Quotation, Mantra, Prayer, Poem, Music, Flower
Yoga means a change of consciousness; a mere mental activity will not bring a change of consciousness, it can only bring a change of mind.
Foiled by the world, thou turnest to seize upon God. If the world is stronger than thou, thinkest thou God is weaker? Turn to Him rather for His bidding and for strength to fulfil it.
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.
In the night as in the day be always with me. In sleep as in waking let me feel in me always the reality of your presence. Let it sustain and make to grow in me Truth, consciousness and bliss constantly and at all times.
Goddess, supreme Mother of Dream, by thy ivory doors when thou standest, Who are they then that come down unto men in thy visions that troop, group upon group, down the path of the shadows slanting? Dream after dream, they flash and they gleam with the flame of the stars still around them; Shadows at thy side in a darkness ride where the wild fires dance, stars glow and glance and the random meteor glistens; There are voices that cry to their kin who reply; voices sweet, at the heart they beat and ravish the soul as it listens. What then are these lands and these golden sands and these seas more radiant than earth can imagine? Who are those that pace by the purple waves that race to the cliff-bound floor of thy jasper shore under skies in which mystery muses, Lapped in moonlight not of our night or plunged in sunshine that is not diurnal? Who are they coming thy Oceans roaming with sails whose strands are not made by hands, an unearthly wind advances? Why do they join in a mystic line with those on the sands linking hands in strange and stately dances? Thou in the air, with a flame in thy hair, the whirl of thy wonders watching, Holdest the night in thy ancient right, mother divine, hyacinthine, with a girdle of beauty defended. Sworded with fire, attracting desire, thy tenebrous kingdom thou keepest, Starry-sweet, with the moon at thy feet, now hidden now seen the clouds between in the gloom and the drift of thy tresses. Only to those whom thy fancy chose, O thou heart-free, is it given to see thy witchcraft and feel thy caresses. Open the gate where thy children wait in their world of a beauty undarkened. High-throned on a cloud, victorious, proud I have espied Maghavan ride when the armies of wind are behind him; Food has been given for my tasting from heaven and fruit of immortal sweetness;
I have drunk wine of the kingdoms divine and have heard the change of music strange from a lyre which our hands cannot master; Doors have swung wide in the chambers of pride where the Gods reside and the Apsaras dance in their circles faster and faster. For thou art she whom we first can see when we pass the bounds of the mortal, There at the gates of the heavenly states thou hast planted thy wand enchanted over the head of the Yogin waving. From thee are the dream and the shadows that seem and the fugitive lights that delude us; Thine is the shade in which visions are made; sped by thy hands from celestial lands come the souls that rejoice for ever. Into thy dream-worlds we pass or look in thy magic glass, then beyond thee we climb out of Space and Time to the peak of divine endeavour.
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O Lord, be ever present in my thought! Not that I ask this of Thee, for I know that Thy Presence is constant and sovereign, I know that all we see and all that escapes our sight is just what it is only through Thy marvellous intervention, because of Thy divine law of love; but I say this and repeat it, I implore, in order to escape from forgetfulness and negligence.
Oh! to become Thy living love so powerfully as to transfigure and illumine all things, so completely as to awaken peace and benevolent satisfaction in all.
Oh, to become Thy divine love, pure and clear-sighted, to be that always and everywhere!...
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Savitri Book 9 Canto 1 - Towards the Black Void
Then like a tree recovering from a wind She raised her noble head; fronting her gaze Something stood there, unearthly, sombre, grand, A limitless denial of all being That wore the terror and wonder of a shape. ||135.8||
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