Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 3)

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As to Christianity and your antipathy to it in general, I would advise you not to subject Jesus to any mud-slinging. You may criticise the historical religion which takes his name, and criticise its pretensions, persecutions and political manoeuvres. But you are mistaken in thinking that it started with a backing of force. St. Paul, whose epistles are our earliest Christian documents, was not the initiator of any "jihad". The backing of force came only with the arrival of Constantine, the first Roman emperor to be converted. Till then the Christians were at the wrong end of the stick, though the Roman persecution has been considerably exaggerated. This persecution was not on the ground of any doctrine special to Christianity. There was quite a clutch of religio-philosophical sects in the Roman empire, including the Jews who lived side by side with the followers of Jesus at Rome. The Christians were in bad odour because they refused to make a god of the Roman emperor. They were considered dangerous traitors.

Jesus is to me a genuine avatar but a limited one with an emphasis mostly on emotional love for the Divine and a broad-based philanthropy. Though he lived in an age which had, as our Mother once told me, a somewhat obscure religious atmosphere, the Divine's touch on him should not be ignored, nor the genuine religious spirit he brought into the Near-Eastern world, a spirit which has inspired down the ages quite a number of spiritual aspirants as well as truth-seeking minds. In the midst of all the superstitions and fanaticisms that have come in his wake, two lights have shone out from Christianity: the discernment of God's love and grace on the one hand and on the other the necessity of brotherly love and service. There have been many cloudings of these lights, but here is the essence of what Jesus gave the world.

I don't say that India is devoid of these lights: we have everything that spirituality can give, but various emphases

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are typical of various religious experiences and these two are typical of true Christianity. This does not mean that we must not expose the numerous falsehoods that have encrusted the Christian religion and on the strength of which its followers claim a unique historicity for it as well as an historical uniqueness. The dogmas of the virginal conception and of Jesus' bodily resurrection and of his being God's only Son have to be exploded and I have set myself that task in one of my unpublished books no less than the task of showing Christianity to have been originally a short-term religion, expecting Jesus' return and the world's end within a generation or two of the crucifixion. Jesus announced that some of those present before him would be there to see his return at the world's end. He never thought of a long-lasting Church on earth.

St. Paul is very clear in his early epistles (Thessatonians, Corinthians I) that he is living in the end of time and will be there when the angel Gabriel blows his announcing trumpet. Later, when his health began to fail, he feared he might die before that event. Christianity can't compare with the wideness and height and profundity of basic Hinduism and whatever dynamism and sense of world-value it claims in our own day are but a candle-flame before the all-illuminating, all-embracing, all-fulfilling vision and work of Sri Aurobindo who may be said to lead Hinduism not only to transcend every other religio-spiritual path more strikingly than ever before but also to transcend even Hinduism's own past glories and powers.

(26.5.1986)

The priest-palaeontologist Teilhard de Chardin's last written note which you have quoted to me - "The universe is centred evolutionarily on the Still-to-come" - is indeed the keynote of all true spirituality of our time - a this-worldly spirituality in which the Still-to-come is no heavenly hereafter but a fulfilment of soul and body on earth in an all-integrating super-

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consciousness in an all-harmonising super-organism. Teil-hard's futurism cannot quite be equated with Sri Aurobindo's, though both are "evolutive". A high mental development with a cosmic sense is his goal: the descent of the Supermind into the psychicised and spiritualised being and the gradual transformation of the body itself in the long run (perhaps of several lives) were beyond his ken. Ultimately, even his this-worldliness met a check because a final rupture between earth and heaven had to be postulated by Christian thought. Teil-hard modified the concept of it by taking it in evolutive terms and not as if it might occur any moment as tradition has it.

I believe the Catholic Church has begun to think along Teilhard's lines wherever the old doctrines could be slanted differently, but I am afraid the original thrust of his "ultra-Christianity" has been blunted in many respects or else subtly shunted to suit traditional needs. Apart from all teachings, one way or another, what strikes me most in Teilhard is that he is a man with a vivid vision. His conceptual system is just a working out, in semi-scientific semi-philosophic language, of his persistent intuition of the divinity in "les choses": material things were to him charged with God and to bring forth the hidden splendour in the course of evolution was the constant concern of his visionary genius. He said that he had been born with a pantheistic soul, but he was afraid of European pantheism which excluded the individuality of the human soul and the transcendental aspect of God. Indian pantheism, which he misjudged, includes them or rather is itself included in a vaster many-sided synthesis of the Divine Nature. However, in the end this synthesis too looks towards a Beyond. Such a looking is due, I hold, to a past prehistoric failure to do something like what Sri Aurobindo has attempted and has, in essence, founded. As an Aurobindonian you can whole-heartedly and single-mindedly strive to capture "I" etonnante musique des choses".

My own half-feeling half-perception of this "astonishing music" is hinted at on p. vii of "A Personal Preface" to The Adventure of the Apocalypse. In the first para I write: "... Two

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nights back I had kept awake similarly; but there had been no poetic inspiration. I had, however, been making inward contact again and again with Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and hearing what I hear in my best and calmest moods, a low universal croon, a far-away rhythm with a deep monotone overlaid with small variations; even the variations play on one and the same softly trembling theme; some ultimate Mother Spirit seems to be gently singing to her child the cosmos..."

Perhaps all such music resolves itself into the mantra OM, the basic Word-Brahman creative of the universe and upholding it by its secret vibration in all matter. Evidently something in Teilhard responded to it.

(28.6.1989)

Your letter has warmed our hearts no end and set them beating more boldly and dreamfully towards the stars. Such spontaneous appreciation as you have expressed of Mother India has brought a deeper sense of the Divine Grace at work in this venture to which we have pledged ourselves.

May I tell you what happened at the very start of our periodical's career? Perhaps you know the story already, but it may be inspiring to hear it again. Mother India was to be launched as a fortnightly. We had planned to bring out the first issue in accord with February 21, the date of the Mother's birthday. In that year - 1949 - the birthday was due on a Sunday. We chose Friday rather than Saturday as the most opportune starting-point. Just three weeks were there to go. Various experienced journalists dropped in at our office, which was then in Bombay. They kept asking me how many months' matter we had in stock to accompany whatever had to be penned freshly in view of current occasions. They said that we should have matter for at least six months, which meant twelve issues. When I told them that I had stuff only for two issues they raised their hands in horror and said, "By all the laws of journalism you are doomed." They advised us

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to postpone publication for two or three months until we were well-stocked.

I wrote to the Mother about their warnings. I said my own attitude was like that of Marshall Foch at the Battle of the Marne in World War I. Asked by Headquarters for a report of affairs at the front he wrote back: "My left wing is broken. My centre is crumbling. The situation is excellent. I am attacking." I wrote also that the Mother's force was making me feel as if I could write the whole issue single-handed each time. But could 1 trust this "delusion of grandeur" against the sage warning of veterans? I asked the Mother for her decision. A telegram came from her: "Stick to the date. Live on faith." We went into action with a whoop. And we have lived on faith for decade on decade.

(21.5.1975)

Yes, I was in Paris, but at the age of about six years. If my grandfather, who was in charge of my future after my father's untimely death, had let me go to Oxford after my B.A., I would surely have visited Paris again and physically known the Left Bank of the Seine, to which I temperamentally belong. During my stay in the Ashram I had several offers from friends to visit England and the U.S.A. and once Israel. But I never accepted any of them. Now, of course, my deteriorated legs make even trips to nearby places almost impossible. The Samadhi is the Ultima Thule at present. Recently, connected with the physical strain of plodding from the Ashram gate to my place opposite the Samadhi, my heart started missing beats at very close intervals. Dr. Raichura, who visits the Samadhi at the same time, was quite concerned. But, strangely, the cardiogram he took soon after showed an absolutely regular heart! There was a discomfort in my chest accompanying the missed beats and I was in a semi-puzzled state. The usual medicine (Sorbitol) did not work at all. Then suddenly one evening I distinctly felt as if a shadow had been lifted off my head. From the next moment I felt completely

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cured. Occasionally the heart still misses beats but I have not a care in the world about it. There is neither physical discomfort nor psychological reaction of any kind. In a way I am reminded of the time 17 years back in Bombay when I had a peculiar fever with a most unpleasant sensation in the stomach. No medicine worked. After a week during which there was just a passive waiting on the Mother, all of a sudden I inwardly saw a fist come down with force somewhere at the back of me and immediately it was as if an ogre had jumped out of my belly and I was perfectly normal. The same night I had a most vivid meeting with the Mother in a dream. The Mother was still in her body at that time, though incommunicado - towards late October 1973.

(23.5.1990)

Your first question is: "While meditating, is it essential to concentrate on any centre? Without concentrating on any centre I am finding it easy to push back the thoughts."

The advice to concentrate on either the head-centre or the heart-centre is for those who have to learn to meditate. To focus their consciousness where thinking or feeling takes place serves to activate the meditative state. Meditation in the Yogic sense seems to me to be a flow of one's conscious being towards the Divine. My natural tendency at the beginning of my Yogic life was to turn mentally towards Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, but the real urge within me was to open my emotional self to them. I did not know how to make this urge active. Knowing that I was an intellectual, the Mother told me to imagine an open book in my heart-centre. I was a little disappointed, "What? Again a book? Do I nor want to get away from books?" I grumbled to myself. But having faith in the Mother's wisdom I followed her advice for some time.

The heart did not easily open. What actually happened was that every time I concentrated in the middle of my chest I felt a pain there. This was rather upsetting, for I could not carry on the concentration. When I complained of it to the

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Mother she just smiled and said: "Don't worry about it. I know what's going on. The pain will disappear after a while." And it did disappear. When it did, I had the feeling that a wall had crumbled down, leaving in its absence an intense aspiration - absolutely spontaneous - towards the Divine.

There was a short period - lasting a few months - when the heart flowed and flowed, as it were, to the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. And its flow sent up a warm current to the head, sweeping all over it and concentrating the thoughts upon them. Later there were blockages of the heart time and again. I would appeal to the Mother to open me up, ask her to put her hand upon my chest. She did whatever I wanted and managed the opening repeatedly - until a time came when there was a non-stop flow, delightfully effortless, and one could say that it was a flow from the Divine within to the Divine without, the Divine present before one and around one and extending everywhere. When things are like that, one does not have to concentrate at any spot. Are they thus with you? From what you write, I conjecture that a meditation is going on spontaneously in your head, pushing thoughts easily out. It is a welcome state. But you don't say whether you are mentally in contact with our Gurus. You appear to be in-drawn - in touch with your own inner being.

Your second question - "Concentrating on any particular centre: what exactly does it mean and what exactly should we do?" - indicates that you have a natural turn inwards and have not attempted any set fixing of consciousness anywhere.

Your third question - "What is meant by 'going deep within' while meditating?" - shows that though an inward turn is natural to you you do not penetrate far enough. All meditation is inward-going but there are in general two stages beyond this preliminary penetration. The first stage takes one to the inner mind, the inner vital, the inner subtle-physical. The second stage is the- innermost soul, the psychic being. Usually to go deep within is in our Yoga to reach this direct emanation of the Personal Divine. In a special sense we may speak of a third stage: the sheer impersonal unbounded Self

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of selves, which is the same in everyone. But it cannot be strictly spoken of as part of our composite individual existence. We may designate it as not within but behind or beyond. I may add a further aspect of inwardness: the Purusha who is the spiritual truth on the individual scale of our common experience of self-consciousness. As distinct from the animals we are not only conscious: we are also conscious that we are conscious. We have the power to stand back as the one who is conscious. When this power is raised to its final limit without transcending the individual scale we have the Purusha, the detached untouched witness who in his greater profundity is the sanction-giver to Nature's movements in us and at his profound est the lord of these movements. On every level of our existence there is the Purusha. I believe the Purusha is called in the Aurobindonian terminology our true mental, our true vital, our true subtle-physical. It is wide and calm and clear, unlike our superficial individuality. I believe it is the terminus of our inner mind, vital and subtle-physical.

Your final question is on quite a different plane: "In the spiritual map of India Burma is included. When and how long was Burma a part of ancient India?" I have the impression that in the times of Asoka and of the Gupta emperors India had suzerainty over Burma just as over Ceylon, at least Samudragupta speaks of all the islands acknowledging his authority. In any case, the Mother does not seem to have gone by old history. She visioned spiritual India to be what had come to be included under recent British rule, which covered present Pakistan too. The very configuration thus formed has an air of beautiful completeness. The Mother has said that whatever the politicians may have done, this is the true India and we shall stick to the truth and wait for its realisation.

As for the dream or vision which you recount, in which a dark man comes and cuts off with a knife the black rope with which your legs were tied, I can't say anything with certainty. I would hazard the interpretation that the black rope symbolises the restricting ignorance in which our outermost or

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lowest physical consciousness, more than any other part of us, lives. The legs stand for this extreme physicality or outwardness. The dark man would, at first blush, suggest ignorance too, but as you have made a distinction between "dark" and "black" I would propose a meaning which "ignorance" would not give. The "dark man" conjures up to my mind a being of mystery, an agency from some secret and therefore to us an obscure dimension of existence. The dimension is of your own being: hence the figure of a "man". The dream or vision may portend a subtle change in your attitude towards and dealings with material circumstances in the near future.

(24.3.1992)

You have asked: "How to be prepared for February 21?" Paradoxically I may say: "Feel that February 21 is not at all a special occasion." For, the Divine Mother came to the earth to evoke in us the eternity and infinity that are at the heart of all the pulses of time, all passing moments and moods. If February 21 is something utterly unusual and exceptional, we have not gauged enough the Divine Mother's ultimate mission.

If I may adapt a line from Sri Aurobindo's Savitri to my purpose, this day is meant to be

A gate of dreams ajar on mystery's verge.

It is in secret continuity with the whole year. The whole year is packed with the Supreme Presence, and February 21, like August 15 (Sri Aurobindo's birthday) is intended to strike us attentive to this subtle reality, this profound mystery. Neither Sri Aurobindo nor the Mother aims to stand as a dazzling exception in the midst of the earth's multiplicity. They collect and concentrate and express in themselves what is hidden everywhere. Because we have forgotten our root in them, our true nature which carries (in Wordsworth's phrase)

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A greatness in the beatings of the heart,

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother make us conscious of our real self by summing up in an unmistakable way its golden essence.

(5.2.1995)

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