Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 3)

9

I have quite a pile of your letters - with quite a host of questions. I shall try to answer them not in a chronological order but as they come up in the order in which the pile has put them.

The first to hand reminds me of the Biblical war-horse neighing "Ha! Ha!" as its nostrils breathe the smell of the battlefield. You are in a regular frenzy facing the field of human knowledge as laid out by encyclopaedias and dictionaries. Here comes your aspiration to be a polymath, master of a hundred disciplines. Ever since my middle teens I have thrilled to the same lure. Except for mathematics, which don't daunt you, I have felt competent to tackle all the ranges of intellectual inquiry but I can't say I am anywhere being in full control of most of them - poetry alone I have scoured from end to end to the extent my extreme familiarity with English allows. Beyond poetry what has most drawn me is literary criticism, philosophical speculation, scientific thought, historical research. I believe I have contributed a bit of original work to each of these branches of knowledge, even though not of an outstanding quality everywhere. The desire to pursue various lines further even now persists, but here some words of the Mother to me keep ringing. In effect their import ran: "The plane of the mind is infinite. One can go on and on there, in fascinated pursuit of knowledge. No time will be left for the spiritual life. One can have a glorious time, mastering arts and sciences and making discovery after discovery. A wide surface satisfaction can be yours but, having seen beyond the mind and obtained a taste of spirituality, glimpsed a ray of the direct light of the Divine, too much preoccupation with mental knowledge will be a waste of your life." Ever since I gathered this grace of "wisdom from the Mother, I have moderated my acquisition of mental knowledge. Though every new vista of intellectual research pulls me towards it, there is a profound sense in the heart that truth lies elsewhere

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and that my main concentration should be on what hides behind the endless variety of the mind's offerings.

We are beings in whom the evolutionary impulse is accompanied by strong whiffs from the typal worlds. There is a world of the mind-energy just as there is a world of the life-force where these powers of consciousness are fulfilled and no need is left then to aspire beyond them. In them one is lapped in ever-unfolding immensities of felicitous ideas and theories or of sensuous-emotional enjoyments. All is revelation on revelation of horizontal adventure: no vertical thrust towards an uncertain and hazardous Unknown, no gamble for a Godhead surpassing vitality and mentality have any part in the typal planes. These are the pleasures and perils of the evolutionary plane. Evolution is a difficult process whereas it is easy to let ourselves drift on the typal tide and if we yield to this tide the vertical thrust weakens. So it is necessary to be careful in our ambition to be polymaths. How to move in the direction of polymathy without sacrificing that thrust: this is the problem for people like us who are intoxicated with encyclopaedias and dictionaries,.

In the wake of your hunger to know everything within man's range, you are led to "an epistemological inquiry -what exactly is knowledge and what is the raison d'etre of man's insatiable urge to search for it?" Over and above or rather behind and beyond the push of the typal mental plane to pursue ideas and theories for their own sake, there is one aspect of the Divine Nature, the Divine Existence, responsible for this urge. The ultimate reality is Omniscience (All-Knowledge) along with Omnipotence (All-Power) and Omnipresence (All-Pervasion), to which we may add Omnifelicity and Omniexpression. Omniscience has two sides: what the Vedanta calls the Higher Knowledge and the Lower Knowledge. The latter covers the world of phenomena, of outer objects and processes. In Vedantic terms, the Play of the Many as distinguished from the Work of the One. When it is contrasted instead of being merely distinguished, it is dubbed Ignorance - avidya in opposition to vidya. The knowledge that

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is ignorance consists in being aware of the Many to the exclusion of the One. The sense of the One is never quite lost but it remains merely a notion and is not perceived as an actuality in the way the various objects are perceived. For those who want to be seers and not only thinkers, the quest for the One as the Infinite, the Eternal, the Divine is of prime importance and they must see (being "seers"!) that this quest does not suffer by the lure of the Many getting excessive. However, the voice of the Isha Upanishad in tune with that of Sri Aurobindo has to be heard, insisting on a due regard for the apparently finite, temporal, non-divine. According to this voice, exclusive knowledge of the One is, in the final perspective, as much Ignorance as exclusive knowledge of the Many. The integral aim of life is manifestation (many-festa-tion?) of the Single, the Unitary, in a double awareness of both the Unique and the Multiple. So I wouldn't pour cold water altogether on your desire to be an expert in the subjects whose very mention thrills you: "Mathematics, computer science, architecture, poetry, painting, music (singing, instruments and composition), literature, nuclear physics, plant science (botany, horticulture, floriculture), mythology, philosophy, 'holopediatrics', geography, astronomy, finance, political sciences, linguistics, grammar, etc."

Now to another question you have raised:

"There is this apparent divergence between two of the Mother's statements:

(1)It is not what one does that is the most important thing but what one is.

(2)In work one progresses ten times more than in empty contemplation (this statement is from memory, so might be slightly inaccurate in wording)." Your puzzlement arises from misconstruing the non-emphasis on "what one does" as putting a premium on inactivity. There are actually two shades in the Mother's intention. One is discouragement of getting impressed by big-looking activity as such. One may win name and fame by grandiose achievements and still remain a poor specimen of a man - selfish, censorious,

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greedy, ambitious. Secondly, one may be busy all the time but with one's consciousness on the surface. The true measure of a man is the quality of his consciousness. One may even do next to nothing outwardly and yet be the acme of humanity. What did Ramakrishna or Ramana" Maharshi do by way of physical productivity? But this does not imply that doing things is set at a discount. It is assumed that one is doing something: only, we do not get the true measure of a man thereby. Whether it is big work or small work, what fundamentally counts is the wideness of one's mind, the depth of one's heart, the height from which one's will operates.

If you keep in view my exposition of the Mother's statement you will not find it to be at odds with her other pronouncement where she encourages work as a means of spiritual progress, preferring it to passive and therefore empty contemplation. Not that she quite discourages contemplation. Everything has its proper place in her many-sided vision. But the contemplative capacity is rather rare, and mostly people flatter their egos by stretching out hours with eyes closed. It is better to occupy oneself in work which one inwardly dedicates to the Divine and during which one keeps one's consciousness high-uplifted. One thus advances further on the Aurobindonian path - especially as this path insists on a new mode of living, a new manner of activity, a creative expression of the inner being's surrender to the Mother's light and love.

You have raised the issue of the Mother and her Grace: "Is the aspiration for the intervention of the Grace the same as aspiring to the Mother? If the two were inseparable, there should not be any need for aspiring for the Grace in particular, because appealing to the Mother would in any case bring forth a reply in the form of Grace's action." Indeed, basically speaking, the Mother and the Grace are identical and everything that comes from the Mother is an act of Grace. But we can speak of Grace's general action and its particular action. The latter is what we commonly refer to when we talk of Grace. It consists in a keen response of help from above to a

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piercing cry of the heart from below. The general action is the showering of knowledge and peace and power and bliss on our deep dissatisfaction with ourselves, the gift of vastitude and altitude to the sincere smallness and surrendering littleness that we are in our best movements. Perhaps we can suggest with a fine feeling the shade of difference between the general Grace and the particular while not forgetting the common basis of both by quoting some lines from a well-known hymn. Here the general Grace is movingly touched off:

Change and decay in all around 1 see.

O Thou who changest not, abide with me!

Here is the lighting up of the Grace in its acute particularity:

When other helpers fail and comforts flee,

Help of the helpless, O abide with me!

In this context I may try to hint an answer to your query: "What is the difference between prayer and aspiration? Which is superior? Or does the question of superiority not arise here?" To aspire means etymologically to breathe towards something and figuratively to rise high for something. The aspirant has in view, as it were, luminous heights and his inner movement is towards them. He who prays finds within his sight, so to speak, shadowy depths surrounding him and his inner movement is to ache for their diminishing and disappearing. He too is aware of a luminosity overhead, but his call is for it to come down while the aspirant feels called by it upward. The latter is not unconscious of his own low state but his concentration is on getting elsewhere. The prayerful soul is more concerned with getting his deplorable plight changed. I may add that his appeal is, more specifically than the aspirant's, to a personal Divinity and is more than the aspirant's in tune with the Grace in its particular aspect. Aspiration and prayer are both of value in the spiritual life and sometimes it is difficult to distinguish them. How would

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one characterise the famous cry of the Brihadaranyaka Upa-nishad?-

From the unreal lead us to the Real,

From the darkness lead us to the Light,

From death lead us to Immortality.

As in most of the Upanishadic verses the fundamental drift here is in the direction of the never-born ever-undying single infinite Self of selves, the Atman who is one with the secret universal Presence, Brahman. But in these three lines we have not only an immense aspiration for the inmost Knowledge: we have also an intense prayer as if to some Supreme Other to make us know that Other as our own essential being. It is as though Brahman were invoked to let us experience Him as Atman. An aspiration finds voice in the accents of a prayer.

A question which must be fairly common is: "Isn't never having seen the Mother and Sri Aurobindo and not living in the Ashram a bit of a spiritual handicap? Or can the Integral Yoga be done with the same intensity without the above-named factor as it is in my case?" Actually you have fused two points: doing the Integral Yoga without having come in physical contact with the Mother and Sri Aurobindo and doing this Yoga outside the Ashram. There have been people who knew the two Gurus physically yet did not continue to stay in the Ashram while doing the Integral Yoga just as there are people who are staying in the Ashram though they have never stood physically face to face with their two Gurus. In the complex situation you posit, the main thing is to feel in one's own heart the presence of the beings who physically manifested as the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. Even during their physical manifestation the main thing was the same. Of course there were many spiritual advantages in coming into contact with that manifestation, but none would have been of fundamental value without the heart's awaking inwardly to a glorious sunlight called Sri Aurobindo and an enchanting moonlight named the Mother. And once the awaking was

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there, the golden epiphany and the silver secrecy could be living realities anywhere and they could be such even when their outer double embodiment had ceased. No doubt, there were special possibilities of spiritual experience for those whom the Divine had willed to be bodily with them, but no essential realisation is debarred to those whom the Divine has willed to be not so. The central point is the inward touch the Divine has given to a seeking soul. All who have become disciples and children of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother under any circumstances have had their touch - and to have received that touch is the only thing we should be concerned with, for it guarantees to us the entire riches of the Divine Existence in proportion to our capacity. As for the opportunity to stay in the Ashram, it depends on a number of things. When Sri Aurobindo and the Mother were in our midst they themselves on several occasions decided that this or that person should do Yoga outside the Ashram in spite of the parties wanting to be Ashramites. When the Mother was there, she in the light of her inner perception decided the issue. At present the Trustees have to ponder many conditions over and above their own inner sense. We may say that broadly the issue is whether one should come to Pondicherry and practise Yoga or stay where one is and do it. As far as I direction of permanent residence in Pondicherry. So do not fret. Make the best of what is possible. Content yourself with occasional visits. To make your sadhana fruitful lies in your hands. If there are difficulties in your milieu, they are not at all likely to disappear if you are in Pondicherry. They are not such that merely a change of place can resolve them.

Now to another problem you have posed: "The Mother says: 'Be aware of the Presence within you.' It gives me an impression as if it can be a conscious willed act instead of being the spontaneous result of the Grace where the Presence 'happens' to you. Please bring some illumination as I direly need a concrete sense of the Presence within me." You seem to forget that Yoga is a twofold affair: the Divine's Grace and

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one's own effort. One has to fulfil certain conditions, create a certain attitude, extend a happy co-operation to the Guru. Man is a mental being, he stands in consciousness a little apart from the stream of what the Vedanta terms the play of Nature in him. He is to some extent a witness and a giver of sanction and has the possibility of becoming ultimately the master of Nature's play. Being thus constituted he cannot simply be pushed into anything. He cannot evolve without conscious collaboration with the Divine Force. And the collaboration is made easy because the same Force which acts as Grace is already within your own being as what the Mother calls "the Presence". To be aware of it you have to quiet yourself, turn your thoughts towards the Mother, make as much as you can an offering of all your movements to her. In this way you will help her to open you up, you will render her Grace more effective, achieve a fusion of the One whom we outwardly adore with the One who shines at all times inwardly adorable and casts a transforming and unifying smile on all that fumbling many-mooded multitude which is our common self.

A few minor questions remain. One is: "What should be my sleep-requirements? 6-6¹/₂ hours or more?" Let me quote you an authority: Napoleon. I label him as an authority because he had complete control over his sleep. He could go into the land of Nod any time. Even in the midst of a battle, with cannonading all around, he could snatch some minutes of sleep. His formula is: "6 hours for men, 7 for women, 8 for children and 9 for idiots."

Next: "Is it advisable or worth it to maintain a spiritual diary viz, a booklet which will serve the purpose of chronicling the course of my odyssey towards the Supreme Goal?" As you are a born writer, it won't be a bad idea to record your day-to-day observations on your own spiritual wanderings, which may hopefully mean at times the noting down of

Those thoughts that wander through Eternity.

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Your choice of the word "odyssey" is apt. For this "man many-counselled", as Homer designates him, passed through quite a number of perils and temptations during his nine-year tossing on the high seas. Will you be able to resist the song of the Sirens or the lure of Circe? Perhaps if you put down everything in cold ink you will acquire an objective view of things and may stop short of complications. Already you have been jotting down your inner and outer vicissitudes in the shape of an epistolary plethora directed towards me. Diary-keeping won't be anything quite strange. But you will have the chance of looking back at all you have passed through and taking stock of all your forwards and backwards and sidewards and the final upshot of all the movements during a year.

You have asked: "What happens to those sadhaks who pass away? Is it inevitable that in their next life they will be spiritually oriented?" Ordinarily it would be difficult to chart out a course. But when we know that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother are residing in the earth's subtle-physical layer in an embodied form in order to carry on their work, the future of dead sadhaks would lie entirely in the hands of our Gurus and I believe that they would be helped to pursue their sadhana in whatever way is deemed helpful by the Gurus. I have also the notion that, since a sincere sadhak has his mind and vital no less than his soul set to one note of devotion to the work of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, the same mental and vital beings and not only the psychic being which naturally persists from life to life may return in a new body in the next birth. After death they may stick together or they may serve different functions but they continue. My motion is suggested by what the Mother said about my friend A.B. Purani who passed away on 11 December 1965: "His higher intellectual part went to Sri Aurobindo and united with him. His psychic is with me and he is very happy and in peace. His vital is still helping those who seek his help." When the time of the next embodiment arrives, all these members that

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are still intact may come together and continue in a spiritually oriented way under the conditions the new physical form will create. Don't take my notion as Gospel truth. It may be just a spark of fancy.

(16.10.1992)

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