1962-09-08, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mother looks unwell. She seems to have been having some fainting spells, but this is not clear.)
Are you tired?
--
This would tend to show. I dont know if we can generalize or if this is just one special case being worked out (I cant say), but theres a very distinct impression that what ordinary human consciousness perceives as death might simply be that the consciousness hasnt been brought back to its true position fast enough.
I am quite aware that all this must seem confusing; I can feel how inadequate the words and expression are for describing the experience. When you want to be literary, you say its a reversal of consciousness but it isnt! Thats just literature.
--
I could see something almost like the fire of battlean interesting spectacle! The body was very conscious of the Help it was getting, and that gave it a lot of confidence: it came out of the battle with a kind of increased certainty that it was being led just as it had to be in order to do the thing something nobody knows how to do externally, nobody! Nobody can knownei ther the process nor anything. Its entirely new.
Of course, the supreme Consciousness knows what Its doing and whats going to happen, in that It knows what It wants; but it isnt something that operates from cause to effect, and from events or circumstances to consequences, the way ordinary consciousness operates; its not like that at all, and thats why were unable to express it outwardly for the moment. Maybe later we will be able to spell something out, but it will never be more than (how can I put it?) just a story, right? Not THE thing itself.
Anyway, everything Ive just said to you can be of use!
--
(Towards the end of the conversation, Mother again speaks of Xs visit:)
Little by little, what was bound to happen has happened: you have a relationship with an X who isnt the real X, but your OWN formation of X (I have already told you this), an ideal X youve set up inside yourself. Well, youd better stop associating your ideal with X, because they dont match!
--
Dont let this visit ruffle you. Essentially, his approach has always seemed peripheral to me, just one part of an immense whole. It represents ONE a spect of the quest for the Divine on earth,2 and it is part of an entire line, like all the sannyasins, all the saddhus, and so on. X happens to have come closer because he has worshipped the Goddess of Love so much, the Shaktis a spect of Love, and that naturally led him here, brought him close, but. I see it as part of a whole worldamong many other things. You know, theres that festival celebrated every ten years, I think, when all the saddhus go to ba the in the Ganges3; Ive seen all the photosits painful. Its its painful. It is no more beautiful or harmonious than a stampeding mob in a revolution. Its there is no special grace.
Now, do you remember the story of that man who has been living at the source of the Ganges for twenty-five years? Here he is (Mother shows his photo). He was in his cave and V. said to him, Id like to take your picture. All right, he answered, and came out and sat down in the snowstark naked.
0 1962-09-15, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It wasnt written for anyone and wasnt meant to be read. I showed it to Sri Aurobindo because he was speaking of certain things and I said, Ah, yes, thats the experience I had in. Then I showed him my notebook for that date (there was something written for each day).
Five thick notebooks, year after year. Even here I kept on writing for a while.
0 1962-09-18, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
First of all, Ill concentrate on it just as Sri Aurobindo said it in English, using French words. Then Ill see if something comes WITHOUT changing anything that is, if the same inspiration he had comes in French. It will be an interesting thing to do. If I can do one, two, three lines a day, thats all I need; I will spend one hour every day like that.
I dont have anything in mind. All I know is that being in that light above gives me great joy. For it is a supramental lighta supramental light of aesthetic beauty, and very, very harmonious.
--
Of That which for ever exceeds idea and speech,
A symbol of what can never be symbolised,
0 1962-09-26, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This region just overlooks the earth and the mind (including the very highest mind). But evolution I mean TERRESTRIAL evolution, with its particular rhythm which is more condensed, more concentrated and, you could say, more focused than universal evolution as a wholethis terrestrial evolution has, with the human species, created a kind of higher intellectuality capable of passing through the overmental region, the region of the gods, and reaching a higher Principle directly.
But this overmental region, this region of the gods with the power to govern the universe and, PARTIALLY, the earth, does have its own reality. You can come into contact with it and use it; the Vedic forefa thers used it, occultists use it, even Tantrics use it. But theres another path which, distrusting the gods, bypasses them through a kind of intellectual asceticism, as it were, wary of forms, of images, and differing expressions, which rises straight as an arrow, proud and pure, towards the supramental Light. That is a living experience.
--
But its better not to emphasize this [in your book]. As I have said, we can bypass that plane, or even pass through without knowing it. It interested me to read in the Vedas that if you dont ascend the way youre supposed to, if you try to bypass the gods, then unpleasant things happen to you and your way is blockeddo you remember that?1 That gives you an idea of what it is. Its like an intermediary zone, far superior to the earth, but still intermediary. Some have tried to cross it without stopping; and there, they say, you run into trouble. Personally, I am not sure, I can only speak of my own experience: there was always a sense of fraternityas you can imagine! I knew them, I was on friendly terms with them, so there was no question of bypassing them or not!
But I have a strong impression that that world is still a magnified version of our own, and part of the old path; it has nothing to do with the Supramental Creation, which will bring to earth the sense of the Supreme and the Unique.
--
I am speaking in riddles, but what else can I do!
I mean that the why and the how of it wont be known until until the curve is completed.
0 1962-09-29, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
We always talk nonsense when we speak. But at any rate (laughing), some nonsense is closer to the truth than other nonsense! This nonsense is closer to the truth.
***
0 1962-10-06, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Sri Aurobindo is speaking here of knowledge through inspiration or revelation. In other words, when something suddenly descends and illuminates your understanding: all of a sudden, you feel you know a certain thing for the very first time, because it comes to you directly from the domain of Light, the domain of true knowledge, and it comes with all its innate force of truthit illuminates you. And indeed, when youve just received it, it seems as though nothing could resist that Light. And if you make sure to let it work in you, it brings about as much transformation as it can in its own domain.
It is a fairly common experience. When it occurs, and for some time afterwards (not very long), everything seems to organize itself quite naturally around that Light. Then, little by little, it blends with all the rest. The intellectual awareness of it remains, formulated in one way or another that much is left but its like an empty husk. It no longer has the driving force that transforms all movements of the being in the image of that Light. And this is what Sri Aurobindo means: the world moves fast, the Lord moves ever forward, and all that remains is but a trail He leaves in His wake: it no longer has the same instantaneous and almighty force it had at the MOMENT He projected it into the world.
--
Actually, well be able to speak of what transforms Matter only when Matter is at least a bit transformed, when there is a beginning of transformation. Then we can talk about the process. But for the moment.
(silence)
--
Actually, when people speak of transformation, theyre mainly thinking of a picturesque transformation, arent they? A beautiful appearanceluminous, supple, plastic, changing at will. But they dont give much thought to this other thing, this rather anesthetic transformation of the organs! And yet its certainly whats going to happen first, long before the appearance is transformed.
Sri Aurobindo spoke of the working of the chakras1 replacing the organs.
--
No, but the difference in vision Im speaking of vision. You told me, for instance, that objects in the overmind were self-luminous.
Yes, from the overmind onwards.
--
When I speak of the world of Oneness I dont merely mean having the sense that all is one and that everything takes place within that One. What I mean by Oneness is that you cant distinguish between conceiving the action, the will to act, the action itself, and the result. Its. All is one, simultaneous.
But how? It cant be explainedit simply cant! You can get a glimpse of the experience, but ultimately, its inexpressible, we have no means to express it.
--
At their maximum, at the height of their possibilities, human conceptions can at the VERY BEST express something or other of the overmind. For me it is very vivid, very familiar, because I have lived there a lot. But even so, I consider words too awkward to express italthough with poetic metaphors you might just manage to convey an impression of it. But as for speaking of the Other Thing, I am quite aware that. Because even when youre right in the Experience, the only thing you feel like doing is keeping quiet. You cant talk. As soon as you utter a word, poof! It all clouds over. Its useless.
But physically, for instance, you see this object [Satprem picks up a paperweight]. Now, I see it in a certain way but you, with a supramental consciousness?
--
Let it get established! When its all well established, well speak about it again (Mother laughs).
Im asking you questions because Ive got a book to write!
Oh, but dont speak of this in your book! People will say youre completely cracked (Mother laughs).
Chakras: centers of consciousness.
0 1962-10-12, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
He has put Himself in the role of spectator and Hes watching Himself. And to watch Himself, He has to accept the notion of time and spaceo therwise He cant watch Himself! And immediately the whole comedy begins. But its a comedy and nothing more!
And were the puppets, eh! Thats why we take it so seriously. But as soon as we stop being puppets, we realize its a comedy.
--
Yes, burned. Or shut up in a box without air and lightwhile FULLY CONSCIOUS. And just because they can no longer express themselves, people say they are dead. They dont waste any time declaring them dead! But they are conscious. They are conscious. Imagine someone who can no longer speak or moveaccording to human laws, he is dead. He is dead but he is conscious. He is conscious, so he sees the people around him: some of them are weeping, some of them are if hes a bit clairvoyant, he also sees that some of them are rejoicing. And then he sees himself put into a box, sees the lid nailed down, shutting him in: Ah, now its all over, theyre going to cover me with earth! Or hes taken over there [to the cremation ground], and then its fire in the mouthFULLY conscious.
I have lived this in recent days. I have seen it. Last night or the night before, I spent at least two hours in a world the subtle physical worldwhere the living mingle with the dead with no sense of difference, it makes absolutely no difference there. For instance, when Mridu1 was in her body I used to see her at night maybe once a year (maybe not even that much). For years she was utterly nonexistent in my consciousness but since she left her body, I see her almost every night! There she is, just as she was, you know (rotund gesture), but no longer troubled, thats all. No longer troubled. And there were both living and what we call the living and the deadthey were both there together, eating together, moving around together, having fun together; and all in a lovely, tranquil lightpleasant, very pleasant. There! I thought, and humans have drawn a sharp line, saying, Now hes dead! Dead! And what really takes the cake is the way they treat the body like an unconscious object, and its still conscious!
Its treated like an object: Now then! Lets get rid of this just as quickly as we can: its a nuisance and it gets in the way. And even those who feel the most sorrow dont want to see it; its too painful for them.
--
People come, letters arrive, various circumstances and problems arise (its over now, but at the timeeven a year ago that kind of thing was sometimes a problem for me). Well, right away, I (Mother opens her hands in front of her forehead, palms upwards, as though presenting the problem to the Lord): Here, Lord, look at this. All I am good for is (same gesture): I am presenting it to You, Lord. And then I keep still, I just keep still: I wont move unless You move me, I wont speak unless You make me speak. And then you stop thinking about it. You think about it just for a second, long enough to do this (same gesture). It comes in like this, then up it goes (gesture showing a problem coming to Mother from one side and being sent above). And later, you suddenly realize youre speaking or acting or making a decision or writing a letter or and He has done it all.
But one can be full of excellent goodwill and still want to Do things. And thats what complicates everything. Or else theres a lack of faith, a lack of belief in the Lords abilityyou think you have to do things yourself because He doesnt know how! (Mother laughs) This sort of stupidity is very widespread, you know: How can He see these things? Were living in a world of Falsehood, how can He see Falsehood? But in fact He does see things as they are!
--
No, I am incapable of speaking, I cant say anything publishable; its impossible, impossible. It seems so artificial to me, so artificial. And besides, it gives me a headache.
So youre the one who has to do the work. You can condense a littlea sentence here, a sentence there.
0 1962-10-16, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
As soon as you speak, most of the knowledge escapes. It becomes what Sri Aurobindo calls a representation, an imageit is not THE thing.
Last April.
0 1962-10-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes. But its the higher level of the musical zone. Each of these zones contains several levels, and the top of the musical zone is already starting to be waves, waves of vibration. But its still directly related to music, while those colored forces I am speaking of have to do with terrestrial transformations and actionsgreat actions. They are powers of action. This zone where you hear no sound eventually becomes sounds and music. It is the summit. Each zone contains several levels.
In short, when one rises to that Origin, one finds a single vibration, which can be expressed as music or thought or architectural or pictorial formsis that right?
Yes, but it goes through specific transformations en route. It passes through one zone or another, where it undergoes transformations to adapt itself to the particular mode of expression. The waves of music are one particular mode of expression of those colored wavesthey should really be called luminous waves, for they are self-luminous. Waves of colored light. Great waves of colored light.
(silence)
0 1962-11-03, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its more a sort of weariness. I spend terrible nights in the subconscient. Over the past six months theres been a really abrupt change in my dreams. Previously I would remember something once in a while; now I remember nothing except the subconscient, and what a subconscient! Im lucky when its not hellish.
Mon petit, from that point of view my nights are abominable toothey cant really be abominable because I live in beatitude, but what I see, what I am forced to see each night is horrible. Just horrible. It seems like an attempt to make me thoroughly disgusted with my work. The subconscient is really a mass of horrors. And its been going on like this for at least six months.
--
In the next conversation, Mother added: "For example, if someone wants to enter some place, you needn't say, 'Don't enter'; you do what's necessary and he cannot enter, he tries but he can't that's what I call 'keeping under control.' I didn't need to speak to or touch them: the Force was doing the work."
***
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.
--
It has become a kind of habit: I am eating a meal, for example, and swallow the wrong way or whatever (not even something violent, just a slightly uneasy sensation in the throat), I do this (gesture of drawing back) for one second, and its finished. Or I am speaking to someone and the right word doesnt come automatically: I just have to do this (same gesture), and there it is. It works for everything. It puts things back in order.
And thats what you have in your meditations. Only (laughing), you wont be happy unless you get out of itunless something dramatic happens! (Mother laughs and laughs) Thats why you complain! Some people work years and years and years to have it just once.
0 1962-11-10, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mother listens to Satprem read a chapter from his manuscript entitled "Under the Sign of the Gods," in which he speaks of the overmind's inadequacy for attaining the plenitude of evolution, Afterwards, Mother tells what she saw while he was reading.)
Theres a kind of cadence.
0 1962-11-14, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
No later than yesterday night, I had this feeling: My god, theres always farther down to go! Its always lower, ever lower. And at the same time, my identity with the Supreme keeps growing while I simultaneously seem to be going down into the most incredible dark dregs of yes, of mud, ever possible in life. Look, you speak of Sri Aurobindos experiencewell, I never knew hed had the vision of all sorts of torture,1 but I have just had it myself in detail, bit by bit and what things! Incredible, incredible. And I was wondering, But why! Why am I seeing all this? Am I losing my contact? On the contrary, it felt closer and closer, stronger and stronger, more and more conscious, luminous, and at the same time this (gesture below).
You have formulated it very, very well. Do you unwittingly feel my experience and write it, or do I. I dont know, its all bound up together. But its most interesting.
0 1962-11-17, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I even remarked to myself (it was a rather curious feeling), Well, its interesting to have such a close view of it. That is, I had the feeling that my station, as Sri Aurobindo calls it, for viewing the world was very high up, and Id had to come down to that place. And thats what made me say, Well, its interesting to have such a close view of things. (I didnt say it to that being, I thought it.) And he was there next to me, gloating, standing some distance off to my right (looking up, I could see his headMo ther looks up at the ceiling). He was jubilant, gloating: You see, you see, you see! Overjoyed. I kept absolutely still; everything was still, calm, motionless (the thought that came was like something passing through me: Its interesting to have such a close view of it). And then I stopped everything, like this (Mother remains as still as a statue, fists clenched). And very soon afterwards (I cant say exactly because time there isnt the same as here), very soon afterwards, everything stopped.1 The storms only purpose was to cause the two thunderbolts, and it stopped after they fell on the earth. And then the flames the whole area was set ablaze (it was like a huge city, but not a city: most likely it was symbolic of a country): vroom! It burst into flames; some flames were leaping up very, very high. But I simply did this, stopped everything (Mother remains motionless, eyes closed, fists clenched), and then looked out once againeverything had returned to order. Then I said (I dont know why, but I was speaking to him in English yes, its because he was speaking English, saying, You see, you see!), I said, Ah, that didnt last long. They quickly brought it under control. With that he turned his back on me (laughing); he went off one way and I the other. Then I regained my outer consciousness, which is why I remember everything exactly.
I believe they began fighting up there two or three days after it happened.
--
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.
--
In fact, three days later, on November 20, in an unhoped-for turn of events, China declared a unilateral cease-fire and withdrawal of troops, even as they were making a spectacular and almost unopposed advance. No one ever understood why.
Mother is probably alluding to difficulties in obtaining the dismissal of the Defense Minister, Krishna Menon. It might be recalled that, under Nehru, India's foreign policy was quite pro-Chinese (the slogan of the day was Hindi-Chini-bha-bha: Indians and Chinese are brothers), and when China began to sweep down into India, the Defense Minister calmly left for London on some mission or other, declaring: oh, it's nothing!
0 1962-11-20, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But what I find perhaps even more incredible than the leaders incompetenceNehru, Menon, and so forthis that for twenty years there hasnt been a single Indian to see things clearly and speak outtheres been no one in India, no one. For twenty years there have been two idols, Nehru and Gandhi, and then some 400 million stupefied people,1 with no one to see things clearly. How is it possible? No one!
But Nehru had a very good foreign press. They considered him almost a god in Europe and America. And Gandhi! Oh, they were. The whole world is like that, mon petitthey dont understand. They dont understand. Nobody understands.
--
Mother sent a special messenger to Delhi with a symbolic gift of 925 grams of gold (some from her own jewelry), as a contri bution to national defense.
Indira Gandhi will come to power four years later, in January 1966.
0 1962-11-23, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Mother is alluding to the passage in Savitri where Sri Aurobindo speaks of "the dark half of Truth."
The most recent battle.
0 1962-11-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Did you come to the meditation on the 24th?1 What did you feel? Nothing special?
The big difference compared to my meditations at home is that immediately theres complete immobility and with no difficulty. Its truly immobile.
--
In order to be discernible, the cube was enveloped in something that looked like a kind of tulle, a tulle made of a pale gray substance, which expressed the individual nonexistence, the perfect humility that completely abolishes the ego: because of that there wasnt the least possibility of egoif you ask me why, I cant say, but thats how it was. And I was seeing that tulle all the time something extremely delicate, scarcely perceptible, yet maintaining the cubes form. It was perfect humility (in the divine sense) and total absence of egothere wasnt even the memory or idea of it, nothing whatever: the abolition of the ego. And it served to receive that immobile immensity which manifested through an action of the Power. And then, the action of the Power. I was conscious (I was consciouswhere was I? I dont know; the cube represented my physical being: I had been TOLD it was my physical being), and I was watching it without being situated I myself had no precise place but could see and understand the whole thing. And I could discern all the action being done through the cube: this action for that thing, this for that, this for that the whole earth (gesture expressing forces radiating outward, each for a special purpose), things from the past and things FAR into the future.
And it was so imperative!
--
Yet speech does exist, the spoken word exists, because it has its place but how can it be made effective? That will probably come later.
Yes, the mantra.
--
Next time, Mother added: "There wasn't 'someone' haying the experience, there was no 'I' anywhere, not even the feeling of the Universal Mother seeing the experienceno. There was the experience. To be more specific I could say, 'I was the experience, there was nothing but the experience.' I didn't have the experience I WAS the experience."
Mother added the beginning of this paragraph later: "I had forgotten to mention part of the experience!"
0 1962-11-30, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The other day you were speaking of Sri Aurobindos departure, and you said, So when he left, all at oncea fall into a pit. And thats what projected me wholly. Did you mean it projected you into the evolution?
I had never left it. But.
0 1962-12-04, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mother speaks again of the direct experience of the Supreme she had when Sri Aurobindo left his body:)
I dont quite understand. Didnt you have the experience of the Supreme before Sri Aurobindos departure?
--
It took me twelve days to get out of ittwelve days during which I didnt speak a single word.
So the experience I mentioned is the PHYSICAL experience.
0 1962-12-08, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You said something mysterious the other day [December 4] concerning Sri Aurobindos departure. You were speaking of the sense of impermanence you had, of total uncertainty, and you said, Its no longer a destruction, but its not yet an ascending transformation.
It was a real physical destruction; so I am saying its not that any more, but its not yet the realization.
--
No, what he seems to be giving me these days, since December 5, is a very clear vision and experience of why he had to leave. But that its not yet time to speak of it.
It wasnt for personal reasons but for reasons of work. I mean he considered (I knew it from the start; he had told me), he considered it better to leave his body, that it was the best way to do the work now. It was necessary.
But the time hasnt come to speak of all this, to give all the reasons, and it probably wont come for quite a while.
These past few days, he seems to want to make me see and experience all the terrestrial conditions that led him to that decision (thats the best way to put it).
--
When he left his body I said, The world isnt ready. I was speaking generally, but now hes showing me each and every point, every single point.
I hope (theres still tomorrow1), I hope hell show me if something has been accomplished along the way. That, I dont know.
0 1962-12-15, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
They make all kinds of recommendations here: for instance, when you go out of your body you should wear a loose-fitting robe, a robe kept specially for that.
Why is that? Whats the idea?
--
But to me this seems to come from his Jewish background. Because Thon was Jewish, even though he never mentioned the fact (the Tlemcen officials made it known: when he arrived he had to tell them who he was). He never spoke of it and he had changed his name. They said he was of Jewish origin, but they could never say whether he was Polish or Russian. At least the person who told me never knew. But for the Jews its the Unthinkable, whose name must not be uttered (it is uttered only once a year, on the Day of Atonement; I think thats what its called). Its the word Yahveh, and it must not be uttered. But the prayers speak of the Elohim, and the Hebrew word Elohim is plural, meaning the invisible lords. So there was no one and only God for Thon, only the unthinkable Formless; and all the invisible beings who claimed to be one and only gods were Asuras.
He used to call Christ That young man! (Laughter) It was very funny.
0 1962-12-19, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yesterday, for instance, I had to see F. and R., since they had just arrived the day before. I spent three-quarters of an hour with them, and by the time it was over they had literally EMPTIED the atmosphere of all spiritual senseit had become empty and hollow. It took me two or three minutes of concentration (which isnt so long) to bring it all back to normal.
I havent seen much of that room,2 I havent been there often. I went to see what it was like for the first time the evening before the inauguration, and it gave me the feeling of something totally emptyyou know, hollow and dry. It was so strong that the body felt like this (wavering gesture, as if Mother were losing her footing). Thats how the BODY felt, its not the consciousness; I am talking about the body-consciousness. The room seemed so hollow and empty that the body felt drained, as if all its force and consciousness had to spread out everywhere in order to fill up that emptiness.
--
After twenty minutes, something said, Thats enough. And I saw that it was enough for the body, that it shouldnt exert itself further the formation withdrew. I couldnt have played a single note more! It was very interesting. And I realized that, truly, the will that moves my body isnt at all the same as before. Previously, it was the will of the being that had been placed into and formed in this body (it wasnt personal but still very individual). While now its not that: its a Will somewhere (somewhere which is everywhere and in everything), a Will somewhere that decides, and when it says Do, the body does; when it says No, nothing in the world could make the body move. And so, that conscious something somewhere, which is like an intermediary between the higher Will and the body and its outer life, has to tell the body, This is necessary. The body never protests, because that which speaks knows VERY WELL. It says, This is necessary, all right, the body does it. But when it says, Thats enough, now, the body stops. Because (how can I express it?) FOR THE BODY, the Most High knows better than the intermediary. In regard to circumstances and the vision of the work to be done, its all one; but for taking care of and educating the body, That (gesture on high) knows best. The intermediary doesnt really care (!), but when That says do, its done; inished, and its finished. Its very interesting.
Naturally, the whole crowd and the people around me kept asking, Now that its all set up, when will there be balcony darshans again? (Because when I came back inside I said, So! Youve built a balcony, have you?). When are we going to have them again? So the intermediary said, I dont know, its not up to me. Consternation! Then I kept very quiet for a little while, listening on high, and from high, high up there came, very slowly (it comes practically drop by drop because you have to do it VERY quietlyit comes drop by drop), what That said I had to reply: Nothing definite. I was told, It depends. It all depends I clearly see that it all depends on the special work being done on my body and on the results of that work. And it isnt formulated: I am not told, I am not told whats going to happen; I am only told, Heres how it might be. (Mother laughs) All right. Thats fine, I said.
But it was funny; it was really an experience, because had you asked me my impression beforeh and (my, I mean what usually talks), my impression was that I just had to decide to go to the balcony and it would happen (the only impossibility I saw was finding time for it). But thats not how it is, thats not it AT ALL. Its something else, utterly new, something I dont know; I have absolutely no reference points, and decisions are made on the highest levelonly with regard to the body. I mean for the work in general, for the terrestrial vision and all that, theres no difference: its seen, its known. But for this special thing in the body, I am not consulted.
I was really amused.
--
Even if I speak to someone more intelligent or better informed. Once or twice I said something to Pavitra, to see what would happen: he immediately dogmatizes, makes a mental principle out of it (consistent with Sri Aurobindos teaching, of course!). And it becomes something rigid, like a box. And he tries! He tries, he KNOWS he shouldnt do that, but. Which means one cannot understand unless one has the experienceyou must have the experience of all this somewhere, mon petit, otherwise you couldnt write about it!
But its Sri Aurobindo!
--
Au revoir, mon petit; its goodits going well. Thats what Sri Aurobindo told me a few days ago (I spent two hours with him at night, with all sorts of very interesting things happening). He told me (in his joking way), You see! Ive got him doing the book that makes him progress. So I said, Good. Because he has been there all along since you embarked on this book, and he seems to be guiding you according to a plan he has worked out. Thats what he told me. I have seen him with you very frequently (as Ive told you), but the other day he told me this positively.
Its good. Its very good this time.
0 1962-12-22, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
If I spent the whole night writing, as Sri Aurobindo used to do, I might be able to keep up to date. But I have no intention of doing that, because my nights are very interesting!
I have had some rather strange things have been happening. I dont know whether you understand the difference between the memory of an inner experience (from the subtle physical, the subconscient, all the inner regions) and the memory of a physical fact. There is a very great difference in quality, the same difference that exists between inner vision and physical vision. Physical vision is precise, well defined, and at the same time flat I dont know how to explain it: its very flat, totally superficial, but very accurate, with the kind of accuracy and precision that defines things which are really not defined at all. Well, theres the same difference in quality between the two types of memory as between the two types of vision. And in the last few days Ive realized that I had the memory of having gone downstairs, of having seen certain people and things, spoken and organized certain thingsseveral different scenes of the PHYSICAL memory. Not at all things I saw with the inner vision while exteriorized, but the MATERIAL memory of having done certain things.
0 1963-01-09, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Some panic. Some have already had a few experiences, they know better and see clearer, they work to adapt to the new vibration. But others have yet to understand, and they feel so stupid, so stupid! And from above, something watches it all and finds it both (both at once) very funny, because really its exceedingly ridiculous, and at the same time so sad! Its so sad to see that EVERYTHING is like this: the WHOLE earth, the WHOLE earth! That this body is the object of a special concentration, a special effort, a special CHARGE, a special concern, a special carethis minuscule fragment, minuscule and theres the whole earth, the whole earth. And they all think themselves so wonderful, so smart!
I could keep talking for hours.
0 1963-01-12, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You understand, there are only 365 days in a year, and we are including the visitors who come specially for their birthdays, nearly 1,300 people. Most people I dont see, but some I have to: people like Nolini, Amrita, Pavitra, Champaklal,2 I cant but give them a moment. Then there are people who come from Africa, from Europe, and who ask to see me before leaving, so
So I am listening to you now.
--
For instance, two or three nights ago (I dont remember), I was with Sri Aurobindo, we were doing a certain work (it was in a mental zone with certain vital reactions mixed in), well, a general work. I was with Sri Aurobindo and we were doing the work together. He wanted to explain to me how a particular movement is turned into a distorted movement; he was explaining this to me (but theres nothing mental or intellectual about it, nothing to do with theories). And without even (how can I put it?) without even a thought or an explanation to forewarn you, a true movement is changed into a movement that is not false but distorted. I was speaking to Sri Aurobindo and he was answering, then I turn my head away like this (not physicallyall this is an inner life, naturally), I turned my head as if to see the [vibratory] effect. Then I turn back and send Sri Aurobindo the movement necessary to carry on with the experience, and I receive a reply which surprises me because of the quality of its vibration (it was a reply of ignorance and weakness). So I turn my attention back again, and as a matter of fact in Sri Aurobindos place I saw the doctor. Then I understood! Superficially, one may say, So, Sri Aurobindo and the doctor are the same! (To people who would see such a thing it would occur that they are the sameof course its all, all the same! All is one, people just dont understand this complete oneness.) Naturally it didnt surprise me for the thousandth of a second, there wasnt any surprise, but oh, I understood! This way (Mother slightly tilts her hand to the left), its Sri Aurobindo, and that way (slightly to the right), its the doctor. This way its the Lord, and that way its a man!!
Really interesting.5
At the time, there were all the minute details of observation that make the experience so concrete. If I were to write it all, it would be worthwhile. But they are countless! I would spend my days writing down my nights! What to do?
This is ONE kindthere are so many different kinds. For the body too, there are countless observations: for example, a vibration like this (gesture) brings eternal bliss; a MINUSCULE shift (it looks like a shiftis it a shift? Is it what? A distortion? An addition? Or is it its all kinds of different things at once), and it turns into anguish and dreadful discomfort THE VERY SAME THING. And so forth. Tons of things that could be written down!
0 1963-01-14, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But e specially all the prohibitions. For instance, let me quote you a statement from X which I heard from a third person: I will do a special puja to help money come. I will prepare a special yantram1 to bring money. But FOR GODS SAKE dont say anything [to Mother], dont do anything or give anything before January 14, because until January 14, a certain planet is in opposition to a certain other planet (Mother laughs), so things follow a downward trend and wont be successful. But afterwards, that particular planet will be ascending and everything will be successful! (Mother laughs) Something in me said spontaneously (something, well, someone), spontaneously and immediately, But why? I can always hear! And I laughed. So they thought I was making fun of him I dont make fun: I laugh, its not the same!
So, mon petit, thats all.
--
It has become quite an entertaining little field of experiences, by the way. Because nowadays I send people cards, and I have lots of cards, innumerable kinds of cards2 (C. spends his time preparing them), and automatically, whenever I have to write a card for someone, it isnt as I decided beforeh and (because sometimes I decide beforehand), the choice is made at the last minute: THIS is the card I must send and THIS is what I must say. I neednt worry about it, it comes just in time. Then I only have to get up, go find the card, write, and its all over. People will tell me (precisely those who lead a spiritual life), What! You make such a trifle the object of a spiritual experience! And its the same with ALL small things: what object to be used, what perfume to put on, what bath salts, all manner of futile, frivolous, unimportant thingsHow shocking! I dont even make an effort to find out or to (think, thank God I dont think!), it just comes: this, that, that. Not saidKNOWN. It isnt even said, I am not told, Do this, never. Its KNOWN: Ah, here we are, thats it! And I choose and do itvery comfortable!
It was actually my experience (for a long, long time, many years) but, these last few days, concrete, in the bodys cells. There arent things in which the Lord is and things in which He isntthere are only fools who think so! He is ALWAYS there. He takes nothing seriously and has fun with everything. And He plays with you, if you know how to play but you dont, people dont know how to play. But how well He knows! How He plays with everything, with the smallest things: you have objects to put on your table? Dont think you have to ponder over how to arrange themno, well play: lets put this here, lets put that there, lets put this like that. Then some other day (because people think, Now she has decided on this arrangement, so thats the way its going to bewell, not so!), some other day (they want to help you! They want to help you put things in order, so it just becomes a mess!), I stay still and quiet, and then we start playing: So! Lets put this here, and that there, and this there ah! (Mother laughs) Since I saw you last time it has been that way constantly, probably to prepare me for this aphorism!
0 1963-01-30, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It goes with fantastic speed, meaning that in ten minutes I translate ten lines. On the whole, only three or four times are there a couple of alternative possibilities, which I jot down immediately. Once, here (Mother shows a passage with erasures in her manuscript), the correction came, absolute. No, he said, not thatTHIS. So I erased what I had written.
Here, read the English first.
0 1963-02-15, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its an explanation of why the world is as it is. At the start he says, He worships her (here again, there are no words in French: Il lui rend un culte, but that makes a whole sentence). He worships her as something far greater than Himself. And then you are almost a spectator of the Supreme projecting Himself to take on this creative a spect (necessarily, otherwise it couldnt be done!), the Witness watching His own work of creation and falling in love with this power of manifestationyou see it all. And oh, He wants to give Her her fullest chance and see, watch all that is going to happen, all that can happen with this divine Power thrust free into the world. And Sri Aurobindo expresses it as though he had absolutely fallen in love with Her: whatever She wants, whatever She does, whatever She thinks, whatever She wills, all of itits all wonderful! All is wonderful. Its so lovely!
And, I must say, I was observing this because, originally, the first time I heard of it, this conception shocked me, in the sense that (I dont know, it wasnt an idea, it was a feeling), as though it meant lending reality to something which in my consciousness, for a very long time (at least millennia perhaps, I dont know), had been the Falsehood to be conquered. The Falsehood that must cease to exist. Its the a spect of Truth that must manifest itself, its not all that: doing anything whatsoever just for the fun of it, simply because you have the full power. You have the power to do everything, so you do everything, and knowing that there is a Truth behind, you dont give a damn about consequences. That was something something which, as far back as I can remember, I have fought against. I have known it, but it seems to me it was such a long, long time ago and I rejected it so strongly, saying, No, no! and implored the Lord so intensely that things may be otherwise, beseeched Him that his all-powerful Truth, his all-powerful Purity and his all-powerful Beauty may manifest and put an end to all that mess. And at first I was shocked when Sri Aurobindo told me that; previously, in this life, it hadnt even crossed my mind. In that sense Theons explanation had been much more (what should I say?) useful to me from the standpoint of action: the origin of disorder being the separation of the primal Powers but thats not it! HE is there, blissfully worshipping all this confusion!
And naturally this time around, when I started translating it came back. At first there was a shudder (Mother makes a gesture of stiffening). Then I told myself, Havent you got beyond that! And I let myself flow into the thing. Then I had a series of nights with Sri Aurobindo so marvelous! You understand, I see him constantly and I go into that subtle physical world where he has his abode; the contact is almost permanent (at any rate, thats how I spend all my nights: he shows me the work, everything), but still, after this translation of Savitri he seemed to be smiling at me and telling me, At last you have understood! (Mother laughs) I said, It isnt that I didnt understand, its that I didnt want it! I didnt want, I dont WANT things to be like that any more, for thousands of years I have wanted things to be otherwise!
The night before last, he had put on a sari of mine. He told me (laughing), Why not? Dont you find it suits me! I answered, It suits you beautifully! A sari of brown georgette, lustrous bronze, with big golden braid! It was a very beautiful sari (I used to have it, it was one of my saris), and he was wearing it. Then he asked me to do his hair. I remember seeing that the nape of his neck and his hair had become almost luminoushis hair was never quite white, there was an auburn shimmer to it, it was almost golden, and it stayed that way, very fine, not at all like the hair people have here. His hair was almost like mine. So while I was doing his hair, I saw the luminous nape of his neck, and his hair, so luminous! And he said to me, Why shouldnt I wear a sari!
0 1963-02-19, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Then Mother speaks of her translation of Savitri:
I do it exclusively for the joy of being in a world a world of overmental expression (I dont say supramental, I say overmental), a luminous, marvelous expression through which you can catch the Truth.
--
I have made some experiments with French too. I wrote something: Pour chacun, le plus important est de savoir si on appartient au passe qui se perpetue, au present qui sepuise, lavenir qui veut natre. [The most important point for everyone is to know whether he belongs to the past perpetuating itself, to the present exhausting itself, or to the future trying to be born.] I gave it to Zhe didnt understand. So I told him, It doesnt mean our past, our present or our future. I wrote this when I was in that state [the experience Mother told at the beginning of this conversation], and it was in connection with a very sweet old lady who has just left her body. This is what I said to her. Everybody had been expecting her departure for more than a month or two, but I said, You will see, she is going to last; she will last for at least another month or two. Because she knows how to live within, outside her body, and the body lives on out of habit, without jerks and jolts. That was her condition, and it could last a very long time. They had announced she would leave within two days, but I said, Its not true. I know her well, in the sense that she had come out of her body and there was a link with me. And I said to her, What do you care! (though she wasnt at all worried, she was staying peacefully with me), The whole point is to know whether one belongs to the past perpetuating itself, to the present exhausting itself, or to the future trying to be born. Sometimes what WE call the past is right here, its the future trying to be born; sometimes what WE call the present is something in advance, something that came ahead of time; but sometimes also its something that came late, that is still part of all that is to disappear I saw it all: people, things, circumstances, everything through that perception, the vibration that would go on transforming itself, the vibration that would exhaust itself and disappear, the vibration that, though manifested for a long time, would be entitled to continue, to persist that changes all notions! It was so interesting! So I wrote it down as it waswithout any explanations (you dont feel much like explaining in such a case, the thing is so self-evident!). Poor Z, he stared at meall at sea! So I told him, Dont try to understand. I am not speaking of the past, present and future as we know them, its something else. (Mother laughs)
But its amusing because I had never paid much attention to that [the questions of language], the experience is novel, almost the discovery of the truth behind expression. Before, my concern was to be as clear, exact and precise as possible; to say exactly what I meant and put each word in its proper place. But thats not it! Each word has its own life! Some are drawn together by affinity, others repel each other its very funny!
0 1963-02-23, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But then, they had brought a four-year-old with them. Today was his birthday. They sent me some money for the child and asked for a card of blessings. I refused to give the card and threw the money back at themquite bluntly. I said, Tell these people that they are selfish and stupid, and I want nothing from them. And I banged on the table. Oh, oh! Everyone was petrified. (Mother laughs) The doctor was there, and Nolini, Champaklal, Amrita. Something in me was laughing a lot! Oh, they thought I was in a terrible fit: Theyll see what will happen to them! And you know, those vibrations are familiar to metheyre terrifying, mon petit. Not human. When it comes, its fearsome, people are in a cold sweat. And I watch it all like a spectator!
Fairly often, its Sri Aurobindo. But this time it was entirely impersonal. It was something that WILL NO LONGER tolerate in the world a certain kind of selfish stupidityto trample this childs finer feelings just because she isnt stupidly attached to her family (who didnt even give her a single thought all the time she was here, she didnt exist for them).
0 1963-03-06, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The question we could ask is: Will the human species be like those species that met with extinction? Some species became extinct (though not species that lasted as long as the human species, as far as I know (?), and also not those which had in them the seed of progress, a possibility of progress). The impression is rather that evolution will follow a curve drawing nearer and nearer to a higher species, and maybe all that is still too close to the lower species will fall away, just as those species fell away in the past.
We always forget that not only is everything possibleeverything, even the most contradictory things but every possibility is given at least one moment of existence.
--
Here we come to the great problem of the road we travel, the eternal Road Sri Aurobindo refers to in Savitri. It is easy to imagine, of course, that what was first objectified had an inclination to objectification. The first point to accept, a logical point considering the principle of evolution, is that the objectification is progressive, it is not complete for all eternity. (silence) Its very hard to express, because we cannot free ourselves from our habit of seeing it as a finite quantity unfolding indefinitely and of thinking that only with a finite quantity can there be a beginning. We always have an idea (at least in our way of speaking) of a moment (laughing) when the Lord decides to objectify Himself. And put that way, the explanation is easy: He objectifies Himself gradually, progressively, with, as a result, a progressive evolution. But thats just a manner of speaking. Because there is no beginning, no end, yet there is a progression. The sense of sequence, the sense of evolution and progress comes only with the Manifestation. And only when we speak of the earth can we explain things truthfully and rationally, because the earth had a beginningnot in its soul, but in its material reality.
A material universe probably has a beginning, too.
--
Otherwise He would never have made the world as it isthere is a special power, a special joy, a special vibration in the worlds intensity of aspiration to become again what it is.
And that is whypartly, fragmentarily whythere is evolution.
0 1963-03-09, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Oh, listen (this is not meant to be published or told), I dont know if Ive told you already. I was nine or ten years old, I was running with some friends in the forest of Fontainebleau (Ive told this story somewhere). The forest is rather dense, so you cant see very far ahead. We were running, and speeding along as I was, I didnt see I was coming to the edge overhanging the road. The place where we were was about ten feet above the road (more than a story high), and the road was paved with stonesfreshly paved. And we were running. I was racing ahead, the others were behind. Well, Id built up such momentum that I couldnt stopwhoosh! I went sailing into the air. I was ten, eleven at the most, mind you, with no notion of the miraculous or the marvelous, nothing, nothing I was just flung into the air. And I felt something supporting me, holding me up, and I was literally SET DOWN on the ground, on the stones. I got up (I found it perfectly natural, you understand!): not a scratch, not a speck of dust, nothing, absolutely intact. I fell down very, very slowly. Then everyone rushed up to see. Oh, its nothing! I said, I am all right. And I left it at that. But the impression lingered. That feeling of something carrying me (gesture of a slow fall, like a leaf falling in stages with slight pauses): I fell down that slow. And the material proof was there, it was no illusion since I was unscathed the road was paved with stones (you know the flint stones of France?): not a scratch, nothing. Not a speck of dust.
The soul was very alive at the time, and with all its strength it resisted the intrusion of the material logic4 of the worldso it seemed to me perfectly natural. I simply thought, No. Accidents cant happen to me.
--
He told me (Mother speaks with an ironic tone), Oh, you can certainly perform miracles! People will be wonderstruck.
(silence)
--
All that I thought I knew now seems to me completely superficial, and I have almost laid my finger on something which, in contrast, gave me the impression of a stupendous discovery. But it was just a flash, the thing is not at my command. I cant speak about it. So it might be better to wait a while before dealing with that subject.
Is this aphorism on death?
0 1963-03-19, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
A rather funny thing was that the day before, he had met N., and N. told me, When that man entered my room, he stared at me, and I felt forbidden to speak I wanted to say something but my mouth remained sealed! He froze me with a look, I couldnt utter a word!
Thats the kind of man he is, hes used to that sort of thing. The most solid man I have ever seen I mean, a oh, a remarkably organized individuality. He must be holding a tight grip on himself.
0 1963-03-23, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Nothing spectacular whatsoever spectacular, you know, thats what people enjoy. Nothing of the sort. For instance, there are two things that give you (and others too) a sense that youre making progress: one is the direct knowledge of whats happening in a given place; the other is the foreknowledge of coming events. Well, ever since the beginning of my Yoga, the two possibilities or capacities have been there, with all the admixture (as Sri Aurobindo says) of the movements of the mind, which befuddles everything. Already around 1910, not only was the capacity there (it would come off and on), but along with it, a discernment which showed me the mixture, and thus left me without any certainty. In this regard, therefore, I cant even say there has been a big change the change is in the proportion, its just a question of proportion: proportion in the certainty, proportion in the accuracy, proportion in the mixture. The mixture keeps decreasing, the certainty keeps increasing but thats all. With, now and then (but that has always happened), now and then, a clear, precise, definite indicationbang! Its a bit more frequent. Thats all. So? Sixty-three years. Sixty-three years of methodical effort, of constant will, of opportunities for the workpeople who want quick results, they make me laugh, you know!
This body isnt even one that is unprepared. It had capabilities, it was born with certain capabilities and was prepared for all kinds of experiences. There was also the sort of intuitive discernment Sri Aurobindo refers to, it had been there since my earliest childhoodveiled, mixed, no doubt, but present all the same, it was there. Afterwards, it was purified, developed, streng thened, the mixture lessened and the body was somewhat (laughing) to perfect itself it went through quite a great deal of friction of all types. Its certainly more apt today than it was fifty years ago, there isnt a shadow of doubt about it! But you understand, theres nothing to boast about!
--
Oh, thats absolutely correct, absolutely true. But anyway, its a fact. And ultimately, a victory thats conditional [on others], well, its just a way to speed up Natures movement a little. If thats what it is, all well and good but as I said (its very good, I make no demands, I dont protest, I am quite peaceful, and, to tell the truth, the result is all the same to me), theres nothing worth mentioning, thats what I mean, you cant write stories about that! (laughing) Its not worth talking about it.
If there were something like a living proof of the truth of what was promisedah, that would be worthwhile. But thats not it! We havent reached that point. It [a victory conditional on others] speeds things up a little; but it has always been said that if people joined in the effort, it would speed things up to some extentsome extent, but to what extent? We cant say.
(silence)
Just think how long I have been looking after all these peoplesome have been here for more than twenty-five years, thirty years, and (Mother shakes her head). I believe they have experiences, perhaps, but nothing to speak of. And the general atmosphere (Mother shakes her head).
One thing, though: suddenly I read (yesterday or the day before) a sermon delivered in the U.S.A. by an American (who is a rabbi, a pastor and even a Catholic priest all at the same time!). He heads a group, a group for the unity of religions. A fairly young man, and a preacher. He gives a sermon every week, I think. He came here with some other Americans, stayed for two days and went back. But then, he sent us the sermons he had given since his return, and in one of them he recounts his spiritual journey, as he calls it (a spiritual journey through China, Japan, Indochina, Malaysia, Indonesia, and so on up to India). What shocked him most in India was the povertyit was an almost unbearable experience for him (thats also what prompted the two persons who were with him to leave, and he left with them): poverty. Personally, I dont know because Ive seen poverty everywhere; I saw it wherever I went, but it seems Americans find it very shocking. Anyway, they came here, and in his sermon he gives his impression of the Ashram. I read it almost with astonishment. That man says that the minute he entered this place, he felt a peace, a calm, a stability he had never felt ANYWHERE else in his life. He met a man (he doesnt say who, he doesnt name him and I couldnt find out), who he says was such a monument of divine peace and quietude that I only wished to sit silently at his side. Who it is, I dont know (theres only Nolini who might, possibly, give that impression). He attended the meditationhe says he had never felt anything so wonderful anywhere. And he left with the feeling this was a unique place in the world from the point of view of the realization of divine Peace. I read that almost with surprise. And hes a man who, intellectually, is unable to understand or follow Sri Aurobindo (the horizon is quite narrow, he hasnt got beyond the unity of religions, thats the utmost he can conceive of). Well, in spite of that Those who already know all of Sri Aurobindo, who come here thinking they will see and who feel that Peace, I can understand. But thats not the case: he was enthralled at once!
--
Three or four days ago, a very nice man, whom I like a lot, who has been very useful, fell ill. (He has in fact been ill for a long time, and he is struggling; for all sorts of reasons of family, milieu, activities and so on, he isnt taken care of the way he should be, he doesnt take care of his body the way he should.) He had a first attack and I saw him afterwards. But I saw him full of life: his body was full of life and of will to live. So I said, No need to worry. Then after some time, maybe not even a month, another attack, caused not by the same thing but by its consequences. I receive a letter in which I am informed that he has been taken to the hospital. I was surprised, I said, But no! He has in himself the will to live, so why? Why has this happened? The moment I was informed and made the contact, he recovered with fantastic speed! Almost in a few hours. He had been rushed to the hospital, they thought it was most serious, and two days later he was back home. The hospital doctor said, Why, he has received a new life! But thats not correct: I had put him back in contact with his bodys will, which, for some reason or other, he had forgotten. Things like that, yes, theyre very clear, they take place very consciously but anyway, nothing worth talking about!
But this mans faith is extraordinary, such faith! The first word he uttered when he regained consciousness: Has Mother permitted my being taken to the hospital? You understand. So I give him the full credit for his recovery. With people like that, yes, you can do something, but thats because they have faith!
0 1963-04-06, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
My only method is a kind of shield of mental silence (in the ordinary mind), so that all the peoples thoughts do not come and pester me all the time, without letup. But they creep underneath! With some people, the moment they enter the room, I feel exhausted, because of their attitude. It doesnt work through thought at all: its a special vibration in my body.
With others, on the contrary, its fine.
0 1963-04-20, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
So I advised him to be sure to keep his eyes open: it maintains a certain activity. When you close your eyes, you plunge into trance (you are perfectly conscious, but you go into trance and the body is absolutely stilled). Thats what Thon had taught me: you free the body consciousness and train it in such a way that it can act on its own, so that while you are deep in trance, you can get up, write, speak, do anythingyou are outside the body, theres just a link left. But its a whole training. Its not too easy, but still it can be done.
I did it to the point that even if the link is cut (I had the experience), the body can go on speaking. Very useful.
I told D. that I will teach him later, because its not good to be paralyzed like that: if someone came in abruptly, anything could happen.
--
Oh, mon petit, theyre excellent, dont speak ill of your meditations, theyre perfect! I have rarely seen such peace. Because I have seen many meditations with some peace, but generally a very tamasic, heavy peace. But this kind of peace that rises and turns into a white bliss, thats very rare. Very rare. And its the same every time: regular, automatic, effortless; its your natural state. I dont know if you had it before coming here, I cant say.
No, with you it becomes very concrete. When Im alone, the perception is more vague; with you, I almost seem to see.
0 1963-04-22, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I arrived here yesterday. So far I have spent most of my time struggling against a horrible impression in my heart, my thought and my body, so strong that if I could, I would catch the first train home today. I have never had such an impression here. I almost wired you to call for your help. I shall try to hold out here as long as is decently possible, then will leave as soon as I can.
On the material level, the conditions are as wretched as possiblein a word, complete barrenness in complete squalor. My body isnt too brilliant, but I hope it will get better. On the mental and affective level = NIL. That leaves the one Thing without which all would collapse.
0 1963-05-03, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When I lie down, I go from one state to the other with extraordinary speed. And Ive noticed (the thing is just at its beginning, so I cant really say), Ive noticed that in that state, the Movement2 exceeds the force or power that concentrates the cells into an individual form. And that state seems to be all-powerful, although devoid of conscious will or vision (for the moment). Its a state (how can I explain this?) whose characteristics exceed the power that concentrates the cells into an individual body. The effect is automatic (not willed): as soon as something takes the form of a physical pain, it disappears INSTANTLY. But then, and this is most interesting, the second the body reverts to a certain stateits ordinary state, which isnt the ordinary human state, of course, but its ordinary, habitual stateit recaptures the MEMORY of its pain, and along with the memory comes the possibility of reverting to it if a certain number of conditions are not automatically fulfilled. I dont know if what I am saying makes any sense, but thats how the experience is. It is probably the passage from the true thing to the thing no longer truenot what is meant by Falsehood here on earth (thats something else altogether), but a first alteration compared to the pure Vibration. It gives the impression of a wrong habit, what remains is merely a question of a wrong habit. Its not the principle of distortion that works here, but the wrong habit due to the effect of ANOTHER principle. And something is to be found to checkcheck, eliminate, prevent that effect from recurring automatically.
Because it happens CONSTANTLY. Its a constant phenomenon: passing from this to that, this to that, this to that, to such a pointits so strong that a second comes, or a minute, or anyway a certain interval of time (I dont know), when you are neither this nor that; then you have a feeling of nothingness. It lasts just an instant; if it lasted longer, it would probably result in fainting or something, I cant say what. But it happens all the time: this, that (oscillating gesture). And between this and that, there is a passage.
--
When you speak of terrestrial things, its very easy, very easy.
These words (Mother shows the notation of her experience) come long after the experience is over. There is a sort of silence, of immobility, and its like something that settles slowly, slowly; and once it has settled, here is the residue (Mother shows her note, laughing).
0 1963-05-11, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The deeper significance of figures There are countless traditions, countless scriptures which I took great care not to follow. But the deeper significance of figures came to me in Tlemcen, when I was in the Overmind. I dont remember the names Thon used to give to those various worlds, but it was a world that corresponded to the highest and most luminous regions of Sri Aurobindos Overmind. It was above, just above the gods region. And it was something in accord with the Overmind creation the earth under the gods influence. That was where figures took on a living meaning for menot a mental speculation: a living meaning. That was where Madame Thon recognized me, because of the formation of twelve pearls she saw above my head; and she told me, You are that because you have this. Only that can have this! (Mother laughs) It hadnt even remotely occurred to me, thank God!
But figures are alive for me. They have a concrete reality.
--
I know someone who could note it down: Sunil could note it down, he knows how to write music. I no longer do Ive forgotten all that. I have spent all my time forgetting everything.
I used to write my Sanskrit as I write Frenchall gone.
--
Mother later clarified: "'Glory to You, O Lord' isn't MY mantra, it's something I ADDED to itmy mantra is something else altogether, that's not it. When I say that my mantra has the power of immortality, I mean the other, the one I don't speak of! I have never given the words.... You see, at the end of my walk, a kind of enthusiasm rises, and with that enthusiasm, the 'Glory to You' came to me, but it's part of the prayer I had written in Prayers and Meditations: 'Glory to You, O Lord, all-triumphant Supreme' etc. (it's a long prayer). It came back suddenly, and as it came back spontaneously, I kept it. Moreover, when Sri Aurobindo read this prayer in Prayers and Meditations, he told me it was very strong. So I added this phrase as a kind of tail to my japa. But 'Glory to You, O Lord' isn't my spontaneous mantrait came spontaneously, but it was something written very long ago. The two things are different."
Such is the case, for example, of Anandamayi-M, who was said to be hysterical because of the strange gestures she made during her meditations, until it turned out that they were ritual asanas and mudras which she performed spontaneously.
0 1963-05-15, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
As an experience, its absolutely certain: when you come in touch with eternal Love, supreme Love, the first, immediate (what should I say?) perception or sensation (its not an understanding, it is much more concrete) is that even the most enlightened, kneaded, prepared material consciousness is INCAPABLE of manifesting That! The first impression is that sort of incapacity. Then comes the experience of something manifesting a type of not exactly cruelty, because its not cruelty as we conceive it; but in the totality of circumstances, there is a vibration which is felt as a certain intensity of refusal of love as it is manifested here thats exactly the thing: something in the material world refuses the manifestation of love as it exists at present (I dont refer to the ordinary world but to the consciousness at its present highest). Its an experience, I am speaking of something that has taken place. Then the part of the consciousness that has been touched by that opposition calls out directly to Loves origin WITH AN INTENSITY IT COULD NOT HAVE HAD WITHOUT THE EXPERIENCE OF THE REFUSAL. Limits are broken, a flood descends which could NOT manifest before, and something is expressed which was not expressed before.
That happened not very long ago.
--
So speculations such as, It would have been better if it had not existed, and so on, are all impracticalirrelevant, absolutely useless.
We should hasten to do what we have to do to put an end to it, thats all, thats the only practical thing.
0 1963-05-18, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mother asks for a box of paints to demonstrate practically the gradation of colors of the levels of consciousness, from the most material Nature to the Supreme. The point is to illustrate the symbol of Infinity, the figure 8, which Mother explained in the conversation of May 11: the infinite play of the Supreme reaching down to Nature and Nature rising toward the Supreme. Mother speaks in English in the presence of a disciple, who is a painter, so that he may convey her explanations to H., the disciple who is preparing illustrations for "Savitri".)
Of course, all these things are lights, so you cant reproduce them. But still, it must be a violet that is not dull and not dark (Mother starts from the most material Nature). What she has put is too red, but if its too blue, it wont be good eitheryou understand the difficulty? Then after violet there is blue, which must be truly blue, not too light, but it must be a bright blue. Not too light because there are three consecutive blues: there is the blue of the Mind, and then comes the Higher Mind, which is paler, and then the Illumined Mind, which is the color of the flag [Mothers flag], a silver blue, but naturally paler than that. And after this comes yellow, a yellow that is the yellow of the Intuitive Mind; it must not be golden, it must be the color of cadmium. Then after this yellow, which is pale, we have the Overmind with all the colors they must all be bright colors, not dark: blue, red, green, violet, purple, yellow, all of them, all the colors. And after that, we then have all the golds of the Supermind, with its three layers. And then, after that, there is one layer of golden whiteit is white, but a golden white. After this golden white, there is silver whitesilver white: how can I explain that? (H. has sent me some ridiculous pictures of a sun shining on waterit has nothing to do with that.) If you put silver, silver gray (Mother shows a silver box nearby shining brilliantly in the sun), silver gray together with white that is, it is white, but if you put the four whites together you see the difference. There is a white white, then there is a white with a touch of pink, then a silvery white and a golden white. It makes four worlds.
--
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!
--
Then again something else comes and says, Oh, you always have very favorable explanations to comfort yourself! You see, I am like a spectator (Mother does the same gesture of great cosmic waves assailing her) at a sort of contest of all the different reactions. (I put it into words to make myself understood, but there are no wordsonly SENSATIONS; the verbal translation is just for explaining, but they are like sensations, or rather states of consciousness. They are all states of consciousness.) And they all run into each other (gesture of waves).
Ah, none of this is for the Bulletin!
0 1963-05-25, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I say this because Thon always announced the coming of the new world. He didnt speak of Supermind, he said: There shall be new heavens and a new earth. That was his explanation. So it may be that, originally, in the origin of the Catholic religion, they too had the idea that after forty days (it could also mean forty centuries, maybe forty eons or forty ages), there would come the descent of the Holy Spirit in the form of flames that would enter those who are ready. I find this explanation more logical.
Of course, the bird, the white dove they speak of, could be the Universal. Maybe it would manifest openly as a result of that descent?
Basically we always try to cut things into small pieces. It evidently means the manifestation, a new manifestation of the Divine, which takes place some time after the Divine in man is resuscitated. The Divine in man is resuscitated, thats very clear: it has become conscious. And after a time (4 is the manifestation, 10 is the perfection of the manifestation), the perfection of the manifestation of God resuscitated in man allows that universal or cosmic thing to manifest. If you take it like that, it makes sense.
0 1963-06-03, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But is this the mind the Tantrics use? For instance, when you speak of the deep blue light in the physical mind, is it the same cellular mind?
I dont think so.
--
Because its very material the brain is material! Its just a little less mechanical than the cellular mind. But it Is material; it isnt the higher mind, certainly: its a mind confined to the body (same gesture to the temples). But the mind I was speaking of, the body-mind, is EVERYWHERE, in every cell: every cell has it within it; whereas that power is specifically situated at the brain level. Its a very cerebral action, enveloping the forehead and the lower part of the face, not even down to the throat.
***
--
Doesnt cry, doesnt speak, but he made a sort of noisehe stretched out his arms to me and seemed to say, Aaah! Then I took him in my arms, and he laid his head there, on my hear the didnt close his eyes, he became ecstatic.
Extraordinary! I have never seen that before, its the first time ever.
--
He came to earth in America (thats already a sign), but his parents are Indians. Entirely conceived and formed, all nine months, in America. And born in America. He spent the first four or five months of his life in America.
His mother, before marrying, told me, I will have a child only when I want it and, I hope, in the way I want it. It was no accident.
0 1963-06-15, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Ive received a letter from a friend in France who speaks at length of someone who has written three volumes entitled Gnosis.
Ohh!
--
With the visit, which we could call presidential, naturally there was a lot of hullabaloo here: everybody was excited (most people were, at any rate). The visit was, so to speak, forced upon me, in the sense that I didnt want to see him I didnt feel I was in such a state that the visit could have a paramount importance. Some people had high hopes in this visit (here and there, even in Switzerland, even in America), they thought I would be able to do something. But practically speaking, it was an illusion, naturally.
And all at once, it came so clearly, as though the Lord Himself were arranging something, and it was translated into, Give him a bath of the Lord. You understand, to make an atmosphere (no need to speak, no need for words), an atmosphere that is a bath of the Lord. So that all those who enter the atmosphere automatically enter the bath of the Lord. It was so lovely! And so simple, so smiling, nothing showy, no big words: something very simple and natural. So, early in the morning, I went to the room over there; I had many people to see beforehand, a host of people who came to see me in the morning, but nevertheless early in the morning I had already started preparing my bath of the Lord! I was finished seeing people about an hour before Nehrus arrival, so I stayed in the room, preparing the bath. It was very charming.
He may have felt something they are very thick-skinned, you know, necessarily so: overworked, full of self-conceit, naturally, and convinced that they know everything and can do everything (and unfortunately they can do a lot), so the whole of life is organized so as to BLOCK all inner receptivity.
--
And Nehru, you see (thats what Pavitra told me yesterday, he went to the town hall to listen to Nehrus speech), Nehru is an out-and-out social democrat who believes that the ideal organization for mankind, instead of only an elite being able to progress, is that the entire masses should progress (as if they wanted to! but anyway). Its an ideaeveryone has his own ideas. But then it seems that when the Chinese attacked, it was a violent blow to his conviction: he thought it impossible that the Chinese would do such a thing (!) He was very deeply shattered.
Naturally, they see no farther than the tips of their noses, and then they are surprised when circumstances (laughing) dont agree!
0 1963-06-19, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Im not speaking of things of the higher mind, because there the key to the way out was found long ago, a long time ago: I mean down below, in the material world the material world. Thats why all those people, like the old man last night, go somewhere elseits all the same to them, why should they bother! Why do you want to change that? And dont try to give light here, its no use and in addition its a nuisance. Leave this Ignorance in peace.
It is very clearly symbolic. But its a frightful anguish, hard to bear.
--
All the details are clearit would take a book to write them. Everybody now has his place and meaning.3 And theyre all so content, so content! So BLISSFULLY ignorant of the condition they live in. And Im not speaking of people who know nothing: all those who were there last night were people full of philosophy, of knowledge, of spiritual experiences and all that the cream.
The elite of mankind.
0 1963-06-29, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Then Mother speaks of the new Pope, Paul VI, who was elected a few days earlier:)
Sri Aurobindo seems to have taken interest in the Popes successor because two nights ago (not in the night, at four in the morning), I was with him I spent a half hour with him (a half hour of OUR time, which is very long), he had just returned from a tour, in Italy e specially. We didnt directly talk about it, but some people were there (there were all kinds of things, many things), and from his comments to this or that person, or on this or that, I knew he was returning from Italy, where he had gone for the nomination of the new Pope. And he said something like: Its the best that could be done under the present circumstances. That is, he appeared satisfied on the whole.
I told you, didnt I, that I saw the death of Pope [John XXIII] without even knowing he was ill? One night, I suddenly saw in the mental atmosphere of the EARTH quite an awesome movement, that is to say, quite global: there were great mental waves (nothing but mental), great waves of anxiety, as though all human thought were very upset; but it wasnt the anxiety of the believers, it was a very global movement the earths mental atmosphere was stirring with great movements of upheaval and anxiety (Mother draws waves in the air). I thought, Whats happening? Whats happening that can so upset men? (as would happen, for instance, with a world war or events of that kind), Whats happening that can draw the attention of the whole earths atmosphere, its mental atmosphere? And the next day, I was told that just at that time, the Pope died. So I thought, Indeed!
--
(Just before Satprem leaves Mother speaks suddenly:)
There is a boat being built (the symbol of the yoga, obviously), its made entirely of pink clay, and what a pink! A boat of pink clay. I was there with Sri Aurobindoa very agile Sri Aurobindo who was going about supervising the construction; I too was going up and down with extreme ease.
--- Grep of noun spe
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