Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 3)

21

Now we are nearing the birthday of the Mother: 21 February. There will be a special force at work on and around that date. 1 take it to be a force that may surprise us by saying:

"Why do you worry whether you are strong enough or worthy enough to do Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga? Just keep visualising me constantly. Those of you who have seen me should try to revive memories of me as you saw my face and form in one activity or another. Whoever has not seen me in person has still my various photographs to go by. The photographs of either Sri Aurobindo or me are not mere pictures. They automatically carry by their very representations of us our consciousness. In the absence of the direct recollection of our physical presence in a body, our photographs can well serve as projections of ourselves. Let there be your soul's focus on them, either with eyes open or with shut eyes holding an image of the portrayal. By whatever means a vivid sense of us as we were in our recent incarnations on earth is called for - an incarnation carrying the supreme Truth-Consciousness with its all-penetrating light and its all-enfolding love. Concentratedly, devotedly, silently conjure up our image or, if silence does not come naturally, let the heart whisper: 'Ma-Sri Aurobindo sharanam mama' ('Mother-Sri Aurobindo are my refuge'). To dwell on that image as intensely as you can with a deep unwavering movement of self-giving - that is all the Yoga I want of you. This Yoga has to be practised not only in the hours when you are alone or unoccupied. Even in the midst of people and even while work is being done by you, let a feeling of our presence, accompanied as far as possible by an inner visual touch, prevail. I expect that by its prevalence there will be at the same time a profound quiet and a shining joy. With those around you you will experience a happy camaraderie without losing by one whit your poise in us. Indeed the friendliness you feel will be directed by a seeking within their diverse selves as a reflection

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of serene Sri Aurobindo and smiling Me. What else can there be when, whether those selves know it or not, we carry all creation as our child and when your Yoga consists in keeping before your inner eyes a vision of us? One further word I shall utter of initiation. By means of the Yoga I have outlined, you will realise vividly for yourself the reality I have suggested to you as lying behind the people with whom you come into contact. You will find yourself perpetually in our arms and guided at all hours by a divine creative Parenthood. From us
will "Spring every moment of your life - a shaft of Truth's sunshine from depth beyond depth of eternal Delight."

(?.2.1994)

Here is the comparison you wanted from me of the two "Autumns" - Hood's and Keats's.

(1)Keats's style is more objective. There is no mention of "I". Where Hood says "I saw old Autumn in the misty morn", Keats simply apostrophises "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness". Even when the motif of "seeing" comes in, he uses the third person: "Who hath not seen thee...?" The personal subjective element is completely absent. Hood not only begins with "I" but also ends with a reference to a mental condition: "In the hushed mind's mysterious far away,..," Keats's utter objectivity makes his picture more vivid, while Hood brings towards the close, in the phrase I have just quoted, a profound note beyond anything in Keats's picture -a note which may legitimately be called the Romantic Age's anticipation of the Aurobindonian style.

(2)Keats packs his lines with richer details: every phrase is laden with descriptive matter: there is much more poetic information. Only one is laxly built: "Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find". Hood's style does not so "load every rift with ore" (Keats's advice to Shelley): he is occasionally content with more or less conventional language. Compare

"The sweets of summer in their luscious cells" with "For Summer has o'erbrimmed their clammy cells", or "Shaking

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her languid locks all dewy bright" with "Her hair soft lifted by the winnowing wind". But in places Hood equals Keats in the richly packed and carefully chosen phrase: e.g., "The squirrel gloats on his accomplished hoard", or "With the last leaves for a love-rosary", or "Like a dim picture of the drowned past", and the line I have already quoted about the hushed mind. This line exceeds the range Keats has accepted here but it is not something alien to his own imagination, as he shows in that snatch in the Ode to Pan woven into his early Endymion:

... solitary thinkings such as dodge

Conception to the very bourn of heaven,

Then leave the naked brain...

Hood has a weak moment which is almost unforgivable: "Alone, alone upon a mossy stone". This phrase is like a snatch from a ballad, quite out of tune with even the rest of Hood's piece.

(3) Hood makes one mood-tone predominate: vague melancholy. Each of the three stanzas brings it in. Stanza 1: "Old Autumn... shadowless like Silence... listening to silence... lonely bird... hollow ear... woods forlorn". Stanza 4: "autumn melancholy dwells,/And sighs her tearful spells... sunless shadows"... "alone, alone... dead and gone... withered world looks drearily... dim picture... drowned past... ghostly thing... grey upon the grey". Keats brings many lights and shades of mood - the melancholy touch is only in "Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn". His picture is composite, more true to objective Nature, while Hood has approached his subject with an already made-up mind, as it were.

(1994)

You say your little son Jeraz is enamoured of the sign for OM. This sign is a powerful symbol of a very significant sound. The sound is really composed of three strains: A,U, M. When you utter them, there is first an open movement of the lips

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with A, then with U a round contraction of them on the way to a closing of them which takes place at the end of the utterance with M, The A sound signifies the outer world and its consciousness. The U symbolises the inner reality. The M points to the innermost. The total word, towards which the three sounds take us and which transcends all of them, indicates the sheer ultimate Existence. The Sanskrit terms for the three are, respectively, Vaishwanara, Taijasa and Prajna -corresponding to the waking state, the dream-state and the sleep-state. The sleep-state, in which the consciousness is most in-drawn, represents the Divine Being, creator of both the dream-state and the waking one from its own depth of omnipotent vision.

What is beyond is simply called Turiya, meaning "Fourth". It is the final ground of all and at the same time overarches all. As such, this utter Absolute, this basic stuff of Being, may be considered a universal consciousness in all the planes, founding everything as well as pervading and containing everything. It is called the Self and this Self is called "fourfold". Through a widened awareness in response to its universality on the physical plane we can prepare ourselves to penetrate the inner and innermost worlds and reflect something of "Turiya".

To take to the OM-symbol is good, but it must not become a mere light-hearted game, a formal gesture towards the Divine, mostly for the sake of good luck to ourselves. Of course, a longing for good luck is nothing wrong, but a sense of the profundity of this symbol should come also. Your son's writing it on your palms will be no more than a game. If you fancy it, you may indulge him. By itself it means hardly anything. The true thing to do is to understand what this symbol stands for and be inwardly in tune with it.

Jeraz's wanting to be a superman should be an aspiration and not an ambition. His feeling for the more-than-human is not to be discouraged but a finer tone should come into it. The true Superman is not just a master of men but a servant of the Divine.

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All this is perhaps too much for the little fellow to grasp in full. Still, a general awakening to the spiritual responsibility of being a Superman may be tried.

Your account of your pregnancy and delivery is fascinating. You were certainly in the right frame of mind all through. 1 don't believe you were indulging in mere imagination. There was an unborn soul inspiring you. You were feeling Sri Aurobindo's presence more than the Mother's because a male child was on the way. But, finally, the creative power is the Mother's - and therefore your dream of the delivery was permeated by her presence. What you were told in your dream was correct as to the gender of the newcomer but not accurate as to the time of the delivery because several factors come into play in the time-field. But the darshan-day need not be taken as a fixed thing. It has "fringes", as it were, extending before and after. To be born 2 hours before the 24th of April 1984 is as likely as to be born 2 hours after that date -that is, at 2 a.m, on the 25th. In either case the child would be within the glow of the 64th anniversay of the Mother's final settlement by the side of Sri Aurobindo to bring into birth a New Age of spiritual evolution. It is also significant that, on the glimmering edge of an anniversary of a day with such a sign of the fabulous future, exquisite aspiring Yasmin brought into the world a boy like Jeraz joyously jumping with a dream of supermanhood.

You have written: "The mental is too active, I must learn to silence my mind. Any suggestion?" In Sri Aurobindo's Savitri we have the verse:

The breathless might and calm of silent mind.

if you will excuse the digression, I would like to quote to you a short passage from Wordsworth which the general cast of this verse calls up from my poetry-packed memory:

It is a beauteous evening, calm and free; The holy time is quiet as a Nun

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Breathless with adoration; the broad sun

Is sinking down in its tranquillity.

The passage seems to become somewhat relevant because of the adjective "breathless" no less than the epithet "calm" common to it and to Sri Aurobindo's line. But here it is "adoration" which creates the rapt in-drawn hushed state answering, as it were, subjectively to the outer scene of sunset in a calm sky free of obstructing clouds. Here is a state of the heart rather than of the mind but I have found that the adoring heart with its deep absorption in the Divine tends automatically to save the mind from random wandering and imparts to it, even when it is busy planning, a certain poise charged with confidence in the Power and Beauty that have entranced the inner self of Godward feeling. No doubt, a silent mind would be an ideal preparation for receiving the "overhead" splendours of the infinite and eternal Spirit, yet a mind quieted to a marked degree by the heart's devoted plunge into a blissful sense of the Personal Divinity is not an achievement to be sneezed at. Also, into whatever measure of mental quietude has been induced by any approach to being "breathless with adoration" the revelatory light from above the mind is likely to enter, even if one fails to realise the condition reflected in that magnificent mantric phrase of Sri Aurobindo's;

Our minds hush to a bright Omniscient.

Ultimately, this is how our minds have to be. In the meantime the path to this grand finale is easier and quicker through the consecration of the emotion-centre in us, touched by the secret soul behind it, than by a direct grappling with the centre of thought. The sustained experience of dedicated love for the Mother emanates an aura of tranquillity to smooth out the repetitive ruffles of the brain. That has been my observation. And such smoothing out prepares for the silence you desire. So let there be, as a result of your bhakti, a deep happy

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stir of serene longing for the Mother or Sri Aurobindo and gradually in consequence there will come about the reality figured by that stanza of Sri Aurobindo:

My mind is awake in stirless trance,

Hushed my heart, a burden of delight;

Dispelled is the senses' flicker-dance.

Mute my body aureate with light.

(24.2.1994)

I am honoured by your following in my stumbling footsteps and imitating my career of many a fall on the way, but please refrain from considering me an exemplary "uncle" in this matter. Uncle in such matters is worse than carbuncle! I am really sorry you have hurt your left upper ribs. 1 shall surely try my best to invoke the Mother's Light, as I feel it, on their behalf, particularly when I face the Samadhi. In fact as soon as I knew of your pain I appealed to the Mother to relieve you. Nowadays my appeal has a double movement. One movement is to hand over the pain or whatever else is the trouble to the Mother whom I feel to be standing in front of me. The second movement is to lift the trouble far above my head to some transcendent region of light and love. Of course, along with the trouble, I offer to the Mother the person who is suffering or has the problem. In both cases the offering is sustained for a time and is repeated a number of times during the day. And both the movements are made not only with a keen mental concentration but also with the heart's intense consecration.

When I look at the picture on the card you have sent, I find it symbolising the very movement upwards of which I have written. The white vase on the white square pedestal seems to be intently raising up" a bouquet of yellow roses to a mysterious beyond. The flowers are on long stems with a throng of delicate green leaves springing out of them. These leaves represent the life-force touched with tenderness carry-

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ing aloft the rose-bunch. I notice that the yellow flowers bear a light on their petals, an answer of Divine Grace to their sincere human plea.

Glancing downward at the picture I mark that it is not quite confined to reflecting the upward movement of my call for help. At the foot of the white vase there is one yellow rose, accompanied by a few green leaves, offering, as it were, a horizontal prayer to a secret Presence in front. So I see both sides of my inner response to you depicted in advance - the token of your love foreshadowing the answer of my mind and heart to the cry from your depths.

(13.1.1994)

On the phone 1 told you - or was it during our tete-a-tete in my room? - that I would be replying to your long letter of January 20. It was a very special letter bringing quite a number of fine topics and thoughts together. To you the centre-piece is of course the birth of your grand-daughter "Kishaya", that 'Tittle-in-much" that has just come into your family. Her date of birth rings a bell in my mind: January 6 is known in Christian history as the "epiphany", the day on which baby Jesus is said in legend to have manifested his divine light to the three magi (pronounced "mayjai") who had come from afar, led by a stellar sign. The relevance of this legend to Parsis is not generally known, though the word "magi" is the plural of the old Persian word "magus" which denotes a member of an ancient Persian priestly caste. The magi were Zoroastrian priests and the earliest tradition¹ about the three "wise men", as the English Bible translates the term "magi", is that their names were typically Parsi-sounding: Hormiz-dah, Yazdegerd and Perozadh.² Later, the names Balthazar, Melchior and Gaspar came into vogue.³ So the Epiphany-day,

1.The Birth of the Messiah by Raymond E. Brown, S.S. (Image books. Garden City, New York, 1979), p. 198.

2.Ibid.

3.Ibid.

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January 6, is radiantly connected with the wisdom of the Parsis' ancestors turned towards the Divine Light.

The name which Rashmi got, as you say, "out of the blue, without a thought", strikes me as very euphonious and the meaning found of "Rishaya" is indeed auspicious: "Ri" for "abundance" in Persian and "shaya" for "protection" in Sanskrit, as the research of Behram and Jehangir has discovered. How it stands numerologically - having number 9 thrice - is not clear to me. Will you send me, at your convenience, an explanation? Is numerology applied to the name as spelt in English or as spelt in Gujarati? In English there are 7 letters, in Gujarati only 3 - or are there 4?

Your dream, whose memory came back to you in a flash while trying to read the alphabetical index of first lines in my Secret Splendour and coming at the very start upon the phrase -

A band of light is now the horizon's line -

your dream is very fascinating. I'll attempt to read its significance. You write: "In the dream I was in Pondicherry, on a big long beach with clean sand. On the left of me there were huts and on my right was a clear huge lovely quiet ocean." Here we have a division between a narrow impoverished existence and the vast beauty and freedom resulting from participation in a Universal Consciousness. The locale -Pondicherry - implies the choice offered by the Sri Aurobindo Ashram between the old human way of living - cooped within a small mentality - and the liberation into a superhuman state illustrating the truth of the old Upanishadic pronouncement: "Immensity alone is felicity." What you saw next was symbolic of the process going on in the Aurobindonian Yoga once we launch on an exceeding of the old restricted habitation within mental ignorance. You write: "At the horizon was one straight beam of light coming down like a thick pillar. Next to it, facing it, on its right was a ball-shaped structure of light." The horizon stands for the distance

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needed to be traversed by the consciousness when it has struck out beyond the accustomed human boundaries, before a superior mode of living is experienced. The luminous pillar from above is the descent of the transforming power of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. The lit-up ball-shaped structure is the earth-consciousness in a state of response to that power. The light coming out of both the structures is described by you as "bluish-white, whitish-blue". It is interesting that you have employed two expressions for the same phenomenon. They touch off the dual joint presence of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. The Mother's light is white, Sri Aurobindo's blue and together the one becomes bluish and the other whitish - a single grace-light, so to speak, with two shades of emphasis: all-transcending purity, all-suffusing richness, without the purity turning into a blank and the richness running into a riot.

The sequel, which you report, to the spectacle afar pleases me as much as the spectacle itself. You "just wanted to go to it" but you remembered that your husband Bertram was at Golconde and that you must somehow call him to share the glory you were witnessing. This shows the unselfishness of your nature.

Then there is the all-too-human struggle between the distant glory and the various material temptations at hand. You describe the latter: "I saw persons offering me lovely silk materials beautifully painted with orchids on one of them, lovely fruit and introducing me to some person from Australia and so on. I was telling myself that all these are beautiful but the real beauty is there at the horizon. I kept on being torn between my love for the light across the ocean and what the persons were offering - none of them I knew but all were very sweet. The beautiful bluish white tight I was trying to call for my protection so that I might not get enamoured of any of the material objects in preference to it."

There is no attempt to pose as being above temptation. There is only an earnest cry to the true splendour, as distinguished from the spurious one, to save you.

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All in all, the dream marks a highly significant stage in your soul's career. It is surely your soul and nothing less in you that is in evidence and in action. Not only is apparent the soul's spontaneous turn towards the great ultimate light of which it is a small yet true representative in our being - "a sun grown soft and small", as I have put it in a poem. Apparent also is the inherent sweetness of the psyche, on the one hand its natural leap of love towards the Highest and on the other its instinctive consideration of whoever is deeply linked with it. Finally apparent is the quiet strength of this inmost self - the way it is resolved to seek the Supreme Truth and nothing short of it. And in all these three characteristics it is at the same time the eternal child and the immortal sage: it has an in-born purity, simplicity, humility, gratitude along with a wideness of outlook which is accompanied by a sense of the importance of little things and a profound patience learnt from the experience of having passed through many lives and many deaths. A definite many-aspected symbol-stamp of the Inmost Dweller in you comes to me from your dream and in the days ahead you will feel increasingly the spreading of the influence of this unforgettable snatch from your night-hours.

It is stimulating news that the pain in your ribs disappeared almost instantaneously after you had written of it to me and I had made an intense inner gesture of offering it to the Mother for its removal. As you say, with lifting things up and with over-work you get some pain at the same spot but nothing like what it was formerly. This is because a sort of physical memory was left by the long experience of the pain and it gets a bit of reviving under abnormal circumstances. You have to avoid such circumstances and give the affected spot a little time to forget the subtle impressions and to live long enough in the experience of the sudden relief following the invocation of the Mother's grace by someone over a thousand miles away from you. Such a "miracle", as you call it, does not happen at all times but when a keen loving faith is at the receiving end an unusual result is quite probable. A

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number of similar instances have come my way. So I am not inclined to look upon the present event as being a freak. There seems to be some hidden logic behind the apparent magic.

You have, like me, an inquiring and questioning mind. Your legal training leads you to write: "I have yet to make proper research about the day the pain vanished and the day you prayed." You have also rightly asked yourself whether the Ayurvedic medicine you had been taking could have worked after so many days like a miracle. But something in you - the intuitive observer - refuses to get round the fact of the sudden relief after an act of appeal to the Divine Mother of both of us by a loving relative who is always close to your heart.

This relative sends his warmest love to you and your family, including the newly arrived Rishaya.

(12.3,1994)

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