Sri Aurobindo's diary of his yogic practice between 1909 and 1927.
Sri Aurobindo's diary of his yogic practice between 1909 and 1927. This two-volume record of sadhana contains fairly regular entries between 1912 and 1920 and a few entries in 1909, 1911 and 1927. It also contains related materials Sri Aurobindo wrote about his practice of yoga during this period, including descriptions of the seven 'chatusthayas' (groups of four elements), which are the basis of the yoga of the 'Record'.
The record of June is written elsewhere.1
The results up to date of the movement in May and in June are,—
1) Finality of the first chatusthaya in all subjective experience. The body is still subject to touches of asamata, to physical disturbance and discomfort and to bodily depression but these remnants of asiddhi are in process of elimination. Subjectively, all that remains are occasional touches on the physical prana which more & more are rendered in terms of physical pressure, not mental, & even this pressure is being steadily converted into a physical ananda which replaces the old discomfort and nirananda, mental & bodily, of grief, vexation, revolt, defeat, failure etc.
2) Finality, so far as can be seen, of dasya, tejas & activity,—although this is entirely manifest, only today. Here again the obstacle is the persistence of physical weakness & depression. The fourfold dharma of virya is at work, subject to ineffective physical touches of their opposites, but not yet energetically active. With the same qualification the fourfold state of shakti is well established, but still uncertain in the bodily force. Chandibhava is limited as yet by the saumya character of the tejas which is full of dhairya and hatha, but not yet fierce & ardent except at intervals. Vali is there always, but Narasinha intermittently. This, however, is passing away & the Narasinha tejas taking the lead. The conversion from saumya to chanda tejas seems definitive today; for the disturbing & depressing force, viz, failure of result, is now practically ineffective. Sraddha in God & self-force is complete, but the knowledge of time & extent in result being still embryonic sraddha in rapidity & in adesh-siddhi is still very moderate.
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3) The vijnana chatusthaya is in complete, but not perfect, fertile or well-arranged activity.
4) The physical siddhi is still in the stage of formation.
5) The fifth chatusthaya is strong in Krishnakali, but only embryonic in karmakáma.
6) The Brahmachatusthaya is complete in extent, imperfect in detail; but the Saguna Brahman is still the basis; the Lilamaya only as yet strongly emergent from the Saguna.
7) The seventh chatusthaya is complete subjectively, though imperfect, especially in siddhi; but objectively it is still insecure.
During the day karmasiddhi of the sahitya (prose) strongly outlined itself, although the movement of the vak is not yet entirely sure of its detail. Work resumed. Natural and Supernatural Man; Aryan Origins; etc. The action of the vijnana was not strong & definite, though at no time suspended or inefficient; the remnant of asiddhi was strongly in evidence. Relapse took place in the processes of assimilation, although the roga of tejasic looseness is becoming more and more exclusively physical & imposed from outside on the system. The physical siddhi as a whole was mostly in abeyance, except in dehashakti which, for the most part, resisted the ordinary effects of these relapses. An attempt was made to revive the perishing rogas, but it succeeded only in manifesting scattered touches.
A sharp touch of yesterday's roga on awaking; free visrishti of bad assimilation. The chanda tejas, not suspended, is somewhat quiescent. In the morning quiescence of siddhi. In the afternoon trikaldrishti recovered its force and a normal accuracy of vyapti prakamya with the inspired vichara and vidhana (arrangement and right assignment of perceptions) accompanied by a slow movement of the deciding vijnana (revelative intuition viveka). At the same time the shadow of uncertainty lingers and errors of placing and stress still continue. The thought (perceptive) is in a similar state of activity. Aishwarya still acts against a resistance sometimes
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successful, sometimes partially successful[,] sometimes ineffective. Occasionally the resistance is non-existent or so slight as to be only just perceptible. Communicative involuntary vyapti & swift fulfilment of lipsa-thought in small details are not infrequent. Kamananda inactive yesterday has revived, but is still very occasional. The Chanda tejas recovers force progressively. (5.30 pm).
For the last two or three days the siddhi of self-preservation & whiteness in the teeth has been swiftly recovering its force. For some months past the asiddhi had returned and the yellow film returned and deepened; now the lower teeth are again white with only a faint suggestion of the yellow shade. In the upper teeth the film is there in blotches, not covering the whole surface, but is rapidly dissolving. N.B. It is now more than four years since any artificial means of preservation or cleansing (brush, powder etc) were last used. In other respects, there are some faint signs of advance in saundarya, but none of these are decisive.
Jnana and Trikaldrishti continue to grow in power and range, but are overshadowed by uncertainty. Revelatory knowledge is acting from above on the mind and the prakasha is not luminous. Aishwarya in the afternoon showed a considerable increase of force at the height of its action; but it easily falls back into a comparative quiescence. Kamananda more active & recovering its normal movement. Poetry (Ilion) was resumed; the power, though still sluggish and a little uncertain, seems freer from its baser & more inefficient elements.
The final purification of the system from the physical touches of Ashanti continues. In the morning there was only a rich and abundant rupadrishti, very bright in colours and numerous in forms and groups, mostly crude, in the prana akasha; this was under stimulus. In the afternoon the depression of the tejas parted and the Krishna Kali emerged with the Rudra personality of Krishna; the kamananda more continuous & persistent while walking. There is a throwback in the saundarya. The continuity and intensity of sharira
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ananda are predicted. Lipi "17" (Anandam Brahma) already fulfilled in the strong emergence of Ananda & the Anandamaya in the environing Brahman. The necessity of aishwarya-tapas for helping the sharirananda is now removed; it remains for the other three members of the physical siddhi, but is to be lessened shortly and then renounced for the arogya.
In the second half of the day there was continuity & intensity of the sharirananda and diminution of the jalavisrishti (about 8 am and 12 midnight).
In the morning inscription of a programme for the day. Its seven heads & their results coincided with an unusual accuracy.
(1) Lipi; express, free, perfecting its own arrangement and spontaneity.
The spontaneity & arrangement are still in course of perfection, not yet perfect; the lipi is express & free only when it conquers the resistance, but this is now frequent. Otherwise it is pale in material and confused in sequence.
(2) Rupa emerging, shaping, sometimes clear & perfect, recurrent, not spontaneous.
(3) Trikaldrishti, overcoming mental confusion and misplacement.
(4) Aishwarya developing control.
(5) Ananda (sháríra) regularising itself and preparing continuous action
(6) Arogya emerging in spite of obstinate opposition.
(7) Krishnakali possessing the whole range of the consciousness
None of these results are complete. In the trikaldrishti the movement is towards the exclusion of false stress & ascription of actuality in event by the mind and the accurate communication of event from vijnana to the mind. In Aishwarya the faculty of dictating several successive movements is accomplished and this is done instantaneously without resistance & in the majority of cases the force is successful; but in many it has to be used with great insistence & coercive pressure to bring about a single result, and short
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periods of almost entire asiddhi occur, in which the force does not touch or hardly touches or touches ineffectively its various objects. The arogya that emerges is chiefly the assimilative power which in spite of denial of visrishti for four days[,] the jala visrishti being allowed only twice daily (yesterday 8-10 am & 8-20 pm), succeeds in throwing off all tendencies to assimilative disturbance except a fluctuating degree of flatulence which tends towards disappearance. The minor rogas (cold etc) which are being expelled still appear momentarily or in isolated touches as external intrusions appearing with or without provocation. Exposure to cold is still effective in assisting this kind of uneasiness. The Kali consciousness aware of Krishna as the Iswara attached itself to all the acts & experiences; but the Krishna personality was held back & the anna given over to other influences.
This last movement was the result of the attempt to execute with force of tejas a second programme, the attempt going through the usual stages. A violent attack of asiddhi, bringing confusion & sunlessness to all the vijnana siddhis & general nirananda of impatience & asraddha, occupied the outer parts of the system. The first chatusthaya remained constant in the system proper, but the physical parts of mind responded to strong though unstable & unpoignant touches of doubt, depression of faith, impatience of asatya &, to a less degree, of asiddhi. In the system proper positive hasyam was alone affected, but atmaprasada remained intact.
The programme non-effectualised contained three considerable items—
1) Second chatusthaya complete in faith and force, (the two elements still most imperfect) and the third complete in knowledge.
2) Ananda complete in continuity.
3) Arogya triumphant over obstacles.
Sleep, for the last two days, has diminished its hold; on the th, from 12 to 5.40 with two half hours of continuous nidravishta 4 samadhi, the 5ᵗʰ from 12 to 4 (about), with half an hour & an hour of broken nidravishta samadhi. Dasya is growing more & more concrete in its hold on the system & the movements of the body no longer depend even partially on the will, but are often enforced contrary to the immediate will of the body or the will in revolt of the
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Jiva; the latter circumstance is rare & came yesterday after a long interval of passive submission as a result of the sudden revival of asraddha & weariness of physical tapasya. The element of tapasya is now much reduced, but still persists in the physical siddhi. For the most part all action is now a passivity supporting more or less effective tapas, not tapasya. In Samadhi coherent sentences of lipi are now common, but in the mass the lipi is incoherent. Isolated figures or momentary groups still prevail. Antardrishta jagrat is confined to the most elementary crude forms and even these come with difficulty and rarely; antardrishta speedily passes into sushupta or swapna samadhi.
The morning has been a continuation of yesterday's confused movement and obstruction, but with a fading stress of asiddhi. In the afternoon an almost perfect trikaldrishti has manifested, some twenty minute movements of the same object (a spider) being accurately predicted. The old defects,—overstress, intention or aishwarya mistaken for event,—still continue, but have less force and are much more infrequent. Chinmayaishwarya also increases rapidly in effectiveness.
As the result of the day's programme an extensive & minute trikaldrishti defective only in a slight uncertainty, occasional misplacements and errors of detail and a tendency to fatigue, when the tamasic or sunless movement tries to resume its hold, is definitely achieved. Telepathy (prakamya vyapti of thought) is now beginning to advance towards self-regularisation & a freer movement & range. The difficulty is only in recognising the thought when it is seen; for it is usually taken as an idea in one's own mind and not recognised as the thought of another, owing to our egoistic appropriation of whatever comes to us in our subjective experience. This difficulty once surmounted, aprakasha alone will remain to be overcome,—itself due to egoistic limitation of our subjective experience & attention to so much as interests or can be made useful to our own activity; an infinite openness & the ear of the mind alert for all shabda is required in order that these siddhis may be perfected.
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Aishwarya increases considerably & rapidly in force & effectiveness, no longer in the old field of exercise mainly (movements of birds, beasts, insects, people around) but in the wider range of life. Certain remarkable instances occurred during the course of the day, eg the easy surmounting of the housing problem and the change in the temper of the intermediary. In the outside world events in the Balkans show a considerable increase in the particular effectiveness, but this is not entirely recent as it dates from the closing period of the war. Therapeutic power is on the increase, eg. Bharati's hysteric patient not cured by him in spite of strong effort & personal contact and suggestion, cured after a distant & moderate application of Will by myself in two days; Lebian pere given up as hopeless by the doctor, rid in less than two days of his worst symptoms (difficulty of breathing at once, difficulty of urination in a day), young Dutambey, regarded as a complicated case, cured of all but a slight residuary symptom after one brief relapse brought on by his own imprudence etc. The most desperate cases still offer a stronger resistance. The control of the will over my own bodily states has also increased.
Sleep 11.45 to 5.50.
Faith & tejas are growing in the second chatusthaya.
The transference of the siddhi from the mental to the ideal plane is indicated in the lipi. For this transference to be entirely effective, three preliminary conditions are required.
(1) The perception of the truth underlying & contained in every subjective experience, thought, thought-suggestion, speculation etc, since all thought proceeds from the vijnana which is satyam & not asatyam.
(2) The acceptance of every act of will, effort, impulsion, effectuating movement as a step in some process of God's effective tapas, the perception of the final object of the process & of the immediate object effected, and the rejection of the idea of failure, sterility & inutility as attached to anything that happens in God's world; since all action, event & impulse proceed from the vijnana which is entirely ritam & failure & inutility would be anritam.
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(3) The acceptance of every feeling & sensation as part of one divine thousand-faceted ananda without distinction of satisfaction or disappointment, right pleasure & perverse pleasure, comfort or discomfort, since all emotions & sensations proceed from the vijnana which is brihat & bhuma & duality belongs to the alpam & the bheda.
These conditions have been partially effected, but the lacunae & defects in their siddhi must be got rid of and corrected, finally, for the upward movement.
A second programme was given and partially effected
(1) Enthusiastic faith and tejas commenced.
There was the first commencement only followed by the interposition of strong obstacles to the growth of either; in the result a calm and firm faith and a strong & steady tejas easily expulsive of shadows of doubt and despondency was established. The continued uncertainty of result and confirmation due to the surviving imperfections of knowledge & force alone prevent the rudra tejas & the avegamaya sraddha from taking possession of the system. They occur in it from time to time, sometimes baffled, but no longer rebuked.
(2) Ananda overcomes the obstacle to continuity and then to intense continuity.
Ananda (sharira) was active throughout the day, continuous in spite of asmarana due to distraction of attention or absorption in thought or act, mildly intense sometimes, but towards the end of the day uncertain, interrupted and, finally, during the night, quiescent
(3) The lacunae of knowledge begin to be filled up, the basis being already formed.
The improvement was chiefly in the more ordinary and spontaneous action of telepathy of idea, right perception of unseen fact, memory, sahityasmriti, acceptance of distant trikaldrishtis, etc. Scenes & incidents forgotten for decades begin to recur to the memory, isolated, not usually complete, but in the details restored quite vivid and precise.
(4) The arogya gets the better of its remaining difficulties. There was constant proof of the power of the arogya, when
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touched or attacked, to resist the attack and right itself swiftly after even strong touches. But the movement is as yet only in its initial stage of decisiveness, not yet wholly decisive.
(5) The lipi in its tertiary stage begins to take possession of the akasha. The tertiary stage has as its features, fixity, immediate legibility, spontaneity of long lipis, variety & lipikaushalya in forms, colours etc. The movement is still embryonic.
A beginning in the predominance of aishwarya was subsequently predicted and took the shape of prayogas initially successful, then successfully baffled by opposing forces of habitual resistance, then fulfilled by unexpected circumstances suddenly intervening & showing the direct hand of the Ishwara. Samadhi was once more active, but has not recovered normal coherency or long continuity of action. Sleep resumed its force, bringing one hour of nidravishta samadhi in the afternoon and more than seven hours sleep at night.
Saundarya generally is forcefully obstructed & makes no progress; but in one detail there has been unexpected and rapid progress,—a rounding off of the sharp angles of those fingers which were formerly square. This was noticed two or three days ago, but farther progress was sensible even in the course of a single day. In only two or three of the fingers are there still traces of the old sharp angles. This isolated rapidity is a strong contrast to the occasional slow & slight progress covering many months & the usual failure of all success in other attempts of the psychic body to alter by mental force the physical sheath into its own image.
Programme.
(1) Aishwarya begins to reign.
For a time the power and the knowledge both seemed to have retrograded & the first to be almost annulled; in the evening aishwarya reemerged with an increased force and effectiveness, fulfilling with an unprecedented frequency & persistence.
(2) Ananda overcomes the obstacle.
Intense ananda continuous for long periods has commenced today to be the rule of the body, but it is varied by long periods
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of subdued ananda and occasional lapses into quiescence. In the night quiescence is still the rule, but is varied by strong touches of activity.
(3) Lacunae of knowledge fill more completely.
Only a slight movement took place in this direction.
(4) Lipi takes stronger possession.
Formerly the ordinary rule of the lipi was the single word with occasional brief phrases & rare extensions, the rule is now the word or the brief phrase with a tendency to complete sentences. But the legibility, vividness & spontaneity are still combated and restricted by the obstinate resistance of the material akasha.
(5) Arogya yet stronger.
It resisted with general success, but not entire immunity, the conditions which have in the past usually or invariably provoked a retrograde movement.
(6) Obstacles to enthusiasm of faith & tejas remove[d].
The chief obstacle removed was dependence on favourable result & success; but the tendency to temporary depression of force from subjective causes is not yet altogether eliminated.
(7) Samadhi & rupa active.
Rupa (crude) was only briefly active in a few images, but these evinced a perfection and stability in various circumstances (image on background, crude image, group, developed image) not yet so decisively combined. Samadhi recovered coherency & is developing application to life. (eg Alpt carrying a cane chair through a veranda; Bh. [Bharati] offering to Rg & another some food, three glasses on a table & pieces of cocoanut (?)).
(8) Utthapana.
Utthapana of the arm in the horizontal position was enforced for an hour and a half; during the later part of this period an abnormal stiffness was produced and an artificial pressure from above strove to depress the arm; nevertheless after three minutes rest, it could again be continued, but in recumbent posture, for another half hour. A slight stiffness in the shoulder is the only after result. Typical utthapana of leg & neck were effected for half an hour, in order to get rid of the habit of adhogati which had again reasserted itself. The physical depression still continues.
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(9) Saundarya.
No definite forward movement as yet distinguishable. In the teeth etc the movement is retrograde.
The articulate thought, long silent, manifested for a minute or two, but with an absolute perfection of style & substance, inevitable, with the full illumination & inspiration of phrase, even in the effective & adequate forms of the inevitability. This is a striking instance of involved siddhi, done without process or sadhan, behind the veil, illustrating the double action of Night & Dawn, naktoshasa swasara ekam shishum [dhápayete].2 There are also other instances, but these are slighter and less definite. Owing to the rush of the old inferior movements which used to rise whenever the avegamaya sraddha & tapas manifested, the trikaldrishti was clouded & disturbed, & the old tejasic misinterpretations abounded. But there was no disturbance, revolt or nirananda in the system & only the shadow of the old tamasic reaction.
The programme for the next three days is yesterday's with additions. The utthapana and saundarya especially must move forward. Trikaldrishti has already reasserted itself, but is imperfect in circumstance; this imperfection will now disappear. Aishwarya is inconstant in its action & often effective only against resistance; the action must be regular & the effectiveness spontaneous. Lipi must get a complete hold on the akash and the difficulty of the stability in rupa, especially in lifelike rupa must at last disappear. Ananda delivered from interruption and arogya triumphant over attack must reach a more solid state of security (vájasátih); utthapana recover itself and saundarya, now constantly obstructed and thrown back, share in the general victorious movement.
The 9ᵗʰ has been a day of failure & recoil. The attempt to establish the avegamaya tejas & sraddha without reaction has broken down; the avega became manomaya and resulted in confusion of knowledge, misplacement of tejas & final return of asamata,
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ashanti, duhkha in strong & then violent touches (10th) which, at first violently expelled, again & successfully invaded the system, supported by the revolt of the Jiva against the asatya. The saundarya has broken down or gone back in the parts not irrevocably fixed & the violent return of asaundarya is successful everywhere. Aishwarya is not entirely ineffective, but subject to frequent failure & almost universal resistance. The touches of roga returned where they were on the point of evanescence and there has been some diminution in the force of continuity of the kamananda. The promises of finality held out to the mind in the first & second chatusthayas, as well as in some details of the third & fourth, have proved, as always, to be tejasic and deceptive. On the other side, there has been enforced a more general perception of the unity of all movements of the Prakriti and of the unity of the mover of the Prakriti & their unity also with the same Purusha & Prakriti in this adhara. The Jiva also is made to recognise its unity with the Prakriti, but not yet with the Purusha, except in occasional glimpses.
The rounding of the fingers still progresses; the only definite trace of the sharp angles is in one corner of the third finger of the left hand where it is represented by a horn of dried & callous skin empty of flesh; otherwise they appear only in the excessive fullness of the curves or in slight unevennesses representing the lost angle (especially on one side of the right thumb). This fullness appears in all except the first fingers which were always pointed & the lefthand little finger which is now of the full pointed variety to which the righthand little finger has also progressed more than others. No other decisive improvement is noticeable in the saundarya, although there is a similar tendency in the feet.
Samadhi is more vigorous & dream recovering continuous coherence, but the movement of samadhi towards long continuity of single incident is not yet effective. Lipi is pressing slowly upon the akasha for removal of its habitual defects.
A stronger attack of asiddhi not removed till the evening; & then not entirely. The only siddhi which advanced during the
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day was the lipi. The successful movement from manas to mahat predicted in the script as the result of the attack.3
In accordance with the prediction the movement of the vijnana from action in the slight, petty & detailed to action in the satyam, ritam, brihat was commenced. At first the knowledge was merely brihat in manas, hundreds of perceptions coming without order or right direction; then the satyam in this infinity came to be revealed not the ritam; every perception was found to be true, but not always true at the time & in the place & order of circumstance indicated by the mind. Subsequently the ritam commenced, the trikaldrishti occurring with perfect accuracy even in the mental & sunless perceptions, but before it could be completed, other preoccupations commenced which filled the rest of the day (kriti). The movement of dasya, tejas, aishwarya, samadhi to mahattwa were similarly interrupted. Kamananda, only occasional the day before,
[This entry was left incomplete. Three blank pages follow.]
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