Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 3)

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I am very happy that you have taken yourself thoroughly in hand and are doing your best to combine normal natural behaviour with the Yogic aspiration. What often stands in the way of both is what I have called "too much preoccupation with oneself". A relaxation away from the ego is indicated in an outward direction by cordial and friendly and co-operative relations with those among whom one lives or works: the same is indicated in an inward direction by getting in touch with the deeper layer of the mind which looks up to a light beyond the mere thinker and with the depth behind the mere "feeler" to a love for some ideality of existence towards which our sense of the good, the true and the beautiful keeps pointing. The cause of the tightness, the narrowness, the tiring anxiety of common life is our being centred in the "habitual self".

You speak of your "proclivity to observe and hold aloft the negative aspect of people's personality", a proclivity which "mars the budding warmth and growing closeness of a relationship". This means you have a hypercritical temper. And perhaps such a temper inclines you to see also the negative aspects of your own personality. The Delphic command - "Know thyself" - is ever valid: we must perceive our abysms, our level lands, our heights: I should add "our depths" as distinguished from "our abysms". But the stress should be on perfecting all our positives. Here there should be no egoistic preening ourselves on our merits and virtues just as there should be no urge to sit in sackcloth and ashes because of our defects and depravities. What is required is an offering of the whole composite self to the Divine and an appeal to help the positives prevail over the negatives and ultimately dissolve them. Sri Aurobindo has said that the Mother never makes much of a sadhak's shortcomings: her concentration is always on his good points, his openings to the Divine Light and Love: no matter how often he may fall.

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she never emphasises his downward tendency but hurries to pick him up and set him once more on the right course. Our attitude to fellow-creatures should be similar. Their minuses must not loom large in our eyes: their pluses have to be appreciated in such a way that each person may feel like doing his best to live up to our happy evaluation of his pluses and hope to lessen the minuses as much as possible.

In another letter you have asked for the correct method of meditation and the correct idea or movement on which to meditate. Then you say that you follow my method of meditation as given in the February (1993) issue of Mother India, namely, to concentrate on the Presence of the Mother in the heart and offer all the movements as quietly as possible to the Presence. Then you put the question: "Can it also be done that one concentrates in a movement of aspiration to the Grace or one concentrates in a state of equanimity, i.e. in a state of having stepped back in the Vast throbbing behind us?" There is no single way to meditate. I believe that the alternatives you have mentioned have figured in some letter or other of mine in the past. Whatever comes naturally to one is the right mode at any particular time. At this moment my meditative mood may be summarised as follows: I feel myself stationed at the back of my heart in a wideness not quite throbbing but quietly vibrating to a far-off rhythm which seems like a universal humming with small ups and downs of tone and, while this large peacefully listening poise is enjoyed, some sort of warm "aroma" of self-offering wafts towards the Divine Mother present everywhere yet wearing the face and form of the human-looking Mother we have known in the Ashram as our Guru and this "aroma" emanates from a small centre which is myself deep within, a centre held in the arms, as it were, of the same human-divine being - at once infinite and finite - towards whom and into whom the self-offering flows. I think what is happening covers all the alternatives you draw my attention to, including the movement of aspiration to the Grace.

You may ask: "How can you talk of meditating when you

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are typing this letter?" Although I do not claim to be an adept in meditative practice I may reply: "Meditation has two aspects - background and foreground. There can. be a detached, dedicated, offered, aspiring state continuing from moment to moment without any effort - undisturbed by whatever one may be doing, a constant background to all one's doings, of which one becomes distinctly aware only when one looks within at any instant, withdrawing from the work in hand for a second. When one returns to the work one knows that the background meditation goes on but instead of the distinct awareness there is in the foreground just a vague sense of something within carrying on the Integral Yoga while one is busy with typing or reading or even talking. Such a double state is possible most when the Yoga is done by the heart rather than by the mind. While the mind is occupied with various activities, the heart stands apart, alone with the Divine. Surely a link exists between the two, for it is the mind that on ceasing from its activities at any point realises that what it was conscious of as a far-away yet persisting divine support is a many-featured condition of blessedness, a participation both ample and profound in some sort of inner divineness.

The background Yoga can be of diverse kinds. People may feel an action from above, illumining both mind and heart and opening an inner eye to strange glorious scenes or to a play of forces seeming to affect the very body although actually the occult or spiritual phenomena have the subtle-physical part of us as their field and the gross-physical form experiences no more than a mirror-effect. The mirror-effect can be productive of happy results in our nerves and even organs but essentially there is no transformation of them towards establishing a new more-than-human body. I have spoken of the foreground and background of meditation in terms of my own general none-too-spectacular transitions from the old "I" to the new Aurobindonian "me".

You are right in deciding not to compare yourself with anyone, superior or inferior. The tendency to pat ourselves on

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the back when we find someone below our self-assessment or to hang our jaw down face to face with a person evidently better-gifted - this tendency is natural and proves helpful at times, but on the whole it is mistaken, for each of us is unique and has to develop according to a "pattern inherent in our nature. This does not mean that we should turn a deaf ear to people's ideas about us. It simply means that we have to be humble enough to consider whatever criticism is made of us and clever enough to see through flattering estimates. Sri Aurobindo once forbade me to run any rivalry with poets already "arrived" or famous but to cultivate my own individual line of inspiration, recognise my defects and, without caring for fame, intensify whatever successful vein I had struck. I was lucky to have Sri Aurobindo to set the proper measure for me, but his aim was to guide me as long as he thought I needed guidance and then leave me to find my own way with the instinct he had implanted in me. In sadhana too one was expected to discern the bent of one's disposition and not put up any scale of more advanced or less advanced sadhaks. Of course a wise practitioner of Yoga would be ready to learn from the example of others, catch the particular line along which a fellow-Ashramite had come inwardly close to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother or avoid the trend by which he or she seemed to grow distant.

"How will the division in me heal? What would be the mechanism of the healing?" - this question of yours gets an answer which is a little complex. The first step is to take your stand as firmly as you can in the part you want to regard as your normal self. The sense of identity must not waver. A detachment has to be practised from the less normal, less Yogic personality - a detachment which tends to forget that there is anything of such a character. The less one is preoccupied with something to be avoided, the firmer gets one's sense of the right self. There is also the need to recognise that actually you are neither the right self nor the wrong. You become whatever your "consciousness" gets fixed on. Each of us is essentially a consciousness moving from one shade to

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another of what we ordinarily regard as our self. The general nature we take to be our own is the ego-formation which demarcates each of us from his fellows and stamps on certain shades of mental, vital and physical being the sense that we are those shades. Then when we turn inward and realise a finer being as our own we have the impression that the ego has made the choice. And we may ask why Sri Aurobindo wants us to get away from such a spiritually inclined chap as the ego. But in fact we have got beyond the ego by the consciousness fixing itself on another psychological state than the ego-bound outer one. And what has guided the consciousness is a projection of the true soul, the psychic being, into the mental-vital-physical complex accompanied by the ego-sense. While the ego directs this complex into the common ways of individual existence with its barbaric or polished self-regard and possessiveness, the psychic projection throbs in sympathy with all creatures as if they were its own self in spite of differences of mould and manner. Furthermore, it has the urge always towards some perfection of thought, expression, conduct and, through it, feels the call of some Unthinkable, Inexpressible, Uncodifiable and, at the same time, in its relation to the cosmic scene of manifestaion, some Infallible. It is this psychic projection that turns towards Yoga and the more you are conscious of it in a direct mode rather than by a reflection of it, as it were, in the mental side of your personality, the easier becomes the process of feeling alien to the "persona" you wish to banish. As there is an intense sincerity in your desire to annul whatever bit of deviation occurred, you are sure to succeed in your Yogic career. All who Have experienced the touch of Sri Aurobindo's finger on the core of their being must expel all doubt about their ultimate destination: the Divine. Everybody has his weak spells, his sudden falls, but when one's direction has been set by a Higher Power they do not matter in the long run. What I am saying has a living force and is not mere book-knowledge, because my deviations have been legion and yet the Mother's hold on me has never failed. I had once asked and obtained the boon:

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"Even if I want to get away from you, never let me go." My deviations included at times rash ventures, the taking of risks. There the Mother had warned me against being too cocksure of her saviour grace. She said: "We have saved you again and again. But do not exploit our protection. Try to be a little more prudent."

(15.3.1993)

It has always been a pleasure to hear from you. And I realise that for a long time I have not been alert enough to give you a corresponding (apt epithet!) pleasure on hearing from me. Your latest sheaf of matter has stirred me from my long lethargy.

It is indeed interesting that Swami Vivekananda was a Freemason. The evidence is well presented. But I cannot subscribe to the idea that his memorable "Sisters and Brothers of America" at the Parliament of Religions at Chicago was inspired by his freemasonry or that it would be "a fortuitous choice of words" without the Masonic underpinning.

To begin with: if, as you claim, Vedanta and Freemasonry have similar attitudes, the former is sufficient to account for that mode of address. Secondly, and basically, the term "Sisters" could never come from Freemasonry, There are no "Sisters" in it: it is exclusively a Brotherhood. Sisterhood is excluded because sisters can't keep secrets, according to these brothers. Both logically and psychologically, Vivekananda's thrilling opening phrase need have nothing to do with his having been a Freemason. In fact, to trace it to his having been initiated in "Anchor and Hope Lodge" is to rob it of its spontaneous inspired splendour, its essentially spiritual aura, its roots in the living sense of the One Self in all and the ancient Indian vision of the whole world being a single family. Besides, Freemasonry, in spite of its "three Grand Principles" - "brotherly love, relief (charity) and truth" - is a secret enclosed limited group conscious of a difference between itself and the world at large: it stresses a special

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relationship among its initiates in distinction from the rest of humanity. There is a touch of the sectarian mind - as in the Semitic religions (judaism, Christianity, Mohammedanism) - in contrast to the world-wide attitude of Hinduism and Buddhism.

I have nothing against Freemasonry. My father was a master mason of the Lodge "Rising Star" and I would have been initiated if my father had not died at the age of 44. I do not share the prejudice of the Roman Catholic Church against Freemasons, though I may admit that certain sections of them had political interests as part of their work and had even an anti-clerical shade in their outlook on life, as in France at one time. My refusal to reduce Vivekananda's grand phrase to his freemasonry is not due to any bias against his membership of any lodge.

(12.12.1992)

In your recent letter you speak of two sides of your being: one which wants to give itself in affection and sympathy to the whole world without any expectation of reward and the other which wants everybody to make much of you and which looks upon itself as specially important. But you regret this side of your disposition and wish to outgrow it. I gather from your self-portrayal that the soul in you is in full bloom of sweetness and light but does not yet have fully the fire of Agni, the all-conquering strength to overwhelm the egoistic urge. However, the fact that you pray to the Mother to take away all ambition, all self-regarding movement, is a clear sign that the sweetness is no mere heavenly sugar but the precursor of a powerful purifying nectar and that the light is more than the shedding of happiness on people: it is also a force turned inward to expose and eliminate every petty egoistic impulse. Agni's- fire is surely in the making and the Mother will respond to your prayer and make you completely her spiritual child who will bring much joy and wisdom in your physical period of "second childhood"!

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The passing away of Madhav Pandit has given you much food for thought. When you so seriously think of mutability in general and even of your own death in some far future, why do you go at me hammer and tongs because I used the word "survive" about myself? At my age it is natural that now and then the idea of the great transition should occur. As I once before told you, Einstein felt himself to be so much a part of the universal flow that he had no particular self-regard in the face of possible death: I feel utterly a part of Sri Aurobindo's world-vision and world-work so that I am certain he will arrange my life according to his will: I have no concern over how long I shall live. I am ready to go tomorrow as well as prepared to continue for years and years, savouring the immortal ambrosia of their inner presence and striving to let something of its rapture and radiance touch the hearts of all who are in contact with me. At my age I cannot have absolute confidence that I shall definitely continue: so it is natural for me to have said to you: "I hope to survive till you return." Along with a streak of jocularity, a teasing tinge, there is bound to be a vein of seriousness here. I understand and appreciate your pain at the word "survive", your anxiety that I should not pop off soon and your deeply held wish for me to go on and on to help people remember and act on Sri Krishna's great words: "You who have come into this transient and unhappy world, love and worship Me." Yes, I cannot blame you for chiding me: your affection is perceived to be warm and vibrant behind your protest, but neither should you take me to task for being realistic. All the same, let me tell you what I have already written to a friend earlier. Your anxiety calls for its repetition. My heart is ever young, my mind is always ready for new ventures and although my legs are not very co-operative these days they are out of tune with a face which - if I am to believe my friends - has no pouches below the eyes and no marked wrinkles and has, even at the age of 88 years and 5 months, all its own front teeth (9 lower and 10 upper). If my head has lost most of its hair, can't the condition be regarded as symbolic of the spirit

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of youth caught in the slang expression "Go baldheaded" (for things), meaning "proceed regardless of consequences"? I hope this picture of me makes you happy.

(15.4.1993)

Long ago I read a letter of Sri Aurobindo's to the effect that it is the lesson of life that everything in this world fails a man except the Divine if he turns entirely to the Divine. I had wondered whether there was any reference here to outer circumstances and events taking a favourable shape by one's adherence to the Divine by means of faith or prayer.

Of course external things could change to some extent, but the non-failure of the Divine in this sense struck me as too superficial and having little bearing on the progress of one's sadhana.

Yesterday there was an incident as if something important were failing me radically, a solid support abruptly giving way. I kept offering the painful occasion to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. All of a sudden, at the Samadhi, I felt an intense inward opening to them in the heart-centre. Behind my own self in that centre supporting me, sustaining my being was a wide warm Presence perpetually transfusing into me a deep peace, a profound happiness, the sense of a personified eternal smile holding me up and passing its strength of unending sweetness into my inner poise.

All external features at the Samadhi vanished. My eyes kept closing and as if drowning in the vast surge of that blissful love which was fully unveiled to my heart because this heart had turned to no support except its mighty mystery. The pain that was there was enveloped by the powerful warmth which was tending all the time to erase it with a joy capable of blotting out everything.

I understood most vividly what Sri Aurobindo had meant by those words - the modus operandi grew clear of the one unfailing factor possible to realise amidst the vicissitudes of "this transient and unhappy world" into which we have come

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yet within which Sri Krishna points to an unchanging support when he gives the call: "Love and worship Me."

A little later an external circumstance came to my help. I received an assurance making me see that the hurtful situation had arisen out of an utter misunderstanding.

(28.4.1993)

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