In the Mother's Light

Peace

PEACE is the basis and pedestal of the cosmic movement. If the immutable peace of the Spirit were not there as the Infinite and eternal support, the whole universe would fly to atoms. In spite of the discords and disorders, clashes and collisions, the world holds together with its multitudinous elements and progresses forward through whatever zigzags and detours, because an unshakable peace upholds it from below. This truth was sought to be conveyed by the symbolic image of Shiva supporting upon his prostrate, moveless body the unceasing dance of Kali, the supreme creative Force. Peace is the last of he three principles of jyoti, Tejas and Shama or Shanti, which .are the supernal spiritual equivalents of Sattwa,¹Rajas,² and Tamas,³the three primal qualities of the lower Nature. In Matter Shanti or the luminous Peace of the Divine becomes the dark and dense Tamas, the congealed inertia of Inconscience.

This peace is the recurring refrain of many of the hymns and incantations of the world's scriptures, because without it here can be no steady purification of human nature, and no creative play of any beneficent power in life. It is the principle of preservation and conservation, stability and security, repose and equilibrium. It is the infallible healer of all ills, the rectifier of all errors, and the sustainer and restorer of all energies. If peace is once established in one's nature, all defects can be easily repaired, all impurities washed clean, and a solid, sure progress made towards self-transcendence. It is the mirror in which the soul sees itself and the only condition and atmosphere in which it can commune with its eternal Master.

But it is not easy to have a settled peace in one's entire being. If quiet and detachment are practised for a long time through an unremitting renunciation of all desires, and a conscious opening is made inwards and upwards, peace comes and begins to fill

¹ The qualitative mode of inner light, happiness, and harmony.

² The qualitative mode of action and passion.

³ The qualitative mode of darkness and inertia.

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our being. In the beginning, we feel a growing peace only in the centre of our consciousness, and whenever there is unrest or disquiet in any of the members of our nature, we can at oncerecede from it and take refuge in that tranquil centre. But after- wards peace expands from the centre and gradually steeps and encompasses the whole nature. It establishes itself not only in the mind, the heart and the life parts, but even in the very cellsof the body. That is to say, it becomes integral and sovereign But this integrality is the most difficult to achieve. It can be said that an integral peace has been only an ideal never yet perfectly realised by man. It includes a complete elimination of all rajasic restlessness from the very cells of the body and a saturation of the entire being with the serenity of an imperturbable calm. There have been many Yogis who lived in an absolute peace in the depths of their being, but the outer partsof their nature were still subject to the onslaughts of the lower passions and impulsions. It is true that they did not mind these onslaughts, which felt like pin-pricks to them, but still a pin-pricks is a pin-prick and a hindrance to an absolute immunity and mastery. This besetting duality has been an ungainly incongruous feature of most spiritual lives, and enforced a frequent resort to trance. A complete invulnerability, a perfect and permanent immunity of the whole consciousness to the forces of disturbance or unrest, is a conquest hardly yet achieved by man.

In the Prayers and Meditations the Mother speaks of this integral peace. Her conception of it is not only deeper and fuller, but immeasurably more comprehensive than that most spiritual teachers. It overwhelms us by its uncompromising absoluteness. She would have us establish a peace which is all-pervasive and perfectly impervious to all causes of trouble or worry. In her Prayer of the 5th December, 1912, she gives us a revealing picture of this kind of peace, which is remarkable not only for its arresting originality, but also for the momentous bearings it has upon the question of divine realisation.

"In Peace and Silence the Eternal manifests; allow nothing to

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disturb you and the Eternal will manifest; have perfect equality in face of all and the Eternal will be there...Yes, we should not intensity, too much effort into our seeking for Thee; the effort and the intensity become a veil in front of Thee; we must not desire to see Thee, for that is still a mental agitation which obscures Thy Eternal Presence. It is in the most complete Peace, Serenity and Equality that all is Thou even as Thou art all, and the least vibration in this perfectly pure and calm atmosphere is an obstacle to Thy manifestation. No haste, no inquietude, no tension; Thou, nothing but Thou without any analysis or any objectivising , and Thou art there without any possible doubt, for all becomes a Holy Peace and a Sacred Silence”¹¹

"Have perfect equality in face of all and the Eternal will be there.”

This is the same supreme equality as elaborated and insistently inculcated by the Gita,—an equality which is the very essence of eternity. This alone can be the widest foundation powerful, dynamic spirituality, and not the traditional straining and struggle of the spiritual seekers, or the heat and effervescence of their undisciplined emotions, so ruthlessly denounced by Vivekananda and branded as hysteria and neurosis. So long as aspiration and devotion for the Infinite are mental or vital-emotional, there is usually, perhaps unavoidably, a great, unequal tension in the being, an overdoing and excess, and in consequence, a want of balance and poise, but when the aspiration becomes purely psychic, a movement of the central soul, the fever and strain subside, and there is, instead, a calm, placid, ever-growing intensity, a naming but unwavering love, broad-based on equality. Pure Bhakti—and by it is meant psychic Bhakti—blossoms only when the mind and the heart have been lulled into a reposeful, trustful peace.

"We must not desire to see Thee, for that is still a mental agitation which obscures Thy eternal Presence.” An astounding this—not to desire to see the Divine ! But is not

¹Prayers and Meditations of the Mother—December 5, 1912.

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desire a movement of ignorance, however laudable and salutary it may be in the conditions of that ignorance ? It has, no doubt, its evolutionary purpose; but it is not an authentic movement the soul, which does not desire to see, but sees, and revels in its natural sight. To a man who has wilfully kept his eyes closed you will not say, "Grope for the light, it is there," but, "Open your eyes and see the light." Our ignorance is, indeed, wilful.We have not only chosen it, but we cling to it, and that is why knowledge does not dawn and the darkness does not pass. If we want the freedom and bliss of the spirit, we have only to rejectthis ignorance and its trail of blind cravings and attachments, and turn globally to God.

We have not to desire to see Him, but actually to open our eyes and see Him. A flaming faith passes into vision and culminates in knowledge. One remembers in this connection a very apt teaching of Shankaracharya : "Steep your sight in knowledge and contemplate the world as full of Brahman." The desire to see the Divine is, as the Mother says, "a mental agitation which obscures Thy eternal Presence." In this agitation a veil falls between us and the Divine, and instead of seeing Him,we see only a surging mist or a confused blur of our mind's imaginings. But, if from the beginning, instead of following the lead of the mind, we follow the lead of our soul, and have a firm faith in its guidance, the fiery intensity of the psychic aspiration will gradually infuse itself into our whole nature and force open the "third eye" which will see the Divine as naturally as the physical eyes see the material objects.

"The least vibration in this perfectly pure and calm atmosphere is an obstacle to Thy manifestation. No haste, no inquietude, no tension; Thou, nothing but Thou...” Here the Mother speaks of the very perfection of peace, something transcending even psychic peace. It is a peace in which there is not even the slightest disturbing vibration anywhere, in any part of the being. It is the peace of the immutable Self, universal in consciousness and eternally equal to all impacts of the world. It is one of the prerequisites of the manifestation of the Divine in and through the liberated soul of man. It is only in this boundless, nameless

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peace that the liberated individual develops what the Gita calls Para Bhakti, and by this transcendent love and adoration knows and unites with the Supreme and becomes a vehicle of His Light and Love and Force upon the earth.

"When one has become the Brahman, when one, serene in the Self, neither grieves nor desires, when one is equal to all beings, then one gets the supreme love and devotion to me." (The Gita: Chapter 18).

We know that Sri Aurobindo lays the same kind of insistent stress upon this peace and calm as the very foundation of his Yoga. In the Bases of Yoga he says,

"The first thing to do in the sadhana is to get a settled peace and silence in the mind.” "Whatever else is aspired for and gained, this (calm) must be kept. Even Knowledge, Power, Ananda, if they come and do not find this foundation, are unable to remain and have to withdraw until the divine purity and peace of the Sat-Purusha are permanently there”....

"It is in the peace behind that you must learn to live and feel it to be yourself.”

"To feel the peace above and about your head is a first step; you have to get connected with it and it must descend into you and fill your mind, life and body and surround you, so that you live in it—for this peace is the one sign of the Divine's presence with you.”

It is interesting to note the same idea here as in the Mother's Prayer quoted above, and expressed in almost identical terms.

This was also the ideal of the ancient spiritual culture in India. But later Yogic and religious disciplines seem to have loosened their hold upon peace. Especially, in some forms of the Bhakti cult, there is a tacit—in many cases even an explicit—sanction given to frenzy, impatience and over-eagerness. Intensity is, of course, indispensable; it is the marshalling of the concentrated energies of the being towards a single definite object; but an unquiet intensity shakes the poise and disturbs the balance of the central consciousness and opens the door to many a force of darkness and disorder. It produces a lop-sidedness,

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flaccidness, sometimes even a morbidity, and clouds and confuses the intellect, rendering it difficult, if not impossible, for the higher light to descend and settle in our nature. The vast, untrembling background and foundation of the ancient Vedic and Vedantic discipline having been lost, Indian spiritual endeavours floundered for centuries in morasses or tossed in swirls and eddies, only achieving a sheer, giddy ascent into the Light of the Spirit or a brilliant burst of power or ecstasy in a few giants of exceptional calibre. It is high time they reverted to theancient background and recovered its deep peace and calm upon which alone the massive edifice of the future can be securely reared.

It is obvious that it is not a mental peace that the Motherspeaks of in her Prayers. A strong moral will may succeed in coercing the nature and imposing a sort of peace upon it, but it is usually found to be a precarious peace and very superficial, behind which one can often hear the uneasy rumble of the rebellious forces. The Socratic confession of suppressed passions is a universal experience which sometimes damps the ardours of youthful idealism and leads to cynicism or pessimism. A peace or calm held at the point of the sword against the unflagging opposition of its enemies, cannot be called a conquest, far less a secure possession. What the Mother means by peace is not the sepulchral stillness of a devasted nature either. She means by peace something profound, permanent, radical, absolute, something that is sovereign in action as well as inaction, in life as well as in death—the infinite and fathomless peace of the Eternal.

"May the peace of Thy divine Love be on all things.” It is this peace of the Divine which she passionately invokes in her Prayer of March 10, 1914 :—

"In the silence of the night Thy Peace reigned over all things, in the silence of my heart Thy Peace reigns always; and when these two silences were united, Thy Peace was so powerful that no trouble of any kind could resist it. I then thought of all those who were watching over the ship to safeguard and protect our route, and, in

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gratitude I willed that Thy Peace should be born and live in their hearts; then I thought of all those who, confident and care-free, slept the sleep of inconscience, and, with solicitude for their miseries, pity for their latent suffering which would awake in them in their own waking , I willed that a little of Thy Peace might dwell in their hearts and bring to birth in them the life of the Spirit, the light which dispels ignorance. I then thought of all the dwellers of this vast sea, visible and invisible, and I willed that over them might be extended Thy Peace. I thought next of those whom we had left far away and whose affection is with us, and with a great tenderness, I willed for them Thy conscious and lasting Peace, the plenitude of Thy Peace proportioned to their capacity to receive it. Then I thought of all those to whom we are going, who are restless with childish preoccupations and fight for mean competitions of interest in ignorance and egoism; and ardently, in a great aspiration of all those whom we know, of all those whom we do not know, of all the life that is working itself out, of all that has changed its form, and all that is not yet inform, and for all that, and also for all of which I cannot think, for all that is present to my memory, and for all that I forget, in a great ingathering and mute adoration, I implored Thy Peace.”

And in the Prayer of Dec. 7,1916, she gives us a vivid picture of the divine Peace realised by her :—

"In appearance my life is the most ordinary and commonplace possible; and inwardly what is it ? Nothing but a calm tranquillity without any variation or anything unexpected; the calm of something which is realised and is not sought for any longer, which no longer expects anything from life and things, which acts without anticipating any profit, knowing perfectly that its action does not in any way belong to it, either in its impulsion or in its result; which wills, conscious that it is the supreme Will alone that wills in it; a calm wholly made of an incontestable certitude, of an objectless knowledge, of a causeless joy and of a self-existent state of consciousness which no longer belongs to time. It is an immobility which moves in the domain of external life, without however, be-

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longing to it or seeking to escape from it. I hope for nothing, expect nothing, desire nothing, aspire for nothing and, above all, I am nothing; and yet happiness, a happiness calm and unmixed, a happiness that does not know itself and has no need to look at its existence, has come to inhabit the tabernacle of this body. This happiness is Thou, O Lord, and this calm too is Thou, O Lord, for these are not at all human faculties and the senses of men can neither appreciate nor enjoy them...”

This peace is one constantly felt even in action, and not only in the silent depths of the soul. It is victorious over all causes of anxiety or agitation, and a stable support of even the most stupendous activities of life.

We have seen that its first perfection is the psychic peace— peace in its pervading and unassailable purity, possessing and occupying the whole nature. Its final perfection is the peace of the Spirit, infinite, eternal, all-embracing and all-transcending. It is through this peace alone that the Divine can sovereignly act in the liberated human instrument.

Man, torn and tossed by the universal unrest, pants today for peace : his soul is in deep agony. War and strife have become the order of the day, war and strife in every walk of life; and everywhere there is a conflict of values, a crumbling of traditions, a vague longing for something new, a desperate tug of the old and a growing discontent and disquiet. How will peace emerge out of this heaving chaos ? And unless peace comes, how will this chaos dissolve ?

In this dilemma, the soul of man, unknown to his outer consciousness, appeals to God, its sole refuge. It is this appeal that rings in many of the Mother's "Prayers and Meditations" with the haunting pathos of psychic sadness. Her Prayer of the 29th Nov. 1913 runs :

"Why all this noise, all this movement, this vain and hollow agitation; why this whirlwind sweeping men away like a swarm of flies caught in a storm ? How sad is the spectacle of all this energy wasted, all these efforts lost ! When will they cease from dancing

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like puppets at the end of threads held they know not by whom or by what ? When will they take the time to sit and draw inwards, to collect themselves and open that inner door which hides from them Thy priceless treasures. Thy infinite boons ?...

"How painful and miserable seems to me their life of ignorance and obscurity, their life of foolish agitation and profitless dissipation, when a single spark of Thy sublime light, a single drop of Thy divine love can transform this suffering into an ocean of joy !

"O Lord, my prayer rises towards Thee: May they know at last Thy peace and that calm and irresistible power which springs from an immutable serenity—appanage of those whose eyes have been opened and who can contemplate Thee in the enkindled core of their being.

"But the hour of Thy manifestation has come.

"And canticles of joy will soon break out from every side.

"I bow down religiously before the solemnity of that how.”

The foregoing consideration will have made it abundantly clear that by peace the Mother does not mean non-violence. Peace comes with purity, with the elimination of desires and the progressive abdication of the ego, and is not the result of the imposition of an ethical principle upon one's nature. It is an inner state that evolves out of the awakened soul within, or descends from the Self above, and is not generated, or induced by the ethical discipline of non-violence. It is not, therefore, an outcome of moral but of spiritual growth. On the basis of peace both violence and non-violence can have their respective play in accordance with the Will of the Divine. Ancient dynamic spirituality had the wisdom to recognise the indispensability of divine violence as a preliminary to every new creation. Effete formations and outworn structures of the past, whether they are physical, vital or mental, have often to be ruthlessly broken up and cast away, so that new forms and principles may emerge and initiate a new era of human progress. Destruction clears the way for new creation, and it is a folly to fight shy of it and zealously try to keep one's hands clean. Ancient spirituality imaged Shiva, the beneficent God of kindness and

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compassion, as also Rudra, the terrible Godhead of destructive violence and scourging wrath. It is this truth that Sri Krishna taught Arjuna while exhorting him to fight—"Fight, but with the fever of thy soul gone",—"Fight but without anger of hatred."

The pacifists who think that a mere physical abstention from violence will save the modern world from ruin and bring about the cherished millennium are either ignorant of human nature, or infatuated with an impossible Utopian dream. Violence will continue to disturb or disrupt human society and shatter the naive hopes of the pacifists so long as any of the lower lusts of man sways his nature. If it is repressed on the physical level it will migrate to the vital and chafe and seethe there till it bursts on the physical again; or, repressed even on the vital level, it will rise to the mental and assume the concentrated intensity of a mental violence. The remedy lies not in the imposition of a moral principle or the adoption of a mental rule, but in the spiritualisation of human nature including even the subconscient; for it is often seen that when violence is completely expelled from the normal waking consciousness, it sinks into the sub-conscient and re-emerges from there in sudden, fretful spurts, playing havoc with the order and security of individual and collective life.

Besides, violence cannot be regarded with indifference, but has to be met and combated, not certainly out of any love of revenge or retribution, but for the protection and preservation of the higher values of existence. Evil has to be smitten and smitten hard, and falsehood pulled down from its high throne, in order that Love and Truth may be reinstated in the hearts of men. And this work of destruction need not in the least ruffle the inner peace; rather the inner peace is sure to impart a clearer vision and an unfailing strength to those who engage in such a dharma yuddha—a battle for the safeguarding or salvaging of the spiritual and cultural heritage of humanity. The Kshatriya element, the aspect of Rudra and Mahakali, has its undeniable truth and function, at least in the present economy of the world, and a willful ignoring of it can only lead to chaos and confusion

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and untold miseries. The use of soul-force is an ideal for which man is not yet prepared individually, let alone its employment in the life of the community. And even granting that soul-force succeeds, it is open to question whether it destroys less than physical force would do in the same circumstances, and whether it is not attended with consequences too radical and dangerously explosive to control. Whenever it has been tried,—it should not be confounded with moral force which is much feebler, because mental, and limited in its scope—it has violently disturbed the ordered march of humanity and upset its psycho- logical balance.

But the peace that the Mother speaks of is the abysmal peace of the Eternal which supports equally the dual work of creation and destruction, and is the foundation of all authentic Yogic action. It is a state of perfect equality to all the movements and impacts of life, and of harmony and co-ordinated action of all the parts of one's nature. Even a little of this peace ensures happiness and clear perception and a comprehensive and catholic outlook on life and its complex problems. This peace transcends all mental and moral states and is "not the peace of an inconscient sleep or of a self-satisfied inertia, nor the peace of a self-forgetful ignorance and an obscure and heavy indifference; but the peace of the omnipotent force, the peace of a perfect communion, the peace of an integral awakening, of the disappearance of all limitation and all darkness.”¹

¹ Prayers and Meditations of the Mother—July 7, 1914.

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