Quotation, Mantra, Prayer, Poem, Music, Flower
Let your life be a constant search for the Truth and it will be worth living.
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.
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.
ॐ नमो भगवते
Mother's Agenda, 19 February 1965
The first word represents: the supreme invocation the invocation to the Supreme. The second word represents: total self-giving; perfect surrender. The third word represents: the aspiration, what the manifestation must become—Divine.
The first word represents: the supreme invocation the invocation to the Supreme.
The second word represents: total self-giving; perfect surrender.
The third word represents: the aspiration, what the manifestation must become—Divine.
If now must pause the bullocks' jingling tune, Here let it be beneath the dreaming trees Supine and huge that hang upon the breeze, Here in the wide eye of the silent moon.
How living a stillness reigns! The night's hushed rules All things obey but three, the slow wind's sigh Among the leaves, the cricket's ceaseless cry, The frog's harsh discord in the ringing pools.
Yet they but seem the silence to increase And dreadful wideness of the inhuman night. The whole hushed world immeasurable might Be watching round this single spot of peace.
So boundless is the darkness and so rife With thoughts of infinite reach that it creates A dangerous sense of space and abrogates The wholesome littleness of human life.
The common round that each of us must tread Now seems a thing unreal; we forget The heavy yoke the world on us has set, The slave's vain labour earning tasteless bread.
Space hedges us and Time our hearts o'ertakes; Our bounded senses and our boundless thought Strive through the centuries and are slowly brought Back to the source whence their divergence wakes.
The source that none have traced, since none can know Whether from Heaven the eternal waters well Through Nature's matted locks, as Ganges fell, Or from some dismal nether darkness flow.
Two genii in the dubious heart of man, Two great unhappy foes together bound Wrestle and strive to win unhampered ground; They strive for ever since the race began.
One from his body like a bridge of fire Mounts upward azure-winged with eager eyes; One in his brain deep-mansioned labouring lies And clamps to earth the spirit's high desire.
Here in this moonlight with strange visions rife I seem to see their vast peripheries Without me in the sombre mighty trees, And, hark! their silence turns the wheels of life.
These are the middle and the first. Are they The last too? Has the duel then no close? Shall neither vanquish of the eternal foes, Nor even at length this moonlight turn to day?
Our age has made an idol of the brain, The last adored a purer presence; yet
In Asia like a dove immaculate He lurks deep-brooding in the hearts of men.
But Europe comes to us bright-eyed and shrill. "A far delusion was that mounting fire, An impulse baulked and an unjust desire; It fades as we ascend the human hill."
She cries to us to labour in the light Of common things, grow beautiful and wise On strong material food, nor vex our eyes With straining after visionary delight.
Ah, beautiful and wise, but to what end? Europe knows not, nor any of her schools Who scorn the higher thought for dreams of fools; Riches and joy and power meanwhile are gained.
Gained and then lost! For Death the heavy grip Shall loosen, Death shall cloud the laughing eye, And he who broke the nations soon shall lie More helpless than a little child asleep.
And after? Nay, for death is end and term. A fiery dragon through the centuries curled, He feeds upon the glories of the world And the vast mammoth dies before the worm.
Stars run their cycle and are quenched; the suns Born from the night are to the night returned, When the cold tenebrous spaces have inurned The listless phantoms of the Shining Ones.
From two dead worlds a burning world arose Of which the late putrescent fruit is man; From chill dark space his roll of life began And shall again in icy quiet close.
Our lives are but a transitory breath: Mean pismires in the sad and dying age Of a once glorious planet, on the edge Of bitter pain we wait eternal death.
Watering the ages with our sweat and blood We pant towards some vague ideal state And by the effort fiercer ills create, Working by lasting evil transient good.
Insults and servitude we bear perforce; With profitable crimes our souls we rack, Vexing ourselves lest earth our seed should lack Who needs us not in her perpetual course;
Then down into the earth descend and sleep For ever, and the lives for which we toiled Forget us, who when they their turn have moiled, Themselves forgotten into silence creep.
Why is it all, the labour and the din, And wherefore do we plague our souls and vex Our bodies or with doubts our days perplex? Death levels soon the virtue with the sin.
If Death be end and close the useless strife, Strive not at all, but take what ease you may And make a golden glory of the day, Exhaust the little honey of your life.
Fear not to take her beauty to your heart Whom you so utterly desire; you do No hurt to any, for the inner you So cherished is a dream that shall depart.
The wine of life is sweet; let no man stint His longing or refuse one passionate hope.
Why should we cabin in such infinite scope, Restrict the issue of such golden mint?
Society forbids? It for our sakes Was fashioned; if it seek to fence around Our joys and pleasures in such narrow bound, It gives us little for the much it takes.
Nor need we hearken to the gospel vain That bids men curb themselves to help mankind. We lose our little chance of bliss, then blind And silent lie for ever. Whose the gain?
What helps it us if so mankind be served? Ourselves are blotted out from joy and light, Having no profit of the sunshine bright, While others reap the fruit our toils deserved.
O this new god who has replaced the old! He dies today, he dies tomorrow, dies At last for ever, and the last sunrise Shall have forgotten him extinct and cold.
But virtue to itself is joy enough? Yet if to us sin taste diviner? why Should we not herd in Epicurus' sty Whom Nature made not of a Stoic stuff?
For Nature being all, desire must reign. It is too sweet and strong for us to slay Upon a nameless altar, saying nay To honied urgings for no purpose plain.
A strange unreal gospel Science brings,— Being animals to act as angels might; Mortals we must put forth immortal might And flutter in the void celestial wings.
"Ephemeral creatures, for the future live," She bids us, "gather in for unborn men Knowledge and joy, and forfeit, nor complain, The present which alone is yours to give."
Man's immortality she first denies And then assumes what she rejects, made blind By sudden knowledge, the majestic Mind Within her smiling at her sophistries.
Not so shall Truth extend her flight sublime, Pass from the poor beginnings she has made And with the splendour of her wings displayed Range through the boundaries of Space and Time.
Clamp her not down to her material finds! She shall go further. She shall not reject The light within, nor shall the dialect Of unprogressive pedants bar men's minds.
We seek the Truth and will not pause nor fear. Truth we will have and not the sophist's pleas; Animals, we will take our grosser ease, Or, spirits, heaven's celestial music hear.
The intellect is not all; a guide within Awaits our question. He it was informed The reason, He surpasses; and unformed Presages of His mightiness begin.
Nor mind submerged, nor self subliminal, But the great Force that makes the planets wheel Through ether and the sun in flames reveal His godhead, is in us perpetual.
That Force in us is body, that is mind, And what is higher than the mind is He.
This was the secret Science could not see; Aware of death, to life her eyes were blind.
Through chemistry she seeks the source of life, Nor knows the mighty laws that she has found, Are Nature's bye-laws merely, meant to ground A grandiose freedom building peace by strife.
The organ for the thing itself she takes, The brain for mind, the body for the soul, Nor has she patience to explore the whole, But like a child a hasty period makes.
"It is enough," she says, "I have explored The whole of being; nothing now remains But to put details in and count my gains." So she deceives herself, denies her Lord.
Therefore He manifests Himself; once more The wonders of the secret world within Wrapped yet with an uncertain mist begin To look from that thick curtain out; the door
Opens. Her days are numbered, and not long Shall she be suffered to belittle thus Man and restrain from his tempestuous Uprising that immortal spirit strong.
He rises now; for God has taken birth. The revolutions that pervade the world Are faint beginnings and the discus hurled Of Vishnu speeds down to enring the earth.
The old shall perish; it shall pass away, Expunged, annihilated, blotted out; And all the iron bands that ring about Man's wide expansion shall at last give way.
Freedom, God, Immortality; the three Are one and shall be realised at length, Love, Wisdom, Justice, Joy and utter Strength Gather into a pure felicity.
It comes at last, the day foreseen of old, What John in Patmos saw, what Shelley dreamed, Vision and vain imagination deemed, The City of Delight, the Age of Gold.
The Iron Age is ended. Only now The last fierce spasm of the dying past Shall shake the nations, and when that has passed, Earth washed of ills shall raise a fairer brow.
This is man's progress; for the Iron Age Prepares the Age of Gold. What we call sin, Is but man's leavings as from deep within The Pilot guides him in his pilgrimage.
He leaves behind the ill with strife and pain, Because it clings and constantly returns, And in the fire of suffering fiercely burns More sweetness to deserve, more strength to gain.
He rises to the good with Titan wings: And this the reason of his high unease, Because he came from the infinities To build immortally with mortal things;
The body with increasing soul to fill, Extend Heaven's claim upon the toiling earth And climb from death to a diviner birth Grasped and supported by immortal Will.
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The one important thing is the goal to be reached; the road matters little, and often it is preferable not to know it beforehand. But what we need to know is whether the time for the divine action upon earth has really come, and whether the work conceived in the depths can be realised.
Of this, O Lord, Thou hast given us the assurance, an assurance which has been accompanied by the most powerful promise that Nature, the universal Consciousness can possibly make.... Thus we have the certitude that what must be done will be done and that our present individual beings are in reality called upon to collaborate in this glorious victory, this new manifestation. What more do we need to know? Nothing. So it is with the greatest confidence that we can witness the formidable fight, the onslaught of the adverse forces, which, unknowingly, finally serve in the realisation of Thy plan. We would be wrong to feel anxious because it is not given to us to know how it serves Thy plan and by what means Thou wilt triumph over all resistances; for Thy triumph is so perfect that every obstacle, every ill-will, every hatred raised up against Thee is a promise of a still vaster and more complete victory.
From the sum of resistances, one can gauge the scope Thou wouldst give to the action of that among Thy pure forces which is coming to manifest upon earth. What opposes is just that upon which it is the mission of these forces to act; it is the darkest hatred which must be touched and transformed into luminous peace.
If the human individual Thou hast chosen as Thy centre of action and Thy intermediary meets with few obstacles, few misunderstandings and little hatred, it means that Thou hast entrusted to him a limited mission without any intensity. It is in the narrow circle of already prepared men of goodwill that he will act and not upon the chaotic and confused mass of terrestrial substance.
O divine Master, this knowledge which Thou hast given me, let all of us share, so that the peace of conviction may reign in our hearts and we may, in the calm of Thy sovereign certitude, confront with head held high all that, unconsciously attracted to the transfiguration, plunges headlong into blind ignorance, believing it will be able to destroy the Transfiguring Love.
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Savitri Book 7 Canto 1 - The Joy of Union; the Ordeal of the Foreknowledge of Death and the Heart's Grief and Pain
Once more she sat behind loud hastening hooves; A speed of armoured squadrons and a voice Far-heard of chariots bore her from her home. ||114.7|| A couchant earth wakened in its dumb muse Looked up at her from a vast indolence.... ||114.8||
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