TERMS STARTING WITH
strabism ::: n. --> Strabismus.
strabismometer ::: n. --> An instrument for measuring the amount of strabismus.
strabismus ::: n. --> An affection of one or both eyes, in which the optic axes can not be directed to the same object, -- a defect due either to undue contraction or to undue relaxation of one or more of the muscles which move the eyeball; squinting; cross-eye.
strabotomy ::: n. --> The operation for the removal of squinting by the division of such muscles as distort the eyeball.
straddled ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Straddle
straddled ::: stood, sat or walked with a leg on each side of; bestrode.
straddle ::: v. i. --> To part the legs wide; to stand or to walk with the legs far apart.
To stand with the ends staggered; -- said of the spokes of a wagon wheel where they join the hub. ::: v. t. --> To place one leg on one side and the other on the
straddling ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Straddle ::: a. --> Applied to spokes when they are arranged alternately in two circles in the hub. See Straddle, v. i., and Straddle, v. t., 3.
stradometrical ::: a. --> Of, or relating to, the measuring of streets or roads.
straggled ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Straggle
straggled ::: wandered or strayed from the proper course or road; wandered about in a scattered fashion; rambled.
straggler ::: n. --> One who straggles, or departs from the direct or proper course, or from the company to which he belongs; one who falls behind the rest; one who rambles without any settled direction.
A roving vagabond.
Something that shoots, or spreads out, beyond the rest, or too far; an exuberant growth.
Something that stands alone or by itself.
straggle ::: v. t. --> To wander from the direct course or way; to rove; to stray; to wander from the line of march or desert the line of battle; as, when troops are on the march, the men should not straggle.
To wander at large; to roam idly about; to ramble.
To escape or stretch beyond proper limits, as the branches of a plant; to spread widely apart; to shoot too far or widely in growth.
To be dispersed or separated; to occur at intervals.
straggling ::: 1. Straying or falling behind others. 2. Proceeding or spreading out in a scattered or irregular group.
stragglingly ::: adv. --> In a straggling manner.
straggling ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Straggle ::: --> a. & n. from Straggle, v.
stragula ::: pl. --> of Stragulum
stragulum ::: n. --> The mantle, or pallium, of a bird.
straight ::: a. --> A variant of Strait, a. ::: superl. --> Right, in a mathematical sense; passing from one point to another by the nearest course; direct; not deviating or crooked; as, a straight line or course; a straight piece of timber.
Approximately straight; not much curved; as,
straightedge ::: n. --> A board, or piece of wood or metal, having one edge perfectly straight, -- used to ascertain whether a line is straight or a surface even, and for drawing straight lines.
straighted ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Straighten
straightener ::: n. --> One who, or that which, straightens.
straighten ::: v. t. --> To make straight; to reduce from a crooked to a straight form.
To make right or correct; to reduce to order; as, to straighten one&
straightforth ::: adv. --> Straightway.
straightforward ::: a. --> Proceeding in a straight course or manner; not deviating; honest; frank. ::: adv. --> In a straightforward manner.
straighthorn ::: n. --> An orthoceras.
straighting ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Straighten
straight-joint ::: a. --> Having straight joints.
Applied to a floor the boards of which are so laid that the joints form a continued line transverse to the length of the boards themselves.
In the United States, applied to planking or flooring put together without the tongue and groove, the pieces being laid edge to edge.
straight-lined ::: a. --> Having straight lines.
straightly ::: adv. --> In a right line; not crookedly.
A variant of Straitly. See 1st Straight.
straightness ::: n. --> The quality, condition, or state, of being straight; as, the straightness of a path.
A variant of Straitness.
straight-out ::: a. --> Acting without concealment, obliquity, or compromise; hence, unqualified; thoroughgoing.
straight-pight ::: a. --> Straight in form or upright in position; erect.
straight-spoken ::: a. --> Speaking with directness; plain-spoken.
straightway ::: adv. --> Immediately; without loss of time; without delay.
straightways ::: adv. --> Straightway.
straik ::: n. --> A strake.
strainable ::: a. --> Capable of being strained.
Violent in action.
strainably ::: adv. --> Violently.
strained ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Strain ::: a. --> Subjected to great or excessive tension; wrenched; weakened; as, strained relations between old friends.
Done or produced with straining or excessive effort; as, his wit was strained.
strainer ::: n. --> One who strains.
That through which any liquid is passed for purification or to separate it from solid matter; anything, as a screen or a cloth, used to strain a liquid; a device of the character of a sieve or of a filter; specifically, an openwork or perforated screen, as for the end of the suction pipe of a pump, to prevent large solid bodies from entering with a liquid.
straining ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Strain ::: --> a. & n. from Strain.
straining ::: the fact of being stretched, wrenched, etc.
strain ::: n. 1. A passage of melody, music, or songs as rendered or heard. 2. Kind, type or sort. strains. v. 3. To force to extreme effort, exert to the utmost (one"s limbs, organs, powers). 4. To make an extreme or excessive effort at or after some object of attainment. 5. Fig. To purify or refine by filtration. strains, strained, straining.
strain ::: n. --> Race; stock; generation; descent; family.
Hereditary character, quality, or disposition.
Rank; a sort.
The act of straining, or the state of being strained.
A violent effort; an excessive and hurtful exertion or tension, as of the muscles; as, he lifted the weight with a strain; the strain upon a ship&
straint ::: n. --> Overexertion; excessive tension; strain.
strait ::: a. --> A variant of Straight.
A narrow pass or passage.
A (comparatively) narrow passageway connecting two large bodies of water; -- often in the plural; as, the strait, or straits, of Gibraltar; the straits of Magellan; the strait, or straits, of Mackinaw.
A neck of land; an isthmus.
Fig.: A condition of narrowness or restriction; doubt;
strait ::: a narrow passage of water connecting two large bodies of water. straits.
straitened ::: enclosed in a limited area; confined.
straitened ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Straiten
straitening ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Straiten
straiten ::: v. t. --> To make strait; to make narrow; hence, to contract; to confine.
To make tense, or tight; to tighten.
To restrict; to distress or embarrass in respect of means or conditions of life; -- used chiefly in the past participle; -- as, a man straitened in his circumstances.
strait-handed ::: a. --> Parsimonious; sparing; niggardly.
strait-jacket ::: n. --> A dress of strong materials for restraining maniacs or those who are violently delirious. It has long sleeves, which are closed at the ends, confining the hands, and may be tied behind the back.
strait-laced ::: a. --> Bound with stays.
Restricted; stiff; constrained.
Rigid in opinion; strict in manners or morals.
straitly ::: adv. --> In a strait manner; narrowly; strictly; rigorously.
Closely; intimately.
straitness ::: n. --> The quality or condition of being strait; especially, a pinched condition or situation caused by poverty; as, the straitnessof their circumstances.
straits ::: pl. --> of Strait
strait-waistcoat ::: n. --> Same as Strait-jacket.
strake ::: --> imp. of Strike. ::: n. --> A streak.
An iron band by which the fellies of a wheel are secured to each other, being not continuous, as the tire is, but made up of separate pieces.
strale ::: n. --> Pupil of the eye.
stramash ::: v. t. --> To strike, beat, or bang; to break; to destroy. ::: n. --> A turmoil; a broil; a fray; a fight.
stramazoun ::: n. --> A direct descending blow with the edge of a sword.
stramineous ::: a. --> Strawy; consisting of straw.
Chaffy; like straw; straw-colored.
stramonium ::: n. --> A poisonous plant (Datura Stramonium); stinkweed. See Datura, and Jamestown weed.
stramony ::: n. --> Stramonium.
stram ::: v. t. --> To spring or recoil with violence.
To dash down; to beat.
stranded ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Strand
stranding ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Strand
strand ::: n. --> One of the twists, or strings, as of fibers, wires, etc., of which a rope is composed.
The shore, especially the beach of a sea, ocean, or large lake; rarely, the margin of a navigable river. ::: v. t. --> To break a strand of (a rope).
strands ::: lines or strings consisting of a complex of fibers or filaments that are twisted together to form a thread or a rope or a cable.
strang ::: a. --> Strong.
strangely ::: adv. --> As something foreign, or not one&
strangely ::: out of the ordinary; unusual or striking.
strangeness ::: n. --> The state or quality of being strange (in any sense of the adjective).
strangeness ::: the quality of being strange, unusual, as an event, circumstance, etc.
stranger ::: n. --> One who is strange, foreign, or unknown.
One who comes from a foreign land; a foreigner.
One whose home is at a distance from the place where he is, but in the same country.
One who is unknown or unacquainted; as, the gentleman is a stranger to me; hence, one not admitted to communication, fellowship, or acquaintance.
One not belonging to the family or household; a guest; a
strange ::: superl. --> Belonging to another country; foreign.
Of or pertaining to others; not one&
strangleable ::: a. --> Capable of being strangled.
strangled ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Strangle
strangler ::: n. --> One who, or that which, strangles.
strangles ::: n. --> A disease in horses and swine, in which the upper part of the throat, or groups of lymphatic glands elsewhere, swells.
strangle ::: v. t. --> To compress the windpipe of (a person or animal) until death results from stoppage of respiration; to choke to death by compressing the throat, as with the hand or a rope.
To stifle, choke, or suffocate in any manner.
To hinder from appearance; to stifle; to suppress. ::: v. i.
strangling ::: 1. Killing by squeezing the throat so as to choke or suffocate; or throttling by a cord, etc. around the neck. 2. Cutting off the oxygen supply of; smothering. Also fig. **strangled.**
strangling ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Strangle
strangulate ::: a. --> Strangulated.
strangulated ::: a. --> Having the circulation stopped by compression; attended with arrest or obstruction of circulation, caused by constriction or compression; as, a strangulated hernia.
Contracted at irregular intervals, if tied with a ligature; constricted.
strangulation ::: n. --> The act of strangling, or the state of being strangled.
Inordinate compression or constriction of a tube or part, as of the throat; especially, such as causes a suspension of breathing, of the passage of contents, or of the circulation, as in cases of hernia.
strangurious ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to strangury.
strangury ::: n. --> A painful discharge of urine, drop by drop, produced by spasmodic muscular contraction.
A swelling or other disease in a plant, occasioned by a ligature fastened tightly about it.
strany ::: n. --> The guillemot.
strap ::: n. --> A long, narrow, pliable strip of leather, cloth, or the like; specifically, a strip of thick leather used in flogging.
Something made of such a strip, or of a part of one, or a combination of two or more for a particular use; as, a boot strap, shawl strap, stirrup strap.
A piece of leather, or strip of wood covered with a suitable material, for sharpening a razor; a strop.
A narrow strip of anything, as of iron or brass.
strappadoes ::: pl. --> of Strappado
strappado ::: n. --> A military punishment formerly practiced, which consisted in drawing an offender to the top of a beam and letting him fall to the length of the rope, by which means a limb was often dislocated. ::: v. t. --> To punish or torture by the strappado.
strapped ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Strap
strapper ::: n. --> One who uses strap.
A person or thing of uncommon size.
strapping ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Strap ::: a. --> Tall; strong; lusty; large; as, a strapping fellow.
strapple ::: v. t. --> To hold or bind with, or as with, a strap; to entangle.
strap-shaped ::: a. --> Shaped like a strap; ligulate; as, a strap-shaped corolla.
strapwork ::: n. --> A kind of ornament consisting of a narrow fillet or band folded, crossed, and interlaced.
strass ::: n. --> A brilliant glass, used in the manufacture of artificial paste gems, which consists essentially of a complex borosilicate of lead and potassium. Cf. Glass.
stratagem ::: a clever, often underhanded scheme or trick for achieving an objective.
stratagemical ::: a. --> Containing stratagem; as, a stratagemical epistle.
stratagem ::: n. --> An artifice or trick in war for deceiving the enemy; hence, in general, artifice; deceptive device; secret plot; evil machination.
strata ::: n. --> pl. of Stratum. ::: pl. --> of Stratum
stratarithmetry ::: n. --> The art of drawing up an army, or any given number of men, in any geometrical figure, or of estimating or expressing the number of men in such a figure.
strategetic ::: a. --> Alt. of Strategetical
strategetical ::: a. --> Strategic.
strategetics ::: n. --> Strategy.
strategic ::: a. --> Alt. of Strategical
strategic advantage; a power to act effectively.
strategical ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to strategy; effected by artifice.
strategic ::: important in or essential to strategy; critical, key, crucial.
strategics ::: n. --> Strategy.
strategi ::: pl. --> of Strategus
strategist ::: n. --> One skilled in strategy, or the science of directing great military movements.
strategus ::: n. --> The leader or commander of an army; a general.
strategy ::: a plan, method, or series of manoeuvres for obtaining a specific goal or result.
strategy ::: n. --> The science of military command, or the science of projecting campaigns and directing great military movements; generalship.
The use of stratagem or artifice.
strath ::: n. --> A valley of considerable size, through which a river runs; a valley bottom; -- often used in composition with the name of the river; as, Strath Spey, Strathdon, Strathmore.
strathspey ::: n. --> A lively Scottish dance, resembling the reel, but slower; also, the tune.
straticulate ::: a. --> Characterized by the presence of thin parallel strata, or layers, as in an agate.
stratification ::: n. --> The act or process of laying in strata, or the state of being laid in the form of strata, or layers.
The deposition of material in successive layers in the growth of a cell wall, thus giving rise to a stratified appearance.
stratified ::: a. --> Having its substance arranged in strata, or layers; as, stratified rock. ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Stratify
stratiform ::: a. --> Having the form of strata.
stratifying ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Stratify
stratify ::: v. t. --> To form or deposit in strata, or layers, as substances in the earth; to arrange in strata.
stratigraphic ::: a. --> Alt. of Stratigraphical
Alt. of -ical
stratigraphical ::: a. --> Pertaining to, or depended upon, the order or arrangement of strata; as, stratigraphical evidence.
stratigraphy ::: n. --> That branch of geology which treats of the arrangement and succession of strata.
stratocracy ::: n. --> A military government; government by military chiefs and an army.
stratographic ::: a. --> Alt. of Stratographical
stratographical ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to stratography.
stratography ::: n. --> A description of an army, or of what belongs to an army.
stratonic ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to an army.
stratosphere ::: 1. The region of the Earth"s atmosphere extending from the tropopause to about 50 km (31 mi) above the Earth"s surface. The stratosphere is characterized by the presence of ozone gas (in the ozone layer) and by temperatures which rise slightly with altitude, due to the absorption of ultraviolet radiation. 2. An extremely high or the highest point or degree on a ranked scale.
stratotic ::: a. --> Warlike; military.
stratum ::: n. --> A bed of earth or rock of one kind, formed by natural causes, and consisting usually of a series of layers, which form a rock as it lies between beds of other kinds. Also used figuratively.
A bed or layer artificially made; a course.
stratums ::: pl. --> of Stratum
stratus ::: n. --> A form of clouds in which they are arranged in a horizontal band or layer. See Cloud.
straught ::: --> imp. & p. p. of Stretch. ::: v. t. --> To stretch; to make straight.
strawberry ::: n. --> A fragrant edible berry, of a delicious taste and commonly of a red color, the fruit of a plant of the genus Fragaria, of which there are many varieties. Also, the plant bearing the fruit. The common American strawberry is Fragaria virginiana; the European, F. vesca. There are also other less common species.
strawboard ::: n. --> Pasteboard made of pulp of straw.
straw-colored ::: a. --> Being of a straw color. See Straw color, under Straw, n.
straw-cutter ::: n. --> An instrument to cut straw for fodder.
strawed ::: --> imp. & p. p. of Straw.
straw ::: v. t. --> To spread or scatter. See Strew, and Strow. ::: n. --> A stalk or stem of certain species of grain, pulse, etc., especially of wheat, rye, oats, barley, more rarely of buckwheat, beans, and pease.
The gathered and thrashed stalks of certain species of
strawworm ::: n. --> A caddice worm.
strawy ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to straw; made of, or resembling, straw.
stray ::: a. --> To wander, as from a direct course; to deviate, or go out of the way.
To wander from company, or from the proper limits; to rove at large; to roam; to go astray.
Figuratively, to wander from the path of duty or rectitude; to err. ::: v. t.
strayed ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Stray
strayer ::: n. --> One who strays; a wanderer.
straying ::: 1. Deviating from the direct course; leaving the proper place, or going beyond the proper limits, esp. without a fixed course or purpose. 2. Wandering; roaming.
straying ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Stray
stray ::: v. 1. To wander about without a destination or purpose; roam. strays, strayed, straying. adj. 2. Found or occurring apart from others or as an isolated or causal instance; incidental or occasional.
streaked ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Streak ::: a. --> Marked or variegated with stripes.
Uncomfortable; out of sorts.
streaking ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Streak
streak ::: n. 1. A long thin mark or trace of some contrasting colour or texture different from the background. 2. A flash leaving a visible line or after effect, as of lightening; bolt. 3. A ray or flash of light or the faint line of he dawn"s light. Also fig. **streaks. v. streaked. 3.** Went quickly; advanced; went at full speed.
streak ::: v. t. --> To stretch; to extend; hence, to lay out, as a dead body.
To form streaks or stripes in or on; to stripe; to variegate with lines of a different color, or of different colors.
With it as an object: To run swiftly. ::: n.
streaky ::: a. --> Same as Streaked, 1.
stream 1. "communications" An {abstraction} referring to any flow of data from a source (or sender, producer) to a single sink (or receiver, consumer). A stream usually flows through a channel of some kind, as opposed to {packets} which may be addressed and routed independently, possibly to multiple recipients. Streams usually require some mechanism for establishing a channel or a "{connection}" between the sender and receiver. 2. "programming" In the {C} language's buffered input/ouput library functions, a stream is associated with a file or device which has been opened using {fopen}. Characters may be read from (written to) a stream without knowing their actual source (destination) and buffering is provided transparently by the library routines. 3. "operating system" Confusingly, {Sun} have called their modular {device driver} mechanism "{STREAMS}". 4. "operating system" In {IBM}'s {AIX} {operating system}, a stream is a {full-duplex} processing and data transfer path between a driver in {kernel space} and a process in {user space}. [IBM AIX 3.2 Communication Programming Concepts, SC23-2206-03]. 5. "communications" {streaming}. 6. "programming" {lazy list}. (1996-11-06)
streamed ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Stream
streamer ::: n. --> An ensign, flag, or pennant, which floats in the wind; specifically, a long, narrow, ribbonlike flag.
A stream or column of light shooting upward from the horizon, constituting one of the forms of the aurora borealis.
A searcher for stream tin.
streamful ::: a. --> Abounding in streams, or in water.
streaminess ::: n. --> The state of being streamy; a trailing.
streaming "communications" Playing {sound} or {video} in {real time} as it is downloaded over the {Internet} as opposed to storing it in a local file first. A {plug-in} to a {web browser} such as {Netscape Navigator} decompresses and plays the data as it is transferred to your computer over the {web}. Streaming audio or video avoids the delay entailed in downloading an entire file and then playing it with a {helper application}. Streaming requires a fast connection and a computer powerful enough to execute the decompression {algorithm} in {real time}. (1996-11-06)
streaming ::: n. 1. An act or instance of flowing. adj. **2.** Pouring forth; streaming; overflowing.
streaming ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Stream ::: a. --> Sending forth streams. ::: n.
streamless ::: a. --> Destitute of streams, or of a stream, as a region of country, or a dry channel.
streamlet ::: n. --> A small stream; a rivulet; a rill.
stream ::: n. 1. A flow of water in a channel or bed, as a brook, rivulet, or small river. Also fig. 2. A continuous flow of anything. thought-streams. 3. A beam or ray of light. v. 4. To pour forth or cause to flow outward or give off a stream; flow. 5. To move or proceed continuously like a flowing stream, as a procession. 6. To extend in a beam or in rays, as light. streams, streamed.
stream ::: n. --> A current of water or other fluid; a liquid flowing continuously in a line or course, either on the earth, as a river, brook, etc., or from a vessel, reservoir, or fountain; specifically, any course of running water; as, many streams are blended in the Mississippi; gas and steam came from the earth in streams; a stream of molten lead from a furnace; a stream of lava from a volcano.
A beam or ray of light.
Anything issuing or moving with continued succession of
stream-oriented {connection-oriented}
streams ::: See lines.
streamy ::: a. --> Abounding with streams, or with running water; streamful.
Resembling a stream; issuing in a stream.
streek ::: v. t. --> To stretch; also, to lay out, as a dead body. See Streak.
streel ::: v. i. --> To trail along; to saunter or be drawn along, carelessly, swaying in a kind of zigzag motion.
streen ::: n. --> See Strene.
stree ::: n. --> Straw.
street ::: a. --> Originally, a paved way or road; a public highway; now commonly, a thoroughfare in a city or village, bordered by dwellings or business houses.
streetwalker ::: n. --> A common prostitute who walks the streets to find customers.
streetward ::: n. --> An officer, or ward, having the care of the streets. ::: a. --> Facing toward the street.
streight ::: a., n., & adv. --> See 2nd Strait.
streighten ::: v. t. --> See Straiten.
strein ::: v. t. --> To strain.
streit ::: a. --> Drawn.
Close; narrow; strict.
streite ::: adv. --> Narrowly; strictly; straitly.
strelitzia ::: n. --> A genus of plants related to the banana, found at the Cape of Good Hope. They have rigid glaucous distichous leaves, and peculiar richly colored flowers.
strelitz ::: n. sing. & pl. --> A soldier of the ancient Muscovite guard or Russian standing army; also, the guard itself.
strene ::: n. --> Race; offspring; stock; breed; strain.
strenger ::: --> Alt. of Strengest
strengest ::: --> the original compar. & superl. of Strong.
strengthened ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Strengthen
strengthener ::: n. --> One who, or that which, gives or adds strength.
strengthening ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Strengthen ::: a. --> That strengthens; giving or increasing strength.
strengthen ::: v. t. --> To make strong or stronger; to add strength to; as, to strengthen a limb, a bridge, an army; to strengthen an obligation; to strengthen authority.
To animate; to encourage; to fix in resolution. ::: v. i. --> To grow strong or stronger.
strengthful ::: a. --> Abounding in strength; full of strength; strong.
strengthing ::: n. --> A stronghold.
strengthless ::: a. --> Destitute of strength.
strengthner ::: n. --> See Strengthener.
strength ::: n. --> The quality or state of being strong; ability to do or to bear; capacity for exertion or endurance, whether physical, intellectual, or moral; force; vigor; power; as, strength of body or of the arm; strength of mind, of memory, or of judgment.
Power to resist force; solidity or toughness; the quality of bodies by which they endure the application of force without breaking or yielding; -- in this sense opposed to frangibility; as, the strength of a bone, of a beam, of a wall, a rope, and the like.
strength reduction An optimisation where a function of some systematically changing variable is calculated more efficiently by using previous values of the function. In a {procedural language} this would apply to an expression involving a loop variable and in a {declarative language} it would apply to the argument of a {recursive} function. E.g. f x = ... (2**x) ... (f (x+1)) ... ==" f x = f' x (2**x) where f ' x z = ... z ... (f' (x+1) 2*z) ... Here the expensive operation (2**x) has been replaced by the cheaper 2*z in the recursive function f'. This maintains the invariant that z = 2**x for any call to f'. (1995-01-31)
strengthy ::: a. --> Having strength; strong.
stre ::: n. --> Straw.
strenuity ::: n. --> Strenuousness; activity.
strenuous ::: a. --> Eagerly pressing or urgent; zealous; ardent; earnest; bold; valiant; intrepid; as, a strenuous advocate for national rights; a strenuous reformer; a strenuous defender of his country.
strenuous ::: characterized by vigorous exertion, as action, efforts, life, etc.
strepent ::: a. --> Noisy; loud.
streperous ::: a. --> Loud; boisterous.
strepitores ::: n. pl. --> A division of birds, including the clamatorial and picarian birds, which do not have well developed singing organs.
strepsipteran ::: n. --> One of the Strepsiptera.
strepsiptera ::: n. pl. --> A group of small insects having the anterior wings rudimentary, and in the form of short and slender twisted appendages, while the posterior ones are large and membranous. They are parasitic in the larval state on bees, wasps, and the like; -- called also Rhipiptera. See Illust. under Rhipipter.
strepsipter ::: n. --> Alt. of Strepsipteran
strepsipterous ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to Strepsiptera.
strepsorhina ::: n. pl. --> Same as Lemuroidea.
strepsorhine ::: a. --> Having twisted nostrils; -- said of the lemurs. ::: n. --> One of the Strepsorhina; a lemur. See Illust. under Monkey.
streptobacteria ::: n. pl. --> A so-called variety of bacterium, consisting in reality of several bacteria linked together in the form of a chain.
streptococci ::: pl. --> of Streptococcus
streptococcus ::: n. --> A long or short chain of micrococci, more or less curved.
streptoneura ::: n. pl. --> An extensive division of gastropod Mollusca in which the loop or visceral nerves is twisted, and the sexes separate. It is nearly to equivalent to Prosobranchiata.
streptothrix ::: n. --> A genus of bacilli occurring of the form of long, smooth and apparently branched threads, either straight or twisted.
stress ::: 1. Physical, mental or emotional strain or tension; a situation, occurrence, condition or factor causing strain. 2. Stimulus or pressure of the influence of an adverse force. 3. Special or exceptional emphasis or significance attached to something. stress-vision.
stressful ::: a. --> Having much stress.
stress ::: n. --> Distress.
Pressure, strain; -- used chiefly of immaterial things; except in mechanics; hence, urgency; importance; weight; significance.
The force, or combination of forces, which produces a strain; force exerted in any direction or manner between contiguous bodies, or parts of bodies, and taking specific names according to its direction, or mode of action, as thrust or pressure, pull or tension, shear or tangential stress.
stress testing "testing" Testing aimed at investigating the behaviour of a software or hardware equipment in out of ordinary operating conditions. (1998-03-27)
stretched ::: extended in length or time.
stretched ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Stretch
stretcher ::: n. --> One who, or that which, stretches.
A brick or stone laid with its longer dimension in the line of direction of the wall.
A piece of timber used in building.
A narrow crosspiece of the bottom of a boat against which a rower braces his feet.
A crosspiece placed between the sides of a boat to keep them apart when hoisted up and griped.
stretching ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Stretch ::: --> a. & n. from Stretch, v.
stretch ::: n. 1. A continuous length, distance, tract, or expanse. stretches. v. 2. To extend (oneself or one"s limbs, for example) to full length. 3. To reach for something as by putting forth the hand. 4. To strain, by pressing forward with effort. 5. To extend over a distance or area or in a particular direction (often with out). 6. To extend in time. 7. To extend laterally. stretches, stretched, stretching.
stretch ::: v. t. --> To reach out; to extend; to put forth.
To draw out to the full length; to cause to extend in a straight line; as, to stretch a cord or rope.
To cause to extend in breadth; to spread; to expand; as, to stretch cloth; to stretch the wings.
To make tense; to tighten; to distend forcibly.
To draw or pull out to greater length; to strain; as, to stretch a tendon or muscle.
stretto ::: n. --> The crowding of answer upon subject near the end of a fugue.
In an opera or oratorio, a coda, or winding up, in an accelerated time.
strewed ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Strew
strewing ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Strew ::: n. --> The act of scattering or spreading.
Anything that is, or may be, strewed; -- used chiefly in the plural.
strewment ::: n. --> Anything scattered, as flowers for decoration.
strewn ::: p. p. --> of Strew ::: --> p. p. of Strew.
strewn ::: scattered, spread widely; disseminated.
strew ::: v. t. --> To scatter; to spread by scattering; to cast or to throw loosely apart; -- used of solids, separated or separable into parts or particles; as, to strew seed in beds; to strew sand on or over a floor; to strew flowers over a grave.
To cover more or less thickly by scattering something over or upon; to cover, or lie upon, by having been scattered; as, they strewed the ground with leaves; leaves strewed the ground.
To spread abroad; to disseminate.
striae ::: pl. --> of Stria
stria ::: n. --> A minute groove, or channel; a threadlike line, as of color; a narrow structural band or line; a striation; as, the striae, or groovings, produced on a rock by a glacier passing over it; the striae on the surface of a shell; a stria of nervous matter in the brain.
A fillet between the flutes of columns, pilasters, or the like.
striate ::: a. --> To mark with striaae.
Alt. of Striated
striated ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Striate ::: a. --> Marked with striaae, or fine grooves, or lines of color; showing narrow structural bands or lines; as, a striated crystal; striated muscular fiber.
striating ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Striate
striation ::: n. --> The quality or condition of being striated.
A stria; as, the striations on a shell.
striatum ::: n. --> The corpus striatum.
striature ::: n. --> A stria.
strich ::: n. --> An owl.
stricken ::: affected by something overwhelming, such as disease, trouble, or painful emotion.
stricken ::: p. p. & a. --> Struck; smitten; wounded; as, the stricken deer. ::: n. --> Worn out; far gone; advanced. See Strike, v. t., 21. ::: v. t.
strickle ::: n. --> An instrument to strike grain to a level with the measure; a strike.
An instrument for whetting scythes; a rifle.
An instrument used for smoothing the surface of a core.
A templet; a pattern.
An instrument used in dressing flax.
strickler ::: n. --> See Strickle.
strickless ::: n. --> See Strickle.
strick ::: n. --> A bunch of hackled flax prepared for drawing into slivers.
strict ::: 1. Stringent or exacting in rules, requirements, obligations, etc. 2. Extremely defined or conservative; narrowly or carefully limited.
strict A function f is strict in an argument if f bottom = bottom (See {bottom}). In other words, the result depends on the argument so evaluation of an application of the function cannot terminate until evaluation of the argument has terminated. If the result is only {bottom} when the argument is bottom then the function is also {bottom-unique}. See also {strict evaluation}, {hyperstrict}. (1995-01-25)
strict ::: a. --> Strained; drawn close; tight; as, a strict embrace; a strict ligature.
Tense; not relaxed; as, a strict fiber.
Exact; accurate; precise; rigorously nice; as, to keep strict watch; to pay strict attention.
Governed or governing by exact rules; observing exact rules; severe; rigorous; as, very strict in observing the Sabbath.
Rigidly; interpreted; exactly limited; confined;
strict evaluation {Call-by-value} evaluation order is sometimes called "strict evaluation" because, in a sequential system, it makes functions behave as though they were {strict}, in the sense that evaluation of a function application cannot terminate before evaluation of the argument. Similarly, languages are called strict if they use {call-by-value} argument passing. Compare {eager evaluation}, {lazy evaluation}. (1994-12-21)
striction ::: n. --> The act of constricting, or the state of being constricted.
strictly ::: adv. --> In a strict manner; closely; precisely.
strictness ::: n. --> Quality or state of being strict.
strictured ::: a. --> Affected with a stricture; as, a strictured duct.
stricture ::: n. --> Strictness.
A stroke; a glance; a touch.
A touch of adverse criticism; censure.
A localized morbid contraction of any passage of the body. Cf. Organic stricture, and Spasmodic stricture, under Organic, and Spasmodic.
stridden ::: p. p. --> of Stride
strided /str:'d*d/ (scientific computing) Said of a sequence of memory reads and writes to addresses, each of which is separated from the last by a constant interval called "the stride length", or just "the stride". These can be a worst-case access pattern for {cache} schemes when the stride length is a multiple of the {cache line} size. Strided references are often generated by loops through an {array}, and (if the data is large enough that access-time is significant) it can be worthwhile to tune for better locality by inverting double loops or by partially unrolling the outer loop of a loop nest. [{Jargon File}] (1994-12-21)
stride ::: n. 1. A regular or steady course, pace, etc. 2. A single long step; a striding manner or gait. v. 3. To walk with long steps, especially in a hasty or vigorous way. strides, strode, Titan-striding.
strident ::: a. --> Characterized by harshness; grating; shrill.
stride ::: v. t. --> To walk with long steps, especially in a measured or pompous manner.
To stand with the legs wide apart; to straddle.
To pass over at a step; to step over.
To straddle; to bestride. ::: n.
striding ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Stride
strid ::: n. --> A narrow passage between precipitous rocks or banks, which looks as if it might be crossed at a stride. ::: --> of Stride
of Stride
stridor ::: n. --> A harsh, shrill, or creaking noise.
stridulate ::: v. t. --> To make a shrill, creaking noise
to make a shrill or musical sound, such as is made by the males of many insects.
stridulation ::: n. --> The act of stridulating.
The act of making shrill sounds or musical notes by rubbing together certain hard parts, as is done by the males of many insects, especially by Orthoptera, such as crickets, grasshoppers, and locusts.
The noise itself.
stridulator ::: n. --> That which stridulates.
stridulatory ::: a. --> Stridulous; able to stridulate; used in stridulating; adapted for stridulation.
stridulous ::: a. --> Making a shrill, creaking sound.
strife ::: 1. Heated, often violent dissension, antagonism; discord; bitter conflict. 2. A quarrel, struggle, conflict or clash. 3. Competition or rivalry.
strifeful ::: a. --> Contentious; discordant.
strife ::: n. --> The act of striving; earnest endeavor.
Exertion or contention for superiority; contest of emulation, either by intellectual or physical efforts.
Altercation; violent contention; fight; battle.
That which is contended against; occasion of contest.
strigate ::: a. --> Having transverse bands of color.
striges ::: n. pl. --> The tribe of birds which comprises the owls.
strigillose ::: a. --> Set with stiff, slender bristles.
strigil ::: n. --> An instrument of metal, ivory, etc., used for scraping the skin at the bath.
strigine ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to owls; owl-like.
strigment ::: n. --> Scraping; that which is scraped off.
strigose ::: a. --> Set with stiff, straight bristles; hispid; as, a strigose leaf.
strigous ::: a. --> Strigose.
strike ::: 1. To inflict, deliver, or deal (a blow, stroke, attack, etc.). 2. Of some natural or supernatural agency: to smite or blast. striking. 3. strike out, off or from. To remove by erasing or crossing out or as if by drawing a line.
striker ::: n. --> One who, or that which, strikes; specifically, a blacksmith&
strike ::: v. t. --> To touch or hit with some force, either with the hand or with an instrument; to smite; to give a blow to, either with the hand or with any instrument or missile.
To come in collision with; to strike against; as, a bullet struck him; the wave struck the boat amidships; the ship struck a reef.
To give, as a blow; to impel, as with a blow; to give a force to; to dash; to cast.
striking ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Strike ::: --> a. & n. from Strike, v. ::: a.
strikle ::: n. --> See Strickle.
string ::: 1. Any series of things arranged or connected in a line or following closely one after another. 2. The vibrating element that produces sound in string instruments and is composed of lengths of a flexible material kept under tension so that they may vibrate freely, but controllably, made of gut, fibre, wire, etc. 3. Slender cords or thick threads used for binding or tying; lines or something resembling this. Also fig. **strings, heart-strings, heart-strings", apron strings (see apron).**
stringboard ::: n. --> Same as Stringpiece.
stringcourse ::: n. --> A horizontal band in a building, forming a part of the design, whether molded, projecting, or carved, or in any way distinguished from the rest of the work.
stringed ::: --> of String ::: a. --> Having strings; as, a stringed instrument.
Produced by strings.
stringency ::: n. --> The quality or state of being stringent.
stringendo ::: a. --> Urging or hastening the time, as to a climax.
stringent ::: a. --> Binding strongly; making strict requirements; restrictive; rigid; severe; as, stringent rules.
stringer ::: n. --> One who strings; one who makes or provides strings, especially for bows.
A libertine; a wencher.
A longitudinal sleeper.
A streak of planking carried round the inside of a vessel on the under side of the beams.
A long horizontal timber to connect uprights in a frame, or to support a floor or the like.
stringhalt ::: n. --> An habitual sudden twitching of the hinder leg of a horse, or an involuntary or convulsive contraction of the muscles that raise the hock.
stringiness ::: n. --> Quality of being stringy.
stringing ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of String
stringless ::: a. --> Having no strings.
stringless ::: without strings; lacking strings.
stringly typed "humour, programming" A humourous play on "{strongly typed}", coined by Mark Simpson, for an implementation that uses strings instead of more appropriate types, thus preventing {compile-time} {type checking}. [{Dodgy Coder (http://www.dodgycoder.net/2011/11/yoda-conditions-pokemon-exception.html)}]. (2012-06-25)
string ::: n. --> A small cord, a line, a twine, or a slender strip of leather, or other substance, used for binding together, fastening, or tying things; a cord, larger than a thread and smaller than a rope; as, a shoe string; a bonnet string; a silken string.
A thread or cord on which a number of objects or parts are strung or arranged in close and orderly succession; hence, a line or series of things arranged on a thread, or as if so arranged; a succession; a concatenation; a chain; as, a string of shells or beads;
stringpiece ::: n. --> A long piece of timber, forming a margin or edge of any piece of construction; esp.:
One of the longitudinal pieces, supporting the treads and rises of a flight or run of stairs.
string "programming" (Or "character string") A sequence of {characters}. Most {programming languages} consider characters and strings (e.g. "124:shabooya:\n", "hello world") to be distinct from numbers, which are typically stored in fixed-length {binary} or {floating-point} representation. A {bit string} is a sequence of {bits}. (2015-11-29)
string reduction A {reduction system} where an expression is represented as a string of function names, constants and parentheses. It is reduced by replacing parts of the string representing subterms by their value. It is harder to represent sharing of subexpressions in string reduction than in {graph reduction}. (1995-02-06)
stringy ::: a. --> Consisting of strings, or small threads; fibrous; filamentous; as, a stringy root.
Capable of being drawn into a string, as a glutinous substance; ropy; viscid; gluely.
strip ::: 1. To take; peel away; remove; sometimes with off. 2. To deprive of honors, rank, office, privileges, or possessions; to divest something of. covering, clothing or the like. strips, stripped.
strip ::: a long narrow piece, usually of uniform width. strips, canvas-strips, sky-strips.
stripe {data striping}
striped ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Stripe ::: a. --> Having stripes of different colors; streaked.
stripe ::: n. --> A line, or long, narrow division of anything of a different color or structure from the ground; hence, any linear variation of color or structure; as, a stripe, or streak, of red on a green ground; a raised stripe.
A pattern produced by arranging the warp threads in sets of alternating colors, or in sets presenting some other contrast of appearance.
A strip, or long, narrow piece attached to something of a
stripe set {data striping}
striping {data striping}
striping ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Stripe
strip-leaf ::: n. --> Tobacco which has been stripped of its stalks before packing.
stripling ::: n. --> A youth in the state of adolescence, or just passing from boyhood to manhood; a lad.
stripped ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Strip
stripper ::: n. --> One who, or that which, strips; specifically, a machine for stripping cards.
strippet ::: n. --> A small stream.
stripping ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Strip ::: n. --> The act of one who strips.
The last milk drawn from a cow at a milking.
strip ::: v. t. --> To deprive; to bereave; to make destitute; to plunder; especially, to deprive of a covering; to skin; to peel; as, to strip a man of his possession, his rights, his privileges, his reputation; to strip one of his clothes; to strip a beast of his skin; to strip a tree of its bark.
To divest of clothing; to uncover.
To dismantle; as, to strip a ship of rigging, spars, etc.
To pare off the surface of, as land, in strips.
strisores ::: n. pl. --> A division of passerine birds including the humming birds, swifts, and goatsuckers. It is now generally considered an artificial group.
strive ::: 1. To exert oneself vigorously; try hard. 2. Make strenuous efforts towards any goal. 3. To struggle vigorously, as in opposition or resistance. 4. To contend in opposition, battle, or any conflict; compete. strives, striven, strove, striving, forward-striving, strivings.
strived ::: p. p. --> Striven.
striven ::: p. p. --> of Strive ::: --> p. p. of Strive.
striver ::: n. --> One who strives.
strive ::: v. i. --> To make efforts; to use exertions; to endeavor with earnestness; to labor hard.
To struggle in opposition; to be in contention or dispute; to contend; to contest; -- followed by against or with before the person or thing opposed; as, strive against temptation; strive for the truth.
To vie; to compete; to be a rival.
striving ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Strive ::: --> a. & n. from Strive.
stri ::: woman, seen as a manifestation of Kali, the divine sakti. stri
strix ::: n. --> One of the flutings of a column.
striyah samasta sakala jagatsu ::: all women entirely in the worlds. [Devi Mahatmyam 11.6]
stroam ::: v. i. --> To wander about idly and vacantly.
To take long strides in walking.
strobilaceous ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to a strobile or cone.
Producing strobiles.
strobilae ::: pl. --> of Strobila
strobila ::: n. --> A form of the larva of certain Discophora in a state of development succeeding the scyphistoma. The body of the strobila becomes elongated, and subdivides transversely into a series of lobate segments which eventually become ephyrae, or young medusae.
A mature tapeworm.
strobilation ::: n. --> The act or phenomenon of spontaneously dividing transversely, as do certain species of annelids and helminths; transverse fission. See Illust. under Syllidian.
strobile ::: n. --> A scaly multiple fruit resulting from the ripening of an ament in certain plants, as the hop or pine; a cone. See Cone, n., 3.
An individual asexually producing sexual individuals differing from itself also in other respects, as the tapeworm, -- one of the forms that occur in metagenesis.
Same as Strobila.
strobiliform ::: a. --> Shaped like a strobile.
strobiline ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to a strobile; strobilaceous; strobiliform; as, strobiline fruits.
stroboscope ::: n. --> An instrument for studying or observing the successive phases of a periodic or varying motion by means of light which is periodically interrupted.
An optical toy similar to the phenakistoscope. See Phenakistoscope.
strockle ::: n. --> A shovel with a turned-up edge, for frit, sand, etc.
strode ::: imp. --> of Stride ::: n. --> See Strude. :::
strode ::: pt. of stride.
stroke ::: 1. The act or an instance of striking, as with the hand, a weapon, or a tool; a blow or impact. 2. A blow struck at an object; e.g. with a hammer, axe, etc. 3. An act of hitting, or the blow given; also said of divine retribution. 4. A movement or mark made in one direction by a pen, pencil, paintbrush etc. 5. A single complete movement, esp. one continuously repeated in some process. strokes.
strokeed ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Stroke
stroke ::: imp. --> Struck. ::: v. t. --> The act of striking; a blow; a hit; a knock; esp., a violent or hostile attack made with the arm or hand, or with an instrument or weapon.
The result of effect of a striking; injury or
strokeing ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Stroke
stroker ::: n. --> One who strokes; also, one who pretends to cure by stroking.
strokesman ::: pl. --> of Strokesman ::: n. --> The man who rows the aftermost oar, and whose stroke is to be followed by the rest.
stroke The oblique stroke character, "/", ASCII 47. See {ASCII} for other synonyms. [{Jargon File}]
stroking ::: n. --> The act of rubbing gently with the hand, or of smoothing; a stroke.
The act of laying small gathers in cloth in regular order.
See Stripping, 2.
strolled ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Stroll
stroller ::: n. --> One who strolls; a vagrant.
strolling ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Stroll
stroll ::: v. i. --> To wander on foot; to ramble idly or leisurely; to rove. ::: n. --> A wandering on foot; an idle and leisurely walk; a ramble.
stroma ::: n. --> The connective tissue or supporting framework of an organ; as, the stroma of the kidney.
The spongy, colorless framework of a red blood corpuscle or other cell.
A layer or mass of cellular tissue, especially that part of the thallus of certain fungi which incloses the perithecia.
stromata ::: pl. --> of Stroma
stromatic ::: a. --> Miscellaneous; composed of different kinds.
stromatology ::: n. --> The history of the formation of stratified rocks.
strombite ::: n. --> A fossil shell of the genus Strombus.
stromb ::: n. --> Any marine univalve mollusk of the genus Strombus and allied genera. See Conch, and Strombus.
stromboid ::: a. --> Of, pertaining to, or like, Strombus.
strombuliform ::: a. --> Formed or shaped like a top.
Coiled into the shape of a screw or a helix.
strombus ::: n. --> A genus of marine gastropods in which the shell has the outer lip dilated into a broad wing. It includes many large and handsome species commonly called conch shells, or conchs. See Conch.
stromeyerite ::: n. --> A steel-gray mineral of metallic luster. It is a sulphide of silver and copper.
strond ::: n. --> Strand; beach.
strong-eyed ::: with adj. prefix (strong-) Gifted with sight, clear-sighted, sharp-sighted. Also fig.
stronghand ::: n. --> Violence; force; power.
stronghold ::: a fortified place or a fortress; a secure defensible place.
stronghold ::: n. --> A fastness; a fort or fortress; fortfield place; a place of security.
strongish ::: a. --> Somewhat strong.
strongly ::: adv. --> In a strong manner; so as to be strong in action or in resistance; with strength; with great force; forcibly; powerfully; firmly; vehemently; as, a town strongly fortified; he objected strongly.
strong-minded ::: a. --> Having a vigorous mind; esp., having or affecting masculine qualities of mind; -- said of women.
strong or violent change or disturbance.
strong ::: superl. --> Having active physical power, or great physical power to act; having a power of exerting great bodily force; vigorous.
Having passive physical power; having ability to bear or endure; firm; hale; sound; robust; as, a strong constitution; strong health.
Solid; tough; not easily broken or injured; able to withstand violence; able to sustain attacks; not easily subdued or taken; as, a strong beam; a strong rock; a strong fortress or town.
strong-water ::: n. --> An acid.
Distilled or ardent spirits; intoxicating liquor.
strongylid ::: a. & n. --> Strongyloid.
strongyloid ::: a. --> Like, or pertaining to, Strongylus, a genus of parasitic nematode worms of which many species infest domestic animals. Some of the species, especially those living in the kidneys, lungs, and bronchial tubes, are often very injurious. ::: n. --> A strongyloid worm.
strontia ::: n. --> An earth of a white color resembling lime in appearance, and baryta in many of its properties. It is an oxide of the metal strontium.
strontianite ::: n. --> Strontium carbonate, a mineral of a white, greenish, or yellowish color, usually occurring in fibrous massive forms, but sometimes in prismatic crystals.
strontian ::: n. --> Strontia.
strontic ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to strontium; containing, or designating the compounds of, strontium.
strontitic ::: a. --> Strontic.
strontium ::: n. --> A metallic element of the calcium group, always naturally occurring combined, as in the minerals strontianite, celestite, etc. It is isolated as a yellowish metal, somewhat malleable but harder than calcium. It is chiefly employed (as in the nitrate) to color pyrotechnic flames red. Symbol Sr. Atomic weight 87.3.
A radioactive isotope of strontium produced by certain nuclear reactions, and constituting one of the prominent harmful components of radioactive fallout from nuclear explosions; also called
stroock ::: --> of Strike
strook ::: --> imp. of Strike. ::: n. --> A stroke.
stroot ::: v. i. --> To swell out; to strut.
strophanthus ::: n. --> A genus of tropical apocynaceous shrubs having singularly twisted flowers. One species (Strophanthus hispidus) is used medicinally as a cardiac sedative and stimulant.
strophe ::: n. --> In Greek choruses and dances, the movement of the chorus while turning from the right to the left of the orchestra; hence, the strain, or part of the choral ode, sung during this movement. Also sometimes used of a stanza of modern verse. See the Note under Antistrophe.
strophes ::: pl. --> of Strophe
strophes ::: the first of a pair of stanzas of alternating form on which the structure of a given poem is based.
strophic ::: a. --> Pertaining to, containing, or consisting of, strophes.
strophiolate ::: a. --> Alt. of Strophiolated
strophiolated ::: a. --> Furnished with a strophiole, or caruncle, or that which resembles it.
strophiole ::: n. --> A crestlike excrescence about the hilum of certain seeds; a caruncle.
strophulus ::: n. --> See Red-gum, 1.
strop ::: n. --> A strap; specifically, same as Strap, 3.
A piece of rope spliced into a circular wreath, and put round a block for hanging it. ::: v. t. --> To draw over, or rub upon, a strop with a view to sharpen; as, to strop a razor.
stropped ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Strop
stropping ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Strop
strotrasya strotram ::: the Ear of the ear. [Kena 1.2]
strouding ::: n. --> Material for strouds; a kind of coarse cloth used in trade with the North American Indians.
stroud ::: n. --> A kind of coarse blanket or garment used by the North American Indians.
strout ::: v. i. --> To swell; to puff out; to project. ::: v. t. --> To cause to project or swell out; to enlarge affectedly; to strut.
strove ::: imp. --> of Strive ::: --> of Strive
imp. of Strive.
strove ::: pt. of strive.
strowed ::: imp. --> of Strow ::: --> of Strow
strowl ::: v. i. --> To stroll.
strown ::: p. p. --> of Strow ::: --> p. p. of Strow.
strow ::: v. t. --> Same as Strew.
stroy ::: v. i. --> To destroy.
strucken ::: --> of Strike
p. p. of Strike.
struck ::: imp. --> of Strike ::: p. p. --> of Strike :::
struck ::: pt. and Pp. of Strike. 1. Produced (music, a sound, note) by touching a string or playing upon an instrument; sounded (a particular note). 2. Proceeded or advanced, esp. in a new direction. 3. Produced or sent down roots (of a plant). struck out.** Produced or elicited as by a blow or stroke.
struck ::: pt. Of strike 1. Removed from; obliterated. 2. v. Put forth. 3.** Plucked the strings on a stringed instrument.
structural ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to structure; affecting structure; as, a structural error.
Of or pertaining to organit structure; as, a structural element or cell; the structural peculiarities of an animal or a plant.
structuralism ::: Traditionally refers to the study of the structures of the mind that underlie human behavior. In Integral Theory, structuralism typically refers to the objective study of interior realities over time in search of regularities and patterns. It is most often used as a third-person approach to first-person singular realities. The outside view of the interior of an individual (i.e., the outside view of a holon in the Upper-Left quadrant). Exemplary of a zone-
structured ::: a. --> Having a definite organic structure; showing differentiation of parts.
structured ::: having and manifesting a clearly defined structure or organization.
structureless ::: a. --> Without a definite structure, or arrangement of parts; without organization; devoid of cells; homogeneous; as, a structureless membrane.
structure ::: n. **1. Mode of building, construction, or organization; arrangement of parts, elements, or constituents. 2. Something built or constructed, as a building, bridge, etc. Also fig. 3. Anything composed of parts arranged together in some way; an organization. structures. v. 4. To give an organization, form or arrangement to; construct a systematic framework for. structured.**
structure ::: n. --> The act of building; the practice of erecting buildings; construction.
Manner of building; form; make; construction.
Arrangement of parts, of organs, or of constituent particles, in a substance or body; as, the structure of a rock or a mineral; the structure of a sentence.
Manner of organization; the arrangement of the different tissues or parts of animal and vegetable organisms; as, organic
structure-stages ::: A term used to denote the sequential or stage-like unfolding of zone-
structure ::: The stable pattern of any occasion. In Integral Theory, structure most often refers to the unique, enduring pattern and actual structure of a level of development. See levels.
structurist ::: n. --> One who forms structures; a builder; a constructor.
strude ::: n. --> A stock of breeding mares.
struggled ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Struggle
struggle ::: n. 1. A strenuous effort; a striving against difficulty. *v. 2. To exert strenuous effort against opposition, often of a stronger or superior adversary. 3. To make a strenuous or labored effort; contend against difficulty; to advance with great or violent effort. *struggles, struggled, struggling.
struggler ::: n. --> One who struggles.
struggle ::: v. i. --> To strive, or to make efforts, with a twisting, or with contortions of the body.
To use great efforts; to labor hard; to strive; to contend forcibly; as, to struggle to save one&
struggling ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Struggle
strull ::: n. --> A bar so placed as to resist weight.
struma ::: n. --> Scrofula.
A cushionlike swelling on any organ; especially, that at the base of the capsule in many mosses.
strumatic ::: a. --> Scrofulous; strumous.
strumstrum ::: n. --> A rude musical instrument somewhat like a cittern.
strummed ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Strum
strumming ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Strum
strumose ::: a. --> Strumous.
Having a struma.
strumous ::: a. --> Scrofulous; having struma.
strumousness ::: n. --> The state of being strumous.
strumpet ::: n. --> A prostitute; a harlot. ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to a strumpet; characteristic of a strumpet. ::: v. t.
strum ::: v. t. & i. --> To play on an instrument of music, or as on an instrument, in an unskillful or noisy way; to thrum; as, to strum a piano.
strung ::: imp. --> of String ::: p. p. --> of String :::
strung ::: pt. of string.
struntian ::: n. --> A kind of worsted braid, about an inch broad.
strunt ::: n. --> Spirituous liquor.
struse ::: n. --> A Russian river craft used for transporting freight.
struthian ::: a. --> Struthious.
struthioidea ::: n. pl. --> Same as Struthiones.
struthio ::: n. --> A genus of birds including the African ostriches.
struthiones ::: pl. --> of Struthio ::: n. pl. --> A division, or order, of birds, including only the African ostriches.
In a wider sense, an extensive group of birds including the ostriches, cassowaries, emus, moas, and allied birds
struthionine ::: a. --> Struthious.
struthious ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to the Struthiones, or Ostrich tribe.
strutted ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Strut
strutter ::: n. --> One who struts.
strutting ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Strut ::: --> a. & n. from Strut, v.
strut ::: to dress, behave, perform, etc., one"s best in order to impress others; show off.
strut ::: v. t. --> To swell; to bulge out.
To walk with a lofty, proud gait, and erect head; to walk with affected dignity.
To hold apart. Cf. Strut, n., 3. ::: n. --> The act of strutting; a pompous step or walk.
struvite ::: n. --> A crystalline mineral found in guano. It is a hydrous phosphate of magnesia and ammonia.
strychnia ::: n. --> Strychnine.
strychnic ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to strychnine; produced by strychnine; as, strychnic compounds; strychnic poisoning
used to designate an acid, called also igasuric acid.
strychnine ::: n. --> A very poisonous alkaloid resembling brucine, obtained from various species of plants, especially from species of Loganiaceae, as from the seeds of the St. Ignatius bean (Strychnos Ignatia) and from nux vomica. It is obtained as a white crystalline substance, having a very bitter acrid taste, and is employed in medicine (chiefly in the form of the sulphate) as a powerful neurotic stimulant. Called also strychnia, and formerly strychnina.
strychnos ::: n. --> A genus of tropical trees and shrubs of the order Loganiaceae. See Nux vomica.
stryphnic ::: a. --> Pertaining to, or designating, a complex nitrogenous acid, obtained by the action of acetic acid and potassium nitrite on uric acid, as a yellow crystalline substance, with a bitter, astringent taste.
Strachey, Christopher {Christopher Strachey}
Straight angle – An angle which is equal to 180°.
Straight line – The shortest distance between two points. It continues indefinitely in both directions.
STRAIGHT ROAD. ::: Take the psychic attitude ; follow the stimght sunlit path, with the Divine openly and secretly upbear- ing you — if secretly, he will yet show himself in good lime.
Strain in work ; If you overstrain yourself by too much pro- longed work or a restless working, that disturbs or weakens the nervous system, the vital-physical, and lays one open to the action of the \vrong forces.
Strand 1. {AND-parallel} {logic programming} language. Essentially flat {Parlog83} with sequential-and and sequential-or eliminated. ["Strand: New Concepts on Parallel Programming", Ian Foster et al, P-H 1990]. {Strand88} is a commercial implementation. 2. A query language, implemented on top of {INGRES} (an {RDBMS}). ["Modelling Summary Data", R. Johnson, Proc ACM SIGMOD Conf 1981].
Strand88 A commercial implementation of {Strand} from Strand Software Technologies Ltd., UK and Strand Software, Beaverton, OR, USA. E-mail: "strand88@sstl.uucp".
Strato: of Lampsacus, head of the Peripatetic School of Greek philosophy from 287-269 B.C. -- M.F.
Stratus "company" One of the leading manufacturers of {fault-tolerant} computer systems. While virtually all of Stratus' core hardware and software is sold into the financial services, telecommunications, travel and transportation, and gaming these markets, a broad range of {middleware} and {applications} are developed and marketed by Stratus, its subsidiaries, and third party partners. Yearly sales $609M, profits $43.5M (1996). {(http://stratus,com)}. (1997-04-24)
Strauss, David Friedrich: (1808-1874) German philosopher who received wide popularity and condemnation for his Life of Jesus. He held that the unity of God and man is not realized in Christ but in mankind itself and in its history. This relation, he believed, was immanent and not transcendent. His numerous writings displayed many currents from Hegelianism and Darwinism to a pantheism that approaches atheism and then back to a naturalism that clings devoutly to an inward religious experience. Main works: Das Leben Jesu, 1835; Die Christliche Dogmatik, 1840; Der alte u. d. neue Glaube, 1872. -- L.E.D.
Strawman The first of the series of {DoD} requirements that led to {Ada} ({Woodenman}, {Tinman}, {Ironman}, {Steelman}). Strawman was produced by the {HOLWG} in Apr 1975. (1995-01-30)
Streaming SIMD Extensions "architecture" (SSE) {Intel Corporation}'s {floating point} {SIMD} extention of their {Pentium} {microprocessor} architecture. SSE was formerly know as KNI (Katmai New Instructions). It was introduced with the {Pentium III}. {Intel Pentium III (http://developer.intel.com/design/pentiumiii/prodbref/)}. {ipoem (http://ipoem.com/technology/Docs/pentium4.html)}. (2003-07-13)
Stream of Consciousness or Thought: Thought considered as a process of continuous change. The metaphor of the stream was suggested by W. James. See The Principles of Psychology, Vol. 1, ch. IX, entitled "The Stream of Thought" especially p. 239. -- L.W.
STREAMS "operating system" A collection of {system calls}, {kernel} resources, and kernel utility routines that can create, use, and dismantle a {stream}. A "stream head" provides the interface between the stream and the user processes. Its principal function is to process STREAMS-related user system calls. A "stream module" processes data that travel bewteen the stream head and driver. The "stream end" provides the services of an external input/output device or an internal software driver. The internal software driver is commonly called a {pseudo-device} driver. The STREAMS concept has been formalised in {Unix} {System V}. For example, {SVR4} implements {sockets} and {pipes} using STREAMS, resulting in pipe(2) openning bidirectional pipes. [IBM AIX 3.2 Communication Programming Concepts, SC23-2206-03]. (1999-06-29)
STREAM ["STREAM: A Scheme Language for Formally Describing Digital Circuits", C.D. Kloos in PARLE: Parallel Architectures and Languages Europe, LNCS 259, Springer 1987]. (1995-01-30)
Strength and purity in the lower vital and wideness in the heart are the best condition for meeting others, especially women, and if that could always be there sex could hardly have a look in.
Strength is all right for the strong — but aspiration and the Grace answering to it are not altogether myths; they are great realities of the spiritual life.” Letters on Yoga*
Strength is all right for the strong—but aspiration and the Grace answering to it are not altogether myths; they are great realities of the spiritual life.” Letters on Yoga
STRENGTH. ::: The feeling of being able to break a stone with the hand or for that matter break the world without anything at all except the force itself is one that comes especially when the mind and vital have not assimilated the Power. It is the feeling of something extraordinary to them and omnipotent ; the idea of breaking or crushing is suggested by the rajas in the vital. After- wards when quietly assimilated this sensation disappears and only the feeling of calm strength and immovable firmness remains.
Stressor ::: Anything, internal or external, which applies psychological pressure on an individual.
STRESS STRuctual Engineering Systems Solver. A system for structural analysis problems in Civil Engineering. STRESS was superseded by {STRUDL}. ["STRESS: A User's Manual", S.J. Fenves et al, MIT Press 1964]. [Sammet 1969, p. 612]. (1995-01-31)
Stress ::: The physical and psychological result of internal or external pressure.
Strict implication: As early as 1912, C. I. Lewis projected a kind of implication between propositions, to be called strict implication, which should more nearly accord with the usual meaning of "implies" than does material implication (see logic, formal, § 1). should make "p implies q" synonymous with "q is deducible from p," and should avoid such so-called paradoxes of material implication as the theorem [p ⊃ q] ∨ [q ⊃ p]. The first satisfactory formulition of a calculus of propositions with strict implication appeared in 1920, and this system, and later modified forms of it. have since been extensively investigated. An essential feature is the introduction of modalities through the notation (say) M[p], to mean "p is possible" (Lewis uses a diamond instead of M). The strict implication of q by p is then identified with ∼M[p ∼q], whereas the material implication p ⊃ q is given by ∼[p ∼q]. In 1932 Lewis, along with other modifications, added a primitive formula (involving the binding of propositional variables by existential quantifiers) which renders definitively impossible an interpretation of the system which would make Mp the same as p and strict implication the same as material implication. Consistency of the system, including this additional primitive formula, may be established by means of an appropriate four-valued propositional calculus, the theorems of the system being some among the tautologies of the four-valued propositional calculus. -- A.C.
Strictly speaking, there are no contraries in the category of substance, since substances are the subject of contraries, nor in the category of quantity, since these are relative. Two contrary states cannot obtain in one and the same individual at the same time and in the same respect; cf. contradiction. Some contraries, e.g. good-bad, black-white, have intermediaries; while others do not, e.g. odd-even. (ii) Propositions: Two universal propositions, having opposite quality (i.e. one affirmative and one negative) are contrary; De Interpretattone, 17b-4, See Logic, formal § 4, 8.
String EXpression Interpreter {String Oriented Symbolic Language}
STring Oriented Interactive Compiler "language" (STOIC) A language from the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. STOIC is similar to {FORTH} for strings and includes many {VAX}-specific items. (1998-09-27)
String Oriented Symbolic Language "language" (SNOBOL) A {string processing language} for {text} and {formula} manipulation, developed by David J. Farber, Ralph E. Griswold and Ivan P. Polonsky at {Bell Labs} in 1962. SNOBOL had only simple {control structures} but provided a rich string-matching formalism of power comparable to {regular expressions} but implemented differently. People used it for simple {natural language processing} analysis tasks well into the 1980s. Since then, {Perl} has come into favour for such tasks. SNOBOL was originally called "SEXI" - String EXpression Interpreter. In spite of the suggestive name, SNOBOL is not related to {COBOL}. Farber said the name SNOBOL was largely contrived at the time the original JACM article was published when one of the implementors said something like, "This program doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of ...". The expansion to "String Oriented Symbolic Language" was contrived later. Implementations include (in no particular order): {SNOBOL2}, {SNOBOL3}, {SNOBOL4}, {FASBOL}, {SITBOL}, {MAINBOL}, {SPITBOL} and {vanilla}. See also {EZ}, {Poplar}, {SIL} and {Icon}. {SNOBOL 4 (http://snobol4.org/)}. {David Farber (http://cis.upenn.edu/%7Efarber/)}. {Ralph Griswold (http://cs.arizona.edu/people/ralph/)}. ["SNOBOL, A String Manipulating Language", R. Griswold et al, J ACM 11(1):21, Jan 1964]. (2004-04-29)
String PRocessING language "language" (SPRING) ["From SPRING to SUMMER: Design, Definition and Implementation of Programming Languages for String Manipulation and Pattern Matching", Paul Klint, Math Centre, Amsterdam 1982]. (1996-02-06)
STROBES {Shared Time Repair of Big Electronic Systems}
Structuralism ::: School of thought from the 19th century focused on the gathering of psychological information through the examination of the structure of the mind.
Structural Psychology: A tendency in American psychology, represented by E. B. Titchener. (A Textbook of Psychology, (1909-10) which in opposition to Functional Psychology (see Functional Psychology, Functionalism) adopted as the method of psychology the analysis of mental states into component sensations, images and feelings; the structure of consciousness is for structural psychology atomistic. -- L.W.
Structural Theories of Mind: See Structuralism. Struggle For Existence: This is given by Charles Darwin as a premise for his evolutionary hypothesis of natural selection. There is constant struggle in a species resultant from the over production of offspring. This notion is an outgrowth of the influence of Malthus on Darwin. Darwin does not mean actual or necessary combat at all stages, but requisite dependence of one upon another and of each upon all factors in the environment leading to the natural selection of the fittest. See Evolutionism, Natural Selection, Charles Darwin, Herbert Spencer, Thomas Henry Huxley. -- L.E.D.
STRUGGLE. ::: There is a period, more or less prolonged, of internal effort and struggle in which the individual will has to reject the darkness and distortions of the lower nature and to put itself resolutely or vehemently on the side of the divine Light.
TERMS ANYWHERE
1. A framework; structure. 2. Any cloth made from yarn or fibres by weaving, knitting, felting, etc. Also fig.
1. Causing irreversible ruin, destruction or death; disastrous. 2. Decisively important; fateful. 3. Proceeding from or decreed by fate; inevitable. 4. Influencing or concerned with fate; fatalistic.
1.* Fig. The deepest feelings of love, affection or compassion. *heart-strings".
1. Hammered or struck repeatedly. 2. Defeated, vanquished, baffled, overcome.
1. Having momentous significance or consequences; decisively important. 2. Fatal, deadly, or disastrous. 3. Controlled or determined by destiny; inexorable. 4. Prophetic; ominous.
1. Imagination, caprice, whim, esp. when extravagant and unrestrained. 2. The forming of mental images, esp. wondrous, extravagant or visionary fancy. 3. A mental image, esp. when unreal or fantastic; vision. fantasies.
1. Of or pertaining to the structure of waxy, hexagonal cells formed by bees for the production and storage of honey. 2.* Fig.* Anything containing sweetness likened to honey.
1. Personal liberty, as opposed to bondage. 2. Liberation or deliverance from fate or necessity. 3. The state or power of being able to act without hindrance or restraint, liberty of action. 4. Exemption from an unpleasant or onerous condition. 5. The quality of being able to conceive and execute boldly. Freedom, Freedom"s.
1. Spirited and original; daring; bold. 2. Fearlessly, often recklessly daring; bold; defiant; insolent; brazen; unrestrained by convention or propriety.
1. To become dim, as light, or lose brightness of illumination. 2.* Become less clearly visible or distinguishable; disappear gradually or seemingly, lit. and fig. *3. To lose strength or vitality; wane. 4. To vanish slowly; die out. 5. To grow dim, fade away, become less loud. fades, faded, fading.
1. To be inadequate or insufficient; fall short. 2. To fall short of success or achievement in something expected, attempted, desired, or approved. 3. To dwindle, pass, or die away. 4. To decline, as in strength or effectiveness; fig. of the heart. 5. Of some expected or usual resource: To prove of no use or help to. 6. Of a material thing: To break down under strain or pressure. fails, failed, failed.
1. To demonstrate or prove to be just, right, or valid. 2. To defend or uphold as warranted or well-grounded. justifies, justified, justifying.
1. To give light to; illuminate; shine on. 2. Make lighter or brighter. 3. To bestow spiritual enlightenment. 4. To enlighten, as with knowledge. 5. To make lucid or clear; throw light on (a subject). 6. To make resplendent or illustrious. 7. To decorate (a manuscript, book, etc.) with colours and gold or silver, as was often done in the Middle Ages. illumines, illumined, illumining, half-illumined.
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.
abstract ::: adj. 1. Withdrawn or separated from matter, from material embodiment, from practice, or from particular examples; theoretical. 2. In the fine arts, characterized by lack of or freedom from representational qualities. n. 3. Something that concentrates in itself the essential qualities of anything more extensive or more general, or of several things; essence.
abstractions ::: things which have no independent existence, which exist only in idea; visionary and unrealistic.
abstruse ::: 1. Concealed, hidden, secret. 2. Hard to understand; difficult, recondite.
a body of executive officials collectively entrusted with the execution and administration of laws.
abolish ::: to put an end to, to do away with; to annul or make void; to demolish, destroy or annihilate. abolished, abolishing.
a breaker or destroyer of images, especially those set up for religious veneration.
abrupt ::: 1. Characterized by sudden interruption or change; unannounced and unexpected; sudden, hasty. 2. Precipitous, steep. 3. Of strata: Suddenly cropping out and presenting their edges.
astral ::: 1. Of, relating to, emanating from, or resembling the stars. 2. Of the spirit world [Greek astron star].
astray ::: 1. Away from the correct path or direction. 2. Away from the right or good, as in thought or behaviour; straying to or into wrong or evil ways.
a stream of a liquid, gas, or small solid particles forcefully shooting forth from a nozzle, orifice, etc. Also fig.
a stroke, beat; in music and prosody the stress or accent marking the rhythm; the intensity of delivery which distinguishes one syllable or note from others.
a structure for supporting or enclosing something else, especially a skeletal support used as the basis for something being constructed. Also fig.
accent ::: 1. The way in which anything is said; pronunciation, tone, voice; sound, modulation or modification of the voice expressing feeling. 2. A mark indicating stress or some other distinction in pronunciation or value. accents.
accentuating ::: marking strongly, emphasizing.
"A cosmos or universe is always a harmony, otherwise it could not exist, it would fly to pieces. But as there are musical harmonies which are built out of discords partly or even predominantly, so this universe (the material) is disharmonious in its separate elements — the individual elements are at discord with each other to a large extent; it is only owing to the sustaining Divine Will behind that the whole is still a harmony to those who look at it with the cosmic vision. But it is a harmony in evolution in progress — that is, all is combined to strive towards a goal which is not yet reached, and the object of our yoga is to hasten the arrival to this goal. When it is reached, there will be a harmony of harmonies substituted for the present harmony built up on discords. This is the explanation of the present appearance of things.” Letters on Yoga
"Action is a resultant of the energy of the being, but this energy is not of one sole kind; the Consciousness-Force of the Spirit manifests itself in many kinds of energies: there are inner activities of mind, activities of life, of desire, passion, impulse, character, activities of the senses and the body, a pursuit of truth and knowledge, a pursuit of beauty, a pursuit of ethical good or evil, a pursuit of power, love, joy, happiness, fortune, success, pleasure, life-satisfactions of all kinds, life-enlargement, a pursuit of individual or collective objects, a pursuit of the health, strength, capacity, satisfaction of the body.” The Life Divine*
adj. 1. Having dropped or come down from a higher place, from an upright position, or from a higher level, degree, amount, quality, value, number. 2. Having sunk in reputation or honour; degraded. 3. Overthrown, destroyed or conquered, esp. of those who have died in battle. (Also, pp. of fall**.**)
adj. 1. Lacking in colour or brightness, vividness, clearness, loudness, strength, etc. 2. Indistinct, ill-defined; dim; faded; slight. 3. Feeble through hunger, fear, exhaustion, etc. 4. Inclined to ‘faint" or swoon. faintest, faint-foot. v. 5. To lose strength, brightness, colour, courage etc.; to fade. 6. To grow weak. 7. To feel weak, dizzy or exhausted; falter; about to lose consciousness. 8. To weaken in purpose or spirit. faints, fainted, fainting.
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.
administration ("s)
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*
adorn ::: to beautify as an ornament does; decorate; to add beauty or lustre to. adorned.
adversity ::: the condition of adverse fortune or fate; a state opposed to well-being or prosperity; misfortune, distress, trial, or affliction.
afflicted ::: distressed with mental or bodily pain; troubled greatly; grievously depressed, oppressed, cast down; tormented.
afflicting ::: 1. Grievously painful, distressing. 2. Distressing with bodily or mental suffering; troubling grievously, tormenting. self-afflicting.
agony ::: 1. Anguish of mind, sore trouble or distress, a paroxysm of grief. 2. The convulsive throes, or pangs of death; the death struggle. 3. Extreme bodily suffering, such as to produce writhing or throes of the body. agonies.
alacananda ::: "One of the four head streams of the river Ganga in the Himalayas. According to the Vaishnavas it is the terrestrial Ganga which Shiva received upon his head as it fell from heaven. The famous shrine of Badrinath is situated on the banks of this stream. (Dow.)” Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works
a large group of rather pretty birds, chiefly of Australasia, popularly called Honey-eaters, having a bill and tongue adapted for extracting the sweet juices of many flowers.
alarm ::: n. 1. A warning sound of any kind to give notice of danger, or to arouse or attract attention; esp. a loud and hurried peal rung out by a tocsin or alarm bell. v. 2. To arouse to a sense of danger, to excite the attention or suspicion of, to put on the alert; warn. 3. To strike with fear or apprehension of danger; to agitate or excite with sudden fear. alarmed, alarming.
alcoves ::: recessed spaces, as bowers in a garden; arched recesses or niches in the wall of any structure.
alien ::: 1. Unlike one"s own; strange; not belonging to one; belonging to another person, place, or family. 2. Adverse; hostile. aliens.
aligned ::: arranged in a straight line; brought into line. re-aligns.
"All birds of that region are relatives. But this is the bird of eternal Ananda, while the Hippogriff is the divinised Thought and the Bird of Fire is the Agni-bird, psychic and tapas. All that however is to mentalise too much and mentalising always takes most of the life out of spiritual things. That is why I say it can be seen but nothing said about it.” ::: "The question was: ‘In the mystical region, is the dragon bird any relation of your Bird of Fire with ‘gold-white wings" or your Hippogriff with ‘face lustred, pale-blue-lined"? And why do you write: ‘What to say about him? One can only see"?” Letters on Savitri
"All depends on the meaning you attach to words used; it is a matter of nomenclature. Ordinarily, one says a man has intellect if he can think well; the nature and process and field of the thought do not matter. If you take intellect in that sense, then you can say that intellect has different strata, and Ford belongs to one stratum of intellect, Einstein to another — Ford has a practical and executive business intellect, Einstein a scientific discovering and theorising intellect. But Ford too in his own field theorises, invents, discovers. Yet would you call Ford an intellectual or a man of intellect? I would prefer to use for the general faculty of mind the word intelligence. Ford has a great and forceful practical intelligence, keen, quick, successful, dynamic. He has a brain that can deal with thoughts also, but even there his drive is towards practicality. He believes in rebirth (metempsychosis), for instance, not for any philosophic reason, but because it explains life as a school of experience in which one gathers more and more experience and develops by it. Einstein has, on the other hand, a great discovering scientific intellect, not, like Marconi, a powerful practical inventive intelligence for the application of scientific discovery. All men have, of course, an ‘intellect" of a kind; all, for instance, can discuss and debate (for which you say rightly intellect is needed); but it is only when one rises to the realm of ideas and moves freely in it that you say, ‘This man has an intellect".” Letters on Yoga
"All ethics is a construction of good in a Nature which has been smitten with evil by the powers of darkness born of the Ignorance, . . . .” The Life Divine
alley ::: a passage between buildings; hence, a narrow street, a lane; usually only wide enough for foot-passengers. blind alley*: one that is closed at the end, so as to be no thoroughfare; a cul de sac*.
"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*
allotted ::: 1. Divided or distributed by share or portion; apportioned. 2. Assigned as a portion, set apart, dedicated.
almighty ::: 1. *Orig. and in the strict sense used as an attribute of the Deity, and joined to God or other title. 2. Absol. The Almighty; a title of God. 3. All-powerful (in a general sense); omnipotent. Almighty"s, Almightiness, almightiness.
altar ::: 1. A block, pile, table, stand, mound, platform, or other elevated structure on which to place or sacrifice offerings to a deity. 2. With reference to the uses, customs, dedication, or peculiar sanctity of the altar. 3. A place consecrated to devotional observances. altar"s, altars, altar-burnings, mountain-altars.
ambition ::: an earnest desire for some type of achievement or distinction, as power, honour, fame, or wealth, and the willingness to strive for its attainment. ambitions.
ambling ::: going at a slow, easy pace, strolling; sauntering.
a monstrous sea creature symbolizing evil.
". . . an Avatar is not at all bound to be a spiritual prophet — he is never in fact merely a prophet, he is a realiser, an establisher — not of outward things only, though he does realise something in the outward also, but, as I have said, of something essential and radical needed for the terrestrial evolution which is the evolution of the embodied spirit through successive stages towards the Divine.” Letters on Yoga
anchor ::: 1. Any of various devices dropped by a chain, cable, or rope to the bottom of a body of water for preventing or restricting the motion of a vessel or other floating object, typically having broad, hooklike arms that bury themselves in the bottom to provide a firm hold. 2. A person or thing that can be relied on for support, stability, or security; mainstay.
anguish ::: excruciating or acute distress, suffering, or pain. anguished.
annihilate ::: to reduce to utter ruin or non-existence, destroy utterly. annihilation, annihilation"s.
antagonist ::: one who is opposed to, struggles against, or competes with another; opponent, adversary. antagonists.
anxious ::: full of mental distress or uneasiness because of fear of danger or misfortune; greatly worried.
apron strings
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.
arbitrary ::: 1. Based on or subject to individual will, judgment or preference: judgment without restriction; contingent solely upon one"s discretion. 2. Capricious; unreasonable; unsupported. 3. Derived from mere opinion or preference; capricious; uncertain. 4. Having unlimited power; uncontrolled or unrestricted by law; despotic; tyrannical.
arch ::: 1. An upwardly curved construction, for spanning an opening, consisting of a number of wedgelike stones, bricks, or the like, set with the narrower side toward the opening in such a way that forces on the arch are transmitted as vertical or oblique stresses on either side of the opening, either capable of bearing weight or merely ornamental; 2. Something bowed or curved; any bowlike part: the arch of the foot. 3. An arched roof, door; gateway; vault; fig. the heavens. arches.
architecture ::: 1. The profession of designing buildings and other artificial constructions and environments, usually with some regard to aesthetic effect. 2. The character or style of building. 3. Construction or structure generally. architectures.
arduous ::: hard to accomplish or achieve; requiring strong effort; difficult, laborious, severe.
arming ::: providing with whatever will add strength, force, or security; support; fortify.
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.
arm ::: power; might; strength. (All other references are to arm(s) as a part of the body.) arm"s, arms.
arms ::: n. 1. Weapons. v. 2. Provides with weapons or whatever will add strength, force or security; supports; fortifies. armed, arming.
arouse ::: 1. To awaken from or as if from sleep or inactivity. 2. To stir up; excite 3. To stir to action or strong response; excite. aroused, arousing.
artistry ::: artistic workmanship, effect, or quality.
artifice ::: 1. An artful or crafty expedient; a stratagem. 2. Cleverness or skill; ingenuity; inventiveness.
a secure or fortified place; stronghold; fortress.
ashamed ::: feeling shame; distressed or embarrassed by feeling of guilt, foolishness, or disgrace.
ashes ::: 1. Bodily remains, especially after cremation or decay. 2. Fig. Ruins; esp. the residue of something destroyed; remains.
aspirant ::: n. **1. One who seeks with eagerness and steady purpose. adj. 2. Aspiring, striving for a higher position; mounting up, ascending. aspirants.**
aspiration ::: 1. A strong desire for high achievement. 2. A steadfast longing for something above oneself. **aspiration"s.
"A SPIRITUAL evolution, an evolution of consciousness in Matter in a constant developing self-formation till the form can reveal the indwelling Spirit, is then the keynote, the central significant motive of the terrestrial existence. This significance is concealed at the outset by the involution of the Spirit, the Divine Reality, in a dense material Inconscience; a veil of Inconscience, a veil of insensibility of Matter hides the universal Consciousness-Force which works within it, so that the Energy, which is the first form the Force of creation assumes in the physical universe, appears to be itself inconscient and yet does the works of a vast occult Intelligence.” The Life Divine
"A third step is to find out that there is something in him other than his instrumental mind, life and body, not only an immortal ever-developing individual soul that supports his nature but an eternal immutable self and spirit, and to learn what are the categories of his spiritual being, until he discovers that all in him is an expression of the spirit and distinguishes the link between his lower and his higher existence; thus he sets out to remove his constitutional self-ignorance. Discovering self and spirit he discovers God; he finds out that there is a Self beyond the temporal: he comes to the vision of that Self in the cosmic consciousness as the divine Reality behind Nature and this world of beings; his mind opens to the thought or the sense of the Absolute of whom self and the individual and the cosmos are so many faces; the cosmic, the egoistic, the original ignorance begin to lose the rigidness of their hold upon him.” The Life Divine
austere ::: 1. Severe in manner or appearance; uncompromising; strict; forbidding; stark. 2. Rigorously self-disciplined and severely moral; ascetic; abstinent. 3. Grave; sober; solemn; serious. 4. Without excess, luxury, or ease; severely simple; without ornament. austerity.
axis ::: 1. The pivot on which any matter turns. 2. A straight line about which a body or geometric object rotates or may be conceived to rotate.
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
baffled ::: 1. Confused, bewildered, or perplexed. 2. Frustrated or confounded; thwarted. baffles, baffling.
balcony ::: a platform that projects from the wall of a building and is surrounded by a railing, balustrade, or parapet.
balustrade ::: a rail and the row of balusters or posts that support it, as along the front of a gallery.
bankruptcy ::: 1. A state of complete lack of some abstract property; "spiritual bankruptcy”; "moral bankruptcy”; "intellectual bankruptcy”. 2. Depleted of valuable qualities or characteristics.
banner ::: 1. A piece of cloth bearing a motto or legend. 2. A placard carried in a demonstration.
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.
bar ::: n. **1. Anything that obstructs or prevents; a barrier. v. 2. To obstruct, prevent, hinder, impede. bars, barred, barring.**
barricade ::: a structure hastily set up across a route of access to obstruct the passage of an enemy.
barrier ::: 1. Anything built or serving to bar passage. 2. Anything that restrains or obstructs progress, access. 3. A limit or boundary of any kind. barriers, barrier-breakers.
barriered ::: closed off; blocked, obstructing passage. Also fig.
basement ::: the substructure or foundation of a building usually below ground level.
bastioned ::: 1. Anything seen as preserving or protecting some quality, condition, etc. 2. A well-fortified position, a defensive stronghold.
battle ::: n. 1. An encounter between opposing forces; armed fighting; combat. v. 3. To fight against. Also fig. 4. To contend, struggle against. 5. To work very hard or struggle; strive. battled.
bazaar ::: a market consisting of a street lined with shops and stalls, especially one in the Orient.
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.
bestrides ::: towers over, dominates, as a victor over the fallen.
bed ::: 1. A piece or part forming a foundation or base; a stratum. 2. The grave. 3. A sleeping-place generally; any extemporized resting place. 4. A piece or area of ground in a garden or lawn in which plants are grown. beds.
belt ::: 1. Any encircling or transverse band, strip, or stripe characteristically distinguished from the surface it crosses. 2. An elongated region having distinctive properties or characteristics and long in proportion to its breadth. 3. A zone or district.
bending ::: pulling back the string of (a bow or the like) in preparation for shooting.
betray ::: 1. To be false or disloyal to. 2. To lead astray; deceive. 3. To divulge, disclose in a breach of confidence, a secret. 4. To show signs of; reveal; indicate. betrays, betrayed, betraying, moon-betrayed.
beyond ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The language of the Upanishad makes it strikingly clear that it is no metaphysical abstraction, no void Silence, no indeterminate Absolute which is offered to the soul that aspires, but rather the absolute of all that is possessed by it here in the relative world of its sojourning. All here in the mental is a growing light, consciousness and life; all there in the supramental is an infinite life, light and consciousness. That which is here shadowed, is there found; the incomplete here is there the fulfilled. The Beyond is not an annullation, but a transfiguration of all that we are here in our world of forms; it is sovran Mind of this mind, secret Life of this life, the absolute Sense which supports and justifies our limited senses.” The Upanishads *
bind ::: 1. To restrain or confine with or as if with ties. 2. To place (someone) under obligation; oblige. 3. To fasten together. Also fig. **binds, bound, binding.**
bit ::: cut into with or as with a sharp instrument or weapon. Also fig.
bitter ::: 1. Having or being a taste that is sharp, acrid, and unpleasant. 2. Difficult or distasteful to accept, admit; bear or endure. 3. Proceeding from or exhibiting strong animosity. 4. Causing a sharply unpleasant, painful, or stinging sensation; harsh; severe. bitterness.
bizarre ::: conspicuously or grossly unconventional or unusual in style or appearance; strange.
bizarrerie ::: strangeness or grotesqueness, especially strange or unconventional behaviour.
blasted ::: knocked down; shattered; destroyed.
blaze ::: n. 1. A brilliant burst of fire, a bright glowing flame. 2. A brilliant, striking display; a brilliant light; resplendent with bright colour. 3. A steady, clear light. 4. Fig. An intense outburst of passion, etc. ::: sun-blaze. v. 5. blazed.
blockade ::: 1. The isolating, closing off, or surrounding of a place. 2. Any obstruction of passage or progress.
block ::: n. 1. A solid piece of a hard substance, such as wood, stone, etc. having one or more flat sides. Also fig. 2. Something that obstructs; an obstacle. blocks. *v. 3. To impede, retard, prevent or obstruct the progress or achievement of (someone or something). Also fig.*
blot ::: n. 1. A dark spot or stain. 2. Something likened to a blot that destroys. v. 3. To make obscure; hide. 4. To destroy utterly; annihilate. blotted.
blow ::: 1. A sudden, hard stroke with a hand, fist, or weapon; a stroke. 2. A sudden attack or drastic action. 3. Fig. A sudden shock, calamity, severe disaster experienced by someone. blows.
blunt ::: made less intense, lessened the strength of; weakened.
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.
boisterous ::: rough and noisy; noisily jolly or rowdy; clamorous; unrestrained, excessively exuberant.
boldness or daring without regard for conventional thought or other restrictions.
border ::: n. 1. A part that forms the outer edge of something. 2. The line or frontier area separating political divisions or geographic regions; a boundary. 3. A strip of ground, as that at the edge of a garden or walk, an edging. borders. v. 4. To form the boundary of; be contiguous to. fig. To confine. 5. To lie adjacent to another. bordered.
bow ::: a weapon consisting of a curved, flexible strip of material, especially wood, strung taut from end to end and used to launch arrows.
bow-twang (‘s) ::: the resonant sound produced when a tense string is sharply plucked or suddenly released.
breadth ::: 1. The measure or the second largest dimension of a plane or solid figure; width. 2. Freedom from narrowness or restraint; liberality. 3. Tolerance; broadmindedness. breadths.
breaks out or from ::: bursts or springs out from restraint, confinement, or concealment. Said of persons and things material, also of fire, light, etc.
breaks through ::: makes a sudden, quick advance, as through an obstruction.
break ::: v. 1. To destroy by or as if by shattering or crushing. 2. To force or make a way through (a barrier, etc.). 3. To vary or disrupt the uniformity or continuity of. 4. To overcome or put an end to. 5. To destroy or interrupt a regularity, uniformity, continuity, or arrangement of; interrupt. 6. To intrude upon; interrupt a conversation, etc. 7. To discontinue or sever an association, an agreement, or a relationship. **8. To overcome or wear down the spirit, strength, or resistance of. 9. (usually followed by in, into or out). 10. To filter or penetrate as sunlight into a room. 11. To come forth suddenly. 12. To utter suddenly; to express or start to express an emotion, mood, etc. 13. Said of waves, etc. when they dash against an obstacle, or topple over and become surf or broken water in the shallows. 14. To part the surface of water, as a ship or a jumping fish. breaks, broke, broken, breaking.* *n. 15.** An interruption or a disruption in continuity or regularity.
bricked ::: constructed, lined, or paved with brick. Also Fig.
bridge ::: n. 1. A structure spanning and providing passage over a gap or barrier, such as a river or roadway. bridges, bridge-like. v. 2. To build or provide a bridge over something; span. Also fig. 3. To join by or as if by a bridge; link, connect. bridged, bridging.
brilliant ::: 1. Full of light; shining; lustrous. 2. Of surpassing excellence; splendid; highly impressive; distinguished. 3. Strong and clear in tone; vivid; bright. pale-brilliant.
brink ::: 1. The upper edge of a steep or vertical slope, esp. the margin of land bordering a body of water. 2. Any extreme edge; verge. 3. A crucial or critical point, esp. of a situation or state beyond which success or catastrophe occurs.
strategic advantage; a power to act effectively.
build ::: 1. To construct; erect; lit. and fig. (sometimes with up). 2. To mould, form, create. 3. To found, form or construct (a plan, system, etc.) on a basis. 4. To develop or give form to according to a plant or process; create; construct (something immaterial). builds, built, building.
building ::: 1. The act or action of constructing; erecting. Also fig. **2. **Something that is built, as for human habitation; a structure.
built ::: pt. and pp. of build. dream-built, high-built, low-built, mind-built, new-built. *adj. *built in. Constructed or included as an integral part of. adj. built-up. Built by the fastening together of several parts or enlarged by the addition of layers.
bullock ::: a castrated bull; a steer.
burdensome ::: 1. Oppressively heavy; onerous. 2. Distressing, troublesome.
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.
burn ::: 1. To be very eager; aflame with activity, as to be on fire. 2. To emit heat or light by as if by combustion; to flame.. 3. To give off light or to glow brightly. 4. To light; a candle; incense, etc.) as an offering. 5. To suffer punishment or death by or as if by fire; put to death by fire. 6. To injure, endanger, or damage with or as if with fire. 7. Fig. To be consumed with strong emotions; be aflame with desire; anger; etc. 8. To shine intensely; to seem to glow as if on fire. burns, burned, burnt, burning.
"But always the whole foundation of the gnostic life must be by its very nature inward and not outward. In the life of the Spirit it is the Spirit, the inner Reality, that has built up and uses the mind, vital being and body as its instrumentation; thought, feeling and action do not exist for themselves, they are not an object, but the means; they serve to express the manifested divine Reality within us: otherwise, without this inwardness, this spiritual origination, in a too externalised consciousness or by only external means, no greater or divine life is possible.” The Life Divine
"But in 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*
"But man also has a life-mind, a vital mentality which is an instrument of desire: this is not satisfied with the actual, it is a dealer in possibilities; it has the passion for novelty and is seeking always to extend the limits of experience for the satisfaction of desire, for enjoyment, for an enlarged self-affirmation and aggrandisement of its terrain of power and profit. It desires, enjoys, possesses actualities, but it hunts also after unrealised possibilities, is ardent to materialise them, to possess and enjoy them also. It is not satisfied with the physical and objective only, but seeks too a subjective, an imaginative, a purely emotive satisfaction and pleasure.” *The Life Divine
buttressed ::: supported; reinforced; sustained as by a buttress; (an external structure built against a wall for support or reinforcement.)
calamitous ::: disastrous; catastrophic, ruinous; devastating.
calamity ::: 1. An event that brings terrible loss, lasting distress, or severe affliction; a disaster. 2. Dire distress resulting from loss or tragedy. calamities.
call ::: Sri Aurobindo: "All Yoga is in its nature a new birth; it is a birth out of the ordinary, the mentalised material life of man into a higher spiritual consciousness and a greater and diviner being. No Yoga can be successfully undertaken and followed unless there is a strong awakening to the necessity of that larger spiritual existence. The soul that is called to this deep and vast inward change, may arrive in different ways to the initial departure. It may come to it by its own natural development which has been leading it unconsciously towards the awakening; it may reach it through the influence of a religion or the attraction of a philosophy; it may approach it by a slow illumination or leap to it by a sudden touch or shock; it may be pushed or led to it by the pressure of outward circumstances or by an inward necessity, by a single word that breaks the seals of the mind or by long reflection, by the distant example of one who has trod the path or by contact and daily influence. According to the nature and the circumstances the call will come.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
calm ::: n. 1. Serenity; tranquillity; peace. 2. Nearly or completely motionless as a condition of no wind. Calm, Calm"s, calms, calmness. adj. 3. Not excited or agitated; composed; tranquil; 4. Without rough motion; still or nearly still. calmer, calm-lipped, stone-calm. *adv. calmly.
Sri Aurobindo: "Calm is a still unmoved condition which no disturbance can affect — it is a less negative condition than quiet.” Letters on Yoga*
"Calm is a positive tranquillity which can exist in spite of superficial disturbances.” *Letters on Yoga
"Calm is a strong and positive quietude, firm and solid — ordinary quietude is mere negation, simply the absence of disturbance.” *Letters on Yoga
"But more powerful still is the giving up of the fruit of one"s works, because that immediately destroys all causes of disturbance and brings and preserves automatically an inner calm and peace, and calm and peace are the foundation on which all else becomes perfect and secure in possession by the tranquil spirit.” Essays on the Gita
The Mother: "Calm is self-possessed strength, quiet and conscious energy, mastery of the impulses, control over the unconscious reflexes.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 14*.
candid ::: 1. Characterized by openness and sincerity of expression; unreservedly straightforward. 2. Free from prejudice; impartial. 3. Clear or pure 4. Not posed or rehearsed.
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.
captive ::: n. 1. One, such as a prisoner of war, who is forcibly confined, subjugated, or enslaved. captives. v. 2. Those taken and held as a prisoners. captived. adj. 3. Kept under restraint or control; confined. 4. Enraptured, as by beauty; captivated.
capture ::: 1. To take possession of; to take by force or stratagem; take prisoner; seize. 2. To represent, preserve or record in lasting form, a quality, etc. captures, captured, capturing.
caress ::: n. 1. A gentle touch or gesture of fondness, tenderness, or love. v. 2. To touch or stroke lightly in a loving or endearing manner. caressed, caressing.
castle ::: lit. A large fortified building or group of buildings with thick walls, usually dominating the surrounding country. Fig. A stronghold, fortress.
cautious ::: showing or practicing caution; careful, prudent, guarded, tentative or restrained.
cell ::: biology: The smallest structural unit of an organism that is capable of independent functioning, consisting of one or more nuclei, cytoplasm, and various organelles, all surrounded by a semipermeable cell membrane. cells.
chained ::: restrained or confined as if with chains. love-chained.
chainless ::: free of restraint; unconstrained.
chain ::: n. 1. A series of things connected or following in succession. 2. Something that binds or restrains. chains. v. 3. Fig. To restrain or confine with or as with a chain.
channel ::: n. **1. A course through which something may be transmitted or through which something may be moved or directed onward. 2. The bed of a stream or river, etc. v. 3. To direct or convey something through (or as through) a channel. channels.**
chantiers ::: unfinished construction sites; workshops.
chastened ::: 1. Restrained, subdued. 2. Made pure or refined in style; simplified; rid of excess.
check ::: v. 1. To investigate, examine or verify as to correctness; examine carefully or in detail; to ascertain the truth about. 2. To inspect so as to determine accuracy, authenticity, quality, or other condition; test. checked.* n. *3. A person or thing that stops, limits, slows, or restrains.
child ::: 1. A person between birth and full growth. 2. A baby or infant. 3. A person who has not attained maturity. 4. One who is childish or immature. 5. An individual regarded as strongly affected by another or by a specified time, place, or circumstance. 6. Any person or thing regarded as the product or result of particular agencies, influences, etc. Child, child"s, children, Children, children"s, child-god, Child-Godhead, child-heart, child-heart"s, child-laughter, child-soul, child-sovereign, child-thought, flame-child, foster-child, God-child, King-children.
choked ::: interfered with the respiration of by compression or obstruction of the larynx or trachea by strangling, smothering; stifling.
circumscribe ::: to enclose or restrict within limits; confine. circumscribed, circumscribing.
clamped ::: 1. Fastened with or fixed in a clamp (a device for binding, holding, compressing or fastening objects together); hence, fig. Restricted, repressed, tightened down, restrained. 2. Established by authority; imposed clamps. (Sri Aurobindo also employs clamped as an adj.)
clang ::: 1. A loud resounding noise, as a large bell or metal when struck. 2. v. To make or cause to make, or produce a loud ringing, resonant sound as of a large bell.
clavichord ::: an early keyboard instrument producing a soft sound by means of metal blades attached to the inner ends of the keys gently striking the strings.
clear ::: 1. Not obscured or darkened; bright. 2. Free from darkness, obscurity, or cloudiness; transparent. 3. Serene; calm; untroubled. 4. Free from doubt or confusion; certain. 5. Easily perceptible to the eye or ear; distinct. 6. Easily understood; without ambiguity. 7. Free from impediment, obstruction, or hindrance; open. clearer, sun-clear, surface-clear.
cleave ::: 1. To split with or as if with a sharp instrument. 2. To pierce or penetrate. cleaves, cloven, cleaving.
cloistral ::: of, like, or characteristic of a cloister.
cloud-bank ::: a long flat-topped mass of cloud or mist stretching above the horizon.
coarse ::: 1. Composed of relatively large parts or particles. 2. Lacking in fineness or delicacy of texture, structure, etc. Not refined or delicate, rough.
coerce ::: 1. To compel or restrain by force or authority without regard to individual wishes or desires. 2. To dominate or control, esp. by exploiting fear, anxiety, etc. 3. To bring about through the use of force or other forms of compulsion. coerced, coercing.
collapse ::: 1. To fall or cave in; crumble suddenly. 2. Fig. To break down suddenly in strength or health and thereby cease to function. collapsed, collapsing.
colourful ::: 1. Having striking colour; full of colour. 2. Striking in variety and interest.
combatant ::: a person engaged in or prepared for a fight, struggle, or dispute. combatants.
combat ::: n. 1. Fighting, especially armed battle; strife. combats. v. 2. To oppose in battle; fight against.
combs ::: a structure of hexagonal, thin-walled cells constructed from beeswax by honeybees to hold honey and larvae.
companion ::: 1. A person who accompanies or associates with another; a comrade. 2. Astronomy. The fainter of the two stars that constitute a double star. companions, companionless.
compass ::: an instrument for determining directions, as by means of a freely rotating magnetized needle that indicates magnetic north.
compassion ::: a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is stricken by misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering. compassion"s.
compel ::: 1. To cause (someone) by force (to be or do something) 2. To force to submit; subdue. 3. To exert a strong, irresistible force on; sway. compels, compelled, compelling, compellingly.
compendium ::: 1. A brief treatment or account of a subject, esp. an extensive subject; concise treatise. 2. A short, complete summary; an abstract.
competitors ::: those who strive to outdo others, engage in a contest, or seek an object in rivalry with others also seeking it.
complex ::: involved or intricate, as in structure; complicated.
compression ::: 1. The act or process of compressing. 2. The process or result of constricting; becoming smaller or pressed together.
constraints ::: limitations or restrictions; bounds.
constructed ::: formed by assembling or combining parts; built. constructing.
constructions ::: things fashioned or devised systematically.
concept ::: 1. An idea, esp. an abstract idea or notion. 2. An idea of something formed by mentally combining all its characteristics or particulars; a construct. 3. A directly conceived or intuited object of thought. concept"s, concept-maps.
conch-shells :: 1. The spiral shell of a gastropod, often used as a horn. 2. The fabled shell trumpet of the Tritons.
concrete ::: 1. Formed by the coalescence of separate particles or parts into one mass; solid. 2. Made real, tangible, or particular as opposed to abstract.
concupiscence ::: strong desire, especially sexual desire; lust.
cone ::: 1. A solid whose surface is generated by a straight line, the generator, passing through a fixed point, the vertex, and moving along a fixed curve, the directrix. 2. Anything that tapers from a circular section to a point.
confine ::: 1. To enclose within bounds, limit, restrict. 2. To shut or keep in; prevent from leaving a place because of imprisonment, illness, discipline, etc. confined.
confines ::: 1. The limits of a space or area; the borders. 2. A bounded scope. 3. Restraining elements.
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.
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).
consumed ::: destroyed totally; destroyed or expended by use. consuming.
contain ::: 1. To be capable of holding. 2. To halt the spread or development of; check, esp. of opposition. 3. To hold or keep within limits; restrain. contained, contains, containing, all-containing, All-containing.
contending ::: striving in opposition or against difficulties; struggling.
contrast ::: a difference, especially a strong dissimilarity, between entities or objects compared.
control ::: n. 1. Power to direct, determine or command. 2. A means of regulation or restraint; curb; check. v. 3. To exercise authoritative control or power over. 4. To hold in restraint; check, esp. one"s emotions. controls, controlled, controlling.
conviction ::: the state of being convinced; a fixed or firm strong intellectual belief.
cope ::: to contend or strive with difficulties and act to overcome them.
cord ::: 1. An influence, feeling, or force that binds or restrains; a bond or tie. 2. Fig. Like a thin rope made of several strands woven together to hold the parts of anything. cords, heart-cords.
cornices ::: prominent, continuous, horizontally projecting features surmounting a wall or other construction, or dividing it horizontally for compositional purposes; i.e. to crown or complete a building.
corrupt ::: 1. To destroy or subvert the honesty or integrity of. 2. To ruin morally; pervert. 3. To cause to become rotten; spoil. 4. To taint; contaminate. corrupted, corrupting.
cosmicity ("s) ::: a word coined by Sri Aurobindo. The suffix ity is used to form abstract nouns expressing state or condition. Hence, cosmicity refers to a cosmic state or condition.
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*
cramped ::: closed in; restricted; confined in space, action, etc.
cross ::: 1. A structure consisting essentially of an upright and a transverse piece, upon which persons were formerly put to a cruel and ignominious death by being nailed or otherwise fastened to it by their extremities. 2. A representation or delineation of a cross on any surface, varying in elaborateness from two lines crossing each other to an ornamental design painted, embroidered, carved, etc.; used as a sacred mark, symbol, badge, or the like. 3. A trouble, vexation, annoyance; misfortune, adversity; sometimes anything that thwarts or crosses. v. 4. To go or extend across; pass from one side of to the other: pass over. 5. To extend or pass through or over; intersect. 6. To encounter in passing. crosses, crossed, crossing.
crucified ::: 1. Afflicted with severe pain or distress; tormented. 2. In reference to being put to death by nailing or otherwise fastening to a cross.
cruel ::: 1. Causing or inflicting pain or suffering without pity. 2. Pleased at causing pain; merciless. 3. Rigid; stern; strict; unrelentingly severe. cruelly.
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.
curb ::: to check, restrain, or control. curbed, curbing.
curious ::: 1. Eager to learn more. 2. Arousing interest because of novelty or strangeness.
cynic ::: 1. A person who believes all people are motivated by selfishness and whose outlook is scornfully and often habitually negative. 2. *adj. *Bitterly or sneeringly distrustful, contemptuous, or pessimistic.
dams ::: 1. Barriers to obstruct the flow of water, esp. one of earth, masonry, etc., built across a stream or river. 2. Any barriers resembling dams.
dash ::: to strike or smash violently, esp. so as to break to pieces.
debris ::: the scattered remains of something broken or destroyed; rubble or wreckage.
destroy ::: 1. To reduce anything to useless fragments, a useless form, or remains, as by rending, burning, or dissolving; injuring beyond repair or renewal; demolish; ruin; annihilate. 2. To subdue or defeat completely; crush. 3. To slay, to kill. destroys, destroyed, destroying, world-destroying.
destroyer ::: a person or thing that destroys.
destruction ::: 1. The act of destroying. 2. The condition of having been destroyed; annihilation. Destruction"s.
"Destruction is always a simultaneous or alternate element which keeps pace with creation and it is by destroying and renewing that the Master of Life does his long work of preservation. More, destruction is the first condition of progress. Inwardly, the man who does not destroy his lower self-formations, cannot rise to a greater existence. Outwardly also, the nation or community or race which shrinks too long from destroying and replacing its past forms of life, is itself destroyed, rots and perishes and out of its debris other nations, communities and races are formed. By destruction of the old giant occupants man made himself a place upon earth. By destruction of the Titans the gods maintain the continuity of the divine Law in the cosmos. Whoever prematurely attempts to get rid of this law of battle and destruction, strives vainly against the greater will of the World-Spirit.” Essays on the Gita
declining ::: failing in strength, vigour, character value, etc.; deteriorating.
deed ::: 1. Something that is done, performed, or accomplished; an act. 2. An exploit or achievement; feat. 3. Often plural as an act or gesture, esp. as illustrative of intentions, one"s character, or the like. deeds.
defeat ::: 1. A bringing to naught; frustration. 2. An overthrow or overturning; vanquishment. 3. The act or event of being bested; losing. **defeats, defeated.
defeatist ::: marked by the attitude of one who admits, expects, or no longer resists defeat, as because of a conviction that further struggle or effort is futile.
delicacy ::: fineness of appearance, construction or execution; elegance.
delicate ::: 1. Distinguishing subtle differences. 2. Of instruments: precise, skilled, or sensitive in action or operation. 3. Marked by sensitivity of discrimination and skillful in expression, technique, etc. 4. Exquisitely or beautifully fine in texture, construction, or finish. 5. Exquisite, fine, or subtle in quality, character, construction, etc. 6. (of colour, tone, taste, etc.) Pleasantly subtle, soft, or faint.
denuded ::: made naked or bare, stripped of anything such as possessions.
deprived ::: divested, stripped, bereaved, dispossessed of (or from) a possession.
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.
"Desire is the root of all sorrow, disappointment, affliction, for though it has a feverish joy of pursuit and satisfaction, yet because it is always a straining of the being, it carries into its pursuit and its getting a labour, hunger, struggle, a rapid subjection to fatigue, a sense of limitation, dissatisfaction and early disappointment with all its gains, a ceaseless morbid stimulation, trouble, disquiet, asânti. ” The Synthesis of Yoga
devious ::: 1. Deviating from the straight or direct course; roundabout. 2. Without definite course; vagrant. 3. Not straightforward; shifty or crooked.
diameter ::: a straight line segment passing through the center of a figure, especially of a circle or sphere, and terminating at the periphery.
diapason ::: 1. A full, rich outpouring of melodious and harmonious sound. 2. The entire range of an instrument or voice.
distrustful ::: unable or unwilling to trust; doubtful; suspicious.
distrust ::: lack of trust or confidence.
dimmed ::: v.**1. Made or became dim; lost brightness. Also fig. adj. 2. Not brilliant; dull in lustre. 3.** Dulled; indistinct; not seen clearly or in detail as of sight or vision.
dionysian ::: 1. Of or relating Dionysus, the Greek god of wine, fruitfulness, and vegetation, worshipped in orgiastic rites and festivals in his name. He was also known as the bestower of ecstasy and god of the drama, and identified with Bacchus. 2. Recklessly uninhibited; unrestrained.
direct ::: adj. 1. Proceeding without interruption in a straight course or line; not deviating or swerving. adv. 2. In a straightforward manner; directly; straight.
disastrous ::: causing great distress or injury; ruinous; very unfortunate; calamitous.
disaster ::: an occurrence that causes great distress or destruction. disasters".
disciplined ::: 1. Trained mentally or physically by instruction or exercise. 2. Having or exhibiting discipline, i.e. activity, exercise or a regimen that develops or improves a skill; training.
discouraged ::: 1. Deprived of courage, hope, or confidence; disheartened; dispirited. 2. Obstructed by opposition or difficulty; hindered. discouraging.
disframe ::: to derange or destroy the form of.
disrobe ::: fig. To divest, strip. disrobed.
disrupt ::: 1. To cause disorder or turmoil in. 2. To destroy, usually temporarily, the normal continuance or unity of; interrupt. 3. To break apart. disrupted.
divested ::: put off, thrown off; abandoned; stripped of.
::: "Divinisation itself does not mean the destruction of the human elements; it means taking them up, showing them the way to their own perfection, raising them by purification and perfection to their full power and Ananda and that means the raising of the whole of earthly life to its full power and Ananda.” Letters on Yoga
dole ::: grief, sorrow, mental distress.
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.
doubt ::: n. 1. Lack of belief in or conviction about something. v. 2. To be undecided or skeptical about: tend to disbelieve or distrust. doubts, doubting, doubtful, doubtfully, doubtfulness.
downstream ::: in the direction of a stream"s current.
dragonflies ::: any of various large insects of the order Odonata or suborder Anisoptera, having a long slender body and two pairs of narrow, net-veined wings that are usually held outstretched while the insect is at rest.
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
dribbled ::: flowed or fell in drops or an unsteady stream; trickled.
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.
drive ::: v. 1. To impel; constrain; urge; compel. 2. To manoeuvre, guide or steer the progress of. 3. To impel (matter) by physical force; to cause (something) to move along by direct application of physical force; to propel, carry along. 4. To send, expel, or otherwise cause to move away or out by force or compulsion. 5. To strive vigorously and with determination toward a goal or objective. 6. To cause and guide the movement of (a vehicle, an animal, etc.). n. 7. A strong organized effort to accomplish a purpose, with energy, push or aggressiveness. 8. Impulse; impulsive force. adj. 9. Urged onward, impelled. 10. Pertaining to an inner urge that stimulates activity or inhibition. drives, drove, drov"st, driving, driven.
drooping ::: weak from exhaustion; depleted of strength or energy.
drunken ::: delirious with or as if with strong drink; intoxicated.
drunk ::: intoxicated as with an alcoholic liquor; overcome or dominated by a strong feeling or emotion. honey-drunk. (Also, pp. of drink.)
duel (‘s) ::: a struggle for domination between two contending persons, groups, or ideas.
dull ::: adj. **1. Causing boredom; tedious; uninteresting. 2. Not brisk or rapid; sluggish. 3. Lacking responsiveness or alertness; insensitive. 4. Not clear and resonant; sounding as if striking with or against something relatively soft. 5. (of color) Very low in saturation; highly diluted; 6. Slow to learn or understand; lacking intellectual acuity. duller, dull-eyed, dull-hued, dull-visioned. v. 7. To make numb or insensitive. 8. To make or become dull or sluggish. 9. To make less lively or vigorous. dulls, dulled.**
dwarf with triple stride
eagle ::: any of several large, soaring birds of prey belonging to the hawk family. The strength, keen vision, graceful and powerful flight of the eagle are proverbial, and have given to him the title of the king of birds. eagle"s, eagles, eagle-peaks, eagle-poised, eagle-winged, she-eagle. (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as an adj.)
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.
earthly ::: 1. Terrestrial; not heavenly or divine. 2. Worldly. earthliness.
easily broken, damaged, or destroyed; brittle; frail. Also fig.
easily broken or destroyed; fragile. frailty.
ebony ::: a deep, lustrous black (after the wood of the same colour).
estranged ::: kept at a distance; withdrawn; withheld; displaying or evincing a feeling of alienation.
echo ::: n. **1. A repetition of sound produced by the reflexion of sound waves from a wall, mountain, or other obstructing surface. 2. A sound heard again near its source after being reflected. 3. A lingering trace or effect. echoes. v. 4. To resound with or as if with an echo; reverberate. echoes, echoing, re-echoed.**
ecstasy ::: 1. Intense joy or delight. 2. A state of exalted emotion so intense that one is carried beyond thought. 3. Used by mystical writers as the technical name for the state of rapture in which the body was supposed to become incapable of sensation, while the soul was engaged in the contemplation of divine things. 4. The trance, frenzy, or rapture associated with mystic or prophetic exaltation. Ecstasy, ecstasy"s, ecstasies, ecstasied, self-ecstasy, strange-ecstasied.
eddy ::: 1. A current at variance with the main current in a stream of liquid or gas, esp. one having a rotary or whirling motion. 2. A small whirlpool. eddies, eddying.
edge ::: n. 1. A dividing line; a border. Also fig. 2. Poet. A thin, sharpened side, as of the blade of a cutting instrument. 3. Fig. A brink or verge. 4. Sharpness or keenness of language, argument, tone of voice, appetite, desire, etc. flame-edge. *v. 5. To put a border or edge on . 6. Fig. To give keenness, sharpness, or urgency to. *edging.
elfin ::: suggestive of an elf in strangeness and otherworldliness; in reference to legendary beings with magical powers, usually characterized as small, manlike, and mischievous.
embody ::: 1. To invest (a spiritual entity) with a body or with bodily form; render incarnate; make corporeal. 2. To give a tangible, bodily, or concrete form to (an abstract concept) or to be an example of or express (an idea, principle, etc. embodies, embodied, embodying, self-embodying.
emotion ::: 1. An affective state of consciousness in which joy, sorrow, fear, hate, or the like, is experienced, as distinguished from cognitive or volitional states of consciousness. Also abstract ‘feeling" as distinguished from the other classes of mental phenomena. 2. A state of mental agitation or disturbance. **emotion"s, emotions.
endeavour ::: a strenuous effort; attempt.
endure ::: 1. To undergo (hardship, strain, privation, etc.) without yielding; bear. 2. To bear without resistance or with patience; tolerate. 3. To admit of; allow; bear. 4. To continue to exist; last. endures, endured.
engine ::: 1. An agent, instrument, or means of accomplishment. 2. Any instrument or device. engines.
enlighten ::: to give intellectual or spiritual light to; instruct; impart knowledge to. enlightened, enlightening, enlightenment.
::: 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
equipoise ::: equality in distribution, as of weight, relationship, or emotional forces; equilibrium.
err ::: 1. To go astray in thought or belief; to make mistakes, blunder. 2. To stray from the right course or accepted standards; sin. erring.
errant ::: 1. Wandering in search of adventure. 2. Straying from the proper course or standards. 3. Moving in an aimless or lightly changing manner.
evil ::: n. 1. Morally bad or wrong; wicked, sinful, as opposed to good. 2. Anything causing injury or harm. Evil, evil"s, Evil"s. adj. 3. Characterized by or indicating future misfortune; ominous; disastrous. 4. Harmful; injurious. 5. Boding ill.
exact ::: 1. Capable of the greatest precision. 2. Precise, as opposed to approximate; neither more nor less. 3. Absolutely accurate or correct in every detail; the same in every detail; precise. 4. Admitting of no deviation, precise, rigorous; strictly regulated.
excessive freedom; lack of due restraint.
expunge ::: 1. To eliminate completely; annihilate. 2. To erase or strike out. expunged.
extended ::: 1. Spread out or elongated in breadth or length. 2. Fully extended or stretched forth. 3. Widespread or extensive; having extension or spatial magnitude.
extinguished ::: 1. Put an end to (hopes, for example); destroyed. 2. Put out, quenched. 3. Obscured; eclipsed.
extravagance ::: unrestrained or fantastic excess, as of actions or opinions; lavishness.
::: **"Fear and anxiety are perverse forms of will. What thou fearest & ponderest over, striking that note repeatedly in thy mind, thou helpest to bring about; for, if thy will above the surface of waking repels it, it is yet what thy mind underneath is all along willing, & the subconscious mind is mightier, wider, better equipped to fulfil than thy waking force & intellect. But the spirit is stronger than both together; from fear and hope take refuge in the grandiose calm and careless mastery of the spirit.” Essays Divine and Human
fear ::: n. 1. A distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, etc., whether the threat is real or imagined; the feeling or condition of being afraid. v. 2. To regard with fear; be afraid of. 3. To have reverential awe of.** fear"s, fears, feared, fearing, fear-filled.
feeble ::: 1. Lacking in volume, loudness, brightness, distinctness, etc. 2. Lacking in force, strength or effectiveness.
fell ::: of an inhumanly cruel nature; fierce; destructive. (All other references to the word are as the past tense of fall.)
fettered ::: bound with chains or ropes, etc. around the legs, as an animal, to restrict the movement of. Hence, fig. imposed restraint upon; confined, impeded, restrained.
fibre ::: 1. A filamentous substance; a web of thread-like tissue such as composes living tissue generally. 2. That which fundamentally constitutes the strength of a thing; sinew; stuff; character. fibres, fibred.
field ::: 1. A wide unbroken expanse, as of ice. 2. An area or sphere of activity. 3. A broad, level, open expanse of land; a stretch of open land, esp. one used for pasture or tillage; a plain. 4. The surface on which something is portrayed or enacted. An area of human activity or interest. 5. A piece of ground devoted to sports or contests; playing field. 6. A region of space characterized by a physical property, such as gravitational or electromagnetic force or fluid pressure. fields, field-paths, star-field, time-field, play-fields, race-fields.
fighter ::: one who fights, struggles, resists, etc.
fighting ::: the action or instance of contending, striving for victory, struggling, engaging in conflict.
fight ::: n. 1. Fig. A confrontation between opposing groups in which each attempts to harm or gain power over the other, as with bodily force or weapons. fights. v. 2. To contend with physically or in battle; attempt to defend oneself against or to subdue, defeat, or destroy an adversary. fighting, fought.
film ::: 1. A movie. 2. A thin flexible strip of cellulose coated with a photographic emulsion, used to make negatives and transparencies.
"Find the Guide secret within you or housed in an earthly body, hearken to his voice and follow always the way that he points. At the end is the Light that fails not, the Truth that deceives not, the Power that neither strays nor stumbles, the wide freedom, the ineffable Beatitude.” Essays Divine and Human
fine ::: 1. Of superior quality, skill, or appearance. 2. Superior or consummate in quality. 3. Exhibiting careful and delicate artistry. 4. Characterized by refinement or elegance. 5. Subtle or precise; refined. finer, fine-curved, fine-linked.
flame ::: n. 1. Burning gas or vapor, as from wood or coal, that is undergoing combustion; a portion of ignited gas or vapor. 2. Fig. A brilliant light; fiery glow. 3. Fig. Intense ardour, zeal, passion, vitality. 4. Spiritual fire. 5. Inner fire. 6. Bright colouring; a streak or patch of color. Flame, flames, flame-ascensions, flame-born, flame-bright, flame-child, flame-discovery, flame-edge, flame-eyed, flame-foot, flame-hills, flame-pure, flame-signs, flame-stabs, flame-throw, flame-white, flame-wrapped, moon-flame. v. 8. To burn with a flame or flames; burst into flames; blaze. 7. To burn or glow as if with fire; become red or fiery 8. To burn or burst forth with strong emotion. flames, flamed. ::: flames out. Bursts out in or as if in flames.
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.
flood ::: n. **1. A large body of water; a great flow or stream of any fluid; any great overwhelming quantity, also poet. & fig. 2. The rise and flowing in of the tide. 3. The rising of a body of water and its overflowing onto normally dry land. 4. Any great outpouring or stream. floods. v. 5. To flow or pour in or as if in a flood. flooded, flooding. ::: And heard the questioning of the unsatisfied flood **
flowing ::: moving in or as if in a stream.
flow ::: n. 1. To move or progress freely as if in a stream. 2. Fig. Something that resembles a flowing stream in moving continuously. v. 3. To circulate. 4. To move or progress freely as if in a stream. 5. To stream or well forth. 6. To proceed or be produced continuously and effortlessly from or out of a source. flows, flowed.
flute ::: n. 1. A high-pitched woodwind instrument; a slender tube closed at one end with finger holes on one end and an opening near the closed end across which the breath is blown. flutes. *v. 2. To play a flute. *fluted, fluting.
fold (s) ::: v. 1. To envelope or clasp; enfold. 2. To bring (the wings) close to the body, as a bird on alighting. folding. *n. 3. The doubling of any flexible substance, as cloth; one part turned or bent and laid on another. Also fig. *4. A coil of a serpent, string, etc.
force ::: n. 1. Strength; energy; power; intensity. 2. Fig. An agency, influence, or source of power likened to a physical force. Force, force"s, forces, Force-compelled, Conscious-Force, earth-force, God-Force, lion-forces, Mother-Force, Nature-force, Nature-Force, serpent-force, soul-force, Soul-Forces, world-force, World-Force, world-forces. *v. 3. To compel or cause (a person, group, etc.) to do something through effort, superior strength, etc.; coerce. 4. To propel or drive despite resistance. 5. To break open (a gate, door, etc.) *forces, forced, forcing.
foreboding ("s) ::: n. **1. A strong inner feeling or notion of a future misfortune, evil, etc.; presentiment. adj. 2.** Foretelling or predicting; indicating beforehand; portending.
::: "For God the Time-Spirit does not destroy for the sake of destruction, but to make the ways clear in the cyclic process for a greater rule and a progressing manifestation, . . . .” *Essays on the Gita
fork ::: something resembling or suggesting a pronged instrument in form; ::: hence a flash of lightning having a zigzag appearance.
formation ::: an organized structure or arrangement; creation. formations.
formed ::: given form or shape to; fashioned, constructed, framed. Formed (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as a n.).
formidable ::: 1. Arousing fear, dread, or alarm. 2. Of discouraging or awesome strength, size, difficulty, etc.; intimidating. 3. Arousing feelings of awe or admiration because of grandeur, strength, etc. 4. Of great strength; forceful; powerful.
::: "For the impersonal Divine is not ultimately an abstraction or a mere principle or a mere state or power and degree of being any more than we ourselves are really such abstractions. The intellect first approaches it through such conceptions, but realisation ends by exceeding them. Through the realisation of higher and higher principles of being and states of conscious existence we arrive not at the annullation of all in a sort of positive zero or even an inexpressible state of existence, but at the transcendent Existence itself which is also the Existent who transcends all definition by personality and yet is always that which is the essence of personality.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
"For the main business of the heart, its true function is love. It is our destined instrument of complete union and oneness; for to see oneness in the world by the understanding is not enough unless we also feel it with the heart and in the psychic being, and this means a delight in the One and in all existences in the world in him, a love of God and all beings. The heart"s faith and will in good are founded on a perception of the one Divine immanent in all things and leading the world.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
fortify ::: to impart physical strength or endurance to; invigorate. fortifying.
fortress ::: 1. A large fortified place; a fort or a group of forts, often including a town; citadel. 2. Any place of exceptional security; stronghold.
fortune ::: chance personified, commonly regarded as a mythical being distributing arbitrarily or capriciously the lots of life. Fortune.
forward ::: adv. 1. Toward or tending to the front; facing frontward. 2. Fig. Directed or moving ahead. 3. Of continuous motion: Towards what is in front; (moving) onwards, on. forward-rippling, forward-striving. *adj. 4. At or near or directed towards a point ahead.* ::: to look forward. Expect or hope for something positive in the future.
foundation ::: 1. The natural or prepared ground or base on which some structure is erected or rests. 2. Fig. That on which something is founded; basis. **foundations.
fountain ::: 1. The source or origin of anything. 2. A jet or stream of water made by artificial means to spout or rise from an opening or structure, as to afford water for use, to cool the air, or to serve for ornament. fountain"s, fountains.
frank ::: direct; ingenuous, open, sincere; undisguised; straightforward. frankness.
freely ::: in a free manner; without restraint.
fringe ::: 1. A decorative border of thread, cord, or the like, usually hanging loosely from a ravelled edge or strip. 2. Anything resembling or suggesting this. 3. An outer edge; margin; periphery. fringes, fringed.
frustrate ::: prevent from accomplishing a purpose or fulfilling a desire; thwart. frustrated.
frustration (‘s) ::: a feeling of dissatisfaction resulting from unfulfilled needs or unresolved problems.
furious ::: 1. Full of fury, violent passion, or rage; extremely angry; enraged. 2. Of unrestrained energy, speed, etc.
fury ::: unrestrained or violent anger, rage, passion, or the like.
gallop ::: 1. A natural three-beat gait of a horse, faster than a canter, in which all four feet are off the ground at the same time during each stride. 2. A ride taken at the pace of a gallop. galloping.
gasping ::: struggling for breath with open mouth; breathing convulsively, esp. at the point of death.
genealogy ::: a record or account of the ancestry and descent of a person, family, group, etc.
germs ::: initial stages in development or evolution as germ cells or ancestral forms; rudiments of living organisms.
giantess ::: an imaginary female being of human form but superhuman size, strength, etc.
giant ::: n. 1. Any creature of exceptional size or strength. giant"s, giants. adj. **2.** Of extraordinary size, extent, or force; gigantic, huge, monstrous.
gird ::: 1. To encircle; surround. 2. To provide, equip, or invest, as with power or strength. girt.
glistening ::: reflecting a sparkling light or a faint intermittent glow; shining lustrously.
gloss ::: 1. A superficial lustre or shine. 2. A superficially or deceptively attractive appearance.
glow ::: n. 1. A light emitted by or as if by a substance heated to luminosity; incandescence. 2. Brilliance or warmth of colour. 3. Intensity of emotion; ardour. joy-glow, petal-glow. v. 4. To shine intensely, as if from great heat. 5. To show a strong bright colour. glows, glowed, glowing.
glue ::: n. 1. Any substance used as a strong adhesive for fastening or joining substances. v. 2. To stick or fasten with or as if with glue. glued, blood-glued.
godhead ::: Sri Aurobindo: ". . . the Godhead is all that is universe and all that is in the universe and all that is more than the universe. The Gita lays stress first on his supracosmic existence. For otherwise the mind would miss its highest goal and remain turned towards the cosmic only or else attached to some partial experience of the Divine in the cosmos. It lays stress next on his universal existence in which all moves and acts. For that is the justification of the cosmic effort and that is the vast spiritual self-awareness in which the Godhead self-seen as the Time-Spirit does his universal works. Next it insists with a certain austere emphasis on the acceptance of the Godhead as the divine inhabitant in the human body. For he is the Immanent in all existences, and if the indwelling divinity is not recognised, not only will the divine meaning of individual existence be missed, the urge to our supreme spiritual possibilities deprived of its greatest force, but the relations of soul with soul in humanity will be left petty, limited and egoistic. Finally, it insists at great length on the divine manifestation in all things in the universe and affirms the derivation of all that is from the nature, power and light of the one Godhead.” *Essays on the Gita
golden Child ::: Sri Aurobindo: "I suppose the golden child is the Truth-Soul which follows after the silver light of the spiritual. When it plunges into the black waters of the subconscient, it releases from it the spiritual light and the sevenfold streams of the Divine Energy and, clearing itself of the stains of the subconscient, it prepares its flight towards the supreme Divine (the Mother).” (Reply to a question in the chapter Visions and Symbols.) Letters on Yoga
gong ::: a large bronze disk of Asian origin, having an upturned rim that produces a vibrant, hollow tone when struck, usually with a soft mallet.
gorgon ::: greek myth any of three winged monstrous sisters, Stheno, Euryale, and Medusa, who had live snakes for hair, huge teeth, and brazen claws. A glance at Medusa who was slain by Perseus) turned the beholder to stone.
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.**
grapple ::: n. **1. A struggle or contest in which the participants attempt to clutch or grip each other. v. 2. To try to deal with a problem, etc. grappled.**
grief ::: 1. Deep or intense sorrow or distress, esp. at the death of someone. 2. Something that causes great unhappiness. grief"s, griefs, griefless.
grovel ::: 1. To lie or creep or crawl in a prostrate position with the face down as in subservience, fear or humility. 2. To behave in a servile or demeaning manner; cringe. 3. To take pleasure in mean or base things. grovels, grovelling.
guarded ::: 1. Protected; defended. 2. Prudent, restrained or noncommittal. many-guarded
gust ::: 1. A strong, abrupt rush of wind. 2. A sudden burst or outburst. gusts, gusty.
gutter ("s) ::: 1. A trough fixed under or along the eaves for draining rainwater from a roof. 2. A channel at the edge of a street or road for carrying off surface water.
had a strong, often restless desire.
halo ::: a geometric shape, usually in the form of a disk, circle, ring or rayed structure, traditionally representing a radiant light around or above the head of a divine or sacred personage. haloed.
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.
harmony ::: 1. A pleasing combination of elements in a whole. 2. Agreement in feeling or opinion; accord. 3. Combination of sounds considered pleasing to the ear. 4. A simultaneous combination of tones, esp. when blended into chords pleasing to the ear; chordal structure, as distinguished from melody and rhythm. harmony"s, harmonies, harmonious, harmoniously.
harp ::: a usually large musical instrument which is held upright, and which has many strings of varying length which are plucked with the fingers. harp"s, harps.
heal ::: 1. To restore to health or soundness; cure. 2.* Fig. To restore (a person) to spiritual wholeness. 3. To become whole and sound; return to health. 4. To bring to an end or conclusion, as conflicts between people or groups, usually with a strong implication of restoring former amity; settle; reconcile. *heals, healed, healing.
heart-strings
heart ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The heart in Vedic psychology is not restricted to the seat of the emotions; it includes all that large tract of spontaneous mentality, nearest to the subconscient in us, out of which rise the sensations, emotions, instincts, impulses and all those intuitions and inspirations that travel through these agencies before they arrive at form in the intelligence.” *The Secret of the Veda
hedge ::: n.** 1. A row of closely planted shrubs or low-growing trees forming a fence or boundary. 2. Any barrier or boundary. hedges. v. 3. To hem in, hinder, or restrict with or as if with a hedge. hedged, fate-hedged. **
helpless ::: adj. **1. Deprived of strength or power; powerless; incapacitated. 2.* Unable to help oneself; weak or dependent. adv. helplessly. n.* helplessness.
hemisphere ::: 1. Half of the terrestrial globe or celestial sphere. 2. The area within which something occurs or dominates; sphere; realm. hemispheres.
hemmed ::: confined or bound by an environment of any kind; enclosed, shut in, limited, restrained, imprisoned; often followed by in.
herculean ::: requiring tremendous effort, strength, etc. (Sri Aurobindo capitalises the word.)
hinder ::: to obstruct or delay the progress of.
"Ideals are truths that have not yet effected themselves for man, the realities of a higher plane of existence which have yet to fulfil themselves on this lower plane of life and matter, our present field of operation. To the pragmatical intellect which takes its stand upon the ever-changing present, ideals are not truths, not realities, they are at most potentialities of future truth and only become real when they are visible in the external fact as work of force accomplished. But to the mind which is able to draw back from the flux of force in the material universe, to the consciousness which is not imprisoned in its own workings or carried along in their flood but is able to envelop, hold and comprehend them, to the soul that is not merely the subject and instrument of the world-force but can reflect something of that Master-Consciousness which controls and uses it, the ideal present to its inner vision is a greater reality than the changing fact obvious to its outer senses. The Supramental Manifestation*
illumined mind ::: Sri Aurobindo: "This greater Force is that of the Illumined Mind, a Mind no longer of higher Thought, but of spiritual light. Here the clarity of the spiritual intelligence, its tranquil daylight, gives place or subordinates itself to an intense lustre, a splendour and illumination of the Spirit: a play of lightnings of spiritual truth and power breaks from above into the consciousness and adds to the calm and wide enlightenment and the vast descent of peace which characterise or accompany the action of the larger conceptual-spiritual principle, a fiery ardour of realisation and a rapturous ecstasy of knowledge.” *The Life Divine
"The Illumined Mind does not work primarily by thought, but by vision; . . . .” The Life Divine
"As the Higher Mind brings a greater consciousness into the being through the spiritual idea and its power of truth, so the Illumined Mind brings in a still greater consciousness through a Truth-sight and Truth-light and its seeing and seizing power.” The Life Divine*
"Immortality is not the survival of the mental personality after death, though that also is true, but the waking possession of the unborn & deathless self of which body is only an instrument and a shadow.” Essays Divine and Human
"Immortality is one of the possible results of supramentalisation, but it is not an obligatory result and it does not mean that there will be an eternal or indefinite prolongation of life as it is. That is what many think it will be, that they will remain what they are with all their human desires and the only difference will be that they will satisfy them endlessly; but such an immortality would not be worth having and it would not be long before people are tired of it. To live in the Divine and have the divine Consciousness is itself immortality and to be able to divinise the body also and make it a fit instrument for divine works and divine life would be its material expression only.” *Letters on Yoga
impediments ::: things that impede, hinder, or obstruct; obstacles.
impotent ::: lacking sufficient strength or ability; powerless to achieve.
impoverished ::: deprived of richness and strength.
instrument ::: 1. A means by which something is affected or done; agency. 2. A person used by an agency for a particular purpose. instruments, instruments", instrument-personality.
incapacity ::: lack of ability, qualification, or strength; esp. to receive.
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.**
indignant ::: angered at something unjust or wrong; expressing strong displeasure at something considered unjust, offensive, insulting, or base.
indoctrinated ::: instructed in a doctrine, principle, ideology, etc., esp. imbued with a specific partisan or biased belief or point of view.
ingenious ::: 1. Characterised by cleverness or originality of invention or construction. 2. Cleverly inventive or resourceful. ingeniously.
inhibitions ::: conscious or unconscious restraint of a behavioural process, a desire, or an impulse.
initiate ::: ppla.**1. Instructed in or introduced to secret or sacred knowledge. n.2. A novice, beginner. Initiate.**
::: "Intellect is part of Mind and an instrument of half-truth like the rest of the Mind.” Letters on Yoga
intense ::: 1. Existing or occurring in a high or extreme degree. 2. Having a characteristic quality in a high degree. 3. Characterized by deep or forceful feelings or emotions. 4. Of an extreme kind; very great, as in strength, keenness, severity, or the like. intenser, intensity, intensities.
intermediate zone ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The intermediate zone means simply a confused condition or passage in which one is getting out of the personal consciousness and opening into the cosmic (cosmic Mind, cosmic vital, cosmic physical, something perhaps of the cosmic higher Mind) without having yet transcended the human mind levels. One is not in possession of or direct contact with the divine Truth on its own levels , but one can receive something from them, even from the overmind, indirectly. Only, as one is still immersed in the cosmic Ignorance, all that comes from above can be mixed, perverted, taken hold of for their purposes by lower, even by hostile Powers. ::: It is not necessary for everyone to struggle through the intermediate zone. If one has purified oneself, if there is no abnormal vanity, egoism, ambition or other strong misleading element, or if one is vigilant and on one"s guard, or if the psychic is in front, one can either pass rapidly and directly or with a minimum of trouble into the higher zones of consciousness where one is in direct contact with the Divine Truth.
interned ::: restricted to or confined within prescribed limits, as prisoners of war, enemy aliens, or combat troops who take refuge in a neutral country. Also fig.
interpret ::: 1. To give or provide the meaning of; explain; explicate; elucidate. 2. To conceive the significance of; construe. interpreted, interpreting, interpreter, interpreters, interpretation, interpretation"s, world-interpreting.
intuition ::: direct perception of truth, fact, etc., independent of any reasoning process. intuition"s, intuitions, half-intuition.
Sri Aurobindo: "Intuition is a power of consciousness nearer and more intimate to the original knowledge by identity; for it is always something that leaps out direct from a concealed identity. It is when the consciousness of the subject meets with the consciousness in the object, penetrates it and sees, feels or vibrates with the truth of what it contacts, that the intuition leaps out like a spark or lightning-flash from the shock of the meeting; or when the consciousness, even without any such meeting, looks into itself and feels directly and intimately the truth or the truths that are there or so contacts the hidden forces behind appearances, then also there is the outbreak of an intuitive light; or, again, when the consciousness meets the Supreme Reality or the spiritual reality of things and beings and has a contactual union with it, then the spark, the flash or the blaze of intimate truth-perception is lit in its depths. This close perception is more than sight, more than conception: it is the result of a penetrating and revealing touch which carries in it sight and conception as part of itself or as its natural consequence. A concealed or slumbering identity, not yet recovering itself, still remembers or conveys by the intuition its own contents and the intimacy of its self-feeling and self-vision of things, its light of truth, its overwhelming and automatic certitude.” *The Life Divine
"Intuition is always an edge or ray or outleap of a superior light; it is in us a projecting blade, edge or point of a far-off supermind light entering into and modified by some intermediate truth-mind substance above us and, so modified, again entering into and very much blinded by our ordinary or ignorant mind-substance; but on that higher level to which it is native its light is unmixed and therefore entirely and purely veridical, and its rays are not separated but connected or massed together in a play of waves of what might almost be called in the Sanskrit poetic figure a sea or mass of ``stable lightnings"". When this original or native Intuition begins to descend into us in answer to an ascension of our consciousness to its level or as a result of our finding of a clear way of communication with it, it may continue to come as a play of lightning-flashes, isolated or in constant action; but at this stage the judgment of reason becomes quite inapplicable, it can only act as an observer or registrar understanding or recording the more luminous intimations, judgments and discriminations of the higher power. To complete or verify an isolated intuition or discriminate its nature, its application, its limitations, the receiving consciousness must rely on another completing intuition or be able to call down a massed intuition capable of putting all in place. For once the process of the change has begun, a complete transmutation of the stuff and activities of the mind into the substance, form and power of Intuition is imperative; until then, so long as the process of consciousness depends upon the lower intelligence serving or helping out or using the intuition, the result can only be a survival of the mixed Knowledge-Ignorance uplifted or relieved by a higher light and force acting in its parts of Knowledge.” *The Life Divine
"I use the word ‘intuition" for want of a better. In truth, it is a makeshift and inadequate to the connotation demanded of it. The same has to be said of the word ‘consciousness" and many others which our poverty compels us to extend illegitimately in their significance.” *The Life Divine - Sri Aurobindo"s footnote.
"For intuition is an edge of light thrust out by the secret Supermind. . . .” The Life Divine
". . . intuition is born of a direct awareness while intellect is an indirect action of a knowledge which constructs itself with difficulty out of the unknown from signs and indications and gathered data.” The Life Divine
"Intuition is above illumined Mind which is simply higher Mind raised to a great luminosity and more open to modified forms of intuition and inspiration.” Letters on Yoga
"Intuition sees the truth of things by a direct inner contact, not like the ordinary mental intelligence by seeking and reaching out for indirect contacts through the senses etc. But the limitation of the Intuition as compared with the supermind is that it sees things by flashes, point by point, not as a whole. Also in coming into the mind it gets mixed with the mental movement and forms a kind of intuitive mind activity which is not the pure truth, but something in between the higher Truth and the mental seeking. It can lead the consciousness through a sort of transitional stage and that is practically its function.” Letters on Yoga
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*
iridescent ::: displaying a play of lustrous colors like those of the rainbow.
iron ::: n. 1. A silver-white metal, usually an admixture of some other substance, usually carbon, rendering it extremely hard and useful for tools, implements, machinery, constructions, and in many other applications. adj. 2. Inflexible; unyielding; firm. 3. Stern; harsh; cruel. 4. *Fig.* Resembling iron in firmness, strength, colour, etc.
issue ::: 1. The ultimate result, event, or outcome of a proceeding, affair, etc. 2. The act of sending out or putting forth; distribution. 3. Something that is sent out or put forth in any form. 4. The act of sending out or putting forth; promulgation; distribution. issues, issued, issuing, issueless.
isthmus ::: a narrow strip of land, bordered on both sides by water, connecting two larger bodies of land.
"It is because of our experience won at a tremendous price that we can urge upon you and others, ``Take the psychic attitude; follow the straight sunlit path, with the Divine openly or secretly upbearing you — if secretly, he will yet show himself in good time, — do not insist on the hard, hampered, roundabout and difficult journey."" Letters on Yoga
justicer ::: a judge or magistrate. justicers. ::: justify
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.
::: "Kali, the Mother of all and destroyer of all, is the Shakti that works in secret in the heart of humanity. . . .” *Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
::: "Karma is only a machinery, it is not the fundamental cause of terrestrial existence — it cannot be, for when the soul first entered this existence, it had no Karma.” *Letters on Yoga
keel ::: 1. The principal structural member of a ship or boat, running lengthwise along the center line from bow to stern, to which the frames are attached. 2. A poetic word for ship.
keen ::: 1. Intense, as feeling or desire. 2. Sharp; vivid; strong. 3. Having a fine, sharp cutting edge or point. 4. Intense; piercing. keen-edged, keen-visioned.
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.
knead ::: 1. To mix and work into a uniform mass, as by folding, pressing, and stretching with the hands. 2. To make or shape by or as if by folding, pressing, and stretching; manipulate. kneaded.
knock*.* ::: n. **1. The sound of a sharp tap on a hard surface; a rap. knocks. v. 2. To rap with the knuckles or an instrument. 3. To strike the breast. knocked.**
::: "Knowledge is a child with its achievements; for when it has found out something, it runs about the streets whooping and shouting; Wisdom conceals hers for a long time in a thoughtful and mighty silence.” *Essays Divine and Human
labouring ::: 1. Doing arduous or unpleasant work. 2. Striving, working hard against opposition or pressure.
labour ::: n. **1. Difficult or arduous work or effort. Also fig. labour"s. v. 2. To strive and make an effort to reach a goal. labours, laboured, labouring.**
labyrinth ::: an intricate structure of interconnecting passages through which it is difficult to find one"s way; a maze. (Sri Aurobindo employs the word as an adj.)
lacerated ::: 1. *Lit. Torn; mangled. 2. Fig.* Torn with deep emotional pain; distress.
lacking moral discipline or ignoring legal restraint, especially in sexual conduct.
lattice ::: an open framework made of strips of metal, wood, or similar material overlapped or overlaid in a regular, usually crisscross pattern. lattices, lattice-window.
laxity ::: the state or quality of being lax; looseness; lacking in strength.
lay waste ::: to devastate; destroy; ruin. laid waste.
leaf ::: 1. A usually green, flattened, lateral structure attached to a stem and functioning as a principle organ of photosynthesis and transpiration in most plants. 2. A page of a book or manuscript. lotus-leaf. (See also gold-leaf.)
leash ::: a chain, strap, etc. for controlling or leading a dog or other animal.
"Life is universal Force working so as to create, energise, maintain and modify, even to the extent of dissolving and reconstructing, substantial forms with mutual play and interchange of an overtly or secretly conscious energy as its fundamental character.” The Life Divine
light, divine ::: Sri Aurobindo: ". . . there is a Divine Light that leans over the world and is not only a far-off incommunicable Lustre.” *Letters on Yoga
"The opening of the consciousness to the Divine Light and Truth and Presence is always the one important thing in the yoga.” *Letters on Yoga
"In the Veda the Cow is the Divine Light — . . . .” Letters on Yoga*
limited ::: confined or restricted within certain limits.
limiting ::: serving to restrict or restrain; restrictive; confining.
limitless ::: having no limit or limits; unrestricted; boundless.
limit ::: n. 1. A boundary or frontier, as of a country, area, etc. 2. The final, utmost, or furthest boundary or point as to extent, amount, continuance, procedure, etc.; the point, edge, or line beyond which something cannot or may not proceed. limits. v. 2. To restrict or confine, as to area, extent, time, etc. limits, limited.
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.
lintel ::: a horizontal structural member, such as a beam or stone, that spans an opening, as between the uprights of a door or window or between two columns or piers.
longed ::: desired strongly or persistently. longs, longed-for.
longing ::: strong, persistent desire or craving, esp. for something unattainable or distant. longing"s, longings, longings".
loom ::: an apparatus for making thread or yarn into cloth by weaving strands together at right angles.
low-built ::: comb. Forming with ppl. adjs. used attrib. numerous quasi-compounds, usually hyphened, such as low-built; built, constructed, in a low or inferior way.
lustre ::: 1. Reflected light; sheen; gloss. 2. Radiance or brilliance of light. 3. Great splendour of the countenance. beauty, etc. lustres.
lustrous ::: having a sheen or glow; gleaming with or as if with brilliant light; radiant; shining; luminous. star-lustrous.
lute ::: a stringed musical instrument having a long, fretted neck and a hollow, typically pear-shaped body with a vaulted back.
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.
n. 1. An exercise serving an educational purpose; something to be learned or studied. lessons. *v. *2. To teach, instruct.
n. **1. A rigid structure formed of relatively slender pieces, joined as to surround sizeable empty spaces. 2. Form, constitution, or structure in general; system; order. 3. Applied to the heaven, earth, etc. regarded as a structure. 4. A body, esp. the human body; physique. 5. A border or case for enclosing a picture, mirror, etc. ::: frames, world-frame. v. 6. To contrive, devise, or compose, as a plan, law, or poem. 7. To fashion or shape. 8. To shape or adapt to a particular purpose. framed, framing, self-framed.**
n. 1. The body or outward appearance of a person or an animal considered separately from the face or head; figure. 2. An object, person, or part of the human body or the appearance of any of these, esp. as seen in nature. 3. The mode in which a thing exists, acts, or manifests itself; kind. 4. The structure, pattern, organization or essential nature of anything. Form, form"s, forms, Forms, form-bound, form-discoveries, form-maker, form-smitten, thought-forms. v. 5. To give form to; shape. 6.* *To take or assume form; to be formed or produced. forms, formed, many-formed, sense-formed. ::: re-form.** To form a second time, form over again.
n. 1. The discomfort, weakness, or pain caused by a prolonged lack of food. v. 2.* Fig. To have a strong desire or craving. Hunger, *hunger"s, hungers hungered, hungering.
n. 1. The horizontal line or plane in which anything is situated, with regard to its elevation. 2. A plane or position in a graded scale; position in a hierarchy. 3. On the same plane, on an equality (with). levels. *adj. 4.** *Having a surface without slope, tilt in which no part is higher or lower than another. 5. Height, position, strength, rank, plane, etc. Also fig. v. 6. Fig. To bring persons or things to an equal level; equalize. levelled, all-levelling.**
n. 1. The lower interior part of a ship or airplane where cargo is stored. 2. The act or a means of grasping. v. 3. To have or keep in the hand; keep fast; grasp. 4. To bear, sustain, or support, as with the hands or arms, or by any other means. 5. To contain or be capable of containing. 6. To keep from departing or getting away. 7. To withstand stress, pressure, or opposition; to maintain occupation of by force or coercion. 8. To have in its power, possess, affect, occupy. 9. To engage in; preside over; carry on. 10. To have or keep in the mind; think or believe. 11. To regard or consider. 12. To keep or maintain a grasp on something. 13. To maintain one"s position against opposition; continue in resistance. 14. To agree or side (usually followed by with). holds, holding. ::: hold back. 15. a. To retain possession of; keep back. b. To refrain from revealing; withhold. c. To refrain from participating or engaging in some activity.
::: "Nothing can be destroyed for all is He who is for ever.” Essays Divine and Human*
"Our ego is only a face of the universal being and has no separate existence; our apparent separative individuality is only a surface movement and behind it our real individuality stretches out to unity with all things and upward to oneness with the transcendent Divine Infinity. Thus our ego, which seems to be a limitation of existence, is really a power of infinity; the boundless multiplicity of beings in the world is a result and signal evidence, not of limitation or finiteness, but of that illimitable Infinity.” The Life Divine
::: "Our incapacity does not matter — there is no human being who is not in his parts of nature incapable — but the Divine Force also is there. If one puts one"s trust in that, incapacity will be changed into capacity. Difficulty and struggle themselves then become a means towards the achievement.” Letters on Yoga
::: **"See God everywhere and be not frightened by masks. Believe that all falsehood is truth in the making or truth in the breaking, all failure an effectuality concealed, all weakness strength hiding itself from its own vision, all pain a secret & violent ecstasy.” Essays Divine and Human
Sri Aurobindo: "As there are Powers of Knowledge or Forces of the Light, so there are Powers of Ignorance and tenebrous Forces of the Darkness whose work is to prolong the reign of Ignorance and Inconscience. As there are Forces of Truth, so there are Forces that live by the Falsehood and support it and work for its victory; as there are powers whose life is intimately bound up with the existence, the idea and the impulse of Good, so there are Forces whose life is bound up with the existence and the idea and the impulse of Evil. It is this truth of the cosmic Invisible that was symbolised in the ancient belief of a struggle between the powers of Light and Darkness, Good and Evil for the possession of the world and the government of the life of man; — this was the significance of the contest between the Vedic Gods and their opponents, sons of Darkness and Division, figured in a later tradition as Titan and Giant and Demon, Asura, Rakshasa, Pisacha; the same tradition is found in the Zoroastrian Double Principle and the later Semitic opposition of God and his Angels on the one side and Satan and his hosts on the other, — invisible Personalities and Powers that draw man to the divine Light and Truth and Good or lure him into subjection to the undivine principle of Darkness and Falsehood and Evil.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "Destruction in itself is neither good nor evil. It is a fact of Nature, a necessity in the play of forces, as things are in this world. The Light destroys the Darkness and the Powers of Darkness, and that is not a movement of Ignorance!” *Letters on Yoga
*Sri Aurobindo: "Ego is only a faculty put forward by the discriminative mind to centralise round itself the experiences of the sense-mind and to serve as a sort of lynch-pin in the wheel which keeps together the movement. It is no more than an instrument, although it is true that so long as we are limited by our normal mentality, we are compelled by the nature of that mentality and the purpose of the instrument to mistake our ego-function for our very self.” The Upanishads
Sri Aurobindo: "Hell and heaven are often imaginary states of the soul or rather of the vital which it constructs about it after its passing. What is meant by hell is a painful passage through the vital or lingering there, as for instance, in many cases of suicide where one remains surrounded by the forces of suffering and turmoil created by this unnatural and violent exit. There are, of course, also worlds of mind and vital worlds which are penetrated with joyful or dark experiences. One may pass through these as the result of things formed in the nature which create the necessary affinities, but the idea of reward or retribution is a crude and vulgar conception which is a mere popular error.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "History teaches us nothing; it is a confused torrent of events and personalities or a kaleidoscope of changing institutions. We do not seize the real sense of all this change and this continual streaming forward of human life in the channels of Time. What we do seize are current or recurrent phenomena, facile generalisations, partial ideas. We talk of democracy, aristocracy and autocracy, collectivism and individualism, imperialism and nationalism, the State and the commune, capitalism and labour; we advance hasty generalisations and make absolute systems which are positively announced today only to be abandoned perforce tomorrow; we espouse causes and ardent enthusiasms whose triumph turns to an early disillusionment and then forsake them for others, perhaps for those that we have taken so much trouble to destroy. For a whole century mankind thirsts and battles after liberty and earns it with a bitter expense of toil, tears and blood; the century that enjoys without having fought for it turns away as from a puerile illusion and is ready to renounce the depreciated gain as the price of some new good. And all this happens because our whole thought and action with regard to our collective life is shallow and empirical; it does not seek for, it does not base itself on a firm, profound and complete knowledge. The moral is not the vanity of human life, of its ardours and enthusiasms and of the ideals it pursues, but the necessity of a wiser, larger, more patient search after its true law and aim.” *The Human Cycle etc.
*Sri Aurobindo: "If thou think defeat is the end of thee, then go not forth to fight, even though thou be the stronger. For Fate is not purchased by any man nor is Power bound over to her possessors. But defeat is not the end, it is only a gate or a beginning.” Essays Human and Divine*
*Sri Aurobindo: "In other words, ethics is a stage in evolution. That which is common to all stages is the urge of Sachchidananda towards self-expression. This urge is at first non-ethical, then infra-ethical in the animal, then in the intelligent animal even anti-ethical for it permits us to approve hurt done to others which we disapprove when done to ourselves. In this respect man even now is only half-ethical. And just as all below us is infra-ethical, so there may be that above us whither we shall eventually arrive, which is supra-ethical, has no need of ethics. The ethical impulse and attitude, so all-important to humanity, is a means by which it struggles out of the lower harmony and universality based upon inconscience and broken up by Life into individual discords towards a higher harmony and universality based upon conscient oneness with all existences. Arriving at that goal, this means will no longer be necessary or even possible, since the qualities and oppositions on which it depends will naturally dissolve and disappear in the final reconciliation.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "I suppose the golden child is the Truth-Soul which follows after the silver light of the spiritual. When it plunges into the black waters of the subconscient, it releases from it the spiritual light and the sevenfold streams of the Divine Energy and, clearing itself of the stains of the subconscient, it prepares its flight towards the supreme Divine (the Mother).” (Reply to a question in the chapter Visions and Symbols.) Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "It 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: " Karma is nothing but the will of the Spirit in action, consequence nothing but the creation of will. What is in the will of being, expresses itself in karma and consequence. When the will is limited in mind, karma appears as a bondage and a limitation, consequence as a reaction or an imposition. But when the will of the being is infinite in the spirit, karma and consequence become instead the joy of the creative spirit, the construction of the eternal mechanist, the word and drama of the eternal poet, the harmony of the eternal musician, the play of the eternal child.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: ". . . our mind has the faculty of imagination; it can create and take as true and real its own mental structures: . . . . Our mental imagination is an instrument of Ignorance; it is the resort or device or refuge of a limited capacity of knowledge, a limited capacity of effective action. Mind supplements these deficiencies by its power of imagination: it uses it to extract from things obvious and visible the things that are not obvious and visible; it undertakes to create its own figures of the possible and the impossible; it erects illusory actuals or draws figures of a conjectured or constructed truth of things that are not true to outer experience. That is at least the appearance of its operation; but, in reality, it is the mind"s way or one of its ways of summoning out of Being its infinite possibilities, even of discovering or capturing the unknown possibilities of the Infinite.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: ” See God everywhere and be not frightened by masks. Believe that all falsehood is truth in the making or truth in the breaking, all failure an effectuality concealed, all weakness strength hiding itself from its own vision, all pain a secret & violent ecstasy. If thou believest firmly & unweariedly, in the end thou wilt see & experience the All-true, Almighty & All-blissful.” Essays Divine and Human*
::: Sri Aurobindo: "Spiritual force has its own concreteness; it can take a form (like a stream, for instance) of which one is aware and can send it quite concretely on whatever object one chooses. This is a statement of fact about the power inherent in spiritual consciousness. But there is also such a thing as a willed use of any subtle force — it may be spiritual, mental or vital — to secure a particular result at some point in the world. Just as there are waves of unseen physical forces (cosmic waves etc.) or currents of electricity, so there are mind-waves, thought-currents, waves of emotion, — for example, anger, sorrow, etc., — which go out and affect others without their knowing whence they come or that they come at all, they only feel the result. One who has the occult or inner senses awake can feel them coming and invading him.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "The anarchic is the true divine state of man in the end as in the beginning; but in between it would lead us straight to the devil and his kingdom.” Essays Divine and Human*
Sri Aurobindo: "the black dragon of the Inconscience sustains with its vast wings and its back of darkness the whole structure of the material universe; its energies unroll the flux of things, its obscure intimations seem to be the starting-point of consciousness itself and the source of all life-impulse.” The Life Divine ::: **Unused, guarded beneath Night"s dragon paws,**
Sri Aurobindo: "The faith in the divine Shakti must be always at the back of our strength and when she becomes manifest, it must be or grow implicit and complete. There is nothing that is impossible to her who is the conscious Power and universal Goddess all-creative from eternity and armed with the Spirit"s omnipotence.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "The first is the discovery of the soul, not the outer soul of thought and emotion and desire, but the secret psychic entity, the divine element within us. When that becomes dominant over the nature, when we are consciously the soul and when mind, life and body take their true place as its instruments, we are aware of a guide within that knows the truth, the good, the true delight and beauty of existence, controls heart and intellect by its luminous law and leads our life and being towards spiritual completeness.” *The Life Divine
*Sri Aurobindo: "The Indian explanation of fate is Karma. We ourselves are our own fate through our actions, but the fate created by us binds us; for what we have sown, we must reap in this life or another. Still we are creating our fate for the future even while undergoing old fate from the past in the present. That gives a meaning to our will and action and does not, as European critics wrongly believe, constitute a rigid and sterilising fatalism. But again, our will and action can often annul or modify even the past Karma, it is only certain strong effects, called utkata karma, that are non-modifiable. Here too the achievement of the spiritual consciousness and life is supposed to annul or give the power to annul Karma. For we enter into union with the Will Divine, cosmic or transcendent, which can annul what it had sanctioned for certain conditions, new-create what it had created, the narrow fixed lines disappear, there is a more plastic freedom and wideness. Neither Karma nor Astrology therefore points to a rigid and for ever immutable fate.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "There is no necessity in the essential nature of mind, sense, life that they should be so limited: for the physical sense-organs are not the creators of sense-perceptions, but themselves the creation, the instruments and here a necessary convenience of the cosmic sense; the nervous system and vital organs are not the creators of life"s action and reaction, but themselves the creation, the instruments and here a necessary convenience of the cosmic Life-force; the brain is not the creator of thought, but itself the creation, the instrument and here a necessary convenience of the cosmic Mind. The necessity then is not absolute, but teleological; it is the result of a divine cosmic Will in the material universe which intends to posit here a physical relation between sense and its object, establishes here a material formula and law of Conscious-Force and creates by it physical images of Conscious-Being to serve as the initial, dominating and determining fact of the world in which we live. It is not a fundamental law of being, but a constructive principle necessitated by the intention of the Spirit to evolve in a world of Matter.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "The true soul secret in us, — subliminal, we have said, but the word is misleading, for this presence is not situated below the threshold of waking mind, but rather burns in the temple of the inmost heart behind the thick screen of an ignorant mind, life and body, not subliminal but behind the veil, — this veiled psychic entity is the flame of the Godhead always alight within us, inextinguishable even by that dense unconsciousness of any spiritual self within which obscures our outward nature. It is a flame born out of the Divine and, luminous inhabitant of the Ignorance, grows in it till it is able to turn it towards the Knowledge. It is the concealed Witness and Control, the hidden Guide, the Daemon of Socrates, the inner light or inner voice of the mystic. It is that which endures and is imperishable in us from birth to birth, untouched by death, decay or corruption, an indestructible spark of the Divine.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "This truth of Karma has been always recognised in the East in one form or else in another; but to the Buddhists belongs the credit of having given to it the clearest and fullest universal enunciation and the most insistent importance. In the West too the idea has constantly recurred, but in external, in fragmentary glimpses, as the recognition of a pragmatic truth of experience, and mostly as an ordered ethical law or fatality set over against the self-will and strength of man: but it was clouded over by other ideas inconsistent with any reign of law, vague ideas of some superior caprice or of some divine jealousy, — that was a notion of the Greeks, — a blind Fate or inscrutable Necessity, Ananke, or, later, the mysterious ways of an arbitrary, though no doubt an all-wise Providence.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga *Ananke"s.
::: *"Stevenson has a striking passage in "Kidnapped” where the hero notes that his fear is felt primarily not in the heart but the stomach.” Letters on Yoga
Strength is all right for the strong — but aspiration and the Grace answering to it are not altogether myths; they are great realities of the spiritual life.” Letters on Yoga*
"The Adversary will disappear only when he is no longer necessary in the world. And we know very well that he is necessary, as the touch-stone for gold: to know if it is pure. But if one is really sincere, the Adversary can"t even approach him any longer; and he doesn"t try it, because that would be courting his own destruction.” Questions and Answers 1955, MCW Vol. 7.
The Apsaras then are the divine Hetairae of Paradise, beautiful singers and actresses whose beauty and art relieve the arduous and world-long struggle of the Gods against the forces that tend towards disruption by the Titans who would restore Matter to its original atomic condition or of dissolution by the sages and hermits who would make phenomena dissolve prematurely into the One who is above phenomena. They rose from the Ocean, says Valmiki, seeking who should choose them as brides, but neither the Gods nor the Titans accepted them, therefore are they said to be common or universal. The Harmony of Virtue
"The body is not only the necessary outer instrument of the physical part of action, but for the purposes of this life a base or pedestal also for all inner action.” The Synthesis of Yoga
the strings on an apron, used for securing it around one"s person.tie to someone"s apron strings. To make or be dependent on or dominated by someone.
"The cosmic consciousness is that in which the limits of ego, personal mind and body disappear and one becomes aware of a cosmic vastness which is or filled by a cosmic spirit and aware also of the direct play of cosmic forces, universal mind forces, universal life forces, universal energies of Matter, universal overmind forces. But one does not become aware of all these together; the opening of the cosmic consciousness is usually progressive. It is not that the ego, the body, the personal mind disappear, but one feels them as only a small part of oneself. One begins to feel others too as part of oneself or varied repetitions of oneself, the same self modified by Nature in other bodies. Or, at the least, as living in the larger universal self which is henceforth one"s own greater reality. All things in fact begin to change their nature and appearance; one"s whole experience of the world is radically different from that of those who are shut up in their personal selves. One begins to know things by a different kind of experience, more direct, not depending on the external mind and the senses. It is not that the possibility of error disappears, for that cannot be so long as mind of any kind is one"s instrument for transcribing knowledge, but there is a new, vast and deep way of experiencing, seeing, knowing, contacting things; and the confines of knowledge can be rolled back to an almost unmeasurable degree. The thing one has to be on guard against in the cosmic consciousness is the play of a magnified ego, the vaster attacks of the hostile forces — for they too are part of the cosmic consciousness — and the attempt of the cosmic Illusion (Ignorance, Avidya) to prevent the growth of the soul into the cosmic Truth. These are things that one has to learn from experience; mental teaching or explanation is quite insufficient. To enter safely into the cosmic consciousness and to pass safely through it, it is necessary to have a strong central unegoistic sincerity and to have the psychic being, with its divination of truth and unfaltering orientation towards the Divine, already in front in ::: —the nature.” Letters on Yoga*
"The Cross is in Yoga the symbol of the soul & nature in their strong & perfect union, but because of our fall into the impurities of ignorance it has become the symbol of suffering and purification.” Essays Divine and Human*
"The Divine is a Being and not an abstract existence or a status of pure timeless infinity; . . . .” The Synthesis of Yoga
"The elementary state of material Force is, in the view of the old Indian physicists, a condition of pure material extension in Space of which the peculiar property is vibration typified to us by the phenomenon of sound. But vibration in this state of ether is not sufficient to create forms. There must first be some obstruction in the flow of the Force ocean, some contraction and expansion, some interplay of vibrations, some impinging of force upon force so as to create a beginning of fixed relations and mutual effects. Material Force modifying its first ethereal status assumes a second, called in the old language the aerial, of which the special property is contact between force and force, contact that is the basis of all material relations. Still we have not as yet real forms but only varying forces. A sustaining principle is needed. This is provided by a third self-modification of the primitive Force of which the principle of light, electricity, fire and heat is for us the characteristic manifestation. Even then, we can have forms of force preserving their own character and peculiar action, but not stable forms of Matter. A fourth state characterised by diffusion and a first medium of permanent attractions and repulsions, termed picturesquely water or the liquid state, and a fifth of cohesion, termed earth or the solid state, complete the necessary elements.” The Life Divine*
::: "The greater the destruction, the freer the chances of creation; but the destruction is often long, slow and oppressive, the creation tardy in its coming or interrupted in its triumph. The night returns again and again and the day lingers or seems even to have been a false dawning. Despair not therefore, but watch and work. Those who hope violently, despair swiftly: neither hope nor fear, but be sure of God"s purpose and thy will to accomplish.” *Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
"There is no such thing as death, for it is the body that dies and the body is not the man. That which really is, cannot go out of existence, though it may change the forms through which it appears, just as that which is non-existent cannot come into being. The soul is and cannot cease to be. This opposition of is and is not, this balance of being and becoming which is the mind"s view of existence, finds its end in the realisation of the soul as the one imperishable self by whom all this universe has been extended. Finite bodies have an end, but that which possesses and uses the body, is infinite, illimitable, eternal, indestructible. It casts away old and takes up new bodies as a man changes worn-out raiment for new; and what is there in this to grieve at and recoil and shrink? This is not born, nor does it die, nor is it a thing that comes into being once and passing away will never come into being again. It is unborn, ancient, sempiternal; it is not slain with the slaying of the body. Who can slay the immortal spirit? Weapons cannot cleave it, nor the fire burn, nor do the waters drench it, nor the wind dry. Eternally stable, immobile, all-pervading, it is for ever and for ever. Not manifested like the body, but greater than all manifestation, not to be analysed by the thought, but greater than all mind, not capable of change and modification like the life and its organs and their objects, but beyond the changes of mind and life and body, it is yet the Reality which all these strive to figure.” Essays on the Gita
the sound produced by or as if by bits of metal striking together.
"The sunlit path can be followed by those who are able to practise surrender, first a central surrender and afterwards a more complete self-giving in all the parts of the being. If they can achieve and preserve the attitude of the central surrender, if they can rely wholly on the Divine and accept cheerfully whatever comes to them from the Divine, then their path becomes sunlit and may even be straightforward and easy.” Letters on Yoga*
::: "The third step is to know the Divine Being who is at once our supreme transcendent Self, the Cosmic Being, foundation of our universality, and the Divinity within of which our psychic being, the true evolving individual in our nature, is a portion, a spark, a flame growing into the eternal Fire from which it was lit and of which it is the witness ever living within us and the conscious instrument of its light and power and joy and beauty.” *The Life Divine
"To me, for instance, consciousness is the very stuff of existence and I can feel it everywhere enveloping and penetrating the stone as much as man or the animal. A movement, a flow of consciousness is not to me an image but a fact. If I wrote "His anger climbed against me in a stream", it would be to the general reader a mere image, not something that was felt by me in a sensible experience; yet I would only be describing in exact terms what actually happened once, a stream of anger, a sensible and violent current of it rising up from downstairs and rushing upon me as I sat in the veranda of the Guest-House, the truth of it being confirmed afterwards by the confession of the person who had the movement. This is only one instance, but all that is spiritual or psychological in Savitri is of that character. What is to be done under these circumstances? The mystical poet can only describe what he has felt, seen in himself or others or in the world just as he has felt or seen it or experienced through exact vision, close contact or identity and leave it to the general reader to understand or not understand or misunderstand according to his capacity. A new kind of poetry demands a new mentality in the recipient as well as in the writer.” Letters on Savitri
"True knowledge is to know with the inner being, and when the inner being is touched by the light, then it arises to embrace that which is seen, it yearns to possess, it struggles to shape that in itself and itself to it, it labours to become one with the glory of its vision. Knowledge in this sense is an awakening to identity and, since the inner being realises itself by consciousness and delight, by love, by possession and oneness with whatever of itself it has seen, knowledge awakened must bring an overmastering impulse towards this true and only perfect realisation.” Essays on the Gita
"Usha is the divine illumination and Dakshina is the discerning knowledge that comes with the dawn and enables the Power in the mind, Indra, to know aright and separate the light from the darkness, the truth from the falsehood, the straight from the crooked, vrinîta vijânan.” The Secret of the Veda*
"Vamana, the Dwarf, in Hindu mythology, one of the ten incarnations of Vishnu, born as a son of Kashyapa and Aditi. The titan King Bali had by his austerities acquired dominion of all the three worlds. To remedy this, Vishnu came to him in the form of a dwarf and begged of him as much land as he could step over in three paces. Bali complied. In two strides the dwarf covered heaven and earth, and with the third step, on Bali"s head, pushed him down to Patala, the infernal regions.” Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works
"Vitality means life-force — wherever there is life, in plant or animal or man, there is life-force — without the vital there can be no life in matter and no living action. The vital is a necessary force and nothing can be done or created in the bodily existence, if the vital is not there as an instrument.” Letters on Yoga*
"We are not the body, but the body is still something of ourselves. With realisation the erroneous identification ceases — in certain experiences the existence of the body is not felt at all. In the full realisation the body is within us, not we in it, it is an instrumental formation in our wider being, — our consciousness exceeds but also pervades it, — it can be dissolved without our ceasing to be the self.” Letters on Yoga
"We arrive then necessarily at this conclusion that human birth is a term at which the soul must arrive in a long succession of rebirths and that it has had for its previous and preparatory terms in the succession the lower forms of life upon earth; it has passed through the whole chain that life has strung in the physical universe on the basis of the body, the physical principle.” The Life Divine
"We. . . become conscious, in our physical movements, in our nervous and vital reactions, in our mental workings, of a Force greater than body, mind and life which takes hold of our limited instruments and drives all their motion. There is no longer the sense of ourselves moving, thinking or feeling but of that moving, feeling and thinking in us. This force that we feel is the universal Force of the Divine, which, veiled or unveiled, acting directly or permitting the use of its powers by beings in the cosmos, is the one Energy that alone exists and alone makes universal or individual action possible. For this force is the Divine itself in the body of its power; all is that, power of act, power of thought and knowledge, power of mastery and enjoyment, power of love.” The Synthesis of Yoga
". . . what is this strongly separative self-experience that we call ego? It is nothing fundamentally real in itself but only a practical constitution of our consciousness devised to centralise the activities of Nature in us. We perceive a formation of mental, physical, vital experience which distinguishes itself from the rest of being, and that is what we think of as ourselves in nature — this individualisation of being in becoming. We then proceed to conceive of ourselves as something which has thus individualised itself and only exists so long as it is individualised, — a temporary or at least a temporal becoming; or else we conceive of ourselves as someone who supports or causes the individualisation, an immortal being perhaps but limited by its individuality. This perception and this conception constitute our ego-sense.” The Life Divine
"When we study this Life as it manifests itself upon earth with Matter as its basis, we observe that essentially it is a form of the one cosmic Energy, a dynamic movement or current of it positive and negative, a constant act or play of the Force which builds up forms, energises them by a continual stream of stimulation and maintains them by an unceasing process of disintegration and renewal of their substance. This would tend to show that the natural opposition we make between death and life is an error of our mentality, one of those false oppositions — false to inner truth though valid in surface practical experience — which, deceived by appearances, it is constantly bringing into the universal unity.” The Life Divine ::: *life"s, life-born, life-curve, life-delight"s, life-drift, life-foam, life-giving, life-impulse, life-impulse"s, life-motives, life-nature"s, life-pain, life-plan, life-power, life-room, life-scene, life-self, life-thought, life-wants, all-life, sense-life.
::: "Wherever thou seest a great end, be sure of a great beginning. Where a monstrous and painful destruction appals thy mind, console it with the certainty of a large and great creation. God is there not only in the still small voice, but in the fire and in the whirlwind.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
without law; unrestrained by law.
"Yet there is still the unknown underlying Oneness which compels us to strive slowly towards some form of harmony, of interdependence, of concording of discords, of a difficult unity. But it is only by the evolution in us of the concealed superconscient powers of cosmic Truth and of the Reality in which they are one that the harmony and unity we strive for can be dynamically realised in the very fibre of our being and all its self-expression and not merely in imperfect attempts, incomplete constructions, ever-changing approximations.” The Life Divine*
KEYS (10k)
1 Jack Butcher
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
17 Emil Aarestrup
3 Anonymous
2 Arthur Conan Doyle
1:In earth's rhythm of shadow and sunlight
Storm is the dance of the locks of the God assenting to greatness,
Zeus who with secret compulsion orders the ways of our nature;
Veiled in events he lives and working disguised in the mortal
Builds our str ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:Vidite li sad, dakle zašto su knjige omražene i zašto ih se boje? One pokazuju pore na licu života." str. 85. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
2:S gledišta prirode nema korisnih i nekorisnih bića. To je samo glupavo razlikovanje koje primjenjuju ljudi." str. 156. ~ Olga Tokarczuk, #NFDB
3:Sometimes classes provide both a str for user-friendly displays and a repr with extra details for developers to view. ~ Mark Lutz, #NFDB
4:Technically, str is preferred by print and str, and repr is used as a fallback for these roles and in all other contexts. ~ Mark Lutz, #NFDB
5:NASA:n käsitys siis on, että JOPA AVARUUSOLIOT toisilla planeetoilla tuntisivat olonsa epämukavaksi joutuessaan kohtaamaan vulvan kuvassa. ~ Liv Str mquist, #NFDB
6:Because printing runs str and the interactive prompt echoes results with repr , this can provide both target audiences with an appropriate display. ~ Mark Lutz, #NFDB
7:Dar tocmai ruralismul nostru constituie dovada suplimentar[ a marii noastre vechimi. }ntr-adev[r, rasele str[vechi sunt conservative, regresive =i defen-sive. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
8:Mogu nabaviti knjige.
-Izlažete se pogibelji.
-To je dobra strana umiranja: kad nemate što izgubiti, izlažete se svakoj pogibelji kojoj želite." str. 86. ~ Ray Bradbury,#NFDB
9:Enligt min erfarenhet är det dåligt att ragga genom att säga något intelligent. Eller, det kan funka, men det går snabbare om man bara står någonstans och utstrålar enfaldig glädje. ~ Liv Str mquist, #NFDB
10:Gnjev uvijek za sobom ostavlja puno praznoga mjesta na koje se odmah, kao poplava, ulijeva tuga i teče velika rijeka., bez početka i kraja. Suze, opet su se obnovili njihovi izvori." str. 235. ~ Olga Tokarczuk, #NFDB
11:Zimska jutra su napravljena od čelika, imaju metana okus i oštre rubove. U srijedu, u sedam ujutro, u siječnju, vidi se da svijet nije stvoren za Čovjeka , a posve sigurno ne za njegovu ugodu i zadovoljstvo." str. 117. ~ Olga Tokarczuk, #NFDB
12:Design note: as we’ll learn in Chapter 30, the repr method is often used to provide an as-code low-level display of an object when present, and str is reserved for more user-friendly informational displays like ours here. ~ Mark Lutz, #NFDB
13:De altfel mitologia noastr[ religioas[ ]ntemeiat[ pe cultul lui Zamolxe, care, a=a nebuloas[ cum este, st[ al[turi de marile religii str[vechi a Olimpului =i a Valhallei, atest[ ]nrudirea oficial[ cu lumea elin[ prin elementul dionisiac =i pitagoreic. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
14:Obojeni ne vole Malog crnog Samba. Spali ga. Bijeli nisu oduševljeni Čiča Tominom kolibom. Spali je. Netko je napisao knjigu o duhanu i raku pluća? Proizvođači cigareta tule? Spali knjigu. Vedrina, Montag. Mir, Montag. Iznesi svoju borbu van. Još bolje, u spalionicu. " str. 65. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
15:In earth’s rhythm of shadow and sunlight
Storm is the dance of the locks of the God assenting to greatness,
Zeus who with secret compulsion orders the ways of our nature;
Veiled in events he lives and working disguised in the mortal
Builds our str ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#NFDB
16:In the humble environs of my boyhood, books were a scarce commodity. By local standards, however, the personal library of STR Manickam, a former ‘revolutionary’ or militant nationalist, was sizeable. He encouraged me to read all I could and I often visited his home to borrow books. ~ A P J Abdul Kalam, #NFDB
17:(str. 95) "Stotine je ljudi prolazilo u svim smjerovima, neki na putu za posao, neki u posjet pacijentima, neki su se uputili na pregled, neki ispratili supružnike, neki dočekali člana obitelji, neki su tračali s kolegama, čavrljali s prijateljima, očijukali sa strancima, fraktalni dio svakodnevnog života. ~ Elan Mastai, #NFDB
18:Jedenasta niezmienna zasada skutecznego działania brzmi: ● str. 29 Działaj rytmicznie Ludzki organizm funkcjonuje według pewnego rytmu. Najbardziej znanym rytmem w naszym życiu jest rytm dnia i nocy. Działamy za dnia i śpimy w nocy. Jest to naturalny proces dla nas, ludzi. Co ciekawe i o czym nie każdy wie, to ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
19:Uvečer promatram Veneru, podrobno pratim promjene te lijepe Gospođice. Više je volim kao večernju zvijezdu, kada se pojavljuje niotkud, kao začarana, i spušta za Suncem, Iskra vječne svjetlosti. Upravo u Sumrak zbivaju se najzanimljivije stvari, jer tada se zaglađuju jednostavne razlike. Mogla bih živjeti u vječnom Sumraku." str. 48. ~ Olga Tokarczuk, #NFDB
20:The structure of the human genome can thus be likened to a sentence that reads- This......is the......str...uc......ture...,,,...of...your...(...gen...ome...)... - where the words correspond to the genes, the ellipses correspond to the spacers and stuffers, and the occasional punctuation marks demarcate the regulatory sequence of genes. ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee, #NFDB
21:Te osobe stvaraju dojam kao da je u njima sačuvano više sjećanja na našu nevinost, kao da su čudo prirode i da ih nije dokraja izudarao Pad. Možda su glasnici, poput onih slugug koji pronađu izgubljenog kraljevića, koji nije svjestan svoga podrijetla, pa mu pokazuju ruho što ga je nosio u svojoj zemlji i podsjećaju na povratak kući." str. 127. ~ Olga Tokarczuk, #NFDB
22:Evo ti, Montag! Nije do ovoga došlo odozgor, od vlade! Nije bilo nikakve naredbe, nikakve obznane, nikakve cenzure isprva, ne! Tehnologija, masovna eksploatacija i pritisak manjina polučili su cilj, Bogu hvala. Danas, zahvaljujući njima, sve vrijeme možeš biti sretan, dopušteno ti je čitati stripove, dobre stare vjerske knjige ili stručne časopise." str. 63. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
23:[Y]hteiskunnan "edistysmieliset ryhmät" koostuvat joukosta ylimielisiä itkupillejä (minä itse mukaanluettuna), joita ei ylipäänsä kiinnosta luoda poliittista muutosta vaan jotka sen sijaan omistavat aikansa oman täydellisen, "hyvien puolella" olevan persoonallisuutensa esittelyyn internetissä sekä "toveriensa" pienimpienkin virheellisten ajatusten/tekojen vahtimiseen kuin STASi ikään! ~ Liv Str mquist, #NFDB
24:Odpor proti bezpráví je povinnost nejen k sobě samému, neboť je splněním příkazu mravního sebezachování - ale je současně povinností i vůči celku. Hájí-li jednotlivec své právo, hájí tím současně platnost práva vůbec. Odpovědnost nemají pouze ti, kteří zákon přestupují, ale i ti, kteří neměli odvahu jej uhájit." (Vladimír Čermák: Otázka demokracie. Díl 4, Hodnoty, normy a instituce. 1. vydání 1998, str. 218, 219). ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
25:Držim, naime, da je ljudska psiha stvorena da nas obrani od sagledavanja istine. Da nam ne dopusti izravno sagledati mehanizam. Psiha je naš obrambeni sustav - skrbi za to da nikada ne pojmimo ono što nas okružuje. Bavi se uglavnom filtriranjem obavijesti i pored toga što su mogućnosti našeg mozga goleme. Jer to se znanje ne bi moglo podnijeti. Svaki se pa i najmanji djelić svijeta sastoji od patnje." str. 219. ~ Olga Tokarczuk, #NFDB
26:Ne, ne, ljudi u našoj zemlji ne znaju se udružiti i stvoriti zajednicu, čak i pod vrganjevim barjakom. To je zemlja neurotičnih individualista, od kojih svaki, čim se nađe među drugima, počinje poučavati, kritizirati, vrijeđati i pokazivati svoju nedvojbenu nadmoćost. Mislim da je u Češkoj posve drugačije. Tamo ljudi znaju mirno raspravljati i nitko se ni s kim ne svađa. Čak i kada bi htjeli, ne bi mogli jer im jezik nije prikladan za svađu." str. 185. ~ Olga Tokarczuk, #NFDB
27:But the Orange County Crime Lab had recently integrated a new technique, PCR-STR (polymerase chain reaction with short tandem repeat analysis), which was much faster than RFLP and is the backbone of forensic testing today. The difference between RFLP and PCR-STR is like copying down numbers in longhand versus using a high-speed Xerox machine. PCR-STR worked particularly well for cold cases, in which DNA samples might be minuscule or degraded by time. ~ Michelle McNamara, #NFDB
28:Strpljenja, Montag. Pustimo da rat ukloni "rodbinu". Naša će se civilizacija sama raspasti. Odmaknite se od centrifuge.
- Mora netko biti spreman kad se rasprsne.
- Što? Ljudi će citirati Miltona? Govoriti "Sjećam se Sofokla"? Podsjećati preživjele da čovjek ima i dobru stranu? Samo će skupljati kamenje da gađaju jedan drugog. Montag, pođite kući. Idite u krevet. Čemu da tratite svoje posljednje sate jureći po kavezu i niječući da ste vjeverica?"str. 89. ~ Ray Bradbury,#NFDB
29:Nainen, joka ei halua naimisiin! No johan pomppasi! Ainoa mahdollinen selitys: hän on HERMAFRODIITTI.
NIIN, NIIN!! Ei kenties ole kummallista, että joku pöpi sterilisaation puolesta puhuva professori kirjoitti näin 30-luvulla, tai edes se, että joku kynäilijä/pallopää popularisoi nämä teoriat joitakin vuosikymmeniä myöhemmin!!
KUMMALLISTA TÄSSÄ ON SE, ETTÄ ERÄS HILPEÄ SETÄMIESPOPPOO VUONNA 1965 INSPIROITUI TÄSTÄ NIIN VALTAVASTI, ETTÄ ONNISTUI VIEMÄÄN LÄPI HAUDAN AVAUKSEN! ~ Liv Str mquist,#NFDB
30:Treba imati otvorene oči i uši, povezivati činjenice, vidjeti sličnosti tamo gdje drugi vide potpunu različitost, pamtiti da se s tanoviti događaji zbivaju na različitim razinama, ili, govoreći drugim riječima, puno događaja su aspekti istog. Da je svijet velika mreža, da je cjelina i da nema nijedne stvari koja bi bila zasebna. Da je svaki, čak i najmanji djelić svijeta s drugima povezan složenim Svemirom korespondencija u koje je teško proniknuti običnom umu. Tako to djeluje. Poput japanskog auta." str. 60. ~ Olga Tokarczuk, #NFDB
31:In January 2001, when Contra Costa got its STR typing up and running, Holes asked one of his colleagues, Dave Stockwell, to rerun the DNA extracts from the EAR case to see if the three cases still had the same offender profile. Stockwell reported back they did. “Call Mary Hong in Orange County,” Holes told him. “We’ve got the same technology now. Check it against hers.” Over the phone, Stockwell and Hong read off the markers to each other. “Yes,” Hong said when Stockwell read one of the EAR markers. “Yes,” Stockwell said in reply to one of hers. Stockwell came into Holes’s office. “Perfect match. ~ Michelle McNamara, #NFDB
32:Nekoliko dana mi je jako nedostajao – njegova kozmetika u kupaonici i čak njegove prazne šalice čaja koje je ostavljao po cijeloj kući. Svakodnevno je nazivao. Potom malo rjeđe, svaki drugi dan, recimo. Glas mu je zvučao kao da živi u drugoj dimenziji, u nekakvom drugom svijetu na sjeveru zemlje, gdje drveće ima tisuće godina, a velike se Životinje među njim kreću usporeno, izvanvremenski. Spokojno sam promatrala kako slika Borosa Sznajdera, entomologa i tafonoma, blijedi i razilazi se, od njega ostaje samo sijeda pleteničica što visi u zraku, apsurdna. Sve prolazi. Pametan Čovjek to zna od početka i ni za čim ne žali." str. 176. ~ Olga Tokarczuk, #NFDB
33:Evie, dear…I suppose it’s tasteless of me to draw attention to it, but in the past minute your stammer has disappeared.”
The red-haired girl tucked a shy smile in the concealment of her palm, and glanced at Daisy from beneath a sweep of auburn lashes. “I’m always much better when I’m away from home…away from my family. And it helps if I remember to talk slowly, and think about what I’m going to say. But I’m worse when I’m tired, or when I have to speak to str-strangers. There’s nothing more terrifying to me than going to a ball and facing a room full of people I don’t know.”
“Dear,” Daisy said softly, “the next time you face a room full of strangers…you might tell yourself that some of them are just friends waiting to be found. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
34:Usred svojih sanjarija iznenada se zaustavlja i grabeći me uzbuđeno za ruku pokazuje jednog kita od žene, koja upravo sjeda na stolicu. »Eno moje danske pičke«, gunđa on. »Vidiš li to dupe? Dansko. Kako ta žena to voli! Ona me naprosto moli da je okinem. Dođi ovamo... Pogledaj je sad, sa strane! Pogledaj to dupe, molim te. Golemo je. Kažem ti, kad se ona popne na mene, jedva mogu da ga obuhvatim rukama. Zakloni mi vidik na cijeli svijet. Osjećam se kao mala buba, koja gmiže u njoj. Ne znam sam zašto na nju padam — valjda zbog tog dupeta. Toliko je nezgrapno. A kakve ima samo nabore! Takvo dupe ne možeš zaboraviti. Stvarnost... opipljiva stvarnost. Druge ti mogu dodijati ili ti mogu dati trenutačnu iluziju, ali ova — s tim svojim dupetom! — ta je neuništiva... To je kao da u postelju ideš s kakvim spomenikom na sebi.«
Str 111
~ Henry Miller,#NFDB
35:Sjedili smo u vrtu ispod stare jabuke na kojoj su se već zametnuli plodovi. Vrt je mirisao i šumorio. Izgubila sam osjećaj vremnea i svaka stanka među izgovorenim rečenicama činila mi se beskonačnom. Prostranstvo vremena otvorilo se pred nama. Razgovarali smo cijela stoljeća, neprestano smo govorili o istom, jednom jednim, drugi put drugim ustima, i nitko oda nas nije se sjećao da je argument s kojim se upravo sporio bio maloprije onaj koji je branio. A zapravo se uopće nismo sporili; vodili smo dijalog, trijalog, tri fauna, druga vrsta ljudi, napola ljudski, napola životinjski. I shvatila sa da nas ima puno u vrtu i šumi, lica su nam pokrivena dlakom. Čudni stvorovi. A na drvo su sletjeli naši Šišmiši i zapjevali. Njihovi tanašni, treperavi glasovi sudarali su se s mikroskopskim djelićima magle pa je Noć oko nas počela tiho zvoniti, prizivajući sva Stvorenja na noćnu pobožnost." str. 164. ~ Olga Tokarczuk, #NFDB
36:Nimalo se, kažem, ne može nauditi velikoj knjizi ako se ponese u zahod. Samo beznačajne knjige trpe zbog toga. Samo beznačajne knjige služe brisanju guzice. Takva je knjiga Mali Cezar koja je sad prevedena na francuski i koja je izišla u biblioteci Passions. Dok okrećem stranice te knjige, čini mi se da sam opet kod kuće i da čitam naslove u novinama, da slušam one proklete radio aparate, da se vozim u starim krntijama, da pijem jeftini džin, da guram kukuruzni klip u dupe prostitutkama djevicama, da vješam Crnce i žive ih spaljujem. Da čovjek dobije sraćku. A to isto vrijedi za Atlantic M o n t h 1 y ili za bilo koji drugi mjesečnik, za Aldousa Huxleyja, Gertrudu Stein, Sinclaria Lewisa, Hemingwaya, Dos Passosa, Dreisera itd, itd... Ne čujem nikakvo zvono da zvoni u meni kad donesem te ptičice u WC. Povučem lančić i odoše u kanal. Niz Seinu pa u Atlantski ocean. Možda će za godinu dana opet izroniti — na obalama Coney Islan-da ili Midland Beacha ili Miamija, s mrtvim meduzama, puževima, račićima, rabljenim prezervativima, ružičastim toaletnim papirom, jučerašnjim novostima, sutrašnjim samoubojstvima ...
str. 58-59 ~ Henry Miller,#NFDB
37:Scrolling through the rest of the 3,500 documents in Michelle’s hard drive, one comes upon a file titled “RecentDNAresults,” which features the EAR’s Y-STR markers (short tandem repeats on the Y chromosome that establish male-line ancestry), including the elusive rare PGM marker. Having the Golden State Killer’s DNA was always the one ace up this investigation’s sleeve. But a killer’s DNA is only as good as the databases we can compare it to. There was no match in CODIS. And there was no match in the California penal system’s Y-STR database. If the killer’s father, brothers, or uncles had been convicted of a felony in the past sixteen years, an alert would have gone to Paul Holes or Erika Hutchcraft (the current lead investigator in Orange County). They would have looked into the man’s family, zeroed in on a member who was in the area of the crimes, and launched an investigation. But they had nothing. There are public databases that the DNA profile could be used to match, filled not with convicted criminals but with genealogical buffs. You can enter the STR markers on the Y chromosome of the killer into these public databases and try to find a match, or at least a surname that could help you with the search. ~ Michelle McNamara, #NFDB
38:Scrolling through the rest of the 3,500 documents in Michelle’s hard drive, one comes upon a file titled “RecentDNAresults,” which features the EAR’s Y-STR markers (short tandem repeats on the Y chromosome that establish male-line ancestry), including the elusive rare PGM marker. Having the Golden State Killer’s DNA was always the one ace up this investigation’s sleeve. But a killer���s DNA is only as good as the databases we can compare it to. There was no match in CODIS. And there was no match in the California penal system’s Y-STR database. If the killer’s father, brothers, or uncles had been convicted of a felony in the past sixteen years, an alert would have gone to Paul Holes or Erika Hutchcraft (the current lead investigator in Orange County). They would have looked into the man’s family, zeroed in on a member who was in the area of the crimes, and launched an investigation. But they had nothing. There are public databases that the DNA profile could be used to match, filled not with convicted criminals but with genealogical buffs. You can enter the STR markers on the Y chromosome of the killer into these public databases and try to find a match, or at least a surname that could help you with the search. ~ Michelle McNamara, #NFDB
39:Kad se bližila zora, sjedili smo na terasi Domea. Već smo odavno zaboravili jadnog Peckovera. Doživjeli smo nešto uzbuđenja u Bal Negre i Joeov se duh vratio nijegovoj vječnoj zaokupljenosti: pički. Upravo u ovo vrijeme, kad se njegovo slobodno veče bliži kraju, njegov nemir se penje do grozničavog vrhunca. On misli na ženske, kraj kojih je prošao ranije u toku večei, i o stalnim ženskama, koje je mogao imati, samo da ih pita, i samo da ih nije već sit. Neizbježivo se podsjetio na svoju pičku iz Georgije — ona ga u posljednje vrijeme opsjeda, moleći ga da je uzme na stan, barem dok ne uspije da nađe ikakav posao. »Nije mi krivo ako je svako malo nahrainim«, kaže on, »ali ne mogu je uzeti za stalno... ona bi mi pokvarila posao s drugira mojim pičkama«. Kod nje ga najviše nervira, da se ona nimalo ne deblja. »Kao da uzimaš kostur u posteIju«, kaže. Neki dan sam je primio — od samilosti — i šta misliš, šta je ta luđakinja učinila sebi? Obrijala ju je do gola... Ni dlačice na njojl Da li si kad imao ženu, koja je obrijala minđu? Odvratno, jelda? Ali i smiješno. Nekako šašavo. Više mi ne izgleda kao minđa, prije kao crknuta školjka ili nešto slično.« On mi opisuje kako je od radoznalosti ustao iz postelje i potražio ručnu svjetiljku. »Natjerao sam je da je rastvori i upravio sam ručnu svjetiljtku ravno na nju. Trebao si me vidjeti... Bilo je komično. Toliiko sam se na to usredotočio, da sam na žensku potpuno zaboravio. Nikad u životu nisam pizdu gledao tako ozbiljno. Čovjek bi pomislio, da je nikad prije nisam vidio. I što sam je više gledao, to mi je bila manje zanimljiva. To služi samo da ti pokaže, da u svemu tome na kraju krajeva nema ništa, naročito kad je obrijana. Dlaka je čini tajanstvenom. Zbog toga te nekakaiv kip nimalo ne uzbuđuje. Jednom sam vidio pravu pravcatu pizdu na kipu — kip je Rodinov. Moraš ga jedanput pogledati... Ona je širom razmaknula noge... čini mi se, da uopće i nema glave. Moglo bi se reći, sama pizda. Isuse, sablasno je izgledala. Stvar i jest u tome — sve izgledaju jednako. Kad ih gledaš odjevene, onda zamišljaš svakakve stvari: na stanoviti način im daješ individualnost, što one naravno nemaju. Ima samo pukotinu između nogu, i zbog nje se sav zapjeniš — a većinom je uopće ni ne gledaš. Znaš da je tamo, i samo misliš kako da uguraš svog jarana unutra, kao da penis misli mjesto tebe. Ali to je aluzija! Sav si se zapalio, a ni zbog čega... Zbog pukotine s malo dlake, ili bez dlake. To je toliko besmisleno, da sam fasciniran zurio u nju. Mora da sam je proučavao bar deset minuta. Kad je tako gledaš, nekako iz daljine, smiješne ti se misli vrte po glavi. Toliko tajanstvenosti oko seksa, a onda otkriješ da to nije ništa, samo praznina. Zar ne bi bilo zgodno kad bi unutra našao kakvu harmoniku... ili kalendar? Ali unutra nema ništa... ama baš ništa. Odvratno. Gotovo sam poludio... Čuj, što misliš što sam kasnije učinio? Na brzinu •sam joj opalio metaik, a onda joj okrenuo leđa. Da uzeo sam knjigu i čitao. U knjizi se može nešto naći, čak i u lošoj knizi... ali pizda je naprosto čist gubitak vrmena... «
Str 144-146
~ Henry Miller,#NFDB
2677 Integral Yoga
1708 Poetry
321 Philosophy
277 Occultism
248 Fiction
247 Mysticism
168 Christianity
129 Yoga
86 Psychology
58 Philsophy
38 Science
26 Hinduism
23 Education
22 Mythology
18 Sufism
16 Integral Theory
15 Zen
14 Theosophy
10 Buddhism
8 Cybernetics
6 Baha i Faith
4 Kabbalah
1 Thelema
1 Alchemy
1382 Sri Aurobindo
1342 The Mother
842 Satprem
418 Nolini Kanta Gupta
220 William Wordsworth
160 Walt Whitman
148 Percy Bysshe Shelley
136 H P Lovecraft
135 William Butler Yeats
132 Aleister Crowley
105 Rabindranath Tagore
88 John Keats
82 Carl Jung
78 Friedrich Schiller
76 Robert Browning
74 Friedrich Nietzsche
67 James George Frazer
64 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
58 Ralph Waldo Emerson
56 Sri Ramakrishna
49 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
43 Plotinus
40 Jorge Luis Borges
37 Swami Krishnananda
35 Rainer Maria Rilke
35 Anonymous
34 Saint Augustine of Hippo
32 Lucretius
31 Swami Vivekananda
31 Edgar Allan Poe
29 Saint John of Climacus
28 Li Bai
27 Aldous Huxley
27 A B Purani
26 Saint Teresa of Avila
23 Rudolf Steiner
20 Jalaluddin Rumi
19 Hafiz
17 Kabir
15 Aristotle
14 Vyasa
14 Ovid
14 Nirodbaran
13 Franz Bardon
12 Plato
11 Sri Ramana Maharshi
11 George Van Vrekhem
10 Hakim Sanai
9 Peter J Carroll
9 Kobayashi Issa
8 Taigu Ryokan
8 Swami Sivananda Saraswati
8 Norbert Wiener
8 Joseph Campbell
7 Thomas Merton
7 Jordan Peterson
7 Henry David Thoreau
6 Thubten Chodron
6 Solomon ibn Gabirol
6 Omar Khayyam
6 Baha u llah
5 Saint John of the Cross
5 Saint Hildegard von Bingen
5 Paul Richard
5 Patanjali
5 Muso Soseki
5 Lewis Carroll
5 Ibn Arabi
5 Farid ud-Din Attar
5 Bokar Rinpoche
5 Boethius
5 Al-Ghazali
4 Ramprasad
4 Rabbi Moses Luzzatto
4 Mirabai
4 Hsuan Chueh of Yung Chia
4 Guru Nanak
4 Bulleh Shah
3 Yosa Buson
3 Symeon the New Theologian
3 Saint Francis of Assisi
3 R Buckminster Fuller
3 Ken Wilber
3 Jayadeva
3 Jacopone da Todi
3 Hakuin
3 Dogen
3 Basava
3 Alice Bailey
3 Alfred Tennyson
2 Wang Wei
2 Shankara
2 Saadi
2 Namdev
2 Nachmanides
2 Michael Maier
2 Mechthild of Magdeburg
2 Matsuo Basho
2 Masahide
2 Mahendranath Gupta
2 Lu Tung Pin
2 Kahlil Gibran
2 Jorge Luis Borges
2 Jetsun Milarepa
2 Jean Gebser
2 Italo Calvino
2 H. P. Lovecraft
2 Genpo Roshi
2 Baba Sheikh Farid
2 Allama Muhammad Iqbal
661 Record of Yoga
220 Wordsworth - Poems
152 Whitman - Poems
148 Shelley - Poems
136 The Synthesis Of Yoga
136 Lovecraft - Poems
135 Yeats - Poems
118 Prayers And Meditations
102 Tagore - Poems
88 Keats - Poems
82 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
82 Agenda Vol 01
78 Schiller - Poems
78 Magick Without Tears
77 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
77 Agenda Vol 08
76 Browning - Poems
71 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
71 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
68 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
68 Agenda Vol 10
67 The Golden Bough
67 Agenda Vol 13
65 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
64 Agenda Vol 09
64 Agenda Vol 04
62 Thus Spoke Zarathustra
58 Emerson - Poems
57 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
57 Agenda Vol 07
57 Agenda Vol 03
56 Agenda Vol 02
55 The Life Divine
55 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
55 Agenda Vol 12
55 Agenda Vol 05
54 Agenda Vol 11
53 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
51 Agenda Vol 06
49 Savitri
49 Letters On Yoga IV
45 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
43 Letters On Yoga II
42 Collected Poems
40 Questions And Answers 1956
39 Liber ABA
38 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
37 The Study and Practice of Yoga
37 Questions And Answers 1953
36 Mysterium Coniunctionis
35 Rilke - Poems
32 Questions And Answers 1954
32 Of The Nature Of Things
32 Goethe - Poems
31 Words Of Long Ago
30 Questions And Answers 1929-1931
30 Poe - Poems
30 Letters On Yoga III
30 Essays On The Gita
29 The Ladder of Divine Ascent
28 Questions And Answers 1955
28 Li Bai - Poems
27 The Perennial Philosophy
27 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
26 The Divine Comedy
26 The Bible
26 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08
24 The Human Cycle
23 On Education
23 Essays Divine And Human
22 The Practice of Psycho therapy
22 The Future of Man
22 City of God
20 Borges - Poems
19 Letters On Yoga I
19 Labyrinths
18 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
18 Crowley - Poems
18 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 06
17 On the Way to Supermanhood
17 Faust
17 Anonymous - Poems
16 Words Of The Mother II
16 Letters On Poetry And Art
16 Let Me Explain
15 Poetics
14 Vishnu Purana
14 Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo
14 The Phenomenon of Man
14 The Mother With Letters On The Mother
14 Some Answers From The Mother
14 Metamorphoses
14 Isha Upanishad
14 Hafiz - Poems
13 Twilight of the Idols
13 The Way of Perfection
13 The Secret Of The Veda
13 The Confessions of Saint Augustine
13 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
13 Bhakti-Yoga
12 Vedic and Philological Studies
12 Talks
12 Raja-Yoga
12 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04
12 Hymn of the Universe
11 Theosophy
11 Rumi - Poems
11 Preparing for the Miraculous
11 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 03
11 Aion
10 Songs of Kabir
10 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 02
10 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 01
10 Knowledge of the Higher Worlds
9 The Practice of Magical Evocation
9 The Interior Castle or The Mansions
9 Liber Null
9 Kena and Other Upanishads
9 Hymns to the Mystic Fire
9 A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah
9 5.1.01 - Ilion
8 The Problems of Philosophy
8 The Hero with a Thousand Faces
8 Ryokan - Poems
8 Dark Night of the Soul
8 Cybernetics
7 Words Of The Mother III
7 Walden
7 The Blue Cliff Records
7 Song of Myself
7 Maps of Meaning
6 Writings In Bengali and Sanskrit
6 The Secret Doctrine
6 The Red Book Liber Novus
6 The Integral Yoga
6 How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator
6 Amrita Gita
5 The Alchemy of Happiness
5 Tara - The Feminine Divine
5 Patanjali Yoga Sutras
5 Alice in Wonderland
4 The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
4 Initiation Into Hermetics
4 General Principles of Kabbalah
3 Words Of The Mother I
3 The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep
3 The Lotus Sutra
3 The Book of Certitude
3 Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking
3 Sex Ecology Spirituality
3 Dogen - Poems
3 Beating the Cloth Drum Letters of Zen Master Hakuin
3 A Treatise on Cosmic Fire
3 Arabi - Poems
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 Milarepa - Poems
2 God Exists
2 Basho - Poems
2 Agenda Vol 1
2 Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2E
00.00 - Publishers Note B, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Like a perfume that rises straight upward without wavering,
My love goes to Thee..]
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, di stressing. 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. A stronomy and biology, too, are beginning to respond to mysterious influences. A tiny point huddled in the center of the world's great clearing. But what is all this, what if I were 'mad'? And then, claws all around, a lot of claws against this uncommon creature. A first man ... is very much alone. He is quite unbearable for the pre-human 'reason.' And the surrounding tribes growled like red monkies in the twilight of Guiana.
One day, we were like this first man in the great, stridulant night of the Oyapock. Our heart was beating with the rediscovery of a very ancient mystery - suddenly, it was absolutely new to be a man amidst the diorite cascades and the pretty red and black coral snakes slithering beneath the leaves. It was even more extraordinary to be a man than our old confirmed tribes, with their infallible equations and imprescriptible biologies, could ever have dreamed. It was an absolutely uncertain 'quantum' that delightfully eluded whatever one thought of it, including perhaps what even the scholars thought of it. It flowed otherwise, it felt otherwise. It lived in a kind of flawless continuity with the sap of the giant balata trees, the cry of the macaws and the scintillating water of a little fountain. It 'understood' in a very different way. To understand was to be in everything. Just a quiver, and one was in the skin of a little iguana in di stress. The skin of the world was very vast.
To be a man after rediscovering a million years was mysteriously like being something still other than man, a strange, unfinished possibility that could also be all kinds of other things. It was not in the dictionary, it was fluid and boundless - it had become a man through habit, but in truth, it was formidably virgin, as if all the old laws belonged to laggard barbarians. Then other moons began whirring through the skies to the cry of macaws at sunset, another rhythm was born that was strangely in tune with the rhythm of all, making one single flow of the world, and there we went, lightly, as if the body had never had any weight other than that of our human thought; and the stars were so near, even the giant airplanes roaring overhead seemed vain artifices beneath smiling galaxies. A man was the overwhelming Possible. He was even the great discoverer of the Possible.
Never had this precarious invention had any other aim through millions of species than to discover that which surpassed his own species, perhaps the means to change his species - a light and lawless species. After rediscovering a million years in the great, rhythmic night, a man was still something to be invented. It was the invention of himself, where all was not yet said and done.
--
'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 pro strations 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
become this 'something else,' but it was far easier to worship and quiescently remain what one was.
She spoke to deaf ears. She was very alone in this 'ashram.' Little by little, the disciples fill up the place, then they say: it is ours. It is 'the Ashram.' We are 'the disciples.' In Pondicherry as in Rome as in Mecca. 'I do not want a religion! An end to religions!' She exclaimed. She struggled and fought in their midst - was She therefore to leave this Earth like one more saint or yogi, buried beneath haloes, the 'continuatrice' of a great spiritual lineage? She was seventy-six years old when we landed there, a knife in our belt and a ready curse on our lips.
She adored defiance and did not detest irreverence.
--
She were making fun of us, then loving us in secret), She told us, 'I have the feeling that ALL we have lived, ALL we have known, ALL we have done is a perfect illusion ... When I had the spiritual experience that material life is an illusion, personally I found that so marvelously beautiful and happy that it was one of the most beautiful experiences of my life, but now it is the entire spiritual structure as we have lived it that is becoming an illusion! - Not the same illusion, but an illusion far worse. And I am no baby: I have been here for forty-seven years now!' Yes, She was eighty-three years old then. And that day, we ceased being 'the enemy of our own conception of the Divine,' for this entire Divine was shattered to pieces - and we met Mother, at last. This mystery we call
Mother, for She never ceased being a mystery right to her ninety-fifth year, and to this day still, challenges us from the other side of a wall of invisibility and keeps us floundering fully in the mystery - with a smile. She always smiles. But the mystery is not solved.
00.01 - The Approach to Mysticism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Mysticism is not only a science but also, and in a greater degree, an art. To approach it merely as a science, as the modern mind attempts to do, is to move towards futility, if not to land in positive disaster. Sufficient stress is not laid on this aspect of the matter, although the very crux of the situation lies here. The mystic domain has to be apprehended not merely by the true mind and understanding but by the right temperament and character. Mysticism is not merely an object of knowledge, a problem for inquiry and solution, it is an end, an ideal that has to be achieved, a life that has to be lived. The mystics themselves have declared long ago with no uncertain or faltering voice: this cannot be attained by intelligence or much learning, it can be seized only by a purified and clear temperament.
The warning seems to have fallen, in the modern age, on unheeding ears. For the modern mind, being pre-eminently and uncompromisingly scientific, can entertain no doubt as to the perfect competency of science and the scientific method to seize and unveil any secret of Nature. If, it is argued, mysticism is a secret, if there is at all a truth and reality in it, then it is and must be amenable to the rules and regulations of science; for science is the revealer of Nature's secrecies.
--
Ignorance, certainly, is not man's ideal conditionit leads to death and dissolution. But knowledge also can be equally disa strous if it is not of the right kind. The knowledge that is born of spiritual disobedience, inspired by the Dark ones, leads to the soul's fall and its calvary through pain and suffering on earth. The seeker of true enlightenment has got to make a distinction, learn to separate the true and the right from the false and the wrong, unmask the luring Mra say clearly and unfalteringly to the dark light of Luciferapage Satana, if he is to come out into the true light and comm and the right forces. The search for knowledge alone, knowledge for the sake of knowledge, the path of pure scientific inquiry and inquisitiveness, in relation to the mystic world, is a dangerous thing. For such a spirit serves only to encourage and enhance man's arrogance and in the end not only limits but warps and falsifies the knowledge itself. A knowledge based on and secured exclusively through the reason and mental light can go only so far as that faculty can be reasonably stretched and not infinitelyto stretch it to infinity means to snap it. This is the warning that Yajnavalkya gave to Gargi when the latter started renewing her question ad infinitum Yajnavalkya said, "If you do not stop, your head will fall off."
The mystic truth has to be approached through the heart. "In the heart is established the Truth," says the Upanishad: it is there that is seated eternally the soul, the real being, who appears no bigger than the thumb. Even if the mind is utilised as an in strument of knowledge, the heart must be there behind as the guide and inspiration. It is precisely because, as I have just mentioned, Gargi sought to shoot uplike "vaulting ambition that o'erleaps itself" of which Shakespeare speaksthrough the mind alone to the highest truth that Yajnavalkya had to pull her up and give the warning that she risked losing her head if she persisted in her questioning endlessly.
00.01 - The Mother on Savitri, #Sweet Mother - Harmonies of Light, #unset, #Zen
After nearly seven years, however, he felt a strong urge to note down what the Mother had spoken; so in 1967 he wrote down from memory a report in French. The report was seen by the Mother and a few corrections were made by her. To another sadhak who asked Her permission to read this report She wrote: "Years ago I have spoken at length about it [Savitri] to Mona Sarkar and he has noted in French what I said. Some time back I have seen what he has written and found it correct on the whole."(4.12.1967)
On a few other occasion also, the Mother had spoken to the same sadhak on the value of reading Savitri which he had noted down afterwards. These notes have been added at the end of the main report. A few members of the Ashram had privately read this report in French, but afterwards there were many requests for its English version. A translation was therefore made in November 1967. A proposal was made to the Mother in 1972 for its publication and it was submitted to Her for approval. The Mother wanted to check the translation before permitting its publication but could check only a portion of it.
00.02 - Mystic Symbolism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
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.
And there is such a commensurability or parallelism between the various levels of consciousness, in and through all the differences that separate them from one another. Thus an object or a movement apprehended on the physical plane has a sort of line of re-echoing images extended in a series along the whole gradation of the inner planes; otherwise viewed, an object or movement in the innermost consciousness translates itself in varying modes from plane to plane down to the most material, where it appears in its grossest form as a concrete three-dimensional object or a mechanical movement. This parallelism or commensurability by virtue of which the different and divergent states of consciousness can portray or represent each other is the source of all symbolism.
0 0.02 - Topographical Note, #Agenda Vol 1, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Algeria and in France or of her current experiences; and gradually, She opened the mind of the rebellious and materialistic Westerner that we were and made us understand the laws of the worlds, the play of forces, the working of past lives - especially this latter, which was an important factor in the difficulties with which we were struggling at that time and which periodically made us abscond.
Mother would be seated in this rather medieval-looking chair with its high, carved back, her feet on a little tabouret, while we sat on the floor, on a slightly faded carpet, conquered and seduced, revolted and never satisfied - but nevertheless, very interested. Treasures, never noted down, were lost until, with the cunning of the Sioux, we succeeded in making Mother consent to the presence of a tape recorder. But even then, and for a long time thereafter, She carefully made us erase or delete in our notes all that concerned Her rather too personally - sometimes we disobeyed Her.
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 con structed 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
--
We have, in modern times, a movement towards a more conscious and courageous, knowledge of things that were taboo to puritan ages. Not to shut one's eyes to the lower, darker and hidden strands of our nature, but to bring them out into the light of day and to face them is the best way of dealing with such elements, which otherwise, if they are repressed, exert an unhealthy influence on the mind and nature. The Upanishadic view runs on the same lines, but, with the unveiling and the natural and not merely naturalisticdelineation of these under-worlds (concerning sex and food), it endows them with a perspective sub specie aeternitatis. The sexual function, for example, is easily equated to the double movement of ascent and descent that is secreted in nature, or to the combined action of Purusha and Prakriti in the cosmic Play, or again to the hidden fount of Delight that holds and moves the universe. In this view there is nothing merely secular and profane, but all is woven into the cosmic spiritual whole; and man is taught to consider and to mould all his movementsof soul and mind and bodyin the light and rhythm of that integral Reality.11
The central secret of the transfigured consciousness lies, as we have already indicated, in the mystic rite or law of Sacrifice. It is the one basic, fundamental, universal Law that upholds and explains the cosmic movement, conformity to which brings to the thrice-bound human being release and freedom. Sacrifice consists essentially of two elements or processes: (i) The offering or self giving of the lower reality to the higher, and, as a consequence, an answering movement of (ii) the descent of the higher into the lower. The lower offered to the higher means the lower sublimated and integrated into the higher; and the descent of the higher into the lower means the incarnation of the former and the fulfilment of the latter. The Gita elaborates the same idea when it says that by Sacrifice men increase the gods and the gods increase men and by so increasing each other they attain the supreme Good. Nothing is, nothing is done, for its own sake, for an egocentric satisfaction; all, even movements relating to food and to sex should be dedicated to the Cosmic BeingVisva Purusha and that alone received which comes from Him.
--
In Yajnavalkya's enumeration, however, it is to be noted, first of all, that he stresses on the number three. The principle of triplicity is of very wide application: it permeates all fields of consciousness and is evidently based upon a fundamental fact of reality. It seems to embody a truth of synthesis and comprehension, points to the order and harmony that reigns in the cosmos, the spheric music. The metaphysical, that is to say, the original principles that constitute existence are the well-known triplets: (i) the superior: Sat, Chit, Ananda; and (ii) the inferior: Body, Life and Mindthis being a reflection or translation or concretisation of the former. We can see also here how the dual principle comes in, the twin godhead or the two gods to which Yajnavalkya refers. The same principle is found in the conception of Ardhanarishwara, Male and Female, Purusha-Prakriti. The Upanishad says 14 yet again that the One original Purusha was not pleased at being alone, so for a companion he created out of himself the original Female. The dual principle signifies creation, the manifesting activity of the Reality. But what is this one and a half to which Yajnavalkya refers? It simply means that the other created out of the one is not a wholly separate, independent entity: it is not an integer by itself, as in the Manichean system, but that it is a portion, a fraction of the One. And in the end, in the ultimate analysis, or rather synthesis, there is but one single undivided and indivisible unity. The thousands and hundreds, very often mentioned also in the Rig Veda, are not simply multiplications of the One, a graphic description of its many-sidedness; it indicates also the absolute fullness, the complete completeness (prasya pram) of the Reality. It includes and comprehends all and is a rounded totality, a full circle. The hundred-gated and the thousand-pillared cities of which the ancient Rishis chanted are formations and embodiments of consciousness human and divine, are realities whole and entire englobing all the layers and grades of consciousness.
Besides this metaphysics there is also an occult aspect in numerology of which Pythagoras was a well-known adept and in which the Vedic Rishis too seem to take special delight. The multiplication of numbers represents in a general way the principle of emanation. The One has divided and subdivided itself, but not in a haphazard way: it is not like the chaotic pulverisation of a piece of stone by hammer-blows. The process of division and subdivision follows a pattern almost as neat and methodical as a genealogical tree. That is to say, the emanations form a hierarchy. At the top, the apex of the pyramid, stands the one supreme Godhead. That Godhead is biune in respect of manifestation the Divine and his creative Power. This two-in-one reality may be considered, according to one view of creation, as dividing into three forms or aspects the well-known Brahma, Vishnu and Rudra of Hindu mythology. These may be termed the first or primary emanations.
--
The first boon regards the individual, that is to say, the individual identity and integrity. It asks for the maintenance of that individuality so that it may be saved from the dissolution that Death brings about. Death, of course, means the dissolution of the body, but it represents also dissolution pure and simple. Indeed death is a process which does not stop with the physical phenomenon, but continues even after; for with the body gone, the other elements of the individual organism, the vital and the mental too gradually fall off, fade and dissolve. Nachiketas wishes to secure from Death the safety and preservation of the earthly personality, the particular organisation of mind and vital based upon a recognisable physical frame. That is the first necessity for the aspiring mortalfor, it is said, the body is the first in strument for the working out of one's life ideal. But man's true personality, the real individuality lies beyond, beyond the body, beyond the life, beyond the mind, beyond the triple region that Death lords it over. That is the divine world, the Heaven of the immortals, beyond death and beyond sorrow and grief. It is the hearth secreted in the inner heart where burns the Divine Fire, the God of Life Everlasting. And this is the nodus that binds together the threefold status of the manifested existence, the body, the life and the mind. This triplicity is the structure of name and form built out of the bricks of experience, the kiln, as it were, within which burns the Divine Agni, man's true soul. This soul can be reached only when one exceeds the bounds and limitations of the triple cord and experiences one's communion and identity with all souls and all existence. Agni is the secret divinity within, within the individual and within the world; he is the Immanent Divine, the cosmic godhead that holds together and marshals all the elements and components, all the principles that make up the manifest universe. He it is that has entered into the world and created facets of his own reality in multiple forms: and it is he that lies secret in the human being as the immortal soul through all its adventure of life and death in the series of incarnations in terre strial evolution. The adoration and realisation of this Immanent Divinity, the worship of Agni taught by Yama in the second boon, consists in the triple sacrifice, the triple work, the triple union in the triple status of the physical, the vital and the mental consciousness, the mastery of which leads one to the other shore, the abode of perennial existence where the human soul enjoys its eternity and unending continuity in cosmic life. Therefore, Agni, the master of the psychic being, is called jtaveds, he who knows the births, all the transmigrations from life to life.
The third boon is the secret of secrets, for it is the knowledge and realisation of Transcendence that is sought here. Beyond the individual lies the universal; is there anything beyond the universal? The release of the individual into the cosmic existence gives him the griefless life eternal: can the cosmos be rolled up and flung into something beyond? What would be the nature of that thing? What is there outside creation, outside manifestation, outside Maya, to use a latter day term? Is there existence or non-existence (utter dissolution or extinctionDeath in his supreme and absolute status)? King Yama did not choose to answer immediately and even endeavoured to dissuade Nachiketas from pursuing the question over which people were confounded, as he said. Evidently it was a much discussed problem in those days. Buddha was asked the same question and he evaded it, saying that the pragmatic man should attend to practical and immediate realities and not, waste time and energy in discussing things ultimate and beyond that have hardly any relation to the present and the actual.
00.04 - The Beautiful in the Upanishads, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Only, to some perhaps the beauty may not appear as evident and apparent. The Spirit of beauty that resides in the Upanishadic consciousness is more retiring and reticent. It dwells in its own privacy, in its own home, as it were, and therefore chooses to be bare and austere, simple and sheer. Beauty means usually the beauty of form, even if it be not always the decorative, ornamental and sumptuous form. The early Vedas aimed at the perfect form (surpaktnum), the faultless expression, the integral and complete embodiment; the gods they envisaged and invoked were gleaming powers carved out of harmony and beauty and figured close to our modes of apprehension (spyan). But the Upanishads came to lay stress upon what is beyond the form, what the eye cannot see nor the vision reflect:
na sandi tihati rpamasya
--
Art at its highest tends to become also the simplest and the most unconventional; and it is then the highest art, precisely because it does not aim at being artistic. The aesthetic motive is totally absent in the Upanishads; the sense of beauty is there, but it is attendant upon and involved in a deeper strand of consciousness. That consciousness seeks consciousness itself, the fullness of consciousness, the awareness and possession of the Truth and Reality,the one thing which, if known, gives the knowledge of all else. And this consciousness of the Truth is also Delight, the perfect Bliss, the Immortality where the whole universe resolves itself into its original state of rasa, that is to say, of essential and inalienable harmony and beauty.
***
00.05 - A Vedic Conception of the Poet, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The poet is a trinity in himself. A triune consciousness forms his personality. First of all, he is the Knower-the Seer of the Truth, kavaya satyadrara. He has the direct vision, the luminous intelligence, the immediate perception.12 A subtle and profound and penetrating consciousness is his,nigam, pracetas; his is the eye of the Sun,srya caku.13 He secures an increased being through his effulgent understanding.14 In the second place, the Poet is not only Seer but Doer; he is knower as well as creator. He has a dynamic knowledge and his vision itself is power, ncak;15 he is the Seer-Will,kavikratu.16 He has the blazing radiance of the Sun and is supremely potent in his self-Iuminousness.17 The Sun is the light and the energy of the Truth. Even like the Sun the Poet gives birth to the Truth, srya satyasava, satyya satyaprasavya. But the Poet as Power is not only the revealer or creator,savit, he is also the builder or fashioner,ta, and he is the organiser,vedh is personality. First of all, he is the Knower-the Seer of the Truth, kavaya satyadrara, of the Truth.18 As Savita he manifests the Truth, as Tashta he gives a perfected body and form to the Truth, and as Vedha he maintains the Truth in its dynamic working. The effective marshalling and organisation of the Truth is what is called Ritam, the Right; it is also called Dharma,19 the Law or the Rhythm, the ordered movement and invincible execution of the Truth. The Poet pursues the Path of the Right;20 it is he who lays out the Path for the march of the Truth, the progress of the Sacrifice.21 He is like a fast steed well-yoked, pressing forward;22 he is the charger that moves straight and unswerving and carries us beyond 23into the world of felicity.
Indeed delight is the third and the supremely intimate element of the poetic personality. Dear and delightful is the poet, dear and delightful his works, priya, priyi His hand is dripping with sweetness,kavir hi madhuhastya.24 The Poet-God shines in his pristine beauty and is showering delight.25 He is filled with utter ecstasy so that he may rise to the very source of the luminous Energy.26? Pure is the Divine Joy and it enters and purifies all forms as it moves to the seat of the Immortals.27Indeed this sparkling Delight is the Poet-Seer and it is that that brings forth the creative word, the utterance of Indra.28
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On this Earth they hold everywhere in themselves all the secrets. They make Earth and Heaven move together, so that they may realise their heroic strength. They measure them with their rhythmic measurings, they hold in their controlled grasp the vast and great twins, and unite them and establish between them the mid-world of Delight for the perfect poise.30
All the gods are poetstheir forms are perfect, surpa, suda, their Names full of beauty,cru devasya nma.31 This means also that the gods embody the different powers that constitute the poetic consciousness. Agni is the Seer-Will, the creative vision of the Poet the luminous energy born of an experience by identity with the Truth. Indra is the Idea-Form, the architectonic conception of the work or achievement. Mitra and Varuna are the large harmony, the vast cadence and sweep of movement. The Aswins, the Divine Riders, represent the intense zest of well-yoked Life-Energy. Soma is Rasa, Ananda, the Supreme Bliss and Delight.
0.00a - Introduction, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
Manly P. Hall, in The Secret Teachings of All Ages, deplores the failure of modern science to "sense the profundity of these philosophical deductions of the ancients." Were they to do so, he says, they "would realize those who fabricated the structure of the Qabalah possessed a knowledge of the celestial plan comparable in every respect with that of the modern savant."
Fortunately many scientists in the field of psycho therapy are beginning to sense this correlation. In Francis G. Wickes' The Inner World of Choice reference is made to "the existence in every person of a galaxy of potentialities for growth marked by a succession of personalogical evolution and interaction with environments." She points out that man is not only an individual particle but "also a part of the human stream, governed by a Self greater than his own individual self."
The Book of the Law states simply, "Every man and every woman is a star." This is a startling thought for those who considered a star a heavenly body, but a declaration subject to proof by anyone who will venture into the realm of his own Unconscious. This realm, he will learn if he persists, is not hemmed in by the boundaries of his physical body but is one with the boundless reaches of outer space.
Those who, armed with the tools provided by the Qabalah, have made the journey within and crossed beyond the barriers of illusion, have returned with an impressive quantity of knowledge which conforms strictly to the definition of "science" in Winston's College Dictionary: "Science: a body of knowledge, general truths of particular facts, obtained and shown to be correct by accurate observation and thinking; knowledge condensed, arranged and systematized with reference to general truths and laws."
Over and over their findings have been confirmed, proving the Qabalah contains within it not only the elements of the science itself but the method with which to pursue it.
000 - Humans in Universe, #Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, #R Buckminster Fuller, #Science
mechanical and leverage calculation capabilities of Leonardo; and in the art of shipdesign the cipher gave birth to structural and mechanical engineering, which made
possible the intertensioning and compressioning calculations of the ribbed structural
strength of a sailing vessel as well as that of its vast wind-energy-driven complex of
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of safely anticipated structural engineering and navigation.
000.105 This new anticipatory science made large engineering projects possible,
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great political and indu strial power structures have all become supranational
comprehensivists, while the people have been passport-chained to their respective
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chemical structuring produces ever more powerful and incisive performances perpound of physical matter employed.
000.112 structures are complexes of visible or invisible physical events
interacting to produce stable patterns. A structural system divides Universe into all
Universe outside the structural system (macrocosm) and all Universe inside the
structural system (microcosm). Newton's discovery of mass interattraction showed
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000.114 All structural systems are comprised of tension and compression
components. Stone masonry has a high compression-resisting strength of 50,000
pounds per square inch ultimate. But masonry has low tensional coherence; it can
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cohering resistance. Gravity pushed humanity's stone structures inward toward the
Earth's center. Humans had to build their structures on bedrock "shoes" to prevent
them from sinking vertically into Earth's center. Stone buildings could not float on
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humans but not for floating heavy cargoes. Thus the high tensile strength of wood,
combined with the human discovery of the intertrussing principles of structuring
and the low overall displacement weights involved, made possible for humans to
design and fabricate air-enclosing wooden vessels whose structure and space
enclosure combined to produce highly successful wooden vessels of the sea that
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iron, carbon, and manganese having a tensile strength of 50,000 p.s.i. as well as a
compression-resisting capability of 50.000 p.s.i. Steel has the same compression-
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capability than masonry and five times the tensile or compressive strength of wood.
Steel brought mankind a structural-tension capability to match stone's previous
millions of years of exclusive compressional supremacy. With far higher tensile
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higher strength-to-weight ratios. Out of this came aluminum production by the
opening of the 20th century-and aluminum alloys and stainless steel by the 1930s.
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and faster. Finally humans developed so much strength per weight of materials
capability that they accomplished "vertol" jet plane flight and vertical space-vehicle
blastoffs. Since then human scientists developing ever greater strength per weight
of material have gone on to carry ever greater useful loads in vertical takeoff
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overwhelming structural strength has become entirely invisible. Fully 99 percent of
humanity has as yet no idea that this increase in tensile capability has come about or
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comprehension of the fundamental structuring principles and their military
developments and profitable commercial uses. But only vast money investments or
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boot straps." Today we are lifting ever lighter and stronger structural vessel "selves"by ever less effort of our scientific know-how boot straps. No economist knows this.
It is the most highly classified of military and private enterprise secrets. Indu stry
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of which the world power structures do not yet have dawning awareness. We can
state that as a consequence of the myriad of more-with-less, invisible, technological
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language of science. Fortunately, however, nature is not using the strictly
imaginary, awkward, and unrealistic coordinate system adopted by and taught by
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grows outwardly by omniintertriangulated structuring from nuclei.
000.127 Nature is inherently eight-dimensional, and the first four of these
dimensions are the four planes of symmetry of the minimum structure of Universe-
the omnitriangulated, equi-vector-edge tetrahedron. In respect to the conceptual pre-
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rhombic dodecahedron 6. When the size information is introduced, it occurs only asfrequency of modular subdivision of each unit vector structuring of the primitive
family's respective 1-, 2-, 3-, 4-, 5-, and 6-tetravolumes. Frequency to the third
0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
SRI RAMAKRISHNA, the God-man of modern India, was born at Kamarpukur. This village in the Hooghly Di strict preserved during the last century the idyllic simplicity of the rural areas of Bengal. Situated far from the railway, it was untouched by the glamour of the city. It contained rice-fields, tall palms, royal banyans, a few lakes, and two cremation grounds. South of the village a stream took its leisurely course. A mango orchard dedicated by a neighbouring zemindar to the public use was frequented by the boys for their noonday sports. A highway passed through the village to the great temple of Jagannath at Puri, and the villagers, most of whom were farmers and craftsmen, entertained many passing holy men and pilgrims. The dull round of the rural life was broken by lively festivals, the observance of sacred days, religious singing, and other innocent pleasures.
About his parents Sri Ramakrishna once said: "My mother was the personification of rectitude and gentleness. She did not know much about the ways of the world; innocent of the art of concealment, she would say what was in her mind. People loved her for her open-heartedness. My father, an orthodox brahmin, never accepted gifts from the sudras. He spent much of his time in worship and meditation, and in repeating God's name and chanting His glories. Whenever in his daily prayers he invoked the Goddess Gayatri, his chest flushed and tears rolled down his cheeks. He spent his leisure hours making garlands for the Family Deity, Raghuvir."
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At the age of nine Gadadhar was invested with the sacred thread. This ceremony conferred upon him the privileges of his brahmin lineage, including the worship of the Family Deity, Raghuvir, and imposed upon him the many strict disciplines of a brahmin's life. During the ceremony of investiture he shocked his relatives by accepting a meal cooked by his nurse, a sudra woman. His father would never have dreamt of doing such a thing But in a playful mood Gadadhar had once promised this woman that he would eat her food, and now he fulfilled his plighted word. The woman had piety and religious sincerity, and these were more important to the boy than the conventions of society.
Gadadhar was now permitted to worship Raghuvir. Thus began his first training in meditation. He so gave his heart and soul to the worship that the stone image very soon appeared to him as the living Lord of the Universe. His tendency to lose himself in contemplation was first noticed at this time. Behind his boyish light-heartedness was seen a deepening of his spiritual nature.
About this time, on the Sivaratri night, consecrated to the worship of Siva, a dramatic performance was arranged. The principal actor, who was to play the part of Siva, suddenly fell ill, and Gadadhar was persuaded to act in his place. While friends were dressing him for the role of Siva — smearing his body with ashes, matting his locks, placing a trident in his hand and a string of rudraksha beads around his neck — the boy appeared to become absent-minded. He approached the stage with slow and measured step, supported by his friends. He looked the living image of Siva. The audience loudly applauded what it took to be his skill as an actor, but it was soon discovered that he was really lost in meditation. His countenance was radiant and tears flowed from his eyes. He was lost to the outer world. The effect of this scene on the audience was tremendous. The people felt blessed as by a vision of Siva Himself. The performance had to be stopped, and the boy's mood lasted till the following morning.
Gadadhar himself now organized a dramatic company with his young friends. The stage was set in the mango orchard. The themes were selected from the stories of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Gadadhar knew by heart almost all the roles, having heard them from professional actors. His favourite theme was the Vrindavan episode of Krishna's life, depicting those exquisite love-stories of Krishna and the milkmaids and the cowherd boys. Gadadhar would play the parts of Radha or Krishna and would often lose himself in the character he was portraying. His natural feminine grace heightened the dramatic effect. The mango orchard would ring with the loud kirtan of the boys. Lost in song and merry-making, Gadadhar became indifferent to the routine of school.
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The Christian missionaries gave the finishing touch to the process of transformation. They ridiculed as relics of a barbarous age the images and rituals of the Hindu religion. They tried to persuade India that the teachings of her saints and seers were the cause of her downfall, that her Vedas, Puranas, and other scriptures were filled with superstition. Christianity, they maintained, had given the white races position and power in this world and assurance of happiness in the next; therefore Christianity was the best of all religions. Many intelligent young Hindus became converted. The man in the street was confused. The majority of the educated grew materialistic in their mental outlook. Everyone living near Calcutta or the other strong-holds of Western culture, even those who attempted to cling to the orthodox traditions of Hindu society, became infected by the new uncertainties and the new beliefs.
But the soul of India was to be resuscitated through a spiritual awakening. We hear the first call of this renascence in the spirited retort of the young Gadadhar: "Brother, what shall I do with a mere bread-winning education?"
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The main temple is dedicated to Kali, the Divine Mother, here worshipped as Bhavatarini, the Saviour of the Universe. The floor of this temple also is paved with marble. The basalt image of the Mother, dressed in gorgeous gold brocade, stands on a white marble image of the pro strate body of Her Divine Consort, Siva, the symbol of the Absolute. On the feet of the Goddess are, among other ornaments, anklets of gold. Her arms are decked with jewelled ornaments of gold. She wears necklaces of gold and pearls, a golden garland of human heads, and a girdle of human arms. She wears a golden crown, golden ear-rings, and a golden nose-ring with a pearl-drop. She has four arms. The lower left hand holds a severed human head and the upper grips a blood-stained sabre. One right hand offers boons to Her children; the other allays their fear. The majesty of Her posture can hardly be described. It combines the terror of de struction with the reassurance of motherly tenderness. For She is the Cosmic Power, the totality of the universe, a glorious harmony of the pairs of opposites. She deals out death, as She creates and preserves. She has three eyes, the third being the symbol of Divine Wisdom; they strike dismay into the wicked, yet pour out affection for Her devotees.
The whole symbolic world is represented in the temple garden — the Trinity of the Nature Mother (Kali), the Absolute (Siva), and Love (Radhakanta), the Arch spanning heaven and earth. The terrific Goddess of the Tantra, the soul-enthralling Flute-Player of the Bhagavata, and the Self-absorbed Absolute of the Vedas live together, creating the greatest synthesis of religions. All aspects of Reality are represented there. But of this divine household, Kali is the pivot, the sovereign Mi stress. She is Prakriti, the Procreatrix, Nature, the De stroyer, the Creator. Nay, She is something greater and deeper still for those who have eyes to see. She is the Universal Mother, "my Mother" as Ramakrishna would say, the All-powerful, who reveals Herself to Her children under different aspects and Divine Incarnations, the Visible God, who leads the elect to the Invisible Reality; and if it so pleases Her, She takes away the last trace of ego from created beings and merges it in the consciousness of the Absolute, the undifferentiated God. Through Her grace "the finite ego loses itself in the illimitable Ego — Atman — Brahman". (Romain Holland, Prophets of the New India, p. 11.)
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One day the priest of the Radhakanta temple accidentally dropped the image of Krishna on the floor, breaking one of its legs. The pundits advised the Rani to install a new image, since the worship of an image with a broken limb was against the scriptural injunctions. But the Rani was fond of the image, and she asked Sri Ramakrishna's opinion. In an ab stracted mood, he said: "This solution is ridiculous. If a son-in-law of the Rani broke his leg, would she discard him and put another in his place? Wouldn't she rather arrange for his treatment? Why should she not do the same thing in this case too? Let the image be repaired and worshipped as before." It was a simple, straightforward solution and was accepted by the Rani. Sri Ramakrishna himself mended the break. The priest was dismissed for his carelessness, and at Mathur Babu's earnest request Sri Ramakrishna accepted the office of priest in the Radhakanta temple.
^No definite information is available as to the origin of this name. Most probably it was given by Mathur Babu, as Ramlal, Sri Ramakrishna's nephew, has said, quoting the authority of his uncle himself.
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Born in an orthodox brahmin family, Sri Ramakrishna knew the formalities of worship, its rites and rituals. The innumerable gods and goddesses of the Hindu religion are the human aspects of the indescribable and incomprehensible Spirit, as conceived by the finite human mind. They understand and appreciate human love and emotion, help men to realize their secular and spiritual ideals, and ultimately enable men to attain liberation from the miseries of phenomenal life. The Source of light, intelligence, wisdom, and strength is the One alone from whom comes the fulfilment of desire. Yet, as long as a man is bound by his human limitations, he cannot but worship God through human forms. He must use human symbols. Therefore Hinduism asks the devotees to look on God as the ideal father, the ideal mother, the ideal husband, the ideal son, or the ideal friend. But the name ultimately leads to the Nameless, the form to the Formless, the word to the Silence, the emotion to the serene realization of Peace in Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute. The gods gradually merge in the one God. But until that realization is achieved, the devotee cannot dissociate human factors from his worship. Therefore the Deity is bathed and clothed and decked with ornaments. He is fed and put to sleep. He is propitiated with hymns, songs, and prayers. And there are appropriate rites connected with all these functions. For instance, to secure for himself external purity, the priest bathes himself in holy water and puts on a holy cloth. He purifies the mind and the sense-organs by appropriate meditations. He fortifies the place of worship against evil forces by drawing around it circles of fire and water. He awakens the different spiritual centres of the body and invokes the Supreme Spirit in his heart. Then he transfers the Supreme Spirit to the image before him and worships the image, regarding it no longer as clay or stone, but as the embodiment of Spirit, throbbing with Life and Consciousness. After the worship the Supreme Spirit is recalled from the image to Its true sanctuary, the heart of the priest. The real devotee knows the absurdity of worshipping the Transcendental Reality with material articles — clothing That which pervades the whole universe and the beyond, putting on a pedestal That which cannot be limited by space, feeding That which is disembodied and incorporeal, singing before That whose glory the music of the spheres tries vainly to proclaim. But through these rites the devotee aspires to go ultimately beyond rites and rituals, forms and names, words and praise, and to realize God as the All-pervading Consciousness.
Hindu priests are thoroughly acquainted with the rites of worship, but few of them are aware of their underlying significance. They move their hands and limbs mechanically, in obedience to the letter of the scriptures, and repeat the holy mantras like parrots. But from the very beginning the inner meaning of these rites was revealed to Sri Ramakrishna. As he sat facing the image, a strange transformation came over his mind. While going through the prescribed ceremonies, he would actually find himself encircled by a wall of fire protecting him and the place of worship from unspiritual vibrations, or he would feel the rising of the mystic Kundalini through the different centres of the body. The glow on his face, his deep absorption, and the intense atmosphere of the temple impressed everyone who saw him worship the Deity.
Ramkumar wanted Sri Ramakrishna to learn the intricate rituals of the worship of Kali. To become a priest of Kali one must undergo a special form of initiation from a qualified guru, and for Sri Ramakrishna a suitable brahmin was found. But no sooner did the brahmin speak the holy word in his ear than Sri Ramakrishna, overwhelmed with emotion, uttered a loud cry and plunged into deep concentration.
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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 de struction; 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
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Yet this was only a foretaste of the intense experiences to come. The first glimpse of the Divine Mother made him the more eager for Her uninterrupted vision. He wanted to see Her both in meditation and with eyes open. But the Mother began to play a teasing game of hide-and-seek with him, intensifying both his joy and his suffering. Weeping bitterly during the moments of separation from Her, he would pass into a trance and then find Her standing before him, smiling, talking, consoling, bidding him be of good cheer, and in structing him. During this period of spiritual practice he had many uncommon experiences. When he sat to meditate, he would hear strange clicking sounds in the joints of his legs, as if someone were locking them up, one after the other, to keep him motionless; and at the conclusion of his meditation he would again hear the same sounds, this time unlocking them and leaving him free to move about. He would see flashes like a swarm of fire-flies floating before his eyes, or a sea of deep mist around him, with luminous waves of molten silver. Again, from a sea of translucent mist he would behold the Mother rising, first Her feet, then Her waist, body, face, and head, finally Her whole person; he would feel Her breath and hear Her voice. Worshipping in the temple, sometimes he would become exalted, sometimes he would remain motionless as stone, sometimes he would almost collapse from excessive emotion. Many of his actions, contrary to all tradition, seemed sacrilegious to the people. He would take a flower and touch it to his own head, body, and feet, and then offer it to the Goddess. Or, like a drunkard, he would reel to the throne of the Mother, touch Her chin by way of showing his affection for Her, and sing, talk, joke, laugh, and dance. Or he would take a morsel of food from the plate and hold it to Her mouth, begging Her to eat it, and would not be satisfied till he was convinced that She had really eaten. After the Mother had been put to sleep at night, from his own room he would hear Her ascending to the upper storey of the temple with the light steps of a happy girl, Her anklets jingling. Then he would discover Her standing with flowing hair. Her black form silhouetted against the sky of the night, looking at the Ganges or at the distant lights of Calcutta.
Naturally the temple officials took him for an insane person. His worldly well-wishers brought him to skilled physicians; but no-medicine could cure his malady. Many a time he doubted his sanity himself. For he had been sailing across an uncharted sea, with no earthly guide to direct him. His only haven of security was the Divine Mother Herself. To Her he would pray: "I do not know what these things are. I am ignorant of mantras and the scriptures. Teach me, Mother, how to realize Thee. Who else can help me? Art Thou not my only refuge and guide?" And the sustaining presence of the Mother never failed him in his di stress or doubt. Even those who criticized his conduct were greatly impressed with his purity, guilelessness, truthfulness, integrity, and holiness. They felt an uplifting influence in his presence.
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One of the painful ailments from which Sri Ramakrishna suffered at this time was a burning sensation in his body, and he was cured by a strange vision. During worship in the temple, following the scriptural injunctions, he would imagine the presence of the "sinner" in himself and the de struction of this "sinner". One day he was meditating in the Panchavati, when he saw come out of him a red-eyed man of black complexion, reeling like a drunkard. Soon there emerged from him another person, of serene countenance, wearing the ochre cloth of a sannyasi and carrying in his hand a trident. The second person attacked the first and killed him with the trident. Thereafter Sri Ramakrishna was free of his pain.
About this time he began to worship God by assuming the attitude of a servant toward his master. He imitated the mood of Hanuman, the monkey chieftain of the Ramayana, the ideal servant of Rama and traditional model for this self-effacing form of devotion. When he meditated on Hanuman his movements and his way of life began to resemble those of a monkey. His eyes became restless. He lived on fruits and roots. With his cloth tied around his waist, a portion of it hanging in the form of a tail, he jumped from place to place instead of walking. And after a short while he was blessed with a vision of Sita, the divine consort of Rama, who entered his body and disappeared there with the words, "I bequeath to you my smile."
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One day Haladhari upset Sri Ramakrishna with the statement that God is incomprehensible to the human mind. Sri Ramakrishna has described the great moment of doubt when he wondered whether his visions had really misled him: "With sobs I prayed to the Mother, 'Canst Thou have the heart to deceive me like this because I am a fool?' A stream of tears flowed from my eyes. Shortly afterwards I saw a volume of mist rising from the floor and filling the space before me. In the midst of it there appeared a face with flowing beard, calm, highly expressive, and fair. Fixing its gaze steadily upon me, it said solemnly, 'Remain in bhavamukha, on the threshold of relative consciousness.' This it repeated three times and then it gently disappeared in the mist, which itself dissolved. This vision reassured me."
A garbled report of Sri Ramakrishna's failing health, indifference to worldly life, and various abnormal activities reached Kamarpukur and filled the heart of his poor mother with anguish. At her repeated request he returned to his village for a change of air. But his boyhood friends did not interest him any more. A divine fever was consuming him. He spent a great part of the day and night in one of the cremation grounds, in meditation. The place reminded him of the impermanence of the human body, of human hopes and achievements. It also reminded him of Kali, the Goddess of de struction.
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there, especially the officers of the temple garden, were struck dumb. Sri Rama- krishna said to Mathur, like a boy: "Just fancy, he too says so! Well, I am glad to learn that after all it is not a disease."
When, a few days later, Pundit Gauri arrived, another meeting was held, and he agreed with the view of the Brahmani and Vaishnavcharan. To Sri Ramakrishna's remark that Vaishnavcharan had declared him to be an Avatar, Gauri replied: "Is that all he has to say about you? Then he has said very little. I am fully convinced that you are that Mine of Spiritual Power, only a small fraction of which descends on earth, from time to time, in the form of an Incarnation."
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Sri Ramakrishna set himself to the task of practising the disciplines of Tantra; and at the bidding of the Divine Mother Herself he accepted the Brahmani as his guru. He performed profound and delicate ceremonies in the Panchavati and under the bel-tree at the northern extremity of the temple compound. He practised all the disciplines of the sixty-four principal Tantra books, and it took him never more than three days to achieve the result promised in any one of them. After the observance of a few preliminary rites, he would be overwhelmed with a strange divine fervour and would go into samadhi, where his mind would dwell in exaltation. Evil ceased to exist for him. The word "carnal" lost its meaning. The whole world and everything in it appeared as the lila, the sport, of Siva and Sakti. He beheld held everywhere manifest the power and beauty of the Mother; the whole world, animate and inanimate, appeared to him as pervaded with Chit, Consciousness, and with Ananda, Bliss.
He saw in a vision the Ultimate Cause of the universe as a huge luminous triangle giving birth every moment to an infinite number of worlds. He heard the Anahata Sabda, the great sound Om, of which the innumerable sounds of the universe are only so many echoes. He acquired the eight supernatural powers of yoga, which make a man almost omnipotent, and these he spurned as of no value whatsoever to the Spirit. He had a vision of the divine Maya, the inscrutable Power of God, by which the universe is created and sustained, and into which it is finally absorbed. In this vision he saw a woman of exquisite beauty, about to become a mother, emerging from the Ganges and slowly approaching the Panchavati. Presently she gave birth to a child and began to nurse it tenderly. A moment later she assumed a terrible aspect, seized the child with her grim jaws, and crushed it. Swallowing it, she re-entered the waters of the Ganges.
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To develop the devotee's love for God, Vaishnavism humanizes God. God is to be regarded as the devotee's Parent, Master, Friend, Child, Husband, or Sweetheart, each succeeding relationship representing an intensification of love. These bhavas, or attitudes toward God, are known as santa, dasya, sakhya, vatsalya, and madhur. The rishis of the Vedas, Hanuman, the cow-herd boys of Vrindavan, Rama's mother Kausalya, and Radhika, Krishna's sweetheart, exhibited, respectively, the most perfect examples of these forms. In the ascending scale the-glories of God are gradually forgotten and the devotee realizes more and more the intimacy of divine communion. Finally he regards himself as the mi stress of his Beloved, and no artificial barrier remains to separate him from his Ideal. No social or moral obligation can bind to the earth his soaring spirit. He experiences perfect union with the Godhead. Unlike the Vedantist, who strives to transcend all varieties of the subject-object relationship, a devotee of the Vaishnava path wishes to retain both his own individuality and the personality of God. To him God is not an intangible Absolute, but the Purushottama, the Supreme Person.
While practising the discipline of the madhur bhava, the male devotee often regards himself as a woman, in order to develop the most intense form of love for Sri Krishna, the only purusha, or man, in the universe. This assumption of the attitude of the opposite sex has a deep psychological significance. It is a matter of common experience that an idea may be cultivated to such an intense degree that every idea alien to it is driven from the mind. This peculiarity of the mind may be utilized for the subjugation of the lower desires and the development of the spiritual nature. Now, the idea which is the basis of all desires and passions in a man is the conviction of his indissoluble association with a male body. If he can inoculate himself thoroughly with the idea that he is a woman, he can get rid of the desires peculiar to his male body. Again, the idea that he is a woman may in turn be made to give way to another higher idea, namely, that he is neither man nor woman, but the Impersonal Spirit. The Impersonal Spirit alone can enjoy real communion with the Impersonal God. Hence the highest est realization of the Vaishnava draws close to the transcendental experience of the Vedantist.
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The Brahmani was the enthusiastic teacher and astonished beholder of Sri Ramakrishna in his spiritual progress. She became proud of the achievements of her unique pupil. But the pupil himself was not permitted to rest; his destiny beckoned him forward. His Divine Mother would allow him no respite till he had left behind the entire realm of duality with its visions, experiences, and ecstatic dreams. But for the new ascent the old tender guides would not suffice. The Brahmani, on whom he had depended for, three years, saw her son escape from her to follow the command of a teacher with masculine strength, a sterner mien, a gnarled physique, and a virile voice. The new guru was a wandering monk, the sturdy Totapuri, whom Sri Ramakrishna learnt to address affectionately as Nangta, the "Naked One", because of his total renunciation of all earthly objects and attachments, including even a piece of wearing cloth.
Totapuri was the bearer of a philosophy new to Sri Ramakrishna, the non-dualistic Vedanta philosophy, whose conclusions Totapuri had experienced in his own life. This ancient Hindu system designates the Ultimate Reality as Brahman, also described as Satchidananda, Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute. Brahman is the only Real Existence. In It there is no time, no space, no causality, no multiplicity. But through maya, Its inscrutable Power, time, space, and causality are created and the One appears to break into the many. The eternal Spirit appears as a manifold of individuals endowed with form and subject to the conditions of time. The Immortal becomes a victim of birth and death. The Changeless undergoes change. The sinless Pure Soul, hypnotized by Its own maya, experiences the joys of heaven and the pains of hell. But these experiences based on the duality of the subject-object relationship are unreal. Even the vision of a Personal God
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On the appointed day, in the small hours of the morning, a fire was lighted in the Panchavati. Totapuri and Sri Ramakrishna sat before it. The flame played on their faces. "Ramakrishna was a small brown man with a short beard and beautiful eyes, long dark eyes, full of light, obliquely set and slightly veiled, never very wide open, but seeing half-closed a great distance both outwardly and inwardly. His mouth was open over his white teeth in a bewitching smile, at once affectionate and mischievous. Of medium height, he was thin to emaciation and extremely delicate. His temperament was high- strung, for he was supersensitive to all the winds of joy and sorrow, both moral and physical. He was indeed a living reflection of all that happened before the mirror of his eyes, a two-sided mirror, turned both out and in." (Romain Rolland, Prophets of the New India, pp. 38-9.) Facing him, the other rose like a rock. He was very tall and robust, a sturdy and tough oak. His constitution and mind were of iron. He was the strong leader of men.
In the burning flame before him Sri Ramakrishna performed the rituals of de stroying his attachment to relatives, friends, body, mind, sense-organs, ego, and the world. The leaping flame swallowed it all, making the initiate free and pure. The sacred thread and the tuft of hair were consigned to the fire, completing his severance from caste, sex, and society. Last of all he burnt in that fire, with all that is holy as his witness, his desire for enjoyment here and hereafter. He uttered the sacred mantras giving assurance of safety and fearlessness to all beings, who were only manifestations of his own Self. The rites completed, the disciple received from the guru the loin-cloth and ochre robe, the emblems of his new life.
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"Brahman", he said, "is the only Reality, ever pure, ever illumined, ever free, beyond the limits of time, space, and causation. Though apparently divided by names and forms through the inscrutable power of maya, that enchantress who makes the impossible possible, Brahman is really One and undivided. When a seeker merges in the beatitude of samadhi, he does not perceive time and space or name and form, the offspring of maya. Whatever is within the domain of maya is unreal. Give it up. De stroy the prison-house of name and form and rush out of it with the strength of a lion. Dive deep in search of the Self and realize It through samadhi. You will find the world of name and form vanishing into void, and the puny ego dissolving in Brahman-Consciousness. You will realize your identity with Brahman, Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute." Quoting the Upanishad, Totapuri said: "That knowledge is shallow by which one sees or hears or knows another
. What is shallow is worthless and can never give real felicity. But the Knowledge by which one does not see another or hear another or know another, which is beyond duality, is great, and through such Knowledge one attains the Infinite Bliss. How can the mind and senses grasp That which shines in the heart of all as the Eternal Subject?"
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Sri Ramakrishna remained completely absorbed in samadhi for three days. "Is it really true?" Totapuri cried out in astonishment. "Is it possible that he has attained in a single day what it took me forty years of strenuous practice to achieve? Great God! It is nothing short of a miracle!" With the help of Totapuri, Sri Ramakrishna's mind finally came down to the relative plane.
Totapuri, a monk of the most orthodox type, never stayed at a place more than three days. But he remained at Dakshineswar eleven months. He too had something to learn.
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 a stray by the senses. He was convinced that the world was maya and had only to be denounced to vanish for ever. A born non-dualist, he had no faith in a Personal God. He did not believe in the terrible aspect of Kali, much less in Her benign aspect. Music and the chanting of God's holy name were to him only so much nonsense. He ridiculed the spending of emotion on the worship of a Personal God.
--- KALI AND MAYA
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After the departure of Totapuri, Sri Ramakrishna remained for six months in a state of absolute identity with Brahman. "For six months at a stretch", he said, "I remained in that state from which ordinary men can never return; generally the body falls off, after three weeks, like a sere leaf. I was not conscious of day and night. Flies would enter my mouth and no strils just as they do a dead body's, but I did not feel them. My hair became matted with dust."
His body would not have survived but for the kindly attention of a monk who happened to be at Dakshineswar at that time and who somehow realized that for the good of humanity Sri Ramakrishna's body must be preserved. He tried various means, even physical violence, to recall the fleeing soul to the prison-house of the body, and during the resultant fleeting moments of consciousness he would push a few morsels of food down Sri Ramakrishna's throat. Presently Sri Ramakrishna received the command of the Divine Mother to remain on the threshold of relative consciousness. Soon there-after after he was afflicted with a serious attack of dysentery. Day and night the pain tortured him, and his mind gradually came down to the physical plane.
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From now on Sri Ramakrishna began to seek the company of devotees and holy men. He had gone through the storm and stress of spiritual disciplines and visions. Now he realized an inner calmness and appeared to others as a normal person. But he could not bear the company of worldly people or listen to their talk. Fortunately the holy atmosphere of Dakshineswar and the liberality of Mathur attracted monks and holy men from all parts of the country. Sadhus of all denominations — monists and dualists, Vaishnavas and Vedantists, Saktas and worshippers of Rama — flocked there in ever increasing numbers. Ascetics and visionaries came to seek Sri Ramakrishna's advice. Vaishnavas had come during the period of his Vaishnava sadhana, and Tantriks when he practised the disciplines of Tantra. Vedantists began to arrive after the departure of Totapuri. In the room of Sri Ramakrishna, who was then in bed with dysentery, the Vedantists engaged in scriptural discussions, and, forgetting his own physical suffering, he solved their doubts by referring directly to his own experiences. Many of the visitors were genuine spiritual souls, the unseen pillars of Hinduism, and their spiritual lives were quickened in no small measure by the sage of Dakshineswar. Sri Ramakrishna in turn learnt from them anecdotes concerning the ways and the conduct of holy men, which he subsequently narrated to his devotees and disciples. At his request Mathur provided him with large stores of food-stuffs, clothes, and so forth, for di stribution among the wandering monks.
"Sri Ramakrishna had not read books, yet he possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of religions and religious philosophies. This he acquired from his contacts with innumerable holy men and scholars. He had a unique power of assimilation; through meditation he made this knowledge a part of his being. Once, when he was asked by a disciple about the source of his seemingly inexhaustible knowledge, he replied; "I have not read; but I have heard the learned. I have made a garland of their knowledge, wearing it round my neck, and I have given it as an offering at the feet of the Mother."
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Eight years later, some time in November 1874, Sri Ramakrishna was seized with an irresistible desire to learn the truth of the Christian religion. He began to listen to readings from the Bible, by Sambhu Charan Mallick, a gentleman of Calcutta and a devotee of the Master. Sri Ramakrishna became fascinated by the life and teachings of Jesus. One day he was seated in the parlour of Jadu Mallick's garden house (This expression is used throughout to translate the Bengali word denoting a rich man's country house set in a garden.) at Dakshineswar, when his eyes became fixed on a painting of the Madonna and Child. Intently watching it, he became gradually overwhelmed with divine emotion. The figures in the picture took on life, and the rays of light emanating from them entered his soul. The effect of this experience was stronger than that of the vision of Mohammed. In dismay he cried out, "O Mother! What are You doing to me?" And, breaking through the barriers of creed and religion, he entered a new realm of ecstasy. Christ possessed his soul. For three days he did not set foot in the Kali temple. On the fourth day, in the afternoon, as he was walking in the Panchavati, he saw coming toward him a person with beautiful large eyes, serene countenance, and fair skin. As the two faced each other, a voice rang out in the depths of Sri Ramakrishna's soul: "Behold the Christ, who shed His heart's blood for the redemption of the world, who suffered a sea of anguish for love of men. It is He, the Master Yogi, who is in eternal union with God. It is Jesus, Love Incarnate." The Son of Man embraced the Son of the Divine Mother and merged in him. Sri Ramakrishna krishna realized his identity with Christ, as he had already realized his identity with Kali, Rama, Hanuman, Radha, Krishna, Brahman, and Mohammed. The Master went into samadhi and communed with the Brahman with attributes. Thus he experienced the truth that Christianity, too, was a path leading to God-Consciousness. Till the last moment of his life he believed that Christ was an Incarnation of God. But Christ, for him, was not the only Incarnation; there were others — Buddha, for instance, and Krishna.
--- ATTITUDE TOWARD DIFFERENT RELIGIONS
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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 ab struse 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 magi strate must visit any part of his di strict 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 illu strated 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 Dispensation, the Navavidhan.
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The other movement playing an important part in the nineteenth-century religious revival of India was the Arya Samaj. The Brahmo Samaj, essentially a movement of compromise with European culture, tacitly admitted the superiority of the West. But the founder of the Arya Samaj was a ' pugnacious Hindu sannyasi who accepted the challenge of Islam and Christianity and was resolved to combat all foreign influence in India. Swami Dayananda (1824-1883) launched this movement in Bombay in 1875, and soon its influence was felt throughout western India. The Swami was a great scholar of the Vedas, which he explained as being strictly monotheistic. He preached against the worship of images and re-established the ancient Vedic sacrificial rites. According to him the Vedas were the ultimate authority on religion, and he accepted every word of them as literally true. The Arya Samaj became a bulwark against the encroachments of Islam and Christianity, and its orthodox flavour appealed to many Hindu minds. It also assumed leadership in many movements of social reform. The caste-system became a target of its attack. Women it liberated from many of their social disabilities. The cause of education received from it a great impetus. It started agitation against early marriage and advocated the remarriage of Hindu widows. Its influence was strongest in the Punjab, the battle-ground of the Hindu and Islamic cultures. A new fighting attitude was introduced into the slumbering Hindu society. Unlike the Brahmo Samaj, the influence of the Arya Samaj was not confined to the intellectuals. It was a force that spread to the masses. It was a dogmatic movement intolerant of those who disagreed with its views, and it emphasized only one way, the Arya Samaj way, to the realization of Truth. Sri Ramakrishna met Swami Dayananda when the latter visited Bengal.
--- KESHAB CHANDRA SEN
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Shivanath vehemently criticized the Master for his other-worldly attitude toward his wife. He writes: "Ramakrishna was practically separated from his wife, who lived in her village home. One day when I was complaining to some friends about the virtual widowhood of his wife, he drew me to one side and whispered in my ear: 'Why do you complain? It is no longer possible; it is all dead and gone.' Another day as I was inveighing against this part of his teaching, and also declaring that our program of work in the Brahmo Samaj includes women, that ours is a social and domestic religion, and that we want to give education and social liberty to women, the saint became very much excited, as was his way when anything against his settled conviction was asserted — a trait we so much liked in him — and exclaimed, 'Go, thou fool, go and perish in the pit that your women will dig for you.' Then he glared at me and said: 'What does a gardener do with a young plant? Does he not surround it with a fence, to protect it from goats and cattle? And when the young plant has grown up into a tree and it can no longer be injured by cattle, does he not remove the fence and let the tree grow freely?' I replied, 'Yes, that is the custom with gardeners.' Then he remarked, 'Do the same in your spiritual life; become strong, be full-grown; then you may seek them.' To which I replied, 'I don't agree with you in thinking that women's work is like that of cattle, de structive; they are our associates and helpers in our spiritual struggles and social progress' — a view with which he could not agree, and he marked his dissent by shaking his head. Then referring to the lateness of the hour he jocularly remarked, 'It is time for you to depart; take care, do not be late; otherwise your woman will not admit you into her room.' This evoked hearty laughter."
Pratap Chandra Mazumdar, the right-hand man of Keshab and an accomplished Brahmo preacher in Europe and America, bitterly criticized Sri Ramakrishna's use of uncultured language and also his austere attitude toward his wife. But he could not escape the spell of the Master's personality. In the course of an article about Sri Ramakrishna, Pratap wrote in the "Theistic Quarterly Review": "What is there in common between him and me? I, a Europeanized, civilized, self-centred, semi-sceptical, so-called educated reasoner, and he, a poor, illiterate, unpolished, half-idolatrous, friendless Hindu devotee? Why should I sit long hours to attend to him, I, who have listened to Disraeli and Fawcett, Stanley and Max Muller, and a whole host of European scholars and divines? . . . And it is not I only, but dozens like me, who do the same. . . . He worships Siva, he worships Kali, he worships Rama, he worships Krishna, and is a confirmed advocate of Vedantic doctrines. . . . He is an idolater, yet is a faithful and most devoted meditator on the perfections of the One Formless, Absolute, Infinite Deity. . . . His religion is ecstasy, his worship means transcendental insight, his whole nature burns day and night with a permanent fire and fever of a strange faith and feeling. . . . So long as he is spared to us, gladly shall we sit at his feet to learn from him the sublime precepts of purity, unworldliness, spirituality, and inebriation in the love of God. . . . He, by his childlike bhakti, by his strong conceptions of an ever-ready Motherhood, helped to unfold it [God as our Mother] in our minds wonderfully. . . . By associating with him we learnt to realize better the divine attributes as scattered over the three hundred and thirty millions of deities of mythological India, the gods of the Puranas."
The Brahmo leaders received much inspiration from their contact with Sri Ramakrishna. It broadened their religious views and kindled in their hearts the yearning for God-realization; it made them understand and appreciate the rituals and symbols of Hindu religion, convinced them of the manifestation of God in diverse forms, and deepened their thoughts about the harmony of religions. The Master, too, was impressed by the sincerity of many of the Brahmo devotees. He told them about his own realizations and explained to them the essence of his teachings, such as the necessity of renunciation, sincerity in the pursuit of one's own course of discipline, faith in God, the performance of one's duties without thought of results, and discrimination between the Real and the unreal.
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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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For the householders Sri Ramakrishna did not prescribe the hard path of total renunciation. He wanted them to discharge their obligations to their families. Their renunciation was to be mental. Spiritual life could not be acquired by flying away from responsibilities. A married couple should live like brother and sister after the birth of one or two children, devoting their time to spiritual talk and contemplation. He encouraged the householders, saying that their life was, in a way, easier than that of the monk, since it was more advantageous to fight the enemy from inside a fortress than in an open field. He insisted, however, on their repairing into solitude every now and then to strengthen their devotion and faith in God through prayer, japa, and meditation. He prescribed for them the companionship of sadhus. He asked them to perform their worldly duties with one hand, while holding to God with the other, and to pray to God to make their duties fewer and fewer so that in the end they might cling to Him with both hands. He would discourage in both the householders and the celibate youths any lukewarmness in their spiritual struggles. He would not ask them to follow indiscriminately the ideal of non-resistance, which ultimately makes a coward of the unwary.
--- FUTURE MONKS
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As time passed, Girish began to learn that the guru is the one who silently unfolds the disciple's inner life. He became a steadfast devotee of the Master. He often loaded the Master with insults, drank in his presence, and took liberties which astounded the other devotees. But the Master knew that at heart Girish was tender, faithful, and sincere. He would not allow Girish to give up the theatre. And when a devotee asked him to tell Girish to give up drinking, he sternly replied: "That is none of your business. He who has taken charge of him will look after him. Girish is a devotee of heroic type. I tell you, drinking will not affect him." The Master knew that mere words could not induce a man to break deep-rooted habits, but that the silent influence of love worked miracles. Therefore he never asked him to give up alcohol, with the result that Girish himself eventually broke the habit. Sri Ramakrishna had strengthened Girish's resolution by allowing him to feel that he was absolutely free.
One day Girish felt depressed because he was unable to submit to any routine of spiritual discipline. In an exalted mood the Master said to him: "All right, give me your power of attorney. Henceforth I assume responsibility for you. You need not do anything." Girish heaved a sigh of relief. He felt happy to think that Sri Ramakrishna had assumed his spiritual responsibilities. But poor Girish could not then realize that He also, on his part, had to give up his freedom and make of himself a puppet in Sri Ramakrishna's hands. The Master began to discipline him according to this new attitude. One day Girish said about a trifling matter, "Yes, I shall do this." "No, no!" the Master corrected him. "You must not speak in that egotistic manner. You should say, 'God willing, I shall do it.'" Girish understood. Thenceforth he tried to give up all idea of personal responsibility and surrender himself to the Divine Will. His mind began to dwell constantly on Sri Ramakrishna. This unconscious meditation in time chastened his turbulent spirit.
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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
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Mahimacharan and Pratap Hazra were two devotees outstanding for their pretentiousness and idiosyncrasies. But the Master showed them his unfailing love and kindness, though he was aware of their shortcomings. Mahimacharan Chakravarty had met the Master long before the arrival of the other disciples. He had had the intention of leading a spiritual life, but a strong desire to acquire name and fame was his weakness. He claimed to have been initiated by Totapuri and used to say that he had been following the path of knowledge according to his guru's in structions. He possessed a large library of English and Sanskrit books. But though he pretended to have read them, most of the leaves were uncut. The Master knew all his limitations, yet enjoyed listening to him recite from the Vedas and other scriptures. He would always exhort Mahima to meditate on the meaning of the scriptural texts and to practise spiritual discipline.
Pratap Hazra, a middle-aged man, hailed from a village near Kamarpukur. He was not altogether unresponsive to religious feelings. On a moment's impulse he had left his home, aged mother, wife, and children, and had found shelter in the temple garden at Dakshineswar, where he intended to lead a spiritual life. He loved to argue, and the Master often pointed him out as an example of barren argumentation. He was hypercritical of others and cherished an exaggerated notion of his own spiritual advancement. He was mischievous and often tried to upset the minds of the Master's young disciples, criticizing them for their happy and joyous life and asking them to devote their time to meditation. The Master teasingly compared Hazra to Jatila and Kutila, the two women who always created ob structions in Krishna's sport with the gopis, and said that Hazra lived at Dakshineswar to "thicken the plot" by adding complications.
--
Sri Ramakrishna also became acquainted with a number of people whose scholarship or wealth entitled them everywhere to respect. He had met, a few years before, Devendranath Tagore, famous all over Bengal for his wealth, scholarship, saintly character, and social position. But the Master found him disappointing; for, whereas Sri Ramakrishna expected of a saint complete renunciation of the world, Devendranath combined with his saintliness a life of enjoyment. Sri Ramakrishna met the great poet Michael Madhusudan, who had embraced Christianity "for the sake of his stomach". To him the Master could not impart in struction, for the Divine Mother "pressed his tongue". In addition he met Maharaja Jatindra Mohan Tagore, a titled aristocrat of Bengal; Kristodas Pal, the editor, social reformer, and patriot; Iswar Vidyasagar, the noted philanthropist and educator; Pundit Shashadhar, a great champion of Hindu orthodoxy; Aswini Kumar Dutta, a headmaster, moralist, and leader of Indian Nationalism; and Bankim Chatterji, a deputy magi strate, novelist, and essayist, and one of the fashioners of modern Bengali prose. Sri Ramakrishna was not the man to be dazzled by outward show, glory, or eloquence. A pundit without discrimination he regarded as a mere straw. He would search people's hearts for the light of God, and if that was missing he would have nothing to do with them.
--- KRISTODAS PAL
--
To spread his message to the four corners of the earth Sri Ramakrishna needed a strong in strument. With his frail body and delicate limbs he could not make great journeys across wide spaces. And such an in strument was found in Narendranath Dutta, his beloved Naren, later known to the world as Swami Vivekananda. Even before meeting Narendranath, the Master had seen him in a vision as a sage, immersed in the meditation of the Absolute, who at Sri Ramakrishna's request had agreed to take human birth to assist him in his work.
Narendra was born in Calcutta on January 12, 1863, of an aristocratic kayastha family. His mother was steeped in the great Hindu epics, and his father, a distinguished attorney of the Calcutta High Court, was an agnostic about religion, a friend of the poor, and a mocker at social conventions. Even in his boyhood and youth Narendra possessed great physical courage and presence of mind, a vivid imagination, deep power of thought, keen intelligence, an extraordinary memory, a love of truth, a passion for purity, a spirit of independence, and a tender heart. An expert musician, he also acquired proficiency in physics, a stronomy, mathematics, philosophy, history, and literature. He grew up into an extremely handsome young man. Even as a child he practised meditation and showed great power of concentration. Though free and passionate in word and action, he took the vow of austere religious chastity and never allowed the fire of purity to be extinguished by the slightest defilement of body or soul.
--
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 ance stral 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 di stress; but he refused them with contempt.
--
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, on the other hand, was gentle to a fault. One day, under circumstances very like those that had evoked Niranjan's anger, he curbed his temper and held his peace instead of threatening Sri Ramakrishna's abusers. The Master, learning of his conduct, scolded him roundly. Thus to each the fault of the other was recommended as a virtue. The guru was striving to develop, in the first instance, composure, and in the second, mettle. The secret of his training was to build up, by a tactful recognition of the requirements of each given case, the character of the devotee.
Jogindranath came of an aristocratic brahmin family of Dakshineswar. His father and relatives shared the popular mi strust 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
--
Gangadhar, Harinath's friend, also led the life of a strict brahmachari, eating vegetarian food cooked by his own hands and devoting himself to the study of the scriptures. He met the Master in 1884 and soon became a member of his inner circle. The Master praised his ascetic habit and attributed it to the spiritual disciplines of his past life. Gangadhar became a close companion of Narendra.
--- HARIPRASANNA
--
Subodh visited the Master in 1885. At the very first meeting Sri Ramakrishna said to him: "You will succeed. Mother says so. Those whom She sends here will certainly attain spirituality." During the second meeting the Master wrote something on Subodh's tongue, stroked his body from the navel to the throat, and said, "Awake, Mother! Awake." He asked the boy to meditate. At once Subodh's latent spirituality was awakened. He felt a current rushing along the spinal column to the brain. Joy filled his soul.
--- SARADA AND TULASI
--
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
--
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 de stroyed 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!"
--
"I shall make the whole thing public before I go", the Master had said some time before. On January 1, 1886, he felt better and came down to the garden for a little stroll. It was about three o'clock in the afternoon. Some thirty lay disciples were in the hall or sitting about under the trees. Sri Ramakrishna said to Girish, "Well, Girish, what have you seen in me, that you proclaim me before everybody as an Incarnation of God?" Girish was not the man to be taken by surprise. He knelt before the Master and said, with folded hands, "What can an insignificant person like myself say about the One whose glory even sages like Vyasa and Valmiki could not adequately measure?" The Master was profoundly moved. He said: "What more shall I say? I bless you all. Be illumined!" He fell into a spiritual mood. Hearing these words the devotees, one and all, became overwhelmed with emotion. They rushed to him and fell at his feet. He touched them all, and each received an appropriate benediction. Each of them, at the touch of the Master, experienced ineffable bliss. Some laughed, some wept, some sat down to meditate, some began to pray. Some saw light, some had visions of their Chosen Ideals, and some felt within their bodies the rush of spiritual power.
Narendra, consumed with a terrific fever for realization, complained to the Master that all the others had attained peace and that he alone was dissatisfied. The Master asked what he wanted. Narendra begged for samadhi, so that he might altogether forget the world for three or four days at a time. "You are a fool", the Master rebuked him. "There is a state even higher than that. Isn't it you who sing, 'All that exists art Thou'? First of all settle your family affairs and then come to me. You will experience a state even higher than samadhi."
--
The words were tender and touching. Like a mother he caressed Narendra and Rakhal, gently stroking their faces. He said in a half whisper to M., "Had this body been allowed to last a little longer, many more souls would have been illumined." He paused a moment and then said: "But Mother has ordained otherwise. She will take me away lest, finding me guileless and foolish, people should take advantage of me and persuade me to bestow on them the rare gifts of spirituality." A few minutes later he touched his chest and said: "Here are two beings. One is She and the other is Her devotee. It is the latter who broke his arm, and it is he again who is now ill. Do you understand me?" After a pause he added: "Alas! To whom shall I tell all this? Who will understand me?" "Pain", he consoled them again, 'is unavoidable as long as there is a body. The Lord takes on the body for the sake of His devotees."
Yet one is not sure whether the Master's soul actually was tortured by this agonizing disease. At least during his moments of spiritual exaltation — which became almost constant during the closing days of his life on earth — he lost all consciousness of the body, of illness and suffering. One of his attendants (Latu, later known as Swami Adbhutananda.) said later on: "While Sri Ramakrishna lay sick he never actually suffered pain. He would often say: 'O mind! Forget the body, forget the sickness, and remain merged in Bliss.' No, he did not really suffer. At times he would be in a state when the thrill of joy was clearly manifested in his body. Even when he could not speak he would let us know in some way that there was no suffering, and this fact was clearly evident to all who watched him. People who did not understand him thought that his suffering was very great. What spiritual joy he transmitted to us at that time! Could such a thing have been possible if he had 'been suffering physically? It was during this period that he taught us again these truths: 'Brahman is always unattached. The three gunas are in It, but It is unaffected by them, just as the wind carries odour yet remains odourless.' 'Brahman is Infinite Being, Infinite Wisdom, Infinite Bliss. In It there exist no delusion, no misery, no disease, no death, no growth, no decay.' 'The Transcendental Being and the being within are one and the same. There is one indivisible Absolute Existence.'"
--
Doubt, however, dies hard. After one or two days Narendra said to himself, "If in the midst of this racking physical pain he declares his Godhead, then only shall I accept him as an Incarnation of God." He was alone by the bedside of the Master. It was a passing thought, but the Master smiled. Gathering his remaining strength, he distinctly said, "He who was Rama and Krishna is now, in this body, Ramakrishna — but not in your Vedantic sense." Narendra was stricken with shame.
--- MAHASAMADHI
Sunday, August 15, 1886. The Master's pulse became irregular. The devotees stood by the bedside. Toward dusk Sri Ramakrishna had difficulty in breathing. A short time afterwards he complained of hunger. A little liquid food was put into his mouth; some of it he swallowed, and the rest ran over his chin. Two attendants began to fan him. All at once he went into samadhi of a rather unusual type. The body became stiff. Sashi burst into tears. But after midnight the Master revived. He was now very hungry and helped himself to a bowl of porridge. He said he was strong again. He sat up against five or six pillows, which were supported by the body of Sashi, who was fanning him. Narendra took his feet on his lap and began to rub them. Again and again the Master repeated to him, "Take care of these boys." Then he asked to lie down. Three times in ringing tone's he cried the name of Kali, his life's Beloved, and lay back. At two minutes past one there was a low sound in his throat and he fell a little to one side. A thrill passed over his body. His hair stood on end. His eyes became fixed on the tip of his nose. His face was lighted with a smile. The final ecstasy began. It was mahasamadhi, total absorption, from which his mind never returned. Narendra, unable to bear it, ran downstairs.
Dr. Sarkar arrived the following noon and pronounced that life had departed not more than half an hour before. At five o'clock the Masters body was brought downstairs, laid on a cot, dressed in ochre clothes, and decorated with sandal-paste and flowers. A procession was formed. The passers-by wept as the body was taken to the cremation ground at the Baranagore Ghat on the Ganges.
0.00 - The Book of Lies Text, #The Book of Lies, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
and straightforward, sometimes its obscure oracles
demand deep knowledge of the Qabalah for inter-
--
Teth is the Tarot trump, strength, in which a woman
is represented closing the mouth of a lion.
--
O thou that stridest upon the middle of The Path, no
phantoms mock thee. For the stride's sake thou
stridest.
Thus art thou lured along That Path, whose fascina-
--
The chapter resembles strongly Dupin's account of
how he was able to win at the game of guessing odd or
--
Man returneth not again; the stream floweth not
uphill; the old life is no more; there is a new life
--
But no man is strong enough to have no interest.
Therefore the best king would be Pure Chance.
--
the Hierophant or Redeemer. T = strength, the Lion.
(13) T, manhood, the sign of the cross or phallus.
--
Advance to the East. Imagine strongly a Pentagram.
aright, in thy forehead. Drawing the hands to the
--
strain forth thine Intelligence, O man, O worthy
one, O chosen of IT, to apprehend the discourse
--
last break down, as the fetter is struck from a
slave's throat.
--
All skillfulness, all strain, all intention is contrary to
ease.
--
He strikes Eleven times upon the Bell 3 3 3-5 5 5 5 5-
3 3 3 and places the Fire in the Thurible.
I strike the Bell: I light the flame:
I utter the mysterious Name.
--
He strikes Eleven times upon the Bell.
Now I begin to pray: Thou Child,
--
He makes them as in Liber Legis, and strikes again
Eleven times upon the Bell. With the Burin he then
--
He strikes Eleven times upon the Bell, and cries
ABRAHADABRA.
--
The weary pilgrim struggles on; the satiated pilgrim
stops.
--
In Her wine-cup are seven streams of the blood of
the Seven Spirits of God.
--
suggestion is further strengthened by the concluding phrase
in brackets, "Keep us from evil", since, although it is the
--
woman, playing by a stream, surrounded by birds and
butterflies. The pole-axe is recommended instead of
--
straws in their hair, and think they are Jesus
Christ!
--
The dead dog floats with the stream; in puritan
France the best women are harlots; in vicious
--
make in the streets and beg his bread!
The new Christ, like the old, it the friend of publicans
--
heap of straw in a hut, and LAYLAH naked!
Amen.
--
Sold her bed to lie upon straw.
Was not she a silly slut
--
CAREY strEET
When NOTHING became conscious, it made a bad
--
The Abyss that stretches between THAT and
NOT.
--
Carey street is well known to prosperous Hebrews
and poor Englishmen as the seat of the Bankruptcy
--
Spring beans and strawberries are in: goodbye to the
oyster!
--
with the early strawberry.
Paragraph 1 means that change of diet is pleasant;
--
How? Not by speed, nor strength, nor power to stay,
But by the Silence that succeeds the Neigh!
--
Paragraph 2 gives the very struggle for life, which
disheartens modern thinkers, as a good enough reason for
--
Witch-moon that turnest all the streams to blood,
I take this hazel rod, and stand, and swear
--
Brooding on blood-thirst-these are not so strange
And fierce as life's unfailing shower. These die,
--
Let all thy stryges and thy ghouls attend!
He that endureth even to the end
--
All the force won by its old woe and stress
In now annihilating Nothingness.
--
We are strassburg geese; the tastiness of our talk
comes from the disorder of our bodies.
--
Such is the globe; but all this is a mere strain in the aethyr,
{Alpha-Iota-Theta-Eta-Rho}. Here is a new Pentagrammaton, presumably suitable
--
And seeing that I am old and well stricken in years,
and that my natural forces fail, therefore do I rise
--
74. Carey street.
75. Plover's Eggs.
0.00 - THE GOSPEL PREFACE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
When we leave the field of art for that of spiritual religion, the scarcity of competent reporters becomes even more strongly marked. Of the day-to-day life of the great theocentric saints and contemplatives we know, in the great majority of cases, nothing whatever. Many, it is true, have recorded their doctrines in writing, and a few, such as St. Augustine, Suso and St. Teresa, have left us autobiographies of the greatest value.
But, all doctrinal writing is in some measure formal and impersonal, while the autobiographer tends to omit what he regards as trifling matters and suffers from the further disadvantage of being unable to say how he strikes other people and in what way he affects their lives. Moreover, most saints have left neither writings nor self-portraits, and for knowledge of their lives, their characters and their teachings, we are forced to rely upon the records made by their disciples who, in most cases, have proved themselves singularly incompetent as reporters and biographers. Hence the special interest attaching to this enormously detailed account of the daily life and conversations of Sri Ramakrishna.
"M", as the author modestly styles himself, was peculiarly qualified for his task. To a reverent love for his master, to a deep and experiential knowledge of that master's teaching, he added a prodigious memory for the small happenings of each day and a happy gift for recording them in an interesting and realistic way. Making good use of his natural gifts and of the circumstances in which he found himself, "M" produced a book unique, so far as my knowledge goes, in the literature of hagiography. No other saint has had so able and indefatigable a Boswell. Never have the small events of a contemplative's daily life been described with such a wealth of intimate detail. Never have the casual and unstudied utterances of a great religious teacher been set down with so minute a fidelity. To Western readers, it is true, this fidelity and this wealth of detail are sometimes a trifle disconcerting; for the social, religious and intellectual frames of reference within which Sri Ramakrishna did his thinking and expressed his feelings were entirely Indian. But after the first few surprises and bewilderments, we begin to find something peculiarly stimulating and in structive about the very strangeness and, to our eyes, the eccentricity of the man revealed to us in "M's" narrative. What a scholastic philosopher would call the "accidents" of Ramakrishna's life were intensely Hindu and therefore, so far as we in the West are concerned, unfamiliar and hard to understand; its "essence", however, was intensely mystical and therefore universal. To read through these conversations in which mystical doctrine alternates with an unfamiliar kind of humour, and where discussions of the oddest aspects of Hindu mythology give place to the most profound and subtle utterances about the nature of Ultimate Reality, is in itself a liberal, education in humility, tolerance and suspense of judgment. We must be grateful to the translator for his excellent version of a book so curious and delightful as a biographical document, so precious, at the same time, for what it teaches us of the life of the spirit.
--------------------
--
May this translation of the first book of its kind in the religious history of the world, being the record of the direct words of a prophet, help stricken humanity to come nearer to the Eternal Verity of life and remove dissension and quarrel from among the different faiths!
May it enable seekers of Truth to grasp the subtle laws of the supersensuous realm, and unfold before man's re stricted vision the spiritual foundation of the universe, the unity of existence, and the divinity of the soul!
--
This epoch-making event of his life came about in a very strange way. M. belonged to a joint family with several collateral members. Some ten years after he began his career as an educationist, bitter quarrels broke out among the members of the family, driving the sensitive M. to despair and utter despondency. He lost all interest in life and left home one night to go into the wide world with the idea of ending his life. At dead of night he took rest in his sister's house at Baranagar, and in the morning, accompanied by a nephew Siddheswar, he wandered from one garden to another in Calcutta until Siddheswar brought him to the Temple Garden of Dakshineswar where Sri Ramakrishna was then living. After spending some time in the beautiful rose gardens there, he was directed to the room of the Paramahamsa, where the eventful meeting of the Master and the disciple took place on a blessed evening (the exact date is not on record) on a Sunday in March 1882. As regards what took place on the occasion, the reader is referred to the opening section of the first chapter of the Gospel.
The Master, who divined the mood of desperation in M, his resolve to take leave of this 'play-field of deception', put new faith and hope into him by his gracious words of assurance: "God forbid! Why should you take leave of this world? Do you not feel blessed by discovering your Guru? By His grace, what is beyond all imagination or dreams can be easily achieved!" At these words the clouds of despair moved away from the horizon of M.'s mind, and the sunshine of a new hope revealed to him fresh vistas of meaning in life. Referring to this phase of his life, M. used to say, "Behold! where is the resolve to end life, and where, the discovery of God! That is, sorrow should be looked upon as a friend of man. God is all good." ( Ibid P.33.)
--
The two pamphlets in English entitled the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna appeared in October and November 1897. They drew the spontaneous acclamation of Swami Vivekananda, who wrote on 24th November of that year from Dehra Dun to M.:"Many many thanks for your second leaflet. It is indeed wonderful. The move is quite original, and never was the life of a Great Teacher brought before the public untarnished by the writer's mind, as you are doing. The language also is beyond all praise, so fresh, so pointed, and withal so plain and easy. I cannot express in adequate terms how I have enjoyed them. I am really in a transport when I read them. strange, isn't it? Our Teacher and Lord was so original, and each one of us will have to be original or nothing.
I now understand why none of us attempted His life before. It has been reserved for you, this great work. He is with you evidently." ( Vednta Kesari Vol. XIX P. 141. Also given in the first edition of the Gospel published from Ramakrishna Math, Madras in 1911.)
--
In 1905 he retired from the active life of a Professor and devoted his remaining twenty-seven years exclusively to the preaching of the life and message of the Great Master. He bought the Morton Institution from its original proprietors and shifted it to a commodious four-storeyed house at 50 Amherst street, where it flourished under his management as one of the most efficient educational institutions in Calcutta. He generally occupied a staircase room at the top of it, cooking his own meal which consisted only of milk and rice without variation, and attended to all his personal needs himself. His dress also was the simplest possible. It was his conviction that limitation of personal wants to the minimum is an important aid to holy living. About one hour in the morning he would spend in inspecting the classes of the school, and then retire to his staircase room to pour over his diary and live in the divine atmosphere of the earthly days of the Great Master, unless devotees and admirers had already gathered in his room seeking his holy company.
In appearance, M. looked a Vedic Rishi. Tall and stately in bearing, he had a strong and well-built body, an unusually broad chest, high forehead and arms extending to the knees. His complexion was fair and his prominent eyes were always tinged with the expression of the divine love that filled his heart. Adorned with a silvery beard that flowed luxuriantly down his chest, and a shining face radiating the serenity and gravity of holiness, M. was as imposing and majestic as he was handsome and engaging in appearance. Humorous, sweet-tongued and eloquent when situations required, this great Maharishi of our age lived only to sing the glory of Sri Ramakrishna day and night.
Though a very well versed scholar in the Upanishads, Git and the philosophies of the East and the West, all his discussions and teachings found their culmination in the life and the message of Sri Ramakrishna, in which he found the real explanation and illu stration of all the scriptures. Both consciously and unconsciously, he was the teacher of the Kathmrita the nectarine words of the Great Master.
--
As time went on and the number of devotees increased, the staircase room and terrace of the 3rd floor of the Morton Institution became a veritable Naimisaranya of modern times, resounding during all hours of the day, and sometimes of night, too, with the word of God coming from the Rishi-like face of M. addressed to the eager God-seekers sitting around. To the devotees who helped him in preparing the text of the Gospel, he would dictate the conversations of the Master in a meditative mood, referring now and then to his diary. At times in the stillness of midnight he would awaken a nearby devotee and tell him: "Let us listen to the words of the Master in the depths of the night as he explains the truth of the Pranava." ( Vednta Kesari XIX P. 142.) Swami Raghavananda, an intimate devotee of M., writes as follows about these devotional sittings: "In the sweet and warm months of April and May, sitting under the canopy of heaven on the roof-garden of 50 Amherst street, surrounded by shrubs and plants, himself sitting in their midst like a Rishi of old, the stars and planets in their courses beckoning us to things infinite and sublime, he would speak to us of the mysteries of God and His love and of the yearning that would rise in the human heart to solve the Eternal Riddle, as exemplified in the life of his Master. The mind, melting under the influence of his soft sweet words of light, would almost transcend the frontiers of limited existence and dare to peep into the infinite. He himself would take the influence of the setting and say,'What a blessed privilege it is to sit in such a setting (pointing to the starry heavens), in the company of the devotees discoursing on God and His love!' These unforgettable scenes will long remain imprinted on the minds of his hearers." (Prabuddha Bharata Vol XXXVII P 497.)
About twenty-seven years of his life he spent in this way in the heart of the great city of Calcutta, radiating the Master's thoughts and ideals to countless devotees who flocked to him, and to still larger numbers who read his Kathmrita (English Edition : The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna), the last part of which he had completed before June 1932 and given to the press. And miraculously, as it were, his end also came immediately after he had completed his life's mission. About three months earlier he had come to stay at his home at 13/2 Gurdasprasad Chaudhuary Lane at Thakur Bari, where the Holy Mother had herself installed the Master and where His regular worship was being conducted for the previous 40 years. The night of 3rd June being the Phalahrini Kli Pooja day, M.
0.00 - The Wellspring of Reality, #Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, #R Buckminster Fuller, #Science
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 demon strable. 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.
--
Science's self-assumed responsibility has been self-limited to disclosure to society only of the separate, supposedly physical (because separately weighable) atomic component isolations data. Synergetic integrity would require the scientists to announce that in reality what had been identified heretofore as physical is entirely metaphysical-because synergetically weightless. Metaphysical has been science's designation for all weightless phenomena such as thought. But science has made no experimental finding of any phenomena that can be described as a solid, or as continuous, or as a straight surface plane, or as a straight line, or as infinite anything. We are now synergetically forced to conclude that all phenomena are metaphysical; wherefore, as many have long suspected-like it or not-life is but a dream.Science has found no up or down directions of Universe, yet scientists are personally so ill-coordinated that they all still personally and sensorially see "solids" going up or down-as, for instance, they see the Sun "going down." Sensorially disconnected from their theoretically evolved information, scientists discern no need on their part to suggest any educational reforms to correct the misconceiving that science has tolerated for half a millennium.
Society depends upon its scientists for just such educational reform guidance.
0.01f - FOREWARD, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
cannot tell with any certainty whether the structure they have
reached is the essence of the matter they are studying, or the
--
whole history of the struggles of the mind :
A sense of spatial immensity, in greatness and smallness, dis-
--
The phenomenon of man I stress this.
This phrase is not chosen at random, but for three reasons.
--
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
Sri Aurobindo has explained the mystery of personality in some of his writings. Ordinarily by personality we mean something which can be described as "a pattern of being marked out by a settled combination of fixed qualities, a determined character.... In one view personality is regarded as a fixed structure of recognisable qualities expressing a power of being"; another idea regards "personality as a flux of self-expressive or sensitive and responsive being.... But flux of nature and fixity of nature" which some call character "are two aspects of being neither of which, nor indeed both together, can be a definition of personality.... But besides this flux and this fixity there is also a third and occult element, the Person behind of whom the personality is a self-expression; the Person puts forward the personality as his role, character, persona, in the present act of his long drama of manifested existence. But the Person is larger than his personality, and it may happen that this inner largeness overflows into the surface formation; the result is a self-expression of being which can no longer be described by fixed qualities, normalities of mood, exact lineaments, or marked out by structural limits."[4]
The gospel of the Supermind which Sri Aurobindo brought to man envisages a new level of consciousness beyond Mind. When this level is attained it imposes a complete and radical reintegration of the human personality. Sri Aurobindo was not merely the exponent but the embodiment of the new, dynamic truth of the Supermind. While exploring and sounding the tremendous possibilities of human personality in his intense spiritual Sadhana, he has shown us that practically there are no limits to its expansion and ascent. It can reach in its growth what appears to man at present as a 'divine' status. It goes without saying that this attainment is not an easy task; there are conditions to be fulfilled for the transformation from the human to the divine.
--
"He comes as the divine power and love which calls men to itself, so that they may take refuge in that and no longer in the insufficiency of their human wills and the strife of their human fear, wrath and passion, and liberated from all this unquiet and suffering may live in the calm and bliss of the Divine."[6]
"The Avatar comes to reveal the divine nature in man above this lower nature and to show what are the divine works, free, unegoistic, disinterested, impersonal, universal, full of the divine light, the divine power and the divine love. He comes as the divine personality which shall fill the consciousness of the human being and replace the limited egoistic personality, so that it shall be liberated out of ego into infinity and universality, out of birth into immortality."[7]
It is clear that Sri Aurobindo interpreted the traditional idea of the Vibhuti and the Avatar in terms of the evolutionary possibilities of man. But more directly he has worked out the idea of the 'gnostic individual' in his masterpiece The Life Divine. He says: "A supramental gnostic individual will be a spiritual Person, but not a personality in the sense of a pattern of being marked out by a settled combination of fixed qualities, a determined character; he cannot be that since he is a conscious expression of the universal and the transcendent." Describing the gnostic individual he says: "We feel ourselves in the presence of a light of consciousness, a potency, a sea of energy, can distinguish and describe its free waves of action and quality, but not fix itself; and yet there is an impression of personality, the presence of a powerful being, a strong, high or beautiful recognisable Someone, a Person, not a limited creature of Nature but a Self or Soul, a Purusha."[8]
One feels that he was describing the feeling of some of us, his disciples, with regard to him in his inimitable way.
0.01 - Letters from the Mother to Her Son, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
a single square block which is surrounded on all sides by streets
and contains several buildings with courtyards and gardens. We
--
our little realm without having to go out into the street - this is
rather nice. But I am busier than ever now, and I can say that at
0.01 - Life and Yoga, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
HERE are two necessities of Nature's workings which seem always to intervene in the greater forms of human activity, whether these belong to our ordinary fields of movement or seek those exceptional spheres and fulfilments which appear to us high and divine. Every such form tends towards a harmonised complexity and totality which again breaks apart into various channels of special effort and tendency, only to unite once more in a larger and more puissant synthesis. Secondly, development into forms is an imperative rule of effective manifestation; yet all truth and practice too strictly formulated becomes old and loses much, if not all, of its virtue; it must be constantly renovated by fresh streams of the spirit revivifying the dead or dying vehicle and changing it, if it is to acquire a new life. To be perpetually reborn is the condition of a material immortality. We are in an age, full of the throes of travail, when all forms of thought and activity that have in themselves any strong power of utility or any secret virtue of persistence are being subjected to a supreme test and given their opportunity of rebirth. The world today presents the aspect of a huge cauldron of Medea in which all things are being cast, shredded into pieces, experimented on, combined and recombined either to perish and provide the scattered material of new forms or to emerge rejuvenated and changed for a fresh term of existence. Indian Yoga, in its essence a special action or formulation of certain great powers of Nature, itself specialised, divided and variously formulated, is potentially one of these dynamic elements of the future life of humanity. The child of immemorial ages, preserved by its vitality and truth into our modern times, it is now emerging from the secret schools and ascetic retreats in which it had taken refuge and is seeking its place in the future sum of living human powers and utilities. But it has first to rediscover itself, bring to the surface
The Conditions of the Synthesis
--
God. Therefore we see in India that a sharp incompatibility has been created between life in the world and spiritual growth and perfection, and although the tradition and ideal of a victorious harmony between the inner attraction and the outer demand remains, it is little or else very imperfectly exemplified. In fact, when a man turns his vision and energy inward and enters on the path of Yoga, he is popularly supposed to be lost inevitably to the great stream of our collective existence and the secular effort of humanity. So strongly has the idea prevailed, so much has it been emphasised by prevalent philosophies and religions that to escape from life is now commonly considered as not only the necessary condition, but the general object of Yoga. No synthesis of Yoga can be satisfying which does not, in its aim, reunite God and Nature in a liberated and perfected human life or, in its method, not only permit but favour the harmony of our inner and outer activities and experiences in the divine consummation of both. For man is precisely that term and symbol of a higher Existence descended into the material world in which it is possible for the lower to transfigure itself and put on the nature of the higher and the higher to reveal itself in the forms of the lower. To avoid the life which is given him for the realisation of that possibility, can never be either the indispensable condition or the whole and ultimate object of his supreme endeavour or of his most powerful means of self-fulfilment. It can only be a temporary necessity under certain conditions or a specialised extreme effort imposed on the individual so as to prepare a greater general possibility for the race. The true and full object and utility of Yoga can only be accomplished when the conscious
Yoga in man becomes, like the subconscious Yoga in Nature, outwardly conterminous with life itself and we can once more, looking out both on the path and the achievement, say in a more perfect and luminous sense: "All life is Yoga."
0.02 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
avoided. Your mental formation may be strong, but the contrary
formation is at least as strong as yours - and we must never
tempt the adverse forces.
--
in the subconscient mind; but it is made stronger by becoming
conscious.
--
I pray for a gracious word from You to strike at the
root of this superstition.
Do you believe it is so easy to strike at the root of a stupidity?
Stupidities are always rooted deep down in the subconscient.
--
suppose, but this goodwill would certainly not stand any strong
gust of wind!
--
ask for anything on the first. You would do well to ask strictly
for the things you need.
--
by strong ropes from rings fixed to a bar above. The supporting posts are securely set in the ground. I was thinking that
something similar could be made for the sieve.
--
someone we meet, especially if that vibration is at all strong. So
it is easy to understand that someone who carries in and around
--
with contradictions and doubts. I have struggled against
this onslaught desperately, but still I haven't found peace.
--
Y's will is strong and he knows how to impose it on others. The
only solution is to have a will stronger than his and to use it
with great calm, but also with great determination.
--
I am not at all displeased. But what a strange idea to let yourself
be upset by such little things! What about the Yoga?
--
The disease: a narrow and egoistic ambition in the mind expressing itself as a strong vanity in the vital, thus distorting your
ideas of things and your reactions.
0.02 - The Three Steps of Nature, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
If, then, this inferior equilibrium is the basis and first means of the higher movements which the universal Power contemplates and if it constitutes the vehicle in which the Divine here seeks to reveal Itself, if the Indian saying is true that the body is the in strument provided for the fulfilment of the right law of our nature, then any final recoil from the physical life must be a turning away from the completeness of the divine Wisdom and a renunciation of its aim in earthly manifestation. Such a refusal may be, owing to some secret law of their development, the right attitude for certain individuals, but never the aim intended for mankind. It can be, therefore, no integral Yoga which ignores the body or makes its annulment or its rejection indispensable to a perfect spirituality. Rather, the perfecting of the body also should be the last triumph of the Spirit and to make the bodily life also divine must be God's final seal upon His work in the universe. The obstacle which the physical presents to the spiritual is no argument for the rejection of the physical; for in the unseen providence of things our greatest difficulties are our best opportunities. A supreme difficulty is Nature's indication to us of a supreme conquest to be won and an ultimate problem to be solved; it is not a warning of an inextricable snare to be shunned or of an enemy too strong for us from whom we must flee.
Equally, the vital and nervous energies in us are there for a great utility; they too demand the divine realisation of their possibilities in our ultimate fulfilment. The great part assigned to this element in the universal scheme is powerfully emphasised by the catholic wisdom of the Upanishads. "As the spokes of a wheel in its nave, so in the Life-Energy is all established, the triple knowledge and the Sacrifice and the power of the strong and the purity of the wise. Under the control of the LifeEnergy is all this that is established in the triple heaven."2 It is therefore no integral Yoga that kills these vital energies, forces them into a nerveless quiescence or roots them out as the source
annakos.a and pran.akos.a.
0.03 - III - The Evening Sittings, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Sri Aurobindo was never a social man in the current sense of the term and definitely he was not a man of the crowd. This was due to his grave temperament, not to any feeling of superiority or to repulsion for men. At Baroda there was an Officers' Club which was patronised by the Maharajah and though Sri Aurobindo enrolled himself as a member he hardly went to the Club even on special occasions. He rather liked a small congenial circle of friends and spent most of his evenings with them whenever he was free and not occupied with his studies or other works. After Baroda when he went to Calcutta there was hardly any time in the storm and stress of revolutionary politics to permit him to lead a 'social life'. What little time he could spare from his incessant activities was spent in the house of Raja Subodh Mallick or at the Grey street house. In the Karmayogin office he used to sit after the office hours till late chatting with a few persons or trying automatic writing. strange dictations used to be received sometimes: one of them was the following: "Moni [Suresh Chakravarty] will bomb Sir Edward Grey when he will come as the Viceroy of India." In later years at Pondicherry there used to be a joke that Sir Edward took such a fright at the prospect of Moni's bombing him that he never came to India!
After Sri Aurobindo had come to Pondicherry from Chandernagore, he entered upon an intense period of Sadhana and for a few months he refused to receive anyone. After a time he used to sit down to talk in the evening and on some days tried automatic writing. Yogic Sadhan, a small book, was the result. In 1913 Sri Aurobindo moved to Rue Franois Martin No. 41 where he used to receive visitors at fixed times. This was generally in the morning between 9 and 10.30.
0.03 - Letters to My little smile, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
have a strong will, so how can I get rid of it?
You don't need to have a strong will - you have only to use
mine.
--
where happiness can no longer enter. Your great strength was
your smile; because you knew how to smile at life, you also
--
dreams and nothing makes us stronger and happier!
11 June 1933
--
because that was already a long stretch and ought not to be
increased.
--
but I saw that the sari was not quite straight. So now
I have only to undo this work - which took me three
--
I shall always be with you, my dear little child, in the struggle
and in the victory.
--
true. The beautiful things are far stronger than the ugly ones
and they will surely win the victory. I am with you always, in
the struggle and in the victory.
29 January 1934
--
yet concealing in itself the stream of life. Because of the resistance
of matter, this stream of life is freed only with difficulty and can
hardly emerge into the light. But with a little concentration and
--
you know what it is and it is sure to come back stronger and
steadier. Remain confident, do not torment yourself - in this
--
I only looked straight into your soul, trying to reestablish
the connection between it and your exterior consciousness. And
0.03 - The Threefold Life, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The mental life concentrates on the aesthetic, the ethical and the intellectual activities. Essential mentality is idealistic and a seeker after perfection. The subtle self, the brilliant Atman,1 is ever a dreamer. A dream of perfect beauty, perfect conduct, perfect Truth, whether seeking new forms of the Eternal or revitalising the old, is the very soul of pure mentality. But it knows not how to deal with the resistance of Matter. There it is hampered and inefficient, works by bungling experiments and has either to withdraw from the struggle or submit to the grey actuality. Or else, by studying the material life and accepting the conditions of the contest, it may succeed, but only in imposing temporarily some artificial system which infinite Nature either rends and casts aside or disfigures out of recognition or by withdrawing her assent leaves as the corpse of a dead ideal. Few and far between have been those realisations of the dreamer in Man which the world has gladly accepted, looks back to with a fond memory and seeks, in its elements, to cherish.
1 Who dwells in Dream, the inly conscious, the enjoyer of ab stractions, the Brilliant.
--
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 ab stractions, the generalisations of the philosopher base themselves on a stable foundation of science and experience.
This mixing with life may, however, be pursued for the sake of the individual mind and with an entire indifference to the forms of the material existence or the uplifting of the race. This indifference is seen at its highest in the Epicurean discipline and is not entirely absent from the Stoic; and even altruism does the works of compassion more often for its own sake than for the sake of the world it helps. But this too is a limited fulfilment. The progressive mind is seen at its noblest when it strives to elevate the whole race to its own level whether by sowing broadcast the image of its own thought and fulfilment or by changing the material life of the race into fresh forms, religious, intellectual, social or political, intended to represent more nearly that ideal of truth, beauty, justice, righteousness with which the man's own soul is illumined. Failure in such a field matters little; for the mere attempt is dynamic and creative. The struggle of Mind to elevate life is the promise and condition of the conquest of life by that which is higher even than Mind.
That highest thing, the spiritual existence, is concerned with what is eternal but not therefore entirely aloof from the transient. For the spiritual man the mind's dream of perfect beauty is realised in an eternal love, beauty and delight that has no dependence and is equal behind all objective appearances; its dream of perfect Truth in the supreme, self-existent, self-apparent and eternal Verity which never varies, but explains and is the secret of all variations and the goal of all progress; its dream of perfect action in the omnipotent and self-guiding Law that is inherent for ever in all things and translates itself here in the rhythm of the worlds. What is fugitive vision or constant effort of creation in the brilliant Self is an eternally existing Reality in the Self that knows2 and is the Lord.
--
But if Progress also is one of the chief terms of worldexistence and a progressive manifestation of the Divine the true sense of Nature, this limitation also is invalid. It is possible for the spiritual life in the world, and it is its real mission, to change the material life into its own image, the image of the Divine. Therefore, besides the great solitaries who have sought and attained their self-liberation, we have the great spiritual teachers who have also liberated others and, supreme of all, the great dynamic souls who, feeling themselves stronger in the might of the Spirit than all the forces of the material life banded together, have thrown themselves upon the world, grappled with it in a loving wrestle and striven to compel its consent to its own transfiguration. Ordinarily, the effort is concentrated on a mental and moral change in humanity, but it may extend itself also to the alteration of the forms of our life and its institutions so that they too may be a better mould for the inpourings of the Spirit. These attempts have been the supreme landmarks in the progressive development of human ideals and the divine preparation of the race. Every one of them, whatever its outward results, has left Earth more capable of Heaven and quickened in its tardy movements the evolutionary Yoga of Nature.
In India, for the last thousand years and more, the spiritual life and the material have existed side by side to the exclusion of the progressive mind. Spirituality has made terms for itself with Matter by renouncing the attempt at general progress. It has obtained from society the right of free spiritual development for all who assume some distinctive symbol, such as the garb of the Sannyasin, the recognition of that life as man's goal and those who live it as worthy of an absolute reverence, and the casting of society itself into such a religious mould that its most customary acts should be accompanied by a formal reminder of the spiritual symbolism of life and its ultimate destination. On the other hand, there was conceded to society the right of inertia and immobile self-conservation. The concession de stroyed much of the value of the terms. The religious mould being fixed, the formal reminder tended to become a routine and to lose its living sense. The constant attempts to change the mould by new sects and religions ended only in a new routine or a modification of the old; for the saving element of the free and active mind had been exiled. The material life, handed over to the Ignorance, the purposeless and endless duality, became a leaden and dolorous yoke from which flight was the only escape.
--
The utility of the compromise in the then actual state of the world cannot be doubted. It secured in India a society which lent itself to the preservation and the worship of spirituality, a country apart in which as in a fortress the highest spiritual ideal could maintain itself in its most absolute purity unoverpowered by the siege of the forces around it. But it was a compromise, not an absolute victory. The material life lost the divine impulse to growth, the spiritual preserved by isolation its height and purity, but sacrificed its full power and serviceableness to the world. Therefore, in the divine Providence the country of the Yogins and the Sannyasins has been forced into a strict and imperative contact with the very element it had rejected, the element of the progressive Mind, so that it might recover what was now wanting to it.
We have to recognise once more that the individual exists not in himself alone but in the collectivity and that individual perfection and liberation are not the whole sense of God's intention in the world. The free use of our liberty includes also the liberation of others and of mankind; the perfect utility of our perfection is, having realised in ourselves the divine symbol, to reproduce, multiply and ultimately universalise it in others.
0.04 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I thought they have strongly refused to have the ropes put upon
them. The ropes may not be tight, but most probably they will
--
I object strongly to his way of twisting the tails of the beasts.
If somebody twisted one of his limbs like that, what would he
--
confidence and joy and peace and finally their strength and even
their health goes.
--
take out Ra in the street that day as usually children run after
the calves and frighten them very much; they even hurt them
0.04 - The Systems of Yoga, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is this truth which makes necessary to every philosophy of Yoga the conception of the Ishwara, Lord, supreme Soul or supreme Self, towards whom the effort is directed and who gives the illuminating touch and the strength to attain. Equally true is the complementary idea so often enforced by the Yoga of devotion that as the Transcendent is necessary to the individual and sought after by him, so also the individual is necessary in a sense to the Transcendent and sought after by It. If the
Bhakta seeks and yearns after Bhagavan, Bhagavan also seeks and yearns after the Bhakta.1 There can be no Yoga of knowledge without a human seeker of the knowledge, the supreme subject of knowledge and the divine use by the individual of the universal faculties of knowledge; no Yoga of devotion without the human God-lover, the supreme object of love and delight and the divine use by the individual of the universal faculties of spiritual, emotional and aesthetic enjoyment; no Yoga of works without the human worker, the supreme Will, Master of all works and sacrifices, and the divine use by the individual of the universal faculties of power and action. However Monistic may be our intellectual conception of the highest truth of things, in practice we are compelled to accept this omnipresent Trinity.
--
The results of Hathayoga are thus striking to the eye and impose easily on the vulgar or physical mind. And yet at the end we may ask what we have gained at the end of all this stupendous labour. The object of physical Nature, the preservation of the mere physical life, its highest perfection, even in a certain sense the capacity of a greater enjoyment of physical living have been carried out on an abnormal scale. But the weakness of Hathayoga is that its laborious and difficult processes make so great a demand on the time and energy and impose so complete a severance from the ordinary life of men that the utilisation of its results for the life of the world becomes either impracticable or is extraordinarily re stricted. If in return for this loss we gain another life in another world within, the mental, the dynamic, these results could have been acquired through other systems, through Rajayoga, through Tantra, by much less laborious methods and held on much less exacting terms. On the other hand the physical results, increased vitality, prolonged youth, health, longevity are of small avail if they must be held by us as misers of ourselves, apart from the common life, for their own sake, not utilised, not thrown into the common sum of the world's activities. Hathayoga attains large results, but at an exorbitant price and to very little purpose.
Rajayoga takes a higher flight. It aims at the liberation and perfection not of the bodily, but of the mental being, the control of the emotional and sensational life, the mastery of the whole apparatus of thought and consciousness. It fixes its eyes on the citta, that stuff of mental consciousness in which all these activities arise, and it seeks, even as Hathayoga with its physical material, first to purify and to tranquillise. The normal state of man is a condition of trouble and disorder, a kingdom either at war with itself or badly governed; for the lord, the Purusha, is subjected to his ministers, the faculties, subjected even to his subjects, the in struments of sensation, emotion, action, enjoyment. Swarajya, self-rule, must be substituted for this subjection.
0.05 - Letters to a Child, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
being and make you strong and joyful.
Love from your mother.
--
I feel devoid of strength, will and energy. I don't
know what to do. This state must go, but I don't know
--
to make you a strong and conscious man who is master of
himself - that is, in control of his lower nature and capable of
--
my heart to comfort and protect you, to strengthen and illumine
you. Never for a moment do I leave you and I am sure that if
--
because your nerves are not very strong. You should eat more,
sleep longer, take some exercise in the open air, etc.
--
being, the being who is free, peaceful, strong and happy always,
independently of all circumstances.
--
Your lions are superb. How quiet they are in their strength.
A strong being is always quiet. It is weakness that causes restlessness. I am sending you (on my envelope, but in reality too)
the repose that comes from concentrated energy.
Be sure that you will become strong and quiet, have faith in
a perfect realisation and in the Divine's omnipotence to achieve
--
cured. It is your body that does not feel very strong and is sad
because it does not have a sound balance of health. The best
--
the slightest. This part of the vital must learn to become stronger
and more enduring.
--
In ordinary life, one has to struggle to satisfy one's desires;
here one struggles not to do so. Actually, whatever path one
follows, success always comes to those who are strong, courageous, enduring. And you know that here our force and our help
are always available to you; you have only to learn to make use
--
that these pleasures can only be obtained through much struggle
and effort and that always they go hand in hand with worry and
--
you feel yourself going down? Are desires becoming stronger in
you? Whatever happens, you can always rely on my help; do
--
I feel completely suffocated. The struggle has become fiercer. How many days must I go on like this?
My dear child,
--
of the strength to leave. I am and will always be in your heart; so
you are sure to find me there if you enter into it deeply enough.
--
path. Give me the strength to reject everything that
comes from outside. May your will be done.
--
my situation right now. The struggle is getting more and
more acute, and worst of all I cannot lie to you. What
--
can; do not yield to the temptation to give up the struggle and let
yourself fall into darkness. Persist, and one day you will realise
--
painting. Give me a strong energy. I want the inner and
outer silence - peace in all my being, from the innermost
--
This craving for strong experiences belongs to the vital; it
is a very frequent tendency in those whose vital is insufficiently
--
How happy I shall be the day when you always feel strong
and happy in all circumstances.
0.05 - The Synthesis of the Systems, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
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
--
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
0.06 - INTRODUCTION, #Dark Night of the Soul, #Saint John of the Cross, #Christianity
the senses, the principal aim of which is the purgation or stripping of the soul of its
imperfections and the preparation of it for fruitive union. The Passive Night of
--
sensual part have their strength and root in the spirit, where all habits, both good
and bad, are brought into subjection, and thus, until these are purged, the
--
midst of these dark confines, feels itself to be keenly and sharply wounded in strong
Divine love, and to have a certain realization and foretaste of God.'11 No less
0.06 - Letters to a Young Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Is it strange that one should become disgusted with this
world? The repetition of the same round - that is death
--
me one day with a love which fills you with strength and with
joy.
--
A love which is sufficiently strong can make a person the
slave of the beloved.
--
going to be like this, and that you will strive to conquer your
two great enemies: jealousy and vanity. The more we advance
--
who wanted to suck my blood; I wanted to stretch my
left hand to him so that he could do so.
--
stop going on strike.
Depression is always unreasonable and leads nowhere. It is the
--
will feel this strong urge to study; but when the brain is well
formed, the taste for studies will gradually die away.
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 Gospel, along which way the soul ordinarily passes in order to reach this high and happy union with God. Since this road (as the Lord Himself says likewise) is so strait, and since there are so few that enter by it,19 the soul considers it a great happiness and good chance to have passed along it to the said perfection of love, as it sings in this first stanza, calling this strait road with full propriety 'dark night,' as will be explained hereafter in the lines of the said stanza. The soul, then, rejoicing at having passed along this narrow road whence so many blessings have come to it, speaks after this manner.
BOOK THE FIRST
--
2. And this going forth it says here that it was able to accomplish in the strength and ardour which love for its Spouse gave to it for that purpose in the dark contemplation aforementioned. Herein it extols the great happiness which it found in journeying to God through this night with such signal success that none of the three enemies, which are world, devil and flesh (who are they that ever impede this road), could hinder it; inasmuch as the aforementioned night of purgative20 contemplation lulled to sleep and mortified, in the house of its sensuality, all the passions and desires with respect to their mischievous desires and motions. The line, then, says:
On a dark night
0.07 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I know that it is only the weak who complain. The strong never
do because they can't be hurt. So I never attach much importance
--
Your love for me is my true refuge and sole strength.
What I offer you, my Mother, is a turbid mixture of
--
The love for the Divine is the strongest force for doing this.
My love and blessings.
0.08 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In order to strengthen the contact and aid, if possible, the
development of the conscious psychic personality, one should,
--
the street and gazed at the sadhaks assembled below.
Series Eight - To a Young Captain
0.09 - Letters to a Young Teacher, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
and habits of street-urchins might like to suggest and who seek
in what Sri Aurobindo has written an excuse for their excesses.
--
Ashram, the conditions were a lot stricter and the discipline more rigorous. How and why have these conditions
changed now?
01.01 - A Yoga of the Art of Life, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
From a certain point of view, from the point of view of essentials and inner realities, it would appear that spirituality is, at least, the basis of the arts, if not the highest art. If art is meant to express the soul of things, and since the true soul of things is the divine element in them, then certainly spirituality, the discipline of coming in conscious contact with the Spirit, the Divine, must be accorded the regal seat in the hierarchy of the arts. Also, spirituality is the greatest and the most difficult of the arts; for it is the art of life. To make of life a perfect work of beauty, pure in its lines, faultless in its rhythm, replete with strength, iridescent: with light, vibrant with delightan embodiment of the Divine, in a wordis the highest ideal of spirituality; viewed the spirituality that Sri Aurobindo practisesis the ne plus ultra of artistic creation
The Gita, II. 40
01.01 - Sri Aurobindo - The Age of Sri Aurobindo, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Indeed, looking from a standpoint that views the working of the forces that act and achieve and not the external facts and events and arrangements aloneone finds that things that are achieved on the material plane are first developed and matured and made ready behind the veil and at a given moment burst out and manifest themselves often unexpectedly and suddenly like a chick out of the shell or the young butterfly out of the cocoon. The Gita points to that truth of Nature when it says: "These beings have already been killed by Me." It is not that a long or strenuous physical planning and preparation alone or in the largest measure brings about a physical realisation. The deeper we go within, the farther we are away from the surface, the nearer we come to the roots and sources of things even most superficial. The spiritual view sees and declares that it is the Brahmic consciousness that holds, inspires, builds up Matter, the physical body and form of Brahman.
The highest ideal, the very highest which God and Nature and Man have in view, is not and cannot be kept in cold storage: it is being worked out even here and now, and it has to be worked out here and now. The ideal of the Life Divine embodies a central truth of existence, and however difficult or chimerical it may appear to be to the normal mind, it is the preoccupation of the inner being of manall other ways or attempts of curing human ills are faint echoes, masks, diversions of this secret urge at the source and heart of things. That ideal is a norm and a force that is ever dynamic and has become doubly so since it has entered the earth atmosphere and the waking human consciousness and is labouring there. It is always safer and wiser to recognise that fact, to help in the realisation of that truth and be profited by it.
01.01 - The New Humanity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The world is in the throes of a new creation and the pangs of that new birth have made mother Earth restless. It is no longer a far-off ideal that our imagination struggles to visualise, nor a prophecy that yet remains to be fulfilled. It is Here and Now.
Although we may not know it, the New Man the divine race of humanity is already among us. It may be in our next neighbour, in our nearest brother, even in myself. Only a thin veil covers it. It marches just behind the line. It waits for an occasion to throw off the veil and place itself in the forefront. We are living in strenuous times in which age-long institutions are going down and new-forces rearing their heads, old habits are being cast off and new impulsions acquired. In every sphere of life, we see the urgent demand for a recasting, a fresh valuation of things. From the base to the summit, from the economic and political life to the artistic and spiritual, humanity is being shaken to bring out a new expression and articulation. There is the hidden surge of a Power, the secret stress of a Spirit that can no longer suffer to remain in the shade and behind the mask, but wills to come out in the broad daylight and be recognised in its plenary virtues.
That Power, that Spirit has been growing and gathering its strength during all the millenniums that humanity has lived through. On the momentous day when man appeared on earth, the Higher Man also took his birth. Since the hour the Spirit refused to be imprisoned in its animal sheath and came out as man, it approached by that very uplift a greater freedom and a vaster movement. It was the crest of that underground wave which peered over the surface from age to age, from clime to clime through the experiences of poets and prophets and sages the Head of the Sacrificial Horse galloping towards the Dawn.
And now the days of captivity or rather of inner preparation are at an end. The voice in the wilderness was necessary, for it was a call and a communion in the silence of the soul. Today the silence seeks utterance. Today the shell is ripe enough to break and to bring out the mature and full-grown being. The king that was in hiding comes in glory and triumph, in his complete regalia.
Another humanity is rising out of the present human species. The beings of the new order are everywhere and it is they who will soon hold sway over earth, be the head and front of the terre strial 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 terre strial 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 Dharmasha stra; for science seeks to teach us the moods of Nature and the methods of propitiating her. Our actual ideal of man is that of the cleverest slave. But the New Man will have found himself and by and according to his inner will, mould and create his world. He will not be in awe of Nature and in an attitude of perpetual apprehension and hesitation, but will ground himself on a secret harmony and union that will declare him as the lord. We will recognise the New Man by his very gait and manner, by a certain kingly ease and dominion in every shade of his expression.
Not that this sovereign power will have anything to do with aggression or over-bearingness. It will not be a power that feels itself only by creating an eternal opponentErbfeindby coming in constant clash with a rival that seeks to gain victory by subjugating. It will not be Nietzschean "will to power," which is, at best, a supreme Asuric power. It will rather be a Divine Power, for the strength it will exert and the victory it will achieve will not come from the egoit is the ego which requires an object outside and against to feel and affirm itself but it will come from a higher personal self which is one with the cosmic soul and therefore with other personal souls. The Asura, in spite of, or rather, because of his aggressive vehemence betrays a lack of the sovereign power that is calm and at ease and self-sufficient. The Devic power does not assert hut simply accomplishes; the forces of the world act not as its opponent but as its in strument. Thus the New Man shall affirm his individual sovereignty and do so to perfection by expressing through it his unity with the cosmic powers, with the infinite godhead. And by being Swarat, Self-Master, he will become Samrat, world-master.
This mastery will be effected not merely in will, but in mind and heart also. For the New Man will know not by the intellect which is egocentric and therefore limited, not by ratiocination which is an indirect and doubtful process, but by direct vision, an inner communion, a soul revelation. The new knowledge will be vast and profound and creative, based as it will be upon the reality of things and not upon their shadows. Truth will shine through every experience and every utterance"a truth shall have its seat on our speech and mind and hearing", so have the Vedas said. The mind and intellect will not be active and con structive 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 One Thing Needful, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
To find the Divine is indeed the first reason for seeking the spiritual Truth and the spiritual life; it is the one thing indispensable and all the resit is nothing without it. The Divine once found, to manifest Him, - that is, first of all to transform one's own limited consciousness into the Divine Consciousness, to live in the infinite Peace, Light, Love, strength, Bliss, to become that in one's essential nature and, as a consequence, to be its vessel, channel, in strument in one's active nature. To bring into activity the principle of oneness on the material plane or to work for humanity is a mental mi stranslation of the Truth - these things cannot be the first true object of spiritual seeking. We must find the Self, the Divine, then only can we know what is the work the Self or the Divine demands from us. Until then our life and action can only be a help or a means towards finding the Divine and it ought not to have any other purpose. As we grow in inner consciousness, or as the spiritual Truth of the Divine grows in us, our life and action must indeed more and more flow from that, be one with that. But to decide beforeh and by our limited mental conceptions what they must be is to hamper the growth of the spiritual Truth within. As that grows we shall feel the Divine Light and Truth, the Divine Power and Force, the Divine Purity and Peace working within us, dealing with our actions as well as our consciousness, making use of them to reshape us into the Divine Image, removing the dross, substituting the pure Gold of the Spirit. Only when the Divine Presence is there in us always and the consciousness transformed, can we have the right to say that we are ready to manifest the Divine on the material plane. To hold up a mental ideal or principle and impose that on the inner working brings the danger of limiting ourselves to a mental realisation or of impeding or even falsifying by a halfway formation the truth growth into the full communion and union with the Divine and the free and intimate outflowing of His will in our life. This is a mistake of orientation to which the mind of today is especially prone. It is far better to approach the Divine for the Peace or Light or Bliss that the realisation of Him gives than to bring in these minor things which can divert us from the one thing needful. The divinisation of the material life also as well as the inner life is part of what we see as the Divine Plan, but it can only be fulfilled by an ourflowing of the inner realisation, something that grows from within outwards, not by the working out of a mental principle.
The realisation of the Divine is the one thing needful and the rest is desirable only in so far as it helps or leads towards that or when it is realised, extends and manifests the realisation. Manifestation and organisation of the whole life for the divine work, - first, the sadhana personal and collective necessary for the realisation and a common life of God-realised men, secondly, for help to the world to move towards that, and to live in the Light - is the whole meaning and purpose of my Yoga. But the realisation is the first need and it is that round which all the rest moves, for apart from it all the rest would have no meaning.
01.01 - The Symbol Dawn, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Lay stretched immobile upon Silence' marge.
1.3
--
A mighty stranger in the human field,
The embodied Guest within made no response.
--
A portion of its sorrow, struggle, fall.
2.16
--
Yet only her outward self suffered and strove;
Even her humanity was half divine:
--
Her strength was founded on the cosmic mights;
The universal Mother s love was hers.
--
Her strong far-winging spirit travelled back,
Back to the yoke of ignorance and fate,
Back to the labour and stress of mortal days,
Lighting a pathway through strange symbol dreams
Across the ebbing of the seas of sleep.
--
Awoke to struggle and the pang divine,
And in the shadow of her flaming heart,
01.02 - Natures Own Yoga, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This has been the highest consummation, the supreme goal which the purest spiritual experience and the deepest aspiration of the human consciousness generally sought to attain. But in this view, the world or creation or Nature came in the end to be looked upon as fundamentally a product of Ignorance: ignorance and suffering and incapacity and death were declared to be the very hallmark of things terre strial. The Light that dwells above and beyond can be made to shed for a while some kind of lu stre upon the mortal darkness but never altogether to remove or change itto live in the full light, to be in and of the Light means to pass beyond. Not that there have not been other strands and types of spiritual experiences and aspirations, but the one we are considering has always struck the major chord and dominated and drowned all the rest.
But the initial illusory consciousness of the Overmind need not at all lead to the static Brahmic consciousness or Sunyam alone. As a matter of fact, there is in this particular processes of consciousness a hiatus between the two, between Maya and Brahman, as though one has to leap from the one into the other somehow. This hiatus is filled up in Sri Aurobindo's Yoga by the principle of Supermind, not synthetic-analytic2 in knowledge like Overmind and the highest mental intelligence, but inescapably unitarian even in the utmost diversity. Supermind is the Truth-consciousness at once static and dynamic, self-existent and creative: in Supermind the Brahmic consciousness Sachchidanandais ever self-aware and ever manifested and embodied in fundamental truth-powers and truth-forms for the play of creation; it is the plane where the One breaks out into the Many and the Many still remain one, being and knowing themselves to be but various self-expressions of the One; it develops the spiritual archetypes, the divine names and forms of all individualisations of an evolving existence.
--
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 de stroying it, but annulling and forbidding the separative consciousness that is the beginning of Ignorance. The first shadow of the Illusory Consciousness, the initial possibility of the movement of Ignorance comes in when the supramental light enters the penumbra of the mental sphere. The movement of Supermind is the movement of light without obscurity, straight, unwavering, unswerving, absolute. The Force here contains and holds in their oneness of Reality the manifold but not separated lines of essential and unalloyed truth: its march is the inevitable progression of each one assured truth entering into and upholding every other and therefore its creation, play or action admits of no trial or stumble or groping or deviation; for each truth rests on all others and on that which harmonises them all and does not act as a Power diverging from and even competing with other Powers of being. In the Overmind commences the play of divergent possibilities the simple, direct, united and absolute certainties of the supramental consciousness retire, as it were, a step behind and begin to work themselves out through the interaction first of separately individualised and then of contrary and contradictory forces. In the Overmind there is a conscious underlying Unity but yet each Power, Truth, Aspect of that Unity is encouraged to work out its possibilities as if it were sufficient to itself and the others are used by it for its own enhancement until in the denser and darker reaches below Overmind this turns out a thing of blind conflict and battle and, as it would appear, of chance survival. Creation or manifestation originally means the concretisation or devolution of the powers of Conscious Being into a play of united diversity; but on the line which ends in Matter it enters into more and more obscure forms and forces and finally the virtual eclipse of the supreme light of the Divine Consciousness. Creation as it descends' towards the Ignorance becomes an involution of the Spirit through Mind and Life into Matter; evolution is a movement backward, a return journey from Matter towards the Spirit: it is the unravelling, the gradual disclosure and deliverance of the Spirit, the ascension and revelation of the involved consciousness through a series of awakeningsMatter awakening into Life, Life awakening into Mind and Mind now seeking to awaken into something beyond the Mind, into a power of conscious Spirit.
The apparent or actual result of the movement of Nescienceof Involutionhas been an increasing negation of the Spirit, but its hidden purpose is ultimately to embody the Spirit in Matter, to express here below in cosmic Time-Space the splendours of the timeless Reality. The material body came into existence bringing with it inevitably, as it seemed, mortality; it appeared even to be fashioned out of mortality, in order that in this very frame and field of mortality, Immortality, the eternal Spirit Consciousness which is the secret truth and reality in Time itself as well as behind it, might be established and that the Divine might be possessed, or rather, possess itself not in one unvarying mode of the static consciousness, as it does even now behind the cosmic play, but in the play itself and in the multiple mode of the terre strial existence.
--
It is also to be noted that as mind is not the last limit of the march of evolution, even so the progress of evolution will not stop with the manifestation and embodiment of the Supermind. There are other still higher principles beyond and they too presumably await manifestation and embodiment on earth. Creation has no beginning in time (andi) nor has it an end (ananta). It is an eternal process of the unravelling of the mysteries of the Infinite. Only, it may be said that with the Supermind the creation here enters into a different order of existence. Before it there was the domain of Ignorance, after it will come the reign of Light and Knowledge. Mortality has been the governing principle of life on earth till now; it will be replaced by the consciousness of immortality. Evolution has proceeded through struggle and pain; hereafter it will be a spontaneous, harmonious and happy flowering.
Now, with regard to the time that the present stage of evolution is likely to take for its fulfilment, one can presume that since or if the specific urge and stress has manifested and come up to the front, this very fact would show that the problem has become a problem of actuality, and even that it can be dealt with as if it had to be solved now or never. We have said that in man, with man's self-consciousness or the consciousness of the psychic being as the in strument, 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 in strument 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
And yet what can be more poetic in essence than philosophy, if by philosophy we mean, as it should mean, spiritual truth and spiritual realisation? What else can give the full breath, the integral force to poetic inspiration if it is not the problem of existence itself, of God, Soul and Immortality, things that touch, that are at the very root of life and reality? What can most concern man, what can strike the deepest fount in him, unless it is the mystery of his own being, the why and the whither of it all? But mankind has been taught and trained to live merely or mostly on earth, and poetry has been treated as the expression of human joys and sorrows the tears in mortal things of which Virgil spoke. The savour of earth, the thrill of the flesh has been too sweet for us and we have forgotten other sweetnesses. It is always the human element that we seek in poetry, but we fail to recognise that what we obtain in this way is humanity in its lower degrees, its surface formulations, at its minimum magnitude.
We do not say that poets have never sung of God and Soul and things transcendent. Poets have always done that. But what I say is this that presentation of spiritual truths, as they are in their own home, in other words, treated philosophically and yet in a supreme poetic manner, has always been a rarity. We have, indeed, in India the Gita and the Upanishads, great philosophical poems, if there were any. But for one thing they are on dizzy heights out of the reach of common man and for another they are idolised more as philosophy than as poetry. Doubtless, our Vaishnava poets sang of God and Love Divine; and Rabindranath, in one sense, a typical modern Vaishnava, did the same. And their songs are masterpieces. But are they not all human, too human, as the mad prophet would say? In them it is the human significance, the human manner that touches and moves us the spiritual significance remains esoteric, is suggested, is a matter of deduction. Sri Aurobindo has dealt with spiritual experiences in a different way. He has not clothed them in human symbols and allegories, in images and figures of the mere earthly and secular life: he presents them in their nakedness, just as they are seen and realised. He has not sought to tone down the rigour of truth with contrivances that easily charm and captivate the common human mind and heart. Nor has he indulged like so many poet philosophers in vague generalisations and colourless or too colourful truisms that do not embody a clear thought or rounded idea, a radiant judgment. Sri Aurobindo has given us in his poetry thoughts that are clear-cut, ideas beautifully chiselledhe is always luminously forceful.
--
Our lives pursue, and till the strain's complete
That now so moans
--
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,
--
We have been speaking of philosophy and the philosophic manner. But what are the exact implications of the words, let us ask again. They mean nothing more and nothing lessthan the force of thought and the mass of thought content. After all, that seems to be almost the whole difference between the past and the present human consciousness in so far at least as it has found expression in poetry. That element, we wish to point out, is precisely what the old-world poets lacked or did not care to possess or express or stress. A poet meant above all, if not all in all, emotion, passion, sensuousness, sensibility, nervous enthusiasm and imagination and fancy: remember the classic definition given by Shakespeare of the poet
Of imagination all compact.. . .
--
The heart and its urges, the vital and its surges, the physical impulsesit is these of which the poets sang in their infinite variations. But the mind proper, that is to say, the higher reflective ideative mind, was not given the right of citizenship in the domain of poetry. I am not forgetting the so-called Metaphysicals. The element of metaphysics among the Metaphysicals has already been called into question. There is here, no doubt, some theology, a good dose of mental cleverness or conceit, but a modern intellectual or rather rational intelligence is something other, something more than that. Even the metaphysics that was commandeered here had more or less a decorative value, it could not be taken into the pith and substance of poetic truth and beauty. It was a decoration, but not unoften a drag. I referred to the Upanishads, but these strike quite a different, almost an opposite line in this connection. They are in a sense truly metaphysical: they bypass the mind and the mental powers, get hold of a higher mode of consciousness, make a direct contact with truth and beauty and reality. It was Buddha's credit to have forged this missing link in man's spiritual consciousness, to have brought into play the power of the rational intellect and used it in support of the spiritual experience. That is not to say that he was the very first person, the originator who initiated the movement; but at least this seems to be true that in him and his au thentic followers the movement came to the forefront of human consciousness and attained the proportions of a major member of man's psychological constitution. We may remember here that Socrates, who started a similar movement of rationalisation in his own way in Europe, was almost a contemporary of the Buddha.
Poetry as an expression of thought-power, poetry weighted with intelligence and rationalised knowledge that seems to me to be the end and drive, the secret sense of all the mystery of modern technique. The combination is risky, but not impossible. In the spiritual domain the Gita achieved this miracle to a considerable degree. Still, the power of intelligence and reason shown by Vyasa is of a special order: it is a sublimated function of the faculty, something aloof and other-worldly"introvert", a modern mind would term it that is to say, something a priori, standing in its own au thenticity and self-sufficiency. A modern intelligence would be more scientific, let us use the word, more matter-of-fact and sense-based: the mental light should not be confined in its ivory tower, however high that may be, but brought down and placed at the service of our perception and appreciation and explanation of things human and terre strial; 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.
--
And it would be wrong too to suppose that there is want of sympathy in Sri Aurobindo for ordinary humanity, that he is not susceptible to sentiments, to the weaknesses, that stir the natural man. Take for example this line so instinct with a haunting melancholy strain:
Cold are your rivers of peace and their banks are leafless and lonely.
--
And the whole aspiration of striving mortality finds its echo in:
A song not master of its note, a cry
--
Headlong, o'ercome, with a stridulent horror the
river descending
--
And if there is something in the creative spirit of Sri Aurobindo which tends more towards the strenuous than the genial, the arduous than the mellifluous, and which has more of the austerity of Vyasa than the easy felicity of Valmiki, however it might have affected the ultimate value of his creation, according to certain standards,14 it has illu strated once more that poetry is not merely beauty but power, it is not merely sweet imagination but creative visionit is even the Rik, the mantra that impels the gods to manifest upon earth, that fashions divinity in man.
James H. Cousins in his New Ways in English Literature describes Sri Aurobindo as "the philosopher as poet."
01.02 - The Creative Soul, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Now the centre of this energy, the matrix of creativity is the soul itself, one's own soul. If you want to createlive, grow and be real-find yourself, be yourself. The simple old wisdom still remains the eternal wisdom. It is because we fall off from our soul that we wander into side-paths, paths that do not belong to our real nature and hence that lead to imitation and repetition, decay and death. This is what happens to what we call common souls. The force of circumstances, the pressure of environment or simply the momentum of custom or habit compel them to choose the easiest and the readiest way that may lie before them. They do not consult the demand of the inner being but the requirement of the moment. Our bodily needs, our vital hungers and our mental prejudices obsess and obscure the impulsions that thrill the hidden spirit. We hasten to gratify the immediate and forget the eternal, we clutch at the shadow and let go the substance. We are carried away in the flux and tumult of life. It is a mixed and collective whirla Weltgeist that moves and governs us. We are helpless straws drifting in the current. But manhood demands that we stop and pause, pull ourselves out of the Mael strom and be what we are. We must shape things as we want and not allow things to shape us as they want.
Let each take cognisance of the godhead that is within him for self is Godand in the strength of the soul-divinity create his universe. It does not matter what sort of universe he- creates, so long as he creates it. The world created by a Buddha is not the same as that created by a Napoleon, nor should they be the same. It does not prove anything that I cannot become a Kalidasa; for that matter Kalidasa cannot become what I am. If you have not the genius of a Shankara it does not mean that you have no genius at all. Be and become yourselfma gridhah kasyachit dhanam, says the Upanishad. The fountain-head of creative genius lies there, in the free choice and the particular delight the self-determination of the spirit within you and not in the desire for your neighbours riches. The world has become dull and uniform and mechanical, since everybody endeavours to become not himself, but always somebody else. Imitation is servitude and servitude brings in grief.
In one's own soul lies the very height and profundity of a god-head. Each soul by bringing out the note that is his, makes for the most wondrous symphony. Once a man knows what he is and holds fast to it, refusing to be drawn away by any necessity or temptation, he begins to uncover himself, to do what his inmost nature demands and takes joy in, that is to say, begins to create. Indeed there may be much difference in the forms that different souls take. But because each is itself, therefore each is grounded upon the fundamental equality of things. All our valuations are in reference to some standard or other set up with a particular end in view, but that is a question of the practical world which in no way takes away from the intrinsic value of the greatness of the soul. So long as the thing is there, the how of it does not matter. Infinite are the ways of manifestation and all of them the very highest and the most sublime, provided they are a manifestation of the soul itself, provided they rise and flow from the same level. Whether it is Agni or Indra, Varuna, Mitra or the Aswins, it is the same supreme and divine inflatus.
01.02 - The Issue, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Regressed the stream of the insistent hours,
And on the bank of the mysterious flood
--
No helper had she save the strength within;
There was no witness of terre strial eyes;
--
Were the spectators of that mighty strife.
3.20
--
To a first thin strip of simple animal wants,
And the mighty wildness of the primitive earth
--
One could drink life back in streams of honey-fire,
Recover the lost habit of happiness,
--
The strength, the silence of the gods were hers.
3.41
--
Heightening the Eternal's dreadful strategy,
He measured the difficulty with the might
--
He made her heart kin to the striving human heart
And forced her strength to its appointed road.
4.13
--
And life's brief struggle in dumb Matter's night.
4.14
--
This slow and strange uneasy compromise
Of limiting Nature with a limitless Soul,
--
Baring her helpless heart to destiny's stroke.
4.27
--
Compound with earth, struck from the starry list,
Or quench with black despair the God-given light.
--
Her strength made greater by the lightning's touch
Awoke from slumber in her heart's recess.
--
It bore the stroke of That which kills and saves.
4.37
--
Can link man's strength to a transcendent Force.
4.39
01.03 - Mystic Poetry, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Among the ancients, strictly speaking, the later classical Lucretius was a remarkable phenomenon. By nature he was a poet, but his mental interest lay in metaphysical speculation, in philosophy, and unpoetical business. He turned away from arms and heroes, wrath and love and, like Seneca and Aurelius, gave himself up to moralising and philosophising, delving 'into the mystery, the why and the how and the whither of it all. He chose a dangerous subject for his poetic inspiration and yet it cannot be said that his attempt was a failure. Lucretius was not a religious or spiritual poet; he was rather Marxian,atheistic, materialistic. The dialectical materialism of today could find in him a lot of nourishment and support. But whatever the content, the manner has made a whole difference. There was an idealism, a clarity of vision and an intensity of perception, which however scientific apparently, gave his creation a note, an accent, an atmosphere high, tense, aloof, ascetic, at times bordering on the supra-sensual. It was a high light, a force of consciousness that at its highest pitch had the ring and vibration of something almost spiritual. For the basic principle of Lucretius' inspiration is a large thought-force, a tense perception, a taut nervous reactionit is not, of course, the identity in being with the inner realities which is the hallmark of a spiritual consciousness, yet it is something on the way towards that.
There have been other philosophical poets, a good number of them since thennot merely rationally philosophical, as was the vogue in the eighteenth century, but metaphysically philosophical, that is to say, inquiring not merely into the phenomenal but also into the labyrinths of the noumenal, investigating not only what meets the senses, but also things that are behind or beyond. Amidst the earlier efflorescence of this movement the most outstanding philosopher poet is of course Dante, the Dante of Paradiso, a philosopher in the mediaeval manner and to the extent a lesser poet, according to some. Goe the is another, almost in the grand modern manner. Wordsworth is full of metaphysics from the crown of his head to the tip of his toe although his poetry, perhaps the major portion of it, had to undergo some kind of martyrdom because of it. And Shelley, the supremely lyric singer, has had a very rich undertone of thought-content genuinely metaphysical. And Browning and Arnold and Hardyindeed, if we come to the more moderns, we have to cite the whole host of them, none can be excepted.
--
The growth of a philosophical thought-content in poetry has been inevitable. For man's consciousness in its evolutionary march is driving towards a consummation which includes and presupposes a development along that line. The mot d'ordre in old-world poetry was "fancy", imaginationremember the famous lines of Shakespeare characterising a poet; in modern times it is Thought, even or perhaps particularly ab stract metaphysical thought. Perceptions, experiences, realisationsof whatever order or world they may beexpressed in sensitive and aesthetic terms and figures, that is poetry known and appreciated familiarly. But a new turn has been coming on with an increasing insistencea definite time has been given to that, since the Renaissance, it is said: it is the growing importance of Thought or brain-power as a medium or atmosphere in which poetic experiences find a sober and clear articulation, a definite and strong formulation. Rationalisation of all experiences and realisations is the keynote of the modern mentality. Even when it is said that reason and rationality are not ultimate or final or significant realities, that the irrational or the submental plays a greater role in our consciousness and that art and poetry likewise should be the expression of such a mentality, even then, all this is said and done in and through a strong rational and intellectual stress and frame the like of which cannot be found in the old-world frankly non-intellectual creations.
The religious, the mystic or the spiritual man was, in the past, more or Jess methodically and absolutely non-intellectual and anti-intellectual: but the modern age, the age of scientific culture, is tending to make him as strongly intellectual: he has to explain, not only present the object but show up its mechanism alsoexplain to himself so that he may have a total understanding and a firmer grasp of the thing which he presents and explains to others as well who demand a similar approach. He feels the necessity of explaining, giving the rationality the rationale the science, of his art; for without that, it appears to him, a solid ground is not given to the structure of his experience: analytic power, preoccupation with methodology seems inherent in the modern creative consciousness.
The philosophical trend in poetry has an interesting history with a significant role: it has acted as a force of purification, of sublimation, of katharsis. As man has risen from his exclusively or predominantly vital nature into an increasing mental poise, in the same way his creative activities too have taken this new turn and status. In the earlier stages of evolution the mental life is secondary, subordinate to the physico-vital life; it is only subsequently that the mental finds an independent and self-sufficient reality. A similar movement is reflected in poetic and artistic creation too: the thinker, the philosopher remains in the background at the outset, he looks out; peers through chinks and holes from time to time; later he comes to the forefront, assumes a major role in man's creative activity.
--
The religious poet seeks to tone down or cover up the mundane taint, since he does not know how to transcend it totally, in two ways: (1) by a strong thought-element, the metaphysical way, as it may be called and (2) by a strong symbolism, the occult way. Donne takes to the first course, Blake the second. And it is the alchemy brought to bear in either of these processes that transforms the merely religious into the mystic poet. The truly spiritual, as I have said, is still a higher grade of consciousness: what I call Spirit's own poetry has its own matter and mannerswabhava and swadharma. A nearest approach to it is echoed in those famous lines of Blake:
To see a World in a grain of Sand,
--
This, I say, is something different from the religious and even from the mystic. It is away from the merely religious, because it is naked of the vesture of humanity (in spite of a human face that masks it at times) ; it is something more than the merely mystic, for it does not stop being a signpost or an indication to the Beyond, but is itself the presence and embodiment of the Beyond. The mystic gives us, we can say, the magic of the Infinite; what I term the spiritual, the spiritual proper, gives in addition the logic of the Infinite. At least this is what distinguishes modern spiritual consciousness from the ancient, that is, Upanishadic spiritual consciousness. The Upanishad gives expression to the spiritual consciousness in its original and pristine purity and perfection, in its essential simplicity. It did not buttress itself with any logic. It is the record of fundamental experiences and there was no question of any logical exposition. But, as I have said, the modern mind requires and demands a logical element in its perceptions and presentations. Also it must needs be a different kind of logic that can satisfy and satisfy wholly the deeper and subtler movements of a modern consciousness. For the philosophical poet of an earlier age, when he had recourse to logic, it was the logic of the finite that always gave him the frame, unless he threw the whole thing overboard and leaped straight into the occult, the illogical and the a logical, like Blake, for instance. Let me illu strate and compare a little. When the older poet explains indriyani hayan ahuh, it is an allegory he resorts to, it is the logic of the finite he marshals to point to the infinite and the beyond. The stress of reason is apparent and effective too, but the pattern is what we are normally familiar with the movement, we can say, is almost Aristotelian in its rigour. Now let us turn to the following:
Our life is a holocaust of the Supreme. ||26.15||
--
The same religious spirit seems to climb a little higher still stretching towards the mystic vein in Donne,
My heart is by dejection, clay,
--
For though through many streights, and lands I roame,
I launch at paradise, and saile towards home,23
--
An allegorical structure has been transfused into a living and burning symbolism of an inner world.
But all that is left far behind, when we hear a new voice announcing an altogether new manner, revelatory of the truly and supremely spiritual consciousness, not simply mystic or religious but magically occult and carved out of the highest if recondite philosophia:
--
Harindranath Chattopadhyaya: "Blue Profound" in strange Journey.
Katha Upanishad.
01.03 - Rationalism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It may be retorted that if Reason is condemned, it is condemned by itself and by no other authority. All argumentation against Reason is a function of Reason itself. The deficiencies of Reason we find out by the rational faculty alone. If Reason was to die, it is because it consents to commit suicide; there is no other power that kills it. But to this our answer is that Reason has this miraculous power of self-de struction; or, to put it philosophically, Reason is, at best, an organ of self-criticism and perhaps the organ par excellence for that purpose. But criticism is one thing and creation another. And whether we know or act, it is fundamentally a process of creation; at least, without this element of creation there can be no knowledge, no act. In knowledge there is a luminous creativity, Revelation or Categorical Imperative which Reason does not and cannot supply but vaguely strains to seize. For that element we have to search elsewhere, not in Reason.
Does this mean that real knowledge is irrational or against Reason? Not so necessarily. There is a super-rational power for knowledge and Reason may either be a channel or an obstacle. If we take our stand upon Reason and then proceed to know, if we take the forms and categories of Reason as the inviolable schemata of knowledge, then indeed Reason becomes an obstacle to that super-rational power. If, on the other hand, Reason does not offer any set-form from beforehand, does not insist upon its own conditions, is passive and simply receives and reflects what is given to it, then it becomes a luminous and sure channel for that higher and real knowledge.
01.03 - Sri Aurobindo and his School, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
European science is conquering Nature in a way. It has attained to a certain kind and measure, in some fields a great measure, of control and conquest; but however great or striking it may be in its own province, it does not touch man in his more intimate reality and does not bring about any true change in his destiny or his being. For the most vital part of nature is the region of the life-forces, the powers of disease and age and death, of strife and greed and lustall the instincts of the brute in man, all the dark aboriginal forces, the forces of ignorance that form the very groundwork of man's nature and his society. And then, as we rise next to the world of the mind, we find a twilight region where falsehood masquerades as truth, where prejudices move as realities, where notions rule as ideals.
This is the present nature of man, with its threefold nexus of mind and life and body, that stands there to be fought and conquered. This is the inferior nature, of which the ancients spoke, that holds man down inexorably to a lower dharma, imperfect mode of life the life that is and has been the human order till today. No amount of ceaseless action, however selflessly done, can move this wheel of Nature even by a hair's breadth away from the path that it has carved out from of old. Human nature and human society have been built up and are run by the forces of this inferior nature, and whatever shuffling and reshuffling we may make in its apparent factors and elements, the general scheme and fundamental form of life will never change. To displace earth (and to conquer nature means nothing less than that) and give it another orbit, one must find a fulcrum outside earth.
01.03 - The Yoga of the King - The Yoga of the Souls Release, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
And the blind Void struggles to live and see,
A thinker and toiler in the ideal's air,
--
A strength of the original Permanence
Entangled in the moment and its flow,
--
In the mute strength of the occult Idea
Determining predestined shape and act,
--
His thought stretches into infinitude;
All in him turns to spirit vastnesses.
--
Refining half-hewn blocks of natural strength
It built his soul into a statued god.
--
And, striking off subjection's rigorous clause,
Annulled the soul's treaty with Nature's nescience.
--
Efforts that would shatter the strength of mortal hearts,
Pursued in a royalty of mighty ease
--
To ethereal symphonies the old earthy strings;
It raised the servitors of mind and life
--
And fed on the white milk of the Eternal's strengths
Till it grows into the likeness of a god.
--
Hearing was a stream of magic audience,
A bed for occult sounds earth cannot hear.
--
To which life strives to fit our rhyme-beats here,
Melting our limits in the illimitable,
--
The strength that only in action feels its truth
Was lodged now in a mute omnipotent peace.
--
Restored the stress of Nature to God's calm.
A vast unanimity ended life's debate.
--
The clash of forces struggling to prevail
In the tremendous shock that lights a star
--
Even his godlike strength to rise must fall:
His greater consciousness withdrew behind;
Dim and eclipsed, his human outside strove
To feel again the old sublimities,
--
A poised serenity of tranquil strength,
A wide unshaken look on Time's unrest
--
Even on the struggling Nature left below
strong periods of illumination came:
--
Or streaked along the roads of Heaven and Hell
Pursuing all knowledge like a questing hound.
--
In the struggle and upheaval of the world
He saw the labour of a godhead's birth.
--
The universal strengths were linked with his;
Filling earth's smallness with their boundless breadths,
--
His walk through Time out stripped the human stride.
Lonely his days and splendid like the sun's.
01.03 - Yoga and the Ordinary Life, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is not helpful to abandon the ordinary life before the being is ready for the full spiritual life. To do so means to precipitate a struggle between the different elements and exasperate it to a point of intensity which the nature is not ready to bear. The vital elements in you have partly to be met by the discipline and experience of life, while keeping the spiritual aim in view and trying to govern life by it progressively in the spirit of Karmayoga.
The best way to prepare oneself for the spiritual life when one has to live in the ordinary occupations and surroundings is to cultivate an entire equality and detachment and the samata of the Gita with the faith that the Divine is there and the Divine Will at work in all things even though at present under the conditions of a world of Ignorance. Beyond this are the Light and Ananda towards which life is working, but the best way for their advent and foundation in the individual being and nature is to grow in this spiritual equality. That would also solve your difficulty about things unpleasant and disagreeable. All unpleasantness should be faced with this spirit of samata.
--
But even if he can live partly in it or keep himself constantly open to it, he receives enough of this spiritual light and peace and strength and happiness to carry him securely through all the shocks of life. What one gains by opening to this spiritual consciousness, depends on what one seeks from it; if it is peace, one gets peace; if it is light or knowledge, one lives in a great light and receives a knowledge deeper and truer than any the normal mind of man can acquire; if it [is] strength or power, one gets a spiritual strength for the inner life or Yogic power to govern the outer work and action; if it is happiness, one enters into a beatitude far greater than any joy or happiness that the ordinary human life can give.
There are many ways of opening to this Divine consciousness or entering into it. My way which I show to others is by a constant practice to go inward into oneself, to open by aspiration to the Divine and once one is conscious of it and its action to give oneself to It entirely. This self-giving means not to ask for anything but the constant contact or union with the Divine Consciousness, to aspire for its peace, power, light and felicity, but to ask nothing else and in life and action to be its in strument only for whatever work it gives one to do in the world. If one can once open and feel the Divine Force, the
--
I must say in view of something you seem to have said to your father that it is not the object of the one to be a great man or the object of the other to be a great Yogin. The ideal of human life is to establish over the whole being the control of a clear, strong and rational mind and a right and rational will, to master the emotional, vital and physical being, create a harmony of the whole and develop the capacities whatever they are and fulfil them in life. In the terms of Hindu thought, it is to enthrone the rule of the purified and sattwic buddhi, follow the dharma, fulfilling one's own svadharma and doing the work proper to one's capacities, and satisfy kama and artha under the control of the buddhi and the dharma. The object of the divine life, on the other hand, is to realise one's highest self or to realise
God and to put the whole being into harmony with the truth of the highest self or the law of the divine nature, to find one's own divine capacities great or small and fulfil them in life as a sacrifice to the highest or as a true in strument of the divine
01.04 - Motives for Seeking the Divine, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
- 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.
That involves something which throws all your reasoning out of gear. For these are aspects of the Divine Nature, powers of it, states of his being, - but the Divine Himself is something absolute, someone self-existent, not limited by his aspects, - wonderful and ineffable, not existing by them, but they existing because of him. It follows that if he attracts by his aspects, all the more he can attract by his very absolute selfness which is sweeter, mightier, profounder than any aspect. His peace, rapture, light, freedom, beauty are marvellous and ineffable, because he is himself magically, mysteriously, transcendently marvellous and ineffable. He can then be sought after for his wonderful and ineffable self and not only for the sake of one aspect or another of him. The only thing needed for that is, first, to arrive at a point when the psychic being feels this pull of the Divine in himself and, secondly, to arrive at the point when the mind, vital and each thing else begins to feel too that that was what it was wanting and the surface hunt after Ananda or what else was only an excuse for drawing the nature towards that supreme magnet.
--
That means what? That men, country, Truth and other things besides can be loved for their own sake and not for anything else, not for any circumstance or attendant quality or resulting enjoyment, but for something absolute that is either in them or behind their appearance and circumstance. The Divine is more than a man or woman, a stretch of land or a creed, opinion, discovery or principle. He is the Person beyond all persons, the
Home and Country of all souls, the Truth of which truths are only imperfect figures. And can He then not be loved and sought for his own sake, as and more than these have been by men even in their lesser selves and nature?
01.04 - Sri Aurobindos Gita, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The supreme secret of the Gita, rahasyam uttamam, has presented itself to diverse minds in diverse forms. All these however fall, roughly speaking, into two broad groups of which one may be termed the orthodox school and the other the modem school. The orthodox school as represented, for example, by Shankara or Sridhara, viewed the Gita in the light of the spiritual discipline more or less current in those ages, when the purpose of life was held out to be emancipation from life, whether through desireless work or knowledge or devotion or even a combination of the three. The Modern School, on the other hand, represented by Bankim in Bengal and more thoroughly developed and systematised in recent times by Tilak, is inspired by its own Time-Spirit and finds in the Gita a gospel of life-fulfilment. The older interpretation laid stress upon a spiritual and religious, which meant therefore in the end an other-worldly discipline; the newer interpretation seeks to dynamise the more or less quietistic spirituality which held the ground in India of later ages, to set a premium upon action, upon duty that is to be done in our workaday life, though with a spiritual intent and motive.
This neo-spirituality which might claim its sanction and authority from the real old-world Indian disciplinesay, of Janaka and Yajnavalkyalabours, however, in reality, under the influence of European activism and ethicism. It was this which served as the immediate incentive to our spiritual revival and revaluation and its impress has not been thoroughly obliterated even in the best of our modern exponents. The bias of the vital urge and of the moral imperative is apparent enough in the modernist conception of a dynamic spirituality. Fundamentally the dynamism is made to reside in the lan of the ethical man,the spiritual element, as a consciousness of supreme unity in the Absolute (Brahman) or of love and delight in God, serving only as an atmosphere for the mortal activity.
01.04 - The Intuition of the Age, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A new impulse is there, no one can deny, and it has vast possibilities before it, that also one need not hesitate to accept. But in order that we may best fructuate what has been spontaneously sown, we must first recognise it, be luminously conscious of it and develop it along its proper line of growth. For, also certain it is that this new impulse or intuition, however true and strong in itself, is still groping and erring and miscarrying; it is still wasting much of its energy in tentative things, in mere experiments, in even clear failures. The fact is that the intuition has not yet become an enlightened one, it is still moving, as we shall presently explain, in the dark vital regions of man. And vitalism is naturally and closely affianced to pragmatism, that is to say, the mere vital impulse seeks immediately to execute itself, it looks for external effects, for changes in the form, in the machinery only. Thus it is that we see in art and literature discussions centred upon the scheme of composition, as whether the new poetry should be lyrical or dramatic, popular or aristocratic, metrical or free of metre, and in practical life we talk of remodelling the state by new methods of representation and governance, of purging society by bills and legislation, of reforming humanity by a business pact.
All this may be good and necessary, but there is the danger of leaving altogether out of account the one thing needful. We must then pause and turn back, look behind the apparent impulsion that effectuates to the Will that drives, behind the ideas and ideals of the mind to the soul that informs and inspires; we must carry ourselves up the stream and concentrate upon the original source, the creative intuition that lies hidden somewhere. And then only all the new stirrings that we feel in our heartour urges and ideals and visions will attain an effective clarity, an unshaken purpose and an inevitable achievement.
That is to say, the change has been in the soul of man himself, the being has veered round and taken a new orientation. It is this which one must envisage, recognise and consciously possess, in order that one may best fulfil the call of the age. But what we are doing instead is to observe the mere external signs and symbols and symptoms, to fix upon the distant quiverings, the echoes on the outermost rim, which are not always faithful representations, but very often distorted images of the truth and life at the centre and source and matrix. We must know that if there has been going on a redi stribution and new-marshalling of forces, it is because the fiat has come from the Etat Major.
--
However, we are concerned more with the immediate past, the mentality that laid its supreme stress upon the human rationality. What that epoch did not understand was that Reason could be overstepped, that there was something higher, something greater than Reason; Reason being the sovereign faculty, it was thought there could be nothing beyond, unless it were draison. The human attribute par excellence is Reason. Exactly so. But the fact is that man is not bound by his humanity and that reason can be transformed and sublimated into other more powerful faculties.
Now, the question is, what is the insufficiency of Reason? How does it limit man? And what is the Superman into which man is asked or is being impelled to grow?
--
But although Reason has been and is useful for the practical, we may say almost, the manual aspect of life, life itself it leaves unexplained and uncomprehended. For life is mobility, a continuous flow that has nowhere any gap or stop and things have in reality no isolated or separate existence, they merge and mingle into one another and form an indissoluble whole. Therefore the forms and categories that Reason imposes upon existence are more or less arbitrary; they are shackles that seek to bind up and limit life, but are often rent asunder in the very effort. So the civilisation that has its origin in Reason and progresses with discoveries and inventionsdevices for artfully manipulating naturehas been essentially and pre-eminently mechanical in its structure and outlook. It has become more and more efficient perhaps, but less and less soul-inspired, less and less-endowed with the free-flowing sap of organic growth and vitality.
So instead of the rational principle, the new age wants the principle of Nature or Life. Even as regards knowledge Reason is not the only, nor the best in strument. For animals have properly no reason; the nature-principle of knowledge in the animal is Instinct the faculty that acts so faultlessly, so marvellously where Reason can only pause and be perplexed. This is not to say that man is to or can go back to this primitive and animal function; but certainly he can replace it by something akin which is as natural and yet purified and self-consciousillumined instinct, we may say or Intuition, as Bergson terms it. And Nietzsche's definition of the Superman has also a similar orientation and significance; for, according to him, the Superman is man who has outgrown his Reason, who is not bound by the standards and the conventions determined by Reason for a special purpose. The Superman is one who has gone beyond "good and evil," who has shaken off from his nature and character elements that are "human, all too human"who is the embodiment of life-force in its absolute purity and strength and freedom.
This then is the mantra of the new ageLife with Intuition as its guide and not Reason and mechanical efficiency, not Man but Superman. The right mantra has been found, the principle itself is irreproachable. But the interpretation, the application, does not seem to have been always happy. For, Nietzsche's conception of the Superman is full of obvious lacunae. If we have so long been adoring the intellectual man, Nietzsche asks us, on the other hand, to deify the vital man. According to him the superman is he who has (1) the supreme sense of the ego, (2) the sovereign will to power and (3) who lives dangerously. All this means an Asura, that is to say, one who has, it may be, dominion over his animal and vital impulsions in order, of course, that he may best gratify them but who has not purified them. Purification does not necessarily mean, annihilation but it does mean sublimation and transformation. So if you have to transcend man, you have to transcend egoism also. For a conscious egoism is the very characteristic of man and by increasing your sense of egoism you do not supersede man but simply aggrandise your humanity, fashion it on a larger, a titanic scale. And then the will to power is not the only will that requires fulfilment, there is also the will to knowledge and the will to love. In man these three fundamental constitutive elements coexist, although they do it, more often than not, at the expense of each other and in a state of continual disharmony. The superman, if he is to be the man "who has surmounted himself", must embody a poise of being in which all the three find a fusion and harmonya perfect synthesis. Again, to live dangerously may be heroic, but it is not divine. To live dangerously means to have eternal opponents, that is to say, to live ever on the same level with the forces you want to dominate. To have the sense that one has to fight and control means that one is not as yet the sovereign lord, for one has to strive and strain and attain. The supreme lord is he who is perfectly equanimous with himself and with the world. He has not to batter things into a shape in order to create. He creates means, he manifests. He wills and he achieves"God said 'let there be light' and there was light."
As a matter of fact, the superman is not, as Nietzsche thinks him to be, the highest embodiment of the biological force of Nature, not even as modified and refined by the aesthetic and aristocratic virtues of which the higher reaches of humanity seem capable. For that is after all humanity only accentuated in certain other fundamentally human modes of existence. It does not carry far enough the process of surmounting. In reality it is not a surmounting but a new channelling. Instead of the ethical and intellectual man, we get the vital and aesthetic man. It may be a change but not a transfiguration.
01.04 - The Poetry in the Making, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
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 in strument, 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 arti stry 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 in strumental faculties offer the least resistance and record with absolute fidelity the experiences of the over or inner consciousness. In Shakespeare, in Homer, in Valmiki the inflatus of the secret consciousness, the inspiration, as it is usually termed, bears down, sweeps away all obscurity or contrariety in the recording mentality, suffuses it with its own glow and puissance, indeed resolves it into its own substance, as it were. And the difference between the two, the secret norm and the recording form, determines the scale of the artist's creative value. It happens often that the ob struction 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.
--
But the Yogi is a wholly conscious being; a perfect Yogi is he who possesses a conscious and willed control over his in struments, he silences them, as and when he likes, and makes them convey and express with as little deviation as possible truths and realities from the Beyond. Now the question is, is it possible for the poet also to do something like that, to consciously create and not to be a mere unconscious or helpless channel? Conscious arti stry, as we have said, means to be conscious on two levels of consciousness at the same time, to be at home in both equally and simultaneously. The general experience, however, is that of "one at a time": if the artist dwells more in the one, the other retires into the background to the same measure. If he is in the over-consciousness, he is only half-conscious in his brain consciousness, or even not conscious at allhe does not know how he has created, the sources or process of his creative activity, he is quite oblivious of them" gone through them all as if per saltum. Such seems to have been the case with the primitives, as they are called, the elemental poetsShakespeare and Homer and Valmiki. In some others, who come very near to them in poetic genius, yet not quite on a par, the in strumental intelligence is strong and active, it helps in its own way but in helping circumscribes and limits the original impulsion. The art here becomes consciously artistic, but loses something of the initial freshness and spontaneity: it gains in correctness, polish and elegance and has now a style in lieu of Nature's own naturalness. I am thinking of Virgil and Milton and Kalidasa. Dante's place is perhaps somewhere in between. Lower in the rung where the mental medium occupies a still more preponderant place we have intellectual poetry, poetry of the later classical age whose representatives are Pope and Dryden. We can go farther down and land in the domain of versificationalthough here, too, there can be a good amount of beauty in shape of ingenuity, cleverness and conceit: Voltaire and Delille are of this order in French poetry.
The three or four major orders I speak of in reference to conscious arti stry 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 in struments 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 in strument, how the vehicle transcribes and embodies what comes from elsewhere. The poet's consciousness becomes then divalent as it werethere is a sense of absolute passivity in respect of the receiving apparatus and coupled and immisced with it there is also the sense of dynamism, of conscious agency as in his secret being he is the master of his apparatus and one with the Inspirerin other words, the poet is both a seer (kavih) and a creator or doer (poits).
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The consciously purposive activity of the poetic consciousness in fact, of all artistic consciousness has shown itself with a clear and unambiguous emphasis in two directions. First of all with regard to the subject-matter: the old-world poets took things as they were, as they were obvious to the eye, things of human nature and things of physical Nature, and without questioning dealt with them in the beauty of their normal form and function. The modern mentality has turned away from the normal and the obvious: it does not accept and admit the "given" as the final and definitive norm of things. It wishes to discover and establish other norms, it strives to bring about changes in the nature and condition of things, envisage the shape of things to come, work for a brave new world. The poet of today, in spite of all his effort to remain a pure poet, in spite of Housman's advocacy of nonsense and not-sense being the essence of true Art, is almost invariably at heart an incorrigible prophet. In revolt against the old and established order of truths and customs, against all that is normally considered as beautiful,ideals and emotions and activities of man or aspects and scenes and movements of Natureagainst God or spiritual life, the modern poet turns deliberately to the ugly and the macabre, the meaningless, the insignificant and the triflingtins and teas, bone and dust and dustbin, hammer and sicklehe is still a prophet, a violent one, an iconoclast, but one who has his own icon, a terribly jealous being, that seeks to pull down the past, erase it, to break and batter and knead the elements in order to fashion out of them something conforming to his heart's desire. There is also the class who have the vision and found the truth and its solace, who are prophets, angelic and divine, messengers and harbingers of a new beauty that is to dawn upon earth. And yet there are others in whom the two strains mingle or approach in a strange way. All this means that the artist is far from being a mere receiver, a mechanical executor, a passive unconscious in strument, but that he is supremely' conscious and master of his faculties and implements. This fact is doubly reinforced when we find how much he is preoccupied with the technical aspect of his craft. The richness and variety of patterns that can be given to the poetic form know no bounds today. A few major rhythms were sufficient for the ancients to give full expression to their poetic inflatus. For they cared more for some major virtues, the basic and fundamental qualitiessuch as truth, sublimity, nobility, forcefulness, purity, simplicity, clarity, straightforwardness; they were more preoccupied with what they had to say and they wanted, no doubt, to say it beautifully and powerfully; but the modus operandi was not such a passion or obsession with them, it had not attained that almost absolute value for itself which modern craftsmanship gives it. As technology in practical life has become a thing of overwhelming importance to man today, become, in the Shakespearean phrase, his "be-all and end-all", even so the same spirit has invaded and pervaded his aesthetics too. The subtleties, variations and refinements, the revolutions, reversals and inventions which the modern poet has ushered and takes delight in, for their own sake, I repeat, for their intrinsic interest, not for the sake of the subject which they have to embody and clothe, have never been dream by Aristotle, the supreme legislator among the ancients, nor by Horace, the almost incomparable craftsman among the ancients in the domain of poetry. Man has become, to be sure, a self-conscious creator to the pith of his bone.
Such a stage in human evolution, the advent of Homo Faber, has been a necessity; it has to serve a purpose and it has done admirably its work. Only we have to put it in its proper place. The salvation of an extremely self-conscious age lies in an exceeding and not in a further enhancement or an exclusive concentration of the self-consciousness, nor, of course, in a falling back into the original unconsciousness. It is this shift in the poise of consciousness that has been presaged and prepared by the conscious, the scientific artists of today. Their task is to forge an in strument for a type of poetic or artistic creation completely new, unfamiliar, almost revolutionary which the older mould would find it impossible to render adequately. The yearning of the human consciousness was not to rest satisfied with the familiar and the ordinary, the pressure was for the discovery of other strands, secret stores of truth and reality and beauty. The first discovery was that of the great Unconscious, the dark and mysterious and all-powerful subconscient. Many of our poets and artists have been influenced by this power, some even sought to enter into that region and become its denizens. But artistic inspiration is an emanation of Light; whatever may be the field of its play, it can have its origin only in the higher spheres, if it is to be truly beautiful and not merely curious and scientific.
That is what is wanted at present in the artistic world the true inspiration, the breath from higher altitudes. And here comes the role of the mystic, the Yogi. The sense of evolution, the march of human consciousness demands and prophesies that the future poet has to be a mysticin him will be fulfilled the travail of man's conscious working. The self-conscious craftsman, the tireless experimenter with his adventurous analytic mind has sharpened his in strument, made it supple and elastic, tempered, refined and enriched it; that is comparable to what we call the aspiration or call from below. Now the Grace must descend and fulfil. And when one rises into this higher consciousness beyond the brain and mind, when one lives there habitually, one knows the why and the how of things, one becomes a perfectly conscious operator and still retains all spontaneity and freshness and wonder and magic that are usually associated with inconscience and irreflection. As there is a spontaneity of instinct, there is likewise also a spontaneity of vision: a child is spontaneous in its movements, even so a seer. Not only so, the higher spontaneity is more spontaneous, for the higher consciousness means not only awareness but the free and untrammelled activity and expression of the truth and reality it is.
Genius had to be generally more or less unconscious in the past, because the in strument was not ready, was clogged as it were with its own lower grade movements; the higher inspiration had very often to bypass it, or rob it of its serviceable materials without its knowledge, in an almost clandestine way. Wherever it was awake and vigilant, we have seen it causing a diminution in the poetic potential. And yet even so, it was being prepared for a greater role, a higher destiny it is to fulfil in the future. A conscious and full participation of a refined and transparent and enriched in strument in the delivery of superconscious truth and beauty will surely mean not only a new but the very acme of aesthetic creation. We thus foresee the age of spiritual art in which the sense of creative beauty in man will find its culmination. Such an art was only an exception, something secondary or even tertiary, kept in the background, suggested here and there as a novel strain, called "mystic" to express its unfamiliar nature-unless, of course, it was openly and obviously scriptural and religious.
I have spoken of the source of inspiration as essentially and originally being a super-consciousness or over-consciousness. But to be more precise and accurate I should add another source, an inner consciousness. As the super-consciousness is imaged as lying above the normal consciousness, so the inner consciousness may be described as lying behind or within it. The movement of the inner consciousness has found expression more often and more largely than that of over-consciousness in the artistic creation of the past : and that was in keeping with the nature of the old-world inspiration, for the inspiration that comes from the inner consciousness, which can be considered as the lyrical inspiration, tends to be naturally more "spontaneous", less conscious, since it does not at all go by the path of the head, it evades that as much as possible and goes by the path of the heart.
01.04 - The Secret Knowledge, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Where Life and Mind erect their structured dreams;
An unborn Power must build reality.
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Witnessed by a strange immaterial sense,
The signals of eternity appear.
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Ourself and a high stranger whom we feel,
It is and acts unseen as if it were not;
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The Real towards which our strivings move,
The secret grandiose meaning of our lives.
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A flickering light in a strange ignorant world,
The earth a brute mechanic accident,
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Out of her mindless depths she strives to rise,
A perilous life her gain, a struggling joy;
A Thought that can conceive but hardly knows
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And stretches arms to what was never hers.
Out stretching arms to the unconscious Void,
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A strength not forced to stumble by its speed,
A Joy that drags not sorrow as its shade.
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Armed with a limited precarious strength,
He saves his fruits of work from adverse chance.
A struggling ignorance is his wisdom's mate:
He waits to see the consequence of his acts,
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When darkness deepens strangling the earth's breast
And man's corporeal mind is the only lamp,
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They look on our struggle with impartial eyes,
And yet without them cosmos could not be.
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Else might their strength be marred and could not save.
Alive to the truth that dwells in God's extremes,
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The godhead promised to our struggling souls
When first man's heart dared death and suffered life.
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Whatever our strong ills and present fate,
When nothing we can see but drift and bale,
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And none could bear but for his strength within,
Yet none would leave because of his delight.
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Where all is deep and strange to the eyes that see
And Nature's common forms are marvel-wefts,
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His changed and struggling immortality.
His soul is a subtle atom in a mass,
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Incarnate in a world of strife and pain,
He puts on joy and sorrow like a robe
And drinks experience like a streng thening wine.
He whose transcendence rules the pregnant Vasts,
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Through a strange mid-world under supernal skies,
Beyond earth's longitudes and latitudes,
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In the hidden strength of her omnipotent Will,
Driven by her breath across life's tossing deep,
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With the Truth-Light strike earth's massive roots of trance,
Wake a dumb self in the inconscient depths
01.05 - Rabindranath Tagore: A Great Poet, a Great Man, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In an age when Reason was considered as the highest light given to man, Tagore pointed to the Vision of the mystics as always the still greater light; when man was elated with undreamt-of worldly success, puffed up with incomparable material possessions and powers, Tagore's voice rang clear and emphatic in tune with the cry of the ancients: "What shall I do with all this mass of things, if I am not made immortal by that?" When men, in their individual as well as collective egoism, were scrambling for earthly gains and hoards, he held before them vaster and cleaner horizons, higher and deeper ways of being and living, maintained the sacred sense of human solidarity, the living consciousness of the Divine, one and indivisible. When the Gospel of Power had all but hypnotised men's minds, and Superman or God-man came to be equated with the Titan, Tagore saw through the falsehood and placed in front and above all the old-world eternal verities of love and self-giving, harmony and mutuality, sweetness and light. When pessimism, cynicism, agnosticism struck the major chord of human temperament, and grief and fru stration and death and decay were taken as a matter of course to be the inevitable order of earthlylifebhasmantam idam shariramhe continued to sing the song of the Rishis that Ananda and Immortality are the breath of things, the birth right of human beings. When Modernism declared with a certitude never tobe contested that Matter is Brahman, Tagore said with the voice of one who knows that Spirit is Brahman.
Tagore is in direct line with those bards who have sung of the Spirit, who always soared high above the falsehoods and uglinesses of a merely mundane life and lived in the undecaying delights and beauties of a diviner consciousness. Spiritual reality was the central theme of his poetic creation: only and naturally he viewed it in a special way and endowed it with a special grace. We know of another God-intoxicated man, the Jewish philosopher Spinoza, who saw things sub specie aeternitatis, under the figure or mode of eternity. Well, Tagore can be said to see things, in their essential spiritual reality, under the figure or mode of beauty. Keats indeed spoke of truth being beauty and beauty truth. But there is a great difference in the outlook and inner experience. A worshipper of beauty, unless he rises to the Upanishadic norm, is prone to become sensuous and pagan. Keats was that, Kalidasa was that, even Shelley was not far different. The spiritual vein in all these poets remains secondary. In the old Indian master, it is part of his intellectual equipment, no doubt, but nothing much more than that. In the other two it comes in as strange flashes from an unknown country, as a sort of irruption or on the peak of the poetic afflatus or enthousiasmos.
The world being nothing but Spirit made visible is, according to Tagore, fundamentally a thing of beauty. The scars and spots that are on the surface have to be removed and mankind has to repossess and clo the itself with that mantle of beauty. The world is beautiful, because it is the image of the Beautiful, because it harbours, expresses and embodies the Divine who is Beauty supreme. Now by a strange alchemy, a wonderful effect of polarisation, the very spiritual element in Tagore has made him almost a pagan and even a profane. For what are these glories of Nature and the still more exquisite glories that the human body has captured? They are but vibrations and modulations of beauty the delightful names and forms of the supreme Lover and Beloved.
Socrates is said to have brought down Philosophy from Heaven to live among men upon earth. A similar exploit can be ascribed to Tagore. The Spirit, the bare transcendental Reality contemplated by the orthodox Vedantins, has been brought nearer to our planet, close to human consciousness in Tagore's vision, being clothed in earth and flesh and blood, made vivid with the colours and contours of the physical existence. The Spirit, yes and by all means, but not necessarily asceticism and monasticism. So Tagore boldly declared in those famous lines of his:
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, de structive, indeed, but grand and puissant and therefore truer emblems of the BeyondJenseitsthan the weak, the little, the pitiful that do not dare to de stroy and by that very fact cannot hope to create.
This is the Nietzsche we all know. But there is another aspect of his which the world has yet been slow to recognise. For, at bottom, Nietzsche is not all storm and fury. If his Superman is a De stroying Angel, he is none the less an angel. If he is endowed with a supreme sense of strength and power, there is also secreted in the core of his heart a sense of the beautiful that illumines his somewhat sombre aspect. For although Nietzsche is by birth a Slavo-Teuton, by culture and education he is pre-eminently Hellenic. His earliest works are on the subject of Greek tragedy and form what he describes as an "Apollonian dream." And to this dream, to this Greek aesthetic sense more than to any thing else he sacrifices justice and pity and charity. To him the weak and the miserable, the sick and the maimed are a sort of blot, a kind of ulcer on the beautiful face of humanity. The herd that wallow in suffering and relish suffering disfigure the aspect of the world and should therefore be relentlessly mowed out of existence. By being pitiful to them we give our tacit assent to their persistence. And it is precisely because of this that Nietzsche has a horror of Christianity. For compassion gives indulgence to all the ugliness of the world and thus renders that ugliness a necessary and indispensable element of existence. To protect the weak, to sympathise with the lowly brings about more of weakness and more of lowliness. Nietzsche has an aristocratic taste par excellencewhat he aims at is health and vigour and beauty. But above all it is an aristocracy of the spirit, an aristocracy endowed with all the richness and beauty of the soul that Nietzsche wants to establish. The beggar of the street is the symbol of ugliness, of the poverty of the spirit. And the so-called aristocrat, die millionaire of today is as poor and ugly as any helpless leper. The soul of either of them is made of the same dirty, sickly stuff. The tattered rags, the crouching heart, the effeminate nerve, the unenlightened soul are the standing ugliness of the world and they have no place in the ideal, the perfect humanity. Humanity, according to Nietzsche, is made in order to be beautiful, to conceive the beautiful, to create the beautiful. Nietzsche's Superman has its perfect image in a Grecian statue of Zeus cut out in white marble-Olympian grandeur shedding in every lineament Apollonian beauty and Dionysian vigour.
The real secret of Nietzsche's philosophy is not an adoration of brute force, of blind irrational joy in fighting and killing. Far from it, Nietzsche has no kinship with Treitschke or Bernhard. What Nietzsche wanted was a world purged of littleness and ugliness, a humanity, not of saints, perhaps, but of heroes, lofty in their ideal, great in their achievement, majestic in their empirea race of titanic gods breathing the glory of heaven itself.
01.05 - The Yoga of the King - The Yoga of the Spirits Freedom and Greatness, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Its strange symbol letters, scattered ab struse signs,
Resolve its oracle and its paradox,
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A picture lost in far and fading streaks,
The earth-nature's summits sank below his feet:
--
A strong Descent leaped down. A Might, a Flame,
A Beauty half-visible with deathless eyes,
--
A secret Nature stripped of her defence,
Once in a dreaded half-light formidable,
--
In shadowy chambers lit by a strange sun
And opening hardly to hid mystic keys
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Her secret strengths native to greater worlds
Lifted above our needy limited scope,
--
Even by Matter's strange unconscious skill.
All's miracle here and can by miracle change.
--
Over their bounds in spurts of splendid strength
She carries their magician processes
--
It took the striving undertones of mind
And took the confused refrain of human hopes
--
As if the strophes of a cosmic ode,
A hierarchy of climbing harmonies
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 in struments that the individual may use and utilise for his own growth and development but in the main they act as deterrents rather than as aids to the expression and expansion of his characteristic being. In reality, however, if we probe sufficiently deep into the matter we find that there is no such thing as corporate life and activity; what appears as such is only a camouflage for rigorous competition; at the best, there maybe only an offensive and defensive alliancehumanity fights against nature, and within humanity itself group fights against group and in the last analysis, within the group, the individual fights against the individual. This is the ultimate Law-the Dharma of creation.
Now, what such an uncompromising individualism fails to recognise is that individuality and ego are not the same thing, that the individual may have his individuality intact and entire and yet sacrifice his ego, that the soul of man is a much greater thing than his vital being. It is simply ignoring the fact and denying the truth to say that man is only a fighting animal and not a loving god, that the self within the individual realises itself only through competition and not co-operation. It is an error to conceive of society as a mere parallelogram of forces, to suppose that it has risen simply out of the struggle of individual interests and continues to remain by that struggle. struggle is only one aspect of the thing, a particular form at a particular stage, a temporary manifestation due to a particular system and a particular habit and training. It would be nearer the truth to say that society came into being with the demand of the individual soul to unite with the individual soul, with the stress of an Over-soul to express itself in a multitude of forms, diverse yet linked together and organised in perfect harmony. Only, the stress for union manifested itself first on the material plane as struggle: but this is meant to be corrected and transcended and is being continually corrected and transcended by a secret harmony, a real commonality and brotherhood and unity. The individual is not so self-centred as the individualists make him to be, his individuality has a much vaster orbit and fulfils itself only by fulfilling others. The scientists have begun to discover other instincts in man than those of struggle and competition; they now place at the origin of social grouping an instinct which they name the herd-instinct: but this is only a formulation in lower terms, a translation on the vital plane of a higher truth and reality the fundamental oneness and accord of individuals and their spiritual impulsion to unite.
However, individualism has given us a truth and a formula which collectivism ignored. Self-determination is a thing which has come to stay. Each and every individual is free, absolutely free and shall freely follow his own line of growth and development and fulfilment. No extraneous power shall choose and fix what is good or evil for him, nor coerce and exploit him for its own benefit. But that does not necessarily mean that collectivism has no truth in it; collectivism also, as much as individualism, has a lesson for us and we should see whether we can harmonise the two. Collectivism signifies that the individual should not look to himself alone, should not be shut up in his freedom but expand himself and envelop others in a wider freedom, see other creatures in himself and himself in other creatures, as the Gita says. Collectivism demands that the individual need not and should not exhaust himself entirely in securing and enjoying his personal freedom, but that he can and should work for the salvation of others; the truth it upholds is this that the individual is from a certain point of view only a part of the group and by ignoring the latter it ignores itself in the end.
--
The individual who leads a severely individual life from the very beginning, whose outlook of the world has been fashioned by that conception, can hardly, if at all, enter at the end the communal life. He must perforce be either a vagabond or a recluse: But the recluse is not an integral man, nor the vagabond an ideal personality. The individual need not be too chaste and shy to associate with others and to give and take as freely and fully as he can. Individuality is not necessarily curtailed or mutilated in this process, but there is this other greater possibility of its getting enlarged and enhanced. Rather it is when you shut yourself up in your own self, that you stick to only one line of your personality, to a single phase of your self and thus limit and diminish yourself; the breadth and height and depth of your self, the cubic completeness of your personality you can attain only through a multiple and variegated stress by which you come in contact with the world and things.
So first the individual and then the commune is not the natural nor the ideal principle. On the other hand, first the commune and then the individual would appear to be an equally defective principle. For first a commune means an organisation, its laws and rules and regulations, its injunctions and prohibitions; all which signifies or comes to signify that every individual is not free to enter its fold and that whoever enters must know how to dovetail himself therein and thus crush down the very life-power whose enhancement and efflorescence is sought. First a commune means necessarily a creed, a dogma, a set form of being and living indelibly marked out from beforehand. The individual has there no choice of finding and developing the particular creed or dogma or mode of being and living, from out of his own self, along his particular line of natural growth; all that is imposed upon him and he has to accept and make it his own by trial and effort and self-torture. Even if the commune be a contractual association, the members having joined together in a common cause to a common end, by voluntarily sacrificing a portion of their personal choice and freedom, even then it is not the ideal thing; the collective soul will be diminished in exact proportion as each individual soul has had to be diminished, be that voluntary or otherwise. That commune is plenary and entire which ensures plenitude and entirety to each of its individuals.
01.06 - Vivekananda, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Such is Vivekananda, the embodiment of Fearlessnessabh, the Upanishadic word, the mantra, he was so fond of. The life and vision of Vivekananda can be indeed summed up in the mighty phrase of the Upanishads, nyam tm balahnena labhya. 'This soul no weakling can attain.' strength! More strength! strength evermore! One remembers the motto of Danton, the famous leader in the French Revolution:De l'audance, encore de l'audace, toujours de l'audace!
The gospel of strength that Vivekananda spread was very characteristic of the man. For it is not mere physical or nervous bravery, although that too is indispensable, and it is something more than moral courage. In the speeches referred to, the subject-matter (as well as the manner to a large extent) is philosophical, metaphysical, even ab stract 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:
--
"It is struggle against nature
and not conformity to nature that makes man what he is."
01.07 - Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
"The zeal for the Lord hath eaten me up." Such has indeed been the case with Pascal, almost literally. The fire that burned in him was too ardent and vehement for the vehicle, the material in strument, which was very soon used up and reduced to ashes. At twenty-four he was already a broken man, being struck with paralysis and neuras thenia; he died at the comparatively early age of 39, emulating, as it were, the life career of his Lord the Christ who died at 33. The Fire martyrised the body, but kindled and brought forth experiences and realisations that save and truths that abide. It was the Divine Fire whose vision and experience he had on the famous night of 23 November 1654 which brought about his final and definitive conversion. It was the same fire that had blazed up in his brain, while yet a boy, and made him a precocious genius, a marvel of intellectual power in the exact sciences. At 12 this prodigy discovered by himself the 32nd proposition of Euclid, Book I. At sixteen he wrote a treatise on conic sections. At nineteen he invented a calculating machine which, without the help of any mathematical rule or process, gave absolutely accurate results. At twenty-three he published his experiments with vacuum. At twenty-five he conducted the well-known experiment from the tower of St. Jacques, proving the existence of atmospheric pressure. His studies in infinitesimal calculus were remarkably creative and original. And it might be said he was a pioneer in quite a new branch of mathematics, viz., the mathematical theory of probability. We shall see presently how his preoccupation with the mathematics of chance and probability coloured and reinforced his metaphysics and theology.
But the pressure upon his dynamic and heated brain the fiery zeal in his mindwas already proving too much and he was advised medically to take complete rest. Thereupon followed what was known as Pascal's mundane lifea period of di straction and dissipation; but this did not last long nor was it of a serious nature. The inner fire could brook no delay, it was eager and impatient to englobe other fields and domains. Indeed, it turned to its own field the heart. Pascal became initiated into the mystery of Faith and Grace. Still he had to pass through a terrible period of dejection and despair: the life of the world had given him no rest or relaxation, it served only to fill his cup of misery to the brim. But the hour of final relief was not long postponed: the Grace came to him, even as it came to Moses or St. Paul as a sudden flare of fire which burnt up the Dark Night and opened out the portals of Morning Glory.
--
"We know truth not by reason alone, but by the heart also: it is in the latter way that we know the first principles, and in vain does reasoning, that has no part in it, attempt to combat them... The heart feels... and the reason demon strates afterwards... Principles are felt, propositions are deduced. . . . "5
About doubt, Pascal says that the perfect doubter, the Pyrrhonian as he is called, is a fiction. Pascal asks:
01.07 - The Bases of Social Reconstruction, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
And yet we have no hesitation today to call them Huns and Barbarians. That education is not giving us the right thing is proved further by the fact that we are constantly changing our programmes and curriculums, everyday remodelling old institutions and founding new ones. Even a revolution in the educational system will not bring about the desired millennium, so long as we lay so much stress upon the system and not upon man himself. And finally, look to all the religions of the worldwe have enough of creeds and dogmas, of sermons and mantras, of churches and templesand yet human life and society do not seem to be any the more worthy for it.
Are we then to say that human nature is irrevocably vitiated by an original sin and that all our efforts at reformation and regeneration are, as the Indian saying goes, like trying to straighten out the crooked tail of a dog?
It is this persuasion which, has led many spiritual souls, siddhas, to declare that theirs is not the kingdom upon this earth, but that the kingdom of Heaven is within. And it is why great lovers of humanity have sought not to eradicate but only to mitigate, as far as possible, the ills of life. Earth and life, it is said, contain in their last analysis certain ugly and loathsome realities which are an inevitable and inexorable part of their substance and to eliminate one means to annihilate the other. What can be done is to throw a veil over the nether regions in human nature, to put a ban on their urges and velleities and to create opportunities to make social arrangements so that the higher impulses only find free play while the lower impulses, for want of scope and indulgence, may fall down to a harmless level. This is what the Reformists hope and want and no more. Life is based upon animality, the soul is encased in an earth-sheathman needs must procreate, man needs must seek food. But what human effort can achieve is to set up barriers and limitations and form channels and openings, which will re strain these impulses, allow them a necessary modicum of play and which for the greater part will serve to encourage and enhance the nobler urges in man. Of course, there will remain always the possibility of the whole scaffolding coming down with a crash and the aboriginal in man running riot in his nudity. But we have to accept the chance and make the best of what materials we have in hand.
--
Our ideals have been mental con structions, rather than spiritual realitiesrealities of the deepest and highest being. And the power by which we sought to realise those ideals was mainly the insistence of our emotional urges, rather than Nature's Truth-Power. For this must be understood that the mental, the vital and the physical form a nexus of reality which works in its own inexorable law and so long as we are within them we cannot but obey the laws that guide them. Of these three strata which form the human adhara, it is the vital which holds the key to man's nature. It is the executive power, the force that fashions the realities on the physical plane; it is what creates the character. The power of thought and sentiment is often much too exaggerated, even so the power of the body, that of physical and external rules and regulations. The mental or the physical or both together can mould the vital only to a limited extent, to the extent which is allowed by the inherent law of the vital. If the demands of the mental and the physical are stretched too far and are not suffered by the vital, a crash and cata strophe is bound to come in the end.
This is the meaning of the Reformist's pessimism. So long as we remain within the domain of the triple nexus, we must always take account of an original sin, an aboriginal irredeemability in human nature. And it, is this fact which a too hasty optimistic idealism is apt to ignore. The point, however, is that man need not be necessarily bound to this triple chord of life. He can go beyond, transcend himself and find a reality which is the basis of even this lower poise of the mental and vital and physical. Only in order to get into that higher poise we must really transcend the lower, that is to say, we must not be satisfied with experiencing or envisaging it through the mind and heart but must directly commune with it, be it. There is a higher law that rules there, a power that is the truth-substance of even the vital and hence can remould it with a sovereign inevitability, according to a pattern which may not and is not the pattern of mental and emotional idealism, but the pattern of a supreme spiritual realism.
What then is required is a complete spiritual regeneration in man, a new structure of his soul and substancenot merely the realisation of the highest and supreme Truth in mental and emotional consciousness, but the translation and application of the law of that truth in the power of the vital. It is here that failed all the great spiritual or rather religious movements of the past. They were content with evoking the divine in the mental being, but left the vital becoming to be governed by the habitual un-divine or at the most to be just illumined by a distant and faint glow which served, however, more to distort than express the Divine.
The Divine Nature only can permanently reform the vital nature that is ours. Neither laws and institutions, which are the results of that vital nature, nor ideas and ideals which are often a mere revolt from and more often an auxiliary to it, can comm and the power to regenerate society. If it is thought improbable for any group of men to attain to that God Nature, then there is hardly any hope for mankind. But improbable or probable, that is the only way which man has to try and test, and there is none other.
01.08 - A Theory of Yoga, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The recent science of Psycho-analysis has brought to light certain hidden springs and undercurrents of the mind; it has familiarised us with a mode of viewing the entire psychical life of man which will be fruitful for our present enquiry. Mind, it has been found, is a house divided, against itself, that is to say it is an arena where different and divergent forces continually battle against one another. There must be, however, at the same time, some sort of a resolution of these forces, some equation that holds them in balance, otherwise the mind the human being itselfwould cease to exist as an entity. What is the mechanism of this balance of power in the human mind? In order to ascertain that we must first of all know the fundamental nature of the struggle and also the character of the more elemental forces that are engaged in it.
There are some primary desires that seek satisfaction in man. They are the vital urges of life, the most prominent among them being the instinct of self-preservation and that of self-reproduction or the desire to preserve one's body by defensive as well as by offensive means and the desire to multiply oneself by mating. These are the two biological necessities that are inevitable to man's existence as a physical being. They give the minimum conditions required to be fulfilled by man in order that he may live and hence they are the strongest and the most fundamental elements that enter into his structure and composition.
It would have been an easy matter if these vital urges could flow on unhindered in their way. There would have been no problem at all, if they met satisfaction easily and smoothly, without having to look to other factors and forces. As a matter of fact, man does not and cannot gratify his instincts whenever and wherever he chooses and in an open and direct manner. Even in his most primitive and barbarous condition, he has often to check himself and throw a veil, in so many ways, over his sheer animality. In the civilised society the check is manifold and is frankly recognised. We do not go straight as our sexual impulsion leads, but seek to hide and camouflage it under the institution of marriage; we do not pounce upon the food directly we happen to meet it and snatch and appropriate whatever portion we get but we secure it through an elaborate process, which is known as the economic system. The machinery of the state, the cult of the kshatriya are roundabout ways to meet our fighting instincts.
What is the reason of this elaboration, this check and con straint upon the natural and direct outflow of the animal instincts in man? It has been said that the social life of man, the fact that he has to live and move as member of a group or aggregate has imposed upon him these re strictions. The free and unbridled indulgence of one's bare aboriginal impulses may be possible to creatures that live a separate, solitary and individual life but is disruptive of all bonds necessary for a corporate and group life. It is even a biological necessity again which has evolved in man a third and collateral primary instinct that of the herd. And it is this herd-instinct which naturally and spontaneously re strains, diverts and even metamorphoses the other instincts of the mere animal life. However, leaving aside for the moment the question whether man's ethical and spiritual ideals are a mere dissimulation of his animal instincts or whether they correspond to certain actual realities apart from and co-existent with these latter, we will recognise the simple fact of control and try to have a glimpse into its mechanism.
There are three lines, as the Psycho-analysts point out along which this control or censuring of the primary instincts acts. First, there is the line of Defence Reaction. That is to say, the mind automatically takes up an attitude directly contrary to the impulse, tries to shut it out and deny altogether its existence and the measure of the insistence of the impulse is also the measure of the vehemence of the denial. It is the case of the lady protesting too much. So it happens that where subconsciously there is a strong current of a particular impulse, consciously the mind is obliged to take up a counteracting opposite impulse. Thus in presence of a strong sexual craving the mind as if to guard and save itself engenders by a reflex movement an ascetic and puritanic mood. Similarly a strong unthinking physical attraction translates itself on the conscious plane as an equally strong repulsion.
Secondly, there is the line of Substitution. Here the mind does not stand in an antagonistic and protestant mood to combat and repress the impulse, but seeks to divert it into other channels, use it to other purposes which do not demand equal sacrifice, may even, on the other hand, be considered by the conscious mind as worthy of human pursuit. Thus the energy that normally would seek sexual gratification might find its outlet in the cultivation of art and literature. It is a common thing in novels to find the heroine disappointed in love taking finally to works of charity and beneficence and thus forgetting her disappointment. Another variety of this is what is known as "drowning one's sorrow in drinking."
--
The method of unconscious or subconscious nature is fundamentally that of repression. Apart from Defence Reaction which is a thing of pure coercion, even in Substitution and Sublimation there always remains in the background a large amount of repressed complexes in all their primitive strength. The system is never entirely purified but remains secretly pregnant with those urges; a part only is deflected and camouflaged, the surface only assumes a transformed appearance. And there is always the danger of the super structure coming down helplessly by a sudden upheaval of the nether forces. The whole system feels, although not in a conscious manner, the tension of the repression and suffers from something that is unhealthy and ill-balanced. Dante's spiritualised passion is a supreme instance of control by Sublimation, but the Divina Comedia hardly bears the impress of a serene and tranquil soul, sovereignly above the turmoils of the tragedy of life and absolutely at peace with itself.
In conscious control, the mind is for the first time aware of the presence of the repressed impulses, it seeks to release them from the pressure to which they are habitually and normally subjected. It knows and recognises them, however ugly and revolting they might appear to be when they present themselves in their natural nakedness. Then it becomes easy for the conscious determination to eliminate or regulate or transform them and thus to establish a healthy harmony in the human vehicle. The very recognition itself, as implied in conscious control, means purification.
--
This is the real meaning and sense of the moral struggle in man, the continuous endeavour towards a transvaluation of the primary and aboriginal instincts and impulses. Looked at from one end, from below up the ascending line, man's ethical and spiritual ideals are a dissimulation and sublimation of the animal impulsions. But this is becauseas we see, if we look from the other end, from above down the descending lineman is not all instinct, he is not a mere blind in strument in the hands of Nature forces. He has in him another source, an opposite pole of being from which other impulsions flow and continually modify the structure of the lower levels. If the animal is the foundation of his nature, the divine is its summit. If the bodily demands form his manifest reality, the demands of the spirit enshrine his higher reality. And if as regards the former he is a slave, as regards the latter he is the Master. It is by the interaction of these double forces that his whole nature has been and is being fashioned. Man does not and cannot give carte blanche to his vital, inclinations, since there is a pressure upon them of higher forces coming down from his mental and spiritual levels. It is these latter which have deviated him from the direct line of the pure animal life.
Thus then we may distinguish three types of control on three levels. First, the natural control, secondly the conscious, i.e. to say the mental the ethical and religious control, and thirdly the spiritual or divine control. Now the spirit is the ultimate truth and reality, behind the forces that act in the mind and in the body, so that the natural control and the ethical control are mere attempts to establish and realise the spiritual control. The animal impulses feel the hidden stress of the divine urges that are their real essence and thus there rises first an unconscious conflict in the natural life and then a conscious conflict in the higher ethical life. But when both of these are transcended and the conflict is carried on to a still higher level, then do we find their real significance and arrive at the consummation to which they move. Yoga is the ultimate transvaluation of physical (and of moral) values, it is the trans-substantiation of life-power into its spiritual substance.
***
01.08 - Walter Hilton: The Scale of Perfection, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Here is the Augustinian mantra taken as the motto of The Scale of Perfection: We ascend the ascending grades in our heart and we sing the song of ascension1. The journey's end is heavenly Jerusalem, the House of the Lord. The steps of this inner ascension are easily visible, not surely to the outer eye of the sense-burdened man, but to the "ghostly seeing" of the aspirant which is hazy in the beginning but slowly clears as he advances. The first step is the withdrawal from the outer senses and looking and seeing within. "Turn home again in thyself, and hold thee within and beg no more without." The immediate result is a darkness and a restless darknessit is a painful night. The outer objects of attraction and interest have been discarded, but the inner attachments and passions surge there still. If, however, one continues and persists, refuses to be drawn out, the turmoil settles down and the darkness begins to thin and wear away. One must not lose heart, one must have patience and perseverance. So when the outward world is no more-there and its call also no longer awakes any echo in us, then comes the stage of "restful darkness" or "light-some darkness". But it is still the dark Night of the soul. The outer light is gone and the inner light is not yet visible: the night, the desert, the great Nought, stretches between these two lights. But the true seeker goes through and comes out of the tunnel. And there is happiness at the end. "The seeking is travaillous, but the finding is blissful." When one steps out of the Night, enters into the deepest layer of the being, one stands face to face to one's soul, the very image of God, the perfect God-man, the Christ within. That is the third degree of our inner ascension, the entry into the deepest, purest and happiest statein which one becomes what he truly is; one finds the Christ there and dwells in love and union with him. But there is still a further step to take, and that is real ascension. For till now it has been a going within, from the outward to the inner and the inmost; now one has to go upward, transcend. Within the body, in life, however deep you may go, even if you find your soul and your union with Jesus whose tabernacle is your soul, still there is bound to remain a shadow of the sinful prison-house; the perfect bliss and purity without any earthly taint, the completeness and the crowning of the purgation and transfiguration can come only when you go beyond, leaving altogether the earthly form and worldly vesture and soar into Heaven itself and be in the company of the Trinity. "Into myself, and after... above myself by overpassing only into Him." At the same time it is pointed out, this mediaeval mystic has the common sense to see that the going in and going above of which one speaks must not be understood in a literal way, it is a figure of speech. The movement of the mystic is psychological"ghostly", it is saidnot physical or carnal.
This spiritual march or progress can also be described as a growing into the likeness of the Lord. His true self, his own image is implanted within us; he is there in the profoundest depth of our being as Jesus, our beloved and our soul rests in him in utmost bliss. We are aware neither of Jesus nor of his spouse, our soul, because of the obsession of the flesh, the turmoil raised by the senses, the blindness of pride and egoism. All that constitutes the first or old Adam, the image of Nought, the body of death which means at bottom the "false misruled love in to thyself." This self-love is the mother of sin, is sin itself. What it has to be replaced by is charity that is the true meaning of Christian charity, forgetfulness of self. "What is sin but a wanting and a forbearing of God." And the whole task, the discipline consists in "the shaping of Christ in you, the casting of sin through Christ." Who then is Christ, what is he? This knowledge you get as you advance from your sense-bound perception towards the inner and inmost seeing. As your outer nature gets purified, you approach gradually your soul, the scales fall off from your eyes too and you have the knowledge and "ghostly vision." Here too there are three degrees; first, you start with faith the senses can do nothing better than have faith; next, you rise to imagination which gives a sort of indirect touch or inkling of the truth; finally, you have the "understanding", the direct vision. "If he first trow it, he shall afterwards through grace feel it, and finally understand it."
It is never possible for man, weak and bound as he is, to reject the thraldom of his flesh, he can never purify himself wholly by his own unaided strength. God in his infinite mercy sent his own son, an emanation created out of his substancehis embodied loveas a human being to suffer along with men and take upon himself the burden of their sins. God the Son lived upon earth as man and died as man. Sin therefore has no longer its final or definitive hold upon mankind. Man has been made potentially free, pure and worthy of salvation. This is the mystery of Christ, of God the Son. But there is a further mystery. Christ not only lived for all men for all time, whether they know him, recognise him or not; but he still lives, he still chooses his beloved and his beloved chooses him, there is a conscious acceptance on either side. This is the function of the Holy Ghost, the redeeming power of Love active in him who accepts it and who is accepted by it, the dynamic Christ-Consciousness in the true Christian.
Indeed, the kernel of the mystic discipline and its whole bearingconsists in one and only one principle: to love Jhesu. All roads lead to Rome: all preparations, all trials lead to one realisation, love of God, God as a living person close to us, our friend and lover and master. The Christian mystic speaks almost in the terms of the Gita: Rise above your senses, give up your ego-hood, be meek and humble, it is Jesus within you, who embraces your soul: it is he who does everything for you and in you, give yourself up wholly into his hands. He will deliver you.
The characteristic then of the path is a one-pointed concentration. Great stress is laid upon "oneliness", "onedness":that is to say, a perfect and complete withdrawal from the outside and the world; an unmixed solitude is required for the true experience and realisation to come. "A full forsaking in will of the soul for the love of Him, and a living of the heart to Him. This asks He, for this gave He." The rigorous exclusion, the uncompromising asceticism, the voluntary self-torture, the cruel dark night and the arid desert are necessary conditions that lead to the "onlyness of soul", what another prophet (Isaiah, XXIV, 16) describes as "My privity to me". In that secreted solitude, the "onlistead"the graphic language of the author calls itis found "that dignity and that ghostly fairness which a soul had by kind and shall have by grace." The utter beauty of the soul and its absolute love for her deity within her (which has the fair name of Jhesu), the exclusive concentration of the whole of the being upon one point, the divine core, the manifest Grace of God, justifies the annihilation of the world and life's manifold existence. Indeed, the image of the Beloved is always within, from the beginning to the end. It is that that keeps one up in the terrible struggle with one's nature and the world. The image depends upon the consciousness which we have at the moment, that is to say, upon the stage or the degree we have ascended to. At the outset, when we can only look through the senses, when the flesh is our master, we give the image a crude form and character; but even that helps. Gradually, as we rise, with the clearing of our nature, the image too slowly regains its original and true shape. Finally, in the inmost soul we find Jesus as he truly is: "an unchangeable being, a sovereign might, a sovereign soothfastness, sovereign goodness, a blessed life and endless bliss." Does not the Gita too say: "As one approaches Me, so do I appear to him."Ye yath mm prapadyante.
Indeed, it would be interesting to compare and contrast the Eastern and Western approach to Divine Love, the Christian and the Vaishnava, for example. Indian spirituality, whatever its outer form or credal formulation, has always a background of utter unity. This unity, again, is threefold or triune and is expressed in those great Upanishadic phrases,mahvkyas,(1) the transcendental unity: the One alone exists, there is nothing else than theOneekamevdvityam; (2) the cosmic unity: all existence is one, whatever exists is that One, thereare no separate existences:sarvam khalvidam brahma neha nnsti kincaa; (3) That One is I, you too are that One:so' ham, tattvamasi; this may be called the individual unity. As I have said, all spiritual experiences in India, of whatever school or line, take for granted or are fundamentally based upon this sense of absolute unity or identity. Schools of dualism or pluralism, who do not apparently admit in their tenets this extreme monism, are still permeated in many ways with that sense and in some form or other take cognizance of the truth of it. The Christian doctrine too says indeed, 'I and my Father in Heaven are one', but this is not identity, but union; besides, the human soul is not admitted into this identity, nor the world soul. The world, we have seen, according to the Christian discipline has to be altogether abandoned, negatived, as we go inward and upward towards our spiritual status reflecting the divine image in the divine company. It is a complete rejection, a cutting off and casting away of world and life. One extreme Vedantic path seems to follow a similar line, but there it is not really rejection, but a resolution, not the rejection of what is totally foreign and extraneous, but a resolution of the external into its inner and inmost substance, of the effect into its original cause. Brahman is in the world, Brahman is the world: the world has unrolled itself out of the Brahmansi, pravttiit has to be rolled back into its, cause and substance if it is to regain its pure nature (that is the process of nivitti). Likewise, the individual being in the world, "I", is the transcendent being itself and when it withdraws, it withdraws itself and the whole world with it and merges into the Absolute. Even the Maya of the Mayavadin, although it is viewed as something not inherent in Brahman but superimposed upon Brahman, still, has been accepted as a peculiar power of Brahman itself. The Christian doctrine keeps the individual being separate practically, as an associate or at the most as an image of God. The love for one's neighbour, charity, which the Christian discipline enjoins is one's love for one's kind, because of affinity of nature and quality: it does not dissolve the two into an integral unity and absolute identity, where we love because we are one, because we are the One. The highest culmination of love, the very basis of love, according to the Indian conception, is a transcendence of love, love trans-muted into Bliss. The Upanishad says, where one has become the utter unity, who loves whom? To explain further our point, we take two examples referred to in the book we are considering. The true Christian, it is said, loves the sinner too, he is permitted to dislike sin, for he has to reject it, but he must separate from sin the sinner and love him. Why? Because the sinner too can change and become his brother in spirit, one loves the sinner because there is the possibility of his changing and becoming a true Christian. It is why the orthodox Christian, even such an enlightened and holy person as this mediaeval Canon, considers the non-Christian, the non-baptised as impure and potentially and fundamentally sinners. That is also why the Church, the physical organisation, is worshipped as Christ's very body and outside the Church lies the pagan world which has neither religion nor true spirituality nor salvation. Of course, all this may be symbolic and it is symbolic in a sense. If Christianity is taken to mean true spirituality, and the Church is equated with the collective embodiment of that spirituality, all that is claimed on their behalf stands justified. But that is an ideal, a hypothetical standpoint and can hardly be borne out by facts. However, to come back to our subject, let us ow take the second example. Of Christ himself, it is said, he not only did not dislike or had any aversion for Judas, but that he positively loved the traitor with a true and sincere love. He knew that the man would betray him and even when he was betraying and had betrayed, the Son of Man continued to love him. It was no make-believe or sham or pretence. It was genuine, as genuine as anything can be. Now, why did he love his enemy? Because, it is said, the enemy is suffered by God to do the misdeed: he has been allowed to test the faith of the faithful, he too has his utility, he too is God's servant. And who knows even a Judas would not change in the end? Many who come to scoff do remain to pray. But it can be asked, 'Does God love Satan too in the same way?' The Indian conception which is basically Vedantic is different. There is only one reality, one truth which is viewed differently. Whether a thing is considered good or evil or neutral, essentially and truly, it is that One and nothing else. God's own self is everywhere and the sage makes no difference between the Brahmin and the cow and the elephant. It is his own self he finds in every person and every objectsarvabhtsthitam yo mm bhajati ekatvamsthitah"he has taken his stand upon oneness and loves Me in all beings."2
--
The conception of original sin is a cardinal factor in Christian discipline. The conception, of sinfulness is the very motive-power that drives the aspirant. "Seek tensely," it is said, "sorrow and sigh deep, mourn still, and stoop low till thine eye water for anguish and for pain." Remorse and grief are necessary attendants; the way of the cross is naturally the calvary strewn with pain and sorrow. It is the very opposite of what is termed the "sunlit path" in spiritual ascension. Christian mystics have made a glorious spectacle of the process of "dying to the world." Evidently, all do not go the whole length. There are less gloomy and happier temperaments, like the present one, for example, who show an unusual balance, a sturdy common sense even in the midst of their darkest nights, who have chalked out as much of the sunlit path as is possible in this line. Thus this old-world mystic says: it is true one must see and admit one's sinfulness, the grosser and apparent and more violent ones as well as all the subtle varieties of it that are in you or rise up in you or come from the Enemy. They pursue you till the very end of your journey. Still you need not feel overwhelmed or completely desperate. Once you recognise the sin in you, even the bare fact of recognition means for you half the victory. The mystic says, "It is no sin as thou feelest them." The day Jesus gave himself away on the Cross, since that very day you are free, potentially free from the bondage of sin. Once you give your adherence to Him, the Enemies are rendered powerless. "They tease the soul, but they harm not the soul". Or again, as the mystic graphically phrases it: "This soul is not borne in this image of sin as a sick man, though he feel it; but he beareth it." The best way of dealing with one's enemies is not to struggle and " strive with them." The aspirant, the lover of Jesus, must remember: "He is through grace reformed to the likeness of God ('in the privy substance of his soul within') though he neither feel it nor see it."
If you are told you are still full of sins and you are not worthy to follow the path, that you must go and work out your sins first, here is your answer: "Go shrive thee better: trow not this saying, for it is false, for thou art shriven. Trust securely that thou art on the way, and thee needeth no ransacking of shrift for that that is passed, hold forth thy way and think on Jerusalem." That is to say, do not be too busy with the difficulties of the moment, but look ahead, as far as possible, fix your attention upon the goal, the intermediate steps will become easy. Jerusalem is another name of the Love of Jesus or the Bliss in Heaven. Grow in this love, your sins will fade away of themselves. "Though thou be thrust in an house with thy body, nevertheless in thine heart, where the stead of love is, thou shouldst be able to have part of that love... " What exquisite utterance, what a deep truth!
Indeed, there are one or two points, notes for the guidance of the aspirant, which I would like to mention here for their striking appositeness and simple "soothfastness." First of all with regard to the restless enthusiasm and eagerness of a novice, here is the advice given: "The fervour is so mickle in outward showing, is not only for mickleness of love that they have; but it is for littleness and weakness of their souls, that they may not bear a little touching of God.. afterward when love hath boiled out all the uncleanliness, then is the love clear and standeth still, and then is both the body and the soul mickle more in peace, and yet hath the self soul mickle more love than it had before, though it shew less outward." And again: "without any fervour outward shewed, and the less it thinketh that it loveth or seeth God, the nearer it nigheth" ('it' naturally refers to the soul). The statement is beautifully self-luminous, no explanation is required. Another hurdle that an aspirant has to face often in the passage through the Dark Night is that you are left all alone, that you are deserted by your God, that the Grace no longer favours you. Here is however the truth of the matter; "when I fall down to my frailty, then Grace withdraweth: for my falling is cause there-of, and not his fleeing." In fact, the Grace never withdraws, it is we who withdraw and think otherwise. One more difficulty that troubles the beginner especially is with regard to the false light. The being of darkness comes in the form of the angel of light, imitates the tone of the still small voice; how to recognise, how to distinguish the two? The false light, the "feigned sun" is always found "atwixt two black rainy clouds" : they are "highing" of oneself and "lowing" of others. When you feel flattered and elated, beware it is the siren voice tempting you. The true light brings you soothing peace and meekness: the other light brings always a trail of darknessf you are soothfast and sincere you will discover it if not near you, somewhere at a distance lurking.
The ultimate truth is that God is the sole doer and the best we can do is to let him do freely without let or hindrance. "He that through Grace may see Jhesu, how that He doth all and himself doth right nought but suffereth Jhesu work in him what him liketh, he is meek." And yet one does not arrive at that condition from the beginning or all at once. "The work is not of the hour nor of a day, but of many days and years." And for a long time one has to take up one's burden and work, co-operate with the Divine working. In the process there is this double movement necessary for the full achievement. "Neither Grace only without full working of a soul that in it is nor working done without grace bringeth a soul to reforming but that one joined to that other." Mysticism is not all eccentricity and irrationality: on the contrary, sanity seems to be the very character of the higher mysticism. And it is this sanity, and even a happy sense of humour accompanying it, that makes the genuine mystic teacher say: "It is no mastery to me for to say it, but for to do it there is mastery." Amen.
01.09 - The Parting of the Way, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
So the humanity of man consists in his consciousness of the self or ego. Is there no other higher mode of consciousness? Or is self-consciousness the acme, the utmost limit to which consciousness can raise itself? If it is so, then we are bound to conclude that humanity will remain eternally human in its fundamental nature; the only progress, if progress at all we choose to call it, will consist perhaps in accentuating this consciousness of the self and in expressing it through a greater variety of stresses, through a richer combination of its colour and light and shade and rhythm. But also, this may not be sothere may be the possibility of a further step, a transcending of the consciousness of the self. It seems unnatural and improbable that having risen from un-consciousness to self-consciousness through a series of continuous marches, Nature should suddenly stop and consider what she had achieved to be her final end. Has Nature become bankrupt of her creative genius, exhausted of her upward drive? Has she to remain content with only a clever manipulation, a mere shuffling and re-arranging of the materials already produced?
As a matter of fact it is not so. The glimpses of a higher form of consciousness we can see even now present in self-consciousness. We have spoken of the different stages of evolution as if they were separate and distinct and incommensurate entities. They may be described as such for the purpose of a logical understanding, but in reality they form a single progressive continuum in which one level gradually fuses into another. And as the higher level takes up the law of the lower and evolves out of it a characteristic function, even so the law of the higher level with its characteristic function is already involved and envisaged in the law of the lower level and its characteristic function. It cannot be asserted positively that because man's special virtue is self-consciousness, animals cannot have that quality on any account. We do see, if we care to observe closely and dispassionately, that animals of the higher order, as they approach the level of humanity, show more and more evident signs of something which is very much akin to, if not identical with the human characteristic of self-consciousness.
01.09 - William Blake: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Touching the very core of the malady of our age he says that our modern enlightenment seeks to cancel altogether the higher values and install instead the lower alone as true. Thus, for example, Marx and Freud, its twin arch priests, are brothers. Both declare that it is the lower, the under layer alone that matters: to one "the masses", to the other "the instincts". Their wild imperative roars: "Sweep away this pseudo-higher; let the instincts rule, let the pro-letariat dictate!" But more characteristic, Monsieur Thibon has made another discovery which gives the whole value and speciality to his outlook. He says the moderns stress the lower, no doubt; but the old world stressed only the higher and neglected the lower. Therefore the revolt and wrath of the lower, the rage of Revanche in the heart of the dispossessed in the modern world. Enlightenment meant till now the cultivation and embellishment of the Mind, the conscious Mind, the rational and nobler faculties, the height and the depth: and mankind meant the princes and the great ones. In the individual, in the scheme of his culture and education, the senses were neglected, left to go their own way as they pleased; and in the collective field, the toiling masses in the same way lived and moved as best as they could under the economics of laissez-faire. So Monsieur Thibon concludes: "Salvation has never come from below. To look for it from above only is equally vain. No doubt salvation must come from the higher, but on condition that the higher completely adopts and protects the lower." Here is a vision luminous and revealing, full of great import, if we follow the right track, prophetic of man's true destiny. It is through this infiltration of the higher into the lower and the integration of the lower into the higher that mankind will reach the goal of its evolution, both individually and collectively.
But the process, Monsieur Thibon rightly asserts, must begin with the individual and within the individual. Man must "turn within, feel alive within himself", re-establish his living contact with God, the source and origin from which he has cut himself off. Man must learn to subordinate having to being. Each individual must be himself, a free and spontaneous expression. Upon such individual , upon individuals grouped naturally in smaller collectivities and not upon unformed or ill-formed wholesale masses can a perfect human society be raised and will be raised. Monsieur Thibon insistsand very rightlyupon the variety and diversity of individual and local growths in a unified humanity and not a dead uniformity of regimented oneness. He declares, as the reviewer of the London Times succinctly puts it: "Let us abolish our insensate worship of number. Let us repeal the law of majorities. Let us work for the unity that draws together instead of idolizing the multiplicity that disintegrates. Let us understand that it is not enough for each to have a place; what matters is that each should be in his right place. For the atomized society let us substitute an organic society, one in which every man will be free to do what he alone is qualified and able to do."
0.10 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
and regret my thoughts. But this kind of struggle keeps
on recurring. Please help me to get out of it.
--
"The Titans are stronger than the gods because they have agreed with God to front
and bear the burden of His wrath and enmity; the gods were able to accept only the
--
The freedom I speak of is an austere truth which strives to
surmount all the weaknesses and desires of the lower, ignorant
--
eleven years old! It is strange.
It is atavistic and comes from the subconscient.
--
will be less striking. What do You think?
One cannot make a general rule; everything depends on the
--
When a stranger asks us what the Sri Aurobindo
Ashram is, how can we give him a reply that is both
--
and attachments: to cut them off all at one stroke, even
at the risk of breaking down, or to advance slowly and
--
this sensitivity is the sign of a strong ego, how can one
eliminate the ego?
Why do you say that sensitivity is the sign of a strong ego? It
does not seem to be evident at all. Moreover, there are many
--
The advance is rarely in a straight and continuous line because a
human being is made up of many different parts, and generally
--
Mother, I also feel that I have a very strong inferiority complex.
Where does all this come from and how can I get
--
an ignorant and imperfect human being struggling with the evils
of the lower nature.... What is created by spiritual progress is an
--
and in order to have the strength to advance by rejecting what
ought to disappear, one must strongly feel one's unworthiness
and incapacity to express the divine perfection.
--
cries for the sword of the Hero of the struggle and the word of
its prophet."26
--
Formerly, You were very strict about permitting people to come and live in the Ashram. Now it is no longer
so. Why?
--
practise the yoga, it was natural to be strict.
As soon as the children were admitted here, it was no longer
possible to be strict and the nature of the life changed.
Now the Ashram has become a symbolic representation of
--
life? In that case, aren't we straying from the true path?
You are still in the old rut that separates spirituality from life.
--
going there. strange!
Truly, I understand nothing about all this except
--
For me it is even stronger than that. I look at a rose, a
thing that contains such a concentration of spontaneous beauty
--
commonly known as the straight path.
This element acts as a defence against the hostile forces
--
and always they struck me by their special character. It was as
if one had, one cannot exactly say an emotion, but a certain
--
it was very strong, even though we were not conscious
Series Ten - To a Young Captain
--
I was very strongly and consciously with you because X had
written to me that the tyres of the car were in poor condition.
--
lives, but I feel very strongly that it is in this very life that
we must realise our highest aspirations, as if this were
--
When You are physically stricken, I always feel very
sad. I tell myself that it is not an ordinary illness, that
--
of the answer they receive, and there are those whose aspiration is sufficiently strong and sincere for them to be constantly
conscious of the help they are given.
01.10 - Nicholas Berdyaev: God Made Human, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Nicholas Berdyaev is an ardent worker, as a Russian is naturally expected to be, in the cause of the spiritual rehabilitation of mankind. He is a Christian, a neo-Christian: some of his conclusions are old-world truths and bear repetition and insistence; others are of a more limited, conditional and even doubtful nature. His conception of the value of human person, the dignity and the high reality he gives to it, can never be too welcome in a world where the individual seems to have gone the way of vanished empires and kings and princes. But even more important and interesting is the view he underlines that the true person is a spiritual being, that is to say, it is quite other than the empirical ego that man normally is"not this that one worships" as the Upanishads too declare. Further, in his spiritual being man, the individual, is not simply a portion or a fraction; he is, on the contrary, an integer, a complete whole, a creative focus; the true individual is a microcosm yet holding in it and imaging the macrocosm. Only perhaps greater stress is laid upon the aspect of creativity or activism. An Eastern sage, a Vedantin, would look for the true spiritual reality behind the flux of forces: Prakriti or Energy is only the executive will of the Purusha, the Conscious Being. The personality in Nature is a formulation and emanation of the transcendent impersonality.
There is another aspect of personality as viewed by Berdyaev which involves a bias of the more orthodox Christian faith: the Christ is inseparable from the Cross. So he says: "There is no such thing as personality if there is no capacity for suffering. Suffering is inherent in God too, if he is a personality, and not merely an ab stract 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 di stress is inherent in it." The view is logically enforced upon the Christian, it is said, if he is to accept incarnation, God becoming flesh. Flesh cannot but be weak. This very weakness, so human, is and must be specially characteristic of God also, if he is one with man and his lover and saviour.
01.10 - Principle and Personality, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It is asked of us why do we preach a man and not purely and solely a principle. Our ideal being avowedly the establishment and reign of a new principle of world-order and not gathering recruits for the camp of a sectarian teacher, it seems all the more inconsistent, if not thoroughly ruinous for our cause, that we should lay stress upon a particular individual and incur the danger of overshadowing the universal truths upon which we seek to build human society. Now, it is not that we are unconscious or oblivious of the many evils attendant upon the system of preaching a man the history of the rise and decay of many sects and societies is there to give us sufficient warning; and yet if we cannot entirely give the go-by to personalities and stick to mere and bare principles, it is because we have clear reasons for it, because we are not unconscious or oblivious either of the evils that beset the system of preaching the principle alone.
Religious bodies that are formed through the bhakti and puja for one man, social recon structions forced by the will and power of a single individual, have already in the inception this grain of incapacity and disease and death that they are not an integrally self-conscious creation, they are not, as a whole, intelligent and wide awake and therefore constantly responsive to the truths and ideals and realities for which they exist, for which at least, their founder intended them to exist. The light at the apex is the only light and the entire structure is but the shadow of that light; the whole thing has the aspect of a dark mass galvanised into red-hot activity by the passing touch of a dynamo. Immediately however the solitary light fails and the dynamo stops, there is nothing but the original darkness and inertiatoma asit tamasa gudham agre.
Man, however great and puissant he may be, is a perishable thing. People who gather or are gathered round a man and cling to him through the tie of a personal relation must fall off and scatter when the man passes away and the personal tie loses its hold. What remains is a memory, a gradually fading memory. But memory is hardly a creative force, it is a dead, at best, a moribund thing; the real creative power is Presence. So when the great man's presence, the power that crystallises is gone, the whole edifice crumbles and vanishes into air or remains a mere name.
--
We are quite familiar with this cry so rampant in our democratic ageprinciples and no personalities! And although we admit the justice of it, yet we cannot ignore the trenchant one-sidedness which it involves. It is perhaps only a reaction, a swing to the opposite extreme of a mentality given too much to personalities, as the case generally has been in the past. It may be necessary, as a corrective, but it belongs only to a temporary stage. Since, however, we are after a universal ideal, we must also have an integral method. We shall have to curb many of our susceptibilities, diminish many of our apprehensions and soberly strike a balance between opposite extremes.
We do not speak like politicians or banias; but the very truth of the matter demands such a policy or line of action. It is very well to talk of principles and principles alone, but what are principles unless they take life and form in a particular individual? They are airy nothings, notions in the brain of logicians and metaphysicians, fit subjects for discussion in the academy, but they are devoid of that vital urge which makes them creative agencies. We have long lines of philosophers, especially European, who most scrupulously avoided all touch of personalities, whose utmost care was to keep principles pure and unsullied; and the upshot was that those principles remained principles only, barren and infructuous, some thing like, in the strong and puissant phrase of BaudelaireLa froide majest de la femme strile. And on the contrary, we have had other peoples, much addicted to personalitiesespecially in Asiawho did not care so much for ab stract 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
We fear Mr. Huxley has completely missed the point of the cryptic sentence. He seems to take it as meaning that human kindness and morality are a means to the recovery of the Lost Way-although codes of ethics and deliberate choices are not sufficient in themselves, they are only a second best, yet they mark the rise of self-consciousness and have to be utilised to pass on into the unitive knowledge that is Tao. This explanation or amplification seems to us somewhat confused and irrelevant to the idea expressed in the apophthegm. What is stated here is much simpler and transparent. It is this that when the Divine is absent and the divine Knowledge, then comes in man with his human mental knowledge: it is man's humanity that clouds the Divine and to reach the' Divine one must reject the human values, all the moralities, sarva dharmn, seek only the Divine. The lesser way lies through the dualities, good and evil, the Great Way is beyond them and cannot be limited or measured by the relative standards. Especially in the modern age we see the decline and almost the disappearance of the Greater Light and instead a thousand smaller lights are lighted which vainly strive to dispel the gathering darkness. These do not help, they are false lights and men are apt to cling to them, shutting their eyes to the true one which is not that that one worships here and now, nedam yadidam upsate.
There is a beautiful quotation from the Chinese sage, Wu Ch'ng-n, regarding the doubtful utility of written Scriptures:
--
A sage can smile and smile delightfully! The parable illu strates 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
In Europe such a contingency did not arise, because the religious spirit, rampant in the days of Inquisitions and St. Bartholomews, died away: it died, and (or, because) it was replaced by a spirit that was felt as being equally, if not more, au thentic and, which for the moment, suffused the whole consciousness with a large and high afflatus, commensurate with the amplitude of man's aspiration. I refer, of course, to the spirit of the Renaissance. It was a spirit profane and secular, no doubt, but on that level it brought a catholicity of temper and a richness in varied interesta humanistic culture, as it is calledwhich constituted a living and unifying ideal for Europe. That spirit culminated in the great French Revolution which was the final coup de grace to all that still remained of mediaevalism, even in its outer structure, political and economical.
In India the spirit of renascence came very late, late almost by three centuries; and even then it could not flood the whole of the continent in all its nooks and corners, psychological and physical. There were any number of pockets (to use a current military phrase) left behind which guarded the spirit of the past and offered persistent and obdurate resistance. Perhaps, such a dispensation was needed in India and inevitable also; inevitable, because the religious spirit is closest to India's soul and is its most direct expression and cannot be uprooted so easily; needed, because India's and the world's future demands it and depends upon it.
--
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.
However, coming to historical times, we see wave after wave of the most heterogeneous and disparate elementsSakas and Huns and Greeks, each bringing its quota of exotic materialenter into the oceanic Indian life and culture, lose their separate foreign identity and become part and parcel of the common whole. Even so,a single unitary body was formed out of such varied and shifting materialsnot in the political, but in a socio-religious sense. For a catholic religious spirit, not being solely doctrinal and personal, admitted and embraced in its supple and wide texture almost an infinite variety of approaches to the Divine, of forms and norms of apprehending the Beyond. It has been called Hinduism: it is a vast synthesis of multiple affiliations. It expresses the characteristic genius of India and hence Hinduism and Indianism came to be looked upon as synonymous terms. And the same could be defined also as Vedic religion and culture, for its invariable basis the bed-rock on which it stood firm and erectwas the Vedas, the Knowledge seen by the sages. But there had already risen a voice of dissidence and discord that of Buddha, not so much, perhaps, of Buddha as of Buddhism. The Buddhistic enlightenment and discipline did not admit the supreme authority of the Vedas; it sought other bases of truth and reality. It was a great denial; and it meant and worked for a vital schism. The denial of the Vedas by itself, perhaps, would not be serious, but it became so, as it was symptomatic of a deeper divergence. Denying the Vedas, the Buddhistic spirit denied life. It was quite a new thing in the Indian consciousness and spiritual discipline. And it left such a stamp there that even today it stands as the dominant character of the Indian outlook. However, India's synthetic genius rose to the occasion and knew how to bridge the chasm, close up the fissure, and present again a body whole and entire. Buddha became one of the Avataras: the discipline of Nirvana and Maya was reserved as the last duty to be performed at the end of life, as the culmination of a full-length span of action and achievement; the way to Moksha lay through Dharma and Artha and Kama, Sannyasa had to be built upon Brahmacharya and Garhasthya. The integral ideal was epitomized by Kalidasa in his famous lines about the character of the Raghus:
--
And still this was not the lastit could not be the lastanti thesis that had to be synthetized. The dialectical movement led to a more serious and fiercer contradiction. The Buddhistic schism was after all a division brought about from within: it could be said that the two terms of the antinomy belonged to the same genus and were commensurable. The idea or experience of Asat and Maya was not unknown to the Upanishads, only it had not there the exclusive stress which the later developments gave it. Hence quite a different, an altogether foreign body was imported into what was or had come to be a homogeneous entity, and in a considerable mass.
Unlike the previous irruptions that merged and were lost in the general life and consciousness, Islam entered as a leaven that maintained its integrity and revolutionized Indian life and culture by infusing into its tone a Semitic accent. After the Islamic impact India could not be what she was beforea change became inevitable even in the major note. It was a psychological cataclysm almost on a par with the geological one that formed her body; but the spirit behind which created the body was working automatically, inexorably towards the greater and more difficult synthesis demanded by the situation. Only the thing is to be done now consciously, not through an unconscious process of laissez-faire as on the inferior stages of evolution in the past. And that is the true genesis of the present conflict.
--
Nature, on the whole, has solved the problem of blood fusion and mental fusion of different peoples, although on a smaller scale. India today presents the problem on a larger scale and on a higher or deeper level. The demand is for a spiritual fusion and unity. strange to say, although the Spirit is the true bed-rock of unitysince, at bottom, it means identityit is on this plane that mankind has not yet been able to really meet and coalesce. India's genius has been precisely working in the line of a perfect solution of this supreme problem.
Islam comes with a full-fledged spiritual soul and a mental and vital formation commensurable with that inner being and consciousness. It comes with a dynamic spirit, a warrior mood, that aims at conquering the physical world for the Lord, a temperament which Indian spirituality had not, or had lost long before, if she had anything of it. This was, perhaps, what Vivekananda meant when he spoke graphically of a Hindu soul with a Muslim body. The Islamic dispensation, however, brings with it not only something complementary, but also something contradictory, if not for anything else, at least for the strong individuality which does not easily yield to assimilation. Still, in spite of great odds, the process of assimilation was going on slowly and surely. But of late it appears to have come to a dead halt; difficulties have been presented which seem insuperable.
If religious toleration were enough, if that made up man's highest and largest achievement, then Nature need not have attempted to go beyond cultural fusion; a liberal culture is the surest basis for a catholic religious spirit. But such a spirit of toleration and catholicity, although it bespeaks a widened consciousness, does not always enshrine a profundity of being. Nobody is more tolerant and catholic than a dilettante, but an ardent spiritual soul is different.
--
It is precisely strong nuclei that are needed (even, perhaps, one strong nucleus is sufficient) where the single and integrated spiritual consciousness is an accomplished and established fact: that acts inevitably as a solvent drawing in and assimilating or transforming and re-creating as much, of the surroundings as its own degree and nature of achievement inevitably demand.
India did not and could not stop at mere cultural fusionwhich was a supreme gift of the Moguls. She did not and could not stop at another momentous cultural fusion brought about by the European impact. She aimed at something more. Nature demanded of her that she should discover a greater secret of human unity and through progressive experiments apply and establish it in fact. Christianity did not raise this problem of the greater synthesis, for the Christian peoples were more culture-minded than religious-minded. It was left for an Asiatic people to set the problem and for India to work out the solution.
01.12 - Goethe, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A complete strength when men were maimed and weak,
German obscured the spirit of a Greek.
--
The Christian too accepts the dual principle, but does not give equal status to the two. Satan is there, an eternal reality: it is anti-God, it seeks to oppose God, fru strate his work. It is the great tempter whose task it is to persuade, to inspire man to remain always an earthly creature and never turn to know or live in God. Now the crucial question that arises is, what is the necessity of this Antagonist in God's scheme of creation? What is the meaning of this struggle and battle? God could have created, if he had chosen, a world without Evil. The orthodox Christi an answer is that in that case one could not have fully appreciated the true value and glory of God's presence. It is to manifest and proclaim the great victory that the strife and combat has been arranged in which Man triumphs in the end and God's work stands vindicated. The place of Satan is always Hell, but he cannot drag down a soul into his pit to hold it there eternally (although according to one doctrine there are or may be certain eternally damned souls).
Goe the carries the process of convergence and even harmony of the two powers a little further and shows that although they are contrary apparently, they are not contradictory principles in essence. For, Satan is, after all, God's servant, even a very obedient servant; he is an in strument in the hand of the Almighty to work out His purpose. The purpose is to help and lead man, although in a devious way, towards a greater understanding, a nearer approach to Himself.
01.12 - Three Degrees of Social Organisation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Declaration of Rights is a characteristic modern phenomenon. It is a message of liberty and freedom,no doubt of secular liberty and freedomthings not very common in the old world; and yet at the same time it is a clarion that calls for and prepares strife and battle. If the conception of Right has sanctified the individual or a unit collectivity, it has also pari passu developed a fissiparous tendency in human organisation. Society based on or living by the principle of Right becomes naturally and inevitably a competitive society. Where man is regarded as nothing moreand, of course, nothing lessthan a bundle of rights, human aggregation is bound to be an exact image of Darwinian Naturered in tooth and claw.
But Right is not the only term on which an ideal or even a decent society can be based. There is another term which can serve equally well, if not better. I am obviously referring to the conception of duty. I tis an old world conception; it isa conception particularly familiar to the East. The Indian term for Right is also the term for dutyadhikara means both. In Europe too, in more recent times, when after the fru stration of the dream of a new world envisaged by the French Revolution, man was called upon again to rise and hope, it was Mazzini who brought forward the new or discarded principle as a mantra replacing the other more dangerous one. A hierarchy of duties was given by him as the pattern of a fulfilled ideal life. In India, in our days the distinction between the two attitudes was very strongly insisted upon by the great Vivekananda.
Vivekananda said that if human society is to be remodelled, one must first of all learn not to think and act in terms of claims and rights but in terms of duties and obligations. Fulfil your duties conscientiously, the rights will take care of themselves; it is such an attitude that can give man the right poise, the right impetus, the right outlook with regard to a collective living. If instead of each one demanding what one considers as one's dues and consequently scrambling and battling for them, and most often not getting them or getting at a ruinous pricewhat made Arjuna cry, "What shall I do with all this kingdom if in regaining it I lose all my kith and kin dear to me?"if, indeed, instead of claiming one's right, one were content to know one's duty and do it as it should be done, then not only there would be peace and amity upon earth, but also each one far from losing anything would find miraculously all that one most needs and must have,the necessary, the right rights and all.
--
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 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
In these latest poems of his, Eliot has become outright a poet of the Dark Night of the Soul. The beginnings of the new avatar were already there certainly at the very beginning. The Waste Land is a good preparation and passage into the Night. Only, the negative element in it was stronger the cynicism, the bleakness, the sereness of it all was almost overwhelming. The next stage was "The Hollow Men": it took us right up to the threshold, into the very entrance. It was gloomy and fore-boding enough, grim and seriousno glint or hint of the silver lining yet within reach. Now as we find ourselves into the very heart of the Night, things appear somewhat changed: we look at the past indeed, but can often turn to the future, feel the pressure of the Night yet sense the Light beyond overarching and embracing us. This is how the poet begins:
I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
--
Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.
The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,
The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy
--
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
--
stray down, bend to us; tendril and spray Clutch and cling?
Chill
--
A modern Neo-Brahmin, Aldous Huxley, has given a solution of the problem in his now famous Shakespearean apothegm, "Time must have a stop". That is an old-world solution rediscovered by the modern mind in and through the ravages of Time's storm and stress. It means, salvation lies, after all, beyond the flow of Time, one must free oneself from the vicious and unending circle of mortal and mundane life. As the Rajayogi controls and holds his breath, stills all life-movement and realises a dead-stop of consciousness (Samadhi), even so one must control and stop all secular movements in oneself and attain a timeless stillness and vacancy in which alone the true spiritual light and life can descend and manifest. That is the age-long and ancient solution to which the Neo-Brahmin as well the Neo-Christian adheres.
Eliot seems to demur, however, and does not go to that extreme length. He wishes to go beyond, but to find out the source and matrix of the here below. As I said, he seeks a synthesis and not a mere transcendence: the transcendence is indeed a part of the synthesis, the other part is furnished by an immanence. He does not cut away altogether from Time, but reaches its outermost limit, its rim, its summit, where it stops, not altogether annihilated, but held in suspended animation. That is the "still point" to which he refers in the following lines:
--
It is true the movement towards transcendence is stronger and apparent in our poet, but the other kindred point-of home and time-is not forgotten. So he says:
.History may be servitude,
--
.... Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,...15
--
Our poet is too self-conscious, he himself feels that he has not the perfect voice. A Homer, even a Milton possesses a unity of tone and a wholeness of perception which are denied to the modern. To the modern, however, the old masters are not subtle enough, broad enough, psychological enough, let us say the word, spiritual enough. And yet the poetic inspiration, more than the religious urge, needs the injunction not to be busy with too many things, but to be centred upon the one thing needful, viz., to create poetically and not to discourse philosophically or preach prophetically. Not that it is impossible for the poet to swallow the philosopher and the prophet, metabolising them into the substance of his bone and marrow, of "the trilling wire in his blood", as Eliot graphically expresses. That perhaps is the consummation towards which poetry is tending. But at present, in Eliot, at least, the strands remain distinct, each with its own temper and rhythm, not fused and moulded into a single streamlined form of beauty. Our poet flies high, very high indeed at times, often or often he flies low, not disdaining the perilous limit of bathos. Perhaps it is all wilful, it is a mannerism which he cherishes. The mannerism may explain his psychology and enshrine his philosophy. But the poet, the magician is to be looked for elsewhere. In the present collection of poems it is the philosophical, exegetical, discursive Eliot who dominates: although the high lights of the subject-matter may be its justification. Still even if we have here doldrums like
That the past has another pattern, and ceases to be a mere sequence
01.14 - Nicholas Roerich, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Is it not strange that one should look to the East for the light? There is a light indeed that dwells in the setting suns, but that is the inferior light, the light that moves level with the earth, pins us down to the normal and ordinary life and consciousness: it" leads into the Night, into Nihil, pralaya. It is the light of the morning sun that man looks up to in his forward march, the sun that rises in the East whom the Vedic Rishi invoked in these magnificent lines:
Lo, the supreme light of all lights is come, a vast and varied consciousness is born in us. . . .
--
Here pilgrims roam, that strayed so far to seek In Golgotha him dead who lives in heaven
the pilgrim soul of Roerich declares with but equal vehemence and assurance:
--
Indeed, Roerich considers the Himalayas as the very abode, the tabernacle itself thesanctum sanctorumof the Spirit, the Light Divine. Many of Roerich's paintings have mountain ranges, especially snow-bound mountain ranges, as their theme. There is a strange kinship between this yearning artistic soul, which seems solitary in spite of its ardent humanism, and the silent heights, rising white tier upon tier reflecting prism like the fiery glowing colours, the vast horizons, the wide vistas vanishing beyond.
Roerich is one of the prophets and seers who have ever been acclaiming and preparing the Golden Age, the dream that humanity has been dreaming continuously since its very childhood, that is to say, when there will be peace and harmony on earth, when racial, cultural or ideological egoism will no longer divide man and mana thing that seems today a chimera and a hallucinationwhen there will be one culture, one civilisation, one spiritual life welding all humanity into a single unit of life luminous and beautiful. Roerich believes that such a consummation can arrive only or chiefly through the growth of the sense of beauty, of the aesthetic temperament, of creative labour leading to a wider and higher consciousness. Beauty, Harmony, Light, Knowledge, Culture, Love, Delight are cardinal terms in his vision of the deeper and higher life of the future.
The stress of the inner urge to the heights and depths of spiritual values and realities found special and significant expression in his paintings. It is a difficult problem, a problem which artists and poets are tackling today with all their skill and talent. Man's consciousness is no longer satisfied with the customary and the ordinary actions and reactions of life (or thought), with the old-world and time-worn modes and manners. It is no more turned to the apparent and the obvious, to the surface forms and movements of things. It yearns to look behind and beyond, for the secret mechanism, the hidden agency that really drives things. Poets and artists are the vanguards of the age to come, prophets and pioneers preparing the way for the Lord.
Roerich discovered and elaborated his own technique to reveal that which is secret, express that which is not expressed or expressible. First of all, he is symbolical and allegorical: secondly, the choice of his symbols and allegories is hieratic, that is to say, the subject-matter refers to objects and events connected with saints and legends, shrines and enchanted places, hidden treasures, spirits and angels, etc. etc.; thirdly, the manner or style of execution is what we may term pantomimic, in other words, concrete, graphic, dramatic, even melodramatic. He has a special predilection for geometrical patterns the artistic effect of whichbalance, regularity, fixity, soliditywas greatly utilised by the French painter Czanne and poet Mallarm who seem to have influenced Roerich to a considerable degree. But this Northerner had not the reticence, the suavity, the tonic unity of the classicist, nor the normality and clarity of the Latin temperament. The prophet, the priest in him was the stronger element and made use of the artist as the rites andceremoniesmudras and chakrasof his vocation demanded. Indeed, he stands as the hierophant of a new cultural religion and his paintings and utterances are, as it were, gestures that accompany a holy ceremonial.
A Russian artist (Monsieur Benois) has stressed upon the primitivealmost aboriginalelement in Roerich and was not happy over it. Well, as has been pointed out by other prophets and thinkers, man today happens to be so sophisticated, artificial, material, cerebral that a [all-back seems to be necessary for him to take a new leap forward on to a higher ground. The pure aesthete is a closed system, with a consciousness immured in an ivory tower; but man is something more. A curious paradox. Man can reach the highest, realise the integral truth when he takes his leap, not from the relatively higher levels of his consciousness his intellectual and aesthetic and even moral status but when he can do so from his lower levels, when the physico-vital element in him serves as the springing-board. The decent and the beautiful the classic grace and aristocracyform one aspect of man, the aspect of "light"; but the aspect of energy and power lies precisely in him where the aboriginal and the barbarian find also a lodging. Man as a mental being is naturally sattwic, but prone to passivity and weakness; his physico-vital reactions, on the other hand, are obscure and crude, simple and vehement, but they have life and energy and creative power, they are there to be trained and transfigured, made effective in struments of a higher illumination.
All elemental personalities have something of the unconventional and irrational in them. And Roerich is one such in his own way. The truths and realities that he envisages and seeks to realise on earth are elemental and fundamental, although apparently simple and commonplace.
0.11 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
to eliminate. One should concentrate all one's effort on building up and strengthening the true consciousness, which will
automatically do the work of unifying the being.
--
This is what we should strive for.
27 November 1968
0.12 - Letters to a Student, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Energy, strength, enthusiasm, artistic taste, boldness, forcefulness are there too, if we know how to use them in the true way.
A vital converted and consecrated to the Divine Will becomes a bold and forceful in strument that can overcome all
0.13 - Letters to a Student, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
generosity; weakness disappears and strength and endurance
take its place; cowardice is replaced by courage and energy.
--
To visit one's parents is to return to an influence which is generally stronger than any other; and there are not many cases where
the parents help you in your spiritual progress, because they are
--
are left to act in the strength or the weakness of their
own egoism"1 and in one of your letters, you have said
0.14 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
then one is ready to gain the strength to surmount all difficulties.
22 November 1971
--
steadfast sincerity, but for those who have a strong will, an
ardent aspiration and an unshakable sincerity, it is well worth
--
do, and to strive to submit your external nature to its decisions.
11 December 1971
--
the stronghold of bad will, for each one's duty is to transform
himself regardless of what others may do.
--
way of life is losing its value. We must strike out boldly on the
path of the future despite its new demands. The pettinesses once
--
study all he has told us, strive to follow his example and prepare
ourselves for the new manifestation.
--
Let us live for the new creation and we shall grow stronger
and stronger while remaining young and progressive.
30 January 1972
--
Thus, the purpose and goal of life is not suffering and struggle
but an all-powerful and happy realisation.
0 1954-08-25 - what is this personality? and when will she come?, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
But if She is ever to reside and act here, She has to find at least a minimal receptivity, at least one human being with the required vital and physical qualities, a kind of super-Parsifal gifted with an innate and integral purity, yet possessing at the same time a body strong enough and poised enough to bear unwaveringly the intensity of the Ananda She brings.
Thus far, She has not found what is needed. Men remain obstinately men and do not want to or are unable to become supermen. All they can receive and express is a love at their own dimension: a human lovewhereas the supreme bliss of divine Ananda eludes their perception.
--
Mother, previously things were very strict in the Ashram, but not now. Why?
Yes, I have always said that it changed when we had to take the very little children. How can you envision an ascetic life with little sprouts no bigger than that? Its impossible! But thats the little surprise package the war left on our doorstep. When it was found that Pondicherry was the safest place on earth, naturally people came wheeling in here with all their baby carriages filled and asked us if we could shelter them, so we couldnt very well turn them away, could we?! Thats how it happened, and in no other way But, in the beginning, the first condition for coming here was that you would have nothing more to do with your family! If a man was married, then he had to completely overlook the fact that he had a wife and childrencompletely sever all ties, have nothing further to do with them. And if ever a wife asked to come just because her husb and happened to be here, we told her, You have no business coming here!
In the beginning, it was very, very strict for a long time.
The first condition was: Nothing more to do with your family Well, we are a long way from that! But I repeat that it only happened because of the war and not because we stopped seeing the need to cut all family ties; on the contrary, this is an indispensable condition because as long as you hang on to all these cords which bind you to ordinary life, which make you a slave to the ordinary life, how can you possibly belong to the Divine alone? What childishness! It is simply not possible. If you have ever taken the trouble to read over the early ashram rules, you would find that even friendships were considered dangerous and undesirable We made every effort to create an atmosphere in which only ONE thing counted: the Life Divine.
--
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!
As soon as I found outand no one told me, I found out through an experienceas soon as I found out that there was a discovery to be made within myself, well, it became THE MOST IMPORTANT thing in the world. It took precedence over everything else!
0 1955-04-04, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
When I am not immediately engrossed in work, I have to confront a thousand little temptations and daily difficulties that come from my contact with other beings and a life that does indeed remain in life. Here, even more, there is the feeling of an impossible struggle, and all these little difficulties seem to gnaw away at me; scarcely has one hole been filled when another opens up, or the same one reappears, and there is never any real victoryone has constantly to begin everything again. Finally, it seems to me that I really live only one hour a day, during the evening di stribution at the playground.2 It is scarcely a life and scarcely a sadhana!
Consequently, I understand much better now why in the traditional yogas one settled all these difficulties once and for all by escaping from the world, without bothering to transform a life that seems so untransformable.
--
By continuing this daily little ant-like struggle and by having to confront the same desires, the same di stractions every day, it seems to me I am wasting my energy in vain. Sri Aurobindos Yoga, which is meant to include life, is so difficult that one should come to it only after having already established the solid base of a concrete divine realization. That is why I want to ask you if I should not withdraw for a certain time, to Almora,3 for example, to Brewsters place,4 to live in solitude, silence, meditation, far away from people, work and temptations, until a beginning of Light and Realization is concretized in me. Once this solid base is acquired, it would be easier for me to resume my work and the struggle here for the true transformation of the outer being. But to want to transform this outer being without having fully illumined the inner being seems to me to be putting the cart before the horse, or at least condemning myself to a pitiless and endless battle in which the best of my forces are fruitlessly consumed.
In all sincerity, I must say that when I was at Brewsters place in Almora, I felt very near to that state in which the Light must surge forth. I quite understand the imperfection of this process, which involves fleeing from difficulties, but this would only be a stage, a strategic retreat, as it were.
Mother, this is not a vital desire seeking to divert me from the sadhana, for my life has no other meaning than to seek the divine, but it seems to be the only solution that could bring about some progress and get me out of this lukewarm slump in which I have been living day after day. I cannot be satisfied living merely one hour a day, when I see you.
0 1955-06-09, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Mother, it is an impossible, absurd, unlivable life. I feel as though I have no hand in this cruel little game. Oh Mother, why doesnt your grace trust that deep part in me which knows so well that you are the Truth? Deliver me from these evil forces since, profoundly, it is you and you alone I want. Give me the aspiration and strength I do not have. If you do not do this Yoga for me, I feel I shall never have the strength to go on.
There is something that must be SHATTERED: can it not be done once and for all without lingering on indefinitely? Mother, I am your child.
--
Your case is not unique; there are others (and among the best and the most faithful) who are likewise a veritable battlefield for the forces opposing the advent of the truth. They feel powerless in this battle, sorrowful witnesses, victims without the strength to fight, for this is taking place in that part of the physical consciousness where the supramental forces are not yet fully active, although I am confident they soon will be. Meanwhile, the only remedy is to endure, to go through this suffering and to await patiently the hour of liberation.
While reading your prayer, I too prayed that it be heard.
0 1956-02-29 - First Supramental Manifestation - The Golden Hammer, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
As I looked at the door, I knew and willed, in a single movement of consciousness, that THE TIME HAS COME, and lifting with both hands a mighty golden hammer I struck one blow, one single blow1 on the door and the door was shattered to pieces.
Then the supramental Light and Force and Consciousness rushed down upon earth in an uninterrupted flow.
0 1956-03-19, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Note written by Mother in French. At this period, Mother's back was already bent. This straightening of her back seems to be the first physiological effect of the 'Supramental Manifestation' of February 29, which is perhaps the reason why Mother noted down the experience under the name 'Agenda of the Supramental Action on Earth.' It was the first time Mother gave a title to what would become this fabulous document of 13 volumes. The experience took place during a 'translation class' when, twice a week, Mother would translate the works of Sri Aurobindo into French before a group of disciples.
AGENDA OF THE SUPRAMENTAL ACTION ON EARTH
--
Hold yourself straight
and the body sat up and held itself absolutely straight during the entire class.
***
0 1956-03-20, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
The control over the movements of the vertebrae, lost a long time ago (which resulted in a kind of insensitivity and incapacity to move them at will) has returned to a great extent: the consciousness is once again able to express itself and the back can straighten up very visibly.
***
--
Almost a total straightening, along with a very clear perception of the new force and power in the cells of the body.
Mother appeared on her balcony daily at about 6 a.m. to give a few moments of meditation to her disciples before the beginning of the day's work.
0 1956-04-20, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
The difficulties of the past weeks have taught me that as soon as one strays from the true consciousness, in however trifling a way, anything may happen, any excess, any aberration, any imbalance and I have felt very dangerous things prowling about me. Mother, you told me in regard to Patrick1 that the law of the manifestation was a law of freedom, even the freedom to choose wrongly. This evening, it has been my very deep perception that this freedom is virtually always a freedom to choose wrongly. I harbor a great fear of losing the true consciousness once again. I have become aware of how fragile everything in me is and that very little would be enough to carry me away.
Therefore, Sweet Mother, I come to ask a great grace of you, from the depths of my heart: take my freedom into your hands. Prevent me from falling back, far away from you. I place this freedom in your hands. Keep me safe, Mother, protect me. Grant me the grace of watching over me and of taking me in your hands completely, like a child whose steps are unsure. I no longer want this Freedom. It is you I want, the Truth of my being. Mother, as a grace, I implore you to free me from my freedom to choose wrongly.
--
Agreedwith all my heart I accept the gift you give me of your freedom to choose wrongly And it is with all my heart, too, that I shall always help you make the choice that leads straight to the goal that is, towards your real self.
With all my affection and my blessings.
0 1956-05-02, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
If you want it to change you, you must open yourself and strive to progress.
Will we benefit collectively or individually from this new manifestation?
--
Look. If all of you who have heard of this, not once but perhaps hundreds of times, who have spoken of it yourselves, thought about it, hoped for it, wanted it (there are some people who have come here only for this, to receive the Supramental Force and to be transformed into supermen, this has been their goal) then how is it that you were ALL such strangers to this Force that when it came, you did not even feel it?!
Can you solve that problem for me? If you find the solution to this problem, you will have the solution to the difficulty.
0 1956-08-10, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
In fact, following the 'Supramental Manifestation' of February 29, 1956, all of Mother's physical difficulties increased, as though all the obscurities in the physical consciousness were surging forth beneath the pressure of the new light. The same observation applies to the disciples who were around Mother and undoubtedly to the world as a whole. A strange 'mysterious acceleration' was beginning to take hold of the world.
***
0 1956-09-14, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Reflect upon this, take your time, tell me very frankly how you feel about it and whether it appears to you, as it does to me, to be a door opening onto a path that will bring you back, free and strong at last to me.
All my affection is with you, and my blessings never leave you.
0 1956-10-07, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
But the divine vision is global. The people in the Ashram do not want this strike but what about the others? They are ignorant, mean, full of ill will, etc., but in their own way they are following a path, and why should they be deprived of the Grace? By the fact that their action is against the Ashram? It is certainly a Grace.
I said that I had not even thought of intervening. When things threatened to turn bad, I simply applied a force so that it wouldnt become too serious.
--
Mother is referring to a strike by the salaried workers of the Ashram, one of the numerous internal and external difficulties constantly assailing Her.
***
0 1956-10-28, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Mother, I implore you, in the name of whatever led me to you in the first place, give me the strength to do WHAT HAS TO BE DONE. You who see and who can, decide for me. You are my Mother. Whatever my shortcomings, my difficulties, I feel I am so deeply your child.
Signed: Bernard
P.S. If you see that I should remain here, put in me the necessary strength and aspiration. I shall obey you. I want to obey you.
***
0 1956-12-26, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Mother, this is the problem around which I have desperately been turning in circles. What is the truth of my destiny? Is it that which is urging me so strongly to leave, or that which is struggling against my freedom? For ultimately, sincerely, what I want is to fulfill my lifes truth. If I have ever had a will, then it is: LET BE WHAT MUST BE. Mother, how can one truly know? Is this drive, this very old and very CLEAR urge in me, false??
Your child,
0 1957-01-18, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
You told me one day that I could be useful to you. Then, by chance, I came across this passage from Sri Aurobindo the other day: Everyone has in him something divine, something his own, a chance of perfection and strength in however small a sphere which God offers him to take or refuse.
Could you tell me, as a favor, what this particular thing is in me which may be useful to you and serve you? If I could only know what my real work is in this world All the conflicting impulses in me stem from my being like an unemployed force, like a being whose place has not yet been determined.
0 1957-04-09, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
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.
I realize that all the progress I was able to make during the first two years has been lost and I am just as before, worse than beforeas if all my strength were in ruin, all faith in myself undoneso much so that at times I curse myself for having come here at all.
That is the situation, Mother. I feel my unworthiness profoundly. I am the opposite of Satprem, unable to love and to give myself. Everything in me is sealed tight.
0 1957-10-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I come to ask your permission to leave India. For more than a year now, I have been fighting not to leave, but this seems to be the wrong strategy.
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 con straints 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 respect, things have changed, the body has a DIRECT power, independent of any outer intervention. Even though it is barely visible, I consider this to be a very important result.
0 1957-12-13, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Mother, I feel all this very strongly; I need your help to follow the true path of my being and fulfill this new outer cycle, should you see that it has to be fulfilled. I feel so strongly that something remains for me to DO. Guide me, Sweet Mother.
Your child,
0 1957-12-21, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Now, I recently had a very striking experience: a discrepancy occurred between my physical consciousness and the consciousness of the world. In some instances decisions made in the Light and the Truth produced unexpected results, upheavals in the consciousness of others that were neither foreseen nor desired, and I did not understand. No matter how hard I tried, I could not understand and I emphasize this word understand. At last, I had to leave my highest consciousness and pull myself down into the physical consciousness to find out what was happening. And there, in my head, I saw what appeared to be a little cell bursting, and suddenly I understood: the recording had been defective. The physical consciousness had neglected to register certain of your lower reactions. It could not have been through preference or through personal will (these things were eliminated from my consciousness long, long ago). But I saw that this most material consciousness was already completely permeated with the transforming supramental truth, and it could no longer follow the rhythm of normal life. It was much more attuned to the true consciousness than to the world! I couldnt possibly blame it for lagging behind; on the contrary, it was in front, too far ahead! There was a discrepancy between the rhythm of the transformation of my being and the worlds own rhythm. The supramental action on the world is slow, it does not act directlyit acts by infiltration, by traversing the successive layers, and the results are slow to come about. So I had to pull myself violently down in order to wait for the others.
One must at times know how not to know.
0 1958-01-22, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Bliss contains coolness and warmth, passivity and activity, repose and action, sweetness and tenderness, all at the same time. Divine tenderness is something very different from sweetnessit is a paroxysm of joy, a vibration so strong that the body feels it will burst, so it is forced to widen.
The diamond light of Bliss has the power to melt all hostile forces. Nothing can resist it. No consciousness, no being, no hostile will can draw near it without immediately being dissolved, for it is the Divine light in its pure creative power.
0 1958-02-03b - The Supramental Ship, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
The experience I had on February 3 proves this. Before, I had had an individual, subjective contact with the supramental world, whereas on February 3, I went strolling there in a concrete wayas concretely as I used to go strolling in Paris in times pastin a world that EXISTS IN ITSELF, beyond all subjectivity.
It is like a bridge being built between the two worlds.
--
This immense ship had just arrived at the shore of the supramental world, and a first batch of people destined to become the future inhabitants of the supramental world were about to disembark. Everything was arranged for this first landing. A certain number of very tall beings were posted on the wharf. They were not human beings and never before had they been men. Nor were they permanent inhabitants of the supramental world. They had been delegated from above and posted there to control and supervise the landing. I was in charge of all this since the beginning and throughout. I myself had prepared all the groups. I was standing on the bridge of the ship, calling the groups forward one by one and having them disembark on the shore. The tall beings posted there seemed to be reviewing those who were disembarking, allowing those who were ready to go ashore and sending back those who were not and who had to continue their training aboard the ship. While standing there watching everyone, that part of my consciousness coming from here became extremely interested: it wanted to see, to identify all the people, to see how they had changed and to find out who had been taken immediately as well as those who had to remain and continue their training. After awhile, as I was observing, I began to feel pulled backwards and that my body was being awakened by a consciousness or a person from here1and in my consciousness, I protested: No, no, not yet! Not yet! I want to see whos there! I was watching all this and noting it with intense interest It went on like that until, suddenly, the clock here began striking three, which violently jerked me back. There was the sensation of a sudden fall into my body. I came back with a shock, but since I had been called back very suddenly, all my memory was still intact. I remained quiet and still until I could bring back the whole experience and preserve it.
The nature of objects on this ship was not that which we know upon earth; for example, the clothes were not made of cloth, and this thing that resembled cloth was not manufacturedit was a part of the body, made of the same substance that took on different forms. It had a kind of plasticity. When a change had to be made, it was done not by artificial and outer means but by an inner working, by a working of the consciousness that gave the substance its form or appearance. Life created its own forms. There was ONE SINGLE substance in all things; it changed the nature of its vibration according to the needs or uses.
--
The tall beings on the shore were not of the same color, at least they did not have this orange tint; they were paler, more transparent. Except for a part of their bodies, only the outline of their forms could be seen. They were very tall, they did not seem to have a skeletal structure, and they could take on any form according to their needs. Only from their waists to their feet did they have a permanent density, which was not felt in the rest of their body. Their color was much more pallid and contained very little red, it verged rather on gold or even white. The parts of whitish light were translucid; they were not absolutely transparent, but less dense, more subtle than the orange substance.
Just as I was called back, when I was saying, Not yet , I had a quick glimpse of myself, of my form in the supramental world. I was a mixture of what these tall beings were and the beings aboard the ship. The top part of myself, especially my head, was a mere silhouette of a whitish color with an orange fringe. The more it approached the feet, the more the color resembled that of the people on the ship, or in other words, orange; the more it went up towards the top, the more translucid and white it was, and the red faded. The head was only a silhouette with a brilliant sun at its center; from it issued rays of light which were the action of the will.
--
When I came back, along with the memory of the experience, I knew that the supramental world was permanent, that my presence there is permanent, and that only a missing link is needed to allow the consciousness and the substance to connectand it is this link that is being built. At that time, my impression (an impression which remained rather long, almost the whole day) was of an extreme relativityno, not exactly that, but an impression that the relationship between this world and the other completely changes the criterion by which things are to be evaluated or judged. This criterion had nothing mental about it, and it gave the strange inner feeling that so many things we consider good or bad are not really so. It was very clear that everything depended upon the capacity of things and upon their ability to express the supramental world or be in relationship with it. It was so completely different, at times even so opposite to our ordinary way of looking at things! I recall one little thing that we usually consider bad actually how funny it was to see that it is something excellent! And other things that we consider important were really quite unimportant there! Whether it was like this or like that made no difference. What is very obvious is that our appreciation of what is divine or not divine is incorrect. I even laughed at certain things Our usual feeling about what is anti-divine seems artificial, based upon something untrue, unliving (besides, what we call life here appeared lifeless in comparison with that world); in any event, this feeling should be based upon our relationship between the two worlds and according to whether things make this relationship easier or more difficult. This would thus completely change our evaluation of what brings us nearer to the Divine or what takes us away from Him. With people, too, I saw that what helps them or prevents them from becoming supramental is very different from what our ordinary moral notions imagine. I felt just how ridiculous we are.
(Then Mother speaks to the children)
--
But one thing and I wish to stress this point to youwhich now seems to me to be the most essential difference between our world and the supramental world (and it is only after having gone there consciously, with the consciousness that ordinarily works here, that this difference appeared to me in what might be called its enormity): everything here, except for what happens within and at a very deep level, seemed absolutely artificial to me. Not one of the values of ordinary physical life is based upon truth. Just as we have to buy cloth, sew it together, then put it on our backs in order to dress ourselves, likewise we have to take things from outside and then put them inside our bodies in order to feed ourselves. For everything, our life is artificial.
A true, sincere, spontaneous life, as in the supramental world, is a springing forth of things through the fact of conscious will, a power over substance that shapes this substance according to what we decide it should be. And he who has this power and this knowledge can obtain whatever he wants, whereas he who does not has no artificial means of getting what he desires.
0 1958-03-07, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Since my departure, I have been feeling your Force continually, almost constantly. And I feel an infinite gratitude that you are there, and that this thread from you to me keeps me anchored to something in this world. Simply knowing that you exist, that you are there, that I have a goal, a centerfills me with infinite gratitude. On a street in Madras, the day after I left, I suddenly had a poignant experience: I felt that if that were not in me, I would fall to pieces on the sidewalk, I would crumble, nothing would be left, nothing. And this experience remains. Like a litany, something keeps repeating almost incessantly, I need you, need you, I have only you, you alone in the world. You are all my present, all my future, I have only you Mother, I am living in a state of need, like hunger.
On the way, I stopped at J and Es place. They are living like native fishermen, in loincloths, in a coconut grove by the sea. The place is exceedingly beautiful, and the sea full of rainbow-hued coral. And suddenly, within twenty-four hours, I realized an old dreamor rather, I purged myself of an old and tenacious dream: that of living on a Pacific island as a simple fisherman. And all at once, I saw, in a flash, that this kind of life totally lacks a center. You float in a nowhere. It plunges you into some kind of higher inertia, an illumined inertia, and you lose all true substance.
0 1958-05-10, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
The difficulty is greater for Westerners than for Indians. Its as though their substance were steeped in falsehood. It also happens with Indians, of course, but generally the falsehood is much more in the vital than in the physicalbecause after all, the physical has been utilized by bodies belonging to enlightened beings. The European substance seems steeped in rebellion; in the Indian substance this rebelliousness is subdued by an influence of surrender. The other day, someone was telling me about some Europeans with whom he corresponds, and I said, But tell them to read, to learn, to follow The Synthesis of Yoga!it leads you straight to the path. Whereupon he replied, Oh, but they say its full of talk on surrender, surrender, always surrender and they want none of it.
They want none of it! Even if the mind accepts, the body and the vital refuse. And when the body refuses, it refuses with the stubbornness of a stone.
0 1958-05-11 - the ship that said OM, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
It was very strange, because my first reaction was one of bewilderment: how is it that someone I was really bewildered for a fraction, not even the fraction of a second. And then
In any event, if it wasnt a man, if it was a ship, then the ship said it! Because it was THATit was that, it was nothing other than an invocation. And the result was fantastic!
--
And these things act upon my body. It is strange, but it coagulates something: all the cellular life becomes one solid, compact mass, in a tremendous concentrationwith a single vibration. Instead of all the usual vibrations of the body, there is now only one single vibration. It becomes as hard as a diamond, a single massive concentration, as if all the cells of the body had
I became stiff from it. When the forest scene5 was over, I was so stiff that I was like that (gesture): one single mass.
Mother is referring to her 'Darshan' when four times a year She appeared on her balcony high above the assembled mass of disciples and visitors on the street below. The 'darshan days' were February 21, April 24, August 15 and November 24.
Tamas: in Indian psychology, inertia and obscurity.
0 1958-07-06, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
But yesterday, in fact, I was looking (with all these mantras and these prayers and this whole vibration that has descended into the atmosphere, creating a state of constant calling in the atmosphere), and I remembered the old movements and how everything now has changed! I was also thinking of the old disciplines, one of which is to say, I am That.7 People were told to sit in meditation and repeat, I am That, to reach an identification. And it all seemed to me so obsolete, so childish, but at the same time a part of the whole. I looked, and it seemed so absurd to sit in meditation and say, I am That! I, what is this I who is That; what is this I, where is it? I was trying to find it, and I saw a tiny, microscopic point (to see it would almost require some gigantic in strument), a tiny, obscure point in an im-men-sity of Light, and that little point was the body. At the same timeit was absolutely simultaneous I saw the Presence of the Supreme as a very, very, very, VERY immense Being, within which was I in an attitude of (I was only a sensation, you see), an attitude (gesture of surrender) like this. There were no limits, yet at the same time, one felt the joy of being permeated, enveloped and of being able to widen, widen, widen indefinitelyto widen the whole being, from the highest consciousness to the most material consciousness. And then, at the same time, to look at this body and to see every cell, every atom vibrating with a divine, radiant Presence with all its Consciousness, all its Power, all its Will, all its Loveall, all, really and a joy! An extraordinary joy. And one did not disturb the other, nothing was contradictory and everything was felt at the same time. That was when I said, But truly! This body had to have the training it has had for more than seventy years to be able to bear all that without starting to cry out or dance or leap up or whatever it might be! No, it was calm (it was exultant, but it was very calm), and it remained in control of its movements and its words. In spite of the fact that it was really living in another world, it could apparently act normal due to this strenuous training in self-control by the REASONby the reasonover the whole being, which has tamed it and given it such a great cohesive power that I can BE in the experience, I can LIVE this experience, and at the same time respond with the most amiable of smiles to the most idiotic questions!
And then, it always ends in the same way, by a canticle to the action of the grace: O, Lord! You are truly marvelous! All the experiences I have needed to pass through You have given to me, all the things I needed to do to make this body ready You have made me do, and always with the feeling that it was You who was making me do itand with the universal disapproval of all the right-minded humanity!
0 1958-08-29, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
The mantra written upon each of the souvenirs1 from the Himalayas has a strong power of evoking the Supreme Mother.
At the Thursday evening meditation, he appeared as the Guru of Tantric Initiation, magnified and seated upon a symbolic representation of the forces and riches of material Nature (in the middle of the playground, to my left), and he put into my hand something sufficiently material for me to feel the vibrations physically, and it had a great realizing power. It was a kind of luminous and very vibrant globe which I held in my hands during the whole meditation.
0 1958-09-16 - OM NAMO BHAGAVATEH, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Lord, God of strength and health.
The words came afterwards, as if they had been superimposed upon the states of consciousness, grafted onto them. Some of the associations seem unexpected, but they were the exact expression of the states of consciousness in their order of unfolding. They came one after another, as if the contact was trying to become more complete. And the last was like a triumph. As soon as I finished writing (in writing, all this becomes rather flat), the impetus within was still alive and it gave me the sense of an all-conquering Truth. And the last mantra sprang forth:
--
Each time this music is played, it produces exactly the same effect upon the body. It is strange, as if all the cells were dilating, with a feeling that the body is growing larger It becomes all dilated, as if swollen with lightwith force, a lot of force. And this music seems to form spirals, like luminous ribbons of incense smoke, white (not transparent, literally white) and they rise up and up. I always see the same thing; it begins in the form of a vase, then swells like an amphora and converges higher up to blossom forth like a flower.
So for these mantras, everything depends upon what you want to do with them. I am in favor of a short mantra, especially if you want to make both numerous and spontaneous repetitionsone or two words, three at most. Because you must be able to use them in all cases, when an accident is about to happen, for example. It has to spring up without thinking, without calling: it should issue forth from the being spontaneously, like a reflex, exactly like a reflex. Then the mantra has its full force.
0 1958-10-01, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
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
0 1958-10-04, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
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.
--
The other day when I was in this state of concentration, I had the vision that I mentioned to you. I felt I was being pulled, that something was pulling me and trying to draw my attention. I felt it very strongly. So I opened my eyes, my mental eyes (the physical eyes may remain opened or closed, it makes no difference either way; when I am concentrated, things on the physical plane no longer exist), I deliberately opened the minds eyes, for that is where I felt myself being pulled, and then I had this vision I told you of. Someone was trying to draw my attention, to tell me something. It takes someone really quite powerful, with a very great power of concentration, to do thatthere are certainly a great many people here and elsewhere who try to do this, yet I dont feel a thing.3
In the outer, practical domain, I might suddenly think of someone, so I know that this person is calling or thinking of me. When you left on your trip, I created a special link-up so that if ever, at any moment, you called me for anything, I would know it instantly, and I remained attentive and alert. But I do that only in exceptional cases. Generally speaking, when I havent made this special link-up, things keep coming in and coming in and coming in and coming in, and the answer goes out automatically, here or there or there or therehundreds and hundreds of things that I dont keep in my memory because then it would really be frightful. I dont keep these things in my consciousness; it is rather a work that is done automatically.
When you asked me if X4 were thinking of me, I consulted my atmosphere and saw that it was true, that even many times a day Xs thoughts were coming. So I know that he is concentrating on me, or something: it simply passes through me, and I answer automatically. But I dont particularly pay attention to X, unless you ask me a question about him, in which case I deliberately tune into him, then observe and determine whether its like this or like that. Whereas this vision the other day was something that thrust itself on me; I was in another region altogether, in my inner contemplation, my concentrationa very strong concentrationwhen I was forced to enter into contact with this being whose vision I had and who was obviously a very powerful being. After telling me what he had to tell me, he went away in a very peculiar way, not at all suddenly as most people appear and disappear, not at all like that. When I first saw him, there was a living form the being himself was there but upon leaving (probably to see the effect, to find out whether he had truly succeeded in making himself understood), he left behind a kind of image of himself. Afterwards, this image blurred and it left only a silhouette, an outline, then it disappeared altogether leaving only an impression. That was the last thing I saw. So I kept the impression and analyzed it to find out exactly what was involved; all this was filed away, and then it was over. I began my concentration once again.
I intentionally carry everybody in my active consciousness for the work, and I do the work consciously; but the extent to which people in the world, or those who are here in the Ashram, are conscious of this or receive the results depends upon them, though not exclusively.
The other day, for example, though I no longer recall exactly when (I forget everything on purpose)but it was in the last part of the night I had a rather long activity concerning the whole realization of the Ashram, notably in the fields of education and art. I was apparently inspecting this area to see how things were there, so naturally I saw a certain number of people, their work and their inner states. Some saw me and, at that moment, had a vision of me. It is likely that many were asleep and didnt notice anything, but some actually saw me. The next morning, for example, someone who works at the theater told me that she had had a splendid vision of me in which I had spoken to her, blessed her, etc. This was her way of receiving the work I had done. And this kind of thing is happening more and more, in that my action is awakening the consciousness in others more and more strongly.
Naturally, the reception is always incomplete or partially modified; when it passes through the individuality, it becomes narrowed, a personal thing. It seems impossible for each one to have a consciousness vast enough to see the thing in its entirety.
--
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.
0 1958-10-06, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
So there are parts which are entirely within me, entirely there is no difference; they are myself. There are other parts with which I am conscious of an exchangea very familiar, very intimate exchange. And there are parts outside of me with which I still have relationships, not exactly as with strangers but merely as acquaintances; it is still necessary to observe their reactions in order to do the correct thing. And the ratio between these different parts is naturally different depending upon the different individuals.
***
0 1958-10-10, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
To know life utterly Oh, there is a very interesting thing in this regard! And its strange, but this particular knowledge reminds me of one of my Sutras1 (which I read out, but no one understood or understood only vaguely, like that):
It is the Supreme Lord who has ineluctably decreed the place you occupy in the universal concert, but whatever be this place, you have equally the same right as all others to ascend the supreme summits right to the supramental realization.
--
On the one hand, there is what Sri Aurobindowho, as the Avatar, represented the supreme Consciousness and Will on earthdeclared me to be, that is, the supreme universal Mother; and on the other hand, there is what I am realizing in my body through the integral sadhana.2 I could be the supreme Mother and not do any sadhana, and as a matter of fact, as long as Sri Aurobindo was in his body, it was he who did the sadhana, and I received the effects. These effects were automatically established in the outer being, but he was the one doing it, not II was merely the bridge between his sadhana and the world. Only when he left his body was I forced to take up the sadhana myself; not only did I have to do what I was doing beforebeing a bridge between his sadhana and the world but I had to carry on the sadhana myself. When he left, he turned over to me the responsibility for what he himself had been doing in his body, and I had to do it. So there are both these things. Sometimes one predominates, sometimes the other (I dont mean successively in time, but it depends on the moment), and they are trying to combine in a total and perfect realization: the eternal, ineffable and immutable Consciousness of the Executrice of the Supreme, and the consciousness of the Sadhak of the integral Yoga who strives in an ascending effort towards an ever increasing progression.
To this has been added a growing initiation into the supramental realization which is (I understand it well now) the perfect union of what comes from above and what comes from below, or in other words, the eternal position and the evolutionary realization.
0 1958-10-17, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
7) But even in the event you have not made the irrevocable decision at the outset, should you have the good fortune to live during one of these unimaginable hours of universal history when the Grace is present, embodied upon earth, It will offer you, at certain exceptional moments, the renewed possibility of making a final choice that will lead you straight to the goal.
That was the message of hope.
0 1958-11-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
At the very bottom of the inconscience most hard and rigid and narrow and stifling, I struck upon an almighty spring that cast me up forthwith into a formless, limitless Vast, generator of all creation.
And it is again one more proof. The experience was absolutely the English word genuine says it.
--
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.
And I followed all this without objectifying it in the least; I was not aware of what it was nor of what was happening, nor of any explanation at all, nothing: it was like that. I was living it, thats all. The experience was absolutely spontaneous. And after this rather painful descent, phew!there was a kind of super-comfort. I cant explain it otherwise, an ease,4 but an ease to the utmost. A perfect immobility in a sense of eternity but with an extraordinary INTENSITY of movement and life! An inner intensity, unmanifested; it was within, self-contained. And motionless (had there been an outside, it would have been motionless in relation to that) and it was in a life so immeasurable that it can only be expressed metaphorically as infinite. And with an intensity, a POWER, a force and a peace the peace of eternity. A silence, a calm. A POWER capable of of EVERYTHING. Everything.
--
I struck upon an almighty spring that cast me up forthwith into a formless, limitless vast, generator of all creation. It was yes, I have the feeling that it was not the ordinary creation, the primordial creation, but the SUPRAMENTAL creation, for it bore no similarity to the experience of returning to the Supreme, the origin of everything. I had utterly the feeling of being cast into the origin of the supramental creation something that is already (how can it be expressed?) objectified from the Supreme, with the explicit goal of the supramental creation.
That was my feeling.
0 1958-11-11, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Yes. Because at the very bottom of the Inconscient is the Supreme. It is the same idea as the highest height touching the deepest depth. The universe is like a circleit is represented by the serpent biting its tail, its head touching its tail. It means that the supreme height touches the most material matter, without any intermediary. I have already said this several times. But that was the experience. I didnt know what was happening. I expected nothing and it was stupendousin a single bound, I sprang up! If someone had had his eyes open, I assure you he would have had to laugh: I was bent over, like this, more and more, more and more, more and more, my head was just about to touch my knees when suddenlyvrrrm! straight, straight up, my head upright in a single bound!
But as soon as you want to express it, it escapes like water running through your fingers; all the fluidity is lost, it evaporates. A rather vague, poetic or artistic expression is much truer, much nearer to the truth something hazy, nebulous, undefined. Something not concretized like a rigid mental expressionthis rigidity that the mind has introduced right down into the Inconscient.
0 1958-11-20, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I dont have all the information, otherwise certainly Two things made me see I saw them the other day. First of all, when you didnt understand my letter, for I wrote it to a part of you that without any doubt should have understood; I was referring to something other than what is seen and known by this part of you which is this center, this knot of revolt that seems to resist everything, that really remains knotted, in spite of your experiences and the strides you have made, as well as your openings. And what made me see is especially the fact that it resists experiences, it is not touched by experiences; this was the point that did not understand what I wrote. Because the part of you that had the experience must necessarily understand what I wrote, without the shadow of a doubt.
Time is needed
I had two visions which are certainly related to this. The most recent one was yesterday, and it concerned a past life in India. It is something that took place in India about one thousand years ago, perhaps a little more (I am not yet sure about this). And it contains both things. Its strange, both things together the origin of the power of realization in this life and the obstacle to be conquered.
I had the last vision yesterday evening. You were much taller than you are now; you were wearing the orange robe, and you were backed up against a door of bronze, a bronze door like the door of a temple or a palace but at the same time it was symbolic (it was a fact, it actually took place like this, but at the same time it was symbolic). And unfortunately, it didnt last because I was disturbed. But it contained the key.
0 1958-11-22, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
But if the soul has had but ONE call, but ONE contact with the Grace, then in your next life you are put in the conditions, once, whereby EVERYTHING can be swept away at one stroke. And at this present moment on earth, you cannot imagine the number of people I have met that is, the number of soulswho had reached out towards this possibility with such an intensity and they have all found themselves on my path.
At that point, sometimes a great courage is needed, sometimes a great endurance is needed, sometimes a true love is enough, sometimes, oh! if only faith were there, one thing, one tiny little thing is enough, and everything can be swept away. I have done it often; there are times when I have failed. But more often than not I have been able to remove it. But then, what is needed is a great, stoical courage or a capacity to endure and to SEE IT THROUGH. The resistance (especially in cases of former suicide), the resistance to the temptation of renewing this stupidity creates a terrible formation. Or else this habit of fleeing when suffering comes: flee, flee, instead of absorbing the difficulty, holding on.
--
It is difficult without a strong will; and above all, above all the capacity to resist the temptation, which was the fatal temptation throughout all ones livesbecause its power builds up. Each defeat gives it renewed force. But a tiny victory can dissolve it.
Oh, the most terrible of all is when one does not have the strength, the courage, something indomitable! How many times do they come to tell me, I want to die, I want to flee, I want to die.I say, But die, then, die to yourself! No one is asking you to let your ego survive! Die to yourself since you want to die! Have that courage, the true courage, to die to your egoism.
But because it is karma, one must, one must DO something oneself. Karma is the con struction of the ego; the ego MUST DO something, everything cannot be done for it. This is it, THIS is the thing: karma is the result of the egos actions, and only when the ego abdicates is the karma dissolved. One can help it along, one can assist it, give it strength, bestow courage upon it, but the ego must then make use of it.
(silence)
--
The other indication is what I told you the other day. When you thought of leaving to join Swami, I immediately saw a stream of light: Ah, the road is opening up! So I said, It is good. And while you were away in Ceylon, I followed you from day to day. You called much more than the second time, when you were in the Himalayas; and with the physical hardships you were undergoing, I was very, very close to you I constantly felt what was happening.
And then I saw a GREAT light, like a glory, when you were at Rameswaram. A great light. And when you returned here, this light was upon you, very strong and imposing. But at the same time, I felt that it needed protectingto be shielded, protected that it was not yet established. Established, ready to resist all that decomposes an experience. I would have liked to have kept you apart, under a glass case, but then I saw that this would have drawbacks as well as advantages. Also, I liked the way you wanted to fight against an uncomprehending reception due to your orange robes and your shaved head. Of course, it was a much shorter path than the other, but it was more difficult.
And then, more and more, I felt that if what I saw, as I saw it, could be realized I saw two things: a journeynot at all a pilgrimage as it is commonly understooda journey towards solitude in arduous conditions, and a sojourn in a very severe solitude, facing the mountains, in arduous physical conditions. The contact with this majesty of Nature has a great influence upon the ego at certain moments: it has the power to dissolve it. But all this complication, all these organized pilgrimages, all that it brings in the whole petty side of human life which spoils everything
--
As soon as you had left, and since I was following you, I saw that nothing of the kind was going to happen, but rather something very superficial which would not be of much use. And when I received your letters and saw that you were in difficulty, I did something. There are places that are favorable for occult experiences. Benares is one of these places, the atmosphere there is filled with vibrations of occult forces, and if one has the slightest capacity, it spontaneously develops there, in the same way that a spiritual aspiration develops very strongly and spontaneously as soon as one lands in India. These are Graces. Graces, because it is the destiny of the country, it has been so throughout its history, and because India has always been turned much more towards the heights and the inner depths than towards the outer world. Now, it is in the process of losing all that and wallowing in the mud, but thats another story it was like that and it is still like that. And in fact, when you returned from Rameswaram with your robes, I saw with much satisfaction that there was still a GREAT dignity and a GREAT sincerity in this endeavor of the Sannyasis towards the higher life and in the self-giving of a certain number of people to realize this higher life. When you returned, it had become a very concrete and a very real thing that immediately commanded respect. Before, I had seen only a copy, an imitation, an hypocrisy, a pretentionnothing that was really lived. But then, I saw that it was true, that it was lived, that it was real and that it was still Indias great heritage. I dont believe it is very prevalent now, but in any case, it is still there, and as I told you, it commands respect. And then, as I felt you in difficulty and as the outer conditions were not only veiling but spoiling the inner, well, on that day I wrote you a short note I no longer recall when it was exactly, but I wrote you just a word or two, which I put in an envelope and sent you I concentrated very strongly upon those few words and sent you something. I didnt note the date, I dont remember when it was, but its likely that it happened as I wished when you were in Benares; and then you had this experience.
But when you returned the second time, from the Himalayas, you didnt have the same flame as when you returned the first time. And I understood that this kind of difficult karma still clung to you, that it had not been dissolved. I had hoped that your contact with the mountains but in a true solitude (I dont mean that your body had to be all alone, but there should not have been all kinds of outer, superficial things) Anyway, it didnt happen. So it means that the time had not come.
--
Only, and this is what I wrote to you the other day which you did not understand: it is precisely at the most painful point, at the time when the suggestions are strongest, that one must hold on. Otherwise, it has always to be done all over again, always to be reconfronted. There comes a day, a moment, when it has to be done. And now, there is truly an opportunity on earth that is offered only once in thousands of years, a conscious help, with the necessary Power
But thats about all I know.
0 1958-11-26, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
That is why the journey is so long, so difficult. For if one would truly consent no longer to be, everything would become so easy, so swift, so luminous, so joyousthough perhaps not in the way men conceive of joy and ease. At heart, there are very few beings who are not enamored of struggle. There are very few who would consent to having no darkness or who can conceive of light as anything other than the opposite of obscurity: Without shadow, there would be no painting. Without struggle, there would be no victory. Without suffering, there would be no joy. That is what they think, and as long as they think like that, they are not yet born to the spirit.
***
0 1958-11-27 - Intermediaries and Immediacy, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
It remains to be seen if all this has first to be mastered before there is even the possibility of holding the Supramental, of FIXING it in the manifestation. That is the great difference. For example, those with the power to materialize forces or beings lack the capacity to fix them, for these are fluid things which act and are then dissolved. That is the difference with the physical world where it is this condensation of energy that makes things (Mother strikes the arms of her chair) stable. All the things in the extraphysical realms are not stable, they are fluidfluid and consequently uncertain.3
The disciple's tantric guru.
0 1958-12-04, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I had come to Hyderabad intending to prepare for a trip to Africa, but when it came to actually doing it, I simply could not. It is stronger than I; I cannot leave India, I cannot live without my soul.
Until these last days, I still thought I could count on some outer solution to resolve my problem, but now I am up against a wall; I see that nothing can be DONE and the only solution is what you said one day: Consent no longer to be.
--
Otherwise, if you consider it preferable to wait, I could go join Swami in Rameswaram, discarding all my little personal reactions towards him. And I would try my best to find again the Light of the first time and return to you stronger. I dont know. I will do what you say. All this really has to change. I dont know, moreover, whether Swami wishes to have me.
Mother, I need you, I need you. Forgive me and tell me what I should do.
--
I have just received your letter which I read with all my love, the love that understands and effaces. When you return here, you will always be very welcome, and we shall certainly take up our work together again. I shall be happy, and it is very much needed. But first of all, it will be good for you to go to Rameswaram. I know that you will be welcome there. Stay there as long as necessary to find and consolidate your experience. Afterwards, come back here, stronger and better armed, to face a new period of outer and inner work. At the end of the labor is the Victory.
With all my confident love.
0 1958-12-15 - tantric mantra - 125,000, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Mother, things are far from being what they were the first time in Rameswaram, and I am living through certain moments that are hell the enemy seems to have been unleashed with an extraordinary violence. It comes in waves, and after it recedes, I am literally SHATTEREDphysically, mentally and vitally drained. This morning, while going to the temple, I lived through one of these moments. All this suffering that suddenly sweeps down upon me is horrible. Yes, I had the feeling of being BACKED UP AGAINST A WALL, exactly as in your vision I was up against a wall. I was walking among these immense arcades of sculptured granite and I could see myself walking, very small, all alone, alone, ravaged with pain, filled with a nameless despair, for nowhere was there a way out. The sea was nearby and I could have thrown myself into it; otherwise, there was only the sanctuary of Parvati but there was no more Africa to flee to, everything closed in all around me, and I kept repeating, Why? Why? This much suffering was truly inhuman, as if my last twenty years of nightmare were crashing down upon me. I gritted my teeth and went to the sanctuary to say my mantra. The pain in me was so strong that I broke into a cold sweat and almost fainted. Then it subsided. Yet even now I feel completely battered.
I clearly see that the hour has come: either I will perish right here, or else I will emerge from this COMPLETELY changed. But something has to change. Mother, you are with me, I know, and you are protecting me, you love me I have only you, only you, you are my Mother. If these moments of utter darkness return and they are bound to return for everything to be exorcised and conqueredprotect me in spite of myself. Mother, may your Grace not abandon me. I want to be done with all these old phantoms, I want to be born anew in your Light; it has to beotherwise I can no longer go on.
0 1958-12-24, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Your last letter was a great comfort to me. If you were not there, with me, everything would be so absurd and impossible. I am again disturbing you because Swami tells me that you are worried and that I should write to you. Not much has changed, except that I am holding on and am confident. Yesterday, I again suffered an agonizing wave, in the temple, and I found just enough strength to repeat your name with each beat of my heart, like someone drowning. I remained as motionless as a pillar of stone before the sanctuary, with only your name (my mantra would not come out), then it cleared. It was brutal. I am confident that with each wave I am gaining in strength, and I know you are there. But I am aware that if the enemy is so violent it is because something in me responds, or has responded, something that has not made its surrender that is the critical point. Mother, may your grace help me to place everything in your hands, everything, without any shadow. I want so much to emerge into the Light, to be rid of all this once and for all.
I am following Swamis in structions to the letter. Sometimes it all seems to lack warmth and spontaneity, but I am holding on. I might add that we are living right next to the bazaar, amidst a great racket 20 hours a day, which does not make things easier. So I repeat my mantra as one pounds his fists against the walls of a prison. Sometimes it opens a little, you send me a little joy, and then everything becomes better again.
0 1958-12-28, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Sweet Mother, I indeed suspect that you want to endure, to bear this struggle all alone. Oh, I think I understand a number of things about the mechanism of these attacks and their connection with me, about the Divine Love that embraces all and takes into itself the suffering and the evil of menall this overwhelms me with a sudden understanding. It seems to me that I am seeing and feeling all that you are facing, all that you are taking upon yourself for us. The suffering of the Divine in Matter has been an overwhelming revelation to meAh! I see, I want to fight, I want to be totally on your side; I am now and forever determined.
But you have enough to do with the higher beasts of prey without still having to fight the little scorpions. I beg of you, Sweet Mother, accept the help that is being offered to you, preserve your strength for the higher struggle. I quite understand that your Love can even go to the scorpions that are attacking you, but it is not forbidden to protect yourself from their venom. You have enough to do on other planes.
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.
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
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
Sweet Mother, by what Grace have you guided and protected me through all these years? There are moments when I have the vision of this Grace, bringing me to the verge of tears. I see so clearly that you are doing everything, that you are all that is good in me, my aspiration and my strength. Me is all that is bad, all that resists, me is horribly false and falsifying. If your Grace withdraws for one second, I collapse, I am helpless.2 You alone are my strength, the source of my life, the joy and fulfillment to which I aspire.
I am at your feet, your child eternally.
0 1959-01-27, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
By a special grace, X gave me both stages of the tantric initiation at the same time, although they are normally separated by several years; then if all goes well, he will give me the full initiation in 6 months. I have thus received a mantra, along with the power of realizing it. X told me that a realization should come at the beginning of the fifth month if I repeat the mantra strictly according to his in structions, 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.
--
Since my last letter, I have thought about it and I see that I will be able to go down in the morning three times a week for one hour, from 10 to 11, to work with you, but you will have to do only the strict minimum in order to have as much free time as you need for the other things.1
As I told you, I have resumed neither classes nor translations, and I still do not know when I will do so. So there is only the old work to finish up, but it will not take very long.
0 1959-01-31, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Your letter, Sweet Mother, has filled me with strength and resolution. I want to be victorious and I want to serve you. I see very well that gradually I can be taught many useful things by X. The essential thing is first of all to lose this ego which falsifies everything. Finally, through your grace, I believe that I have passed a decisive turning point and that there is a beginning of real consecration and I feel your Love, your Presence. Things are opening a little.
Sweet Mother, I love you and I want to serve you truly.
0 1959-03-10 - vital dagger, vital mass, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
(The disciple returned to the Ashram, but as he was very quickly seized again by his mania for the road, the Agenda of 1959, alas, is strewn with great gaps and is almost nonexistent. The following conversation is in regard to one of Mother's commentaries on the Dhammapada: 'Evil')
I spent a nighta night of battlewhen, for some reason or other, a multitude of vital formations of all kinds entered into the room: beings, things, embryos of beings, residues of beingsall kinds of things And it was a frightful assault, absolutely disgusting.
0 1959-04-07, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Your resolution came straight to me. I sheltered it in the depths of my heart, and with my highest will, I said, So be it.
Just now, I received your letter confirming my experience. It is good.
0 1959-05-19 - Ascending and Descending paths, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
In fact, you can immediately see the difference between those who have a mantra and those who dont. With those who have no mantra, even if they have a strong habit of meditation or concentration, something around them remains hazy and vague. Whereas the japa imparts to those who practice it a kind of precision, a kind of solidity: an armature. They become galvanized, as it were.
Original English.
0 1959-05-28, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
1) There is the destiny of the adventurer: it is the one in me that needs the sea or the forest and wide open spaces and struggles. This was the best part of my childhood. I can sit on it and tell myself that the adventure is within, and it might work for a while. But this untamed child in me continues to live all the same, and it is something very valuable in me. I cannot kill it through reasoning, even spiritual reasoning. And if I tell it that everything lies within, not without, it replies, Then why was I born, why this manifestation in the outer world? In the end, it is not a question of reasoning. It is a fact, like the wind upon the heaths.
2) There is the destiny of the writer in me. And this too is linked to the best of my soul. It is also a profound need, like adventuring upon the heaths, because when I write certain things, I brea the in a certain way. But during the five years I have been here, I have had to bow to the fact that, materially, there is no time to write what I would like (I recall how I had to wrench out this Orpailleur, which I have not even had time to revise). This is not a reproach, Mother, for you do all you can to help me. But I realize that to write, one must have leisure, and there are too many less personal and more serious things to do. So I can also sit on this and tell myself that I am going to write a Sri Aurobindo but this will not satisfy that other need in me, and periodically it awakens and sprouts up to tell me that it too needs to breathe.
--
And I was also struck when you told me that I wanted to kick up a row. You so clearly implied that I was leaving the Ashram in a shoddy way. So that also froze me. I thought I had done my best and, in order to serve you, repressed as much as I could the others in me.
So there. I can find no solution. X will not understand, and I will not say anything to him. But I obey you because everything is futile and there is too much pain in this world, and also someone in me needs you, someone who loves you in his own way.
0 1959-06-03, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Regarding me, this is more or less what he said: First of all, I want an agreement from you so that under any circumstances you never leave the Ashram. Whatever happens, even if Yama1 comes to dance at your door, you should never leave the Ashram. At the critical moment, when the attack is the strongest, you should throw everything into His hands, then and then only the thing can be removed (I no longer know whether he said removed or de stroyed ). It is the only way. SARVAM MAMA BRAHMAN [Thou art my sole refuge]. Here in Rameswaram, we are going to meditate together for 45 days, and the Asuric-Shakti may come with full strength to attack, and I shall try my best not only to protect but to de stroy, but for that, I need your determination. It is only by your own determination that I can get strength. If the force comes to make suggestions: lack of adventure, lack of Nature, lack of love, then think that I am the forest, think that I am the sea, think that I am the wife (!!) Meanwhile, X has nearly doubled the number of repetitions of the mantra that I have to say every day (it is the same mantra he gave me in Pondicherry). X repeated to me again and again that I am not merely a disciple to him, like the others, but as if his son.
This was a first, hasty conversation, and we did not discuss things at length. I said nothing. I have no confidence in my reactions when I am in the midst of my crises of complete negation. And truly speaking, at the time of my last crisis in Pondicherry, I do not know if it was really Xs occult working that set things right, for personally (but perhaps it is an ignorant impression), I felt that it was thanks to Sujata and her childlike simplicity that I was able to get out of it.
--
That is all, Sweet Mother. In spite of my anesthesia, I think of you. (I am not blocked; on the contrary, it seems to me that the bond has been renewed since our last meeting, but I feel strangely empty.) I am unable to understand how you can love me. Oh Mother, I have truly to begin living, truly loving!
Your child,
0 1959-06-09, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Mother, lead me towards you, I am blind and without strength.
Your child,
0 1959-06-17, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
The only thing that affirms itself with a certitude and a greater and greater force is my soul. I cling to It with all my strength. It is my only refuge. If I did not have that, I would throw my life overboard, for the outer circumstances and the immediate future seem to me impossible, unlivable.
I was touched by your blessings for Sujata and myself. But there lies another impossibility.
0 1959-06-25, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
The last time I was in Rameswaram, I had two other very poignant dreams, but I could not make out what they meant. In one dream I was strangling someone with my bare hands; it was an abominable feeling. And in the other, I saw, in a kind of nocturnal setting, a hanged man being taken down, with all kinds of people bustling about the corpse with lamps, and suddenly I knew that this hanged man was me.
I had said nothing to X about these various dreams before he told me the story of my last three existences: three times I committed suicide the first by fire, the second by hanging, and the third by throwing myself into the void. During the first of these last three existences, I was married to a very good woman, but for some reason I abandoned my wife and I was wandering here and there in search of something. Then I met a sannyasi who wanted to make me his disciple, but I could not make up my mind, I was neither this side nor that side, whereupon my wife came to me and pleaded with me to take her back. Apparently I rejected herso she threw herself into the fire. Horror- stricken, I followed her, throwing myself into the fire in turn. That was when I created a connection with certain beings [of the other worlds] and I fell under their power. For two other lives, under the influence of these beings, the same drama was repeated with a few variations.
--
X gave me a new mantra. My body is exhausted from too much nervous tension. I am living in a kind of cellar with four inches of filth on the floor and walls, and two openings, one onto the street of the bazaar the other onto a dilapidated courtyard with a well. On my right lives a madwoman who screams half the day. There is only my mantra which burns almost constantly in my heart, and who knows what hope that some day the future will be happy and reconciled. There is also Sujata and you.
Your child,
0 1959-07-10, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
A moment ago I barely found the strength not to kill myself. Destiny has repeated itself once again, but this time it was not I who rejected her, as in past existences, it is she who rejected me: Too late. For a moment, I thought I was going to go crazy too, so much pain did I have then finally I said, May Thy Will be done, (that of the Supreme Lord) and I kept repeating, Thy Grace is there, even in the greatest suffering. But I am broken, rather like a living dead man. So be happy, for I will never wear the white robe that Guruji gave me.
You will understand that I do not have the strength to come to see you. My only strength is not to rebel, my only strength is to believe in the Grace in the face of everything. I believe I have too much grief in my heart to rebel against anything at all. I seem to have a kind of great pity for this world.
Well, this time I shall remain silent.
0 1959-07-14, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Mother, I need Sujata like my very soul. It seems to me that she is a part of me, that she alone can help me break with this horrible past, that she alone can help me to love truly at last. I need peace so much, a quiet, PEACEFUL happinessa base of happiness upon which I could use my strength to build, instead of always fighting, always de stroying. Mother, I am not at all sure of what must be, but I know that Sujata is part of this realization.
Thats all, Mother. Forgive me, but I am so afraid. For how is this possible in the Ashram? What would people say?
0 1960-01-28, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
When I started my japa one year ago, I had to struggle with every possible difficulty, every contradiction, prejudice and opposition that fills the air. And even when this poor body began walking back and forth for japa, it used to knock against things, it would start breathing all wrong, coughing; it was attacked from all sides until the day I caught the Enemy and said, Listen carefully. You can do whatever you want, but Im going right to the end and nothing will stop me, even if I have to repeat this mantra ten crore1 times. The result was really miraculous, like a cloud of bats flying up into the light all at once. From that moment on, things started going better.
You have no idea what an irresistible effect a well-determined will can have.
--
Of all forms of ego, you might think that the physical ego is the most difficult to conquer (or rather, the body ego, because the work was already done long ago on the physical ego). It might be thought that the form of the body is a point of concentration, and that without this concentration or hardness, physical life would not be possible. But thats not true. The body is really a wonderful in strument; its capable of widening and of becoming vast in such a way that everything, everything the slightest gesture, the least little taskis done in a wonderful harmony and with a remarkable plasticity. Then all of a sudden, for something quite stupid, a draft, a mere nothing, it forgetsit shrinks back into itself, it gets afraid of disappearing, afraid of not being. And everything has to be started again from scratch. So in the yoga of matter you start realizing how much endurance is needed. I calculated it would take 200 years to say ten crore of my japa. Well, Im ready to struggle 200 years if necessary, but the work will be done.
Sri Aurobindo had made it clear to me when I was still in France that this yoga in matter is the most difficult of all. For the other yogas, the paths have been well laid, you know where to tread, how to proceed, what to do in such-and-such a case. But for the yoga of matter, nothing has ever been done, never, so at each moment everything has to be invented.
0 1960-03-07, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Publisher and friend are here one in telling you that LOrpailleur is a beautiful book whose richness and force have struck me even more this time than before when I read the first version. I cannot tell you how much your Job is my brotherin his darkness as in his light. The joy, the wild, irrepressible joy that furtively yearns and at times bursts forth, embracing all, this joy at the heart of the book burns the reader for a few, in any case, who are prepared to be inflamed. In the end, I cant say if LOrpailleur will or will not be noticed, if the critics will or will not bestow an article, a comment, an echo upon it, if bookstores will or will not sell it (poor orpailleur!). But what I know is that for a few readers2, 3, 10 perhapsyour book will be the cry that will rip them from their sleep forever. To your song, another song in themselves will respond. Where, how shall this concert finish? Who knowsanything is possible!
My words are a bit disjointed but Im not in the mood to give an articulate discourse. Which is a way of saying, once again, how happy I amand grateful.
0 1960-05-24 - supramental flood, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
These experiences are always absolute, as long as they last; then, through certain signs that I know (I am accustomed to it), I notice that the body consciousness begins closing up again. Or rather, somethingevidently a Supreme Wisdomdecides its sufficient for this time and that the body has had enough. It ought not to break, which is why certain precautions are taken. So this comes in several little stages that I know quite well. The final one is always a bit unpleasant because my body gets into rather peculiar positions as a result of the work. As its only a sort of machine, towards the end I have some difficulty straightening my knees, for example, or opening my fingers I think they even make a noise, like something forced into one position whose life has become purely spontaneous and mechanical. There are plenty of people like that, plenty, who enter into trance and then can no longer get out by themselves; they get themselves into a certain position and someone has to free them. This has never happened to me; I have always managed to extricate myself. But yesterday evening, the experience lasted a very long time. There was even a little cracking at the end, as when people have rheumatism.
And during all this time, approximately three hours, the consciousness was completely, completely different. It was here, however; it was not outside the earth, it was on earth, but it was completely differenteven the body consciousness was different. And what remained was very mechanical; it was a body, but it could just as well have been anything. All this power of consciousness that for more than seventy years Ive gradually pushed into each of the bodys cells so that each cell could become conscious (and it goes on constantly, constantly), all this seemed to have withdrawn there only remained one almost lifeless thing. However, I could raise myself up from my bed and even drink a glass of water, but it was all so bizarre. And when I went back to bed, it took nearly forty-five minutes for the body to regain its normal state. Only after I had entered into another type of samadhi2 and again come out of it did my consciousness fully return. It is the first time I have had an experience of this kind.
0 1960-05-28 - death of K - the death process- the subtle physical, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
And the concentration grew stronger and stronger. The day before yesterday it became very, very powerful, and yesterday morning, around half past noon, it pulled me inward; he came to me in a kind of sleep, a conscious sleep, and I even said almost aloud, Oh, K!
It lasted fifteen minutes; I was completely within, inside, as if to receive him.
--
I think they do it here (apart from entirely sanitary considerations in the case of people who have died from nasty diseases), here in India, mainly because they are very afraid of all these little entities that come from desires, impulsesthings which are dispersed in the air and which make ghosts and all kinds of things. All desires, all attachments, all those things are like pieces that break off (each one goes its own way, you see), then these pieces gain strength in the surrounding atmosphere, and when they can fasten on to someone, they vampirize him. Then they keep on trying to satisfy their desires.
The world, the terre strial atmosphere, is full of filth.
0 1960-06-04, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Myself, I go to bed very early, at eight oclock. Its still quite noisy everywhere, but I dont mind; at least Im sure of no longer being disturbed. First you must stretch out flat and relax all your muscles, all your nervesyou can learn this easilybecome like a dishrag on the bed, as I call it; there should be nothing left. And if you can also do that with the mind, you get rid of a lot of idiotic dreams that make you more tired when you wake up than when you went to bed; they are the result of the cellular activity of the brain going on uncontrollably, which is very tiring. Therefore, relax fully, bring everything to a complete, tensionless calm in which everything has stopped. But this is only the beginning.
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.
--
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.
0 1960-06-07, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
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.
--
Ah, thats what it is! Your cave it IS like that, its really like that, I understand why you feel you have to blast it with dynamite! But if you go right to the endright to the endtheres no more top to the cave, its wide open to the stars. I can see it. Go to the very end. Its very dark. Its very dark and not very enticing, and it feels as if it may still be worse but it wont be worse. Go right to the end, and suddenly youll be able to stand up straight.
(long silence)
--
But thats how it is; I feel it is so (How can I put it?) There are always at least two ways of doing things. I have a very strong feelingvery strong that you want me to take you by the hand and go together
Do you have that idea or not?
--
Its strange, but I rarely see you in a very physical wayyou, just as you are.2
Do you only see me physically?
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
Its form was elongated, slanting downwards (it always has this form). At the top it looked like a head, then the lines disappeared down below. It had no openings. And then, it was surrounded by various dark sheaths, a very dark purple which is the color of protection. A sparkling light was entering into itit kept entering, but without making any holes. It passed right through everything, through the purplethrough everything. It passed through and entered inside, where there were sparklings of every color, like a cascade. There are always these cascades of forcesimilar to a cascading stream whose waters neither flow on nor disappear, but accumulate: an accumulation of energies, a condensation. And they accumulate without taking up any more space through a kind of compression. And inside, its moving, vibrating, vibrating, vibrating, it keeps coming and comingyou dont know where it comes from, but it keeps coming and accumulating.
It was a force with a sparkling white light at its center, the light which is the force of the Divine Mother, and as soon as it was well packed and concentrated inside, or condensed, it took on all the colorsvibrations of every color Like a materialization these colors were like a materialization of the Divine Force when it enters matter. (Just as matter is a condensation of energy, well, this seemed to be a condensation of Divine Force. Thats really the impression it gave.)
0 1960-07-15, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Although it is still in a region of the physical mind, it is a mind striving towards a luminous organization and clearly aspiring to rise towards the higher realms.
And last night especially I had a very positive impression (a sort of feeling) that I can count on you.
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
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 especially 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:
0 1960-07-26 - Mothers vision - looking up words in the subconscient, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Coming at the end of the night as it did, it means that its an exploration in some part or another of a subconscious mental activity. And you can make so many discoveries there it is unbelievable! But its lovely. And rarely unpleasant. There was a time when it was very unpleasant, oppressive, full of effort and resistance. I would want to go somewhere, but it would be impossible; I toiled and struggled, but everything would go wrong the straight paths would suddenly plunge into an abyss, and Id have to cross the abyss. For years it was like that. Just recently, I looked back over this whole period But now it is over. Now its something its lovely, its enjoyable, its a little it has a childlike simplicity.
However, its not a personal subconscient, but a its more than the Ashram. For me, the Ashram is not a separate individualityexcept in that vision the other day,1 which is what surprised me. Its hardly that. Rather, it is still this Movement of everything, of everything that is included. So its like entering into the subconscient of the whole earth, and it takes on forms which are quite familiar images to me, but they are absolutely symbolic and very, very funny! It took a moment to see that vainquons is spelled q-u-o-n-s. And I wasnt sure! I meant to ask Pavitra for a dictionary which gives verb conjugations, for then if Im stuck on something while writing, I can look it up.
0 1960-09-20, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
When I got there, I felt a moment of anguish; my feeling was that nothing could be done. Not for him in particular, but universally, for all those in his categoryit seemed hopeless.6 If that was perfection, then nothing more could be done. This lasted only a second, but it was painful. And then I tried that is, I wanted to bring my consciousness down into the highest cubethis eternal, universal and infinite consciousness which is the first and foremost expression of the manifestation but nothing doing. It was impossible. I tried for several minutes and saw that it was absolutely impossible. So I had to make a curious movement (I couldnt get through it, it was impassable), I had to come back down into the so-called lower consciousness (not lower, actuallyit was vast and impersonal), and from there I came out and regained my equilibrium. This is what gave me that splitting headache I told you about. I came out of there as if I were carrying the weight the weight of an irreducible absoluteit was dreadful. Unfortunately, I was unable to rest afterwards, and as people were waiting to see me, I had to talkwhich is very tiring for me. And this produced a bubbling in my head, like a this dark blue light of power in matter was there, shot through with streaks of white and gold, and all this was flashing back and forth in my head, this way and that way I thought I was going to have a stroke! (Mother laughs)
This lasted a good half hour before I could calm it down, make it quiet, quiet. And I saw that this came from the fact that he wanted to bring the Power down, to transmit the Power into the physical mind! But as soon as Im put in contact with the Power, you understand, it makes everything explode! (Mother laughs) It felt exactly like my head was going to explode!
--
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 con structions, all the mental, speculative structures none of it remaineda big hole.
And such a peaceful, such a luminous hole!
--
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.
--
The most recent incident took place a few days ago, for there was a general excitement in the factory due to the expected visit of a government minister during the day. That afternoon, exactly at half past three, I felt that I had to make a little concentration. So I paid attention and saw poor L11 praying to me. He was praying, praying, calling mesuch a strong call that it pulled me. I was having my bath (you know what happens when Im very strongly pulled Im stopped right in the very midst of a gesture, then the consciousness goes wandering off! And I cant do anything, it stops me dead. Thats exactly what happened to me in the bathroom). When I saw what was happening, I straightened things out. Then they must have had their ceremony, for suddenly I felt, Ah, now it has calmed down, its all right. And I went on to something else.
The next day, L came to see me. He told me that shortly before 3:30, the machine had stopped once again, but this time it was quickly set right; they found out right away what had to be done. And then he told me that at 3:45 he had started praying to me that all should go well. Oh, I know! I said.
0 1960-10-02a, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
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 1960-10-02b, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
In this way we keep the word appel [call], which is strong. All I did was change the relative pronoun (at first you had translated it as qui, nos portes, attend notre appel2).
I dont know. Perhaps it is more incisive this way.
0 1960-10-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
For the placement of words is not the same in English and in French. In English, for example, the place an adverb occupies is of major importance for the precise meaning. In French also, but generally its not the same! If at least it were exactly the opposite of English it would be easier, but its not exactly the opposite. Its the same thing for the word order in a series of modifiers or any string of words; usually in English, for example, the most important word comes first and the least important last. In French, its usually the opposite but it doesnt always work!
The spirit of the two languages is not the same. Something always escapes. This must surely be why revelations (as Sri Aurobindo calls them) sometimes come to me in one language and sometimes in the other. And it does not depend on the state of consciousness Im in, it depends on what has to be said.
--
Not some kind of esperanto!but sounds springing straight from above.
The SOUND must be captured. There must be one sound at the origin of all language And then, to capture it and project it. To make it vibrate because it doesnt vibrate in the same way here as it does above.
0 1960-10-11, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
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.
0 1960-10-22, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
It is part of a huge house. Theres a seven-story apartment building on each side, and the street is here.
It wasnt very big. The studio was rather largea beautiful room Thats where I received Madame David-Neelwe saw each other nearly every evening.
--
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.
--
Im going to tell you what I sawits very interesting. First, emanating from here (Mother indicates the chest), a florescence of every color like a peacocks tail spread wide; but it was made of light, and it was very, very delicate, very fine, like this (gesture). Then it rose up and formed what truly seemed like a luminous peacock, up above, and it remained like that. Then, from here (the chest), what looked like a sword of white light climbed straight up. It went up very high and formed a kind of expanse, a very vast expanse, which was like a callthis lasted the longest. And then, in response, a veritable rain, like (no, it was much finer than drops) a golden lightwhite and goldenwith various shades, at times more towards white, at times more golden, at times with a tinge of pink. And all this was descending, descending into you. And here (the chest), it changed into this same deep blue light, with a powdering of green light inside itemerald green. And at that moment, when it reached here (the level of the heart), a number of little divinities of living golda deep, living goldcame, like this, and then looked at you. And just as they looked at you, there was the image of the Mother right at the very center of younot as she is commonly portrayed but as she is in the Indian consciousness Very serene and pure and luminous. And then that changed into a temple, and inside the temple there seemed to be an image of Sri Aurobindo and an image of me but living images in a powdering of light. Then it grew into a magnificent edifice and settled in with an extraordinary power. And it remained motionless.
That is the representation of your japa.
--
Yes, of coursevery strongly. At one moment it was very, very powerful.
(Mother laughs heartily) Your japa is lovely. Oh, its a whole world thats forming, and its truly harmonious, powerful, beautiful. Its very good. If you like, well do this for a few moments from time to time. It was very how should I put it? very pleasant for me. It feels comfortable, a bit removed from all this porridge! I was very glad.
0 1960-10-25, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
When I found this out, I immediately thought, Good, this boy caught the formation2 X had made for the other one, and it got him back. For its really miraculous that he succeeded. But the other one, the nephew, was left stranded, nowhere to be found. It was obviously the same gang and the same method.
Then the police got involved. They wanted to take him back to the countryside around Poona (naturally I suppose they nursed him in the meantime), but not much came out of it. Seems that wherever he remembered seeing these people, when he said he had seen them, he fainted. Finally, I was told the story, and the poor family wrote to me saying, Who are these demons with such a great power that even it withstands Mothers force as well as that of Xand who are holding our son? So X was again informed and, knowing the story of the elder brothers friend, he said, Ah, now I know where the other one is, and I hope it wont take too long. But then September 26 passedgeneral despair in the family. They wrote to me, and I concentrated.
It was just before Durga Puja,3 or just after I cant remember (dates and I dont go together)no, it was after Durga Puja. So I went into a deep concentration and, as a matter of fact, I saw that a very powerful and dangerous rakshasic4 power was involved. And then, when I started walking for my japa upstairs in my room (I had given some thought to this story and tried asking for something to be done), I suddenly saw Durga before me raising high a lance of white light the lance of light that de stroys the hostile forcesand She struck into a black swarming mass of men.
But then there came a frightful reaction. For one day I was nearly as sicknot quiteas two years ago5 (they must have used the same mantra). And, you see, I who never vomit terrible vomitingeverything inside came out! Only now Im a bit more experienced than two years ago (!), so I set it right It happened here, downstairs, in the afternoon. I went right back up to my room (I didnt see anyone that afternoon), and I remained concentrated to try to find out what had happened. I saw that it came from therea backlash of those people trying to defend themselves.
--
I found out the details: this boy had to go to the station, but on his way, he went into a shoe store just next to the station to buy a pair of sandals. As he entered, he saw a man there choosing a pair of womens shoes for himself! This seemed strange to him: Whats this man doing buying and he WATCHEDsuddenly, nothing more. He lost consciousness and no longer knew what happened to him. And thats how the story begana man selecting womens shoes in a shop! He must do strange thingsprobably intentionallyto attract peoples attention. Naturally, out of curiosity, the boy started watching, and that was thatall of a sudden, blank, nothing more! And long afterwards he found himself far away in a train with this man. Hes here now with his mother they came to thank me. Its he who gave me the details. Hes a nice boy, but all this has left him with some anxiety, especially when he speaks of it. Hes trying to forget. He told me hed like to join the army and asked my permission. The boy feels a need for force and he has the idea that to be part of such a force would be good for him. (Of course, he didnt tell me all this, hes not that conscious. But thats what he feels the need to be supported by an organization of force.) So I encouraged him. I told him it was a good idea. His mother wasnt very happy! She feared he was leaping from the frying pan into the fire!
Another curious detail is that after having taken away all his appetite and having put him in the caf as a waiter, they told him, Now you must eat, so he tried to eat, and for four days he vomited up everything he put init was completely black! After that, he was able to start eating a little. Its a fantastic story!
--
But I was mainly interested by the fact that I felt the danger these people representednot because they were brigands, but because they had some powerbrigands with a power and from what I saw, it was not merely an hypnotic power. There must have been a tantric force in it, otherwise they would not have been so powerful, and especially so powerful from a distance. I had said to myself, They MUST be caught. Which was why (the Force kept on working, you see). And yesterday, the newspaper said that a gang of five men, eight women and half a dozen children had been arrested by the police in Allahabad for using what the newspaper called mesmeric means to rob people, attack them, etc. (They were operating in Poona, Bombay and Ahmedabad, but they were caught in Allahabad). Probably when they realized that the boy was gone, they got frightened and fled to the North. And they were arrested in Allahabad I had made a very strong formation and had said, They MUST be caught.
As of now, I have no other news Theyve been caught, so they cant do any wrong OUTWARDLY, but still their power is there. Were going to have to be And everyone here says the same thinglike a black veil of unconsciousness that has fallen upon us. Even those who arent accustomed to such things have felt it. Im presently cleaning the whole placeits not easy. Everything is upside down.
--
When you have to slip in seven hours of japa a day, it makes your life a bit strange!
Its so contrary not only to the education but to the make up of people from the West! For an Indian for a modern Indian it would be difficult, but for those who have kept something of the old tradition it would not be difficult. Its easy for children raised in a monastery or near the guru
--
But its good to know in order to avoid this feeling of being crushed when things are still completely outside your control, this sense of fatality people havetheyre born, they live, they die: Nature is crushing and we are the playthings of something much bigger, much stronger than us that is the Falsehood.
In any case, for myself, in my yoga, only after I KNEW that I AM the Master of everything (provided I know how to BE this Master and LET myself be this Masterprovided, that is, that the outer stupidity accepts to stay in its place), did I know that one could be the Master of Nature.
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.
--
When I meditate with you When Im alone, there is never this power, this Its something else Sometimes its strong but it always lacks this particular quality. There are powerful moments when Im alone, but not like this.
Of course! Im also with you there in your room when you meditate, but it does make a difference
--
Yes, of course! But to be put back in order, it must become a bit stronger. The more fragile you are, the more it breaks down.
All I know is that HERE you must be very careful not to weaken the bodys resistance (I dont just mean in India, but here in the Ashram). Here, its important the base must be solid, for otherwise its difficult. The more the Force descendsas it has just now descended the more the body must be rather square. Its important.
--
L'Orpailleur, which had just been published. The man's description, as a matter of fact, bears a striking resemblance to the publisher.
The terre strial work to be accomplished through the Agenda.
0 1960-11-05, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
So then I went in search of its origin. Its something in the subconscientin the cells subconscient. Its roots are there, and on the least occasion And its so very, very ingrained that For example, you can be feeling very good, the body can be perfectly harmonious (and when the body is perfectly harmonious, its motions are harmonious, things are in their true places, everything works exactly as it should without needing the least attentiona general harmony), when suddenly the clock strikes, for example, or someone utters a word, and you have just the faint impression Oh, its late, Im not going to be on timea second, a split second, and the whole working of the body falls apart. You suddenly feel feeble, drained, uneasy. And you have to intervene. Its terrible. And were at the mercy of such things!
To change it, you have to descend into itwhich is what Im in the midst of doing. But you know, it makes for painful moments. Anyway, once its done, it will be something. When that is done, Ill explain it to you. And then Ill have the power to restore you to health.
0 1960-11-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
So for persons who are severe and grave (there are two such examples here, but its not necessary to name them) There are beings who are grave, so serious, so sincere, who find it hypocritical; and when it borders on certain (how shall I put it?) vital excesses, they call it vice. There are others who have lived their entire lives in a yogic or religious discipline, and they see this as an obstacle, illusion, dirtyness (Mother makes a gesture of rejecting with disgust), but above all, its this terrible illusion that prevents you from nearing the Divine. And when I saw the way these two people here reacted, in fact, I said to myself, but you see, I FELT So strongly that this too is the Divine, it too is a way of getting out of something that has had its place in evolution, and still has a place, individually, for certain individuals. Naturally, if you remain there, you keep turning in circles; it will always be (not eternally, but indefinitely) the woman of my life, to take that as a symbol. But once youre out of it, you see that this had its place, its utilityit made you emerge from a kind of very animal-like wisdom and quietude that of the herd or of the being who sees no further than his daily round. It was necessary. We mustnt condemn it, we mustnt use harsh words.
The mistake we make is to remain there too long, for if you spend your whole life in that, well, youll probably need many more lifetimes. But once the chance to get out of it comes, you can look at it with a smile and say, Yes, its really a sort of love for fiction!people love fiction, they want fiction, they need fiction! Otherwise its boring and all much too flat.
--
Its an approach which is not at all mental nor intellectual nor (God knows!) moral in the leastno notion of Good or Evil nor any of those things, absolutely none of that. Theres a moment in life when you begin thinking a little and you see all this from an overall or universal point of view in which all moral notions completely disappearFOR ANOTHER REASON. This experience with Z reminded me of a certain way of approaching Beauty that enables you even to find it in what appears dirty and ugly to the common vision. It is She trying to express herself in this something which to the common vision is ugly, dirty, hypocritical. But of course, if you yourself have striven assiduously and have greatly held yourself in, then you look at it reprovingly.
From my earliest childhood, instinctively, I have never felt the slightest contempt or how should I say (well, well! I was thinking in English) shrinking or disapproval, severe criticism or disgust for the things people call vice.
--
I have experienced all kinds of things in life, but I have always felt a sort of lightso INTANGIBLE, So perfectly pure (not in the moral sense, but pure light!)and it could go anywhere, mix everywhere without ever really getting mixed with anything. I felt this flame as a young childa white flame. And NEVER have I felt disgust, contempt, recoil, the sense of being dirtiedby anything or anyone. There was always this flamewhite, white, so white that nothing could make it other than white. And I started feeling it long ago in the past (now my approach is entirely differentit comes straight from above, and I have other reasons for seeing the Purity in everything). But it came back when I met Z (because of the contact with him)and I felt nothing negative, absolutely nothing. Afterwards, people said, Oh, how he used to be this, how he used to be that! And now look at him! See what hes become! Someone even used the word rotten that made me smile. Because, you see, that doesnt exist for me.
What I saw is this world, this realm where people are like that, they live that, for its necessary to get out from below and this is a wayits a way, the only way. It was the only way for the vital formation and the vital creation to enter into the material world, into inert matter. An intellectualized vital, a vital of ideas, an artist; it even fringes upon or has the first drops of Poetrythis Poetry which upon its peaks goes beyond the mind and becomes an expression of the Spirit. Well, when these first drops fall on earth, it stirs up mud.
--
How strange it is! You have the feeling of ascending, of a progress in consciousness, and everything, all the events and circumstances of life follow one another with an unquestioning logic. You see the Divine Will unfolding with a wonderful logic. Then, from time to time, there appears a little set of circumstances (either isolated or repeated), which are like snags on the way; you cant explain them, so you put them aside for later on. Some such accidents have been quite significant, but they dont seem to follow this ascending line of the present individuality. Theyre scattered along the way, sometimes repeated, sometimes only once, and then they vanish. And when you go through such an experience, you sense that they are things put aside for later on. And then, all of a sudden (especially during these last two years when I have again descended to take all that up), all of a sudden, one after another, all these snags return. And they dont follow the same curve; rather, its as if suddenly you reach a certain state and a certain impersonal breadth that far surpasses the individual, and this new state enters into contact with one of those old accidents that had remained in the deepest part of the subconscientand that makes it rise up again, the two meet in an explosion of light. Everything is explained, everything is understood, everything is clear! No explanation is needed: it has become OBVIOUS.
This is entirely another way of understandingits not an ascent, not even a descent nor an inspiration it must be what Sri Aurobindo calls a revelation. Its the meeting of this subconscious notationthis something which has remained buried within, held down so as not to manifest, but which suddenly surges forth to meet the light streaming down from above, this very vast state of consciousness that excludes nothing and from it springs forth a lightoh, a resplendence of light!like a new explanation of the world, or of that part of the world not yet explained.
And this is the true way of knowing.
0 1960-11-12, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
On a small scale, in very small details, I feel that of all the forces, this is the strongest. And its the only one with a power over hostile wills. Only for the world to change, it must manifest here in all its fullness. We have to be up to it
Sri Aurobindo had also written to the effect, If Divine Love were to manifest now in all its fullness and totality, not a single material organism would but burst. So we must learn to widen, widen, widen not only the inner consciousness (that is relatively easyat least feasible), but even this conglomeration of cells. And Ive experienced this: you have to be able to widen this sort of crystallization if you want to be able to hold this Force. I know. Two or three times, upstairs (in Mothers room), I felt the body about to burst. Actually, I was on the verge of saying, burst and be done with. But Sri Aurobindo always intervenedall three times he intervened in an entirely tangible, living and concrete way and he arranged everything so that I was forced to wait.
0 1960-11-15, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
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.
--
It was strange, this morning I came a few minutes late. (I blamed the clocks which werent working, but it wasnt the clocks which were to blame!) I was getting dressed when suddenly all this came upon me I had a moment of it may have lasted one or two minutes, just a few minutes, not long.Oh, the emotion I had during the experience was it was very absorbing.
It was no longer this (that is, life as it is on earth) becoming conscious of That (the eternal soul, this portion of the Supreme as Sri Aurobindo said); it was the eternal soul seeing life in its own way but without separation, without any separation, not like something looking from above that feels itself to be different How strange it is! Its not something else, its NOT something else, its not even a distortion, not even Its losing its illusory quality as described in the old spiritualities thats not what it is! In my experience, there was there was clearly an emotion I cant describe it, there are no words. It wasnt a feeling, it was something like an emotion, a vibration of such TOTAL closeness and at the same time of compassion, a compassion of love. (Oh, words are so pitiful! ) One was this outer thing, which was the total negation of the other and AT THE SAME TIME the other, without the least separation between them. It WAS the other. So what was born in one was born in the other as well, in this eternal light. A sweetness of identity, precisely, an identity that was necessarily such total understanding with such perfect love but love says it poorly, all words are poor! Its not that; its something else! Its something that cannot be expressed.
I lived that this morning, upstairs.
--
It has a lot to do before it is strong enough to LIVE that.
This was still there, like a sweetness, when I came to the balcony And the notion that people, objects, life, that all that are different is unthinkable! It is not possible. Even thought is so strange!
(silence)
0 1960-11-26, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Not last night but the night before, I touched at least one of the causes (at that time it felt like THE cause) of a certain powerlessness to act directly on Matter You see, when the Will and the Power come, they are extremely effective everywhere UP TO A CERTAIN REGION (in other words, whether people are receptive or not, open or not, makes no differencewhen the Will is applied it is all-powerful UP TO a certain region) but once it arrives here, at the most material material, its efficacy depends on many thingsand a power which depends on something is no power! For a long, long time I have been searching for the reasons behind this powerlessness. Ive located a few, one after another, and upon these points there was an immediate effect. But some things resisted (oh, quite a number, in a number of ways), for example it had difficulty acting on illnesses, on the cells, on doubt (not mental doubt, but rather the doubt of the physical consciousness which cant accept certain things that seem impossible to itwhat Sri Aurobindo calls disbelief,1 not a mental doubt, but the disbelief of the physical consciousness which cant accept what is contrary to its own nature and its own working). And as for illnesses, sometimes it has an immediate effect, but sometimes it drags on and has to follow its so-called normal course. On all these three points, I clearly felt that something was hampering it. These are the Enemys strongholds; all that doesnt want the Divine seizes upon it and even the working of the Power coming from above is ob structed, for when it must work here in the body, it is stopped or deformed or altered or diminished.
All this goes on in the subconscient; these are things that were pushed out of the physical consciousness down into the subconscient, so theyre there and they come back up whenever they please.
--
Once or twice I heard certain things about him and I told him (for I told him all I saw or heard), and I said that I was that these suggestions were coming from the Enemy and that I was violently fighting against them. Then he looked at metwicehe looked at me, nodded his head and smiled. And thats all. Nothing more was said. How strange! I thought. And thats all. Then I myself must have forgotten. You see, he wanted me to forget.
I only remembered afterwards.
--
But its only to make me find the to make me go through the experience and to find the strength. And also to give the body this absolute faith in its Divine Realityto show it that the Divine is there and that He wants to be there and that He shall be there. And its only at such moments as thesewhen logically, according to the ordinary physical logic, its all over that you can seize the key.
You have to go right through everything without flinching.
0 1960-12-17, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
(Mother gives the disciple a cadamba flower which she has named 'Supramental Sun'a striking orange ball consisting of innumerable stamens)
Its beautiful, isnt it? Its all together, but its innumerable. Its ONE thing going in all directions. And what a color! The tree is glorious.
0 1960-12-31, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Oh, my dress is caught under one of the stool legs. Are you strong?
Oh yes!
--
I was in my home, somewherea world whose light is like a sun (golden with scarlet reflections); it was very beautiful. It was in a town, and my house was in that town. I wanted to take to someone some not presents, but things he needed. So I got everything together, prepared it all, and then loaded my arms with all the packages (I had taken my own time to arrange everything nicely), and I went out when the whole town was completely deserted there was not a soul on the streets. A complete solitude. And such a sense of well-being, of light and force! Yes, really a kind of felicity, for no reason. And instead of weighing me down, it seemed as if my packages were pulling me! They pulled me on in such a way that each step was a joy, like a dance.
This lasted the whole time I was crossing the town. Then I came to a border, right at the beginning of another part where I was to take my packages; there, just a little below me, I saw a house under con struction the house belonging to the person to whom I had to deliver these presents (the symbolism in all this, of course, is quite clear).
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.
0 1961-01-10, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
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 indu stry (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!
0 1961-01-12, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Consider the case of a woman with many friends, and these friends are very fond of her for her special capacities, her pleasant company, and because they feel they can always learn something from her. Then all of a sudden, through a quirk of circumstances, she finds herself socially o stracizedbecause she may have gone off with another man, or may be living with someone out of wedlockall those social mores with no value in themselves. And all her friends (I dont speak of those who truly love her), all her social friends who welcomed her, who smiled so warmly when passing her on the street, suddenly look the other way and march by without a glance. This has happened right here in the Ashram! I wont give the details, but it has happened several times when something conflicted with accepted social norms: the people who had shown so much affection, so much kindness oh! Sometimes they even said, Shes a lost woman!
I must say that when this happens here. In the world at large it seems quite normal, but when this happens here it always gives me a bit of a shock, in the sense that I say to myself, So theyre still at that level!
0 1961-01-17, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But actually, there are really two quite different forms of self-deception. One can be very shocked by certain things, not for personal reasons but precisely because of ones goodwill and ardor to serve the Divine, when one sees people misconducting themselves, being egoistical, unfaithful, treacherous. There comes a stage when one has mastered these things and doesnt permit them to manifest IN ONESELF; but to the extent that one is in contact with ordinary consciousness, ordinary viewpoints, ordinary life and thought, their possibility is still there, latent, because they are the inverse of the qualities one is striving for. And this opposition always exists until one has risen above and no longer has either the quality or the defect. As long as one has virtue, one always has its latent opposite. The opposition disappears only when one is beyond virtue and sin.
But until then, there is this kind of indignation stemming from the fact that one is not entirely above: its a period when one totally disapproves of certain things and would be incapable of doing them. And up to this point, there is nothing to say, unless one gives an external, violent expression to his indignation. If anger interferes, it indicates an entire contradiction between the feeling one wants to have and this reaction towards others. Because anger is a deformation of vital power originating from an obscure and thoroughly unregenerate vital,1 a vital still subject to all the ordinary actions and reactions. When an ignorant, egoistic individual will exploits this vital power and encounters opposition from other individual wills around it, then under the pressure of opposition this power changes into anger and tries to obtain through violence what could not be achieved by the pressure of the Force alone.
--
This mental habit of always cloaking everything with a favorable appearance, of giving all movements a favorable explanation, is at times so flagrant that it can fool nobody but oneself (although it may occasionally be subtle enough to create an illusion). It is a sort of habitual self-exoneration, the habit of giving a favorable mental excuse, a favorable mental explanation for all one does, all one says, all one feels. For example, someone with no self-control who strikes another in great indignation and is ready to call it divine wrath! Righteous2 is perfect, because righteous immediately introduces this element of puritanical moralitywonderful!
This power of self-deception, the minds craft in devising splendid justifications for any ignorance or folly whatsoever, is tremendous.
0 1961-01-22, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
At last I found myself in a big place down below where there was a row of houses, all kinds of things, and it was absolutely essential that I go back upwhen suddenly a somewhat indistinct form (rather dark, unluminous) came to me and said, Oh, dont go there, its very bad, very dangerous! Theyve set it all up in a terrifying way: none can withstand it! You mustnt go there, wait a bit. And if you need something, do come, you know I have everything you need! (Mother laughs) its a little old and dusty but youll manage! Then she led me into a huge room filled with objects piled one on top of another, and in one corner she showed me a bathtubmy child, it was a marvel! A splendid pink marble bathtub! But it was unused, dusty and old. Well just wipe it off, she said, and youll be able to use it! She showed me other areas for washing and dressing, there was everything one could possibly need. You can use it all. Dont go up there! I looked at her closely. She struck me as having a tiny face, it was oddit wasnt a form, it was it was a form and yet it wasnt! As imprecise as that. Then I clasped her in my arms and cried out, Mother, you are nice! (Mother laughs) I knew then that she was material Mother Nature.
After that I felt quite at ease. The battle was overit was over FOR THE MOMENT, because they werent finished: they continued their uproar on the other side; but I didnt have to go there anymore.
--
Oh, no! (Mother laughs) I dont use such violent means! No, no! It was very strange. When it fell upon me (four or five days ago, I no longer recall), everything I had gained materially disappeared! As though all that had been conquered and mastered, even what had begun to change, even wrong functionings that had completely ceased, all that had been set right and brought under control: gone! Gone! Completely gone! As if everything came back in one fell swoop.
I remained perfectly tranquil, there was nothing else to do; I knew it meant a battle. I was perfectly tranquil, but I could no longer eat, I could no longer rest, do japa2 or walk, and my head felt as though it would burst. I could only abandon myself (Mother opens her arms in a gesture of surrender), enter into a very, very deep trance, a very deep samadhithis is something one can always do. But that was the only thing left to me. Ideas were just as clear as ever (all that is above and doesnt budge), but my body was in a very bad way. It was a fight, a fight at each second. The least thing, just to walk a step, was a struggle, an awful battle!
Then last night I saw the symbol, the image of the thing. But what was it? It was an element in the most material Matter,3 because it was deep down below; yet despite it all, Mother Nature was in charge there: she was familiar with everything, knew everything and it was all at her disposalabsolutely the most material Nature. And she herself had no light, but was very, very she had a concealed power that was completely invisible.
--
Oh, I felt it! It was very violent. It came down on me three times and I told myself, Hmm, someone is cleaning out! It felt like something was being removed from me that shouldnt be there. But the third time I doubted it was you because it became so violent, particularly around the abdomen, like something being torn out of me. strange. Vibrations, nothing but vibrations very, very violent.
For me it was in the head (not last night but over the past few days), when I was trying to do my japaoh, it was as though my head would burst! All the nerves were not just tense (Mother touches the nape of her neck), but cramped. And my head felt as if boiling oil were being poured inside it; it was about to explode, and I couldnt see clearly.
--
You see, personal surrender and devotion is an excellent solution for the individual, but it doesnt work for the collectivity. For example, as soon as I am alone and lying on my bedpeace! (Ah, I forgot! They had invented yet another thing: making my heartbeats irregular. Every three or four beats it would stop; then it would start up again, pounding as if I had been struck. Three, four beats, a faint little beat, then stop then, bang! Blow after blow. One more of their extraordinary inventions!) But, as soon as I stretch out and make a total surrender of all the cellsno more activity, nothingeverything goes well. But I am well aware that this surrender has an effect on the action only to the extent that the Supreme Lord has decided upon the action, and those movements stretch over long periods of time5: all sorts of things may happen before the final Victory is won. Because, for us, the scale is very small; even if it were of terre strial proportions, it would be a very small scale; but on a universal scale. These forces have their place and their action, their universe, and as long as their place and their action are maintained, they will be here. So before their action can be exhausted or become useless, many things can happen.
Individually, however, there is almost instantaneous bliss. But this is not a true solution its a solution in the long run, by repercussion. To have true comm and here in this world, all of that must be mastered.
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!
--
The body was stretched out flat.
And for a quarter of an hour, the consciousness rose, rose, without moving. It kept rising up, up, upuntil the junction was made.
--
This descending reorganization ended exactly when the clock struck one. At that moment I knew that I had to go into trance for the work to be perfected, but until then I was wide awake.
So I slipped into trance.
--
Does a servant come to your house? No one is sick in his family? Because what happens is that they dont want to lose their jobs or their salary, so they dont warn you. They may have smallpox or measles or chickenpox and they dont take the slightest care to wash or change their clothes; they come to your house and of course they bring along the disease. So the number of cases keeps multiplying and multiplying. I have been meaning to tell Pavitra to be careful of that little character who works for himeven ordinarily I dont like to see him running around here. Its strange how it sullies the atmosphereoh, you cant imagine! Almost all of them, almost all!
Its not at all the same as in the West, in Europe or America, not at all. Basically, the people in those countries are made of the same stuff as we are. But here thats not the case, because for centuries it never changeda Brahmin, for example, always remained a Brahmin, a Kshatria was always a Kshatria and all his servants were Kshatrias. It stayed in the family, in the sense that in each caste the servantsoften poor relativesbe longed to that same caste. From a social standpoint this might not have been too pleasant, but as far as atmosphere was concerned, it was very good. This was changed, however, first by the Muslim invasion, and then especially by the British.
--
Then she returned to India and I took her in with me. I continued to treat her almost as a friend and I helped her to develop her gifts. Mon petit,10 how dirty she started to get, lying, stealing, and absolutely needlesslyshe had money, she was well treated, she had everything she needed, she ate what we didthere was absolutely no reason! When I finally asked her, But why, why!? (she was no longer young at this point), she replied, When I came back here, it took hold of me again; its stronger than I am. That was a revelation for me! Those old habits had been impervious to education.
We think these people are the way they are because the environment is bad, the education is poor, the conditions are difficultits not true! In the universal economy of things they REPRESENT something, a certain type of force and vibration. It will have to be either dissolved or transformed. Transformed? But perhaps that is. It may disappear along with the hostile forces. Perhaps once everything has been transformed it will disappear I dont know when.
0 1961-01-27, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Balcony-darshan: up to 1962, Mother appeared every morning on the first-floor balcony to be seen by the disciples assembled on the street below.
***
0 1961-01-31, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Now I have begun reading those hymns2. Oh, now I understand! All those obstacles were a preparation straight from Sri Aurobindo. Now I understand! (What I mean by understand is that its a help for making progress.) I understand the nature of certain ob structions and certain difficulties, and what allows certain forces to oppose each other I understand it quite clearly.
I have read only two hymns so far. By the time I reach the end I will probably have found something.
--
Its not yet perfect, its still being worked on, but when I read it over, I saw that I had truly gone beyond the stage where one tries to find a correspondence with what one reads, an appropriate expression sufficiently close to the original text (thats the state I was in before). Now its not like that anymore! The translation seems to come spontaneously: that is English, this is French sometimes very different, sometimes very close. It was rather interesting, for you know that Sri Aurobindo was strongly drawn to the structure of the French language (he used to say that it created a far better, far clearer and far more forceful English than the Saxon structure), and often, while writing in English, he quite spontaneously used the French syntax. When its like that, the translation adapts naturallyyou get the impression that it was almost written in French. But when the structure is Saxon, what used to happen is that a French equivalent would come to me; but now its almost as if something were directing: That is English, this is French.
It was there, it was clear; but its not yet permanent. Something is beginning. I hope its going to become established before too long and that there will be no more translating difficulties.
--
With my japa the contrast is the same, its absolutely astounding: I feel I am saying the words in the same way, with the same sound, exactly the same rhythm, but in some cases, with a particular inner attitude, the time by the clock is different! Yet nevertheless, bound up as we are in our physical Matter, we imagine it has taken exactly the same amount of time! Thats what is so strange, this extraordinary relativity vis--vis the clock.
This must be what they tried to express by Joshua making the sun stand still.
--
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 powerful strange, isnt it?
Its not at all sweet-smelling.
Oh, no! Its quite strong.
Its largely the fragrances that have made me give flowers their significance. I find these studies quite interesting; it corresponds to something really TRUE in Nature.
--
Another time, I was brought one of those big flowers (which are not really flowers) somewhat resembling corn, with long, very strongly scented stalks.4 I smelled it and said, Ascetic Purity! Just like that, from the odor alone. I was later told it was Shivas flower when he was doing his tapasya.5
These people have an age-old knowledge the ancient Vedic knowledge which they have preserved. In other words, it is something CONCRETELY TRUE: it doesnt depend at all on the mind, on thought or even on feelingsits a vibration.
--
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 demon strated 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 re strict my freedom of decision. He left without replying, so it remains status quo.
I have had several experiences demon strating 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!
How many, many experiences there were during those days at Tlemcen! Surely youve heard them. Were you there when I told the story about the big toad? A huge toad, covered with warts. No? The sitting room was upstairs in Theons house (the house was built on a hillside) and it was connected by large open doors to a small terrace that sat almost on top of the hill. I played the piano in this room every day. And one day, what did I see hopping in through the open bay windows but an enormous black toadenormous! He sat down on his backside right in the entrance and puffed up his throat: poff! poff! And for the whole time I played, he stayed there going Poff! poff!, as though in a state of delight! When I finished, I turned around and he gave me one last Poff! and hopped away. It was comical!
--
Oh (laughing), he had a formidable power! Theon had a formidable power. One stormy day (there were terrible thunderstorms there), he climbed to the high terrace above the sitting room. Its a strange time to be going up there, I said to him. He laughed, Come along, dont be afraid! So I joined him. He began some invocations and then I clearly saw a bolt of lightning that had been heading straight towards us suddenly swerve IN THE MIDST OF ITS COURSE. You will say its impossible, but I saw it turn aside and strike a tree farther away. I asked Theon, Did you do that? He nodded.
Oh, that man was terriblehe had a terrible power. But quite a good external appearance!
--
So, mon petit. Sri Aurobindo always said the greatest obstacle to true understanding and participation in the Work is common sense. He said thats why Nature creates madmen from time to time! They are people not strong enough to bear the dismantling of this petty stupidity called common sense.
Its time to go now. Do you have anything to say?
0 1961-02-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
One is very arduous: it is a severe and continuous tapasya. It is the way of the strong who are predestined for it.
The other is to find something worth concentrating upon that diverts your attention from your small, personal self. The most effective is a big ideal, but there are innumerable things that enter into this category. Most commonly, people choose marriage, because it is the most easily available (Mother laughs). To love somebody and to love children makes you busy and compels you to forget your own self a little. But it is rarely successful, because love is not a common thing.
--
So, in life, nothing comes without an effort and a struggle.
And if you are not ready for the effort and the struggle, then it is better to accept the fact that life will be dull and unsatisfactory, and submit quietly to this fact.
Thats for the complainers.
0 1961-02-11, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
55Be wide in me, O Varuna; be mighty in me, O Indra; O Sun, be very bright and luminous; O Moon, be full of charm and sweetness. Be fierce and terrible, O Rudra; be impetuous and swift, O Maruts; be strong and bold, O Aryama; be voluptuous and pleasurable, O Bhaga; be tender and kind and loving and passionate, O Mitra. Be bright and revealing, O Dawn; O Night, be solemn and pregnant. O Life, be full, ready and buoyant; O Death, lead my steps from mansion to mansion. Harmonise all these, O Brahmanaspati. Let me not be subject to these gods, O Kali.1
He invokes all these Vedic gods and tells each one to take possession of him; and THEN he tells Kali to free him from their influence! It is very amusing!
--
Last night I had a dream about you that made a vivid impression on me. Its probably absurd, but it was so real! You had called me because you were going to leave your body: you had decided to leave and you wanted somehow to say good-bye. It was so real! I came to you and for a moment you placed my head on your knees, and I was filled with light; it was very tender. But at the same time, I knew you were saying good-bye, you were going to leave your body, and I wept in my dream. Then I went to sit in a corner because there were other people who probably had come to see you as well. I remained in that corner, strickenit seemed so real, you understand! Just then, aman I didnt know entered the room (I knew he was French), a stranger dressed all in black, and he started making a loud commotion. He was smoking a pipe,2 a very coarse man, and he wanted to make all the people there, the disciples, get out of the room .3 It was so real! I awoke with a start and almost cried aloud, Ah, its a dream! Its only a dream!
Oh, it was that real!
--
But this body feels so strongly that it exists ONLY because the divine Power is in it. And constantly, for the least thing, it has only one remedy (it doesnt think of resting, of not doing this or that, of taking medicine), its sole remedy is to call and call the Supremeit goes on repeating its mantra. And as soon as it quietly repeats its mantra, it is perfectly content. Perfectly content.
(silence)
--
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.
--
In the present case, of course, the body is always saying, I am ready for everything I will do anything at all; yet I still cant say that it has this. Its trying to be completely pure according to the spiritual conceptit doesnt sense its separate personality. More and more, year after year, it has been striving to feel only the divine Presence, the divine Life, the divine Force and the divine Will, all within itself; and to feel that without them it is nothing, it doesnt exist. This is fully realized in its consciousness (the conscious part). In the subconscient and inconscient,5 obviously it is not realized otherwise, logically, it shouldnt be ill.
The whole disorder evidently originates from the subconscient and inconscient; all the more so as it came with various indications (sent by the hostile forces but this can always be useful, provided you are careful) saying, Yes, everything is going well in your higher centers, but(because the different points of attack have clearly followed the order of the centers). Four or five days ago, or maybe a week, before this latest difficulty occurred, I saw little beings coming out of the subconscient and saying, Ah! Your legs havent had any trouble for a long time! Its the turn of the lower centers! I swept it all away, of course, but.
--
(The clock strikes) Oh, now I must go!
(silence)
--
Nevertheless, a mathematical model resulting from a recent theory that attempts to represent our material universe strangely resembles Mother's perception, for it postulates a milieu consisting entirely of electromagnetic waves of very high frequency. According to this theory, Matter itself is the 'coagulation' of these waves at the moment they exceed a certain frequency threshold; our perception of emptiness, of fullness, of the hard or the transparent, being finally due only to the differences in vibratory frequencies'vibratory modes within the same thing.'
But what is this 'same thing'?
0 1961-02-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
My body was strongly built, solid, full of enduranceit had a tremendous energy, yet its beginning to feel that it isnt easy.
(silence)
--
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!
--
A great deal has been brought to light since that experience. It has been the starting point for such turmoil, even physically, such strong jolts that I might have wondered, Was I dreaming or was it real?. And more and more I am coming to understand that this is the INDISPENSABLE preparation in the most material world for that experience to become definitively established, to express itself outwardly, constantlythis is obvious.
If the experience remained permanently, it would be something very close to omnipotence. I felt at the time that there was no such thing as an impossibility: it was truly the sensation of omnipotence. It is not omnipotence, because there is always a greater Omnipotence (one knows this only in the higher realms). But in terms of the material world, it was clearly something very, very different from all that has ever been seen or heard or told by all extant traditionsit all seems like the babbling of a child in comparison. At that moment itself there was only the Something which sees, decidesand it is done.
0 1961-02-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The Darshan went rather well, much better than I was expecting; but the following two days it was difficult here [in the body]. Then one night (I dont remember which), I I cant say grumbled, but (it wasnt my body grumbling, it is very docile and doesnt protest), but I sometimes find that well, I found it a little exaggerated that day. All the same, I said, this may be demanding a bit too much of it! And then (Mother laughs) the whole night through, each time I awoke and looked (not with my physical eyes), I saw serpents! They were drawn up straight in a circlemagnificent cobras with white bellies, pearl gray backs and flecks of gold on their hoods! They surrounded me, watching, exactly as though they were saying, All the necessary energy is there! You neednt worry! So I concluded that this whole affair11 must have its utilityit cant be simply the bodys lack of plasticity and incapacity to receive. It must have a usefulness but what? I havent understood. Perhaps I will get the explanation later, once its over.
And the next afternoon, I closed my eyes while I was bathing and what did I see but an enormous, magnificent cobra! It gazed at me, almost smiling, and stuck out its tongue! Good, I said, then everything is all right! (laughing) I have only to hold on.
--
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.
0 1961-02-28, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And then the reply came to me very strongly; something took hold of me and I was, so to say, obliged to write: What Sri Aurobindo represents in the worlds history is not a teaching, not even a revelation; it is a decisive action direct from the Supreme.2
Its not from me. It came from there (gesture upwards). But it pleased me.
0 1961-03-04, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
They also had a sudden brainstorm to affiliate with the Sri Aurobindo Society. But the Sri Aurobindo Society has absolutely nothing to do with their project: its a strictly external thing, organized by businessmen to bring in moneyEXCLUSIVELY. That is, they want to put people in a position where they feel obliged to give (so far they have succeeded and I believe they will succeed). But this has nothing to do with working for an ideal, it is COMPLETELY practical.10 And of course, World Union has nothing to offer the Sri Aurobindo Society: they would simply siphon off funds. So I told them, Nothing doingits out of the question!
But your name is there as President of the Sri Aurobindo Society, they said. My name is there to give an entirely material guarantee that the money donated will really and truly be used for the Work to be done and for nothing else; its only a moral and purely practical guarantee. These people arent even asked to understand what Sri Aurobindo has said but simply to participate. Its a different matter for those in World Union, who are working for an ideal: they want to prepare the world to receive (laughing) the Supermind! Let them prepare it! It doesnt matter, they will achieve nothing at all, or very little. Its unimportant. Thats my point of view and I have told them so.
--
The opposition is clearly becoming stronger and stronger, a very good signit means we are advancing. But circumstances are growing more and more difficult: the least thing becomes an opportunity to demon strate bad will and spiteon the part of the government, on the part of people here and so on. Seen from a superficial viewpoint, we are more than ever in the soup. But this makes my heart rejoice! I take it as a sign that we are getting nearer.
Dont let it trouble you, you must always smile. Smile, be absolutely above it allabsolutely.
0 1961-03-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(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.
***
--
Long ago when Sri Aurobindo was still here, I was once bitten by a mosquito that had just come from a leper. He was sitting on the street corner, although I didnt know it at the time (I was in my bathroom, just opposite the corner). Suddenly I was bitten here, on the chin, and I knew IMMEDIATELY: Leprosy! Within a few seconds it became terriblehideous! I did what was necessary at once (as I was in the bathroom, I had what I needed). Then I suddenly got the impulse to go and look out the window there was the leper. And I understood: the mosquito had been kind enough to fly from him to me! But in that instance I was able to check it right away (it lasted three or four days)I say check because they claim leprosy sometimes takes fifteen years to surface, so. But now it has been more than fifteen years (Mother laughs), so its finished!
No, the difference, the great difference, is that when one is conscious, the thing is KNOWN immediately and one can react.
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!
I was abruptly awakened by the clock striking (I didnt count), and my immediate feeling was, Well, he is really very nice! Now theres a good companion!
But I woke up one hour too early!1
--
Truly, they have ruined the earth, they have ruined itthey have ruined the atmosphere, they have ruined everything; and for it to become something like the earthly paradise again, ohh! What a long way to gopsychologically, above all. Even the very structure of Matter (Mother fingers the air around her), with their bombs and their experiments and their oh, they have made a mess of it all! They have truly made a mess of Matter.
Probably no, not probably, its absolutely certain that this was necessary for kneading matter, churning it, to prepare it to receive THAT, the new thing yet to manifest.
0 1961-03-14, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
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.
I have been honored with a form of filariasis which occurs perhaps not once in a million cases. The doctor isnt tearing his hair out because thats not his way, but he is perplexed.
--
In other words, this coexistence or simultaneity of joy and tension, combat and peace, progress in the cellular consciousness and physical disequilibrium, form a physiological whole which is ... strange.
***
0 1961-03-17, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The experience occurred in a place corresponding to ours [the main Ashram building], but immense: the rooms were ten times bigger, but absolutely one cant say emptythey were barren. Not that there was nothing in them, but nothing was in order, everything was just where it shouldnt be. There wasnt any furniture so things were strewn here and therea dreadful disarray! Things were being put to uses they werent made for, yet nothing needed for a particular purpose could be found. The whole section having to do with education [the Ashram School] was in almost total darkness: the lights were out with no way to switch them on, and people were wandering about and coming to me with incoherent, stupid proposals. I tried to find a comer where I could rest (not because I was tired; I simply wanted to concentrate a little and get a clear vision in the midst of it all), but it was impossible, no one would leave me alone. Finally I put a tottering armchair and a footstool end-to-end and tried to rest; but someone immediately came up (I know who, Im purposely not giving names) and said, Oh! This wont do at all! It CANT be arranged like that! Then he began making noise, commotion, disorderwell, it was awful.
To wind it all up, I went to Sri Aurobindos rooman enormous, enormous room, but in the same state. And he appeared to be in an eternal consciousness, entirely detached from everything yet very clearly aware of our total incapacity.
--
It was so sad to see how good-for-nothing we were that it woke me up, or rather I heard the clock strike (like the other day, I didnt count and leapt out of bed; but I quickly noticed that it was only 3 oclock and lay back down). Then I began looking and told myself, If we really have to emerge from all this infirmity before anything can truly be well done, then we have quite a long road to travel! It was pitiful, pitiful (first on the mental, then on the material plane), absolutely pitiful. And I was depending on these people! (Sri Aurobindo was depending on me and therefore on them.) Good god, I said, if I only knew where things were kept! If they had just let me handle things, it could have been done quickly. But no! All those people had to be involved Oust as we always depend on intermediaries in real life).
It made me wonder.
--
Take the case of this man Im not naming Ive been training him, working with him, for more than thirty years and I still havent managed to get him to do things spontaneously, according to the needs of the moment, without all his preconceived ideas. Thats the point where he resists: when things have to be done quickly he follows his usual rule and it takes forever! This was illu strated strikingly that night. I told him, Just look: its there its THEREhurry up and warm it a little and Ill go. Ah! He didnt protest, didnt say anything, but he did things exactly according to his own preconceptions.
Its a terrible slavery to the lower mind, and so widespread! Oh, all these goings-on at the School, my child, all the teaching, all the teachers.2 Terrible, terrible, terrible! I was trying to turn on the switches to give some light and not one of them worked!
0 1961-03-21, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
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 in strument, but a well-paid in strumentsomeone 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 in strumentsomeone is hiding behind him, using him as a screen.
0 1961-03-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It was mainly on your right side I banged on it. But strangely enough, it didnt break it became supple, but then it lost its beauty. (It was so beautiful, as though sculptured!) I tried to pass through it, but to do so (this is what I found interesting), instead of passing through at this level (the chest), the psychic plane the level of the souls vibration I had to climb up above and then descend; and finally, without even realizing it, I found myself inside I had entered through sheer force of concentration. There, at the vital level, the emotional vital (solar plexus), I put two flowers: one very large Endurance in the Most Material Vital [zinnia] and another flower like the one X just gave me [cosmos] but bigger and pure white (it concerns sexual movements, light in sexual movements). But curiously enough, I passed inside through a trance; I was quite busy trying to make it more fluid when all at once, poof! I found myself inside. But since I entered through a trance it became completely objective: no more thought, nothing. And I saw I had put these two flowers there (at the levels of the abdomen and chest), one more active, a very large, dark purple Endurance flower, and another much smaller, pure white, slightly lower down. While I was watching this I think the clock must have struck something pulled me and it all faded away.
And I found it interesting that when I received your letter yesterday evening I concentrated for a moment, almost out of curiosity: Why doesnt he ever feel he has an experience? Why doesnt he feel anything? I wanted to know precisely what type of experience would give you the feeling of having an experience!
--
I understand! But yesterday when I was concentrating, I seemed to be sitting right in front of you again; and in the same way, with my left side, I was banging, banging on that absolutely rigid thing on your right. I was astonished: Why am I banging? (I had no intention of banging!) It was strange. The left side isnt like that, its the right.
But now I have done some damage!
--
strangely enough, Ive received the same complaint from S. He says, I dont have any experiences. What kind of experience do you have? I asked. He replied, I sit in meditation and what comes is peace, peace, peace its always the same thing!(Some people would be very happy with that, but him.) I asked him, What experience do you want? To be conscious, he told me, to be conscious of the Divine, conscious of the divine Presence! And I always answer him, Its because your mind is barricaded. (Mother forms a geometrical figure) He is so convinced that he knows! He tells me, No! Its not that. He doesnt believe me!
At any rate, I have had no results with him, nor with X.
0 1961-03-27, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
My bodys consciousness has changed that much I know. Not totally, of course, but enough to feel that theres no separation, that vibrations are unpartitioned there are no partitions! And I felt this very strongly with X: that when we were face to face in meditation there was no longer any difference between us, that this Vibration I was feelingthis Vibration of a strong and very solid, very balanced peacewas the same for him as for me. I didnt feel that I was here and he was there. I had only to shut my eyes and there was no difference between us. (This doesnt happen just with him: I feel it with everyone; but I am aware of how it is with others, I can sense why they dont feel it.) But I was under the impression that he, at least, would have felt it I must have been mistaken! This incident came to tell me I was mistaken.
Still, it surprises me. Because sitting in that room, one has the feeling (I say one, its probably I dont know what it is), I thought he had the same feeling I did: oh, it could last an eternity! Its like that: tranquil, tranquil, peaceful, balanced, strong. On other occasions there was a kind of movement: it came, went, came, went; but this time (Mother stretches forth her arms as if time had stopped) and I am like that (not the I here, the I above), I see it like that. Then just as the clock is about to strike, when the half-hour is finished, something comes and tells my body, Now! A tiny shock, and two or three seconds later the clock strikes. I always feel beforehand, Now its over. Otherwise there would be no reason for it to endits so peaceful! And not something diluted, as it were, but strong, compact. Compact. Then that tiny shock and the body comes to attention: Ah, Im going to have to move! And always after about two seconds, the clock strikes. I open my eyes, look at X and wait. Three or four seconds later, or after a minute or two, he opens his eyes, bows to me and gets up. Then I get up. Its always the same. So I dont know why. I dont understand what goes on in his consciousness. I no longer understand.
Im not so sure about what he said to N.
--
(silence, the clock strikes the hour)
No, no: do not brood about it. Let it be, it will work out. It will work out the way it has to work out.
--
Yesterday I had such a strong feeling that ALL con structions, all habits, all ways of seeing, all ordinary reactions, were all crumbling awaycompletely. I felt I was suspended in something entirely different, something I dont know.
(silence)
0 1961-04-12, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
What do these animals represent in the terre strial manifestation? Theyre so strange.
Cats are vital forces, incarnations of vital forces. The King of the Cats that is, the spirit of the speciesis a being of the vital world.
--
But I have had some cats. I had a cat who was the reincarnation of the mind of a Russian woman. I had a vision of it one day, it was so strangethis woman had been murdered at the time of the Russian Revolution, along with her two little children. And her mind entered a cat here. (How? I dont know.) But this cat, mon petit. I got her when she was very young. She would come and lie down, stretched out like a human being, with her head on my arm! (I used to sleep on a Japanese tatami on the floor.) And she would stay there, so well-behaved, didnt stir all night long! I was really amazed. Then she had kittens, and wanted to give birth to them lying stretched out, not at all like a cat. It was very difficult to make her understand that it couldnt be done that way! And one night after she had had her kittens, I saw her I saw a young woman in furs, with a fur bonnetyou could just see a tiny human face; she had two little ones and she came to me and placed them at my feet. Her whole story was there in her consciousness: how she and the two children had been murdered. And then I realized she was the cat!
The cat wouldnt leave her kittens for a moment! Not for anything. She wouldnt eat, wouldnt go outside to relieve herself, nothing: she stayed put. So I told her, Bring me your kittens. (If you know how to handle them, cats understand very well when theyre spoken to.) Bring me your little ones. She looked at me, went and brought one of her kittens, and placed it between my feet. Then she went to fetch the other one and placed it between my feet (not beside, between my feet). Now you can go out, I told her. And out she went.
--
Because later on he would go roaming about; he had become terribly strong and would prowl around everywhere. At that time I was living in the Library house, and he would go off as far as the Ashram street (the Ashram didnt belong to us yet, the house was owned by all kinds of people), but when I would go out on the terrace across from Champaklals kitchen and call, Big boy! Big Boy! although he couldnt hear it, he could sense it, and he would come back galloping, galloping. He always came back, unfailingly. The day he didnt come back, I got worried; the servant went looking for himand found him moaning, vomiting, poisoned. He brought him to me. Oh, really! it was. He was so nice! He wasnt a thief or anythinghe was a wonderful cat. Someone had laid out poison for god knows what cat, and he ate it. I showed him to Sri Aurobindo and said, He has been killed.
Before that, I lost another one from that kind of typhoid cats get. He was called Browny and he was so beautiful, so nice, such a marvelous cat! Even when utterly sick, he wouldnt make a mess, except in a corner prepared just for that; he would call me to carry him to his box, with such a soft and mournful voice. He was so nice, with something sweeter and more trusting than a child. There is a trust in animals which doesnt exist in humans (even children already have too much of a questioning mind). But with him, there was a kind of worship, an adoration, as soon as I took him in my armsif he could have smiled, he would have. As soon as I held him, he became blissful.
0 1961-04-15, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its really strange: there is no space between that time and now. I dont know how to explain it. I have no feeling of time, none at all, none.
(long silence)
0 1961-04-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
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 de stroy their balance. You might say to me, Then its because they had to go mad! Yes, evidently.
--
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.
--
The Rishis distinguished between the ' straight' (almost in the optical sense: that which allows the ray to pass straight through) and the twisted or crooked consciousness.
Agenda I of December 31, 1960.
--
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 in struments 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
There are manymanywho think I am going to die and are making preparations so as not to be left completely out on the street when I go. I am aware of all this. But its childishnessif I leave, they are right; if I dont, it doesnt matter!
(silence)
0 1961-04-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
After this, I received the draft of the Sri Aurobindo Societys brochure to be di stributed among all disciples, all society members, in order to encourage them. Well, that was the last straw! Oh, the most asinine propaganda! And plump in the middle of a bunch of other things (which had nothing to do with me), I come across this: We have the great fortune to have the Mother among us, and we propose to be the intermediary for all who wish to come into direct contact with her! They wanted to print this and di stribute it, just like that! So I took my brightest red ink and wrote: I do not accept this responsibility, you cannot make this promise. And that was that. I cut it. And now heres A., doing the same thing!
(silence)
--
Look here, theres a muddle in all this. The Sri Aurobindo Society people had ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with the spiritual life when they began; they didnt at all present themselves as a spiritual groupnothing of the kind; they were people of good will who volunteered to collect money to help the Ashram. So I said, Very well, excellent and as long as its like that, Im behind it. Leaflets can be handed outwhatever people like; its enough if their interest is aroused, if they know there is an Ashram and that it needs some help to go on. But thats all. It has nothing to do with yoga or spiritual progress or anything of the kindit was a strictly practical organization. It was not the same thing as World Union. World Union wanted to do a spiritual work on earth and to create human unity. I told them, You are taking something of an inward nature and you want to externalize it, so naturally it immediately goes rotten.(But its almost over now, Ive pulled the rug out from under them.)
Anyway.
--
The other day, I told N. (and I told him loud enough for everyone to hear): We can dispense with a good half of the ashramites straight-away and not lose a single sadhak.4
Well, his jaw dropped! People imagine that by the simple fact of being here they become disciples and apprentice yogis! But its not true.
--
It came last night. It came slowly, but last night it was very strong: no more sequence, no more linking of cause and effect, no more goal, no more purpose, no more intentiona kind of Absolute which does not exclude the creation. It is not Nirvana, it has nothing to do with Nirvana (I know Nirvana very well, Ive had itjust yesterday evening, for instance, while walking for japa, and even this morning. You see, I begin by an invocation to the Supreme under his three aspects, and no sooner have I uttered the sound, TAT when all is abolished: Nirvana. And the last few days I have noticed that its instantaneous, so easy! Oh, a delight! Bah!). But its not Nirvana, its beyond that; it contains Nirvana and it contains the manifested world and it contains everything else; all the appearances and disappearances13all of that is contained in it.
Something.
0 1961-04-29, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But its strange.
(silence)
In churches, I dont know. I havent been to them very often. I have been to mosques and templesJewish temples. The Jewish temples in Paris have such beautiful music; oh, what beautiful music! I had one of my first experiences in a temple. It was at a marriage, and the music was wonderfulSaint-Saens, I later learned; organ music, the second best organ in Pariswonderful! I was 14 years old, sitting high up in the galleries with my mother, and this music was being played. There were some leaded-glass windowswhite, with no designs. I was gazing at one of these windows, feeling uplifted by the music, when suddenly through the window came a flash like a bolt of lightning. Just like lightning. It enteredmy eyes were openit entered like this (Mother strikes her breast violently), and then I I had the feeling of becoming vast and all-powerful. And it lasted for days.
Of course, my 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.
--
I remember a good-hearted priest in Pau [Southern France] who was an artist and wanted to have his church decorateda tiny cathedral. He consulted a local anarchist (a great artist) about it. The anarchist was acquainted with Andrs father and me. He told the priest, I recommend these people to do the paintings they are true artists. He was doing the mural decorationsome eight panels in all, I believe. So I set to work on one of the panels. (The church was dedicated to San Juan de Compostello, a hero of Spanish history; he had appeared in a battle between the Christians and the Moors and his apparition vanquished the Moors. And he was magnificent! He appeared in golden light on a white horse, almost like Kalki.6) All the slaughtered and struggling Moors were depicted at the bottom of the painting, and it was I who painted them; it was too hard for me to climb high up on a ladder to paint, so I did the things at the bottom! But anyway, it all went quite well. Then, naturally, the priest received us and invited us to dinner with the anarchist. And he was so nicereally a kind-hearted man! I was already a vegetarian and didnt drink, so he scolded me very gently, saying, But its Our Lord who gives us all this, so why shouldnt you take it? I found him charming. And when he looked at the paintings, he tapped Morisset on the shoulder (Morisset was an unbeliever), and said, with the accent of Southern France, Say what you like, but you know Our Lord; otherwise you could never have painted like that!
Well.
In short, I have known people from everywhere, I have been everywhere, I have seen and heard everything. It was very strange, very strange. And I didnt do it on purpose, but just because the Lord willed it.
What experiences!
0 1961-05-02, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When Sri Aurobindo was here, the work was done in another way; there was such an impression of hovering above difficulties, of acting on them from above. It was so strong that even rebellious elements, even things which were not going well, even they were dominated from above and they could not manifest they stayed like that. And as they could not manifest, they faded quietly away.
I have seen people (people from outside) who were enemiesall their enmity was pacified, pacified, pacified. They were unable to do any harm, even when they wanted to. Everything was made innocuous in that way. And it was the same thing here in the Ashram; as always, people had wrong movements and wrong thoughts, but all this, too, was dominatedit was pacified, pacified.
0 1961-05-12, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
No, the mind must have gone on strike.
Its uninteresting.
0 1961-05-19, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This feeling was so warm, so intimate, so I dont know how to express it. At once so soft and so powerful and so. Oh, it was concrete! The whole atmosphere, the whole atmosphere became solidall, all had the taste of the Lord. I dont know how to make it clear. It was quite material, as if you had a mouthful of it, everything was full of itit was like that. In such a PHYSICAL way! Like. You might compare it to the most delicious taste you could ever haveit was the sense of touch and of tastevery, very material. It was like closing your hand on something solidsuch a warm, soft vibration, and SO strONG, so powerful, so concrete!
It is evidently proof of an evolution in this direction, within this whole cluster of cells, but.
--
But this body is still much too open to peoples mental formations, so it has to struggle against oh!
Thats my reproach to itwhy does it struggle? Why, suddenly, do I have a terrible fatigue falling over me and have to brace myself? The body, naturally, does only one thingit automatically repeats the mantra; then all becomes quiet, all is set in order. But why is this effort necessary? It should be done automatically [the sweeping away of bad vibrations]. Why is there a need to remember or to put up a struggle? Oh, a battle!
Its not the body complaining, it doesnt complain at all I am the one who complains! I think that its doing its best, but its thwarted by this type of (one can scarcely speak of a mind) this kind of mind-like activity in matter3 interfering. t is sordid. I havent yet been able to eliminate it completely.
0 1961-06-06, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
strangely, it happened after reading that first chapter of On Himself; while reading I felt a sort of malaise in my body, so slight that it was almost imperceptible, but still a malaise and it lasted through the night. Why? Nothing had changed in the consciousness.
More and more I have the impression ofwhat? How can it be explained? A question of vibrations in Matter. Its incomprehensible, completely eluding all mental law, all psychological law: a self-existent something.
--
There is such a strong impression of facing something which completely escapes comprehension, reason, intelligence, everything mental or intellectual (even the most elevated); its not that, its. And then truly, if you stand back from it and employ big words, you would say, All this (Mother tilts her hand to one side) is Truth, and all that (she tilts her hand to the other side) is Falsehood but its the SAME thing! In one case, you have the sense of being carriednot only the body but the entire world, all circumstancescarried, floating in a beatific light towards an eternal Realization; and in the other case, its like this (Mother makes a gesture of being burdened), deadening, heavy, sorrowfulexactly the same thing! Almost the same material vibrations.
And its so subtle, so incomprehensible theres a distinct impression of it TOTALLY eluding even the highest conscious will. What is it? What is it?
0 1961-06-17, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It was the same thing yesterday, the same Experience, only less strong and less continuous. But all these petty imageries dont interest me.
So I dont ask him anything.
0 1961-06-20, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yesterday, when I was in that immobility, suddenly I felt something obliging me to turn my head. I didnt turn my head, but the consciousness turned (gesture to the left), and then I saw myself standing there in the corridor (that kind of corridor separating the hall and Sri Aurobindos room) in my usual outdoor dress [Indian shirt and light trousers]. I was standing up very straight and holding a globe of light above my head and such a light! It was shining brighter than those strong electric bulbsdazzling. My own clothing seemed to be made of golden-pink light. I was standing very straight and carrying this globe (gesture above the head). When I saw that I said to myself, Now why on earth is he making me see this? And that was all. Nothing else happened except that. But near me there was a figure I didnt know, and it reminded me of Xs great guru,1 whom I had already seen once. There he was by my side, a tall figure, and he seemed to be the one who had tugged at me to make me see that vision.
It was a large globe. Although no distinct rays could be seen, it appeared to be projecting innumerable rays like flashes of lightning. It was sparkling all over.
0 1961-06-24, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But there are all sorts of cases. Take N.D., for example, a man who lived his whole life with the idea of serving Sri Aurobindohe died clasping my photo to his breast. This was a consecrated man, very conscious, with an unfailing dedication, and all the parts of his being well organized around the psychic.6 The day he was going to leave his body little M. was meditating next to the Samadhi when suddenly she had a vision: she saw all the flowers of the tree next to the Samadhi (those yellow flowers I have called Service) gathering themselves together to form a big bouquet, and rising, rising straight up. And in her vision these flowers were linked with the image of N.D. She ran quickly to their house andhe was dead.
I only knew about this vision later, but on my side, when he left, I saw his whole being gathered together, well united, thoroughly homogenous, in a great aspiration, and rising, rising without dispersing, without deviating, straight up to the frontier of what Sri Aurobindo has called the higher hemisphere, there where Sri Aurobindo in his supramental action presides over earth. And he melted into that light.
Some time before his heart attack he said to his children: the gown is old, it must be thrown away.
0 1961-07-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Unless one is ABSOLUTELY indifferent, truly one cannot last. This is quite clear. That is the way it must be (gesture of a becalmed sea). For suddenly you find yourself in a state which feels like it could last forevernothing matters, it goes on and on and on (Mother stretches out her arms, as if floating on a vast, infinite sea) like this, forever. I have been in this state very often, and you truly feel that. But the experience must not be in the head (that can be easily had); it has to be HERE (Mother slaps her knees), here in the body. When the body catches on to this, nothing is either disagreeable or agreeable to itit takes no pleasure, feels no disgust, no uneasiness, no anything. Its in a state, ah! (same gesture of a becalmed sea)
Its very interesting.
--
Sri Aurobindo also had to struggle against this because he too received a Christian education. And these Aphorisms are the result the floweringof the necessity to struggle against the subconscious formation which has produced such questions (Mother takes on a scandalized tone): How can God be weak? How can God be foolish? How. But there is nothing but God! He alone exists, there is nothing outside of Him. And whatever seems repugnant to us is something He no longer wishes to existHe is preparing the world so that this no longer manifests, so that the manifestation can pass beyond this state to something else. So of course we violently reject everything in us that is destined to leave the active manifestation. There is a movement of rejection.
Yet it is He. There is nothing other than He! This should be repeated from morning to night, from night to morning, because we forget it every minute.
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.
--
To be in a condition in which all is the Supreme, all is wonderful, all is marvelous, all is marvelous love, all is all is profound Joyan unchanging, immutable, ever-present condition. To live in That, and then to have this bodily substance contradict it through every possible stupiditylosing sight, losing strength, pains here, pains there, disorders, weaknesses, incapacities of every type. And at the SAME TIME, the response within this body, no matter what happens to it, is, O Lord, Your Grace is infinite. The contradiction is VERY disconcerting.
From experience, I know perfectly well that when one is satisfied with being a saint or a sage and constantly maintains the right attitude, all goes well the body doesnt get sick, and even if there are attacks it recovers very easily; all goes very well AS LONG AS THERE IS NOT THIS WILL TO TRANSFORM. All the difficulties arise in protest against the will to transform; while if one says, Very well, its all right, let things be as they are, I dont care, I am perfectly happy, in a blissful state, then the body begins to feel content!
--
Well, since I believerightly or wrongly, I dont know that the doctor has more experience than I, that from the therapeutic and biological standpoint he knows a bit more, I showed him the eye and asked, Can I read? Better not read until its finished, he replied, and told me to wash my eyes with glucose. (Its a useful piece of information for those with tired eyes: mix the glucoseliquid glucose, the kind that comes in ampoules for injectionwith something like the blue water we make here, half and half. Open the ample, put a third of it in the eye-cup, then add the blue water.) I have already tried it once and found that it gives a great deal of strength to the eyes. Tomorrow Im going to start doing it regularly. There you are.
What made Sri Aurobindo stop?
--
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.
(silence)
--
Some months ago, when this body had once again become a battlefield and was confronting all the obstacles, when it was suspended, asking itself whether it wasnt wondering intellectually, but asking for a kind of perception, wanting to touch something: it wondered which direction it was taking, which way things were going to tilt. And suddenly, in all the cells, there was this feeling (and I know where it came from): If we are dissolved out of this amalgam, if this assemblage is dissolved and can no longer go on, then we shall all go straight, straight as an arrow and it was like a marvelous flame straight to rejoin Sri Aurobindo in his supramental world, which is right here at our door. And there was such joy! Such enthusiasm, such joy flooded all the cells! They didnt care at all whether or not they would be dissociated. Oh, they felt, so what!
This was truly a decisive stage in the work of illuminating the body.
--
(The clock strikes.)
***
0 1961-07-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Sri Aurobindo always said that cruelty was one of the things most repugnant to him, but he explained it as the deformation of an intensity. We could almost call it the deformation of an intensity of love something not satisfied with half-measures, something driven to extremes (which is legitimate)its the deformation of the need for extremely strong sensations.
I have always known that cruelty, like sadism, is the need to cut through a thick layer of totally insensitive tamas1 by means of extremely violent sensationan extreme is needed if anything is to be felt through that tamas. I was always told, for example (in Japan it was strongly emphasized to me), that the people of the Far East are very tamasic physically. The Chinese in particular are said to be the remnants of a race that inhabited the moon before it froze over and forced them to seek refuge on earth (this is supposed to account for their round faces and the shape of their eyes!). Anyway (laughing), its a story people tell! But theyre extremely tamasic; their physical sensibility is almost nilappalling things are required to make them feel anything! And since they naturally presume that what applies to them applies to everyone, they are capable of appalling cruelty. Not all of them, of course! But this is their reputation. Have you read Mirbeaus book? (I believe thats his name.) I read it sixty years ago something on Chinese torture.
Yes, its well-known.
--
Certain things can be called sin, if you like, such as cruelty. Well, the only explanation I see for such things is the deformation of the need or taste for extremely strong sensations. I have noticed that cruel people experience an Ananda in their cruelty they find an intense joy in it. It is thereby legitimized. Only its in such a deformed state that its repugnant.
The idea that things are not in their place, mon petit, is something I understood even as a youngster, and it was eventually explained to me by Theon.
--
This state of consciousness4 probably has to become constant, but that would pose a problem: how could one then keep in contact with the world as it is in its deformation? Because I have noticed that when this state is very strong in me, very strong, so strong that it can withstand everything bombarding it from outside, people dont understand a thing I say, NOTHING! Therefore, it would seem to cut off a useful contact.
What would it be like, for instance, to have a small supramental creation as a nucleus of action and influence radiating upon earth (to limit it to the earth)? Is it possible? Its easy to conceive of a superhuman nucleusa creation of supermen, that is, of men who by virtue of evolution and transformation (in the true sense of the word) have succeeded in manifesting the supramental forces; yet since their origin is human, there is inevitably a contact; even if everything is transformed, even if their organs are transformed into centers of force, a sort of human coloration still remains. These are the beings who, according to tradition, will discover the secret of direct, supramental creation, bypassing the process of ordinary Nature. Then through them the true supramental beings will be born, who will necessarily have to live in a supramental world. But how would contact be made between these beings and the ordinary world? How to conceive of a transformation of nature sufficient to enable this supramental creation to take place on earth? I dont know.
--
But its rather delicate, like a very, very delicate clockwork, like a precision machine, and the least little thing throws everything out of gear. When someone has a bad reaction, for instance, or a bad thought, or an agitated vibration, or an anxietyanything of this nature is enough to dissolve all the harmony. For me, its translated straight-away into a malaise in my body, a very particular type of malaise; then disorder sets in, and the ordinary routine returns. So again I have to gather up, as it were, the Presence of the Lord and begin to infuse it everywhere. Sometimes it goes quickly, sometimes it takes longer; when the disorganization is a little more radical, it takes a little longer.
This eye [hemorrhage], for instance, resulted from such a disorder, a very dark force that someone allowed to enter, not deliberately, not knowingly, but through weakness and ignorance, always mingled, of course, with desire and ego and all the rest. (Without desire and ego, such things would find no access but desire and ego are very widespread.) At any rate, that was plainly the cause and I sensed it immediately. Sometimes when it comes, it creeps up like this (Mother brings her hand to her throat), a black shadow strangling you. Yet inwardly nothing is affected at all, to such an extent that if I didnt pay attention to the purely external reaction, I wouldnt know anything had happened (its the great Play); but externally the indication is immediate: half an hour later I had this eye hemorrhage. I was struggling against a wholly undesirable intrusion, and I knew italthough from an outer point of view, the cause was insignificant. Its not always the events we consider serious or important that produce the most harmful effectsfar from it. Sometimes its an altogether INSIGNIFICANT intrusion of falsehood, for some quite insignificant reasonwhat is commonly labeled a stupidity. This stems from the fact that the adverse forces are always lying in wait, ready to rush in at the least sign of weakness.
The incomprehension generated by doubt (the kind of doubt that always results from an egoistic movement) is very dangerous. Very dangerous. Its not even necessary to be in a psychic consciousness even for an enlightened vital consciousness, it produces no effect; but HERE, in this material swarm.
--
A fresh disorder to be straightened out.
Actually, we are very lazy.
0 1961-07-28, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There are two lines in the ancient traditions, two ways of explaining this. One says it is by the descent of what already exists in all its perfection that what is involved can be awakened to consciousness and evolution. Its like the old story: when what Sri Aurobindo calls the universal Mother or the Shakti (or Sachchidananda1) realized what had happened in Matter (that is, in what had created Matter) and that this involution had led to a state of Inconscience, total unconsciousness, the ancient lore says that at once the divine Love descended straight from the Lord into Matter and began to awaken what was involved there.
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.
--
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?
--
Reclining on the waves silken folds, I descend; rocked from one undulating wave to another in a gentle rhythm, I am borne straight towards the west. The deeper I go, the more luminous the water becomes, great silvery currents coursing through it.
Cradled from wave to wave, for a long while I descend deeper, ever deeper.
All at once, as I gaze above me, I glimpse something roseate; I draw nearer and discern what appears to be a shrub, as large as a tree, held fast to a blue reef. The denizens of the waters glide to and fro, myriad and diverse. Now I find myself standing upon fine, shining sand. I gaze about me in wonder. There are mountains and valleys, fantastic forests, strange flowers that could as well be animals, and fish that might be flowersno separation, no gap is there between stationary beings and mobile. Colors everywhere, brilliant and shimmering, or subdued, but always harmonious and refined. I walk upon the golden sands and contemplate all this beauty bathed in a soft, pale blue radiance, tiny, luminous spheres of red, green and gold circulating through it.
How marvelous are the depths of the sea! Everywhere the presence of the One in whom all harmonies reside is felt!
Ever westward I advance, without weariness or hesitation. Spectacle succeeds spectacle in incredible variety; here upon a rock of lapis lazuli stretch fine and delicate seaweed like long blond or violet tresses; here great, rose-hued fortress walls, all streaked with silver; here flowers seem chiseled from enormous diamonds; here goblets, as beautiful as if carved by the most gifted sculptor, are filled with what appear to be droplets of emerald, alternately vibrant with light and shadow.
Presently I find myself between two rock walls of sapphire blue, upon a path flecked with silver; and the water becomes ever purer and more luminous.
--
Standing there between two iridescent pillars is a very tall figure; his face, framed in short blond curls, is that of a very young man; his eyes are sea-green; he is clad in a pale blue tunic, and like wings upon his shoulders are great, snow-white fins. Beholding me, he steps aside against a pillar to let me pass. Scarcely have I crossed the threshold when an exquisite melody strikes my ears. The waters are all iridescent here, the ground aglow with glossy pearls; the portico and the vault, hung gracefully with stalactites, are opaline; delectable perfumes hover everywhere; galleries, niches and alcoves open out on all sides; but directly ahead of me I perceive a great light and towards it I turn my steps. There are great rays of gold, silver, sapphire, emerald and ruby, radiating outward in all directions, born from a center too distant for me to discern; to this center I feel drawn by a powerful attraction.
Now I see that these rays emanate from a recumbent oval of white light encircled by a superb rainbow, and I sense that the one whom the light hides from my view is plunged into a profound repose. For long I remain at the outer edge of the rainbow, trying to pierce through the light and see the one who is sleeping encircled by such splendor. Unable to discern anything, I enter the rainbow, and thence into the white and shining oval. Here I see a marvelous being: stretched on what seems to be a mass of white eiderdown, his supple body, of incomparable beauty, is garbed in a long, white robe. His head rests on his folded arm, but of that I can see only his long hair, the hue of ripened wheat, flowing over his shoulders. A great and gentle emotion sweeps through me at this magnificent spectacle, and a deep reverence as well.
Has the sleeper sensed my presence? For now he awakens and rises in all his grace and beauty. He turns towards me and his eyes meet mine, mauve and luminous eyes with a gentle, an infinitely tender expression. Wordlessly he bids me a sublime welcome and my whole being joyously responds. Taking my hand, he leads me to the couch he has just left. I stretch out on this downy whiteness, and his harmonious visage bends over me; a sweet current of force enters wholly into me, invigorating, revitalizing each cell.
Then, wreathed by the splendid colors of the rainbow, enveloped by lulling melodies and exquisite perfumes, beneath his gaze so powerful, so tender, I drift into a beatific repose. And during my sleep I learn many beautiful and useful things.
0 1961-08-05, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
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.
--
The subtle physical is right here (gesture on the surface of the skin). Some people are sensitive in the subtle physical; you move your hand near them and they feel it immediately. Others dont even noticeit depends on the subtle physicals sensitivity. And the circumconscient surrounds it like an envelope. If there are no tears in it, this envelope is a magnificent protection.4 And its not dependent on any spiritual or intellectual rationale, but on a harmony with Nature and life, a kind of stability in the material being. People with strong envelopes are almost always in good health and succeed in what they do. It isnt something mentalwhen they do a work it comes out nicely, if they want to meet someone, they meet him. Things of this nature.
The circumconscient must be that.
--
Its strange. I say strange because its due to her that I took birth in this body, that it was chosen. When she was very young she had a great aspiration. She was exactly twenty years older than 1; she was twenty when I was born and I was her third child. The first was a son who died in Turkey when he was two months old, I thinkthey vaccinated him against smallpox and poisoned him, (laughing) god knows what it means! He died of convulsions. Next was my brother who was born in Egypt, at Alexandria, and then me, born in Paris when she was exactly twenty years old. At that time (especially since the death of her first child) she had a kind of GREAT aspiration in her: her children had to be the best in the world. It wasnt an ambition, I dont know what it was. And what a will she had! MY mother had a formidable will, like an iron bar, utterly impervious to all outside influence. Once she had made up her mind, it was made up; even if someone had been dying before her eyes, she wouldnt have budged! And she decided: My children will be the best in the world.
One thing she did have was a sense of progress; she felt that the world was progressing and we had to be better than anything that had come before and that was sufficient.
Its strange, but that was sufficient.
Did I tell you what happened to my brother? No? My brother was a terribly serious boy, and frightfully studiousoh, it was awful! But he also had a very strong character, a strong will, and there was something interesting about him. When he was studying to enter the Polytechnique, I studied with himit interested me. We were very intimate (there were only eighteen months between us). He was quite violent, but with an extraordinary strength of character. He almost killed me three times,9 but when my mother told him, Next time, you will kill her, he resolved that it wouldnt happen again and it never did. But what I wanted to tell you is that one day when he was eighteen, just before the Polytechnique exams, as he was crossing the Seine (I think it was the Pont des Arts), suddenly in the middle of the bridge he felt something descend into him with such force that he became immobilized, petrified; then, although he didnt exactly hear a voice, a very clear message came to him: If you want, you can become a godit was translated like that in his consciousness. He told me that it took hold of him entirely, immobilized hima formidable and extremely luminous power: If you want, you can become a god. Then, in the thick of the experience itself, he replied, No, I want to serve humanity. And it was gone. Of course, he took great care to say nothing to my mother, but we were intimate enough for him to tell me about it. I told him, Well (laughing), what an idiot you are!
Thats the story.
--
There was another reason. My father was wonderfully healthy and strongwell-balanced. He wasnt very tall, but stocky. He did all his studies in Au stria (at that time French was widely spoken in Au stria, but he knew German, he knew English, Italian, Turkish), and there he had learned to ride horses in an extraordinary manner: he was so strong that he could bring a horse to the ground simply by pressing his knees. He could break anything at all with a blow of his fist, even one of those big silver five-franc pieces they had in those daysone blow and it was broken in two. Curiously enough, he looked Russian. I dont know why. They used to call him Barine. What an equilibriuman extraordinary physical poise! And not only did this man know all those languages, but I never saw such a brain for arithmetic. Never. He made a game of calculationsnot the slightest effortcalculations with hundreds of digits! And on top of it, he loved birds. He had a room to himself in our apartment (because my mother could never much tolerate him), he had his separate room, and in it he kept a big cage full of canaries! During the day he would close the windows and let all the canaries loose.
And could he tell stories! I think he read every novel available, all the stories he could findextraordinary adventure stories, for he loved adventures. When we were kids he used to let us come into his room very early in the morning and, while still sitting in bed, tell us stories from the books he had read but he told them as if they were his own, as if hed had extraordinary adventures with outlaws, with wild animals. Every story he picked up he told as his own. We enjoyed it tremendously!
--
On another occasion, Mother told Sujata more about these three times her brother almost killed her: 'One day we were playing croquet, and either because he got beaten or for some other reason, he flew into a rage and struck me hard with his Mallet; fortunately I escaped with only a slight scratch. Another time, we were sitting in a room and he threw a big chair towards me I ducked just in time and the chair passed over my head. A third time, as we were descending from a carriage, he pushed me down under it; luckily the horse didn't move.'
***
0 1961-08-11, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Oh no, nothing doing! Whats marvelous is that I havent a single idea in my headnothing. Not idea; I never have many of them! (laughing) No words, mon petit, nothing. I have two of T.s notebooks here I read them, said Ah!, and put them away. Theyve already stayed there for two weeks or I dont know how long. NOTHING, completely blank. But on the lowest plane, some interesting things: suddenly (not from time to time, but all the time, or almost all the time), all the bodys cells suddenly seem to participate in a movement of force, a sort of circular movement containing all the vibrationsphysical vibrationsright from the most material sensation (Mother touches the skin of her hands) to all the feelings of strength, power and comprehension (especially from an active standpoint, the standpoint of actions, movements, influences). Its not at all limited to the body; its like that, like that, like that (Mother makes a gesture stretching to infinity). It has neither beginning nor end. The body itself is starting to feel how Energy behaves.
Its very interesting.
--
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.
0 1961-08-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It was rather interesting in that I wasnt expecting it; it came suddenly when I was walking in my room in the evening the feeling not positively that the body no longer existed, since it kept walking, but that there was no more center. I cant put it any other waythere was no more center. There was only one Center. It was all, all the same thing, and from the absolutely material standpoint, the standpoint of sensationsmaterial sensations, exchanges, vibrationseverything. At one point it even became so strong that something laughed and said, Ah! So thats how to no longer exist!
It was very interesting. However, the experience could not last because after a while I wasnt alone anymore. Actually, it was dinner time. Not that I couldnt eat in that stateit makes no difference (I can eat very easily through others, for instance: it has happened quite frequently that someone else eats and I am satisfied; theres no need to put anything inside, its very convenient! These are experiments.) But this was it was the almost total annihilation of the center. It didnt last because of the people (four, as always) bringing in dinner, serving the plates, etc.their concentration weakened the experience: it faded. The feeling of Im eating returned a littlenot I! That notion disappeared a long time ago! Not my true Imy true I has been settled up above for a very long time, and it doesnt move from there. But this body is eating; this body which has been put at the disposal of the work is eating (it didnt come in so many words and sentences, but still!). In short, the experience faded with the sensation of eating and I was unable to know its effect.
0 1961-09-10, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes, in comparison with Sri Aurobindos contact (the vibration that comes from him, if you like), it always seems meager, always flat. Even the most you know, spiritual experiences that have been described, experiences that others have hadwell, even experiences that are stronger, clearer, more powerful, more complete than any of those seem when you make contact with Sri Aurobindo, oh, how thin they all seem, so thin!
Besides, as a means of expression. writing is hard labor, you know. Its not pleasant, its not like composing music or painting.
--
strangely enough, some years earlier, when Satprem was writing L'Orpailleur, Sujata had a vision in which she saw him typing, and from the typewriter came, not typewritten lines, but music!
***
0 1961-09-16, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You know, we are surrounded by complications, but there is always a place where it all opens out simple and straightthis is a fact of my experience. You go around in circles, seeking, working at it, and you feel stuck; then something in the inner attitude gives way, and all of a sudden it opens outquite simply.
I have had this experience very often. So I have asked Sri Aurobindo to give it to you.
--
Its curious, all the complications seemed to be there (Mother touches her temples), very complicated and very difficult to adjust; and then when he said, Be simplehow strangeit was like a light coming from his eyes, as if one had suddenly emerged into a garden of light.
It gave that impressionlike a garden bathed in light.
--
I have to face a similar difficulty, mind you, although its on another level. There is such a tremendous accumulation of people to see, things to do, questions to be resolvedeverything. The accumulation is So TIGHTLY packedso compact! Too compact for the life for the hours, the time, the forcesof an ordinary body. Yet behind it all, there is a sort of constant active immobility, in the sense that the consciousness has the impression of being immobile, of being borne along on the stream of progress and evolution. But this immobility. If I should try to do what I have to do, you know, everything I have to do, well it becomes impossible, things clog up, it gets painful. And here his answer is the same: Be simple, be simple.
This morning when I was walking, the program of the day and the work ahead of me was so formidable that I felt it to be impossible. And yet simultaneously there was this immobile inner POSITION in me; as soon as I stop my movement of formation and action, it becomes like a dance of joy: all the cells vibrating (there is a sort of vivacity, and an extraordinary music), all the cells vibrant with the joy of the Presence the divine Presence. But when I see the outside world entering and attacking, well this joy doesnt exactly disappear, but it retreats. And the result is that I always feel like sitting down and keeping stillwhen I can do that it is marvelous. But of course, all the suggestions from outside come in: suggestions of helplessness and old age, of wear and tear, of diminishing power, all thatand I know positively that its false. But calm in the body is indispensable. Well, for me also Sri Aurobindos answer is always the same: Be simple, be simple, very simple.
--
I am still unable to write a line, except when someone needs a reply; then it comes straight-away, without reflecting, a few lines thats all right. But to read a question and then answer, oh! Its not lassitude, its a refusal to budge.
Yes, but you are besieged by so many people who really dont
0 1961-09-23, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
What struck me is that he never wanted to write anything else. To write those articles for the Bulletin1 was really a heavy sacrifice for him. He had said he would complete certain parts of The Synthesis of Yoga,2 but when he was asked to do so, he replied, No, I dont want to go down to that mental level!
Savitri comes from somewhere else altogether.
0 1961-09-30, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This is the complete negation of bluff. I find it very beautiful. When I saw this flower, it struck me as something very profound, very calmabsolutely sure, immobile. I dont know why, but the longer I looked at it, the more it gave that impression and when I was asked its significance, I said, Unostentatious Certitude. Its what one might call a superlative good-taste in the realm of spiritual experience: something with greater content than it expresses.
***
--
I had a clear vision of the two kinds of opposites in nature (not only in nature but in life) which almost everyone carries within himself: one is the possibility of realization, the other is the path chosen to attain it. There is always (its probably inevitable) the stormy path of struggle, and then there is the sunlit path. After much study and observation, I have had a sort of spiritual ambition (if it can be called that) to bring to the world a sunlit path, to eliminate the necessity for struggle and suffering: something that aspires to replace this present phase of universal evolution with a less painful phase.
It greatly interested me when I read your letter. I was looking at why you have so many difficulties; twice in your note you wrote that it [writing] is a suffering. You have very often written this word, very often spoken it, and it seems dominant in one aspect of your beingwhile in the other is the glory of a supreme joy, the very stuff of the future realization.
0 1961-10-02, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This concentration on finding the mechanism sprang from the fact that there were disorders in the body which were vanishing and then reappearingpermanent cure seemed impossible. So I told myself, Somewhere, probably in the subconscient, something must be justifying their presence. Then, after concentrating and searching and concentrating some more, suddenly a memory rose up from the subconscient (a memory which is a kind of continued existence under a certain form), the memory of a particular set of movements and actions (not physical movements, but attitudes) that go back many years and had never attracted my attention. None of it had ever been included in the general clearing-out because, like so many other things, it all seemed to be due to normal, ongoing circumstances. But thats just where I saw (what to call it?) the hue, the taint of Falsehood. Its very subtle. These are very subtle things. But suddenly, oh! It caught hold of me and created a revolution in the whole being. All those vibrations were cast up and transformedan extraordinary thing. It stirred up much more commotion and revolution than I had ever expected. And ah! A relief. Something was clarified, bringing a brilliant, new comprehension, and then quite interesting physical results. Before this, I was really feeling rather poorly, extremely tired, with the impression of a decline into decrepituderelatively speaking! (It was in a very superficial part of the being, but it was enough to be disagreeable.) And all of itpfft! Gone in a single stroke.
And that very day, I had this experience with the possessed personit all came together. And then afterwards, a sort of mastery over the problem and the impression of a breakthroughan opening up of the WAY to change, which is this enlargement. First, the movement of generosity (not that shriveling movement, but its exact opposite the movement of expansion), and from there you go on to universality, and from universality to Totality.
--
Then there is a doctor, V., who comes here twice a year to give a check-up to all who take part in the physical education program and all the children. He is an extremely honest and sincere man who believes in the mission of medical science. Each time he comes, I write something in his diary on the day of his departure (his whole diary is full of things Ive written they usually appear in the Bulletin or somewhere). On that very same day I learned that V. was leaving, and it suddenly came to meso clearly! Falsehood in the body that sort of juxtaposition of contraries, the inversion of the Vibration (only it doesnt really invertits a curious phenomenon: the vibration remains what it is but its received inverted)this falsehood in the body is a falsehood in the CONSCIOUSNESS. The falsity of the consciousness naturally has material consequences and thats what illness is! I immediately made an experiment on my body to see if this held, if it actually works that way. And I realized that its true! When you are open and in contact with the Divine, the Vibration gives you strength, energy; and if you are quiet enough, it fills you with great joyand all of this in the cells of the body. You fall back into the ordinary consciousness and straightaway, without anything changing, the SAME thing, the SAME vibration coming from the SAME source turns into a pain, a malaise, a feeling of uncertainty, instability and decrepitude. To be sure of this, I repeated the experiment three or four times, and it was absolutely automatic, like the operation of a chemical formula: same conditions, same results.
This interested me greatly.
0 1961-10-15, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You have brought me a very strange experience.
The first time you read your manuscript, I called Sri Aurobindo to hear it. He was in the subtle physical and he listened. Yesterday when I sat down to listen, I thought, It would be much better if he entered my brain because that way. In fact, I called him; he entered my brain. It took some time; all through the beginning of the reading we were still two; then he came in more and more, more and more, more and more. My headmy physical headseemed to be swelling up! There was no longer space for anyone but him. It was the light that dark blue light of mental power (but true mental power) in the physical the tantrics use it, you always see it with Xs action, but Ive never seen it this way before! My head was full, you knowfull, full, not an atom of space to spare I could feel it swelling up!
--
Afterwards, I tried to understand (I tried to identify enough to be able to understand) and I got the feeling that he finds it will be much more powerful if you dont follow normal logical lines (Im elaborating a bitit wasnt quite like this); rather, if you like, it is better to be prophetic than didacticfling abroad the ideas, ploff! Then let people do what they can with them. I felt he was viewing this not only from the essential standpoint, but from the standpoint of the public, and he wanted to ensure that it doesnt become tiresomeat all costs, dont let it be tiresome. It can be bewildering, but not tiresome. Let them be hurled right into things strange and unknown things, perhaps, but. For instance (this is my own style, you can take it for what its worth), it would be better for people to say, Hes a madman, than to say, Hes a boring sermonizer. And all this was coming with his sense of humor, the way he has of saying, for example, that folly is closer to the Divine than reason!
I dont know, I didnt hear the beginning, but certainly everything dealing with physical events [of Sri Aurobindos life] will be expressed in a very reasonable and normal style so that there will be no danger of people saying, Hes a half-cracked visionary! I dont know, the first part of what you read to me was so good! Gusts of golden light kept coming. Perhaps you wanted to explain too much. You dont know what happened?
0 1961-10-30, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its rather strange.
He is there and the atmosphere is full of a sort of concentration of force, and there are these two things: This is how legends come into being how legends begin. The beginning of the legend. I hear this. And there is also a kind of analogy to the old stories of Buddha, of Christ. Its strange.
I seemed to be looking back into the present from some thousands of years ahead (its no longer now, but as if I were propelled somewhere several thousand years ahead, looking backwards) and its the beginning of the legend.
--
A strange impression.
And Sri Aurobindo is ever the same.
--
When I began to see this yesterday, I said, Ah, weve struck gold! I dont even know why, but it was the way you presented the thing, the way you explained that the most unconscious and the most conscious meet.1 That was the the thread or the key, I dont know. Then I followed the thread and came to this experience. And its still going on today.
I mean that theres a feeling of being on the wrong track: ordinarily, when seeking the Supermind, one looks for it on the heights. But thats not it! Thats not it. And one always imagines a sort of subtilization, something etherealized, but its not that.
--
All is reconciled. The Rishi is the son of two mothers: son of Aditi, the luminous cow, Mother of infinite Light, creatrix of the worlds; and son as well of Diti, the black cow, Mother of the tenebrous infinite and divided existence for when Diti at last reaches the end of her apparent Night, she gives us divine birth and the milk of heaven. All is fulfilled, The Rishi sets flowing in one movement human strengths and things divine (IX.70.3), he has realized the universal in the individual, become the Infinite in the finite: Then shall thy humanity become as if the workings of these gods; it is as if the visible heaven of light were founded in thee (V.66.2). Far from spurning the earth, he prays: O Godhead, guard for us the Infinite and lavish the finite(IV.2.11).
The voyage draws to its close. Agni has recovered its solar totality, its two concealed extremities. The inviolable work is fulfilled. For Agni is the place where high meets lowand in truth, there is no longer high nor low, but a single Sun everywhere: O Flame, thou goest to the ocean of Heaven, towards the gods; thou makest to meet together the godheads of the planes, the waters that are in the realm of light above the sun and the waters that abide below (III.22.3). O Fire O universal Godhead, thou art the navel-knot of the earths and their inhabitants; all men born thou controllest and supportest like a pillar (I.59.1). O Flame, thou foundest the mortal in a supreme immortality thou createst divine bliss and human joy (I.31.7). For the worlds heart is Joy, Joy dwells in the depths of all things, the well of honey covered by the rock (II.24.4).
0 1961-11-05, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
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.
--
And you understand, it wasnt the struggle of a man against a god, but the struggle of a god against a god. And when he was like that, he clearly had a formidable, formidable Power! He forced everybody to obey him but it was Falsehood. And he preached an ascetic spirituality,7 you cant imagine! He was incredibly convincing, but he couldnt see a petticoat without. Boys, girls, nothing got by him!
Fantastic.8
0 1961-11-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When I returned from Japan and we began to work together, Sri Aurobindo had already brought the supramental light into the mental world and was trying to transform the Mind. Its strange, he said to me, its an endless work! Nothing seems to get doneeverything is done and then constantly has to be done all over again. Then I gave him my personal impression, which went back to the old days with Theon: It will be like that until we touch bottom. So instead of continuing to work in the Mind, both of us (I was the one who went through the experience how to put it? practically, objectively; he experienced it only in his consciousness, not in the body but my body has always participated), both of us descended almost immediately (it was done in a day or two) from the Mind into the Vital, and so on quite rapidly, leaving the Mind as it was, fully in the light but not permanently transformed.
Then a strange thing happened. When we were in the Vital, my body suddenly became young again, as it had been when I was eighteen years old! There was a young man named Pearson, a disciple of Tagore, who had lived with me in Japan for four years; he returned to India, and when he came to see me in Pondicherry, he was stupefied.4 What has happened to you! he exclaimed. He hardly recognized me. During that same period (it didnt last very long, only a few months), I received some old photographs from France and Sri Aurobindo saw one of me at the age of eighteen. There! he said, Thats how you are now! I wore my hair differently, but otherwise I was eighteen all over again.
This lasted for a few months. Then we descended into the Physical and all the trouble began.5 But we didnt stay in the Physical, we descended into the Subconscient and from the Subconscient to the Inconscient. That was how we worked. And it was only when I descended into the Inconscient that I found the Divine Presence there, in the midst of Darkness.
--
After reading your letter, I had a very strong feeling that you put the problem like that because you were considering it from a mental plane, which is the only plane where it exists; if you go beyond, there are no more oppositions or problems. These things are subtle, you know, and as soon as you try to formulate them, they elude youformulation deforms.
What I mean is that its not necessarily in trance, in another world, that one gets the supramental consciousness.
--
Naturally, its preferable to be in a comfortable position (its a question of security). If you venture to do these kinds of things standing up, for instance, as I have seen them done, its dangerous. But if one is quietly stretched out, there is no need for trance.
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?
--
We aren't sure, but this may refer to the experience of July 12, 1960, or to that of November 5, 1958, 'the almighty spring' (in fact, they are probably one and the same experience) which gave rise to the 1959 New Year Message: 'At the very bottom of the Inconscient, most hard and rigid and narrow and stifling, I struck upon an almighty spring that cast me up forthwith into a formless, limitless Vast, vibrating with the seeds of a new world.'
Seconds that could last for half an hour!
0 1961-11-12, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But you see, Id been struggling for four or five days with no results. Well, this morning. I was angry yesterday, angry with you
(Unperturbed) Yes.
--
I have the feeling. You know, Sri Aurobindo is trying to make me understand something, and it gives me a very strong feeling that you are creating unnecessary difficulties for yourself, and if if only you could let go of something (I dont know what), then suddenly it would be: ah! Its done, its all done, there it is!
Maybe in a few minutesin any case not more than a few daysit would be finished. And ORIGINAL. The main impression is that it would be something new, original, unexpected, and thats just whats needed: something unexpected, unlike anything ever done before. Something sudden. At the risk of being a bit bewildering that doesnt matter! It doesnt matter. With all those pictures it will always be accessible to everyone. Especially each time you express this fatigue, this difficulty, what Sri Aurobindo seems to be saying comes back to me: But of course! He is banging up against something that shouldnt even be there!
0 1961-11-16a, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But worknot a stroke. Ah, yes, I am translating The Synthesis of Yoga and it seems much easier. I go slower, a certain tension has disappeared, and the meaning is far clearer than usual. In other words, Im interiorized there you have it.
But its deplorable from an external viewpoint! Unread letters are piling up; I dont reply to people, I forget everything I dont even try to remember. From an external point of view, Im pretty worthless.
0 1961-12-16, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The English version is stronger than the French. Thats because it first came in English and then I made a patch-up job in French!
(silence)
--
Right now its wide open and flowing (gesture of waves streaming in).
And its saying something all the while.
0 1961-12-20, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Dear Sir I must begin by telling you that although this text is an excellent essay, it is not, in its present form, a book for the Spiritual Masters series. Let us enumerate the reasons for this. First of all, the general impression is of an AB strACT text. I can straight-away imagine your reaction to this and I dread misunderstandings! But putting myself in the readers place, since, once again, it does involve a collection intended for a wide public that we are beginning to know well, I can assure you that this public will not be able to follow page after page of reflections upon what one is bound to call a philosophical and spiritual system. Obviously this impression is caused primarily by the fact that you have begun with twenty-one pages where the reader is assumed to already know of Sri Aurobindos historical existence and the content of the Vedas and the Upanishads, plus I dont know how many other notions of rite, truth, divinity, wisdom, etc., etc. In my view, and the solution is going to appear cruel to you, for you certainly value these twenty-one pages [on the Secret of the Veda], they should purely and simply be deleted, for everything you say there, which is very rich in meaning, can only become clear when one has read what follows. There are many books in which readers can be asked to make the effort entailed in not understanding the beginning until they have read the end: but not books of popular culture. One could envisage an introduction of three or four pages to situate the spiritual climate and cultural world in which Sri Aurobindos thought has taken place, provided, however, that it is sufficiently descriptive, and not a pre-synthesis of everything to be expounded upon in what follows. In a general way you are going to smile, finding me quite Cartesian! But the readership we address is more or less permeated by a widespread Cartesianism, and you can help them, if you like, to reverse their methodology, but on the condition that you make yourself understood right from the start. Generally, you dont make enough use of analysis and, even before analysis, of a description of the realities being analyzed. That is why the sections of pure philosophical analysis seem much too long to us, and, even apart from the ab stract character of the chapter on evolution (which should certainly be shorter), one feels at a positive standstill! After having waited patiently, and sometimes impatiently, for some light to be thrown on Sri Aurobindos own experience, one reads with genuine amazement that one can draw on energies from above instead of drawing on them from the material nature around oneself, or from an animal sleep, or that one can modify his sleep and render it conscious master illnesses before they enter the body. All of that in less than a page; and you conclude that the spirit that was the slave of matter becomes again the master of evolution. But how Sri Aurobindo was led to think this, the experiences that permitted him to verify it, those that permit other men to consider the method transmittable, the difficulties, the obstacles, the realizationsdoesnt this constitute the essence of what must be said to make the reader understand? Once again, it is the question of a pedagogy intimately tied in with the spirit of the collection. Let me add as well that I always find it deplorable when a thought is not expressed purely for its own sake, but is accompanied by an aggressive irony towards concepts which the author does not share. This is pointless and harms the ideas being presented, all the more so because they are expressed in contrast with caricatured notions: the allusions you make to such concepts as you think yourself capable of evoking the soul, creation, virtue, sin, salvationwould only hold some interest if the reader could find those very concepts within himself. But, as they are caricatured by your pen, the reader is given the impression of an all too easily obtained contrast between certain ideas admired and others despised. Whereas it would be far more to the point if they corresponded to something real in the religious consciousness of the West. I have too much esteem for you and the spiritual world in which you live to avoid saying this through fear of upsetting you.
Amen.
--
Then when Richard came here he met Sri Aurobindo (he was haunted by the idea of meeting the Master, the Guru, the Great Teacher). Sri Aurobindo was in hiding, seeing no one, but when Richard insisted, he met him, and Richard returned with a photograph. It was one of those early photos, with nothing in it. It was empty, the remnants of the political man, not at all resembling what I had seen I didnt recognize him. Its strange, I said to myself, thats not it (for I saw only his external appearance, there was no inner contact). But still, I was curious to meet him. At any rate, I cant say that when I saw this photograph I felt, Hes the one! Not at all. He impressed me as being a very interesting man, but no more.
I came here. But something in me wanted to meet Sri Aurobindo all alone the first time. Richard went to him in the morning and I had an appointment for the afternoon. He was living in the house thats now part of the second dormitory, the old Guest House.5 I climbed up the stairway and he was standing there, waiting for me at the top of the stairs. EXACTLY my vision! Dressed the same way, in the same position, in profile, his head held high. He turned his head towards me and I saw in his eyes that it was He. The two things clicked (gesture of instantaneous shock), the inner experience immediately became one with the outer experience and there was a fusion the decisive shock.
--
I dont know, Im putting it poorly, but this experience was concrete to the point of being physical. It happened in a Japanese country-house where we were living, near a lake. There was a whole series of circumstances, events, all kinds of thingsa long, long story, like a novel. But one day I was alone in meditation (I have never had very profound meditations, only concentrations of consciousness Mother makes an abrupt gesture showing a sudden ingathering of the entire being); and I was seeing. You know that I had taken on the conversion of the Lord of Falsehood: I tried to do it through an emanation incarnated in a physical being [Richard]7, and the greatest effort was made during those four years in Japan. The four years were coming to an end with an absolute inner certainty that there was nothing to be done that it was impossible, impossible to do it this way. There was nothing to be done. And I was intensely concentrated, asking the Lord, Well, I made You a vow to do this, I had said, Even if its necessary to descend into hell, I will descend into hell to do it. Now tell me, what must I do?The Power was plainly there: suddenly everything in me became still; the whole external being was completely immobilized and I had a vision of the Supreme more beautiful than that of the Gita. A vision of the Supreme.8 And this vision literally gathered me into its arms; it turned towards the West, towards India, and offered meand there at the other end I saw Sri Aurobindo. It was I felt it physically. I saw, sawmy eyes were closed but I saw (twice I have had this vision of the Supremeonce here, much later but this was the first time) ineffable. It was as if this Immensity had reduced itself to a rather gigantic Being who lifted me up like a wisp of straw and offered me. Not a word, nothing else, only that.
Then everything vanished.
0 1961-12-23, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes, I felt you were going through a strange period.
Now I know the outcome, and thats what I didnt see before. But it will take time. For the moment it seems. You know, it wasnt pleasant: everything appears useless, impossible in that condition. But thats very good! (Mother laughs) Very good.
--
Because there comes a time when one perceives the entire universe in such a total and comprehensive way that, in truth, it is impossible to remove anything from it without disturbing everything. And going a couple of steps further, one knows for certain that things which shock us as contradictions of the Divine are simply things out of place. Each thing must be exactly in its place, and whats more, be supple enough, plastic enough, to admit into a harmonious, progressive organization all the new elements constantly being added to the manifest universe. The universe is in a perpetual movement of internal reorganization, and at the same time its growing: its becoming more and more complex, more and more complete, more and more integralindefinitely. And as the new elements manifest, the whole reorganization must be built on a new basis, and thus there isnt a second when ALL is not in perpetual movement. And when the movement is in accord with the divine order, its harmonious, so perfectly harmonious that its almost imperceptible. Now, if you descend from this consciousness towards a more external consciousness, you begin naturally to have a very precise feeling of what helps you attain the true consciousness and what bars the way or pulls you backwards or even fights against your progress. And so the perspective changes and you are obliged to say: this is divine or a help towards the Divine; and that goes against the Divine, its the Divines enemy. But this is a pragmatic standpoint, geared to action, to movement in material lifebecause you havent yet attained the consciousness surpassing all that; because you havent reached that inner perfection where you no longer have to fight, since you have gone beyond the field or the time or the utility of struggle. But before reaching that state in your consciousness and action, there is necessarily struggle; and if there is struggle, there is choice; and to choose, you need discrimination.
(Mother remains silent)
--
And in the experience there was no difference between my physical and my inner being (actually, its that way more and more for me); even physically, externally, there was a kind of love full of adoration, and so spontaneousnot even any sense of wonder! And there was such a formidable Power in it, formidable from the standpoint of the entire earth. It lasted one hour. After an hour, the experience slowly began to fade (it had to fade for purely practical reasons). But it left me so confident of a radical changenot a total change, for it wasnt permanent but so radical that even outwardly, way down below in me, something was saying, Ah, how will the meditations with X be now? I caught Myself not thinking, not myself: someone thought like that, somewhere way down below. This pulled me out of the experience and I wondered, Thats strange, whos thinking like that? It was one of the personalities4 (in terms of work, its the one that gives each action its proper place), someone way down below, spontaneously feeling: But thats going to change the meditations! What will they be like now? When I returned and began to look at things with the usual discernment, I told myself that perhaps there actually will be a change.
But truly, EVERYTHING was changed at that moment: something was achieved. It was the perception of Power the Power that comes from Love (what Love is to the Supreme Consciousness, which has nothing to do with what we usually mean by the word love). And it was it was simple! None of those complications resulting from thought, intellect, understandingall that was gone, all gone. A formidable Power! And it made me understand one thing, that the state I had been put in (by the Lord of Yoga, in fact) was for obtaining the particular power that comes through an identity with all material things, a power possessed by certain personsnot always yogis, certain mediums, for instance. I saw it with Madame Theon: she would will a thing to come to her instead of going to the thing herself; instead of going to get her sandals when she wanted them, she made the sandals come to her. She did this through a capacity to radiate her mattershe exercised a will over her matterher central will acted upon matter anywhere, since she WAS THERE. With her, then, I saw this power in a methodical, organized way, not as something accidental or spasmodic (as it is with mediums), but as an organization of Matter. And so I began to understand: With this comes the power to put each thing in its place! provided one is universal enough.
0 1962-01-09, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its strange, these attacks bizarre; they seem to have nothing to do with my state of health.
Its a sort of decentralization. You see, to form a body all the cells are concentrated by a kind of centripetal force that binds them together. Well, now its just the opposite! A kind of centrifugal force seems to be dispersing them. When it gets a bit too much I go out of my body; outwardly I seem to faint but I dont faint, I remain fully conscious. So obviously this creates a sort of bizarre disorganization.
And theres a strange thing about it, which so far I havent figured out: it always happens (it has already happened three times, and thats a lot for me) when X1 comes, the night before he arrives.
Yes.
--
Someone happened to be there last time so I didnt fall and hurt myself. But this time I was alone in my bathroom and actually I was going through a phenomenon of consciousness in which I was spreading over the worldspreading PHYSICALLY, thats the strange thing! The sensation is in the CELLS. There was a movement of diffusion in me, becoming more and more rapid and intense, and then suddenly I found myself on the floor.
Theres a seat in my bathroom upstairs, and between the seat and the wall are two small tables (not tables, but small stools where a few things are kept), and a porcelain towel bar (luckily, everything has rounded corners). I found myself wedged in between the seat and the two small tables (a space about this wide!). And all that matter the material substance of the table and the objects on the table and the porcelain seatit all seemed so unreceptive! It doesnt give way like it should for things to be comfortable; but it wasnt that my body was uncomfortable there was no body! The whole set-up was bizarre, everything was in a bizarre and absurd situation which I couldnt really understand, couldnt make out: Whats this big lump doing here, I seemed to be wondering, taking up so much room, getting in the way?
My elbow had ended up leaning on a little plastic tray I have there, where I keep pencils, ball-point pens, note pads and so forth. The body was leaning on this tray, evidently trying to get up, and the whole thing started cracking noisily under the weight. And in a diffuse but very clear consciousness I was saying to myself, But why? Whats all this ridiculous noise? And whats this heavy thing doing? What disorder. There shouldnt be such disorder. And it went on crack-crack-cracking. Then suddenly normal consciousness returnedto be exact, what returned was the normal RELATIONSHIP consciousness has with thingsand I said, Well, really! What a ridiculous situation! What is this elbow doing on that tray? It should realize its breaking it! And when things were all completely back to normal I told my body, What are you doing, you idiot! Come on, pick yourself up, get moving! Immediately, docile as a little child, it extricated itself, turned around, and stood up straightquite straight. I had scratched my knee, scratched my elbow, and taken three knocks on the head. Luckily there were no sharp edgesit was all hard enough, but no sharp edges. Anyway, in the end I was all right, no damage done.
No damage at all, but it was a bizarre sensation. So I tried to understand how it could have happened, how I could have so lost my sense of relation to things. For a long time my body had been telling me, Ive got to lie down, Ive got to lie down. And I would very sternly reply, You dont have time! (Laughing) So then this happened. Had I obeyed it and laid down, there would obviously have been no problem. But I was in my experience, going on with my experience, and at the same time I was getting ready to come downstairs. So I told my body, Its all right, its all right, youll lie down later. But it had its own way of lying down! (Laughing) It just stretched out right where it was. Actually it wasnt even stretched outit was all askew.
Afterwards, I looked into it a bit. Whats wrong with you, anyway? I said. If you dont have the strength to bear experiences you wont be able to do the work! My body answered me very clearly that I was overworking it; and Sri Aurobindos will was clearly behind it, saying, Its overwork. You cant keep on seeing people and talking for hours on end and then going into these kinds of experiences. You cant do both, you have to choose, or at least strike a better balance. Well, I certainly wasnt going to stop my experiences, so I took advantage of this little incident to get some rest. It was nothing, really! The doctors were saying, Take care, the heart isnt working properly, and all that. They wanted to start drugging me! All I need is peace and quiet, not drugs. So I took a restand since I had to have an excuse, I said I wasnt well and needed rest.
But following that, and because of the overwork, an old thing I thought I had cured has come back. It was originally brought on by overwork when I was going to the Playground and resting only two hours out of twenty-four, which wasnt enougha sort of ulcer formed between my nose and throat. Its an old complaint, dating from the removal of adenoids in my childhood; the operation left a kind of small cavity, which was nothing in itself, except that occasionally it would give me a cold. But as a result of overwork it came back in the form of an ulcer, and gave me artificial colds; it was so sour and corrosive, a terrible irritation in the throat and nose. It got much worse when I was giving classes at the Playground, and once I showed it to the doctor. Why, you have an ulcer! he said. A big fuss. He offered to treat me. No thanks! I said. Dont worry, it will pass. And I began my own yogic treatment. It was over in a week and for three years there was no further sign of it. Recently (the last two or three months) I had felt it trying to come back, for exactly the same reason of overwork. And with that little adventure the other day, it did come backit gave me one of those stupid colds: sneezing, coughing. Its not quite over yet. But its nothing, it just gives me an excuse (laughing) to tell people I am still not quite well!
--
These past few days Ive had some interesting experiences from this standpoint. I had what is commonly called fever, but it wasnt feverit was a resurfacing from the subconscient of all the struggles, all the tensions this body has had for what will soon be eighty-three years. I went through a period in my life when the tension was tremendous, because it was psychological and vital as well as physical: a perpetual struggle against adverse forces; and during my stay in Japan, particularly oh, it was terrible! So at night, everything that had been part of that life in Japanpeople, things, movements, circumstancesall of it seemed to be surrounding my body in the form of vital3 vibrations, and to be taking the place of my present state, which had completely vanished. For hours during the night, the body was reliving all the terrible tensions it had during those four years in Japan. And I realized how much (because at the time you pay no attention; the consciousness is busy with something else and not concentrated on the body), how much the body resists and is tense. And just as I was realizing this, I had a communication with Sri Aurobindo: But youre keeping it up! he told me. Your body still has the habit of being tense. (Its much less now, of course; its quite different since the inner consciousness is in perfect peace, but the BODY keeps the habit of being tense.) For instance, in the short interval between the time I get up and the time I come down to the balcony,4 when I am getting ready (I have to get this body ready to come down) well, the body is tense about being ready in time. And thats why accidents happen at that moment. So the following morning I said, All right, no more tension, and I was exclusively concerned with keeping my body perfectly tranquil I was no later than usual! So its obviously just one of the bodys bad habits. Everything went off the same as usual, and since then things are better. But its a nasty habit.
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?
--
It gets much less winded, of course, when you have the inner equality of the divine Presence. So much fatigue is due to excess tension produced by desire or effort or struggle, by the constant battle against all opposing forces. All that can go.
We tire ourselves out quite needlessly.
--
Psychologically, there was no struggle, no tension, no effortnot ONCE; I was living in total and confident serenity. On the material plane there were attacks, but even these he took upon himself. Well, I saw it all, all those thirty years of life; not for a SECOND did I have any sense of responsibility, in spite of all the work I was doing, all the organizing and everything. He had supposedly passed on the responsibility to me, you see, but he was standing behindHE was actually doing everything! I was active, but with absolutely no responsibility. I never felt responsible for a single minutehe took the full responsibility. It was really.
For the first seven years he was doing the work, not me. He was the one who saw people; I looked after his personal affairs, his housekeeping, his food, his clothes and so forth. I kept myself quietly busy with that, doing nothing else, not seeing people, simply looking after his material lifelike a child at play. It was seven years of integral peace.
Later, when he withdrew and put me in front, there was naturally a bit more activity, as well as the semblance of responsibility but it was only a semblance. What security! A sense of total, total security for thirty years. Not once. There was just a single scratch, so to speak, when he had that accident and broke his leg. There was a formation at work (an adverse force) and he wasnt taking sufficient precautions for himself because it was directed against both of us, and more especially against me (it had tried once or twice to fracture my skull, things like that). Well, he was so intent on keeping it from seriously touching my body that it managed to sneak in and break his leg. That was a shock. But he straightened everything out again almost immediatelyit all fell back into place and went on like that till the end.
And the feeling was so strong that even during his illness (which lasted for months, you know), I had a sense of perfect security; so much so that the idea of his life being really affected in the least by this illness couldnt even occur to me! I didnt want to believe it when the doctor said, Its over. I didnt want to believe it. And as long as I stayed in the room with me in the room he couldnt leave his body. And so there was a terrible tension in himon the one hand the inner will to depart, and then this thing holding him there in his body: the fact that I knew he was alive and could only be alive. He had to signal me to go to my room, supposedly to rest (I didnt rest); and no sooner had I left his room than he was gone.
They immediately called me back. Thats how it was. Then when he came to me, when I really saw what had happened, when he went out of his body and entered into mine (the most material part of him, the part involved with external things) and I understood that I had the entire responsibility for all the work AND for the sadhana7well, then I locked a part of me away, a deep psychic8 part that was living, beyond all responsibility, in the ECSTASY of the realization: the Supreme. I took it and locked it away, I sealed it off and said, Youre not moving until until all the rest is ready.
--
This was counterbalanced by a terrible censor which never left me.11 It took Sri Aurobindo to clear it from my path. But I didnt have the sense of sin, of Good and Evil, sin and virtuedefinitely not! My consciousness was centered around right action and wrong action12this should have been done, that shouldnt havewith no question of Good or Evil, from the standpoint of work, of action alone. My consciousness has always been centered on action. It was a vision, a perception of the line to be followedor the many lines to be followed for the action to be accomplished. And any deviation from what to me was the luminous line, the straight line (not geometrically straight: the luminous line, the line expressing the divine Will), the slightest deviation from that, and oh, it was the only thing that tormented me.
And the torment didnt come from me, it came from that character hooked on to my consciousness and constantly whipping me, hounding me, ill-treating mewhat people call their conscience, which has nothing whatsoever to do with consciousness!13 Its an adverse being, and whatever it can change, it changes for the worse; whatever is susceptible to being changed into something antidivine, it changes. And it is constantly repeating the same thing: This is wrong, that is wrong, this is wrong.
--
All in all, in these last few aphorisms Sri Aurobindo is clearly trying to show us that we must go beyond the sense of sin and virtue. It reminds me of a passage from one of your experiences which struck me very much at the time. In that experience you went to the supramental world: you saw a ship landing on the shore of the supramental world and people being put through certain testssome people were rejected, others were kept. Theres a striking passage in your description, and it bears a relation to these aphorisms. May I read you what you said?14
Yes I dont remember it any more.
--
This criterion had nothing mental about it, and it gave the strange inner feeling that so many things we consider good or bad are not really so. It was very clear that everything depended upon the CAPACITY of things and upon their ABILITY to express the supramental world or be in relationship with it. It was so completely different, at times even so opposite to our ordinary way of looking at things!
Yes.
--
I was particularly struck at the time.
And it has never left me. Ever since then I have kept that same vision of things. But I have to make it intelligible.
--
Up to March 1962, Mother came out every morning on the first floor balcony. The disciples were assembled on the street below.
Mother frequently addressed Satprem as "mon petit" or "petit," terms of endearment she used for very few other people, which can be approximately rendered as "my little one" or "my child." Since no English phrase can capture the nuances of Mother's simple "petit" and "mon petit," we have decided to leave them in the original French wherever they occur.
0 1962-01-12 - supramental ship, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Another thing I didnt mention to you when I related the experience was that the ship had no engine. Everything was set in motion through will powerpeople, things (even the clothes people wore were a result of their will). And this gave all things and every persons shape a great suppleness, because there was an awareness of this willwhich is not a mental will but a will of the Self, what could be called a spiritual will or a soul-will (to give the word soul that particular meaning). I have that experience right here when theres an absolute spontaneity in action, I mean when the action for instance, an utterance or a movementis not determined by the mind, and not even (not to mention thought or intellect), not even by the mind that usually sets us in motion. Generally, when we do something, we can perceive in ourselves a will to do it; when you watch yourself, you see this: there is always (it can happen in a flash) the will to do. When you are conscious and watch yourself doing something, you see in yourself the will to do itthis is where the mind intervenes, its normal intervention, the established order in which things happen. But the supramental action is decided by a leap over the mind. The action is direct, with no need to go through the mind. Something enters directly into contact with the vital centers and activates them without going through the mindyet in full consciousness. The consciousness doesnt function in the usual sequence, it functions from the center of spiritual will straight to matter.
And so long as you can keep that absolute immobility in the mind, the inspiration is absolutely pureit comes pure. When you can catch and hold onto this while youre speaking, then what comes to you is unmixed too, it stays pure.
--
So we can say that the Supermind can express itself through a terre strial 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.
0 1962-01-21, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In those realms, you know, now sometimes stretches over many years. I wont say its going to be instantaneous; that, I dont know I dont know. I will probably know in a few days.
Its like opening a door just a crack and catching a glimpse of whats beyond.
--
This recent period has been very difficult. I see clearly that it was a preparationto prepare the way for that experience. It came to reverse the attitude, the attitude of struggling to surmount, subdue and abolish everything antidivine in creation.
Up till now, this attitude was probably (not probablycertainly) necessary to prepare things. But now theres a sort of sudden reversal, as if the moment had come for the creative principle, the force, the universal creative Force to say, This too is Me. For it is time for it to disappear. This too is Me: I no longer treat it as an enemy to get rid of; I accept it as Myself, so that it truly does become Me.
--
It is true that the subliminal in man is the largest part of his nature and has in it the secret of the unseen dynamisms which explain his surface activities. But the lower vital subconscious which is all that this psycho-analysis of Freud seems to know, and even of that it knows only a few ill-lit corners,is no more than a re stricted and very inferior portion of the subliminal whole. The subliminal self stands behind and supports the whole superficial man; it has in it a larger and more efficient mind behind the surface mind, a larger and more powerful vital behind the surface vital, a subtler and freer physical consciousness behind the surface bodily existence. And above them it opens to higher superconscient as well as below them to lower subconscient ranges. If one wishes to purify and transform the nature, it is the power of these higher ranges to which one must open and raise to them and change by them both the subliminal and the surface being. Even this should be done with care, not prematurely or rashly, following a higher guidance, keeping always the right attitude; for otherwise the force that is drawn down may be too strong for an obscure and weak frame of nature. But to begin by opening up the lower subconscious, risking to raise up all that is foul or obscure in it, is to go out of ones way to invite trouble. First, one should make the higher mind and vital strong and firm and full of light and peace from above; afterwards one can open up or even dive into the subconscious with more safety and some chance of a rapid and successful change.
The system of getting rid of things by anubhava [experience] can also be a dangerous one; for on this way one can easily become more entangled instead of arriving at freedom. This method has behind it two well-known psychological motives. One, the motive of purposeful exhaustion, is valid only in some cases, especially when some natural tendency has too strong a hold or too strong a drive in it to be got rid of by vicra [intellectual reflection] or by the process of rejection and the substitution of the true movement in its place; when that happens in excess, the sadhak has sometimes even to go back to the ordinary action of the ordinary life, get the true experience of it with a new mind and will behind and then return to the spiritual life with the obstacle eliminated or else ready for elimination. But this method of purposive indulgence is always dangerous, though sometimes inevitable. It succeeds only when there is a very strong will in the being towards realisation; for then indulgence brings a strong dissatisfaction and reaction, vairagya, and the will towards perfection can be carried down into the recalcitrant part of the nature.
The other motive for anubhava is of a more general applicability; for in order to reject anything from the being one has first to become conscious of it, to have the clear inner experience of its action and to discover its actual place in the workings of the nature. One can then work upon it to eliminate it, if it is an entirely wrong movement, or to transform it if it is only the degradation of a higher and true movement. It is this or something like it that is attempted crudely and improperly with a rudimentary and insufficient knowledge in the system of psycho-analysis. The process of raising up the lower movements into the full light of consciousness in order to know and deal with them is inevitable; for there can be no complete change without it. But it can truly succeed only when a higher light and force are sufficiently at work to overcome, sooner or later, the force of the tendency that is held up for change. Many, under the pretext of anubhava, not only raise up the adverse movement, but support it with their consent instead of rejecting it, find justifications for continuing or repeating it and so go on playing with it, indulging its return, eternising it; afterwards when they want to get rid of it, it has got such a hold that they find themselves helpless in its clutch and only a terrible struggle or an intervention of divine grace can liberate them.Some do this out of a vital twist or perversity, others out of sheer ignorance; but in yoga, as in life, ignorance is not accepted by Nature as a justifying excuse. This danger is there in all improper dealings with the ignorant parts of the nature; but none is more ignorant, more perilous, more unreasoning and obstinate in recurrence than the lower vital subconscious and its movements. To raise it up prematurely or improperly for anubhava is to risk suffusing the conscious parts also with its dark and dirty stuff and thus poisoning the whole vital and even the mental nature. Always therefore one should begin by a positive, not a negative experience, by bringing down something of the divine nature, calm, light, equanimity, purity, divine strength into the parts of the conscious being that have to be changed; only when that has been sufficiently done and there is a firm positive basis, is it safe to raise up the concealed subconscious adverse elements in order to de stroy and eliminate them by the strength of the divine calm, light, force and knowledge. Even so, there will be enough of the lower stuff rising up of itself to give you as much of the anubhava as you will need for getting rid of the obstacles; but then they can be dealt with with much less danger and under a higher internal guidance.
***
0 1962-01-24, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Id rather you read it yourself, because my English. I found it really striking these four lines here.
(Mother reads:)
--
stretched out in love desire her rebel sons.1
Yes, thats it.
--
Its strange; when I read I see only whats needed at the moment. The rest seems to go unnoticed. And then as soon as its needed, it comes backas happened with what you just showed me.
Yes, thats it thats what just happened.
0 1962-01-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(the clock strikes)
I have to go.
0 1962-02-03, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But Sujata, for example, was completely, COMPLETELY free of the whole (what shall I say?) what could be called the unhappy aspect of her karmacompletely free. For I know the people around me and what they carry with them very well, and there was nothingjust one thing remained, the one part that was rather con structive, so I had left that totally intact. And when the events of her past life were revealed to her, I took the greatest care to de stroy the revelation as it was being given. And I did it ruthlessly. You see, it was like dumping a load of mud on someone completely unsullied, and I didnt let it happen (I couldnt stop what entered through her physical brain, but inwardly I utterly annihilated it). The only thing I left untouched was the con structive part of the bond that had existed between you two, and so when she met you, she. Thats all I left, because it was good, pure, lovelyit was good. But all the rest. And you saw how strongly I protested when I was told she had committed suicide. No, no, no! I said; even if somebody with perfect knowledge were to tell me so, Id still say NO.
She is untainted by all thatpure and I wont stand for someone pure to be soiled. She was so much my child that after her death everything was carefully cleansed, arranged, put back in place, organized, purified. So she returned unblemished and pure, and I dont want her soiled.
0 1962-02-13, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
strange. This morning it was strange, for both were there: the feeling of physical weaknessalmost a physical decomposition and AT THE SAME TIME, SIMULTANEOUSLY (not even one behind the other, but both together), a glory of divine splendor.
Both together.
--
I feel a very strong need for someone who knows.
Yes, I too have quite often thought that someone should come here who.
--
And he purposely doesnt want me to note down what he says. For I could do so (if I had time) very early in the morning; I remember very, very clearly and precisely. Later it fades, its erased only the impression or influence remains and its very strong all day until its replaced by another. This creates a sort of atmosphere in which I live, an atmosphere of knowledge.
But he doesnt want me to note it down. Its not simply that I dont have the time, he doesnt want me to. When I wake up (not wake up, when I come out of that state), there are no lapses of consciousness. This is something I have acquired through lifelong discipline I have no lapses. Things dont suddenly go away, poof! They remain very clear I go from one state to another with no impression of a gap. But I see his action: he replaces the precise memory of what has been said and done by a sort of atmosphere, a sensation that stays with me all day long.
0 1962-02-24, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And in the afternoon, I had a funny experience at the Playground.3 When I got down from the car to go inside, I felt. For close to a year now I have been saddled with (I mean it was imposed on me) a useless pair of legs: weak, awkward, old, worn outworthless. I constantly had to will them to walk, and even then they were more than clumsy. And it was all swept away in the same manner (sweeping gesture). I literally almost danced! Imagine, getting rid of a pair of legs just like that! INSTANTLY my legs felt the way they used to (I have always had strong legs)that alert, solid, agile strength and I had to re strain myself from cavorting about! Ah, now we can walk! Keep calm, I had to tell them, or they would have started skipping and prancing!
And they stayed that way, there was no relapse. I was waiting to see if it would lastit did. Something seems to be over with now.
--
You can achieve excellent control of the heart. But I never practiced it violently, never strained myself. I think holding for 16 is too long. I used to do it simply like this: brea the in very slowly to the count of 4, then hold for 4 like this (I still have the knack of it!), lifting the diaphragm and lowering the head8 (Mother bends her neck), closing everything and exerting pressure (this is an almost instantaneous cure for hiccupsits handy!). Then while I held the air, I would make it circulate with the force (because it contained force, you see) and with the peace as well; and I would concentrate it wherever there was a physical disorder (a pain or something wrong somewhere). Its very effective. The way I did it was: inhale, hold, exhale and emptyyou are completely empty. Its very useful; very handy for underwater swimmers, for instance!
I had trouble breathing in slowly enough thats a bit hard. I began with 4 and eventually managed to do 12. I did 12-12-12-12. It took me months to reach that, it cant be done quickly. To brea the in very slowly and hold all that air isnt easy.
0 1962-02-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When one is identified with the Supreme, there is a place where all is unequivocally known: in the past, in the present, in the future and everywhere. But when they return, those who go there usually forget what they have seen. A particularly strict discipline is needed to remember. Thats the only realm where you cant be mistaken.
But the links of communication are seldom all there, so one rarely remembers.
--
Take the case of someone you know well and are used to seeing materially: seeing him in the subtle physical, certain aspects become more prominent, more visible, more marked; physically they went unseen because in the material grayness they had blended with many other things. Certain character traits that never showed up physically now become so marked as to be quite visible. When you look at someone physically, you see the color of his complexion, the shape of his features, his expression. Seeing him at the same moment in the subtle physical, you suddenly notice different colors on different parts of the face, in the eyes an expression or a particular light you hadnt seen beforea strong impression of a very different overall appearance, which to our physical eyes would seem rather outlandish. But for the subtle vision its all very expressive and revealing of the persons character, or even of the influences hes under (what I am talking about is something I observed a few days ago).
So, according to the plane where you are conscious and can see, you perceive images and see events from varying distances and with varying degrees of accuracy. The only true and sure vision is the vision of the Divine Consciousness. The problem, therefore, is to become conscious of the Divine Consciousness and constantly maintain it in all lifes details.
--
With a universal mental vision, you can see (and this is very interesting) how the mental world operates to get realized on the physical plane. You see the various mental formations, how they converge, conflict, combine and relate to one another, which ones get the upper hand, exert a stronger influence and achieve a more total realization. Now, if you really want a higher vision, you must get out of the mental world and see the original wills as they descend to take expression. In this case, you may not have all the details, but the central FACT, the fact in its central truth, is indisputable, undeniable, absolutely correct.
Some people also have the faculty of predicting things already existing on earth but at a distance, far from physical eyestheyre generally those who have the capacity to expand and extend their consciousness. Their vision is slightly more subtle than physical vision, and depends on an organ subtler than its purely material counterpart (what could be called the life of this organ). So, by projecting their consciousness, and having the will to see, they can clearly see things that already exist but are beyond our ordinary field of vision. Those who have this capacitysincere people who tell what they see, not blufferssee with perfect precision and exactness.
--
I have had hundreds and hundreds of experiences like thatinformed just at the last moment (not one second too soon)and in very different circumstances. Once in Paris I was crossing the Boulevard Saint Michel (I had resolved to attain union with the psychic presence, the inner Divine, within a certain number of months, and these were the last weeks I was thinking of nothing but that, engrossed in that alone). I lived near the Luxembourg Gardens and was going there for a stroll, to sit in the gardens that eveningstill indrawn. I came to a kind of intersectionnot a very sensible place to cross when youre interiorized! So, in that state, I started to cross when all of a sudden I had a shock, as if something had hit me, and I instinctively jumped back. As I jumped back a streetcar rushed by. I had felt the streetcar at a little more than arms length. It had touched my aura, the protective aura (that aura was very strong at the time I was deep into occultism and knew how to maintain it). My protective aura was touched, and it literally threw me backwards, just like a physical shock. Accompanied by the drivers insults!
I leapt back just in time, and the streetcar passed by.
There are loads of stories I could tell but I dont remember any more right now.
0 1962-03-03, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Heres a strange aphorism.
Ah! Read it to me.
0 1962-03-06, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This in itself has to be conquered; I mean, the state in itself represents something to be conquered. Because you remember, I told you the other day about having such a tremendous experience in the body-consciousness1this this dull consciousness in the material world, which really gives the feeling of something inert, unchanging, incapable of responding; you could wait millions and millions of years and nothing would budge. And that experience came at the end of a rather critical passageit takes cata strophes to get it moving, thats whats so strange! And not only that, but the wisp of imagination it does have (if you can call it imagination) is invariably cata strophic. Whatever it anticipates is always for the worst the pettiest, meanest, nastiest kind of worstalways the worst. Its really, its the most sickening condition human consciousness and matter can be in. Well, I have been swimming in it for months, and my way of being in it is to go through every possible illness and to have every possible physical aggravation, one after another.
Just recently, as I told you, things truly became a little disgusting, dangerous, and for an hour or an hour and a half I did a sadhana like this (Mother clenches her fists), keeping hold of this body and body-consciousness. And the whole time the Force was at work there (it was like kneading a very resistant dough), something was saying to me, Look, you cant deny miracles any longer. It was being said to this consciousness (not to me, of course), this body-consciousness: Now you cant deny it miracles do happen. It was forced to see; there it was, gaping like an idiot being shown the skyAh! And its so stupid that it didnt even have any joy of discovery! But it was forced to see, the thing was right under its nosethere was no escaping it, it had to be admitted. But you know what, mon petit, as soon as I let up on the pressureforgotten!
--
You can lie down on a mat, look at a flower or a patch of sky if theres any to see; if need be (teasingly), smoke a cigarette to keep yourself busy, and just stay like that, relaxed. And if you do your pranayama along with this relaxation you will notice yourself growing extremely strongstoring, storing, storing up energies. And then if you have to make an effort, theres nothing to itits as easy as pie.
Its that old habit, the old fear of being lazy. It took me. But Sri Aurobindo cured me of that rather quickly. Thats how it was before I met him. And thats the first thing he did: he gave me a tap on the head, and all activity ceasedtotal silence, all mental con structions and habits swept away in the blink of an eye.
0 1962-03-11, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
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.
Written things can fall into all sorts of hands and become very dangerous weapons.
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 1962-05-13, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The first sign of the return to individuality was a prick of pain, a tiny point (Mother holds between her fingers a minuscule point in the space of her being). Yes, because I have a sore, a sore in a rather awkward place, and it hurts2 (Mother laughs). So I felt the pain: it was the sign of individuality coming back. Other than that, there was nothing any moreno body, no individual, no limits. But its strange, I have made a strange discovery3: I used to think it was the individual (Mother touches her body) who experienced pain and disabilities and all the misfortunes of human life; well, I perceived that what experiences misfortunes is not the individual not my body, but that each misfortune, each pain, each disability has its own individuality as it were, and each one represents a battle.
And my body is a world of battles.
0 1962-05-15, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Once again, with Mother, we find ourselves deep into modern physics. All theories of physics attempting to describe the structure of our universe and the composition of matter, whether they emanate from official scientific laboratories or from the work of independent researchers, point to the wavelike or sinusoidal movement as the constituent and dynamic foundation of physical reality. Indeed, whether in electromagnetic or gravitational fields, or in atomic interactions, everything, from the heart of the atom to the farthest reaches of the universe, moves or is propagated as waves. With striking succinctness Mother says, The wave movement is the movement of life.
A movement of waves without beginning or end, with a condensation like this (gesture from above down), with a condensation like that (horizontal gesture). We cannot fail to be reminded of the electromagnetic field with its two perpendicular components, the electric and magnetic fields, which are propagated along an infinite sinusoidal wave. And then again: A movement of expansion a sort of contraction, concentration, and then expansion, diffusion. Unmistakably, this is an exact description of the propagation in space of a sinusoidal wave.
striking though the parallel may be, there is still a fundamental difference between these mathematical concepts and Mothers experience. In the first case, we are dealing with conceptual in struments 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 de struction of our work and an act of treachery against Sri Aurobindo." (May 6, 1941, original English.)
See note at the end of this conversation
0 1962-05-18, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There was a relation, I kept a link with it, but it took some days to get established (I dont know how many, because for a long time I couldnt keep track of anything). After some days (say ten days, twenty days, I dont know), the will began to function, the body was again under the control of the will. But that didnt happen right away for some days, the will that deals with the body was annulled (I was entirely conscious and alive, but not in my body). The body was merely something moved around by the people looking after me. Not that it was separate, but I couldnt even say, its a body it wasnt anything any more! Something. Having undergone so much preparation, the universalization of the body-consciousness and all that, the experience didnt even seem strange to me (in fact, it was certainly the result of all that preparation). The body was something like a mass of substance being driven by the will of the three people looking after it. Not that I was unaware of it but. I wasnt much concerned with it, to tell the truth; but as far as my attention was turned to it, it was a corporeal mass being moved around by a few wills. The supreme Will was in full agreement; the body had been entrusted, in a way (I dont know how to express this) yes, it was like something entrusted, and I was simply looking on I watched it all for I dont know how many days, with hardly any interest.
The one really concrete link was pain. Thats how the contact was kept.
--
But there has been a strange phenomenon [since April 3]. Before, I used to say, I am outside my body. It was always I am outside my body. But this time, the body seemed to have been consigned or entrustedmore like entrusted.
It has gradually come back, in the sense that actively. No, I cant even say thatits not true. What has come back is the increasingly precise memory of how I had organized the life of this body, the whole formation I had made, down to the smallest details for the things I was using, how I was making use of them, how I had organized all the objects around the body, all that. What has come back is the memoryis it memory? The awareness of all that has returned, as if I were putting the two back into contact. And so, instead of the body being left totally in the hands of those around me, the formation I had made is coming back, with certain changes, certain improvements and simplifications (but mind you, I had neither the intention nor the will to change anythingthose things are simply coming back into the consciousness like that, with certain changes made). In short, its a kind of conscious formation recrystallizing around this body.
0 1962-05-22, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(The beginning of this conversation, unfortunately not kept, dealt with certain instances of human ugliness. The topic, in fact, was Satprem's break with X who had been his guru for the past few years. The reasons for this rupture may one day be told, but it should be stressed right now that the fault did not really lie with X, whom Satprem continued to respect, but with a group of schemers at the Ashram who fastened onto X in the hope of god knows what "powers." It is perhaps just as well that the human "ugliness" here in question has vanished from Satprem's records, foralthough it did come up again immediately after Mother's departureit concerned only the Ashram disciples. All the details and all Mother's reflections on the subject have thus been lost, with the exception of this last fragment:)
What a world!
0 1962-05-27, #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 in structive. 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.
--
But really, unless you experience it yourself, it will strike you as a kind of fairy tale. And not a very pleasant fairy tale!
If you could just give me a hint.
--
Let me put it to you more clearly: your physical body, for example, should have been either stronger or more supple or endowed with certain very strong vital compensations, so that you wouldnt suffer from your working conditions. Of course, for someone following a yogic ascent, whose soul is in the process of formation, the external conditions of life are normally what is best for inner development, whatever that may beeven if, on the surface, those conditions arent good. So the only advice you can give such a person is, Well, either renounce the spiritual life or else putup with it. But thats not your case. There is a Mission, a work, and a kind of gap between a certain physical formation and that Mission. So if you ask me plainly what I see, I can tell you plainly, instead of saying as I would to certain sadhaks or anyone sincerely wanting to do yoga, Take it or leave it; you must learn to transform yourself inwardly to the point where you can master the body and its needs. I cant tell you that, because thats not how it is for you.
I mean it may beit may be that even an inner transformation (a complete conversion of the vital being, for instance) wouldnt necessarily bring an improvement in your health. It is here where. Its not something I see imperatively. And to go back to ordinary life would be the end of everythingof your physical life and your inner life too.
--
It is in the vital, mon petit. Something happened while you were being formedyour vital isnt strong enough.
You know, I am absolutely convinced that when I have found what I seek [the third position] everything will change for you instantly, like this (gesture of turning upside-down): snap! You wont have to make the slightest effortit will be done just like that, in a flash. But meanwhile. Meanwhile I want you to be healthy. If going to the mountains for a few months does you a lot of good. Notice I say if I am not sure of it.
0 1962-05-31, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Theres a strange thing that happens to me all the time, at least fifty times a day (and its particularly clear at night). In its most external form its like moving from one room to another, or from one house to another, and you go through the door or the wall almost without noticing it, automatically. Being in one room is reflected outwardly by quite a comfortable condition, a state where theres no pain at all, no pain anywhere, and a great peacea joyous peace, a state of perfect calm an ideal condition, at any rate, which sometimes lasts a long, long time. Its mainly at night, actually; during the day people interrupt me with all sorts of things, but for a certain number of hours at night this state is practically constant. And then suddenly, with no perceptible or apparent reason (I havent yet discovered the why or the wherefore of it), you seem to FALL into the other room, or into the other house, as though you had made a false step and then you have a pain here, an ache there, youre uncomfortable.
Obviously its the continuation of the same experience I told you about,1 but now it has come to this. I mean the two states are now distinctnoticeably distinct; but so far I havent found either the why or the wherefore. Is it something coming from outside or just an old rut: yes, it really feels like an old rut, like a wrinkle in a piece of cloth; you know, you iron it out again and again, and the wrinkle comes back. Thats more the feeling it gives menot at all a conscious habit, just an old rut. But might something from outside also be provoking it?
--
Something done with a very light touch, with no importance attached to it, but coming from a new worldoh, nowadays I constantly make a distinction between (what shall I say?) the straight-line, right-angle life and the undulating life. One life I might describe like this (Mother makes chopping gestures, showing crisscrossing lines): everything is sharp-edged, hard, angular, and youre constantly bumping into things; and then theres an undulating life, very sweet, with a great charmVERY charming but not not too stable. strange, its a completely different kind of life. Well, my story belonged to that world. There was nothing here (Mother touches her forehead), and not even anything here (above the head); it was something like like waves. And it was very joyous, very joyous and carefree.
(silence)
--
But to say its these particular Words exclusively would be ridiculous. What counts is the sincerity of the aspiration, the exactness of the expression and the power; that is, the power that comes from the mantra being accepted. This is something very interesting: the mantra has been ACCEPTED by the supreme Power as an effective tool, and so it automatically contains a certain force and power.5 But it is a purely personal phenomenon (the expression is the same, but the vibrations are personal). A mantra leading one person straight to divine realization will leave another person cold and flat.
What is your experience when you say your mantra? You once told me you felt good saying it.
--
It was the first sound that came from the body when I had that last experience [April 13]. Along with the first pain, came that first soundso it must be quite well rooted.6 And it brings in exactly that vibration of eternal Life: the first thing I felt, all of a sudden, was a kind of strong calm, confident and smiling.
Oh, I am sure it is very good, very helpful.
0 1962-06-02, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But whats strikingits connected to what I was telling you the other dayis that I was going to see some people who were on the other side of a river. Ordinarily the river water wasnt clean and you needed a boat or something to cross; but yesterday I was in a special state I just sat down on the water and said, I am going there. And then, quite naturally, a current of pure, crystal clear water simply took me where I wanted to go. It was a very pleasant sensation I was sitting on the water, all smiles, and prrt! I was taken to the other side. Oh, very good! I thought. Will it continue? And so once again I said, I am going there (that is, back to this side) and prrt! Back I came.
Then someone came. There are symbolic people in these dreams; they seem to be made up of various parts of the beings of those around me, people who have a particular relationship with me and bring a particular help to the Work. They are symbolic characters and always the same: one of them is tall and thin, some are small, there are young ones, old ones. I cant say its this person or that person, but rather that something IN this or that person is represented in these characters. And one of them is like a big brotherhe helps out in certain circumstances; if theres a boat, for instance, the big brother steers it. So he came up to me and said, Yes, I know the method, and began to try. Stop, for heavens sake! I said. Youll spoil everything; to make it work I have to say: I WANT TO GO THERE. When he began trying to bring me across with his own methods, the water grew muddy again and I started to sink! No no no! I protested. Dont do that, thats notit at all! THAT has to (although I wasnt formulating it to myself, what I meant was the sense of a certain higher Will) THAT has to say: I WANT TO GO THERE; then it works.
--
Last night I spent almost all my time in such a building. And all the people who help the work were symbolized there but its always a material help, either work or money or. I remember being particularly struck by one character last night. (Again, there were a lot of aggravations, but someone or something was always on the scene when I arrived and it all sorted itself outit was the exact opposite of the dreams I was talking about the other day: all the difficulties sorted themselves out when I arrived.) Then I came to a rather difficult place to cross (you had to flounder about on slippery scaffoldings) and suddenly, facing me, there was a man (of course, it was probably a symbol rather than a man, but it might really be someone physical). He was one of the workers, a master mason (when I woke up this morning, I thought of the symbolism of Freemasonry and wondered if it might give a clue to the experience). Nearby, people were coming to supervise, observe, direct, people who thought themselves highly superior but they were never any help in solving practical problems! They were creating more problems than they were helping to solve. Anyway, this master mason appeared to be around fifty, with a beautiful facea workers face, beautiful and concentrated. There was a difficult place to cross, and he had worked the thing out very efficiently, with a lot of care. Then, when it was all done and I was able to go on my way, I felt a great surge of love go out to him, with neither gesture nor word and he received it, he felt and received it. His face lit up and he implored me, with wonderful humility, Never let me forget this moment, the most beautiful moment of my life. (I dont know what language he used because it didnt come to me in words.) It was such an intense experience. His humility, his receptivity, his response were all so beautiful and pure that when I woke upwhen I came out of the experience, at any rate I was left with a most delightful impression.
What he represents might be partly manifested by somebody here. A beautiful face a man around fifty. Or it may be symbolic: such characters are sometimes put together with features from several people, to make it very clear that they represent a state of consciousness and not an individual. Its far more often a state of consciousness than an individual.
--
The afternoon experience was very intriguing; I was busy working (organizing things for one of the departments, I no longer remember which) and then I said to the person I was with, Now I am going to my cousins place! When I was very young I had a cousin, the eldest son of one of my fathers brothers (he had a large family, such as you seldom see in France). This cousin became some kind of engineera civil engineer, maybe, or a mechanical engineer (he was an outstanding chemist). Anyway, this boy was very attracted to me. He went off to the war as an officer and caught some disease (I forget what) and died around 1915, at the time I returned to France. Well, in my experience yesterday afternoon, a certain family living HERE gave me exactly the same sensation I had had towards those people when I was young. And especially for this cousin (for the rest of the family it was more vague, like a background to the experience). I am going to their place, I said. They have a lovely estate here, just as they had a lovely estate in France before (they had Madame de Sevignes chateau at Sucy, near Parisa beautiful property). And it was all so concrete! It wasnt coming through the head; it wasnt a thought but a sensation. I have to go see him now, I said. And even as I was having my vision I was telling myself, You must be going crazy! Can they really be here in Pondicherry? This uncle with whom I had only rather distant relations and this cousin I never saw much of, but whom I knew to be very nice and very loyalAre they really here?! The sensation was most strange (the head wasnt functioning at all; it was a SENSATION). So off I went to see this cousin, and it was on the way to see him that I had the experience of crossing the river. And on the way back, after the discussion with the spiritual brother (whom I really told off: Get out of here! I dont need you!), after that, when I found myself back on the bank, I started collecting my consciousness again, telling myself, Look here now! Lets try to see clearly. And then I realized that the cousin who died prematurely during the war had reincarnated in someone here. How strange, I thought. And the dates coincided.
But that is a singular state: there is no mental intervention at all; you live things POSITIVELY, just as you experience them physically, in the same way that this (Mother knocks on the table next to her) is physically a table. Its that kind of perception something positive. I positively said, I am going to my cousins place, and the relationship had an absolutely positive vibrationit wasnt at all something thought or even remembered: theres no remembering anything, its simply there, alive. A strange state. I have had it on several occasions, and when I have it I am aware that this must be the state people who know what is happening and make predictions are inin this state there is no possibility of doubt. No thoughts intervenenone at all, not one. Absolutely nothing intellectual: simply certain vital-physical vibrations, and then you know. And you dont even wonder how you know; its not that kind of thingits self-evident. And since I was in that state when I saw the reincarnation of the cousin, I am perfectly sure of what I saw. And god knows (Mother laughs), when I came out of it and began to look at it all with my usual consciousness, I said to myself, My word! I would never have thought of such a thing! It was millions of miles from any thought of mine. Besides, I never used to think of that cousin; he was a fine boy but I never paid much attention to him, he had no place in my active consciousness.
Its fun.
0 1962-06-06, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
strange.
I had decided to tell you nothing because I really have nothing to sayits something thats going to need some time to become clear. But then this happened just now as I was waiting for you. So I looked, something above looked at what was happening in the body, as though asking it, Lets see, how does this feel to you? And I have told you how it feels.
--
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.
--
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.
--
Oh, mon petit, if you knew how hard some things become in the being! Oh, how much Ive had to struggle and struggle and struggle. This experience [of April 13] did the job, but otherwise it was a minute-to-minute struggle. Life turns you into something hard as iron (Mother makes a fist).
And thats what has happened. Thats what has happened. Anyway, we can still try! (Mother laughs.)
0 1962-06-09, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In fact, physicists today unanimously admit that the mathematical "models" explaining the corpuscular structure of matter have become excessively complex: "There are too many kinds of quarks [theoretical elementary particles and 'ultimate' constituents of matter] and far too many of their aspects are unobservable." There is a call for a simpler working hypothesis, a new idea, simplifying and unifying, that would explain matter without recourse to "unobservables."
And it may well be that the seed of this "idea" is concealed in Mother's simple but enigmatic words: "Everything has one and the same constituent element; and everything lies IN the interrelations."
0 1962-06-12, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Unexpectedly, this conversation led into the subject of Satprem's break with X, who had been his guru for the past few years. Here then, briefly, is the story behind the rupture: No sooner had Satprem brought X to the Ashram than a swarm of disciples threw themselves at him. Conspicuous among these were the moneymen, the same wheelerdealers who, eleven years later, after Mother's departure, were to reveal their ambitions in Auroville as well as Pondicherry. Satprem's somewhat straightforward manner soon got in the way of their schemes. He had a deep affection for X and when he repeatedly saw that these peoplespiritual scoundrels is the only word for themwere, in the hope of sowing confusion (for they always prosper best in confusion), bringing false reports to Mother of things X had supposedly said, he tried in all innocence to put X on his guard against the false reports and dishonest people who were wronging him. But instead of listening to Satprem and understanding that he spoke out of love, Xwith all his Tantric power behindflew into a violent rage against him, as if he had been casting a slur on X's prestige. Satprem then broke with X, but not without sorrow.)
Anything new?
--
When I spoke to him, you know, when I went to see him, it was just after my japa and I was in a state of absolute inner calmabsolute, with not a. I simply felt he had to be helped, because he was saying things that were going against him. So I had this feeling, a very strong feeling of affection, but an affection that states things clearly and unemotionally. I was very calm when I said all that. I did get upset afterwards, but I was upset mainly because he immediately had such an incredible reaction! So then I was at a loss. But the way I put things to him. Really, if he had the least. But even a man who has never done any yoga would have felt I was speaking from my heart, candidly. Even a man with no spiritual culture would have felt that. So how could he take it in such a way!
I am not sure he did.
--
You see, the trouble is hes a man whose principles and education prevent him from believing in progress and transformation. He believes that if you fulfill the conditions you get the siddhi,3 and thats the end of it the goal is reached. He had already attained his goal before meeting us, and then he could have kept his distance, but he became intimately connected with something full of all kinds of difficulties (which we neither ignore nor call for), but its essentially a Power for progressan awesome force for progress. Well, when I saw that, I wondered, How can he possibly bear it? I thought he would keep his distance and not enter the atmosphere, but he did try to enterhe linked up with certain people, and particularly when he started meditating with me (he asked for it, not me), suddenly something responded. And that triggered the conflict in him. One part of his being has gone along with the Movement, while the other is left strandeddoesnt budge. That created a gap.
Of course, one has to be in a terribly superficial consciousness to react the way he did. He had a rather deep contact with you, and there were moments when he understood very well who you arehe knows, he told me so. Consequently, had he truly been in a yogic state, then even if you had done something tactless or wrong, he would have just smiled! He would have said, Oh, hes just impetuous, but I dont mind.
--
Yes, but if I may say so, thats exactly what Ive been working towards all these years. I had read in Sri Aurobindo: mental silence, tranquillity, peace and so thats what Ive been striving for. I mean, I think Ive got it nowwhen I meditate, its tranquil.
Oh, yes! Certainly.
--
That, you know, was what I was always striving for: a sudden surge into the supreme Light, into the Eternal and the Infinite, and then into dazzled wonder. And then, instead of being dazzled by it, it becomes your normal state.
Thats really something. And thats what I wanted to give you.
0 1962-06-23, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But last night too, I noticed I was very tall I am generally very tall. Tall and strong.
Voil.
0 1962-06-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Everything that happened prior to the experience of April 13 has disappeared, as it were, and the usual functioning of the consciousness has been totally annulled; it is trying little by little to create a new mode of operationnot merely trying: it is in the PROCESS of doing so on a truer foundation; a truer foundation, or truer relations, or vibrations, or functionings (I dont know the right word for it: all these things at once). That presence the other day [the tall white Being] was nothing essentially newit had already intervened a good many times; and yet it was new, because the whole functioning was new. Its like my experience two nights ago [the recharging of batteries], I had it for months on end; well, it was new because it was based on a new functioning. And each time (is it out of habit, or to make me understand, to make me see the difference?), each time the old functioning starts up, first of all I really feel I am losing the true contact, that the TRUE thing is escaping, and then I wonder how anybody can function like that without going insane! Thats what strikes me nowthis feeling of going insane! I mean it grates, it scrapes, it makes no senseit misses the point. It is not the TRUE thing, its beside the point. It tries to imitate something inimitable. And so I ask myself, What is this? Am I going crazy? Am I losing my faculties? And then I realize its not that at all! Above theres a state of immutable and UNSHAKABLE concentration, constant and almighty, and with but a drop of That, a spark of That, all problems are solved. Then I see clearly that its only a demon stration to make me see the inadequacy of the old, habitual functioningto really and truly convince me that its inadequate. Its rather hard to bear, actually. Last night I had it, I have seen it again in recent days: it lasts a few secondsjust enough for a satisfactory lesson! It may also happen to make me understand, but afterwards I wonder, Well, if everybody is in this state they dont know it, but its just terrible! And I realize that the LEAST thing, the slightest circumstance, is COMPLETELY distorted, instantly distorted by the way people work it out, the way they cause events to develop.
Thats an ever-present experience.
--
It is a subtle-physical beingnot a vital but a subtle-physical being, and I am tall and strong.
Tell her shes not the only one who sees me this waymany do. When I see myself at night, thats how I see myself. Perhaps well, this (Mother touches her body) would have to yield. But when? I dont know.
Ageless something neither young nor old nor something totally different. And tall, strong.
Thats how I see myself.
--
A whiteness and a strength is in the skies... Virgin formidable In beauty, disturber of the ancient world!... How art thou white and beautiful and calm, Yet clothed in tumult! Heaven above thee shakes Wounded with lightnings, goddess, and the sea Flees from thy dreadful tranquil feet.
Perseus the Deliverer, Cent. Ed., VI. 6.
0 1962-06-30, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Almost all my memories of past lives came like that; the particular being reincarnated in me rises to the surface and begins acting as if it were all on its own! Once in Italy, when I was fifteen, it happened in an extraordinary way. But that time I did some research. I was in Venice with my mother and I researched in museums and archives, and I discovered my name, and the names of the other people involved. I had relived a scene in the Ducal Palace, but relived it in such a such an absolutely intense way (laughinga scene where I was being strangled and thrown into a canal!) that my mother had to hurry me out of there as fast as she could! But that experience I wrote down, so the exact memory has been kept (I didnt write down the other experiences, so the details have all faded away, but this one was noted, although I didnt include any names). The next morning I did some research and uncovered the whole story. I told it all to Thon and Madame Thon, and he also had the memory of a past life there, during the same period. And as a matter of fact, I had seen a portrait there that was the spitting image of Thon! The portrait of one of the doges. It was absolutely (it was a Titian) absolutely Thon! HIS portrait, you know, as if it had just been done.5
All those kinds of things came to me just like that, without my looking for them, wanting them, or understanding them, without doing any sort of discipline, nothingit was absolutely spontaneous. And they just kept on coming and coming and coming.
--
But with this present incarnation of the Mahashakti. She is the Supremes first manifestation, creations first stride, and it was She who first gave form to all those beings. Now, since her incarnation in the physical world, and through the position She has taken here in relation to the Supreme by incarnating in a human body, all the other worlds have been influenced, and influenced in an extremely interesting way.8 I have been in contact with all those gods, all those great beings, and for the most part their attitude has changed. And even with those who didnt want to change, it has nonetheless influenced their way of being.
Human experience, with this direct incarnation of the Supreme,9 is ultimately a UNIQUE experience, which has given a new orientation to universal history. Sri Aurobindo speaks of thishe speaks of the difference between the Vedic era, the Vedic way of relating to the Supreme, and the advent of Vedanta (I think its Vedanta): devotion, adoration, bhakti, the God within.10 Well, this aspect of rapport with the Supreme could exist ONLY WITH MAN, because man is a special being in universal History the divine Presence is in him. And several of those great gods have taken human bodies JUST TO HAVE THAT.11 But not many of themthey were so fully aware of their own perfect independence and their almightiness that they didnt NEED anything (unlike man, you see, struggling to escape his slavery): they were absolutely free.
And thats why. How many times Durga came! She would always come, and I had my eye on her (!), because in her presence I could clearly sense that there wasnt that rapport with the Supreme (she just didnt need it, she didnt need anything). And it wasnt that something acted on her consciously, deliberately, to obtain that result: it has been a contagion. I remember how she used to come, and my aspiration would be so intense, my inner attitude so concentrated and one day there was such a sense of power, of immensity, of ineffable bliss in the contact with the Supreme (it was a day when Durga was there), and she seemed to be taken and absorbed in it. And through that bliss she made her surrender.
0 1962-07-04, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
They tried, fought, operated: no movement, nothing moved. Then one day they declared him dead (by the way, according to doctors, when the body dies the heart beats on faintly for a few seconds; then it stops and its all over). In his case, those faint beats (not strong enough to pump blood) continued for half an hour the kind of heartbeats typical of the trance state. (They all seem to be crassly ignorant! But anyway, it doesnt matter.) And they all said, even the doctors, Oooh, he must be a great yogi, this only happens to yogis! I have no idea what they mean by that. But I do know that although those heartbeats arent strong enough to pump blood through the body (thus putting the body into a cataleptic state), they do suffice to maintain life, and thats how yogis can remain in trance for months on end. Well, I dont know what type of doctors they are (probably very modern), but theyre ignorant of this fact. Anyway, according to them he had those pulsations for half an hour (normally they last a few seconds). All right. Hence their remarks. And he was here the whole while, immutable. Then suddenly I felt a kind of shudder; I lookedhe was gone. I was busy and didnt note the time, but it was in the afternoon, thats all I know. Later I was told that they had decided to cremate him, and had done so at that time.
The violence of the accident had brutally exteriorized him, but when it happened he must have been thinking of me with trust. He came and didnt budgehe never knew what was happening to his body. He didnt know he was dead! And if.
0 1962-07-11, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This has never happened before, its brand-new. Before, there was always that Power transmitted through the higher mind (what Sri Aurobindo calls the Overmind); it was up there, dissolving, dispersing, changing, doing a whole lot of work, without any difficulty, effortlessly (gesture above the head showing the tranquil, irresistible flowing of a stream), nothing to it. That was my constant, second-to-second action, everywhere, all the time, for everything that came to me. But THIS is completely, completely new. Its a sort of imposition, almost like an imposition on the PHYSICAL brain (I presume it must be for changing the brain cells). And I am allowed to do only one thing (Mother grips the mental con struction presented to her); its right in front of me like this and wont leave me, it clings like a leech, stock-still. So I have to bring in the supreme, divine Vibration, the Vibration I experienced the other day [April 13], and hold it steadily (sometimes it takes quite a while) until all is hushed in a divine silence.
(silence)
0 1962-07-14, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
A strange dream, very strange. A crowd of people was waiting for you to come out, and you did come, you appeared. Then suddenly you fainted. Im not sure why you fainted, you were physically sick or something. So you were carried away. A crowd was waiting to see you and they shoved me to the back (by the way, I noticed I was dressed as a Sannyasin). Finally, I came up close to you all of a sudden, leaving the crowd behind; I came up very close and then you told me certain things, I dont know what. You seemed so frailall white, very frail and tired, as if you had just fainted. Anyway, things like that, you see.1
No, I wasnt sleeping, I was concentrating; and in this concentration, while I was fully enveloped in those forces, THROUGH THAT you came to me. It was truly fine!
--
And simultaneously there is an automatic perception of timeclock timewhich is rather curious (everything is regulated by the comings and goings of the people around me, you see: such a thing at this time, such a thing at that time), I dont need to hear the clock I am warned just before it strikes. I repeat one part of the japa in a particular way while lying down, because the Power is greater (these arent meditations, they are actions), and another part while walking. So I stay stretched out for a certain time, I walk for a certain time, and at a fixed hour this one goes, another comes, and so on. But none of them are people; I dont tell them so, but theyre not people: they are movements of the Lord. And its extremely interestingone of the Lords movements will have this particular character, another movement will have a different type of vibration, and they all harmonize very nicely into a whole. But I know what time it is just before the clock strikes: six oclock, 6:30, 7:00, 7:30, like that. Not with the words six, seven, but: its time, its time, its time. And along with thisthis clockwork precision I have that other notion of time which is quite different, its. Although its a very rigid convention, our time is a living formation with its own living power here in the world of action. The other time is the rhythm of consciousness. So according to the intensity of the Presence (theres a concentration and an expansion, I mean), according to this pulsationwhich can vary, its not regular and mechanicalwalking around the room takes either no time at all, or else an ENORMOUS amount of time. But this doesnt interfere with the other time, theres no contradiction. Our time is on a different plane, something far more external; but it has its usefulness and its own law, and the one doesnt hinder the other.4
And its gradually becoming foreseeable that.5
--
But anyway, the Old World is an OLD world in the true sense of the word. India is much, much older, but more alive. Yet now it strikes me as so very rotten! They went rotten. You know what happens when a rotten apple is put next to a good one: England came and stayed much too long. It made things go quite rotten. Very, very rotten; its difficult to heal. Otherwise, whats not rotten is truly good.
But there is a place where something is awakening, a small something like what little children and animals have, going like this (Mother imitates a baby bird poking its beak out of the nest and peering around), peep-peep-peep, oh, alert and eager to know: America. They have a carapace as hard as an automobilesit has to be hammered open, but underneath theres something that wants to know and knows nothing, nothing, is totally ignorant but oh, it wants to know! And this can be touched. They may be the first to awaken.
--
strange, theyre on that side! (Mother gestures to the right.) Why are they on the right? Ah, thats where it is on the map! Its on the other side of the ocean, isnt it? (Mother looks in the direction of the Pondicherry coast.) Thats it. No, but it does have something to do with the right. Action: the right side is action.
They are silly, silly! They are absolutely ignorant and yet theres a flame of aspiration suddenly awakening. And then they want to know, want to investigate, want to find, want to learn, want to. Its going like this (Mother blinks her eyes like a baby bird waking up), vibrating and searching.
--
Yes, the ordinary consciousness is like an axis with everything revolving around it. An axis fixed somewhere, and everything revolves around it thats the ordinary individual consciousness. And if the axis shifts, one feels lost. Its like a big axis (more or less big, it can also be tiny) planted straight up in time, with everything revolving around it. The consciousness may be more or less extended, more or less high, more or less strong, but it always turns on an axis. And now for me there is no more axis.
I was looking it just isnt there any moregone, vanished!
--
When one goes out of the body (and probably at death), there is always the impression of moving "upwards," or "inwards," which means into a deeper plane (either way, it is simply the expression of a change of dimension). What is striking about Mother's experience is this LEVEL movement, indicating that she had not left the physical world. We are faced with a strange enigma: a physical world WITHIN the physical worldano ther world, or the same one lived differently? A physical world where death no longer exists: one has died unto death. The world to come?...
Mother's japa.
0 1962-07-18, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Matter needs quite a preparation to make it strong enough to hold those vibrations, and and the body seems to be given a trickle to see how much it can bear. But theres such an immediate intensity of joy in all the cells, in the heart and organs, that it all seems on the verge of exploding.
It comes just to tell you, See, this is how it is.
--
Its like an image. You see, the body is stretched out here on the chaise longue. You know how it is when experiments are done on animals? Its something like that the body is there as the subject of an experiment. Then theres my consciousness, the part focused on the earthly experience and the present transformation (its what I mean when I say I). And then the Lord. I say the Lord Ive adopted that because its the best way of putting it and the easiest for me, but I never, NEVER think of a being. For me, its a simultaneous contact with the Eternal, the Infinite, the Vast, the Totality of everything the totality of everything: all that is, all that has been, all that will be, everything. Words spoil it, but its like thatautomaticallywith consciousness, sweetness and SOLICITUDE. With all the qualities a perfect Personality can offer (I dont know if you follow me, but thats the way it is). And That (I use all these words to say it, and three-fourths is left out) is a spontaneous, constant, immediate experience. So the I I spoke of asks that the body may have the experience, or at least an initial taste, even a shadow of the experience of this Love. And each time its asked for, it comes INSTANTLY. Then I see the three together1in my consciousness and perception the three are together and I see that this Love is dosed out and maintained in exact proportion to what the body can bear.
The body is aware of this and is a little sad about it. But immediately comes something soothing, calming, making it vast. The body instantly senses the immensity and regains its calm.
This experience I am describing is exactly what happened yesterday (it happens every day, but yesterday it was especially clear). And its still here I am seeing it as I saw it, its still here. Actually, it is always herealways herethough its more striking when the body is stretched out, motionless in the Yoga. The experience is slightly different when walking because that involves action. When the body walks, it acts on behalf of everything thats related to it, hence the action is vaster and more powerful. But when it is stretched out and asks the Lord to take possession of it, it really asks with all its aspiration. And the very intensity of the aspiration brings in the possibility of a slight emotional vibration. But it is immediately drowned in the immobile immensity of matter, which senses the Divine Descent like a leaven that makes dough rise thats it exactly, the terre strial immensity of matter and the leavening action of the Divine Descent. The intensity of these vibrations is above and beyond anything we are used to feeling the vital seems dull and flat in comparison. And what a Wisdom! It knows how to make use of time that is, it actually changes itself into timeso as to minimize the possibilities of damage.
Its plain to see that, left to itself in its full power of transformation and progress, this flame of aspiration, this flame of Agni would have scant consideration for the result of the process the result of the process is that fire burns. And there could be mishaps in the functioning of the organs. All the organs must undergo a transformation, but were it too rapid and too sudden, well, everything would go out of whack. The machine would simply explode. But this Wisdom doesnt come from the universal consciousness (which I dont really think is so wise!), its infinitely higher: the Supreme Wisdom. Something so wonderful! It foresees things the universal forces in their universal play would overlooka wonder!
--
But now the body the body itself, its very own selffeels it is WITHIN things or WITHIN people or WITHIN an action. 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!
--
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.)
But It was blueall blue. And That said, Little children dont know what theyre talking about.
0 1962-07-21, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This is no easy change to make. After these fifteen years I am only now rising into the lowest of the three levels of the Supermind and trying to draw up into it all the lower activities. But when this siddhi will be complete, then I am absolutely certain that through me God will give to others the siddhi of the Supermind with less effort. Then my real work will begin. I am not impatient for success in the work. What is to happen will happen in Gods appointed time. I have no hasty or disorderly impulse to rush into the field of work in the strength of the little ego. Even if I did not succeed in my work I would not be shaken. This work is not mine but Gods. I will listen to no other call; when God moves me then I will move.
I know very well that Bengal is not really ready. The spiritual flood which has come is for the most part a new form of the old. It is not the real transformation. However this too was needed. Bengal has been awakening in itself the old yogas and exhausting their samskaras [old habitual tendencies], extracting their essence and with it fertilizing the soil. At first it was the time of VedantaAdwaita, Sannyasa, Shankaras Maya and the rest. It is now the turn of Vaishnava DharmaLila, love, the intoxication of emotional experience. All this is very old, unfitted for the new age and will not endure for such excitement has no capacity to last. But the merit of the Vaishnava Bhava [emotional enthusiasm] is that it keeps a connexion between God and the world and gives a meaning to life; but since it is a partial bhava the whole connexion, the full meaning is not there. The tendency to create sects which you have noticed was inevitable. The nature of the mind is to take a part and call it the whole and exclude all other parts. The Siddha [illuminated being] who brings the bhava, although he leans on its partial aspect, yet keeps some knowledge of the integral whole, even though he may not be able to give it form. But his disciples do not get that knowledge precisely because it is not in a form. They are tying up their little bundles, let them. The bundles will open of themselves when God manifests himself fully. These things are the signs of incompleteness and immaturity. I am not disturbed by them. Let the force of spirituality play in the country in whatever way and in as many sects as may be. Afterwards we shall see. This is the infancy or the embryonic condition of the new age. It is a first hint, not even the beginning.
--
You write about the Deva Samgha and say, I am not a god, I am only a piece of much hammered and tempered iron. No one is a God but in each man there is a God and to make Him manifest is the aim of divine life. That we can all do. I recognize that there are great and small adharas [vessels]. I do not accept, however, your description of yourself as accurate. Still whatever the nature of the vessel, once the touch of God is upon it, once the spirit is awake, great and small and all that does not make much difference. There may be more difficulties, more time may be taken, there may be a difference in the manifestation, but even about that there is no certainty. The God within takes no account of these hindrances and deficiencies. He breaks his way out. Was the amount of my failings a small one? Were there less obstacles in my mind and heart and vital being and body? Did it not take time? Has God hammered me less? Day after day, minute after minute, I have been fashioned into I know not whether a god or what. But I have become or am becoming something. That is sufficient, since God wanted to build it. It is the same as regards everyone. Not our strength but the Shakti of God is the sadhaka [worker] of this yoga.
Let me tell you in brief one or two things about what I have long seen. My idea is that the chief cause of the weakness of India is not subjection nor poverty, nor the lack of spirituality or dharma [ethics] but the decline of thought-power, the growth of ignorance in the motherl and of Knowledge. Everywhere I see inability or unwillingness to thinkthought-incapacity or thought-phobia. Whatever may have been in the middle ages, this state of things is now the sign of a terrible degeneration. The middle age was the night, the time of the victory of ignorance. The modern world is the age of the victory of Knowledge. Whoever thinks most, seeks most, labors most, can fathom and learn the truth of the world, and gets so much more Shakti. If you look at Europe, you will see two things: a vast sea of thought and the play of a huge and fast-moving and yet disciplined force. The whole Shakti of Europe is in that. And in the strength of that Shakti it has been swallowing up the world, like the tapaswins [ascetics] of our ancient times, by whose power even the gods of the world were terrified, held in suspense and subjection. People say Europe is running into the jaws of de struction. I do not think so. All these revolutions and upsettings are the preconditions of a new creation.
Then look at India. Except for some solitary giants, everywhere there is your simple man, that is, the average man who does not want to think and cannot think, who has not the least Shakti but only a temporary excitement. In India, you want the simple thought, the easy word. In Europe they want the deep thought, the deep word; there even an ordinary laborer or artisan thinks, wants to know, is not satisfied with surface things but wants to go behind. But there is still this difference: there is a fatal limitation in the strength and thought of Europe. When it comes into the spiritual field, its thought-power can no longer move ahead. There Europe sees everything as riddlenebulous metaphysics, yogic hallucination. They rub their eyes as in smoke and can see nothing clear. Still, some effort is being made in Europe to surmount even this limitation. We already have the spiritual sensewe owe it to our forefa thersand whoever has that sense has at his disposal such Knowledge and Shakti as with one breath might blow away all the huge power of Europe like a blade of grass. But to get that Shakti one must be a worshiper of Shakti. We are not worshipers of Shakti. We are worshipers of the easy way. But Shakti is not to be had by the easy way. Our forefa thers dived into a sea of vast thought and gained a vast Knowledge and established a mighty civilization. As they went on in their way, fatigue and weariness came upon them. The force of thought diminished and with it also the strong current of Shakti. Our civilization has become an achalayatana [prison], our religion a bigotry of externals, our spirituality a faint glimmer of light or a momentary wave of religious intoxication. And so long as this sort of thing continues, any permanent resurgence of India is improbable
In Bengal this weakness has gone to the extreme. The Bengali has a quick intelligence, emotional capacity and intuition. He is foremost in India in all these qualities. All of them are necessary but they do not suffice. If to these there were added depth of thought, calm strength, heroic courage and a capacity for and pleasure in prolonged labor, the Bengali might be a leader not only of India, but of mankind. But he does not want that, he wants to get things done easily, to get knowledge without thinking, the fruits without labor, siddhi by an easy sadhana [discipline]. His stock is the excitement of the emotional mind. But excess of emotion, empty of knowledge, is the very symptom of the malady. In the end it brings about fatigue and inertia. The country has been constantly and gradually going down. The life-power has ebbed away. What has the Bengali come to in his own country? He cannot get enough food to eat or clothes to wear, there is lamentation on all sides, his wealth, his trade and commerce, his lands, his very agriculture have begun to pass into the hands of others. We have abandoned the sadhana of Shakti and Shakti has abandoned us. We do the sadhana of Love, but where Knowledge and Shakti are not, there Love does not remain, there narrowness and littleness come, and in a little and narrow mind there is no place for Love. Where is Love in Bengal? There is more quarreling, jealousy, mutual dislike, misunderstanding and faction there than anywhere else even in India which is so much afflicted by division.
In the noble heroic age of the Aryan people4 there was not so much shouting and gesticulating, but the endeavor they undertook remained steadfast through many centuries. The Bengalis endeavor lasts only for a day or two.
You say that what is needed is maddening enthusiasm, to fill the country with emotional excitement. In the time of the Swadeshi [fight for independence, boycott of English goods] we did all that in the field of politics, but what we did is all now in the dust. Will there be a more favorable result in the spiritual field? I do not say there has been no result. There has been. Any movement will produce some result, but for the most part in terms of an increase of possibility. This is not the right method, however, to steadily actualize the thing. Therefore I no longer wish to make emotional excitement or any intoxication of the mind the base. I wish to make a large and strong equanimity the foundation of the yoga. I want established on that equality a full, firm and undisturbed Shakti in the system and in all its movements. I want the wide display of the light of Knowledge in the ocean of Shakti. And I want in that luminous vastness the tranquil ecstasy of infinite Love, Delight and Oneness. I do not want hundreds of thousands of disciples. It will be enough if I can get a hundred complete men, purified of petty egoism, who will be the in struments of God. I have no faith in the customary trade of the guru. I do not wish to be a guru. If anybody wakes and manifests from within his slumbering godhead and gets the divine lifebe it at my touch or at anothersthis is what I want. It is such men that will raise the country.
You must not think from all this lecture that I despair of the future of Bengal. I too hope, as they say, that this time a great light will manifest itself in Bengal. Still I have tried to show the other side of the shield, where the fault is, the error, the deficiency. If these remain, the light will not be a great light and it will not be permanent.
0 1962-07-25, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It was a very pleasant sensation. I would sit in a little armchair made especially for me, all alone in my room, and I (I didnt know what it was, you see, not a thing, nothingmentally zero) and I had a VERY PLEASANT feeling of something very strong, very luminous, and it was here (above the head). Consciousness. And I felt, Thats what I have to live, what I have to be. Not with all those words, naturally, but (Mother makes a gesture of aspiration Upward). Then I would pull it down, for it was it was truly my raison dtre.
That is my first memoryat five years old. Its impact was more on the ethical side than the intellectual; and yet it took an intellectual form too, since. You see, apparently I was a child like any other, except that I was hard to handle. Hard in the sense that I had no interest in food, no interest in ordinary games, no liking for going to my friends houses for snacks, because eating cake wasnt the least bit interesting! And it was impossible to punish me because I really couldnt have cared less: being deprived of dessert was rather a relief for me! And then I flatly refused to learn reading, I refused to learn. And even bathing me was very hard, because I was put in the care of an English governess, and that meant cold bathsmy brother took it in stride, but I just howled! Later it was found to be bad for me (the doctor said so), but that was much later. So you get the picture.
But whenever there was unpleasantness with my relatives, with playmates or friends, I would feel all the nastiness or bad willall sorts of pretty ugly things that came (I was rather sensitive, for I instinctively nurtured an ideal of beauty and harmony, which all the circumstances of life kept denying) so whenever I felt sad, I was most careful not to say anything to my mother or father, because my father didnt give a hoot and my mother would scold me that was always the first thing she did. And so I would go to my room and sit down in my little armchair, and there I could concentrate and try to understand in my own way. And I remember that after quite a few probably fruitless attempts I wound up telling myself (I always used to talk to myself; I dont know why or how, but I would talk to myself just as I talked to others): Look here, you feel sad because so-and-so said something really disgusting to you but why does that make you cry? Why are you so sad? Hes the one who was bad, so he should be crying. You didnt do anything bad to him. Did you tell him nasty things? Did you fight with her, or with him? No, you didnt do anything, did you; well then, you neednt feel sad. You should only be sad if youve done something bad, but. So that settled it: I would never cry. With just a slight inward movement, or something that said, Youve done no wrong, there was no sadness.
--
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.
--
Some thoughts. Are they thoughts? Its something much higher than thought, much higher than ideas. It is the VISION OF KNOWLEDGE in an extremely luminous region where vibrations are very precise and very strong; and this is obviously what, as it descends, translates into sounds and words (but this is much lower down). In the form closest to the Origin, they are luminous vibrations.
But the human mind latches on to everything and copies it!
--
One night during my first year here, he came and placed his hand over my heart, and in my dream I wept and wept and wept. Afterwards I told myself, What a strange imagination! I took it for imagination!
Oh, mon petit, how wonderful!
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.
0 1962-08-04, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The interchange of vibrations among people is something tremendous, and were swimming in it all, all, all the timeeven when were alone! Because these things travel: for instance, its enough for someones thought to come and strike against yours, and for you to think of him (which means responding)there is an immediate effect in the body. So to imagine that solitude would make yoga any easier is sheer childishness.
The only possible solution is so perfect a union with the supreme Vibration that everything is automatically put under His influence; and in that case it is easier to feel wider, higher, vaster than the world (to take just the earth: the terre strial world) than an individual.3 For it is easier to do this (embracing gesture), to take everything in, to embrace and change it from outside, than to change it from inside. At present, the two movements are simultaneous, and staying inside was4 the result of all those years of experience in drawing the Supreme Presence down into the most material world for that, you have to accept (how can I put it?) corporeal oneness.
--
And through certain things, I can perceive the very clear, precise and absolute Direction coming from the Supreme. And He is arranging all those thingsforms, various intellectual formsexactly as they should be. Because here (pointing to the crown of the head), and even from here (lower) down to here (the forehead), its all immobile. All these vibrations come, pass through, whirl around, they come from everywhere, but here (the head) nothing moves, theres no response. And yet I have seen that on the intellectual level there are a number of what Sri Aurobindo calls frames, certain principles of organization6 giving a precise orientation to the yogas action. One of them, the strongest, is my translation of The Synthesis of Yoga. I do a page almost every day and on that page I invariably find an idea or a sentence that EXACTLY expresses the field of experiences I was in that day and the night before; and some of the details. And interestingly enough, certain points in the pages you read me today were the EXACT frame of a series of experiences Ive been havingalmost word for word, with the same words.7 That sort of thing. Its like intellectual forms being assembled to give the field of experience precision, because theres nothing here (the forehead), its blankyet some form is necessary! Well, the forms Sri Aurobindo has given predominate, but what you write has its place, and a very precise and interesting place: the way of thinking. And I see that theres an immense field of intellectual thought, intellectual formulation, with varying degrees of intensity and precision, serving as a SIEVE for the Supremes Will to pass through. And the sievethis sort of immense universal sieveis what gives the precision.8 Its very interesting. That way, the mind remains perfectly stillit has nothing to do, everything is done for it! It is nothing but a mirrora living mirror where everything gets inscribed and which can reflect back its image without becoming active.
The nature of my nights is changing, the nature of my days is changing.
0 1962-08-14, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Theres a fellow (hes neither young nor old) who has been living for twenty-five straight years at one of the sources of the Ganges, in a small cave carved into the mountainsidea tiny, bare space, an earth floor and a tiger skin. He sits on the tiger skin stark naked, without a stitch, naked as a newborn babe, in the dead of winter as well as in summeroutside everything is covered with snow. He eats sometimes passers-by bring him fruit, which he dries in the sun, then puts into water and drinks. Thats all. He hasnt once left there in twenty-five years.
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!
--
It seems he said that if we could make it to 1964, afterwards the difficulties would disappear. (But this is a very strong formationwhat did he pick up? Is it Sri Aurobindos formation? Is it the boys thought, or what?) But hes a wonderful mind-reader; he must have a marvelous power of vision in the mental world.
It really amused me. If you asked if you asked people here, not too many would have such a clear idea: They have come to do something entirely new and very difficult.
0 1962-08-18, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
All his sweetness and all his splendor and all his power and all his calm were there and far stronger and clearer than when he was in his body!
I always had that same impressionit was always like that in his room; and I would always have that impression whenever I met him. And even when I was working, all the while I would feel him behind me, doing everything. But this was much stronger. Much stronger. It was one was caught up and there was no way to get out of it. Thats how it was something ABSOLUTE.
Ive asked no one, Ive told no one, I havent said anything about it, not a word; youre the first. When Pavitra came yesterday I smilingly asked him if hed had a good meditation, thats all. He said yes. So I told him, Well, Sri Aurobindo was sitting on you! (Mother laughs) I was sitting below, in Sri Aurobindos room, he replied. He was there too! I said (Mother laughs).
0 1962-08-25, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
So they must be written. You can tell me about it on Tuesday. And again he repeated, No worry, no worry. Take it easy, take it easy. And it was as if he wanted to sit you down by a running river, as if you could see the water flowing, flowing, flowing, flowing so naturally along. As if you were sitting in a lovely flower- strewn meadow by a flowing stream. And he was saying, Dont worry, take it easy, take it easy.
He was putting all kinds of things around you. So there you are.
--
No, not at all. I have time but I just cant do it. Its a shame, because it was a conscious hour. I would often go strolling by the sea.
You slept by the sea?
--
How strange!
I am not responsible.
--
stretch out, and then just call me. And let yourself go. Try. Try today.
Just lie down quietly, without thinking of anything, and then call me thats all.
--
This coincides strangely with the turn in Mother's yoga, as though from this time on Satprem would be deprived of all his inner promenades and forced to stay in the body.
***
0 1962-08-28, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You see, the subtle physical seems to DOSE OUT its power and light and capacity of consciousness according to the amount of receptivity in the purely physical vibration. Thats why the effects stretch over a long period of time. Its being done very, very gradually. But its an almost continuous work. Only when theres some bodily activity and the consciousness must turn outwards (not in the same way as before, thats impossible, but still in a way that seems like a continuation of the old consciousness), then, if the work continues at all, its invisible and maybe it doesnt continue. I dont know. But as soon as all activity stops and the body is concentrated or immobileperhaps no more than simply passive that penetration is perceptible: its visible. Visible. And its not like something more subtle penetrating something less subtle without altering it; the essential point is that this penetration actually changes the composition. Its not merely a degree of subtlety, its a change in the internal composition. Ultimately, this action probably has an effect on the atomic level. And thats how the practical possibility of transformation can be accounted for.
Its an experience I have all the time.
--
It will surely stretch over a long period of time.
And at each step, its as though you had to take great care that nothing gets thrown off balance. The new combinations of vibrations, especially, are difficult for the body it must be very, very quiet, well under control, very peaceful, or else it panics. Because its used to vibrations whose effects follow a regular pattern, so if the pattern changes theres a kind of frightened jolt. That must be avoided, the body has to be very gently kept under control.
0 1962-08-31, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Anyway, even if you dont sleep, its always restful to stretch out on your bed or a mat and go limp; its a good rest for the vital being, and it cant do you any harm.
***
--
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.
--
Its a kind of liberation I dont mean from worry or preoccupation, theres no question of that but from the very IDEA of a consequence: its this way because thats the way it is; it has to be this way, so it is. Thats all. And at each second its this way because it has to be, and so it is. And That repeats itself eternally, and it is this eternal Pulsation which is expressed in time by those gusts I feel this very strongly, very strongly. Its a constant, spontaneous and very natural experience for me. The idea of something behind or ahead in time and so on is a Truth changing from immutable Eternity into Eternity of manifestation. And it changes like this (Mother makes a pulsating gesture), exactly like gustspuff, puff, puff.
Irresponsible gusts, like a childs soap bubbles, you might say. No sense of consequencesnone, none whatsoever: puff, puff, puff like that.
0 1962-09-08, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its a strange sensation, a bizarre perception of both the true functioning and the functioning distorted by the sense of being an individual body. Theyre not even you cant even say theyre superimposed, theyre almost simultaneous, and thats why it is so hard to explain. A number of things are malfunctioning in the body; I dont know if they can be called illnesses (maybe the doctors would call them illnesses), but in any case, theyre malfunctionings in the bodys organs: the heart, the stomach, the intestines, the lungs and so on. And at the same time theres (it cant be called a functioning) the true state. And thus certain disorders appear only when the consciousness as if the consciousness were pulled or pushed or poised in a certain way, and then, those malfunctionings INSTANTLY appearnot as a consequence: I mean the consciousness becomes aware of their existence. And if the consciousness stays in that position long enough, there are what we conventionally call consequences: the malfunctioning has its consequences (tiny things, such as physical discomforts, for instance). And if through (is it yogic discipline, is it the Lords intervention? Call it what you will) but if the consciousness regains its true position, the consequences cease IMMEDIATELY. Sometimes, though, its like this (Mother makes a gesture of an overlapping or interpenetration by interlacing the fingers of her two hands), in other words, this way, then that, this way, then that (Mother slips the fingers of her right hand back and forth through the fingers of her left to show the consciousness alternating between two states), this position, then that position, this one, then that one. This movement takes only a few seconds, so I can almost perceive the two functionings simultaneously. Thats what gave me the knowledge of the process, otherwise I wouldnt understand; I would simply think I am falling from one state into another. Thats not it, its just. The substance, the vibrations, everything is probably following its normal course, you see, and all that is really changing is the way consciousness perceives things.
So pushing this knowledge to its limit that is, applying it generallylife (what we usually call life, the physical life of the body) and death are THE SAME THING, simultaneous its just that the consciousness moves back and forth, back and forth (same gesture). I dont know if I am making myself clear. But its fantastic.
--
Outwardly, of course, these troubles (these apparent troubles) upset people, especially the doctor! Ive explained to him that it was all yoga and transformation, and he shouldnt worry, but evidently its upsetting to ordinary eyes. One fact in particular is bewildering to ordinary vision: I am very, very regularly losing weight. Its already down to a ridiculous figure I weigh only 85 pounds! With my height and bone structure, my normal weight should be 130 pounds; when I was twenty-five I weighed 130 or 135. Now I am down to only 85, and its going down quite regularly. I understand how disturbing this might be for people who see things in the ordinary way! I dont eat much (not a little, not a lot, just average), and I dont seem to benefit from what I eat thats how it looks on the surface. And then there are these strange phenomena; I dont usually talk about them (youre the only one I have explained them to, nobody else), I dont talk about them, but from time to time I appear to I must appear to be fainting. And not in the usual way, you know, thats the thing! Nothing happens in the usual way, so its very upsetting! (Mother laughs) The Energy is tremendous, more tremendous than it has ever been; and there is practically no physical strength. I can act, but only if I bring in the Energy: the least physical act demands the Energy. I think the body is completely flimsy; it seems sometimes I touch it to see if its still if its hard or if its soft!
(silence)
0 1962-09-15, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Somewhere in the overmind (beyond the higher mind and from the overmind onwards), things are luminous IN THEMSELVES. Light doesnt have to strike them: things themselves are luminous. And this makes a considerable difference in vision. Things are no longer lit from outside, they are luminous in themselves. This is the main difference in the quality of the light.
It has even come to the point where things lit from outside seem artificial to me. They have lost their light.
0 1962-09-26, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
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, di strusting the gods, bypasses them through a kind of intellectual asceticism, as it were, wary of forms, of images, and differing expressions, which rises straight as an arrow, proud and pure, towards the supramental Light. That is a living experience.
Sri Aurobindo preached the integral yoga which includes everything, so one can have all the experiences. Indeed, the universe was clearly created as a field of experience. Some people prefer the short, straight and narrow paths thats their business. Others like to dawdle along the wayand thats their business! And some are drawn to have all the experiences, and thus they often wander for a long time through the overmental world. And of course, the vast majority of those who have RELIGIOUS aspirations are thus put in touch with various deities, where they stopits enough for them.
But everything Ive just said is only one tiny part of the whole story.
--
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.
Basically, its part of the old path, a consequence of all that has happened, of the whole universal formation as we know it. People who believe in essential Evil would say its a consequence of the accident of creation. But is it an accident? I have my doubts. It has yet to be revealed. And we wont know until until its over.
--
(Later, Mother tries to remember a word that struck her while listening to Satprem read his manuscript on Sri Aurobindo:)
Its strange, I realize that I listen with a completely different type of consciousness. Nothing is left here (pointing to the forehead), all that comes there is sound, but I listen elsewhere.
I have no physical memory I dont remember at all. But I had the impression. I saw a word turning into living bluish light, so I thought, Ah, a good word for my translation! (Mother again tries to remember, then gives up.)
0 1962-10-06, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But any transformation in the being, on any plane, always has repercussions on the planes below. There is always an action. Even those things which seem purely intellectual certainly have an effect on the structure of the brain.
And these kinds of revelations happen only in a silent mindor at least a mind at rest. Unless the mind is absolutely tranquil and still, it doesnt come. Or if it does come, you dont even notice anything with all the racket youre making! And of course, these experiences help the tranquillity, the silence and receptivity to become better and better established. This sense of something utterly immobile, but not closedimmobile, but open and receptivegets more established the more you have these experiences. There is a big difference between a dead, lackluster, unresponsive silence and the receptive silence of a quieted mind. It makes a big difference. And it results from these experiences. All the progress we make is always, quite naturally, the result of truths coming down from above.
--
One thing struck me: you say that the Gita as Sri Aurobindo explained it is not overmental but supramental.
Sri Aurobindo said that what he came to bring was already indicated in the Gita.
0 1962-10-12, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
So you see, the only one whos not worried is the one watching the show, because he knows everything thats going to happen. He has an absolute knowledge of everything, everything that is happening, has happened or will happen for him, its all ONE presence. And then there are the actors, the poor actors, who dont even know their roles very well. They worry and fret because theyre being made to play something and they dont know what it is. Ive just had a very strong sense of this: were all playing parts in the comedy, but we dont know what the comedy is, nor where its going, where its coming from, nor what its all about. We just barely know (and poorly, at that) what were supposed to do at a given moment. And knowing it so poorly, we worry about it. But when you know everything, you cant worry any moreyou smile. He must be having great fun, but for us. And yet we are given the FULL POWER to have just as much fun as He does.
We just dont take the trouble to do it.
--
I cant tell people all this in the Bulletin, mon petittheyd go crazy! They mustnt be fed things too strong for them to digest.
Theres a person I wont name who has read Sri Aurobindos books and thought he understood them. He has been following a yogic discipline (anyway, he thought he was doing yoga) and he pulled down the Force. The Force responded (Mother laughs). He wound up with a headache! He got frightened and wrote to me in these exact words: This Force is the Lords Force (which is true, quite true), and it has turned into fear. So (Mother laughs) fear is the Lords principal perversion. There you have it. He read in books that the Lord is behind everything, that there is nothing that isnt the Lord; so its the Lord who has become perverted in His manifestation, naturally. The Force of the Lord came to help him and was changed into fear, so the Lords principal perversion is fear!
--
Exactly! Thats just what happens when you feed people something too strong, something they cant understand and assimilate: it creates incoherence in their brains.
So none of this stuff can be published, though its fine for the Agenda. How can it be told to people?
--
When I start looking, you know (Mother closes her eyes), there are two things simultaneously: that smile, that joy, that laughter, and then that peace! Oh really, such peace. Such a full, luminous peace and TOTAL: no more struggle, no more contradictions. No more struggle. A SINGLE luminous harmony and yet everything is there, what we call error, suffering, misery, its all there. NOTHING is done away with. It is another way of seeing.
(long silence)
--
Oh, all this frightful toil, this effort of the mind to understand! struggling, giving itself headachesphew! Absolutely useless, absolutely useless. It leads nowhere, except to more confusion.
You find yourself facing a so-called problem: What am I to say? What am I to do? How should I act? There is nothing to do! Nothing but to say to the Lord, You see, heres the situation. Thats all. And then keep very still. And spontaneously, without thinking about it, without reflecting, without calculating, without doing anything, anything whatsoever, without the slightest effort you do what must be done. But its the Lord who does it, its no longer you. He does it, He arranges the circumstances, He arranges the people, He puts the words in your mouth or under your penHe does it all, all, all, all, and you have nothing more to do, nothing but let yourself live in bliss.
--
Theres no way you can make use of all this; its strictly for the Agenda.
I often wonder: when one prays to the Lord, when one wants to tell Him that somethings wrong, I always feel its necessary to concentrate very hard because its really something Far you have to call. But is this true? Or is it really.
0 1962-10-16, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But each time I ask my body what IT would like, all the cells say, No, no! We are immortal, we want to be immortal. Were not tired, were ready to struggle for centuries if necessary; we have been created for immortality and we want immortality.
It is very interesting.
0 1962-10-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Then comes the musical zone, and there you find the origin of the sounds that have inspired the various composers. Great waves of music, without sound. It seems a bit strange, but thats how it is.
But do you hear something when you play, or what?
0 1962-10-30, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There are different LINES of approach. It all ultimately depends on ones aspiration or dominant preoccupation, or on what one needs for ones work. Its as if one went strAIGHT where one wants to go, ignoring everything else, taking no notice of itpassing through it if necessary, but without paying attention to it. And the need to classify, well it comes afterwards, if one feels like describing things, but it isnt necessary.
Its like that famous Nirvanayou can find it behind everything. Theres a psychic nirvana, a mental nirvana, even a vital nirvana. I think I already told you about the experience I had with Tagore in Japan. Tagore always used to say that as soon as he started meditating he entered Nirvana, and he asked me to meditate with him. We sat together in meditation. I was expecting to make a very steep ascent, but he simply went into his MIND, and there (what I do, you see, is tune in to the person I am meditating with, identify with him thats how I know what happens). Well, he started meditating, and everything quite rapidly came to a halt, became absolutely immobile (this he did very well), and from there he sort of fell backwards, and it was Nothingness. And he could remain in that state indefinitely! We did in fact stay like that for a rather long time; I dont remember how long, three quarters of an hour or an hour, but anyway it was long enough. I was keeping alert the whole time to see if, by chance, he would go on into something else, but there he stayedhe stayed there nice and calm, without stirring. Then he came back, his mind started up again, and that was that.
--
Thats the experience. Its the base, the basic experience. Once you have it, you may progress more or less rapidly; although if you truly give yourself, you progress very rapidly. Externally you are in a position where, having that experience, you could cover the whole path in a matter of years and straight-away begin the work of transformation (Mother touches her body).
To have it (just to give you an idea) took me a year of exclusive concentration on finding that within myself that is, to enter into contact with the immanent God. I did nothing but that, thought of nothing but that, wanted nothing but that. There was even a rather funny instance, because I had resolved to do it (I had already been working for a very long time, of course; Madame Thon had told me about my mission on earth and all that, so you can imagine I am talking about the psychic being belonging to this present creation, this formationMo ther touches her body) anyway, it was New Years Eve and I decided: Within the coming year. I had a large, almost square studio, a bit bigger than this room, with a door leading onto a patio. I opened the little door and looked at the sky and there, just as I looked, was a shooting star. You know the tradition: if you formulate an aspiration just as you see a shooting star, before the star disappears, it will be realized within the year. And there, just as I opened the door, was a shooting star I was totally in my aspiration: Union with the inner Divine. And before the end of December of the following year, I had the experience.
But I was entirely concentrated on that. I was in Paris, and I did nothing else but that; when I walked down the street, I was thinking only of that. One day, as I was crossing the Boulevard Saint Michel, I was almost run over (Ive told you this), because I was thinking of nothing but thatconcentrating, concentrating like sitting in front of a closed door, and it was painful! (intense gesture to the chest) Physically painful, from the pressure. And then suddenly, for no apparent reason I was neither more concentrated nor anything elsepoof! It opened. And with that. It didnt just last for hours, it lasted for months, mon petit! It didnt leave me, that light, that dazzling light, that light and immensity. And the sense of THAT willing, THAT knowing, THAT ruling the whole life, THAT guiding everythingsince then, this sense has never left me for a minute. And always, whenever I had a decision to make, I would simply stop for a second and receive the indication from there.
But that was ages ago. I have done a lot of things since then. It was long ago, in 1912. And now oh, this old carcass!
0 1962-11-10, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But it was all so lovely, so very lovely! There was a rhythm; it was all unfolding rhythmically, a rhythm of the falling sheets of paper; and a rhythm moving along very slowly, not in a straight line, and undulating.
It was very lovely. A most pleasant atmosphere.
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
Was it India that was struck?
Yes, of course, it was India.
--
Because it can set things back thousands of years. For there are moments when things converge, and it is rare to have a MOMENT in this Story: it stretches over long, long, almost indefinite periods of time. So to get a MOMENT that becomes something actual in terre strial life (Mother drives her fist into the Earth) is very difficult. And if that moment is passed by, is missed.
But I always wonder because Sri Aurobindo left without revealing his secret. He said he was leaving DELIBERATELYthat much he told me. He told me what I needed to know. But he never said the moment hadnt come (you see, he thought he came saying the time had come), he never said if hed seen that things were not sufficiently ready. He told me the world is not ready, that much he did say. He told me he was going away deliberately because it was necessary, and that I had to stay and continue the work, that I would continue. He said those three things. But he never told me whether or not I would succeed! He never told me whether or not I could bring the moment back.
--
But strangely enough, ever since these people began fighting up there [along the Himalayan border], the earth has been more receptive.
Yet people have fought beforepeople have fought everywhere, havent they? Since the last war they have never stopped fighting in one place or another: in Africa, in Asia, everywhere. Theyve been constantly fighting. There was always something, constantly. This whole Algerian story terrible things went on there; and all the trouble in the Congo and so forthbattles everywhere. But I dont know why (its not that I wasnt concerned with these events, they were in my consciousness), but this time two things have happened: a greater Power has descended (something very concrete, almost tangible), a great Power has descended, has been especially sent; and also a certain receptivityeverywhere, even in the Chinese (I dont mean locally: its all over the world). Is it because, materially, theres some anxiety at the idea of? If a new world war starts, its obviously going to be something unspeakable, frightful, frightfulwhole civilizations will be swallowed up. It will put a stop to life on earth in a terrible way. Is that what made people? Has this awakened some aspiration? Possibly. Theres clearly a greater receptivity. I see this from the fact that whenever the Will spreads out (Mother makes a gesture of emanation), well, it has a more concrete and more immediate effect.
--
It was so strong that when I was told what X had written, somewhere (its somewhere off to my right, I dont know) That [the Creative Force] responded right away (we have to use words, and words just dont work but I have nothing else at my disposal), and It said, Well, he wants to remain on the other side, then.
I refrained from saying anything.
--
The first of these dreams was a revolutionary movement which would create a free and united India. India today is free but she has not achieved unity. () The old communal division into Hindus and Muslims seems now to have hardened into a permanent political division of the country. It is to be hoped that this settled fact will not be accepted as settled for ever or as anything more than a temporary expedient. For if it lasts, India may be seriously weakened, even crippled: civil strife may remain always possible, possible even a new invasion and foreign conquest. Indias internal development and prosperity may be impeded, her position among the nations weakened, her destiny impaired or even fru strated. This must not be; the partition must go.8 ()
Sri Aurobindo
--
I do not know why you want a line of thought to be indicated to you for your guidance in the affair of Korea. There is nothing to hesitate about there, the whole affair is as plain as a pike-staff. It is the first move in the Communist plan of campaign to dominate and take possession first of these northern parts and then of South East Asia as a preliminary to their manoeuvres with regard to the rest of the continentin passing, Tibet as a gate opening to India.9 If they succeed, there is no reason why domination of the whole world should not follow by steps until they are ready to deal with America. That is, provided the war can be staved off with America until Stalin can choose his time. Truman seems to have understood the situation if we can judge from his moves in Korea, but it is to be seen whether he is strong enough and determined enough to carry the matter through. The measures he has taken are likely to be incomplete and unsuccessful, since they do not include any actual military intervention except on sea and in the air. That seems to be the situation; we have to see how it develops. One thing is certain that if there is too much shillyshallying and if America gives up now her defence of Korea, she may be driven to yield position after position until it is too late: at one point or another she will have to stand and face the necessity of drastic action even if it leads to war. Stalin also seems not to be ready to face at once the risk of a world war and, if so, Truman can turn the tables on him by constantly facing him with the onus of either taking that risk or yielding position after position to America. I think that is all that I can see at present; for the moment the situation is as grave as it can be.10
Sri Aurobindo
--
In April 1942, when England was struggling against the Nazis and Japan, which was threatening to invade Burma and India, Churchill sent an emissary, Sir Stafford Cripps, to New Delhi with a very generous proposal which he hoped would rally India's goodwill and cooperation in the fight against the worldwide threat. In this proposal, Great Britain offered India Dominion status, as a first step towards an independent government. Sri Aurobindo at once came out of retirement to wire his adhesion to Cripps; he wired all of India's leaders, and even sent a personal messenger to Gandhi and the Indian Congress to convince them to accept this unhoped for proposal without delay. One of Sri Aurobindo's telegrams to Rajagopalachari (the future President of India) spoke of the grave danger, which no one seemed to see, of rejecting Cripps' proposal: "... Some immediate solution urgent face grave peril. Appeal to you to save India formidable danger new foreign domination when old on way to self-elimination." No one understood: "Why is he meddling?" Had it accepted Dominion status, India would have avoided the partition of the country in two, the artificial creation of Pakistan, as well as the three wars that were to follow (and which we haven't heard the last of), and the blood bath that ravaged Bengal and the Punjab in 1947 at the time of the partition. (See in Addendum an extract from Sri Aurobindo's message on the occasion of India's Independence.)
There is another side to the story. When Nehru died, Mother said in a message of May 27, 1964: "Nehru leaves his body but his soul is ONE with the Soul of India, that lives for Eternity."
0 1962-11-20, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And all night long (or a good part of it in any case), Indira Gandhis thought was here, clinging to me (Indira Gandhi is Nehrus daughter), and the jewelry was sent to her.3 It was handed over to Nehru, who passed it on to Indira.4 And she wrote me a letter I received yesterdaya very (Mother searches for the proper word) a very amicable letter; a letter from someone who has understood that this gift was an important elementnot on a worldwide level (!), but because it was important that people know I have made a gesture of collaboration. But it didnt end there. The letter came yesterday; generally, of course, when I see a letter coming, I see it BEFORE receiving it; but here it was SHE, she herself, thinking [of Mother], thinking, thinking, thinking over and over again. (With Nehru, its always very blurred: he doesnt have sufficient mental power for his position, he lacks the required strength of mind, so its always hazy; when you tune in to him, thats the impression you getblurred gesturenot solid.) But with her, it kept coming and coming and coming. They must be feeling or beginning to feel that something other than what they have is required.
We shall see.
0 1962-11-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When I came out of it, I drew only one conclusion: Why am I not in such states more often? I waste my time with a mountain of external things: reading and writing letters, seeing people, doing this and that, putting some order into matter (theres a very strong tendency to bring orderan order of a higher logicinto SMALL material things)why? Then the reply came, not in words but very clearly: Dont worry (Mother laughs). It has to be this way and its a time of transition.
A time will come when it will all be done automatically, but right now that would be impossible. As it is, the way the Force acts is already making people here a little disorientedits verging on being unintelligible to them. In other words, its beginning to obey another law. For instance, to know at the exact moment what needs to be done or said, whats going to happenif theres the slightest bit of concern or concentration to know, it doesnt come. But if I am just like that, simply in a kind of inner immobility, then for all the little details of life, I know at the exact moment. What needs to be said comes: you say this. And not like an order from outside: it just comes, there it is. What needs to be said is there, the reply that needs to be sent is there; the person who enters, entersyoure not forewarned. You do things in a kind of automatic way. In the mental world, you think of something before doing it (it may happen very fast, but both movements are distinct); here it isnt like that.
--
strobilan thes kunthianus.
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."
0 1962-11-30, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
1) The human element will increasingly cooperate and people would get stronger in every sense.
2) The struggle will go on for one and a half years. There will be victory for India.
3) struggle is more in the spiritual (subtle) than on the physical and the struggle need not be a shooting war.
4) Himalayan states will enjoy independence.
--
6) All nations will shower help on India and the struggles cost will not affect Indian economy.
7) When asked how the Chinese will be defeated without a shooting war, he said They may just go back. He could not say that there would be no resumption of hostilities. He said There need not be.
--
I felt very stronglyso intensely it was inexpressible that there was but ONE THING to lean on, ONE THING sure and unfailing: the Supreme; all the rest comes and goes, it stays, then disappears.
(silence)
0 1962-12-04, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
What he is now striving to give this body is the consciousness of Permanence, of Immortality, of the Certitude of absolute securityin Matter, in Life, in every moments action. And that is becoming nearer and nearer, more and more constant. Gradually, the mixture of old impressions is disappearing thats the BEDROCK, the basis of the transformation.
In the true movement, you feel the Absolute and Eternity physically. How? Its impossible to describe, but thats how it is. And the minute you get out of That, when you fall back even slightly into the ordinary movement, the old movement, theres a feeling of ABSOLUTE uncertainty! Uncertainty at every second. It would be impossible for an ordinary human being to live in that consciousness, with that sense of total and absolute uncertainty, of total and absolute impermanenceits no longer a de struction,1 but its not yet an ascending transformation. Absolute instability. It doesnt last more than a fraction of a secondjust enough time to become aware of oneself, thats all.
0 1962-12-19, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But I had an interesting experience the other day, when this new room was inaugurated. Those rascals set up a balcony! And there was such a crowdin all the streets, on the rooftops that I had no choice but to go out on the balcony. And I realized that there has been a complete break between my life before and now, with that famous experience1 as the dividing line: I have to make the same movement I make to summon up the memory of a past life! It was so concrete, I was flabbergasted. The same movement of consciousness as when you summon up a past life: it was as though I had to recall what I used to do on the balcony in my former life! I was teaching the body as if it had no idea what to do. I was calling back what had to be done from the depths of a subconscious memory. But it was not the same thing, since the doors were not the same, the setup was different, so it was a little bit complicated. But when I found myself at the edge of the balcony, I suddenly drew on something, and this came: Heres how it was, heres what I used to do; and once again the Presence was there. And the whole time I was standing on the balcony it was it was better than before, much clearermuch clearer the experiences are much simpler and much more absolute (when I know something, I know it better than before).
But in the past, you see, I used to go up and down the stairs four or five times a day; I would go out, go down the other stairs, it gave me some exercise. Nowadays I dont get any exercise, except walking for half an hour twice a day, but thats no substitute: my legs are a bit stiff from lack of exercise. So I didnt feel like walking on the balcony like a puppet before of all those people waiting and wondering. You see, more than three-quarters of them think I was very sick (Mother laughs), practically dying (thats the form it takes in their consciousness). I couldnt show them someone who seemed to be emerging from a serious illness! So I clearly saw I had to tell my body, Now dont walk like that! Youve got to walk like thisthis is how you used to walk. And the body was listening like a little child. Youre going to walk, I had to tell it, youre going to walk like this. And it started walking! It was funny.
--
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.
The next day it wasnt like that any more; the work had been done the day before, in one minute (it gets done very quickly, but in a very intense and violent way). I had purposely gone to the room the previous evening, to set things in order, and so the next day it was better, the work was already done. Then I sat down at the organ it was much better than I expected. It was as if a formation were waiting, and as soon as I sat down it descended. Oh, a marvelous musical joy! I didnt have to look and when I wasnt looking, I saw everything from within: all the notes, my hands, everything, with eyes closed. And so it descended I was very happy. I must have played for a good twenty minutes.
0 1962-12-22, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
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.
Afterwards, I had to look into it: it really was a memory. It suddenly struck me, and I wondered, Did I really go downstairs physically? There are plenty of people here to prove that I didnt, that I didnt stir from here. And yet I have the physical memory of having done so, and of having done certain other things as well; I even remember going outside.
Well, it confronts me with a real problem. Not only is that memory absolutely physical, but the EFFECTS of what I said and did are there.
0 1962-12-28, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This cleansing of the middle ground is the whole story of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother I had been dredging, dredging, dredging the mire of the subconscious. The supramental light was coming down before November,2 but afterwards all the mud arose and it stopped.3 Once again Sri Aurobindo verified, not individually this time but collectively, that if one pulls down too strong a light, the violated darkness below is made to moan. It is noteworthy that each time Sri Aurobindo and the Mother had some new experience marking a progress in the transformation, this progress automatically materialized in the consciousness of the disciples, without their even knowing anything about it, as a period of increased difficulties, sometimes even revolts or illnesses, as though everything were grating and grinding. But then, one begins to understand the mechanism. If a pygmy were abruptly subjected to the simple mental light of a cultivated man, we would probably see the poor fellow traumatized and driven mad by the subterranean revolutions within him. There is still too much jungle beneath the surface. The world is still full of jungle, thats the crux of the matter in a word; our mental colonization is a minuscule crust plastered over a barely dry quaternary. And the battle seems endless; one digs and digs, said the Rishis, and the deeper one digs, the more the bottom seems to recede: I have been digging, digging. Many autumns have I been toiling night and day, the dawns aging me. Age is diminishing the glory of our bodies. Thus, thousands of years ago, lamented Lopamudra, wife of Rishi Agastya, who was also seeking transformation. But Agastya doesnt lose heart, and his reply is magnificently characteristic of the conquerors the Rishis were: Not in vain is the labor which the gods protect. Let us relish all the contesting forces, let us conquer indeed even here, let us run this battle race of a hundred leadings.
(Rig-Veda I.179)
0 1963-01-09, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Terrible. A strange difficulty.
If the inner being the true beingis the ruler, the power of the true being makes the body act automatically; but then it doesnt grow conscious of its own change, it doesnt collaborate in its change, so for the change to happen it would take maybe millennia. The true being has to be like this (gesture to the background, standing back) and the body has to do everything BY ITSELF, in other words, contain the Lord, receive the Lord, give itself to the Lord, BE the Lord. It does aspireoh, its intense, aflame thats very good. But the Lord (smiling) doesnt conform to the ordinary habit! So all the habits, the minute He just tries to take possession of one function or another, even partially (not totally), all the interrelationships, all the movements are changed instantlypanic. Panic at the particular spot. And the result: you faint, or you are just about to faint, or you have an excruciating pain, or anyway something APPARENTLY breaks down completely. So whats to be done? Wait patiently until that small number or large number of cells, that little spot of consciousness, has learned its lesson. It takes one day, two days, three days, then the chaotic, upsetting big event calms down, is explained, and those particular cells say to themselves (or begin saying to themselves), God, how dumb we are! It takes a little while, then they understand.
0 1963-01-12, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its a strange phenomenon: as soon as I sit down to translate, in the space of one or two seconds, no more, I become a different person. I writeit isnt I who write, I know its Sri Aurobindo.
And he suggests some words to me, that is, suddenly I see: Like this. I hear the sentence and write it down. Sometimes its very different, though I can see the meaning is the same; and sometimes it isnt French.
--
Its rather odd, at times it comes in torrents (more than streams): forms, images, expressions, revelations, it comes flowing, flowing, flowingif I started writing I could write endlessly. At other times its total immobility. And if I try to disturb that, it means falling back into the ordinary stupidity.
Well see.
--
And I realize You see, I need physical help to relieve the body of all effort thats not strictly indispensable. But I cant make their [the attendants] life completely chaotic in appearance: there has to be some schedule. And a schedule means terrible limitations. I cant help it. I cant help it, because for the time being, simply the will expressing itself isnt enough to make matter respond. Once it is like that, time wont matter any more, butBUT.
We mustnt be impatient.
0 1963-01-30, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
So I will go on. If there are corrections, they can only come through the same process, because at this point to correct anyhow would spoil it all. There is also the mixing (for the logical mind) of future and present tenses but that too is deliberate. It all seems to come in another way. And well, I cant say, I havent read any French for ages, I have no knowledge of modern literatureto me everything is in the rhythm of the sound. I dont know what rhythm they use now, nor have I read what Sri Aurobindo wrote in The Future Poetry. They tell me that Savitris verse follows a certain rule he explained on the number of stresses in each line (and for this you should pronounce in the pure English way, which somewhat puts me off), and perhaps some rule of this kind will emerge in French? We cant say. I dont know. Unless languages grow more fluid as the body and mind grow more plastic? Possible. Language too, maybe: instead of creating a new language, there may be transitional languages, as, for instance (not a particularly fortunate departure, but still), the way American is emerging from English. Maybe a new language will emerge in a similar way?
In my case it was from the age of twenty to thirty that I was concerned with French (before twenty I was more involved in vision: painting; and sound: music), but as regards language, literature, language sounds (written or spoken), it was approximately from twenty to thirty. The Prayers and Meditations were written spontaneously with that rhythm. If I stayed in an ordinary consciousness I would get the knack of that rhythm but now it doesnt work that way, it wont do!
0 1963-02-15, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And, I must say, I was observing this because, originally, the first time I heard of it, this conception shocked me, in the sense that (I dont know, it wasnt an idea, it was a feeling), as though it meant lending reality to something which in my consciousness, for a very long time (at least millennia perhaps, I dont know), had been the Falsehood to be conquered. The Falsehood that must cease to exist. Its the aspect of Truth that must manifest itself, its not all that: doing anything whatsoever just for the fun of it, simply because you have the full power. You have the power to do everything, so you do everything, and knowing that there is a Truth behind, you dont give a damn about consequences. That was something something which, as far back as I can remember, I have fought against. I have known it, but it seems to me it was such a long, long time ago and I rejected it so strongly, saying, No, no! and implored the Lord so intensely that things may be otherwise, beseeched Him that his all-powerful Truth, his all-powerful Purity and his all-powerful Beauty may manifest and put an end to all that mess. And at first I was shocked when Sri Aurobindo told me that; previously, in this life, it hadnt even crossed my mind. In that sense Theons explanation had been much more (what should I say?) useful to me from the standpoint of action: the origin of disorder being the separation of the primal Powers but thats not it! HE is there, blissfully worshipping all this confusion!
And naturally this time around, when I started translating it came back. At first there was a shudder (Mother makes a gesture of stiffening). Then I told myself, Havent you got beyond that! And I let myself flow into the thing. Then I had a series of nights with Sri Aurobindo so marvelous! You understand, I see him constantly and I go into that subtle physical world where he has his abode; the contact is almost permanent (at any rate, thats how I spend all my nights: he shows me the work, everything), but still, after this translation of Savitri he seemed to be smiling at me and telling me, At last you have understood! (Mother laughs) I said, It isnt that I didnt understand, its that I didnt want it! I didnt want, I dont WANT things to be like that any more, for thousands of years I have wanted things to be otherwise!
0 1963-02-19, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But it was all a living, palpable experience which lasted for a day and a half. The entire universal movement was LIVED and sensed. Not merely seen but lived and in what light! What stupendous power! With that kind of certitude at the core of everything something very odd. Its very difficult to express. But the experience lasted so long that it became perfectly familiar. To translate it into words I might say: it is the Supremes way of seeingof feeling, of living. I was living things the way He does. And it gives a power of certitude of realization. In the sense that what we are heading for is already here; the road we look back on, the road we have traveled and the road yet to travel, it all lives simultaneously. And with such logic! An eternal, wonderful superlogic which makes it obviousness itselfeverything is obviousness itself. struggle, effort, fear, all of that, oh, absolutely, absolutely nonexistent. And together with this, the explanation of the feeling we have of not wanting certain things any more: they leave the Manifest. You see, its like a sieve into which everything is thrown and where He to Him, everything, but everything is the same, but there is the vision of what He wants, and also of what is useless for what He wants or would prevent the fullness and totality of what He wants (contradictions of sorts, I dont know how to explain it)so with that He just goes this way (gesture of reswallowing) and it goes out of the Manifestation.
At the time I could have said it in a more understandable language, while now
0 1963-02-23, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The little girl struggled as if she were drowning, you know. She went everywheretook refuge at the School, took refuge in Pavitras room, begged G. in tears to intervene. M. was absolutely desperate. Everybody is trying to dissuade them, everybody is scandalizedits their right! Brandishing their right, they grab the girl and squeeze her: Youll love us, or else!
And they think they will succeed!
--
A feeling of immense wingsnot two: all around and stretching out everywhere.
Constantly, night and day. I participate in it only when I am tranquil.
--
Gradually Mother will stop struggling and intrusion will become the rule. As a result, these conversations will suffer greatly.
***
0 1963-03-06, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
If what belongs to the supramental world materialized abruptly, rather than through a slow evolution that would be something which man, as a mental being, even if his mentality, his mental domain, were brought to perfection, could call a miracle, for it is the intervention in his conscious life of something he doesnt consciously carry within him. The taste for miracles, which is very strong (much stronger in children or in hearts that have remained childlike than in highly mentalized beings), is basically the faith that the aspiration for the Marvelous will come true, that things beyond all that we may expect of normal life will come true.
In fact, for education, people should always encourage both tendencies side by side: the thirst for the Marvelous, the seemingly unrealizable, for something that fills you with a sense of divinity, while at the same time encouraging, in the perception of the world as it is, an exact, correct and sincere observation, the abolition of all imaginings, a constant control, and a most practical and meticulous feeling for exactness in details. Both tendencies should go side by side. Generally, people kill one with the idea that its necessary in order to develop the otherwhich is totally erroneous. The two can coexist, and as knowledge grows, a moment comes when you understand that they are two aspects of the same thing, namely, a clear vision, a superior discernment. But instead of the vision and discernment being limited and narrow, they become absolutely sincere, correct, exactAND immense, embracing an entire field thats not yet part of the concrete Manifestation.
--
Basically, people with a very strict logic tell you, Why pray? Why aspire, why ask? The Lord does what He wills and will always do what He wills. Its perfectly obvious, it goes without saying, but this fervor, Lord, manifest Yourself! gives His manifestation a more intense vibration.
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.
0 1963-03-09, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
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.
But flung like that! For a very long time the memory of the SENSATION remained: something that went like this (same gesture of a leaf falling) and simply set me down on the road. When I worked with Thon, the memory came back, and I saw it was an entity: what people in Europe call angels (what do they call it?) guardian angels, thats right. An entity. Thon had told me of certain worlds (worlds of the higher intellect I dont remember, he had named all the different planes), and in that world are winged beingswho have wings of their own free choice, because they find it pretty! And Madame Thon had always seen two such beings with me. Yet she knew me more than ten years later. And it appears they were always with me. So I took a look and, sure enough, there they were. One even tried to draw: he asked me to lend him my hand to do drawings. I lent my hand, but when I saw the drawing (he did one), I told him, The ones I do without you are much better! So that was the end of the matter!
--
There was another occurrence (less striking), once in a room as long as this one and wider,5 the salon in my familys house. Some little friends had come and we were playing. I told them, Ill show you how one should dance. I went to a corner of the room to get the longest distance to another corner, and I told them, One single step in the middle. And I did it! (Mother laughs) I sprang (I didnt even feel I was jumping, it was like dancing, you know, like when they dance on point), landed on the tips of my toes, bounced up and reached the other corneryou cant do that alone, even champions cannot. The length of the jump went beyond records, because afterwards I asked here, when we started physical exercises at the Ashram, I asked what the longest jump wasmine was longer! And they take a run up, you see, they run and then jump. But I didnt run: I was standing in the corner, and hop! up I went (I said hop! to myself, soundlessly), and frrrt! I landed on the tips of my toes, bounced and landed the other sidequite evidently I was carried.
All this took place before the age of thirteen or fourteen (from eight to thirteen or fourteen). Many things of the kind, all of which seemed to me perfectly naturalit didnt feel as though I was doing something miraculous. Perfectly natural.
--
In the following conversation, Mother gave a very recent example of someone cured by the supramental force acting in the material mind: "After three warnings which he didn't heed, A. [a Paris disciple], one morning, found himself half-paralyzed. And the next day, it started spreading to the other side, the left side. At that point, he gave a callit struck him to see one side completely paralyzed and the other following suit, he saw himself going down, so he gave a call. And he says that inside a few minutes, a stupendous Force came into him and that Force said, "No!" And almost automatically, everything came to a stop. Nothing came over the left side, and the right side started to improve. And when I received the first telegram informing me that A. had to take to his bed because of an 'attack' (a 'heart attack,' they said, but it wasn't the heart, it was an embolism in the brain), with the telegram in my hands, I saw, written OVER the telegram's words: 'It's nothing, no need to worry'! So I said coolly, 'Oh' it's nothing, no need to worry.' (Mother laughs) Then the letter came with all the details: thrombosis, and so on. But he says he feels a Force [near Mother] that's not in his ordinary little life over there, he finds it makes all the differenceit's something which gives a LIFE that's not in his ordinary little life in France. Anyhow, this is something like a miracle."
Just what presides over the "inevitability" of accidents, including gravitation, illness and death.
0 1963-03-13, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Art thou indeed so strong, O heart,
O Soul, so free?
0 1963-03-16, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Those things are strange. You dont remember actively, that is, you cant find any thought whatsoever to express the experience; even the active sensation of the experience fades away. And yet you are no longer the same person thats the remarkable thing! I experienced this phenomenon several times (I dont remember clearly enough to tell you exactly how many times), several times in my life, it was always the same thing: no longer the same person, youve become someone else. All the relationships with life, with consciousness, with movementeverything changes. Yet the central thing is just a vague impression. At the moment of the experience, for a second, its so clear, so precisea thunderbolt. But then probably the cerebral and nervous system is incapable of preserving it. But all the relationships are changed, you are another person.
Ive seen this phenomenon very often. For example, the impression people have in ordinary life (few are conscious of it, but everyone has the impression, I know that) of a Destiny or a Fate or a will hanging over them, a set of circumstances (it doesnt matter what you call it), something that weighs you down and tries to manifest through you. But weighing you down. That was the first of my experiences: emerging above (very long ago, at the beginning of the century). And it was that kind of experience: one second, but suddenly, oh, you find yourself above it all. I remember because at the time I told the people I knew (maybe I was already looking after the Cosmic Review, it was the beginning, or maybe just before), I told them: There is a state in which you are free to decide what you will do; when you say, I want this, it means it will happen. That was the impression I lived with. Instead of thinking Id like to do this, Id like that to happen, with the sense of the decision being left to Fate, the impression that you are above and you make the decision: things WILL BE like that, things WILL BE like that.
0 1963-03-19, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Because at the start, there is usually that vibration with all the colors, though with blue strongly predominant (the color I have come to call the Tantric power in Matter); thats immediately with you, its a sort of normal state of concentration. Then afterwards, you seemed to recede or stretch out into a vast Immensity of very quiet silvery whitenessvery quiet and unbroken. Like a receding from outer life and a stretching out into that state. And then there comes downliterally comes downa very intense golden light, very intense, almost (what could I call it?) a colorful gold, really golden, very, very intense, and as though atomizeda powdering. The three in succession. Dont you feel that way?
I feel the second movement: a sense of expanse, it is all white and open.
--
He entered the room wearing some kind of religious headdress, I cant say what, and intending to be very arrogant. He went past me stiffly, and suddenly what do I see but the man do his pranam.2 He stepped back, took off his hat and did his pranam. And stayed that way for nearly a quarter of an hour. And it was interesting, his response was interesting. Then he started talking to me (someone translatedhe spoke in Hindi, I think), asking me to take care of B. I said something in turn, and then thought strongly, Now, time is up, it cant last forever! (He had already been there for more than fifteen minutes.) And suddenly I see him stiffen, put his thing back on his head, and go.
Hes the only man who gave me that sensation in my whole life.
0 1963-03-23, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
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!
I feel very strongly that things are that way because the Earth is that way.
Yes, quite clearly! Quite clearly.
--
Its the same with people who get cured. That I know, to some extent: the Power acts so forcefully that it is almost miraculousat a distance. The Power I am very conscious of the Power. But, I must say, I find it doesnt act here so well as it does far away. On government or national matters, on the terre strial atmosphere, on great movements, also as inspirations on the level of thought (in certain people, to realize certain things), the Power is very clear. Also to save people or cure themit acts very strongly. But much more at a distance than here! (Although the receptivity has increased since I withdrew because, necessarily, it gave people the urge to find inside something they no longer had outside.) But here, the response is very erratic. And to distinguish between the proportion that comes from faith, sincerity, simplicity, and what comes from the Power Some people I am able to save (naturally, in my view, its because they COULD be saved), this is something that for a very long time I have been able to foresee. But now I dont try to know: it comes like this (gesture like a flash). If, for instance, I am told, So and so has fallen ill, well, immediately I know if he will recover (first if its nothing, some passing trouble), if he will recover, if it will take some time and struggle and difficulties, or if its fatalautomatically. And without trying to know, without even trying: the two things come together.2 This capacity has developed, first because I have more peace, and because, having more peace, things follow a more normal course. But there were two or three little instances where I said to the Lord (gesture of presenting something, palms open upward), I asked Him to do a certain thing, and then (not very often, it doesnt happen to me often; at times it comes as a necessity, a necessity to present the thing with a commentfrom morning to evening and evening to morning I present everything constantly, thats my movement [same gesture of presenting something] but here, there is a comment, as if I were asking, Couldnt this be done?), and then the result: yes, immediately. But I am not the one who presents the thing, you see: its just the way it is, it just happens that way, like everything else.3 So my conclusion is that its part of the Plan, I mean, a certain vibration is necessary, enters [into Mother], intervenes, and No stories to tell, mon petit! Nothing to fill people with enthusiasm or give them trust, nothing.
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!
--
So the body thought, Oh, I havent got beyond that. If I have to do the right thing in the right way and right on the dot to keep my balance You understand, a sense of insecurity! And very strong, very strong. Of course, there is something like reason (not quite ordinary reason), something like reason that says, When you automatically and always do exactly what should be done, it will vanish. (Mother laughs) Thank you very much! But as it cannot be a mental decision, then how? You see, you can learn only through experience, and since everything is in perpetual motion, the experience of the past cannot help for the future: its a matter of every minute. So how can you know? It means well know that we are free from error only when we are all the time, all the time in perfect harmony! But then there will be no point in knowing it, it will be done! Thats the situation. If the body is transformed and lives naturally in the divine rhythm, why would I need to know it! (Laughing) It will be immaterial to me, because it will BE. We want to know things when they arent yet.
The body is like a child who needs encouragement, you know, Come on now, dont get in a state, things are fine, youre making progress, you need not worry. Oh, ridiculous!
0 1963-03-27, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Then I thought: now, Sri Aurobindo, its quite clear; for him, the goal was Perfection. Perfection not in the sense of a summit but of an all-inclusive totality in which everything is represented, has a place. And I saw that this Perfection would comemust comein stages. He announced something the realization of which will stretch over thousands of years. So it must come in stages. And I saw that what I find essential, indispensable (everything is there, everything finds a place, yet there is a kind of anguishnot a personal anguish but a terre strial anguish), is Security. A need for Securitywhatever you attempt, whatever you seek, even Love, even Perfection, it needs Security. Nothing can be achieved with the feeling that all opposing forces can come and sweep everything away. We must find the point where nothing can be touched or de stroyed or halted. Therefore, its Security, the very essence of Security. So I wrote:
Sri Aurobindo promised Perfection
0 1963-04-06, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I am conscious of the body, but it isnt the consciousness of this body (Mother touches her body): its the consciousness of THE Body it may be anyones body. I am conscious, for instance, of vibrations of disorder (most often they come in the form of suggestions of disorder) in order to see whether they are accepted and have an effect. Lets take the example of a suggestion of hemorrhage, or some such suggestion (I mention hemorrhage because it will soon come into the picture). Under the higher Influence, the body consciousness rejects it. Then begins the battle (all this takes place all the way down in the cells, in the material consciousness) between what we could call the will for hemorrhage, for example, and the reaction of the bodys cells. But its very like a real battle, a real confrontation. And all of a sudden, theres something like a general issuing a comm and and saying, Whats this! You understand, that general is conscious of the higher forces, the higher realities and the divine intervention in Matter; and after trying to use the will, this reaction, that feeling of peace and so on, suddenly he is SEIZED by a very strong determination and issues a commandin no time the effect begins to make itself felt, and little by little everything returns to order.
All this takes place in the material consciousness. Physically, the body has all the sensations but not the hemorrhage, you understand. But it does have the sensations, that is, the effects: all the sensory effects. It goes on for a while and then follows a whole curve. All right. Once the battle is over, I take a look and wonder (I observe the whole thing, I see my body, which has been fairly shaken, mind you), I say to myself, What in the world is all this? But just for a second, then I forget about it.
--
Yes, yes. I had a strong feeling of something well, something rather new.
The contact with other bodies (which in fact are not "other").
0 1963-04-16, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
He may influence you, because you were under his influence in the beginning. He does have the power to influence youto enclose you in his own atmosphere. But he cannot keep you imprisoned! Thats not possible, you are beyond his grasp! So, if (how can I put it?) if you can learn to receive his force without being enclosed in his thought, thats very good. Or rather to receive his force without being impressed or influenced by his thought the thought is very narrow, but the force is very strong.
He does put you in contact with a peace, its a facta boxed-in peace, but a peace all the same, a real peace, a concrete, concrete stillness. So the thing to be done (because that peace is perceptible Ive had the experience of it so many times) is to remain very objective within that peace; then you can benefit from the peace without accepting its limits. You should, for instance, be able to keep that peace in the cells (the brain cells if you feel tired) without allowing yourself to be enclosed like that. There is no need to struggle, just remain turned upward. Its very hard to explain. But maybe you will experience it, then youll understand what I mean.
There is always a vibration subtler than his vibration of peace, and that one must remain free, without getting enclosed in the other. For example, if something pulls and causes a mental tension in the head, just keep in contact with that peace (oh, he does have a capacity of mental immobility), and let it penetrate you, but without concentrating all your being on it: allow the rest of your activity to unfold as usual in an infinity. Its only the vibrations of the physical mind that you should keep in that stability.
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 1963-04-29, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I feel your help very strongly.
With love,
0 1963-05-03, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
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.
Life on the surface (what people see of it, what they are in contact with) is certainly a sort of mixture of the two, with something going on behind the screen, but what you see on the screen is a sort of combination of the twothey dont really combine, but the visual effect is odd [for Mother]. By visual, I dont mean just for the eyes but for the outer consciousness. Its a bizarre life, neither this nor that, nor a mixture of the two, nor a juxtaposition, but as though both were operating through each other. It must be intercellular: something that goes this way (Mother intertwines the fingers of one hand with the fingers of the other in a continuous movement of interpenetration), so that the mixture must be very microscopic, on the surface.
--
But from a much more external viewpoint, the night that followed your arrival there3 was dreadful, in the sense that the consciousness was put in contact with all the most negative and de structive things: like an entire world, yes, of denial, of refusal too, of opposition, of battle, of ill will the visual appearance was chalk-white, you know, the soulless white of chalk, everything was like that, even black was chalk-white (!). Something absolutely stripped of all soul life. Horrible. I dont know, I would have to go back years and years and years to find anything like it in my memory. And I was right in it, it was forced on me; it was as if I were made to stay there and watch it all.
I forgot: immediately afterwards I swept everything clean. Except for what Ive just said, I dont remember what it was I dont remember what it was because I did NOT want it to exist. But it was horrible. And in the morning, there was such a painful impression! So I thought something was wrong over there, and when I received your letter, I understood. But it isnt limited to one person or another, one place or another: it seems to evoke a universal way of being, thats what troubles me. As if an entire way of being which Ive been resisting for for, well, more than seventy years at any rate, which Ive been keeping at arms length so it may no longer exist in a real way, as if it were all forced on me. Like a thing from a past that no longer has the right to exist.
--
but the Lord is also the struggle
and the Victory.
--
Thats exactly what made a sharp division in the whole spiritual thought or spiritual will of mankind. The point doesnt seem to have been understood. Some, like Buddha and that whole line, have declared that the world is incorrigible, that the only thing to do is to get out of it, and that it can never be otherwiseit changes, but really remains the same. The result is a certain attitude of perfect acceptance. So, for them, the goal is to get out that is, you escape: you leave the world as it is and escape. Then there are the others, who sense a perfection towards which men strive indefinitely and which is realized progressively. And I see more and more that the two movements complement each other, and not only complement each other but are almost indispensable to each other.
In other words, the change that arises from a refusal to accept the world as it is has no force, no power: what is needed is an acceptance not only total but comprehensive, joyousto find supreme joy in things in order to have (its not a question of right or power) in order to make it possible for things to change.
0 1963-05-11, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Why not? It doesnt occur to him [X] because hes used to sitting and writing on the ground. Its the same as if I thought it impossible to meditate unless I sat cross-legged and bolt upright! Fortunately, I lived with Sri Aurobindo, who never used to sit cross-legged. He told me right away that it was all a question of habitssubconscious habits. It has no importance whatsoever. And how well he explained: if a posture is necessary for you, it will come by itself. And its perfectly true, for instance, that when necessary, the body will suddenly sit up straightit comes spontaneously. As he said, the important thing is not the external frame but the inner experience, and if there is a physical necessity and your inner experience is entirely sincere, that physical necessity will come ALL BY ITSELF.2 This is something I am absolutely sure of. And he gave me his own example (I had mine, too) of certain things considered dangerous or bad, which we both did independently and spontaneously, and which were a great help to us! Consequently, all those stories of posture and so on are the petty mechanical bounds of the human mind.
It came to me while I was walking [for the japa]. I had a kind of vision of you squatting askew and writing. And I thought, But thats awful! Hell ruin his health!
--
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.
As long as Nature lasts, he too is there; For this is sure that he and she are one.
0 1963-05-15, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is a particular aspect of the creation (a very modern aspect, maybe): a need to get out of disorder and confusionof disharmony and confusion. A confusion, a disorder which assumes all forms, turns into struggles, pointless efforts and wasted energy. It depends on which level you stand on, but materially, in action, it means unnecessary complications, wasted energy and materials, waste of time, incomprehension, misunderstanding, confusion, disorderwhat in ancient days they called deforma in sharp and unnecessary zigzags). Its one of the things farthest from the harmony of a purely divine actionwhich is somethition, crookedness in the Vedas (I dont know the French word for it, its something crooked which, instead of shooting straight to the goal, weaves its wayng so simple. It looks like childs play and directdirect, without those absurd and completely useless twists and turns. Well, it is clearly the same phenomenon: that disorder is a way to stimulate the need for pure and divine simplicity.
The body feels strongly, very strongly that everything could be so simple, so simple!
And for the being that sort of individual aggregateto be transformed, it needs in effect to grow simpler and simpler. All those complexities of Nature which man is now beginning to understand and study, which for the smallest thing are so complex (the smallest of our physical workings is the result of such a complex system that its almost unthinkable certainly it would be impossible for the human mind to think up and contrive all those things), are now being discovered by science. And its quite plain to see that for the functioning to become divine, that is, to escape Disorder and Confusion, it must grow simpler and simpler.
0 1963-05-18, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You suffer from, say, a physical trouble, purely physical (morally speaking, it goes without saying, the thing is quite clear; I mean something purely material). Something is disorganized in the working or the structure of the organs. The result is pain. At first you endure, then out of endurance comes perfect equality, and out of perfect equality comes ecstasyits perfectly possible; its not only possible, it has been proved. But the experiment should be carried through TO THE END to know whether ecstasy has the power to restore the bodys order, or whether it ends in dissolution: you are in ecstasy and die in ecstasy. That is, you leave your body while in ecstasy. Is that so? Its not only possible, its perfectly obvious. But thats not what we want! We want to restore order, to eliminate disorder IN MATTERdoes ecstasy have the power to restore order in the physical working and triumph over the forces of dissolution?
The only way to find out is to make the experiment!
--
Maybe someone much more intelligent, much smarter than me would find the work easier; but he would probably have more difficulties insideno such difficulties here! But outside For example, the chemical discovery of the structure of Matter would seem to be sufficient to serve as a base for true knowledge to act on Matter.3 And maybe those scientists, those who have discovered and experimented with the structure of Matter, would have no difficulty. But the field of the greatest difficulty is the medical field, the therapeutic field: their science is still ABSOLUTELY contrary to the true knowledge. And when it comes to the bodys equilibrium They know anatomy, they even know a little (not very, very much) a little about the bodys chemi stry, they know all kinds of things that the common man doesnt, on the strength of which they make dogmatic assertions and send you packing like an ignorant fool. All this business about the bodys workingshow much do they know? Naturally, when you ask them, But why is it like that? they reply, Oh, why? I have no idea.
And their way of telling you, Thats how things are and they cannot be otherwise! But if you tell them, Your experience is ultimately based on statistics, but your statistics are useless, they cover such a limited field of experience that they are worthless there is also all that you dont know, then they feel sorry for you.
--
Let us recall that it was in 1952 that the biochemist Stanley Miller discovered the structure of the DNA molecule.
***
0 1963-05-22, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its a new experience. It came very strongly, as though the final decision were referred to meto the PHYSICAL consciousness. So I said, Very well, then! Let him be cured, thats my decision.
What struck me was the suddenness of it: all at once I felt an easing.
Yes, it isnt gradual, its all at once.
0 1963-05-25, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have a strong impression and thats why Sri Aurobindo was so interested in the book and took such a part in it that it is the way of explaining things which those with a European education can best understand. Or those with a modern education, at any rate, with a modern turn of mind, because its very appropriate for America, too. And for the whole part of India thats under the influence of British education, it will put them in touch in a way they can understand.
Not for a second did I think they would publish itin fact, to tell you the truth, it wouldnt make me too happy either! Its not a book for their Collection. Their Collection is much too trite, too superficial.
--
Maybe were trying to stretch the parallel too far, maybe its something else.
(silence)
0 1963-06-03, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
A few days ago, at the end of an activity or a situation which demanded an effort, almost a struggle, I heard (its odd), I heard the cells repeat my mantra! It was like a choir in which each cell was repeating the mantra, automatically. Well, this is odd! I thought. And it was just after that, the next day and the day after, that someone showed me this letter.
It is astonishingly true.
--
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.
0 1963-06-08, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Obviously, there was there must have been a cause for alarm, because as soon as I became conscious of the experience (it started before I became conscious of it; when I did, it seemed to me it had already been going on for a long time; so when I say three hours, it means three hours during which I was conscious, but it had started long before; it was around eleven at night and lasted till three in the morning), so the second I was made conscious of the thing, obviously there was a cause for alarm, because immediately I was told, You see, this is what is going on, and it was thanks to that ecstasy in the body that there was no alarm: Oh, things are fine, everything is fine. And when the experience was over, it didnt end like an experience exhausting itself; it ended as if, very slowly, the thing were, not exactly veiled to my consciousness, but as if my consciousness were turned away from it, with the feeling, Dont worry. At the start and at the end. All the same, when I woke up, I thought (because my head felt strange, there was a bizarre sensation as if I had become quite swollen! Swollen, inordinately swollen), I thought, Maybe when I get up tomorrow morning (I get up at 4:30), Ill find myself in a complete daze! Thats why I observed but everything was fine, there only remained that sort of feeling of being swollen. I feel (yet it was two nights ago, not last night), I feel as if my head were swollen! But the clear-headedness is the same as ever!! (laughing) Nothings been disturbed!
On the contrary, there is a sort of like an acuteness, something more acute in the perception, a little bit ironic I dont know why. A magnified impression that all the things in the world are much ado about nothing, a lot of fuss about nothing Ive had that feeling for for centuries, I could say, but there is in addition something ever so slightly acute and ironic.
--
strange.
(silence)
0 1963-06-12, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(silence Mother tries to remember, the clock strikes)
It was a rather acute sensation that when the world, the earth, goes from one state to another, there is a sort of transition; it is always like a ridge between two mountains (gesture of a precarious balance), and there is a very perilous moment when the slightest thing can cause a cata strophewhich means a lot of things would have to be built anew. The same phenomenon exists too on a very small scale, for individuals, in the sense that when they go from one state of consciousnessa collection of states which constitutes their individualityto a higher state, or when they introduce into their state an element that will yield a higher synthesis, there is always a dangerous period when a cata strophe is possible. And the sensation I had last night was that the earth is now going through one such period of transition, and there isthere was or there isa possibility of cata strophe.
0 1963-06-15, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Because do you know the story of that Romanian who was tortured by the Communists and had visions of Sri Aurobindo2 (he didnt see him as he is, in fact, he saw him according to his own conception: thin and ascetic), and finally the apparition told him, I am your soul, and so on? But he had never read Sri Aurobindos name, he only heard it, and he wrote it in a very odd way [Aurobin Dogos]. It SEEMS to be something of Sri Aurobindo. Anyhow it gave him the strength to go through all those torturesappalling tortures, unimaginable. And he was able to escape, somebody helped him escape (now he is safe in England). But before that, he suffered so much that he thought of letting himself die, and that voice, that apparition which came and spoke to him for hours, was what gave him courage and told him that the soul NEVER gets discouraged, it has something to do, and you must endure. He endured thanks to that voice.
Well, similar things may have happened elsewhere and some people may have received inspirationswe cannot say.
--
This morning again, for a stretch of several hours (it started at the end of the night, between 3 and 4 oclock, and went on till 6:30 or 7 in the morning), there was a sensation of hanging in balance on a kind of ridge (gesture): you must be very careful, keep very quietnot immobile but quiet.
It must be (on a much lower level) at such moments that you fall ill; when people fall ill, it must be (on their scale, of course, probably a very, very small scale), it must be due to that (gesture of precarious balance): they must be going from one moment to another, from one balance to another, and if they are not careful, they topple over. Then its IN the illness that they find a new harmony(laughing) either here or in another world!
--
The other day, I had asked S.M. to come while Nehru was here (he is a friend of Nehrus and has his confidence), and S.M. did all the talking. But I saw that if he had been silent, if Nehru had been sitting in his armchair with me saying nothing and no one to listen to, he couldnt have stayed! He would have left. It would have been too strong, he couldnt have stayed. Whereas listening to S.M., he didnt pay attention, and slowly, slowly, I was able to do my work. Which means it can be done only in a COMPLETELY roundabout way, completely.
After he left, there was almost an invasion a totally unexpected invasion [of Nehrus retinue]. When I saw that, I thought, Well, well! Thats how I am protected! If anyone of those people had had some mischief in mind, he could have just walked in! An invasion of the whole Pondicherry government: the councilors. Like a crush of I dont know, if I say a rough sea, I give them a compliment! I hesitated, I was about to say a herd, but a herd doesnt have the vulgar skepticism of those people; a herd is harmlessly unconscious, while these are unconscious but harmful.
0 1963-06-19, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There are activities that take place in a semidarkness, which the people of the placepeople who are here at the Ashramregard as light and where everyone attends to his affairs with his own ideas and what he considers to be his knowledge. Everything takes place in a semidarkness, a great confusion and a you know, a most oppressive sense of powerlessness. It went on for hours. Finally, I absolutely wanted I wanted to get out of that place at all costs and return to the Light (the real one) and the open. But it was literally impossible: whatever path I took to get out suddenly collapsed, or disappeared as if swallowed up in a wall or a complexity of incoherent things, or else it came to an abrupt end, plunging straight down very deep. I remember one of those places, I absolutely wanted to find a way out, and when I got there, there was a sheer gulf, and I said to myself, What am I going to do? Just then I saw a man, I dont know who he was, but he was dressed (it was symbolic) as a mountain climber, with all the equipment needed to climb down a sheer cliff, and with the help of his ice axe he fastened himself to the cliff and climbed down. Then I said, This is PRETENDING to find the way, but its not finding the way. I was there concentrating, and as I concentrated, suddenly I was able to find a path which led me up to a terrace.
I was accompanied by three or four people (but they are symbolic people). Everything was taking place in a half-night, and outside it was complete night. But when I reached the terrace, there was one of those big electric street lights, which turned on and gave a white light (like the half-light of an electric lamp in the nightwhich is nothing). The terrace was a very long one, but with a drop on every side: there was no way to get out; at one end, the way was blocked by a sort of house, and on both sides it plunged straight down into a black hole. And then that sense of powerlessness, of knowing nothingyou dont know where to go, you dont know what to do. It was And it is THE ORDINARY STATE OF HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS the consciousness of human activity. But in my consciousness (I was shut in there, you understand), it was truly it was almost a torture, last night; it was frightful.
I was saying to myself, But whats the way to get out of here? I concentrated, became conscious again of the divine Presence, but there was something telling me, Nothing is responding, its not working. It was horrible. Nothing is responding, its not working; its not working, it cant change, nothing is responding; nothing is responding, its not working. I was there like that, with two or three people. I sat down (some rooms were higher than others and it made a difference in level between the terraces), I sat down on a ledge, questioning intensely within, What can I do? What can I do? Whats the way? What can I do? Wheres the lever? I was trying to find the lever for changing it all. But I was unable to find it. Suddenly, from the room at the end a little old man came out, very old, who gave the impression of an attachment to old things; just the same (he was all blue), just the same when he arrived (it must be the symbol of an old method or an old discipline), I told him, Ah, now that you are here, can you tell me the way out of this place? Whats the way to get free, the way out? That started him laughing: No, no! Theres no way, no way out, you must be content with what you have. Then he looked at that poor light above, which really didnt give much light at all, and he said (in a high-sounding tone): But in the first place, I came to tell you that you must put out that sun! I dont want that dazzling sun here. Ah! I thought, Thats what he calls a sun! I was so disgusted that finally I woke up. Something pulled me out abruptly. But with such a strong impressionso strong that I was gripped by anguish: What can be done to change that? The WAY, you see, the way was inadequateinadequate. That was the anguish: My own experience is inadequate, it has no effect THERE, so whats to be done? Whats to be done? What can be done? So thats how I was for hours this morning: Whats the way? Whats the way? Whats the way to change that darkness into light?
It wasnt very cheering.
--
And my experience did not REACH there; there was no contact, I was powerless. What little light that turned on because of my presence and was considered as a dazzling sun was to me a mere street lamp. It was painful.
I thought, Why? Why am I not happy and quiet here, too? And something answered, Because I want to change that. If I accepted it, I wouldnt even notice it; its because I want to change that darkness. So then then there will be joy only when we have FOUND the wayand how to find it? All the methods I use for the yoga and for transformation, all were useless, useless, useless, no action, no action, no effect, no effect. Ive never seen a place so unreceptive! No effect, none at all. And everybody VERY content with what he knew!
--
It was very strange because I was in that state all the time, saying to myself, I must find something, I must find something, theres something to find. And I tried to call down the experiences of the higher beings,1 but it couldnt reach downit couldnt reach down, couldnt make contact. So when I saw that old man come (I knew perfectly well that he could do nothing whatsoever, but I thought, I must ask him, I must ask him just the same, I must ask him), I asked himalthough I knew perfectly well that he couldnt give me the key. There was that double thing: the knowledge that all that goes on there2 is useless, useless, that thats not where the solution lies; and yet you should neglect nothing, overlook nothing, leave no stone unturned. Give everything a try.
(silence)
--- Grep of noun str
strabismus
strabotomy
strachey
strad
stradavarius
straddle
stradivari
stradivarius
strafe
strafer
straggle
straggler
straight
straight-arm
straight-fluted drill
straight-line method
straight-line method of depreciation
straight and narrow
straight angle
straight arch
straight arrow
straight chain
straight chair
straight face
straight flush
straight flute
straight hang
straight life insurance
straight line
straight man
straight person
straight pin
straight poker
straight razor
straight shooter
straight sinus
straight thrust
straight ticket
straightaway
straightedge
straightener
straightforwardness
straightjacket
straightness
strain
strain gage
strain gauge
strainer
strainer vine
straining
strait
strait and narrow
strait of calais
strait of dover
strait of georgia
strait of gibraltar
strait of hormuz
strait of magellan
strait of messina
strait of ormuz
straitjacket
straits
strake
strand
strand wolf
strange attractor
strange particle
strange quark
strangeness
stranger
stranglehold
strangler
strangler fig
strangler tree
strangles
strangling
strangulation
strap
strap fern
strap hinge
strapado
straphanger
strapless
strappado
strapper
strasberg
strasbourg
strassburg
stratagem
strategian
strategic arms limitation talks
strategic buyout
strategic intelligence
strategic warning
strategics
strategist
strategy
stratford-on-avon
stratford-upon-avon
stratification
stratified language
stratified sample
stratified sampling
stratigraphy
stratocracy
stratosphere
stratum
stratum basale
stratum corneum
stratum germinativum
stratum granulosum
stratum lucidum
stratus
stratus cloud
strauss
strauss the elder
strauss the younger
stravinsky
straw
straw boss
straw foxglove
straw hat
straw man
straw mushroom
straw poll
straw vote
straw wine
strawberry
strawberry-shrub family
strawberry blite
strawberry bush
strawberry daiquiri
strawberry geranium
strawberry guava
strawberry haemangioma
strawberry hemangioma
strawberry ice cream
strawberry jam
strawberry mark
strawberry pigweed
strawberry preserves
strawberry saxifrage
strawberry shrub
strawberry tomato
strawberry tree
strawboard
strawflower
strawman
strawworm
stray
strayer
streak
streaker
stream
stream of consciousness
stream orchid
streambed
streamer
streamer fly
streaming
streamlet
streamline flow
streamliner
streep
street
street address
street arab
street child
street cleaner
street clothes
street corner
street cred
street credibility
street drug
street fighter
street girl
street lamp
street name
street organ
street person
street sign
street smarts
street sweeper
street theater
street urchin
streetcar
streetcar track
streetlight
streetwalker
streisand
strekelia
strekelia formosissima
strelitzia
strelitzia family
strelitzia reginae
strelitziaceae
strength
strengthener
strengthening
strenuosity
strenuousness
strep
strep throat
strepera
strepsiceros
strepsirhini
streptobacillus
streptocarpus
streptococcal sore throat
streptococci
streptococcus
streptococcus anhemolyticus
streptococcus tonsilitis
streptodornase
streptokinase
streptolysin
streptomyces
streptomyces erythreus
streptomyces griseus
streptomyces scabies
streptomycetaceae
streptomycin
streptopelia
streptopelia risoria
streptopelia turtur
streptosolen
streptosolen jamesonii
streptothricin
stress
stress fracture
stress incontinence
stress mark
stress test
stressor
stretch
stretch mark
stretch pants
stretch receptor
stretch reflex
stretchability
stretcher
stretcher-bearer
stretcher party
stretchiness
stretching
streusel
strewing
stria
striate area
striate body
striate cortex
striate vein
striated muscle
striated muscle cell
striated muscle fiber
striated muscle tissue
striation
striatum
strickland
strickle
strictness
stricture
stride
stridence
stridency
strider
stridor
stridulation
strife
strigidae
strigiformes
strike
strike-slip fault
strike leader
strike pay
strike zone
strikebreaker
strikebreaking
strikeout
striker
striking
strikingness
strindberg
string
string bass
string bean
string cheese
string line
string of beads
string of words
string orchestra
string quartet
string quartette
string section
string theory
string tie
stringed instrument
stringency
stringer
strings
stringybark
stringybark pine
strip
strip-jack-naked
strip alert
strip cropping
strip lighting
strip mall
strip mine
strip miner
strip mining
strip poker
strip search
strip show
strip steak
stripe
stripe blight
striped bass
striped button quail
striped coral root
striped dogwood
striped drum
striped gentian
striped hyena
striped killifish
striped maple
striped marlin
striped muishond
striped mullet
striped racer
striped skunk
striped squirrel
striped violet
striper
stripes
striping
stripling
stripper
stripper well
stripping
striptease
striptease artist
stripteaser
striver
striving
strix
strix aluco
strix nebulosa
strix occidentalis
strix varia
strizostedion vitreum glaucum
strobe
strobe light
strobile
strobilomyces
strobilomyces floccopus
strobilus
stroboscope
stroheim
stroke
stroke play
stroking
stroll
stroller
stroma
stromateid
stromateid fish
stromateidae
strombidae
strombus
strombus gigas
strong-armer
strong belief
strong breeze
strong drink
strong force
strong gale
strong interaction
strong point
strong suit
strongbox
stronghold
strongman
strongroom
strongylodon
strongylodon macrobotrys
strontianite
strontium
strontium 90
strop
strophanthin
strophanthus
strophanthus kombe
stropharia
stropharia ambigua
stropharia hornemannii
stropharia rugoso-annulata
strophariaceae
strophe
structural anthropology
structural formula
structural gene
structural genomics
structural iron
structural linguistics
structural member
structural sociology
structural steel
structuralism
structure
strudel
struggle
struggler
strum
struma
strumpet
strut
struthio
struthio camelus
struthiomimus
struthionidae
struthioniformes
strychnine
strymon
strymon melinus