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'.
Sat or Substance is now everywhere vyakta, Tapas is in activity, Ananda emergent, Vijnana in process of organisation. The first day of February has been outwardly a day of retardation, almost of relapse; for the trikaldrishti once more lapsed into a state of murky obscurity shot with light and halflit with erring illuminations, misplaced energy worked more than satya tapas, the body was overtaken by exhaustion or weakness, Ananda failed in sustained intensity. As usual, however, the movement was one of preparation, not of relapse, for the expulsion of these remnants, not a concession to their extant force. The karmasiddhi which seemed to have been once more attacked, emerged perfectly victorious in the immediate surroundings.. S's [Saurin's] interview with the Governor showed that the prakamyavyapti & the aishwarya were acting correctly; the news of the troubles of the opposition movement were still more strikingly in accord with the Will. A failure in the recurring problem was immediately corrected by the Will. The lipi "safety of the S.C." was justified. In other directions of the karma a motion is visible. Although therefore there was no addition or definite increase in the siddhi, the current of preparation was perfectly visible. In addition, the most powerful tests & attacks failed to disturb the samata & shanti which can now be considered as established. The last general shadows of ashanti, duhkha and vishada may now
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be considered as slain, although momentary touches are sure to recur.
The Telegrams today contain several fulfilments of the aishwarya & trikaldrishti 1) the appointment of Ijjat Pasha as Commander-in-Chief (lipi); 2) the passing of the Trades Unions Bill without Conservative opposition (aishwarya); 3) the loss of a boat and grounding of a ship, (lipi—more shipwrecks), and the storm & railway accidents in Germany (trikaldrishti); 4) the Nationalist success at Londonderry; 5) the trend of opinion about the Turkish note in Europe.
The morning began with an effective reorganisation of the trikaldrishti, but an unsuccessful attempt to bring in the strong and effective tejas & tapas disturbed the system, and brought back the unavailing struggle of false tapas to harmonise itself with knowledge & peace; the result was a return of the contradiction of samata, shanti, sukha & prasada, which although unable to possess the system, was able to overcome its outer activity by recurrent touches giving an impression of continuity. As usual, the contrariety started with impatience of asiddhi and was enforced by impatience of asatya. The result of the struggle has been to establish the satya tapas in knowledge; formerly, perfect trikaldrishti was only possible on condition of entire passivity, of a purely inert reception of true suggestions confirmed by the event or sanctioned by the illumination. The movement to introduce an active knowledge has hitherto had a chequered success and, if pushed too far, led always to false tapas and disturbance of truth and peace; but now the active knowledge has asserted its right to conjoint action with passive perception of the data. The elements of a well-organised trikaldrishti are, therefore, all of them present and the organisation will now be finally proceeded with and effected. In this organisation all the elements of error, which have so long troubled the intellect and the faith, will find their justification, for all of them are now revealed as essentially true processes of knowledge which only lead to error because their results are misunderstood by the stumbling and groping faculty of discrimination dignified with the name of
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reason. The tamasic trikaldrishti, the tejasic volitional, the speculative, the inferential have all their place and portion in intuitive and revelatory knowledge. At the same time satya tapas is being finally established, not in the sense of being finally effective, but in the sense of being either (1) immediately effective or (2) ultimately effective or (3) effective of a force or tendency intended ultimately to modify the present type of action or nature. Thus the sense of failure, error and misuse of energy which used to discourage the Chandibhava and bring back the merely calm or the discouraged passivity, now disappears in its causes and the basic elements of the bhava may be considered well-established, ie sauryam ugrata and yuddhalipsa and even daya ishwarabhavah karmasamarthyam, although not perfect & all-embracing are at least in established action. The sraddha alone is still deficient and liable, even in some of its efficient parts, to be discouraged.
A fresh siddhi today is the finality of the Krishna-Kali relation in the personality; the personal activity of the Purushottam; the personal script; the personal vani; the personal guidance. The period of intermittent manifestation of guidance passed some time ago, its remnants are now deleted; only the remnants of the indirect guidance remain and these too are to be rapidly deleted, for the indirect guidance itself ceases from today. It has long been only a subordinate part of the guiding activity, always tending to be overruled or dominated in its suggestions, impulses and utterances.
The programme given today (in the morning) and already partly fulfilled, runs:—
1) Ananda, increase and sovereignty of all states and all times
2) Trikaldristi, not yet perfectly arranged, but efficiently organised.
3) Power extended and confirmed.
4) Rupa, lipi, samadhi active and growing.
5) Health emergent again in assimilation and in chakra
6) Saundarya still growing slowly.
7) Fresh proofs of karmasiddhi.
The united action of tapas & trikaldrishti (formerly detrimental to each other) is now established in its harmony, although survivals of the past discord persist. The lipi, a little hampered
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recently, has recovered its profuse action and easy self-revelation of significance. In the kamananda a double sanyama is developing &, indeed, already active by which a part of the manas activity has detached itself to attend to the sensation of the ananda while the main energy is otherwise concerned. By this movement, which has yet to be perfected, the ananda has been enabled not only to possess, but to become sovereign of the body in both the states of physical activity and of mental abstraction; once this sovereignty is well established and emphasised, only the states of sleep and samadhi remain to be mastered. The state of samadhi is already open to the ananda, but its entrance there is still exceptional.
(Feb 3)
In accordance with the programme Ananda has taken sovereign possession of all states and has been continuous yesterday from the morning when it commenced, throughout the day, prevailed over several attempts to expel it in the evening, the time when it has usually declined, persisted throughout the night every time that the sleep was interrupted, recurred & held the body constantly in moments of samadhi and was often present in sleep. The only defect of the continuity was interruption by sleep and unevenness,—failure of continuous intensity; for twice in the evening it became almost implicit and in sleep it became involved in apparent cessation. Rupa and lipi were both active, & rupa commenced extending its range of stable developed images; the greatest progress, however, was in samadhi which finally triumphed and produced great, complex and continuous images and incidents in profusion, taking possession of dream, which is now passing into swapna-samadhi. Present association hardly occurred at all in a crowded succession of dreams and even present ego, though not entirely absent, became a practically negligible quantity. Only a slight tendency to inconstancy and rapid transition, not amounting to incoherency, marred this rapidly effected perfection. For the first time, the vision of the book with freely legible passages and sentences, became frequent and, if not yet fixedly stable, yet sufficiently stable in its rapid self-revelation for whole sentences & even several sentences at a time to be simultaneously read and understood. Ahaituka raudrananda also commenced to manifest more freely & continuously.
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Trikaldrishti and Power are active in their organised movement. Proofs of karmasiddhi were given, especially the arrival of money in the full sum willed & more than had been probable or expected. There were slight indications of the emergent health and the elimination of positive asaundarya; here alone the fulfilment was meagre and unconvincing.
Today's first movement has been the development of the authoritative direct guidance of the Master of the Yoga imposing itself on the mind even when there are no data for sraddha and, parallel with this movement, a strengthening of the pure revelatory movement,—independent of data, probability or actual fulfilment,—of the trikaldrishti and its materials, lipi, prakamya-vyapti and rupa. The purnabrahmadrishti has also been powerfully strengthened and is extruding the old outlook of mere Avidya. Otherwise the morning has been occupied chiefly with the removal of the remnants of certain old activities, eg, expectation, mental insistence, distrust etc. The process is not yet complete.
The rest of the day was occupied with action on the same lines and the removal of expectation & mental insistence was thoroughly tested; the latter has disappeared and is replaced by dhriti and tejas; expectation is inactive, but is not replaced yet by a settled faith, owing to the apparent contradiction given by events to some statements of the Vani which has revived the tendency of distrust. This distrust, however, can only hold its own in details and recur as a doubt with regard to saundarya and Adeshasiddhi. It does not any longer question the Yogasiddhi, but is only doubtful about its immediate incidents or its promised increase of rapidity. In any case samata seems to have been, at last, perfectly established. If so, it is the first fulfilment of the character predicted for the month of February,—a period of perfect completion and faultless organisation. This perfection of samata is subject, however, to an uneven distribution of tejas in the reception of impacts; but a superficial unevenness of ananda is apparently the intention of the siddhi; it is, therefore, not a defect of samata, but, so far as discomfort enters into the lower levels of the unevenly distributed tejas, a defect of
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shakti which concerns the second chatusthaya—a defect, practically, of bhogasamarthya. Sahitya was resumed in the afternoon. (Soul in Art).
The struggle over the health still continues and for the last two evenings there has been feverish heat in the system and a limitation of the pranic energy; utthapana has been practically discontinued. The attempt to establish force in the chakra has failed. On the other hand, there has been no success in the endeavours of the enemy to reintroduce eruption or the affections of cold. Kamananda showed at times an increased intensity working on the body rather than seated in it, but at others was dull and even implicit. Rupa progresses with the old slowness; samadhi did not increase, nor lipi grow in richness. Trikaldrishti & power continued to work accurately; but without intensity or inspiration, & only in details. The day's programme was not fulfilled in the sthula.
Telegrams—The Karachi bomb is now denounced as an informer's hoax; naturally, it is not admitted to be an unsuccessful police fraud. Curiously enough, the prakamya which two days before the find suggested the existence of a plot against Lord Sydenham, still persists, though in a vaguer form. A farther case of marine accident reported today.
Lipi—eighth—suggesting Saturday Feb 8ᵗʰ as a decisive day, both for the yogasiddhi and for the karmasiddhi. Some decisive action or news in the Balkans is also suggested, as well as something in the matter of equipment. Today, Tuesday, has already been given as decisive for the immediate movement of the Yoga.
The second chatusthaya is now being arranged by the harmony of the dasya, tejas and general sraddha, (tapas, tejas, prakasha), but the uncertainty of the trikaldrishti continues and prevents assured sraddha in details of time, place & circumstance
Strong persistence of fever, mainly in the sukshmadeha, but with fluctuating effects on the sthula, was the principal feature of the day. No change was made as to food, bathing etc, nor was physical exertion altogether suspended. The assimilative process continued in spite of the sanskaras that attempted to destroy it.
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Attempts were made to restore the old symptomatic affections under cover of the fever, but hitherto they have failed. Neither could any impression be produced on the clear working of the brain nor was literary work prevented. The general sraddha & tejas stood firm and continued to grow in spite of the adverse experience. The activity of the vijnana and the utthapana chiefly suffered. Trikaldrishti was strongly obscured although it continued to act along with aishwarya in ordinary details. Ananda is not affected; there is ananda in the sensations of the fever. Samata is perfect.
Kamananda got rid of the tendency to fall into the implicit state. It subsides now at its lowest to a subdued ananda bordering on the implicit, but usually well manifest out of which the normal intensity emerges. Samadhi is now well established in variety, frequency and brief continued activity of scenes and images. Communication with the manasic world in the jagrat is now occurring; formerly there was drishti only of the pranajagat and the subtle Bhu.
Another shipwreck; the resumption of hostilities in the Balkans; the insufficient pressure of the Powers on the belligerents; the attitude of the Porte; the Roumano-Bulgarian tension continued; the police notification to the inhabitants of Delhi, are all indicative today either of successful aishwarya or correct trikaldrishti.
(6ᵗʰ Feb)
Another day of strong attack, but the health succeeded in expelling the impure heat in the system; during the night the attack succeeded in impressing itself on the throat in a sensation, never quite determinate, but often strong, of sore throat; this was thrown off; returned in the morning of the 6ᵗʰ, was thrown off again, although dahi was freely eaten; but the remnants still persist in returning. It has become perfectly clear that all these are false illness, formulated in symptom and not in root in the sukshma body and thence pressed upon the sthula; but it is also clear that the sthula body is still insecure against these attacks. Always, the movement is to repeat the last fragments of the last ailments that
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were left unexpelled when the final movement of the siddhi began. Always, therefore, it is an attempt to keep in activity the almost dead physical sanskaras, the grooves of imperfect movement to which the body was finally accustomed.
These two days have been of an old type long discontinued, in which the siddhi has been suspended almost entirely in all its imperfect parts and only those allowed to progress in which the attack could make no impression. In the present instance, it is the samata shanti sukha prasada which have stood a continued and violent test and emerged, as far as can be seen, entirely perfected. Shadows have fallen on the last two without being able to [affect]1 them substantially. Tejas of the nature of dhairyam and tapas of the Mahasaraswati type have also remained unaffected; there has been no sinking back into tamasic udasinata, although movements in that direction were attempted. Sraddha in the eventual Yogasiddhi has remained substantially unaffected, in spite of shadows, except that strong doubts have assailed the faith in the saundarya, the one member of the four chatusthayas for which there is as yet very meagre justification. On the other hand the Mahakali tapas has sunk into inactivity, after one strong battle in which it prevailed temporarily over the strongest resistance to the aishwarya. The vijnana siddhi has been pale and fitful; physical siddhi heavily attacked and for the most part interrupted, even the kamananda sinking back into the implicit state from which the others fluctuatingly manifested. Sraddha in the adeshasiddhi and the rapidity of the yogasiddhi sank to the lowest terms now possible to the general faith.
Today the mists have begun to clear and show an advance,—principally, towards the final removal of the false tejas & tamas in the knowledge which though expelled from the system still besiege it from the environment and occupy the outgoing and incoming
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paths of the thought perception. If the mind can be got to reject these false visitors, then there is a source of knowledge independent of all data which gives automatically the truth. That which learns from data, is also misled by data; this wrong suggestion of data has been for some time the besetting obstacle to the completion of the trikaldrishti & jnana, the strong refuge of outgoing error. The Personality of the Master is now occupying the life in place of the more general personality of the Saguna Brahman. It is no longer Ishwara or Bhagawan only, but Srikrishna-Narayana. At present, however, it is only in the personal relations with the Master of the Yoga that the substitution has been established..
During the rest of the day, the parts of the Yoga which had been clouded, reemerged in full strength, with the exception of Rupa and Samadhi which did not yet manifest their full former strength. There are signs, however, in the swapna and jagrat samadhi of a more perfect manifestation approaching.
Lipi—8-9 27ᵗʰ February. 12.
Passing of the Trades Union Bill in the Lords (Trikaldrishti & Aishwarya). Bulgarian attack in Gallipoli & Turkish retreat (Trikaldrishti, but contrary to Aishwarya). Withdrawal of charge against two accused in Wari Arms Act Case (Trikaldrishti of Inference etc)
The tejas, tapas, prakasha united acted in harmony this morning so that the perfect knowledge of trikaldrishti, exampled once before while watching the movements of the ants on the wall, reemerged and applied itself to all surrounding movements, thoughts & feelings. This was in a state of comparative passivity. When the active tejas once more emerged, there was some disturbance by the volitional suggestions, but this action was feeble and the prakasha soon readjusted itself. With regard to distant movements, etc, the old incertitude still continues.
Yesterday, another signal proof of the power of Will to alter the forms of the body, was finally proved. The left undercurve of the foot, which was at first non-existent, that side being flat, and afterwards very slight, is now deep and declared, and by a test was
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found to be at least three times what it had been at the last time of testing. Similar proof has been recently given in the line of the waist, but this is not yet so striking and decisive. This success, after a long and obstinate resistance, justifies sraddha, not only in the saundarya, but in the ultimate emergence of the Adesha siddhi and the equipment; the justifiable doubt is about the extent of fulfilment and the timeliness.
In the afternoon exceeding[ly] brilliant swapnasamadhi at a great depth of dream-trance repeatedly occurred; the rupas were of the fleeting kind, but stable for two or three seconds, instead of, as usual, fleeting in the moment of appearance. At night also swapnasamadhi was rich and various at a great depth and perfectly stable scenes of entire vividness were at last developed, instead of the vivid stability of shifting panorama and dim stability which were formerly the highest attainment. The fleeting still predominates over the stable, the dim or pale over the vivid; but the disproportion is decreasing. Organisation, also, has not progressed and dream is once more imperfectly coherent.
Kamananda recovered intensity and confirmed the permanent stability of the subdued ananda. From today the intensity has become as natural and sustained in standing and walking as in the sitting and recumbent positions and is hardly less in pitch; but the abstraction of the attention has still the power of suspending the intense ananda. The movement now is to a greater continuity of the intense ananda.
Trikaldrishti grows in normal perfection of detail; but the other siddhis are still busy confirming their hold on the akash. Karmasiddhi has been thoroughly confirmed today in one direction by the retirement of the Pulinda into S's [Saurin's] karmadeha and outer swabhava; the chief obstacle in the house is therefore removed. The action of the tejas in physical pressure as a means of pushing the siddhi is removed, definitely, & everywhere the pure action of the Will on the akasha has been substituted. The second proof of the increasing saundarya is now more definite. A third is preparing, but still indefinite.
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Today is marked mainly by the continuation of the movements of the eighth; development of the Krishna Kali relation, progress of the instruments of knowledge, a more general force of the Powers, a more settled action of the rupadrishti, a finally secure and easy action in the akash of the lipi, Kamananda constant in the intense or subdued forms throughout the day and part of the night,—though in the evening almost implicit,—and more frequent & powerful in the state of samadhi, slow progress of the swapnasamadhi, the physical siddhi struggling with the remnants of asiddhi which intend to return or persist, maintenance of the karmasiddhi. Except in the lipi nothing assuredly final and definite.
Days of crisis & transition, intended chiefly for the exclusion of the remnants of false tapas in the lipsa and the full replacement of the Aniruddha bhava by the Balaram-Aniruddha in the Master of the Yoga. Kamananda now possesses the whole day in the subdued form with the intense rising out of it; it is discontinued at night.
The Balaram-Aniruddha Bhava suffused with Pradyumna and based on concealed Maheshwara now governs the Yoga; but in the Prakriti, the Maheshwara bhava is not yet concealed. In neither is there as yet a very powerful energy of the Balarama or Mahakali bhava. The vijnana has recovered its elasticity, the knowledge & sight of the sukshma world is increasing and the kamananda grows in intensity.
This movement continued throughout the day, ceased in the evening. The movement is towards the purification of error out of the trikaldrishti & aishwarya and dream, incoherence & insufficiency out of the samadhi. But the resistance in the akasha is still strong enough to prevent an unhampered rapidity of improvement. Health improves & grows stronger, yet the abnormal symptomatic affections, which have no longer any coherence or raison d'être, still recur or cling. Adhogati is persistent & prevents the established
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utthapana from frequently manifesting. Saundarya is still limited to its one or two imperfect details. Karmasiddhi develops, but slowly & against a considerable obstruction.
A day of uncertain development. Swapna samadhi is slowly becoming more purposeful and developing a better organisation.
Trikaldrishti improved and became normally free from the old sources of error except in matters of exact detail. Health strongly attacked.
[No entry]
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