Quotation, Mantra, Prayer, Poem, Music, Flower
The divine detachment must be the foundation for a divine participation in Nature which will replace the old egoistic participation, the divine quietism must support a divine activism and kinetism .
India had three fortresses of a communal life, the village community, the larger joint family & the orders of the Sannyasins; all these are broken or breaking with the stride of egoistic conceptions of social life; but is not this after all only the breaking of these imperfect moulds on the way to a larger & diviner communism?
A "personalised" section means that the content is refreshed per view for you, as if in answer to your inner aspiration.
The content is selected from the words of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo. It is the electronic equivalent of looking up any of Sri Aurobindo's or The Mother's works to receive an indication or answer. The explanation of the physical process follows..
Everybody can do it. It is done in this way: you concentrate. Now, it depends on what you want. If you have an inner problem and want the solution, you concentrate on this problem; if you want to know the condition you are in, which you are not aware of - if you want to get some light on the state you are in, you just come forward with simplicity and ask for the light. Or else, quite simply, if you are curious to know what the invisible knowledge has to tell you, you remain silent and still for a moment and then open the book. I always used to recommend taking a paper-knife, because it is thinner; while you are concentrated you insert it in the book and with the tip indicate something. Then, if you know how to concentrate, that is to say, if you really do it with an aspiration to have an answer, it always comes.
For, in books of this kind (Mother shows The Synthesis of Yoga), books of revelation, there is always an accumulation of forces - at least of higher mental forces, and most often of spiritual forces of the highest knowledge. Every book, on account of the words it contains, is like a small accumulator of these forces. People don't know this, for they don't know how to make use of it, but it is so. In the same way, in every picture, photograph, there is an accumulation, a small accumulation representative of the force of the person whose picture it is, of his nature and, if he has powers, of his powers. Now, you, when you are sincere and have an aspiration, you emanate a certain vibration, the vibration of your aspiration which goes and meets the corresponding force in the book, and it is a higher consciousness which gives you the answer.
Everything is contained potentially. Each element of a whole potentially contains what is in the whole. It is a little difficult to explain, but you will understand with an example: when people want to practise magic, if they have a bit of nail or hair, it is enough for them, because within this, potentially, there is all that is in the being itself. And in a book there is potentially - not expressed, not manifest - the knowledge which is in the person who wrote the book. Thus, Sri Aurobindo represented a totality of comprehension and knowledge and power; and every one of his books is at once a symbol and a representation. Every one of his books contains symbolically, potentially, what is in him. Therefore, if you concentrate on the book, you can, through the book, go back to the source. And even, by passing through the book, you will be able to receive much more than what is just in the book.
There is always a way of reading and understanding what one reads, which gives an answer to what you want. It is not just a chance or an amusement, nor is it a kind of diversion. You may do it just "like that", and then nothing at all happens to you, you have no reply and it is not interesting. But if you do it seriously, if seriously your aspiration tries to concentrate on this instrument - it is like a battery, isn't it, which contains energies - if it tries to come into contact with the energy which is there and insists on having the answer to what it wants to know, well, naturally, the energy which is there - the union of the two forces, the force given out by you and that accumulated in the book - will guide your hand and your paper-knife or whatever you have; it will guide you exactly to the thing that expresses what you ought to know…. Obviously, if one does it without sincerity or conviction, nothing at all happens. If it is done sincerely, one gets an answer.
Certain books are like this, more powerfully charged than others; there are others where the result is less clear. But generally, books containing aphorisms and short sentences - not very long philosophical explanations, but rather things in a condensed and precise form - it is with these that one succeeds best.
Naturally, the value of the answer depends on the value of the spiritual force contained in the book. If you take a novel, it will tell you nothing at all but stupidities. But if you take a book containing a condensation of forces - of knowledge or spiritual force or teaching power - you will receive your answer.
तत्सवितुर्वरं रूपं ज्योतिः परस्य धीमहि । यन्नः सत्येन दीपयेत् ।।
Tat savitur varam rūpam jyotiḥ parasya dhīmahi, yannaḥ satyena dīpayet
Let us meditate on the most auspicious (best) form of Savitri, on the Light of the Supreme which shall illumine us with the Truth.
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King Manu in the former ages of the world, when the Arctic continent still subsisted, seeks knowledge from the Rishi of the Pole, who after long baffling him with conflicting side-lights of the knowledge, reveals to him what it chiefly concerns man to know.
MANU Rishi who trance-held on the mountains old Art slumbering, void Of sense or motion, for in the spirit's hold Of unalloyed Immortal bliss thou dreamst protected! Deep Let my voice glide Into thy dumb retreat and break thy sleep Abysmal. Hear! The frozen snows that heap thy giant bed Ice-cold and clear, The chill and desert heavens above thee spread Vast, austere, Are not so sharp but that thy warm limbs brook Their bitter breath, Are not so wide as thy immense outlook On life and death: Their vacancy thy silent mind and bright Outmeasureth. But ours are blindly active and thy light We have forgone.
RISHI Who art thou, warrior armed gloriously Like the sun? Thy gait is as an empire and thine eye Dominion.
MANU King Manu, of the Aryan peoples lord, Greets thee, Sage.
RISHI I know thee, King, earth to whose sleepless sword Was heritage. The high Sun's distant glories gave thee forth On being's edge: Where the slow skies of the auroral North Lead in the morn And flaming dawns for ever on heaven's verge Wheel and turn, Thundering remote the clamorous Arctic surge Saw thee born. There 'twas thy lot these later Fates to build, This race of man New-fashion. O watcher with the mountains wild, The icy plain, Thee I too, asleep, have watched, both when the Pole Was brightening wan And when like a wild beast the darkness stole Prowling and slow Alarming with its silent march the soul. O King, I know Thy purpose; for the vacant ages roll Since man below Conversed with God in friendship. Thou, reborn For men perplexed, Seekest in this dim aeon and forlorn With evils vexed The vanished light. For like this Arctic land Death has annexed To sleep, our being's summits cold and grand Where God abides, Repel the tread of thought. I too, O King,
In winds and tides Have sought Him, and in armies thundering, And where Death strides Over whole nations. Action, thought and peace Were questioned, sleep, And waking, but I had no joy of these, Nor ponderings deep, And pity was not sweet enough, nor good My will could keep. Often I found Him for a moment, stood Astonished, then It fell from me. I could not hold the bliss, The force for men, My brothers. Beauty ceased my heart to please, Brightness in vain Recalled the vision of the light that glows Suns behind: I hated the rich fragrance of the rose; Weary and blind, I tired of the suns and stars; then came With broken mind To heal me of the rash devouring flame, The dull disease, And sojourned with this mountain's summits bleak, These frozen seas. King, the blind dazzling snows have made me meek, Cooled my unease. Pride could not follow, nor the restless will Come and go; My mind within grew holy, calm and still Like the snow.
MANU O thou who wast with chariots formidable And with the bow! Voiceless and white the cold unchanging hill,
Has it then A mightier presence, deeper mysteries Than human men? The warm low hum of crowds, towns, villages, The sun and rain, The village maidens to the water bound, The happy herds, The fluting of the shepherd lads, the sound Myriad of birds, Speak these not clearer to the heart, convey More subtle words? Here is but great dumb night, an awful day Inert and dead.
RISHI The many's voices fill the listening ear, Distract the head: The One is silence; on the snows we hear Silence tread.
MANU What hast thou garnered from the crags that lour, The icy field?
RISHI O King, I spurned this body's death; a Power There was, concealed, That raised me. Rescued from the pleasant bars Our longings build, My winged soul went up above the stars Questing for God.
MANU Oh, didst thou meet Him then? in what bright field Upon thy road?
RISHI I asked the heavenly wanderers as they wheeled For His abode.
MANU Could glorious Saturn and his rings of hue Direct thy flight?
RISHI Sun could not tell, nor any planet knew Its source of light, Nor could I glean that knowledge though I paced The world's beyond And into outer nothingness have gazed. Time's narrow sound I crossed, the termless flood where on the Snake One slumbers throned, Attempted. But the ages from Him break Blindly and Space Forgets its origin. Then I returned Where luminous blaze Deathless and ageless in their ease unearned The ethereal race.
MANU Did the gods tell thee? Has Varuna seen The high God's face?
RISHI How shall they tell of Him who marvel at sin And smile at grief?
MANU Did He not send His blissful Angels down For thy relief?
RISHI The Angels know Him not, who fear His frown, Have fixed belief.
MANU Is there no heaven of eternal light Where He is found?
RISHI The heavens of the Three have beings bright Their portals round, And I have journeyed to those regions blest, Those hills renowned. In Vishnu's house where wide Love builds his nest, My feet have stood.
MANU Is he not That, the blue-winged Dove of peace, Father of Good?
RISHI Nor Brahma, though the suns and hills and seas Are called his brood.
MANU Is God a dream then? are the heavenly coasts Visions vain?
RISHI I came to Shiva's roof; the flitting ghosts Compelled me in.
MANU Is He then God whom the forsaken seek, Things of sin?
RISHI He sat on being's summit grand, a peak Immense of fire.
MANU Knows He the secret of release from tears And from desire?
RISHI His voice is the last murmur silence hears, Tranquil and dire.
MANU The silence calls us then and shall enclose?
RISHI Our true abode Is here and in the pleasant house He chose To harbour God.
MANU In vain thou hast travelled the unwonted stars And the void hast trod!
RISHI King, not in vain. I knew the tedious bars That I had fled, To be His arms whom I have sought; I saw How earth was made Out of His being; I perceived the Law, The Truth, the Vast, From which we came and which we are; I heard The ages past Whisper their history, and I knew the Word That forth was cast Into the unformed potency of things To build the suns. Through endless Space and on Time's iron wings A rhythm runs Our lives pursue, and till the strain's complete That now so moans And falters, we upon this greenness meet, That measure tread.
MANU Is earth His seat? this body His poor hold Infirmly made?
RISHI I flung off matter like a robe grown old; Matter was dead.
MANU Sages have told of vital force behind: It is God then?
RISHI The vital spirits move but as a wind Within men.
MANU Mind then is lord that like a sovereign sways Delight and pain?
RISHI Mind is His wax to write and, written, rase Form and name.
MANU Is Thought not He who has immortal eyes Time cannot dim?
RISHI Higher, O King, the still voice bade me rise Than thought's clear dream. Deep in the luminous secrecy, the mute Profound of things, Where murmurs never sound of harp or lute And no voice sings, Light is not, nor our darkness, nor these bright Thunderings, In the deep steady voiceless core of white And burning bliss, The sweet vast centre and the cave divine Called Paradise,
He dwells within us all who dwells not in Aught that is.
MANU Rishi, thy thoughts are like the blazing sun Eye cannot face. How shall our souls on that bright awful One Hope even to gaze Who lights the world from His eternity With a few rays?
RISHI Dare on thyself to look, thyself art He, O Aryan, then. There is no thou nor I, beasts of the field, Nor birds, nor men, But flickerings on a many-sided shield Pass, or remain, And this is winged and that with poisonous tongue Hissing coils. We love ourselves and hate ourselves, are wrung With woes and toils To slay ourselves or from ourselves to win Shadowy spoils. And through it all, the rumour and the din, Voices roam, Voices of harps, voices of rolling seas, That rarely come And to our inborn old affinities Call us home. Shadows upon the many-sided Mind Arrive and go, Shadows that shadows see; the vain pomps wind Above, below, While in their hearts the single mighty God Whom none can know,
Guiding the mimic squadrons with His nod Watches it all— Like transient shapes that sweep with half-guessed truth A luminous wall.
MANU Alas! is life then vain? Our gorgeous youth Lithe and tall, Our sweet fair women with their tender eyes Outshining stars, The mighty meditations of the wise, The grandiose wars, The blood, the fiery strife, the clenched dead hands, The circle sparse, The various labour in a hundred lands, Are all these shows To please some audience cold? as in a vase Lily and rose, Mixed snow and crimson, for a moment blaze Till someone throws The withered petals in some outer dust, Heeding not,— The virtuous man made one with the unjust, Is this our lot?
RISHI O King, sight is not vain, nor any sound. Weeds that float Upon a puddle and the majestic round Of the suns Are thoughts eternal,—what man loves to laud And what he shuns; Through glorious things and base the wheel of God For ever runs. O King, no thought is vain; our very dreams Substantial are;
The light we see in fancy, yonder gleams In the star.
MANU Rishi, are we both dreams and real? the near Even as the far?
RISHI Dreams are we not, O King, but see dreams, fear Therefore and strive. Like poets in a wondrous world of thought Always we live, Whose shapes from out ourselves to being brought Abide and thrive. The poet from his vast and labouring mind Brings brilliant out A living world; forth into space they wind, The shining rout, And hate and love, and laugh and weep, enjoy, Fight and shout, King, lord and beggar, tender girl and boy, Foemen, friends; So to His creatures God's poetic mind A substance lends. The Poet with dazzling inspiration blind, Until it ends, Forgets Himself and lives in what He forms; For ever His soul Through chaos like a wind creating storms, Till the stars roll Through ordered space and the green lands arise, The snowy Pole, Ocean and this great heaven full of eyes, And sweet sounds heard, Man with his wondrous soul of hate and love, And beast and bird,—
Yes, He creates the worlds and heaven above With a single word; And these things being Himself are real, yet Are they like dreams, For He awakes to self He could forget In what He seems. Yet, King, deem nothing vain: through many veils This Spirit gleams. The dreams of God are truths and He prevails. Then all His time Cherish thyself, O King, and cherish men, Anchored in Him.
MANU Upon the silence of the sapphire main Waves that sublime Rise at His word and when that fiat's stilled Are hushed again, So is it, Rishi, with the Spirit concealed, Things and men?
RISHI Hear then the truth. Behind this visible world The eyes see plain, Another stands, and in its folds are curled Our waking dreams. Dream is more real, which, while here we wake, Unreal seems. From that our mortal life and thoughts we take. Its fugitive gleams Are here made firm and solid; there they float In a magic haze, Melody swelling note on absolute note, A lyric maze, Beauty on beauty heaped pell-mell to chain The enchanted gaze,
Thought upon mighty thought with grandiose strain Weaving the stars. This is that world of dream from which our race Came; by these bars Of body now enchained, with laggard pace, Borne down with cares, A little of that rapture to express We labour hard, A little of that beauty, music, thought With toil prepared; And if a single strain is clearly caught, Then our reward Is great on earth, and in the world that floats Lingering awhile We hear the fullness and the jarring notes Reconcile,- Then travel forwards. So we slowly rise, And every mile Of our long journey mark with eager eyes; So we progress With gurge of revolution and recoil, Slaughter and stress Of anguish because without fruit we toil, Without success; Even as a ship upon the stormy flood With fluttering sails Labours towards the shore; the angry mood Of Ocean swells, Calms come and favouring winds, but yet afar The harbour pales In evening mists and Ocean threatens war: Such is our life. Of this be sure, the mighty game goes on, The glorious strife, Until the goal predestined has been won. Not on the cliff To be shattered has our ship set forth of old,
Nor in the surge To founder. Therefore, King, be royal, bold, And through the urge Of winds, the reboant thunders and the close Tempestuous gurge Press on for ever laughing at the blows Of wind and wave. The haven must be reached; we rise from pyre, We rise from grave, We mould our future by our past desire, We break, we save, We find the music that we could not find, The thought think out We could not then perfect, and from the mind That brilliant rout Of wonders marshal into living forms. End then thy doubt; Grieve not for wounds, nor fear the violent storms, For grief and pain Are errors of the clouded soul; behind They do not stain The living spirit who to these is blind. Torture, disdain, Defeat and sorrow give him strength and joy: 'Twas for delight He sought existence, and if pains alloy, 'Tis here in night Which we call day. The Yogin knows, O King, Who in his might Travels beyond the mind's imagining, The worlds of dream. For even they are shadows, even they Are not,- they seem. Behind them is a mighty blissful day From which they stream. The heavens of a million creeds are these: Peopled they teem
By creatures full of joy and radiant ease. There is the mint From which we are the final issue, types Which here we print In dual letters. There no torture grips, Joy cannot stint Her streams,- beneath a more than mortal sun Through golden air The spirits of the deathless regions run. But we must dare To still the mind into a perfect sleep And leave this lair Of gross material flesh which we would keep Always, before The guardians of felicity will ope The golden door. That is our home and that the secret hope Our hearts explore. To bring those heavens down upon the earth We all descend, And fragments of it in the human birth We can command. Perfect millenniums are sometimes, until In the sweet end All secret heaven upon earth we spill, Then rise above Taking mankind with us to the abode Of rapturous Love, The bright epiphany whom we name God, Towards whom we drove In spite of weakness, evil, grief and pain. He stands behind The worlds of Sleep; He is and shall remain When they grow blind To individual joys; for even these Are shadows, King, And gloriously into that lustre cease
From which they spring. We are but sparks of that most perfect fire, Waves of that sea: From Him we come, to Him we go, desire Eternally, And so long as He wills, our separate birth Is and shall be. Shrink not from life, O Aryan, but with mirth And joy receive His good and evil, sin and virtue, till He bids thee leave. But while thou livest, perfectly fulfil Thy part, conceive Earth as thy stage, thyself the actor strong, The drama His. Work, but the fruits to God alone belong, Who only is. Work, love and know,- so shall thy spirit win Immortal bliss. Love men, love God. Fear not to love, O King, Fear not to enjoy; For Death's a passage, grief a fancied thing Fools to annoy. From self escape and find in love alone A higher joy.
MANU O Rishi, I have wide dominion, The earth obeys And heaven opens far beyond the sun Her golden gaze. But Him I seek, the still and perfect One,- The Sun, not rays.
RISHI Seek Him upon the earth. For thee He set In the huge press Of many worlds to build a mighty state For man's success, Who seeks his goal. Perfect thy human might, Perfect the race. For thou art He, O King. Only the night Is on thy soul By thy own will. Remove it and recover The serene whole Thou art indeed, then raise up man the lover To God the goal.
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It is Thy Presence in every being, O divine Master of love, that makes it possible for every man, even the most cruel, to be open to pity and even the most vile to respect, almost despite himself, honour and justice. It is Thou who, beyond all conventions and prejudices, illuminest with a special light, divine and pure, all that we are and all that we do, and makest us see clearly the difference between what we actually are and what we could be.
Thou art the impassable barrier set up against the excess of evil, darkness and ill-will; Thou art the living hope in every heart of all possible and future perfections.
To Thee all the fervour of my adoration.
Thou art the gateway within reach of our conception leading to unsuspected and inconceivable splendours, splendours which will be revealed to us progressively.
Prayers & Meditations >>
Savitri Book 7 Canto 3 - The Entry into the Inner Countries
Approaching loomed a giant head of Life Ungoverned by mind or soul, subconscient, vast. ||118.36||
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