Visions of Champaklal

A Vision at the Lake Estate

1979-08-14

“The place visited is outside of our divisions of time, for even those who have passed away are present. It is a place where the psychic consciousness prevails, as is proved by “folded hands and a deep prayerful mood”. But here this consciousness is not only within; it is also manifested without—”“eyes closed” and “eyes open”. Two of the signs of the psychic were there; “simplicity and genuine faith without any kind of pretension.” There is also the characteristic of Grace from the spiritual planes; the “heavy rainfall.” The psychic's capacity to receive it is shown by the lake being full. The spontaneous attunement of the psychic with the beauty of Nature is spotlighted by the remembrance of the Mother's statement about the aesthetic sense of the Japanese. The lotuses white and red point to the presence of the Avatars; the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. The lilies point to the inherent purity of the beings in this plane. The automatic results of the movement of the beings here are symbolised by fruit found as if by magic in the hands when their palms are opened after the eyes have looked up.

“Champaklal's own psychic being is seen in the form of that “charming young boy” who comes to guide and who acts as if he knew Champaklal and with whom Champaklal too feels familiar. Some traits of the plane are revealed by the animals with whom the children are playing—the speed of spiritual progress (deer), strength with illumined wisdom (elephants), the Divine's power (horses), the Divine's light (cows). The ferocity and rapacity which are ordinarily associated with lions and tigers are found to be absent here since these animals are not to be observed. But the truth behind them is not lacking in spirituality; the lordly strength behind the lion and the fiery energy behind the tiger are part of the Divine's manifestation, but they belong to another dimension of the inner life than the psychic and, when that dimension merges with this, they will be realised. Note the reply of the boy, “The Mother has said that the time has not yet come for us to go where they are.”

“The Mother wants Champaklal to be acquainted through his own soul with the various projects for the psychic being's developing influence for the earth's future. The Mother is all-pervading, everywhere present to the soul in whatever aspect the soul shows.

“And the soul itself too is not bound to one place; its opening to the Mother gives it the ability to be everywhere. And both the facts bring great joy.

“The psychic plane is not static. There are lessons to be learned from the Divine all the while and at every stage of the soul's experience after its entry there during its sadhana. The Prasad Bhavan stands for the central point of the plane, where the psychic's intrinsic sweetness is most directly and intensely experienced. It is approachable only by those who live in the psychic consciousness. A symbol of the psychic nature's self-giving is the gigantic Service Tree in full bloom; but the branches touching the ground and barring the way shows that one cannot develop the Service-temper easily. A secret has to be found. A small pillar signifying perhaps some stiffness in the being has to be put down. The boy pressing his foot on it seems to suggest this.

“Past the sharing of the Service-temper there is the dome-shaped building. Possibly the dome represents a rounding-off, a completeness of being. It is also evocative of the sense of the sky which appears like a dome. This evocation would mean the Overhead Consciousness with which the psychic has to link up. Within this dome-shaped building is what I have called the central point of the psychic plane, the Prasad Bhavan where there is, as it were, the quintessence of the Divine. It is a deep core surrounded by a wall (with no door or window) where one may have the experience which an Aurobindonian poet has expressed in regard to the Divine Mother:

Your spirit is my spirit, deep in the deep,
Walled by a wizardry of shining sleep.

“Here within a golden circle an opening is made to the overhead Sun of the planes beyond the mind, the planes which rise ultimately into the Supramental. In its own manner the psychic plane represents the Transcendent, for it is a projection directly from the Highest to stand behind the universal manifestation. And it is from this inmost fusion of the soul-plane with the supreme station of the Divine that a dish, giving what we have named the quintessence of the Divine, comes out, bringing the marvellous Prasad.

“While Champaklal is coming out of the Bhavan he gets a view of the vital world under the psychic influence—the exceptionally pretty fishes of varied forms and colours. Champaklal draws an inference about earthly food being cooked in the future by solar energy. His inference is symbolic too. It implies that we shall live on an earth whose sustenance of us will be derived from the Supramental Light.

“The closing words of the Mother mean that what she is preparing for us by way of psychic experience is not yet ready. But before we share our life with her in our depths we may be assured that even in our present half-developed condition the Mother is always with us.”

AMAL