Choosing to do Yoga

To DO Sri Aurobindo's Yoga means to seek to transform oneself integrally, to have this single aim in one's life: that alone exists, nothing else. You feel it in yourself whether you want it or not. If you do not, you can live a life of goodwill, service, understanding; you can work in many other ways. But between that and doing Yoga there is a great difference.

To do Yoga you must want it consciously, you must know first of all what it is, – know what it is and then take the resolution. And once the resolution is taken you must waver no more. When you go to it, you must take it up fully conscious of what you are doing. When you say "I want to do Yoga," you must know what you are deciding about. That is why when I have spoken to you I have not laid much stress upon this aspect of the thing. I have surely spoken about it and even perhaps a good deal – I am here to speak, and you to listen; but what I mean is that whatever I may have said generally, it is only when individually one comes to me and says that he wants to do Yoga, that I say "yes" (or "no", if necessary). For such persons things become different, the conditions of life become different, particularly inner things and conditions.

Always there is a Consciousness here and it acts constantly to rectify your position: all the while it puts you in the face of obstacles that prevent you from progressing; it makes you dash your nose against your own errors and blindnesses. But this happens only in the case of those who have decided to do Yoga. For others the Consciousness acts as a light, a knowledge, a force for progress, so that you may reach the maximum of your capacities, develop yourself as far as possible in an atmosphere as favourable as it may be, leaving you, however, completely free to choose.

Page 3

The decision must come from within. All who come consciously for Yoga, knowing what Yoga is, have to accept conditions of life very different from those that others enjoy – externally perhaps there may not be any difference, but internally there is a wide gulf. There is a kind of absoluteness in the Consciousness that does not allow any deviation from the Path: errors committed become immediately visible with such consequences that one cannot deceive oneself any longer and things take a very serious aspect.

You all, my children, I may tell you, – I have already told you many times and I still repeat, you live in an uncommon freedom. Externally there are a few small restrictions, for, as we are many, and have not the whole earth at our disposal, we have to submit ourselves to some discipline to a certain extent, so that there may not be too much disorder; but internally you live in wonderful liberty, no social restraint, no moral restraint, no intellectual restraint, no fixed principle, nothing is there, save and except a light. If you wish to profit by it, you get the profit; if you do not want, you are free not to profit by it.

But the day you make a choice, and when you do it with all sincerity and you feel within you a radical decision, things become, as I say, quite different. There is the light and there is the way to follow, straight on, one must not turn aside. It deceives none and none can deceive it. Yoga, you must know, is not just a play. When you choose, you must know what you have done. And when you have chosen your way, you must stick to it. You have no more the right to hesitate. You have to go ahead. That is all.

The least, however, that I expect from you is the will to do things well, an effort towards progress, the desire to be in life something better than ordinary humanity. You are brought up, you have grown up under conditions that are unusually luminous, conscious, harmonious, full of goodwill. And in answer to that it is proper that you should be upon earth in some way an expression of that light and harmony and goodwill. That would be something fair. .

One can do the Yoga, the Yoga of Transformation – of all things the most difficult – only when one feels that one is here, upon earth, for this alone and has nothing else to do, that this is the sole reason of one's existence. Even if you have to toil hard,

suffer, struggle, it is of no consequence: "This alone and nothing else," – then it is a different matter. Otherwise I tell you: Be always happy, be always good; be good, meaning, be more understanding, know that you are growing up under exceptional conditions, try to live a life higher, nobler and truer than the ordinary life and let a little of this Consciousness, this light and this benevolence express itself in the world.

It is not for a personal and egoistic aim that you seek perfection, it is for the sake of manifesting the Divine, it is to put all at the service of the Divine. You do not do Yoga with the intention of perfecting yourself personally, for your own sake, but for the divine work that has to be done, for the fulfilment of the Divine Will.

So long as a personal aspiration is there, a personal desire, an egoistic will, it is a mixture, it is not the exact expression of the Divine Will. The only thing that counts is the Divine, His Will, His manifestation, His expression. You are for that, you are that, and nothing else. If there happens to be a feeling of I, of ego, of the individual person, it means that you are not yet what you ought to be. I do not say that the thing can be done forthwith, but that this is the truth of the matter.

For, on this level, on the spiritual level, too many people, – in fact, the majority of those who take up the spiritual life – do Yoga for personal reasons, all kinds of personal reasons : some because they are disgusted with life, others because they are unhappy, some others because they wish to have more knowledge, others again because they want to be spiritually great, yet others because they want to learn things so that they may teach them to others, and so On, there are a thousand personal reasons for doing the Yoga. But there are not many for doing the simple act of giving oneself to the Divine – this act in all its purity and consistency – so that the Divine may take one up and do with One what He wants. With that you go straight to your goal and never run the risk of making a mistake. But all the other motives are mixed up, tainted with ego and they can lead, you hither and thither and far away from the goal.

This feeling that there is for you only one reason for existence, one single motive, the total complete perfect consecration to the

Page 5

1

You must become conscious of yourself, conscious in every detail. You must organise what you call yourself around the psychic centre, the divine centre of your being so that you can possess a single, cohesive, fully conscious being: as this centre is wholly consecrated to the Divine, if all the elements are organised harmoniously around it, they too get consecrated to the Divine. Thus, when the Divine wills it, when the time comes, when the work of individualisation is complete, then the Divine permits you to let your ego melt in Him, so that you may exist for the Divine alone. But it is the Divine that takes the decision. You should have done the whole preliminary work first, become a conscious being, solely and exclusively centred around the Divine and governed by Him. When your ego has served its purpose in forming a complete individual out of you, when that work has been perfectly, fully achieved, then you can say to the Divine, "Here, I am ready now; do you want me?" The Divine generally says, "Yes". Then everything is worked out, everything accomplished. You become a true instrument for the Divine's work. But the instrument must be built up first.

You are sent to school, you are asked to do exercises (both mental and physical); do you think it is just to put you to trouble? No, it is because a surrounding is absolutely necessary where you can learn to form yourself. If you tried by yourself this work of individualisation, integral formation, all alone in one corner, you would be asked nothing till you have done it; but you are not likely to do it, not a single child would do it, he would not even know how to do it or where to begin. If a child is not taught how to live, he would not be able to live, he would not.

know how to do anything. The most elementary movements it is not able to do unless it is taught. Therefore if every one were to go through the whole experience, unaided, in the matter of forming his individuality, he would be dead long before he could begin to exist even. That is the utility of the experiences of others, accumulated through centuries, of those who have had the experience and who tell you, "If you want to go quick, and learn in a few years what needed centuries to learn-well, do this, do that, this way, that way, read, study, attend to your lessons at school, in the playground." Once you are on the way, you can find your own method if you are a genius. But in the beginning you must know from others how to stand on your legs and walk. It is not easy to go all by oneself. That is why one needs education.

2

There are children who are very disorderly. They do not know how to keep things tidy. They do not know even how to keep things. They lose or spoil them. There are several reasons for it. First of all, very often it means that the child lacks sufficient vitality. The vital is not strong enough to take care of external objects. Another reason may be that he does not find interest in the physical life; his interest may lie in the direction of mental occupation, imagination or dreaming etc. Or again it may be a lack of self-control and discipline.

Anyway the result is the same. That is to say, confusion. There are children who, when they undress, throw their clothing right and left or, when they have done their task, do not know where they put their books and paper, pencil, or ink pot; it takes a lot of trouble to find them again or bring them together. In reality, all this shows an undisciplined nature, a character that is not methodical; it shows that not only in the outside but internally too the person is disorderly. There are people, perhaps considering themselves big, who even have a contempt for physical objects. But Sri Aurobindo says, people who cannot take care of things do not deserve to have them, have no right to ask for them. As I say, it shows a kind of acute egoism, much inner confusion.

There are people who live in rooms apparently clean and tidy. But open a cupboard, pull out a drawer, you will find there a battlefield: all is mixed up. They have a head too that is very much like that-a poor small head where ideas are in the same condition as the objects outside in the cupboard. They have not organised them, put them in order. You may take it as an absolute rule. I have never seen a man who keeps things in a disorder and yet possesses a logical brain. In him ideas like the objects are thrown together pell-mell, the most dissimilar and contradictory ideas form a jumble, they are not organised, harmonised into a higher synthesis.

Hence, to know a man's character you need not spend your time in talking to him, you just go and open a drawer of his or open his almirah, you will know. But I may speak of someone – I shall tell you presently who it is – who used to live in the midst of heaps of books and papers. You enter into his room, you find piles of them everywhere. But if by chance, you were, to your misfortune, to displace a single sheet of paper, he would know perfectly well and would ask immediately who was it that had disturbed the papers. There were masses of things, on your entering you would not find your way. But each thing had its place – notes, letters, books, all in order and you could not mishandle them without his knowing it. Well, it was Sri Aurobindo. In other words, you must not confuse orderliness with poverty. Naturally if you have a few things – a dozen books and a limited number of objects – it is easier to have them properly arranged. But what is to be aimed at is a logical order, a conscious intelligent order among a multiplicity of objects. That requires a capacity for organisation. It is a capacity which every one must acquire and possess, unless of course you are physically disabled – when one is ill or sickly or maimed and has not the required strength: even then there is a limit. I know of sick people who could tell you: "Open me that drawer, you will find on the right or on the left or at the bottom such and such a thing." They could not themselves move and handle the things but knew where they were. Apart from such cases, the ideal must be one of order, organisation, like that of a library for example, where you have thousands and thousands of books that are yet all arranged, classified, docketed and you have only to name a title and in a few minutes the book is in your hand of

course, it is not the work of a single person; even then, the pattern is there as an example to follow.

You too must organise your affairs in the same way. You need not follow another's method or system. You have your own rule, that which is convenient and true for you – but it must be well planned and properly laid out.

Page 10

MORAL notions have nothing to do with the growth of the inner being. I regret to say it, but the two are ill-assorted mates and go opposite ways. You may fall totally sick by doing a very unselfish act, on the other hand you may continue to be hale and hearty while doing the most egoistic acts.

There is a great difference between a moral consciousness and a consciousness that is the expression of truth. I tell you again it is infinitely more difficult to have a consciousness expressing the truth than to have a moral consciousness. For any blockhead who knows social rules and follows them has a moral consciousness, but to have a consciousness of the truth, one must not be a blockhead, that is the first condition.

All the misadventures of life come from a lack of organisation of life. You live from moment to moment, take things as they arrive, somehow or other. Or, you try a mental organisation which does not at all agree with the truth and is therefore thwarted at each step. But if life is organised according to a higher principle, without the gropings that usually attend it, that is to say, following every minute a precise indication with regard to what is to be done and how it is to be done, then things can be arranged without mishaps.

Generally speaking, it is better to choose one's work carefully, take up only as much as one is able to do and do that well; often you take up too much and in that too much there are a good amount of useless things which can be cut out or diminished considerably without affecting the result. I do not make this an absolute general rule. I am stating only an experience of mine. If you are all attention to the inner indication and you refuse to be tossed about by the waves coming from outside – movements of other people's will, routine circumstances or adverse forces

that do not want the things to be done – I say, instead of being driven hither and thither, if you receive the clear precise inner sign and follow it without evading or hesitating, with a strictness even that may be displeasing to others so much the worse for the others – in that case you will find that you do become in some sort master of circumstances; for they organise themselves favourably and you are able to do more work in less time.

There is a way of diminishing the time taken for a work and that is by increasing your concentration. There are people incapable of concentration; it tires them. But it is like carrying a weight; you can get used to it. So, first you have to master this power of concentration; for that you have to calm your mind and in that calmness, concentrate, go on concentrating on the point that you have to deal with, on the work that is to be done, whatever it is. The concentration comes with a kind of driving force, quiet but extremely powerful; and you go forward without hesitation. Then you can do in a quarter of an hour what might normally take full one hour. That saves you a good deal of time. You can, instead of continually passing from one work to another, stretch yourself for a while and have complete rest. The rest gives relaxation to all the limbs that were under tension while you were working, that is to say, brings new strength to them and you can start again another spell of concentration.

Page 12

WHATEVER you do – study or sports – you must, think of the Divine in doing it. It is not a very difficult thing after all. At first you may do it as a kind of preparation to make yourself capable of receiving the divine force, and then as service to help in the collective work. You can do it not for personal gain but in order to be ready for the Divine Work.

This seems to me indispensable. If you keep the ordinary point of view, you will always find yourself in conditions that are not wholly satisfactory and incapable of receiving all the forces that you can receive.

If you are doing long jump, for example, it should not be merely for the pleasure of doing it, it is with the idea of making your body more perfect in its functioning, an instrument more fit to receive the divine forces and to manifest them.

Indeed, everything that you do must be done in this spirit. Otherwise you do not profit by the opportunity, the favourable circumstances that are given to you.

The Consciousness is there pervading everything and seeking to manifest itself in all movements. And if you, on your side, tell yourself that the effort, the progress you make is to enable you to receive this Consciousness and to manifest it, then the work will naturally be done much better and more quickly.

And this seems to me to be the most elementary thing. For, to tell you the truth, I would be astonished if it were otherwise. For your presence at a place organised as it is would have no meaning if it were not for that. What would be its use? There are any number of universities and schools in the world that are much better manned and equipped than ours. If you are here, it must be for a special reason. It is because here there is a possibility of absorbing consciousness and progress. If you do not put yourself

Page 13

in a state in which you receive it, you lose the chance that you are given.

What do you think about it? Is it mere chance or simply because your parents have put you here that you are here, you might as well have been anywhere else? You should put these questions to yourselves. At thirteen one can begin questioning very well, especially if one finds himself at a place which is not quite ordinary. Why is one here, for what reasons, what is the purpose of being here?

If you had asked this, you should have gone and sought for the answer somewhere within you. For the answer is within you, nowhere outside. If you go deep enough you will find an answer very clear, very interesting. If you go deep down, into a silence where all external things are silenced, you will see there within, a Flame of which I speak so often and within this Flame you will see your destiny. You will see that the aspiration of centuries that has been accumulating little by little to lead you through countless births to the great day of Realisation. This preparation has taken thousands of years and it is now arriving at its fruition.

And when you have gone deep enough to find that, you will see and feel that all your incapacities, weaknesses, all that in you denies and does not understand, all that is not yourself; it is simply a robe which fits you to certain extent only and which you have put on for the occasion only.

But you must understand. If you wish to see yourself truly capable of profiting by the opportunity, doing what you wanted to do, what you aspired to do long long ago, you must little by little turn to the Light, the Consciousness, the Truth and bring them into these obscure elements of your external robe. It is only then that you will understand fully why you are here, not only understand but become capable of doing what you are here for.

Through centuries it has been preparing itself in you, not naturally in this body, which is the most recent, but in your true being: for centuries it has been waiting for this occasion. You see how wonderful it all is! You see the things that one has hoped for since long ago, for which one has prayed so much, laboured so much, find now the hour when they are being realised. It is the hour when great things are being done. One must not miss the occasion.

Page 14

What is the difference between Desire or Wish and Will?

THEY are not the same thing. When, for example, you see that a thing is to be done and that it is good to do it, then normally your reason decides and judges; then it is your will that sets to work and makes you do what is necessary for the work to be done. Thus, will is the power of execution which should be at the disposal of what has been decided by you or a higher force. It is a thing co-ordinated and organised: it acts according to plan and is in full self-control. Wish or desire, on the other hand, is an impulse. There are people who are full of desires, but have no will; they are eaten up by their desires, as it is said. You go nowhere if you have not even the will to fulfil your desires. The little bit of will most people have is indeed put at the service of their desires. Will is a force capable of deliberation and organisation and can be used for any purpose in view.

When you have the will, it means you have the capacity of the stained effort for a definite end. A desire, on the contrary, is something violent, passionate and momentary; it is very rarely a durable thing. It has not the stuff, the substance and organisation of a sustained effort. When desire gets hold of you, it can make you do anything, but in a fit of impulse, not in a methodical and consistent manner.

Why do children have the habit of always asking for things – material objects, I mean?

Precisely because they are full of desires. Perhaps when they were conceived, they were imbued with the vibrations of desire, and as they have no control over themselves, they give free vent

Page 15

to their feelings. Older people are also full of desires, but they are too shy to show them. They are ashamed of these things, they fear they will be ridiculed and so they hide them. Children are more simple and straightforward; when they want anything; they speak out. They do not think that it is not proper or wise to betray themselves. They do not reason in that way. People, of course – ordinary people, I mean – live constantly full of desires, only they do not express themselves, sometimes they do not even avow it to themselves. But it is always there, this sense of the need for things. Directly you see a beautiful object, you are at once seized by the idea of possessing it. It is childish, it is even ridiculous. Ninety-nine persons out of a hundred do not get at all the things they desire. And of the one per cent how many are interested in the thing once they have actually got it? A child is even more like that. Give him what he wants, a second after he will not even look at it.

How to help a child to get out of this habit?

There are more than one method. First of all, it is to be known whether one may not altogether stop the child from expressing freely what he thinks and feels. People do this usually and constantly. They scold, they punish and the child takes the habit of hiding his desires. That does not cure. If you always tell the child, "No, you won't have it", you simply instal this idea in him: "Yes, when I am a child, I am not given anything, I must wait till I grow up; well, when I am a man I shall have all that I want". So I say it is not a cure; it is not an easy task to bring up a child. There is however the other way of which I spoke, to give him what he wants. But the difficulty is that the next moment he will ask for another thing and go on doing without end. For it is a law, the law of desire, that it is never satisfied. So you can change your method and tell the child, supposing it is intelligent enough: "You see, you wanted so much to have the thing and now that you have it you don't care, you ask for something different. You will do the same with that also." But if it is a shrewd child he would reply: "Well, the best way to Cure me of my desires is to give what I ask for."

Many hold this last idea all their life. When they are told to overcome their desires, they answer, "The best way of overcoming

them is to satisfy them." But what is needed is not merely to change the object of desire, but change the impulse, the movement itself. For that purpose, a good deal of knowledge and understanding and experience are required. That you cannot expect of young children. First of all, they do not possess the capacity for reasoning and you cannot explain the matter to them, they will not understand, your reasons. It is why the parents have normally no other way except to cut them short, saying: "Stop, you bother us". That is how they get out of the difficulty.

It is not a solution. The task is hard, demanding sustained effort and unshakable patience. There are people, a good many, who, although no longer children, yet continue to be so all their life: they too do not understand reason. If you tell them, they are not reasonable and that it is not possible to be continually satisfying their desires, they simply think: "These people are quite unpleasant, they are not amiable." That is all.

What one may try, in respect of a child, is to turn the direction of his desires, let him desire better things, better because more true and also more difficult to obtain. For example, when you see a child full of desires, put into him a desire of higher quality, that is to say, instead of desiring purely material objects which can give only a temporary satisfaction, one could awaken in him the desire to know, to learn, to become great and so on. That would indeed be a very good beginning. As these things are more difficult to secure, it will serve to develop, to strengthen his will. Even if the difficulty is of a physical kind, if, for example, you give the child a doll to prepare, a Chinese puzzle to solve or a game of Patience, the effort helps in the development of concentration, perseverance, a certain clarity of ideas etc. You can in this way divert the child's will from wrong pursuits to right ones. True, it needs constant attendance and application on your part, but that seems to be the surest way. It is not easy, but it is the most effective.

To say "no" does not cure, but to say "yes" does not cure either. I knew some persons who allowed their children to do as they pleased. There was one child who tried to eat anything he could get hold of. Naturally he fell sick and got disgusted in the end and cured of the habit. Still the method means risk. For example, a child one day got hold of a match-box and as he was

not prevented, burnt himself in playing with it, although thereafter he did not touch a match-box any more. The method may be even catastrophic. For there are children who are dare-devils –most children are so – and when a desire possesses them they are stopped by nothing in the world. Some are fond of walking along the edge of walls or on house tops; some have an impulse to jump into water directly they see it. Even there are some who love to take the risk of crossing a road when a car is passing. If such children are allowed to go their way, the experiment may prove fatal sometimes. There are people who do allow their children to have this liberty arid take the risk. For they say prevention is not a cure. Children who are denied anything do not usually believe that what is denied is bad, they consider that a thing is called bad simply when one wishes to deny it. So would it not be better, it is argued, to concede the liberty? The theory is that individual liberty must be respected at all costs. Past experiences should not be placed before beings that are come newly into the world; they must get their own experiences, make their own experiments free from any burden of the past. Once I remonstrated with someone that a child should be forewarned about a possible accident, I was told in answer it was none of my business. And when I persisted in saying that the child might get killed, the answer was, "What if? Each one must follow his destiny. It is neither the duty nor the right of anybody to meddle in the affairs of others. If one goes on doing stupid things One will suffer the consequences oneself and most likely stop doing them of one's own accord – which is hundredfold better than being forced by others to stop." But naturally there are cases when one stops indeed, but not in the way expected or wished for.

The matter gets difficult and involved, if you make a theory and try to follow it. In reality, each case is different and to be able. to deal with each adequately needs a whole lifetime's occupation.

Page 18

A Sign and A Symbol

It is said that if you see a shooting star and make a vow at that time, the vow is sure to be fulfilled. Is it true?

IT means that you must be able to formulate your aspiration during the time the star is visible, that is to say, a very short time. Now, if an aspiration can be formed and formulated in such a short time, it shows that the aspiration is there all the while quite at the front of your consciousness. Of course, the thing is true of the spiritual aspiration only: it is not applicable to matters of ordinary life. So I say that if you are capable of articulating your aspiration in a split second, it means that the object of your aspiration lies in front and dominates your consciousness. And necessarily whatever dominates your . consciousness is likely to be quickly realised.

I had the occasion to make the experiment and have had the experience. It happened exactly as you say. I saw a shooting star and as it passed, at the precise moment, leaped out of my consciousness the words: To realise for my body union with the Divine. And before the year ended, it was done.

Obviously, the star was not the cause. It was because the thing dominated my consciousness, I thought of nothing but that, I willed nothing but that, I acted only for that. Usually, it seems, it takes a whole lifetime to have the realization – the minimum is thirty-five years, it is said. But it was done in my case within twelve months.

It was because I was wholly concentrated upon the aspiration that I could formulate it in the twinkling of an eye that the passage of the star represents – not as a mere vague impression – but in clear precise words: To realise for the body union with the Divine. What is important is not the star, but the aspiration.

Page 19

There is no need of a shooting star to be there in order to have the experience quickly, what is needed is that the whole being must concentrate its will upon one point.

Page 20

Sleep and Pain

How would one be able to sleep when one has extreme bodily pain?

THAT requires some kind of yogic power. The best way, the absolute one, is to get out of the body.

When the body suffers, when you have high fever, for example, when you are sick, sick to the last degree, the only thing to do then is to come out of the body, come out with your vital being. If you are a yogi and have the knowledge, you remain outside the body but just above it so that you are able to look at it. You can see your own body if the vital form in which you go out is sufficiently materialised. You see your body and with the consciousness and the power which you have then, you can direct the rays of the Force upon the spot where the body suffers. This is a top process, but it gives the absolutely sure means of getting cured. If the power and the knowledge are there, it is infallible. You can cure any disease with that and in a short time. Only it means a considerable education and training. You cannot improvise it. But as a matter off act men help themselves naturally and automatically when the pain becomes unbearable; they faint. To faint is to get out of the body. So persons who are not too much tied down to the body faint away when the bodily suffering becomes too strong. Only, when you go out of the body, leaving it as an inert mass, there must be someone near sensible and intelligent enough. The body must not be shaken violently to make you wake up. If people by the side are seized by a panic and hurl buckets of water upon your head, the result may be worse. Otherwise, the fainting fit passes quietly, little by little, into a restful condition as there is no longer the consciousness recording the bodily suffering. In the so-called fit the body becomes

gradually quiet and immobile, so that it may rest in spite' of the suffering.

There are lesser means with lesser results. These too are not very easy either. One is to cut the connection between the brain and the part that suffers. The brain not receiving the vibration, the pain is no longer felt. In fact, this is what doctors do when they operate under anaesthesia. The nervous connection round the affected part is made insensitive and the pain is not felt or it is reduced to a minimum. But here you have to do it with your will and consciousness; and that requires an occult power. Some can do it automatically, but their number is very few. If you are unable to go so far, there is another way which should be within your reach. Do not concentrate or dwell upon your pain and suffering; withdraw your attention and direct it elsewhere. The more you think of your pain, the worse it becomes. If you are busy observing its signs and signals, almost awaiting its attack, you surely welcome it in a way, you indulge it and help its continuance. That is why you are advised in that condition to do some light reading or hear things read out, so that the attention may be diverted.

When you go to sleep the ideal is to enter into integral rest, that is to say, immobility of the body, peace in the vital, absolute silence in the mind and the consciousness coming out of all activity and passing into Sachchidananda. If you can do that, then when you get up, you get up with a feeling of extraordinary power, perfect joy and so on. But it is not easy to do it. Still it can be done. It is the ideal condition.

Generally, however, it is never like that; most often, practically the whole length of your sleep is wasted in all kinds of disorderly movements: you toss about in your bed, kick and jump and even talk and shout. That means you have no rest at all.

Usually there is a whole group of dreams, useless and tiresome, that prevent you from resting. You must avoid all that. You can avoid them, if just before you go to sleep you make a little effort at concentration, that is to say, try to be in relation with what is best in yourself, through an aspiration or a prayer. You do that and go to sleep. Now, if you have done your concentration in some way successfully, you are likely to get a kind of dreams, rather experiences in sleep which you remember, which are useful indications or signs about problems for which you had

had no answer; it may be on the subject of certain circumstances where you have to take a decision and are unable to do So; or it may be something in your consciousness which is not clear to you in your waking state, because you are not in the habit of noticing or recognizing it normally, but which you feel in some way doing you harm. All these things may appear to you in a revealing symbolic dream. Things are clear which were obscure before. And this does not depend upon what you have been or were doing the whole day long, but much upon the way in which' you get into sleep. A minute of sincere aspiration just before going to sleep is sufficient to make of your sleep a powerful help instead of an agent for obscuration.

There is also a proper way of getting out of sleep, as there is a proper way of getting into it. Instead of jumping out of the bed as soon as you are awake or moving about in it, you should keep quiet and still as you awake; you awake slowly without the least movement in your limbs; you feel a sort of vague impression left in you of something that has happened, something peculiar and even strange. Keep yourself still and observe, observe closely and attentively. Slowly you perceive a kind of half memory emerging of an activity in your past night. Remain concentrated and always still and immobile, gradually something like the tail-end of a dream appears and if you pull at it, follow it up, that is to say, backward – always keeping yourself quiet – you can recollect practically the whole of your dream, quite an interesting activity of yours in the night.

You do many things at night in your sleep. You forget most of them. If however you recall them, become conscious of them, you can begin controlling them. Before being conscious, without being conscious of a thing, you cannot have control over it. It is by being conscious that you get the power for control. If you can control your activities in sleep, you can have a restful sleep. Sometimes when you get up you find yourself more tired than when you went to bed. It is because you are in the habit of doing very many useless things in your sleep, running about wildly in your vital, wandering chaotically in your mind, etc., etc. Naturally when you get up you do not seem to have tasted any rest. Sometimes you get into bad quarters, dark and ugly regions and you struggle there, fight there, receive blows, give

blows and you are prostrate in the end. All that you can avoid, when you become conscious and gain control.

When one sees oneself dead or dying, it may mean several things. It may mean a spiritual death or a vital death or the death of some part in you that is to go; in the last case it means a progress in the consciousness. It may be also a premonition. The significance depends upon the context.

Page 24

You can't imagine what a bazaar there is in the head. It is something terrible. If you look truly objectively at what passes there you will be shocked. You have then to put it in order, see into it clearly and arrange, you have to note that two contradictory ideas do not run concurrently on parallel lines.

I know a considerable number of persons who shelter in their head contrary ideas, not at all synthesized – there is no question of synthesis here – but dwelling together like two brothers engaged in eternal quarrels and contradictions, that is to say, the two ideas cannot get on together, unless you lift them up and reconcile and unify them in a higher and wider view; but that means work of a superior kind. People often do not even perceive that they are contradicting themselves with their conflicting ideas, they are not disturbed in any way. If I should give you examples – they are innumerable – you would laugh at the ridiculousness of incompatible ideas associating together.

I propose to give you a task. You have ideas on things. You must surely have ideas on the world, life, the why of existence and the whence and the whither, wherefore we are here, our present occupation, our future realisation, etc., etc. Now try to put all these ideas in front of you and then arrange them. Will you find it easy? Surely it will amuse you and you will discover amazing things. First of all, the very work itself of exposition, that is to say, simply placing the ideas side by side in front of you, all the ideas that you have on a given subject, as if you were writing out a composition given in your class, will bring to you funny revelations. If you did not already have the habit of holding to a central idea, a central immutable truth, if that were possible, around which you arranged all the collateral ideas, organised them in a logical order, if, I say, you did not do anything

Page 25

like that before, you would find yourself, if not in a sad, at least in a comic situation. You can't imagine how many contradictory thoughts you are thinking in the course of an hour without the least surprise! For example, take this subject: "what is the goal towards which life is moving?" or "why do men take birth only to die?" – take a subject a little general and even somewhat abstract like this and not the problem of why football today and not basket-ball – things can be easily explained away there-and then try to line up all your ideas on the matter; you will see how queer the affair is.

How to distinguish between an idea that is one's own and an idea coming from elsewhere (a book or a person)?

There is nothing like an idea belonging to oneself and an idea belonging to others. No one has an idea exclusively his own. There is an immensity out of which one can draw according to one's personal affinity. Ideas are a collective possession, a joint property. Only there are different stages. There is the most common or commonplace stage where all of us have our brain sunk in a crowded mass of impersonal notions. It is the stage of Mr. Everybody. The next stage is a little higher, that of thinkers, as they are called. There are other stages further up, many others, some beyond the domain of words, others still within the domain of ideas. Those who can mount sufficiently high are able to catch something that looks like light and bring it down with its packet of ideas or its bundle of thoughts. An idea brought down from a higher region organises itself, crystallises itself into a variety of thoughts that are capable of expressing the idea in different ways. Then, if you are a writer, a poet or an artist and bring it further down into more concrete forms, then you can have all kinds of expressions, infinite ways of presenting a single idea, a single small idea perhaps, but coming down from a great height. If you can do that, you know also how to distinguish between the pure idea and the manner of expressing it. If you are unable to do it by yourself, you can take the help of others, you can learn from persons and books. You can, for example, note how one particular idea has been given so many different forms by different poets. There is the pure or essential idea, then there is the typal or generic idea and then the many formulations.

Page 26

---

You told us the other day that there are spirits who remain bound to trees. How are they to get free?

WHY should they get free?

You told us how the spirits in the trees got freed when someone was kind to them and prayed on their behalf.....

Yes, but that was in the story. It was a Christian legend and put in that way to illustrate a lesson. It was to show that if you are wicked you suffer even after death, that it is a virtuous life that saves you from misery. In reality, however, there is no question here of sin and punishment, it is not that spirits get attached to trees in order to be punished. When a person dies, his vital being leaves the body and goes out; but it finds itself in unfamiliar and inhospitable surroundings, especially if there is no one, none among his friends and relatives upon earth, to help him in the proper way, to guide or protect him in the new country where there are hostile beings to harm. In such a situation a tree is often a very ready shelter, a big old tree with friendly branches spread out, possessing a strong vitality. It is the sap, the elements of water coursing in the substance of the tree, that is to say, the support of its life-power, to which the vital being of the dead man is drawn as its physical support and shelter. There is no question of forced imprisonment and a desire to be freed.

Are they not harmful, these spirits?

In what way? Usually they do not seem to be so.

Page 28

But we hear stories of people who are possessed by them and troubled and tortured.

Those are of a different kind. They are beings belonging to the vital world and are hostile forces. Here we were speaking of the remnants of the vital being of a dead man. But even in cases of possession by hostile forces of beings, the real truth is most often of another kind. Usually these beings or spirits, as they are called, are nothing more than creations of men. That is to say, it is fear that produces them; it is a mere mental formation which is taken to be a reality. And the greater the fear, the more concrete and effective the formation appears to be. I have had to deal with hundreds of such cases and I have found that there are very few which contain anything more than imagination. Some time ago, I was told of a tree nearby that was the haunt of a ghost. Our milkmen were afraid of the ghost and had seen it! I sent Amrita 1 to burn some incense there and go round the tree a few times and tell the people it was gone. Well, it was indeed gone; for it was not a very substantial being. As I said, most of the spirits are the creations of our fear.

How long do Spirits of dead people live in their trees?

That depends. There are entities that stay or live only for a short time; there are others that have a stronger formation and may stay on in their shelter for a thousand years, if the trees live up to a thousand years.

Do such spirits go out of animals also and possess trees?

Not likely. A certain growth and organisation of the vital being is necessary to be able to persist after death. The vital being of an animal is too unformed and fluid, too bound to the body to continue as an independent entity. When an animal dies its vitality almost immediately disintegrates and merges into the general forces of Nature. It is only in man where there is a mental being to organise the vitality into some sort of an individualised form that the persistence of that form is possible after the dissolution of the body.

¹ A disciple of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother

Page 29

YES, for it is their nature to be faithful and they have not man's mental complications. What prevents men from becoming faithful is the complexes of their mind. Most men are not faithful because they are afraid of being dupes, afraid of being cheated, exploited. Also behind the faithfulness they have there is always a large dose of egoism hidden, there is a bargaining more or less conscious, a give and take: 'I am faithful to you. You too must be faithful to me, in other words, you must be nice to me, must not exploit me etc. Dogs do not have these complexities, for they have a very rudimentary mind. They have not this marvellous capacity of reasoning which drives man to commit such follies. But, of course, we cannot go back to the dog state. What we have to do is to rise higher, to become a superman, to have the dog's quality on a higher level, if! am allowed to say so, i.e. instead of being faithful instinctively, blindly, half-consciously, through a kind of binding need, it must be a conscious, willing, deliberate faithfulness, above all, free from egoism. There is a point where all the virtues meet: it is the point that is beyond egoism. 1fwe take faithfulness or devotion or love or the will to serve,-all these when they are above the level of egoism are similar to one another in the sense that they give themselves and ask no return. And if you get up a step higher, you see they are done not through the sense of duty or abnegation but out of an intense joy that carries its own reward, which needs nothing in exchange, for it is joy itself. But for that you should have risen very high where there is no longer any turn-back on oneself, these movements that draw you down –that kind of sympathy for oneself, the self-pity that one feels for oneself and says "Poor me I" This is a most degrading sentiment and it pulls you immediately into a dark hole.

You must leave that far behind if you will have the joy of

faithfulness, the joy of self-giving, that does not notice at all whether it is properly received or not, whether there is a response or not. Never to wait for a return in exchange for what one does, wait for nothing, not through asceticism or the sense of sacrifice, but because of the joy of being in that consciousness: that is sufficient, that is much more that what one can receive from anything outside.

Page 31

FROM the worldly standpoint, from the point of view of the result achieved, certainly things can be done better. But I am speaking of the effort put in, effort in the deepest sense of the word. Work is prayer done with the body. With that effort in your work the Divine is satisfied, the eye of the Consciousness that has viewed it is indeed pleased. Not that from the human standpoint one cannot do better. For us, however this particular endeavour is one among many; it is only one movement in our sadhana. We are engaged in many other things. To raise one particular item of work to something like perfection requires time and means and resources which are not at our disposal. But we do not seek perfection in one thing, our aim is an integral achievement.

An outside view may find many things to criticise and criticise much, but from the inner view what has been done has been done well. In an outside view, you come with all kinds of mental, intellectual formations and find there is nothing uncommon in what is done here. But thereby you miss what is behind: the sadhana. A deeper consciousness would see the march towards a realisation that surpasses all. The outside view does not see the life spiritual; it judges by its own smallness.

There are people who write wanting to join our University¹ and they ask what kind of diploma or degree we prepare for, the career we open out. To them I say: go elsewhere, please, if you want that; there are many other places, much better than ours, even in India, in that respect. We do not have their equipment or magnificence. You will get there the kind of success you look for. We do not compete with them. We move in a different sphere, on a different level.

¹ Now the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education

Page 32

But this does not mean that I ask you to feel superior to others. The true consciousness is incapable of feeling superior. It is only the small consciousness that seeks to show superiority. Even a child is more developed than such a being; for it is spontaneous in its movements. Rise above all smallness. Do not be interested in any other thing than your relation with the Divine, what you wish to do for Him. That is the only thing interesting.

Page 33

HUMAN thought always creates forms in the mental world. It is a creative force. You are creating thought-forms constantly and sending them out into the atmosphere around; they go abroad to do their work. You are yourself surrounded always by such formations. No doubt there are people who cannot think clearly; they form around them only a kind of whirl. But they who think clearly and strongly create thought-forms that go out to accomplish their task and return to the source. There are cases of people who are troubled by their own formations that return to them or upon them as if to possess them and which they cannot get rid of; they do not know how to unmake a form which they make. When you have made a particularly strong formation, it remains always linked to you; it comes back again and again hitting your head and gathering force. In the end it becomes a necessity for you. There is a whole world of mystery to learn in this matter. Men live in ignorance; they have powers of which they are thoroughly unconscious or know very little.

Buddhists, I mean those who are in the more orthodox tradition, do not believe in God or an eternal Reality; they do not believe in gods either, that is to say, in beings who are truly divine. They, however, know admirably how to use the mind and the mind's power. The Buddhist discipline makes you master of the mental instrument. A person following the Buddhist discipline came to me once and said that he had made an experiment: he had formed a being with his thought, he had created something like a Mahatma. He knew and it is a proved fact that these mental formations after a time begin to have a personal life, independently of the author,-although they may be connected with him, yet they are quite independent, in the

Page 34

sense that they have a will of their own. But now he was facing a formidable difficulty. He said: "Do you know I have formed my Mahatma so well that he has become a personality quite independent of me and comes all the while to trouble me? He comes, scolds me for this and that, advises me in this matter and that and wants to control my life altogether. I am unable to get rid of him. I find it extremely difficult and do not know how to go about it. As I say, my Mahatma has become extremely troublesome. He does not leave me to be at rest. He interferes in all my activities, prevents me from doing my work and yet I know it is my own creation and I am unable to do away with it." He explained to me how he had tried to get rid of the thing. I then told him it was because he did not know the trick. I showed him the process and the next morning he came happy and beaming, saying "it has left." He could not cut the connection; even then cutting the connection is not sufficient, for the being would continue to live apart and independent. What is needed is to re-absorb what one has created, to swallow what has been put out.

Page 35

WHEN you think of a person or a thing you are immediately I there and come into contact with the object of your thought. But this happens in the thought world only; you know nothing of the vital or physical context of the object. Thought is conscious of thought only in the mental world; by your thought you can be conscious of the mental atmosphere of the distant object, of the thought of the person to whom you go, but nothing else, absolutely nothing of his vital or physical.

If you want to know of the vital you must go to the object vitally; it means an exteriorisation that leaves the body at least three-fourths in trance. And if you want to see things physically you will have to go out in your most material subtle physical; that leaves the body in an entirely cataleptic condition. These things cannot be done without there being someone by your side who has the right knowledge and who can protect you.

But the mental exteriorisation happens constantly. It puts you in relation with the mental world. If you are very conscious and the person you see in thought is also very conscious, then you can know of the ideas and opinions which the person might form at that time, but even then only indirectly, you do not know directly.

When you imagine a thing, it means that you make a mental formation which may be near to the truth or far from it according to the quality of your formation. There are people who have this power of formation to such an extent that they are capable of realising what they imagine. They imagine something and they make such a strong and well-shaped formation that they succeed in materialising it. They are truly creators. There are not many like that, but there surely are a few.

Page 36

You can meet a dead person also in your thought if he continues to be in the mental world; you can be in contact with his mind and have a sort of mental vision of his life there. But if he is gone to the psychic world, then thinking of him is not sufficient; you must know how to go into the psychic world and meet him there.

The mind has its own power of vision; it is not the vision of the physical eyes, but it is yet vision, perception through forms. It is not imagination which is a quite different faculty. Suppose you figure to yourself an ideal being to whom you attribute all conceptions of ideality you have. You say he must be like this, he must be like that, his thoughts are like this, his character like that; you fill up all the details and build up the being. Well, that is the work of imagination. Literary men, novel-writers, always do this kind of construction. Of course, there are writers who take up things from life; but there are others who imagine things and impose them upon life. A character, a concourse of circumstances, a whole chain of events, they spin out of their head. And if they are powerful and possess sufficient creative force, it is quite possible there may be one day actually a physical human being embodying the type imagined.

You can make use of imagination for a high purpose. With its help you can recreate your inner and outer life. You can wholly build your life if you know how to use it and have the power. As a matter of fact, it is the most ordinary and primary way of creating and forming things in the world. I had always the impression that if one had not the capacity of imagination, one would not make any progress. Your imagination always goes ahead of your life. When you think of yourself, usually you imagine what you would like to become – that comes first, the prevision, and then you follow it up; you continue to imagine and realise, realise and imagine. Imagination opens the way to realisation." It is very difficult to move unimaginative people. They see only what is just in front of their nose, they feel only what is there at a given moment. They cannot advance, they are blocked by the immediate present. It is imagination that makes the whole difference.

Men of science also have and should have a great power of imagination; otherwise they would discover nothing. Imagination, is in reality, the capacity to project oneself out of realised

Page 37

things towards things realisable and pull them in by the very power of projection. It is true there is a progressive and there is a regressive imagination. There are people who always imagine all possible catastrophes and have the power even to make them come. However, imagination has its good use. It sends out, as it were, antennae into a world that is not yet realised, and they catch hold of something there and draw it here. Naturally, it means an addition to earth's atmosphere, addition of things that tend towards manifestation. Imagination then is an instrument that one can train and discipline and use at will. It is one of the principal faculties that should be developed and made serviceable.

Even, you can imagine the Divine and come into contact with Him. You do in fact come into contact with that which you imagine. Do you know you cannot imagine anything that is not somewhere? It may not exist here upon earth, but it is and must be elsewhere. As I say, it is impossible to imagine anything that is not contained in the universe in principle at least. Otherwise it would not be there even as an idea.

The universe is progressive. That is to say, more and more things constantly manifest themselves there. Now, imagination is a faculty by which you go beyond the range of manifested things; if you have progressed so far as to imagine things that are not yet manifested, you already help in bringing down these things and making them part of the manifested reality. Naturally, you must know how to go beyond the manifested universe in order to be able to imagine what is not there. And there are many, many such things.

First of all, you must know how to get beyond the terrestrial manifestation, in order to be able to imagine a new thing in it. And (or how many millions of years has earth existed! What has been the output of new things there? Countless, for no two things upon earth are exactly the same, although they may be very similar. It is not easy with your mind to get out of the earthly atmosphere. But if you have succeeded in doing that, you have to get out of the universal life. To enter into contact with all that has been here upon earth since the beginning of its appearance till the present day and then to enter into contact with the universal of which the earth forms only a tiny particle from its beginning to its formulation today – this is not sufficient. You

Page 38

have still to go beyond, beyond the universal, into the transcendent, the unmanifest. Then you can think of imagining and bringing down something new into the manifestation and upon earth. Not that one cannot do this. But it is not so easy.

Page 39

I HAVE said: "Poetry is sensuality of the mind". How is it so? It is because poetry is in relation with the forms and images of ideas – forms, images, sensations, impressions, emotions attached to ideas are the sensual or, if you prefer to call it, the sensuous side of things. All such relations are sensuousness. And poetry concerns itself with this idea of mind and thought. It approaches the world of ideas through their appearances, through the play of sensations and emotions around them. It is not like philosophy or metaphysics which endeavours to look into the inside of ideas. Poetry, on the other hand, cannot be poetry unless it evokes, that is to say, unless it gives a form, a sensuous form to the idea. I have used an epigrammatic phrase to express this truth and even chosen the stronger word to give an edge to it. People are called sensual when they are occupied solely with the sensations of the physical life, with the forms and formations and movements of the material world, when they live with their senses and enjoy the things of the senses. The same tendency instead of going out towards the external life, the physical world, when it turns towards objects of the mind, towards ideas gives rise to poetry. Poetry is a world under the aspect of the beauty of form. It expresses the beauty of an idea, the harmony or rhythm of a thought, giving all that a concrete shape or image: it becomes a play of images, a play of sounds, a play of words. Thus instead of a sensuality of matter, we have a sensuality of the mind. I have not taken the word in a pejorative sense, nor in a moral sense; it is simply descriptive.

I do not mean, in other words, that such a view, the poetic view, necessarily prevents you from seeing the truth of things. It only describes the way of the poet's approach as poet. Indeed, if it were a choice between reading a book of good poetry and reading

Page 40

a book of metaphysics, personally I would prefer poetry, for that is less arid! My definition of poetry, I assure you, is not a condemnation, it is only a description, a statement of fact, namely, that poetry is the sensual or sensuous approach to truth. It is perhaps a somewhat paradoxical way of putting the thing: it is meant to strike the thought, to awaken it to the perception of a reality which is usually obscured by the habitual, traditional or "classical" way of thinking.

If you mean by inspiration that the poet does not think when he writes a poem, that is to say, he has gone beyond all thought, has made his mind silent, silent and immobile, has opened himself to inner or higher regions and writes almost automatically, well, such a thing happens perhaps once a thousand years. It is not a common phenomenon. A Yogi has the power to do that. What you normally mean, however, by an inspired poet is something quite different. People who have some kind of genius, who have an opening into other and higher regions are called "inspired" ; persons who have made some discovery are also included in that category. Each time you are in relation with a thing belonging to a domain superior to the normal human consciousness, you are inspired. And when you are not totally bound to the very ordinary level you do receive "inspirations" from above. It is the same in the case of a poet. The source of his creation is elsewhere up above the ordinary mind; for that he need not possess an empty vacant mind.

Page 41

WE always give the name "Divine" to all that we are not and want to become, all that seems infinitely higher than not only everything we have done but everything we can possibly do, all that is beyond our present capacity and conception.

I am perfectly sure that if we went back into the past a few thousands of years, we would find that when one spoke of the Divine it was of a being somewhat like one of the "overmental" gods. But now, the way of living proper to these overmental divinities who governed the earth and created many things upon earth for a very long time, seems to us very inferior to what we conceive as the Supramental. This Supramental again which we now call the Divine and which we seek to bring down upon earth will have the same effect upon us a few thousand years hence as the Overmental has upon us now.

In other words, in the manifestation, in his Self-expression the Divine is progressive. Outside and beyond manifestation, He is something we cannot conceive of. But when He manifests Himself in this status of constant becoming, He manifests more and more of Himself, as if He had reserved for the final end the most beautiful things of His being.

As the world progresses what He expresses of Himself in the world becomes more and more the Divine.

Sri Aurobindo has used the word Supramental in order to be clear to people who live in the evolutionary external consciousness and who are aware of the way in which the terrestrial world has developed, telling them that it is something greater than the creation of man whom he always calls a mental being. He calls it Supramental to say that it is beyond mind.

But we can also say that it is something more divine than what has been manifested before.

For the Infinity is there; that has no limit. Thus there will always be a growing perfection. What appears to us as imperfect today must have appeared as something perfect to which certain epochs of history yearned and aspired.

And there is no reason why the movement should stop. If it stopped it would mean an end of things – a new pralaya.

Page 43

PERFECTION is a relative term. A thing may be perfect in relation to the present or the past; it may not be so in relation to what is to come. Creation is a perpetual movement, a perpetual progression. Each time a new consciousness manifested upon earth, it was very natural for men of the epoch to have the impression that it was the final definitive realisation, at least a very great progress.

Still we must note that even for an animal, say an elephant or a dog, human capacities appear as marvellous; they feel, the dogs do, that man possesses almost divine powers. So men too from the stage where they are have a hint of things beyond; that is why we are not wholly satisfied, we have the feeling in spite of all things achieved that there is something else which eludes, indeed the true thing eludes, we turn around it, but never touch it. It means that man is ready for a further progress. If it were not so, if he were satisfied only with what he can do, he would try to do that alone, better and better perhaps, but in the same groove. However, it is not that: he seeks something else, something quite different, which is truly true, on which one can count, which does not crash down when one props oneself upon it, something durable, permanent, the Rock of Ages. This need of eternity, of an absolute good and absolute beauty awakens exactly at the moment when one is ready to receive a new consciousness.

For a very long time, perhaps from the very beginning – I do not mean from the beginning of human evolution, for there have been earlier periods when, before the true man appeared, intermediate beings at first were tried who were much nearer to the animal; I mean the beginning of a sufficiently developed human form when it became ready to receive something from above

there have been always and there are still individuals who carry in them this need of the eternal and the absolute. It is only little by little, very gradually, through cycles of enlightenment and obscurity that something like a collective consciousness in humanity awakes to the need of such a higher existence. And today this necessity seems evidently very general, cutting across all turmoils and stupidities of mankind: that shows that the time is near.

Yes, for a very long time, men were told, "It will be, it will be," were given the promise. It was promised, thousands and thousands of years ago, that a new consciousness, a new world, something of the Divine would manifest itself upon earth; it was always in the future, somewhere in the revolution of the ages. One had not this feeling, this sensation that it is here and now.

By far the larger part of humanity, in fact, most of it, need to make a very great effort to imagine what the future may be like. Its consciousness is so much tied down to what is that it finds it difficult even to imagine that things can be otherwise. When what shall be becomes, for at least the consciousness of a group of individuals, an inevitable necessity and what has been and is appears to it as an absurdity that cannot last, then and then only comes the moment for the change to happen, not before.

The question still remains whether the thing can happen and will happen individually before it happens collectively. But no individual realisation even can be complete or approach perfection, unless and until it is in harmony with a group consciousness representing a new world. There is always an interdependence between the individual and the collective so much so that an individual realisation is bound to be restricted and diminished in an unresponsive atmosphere. Earth life as a whole has to follow a certain curve of progress in order that a new world and a new consciousness may appear in it.

So the future realisation does depend, partially at least, upon you, individually and collectively. Have you ever tried to conceive what the new consciousness might mean, what the new race and the new world would look like?

It is evident that the advent of man upon the earth has changed the terrestrial conditions. One cannot say that this has been to the greatest good of all, for it meant much suffering in many places. Also it is evident that the complication which the human

being has brought with him into life has not always been favourable to him or to others. But from another point of view it did mean a progress, a marked progress among the lower species. Man mixed himself up with the life of animals, with the life of plants, even with the life of metals and minerals; it was not, as I said, to the great joy of all those with whom he occupied himself; but in any case, their conditions of life were changed by this intervention. In the same way, it is likely that the supramental being, whatever he might be, when he comes, will change considerably the life upon earth. We cherish this hope in our heart and in our mind that all the ills the earth suffers from will be, if not completely cured, at least to a large extent alleviated and that conditions of living here will be more pleasant and harmonious, at least tolerable for all. That is quite possible. In man, the mental consciousness that he embodied acted, by the very force of its nature, for its own satisfaction, for its own growth, without much consideration for the consequences of its actions. The Supramental, on the other hand, will act differently; that is our hope, at least.

Human life, however, is brief and naturally there is a tendency in man to shorten the distances in proportion to his dimensions. Still there will come a time when the thing will happen; there will be a moment or a movement that will at last land into the reality. Once upon a time there came a moment when the mental being could appear upon earth. The start may be poor, very incomplete, very partial, but after all there was the start. Why should not the same thing occur now?

The people who were announcing the good news from the beginning of time must have been the best informed of men. And I tell you that since the beginning of earth history, Sri Aurobindo has always presided over the great earthly transformations, under one form or another, one name or another. And if he came this time and said this is the final, then it must be the final. Perhaps he knows.

In that case, if this time it is final, then those who are ready or make themselves ready will naturally be the people who start first on the new path. There will be many such, I hope. But my own standpoint here is this: even if the thing has only half a chance of materialising it is worth the trouble. I think I have told you more than once that a moment comes in the life of

Page 46

many when life as it is, human consciousness as it is, becomes absolutely unbearable, creating only disgust and repulsion; one does not wish to continue it any longer, one can only throw all effort, all force, all life and soul into this single chance, into this singular opportunity given at last, so that one may pass on to the other side. What a relief, to set one's foot on a road that takes you elsewhere! It is worth the trouble of throwing behind all your burdens, freeing yourself of all loads so that you may leap all the better. This is how I look at the thing. It is the sublimest of adventures; if you have in you the true spirit of adventure in the least, you will feel it is worth risking all for all. But they who fear and hesitate, who ask, "Am I not giving away my prey for the shadow?" – a most stupid saying, according to me – they who are more for profiting by what they possess than for risking to lose all in the hope of something that mayor may not happen tomorrow, I assure you, such people will not notice the change even if it happens right under their nose. They will say, "It is all right, we do not care, there is nothing to regret." Quite possibly; but after all, they might have to regret, we do not know.

In any case, that is what I mean by sincerity. That is to say, if you regard the new realisation as the only thing truly worth living for, if what is is intolerable, not only for oneself, perhaps not so much for oneself as for the whole world, one feels the need of it if one is not small and egoistic; one feels that the present has lasted too long and one can do nothing but take up all that one is, all that one can do and hurl oneself completely – head foremost, without looking backward, without considering what may happen or not – into the adventure. It is far better to jump into the abyss, than to stand on the brink shivering.

Page 47

THERE is a flower to which we have given this name. It is the familiar Champa. The flower has five petals. Each petal represents a quality or movement of consciousness, the five qualities or movements making up the psychological perfection. In the beginning I named them-(l) Surrender, (2) Sincerity, (3) Faith, (4) Devotion and (5) Aspiration. Of course the meaning can be changed. In fact, when I give the flower to someone, I do not always mean the same qualities. I change according to the need of the person and at the moment. However, we can have all the same a general scheme. In any case, in all combinations and to whomsoever I may give, the first among the qualities is and must always be Sincerity. For, if sincerity is not there, one cannot move even half a step. So sincerity is the first thing necessary and should be always there.

This can be translated by another word, if you like. That would be transparence. Let me explain.

When someone comes to me and I look at him, I look into his eyes, straight into his eyes. If the person is sincere, that is to say, transparent, I enter into him through his eyes and I see his soul clearly. But when I look and see in the eyes a cloud, and then a screen or continuing farther I meet a wall or something very black and when I find I have to pass through all that and drill holes at places to go through, even so at the last minute I am not sure if I do not stand against a bronze wall that refuses all entry, then in such cases I do not find the soul and the person I can declare to be not sincere. Literally, such a person is not transparent. So, then, this is the first thing.

The next item which is also obviously necessary for all progress is Faith. There is also another word for it which although seemingly limited, possesses for me at least a greater importance;

Page 48

I mean, trust. If your faith is not made of a complete trust in the Divine or if you begin to lose the trust, then you gradually lose faith in the Divine Power or in the Divine Goodness or in the trust that the Divine has in you. These are the three great stumbling-blocks.

It happens at times, if not quite often, that starting with a faith which you describe unshakable, the faith that the Divine alone does everything and can do everything, that whatever occurs in me or in others, everywhere, is the work of the Divine and of none other than the Divine and you continue to the logical end, apparently at least, till after a time you begin to accuse the Divine of the most frightful misdeeds, make him a veritable demon being the author or abettor of all the evils in the world.

Or you say, you have faith in the Divine, but as to this world, you know what it is and you put no trust in it. You say: "In the first instance, I suffer much, I am unlucky, much more unlucky than any other person"–one is always more miserable than one's neighbour, be sure "life has been unkind to me. Now, if the Divine is divine, all kindness, all generosity, all love and harmony, how is it that I am so unfortunate? The Divine must then be powerless. Otherwise, how can he leave me in unhappiness, if he is so kind?" That is the second stumbling-block. The third one is this. There are people who are too modest, full of an excessive and misguided humility, who say: "Surely the Divine has rejected me, I am good for nothing, He can do nothing with me, it is better for me to give it all up." Such difficulties will always crop up, if along with faith you do not have complete trust in the Divine.

throw all their anger upon the Divine, accusing him of neglect and cruelty; or then they think, "I must have made a grave, blunder, I am hopeless in his eyes and I am rejected."

Now, there is a movement which one can have and constantly along with devotion, as complementary to it – a sense of gratitude, that the Divine exists and one feels a kind of gratefulness, born of wonder, which fills you truly with a sublime joy; the very fact that the Divine exists, that there is something in the universe which is the Divine, that it is not merely a monstrosity that we see here below, brings a flow of unspeakable gladness in you. Every time the least thing puts you in contact with this sublime reality of the Divine's existence, whether directly or indirectly, your heart is filled with a feeling so intense, so marvellous, the feeling precisely of a profound gratitude which has of all things the sweetest savour, that no other joy can bring. So I say devotion by itself is incomplete, it must have gratitude as its companion.

We come to the next term. I spoke to you once of courage; I said courage means the taste for adventure, the supreme adventure. This taste for the supreme adventure is Aspiration – aspiration that seizes you wholly and throws you without calculation or reserve, without the possibility of withdrawal, into the great adventure of the discovery of the Divine, the great adventure of meeting the Divine and the still greater adventure of realising the Divine. It means plunging into an unknown venture without looking backward, without asking even for a moment what is going to happen – for if you ask where you are going to fall, you never start, you remain fixed where you are, both your feet firmly rooted on the spot, fearing lest you lose your balance. That is why I call the thing courage. But truly it is aspiration. The two go together. True aspiration is something full of courage.

Endurance in its physical expression is perseverance. That is to say, you must be prepared to do a thousand times, if necessary, the same thing over and over again. You take a step forward, you think you are firmly placed; but there will always crop up something or other which brings back the old difficulty. You think you have solved the problem, you will have to solve it again: it will come in a slightly different form, but it is the same problem. You must be ready to face the problem, go through the same difficulties a million times. That is how you are sure to arrive at the goal.

We have left out one very important factor – Surrender. Now Sri Aurobindo says that surrender is the first and absolute condition for doing Yoga. Without it there is no Yoga. So we can say that it is not one of the qualities required, but that it is the primary indispensable attitude for one to be able to begin Yoga. If you have not decided to surrender you cannot start on the path. But to make this surrender total and complete all the Five that we have enumerated are needed. This is then what I propose. We put Surrender on the top, at the head; for to do the integral Yoga, one must first of all take the resolution to surrender entirely to the Divine, there is no other way that is the one way. Afterwards, one must have the five psychological perfections.

Page 51

FROM where does desire come? Buddha said that it came from Ignorance. It is almost that. Desire is something in the being which imagines that it requires an object other than itself for its satisfaction. This is sheer ignorance, proved by the fact that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred when one has the thing desired, one no more cares for it.

At its very origin, I think, it was an obscure need for growth or increase. In the lowest forms of life we find love transformed into an instinctive and irresistible need for enlarging, swelling, absorbing, adding to it another body. This need to take in is desire. So perhaps if you go back far enough into the last depths of inconscience, you will see that the ultimate source of desire is love: it is love in its most dark and inconscient form. It is, as I said, a need for accretion, an attraction for an outside object in order to embrace it, swallow it, make it part of itself and so grow bigger. Now, suppose you have before you something beautiful, harmonious, pleasing: if you have the true consciousness, you enjoy and are happy to the full, by simply looking at the thing, by having an inner contact in consciousness with the beauty and harmony that is there. And there the matter ends. You have the joy and that is all. Such a movement is very common in the artist. He sees a beautiful person, he has the joy of observing the grace of the form, the harmony of the movements and all that. But it does not go beyond. He is perfectly happy, perfectly satisfied when he has seen something beautiful.

An ordinary consciousness, on the contrary, I mean very ordinary, flat as ordinary things are, when it sees something beautiful, whether it is a material object or a person, it imme­diately jumps at it, shouting, "I must have it!" It is pitiable, isn't it? And even then with such a consciousness you cannot

Page 52

enjoy beauty, for the anguish of desire will pursue you. You lose true enjoyment but do not get anything in return. There is no happiness in desiring something. It only puts you in an unhappy state.

Buddha also said that there was a greater joy in overcoming a desire than in satisfying it. Everybody can make this experiment and have the experience. It is quite interesting to do so.

When you give up a desire, there occurs at the moment an inner communion with your psychic being and that is why one gets a greater joy in rejecting a desire than in fulfilling it. Besides, when you do satisfy your desire always there is a bitter after­taste somewhere. There is no desire which when satisfied does not leave this bitterness in you, as when you have taken some­thing very sweet, the mouth becomes full of a bitter taste. The nature of desire is like that. You must try to throw it away, but sincerely. You must not pretend doing it and keep the thing in a comer. In that case it will surely bring misery to you.

Page 53

You have seen Sannyasins lying upon nails. Why do they do that? Perhaps to prove their saintliness. But when they do so in public, well, the suspicion is legitimate that it is something like a pose. There are some perhaps who do the thing sincerely and seriously, that is to say, they do not do it merely to make a show. In their case we might ask why they do so. They say it is to prove to themselves their detachment from the body. There are others: they go a little further and say that one must make the body suffer in order to free the soul. But I tell you that the vital has a taste for suffering and imposes suffering on the body because of this perverse taste for suffering. I have seen children who, when they got hurt, would press the part hurt in order to get more pain and it was a pleasure to them. I have seen bigger persons also doing the same thing – morally I mean. It is a very well-known fact. I always tell people 'If you are unhappy, it is because you want to be unhappy. If you suffer, it is because you like suffering, otherwise you would not have the thing.' I call it an unhealthy state; for it is contrary to harmony and beauty; it is a kind of unhealthy need for strong sensations. Do you know, China is a country where they have invented the most atrocious kinds of torture, unthinkable ways? When I was in Japan I asked a Japanese who liked the Chinese very much, why it was so. He told me: 'It is because the people of the Far East, including the Japanese, possess very dull sensibility. They feel very little; unless the suffering is very strong they feel nothing.' They were obliged to use their intelligence for the discovery of extremely strong sufferings. Well, all people who are inconscient or tamasic – the more inconscient they are the greater the tamas – have their sensibility blunted; they need strong sensations if they have to feel them. This is what usually makes them cruel, because

Page 54

---

cruelty gives very strong sensations. The nerve tension produced in you when you impose suffering on someone, well, it does bring a sensation: they need that in order to feel, otherwise they would not feel. It is for that reason that whole races are particularly cruel. They are inconscient, inconscient vitally. They may not be unconscious mentally or otherwise. But they are unconscious vitally and physically, physically above all.

If one has a sense of beauty can he be cruel?

It is a psychological problem. It depends upon the region where there is the sense of beauty. There may be a physical sense of beauty, a vital sense of beauty and a mental sense of beauty. If you have the moral sense of beauty, that is to say, a sense of decency and nobility, you can never be cruel. You will be always generous; your movements will consist of fine gestures. But, as I say often, man is composed of many different bits pieced together. For example, I frequented very much the artists. I knew all the great artists of the end of the last century and the beginning of the present. I lived among them. They had really a great sense of beauty. But morally some were very cruel. It is because when you see an artist in his study at work you find him living in an atmosphere of great beauty, but when you see the gentleman at home, he is a different person, having very little contact with the artist he was. Here he becomes vulgar and commonplace. Many of them are indeed like that. But there are always exceptions. Some have a unified personality, that is to say, they live their art and are truly generous, fine.

Page 55

I DO not think so. You cure nothing in that way. You give yourself the illusion that you are progressing, but you are really freed of nothing. The proof is that as soon as you stop the practices, the old things come back violently with a vengeance.

But naturally all depends upon the meaning you attach to the word. If it means not yielding to your desires, then it is not asceticism, it is common sense, it is good sense. By asceticism people usually understand fasting, bearing biting cold or burning heat, lying on a bed of sharp nails, that is to say, torturing the body in some way or other. That gives you only self-importance or spiritual egoism, nothing more. You acquire no true control or mastery in this way. People do it because it is so simple and easy, because it satisfies their vanity. You make a show of your ascetic virtues and under the guise hide many other things.

It is much more difficult, however, to master one's impulses quietly, deliberately, prevent them from bursting out instead of mortifying the body with ascetic feats. It is much more difficult not to be attached to things that one possesses than to possess nothing. Yet it is a simple truth that has been recognised through ages. To be without posessions or to reduce one's possessions to a minimum is easy: difficult it is not to be attached to whatever you happen to possess. It means a higher degree of moral value. Try to do this simply and you will know what it costs: when a thing comes to you, accept it and if it goes away, for some reason or other, let it go, without regret, without trying to hold it back; not to refuse it when it comes, not to regret when it leaves – naturally, I speak of material objects, things required for use in life.

Physical asceticism does not cure. For the defects are within. You are afraid of contacts from outside and you withdraw into

Page 56

caves and jungles and hilltops, to live all by yourself. But you need no borrowing from others; you carry a sufficient load yourself. In fact if they were not in you, you would not have even detected them in others. You catch the infection from outside, simply because you carry the germs inside. Great waves of passion, one can say with much truth, roll through men, they are not generated in them. But if there is anyone perfectly pure, with no possibility of any passion in him, then such waves may be sweeping over for centuries together, he will not be affected or touched by them. He may see them, look at them as they pass, like a storm across the sky, but he will not feel them.

When there is an answering vibration in us to the vibration outside, it means that the vibration is already there within, otherwise no outside vibration can enter or make an impression. The explanation of a panic – a general fear entering into each and every one of a crowd – lies there. A panic, however, can be stopped, if there are one or two who can resist, who are not touched, who are outside the vibrations. Such individuals can save the situation and prevent the stampede. The thing has happened often. A movement, a vibration, a force is contagious, because the ground of contagion is already there.

Why does not the effort towards progress come always spontaneously, especially for us who are here in the Ashram?

It is because the physical nature in man is usually tamasic. Effort is natural to the vital. But the vital generally makes the effort for its own satisfaction. I do not think that the physical nature left to itself moves spontaneously in the direction of effort; it needs some activity but of a subdued kind.

you do it when it pleases you and you don't do when it does not please you; you take things quite easily.

Of course there are some who do make the effort spontaneously. And that from the spiritual point of view has an infinitely greater value. You make the progress, because you feel within you the need to do so, because it is an impulse that wells up from your depths, not because you are driven by a compel ling force outside. What you do spontaneously and sincerely of your own accord is something part and grain of yourself. You do a thing not because if you do it you will be rewarded and if you do not do it you will be punished. It might happen, however, sometimes that something comes to you or into you and gives you the impression that your effort is appreciated, but the effort is not due to that. Indeed, things are arranged in such a way here that the satisfaction of having done and done well is the best reward one has and one punishes oneself thoroughly by doing badly or not doing; no other punishment can be more real or more concrete. All this is immensely significant and valuable from the standpoint of spiritual growth, much more than things produced by external regulation and pressure.

What is exactly a spiritual experience?

It is something which puts you in contact with a consciousness higher than that you have ordinarily. You live in a certain state and you do not even know what it is like. That is the ordinary consciousness. Suddenly you become conscious within you of something very different and much superior – that is a spiritual experience, whatever it may be. You may formulate it in a mental idea or you might not, you may explain it or you may not, it may last or it may not, it may be quite momentary. But if there is this difference in the essential quality of the consciousness, signifying something coming from above, from a greater height, something pure and true, purer and truer than anything you normally experience, that I call spiritual experience, although there are a thousand things that belong to that category.

Page 58

LAST week I spoke of birth and how a soul enters into a body. I told you that the body is formed in a very unsatisfactory manner almost in the case of every person, the exceptions are so rare that one need not mention them. I told you that because of this obscure birth man is made to carry with him quite a bundle of things which later on he has generally to get rid of, if he wishes to progress truly in life. I told you in effect that you are made to come by force, conditions are imposed upon you by force, and by force you obey the laws of heredity. Now, I am asked who or what is it that forces? I shall answer as clearly as possible.

The body is formed by a man and a woman who are the father and the mother; these when they form the body have no means to ask of the being whom they are bringing into the world whether he likes it or whether it is agreeable to his destiny. They impose upon the body, by the force of necessity, an atavism, an environment and subsequently an education which are almost always obstacles to future growth. A growing soul or a soul full-grown taking birth in a body has to fight against these circumstances that are forced upon him by the animal birth in order to find his true path and discover his own self in its fullness.

It is possible, however, for the parents, instead of doing the thing in the animal way, driven by mere instinct and desire, most of the time even without wanting it, to do it with a conscious will, aspiring, praying almost that the body they are about to bring forth should be a form suitable to clothe a soul coming at their call. I have known people, – there are not many, of course, still there are some, – who chose especial circumstances, prepared themselves, holding an attitude of concentration, meditation and aspiration, invoking some exceptional being to come into the body they were to form. For that one must have also an

Page 59

occult knowledge which people generally do not possess.

In ancient times, in some civilisations and even now in some countries, the expectant woman is kept specially in a surrounding of beauty and harmony and peace and ease and very normal physical conditions so that the coming child may be formed under the best circumstances. Evidently this is as it should be, for it is within human possibilities. Human beings have developed enough not to consider it as an exceptional thing. And yet in fact, it is an exceptional thing, for there are very few people who think of it, most are in the habit of producing children without giving a thought to it. But the least that is expected of man is that he should be somewhat conscious and do the things he has to do in the best of conditions.

Now, a fully formed conscious soul wanting to take birth looks generally from its psychic domain for a corresponding psychic light upon some place on earth. In its previous birth, before leaving the earthly atmosphere, it chose, as the result of its total experience in that life, the conditions of its future life, not in details, but more or less in a general way. Such cases are very exceptional. We here perhaps can speak of it, but for the majority of the human population, even among the most well-educated, the question does not arise.

Normally we are dealing with a soul that is growing, which is in the process of its growth. Now, there are all the stages of growth, from the tiniest spark that is becoming a little flame of light up to the fully conscious and fully formed being. This ascent of the soul in order to become a mature conscious being, having its own will and deciding its own destiny, takes thousands of years.

When, however, it is a free and conscious soul that seeks to take a body again upon earth, it begins to work upon the body even before the birth. Such being the case, it has no reason not to accept the inconveniences that result from the ignorance of the parents. It has chosen its place for a reason which is a reason not of ignorance: it saw a light – which may be simply a light of possibility; but there was a light and that is why it came there. And when from the domain of the psychic it looks upon the earth and has chosen its place of birth, the choice has sufficient discernment in it not to have made a gross mistake.

In any case, even in the very best of situations, when a soul

Page 60

comes down consciously and when it has consciously worked in the formation of the physical body, so long as the body is formed in the usual animal way, the soul will have to struggle, and to correct all that comes from this human animality.

The parents have naturally a particular formation, they have a particular kind of good or bad health; at the very best, they have a lot of atavistic tendencies, habits, subconscious and even conscious complexes, deriving from their own birth, their environment and the life they have led. And even if they are remarkable people, in their own way, usually they carry an amount of things, that are contrary to the true psychic life, I mean, even if they are the very best, the most conscious. And when the parents have done their utmost to give their children the best education, the children come in contact with all kinds of other people who have a great influence upon them especially when they are very young; these influences enter into the subconscious and they have to be fought against later on.

So I say, because of the way in which the body is brought into being at present, you have to face innumerable difficulties, coming more or less from the subconscient, that rise to the surface with which you have to fight if you want to be free entirely and develop normally.

Page 61

THE fatigue of the body comes from an inner disharmony. There may be many other apparent reasons, but all amount to that fundamental circumstance viz. a want of balance among the different parts of the being. That may occur on a day when, for example, you had a lot of energy and you spent too much. But such is usually not the case with children. They spend and go on spending till they are not able to do any more. A child is very active till the last moment when it drops dead asleep. A minute before it was moving about, running, shouting, all on a sudden it falls down into deep sleep. And that is how they grow and gain strength. So the trouble does not lie in spending. Spending is easily repaired by necessary rest. Fatigue and lethargy come from a different source.

People think they have only to continue to do what they do everyday, perform the same work, with the same state of consciousness regularly and everything will be all right. But things do not happen that way. All on a sudden in the midst of the regular movement, you do not know why or how, a part of your being – some feeling, or thought – makes a progress, discovers a new thing, receives a light or a higher impulsion. That part shoots ahead, as it were, and goes forward: the other parts remain behind. That brings about a disharmony and it is quite sufficient to cause fatigue, even much fatigue. Truly, however, this is not fatigue, but a desire to keep quiet, to concentrate, to remain within oneself and build a new harmony between the disparate parts. And such a state or period is quite necessary which is a period of assimilation of what one has learnt, of harmonisation of all the limbs.

With regard to their physical being, men live in a formidable ignorance. How many of you know the exact quantity of food

Page 62

and the kind of food the body requires? Yes, simply this, how much to take and when to take? You do not know. You are taught all kinds of things. You learn why and how this earth moves or the sun does not, why or how the triangle consists of two right angles: your faculties of imagination and discrimination are set to the task and get sharpened. But this little bit of exact knowledge you do not have – the quantity of food you must take and the hour when the body needs it. It may be you are not unaware at times of this exact need. But to know properly demands a discipline, continuous labour for years perhaps. Years indeed you require when it is a matter of control over your mind, of attaining a consciousness subtle enough to enable you to come in contact with the elements of transformation and progress, to know how to regulate for your body the exact amount of physical effort, material activity, expenditure and reception of energy, how to secure the proportion between what is received and what is given out, how to utilise energy to re-establish the equilibrium that was broken in order to push forward new cells that were lagging behind and then how to build up conditions for a further step in upward progress to be possible etc., etc. The task is formidable. And yet that is the thing to be done if you want the body to be transformed. First of all, you must bring the body into complete harmony with the inner consciousness. That means a work in each cell of the body, in each small activity, in each movement of the organs. Only that and nothing more can keep you busy day and night with no other thing to look to. It is not easy to maintain the effort, the concentration, the inner vision in a continuous manner.

Who can look into oneself so precisely, accurately, positively, as to know exactly what is out of order, why it is out of order, how it has come to be so? All that is a matter of pure observation. And then only arises the problem of doing the thing that will bring about a new order which is a much more difficult affair. And yet this is only the ABC of body-transformation.

Page 64

THERE are people who are disgusted with life. They want to go away in the hope that it will be better the next time. But we tell you: It is no use running away from your body, it will not be easier without a body. On the contrary, it will be much more difficult. The body is meant for you to do Yoga. We are upon earth here and it is precisely during the period of our life upon earth that we can make progress.

You cannot progress outside the life on earth. The terrestrial life, the material life is essentially the life for progress. It is here that we develop and advance. Outside the earthly life you take rest, or else you remain unconscious. You can have this period of assimilation, period of rest or period of inconscience elsewhere. But for periods of progress you must come to the earth and in the body. So when you take a body it is for making progress and when you leave it the period of progress ends.

Now true progress means Sadhana, in other words the most conscious and the most rapid progress. Otherwise there is a progress with the march of Nature and that takes centuries and centuries, hundreds of centuries to move just a little forward.

Every human being here upon earth, whoever he is and whatever he is, has within him a psychic Being, only in various degrees of evolution. An embodied person possesses many other things e.g. states and forms of consciousness. His task upon earth is to transform these elements which form, as it were, the part of the universe given to him for his work of transformation. And even if he has a vaster mission beyond his own person, he cannot do that unless he has done the personal work first. You cannot change the outside world unless you have begun changing your own self. It is the first and indispensable condition and it is true for all, young or old, small or big. It is for this reason that life has been given to the psychic being: it is man's opportunity for progress. The span of earthly life is the time for progress. Outside earthly life there is no progress. The possibility and the means for the progress are only there in earthly life. So one must begin with oneself. When the work has been done with regard to oneself then only one can begin elsewhere. But first, work at home.

You go to kill yourself when you are a coward. The psychic comes with a definite aim to gather a certain sum of experiences, to learn, to make progress. If you go away before the work is done, you have to come back and do it over again but in circumstances much more difficult than before. Whatever you avoided in one life, you will find reappearing in a more difficult form. Without going very far, take for example this small difficulty in your life, the examination you have to pass. If you do not go through it, if you turn your back, you will have to pass it, another time and that time it will be more difficult.

a continual nightmare. It is not very pleasant.

To avoid a nightmare you have to be in your psychic consciousness; for when you are in that consciousness nothing troubles you or brings you anxiety. It is only when you are in a movement of ignorance that you do not have the courage or the strength to face a danger.

What is the source of cowardice?

Ignorance is the source. Ignorance is the cause of all evil. I think, however, that one becomes a coward when one is tamasic i.e. one fears to make an effort.

Page 67

I BELIEVE the primitive man was very near to the animal. He lived more by instinct than by intelligence. He ate when he was hungry without any kind of fixed rule. He might have had his own tastes and preferences, we do not know much about it; but we know that he lived much more physically, much less mentally or even vitally than now.

Originally very material in nature, much like the animal, man in he course of his progress through centuries or millenniums became more and more mental, more and more vital. And as he grew more mental and more vital, refinement became possible, the intelligence increased, but the possibility too of perversion and deformation. It is one thing to educate the senses so as to bring into them every variety of refinement, growth, knowledge, appreciation, taste and all that, meaning a progress in consciousness: it is quite another to be attached to the objects of sense, to have greed, to be a glutton.

You can make a very thorough study of taste, for example, you can acquire a detailed knowledge of the different tastes of different things, the association of an idea or notion with taste, which means not perhaps a progress in the vital, but at least a development of this particular sense. That is permissible but there is a great difference between that and eating out of greed, thinking of food all the while, eating not because of its need but because of desire and gluttony.

Indeed, people who try to develop their taste are rarely very much attached to food. They cultivate their taste for developing, refining their senses, not for the sake of eating. In the same way the artist, a painter, for example, trains his eyes so that he can know how to appraise the beauty of form and colour, line and design, composition and harmony that is found in physical

nature. It is not mere desire or hunger that drives them, it is taste, culture, development of the sense of sight, appreciation of beauty that is his preoccupation. Generally, artists who are truly artists, who love and live their art, who are in search of beauty are people who do not have many desires. They live in their aesthetic sensibility, in their senses turned to the enjoyment and creation of beauty. They are not the kind of people who live by their vital impulses and physical desires.

In a general way, education, cultures, refinement of the senses are the means of curing movements of crude instinct and desire and passion. To obliterate them is not curing them; instead, they have to be cultivated, intellectualised, refined. That is the surest way of curing them. To give them their maximum growth in view of the progress and development of consciousness, so that one may acquire to a sense of harmony and exactitude of perception is part of culture and education for the human being. Men cultivate their intelligence in the same way: they read, they think, compare and contrast, they make a study. In this way their mind enlarges itself, it becomes wider and more comprehensive than the minds of those who live without a mental education, who possess only a few ideas that perhaps even contradict each other. They are moved wholly by these as they have no other, they think those are the only ideas that should govern them: such minds are extremely narrow and limited. On the other hand, they who have cultivated their intelligence, who have studied and thought, who have widened their mental range a little and so can see and note and compare other ideas and possible notions discover easily that it is sheer ignorance and absurdity to be attached to a limited set of ideas and to consider that alone as the expression of truth.

How does fasting bring about a state of receptiviry?

Usually the vital being is concentrated very much in the body. And when the body is well fed, it draws its force and energy through the food – it is one way of absorbing energy, almost the the only way, at least the more important way, under the existing conditions of life, but it is a tamasic way.

This energy that one takes in, if you reflect upon the matter you will easily admit, is the vital energy that is in the plant or the animal and logically it is of an inferior quality to that which should be man's who is supposed to be on a higher level in the scale of species. So it is impossible to eat without absorbing a large quantity of unconsciousness. Inevitably that makes you heavy and dense. And if you are in the habit of eating much, a good part of your consciousness is engaged in digesting and assimilating what you eat. Thus if you do not take food, that already frees you from this unconsciousness that you have no longer to assimilate and transform within you: in order to liberate energy in you. Then, as there is an instinct in the being to make up for the energy spent, if you do not gather it from food i.e. from below, you make automatically an effort to draw it from the universal vital energy which is free around you. And if you can assimilate that energy, assimilate it directly, then there is no limit to your energy.

your nature. But if your body does not have much reserve, it gets easily weakened by fast, then there occurs a disharmony between the intensity of the energies you absorb and the capacity of the body to hold them and that upsets you. You lose your poise, the equilibrium of the forces is broken and anything can happen. In any case, if such a thing happens, you lose a good deal of self-control, you get excited and this unnatural excitement you consider as a higher state of consciousness. But it is an inner unbalance, nothing more. Otherwise, in that state your senses get refined and receptive. Thus when you fast and do not draw energy from below, if you smell a flower, you feel nourished, the perfume you breathe in serves as food, it gives you energy and this you would not have known but for the fasting.

In this condition certain faculties become intensified and that is taken as a spiritual effect. But in reality it has very little to do with spirituality. However, instead of thinking all the while about food, how to get it and eat it, if one were to take to fasting for the sake of freeing oneself from the bondage of food preoccupation, rising a little in the scale of consciousness, it would be a good thing. If you have the faith it will do you good, it will purify you, make you progress a little. In that way it is all right: it will not do any harm to your body except making it a little slimmer. But if you fast and then continuously turn back to it and think of the food that you might have eaten or are likely to eat after the fasting, well, such fasting is worse than feasting.

Maeterlinck, – you must have heard of him, the author of The Blue Bird-was a very corpulent person. As he had some sense of beauty he disliked corpulency, and in order to reduce it or keep it within bounds, he took to fasting for one day a week regularly. As he was an intelligent man, he did not on that day give any thought to food, but he kept himself wholly engaged in writing and studying. Fasting was of use to him.

then the body will tell you in a very precise and exact manner when it has taken just the amount necessary. It is only when you have notions in your mind or desires in your vital, when for example, you are in love with a particular dish that you eat in multiples of the quantity needed and oppress your body and make it lose its natural perception.

Page 72

What happens when one eats meat?

I WILL tell you then a story. I knew a young woman, Swedish, who was doing Sadhana. Normally she was a vegetarian, by habit as well as by inclination. One day she was invited to a dinner. She was given fowl to eat. She did not like to make a fuss and quietly ate her fowl. Now at night she found herself, in dream of course, in a basket and her head in between two bits of sticks and being shaken to and fro. She felt very unhappy, very miserable. And then she saw herself head down and legs up in the air and being shaken, shaken continually. She was thoroughly miserable. All on a sudden she felt she was being skinned, flayed and how painful it all was! And then some one came with a knife and cut off her head. She woke up at that. She told me the story and said she had never had such a frightful nightmare in her life. She had thought nothing of this kind before going to bed; it must have been simply the consciousness of the poor chicken that entered into her and she experienced in dream all the agonies of this creature when it was being carried to the market, her feathers pulled out and in the end the head severed. That is what happens. In other words, along with the meal that you take, you absorb also, in a large or small measure, the consciousness of the animal whose flesh you swallow. Of course it is nothing serious, but it is not always pleasant. Yet obviously it does not help you to be more on the side of man than on that of the animal kind. Primitive men, we know, were much nearer the animal level and used to take raw meat: that gave them evidently more strength and energy than cooked meat. They used to kill an animal, tear it to pieces and bite into the flesh. That is how they were robust and strong. Also it was for this reason perhaps that there was in their intestines an organ called appendix of a much bigger size than it is now: for it had to digest raw

Page 73

meat. As men however started cooking their food and found it more palatable that way the organ too gradually diminished in size and fell into atrophy; now it does not serve any purpose, it is an encumbrance and often a source of illness. This means that it is time to change the diet and take to something less bestial. It depends, however, on the state of the consciousness of each person. An ordinary man, who leads an ordinary life, has ordinary aspirations, thinks of nothing else than earning his livelihood, keeping good health and rearing a family, need not pick and choose, except on purely hygienic grounds. He may eat meat or anything else that he considers helpful and useful, doing good to him.

But if you wish to move from the ordinary life to a higher life, the problem acquires an interest. And again, for a higher life if you wish to move up still farther and prepare yourself for transformation, then the problem becomes very important. For there are certain foods that help the body to become more refined and others that keep it down to the level of animalhood. But it is only then that the question acquires an importance, not before. Before you come to that point, you have a lot of other things to do. It is certainly better to purify your mind, purify your vital before you think of purifying your body. For even if you take all possible precautions and live physically with every care to eat only the things that help to refine the body, but the mind and the vital remain full of desire and inconscience and obscurity and all the rest, your care will serve no purpose. Your body will become perhaps weak, disharmonious with your inner life and drop off one day.

You must begin from within. I have said a hundred times, you must begin from above. You must purify first the higher regions and then purify the lower ones. I do not mean by this that you should give yourself up to all the licences that degrade the body. I do not mean that at all. I am not advising you not to control your desires. What I mean is this: do not try to be an angel in the body before you are already something of the kind in your mind and in your vital. For that will bring about a dislocation, a lack of balance. And I have always said that to maintain the balance, all the parts must progress together. In trying to bring light into one part you must not leave another part in darkness. You must not leave any obscure corner anywhere.

Page 74

When one makes an effort, makes a little progress, one gets satisfied and is proud of it. That spoils everything. How to get rid of this fault?

IT is because one looks at oneself while doing a thing. It is the habit of constantly observing oneself as one works or lives. Certainly you must observe yourself; but more than that you must be sincere and spontaneous – spontaneous in what you do and not turning towards yourself all the while, judging, criticising, sometimes even severely. That is often as bad as patting oneself with satisfaction.

You must be sincere in your aspiration, you need not even know that you are aspiring: you should become the aspiration. When you can do that, you feel an extraordinary strength. One minute of such an experience prepares you for years of progress. When you are no longer a person, an ego that is always looking at itself, when you are the very action you do – especially in the act of aspiration – well, I say nothing can be better than that. When it is not a person that aspires, when the aspiration shoots up in a concentrated momentum, one can go very far. Otherwise there is a mixture of vanity, self-sufficiency, even self-pity, all kinds of petty movements which spoil the affair.

What are the conditions for a descent of faith?

The most important condition is trust, a childlike trust, the candid feeling that knows that needed things will come, that there is no question about it. When the child has need of anything, he is certain that it is coming. This kind of simple trust or reliance is the most important condition.

One must aspire, it is indispensable; but there are people who

Page 75

aspire and yet with so much conflict within them, between faith and want of faith, trust and distrust, between optimism that is sure of victory and pessimism that is just waiting for the catastrophe to come etc., etc. If such is the state of your being, you may aspire but nothing will come out of it. You say, "I aspire and I get nothing"; that is because you are demolishing your aspiration all the while by your want of trust. But if truly you have the trust, things would be different. Children, for example, when they are left to themselves, when they have not been deformed by elderly people, have a great confidence that everything will be all right. When they have an accident they never think that it will be anything serious. They have the spontaneous conviction that it will be set right soon and that helps things to get right soon. When you aspire for the Force, ask for the Divine's help, if you do it with an unshakable certitude that the thing will come, in that case, it is impossible for it not to come. In fact, as I say, such a conviction is in itself an inner opening. There are people who are naturally and automatically in this condition. Whenever or wherever there occurs an opportunity to receive something from above they are there present. And there are others who always fail to be on the spot when there is an occasion for the descent: they close themselves at the right moment. But they who have the childlike reliance they never miss an opportunity. It is a very curious phenomenon. Apparently there may not be much difference between the two types. Both may have the same goodwill, the same aspiration, the same desire to do one's best, but he who has a happy confidence in him, who does not question, who does not ask if he will have the thing or not, whether the Divine will answer or not for, to him that is not the question, it is understood and taken for granted: "The thing I need I shall be given," he says, "if I pray my prayer will be granted, in am in difficulty and I ask for help, the help will come, it will not only come but settle everything" – I say, the person who has such a spontaneous, candid, unquestioning reliance gets the best conditions under which an effective descent can take place; its action then is marvellous.

roll down etc., etc... " In this way you build up a wall between yourself and the Force that you want to receive.

The psychic being has this trust, has it in a wonderful manner, without a shadow, without a question, without contradiction; and when it is there, there is no prayer that remains unanswered, no aspiration unfulfilled.

Page 77

What is the value of religious exercises (such as Japa etc.) ?

THESE things, if they help you, are all right; if they do not, naturally they are of no use. The value is quite relative. It is worth only the effect it has on you or the measure of your belief in it. If it is an aid to your concentration, then, as I say, it is wel­come. The ordinary consciousness takes to the thing through a kind of superstition; one thinks, "If I go to the temple or to the church once a week, for example, if I say my prayers regularly, something good will happen to me." It is a superstition spread all over the world, but it has no spiritual value.

I have been to holy places. I have seen monuments considered as very highly religious, in France, in Japan and elsewhere; they were not always the same kind of temples or churches nor were they the same gods but the impression they left on me, my experiences of them were everywhere almost the same, with but slight differences. There is usually a force concentrated at the place, but its character depends entirely upon the faith of the faithful; also there is a difference between the force as it really exists and the form in which it appears to the faithful. For instance, in a most famous and most beautiful place of worship which was, from the standpoint of art, the most magnificent creation one could imagine, I saw within its holy of holies a huge black Spider that had spread its net all around, caught within it and absorbed all the energies emanating from the de­votion of the people, their prayers and all that. It was not a very pleasant spectacle. But the people who were there and prayed felt the divine contact, they received all kinds of benefit from their prayers. And yet the truth of the matter was what I saw. The people had the faith and their faith changed what was

Page 78

---

bad into something that was good to them. Now if I had gone and told them: 'you think it is God you are praying to! it is only a formidable vital Spider that is sucking your force,' surely it would not have been very charitable on my part. But every­where it is almost the same thing. There is a vital Force presiding. And vital beings feed upon the vibrations of human emotion. Very few are they, a microscopic number, who go to the temples and churches and holy places with the true religious feeling, that is to say, not to pray or beg something of God, but to offer themselves, to express gratitude, to aspire, to surrender. One in a million would be too many. These when they are there, get some touch of the Divine just for the moment. But all others go only out of superstition, egoism, self-interest and create the atmosphere as it is found and it is that that you usually breathe in when you go to a holy place; only as you go there with a good feeling, you say to yourself "what a peace-giving spot!"

I am sorry to say it. But it is like that. I tell you I have pur­posely made the experiment to some extent everywhere. Perhaps I came across at times in far-away small corners – like a small village church, for example – places where there was real peace and quiet and some true aspiration. Barring that, everywhere it is but a web of adverse vital forces that use everything for their food. The bigger the congregation, the more portentous the vital deity. Besides, in the invisible world it is only the vital beings that like to be worshipped. For, as I have said, that pleases them, gives them importance. They are puffed up with pride and are happy; when they can have a troop of people adoring them, they reach the very height of satisfaction.

vital beings and it is this region that is full of such things as are liked by them, because they are their food. They are happy, they feel important when men call them, pray to them, make their offerings to them: the being that has the largest number of adorers is the most satisfied, the most glorified, the most puffed up. How can you imagine that a true god, a god even of the Overmind – although those of this region are already somewhat touched by human frailties – that is to say, one who has the higher consciousness, would get any pleasure out of these things? I repeat, an act of real kindness, intelligence, unselfishness or fine understanding or sincere aspiration is for him an altogether higher and more valuable thing than any petty religious cere­mony. There is no comparison. You speak of religious cere­monies. There is, for example, a being called Kali; there are many Kalis, of many varieties, installed in temples and homes. All of them almost are vital beings and forces, some are ugly and terrible. I have known people who had such a fear of Kali – ­their household Kali – that they trembled at the thought of offending her in any way, of committing the least fault that would displease her; for that means Kali's vengeance. I know, I know very well these entities: they are beings of the vital world, they are vital formations – the forms are given by the human mind and what forms! To think that men worship such terrible and demoniac things!

From this standpoint it is good that for a time humanity should come out of the religious atmosphere, full of fear and blind superstitious submission by which the adverse forces have profited so monstrously. The age of negation, of atheism and positivism is from this view quite indispensable for man's liberation from sheer ignorance. It is only when you have come out of this, this abject submission to the evil forces of the Vital that you can rise to truly spiritual heights and then become there collaborators and right instruments of the forces of the Truth and Consciousness and Power. The superstitions of the lower levels you must leave far behind to rise high.

Page 80

(1)

PRAYERS are of many kinds. There is a prayer, purely mechanical and physical, that is to say, merely words learnt by rote and repeated mechanically. It does not mean much and generally has only one effect, making the person calm who prays; if you repeat a prayer several times, it calms you in the end.

There is a prayer which is a formula welling out spontaneously in order to give expression to something very precise which you ask for. You may pray for something, for some person; you may pray even for certain circumstances; you may pray for yourself also.

Or you may pray to express your gratitude to the Divine for what He has done for you, for what you see in Him, for what you wish to do for Him in thankfulness. Evidently it is the highest kind of prayer, for it is not exclusively concerned with one's own self. It is of a great order, this prayer of thanksgiving.

It is the meeting ground of prayer and aspiration. Such prayers are the spontaneous formulation of an experience that has been lived; it pours out from within the being, as the expression of a deep realisation, a yearning to sing praises for this experience that has been granted, a desire that the experience may continue or be explained. All this is very near to aspiration.

Again there is a prayer, spontaneous and disinterested, a great call as it were, a call for divine intercession. It is a very powerful thing. I have had innumerable examples of things being fulfilled instantaneously by prayers of this kind. It means a great faith, a great fervour, a great sincerity, also a great simplicity of heart – something that does not calculate, that does not arrange, that does not bargain, that does not give with the idea of a return.

Page 112

(2)

You can pray in all domains. A prayer belongs to the domain in which you pray.

Prayers may be purely physical, even material.

They may be vital or mental or psychic or spiritual.

Each one has its own character and its own value.

Prayer is a thing much more external than aspiration. It concerns generally a definite object and it is always formulated, for it is the formula itself that is the prayer. One can have an aspiration and transcribe it in a prayer, but if it is formulated in words, ids almost a movement of invocation.

Aspiration goes beyond prayer on all sides. It is much more self-forgetful, living only in the thing that one wills to do or become, in the offering that one seeks to make to the Divine. Aspiration may come from any plane, but the centre lies in the psychic.

(3)

You aspire for a certain state of being. You have, for example, discovered within you something which does not agree with your ideal, a movement of obscurity or ignorance, even perhaps a bad will, something which goes against what you want to realise. You do not formulate a vow in words but something rises up in you like a flame, an offering made of a living experience which asks for a greater, larger being, a being more and more clear and precise. The thing can be reproduced in words later on, when one tries to remember and note down the experience.

Aspiration bursts forth like a mounting flame bearing in itself the thing that one desires to become, to do or to have. I said "desires", but "aspires" is the right word, for it has neither the quality nor the form of a desire. It is truly a great flame of purifying will and it bears in its core what seeks to realise itself.

(4)

You have, for example, done a thing which you regret to have done. That has unfortunate consequences and upsets things, involving

Page 113

also other persons. You do not know the reaction of others, but as for yourself you wish that what has been done should turn to good and if a fault has been committed it should be admitted and made an occasion for a greater progress, a greater discipline and a new ascent towards the Divine, for opening a door towards a future that you want to be clearer, more true and more intense.

Then, the thing gathers like a force and rushes forth, mounts like a great ascending movement, sometimes without being formulated in the least, without words, without expression, but like a flame.

That is true aspiration. That can happen a hundred times, a thousand times every day, if you are in the state when you want to progress constantly, become more true, more integrally in harmony with what the Divine Will wants of you.

(5)

It seems difficult to pray without praying to someone. There are people who have a conception of the universe from which they have driven out all notion of the Divine. There are many, I suppose, like that. It troubles them, the idea that there is something that knows all, is capable of all, and is superior to them in such a formidable manner that there is no comparison; it is troublesome to their self-love, so they try to make a world without the Divine. They certainly cannot pray. To whom would they pray-unless they pray to themselves, which is not the normal custom? But one can aspire for something without having a faith in the Divine. One can have an aspiration for a condition, a knowledge, a realisation, a state of consciousness. You do aspire for something. There are people who have no faith in the existence of God, but they have faith in progress; they believe that the world is progressing constantly and this progress will go on indefinitely without stop towards a better that will be always greater than the preceding better. Such people may indeed have a great aspiration, they need have no notion of a divine existence for that.

Aspiration necessarily includes a faith, but it need not be a faith in the divine Being. Prayer, on the other hand, cannot exist unless it is addressed to a divine Being.

Page 114

(6)

What to pray unless one prays to some person for something. You pray to someone who can listen to you. If there is none to listen to you, how can you pray? Therefore, if you pray, it means, even in case you do not admit it, you have a faith in something which is infinitely greater and infinitely more powerful than you and which can change your destiny and change yourself, provided you pray in a way that the prayer is heard.

The intellectuals recognise aspiration and say that prayer is an inferior thing. The mystics tell you that aspiration is all right, but if you wish to be heard and wish the Divine to hear, you must pray – and pray with the simplicity of a child, with a perfect candour, that is to say, perfect trust. "I have need of this or that" – whether a moral or material need – "I ask it of you give me."

"You gave me what I asked for. You have brought to my close touch experiences that were unknown and that are now wonders which I reach at will. I am infinitely grateful and I offer you this hymn of thanksgiving for your intervention."

(7)

Instead of lighting a lamp and kneeling before it with folded hands, light a flame within your heart and then have a great aspiration towards something more beautiful, more true, more noble, better than anything you know.

"I ask that tomorrow all the things that I do not know I may begin to know, all the things that I cannot do, I may begin to do, and every day more and more."

And if you are put in the presence of much misery in the world, if you have friends who are unhappy and relatives who suffer, if you have difficulties or anything whatsoever, ask:

"May the entire consciousness altogether rise to that Perfection which shall manifest! May all this ignorance that has made the world so unhappy change into an enlightened knowledge! May this bad will be illumined and transformed into goodwill."

Page 115

And in proportion to what you are able to do, what you are able to understand, you wish with all your heart that it may be like that. It may take the form of a prayer, and you can ask – ask of what or whom? Ask of that which knows, ask of that which is capable, ask of all that is better and stronger than yourself to give the help that it may be so. And how beautiful such prayers would be!

Page 116

To have good meditation or contact with the inner world, if you are obliged to go into Samadhi, then your normal consciousness will remain always the same without changing. In other words, people who have a higher consciousness only in deep meditation, once they come out of it, are not worth more than what they were before. All their defects are there which they get back as soon as they get back their previous consciousness.¹ Such people never progress; for they never establish a connection between their deeper consciousness, the truth of their being, and their external being. They take off their external being like a robe and put it aside in a corner telling it "keep quiet, my dear friend, you bother me" –and they enter into contemplation, meditation, their deep experience or realisation; and when they return they put on their robe again which has not changed in the meanwhile, even might have become more dirty than ever. So they remain where they are or become worse, in their outward nature, in spite of their meditation. If you want to change your external being, you must remain conscious of it and while being conscious have other experiences: you must not lose contact with it if you wish to derive full benefit out of your experiences.

There are many such people who meditate for long hours, some almost all the time; but if by chance they are disturbed in their meditation by someone calling them or making noise, they fly into a rage, shout and abuse the whole world; they become

¹ Sri Ramakrishna used to tell a story in this connection. When asked about the purificatory virtue of a dip in the Holy Ganges he answered that the sins leave you as soon as you are about to enter the waters, but they keep waiting on the shore, and directly you are out they pounce upon you and settle in you as merrily as before.

Page 85

more nasty than they would have been had they remained ordinary men without trying meditation. The reason is, as I say, that they neglect to associate their outer life with their deeper consciousness: they cut themselves into two, there is one bit that is within making progress and another bit outside that goes from bad to worse, for it is left wholly uncared for.

Page 86

THERE is a great difference between pushing a thing away simply because you do not want it and changing the state of the consciousness so that the thing you do not want becomes completely foreign to your nature. Usually when you have a movement in you which you do not like, you drive it back and repel it, but you do not take the trouble of finding in yourself that which served and serves still as a support to the movement, the particular tendency, the turn of consciousness which enables the thing to enter into the consciousness. If, however, instead of a gesture of mere condemnation and suppression, you enter deep into your vital consciousness and find out the support, that is to say, the small vibration of a special kind embedded far in a corner, often a corner so dark that it is difficult to see it is there, if, in spite of all difficulty, you concentrate and follow on the track of the thing, the origin of the movement, then at the end you discover quite a small snake-like thing, coiled up, quite small, not bigger than a pea, but very black and embedded firmly. There are then two procedures: either to throw a light so intense, the light of the truth-consciousness, so strong upon the point that the thing is dissolved or to seize the little object as with a pair of pincers, pluck it out and place it before your consciousness. The first method is radical, but you have not always at your disposal the light of the Truth and you cannot make use of it whenever you like. So you have to take to the second method. You may follow it, but it will give you pain, a pain as great as when a tooth is being pulled out. I do not know if any of you had the experience, but it is painful. Usually, however, what you do in the presence of an undesirable movement is to try to wipe it off – gently, I suppose – or cover it up; thus things go on as before. You do not have the courage and so

Page 87

things do not change. Yes, it gives you pain; the pain is usually here in the heart. But if you have the courage, it is better to pull out the thing than to temporize with it; pull it out and put it in front of your gaze; it dissolves. That makes an end of it and you are cured. The thing will not come into you any more to trouble you. But the operation is radical and it has to be done as an operation.

In the beginning you need a great perseverance in seeking out the thing. For normally when you are in search of these things, the mind comes in and deploys a thousand and one reasons and favourable explanations so that you may not pursue the enquiry. It tells you: "No, it is not your fault at all; it is the circumstances, it is the people, it is things coming from outside, it is this and it is that," all excellent excuses, and if you are not firm in your resolution, you let things go on and you remain where you were; the thing will come back to trouble you again and you have to begin all over once more. But if you have done the operation, everything is done with. Do not trust the mind and its explanations. It might inspire you to say: "Yes, yes, on other occasions it was like that, I admit, I was indeed in the wrong; but this time, I am sure, it is not my fault etc., etc." If you do not deal firmly with your adversary, it will be always there, hiding in the subconscient, lodged there comfortably, coming up any day you are off your guard. I have seen people cherishing the evil in this way for more than thirty-five years. And if one does not go about it in the right way, there is no reason why the things should not continue life after life. The only safe way then is to do the operation, cost what it may. For it gives you the final relief. I say, when you throw the beam of light upon the spot, it burns, it seres. But you must bear it. You must have the sincerity that does not allow you to draw back, to cover up the place and retire. You must instead throw it wide open, receive the blow straight upon you.

I have told you to seek out the place where the hidden thing lies. The black thing has many a cosy corner in your being. There are people who have it in the head, some in the heart, others down below; but wherever it is when you track it down it has the same look, the little black creature rolled up, not bigger than a pea but hard and firmly set, a microbe-size snake coiled up. If it is something in the head it becomes somewhat difficult to discover.

Page 88

For the head is full of wrong ideas and it is not easy to put it into order for pursuing the right track. A comparatively easier place to discover and to cure is in the heart, though here it gives the greatest pain. But here it is found more easily and cured also most radically. Down below in the vital things are very confused and obscure. All things are mixed up in a veritable chaos. The movements are also more violent, more uncontrollable and ignorant. Here are all the movements of anger, pride, ambition, passion, all attachments and sentimentalities, the hunger that you call love. And there are a hundred others. There are as many kinds in the head too. There it is the perversions of thought, all the betrayals, the betrayals of your soul. It is inconceivable how one betrays one's soul, in how many ways, how persistently, the decisions, the points of view, the favourable explanations which your brain supplies to buttress you against your perception that you have done something wrong. You have to disentangle all this, put each thing in its place, throw upon each the light of your true consciousness and judge – burn, purify or transform.

Page 89

THERE is no difference in the end between the two if the goal to be attained is the Impersonal Divine, that is to say, if you want to unite and identify yourself with the Impersonal Divine, merge into it. But if your aspiration is to reach what is beyond, what Sri Aurobindo calls the supramental Reality, then there comes in a difference, a difference in. the goal as well as in the way. For the way to the supramental realisation is essentially the way of surrender. It is a question of temperament perhaps. And if One has the temperament, the disposition, the path of surrender is infinitely more easy: three-fourths of your trouble and diffi­culty are got rid of automatically. But it may prove hard going for some.

Now as regards the result, in one case, I may say, it is linear, it ends at a point, as it were; in the other case, the path is spheri­cal and ends in a totality. Each one individually can reach his origin and the optimum of his being; the origin and the opti­mum of one's being is the same as the Eternal, the Infinite, the Supreme. If you reach your origin, you reach the Supreme, but you reach along a single line – do not take the image literally, it is only a description to make the thing easy to understand. So it is, I say, a linear realisation terminating at a point and this point is one with the Supreme, your maximum possibility. By the other way, you arrive at, what I call, a spherical realisation; for it gives you the idea of something that contains all, it is not a point but a totality that excludes nothing.

The relation of the whole and its part does not hold good here; for there is no longer any division. The very quality of the approach is different. Can you say that a perfect identification with one drop of water would give you the knowledge of what the sea is? And here the perfect identification in question is not

Page 90

merely with the ocean but with all possible oceans. And yet the perfect identification with one drop of water does give you the knowledge of the ocean in its essence; but in the other way you know the ocean not merely in its essence but in its totality. It is however very difficult to express the reality of the truth. What can be said to put it as clearly as possible is this: in the line of personal effort, when one depends solely upon one's personal strength, all that has been individualised maintains the virtues of individuality and hence also, in a certain sense, all the limi­tations necessary for this individuality. In the other case, when you have surrendered your individuality, you not only enjoy the virtues of individuality but also you are not subject to its limitations. It is almost high philosophy, I am afraid. It is not clear therefore. But that is all I can say.

Page 91

IT means the vital when it is converted. The converted vital is for the Divine like a warrior. The vital in man is the region of power and it is that which drives him to fight, to fight and conquer. It is the most difficult element to deal with: for it is this capacity to fight that also produces in the vital the spirit of revolt and independence, the will to follow its own will. But when the vital understands and is converted, if it is truly surrendered to the Divine Will, then its fighting capacity turns against anti-divine forces, the forces of obscurity that prevent the transformation: the powers of the vital are strong enough to conquer the enemies. The anti-divine forces are in the vital world: from there they spread upon the physical. But their own seat is in the vital and it is the converted vital that can effectively deal with them. But the conversion is difficult.

The higher vital finds it much less difficult to surrender, for it is under the influence of the mind and sometimes even of the psychic; it understands them more easily. It is less difficult than the lower vital, for the latter is essentially the stronghold of desires and blind impulsions. The lower vital, even when it surrenders, when it does what it is asked to do, is not wholly happy, it suffers and only pushes down the impulse to revolt, it obeys unwillingly and does not collaborate. Unless it collaborates in joy and true love, nothing can be done, the transformation cannot come.

The surrender can be happy only when it is sincere. Or rather one can turn round the thing and say, if the vital is not happy, you must know for certain that it is not perfectly sincere. If it is not happy, that means there is some reservation, something that would like the thing to be otherwise, something with a will of its own, its own desire, its own aim and which is not satisfied, not

Page 92

completely surrendered, not sincere in its surrender. But if one is sincere in his surrender one is perfectly happy automatically: he enjoys an inexpressible happiness. Therefore if there is not this inexpressible happiness; it is a sign that something is there which is not sincere.

Now if you wish to discover that part, you have to aspire, to insist, throw the light – pray, if need be. There are many other ways. Sometimes a surgical operation too is necessary, you have to thrust the red hot iron into the wound, just as you have to do when there is a nasty abscess that does not want to burst.

Page 93

You are to open yourself to the Divine and receive Him. Usually you open yourself in all directions to everything and everybody in the world. You open your surface being and receive there all sorts of influences from all quarters. So inside you there-comes about what we can call a hotch-potch of all contrary and contradictory movements: and that creates difficulties without number. Now instead of that, live away from the surface, from the outside and open up to the Divine and receive nothing hut the Divine force. If you can do that all difficulties practically disappear. But, of course, the trouble is there. Unless one is alchemically conditioned, it is an impossibility to have relations with people, to talk to them, to deal with them, have interchanges with them and yet not absorb something out of them. If one can surround oneself with an atmosphere that acts as a filter, then all that come from outside are checked and sifted before they reach you or touch you. That needs a good training and a large experience. That is why people in ancient days who wanted an easier path took to solitude, into the depths of the forest, on the top of a hill or under a cave so that they might not have to deal with people-for that naturally reduces undesirable interchanges. Only, it has also been found that such people begin to take an enormous interest in the life of animals and plants instead of men: for it is indeed difficult to do without interchange with something or other. So the best thing would be to face the problem squarely, to clothe yourself with an atmosphere totally concentrated on the Divine so that whatever passes across is filtered in its passage. And further, there is the question of food. The body is obliged to take in foreign matter in order to subsist, it would therefore absorb at the same time a fair quantity of inert and unconscious forces or that of some not

Page 94

very desirable consciousness. I once spoke to you of the consciousness that one absorbs with food, there is also unconsciousness that one absorbs in the same way. That is why in many systems of Yoga you are advised to offer first to the Divine your food and then eat it: it means calling down the Divine into your food before absorbing it. Offering means putting in contact: the food is put in contact with type Divine, i.e. put under His influence. This is a very good, a very useful procedure; if you knew how to do it, it would diminish very much the labour of the inner transformation that one has to do. For in the world we live in solidarity with all others. You cannot take in a single breath of air without absorbing the vibrations, the numberless vibrations that come from all kinds of movements and all kinds of people. So if you want to keep yourself intact, you must, as I have said, maintain yourself in the condition of a filter allowing nothing undesirable to enter. Or put on a mask as one does when crossing an infected and poisoned locality, or do something similar.

One must have around oneself an atmosphere so condensed, condensed in a spirit of total surrender, that nothing can enter without being automatically filtered. There are wicked thoughts, evil will about you, harmful formations sent out by bad people. The air pullulates with these: dark noisome bacilli. It is so troublesome to be always on the look-out, at every step to be on one's guard, to move slowly with care and caution and precautions; even then one is not sure. But if you cover yourself with the cloak of light, the light of a happy, sincere surrender, and aspiration, that is a wonderful filter, that gives you automatic protection. The undesirable forces not only cannot enter, they are thrown back upon their originator, the attackers themselves become their own victims.

Page 95

How to melt into the Divine? That is to say, how to get dissolved in the Divine, lose one's ego?

FIRST of all, one must wish for it, will for it, aspire for it with perseverance. Every time the ego shows itself, you must give it a blow on the nose, until it receives so much of it that it gets tired and gives up. Generally, however, one does not administer the blow but cherishes the miscreant, justifies its presence. When it shows itself one says, "After all it is right"; although in most cases, one does not even know it is the ego, one takes it for one's self. The first condition then is to consider it essential that one should have no more ego. You must understand what is meant when you say you no longer want it. It is not so easy. For while in your brain you turn and turn the idea 'I do not want ego, I do not want to be separate from the Divine', in life it has no effect; when actually you do a selfish or egoistic act, you find it quite natural; it does not even give a shock to you.

We must begin by understanding what the thing really means. There are many stages or steps in it. First of all, you must distinguish between two things (1) selfishness and (2) egoism. Selfishness is a crude form and it should not be very difficult to get rid of it, at least a good part of it. You can get over it simply by having a sense of the ridiculous. You do not see how absurd a selfish man is. He always thinks of himself, bringing everything round to himself, ruled by considerations of his small person, putting himself at the centre of the universe and trying to organise the universe, including God, around himself, as if he was the most important item of the universe. Now, if you just try to look at yourself from outside in a dispassionate way, see yourself as in a mirror, you immediately recognise how ridiculous your

Page 96

little person is. I remember I read in French, translated of course, a line from Tagore which amused me very much. It was about a little dog. The dog was seated in the lap of its mistress and considered itself to be the centre of the universe. Yes, the picture stuck in my mind. I knew actually a little dog who was like that. There are many of the kind, perhaps all: they want that everybody should be busy with them and they succeed in doing so.

You have to go a long way before you can think of merging your ego, your self in the Divine. First of all, you cannot merge your ego or your self until you are a completely individualised being. And do you know what does that mean – 'to be completely individualised'? It means one capable of resisting all external influences. The other day I received a letter from someone who says that he hesitates to read books; for he has a very strong tendency to identify himself with what he reads; if he reads a novel or a drama he becomes the character pictured and is possessed by the feelings and thoughts and movements of the character. There are many like that. If they read something, while they read they are completely moved by the ideas and impulsions and even ideals they read about and are totally absorbed in them and become them, without their knowing it even. That is because ninety-nine per cent of their nature is made of butter as it were: if you press your finger it leaves a mark. That is the ordinary man's character. One takes in, as one comes across it, a thought experienced by another, a phrase read in a book, a thing observed or an incident the eyes fall upon, a will or wish of a neighbour, all that enters pell-mell intermixed –enters and goes out, others come in – like electric currents. And one does not notice it. There is a conflict, a clash among these various movements, each trying to get the upper hand. Thus the person is tossed to and fro like a piece of cork upon the waves in the sea.

Instead of this unformed and unconscious mass, one has to become conscious, cohesive, individualised, that which exists by itself and in itself, independently of its surroundings, that which can hear, read, see anything and will not change because of that. It receives from outside only what it wishes to receive. It rejects automatically what does not agree with its purpose: nothing can leave any impression upon it, unless it wishes to

Page 97

have the impress. It is thus that one begins to be individualised. And when one is an individual, then only can one make a gift of it, for unless you possess a thing you cannot give it; when you have nothing or are nothing you can give nothing. So in order that the separate ego may disappear, one must be able to give oneself wholly, totally without restrictions. And to be able to give, one must exist and to exist one must be an individual. If your body were not rigid as it is – the body is indeed terribly rigid – if it were not something quite fixed and if you had not this solid skin around the skeleton, if you were the exact expression of what you are vitally and mentally, it would be worse than the gelatinous jelly fish. All would enter and melt into one another, what a chaos and confusion would it be! That is why a rigid form is given at the outset. And you complain: the physical is so fixed, it lacks plasticity, suppleness – it lacks the fluidity that enables one to melt into the Divine! But it was a necessity. For if you were out of your body and entered into the regions behind –the vital, – you would see how things stand there: things get mixed, separated, intertwined, all kinds of vibrations, currents, forces that come and go, struggle and fight, seize each other, absorb each other, repulse each other! Very difficult to find a personality in all that. It is only forces, movements, impulsions, desires. Not that there are not individualities and personalities there too! But they are Powers. They who have individualised themselves in such a world are either heroes or demons!

And then in the mind, if you become conscious only of the physical mind, apart from what belongs to the brain, independent of the head, you will see that it is really a market place, as it has been called: everything enters here, all kinds of ideas and notions cross and recross and move about, jostle one another, knock against each other – there are even accidents sometimes. There you can search, but search in vain to find where your own mind lies.

One needs years of labour – organising, selecting, building up very diligently, very carefully, very rationally, very cohesively, in order simply to form oneself: to form this simple thing, for example, to think in one's own way. You believe you think in your own way, you do not know how much you depend for your thoughts upon the people you speak to, upon the books that you read, upon your varying moods; yes, it depends

Page 98

not unoften upon your good or bad digestion, upon the fact of your being closed in a room or free in the open air, upon the scenery around you, upon sun or shower. You do not notice it, but you think of different things in different ways according to conditions or situations which have nothing to do with your own self. So, I say, to have your thoughts coordinated, cohesive, logical, you would need a long, very long work in minute details. And then, that is the most important part of the thing, when you have come to a beautiful mental structure, well-shaped, very strong, very powerful, the first thing you will be told to do is that you must break it up, if you wish to be united with the Divine! And unless and until you have done that first part you cannot do the second part, unless you form yourself you cannot give yourself, you would have nothing to give to the Divine. You are nothing more than a mass of inchoate things which are not yourself. First you must exist, you must be, before you can give yourself.

At the present moment in the actual state of things what one can give to the Divine is one's body. But that is precisely the thing that one does not give. Yes, try to consecrate your work, your bodily labour; even there, there are so many things that are not true or correct.

You may naturally ask how to melt the body in the Divine? You say you understand somewhat melting the mind, melting the vital, thoughts and emotions, ideas and aspirations into the Divine, but the body? It cannot be melted as in a cauldron! And yet that is the only thing upon which you can put your personal name – although that too is only a convention – and say this is I. Of course if you look at yourself in a mirror, you see clearly you are not what you were twenty years ago, you are now quite different, quite unrecognisable. Still you have the perception that it is the same person, yourself. You can begin your giving by that which is most formed, most known to you as yourself.

I do not mean to confront you with complicated movements. What I say is this that if you speak of melting into the Divine or uniting with the Divine, you must first of all know what you are. You are apparently the ego. It is there. The ego is meant to make you conscious, an independent, individualised being – that is to say, you must not be a market place where all kinds of movements

Page 99

mingle and jostle; you must be able to exist in yourself. The ego is for that and that is why you have a skin, to form a closed circle (allowing, of course, things to infiltrate through its pores, so to say, but it must be at your will and bidding).

You must form yourself, you must be conscious of yourself – not in a general way but in every detail. Every detail of what you call yourself must be organised around one centre, your true self, the divine being in you, so that the whole may be a cohesive organised entity. When thus wholly conscious, harmoniously organised around the divine centre, then it can be wholly consecrated, united with the Divine: then the time comes, the Divine permits the true union to be made. When the individualisation is complete then He lets you merge your ego into the Divine, you live and exist for the Divine alone.

Page 100

Love Divine

"THE intensity of Divine Love does not produce any perturb­ation in any part of the being".¹ Why should it? If there is a perturbation, it is more likely that a different kind of love was in question. If it is Divine Love, there can be no perturbation, for each one receives it according to his capacity.

Divine Love is there in its full intensity, as a tremendous force. But most people, ninety-nine out of a hundred, feel nothing at all. What they feel is exactly in proportion to what they are, what they can receive and hold. Indeed, you are always bathed in an atmosphere vibrant with Divine Love. Sometimes, on rare occasions, for a few seconds perhaps, there is all on a sudden just the impression of something, and you say: "there, the Divine Love came to me!" Well, it is a way of saying: the true fact being that for some reason or other you happened to be just a little open and you had the perception of the thing that is always with you. The Love is there, the divine consciousness, too, is there in the same way. They are one, after all. They are there all the while; only you do not feel it or do so only spasmodically. Once in a way you find yourself, without any rhyme or reason as it were, in that happy state and you declare that the Divine Love has at last turned towards you! But, as I say, the matter is not like that. There came about an opening in you, perhaps no more than a pinpoint, and that was sufficient for the thing to rush in; for the atmosphere is surcharged with it and wherever there is a possi­bility of its being received, it is received. The same is true of all things divine. They are there: you do not receive or perceive them, because you are closed, shut off, blocked up. You are

¹ Sri Aurobindo: Elements of Yoga.

Page 101

occupied, most of the time with other things. You are full of yourself, packed with it, and there is no room for anything else. You are not merely passively filled with yourself, but very act­ively, you are furiously busy with yourself. How can you notice then the marvellous things that are about you, around you? You get a glimpse unawares, perhaps when you are asleep; but it fades away soon. Man's ego is a formidable thing; the whole universe, to him, is a mere function of the ego. You are the centre and the entire creation revolves around you. Such is your vision of the universe. You do not see it as it is; you see only yourself when you look at it.

To begin, then, you must be able to come out of your ego. You will have to enter, as the first step, into something like a state of inexistence. Thereafter only will you begin to see things as they are, that is to say, from a height. If you want to see things as they truly are, you must become absolutely like a mirror­ – silent, peaceful, immobile, impartial, with no preference, in a state of total receptivity. You will begin to see many things that did not seem to be there before, but only now becoming active. Well, you may very well have gone inside one of these things instead of being shut up into a minute spot in the infinite universe, which you call yourself. There are many ways by which you can come out of yourself. Anyhow that is the one thing to be done, if you wish to see the world as it is, not as it seems to be, a function of yourself.

Now to come out of the ego, you must have naturally, first of all, the will to do so. The surest way to do it is to give yourself to the Divine, not to pull the Divine towards you but to abandon yourself to Him. That is how you start forgetting yourself. Usually when people think of the Divine, the immediate impulse in them is to pull Him (or whatever they represent Him to be) towards themselves, within themselves. The result generally is that they receive nothing; and they grumble: "Oh, I called and called, I prayed and prayed, but there was no answer, I received nothing, nothing came." But before grumbling, ask yourself if you had offered yourself. You would find that instead of offering yourself you had pulled. Instead of being generous, open-handed and open-hearted, you were a miser, a beggar. When you pull you remain wholly within yourself, shut up, sealed within your ego. You raise a wall of separation between you and the thing

Page 102

that is around you and wants to come in, which is thus not admitted, almost deliberately refused entrance. You enclose yourself within a prison and grumble that you have nothing, feel nothing. At least if you had opened a window you would have had something of the light and air about you.

Page 103

(1)

To escape from life is a teaching based on the view that life is an illusion. The teaching began with Buddha. Buddha said that life or existence is the fruit of desire and that there was only one way of getting out of the misery, namely, to go out of existence. Shankara continued in that line. He added, however, that existence was not merely the fruit of desire, but that it was altogether an illusion and that so long as one lives in that illusion, one cannot realise the Divine. For him the Divine – the Supreme Divine – did not exist. I believe his view was something to that effect. In any case, for the Buddha there was no God.

Both of them came in contact with something true and real. Buddha had surely an inner contact with something which, in relation to the outer life, appeared to him as non-existence and in this non-existence all the consequences of existence disappeared. There is indeed such a state. And it is said that if you remain in that state for more than twenty days, you are sure to lose your body. I believe it is so, if the condition becomes exclusive. But also it can be an experience that remains behind, exists in a conscious way and yet not exclusively. In other words, the contact with the world and the outer consciousness is maintained and supported by something which is independent of them and free. It is a state in which you can make truly a great progress in your external consciousness; for then you can detach yourself from everything and act without attachment, without preference, in an inner freedom that expresses itself in the outer life. Once you have attained the inner freedom, this conscious contact with the eternal and the infinite, you must return to

Page 104

action without losing that consciousness and allow it to influence the whole of the consciousness turned to action.

That is what Sri Aurobindo calls bringing down the Force from above. That way lies the only chance of changing the world; for you seek there a new Force, a new domain, a new consciousness and you put that in contact with the external world. Its presence and its action will bring changes inevitably, a total transformation, we hope, in the external world.

(2)

There is no doubt that Buddha had the first part of the experience; but he never thought of the second part, for it was contrary to his own theory. That theory was that one must escape. And it is obvious that there is only one way of escaping and that is to die. And yet, as he had said it himself very well, one may die and yet remain attached to life and continue to be in the cycle of rebirths without having the liberation. As a matter of fact, it is through the successive sojourns upon earth that one grows till one arrives at this liberation. For him the ideal is that where the world exists no longer. It is as if he accused God of having committed an error by creating a world and the only thing to be done is to repair the error by annulling it. Naturally, being thoroughly reasonable and logical, he did not admit the existence of God. But then by whom was the error committed? When and how did it come about? He never answered these questionings. He simply said that the world began with desire and with the end of desire it must end.

He was on the verge of saying that the world was purely subjective, that is to say, a collective illusion, and if the illusion ceased the world would also cease. But he did not go so far. It was Shankara who took up the line and completed the teaching.

In the more ancient wisdom, however, if one goes back to the teaching of the Vedic Rishis, for example, one finds no idea of escape from the world; they sought a realisation upon earth and they even conceived of a golden age when this realisation would be achieved. .

It is without doubt since the teaching of Buddha that the idea of escape came in; and that has gradually undermined the vitality

Page 105

of the country for it meant an endeavour to cut oneself away from life. The outward reality became a false illusion and one should have nothing to do with it. The natural result was that one cut oneself away from the universal energy and so vitality went on diminishing, and with diminishing vitality, all possibility of terrestrial realisation also diminished.

(3)

Some say that the Buddha was an Avatar, others say he was not.

To use the names as known in India, I think it is the Avataras of Vishnu (the aspect of the Divine that builds and preserves), who come to prove that the Divine can live upon earth; whereas, each time that Shiva has manifested (the aspect that works to transform and destroy), it was in persons who have tried to fight against illusion and demolish what existed.

I have reasons to think that 'the Buddha manifested something of the Shiva power. It was the same compassion and comprehension of all misery and it was the same force that destroys, evidently with the intention of transforming, but destroying more than constructing.

His work does not seem to have been very constructive indeed. It was necessary to give a practical training to man not to be egoistic. In that way it proved to be useful.

But taken in its fundamental principle it has not helped much in the transformation of earth and earthly life. It has not encouraged the descent of a higher Consciousness into earthly life; instead it has very strongly encouraged the separation of the Consciousness, which he said was the only truth, from all external expression.

And as to the existence or manifestation of the Divine upon earth, they who believed in Buddha have now made him a God. You have only to look at the Buddhist temples and all their divinities to know that human nature has always the tendency to deify what it admires.

Page 106

The Significance of Dates

Does a particular date or a series £if dates carry any special significance?

THE way of framing a calendar is a convention. If the convention is made general, as there is an attempt now to do, it can become a very powerful formation. But in order to become significant for many, many must first accept it. I mean by a formation an image infused with a force that makes it something living, an image which can be used as a symbol. There are people who may form images and use them as symbols, but all is done only for themselves, as in the case of dream-symbols. These are purely subjective and valid in so far as those people are personally concerned.

But if your calendar is adopted by almost the whole of mankind, then the symbol is capable of acting upon a very wide field. You can act upon the major bulk population through this formation. As it is purely conventional, I repeat, it is fruitful only in the measure in which it has been accepted. If instead of millions of people who are now following the European calendar there were only three or four persons, then it would be symbolic only for these few. The thing itself has no value, its value depends upon the use you make of it.

The conventions are useful as symbols, I said, that is, they are a means to put you in contact with what is more subtle, to put what is material in contact with the more subtle. That is their use.

Here comes also the error which people make in respect of stars and horoscopes. For all that is simply a language and a convention. If you accept the convention you can use it for a particular world. But it has value and importance only in proportion to the number of people who believe in it. But if you

Page 107

simplify, the more you do so the more the thing becomes a superstition. For, what is superstition? It is the abuse of generalisation from a particular.

I always give the example of a person passing under a ladder. A man was working on its top rung and accidentally he dropped his instrument on the person below who got his head broken. The witness of this whole incident then made a general rule that to pass under a ladder was a bad sign. Well, it is superstition pure and simple.

In fact, much of our knowledge originates in the same way. Thus, a certain medicine is found, because of favourable circumstances, to cure a number of people suffering from a particular disease. Then it is announced that the medicine is an absolute remedy for that disease. But it is not true. If the same medicine is given to a hundred persons, it will affect them in a hundred different ways: sometimes the reactions are quite opposite. In no two cases will the result be similar. Therefore it is not the virtue of the medicine itself that effects that cure. It is a superstition to believe in the absolute efficacy of medicines.

But going further we can say that there is very little difference between science and superstition! The only difference is in the manner of expressing oneself. If you take care to say like the scientists, "it seems it is like that, one might conclude that things appear like that" etc., etc. then it is no longer superstition. But if you assert point-blank, "it is like that", then you land in superstition.

Page 108

The Value of Money

THE more money one has, the more one falls into a calamity. It is indeed a calamity, my children.

It is a catastrophe to have money. It makes you stupid, it makes you avaricious, it makes you wicked. It is one of the biggest calamities in the world. Money is a thing which one should not possess unless and until he is without desire, without attachment. When one has a consciousness as wide as the earth, then only one can have all the money there is upon earth and that would be good for everybody. But until then as much money as you have, so much the curse there is upon you. I will tell this to the face of everybody, even to the face of the man who considers it a merit to be rich. It is a calamity; it is also perhaps a disgrace, a fall from the Divine Grace, the expression of a Divine discontent.

It is infinitely more difficult to be rich and also to be wise, intelligent and generous – to be generous, please note, – when one is rich than when one is poor. I have seen and known many persons in many countries; the most generous persons were always the poorest. As soon as the pocket becomes full, you are seized as if with a malady, a sordid attachment to money. I assure you it is a malediction.

So the first thing to do when one has money is to give it away. But as you should know, it must not be given without discrimination. Do not give it in the way a philanthropist does; for that only fills him with the sense of his kindness, his generosity, his importance. You must do it with a sattwic sense, that is to say, see where is the best possible use of it. Everyone then has to find in his own consciousness, the highest consciousness he has, what is the best possible use of the money one has.

As a matter of fact, money has value only so far as it is in circulation.

Page 109

For each and everyone money has worth only if and when it is spent. Man has taken care to choose for money a material that does not deteriorate, gold and silver, for example, but all the same it rots, from the moral point of view, if it does not circulate. Nowadays paper is used in place of metal, but if you keep the bundle of paper in your drawer, you will find in course of time all your hoarding worn out, eaten up. Worms and insects would present you with a lace-work that your banks would refuse to accept!

There are peoples and religions who say that God makes those poor whom he loves. I do not know if it is true, but one thing that is true is this that when one is born rich or when one becomes rich, in any case when one has much, that is to say, in material wealth, it is certainly not a sign that the Divine has chosen him for His Grace; he must needs make a good deal of amende honorable if he is to walk on the straight road, the true path towards the Divine.

Wealth is a force; it is, I told you once already, a force of Nature. It should be a means of circulation, a power in movement, even as water that flows is a power in movement. It is something which serves to produce, to organise. It is a convenient means – for at bottom it is only a means – for the full and free circulation of commodities. And this force must be in the hands of those who know how to make the best possible use of it, in other words, in the hands, as I have already said, of those who have abolished in them, who are somehow freed from all personal desires, all attachments. To that must be added also a vision wide enough to understand the needs of the earthly life, a complete knowledge capable of organising those needs and using this force to meet them.

Over and above this, if such people possess a higher spiritual consciousness, then they can use the force to build slowly upon earth something that will be able to manifest the Divine Power and the Divine Grace. It is then that this force of money, of wealth, this power of Finance, instead of being a curse, as I have said, would be a blessing for the welfare of all. The saying goes that it is the worst people who become the best. I hope the best do not become the worst, for that would be sad indeed.

The greatest power, when used ill, can be a very great calamity; the same power used well can be a blessing.

Page 110

All depends on the use that is made of a thing. Each object has a place, a function, a true use in the world. In the world as it is, however, very few things are used for their true purpose, very few things are in their right place. The world is in a frightful chaos. That is why there is all this misery, all this suffering. If each thing were in its own place, all in a harmonious poise, the whole world would progress without any necessity of falling into the state of misery and suffering in which it is now.

Page 111

COLLECTIVE meditation, of which the most external form is collective prayer, has been practised since ancient times for different reasons, in different ways, and with different purposes. Groups of persons, whether belonging to the same Church or not, come together to express a common feeling; in certain cases, it is to sing together in praise of God, to chant a hymn of gratitude, expressing love, adoration, thankfulness. In other cases, there are many historical examples of this – people gather together for a common invocation, to ask something from the Divine in the hope that a prayer done collectively will have more effect than an individual prayer. Thus, in Europe prophets announced that in the year one thousand of grace there would be the end of the world; everywhere crowds assembled to implore the divine protection and to pray that the catastrophe might be averted. More recently in modern times, when the king of England, George VI, had an attack of pneumonia and was almost on the point of death, the British people gathered not only in churches but even in the streets in front of the royal palace, to pray in common and to ask God to save their king. This is of course a most external form, I could say, a most worldly meditation in community. Besides, in all groups of Initiation, in all spiritual schools of ancient times and naturally in modern times also, meditation in community has always been practised; here the purpose is evidently very different. People gather together to make a collective progress, to open themselves to a force, a light and an influence; it is somewhat like that which we all try to do here. There are two ways to proceed, and both are excellent. For individual meditation, first of all, one must prepare to meditate, that is to say, after sitting down in a posture, at the same time comfortable enough not to be too

Page 117

cramped, – and not too comfortable either lest you should fall asleep, one establishes the calm and the silence, not only externally but internally and then one gathers as far as possible one's consciousness which is generally dispersed in all kinds of thoughts and preoccupations. One brings back the consciousness as completely as one can, and concentrates it in the region of the heart, towards the solar plexus, so that all the active energies which are in the head, all which make the brain active are turned and concentrated on this point. This may be done in a few seconds, or in a few minutes. It depends upon each one; when you have prepared yourself in this way, you have the choice between two attitudes: active and passive.

What I call an active attitude is to concentrate on the person who guides the meditation with the will to open yourself to receive what is being given to you or to the force with which you are put in contact. It is active, because here there is a will which acts and an active concentration to open yourself to someone or something.

The passive attitude is simply this: after having concentrated in the way I told you, to open yourself as one opens the door: imagine that in the centre of the heart there is a door, then you open the door and remain still and silent in expectation, Naturally, you may use any other similar image; for example, the image of a book that you open completely, a book with all the pages white, that is to say, very peaceful and then wait for what happens.

These two attitudes are equally effective; you may adopt one or the other, according to the day, according to the occasion, according to the mood you feel disposed to. Or you may adopt one and hold to it if it is easier for you and if it is more advantageous.

Now, in our special case, I will tell you what I am trying to do.

It is now nearly one year that we had one Wednesday the Manifestation of the Supramental Force. Since that moment the Power is working very actively, even if very few people are able to perceive it; and I think that the time has come now to help it as much as we can by making an effort towards collective receptivity. Of course, the Force is not only acting in the Ashram, it is acting in the whole world and everywhere;

Page 118

wherever there is receptivity it is working; the Ashram does not have exclusive monopoly or receptivity in the world. But as we are all here, knowing more or less what has happened, we can collectively, – individually I hope everyone is doing his best to profit by the circumstances – facilitate its action by trying to unify the ground, produce a particularly fertile soil, so that the maximum of collective receptivity may be obtained and that there be the least possible wastage of time and energy.

Now that you have been warned, it is for you to make an effort in this direction.

Page 119

THE psychic is like an electric wire that connects the generator with the lamp; the lamp being the body, the visible form. Its function is likewise, that is to say, if the psychic were not there in Matter, it could have no direct contact with the Divine. It is because of the psychic presence that there can be a direct contact between Matter and the Divine. And every human being can be told: "You carry the Divine within you, you have only to enter within yourself and you will find Him." It is a direct, special transmuting infusion into the most inconscient and obscure Matter to awaken it once more step by step to the Divine Consciousness, the Divine Presence and finally the Divine Himself.

It is a thing characteristic of earthly creatures. It is a speciality of the earth. But only in the human being does the psychic become more conscious, more formed and also more independent; it is there individualised. It is the presence of the psychic that makes of man an exceptional being, so much so that beings of other domains in the universe, those, for example, belonging to what Sri Aurobindo calls the Overmind, the demi-gods and even the gods are very eager to take a physical body upon earth so that they can have the experience of the psychic. These beings possess certainly many qualities which men have not, but they lack this direct Divine Presence which is quite exceptional, which is a fact of the earth and is found nowhere else. All these inhabitants of the higher worlds, of Higher Mind and Overmind and other regions do not possess a psychic being.

Naturally, the beings of the vital world do not have it either. They do not regret it, they do not want it. In their origin, of course, they descended directly from the Divine, but that was only in their origin and it is so long ago. Now they have no direct contact with the Divine within them, they do not have

Page 120

the psychic being. If they had converted themselves under these conditions nothing would have remained of them, because they are made wholly of the opposite movement. They are entirely made of self-assertion, despotic power, alienation from the origin and the utmost disdain for all that is pure and beautiful and noble. Those only, very rare, among them who wish to be converted do one thing immediately: take a physical body. But others do not want it; that ties them, restricts them to a rule which they defy.

It is a fact – I do not like to say it often to him, for he has such a high opinion of himself that he needs no encouragement, but it is a fact and hence I am obliged to state – that man has this exceptional virtue of having in him the psychic being. But to tell you the truth he does not seem to turn it to good account, he does not appear to consider it at all as a desirable thing, so far as one can judge from the manner in which he treats this Presence. He prefers to it his mental ideas, he prefers to it his vital desires, he prefers to it his bodily habits.

There is a story in the Bible which I always liked. Two brothers were there, Esau and Jacob. Esau returns home hungry and tells his brother Jacob that he is very hungry. He was so hungry that he proposed to his brother, "Listen, if you give me your dish of pottage (Jacob had prepared a dish of pottage) I will give over to you my birthright." One can understand the story in quite a superficial way. But it has a deeper meaning. The birthright is the right of being the son of God. And the man was ready to give up his divine right in order to eat because he was hungry. It is a very old story, but it is eternally true.

At its origin, the psychic begins by a kind of a divine spark within oneself, a spark of the divine consciousness. Out of this spark will slowly emerge an independent conscious being which will have its own action and its own will

The progress of the psychic consists in its formation, building and organisation. It grows into a conscious individuality through successive lives; for there can be progress only upon earth, in the physical world; it is not possible everywhere. In the psychic

Page 121

world there is a kind of rest, full of beatitude. One remains there as one is, still, without moving.

The progress is like the progress of a child that grows. It is a continuous growth. For a long time, in most human beings the psychic is a continuously growing entity. It is not a fully individualised, fully conscious being and master of itself. It needs to be born in many lives one after another so that it may build itself and become fully conscious.

But that has an end. There comes a moment when the being is fully built up fully individualised, fully master of itself and its destiny. When one such psychic being incarnates in a human body, it makes a great difference. This human being is, so to say, born free; he is not bound to circumstances or surroundings or heredity like ordinary human beings. He comes into the world and he has the impression that he has come purposely to accomplish something, he has a work to do, a mission to fulfil.

From that point of view the progress of his growth has ended. That is to say, it is no longer necessary for him to be reborn in a body. Till then reincarnation was obligatory. For it is in the physical life and in the physical body that he grows little by little until he becomes a wholly conscious being. But once he is completely formed, he is free, in the sense that he can, at will, take a body or not take it.

When a psychic being incarnates, it precipitates itself down into the inconscience, because the physical world and even a human consciousness, whatever it may be, are very unconscious in comparison with the psychic consciousness. It is as if it fell on its head and it is stunned. Generally, but for some rare exceptions, for a long time it knows nothing; it does not know where it is, what it does, nor why it is there, nothing. It is in a great difficulty to express itself, especially in a baby who has not a brain but only the embryo of a brain. So it is very rare for a child to show that it contains within itself an exceptional being. That happens, but generally it takes time.

The psychic awakes slowly from its dazed condition and slowly it becomes aware that it is there for some reason and by choice. But the intensive mental education that one usually receives shuts out completely the psychic consciousness. Then a

Page 122

mass of circumstances, happenings of all kinds, emotions and sensations and various other things are needed to open the inner doors and to enable one to begin to remember – remember that one has come from another world, one has come for a very definite reason. If the psychic however had chanced to fall upon a little knowledge instead of falling into a world of ignorance, there could have been a quicker contact.

There are not very many fully developed souls upon earth. Evidently those who have reached a certain culture, a certain growth, a certain individualisation have instinctively the tendency to come together and form groups. It is then that we come across in particular epochs and climes fully formed beings gathering together. But you must not believe that that gives in any way the exact measure of human culture and growth. That is only a spray of foam on the surface. Even among those who already form a selection, there is not perhaps one in a thousand who can be called truly an individual being, conscious of himself, united with his psychic being, governed by his inner law and therefore partially at least if not wholly free from external influences; because being a conscious entity when these influences come he sees them, those that seem to agree with his inner growth and normal development he accepts and those that contradict he rejects. And instead of being a chaos, or in any case a frightful mixture, he is an organised individual being, conscious of himself, moving in life, knowing where he wants to go and how to go.

That is the best of mankind that Nature is capable of producing. They are men still, but the top of mankind. They are ready to become something else. But unless and until one becomes that, one remains in greater part an animal with only just a little beginning of manhood. It is only that that one can call Man. And I am saying this in the hope that you will become such a one.

Page 123

(1)

WHEN you are in a certain set of circumstances and when certain things happen, these things often go against your desire or against what appears to you best. And you regret and say: "Oh! How much better it would have been had it been otherwise!" It does not matter whether the thing concerned is small or big.

The years pass, events roll on. You progress, become more conscious, understand better. And when you look back, you discover, at first with surprise, later on with a smile, that the special circumstances which once appeared to you disastrous or unfavourable were just the very best thing that could have happened for your needed progress. And if you were a little wiser you would say, "Truly, the Divine Grace is infinite!"

And when this happens to you a good number of times, you begin to understand that in spite of man's blindness and wrong appearances, the Grace is at work everywhere and because of the Grace it is the best possible that happens in the state where the world is at a given moment.

It is because our vision is limited or because we are blinded by our preferences that we are unable to discover why things are as they are. But when one begins to see one enters into that state of wonder which nothing can describe. Behind the appearances one finds this infinite, marvellous, all-powerful Grace that knows everything, organises everything, arranges everything, and leads us, whether we want it or not, whether we know it or not, towards the supreme goal, the union with the Divine, the awareness of the Divine Consciousness and becoming one with it.

Thus living in the action and the presence of the Grace one

Page 124

lives a life full of delight and wonder, the sense of a marvellous power and at the same time, full of a quiet and complete trust which nothing can shake.

Whatever may be the faith and the trust you have in the Divine Grace, whatever your capacity of seeing it at work in all circumstances, at every moment and at all points of life, you can never fully understand the marvellous immensity of its action and the precision and the exactitude with which it works. Never shall one grasp in what degree the Grace does everything, is behind everything, organises everything in order that the advance towards the divine realisation may be as swift, as complete, as total as it can be under the given circumstances of the world.

As soon as you come in contact with it, you find that there is not a second in time, not a point in space which does not show in a signal manner this ceaseless work of the Grace, its constant intervention. And once you have seen that, you feel you are never up to the mark. For you must never forget that you must not have fear or anguish or regret or recoil or even suffering. If you were in union with this Grace, if you saw it everywhere, you would begin to live a life of exultation, all power and infinite happiness. And that would be the best possible collaboration in the Divine Work.

(2)

THERE is a time when one becomes conscious enough to see that things in themselves are neither good nor bad. What they are and what their effects are upon us depends entirely upon the attitude that we have towards them. The same thing, the same circumstance, identically the same, if taken as a gift from God, as a Divine Grace, as the effect of a total harmony, helps us to become more conscious, more strong and more true. On the other hand, taken as a blow given by Fate, as a bad force that seeks to hurt us it will serve only to diminish us, make us dull and heavy; it will take away our consciousness, our force and the harmony.

I wish you all to have this experience. For when you have it, you become master of yourself, not only master of yourself, but

Page 125

master of the circumstances of your life, at least so far as they concern you personally. And that depends exclusively on the attitude that you take. It is not an experience that passes through your head (it may begin there); it is an experience that may happen even in your body. Its completion however needs much labour for concentration, self-mastery, for driving the consciousness into Matter. The result of a shock received by the body from outside will vary according to the manner in which the body receives it. And the body can be so perfected in this line that you become master of accidents.

This power some have, fully developed and realised in the mind, the power, namely, to act upon the outer circumstances so that they are altogether changed when they act upon you. This power can come down into matter, into the physical substance itself, in the cells of the body and give to the body the same control over surrounding things. That is sure to come. This opens before you fresh horizons; it is one step on the way towards transformation.

If you are truly in a state of intense aspiration there is no circumstance that will not serve to help you in the realisation of your aspiration. All will come to help you, as if it were the perfect and absolute Consciousness that organised all things around you.

And you in your external ignorance may not recognise it, may at first protest against the circumstances as they come to you, may grumble and try even to change them. But after a time you will have become wiser, with a little distance put in between the event and yourself, you will find out that that was just the thing necessary for you to make the required progress. It is a Will, a supreme Good Will that arranges everything around you.

If you say to the Divine with conviction, "I want you alone", the Divine will arrange all circumstances in such a way as to oblige you to be sincere. Something in you says, "I want nothing but you", and then all the while you want a hundred different things. Usually it is one thing particularly that comes

Page 126

and troubles you and prevents you from realising your aspiration. Well, the Divine will come without showing himself, without even your suspecting it and He will arrange circumstances in such a way that whatever prevents you from being solely given to the Divine, will be inevitably removed from your path. And then when all such things are removed you begin to complain and shout. But subsequently, if you are sincere, you remember that you said to the Divine that you belonged to Him alone. And then He will remain with you, all the rest will pass. That is the greater Grace.

Only you must say it with conviction – I do not mean that it has to be immediately integral, for if it is integral, the work is already done but that the central will of the being must say with conviction, "I want nothing but you." Even once would be sufficient. That may take time more or less, sometimes it may extend to years, but you reach your goal. You are certain to reach.

If you want a precise thing, if you have a special reason for invoking the Grace, you must formulate your prayer exactly and clearly. Naturally, if you are in a state of complete surrender, if you are giving yourself, offering yourself wholly, simply to the Grace and you let it work as it wants, there is nothing to say, it is all right. But after a time you must not begin to question about what it has done, you must not say, "I did that with the idea of getting this". Indeed if you have in you the idea of getting something then it is better to formulate the thing sincerely and simply, just as you see it. Thereafter it is for the Grace to choose, whether it will do or not do as you want. In any case, you have clearly formulated your desire and there is nothing bad in that. It becomes bad only when it is not granted and you revolt. You must understand at that moment that the desire or the aspiration that one has may not be very enlightened and that one might ask for a thing that is not exactly good for oneself. So one must be wise and say, "Let Thy Will be done".

But so long as you have an inner perception and a choice of your own, there is no harm in formulating it. It is quite a natural movement. For example, if you have committed a fault and wish sincerely not to repeat it, I do not see any harm in asking

Page 127

for it. On the contrary, if you ask for it with a true inner sincerity, there is a great chance of its being granted. You must not believe that the Divine likes to contradict you. He is not at all particular about it. Only He may know better what exactly is good for you. He contradicts your aspiration only when it is absolutely indispensable. Otherwise he is always ready to grant you what you want.

If you have a very powerful imagination, and you build up a formation of your desire in all details and if the structure is well made, complete and existing by itself, then you may be sure that if you live long enough the thing will be realised. What is not put at the disposal of men is the time it takes: it may be tomorrow, it may be the next moment, or it may take years and even centuries, but it will be realised.

If to this power of imagination you can add a kind of creative power of the vital, then you raise a wholly living force. Like all living forces tending towards manifestation, this force too will exercise a pressure upon earthly events in order to realise itself and it will realise itself.

Only personal desires and personal circumstances are things that are not persistent or stable. After a time, a thing that interested you very much does not interest you any more: you think of another thing, you have another desire, you make another formation. But if the earlier formation had been well thought out and built up, then after having followed its course in space it would have realised itself. You are put in front of your first desire now realised while you have already embarked upon your second, or may be your third, or your fourth. You say then almost indignantly, "But I do not want that, why does it come to me?" – without however taking into account the fact that it is the result of your previous action.

But if instead of being desires these are aspirations for things spiritual, and if you follow your line of regular progression, then it is absolutely certain that you will get one day what you have imagined. It may be sooner, or it may be later if there are very many obstacles on the way. For example, if you have made a formation that is still foreign to the earth's atmosphere, then it may take some time to prepare the conditions for its appearance.

Page 128

But if it is something already realised many times upon earth and not too radical a transformation, then you can have it quickly, provided you follow the line with persistence.

And if to that now you add the ardour of faith and trust in the Divine Grace and that self-giving to the Grace which makes you wait upon the Divine for everything, then it becomes a formidable matter. You can see before your eyes things happening more and more, the most wonderful things realised one after another.

But there are conditions to fulfil: a great purity must be there and a great intensity in the self-giving and that absolute trust in the supreme wisdom of the Divine Grace which knows better than us what is truly good for ourselves. If the aspiration is offered to That and the offering is made truly and with enough intensity, the result will be marvellous.

But then you must be able to see. When things are realised, most often people find that quite natural; they do not care to see even why and how it has so happened; they simply say, "Yes, but of course it had to be so." And thus they lose the joy of gratefulness. After all, if one can be full of gratefulness and gratitude for the Divine Grace, then that is the last thing; you begin to see that at every step things are exactly what they should be and the very best that can be. It is then that Sachchidananda begins to gather Himself and refashion His Unity.

Page 129

(1)

LOVE, in its essence, is the joy of identity. It finds its final expression in the felicity of union. Between the two there are all the phases that make up the universal manifestation.

Love comes from the very origin of the universe. Love in its essence, I say, that is, before the manifestation, is the delight of identity. Something there was which became conscious of the identity. And that is precisely Love. Afterwards comes the manifestation of Love. In its highest form, when it comes back to its origin across all its history of manifestation, it becomes the felicity of union. The sense of union comes as a consequence of the sense of separation. The passage through the whole manifested universe gives the sense of separation from the origin and the return to the origin is the felicity of reunion – union of two things which were separated and are united again. That is Love in its great circuit of manifestation.

When it climbs back to its origin, it returns to the starting point with something more than what it had before it started. It is the experience of the universe and universality. Fundamentally, that is the reason for the existence of creation. Consciousness would not be what it is had it not been expressed in a creation. There is an enrichment of consciousness through the experience gathered in an objective universe, a richness of content and a plenitude it would not have if there were not a manifested universe.

The return movement of creation is not a thing that happens in time. It is difficult to conceive, because for us things are suceessive. But if one could conceive a movement as a whole .embracing everything, which would be at the same time the

Page 130

beginning and the end, and contain all, it would then be not a return in time, but a return in consciousness.

If there were not the circuit, there would never be the Ananda of union, there would be only the Ananda of identity. And it is precisely in order that this Ananda of identity may find its culmination and crowning in the Ananda of union that the whole circuit has been done.

The very moment when the individual consciousness moved away from its divine origin and remained no longer identified with the movement of the divine consciousness, the sense of separation was created. The individual consciousness did not separate wilfully, but it remained no longer identified. Not being identified, the Divine Consciousness followed a certain movement and the individual consciousness followed another, and naturally they drifted apart from each other more and more. Let us say, as an image, that the Divine Consciousness advances at a certain speed and the individual consciousness, not having remained united with it, could not keep pace with it and therefore fell back more and more, far behind. The Divine moves forward, the individual stops; when the individual moves, the Divine flies. When the individual takes one step, the Divine leaps. That increases the gap of separation more and more. It is this original separation that has produced others in its train and these separations all together have created the universal misery, at least the earthly misery as we know it.

It all began by a separation in the consciousness and it ended by a separation in respect of the worlds and their elements, by a division that we witness down to the material nature. The separation in consciousness has produced the separation of forms and the separation of forms has induced pain and suffering. Now, therefore, there are these countless objects that lie about divided and separated from one another. Since, however, the universe had to be a progressive thing, the bliss of identity, the full consciousness of this identity had necessarily to be veiled, otherwise nothing would have moved.

Evidently, if the sense of unity were reestablished, the miseries would disappear. But if you realised the perfect identity and the whole universe in its totality realised this absolute unity in which

Page 131

there is no possibility of any distinction, then there would be no universe at all, it would be the return to Pralaya. The solution then is to find Ananda in the play of mutual exchange and union.

What has been projected into space and time must be brought back to itself, without thereby annulling the world so created. That is why Love burst forth as the irresisitible power of Union. It soared over darkness and unconsciousness, it scattered itself, pulverised itself into the bosom of unfathomable night. It is then that the awakening and the ascension began the slow formation in and out of Matter and a progress without end.

(2)

There is a state of consciousness in which one experiences the Divine Love everywhere. One does not feel then a great difference between one creature and another except in their physical appearance. Even in unconsciousness and immobility, the apparently complete inertia – of the stone, for example – can be found a dazzling light, the light of the divine Presence. There is much more aspiration than one thinks in objects that are usually called inanimate. In the stone precisely there is a spontaneous sense of what is there high above and although it cannot express it, it feels the thing and that affects it although in different ways. In the stone, in things and objects, there is a strange receptivity that comes from this Presence.

You can take what you call a precious stone and concentrate a force or forces in it. It retains them. These forces radiate afterwards very slowly, but increasingly, progressively. And if you know how to do it, you can charge it with a quantity of force quite enough to last almost indefinitely so to say. There are stones that serve as intermediaries of union, stones that serve as accumulators of energy and stones that may serve as foretellers of circumstances, they may carry messages. Therefore, as they can serve as accumulators, it means that they carry in themselves the source of the Force itself, otherwise they would not be receptive.

It is a force of this kind that is the origin of the phenomenon of crystallisation. Crystals gather together in matter, it is already a movement of love. Stones that crystallise, rock crystals, for

Page 132

example, form wonderful designs, so magnificent in their absolute harmony; that comes because of only one thing – the Force of Love.

You do not see the thing, because you have not the inner sensibility. But once you have the direct perception of the forces of love behind things you see that it is everywhere the same. And you can even come to understand what man-made manufactured things tell you.

The movement is quite perceptible in the vegetable kingdom, in the tree and the plant. These trees that rise up and up always, the small ones trying to catch up with the big ones, the big ones endeavouring to mount still further! The plants always seek to find out a direction from where they can receive as much light as possible. It is the need to grow in order to get more light, more air, more space.

When you see a rose opening out to the sun, it is as if it were for the need of giving away its beauty. For us it is unintelligible, for flowers do not think out what they do. A human being always associates with what he does the capacity to see what he does, to think what he does. But flowers I are not, so to say, conscious at all, theirs is a spontaneous movement. It is a mighty Force that is at work through all this, the great universal Consciousness, the great force of universal Love that makes all things flower in beauty.

It is said the tiger's need to devour is one of the first expressions of love in the world. What is likely to prove that this is not quite false is that when a tiger or a serpent catches its victim, the victim usually gives himself up in a kind of delight of being eaten. A testimony comes in the experience of a man in the following true story. He happened to be in the midst of bushes with his comrades. He was a little behind, away from others and a tiger caught hold of him. The others returned when they noticed that he had disappeared. They found and followed the traces and arrived just in time to save him from the jaws of the tiger. When he had recovered a little, he was asked what a terrible experience he must have had! He replied that it was nothing of the kind: "Just imagine, I don't know what happened to me, but as soon as the tiger seized me and began to drag me along the ground, I felt an intense love for him and a great desire that he should eat me up." This is, I say, a true story.

Page 133

As a matter of fact, long before the tiger came on the scene, there must have been early creatures dwelling at the bottom of the sea that had only one function, the stomach. They existed only as stomachs and their only activity was to swallow. One may say that these are the first expressions of love seeping through matter. For, before that there was nothing, except perfect inconscience, complete immobility, nothing was moving. It is with love that movement began, consciousness awakened, transformation started. Love is the power of the world.

The need to swallow is a primitive way of uniting with things, but it is a very direct way, you swallow and you absorb the thing. The tiger takes a great joy in the thing; there is a joy and that is already a higher form of love.

If you want to know what love is, you must love the Divine. It is a very well-known fact that in the end you become just like the thing you love. If you love the Divine, by the force of this love, little by little, you will become more and more like the Divine. And then one can identify oneself with the divine Love and know what it is, you cannot know it in any other way.

Necessarily, the love between two human beings is always made of ignorance, misunderstanding, weakness and a terrible sense of isolation. It would be as if you wanted to gain entrance into the presence of a unique Splendour and the first thing you do is to put a screen between yourself and this Splendour and you are very much astonished that you do not have even a vague impression of it! The first thing then to do is to do away with the screen, pass through and stand in the presence of the Splendour. Then you know what it is. But if you go on piling veil after veil between yourself and That, you will never see it. You may have just a vague impression, "there is something" and that is all.

One of the highest expressions of love in human beings is the giving of oneself entirely to the person loved. That is to say, to sacrifice oneself for the motherland, give one's life in defending another person, etc. This may not be the very highest form, but it is already something. From there you have to climb very high up to arrive at the true expression which is on the summit of the ascent. The ultimate expression of love is in the felicity of union.

That brings us to the symbol of Krishna and Radha. Krishna

Page 134

is he of whom Sri Aurobindo speaks as the divine Flute-player, that is to say, the immanent and universal Divine who is the supreme power of attraction. Radha is the name given to the soul, the psychic personality responding to the call of the Fluteplayer.

Radha consciousness is essentially the way in which the individual answers to the divine call. Sri Aurobindo describes it as the capacity to find Ananda in all things through identification with the one divine Presence and through total self-giving to this Presence. That has the power of changing everything into perpetual ecstasy. Instead of seeing things in their apparent discord, you see the Presence alone, the Will and the Grace in all things. And every event, every element, every circumstance, every form changes into a way, a detail through which you can approach more intimately and more profoundly the Divine. The discordances disappear, the uglinesses vanish, there remains only the splendour of the divine presence in the Love that radiates in all things.

(3)

Love for the Divine means an exclusive attachment to the divine Reality. This concentration finds its culmination in an integral identification and is instrumental to the supramental realisation upon earth.

Love alone is capable of putting an end to the suffering of the world. Only the ineffable delight of Love in its essence can wipe out of the universe the burning pain of separation. For it is only in the ecstasy of the supreme union that creation will discover the reason of its existence and its fulfilment.

It is this marvellous state that we wish to realise upon earth. It is this that will be able to transform the world, make of it a dwelling place worthy of the divine Presence. And then only Love, true and pure, will incarnate in a body that will no longer be a disguise or a veil. That is why no effort is too arduous, no austerity too rigorous to illumine, perfect, transform the physical substance so that it no more hides the Divine, when the Divine takes an external form through Love. For, then there will be freely manifested in the world that marvellous divine Kindness that can change life into a paradise of the sweetest delight.

Page 135

The Divine Love is there with all its intensity, with all its tremendous power. But most people do not feel anything. What they feel is exactly proportionate to what they are and what they are capable of receiving.

Just imagine that you are bathed in an atmosphere wholly vibrant with divine love. But you perceive nothing of it. Sometimes, rarely, all on a sudden you get the impression of something. Then you say: "Oh! Divine Love came to me!" It may seem to be an illusion, but the simple thing is that for some reason or other you were open just a little and you perceived the Thing. But it is always there.

The Divine Consciousness also means the same thing. This too is there in its full intensity. Yet people do not perceive it or perceive only spasmodically. But at one moment you happen to be in a good condition, you feel something and say: "Oh! the Divine Consciousness appeared to me." But, as I said, it is not quite that. When you have a small opening, sometimes even like that of a pinhead, it rushes into you, for it is an active atmosphere. Whenever there is a possibility of its being received, it is received.

It is the same thing with regard to all divine things. They are all there.

Only you do not receive them, because you are closed up, blocked up. And you are very actively occupied with other things all the while. All the while you are full of yourself. As you are full of yourself, there is no place for the Divine. But He is there.

All wonderful things are there around you: You do not see them, or see them occasionally only, at a moment when you are a little more receptive, or perhaps in sleep, when you are less exclusively occupied with your petty affairs. Then a light comes to you of something; you see, you feel something. But generally, as soon as you wake up, all that is obliterated by the formidable ego that is full of itself.

If you look at yourself closely you will see that it is always like that. Your vision of the universe is this: that you are at the centre and the universe is around you. It is not the universe that you see but you see yourself in the universe. So there is no room for any other thing.

The surest means of reestablishing the right perspective is to

Page 136

give yourself to the Divine. Then you are obliged to come out of yourself a little at least to begin with.

Generally, when people think of the Divine, the first thing they do is to pull as much as they can and they receive nothing. They tell you: "Oh, I have called, I have prayed and I have had no answer". If they are asked: "Have you offered yourself?", they reply: "No, I have pulled." "But that is why you have not received." It is not that the answer did not come. But when you pull, you are so much shut up within your ego that you raise a wall between what is to be received and yourself. You confine yourself within a prison and yet you are astonished that in your prison you feel nothing.

Throw yourself out of yourself. Give yourself without holding back anything, simply for the joy of the self-giving. Then there is a chance of your feeling something.

When you do not ask whether you are loved or you are not loved, when you are absolutely indifferent to that, then only there is the beginning of true love.

You love because you love, not because you receive an answer to your love, or because the other person loves you. You love because you cannot do otherwise than love. You do not pay any attention to what may happen. You are perfectly satisfied with your feeling of love. You love because you love. Everything else is bargaining, it is not love.

Besides, it is sure and certain that as soon as you are truly in love, you do not put the question any more. It is so childish, ridiculous and insignificant to put the question. As soon as you are truly in love, you have the entire plenitude of delight and realisation. You do not need any kind of response. You are the Love. That is all. You have the full satisfaction of love. And there is no need of reciprocity.

(4)

"To become conscious if the Divine Love, you must abandon all other love." What is the best way of rejecting "the other love" which is so obstinate in its denial and which does not leave you easily ?

To pass through – yes, pass through and see what is behind, not to stop short at the appearance, not to rest satisfied with the

Page 137

external form, but to look for the principle that is behind the love, not to be satisfied until you have found the source of the feeling in you. Then the external form will fall away of itself and you will be in contact with the Divine Love that is behind everything. That is the best way. To try to reject one to find the other is very difficult, almost impossible. Because human nature is so limited, so full of contradictions and so exclusive in its movements that if you want to reject love in its lower form, that is to say, human love as human beings feel it, if you force yourself towards rejecting that, then generally you reject even the capacity to feel love and you become as it were a stone. Then sometimes you have to wait for years or even centuries for the capacity of receiving and manifesting love to reawaken in you.

Therefore the best means is, when love comes in any form whatsoever, to try to pierce through its external appearance, to find out the divine principle that is behind and that is the cause of its existence. Naturally it is full of snares and difficulties, but it is the most effective. In other words, instead of ceasing to love, because you love in the wrong way, you must cease to love in the wrong way and try to love in the right way. For example, the love between human creatures, in all its forms, the love of the parents for their children, of the children for their parents, the love between brothers, between lovers, all are tainted with ignorance and egoism and every other fault that is the common human fault. So, instead of ceasing altogether to love, which is besides very difficult, as it will simply dry up the heart and therefore serve no purpose, you must learn to love with devotion and self-giving and self-abnegation, you are to fight not against love itself but against its deformities. All forms of appropriation, the sense of possession, jealousy, all other feelings that accompany and support these root feelings are to be rejected. Instead you must not seek to possess, dominate, impose your will or caprice or desire, must not be eager to take and receive, but to give. Do not demand a return from the other, but be satisfied with your own love; do not seek your interest, your personal pleasure, the fulfilment of your own desire but rest content with your love and affection, do not ask for a response, but remain happy with loving only, nothing more.

If you have done that, you have taken a big step, and then through that attitude, little by little you may progress more into

Page 138

the feeling itself, and you will find one day that love is not a personal thing, love is a divine universal feeling that manifests through you as well as it can, but it is in its essence a divine thing.

The first step then is to cease to be egoistic. It is the same rule for all, not only for those who want to do Yoga, but even in ordinary life, if you want to love, truly, first of all you must not love yourself and particularly do not love in an egoistic way; you must give yourself to the object of your love without asking for anything in return. This is the very elementary discipline, if you are to transcend yourself, and live a life that is not wholly commonplace.

In Yoga, you add something more. It is, as I have said, the will to pierce through this limited and human form of love and discover the principle of Divine Love that is there behind; it is there then that you are sure to arrive at a result. That is better than drying up one's heart. It is more difficult perhaps, but it is always better because, by so doing, you do not make others suffer egoistically, you leave others to their own movements, you concern yourself with your own transformation, without imposing your will upon others and that, even in ordinary life, is a step towards something that is a little higher and more harmonious.

Page 139

How Can Time Be a Friend?

IT depends on the way you look at it. It depends on the relation you have with it. If you take it as a friend, it becomes a friend, if you consider it as an enemy, it becomes an enemy.

But, perhaps, what you wanted to ask is how to feel when it is an enemy and when it is a friend. Well, when you are impatient and say, "Oh, I cannot get to the end of the thing, oh, when shall I finish it?" and when you are not able to do the thing immediately and get desperate, then time is your enemy. But when you say, "Well and good, I have not done it this time, I shall do it next time, and I am sure, one day or another, I shall do it," then it becomes your friend.

Is time merely subjective or is there something concrete, something like a personality in it?

Perhaps this also depends on how you look at it. All forces are personal forces, all forces of Nature are also personal forces. But if we look at them as impersonal things, our relation with them becomes impersonal. Take for example what has happened just I!°W' If you were a meteorologist, you would calculate the currents of the wind, the pressures of the atmosphere etc., etc. and conclude: "Given all that, what has happened had exactly to happen and there will be so many days of rain and so on." So it is for you a force which you are obliged to call a force of Nature and you can only look at it quietly and wait for the fixed number of rainy days to pass.

But it may happen also that you are in a sort of personal relation with the little conscious beings that are behind wind and storm and rain, behind thunder and lightning and the so-called forces of Nature, which are, however) personal forces;

Page 140

then through the relation you establish a kind of friendship with them. And instead of looking at them as enemies and mechanical inexorables that you have simply to bear without being able to do anything, you arrive at a cordial understanding with them, you succeed in having an influence over them and you may tell them: "But why do you want to blow and pour here, why don't you do it just by the side where there is a field?"

And I have seen with my own eyes, here and in France and Algeria, the rain falling on a very definite spot exactly where it should rain, because it was dry and there was a field that needed to be watered. And at another place, just a few yards away, it was all sunny and dry, because the place needed to be sunny and dry. Naturally, if you proceed very scientifically, they will explain the thing scientifically; but as for myself, I saw it happen as the result of an intervention from someone who had asked for it and got it.

I have told you of my experiences in Algeria. Very many interesting things happened there. For a certain atmosphere was there, an atmosphere, one might say, of a little more real knowledge. There were certain small beings, those that controlled or produced snow. They could come and enter into a room and say: "Now, it must snow here" – "But there has been no snow in this country! Snow? You don't mean that? Near the Sahara, it's going to snow?" - "It must snow, because they have planted fir trees on the mountain and when we see fir trees we come. Fir trees mean we are called and so we come." Thus there was a little argument and the little beings went away with the permission to snow. The mountain was covered with snow. And it was quite near the Sahara. You come down a few miles and you reach the Sahara.

Someone took the fancy of covering the hills with fir and fir is a tree of cold countries. The beings were called in and there they came. All that is true fact, it is not an invention.

Everything depends on your relation. It may be that the meteorologists could explain the thing, explain it away, I do not know – they explain all things in all ways.

Things are as you look at them. That is the truth. I have seen other things also, not so pleasant as the one I have just described. For since men have invented – not invented but

Page 141

discovered things they did not know of, atom bombs and things worse than that and have begun to play with them like babies, it has thoroughly upset the little beings which lived according to their own rhythm of life and were accustomed to habits that answered to events they could foresee. Now all that is changed and they have suffered in consequence. They have lost their head and they do not know what they do.

There was a time, at the end of the war, when things over there became terribly chaotic and one lived in the absurd and as the unfortunate experience continues, the little beings have not yet been able to come out of their maddening confusion. Yes, they have become maddened. Men play with things of which they know only the exterior, that is to say, which they do not know at all. Anything may happen, including, alas! catastrophes that have been foretold long long ago.

That may happen and may not. It depends on the thing that will intervene.

I had once spoken to you of all that, of wind and cloud and rain and I told you to pray if you wanted the weather to change, but I am afraid you thought I was joking.

One thing is certain. It is this. If you are able to see the deeper law of things and if you are in contact with a higher consciousness in order to realise something that is far beyond all human conceptions, why should you be concerned with any human opinion? Ordinary men have no notion of what spiritual life or divine realisation may be like. Naturally, it is precisely because of their ignorance that they come and judge those things quite nonchalantly and advise you as to how you should live and move and act and be. They know nothing, they see nothing. Your attitude towards them should be one of supreme indifference. And yet you should not feel superior to them. On the other hand, you should be kind and wish that they should be reborn in the Light. You should avoid arguing with such people and never try to convince them, that would be a vain attempt. You should be absolutely indifferent, indifferent to their criticisms and indifferent to their praise. You should know it is easier to be indifferent to criticism than to compliments. I shall tell you a story in this connection.

I have spoken to you more than once of Madame D. N.¹

¹ Madame Alexandra David-Neele.

Page 142

She was a militant personality and a great Buddhist luminary. When she came to India she wanted to see some of the great Indian sages, Gurus, that is to say, and she went to one of them – I do not give you his name – who looked at her and asked her, as the talk was about Yoga and personal effort and all that, whether she was indifferent to criticism. She answered him in the classical expression: "Does one mind the barking of a dog?" She added, when she was narrating to me the story, with much humour: "Happily, he did not ask me whether I was indifferent to praise – for that is much more difficult!"

So then, you should not consider yourself superior to others and I shall tell you why; you must know that in a being, human or other, it is the consciousness that matters and you are either conscious or unconscious: you can consider yourself superior only when you are unconscious; the very moment you are conscious, truly conscious, you lose the sense of superiority or inferiority. In either case you must not feel superior, for it is smallness, pettiness; but you must be full of goodwill and sympathy and care little about what one says or does not say; however, be always polite, for it is always better to be polite than to be impolite. In that way you put yourself in relation with forces that are more harmonious and you can fight better against the forces of destruction and ugliness. But in reality you must rise above all that and feel yourself interested only in the Divine, in what He expects of you and in what to do for Him, for that is the only thing that counts. The rest has no importance.

Page 143

IN one's own consciousness one must look at things from a wider, more general standpoint. If at any moment something holds you, holds you tight and you have to face it, if you are compelled to wrestle with a formidable obstacle and at that time you begin to feel that before this moment thousands and thousands of years have passed and after that moment yet more thousands and thousands of years will pass, you immediately see the inconsequence of this little point of time; you need not enter into a high spiritual condition, you have simply to contact Time and Space, with all that is before and all that is after and all that is happening at the time, and if you are not an idiot you say immediately: "Ah, well, I am giving importance to something that has no importance."

Your little moment loses then and there all its importance if you can visualise simply the immensity of the creation. I am not speaking of rising to spiritual heights, I speak only of the immensity of the creation in time and space and the small event on which you are concentrated as if it were of great consequence. All that dissolves immediately if you go about the thing in a sincere spirit. Naturally there is a part in you that will protest and say, "But for me it has an importance." You have only to leave it aside and go on with the other part of light and consciousness. If you are sincere there, it is not difficult.

There are other procedures. A Chinese sage, I read out to you once, advises you to lie down on the flow of events as on a plank in the ocean, and imagine yourself to be on the vast immensity, drifting upon the waves, contemplating the sky above. In Chinese they call it Wu Wei. When you can do that

all trouble disappears.

Page 144

I knew one Irishman who used to lie on his back and look up to the sky in the night when there were stars. He looked, contemplated upon the sky, imagined as if he were floating in this immensity studded with countless luminous points and immediately he felt all his troubles were' gone. There are many such ways. What you have to do is to get the sense of relativity, your little person and the importance you attach to things concerning you as against the boundless infinity of the universe. Naturally, there is the other way of separating yourself from the earthly consciousness and rising into a higher consciousness, there earthly things take their true place, that is to say, they become small things.

Page 145

FROM the standpoint of artistic and literary taste and culture, the present world is a thing of extremes. On one side, it is trying hard to discover something very noble, and on the other, it is sinking into a vulgarity which is infinitely greater than the vulgarity, say, of two or three centuries ago. In those times people who were not cultured were crude, but their crudeness resembled the crudeness of animals and had not much perversion in it-there was something certainly, for as soon as the mind appears, perversion also comes in. But in our days, what does not rise to the peak, remains on level earth, is a crudeness of the most perverted kind; that is to say, it is not only ignorant or stupid, it is ugly, dirty, repulsive, it is deformed, it is vile, it is extremely low. What makes it so is the wrong use of the mind. If there were no mind, this perversion would not exist. Now what is ugly is ugly from all points of view.

There are things that are considered beautiful these days. I have seen photographs and reproductions which are frightfully vulgar in the perverted sense, and yet people are uproarious about them and find them beautiful. That means there is something there which has not only no culture and development, but has developed in the wrong way, that is to say, is deformed, which is worse, for it is much more difficult to straighten a perverted and deformed object than to enlighten that which is merely ignorant or without education.

I believe there are certain things that have become great instruments of perversion and among them I name the Cinema. The Cinema could have been, and I hope one day it will be, an instrument of education and culture. But for the moment it is largely an instrument of perversion, a truly hideous perversion: perversion of taste, perversion of consciousness, a moral

Page 146

and even a physical ugliness. And yet it is something which can be serviceable for education, for progress, for artistic culture and growth. It can be made a means for the spread of the sense of the beautiful and the creation of things beautiful in a way much more general and accessible to all than was possible by the older methods. But what could have been better, is not better but has become worse.

As I said, we are in a period of excesses; we move from one excess to another. If it is not an excess of zeal towards perfection, we fall back into the opposite excess of perversion. As we live in the midst of such a world, if we carefully note we shall find that we automatically share in the universal vulgarism, unless we are watchful over ourselves and bring down into our being the light of our highest consciousness; at every step we run the risk of grave errors of taste, in matters spiritual also.

Page 147

ONE has forgotten. From the fact of separation from Sat-Chit-Ananda comes forgetfulness of what one is. You believe you are, does not matter what, a boy, a girl, a man, a woman, a dog, a horse, anything: a stone, the sea or the sun. You think you are all that, instead of thinking that you are the One Divine. Indeed, if you had continued to think that you are the One Divine, there would have been no universe at all. The phenomenon of separation seems to have been indispensable, otherwise it would have remained always as it was.

But once the curve has been followed up and the Unity re-established, having profited by the multiplicity and division, the Unity found is of a higher quality: a Unity that knows itself, instead of a unity that does not know itself, for there is nothing else there which knows the other. Where the Unity is absolute, who or what can know the Unity? Hence the need of the appearance of something which is not that, in order to know what it is.

I believe this is the secret of the universe. Perhaps the Divine truly wanted to know Himself, then He cast Himself out of Himself and looked at Himself. And now He wants to take the joy of this possibility of being Himself with the full knowledge of Himself. It becomes much more interesting.

All physical life has the vital as its origin. The vital has the mental reality as its origin. The mental itself has another origin. And so on.

Nothing can be manifested upon earth physically unless it has at its origin a higher truth. Otherwise the world would not exist. If it were something flat, having its origin in itself, it

Page 148

would very soon cease to exist. It is because there is a force, an energy that drives, behind the manifestation that life continues to exist. Otherwise it would soon exhaust itself.

The original Will was towards forming individual beings that would be capable of becoming conscious again of their origin, although the procedure of individualisation compelled the individual to feel itself separate in order to be an individual. And the very moment it is separated, it is cut off from the original Consciousness, at least apparently, and falls into inconscience, for the only thing that is the Life of life is the Origin.

It is this inconscience that brings it about that you are not aware any longer of the Truth of your being. The secret of all deformation in the world is this inconscience which has been produced by the fact of separation from the Origin. And that explains why there are ugliness, wickedness, illness, suffering and death. It is because of this inconscience that although the Origin is there, it cannot manifest itself. It is there, that is why the world exists, but it is deformed in its expression, because it manifests itself through inconscience, ignorance and obscurity.

The only way to set everything right is to be conscious again and it is very simple.

There is only one Origin. This Origin is the Truth at its perfection, for it is the only thing that truly exists. It has exteriorised itself, projected itself, scattered itself, and by so doing has produced what we see, a mass of very fine, very brilliant brains in search of that which they have not yet found and which they find at last; for what they are in search of is within them. The remedy is within the heart of the Evil.

There is what we call the Truth, the foundation of all things, because if that was not there nothing would be. There is nothing which does not carry within it an eternal Truth, otherwise it would not be. The universe would not exist for one thousandth part of a second if it did not contain in itself a Truth.

And once you have found the truth, you find the Origin, you find out why things are what they are and the means of changing them. If you are in contact with the Divine, you have the key to everything. You know the how, the why, the process by

Page 149

which that may change. So there is something to be done. It is so interesting.

You represent a little mass of agglomerate substance that forms your self. Enter into that and find the key. You cannot say: "That is beyond me, that is too great for me." Go within the little person and you will find the key that opens all the doors.

You are That, you are in That.

To make you understand more easily, I may say, That is within us, That is part of our consciousness somewhere. Otherwise we would never be able to be conscious of it. If we did not carry the Divine within ourselves, in the essence of our being, we would never be aware of Him, it would be an impossible task.

You can turn the problem the other way round. The very moment you conceive and feel in one way or another, or even, to begin with, you admit that the Divine is within you and you are also within the Divine, that itself pushes the door a little, half-opens it. And if subsequently a great aspiration comes and an intense need to know and to be, then you can glide in. When you have glided in, you become conscious of what one is.

There is only one thing to be found, not two.

If Science moves forward in a definite direction, if it progresses sufficiently, if it does not stop short on the way, it will find the same thing as was found by the mystics.

If one goes round long enough one must come back to the same point. And once you come back, you have the impression that there was never anything to find outside. Yes, it is like that, there is nothing to find outside yourself.

Page 150

IN the supramental vision there is a direct, full and immediate knowledge of things, in the sense that you see all things at the same time totally, integrally; you see the truth of a thing in all its aspects simultaneously.

But as soon as you want to explain or describe it, you are obliged to come down to a lower level. Sri Aurobindo calls it the Mind of Light. Here things have to be said or even thought or expressed and realised in action one after another in a certain order, in a certain relation to each other. Therefore the simultaneity disappears; for, in the present condition of our way of expression it is impossible to say everything at once outright. We are obliged to veil a portion of what we see and know in order to bring it out little by little. Sri Aurobindo therefore calls it a transparent veil; for you see all, you know all at the same time, you have the entire or total knowledge of a thing, but you cannot express it whole and entire at one stroke.

There are no words, no possible modes of expression for the supramental vision, so long as we are what we are. We have to use an inferior procedure to express ourselves, and yet we possess at the same time the full knowledge. It is because of the necessity of transferring this knowledge into words that we are compelled, so to say, to hold back a part of what we know, letting it come out step by step in a succession. It is the veil of expression that suits our need both for utterance and understanding. The knowledge is there, really there, we have not got to search for it and we have not got to express it as we go on finding it; no, it is there in its totality, only the necessity of expression makes us say things one after another, and that naturally diminishes the omnipotence ascribed by Sri Aurobindo to the vision. For what is omnipotent is the total vision expressing itself totally. Omniscience

Page 151

is there, in principle, it is perceptible; but this omniscience cannot act in its full power, for it has to come down a step to be able to express itself.

To live totally in the supramental knowledge, one must have other means of expression than those available at present. New modes of expression have to be developed for expressing supra mental things in a supramental way. At present we have to raise our mental faculty to its maximum, to a sort of frontier that is hardly visible and which yet exists; for our means of expression still belong to this mental world and they do not possess supramental power. We do not have the necessary organs. We must become beings of the supramental world, with a supramental substance, a supramental inner organisation, to express the supramental knowledge in a supramental way. Till now we could, in some part of our consciousness, come out wholly into the supramental vision and knowledge, but could not express it from there. We had to come, as I say, one plane lower down to be able to express ourselves.

That is how this veil is transparent to the consciousness, for the consciousness sees and knows things in a supramental way, but a part remains veiled and comes out only progressively, for it has not the means to do otherwise.

Page 152

I HAVE been asked what difference the presence of the Supermind will make, in what way will it change the trend of events and how, since the Supramental manifestation, life has to be reviewed. I am asked to give practical examples. I do not know what this means, but here is what I have seen in a somewhat mathematical mood. Although the mathematical language is quite foreign to me, still I may call it a mathematical mood, that is to say, a mathematical way of looking at the problem.

I believe you have done sufficient mathematics to know the complexity of combinations that arises when you take as your basis some elements out of a sum total. To make it clearer I shall give you an example – but without using the terms you have been taught at school – from the letters of the alphabet. There are a certain number of letters. Now, if you want to calculate or know the number of combinations possible with these letters, taking all the letters together and organising them in as many ways as you can, as you have been taught, you will find that it runs into a fantastic figure.

Similarly, take the material world and come down to the most minute particle – you know scientists have arrived at things that are absolutely invisible and incalculable – and take this particle as your basis and the material world as the total and, further, imagine a Consciousness or a Will playing with these particles, making all sorts of possible combinations, never repeating the same combination. Of course, mathematically they say that the number of particles is finite and therefore the number of combinations also is finite, but this is purely theoretical, and theory does not interest us. Coming to the practical,

Page 153

even if you suppose that these combinations follow each other in such a manner and at such a speed that the change from one to another is hardly perceptible, it is clear that the time needed for the working out of all these combinations would be, apparently, infinite. That is to say, the number of combinations would be so immense that practically no end could be assigned to it.

Now imagine, as I have just asked you to do, that really there exists a Consciousness, a Will manifesting these combinations successively and indefinitely, never repeating twice the same thing; then we must come to the conclusion that the universe is new at each moment of eternity, and if the universe is new at each moment of eternity we are forced to admit there is nothing absolutely impossible; even further, what we call logical is not necessarily the true, and the logic or what might almost be called the fancy of the Creator has no limit to it.

Therefore, if for some reason (which it is difficult to express) a combination is not followed up by that which is nearest to it, but another one freely chosen by the Supreme Freedom, all our external certainties and all our surface logic would fall to the ground.

For, the problem is much more complicated than you imagine. It is not merely on one plane, in one domain, that is to say, what may be called the surface of things, that there is this almost infinite quantity of elements allowing combinations eternally new. There is more than that, there is what may be termed depth, that is to say, other dimensions.

Creation is the result not only of combinations on the surface but also of combinations in the depths of this surface: in other words, there are psychological factors. But I am looking at it from the purely mathematical standpoint; although I do not speak the mathematical language, it is still a mathematical conception. Here is then the problem.

Each time a new element is introduced into the sum total of possible combinations, it is as it were a tearing of its limits; the introduction of something that effaces the past limits, brings in new possibilities into play, multiplies indefinitely the old possibilities. You had, for example, a world as the ancient knowledge found it, with twelve layers of depth or successive dimensions. Now suppose in this world of twelve dimensions

Page 154

suddenly other dimensions were precipitated; all the old formulas would be changed immediately and the whole possibility according to the old unfolding would be, one cannot say increased, but supplemented by an almost infinite number of new possibilities, and that in such a manner that all the old logic would become illogical in the presence of the new logic.

I do not speak at all of what the human mind has made of the universe, because that is a reduction to its own dimension. I speak of the fact as it is, of the sum total of combinations that realise themselves successively according to an order and a choice which evidently escape wholly the human consciousnes, a sum total to which man has somewhat adapted himself and has at last succeeded in giving an expression that links itself to something tangible, after a great effort of study made through the centuries. It is evident that the modern scientific perception is much nearer to something that corresponds to the universal Reality than the perceptions, say, of the Stone Age; there is not a shadow of doubt about t4at. But even this will be completely transcended, surpassed and probably upset by the intrusion of something which was not in the universe and has not been studied so far.

This change, this sudden mutation in the universal elements will very certainly bring a kind of chaos in our perceptions, but out of it a new knowledge will arise. That, in a most general way, will be the result of the New Manifestation. From a more restricted, external and limited point of view I shall speak now of things which are not within my own experience, but which I have heard being spoken about. It is said, for example, that one finds now a larger number of what they call child prodigies. Personally, I have met none, so I cannot say what exactly is "prodigious" in these children. However, as the stories go, there is a new type or types of consciousness which appear surprising to the ordinary human consciousness. It is such examples, I suppose, that you would like to have in order to understand what is happening. Indeed it is quite possible that things are happening now which people are not accustomed to meet with. But that is a question of interpretation. The only fact I am sure of is what I have just told you, that the quality, the quantity and the

Page 155

nature of the possible universal combinations are about to change to such an extent that it will stagger all those who deal with life. Let us wait and see.

I may add one word, a practical word, to what I have already said; it is an illustration of a detail, but it will be a kind of reply to some other questions put to me some time ago about the so-called laws of Nature, causes and effects, inevitable consequences in the material world, more particularly from the point of view of health: we are told that if some precautions are not taken, if we do not eat as we should, if we do not follow certain rules, necessarily there will be consequences.

True. But if you look at the thing in the light of what I have told you – that there are no two universal combinations that are alike – then how can you establish laws and what is the absolute truth of such laws?

There is no such truth. For, if you are logical, that is to say, with a little higher logic, how can you say that a thing repeats itself, since there are no two things, no two combinations, no two universal manifestations that are the same? The "sameness" could be only an appearance, not a fact. The mind sets up rigid laws, and when it does that, you do not cut yourself off from the apparent surface existence, for the surface, in a very obliging manner, seems to satisfy these laws. But that is an appearance, and it does cut you off from the creative Power of the Spirit, cut you off from the true Power of Grace. You can understand that if, by your aspiration and your attitude, you bring down a higher element, a new element – which now we may call the Supramental – into the existing combinations, you can all on a sudden change their nature and then all these so-called necessary and inexorable laws become absurdities. It is you, with your conception, your attitude, your acceptance of certain so-called principles, it is yourself who shut the door against the possibility of what you call miracles. They are not miracles, if you know how they come about, but evidently for your consciousness they have the look of the miraculous.

It is you who say with a logic that appears quite reasonable: "If I do this, necessarily this will happen," or "If I do not do this, this other thing will surely come about," and that is how you put, as it were, an iron curtain between yourself and the free action of the Grace.

Page 156

How good would it be to imagine that the Supreme Consciousness, essentially free, that presides over the universal manifestation, is fanciful in its choice and that it makes things succeed each other, not according to a logic that is accessible to the human thought, but according to another kind of logic, the logic of the unforeseen!

Then there would be no limit to the possibilities, the unexpected and the wonderful. And one could hope for the most splendid, the most delightful things from this Will, sovereignly free, playing eternally with the elements, ceaselessly bringing forth a new world that would have logically nothing to do with the world that went before. Don't you think it would be the happiest of things? We have had enough of the world as it is.

All this I am telling you so that each one of you may put as few barriers as possible against future possibilities. And that is my conclusion.

I do not know if I have made myself understood or not, but I suppose a day will come when you will know what I have wanted to say.

Page 157

You must have observed that my way of talking to you is not always the same. I don't know whether you are very sensitive to the difference, but for me it is considerable.

Sometimes, on rare occasions, because of something read or for another reason, there comes to me in the wake of a question what is called an experience but what is simply the fact of entering into a certain state of consciousness and, having entered into it, describing that very state. In such a case, the Force, the Consciousness that express themselves pass across the individual mind, use it like a storehouse of words and draw from it by a sort of affinity the words necessary for the expression. That is the true teaching, the teaching that is difficult to find in books. It can be there, but one must be oneself in that state of consciousness to be able to discover it, whereas, with the spoken word, the sound vibration transmits at least something of the experience and this can be contagious for all who are sensitive.

On other occasions, the question posed and the subject chosen are conveyed by the mind to the higher Consciousness. The mind receives a response from that Consciousness and conveys it through the word. This is what generally happens in all teachings, provided that the one who teaches has the capacity to pass the question on to the higher Consciousness – a capacity not always present.

I should tell you that the second method does not interest me much. Very often, when the question or the subject fails to give me the possibility of entering into a state of consciousness that interests me, I far prefer to keep silent. And it is, as it were, a sense of duty that makes me talk.

I am informing you in advance, because in the past I have cut short the conversation and passed abruptly into meditation.

Page 158

MASTERY means to know how to deal with certain vibrations. If you have the knowledge and can deal with the vibrations, you have the mastery. The best field for such an experience and experiment is yourself. First, you must have mastery over yourself and when you have it, you can transmit its vibrations to others in so far as you are capable of identifying yourself with them. But if you cannot deal with the vibrations in yourself, how can you deal with them in others? You can, by word or by influence, encourage people so that they do what is necessary to master themselves, but you cannot yourself have direct mastery over them.

To master something, a movement, for example, means, by your simple presence, without any word, any explanation, to replace a bad vibration by the true one. By means of the word, by means of explanation and discussion, even a certain ema­nation of force, you exert an influence upon another, but you do not master the movement. Mastery over a movement is the capacity to set against the vibration of the movement a stronger, truer vibration that can stop the other vibration. An example can be easily given.

Two persons are quarrelling in your presence; not only are they quarrelling, they are about to come to blows. Then you approach and explain to them that it is not a desirable thing and you give good reasons so that they refrain from it in the, end. You exercise an influence over them in this way. But if, on the other hand, you simply stand before them, look at them and send out a vibration of peace and calm and quietness with­out uttering a word, without any explanation whatsoever, and if as a result the other vibration does not stand but dies down by itself, that is mastery.

Page 159

It is the same with regard to curing ignorance. If words are necessary to explain a certain thing, then you do not have the true knowledge. If I have to speak out all that I mean to say in order to make you understand, then I do not have the mastery, I simply exercise an influence upon your intelligence and help you understand, awaken in yourself the desire to know, to discipline yourself, etc., etc. But if I am not able, simply by looking at you, without saying anything, to make you enter into the light that will make you understand, well, I have not mastered the state of ignorance.

The problem of teachers is: how to control the classes, how to bring the students under discipline?

How can you have control over your students or discipline them unless you have control over yourself?

But to learn to have control or mastery over oneself would take a whole lifetime!

It is a pity! But how can you hope for it otherwise? When you have an undisciplined, disobedient, insolent student, it means a certain vibration in the atmosphere which is unfor­tunately very contagious. If you do not have in yourself the contrary vibration, the vibration of discipline, order, humility, calmness, peace that nothing disturbs, how can you hope, I say, to have an influence? You may tell the student that such a thing should not be done; but the result may be worse or he may mock at you. And if, on top of it, you do not know how to control yourself, but get into a temper, well, you may be done for, you may lose for your whole life all possibility of controlling your students.

Teachers who do not possess perfect calm, endurance that can stand all test, tranquillity that cannot be shaken by any­thing, who have not cast off their amour propre, are not the kind that can ever succeed. You must be a saint, a hero in order to be a good teacher. You must be a great Yogi to be a good teacher. You must yourself have always the perfect attitude if you demand from your students a perfect attitude. You cannot ask of any person a thing which you cannot do yourself.

Page 160

So then look within yourself at the difference there is be­tween what is and what should be; that will give you the measure of your lack of success in the class.

Now I would like to add one word, since I have the occasion. We have asked many of our students, when they are grown up and know something, to teach others. There are some, I believe, who know the reason why; but there are others who think that it is because it is good to serve in some-way or other, because teachers are needed after all and that we are glad to have them. But I tell you, for it is a fact, I have never asked any of those who were educated here to give lessons unless I saw that that was the best way for them to acquire self-discipline, to learn what they are to teach, to attain an inner perfection which they would not do except by being teachers and having this oppor­tunity, an exceptionally severe one, for self-discipline.

They who are successful here as teachers, – I do not mean an external, artificial and superficial success, – they who become truly good teachers, are exactly those who are capable of making an inner progress towards impersonalisation, capable of eliminating their egoism, becoming masters of their movements, possessing insight, comprehension of others and a patience, proof against all test and trial.

If you have passed through that discipline and succeeded, then you will not have wasted your time here. I ask everyone who accepts the work of giving lessons to accept it in that spirit. It is all very nice to be obliging, to give service, to be useful; it is a very good thing, certainly. But it is only one side, perhaps the most unimportant side of the question. The much greater, more important side is this, that you have been given the Grace so that you may arrive at mastering yourself, at an understanding of your subject and of other persons which you could not have done but for this opportunity. And if you have not profited during all these years that you have been teaching, well, it means you have wasted at least half of your time.

What about the organisation of studies at the Ashram school? If the students are given full freedom, as it is supposed you have given them, that is to say, if they are permitted to come to the classes or go away from them as they like or learn or not learn their lessons according to their choice, then how can a system or organisation work?

Page 161

But when did I say that a student is free to come and go as he likes? You must not confuse matters. I said and I repeat that if a student feels that a particular subject is foreign to him, if for example, he has a capacity for literature and poetry and a disgust or even dislike for mathematics, in that case, if the student comes and tells me, "I prefer not to follow the course of mathematics", I cannot answer him, "No, you must abso­lutely do it". But once a student has decided to follow a class, it is quite an elementary discipline for him to follow the class, to attend it regularly, to behave decently while he is there. Otherwise it is not becoming of him to go to the school at all. I have never encouraged people to loiter about during class hours or to come one day and be absent the next day, never, for, to begin with, if you are not able to submit yourself to this very elementary discipline, you will never succeed in having the least control over yourself; you will be always the slave of every impulse and fancy of yours.

If you do not want to pursue a certain line of knowledge, it it is all right, you are not obliged to do so. But if you decide to do a thing in life, whatever it is, you must do it honestly in a disciplined, regular and methodical manner, without allowing yourself to be fanciful. I have never approved of a person being the plaything of his impulses and caprices. You can never get sanction for that out of me, for you are then no longer a human being but an animal.

Page 162

THE question is about our physical education and, in a general way, the psychological basis of our activities here. These things have, of course, been written about and spoken of by me and by Sri Aurobindo very often, but evidently the idea does not seem to have entered your consciousness.

I do not wish to wage a war against what you feel and do, but I would like you at least to understand why things are done here in the way they are being done instead of letting yourself go thoughtlessly in a retrograde movement towards all that is done elsewhere, under the plea that that is how your fathers and grandfathers and great grandfathers and all the ancestors of yourself and of all your friends and relatives did in the past and considered it as the normal and natural way of doing things.

I do not contradict the fact, in the sense that humanity was created by Nature with special intentions and special purposes; it is in order to realise her ends that Nature fashioned her creatures and gave them special habits and functions. Therefore, if you speak of natural things, I cannot say that they are not natural, for it is Nature's way.

But all the same I have told you, I suppose, not once but many times, and Sri Aurobindo also has written, not once but more than once, that we are not here to recommence, perpetuate, continue what is done elsewhere. And we have given a concrete shape to this fact specially in our education. For, I must avow, without giving offence to anyone, that they who come here after having lived long and who carry a heavy load of the past upon their back find it difficult to change immediately their attitude and their point of view, but if you take the young ones, who are not spoilt yet – although they too get spoilt very

Page 163

easily – those who are .not spoilt too much by the usual education, by family ideas, ancestral inclinations, you have just a chance of turning their consciousness to the true path and obtain somewhat tangible and concrete results.

To speak the truth, we have had nothing to complain of; for we had absolutely clear proofs that what we wanted to do is quite possible, if one knows how to set about it.

This is then what we say: given similar conditions, the same education, identical possibilities, there is no reason to make a categorical, final and imperative distinction between what are called men and women. For us, human beings are the expression of one and the same soul; and if, as I already said in the beginning, Nature has made a differentiation in the expression with a view to satisfying her needs and realising her purposes, but if our needs and our purposes are different and we do not recognise the physical ends as conceived by Nature to be the final and absolute ends, then we can try and develop our consciousness along another line.

Unfortunately we have come to notice one thing. As years pass and small girls grow up, they suddenly begin to remember that they are girls and that they must live and move in a special manner, they must be charming, good-looking, pretty, etc., etc. So all our efforts seem to be in vain. Naturally, there are exceptions – there are always exceptions to the rule – but even among these, in the background of their consciousness there is this feeling of being not quite like the others, the satisfaction of having done better than the others, the conceit that they stand comparison with the others – the males!

I am told people have been remarking – people naturally not accustomed to our ways – people with their own old-world ideas – and asking why we have the same programme of physical education for both boys and girls, why the girls are not treated in a special way, quite differently from the boys – is it not a gross error even from the physical point of view to level them together? Their crowning argument being, that is the way things are done everywhere else.

I say if that is the way things are done elsewhere, it is no use our repeating the same here. We cannot do it better than they. On the contrary, if things are done elsewhere in that way, it is just the reason why we should not do them that way.

Page 164

What we want is precisely to bring into the world something which is not there. But if we keep to all the habits of the world, all its preferences and prejudices, all its constructions, how shall we come out of the rut and do something new?

I have told you, my children, I have repeated in all kinds of tone and temper: if you wish truly to benefit by your stay here, try to look at things and understand them with a new eye and a new perception based on something higher, deeper, truer, something which is yet not there, but will be one day. And it is to build up this future that we have taken a special attitude.

I tell you, we have had quite material proofs of the correctness and truth of our position. They do not last, however. Why? Because it is extremely easy to fall back into the ordinary consciousness, but there is nothing more difficult than to hold oneself high all the time on the top rung of the ladder and look at the world from up there.

But we will not obey Nature's orders, even if these orders have behind them thousands and thousands of years of habit. Yet one thing is certain: the argument that Nature puts forward against any change in things that they have been always as they are is not true. Whether she wants it or not, things do change and a day will come when people will say, "Ah yes, things were so in those days, but now it is all different!"

You may naturally complain that I am addressing myself only to the girls and that I am telling you all this in the presence of the "other sex". But I include them also in the ridiculousness of the whole thing. For if they did not think in the way they think, if they did not feel in the way they feel and if they did not behave in the way they behave, long long ago you would have been disgusted with these childish mannerisms of yours.

However, I ask you only to understand and admit this much: for some time we still belong to a period of faith and trust, that things are on the way to change, that we have reached a point in time when things are turning and taking a new direction. I ask of you a little more faith, a little more trust, just letting yourself be guided. Otherwise you will lose the advantage of being here. That is all.

Page 165

I HAVE begun to notice that many among you, perhaps a very large portion, do not listen to what I say. For not unoften you have put questions on a subject on which I had talked in detail just a moment before, as if nothing was spoken. The fact is surely this: each one of you is shut up in his own thought, exactly as, I suppose, you do in the class also at school. You repeat to yourself your own lesson, thinking of what is expected of you – provided, of course, you are at all diligent and attentive – and do not listen to what your teacher asks and explains or what the other students answer. You miss in this way three-fourths of the advantage of being not all alone but in a group.

Here the matter is more serious. For I do not give an individual or personal answer. I answer in such a way that all may profit and if, instead of listening, you continue to think what you have in your own head, you lose the opportunity to learn anything.

That is the first point. If you are here, you must first of all, listen and not think of other things. But that is not sufficient, it is only the beginning. For there is a good way and there are many bad ways of listening. I do not know if any of you likes to hear music. But if you want to hear music, you must make an absolute silence in your head; you should not follow or accept any thought, you should be wholly concentrated, make yourself a kind of screen, noiseless and immobile. That is the only way of hearing and understanding music. If you allow the least movement or waywardness in your thought, the whole value of the music will escape you.

Now, to understand a teaching which is not altogether of a material kind, which implies an opening to things that are

Page 166

within, the necessity of silence is all the greater. But if instead of listening to what is said, you jumped about for an idea in order to put another question or if you started arguing about the things said under the specious pretext of understanding better, all that you heard would pass like smoke without leaving an effect.

In the same way, when you have an experience, as long as it lasts, do not try to understand what it means; if you do that, it vanishes, or you deform and disfigure it, taking away all its purity. In the same way also if you want a spiritual experience to enter into you, you must have a brain absolutely quiet and immobile, like a mirror which not only reflects but absorbs, allows the ray to enter and penetrate deep within so that out of the profundities of your consciousness it may rise up one day or other in the form of knowledge.

If you come here, come with the intention of listening in silence. What will happen you will recognise later on; the effect of this attitude of silence you will find out in course of time. But in the meanwhile the only thing to do is to be silent, still, attentive.

Page 167

You say it is obvious that evolution has a goal and that it cannot stop here or now. It seems to you obvious because you have read Sri Aurobindo's books. But if you take anybody you meet in the street and ask him what is the purpose of the universe or of the evolution, you will see that he will answer by saying that he knows nothing about it. Even here there are many, perhaps hundreds, if you ask them individually not to repeat what they have read but to say what they feel and think by themselves about the question, what is the intention behind the universal evolution or whether there is any intention at all, they will not be able to give a better answer. I do not think that there are many who will be able to tell you in all sincerity, "It is like this, it is like that, it is evident, etc., etc.". A good number may be able to quote passages from Sri Aurobindo; otherwise, if you cease thinking, thinking with what you have read or heard, if you try to express your own personal experience, would you have any certitude to declare? I do not speak of the result of what you have learnt, what you have read or heard about, I speak of your own personal experience, exclusively genuinely your own, something that is evident because it is your life and realisation. Are you capable of anything of that kind?

If you have an experience of the kind, I shall be glad to con­gratulate you and say that you have not wasted your time here.

Let us then look within ourselves.

Page 168

(1)

THERE are people who come to me and say that they would like to go home, for their health does not permit them to con­tinue here; it is gradually getting worse and worse and they ask for my permission.

I wonder at their ignorance. Perhaps I should not wonder; human nature is like that. These people do not know or see or feel in the least that they are here in the best of conditions for cure, nowhere else in the world would they get anything like the opportunity or the help that is here. Naturally, if one is to be here and derive the full benefit of his stay, one has to fulfil certain conditions or rather one condition. That one condition is to give up the ego, not to live the life of the ego, but to live the life of the soul, to dedicate oneself to the Divine. So it is evident that if this condition is not fulfilled, that is to say, being here you continue to live the life of your old self, your ego, if you refuse to change, naturally you do not get the benefit of the help that is given here. And when you refuse to go forward, not only do you halt where you are, you go backward. That is the meaning of one's health getting worse. Of course if you ask my permission to go away, you have it. The Grace is every­ where for all to the extent they can receive and allow it to come to them. But that is not what things would be if you were

here and agreed to attempt to fulfil the conditions of the life here.

To be able to stay here one must have faith. But people's faith depends upon what the ego desires and seeks. "I believe in the Divine provided I find Him doing or arranging things as I would like them to be. If things happen contrary to my

Page 169

notions and wishes, then I believe no more in the Divine." That is their attitude.

Now it is precisely this ego-view that vitiates one's approach to life and existence. In the true and the most ancient tradition of spirituality, the world was never looked upon as Maya or illusion, it was the ego that was considered as an illusion and the generator of illusions. It is the ego and ego's view that puts us in a wrong relation with the world and the consequences are all the falsehoods and miseries. Be egoless, do not contaminate your perception or your movement with the ego's touch, you will see the world changed and transformed.

If you had faith, if you had less of the egoistic demands and shrinkings, you would see how beautifully Nature collaborates with you.

The greatest thing that can ever be, the most marvellous thing since the beginning of creation, the miracle has happened. And that is the only thing that concerns us most intimately and the only thing we should be concerned with. A new world, yes a completely new world, is born and is here. Nothing can be more momentous. And yet, do you know, feel or perceive it? Unless things give a physical knock upon your nose, you do not believe in its reality. And yet it is there. You are blind and without sense because you are ego-bound. It is your I, My and Mine that has woven around you a web, a screen.

(2)

Wake up in yourself a will to conquer. Not a mere will in the mind but a will in the very cells of your body. Without that you can't do anything, e.g., you may take a hundred medicines but they won't cure you unless you have a will to overcome the physical illness.

I may destroy the adverse force that has possessed you. I may repeat the action a thousand times. But each time that a vacuum is created it will be filled up by one of the many forces that try to rush in. That is why, I say, wake up the will to conquer.

Page 170

(1)

You must be very very persevering. I will tell you a story – my own story.

When I began to practise occultism, as I started working with my nights, making them conscious, I found that between the subtle physical level and the most material vital there was a small region, very small indeed, that was not developed well enough to serve as a conscious link between the two. So what happened in the most material vital was not being accurately translated into the consciousness of the most subtle physical. Something was lost in the passage which was however not quite empty but only half-conscious, not adequately developed. I knew there was only one way, namely to go on working for the development. I started working sometime in February, I suppose. One month, two months, three, four months passed with no result. I continued. Five months, six months. Then in July or August I left my home in Paris for the country-side. I came to a very small place near the seaside and stayed with friends. There was a garden there. And in the garden a fine green turf and flowers and trees all round. It was a pretty little quiet place. It was very quiet, very silent. One day I lay myself down on the grass, flat on the face resting on my elbows (among the grass). Suddenly the whole life of this nature, the whole

life of the intermediate region I am speaking of, which is most living in the plant and in physical nature, all this domain became all on a sudden, unexpectedly, without any transition, absolutely living, intense, conscious, wonderful. This was the result of the continuous activity of six months that had not given any result till then. I did not know it; just a little favourable

Page 171

condition and the result is there. It is like the chick in the egg. It has been there for a long time but you do not see it. You ask doubtfully if there is any chick at all inside the egg. And then suddenly a crack, a small hole – the egg bursts and the chick comes out, quite formed and whole and entire. It took all this time to form itself. So it is like this. When you wish to pre pare something within you it is like the preparation of the chick inside the shell. It takes a long time and there is not the least result. But you must not be disheartened. You must continue your effort, as before, regularly as if the whole of eternity were before you, thoroughly disinterested in the result. One day the result bursts upon you, the whole result of all your work.

(2)

When I look at people and when I am occupied with them, I have the will – I do not say it is always possible – anyhow, I have the will to see in them their psychic being, their ideal, what they want to do, what they want to become, to hold it and bring it out to the surface. That is all my work. What I see, I try to draw out to the front. When I do this, with the exception of a very few instances when people are somewhat conscious, I am not always sure of the kind and degree of their external consciousness. And when I put questions to someone, it is to know the difference between what he is conscious of and what I see. I am doing this all the while. And that is why it seems as in did not know.

There is a vast difference between what you know of yourself and what I know of you. What I know of you is evidently what you ought to become. Your external being one can see well. But between that and the inner being that I see there is the vital mental region which is the most important thing from the human point of view; for what one has to become must be repeated there first, if it is to be materialised. But as I say, the gap is wide between what you know of yourself, what is actively conscious in you and what you are in the truth of your being. This intermediary region is somewhat difficult for me to be

familiar with or comprehend: for it is a cloudy region for me, a domain of falsehood. You must note the distinction between a lie and a falsehood. A lie is that which is altogether unreal,

Page 172

which has not been, which is not there. A falsehood is that which is not true, in the sense that it is not the expression of your truth – not at all – and yet, it is that of which you are mostly externally conscious. Very very few are there who have the inner perception of what they want to become, what they want to do, what the truth of their being is. There are not many of that kind. For some, the thing comes and is then veiled – just a lightning flash for a moment and then all is dark. For me it is a perpetual question to know what is the state of the superficial consciousness which is for me so unreal, so untrue.

There is such a contradiction between the brutal fact of the daily activity and this image I make to myself of what each one of you should be: I keep this image always intact with all the power of my consciousness so that you may realise it. That is yourself, your own self. It is not this ignorant, stupid, insincere, dishonest being that you call yourself.

(3)

Once upon a time, long long ago, when I was in Paris, I used to see Madame D. N.¹ almost daily. She was full of ideas and told me: "You should not think of action, it means attachment to action. When you want to do something it indicates that you are still tied down to the things of the world." I replied: "No, nothing is more easy. You have only to imagine all that has been done before, all that will be done hereafter and all that is being done now, you will immediately perceive that your action is nothing but a breath, one second in eternity and you are no longer attached to it." I did not know the text of the Gita at that time. And I had not the complete text, the text that I am here putting somewhat in my own way: "And detached from the fruit of action, act." I did not know the Gita, but what I said was in effect what the Gita teaches. You should act not because you believe in your action. You act because you should act. That is all. It is however a condition that may prove dangerous sometimes. For instead of willing with a sovereign will to action you simply look and let things happen.

¹Madame Alexandra David Neele the eminent Tibetologist.

Page 173

Cycles of Creation

THE present cycle of creation has for its goal the advent of the Supermind, the coming of a supramental race of beings.

The world, it seems, moves in cycles. There are periods of creation with a hiatus or a gap in between of dissolution. Present-day science too speaks of the universe proceeding in pulsations, that is to say, alternate expansion and contraction. Indian mythology speaks of alternate 'Pralaya' and 'Srishti'. The Indian system speaks also of 'Mahapralaya', utter dissolution or 'Yoganidra' of the Supreme. In other words, there are periods when the universe retires altogether into its origin and when it comes out it manifests itself in an entirely new way. In a given creation between two major dissolutions, 'Mahapralaya', that is to say, in a major cycle, there are minor cycles (epicycles) marked by minor dissolutions, 'Khandapralaya'.

The present major cycle aims, as I have said, at the manifestation of the Supermind and the installation of the supramental race. The cycle started, one does not know when, billions of years ago perhaps, but the principle of the creation seems to be clear enough. It has matter for its base, earth as its centre and man as its dynamic agent. For all we know there may be, there are other principles and modalities of creation. One may well conceive of air, for example, as the basis of creation and some other heavenly body, an airy globe in a far-off galaxy, for example, being the basis of creation and an airy creature as the vehicle for the play based upon that principle. Even fire may be the basic principle of another creation and salamander-like beings its natural inhabitants. There may be quite other principles or modes of creation conceivable or inconceivable by the human mind. However,

Page 177

we speak now of the present terrestrial creation of which we human beings are representative participants.

The present cycle, the great cycle that is to say, has, as I have said, for its ultimate motive and purpose the advent and reign of the Supermind. But this proceeds through stages, each stage forming a minor or lesser cycle. The stages of these cycles are the different degrees of what is called evolution. The evolution starts upon the basis of an apparently simple substance and goes on unfolding gradually an inherent complexity. As we know, the different cycles of evolution in the past were at the outset a purely material universe of inorganic elements, then came the cycle of organic combinations, then the manifestation of life and next the mind and at present the mind at its peak capacity, which means the advent of the strange creature that has a miraculous destiny to accomplish. And that is to bring forth out of him the achievement and fulfilment of the next cycle. For the mind is there to bring forth, to usher in the Supermind and man is there as the laboratory and the vanguard as well of the Supermind.

At the present time the human consciousness in general has been so prepared and its dwelling and playfield the earth consciousness made ready to such a degree that it has been possible for the still secreted higher perfection to enter into the arena. The evolution, the growth has been a gradual expression and revelation of the light, the consciousness in a higher and higher degree of purity and potency through an encasement hard and resistant at first but gradually yielding to the impact of the higher status and even transforming itself so as to become its instrument and embodiment. We speak of the present situation, we are concerned with man and what he is to grow into or bring out of himself. Here also there seem to be stages or cycles of creation leading to the final achievement. The whole burden of the present endeavour is how to transcend, transform or modify the animalhood which is the basis of humanity even now and in and through which man is growing and seeking to manifest and incarnate his superior potencies. Man's supramental destiny means that he totally outgrows the animal, outgrows even his manhood in so far as it is merely human; for he has to incorporate the principle of the supramental which wholly transcends the mental.

Page 178

The first step in this momentous movement has been taken, the first act achieved, for the supramental is now here established in the earth's atmosphere and is already percolating into general human consciousness. It is no longer a far-off object residing away in its own home, its higher transcendent status, but a concrete reality as something like earth's own. It is at work in this material envelope, this animal encasing of humanity and is vigorously transforming, demolishing and building, preparing the new structure.

The embodiment of the supramental, the supramental consciousness in its supramental body is indeed even now rather a far-off event. But the beginning of a supramentalised humanity, a section of it as the spearhead is quite a possibility in a comparatively near future. A race of elite in whom the grosser elements of humanhood, its physical animality and mentality have been purified of their dross, refined into something of the pure luminous reflection of the higher consciousness – that is the immediate end for which the new force seems to be labouring. And the consequence too of this achievement is expected to be also very considerable. The whole human race or even a majority of it is not likely to be transfigured into the elite, the race of the pioneers just referred to. The advent or the preparation of such a body will in its turn naturally influence the rest of mankind and act so effectively and largely that the human race in general will put on a different aspect, the aspect of a humanity not of the Kaliyuga but of the Satyayuga. That is what the general human mind has been aspiring for and calling "Ramarajya". A humanity with a radiant mind, a purified, generous, unegoistic, yet creative vital and a physical consciousness enjoying, revealing, building forms of true beauty seems to be a nearer and intermediary probability – and animal-born humanity retaining its normal animal structure, still outgrowing its grosser movements and instincts, controlling and guiding, modifying and utilising them to higher purposes (Pashupati) may well be a happy stage towards the final appearance of the supramental race wholly transcending the frame of animality, born and existing in the purely supramental way.

A supramentalised material universe or rather physical earth may itself put on a different, a radiant appearance

Page 179

and also the beings and creatures of the other levels of life and physical existence may also undergo a sea change, but of that nothing need be or can be previewed at present.

Page 180

THE first step in the spiritual life is the Vedantic experience that the world is an illusion, an absolute illusion. Rather it is the Buddhist experience of nihil, nothingness, extinction that is the first step, the very basic realisation of all spiritual life. It is not the summit – the nee plus ultra, beyond which there is nothing – but it is the very foundation, the absolute minimum of spirituality – sine qua non, without which it is not. The one experience with which you start your spiritual journey is the total negation of whatever exists, reducing existence to zero: world-existence being equated with Ignorance. Life is a false­hood, one has to reject it outright. The next step in Vedanta would be, when you have eliminated everything, reduced all to zero, to contemplate, to find what remains, the irreducible reality – the unity, the One, Sat, Brahman.

First, then, the total and absolute dissolution of this creation of ignorance, the Creation which is ignorance, and attaining a status of nothingness, absolute annihilation, then in that blank void emerges the Residue, the One True Reality – a silent, infinite eternal immobility, a pure Existence. In the beginning the Non-Existence (Asat), then there arises the Pure Existence (Sat). That pure Existence is gradually found to possess or be Delight also. As Being is not the being in creation even so the Consciousness is not the normal or mental consciousness, and Delight too is not the joy of life; they are all of quite another quality and category.

In other words Purusha is given the exclusive reality, while Prakriti is negated, being identified with unconsciousness and ignorance, is relegated to a status of relative reality. Prakriti is considered as maya, the illusory consciousness, the ignorance.

Page 181

Purusha is the Brahman, the Conscious Being, the One Absolute Pure Reality.

The Tantra comes next in the scale. Tantra does not consider Prakriti as absolutely separate from Purusha and opposite in character. Prakriti is not unconsciousness (Achit); it is instinct with consciousness. Indeed Prakriti as conceived by Sankhya or Mayavada is only a lower formulation, an inferior aspect of the higher Prakriti which is one with the higher Purusha, Purushottama. Tantra worships the higher Prakriti as Para­shakti, the Divine Mother who holds in herself the supreme Purusha. The world is created and exists not by the power of Maya but by the formative power of the Mother, which was the original meaning of the word 'maya', the Divine Maya. The Divine Mother creates the world and maintains the world in the Delight of her Conscious Existence. She is the Supreme Consciousness (Chinmayee), she is the Power of Delight (Hladini Shakti).

The whole bifurcation between Tantra and Vedanta hinges upon one point. The Vedanta overlooked one term of the Truth and missed thereby a whole world of experience and reality. The central term of Vedanta is taken as Consciousness, Consciousness pure and simple. It omitted the fact that Con­sciousness is also Energy. That Chit is Tapas is the central principle in Tantra. The exclusive stress on Chit, Pure Consciousness, led to the realisation of the Pure Purusha as mere Witness, Observer, a passive consciousness. Subsequently it was also added that the Purusha is not merely a Witness, (saksi), but the Upholder (bharta), even Enjoyer (bhokta) of the world and creation; finally it was added also that the Purusha may be a creator also (karta), but all this is somewhat outside the pale of orthodox Vedanta, Mayavada. Tantra equated Consciousness with Energy; for it Conscious Energy or Consciousness-Energy is the indivisible Mother-Reality.

The Vedanta ends in Ananda, it is a static unitary Ananda. The Tantra posits a dynamic Ananda, a dual Ananda between Ishwara and Ishwari, Shiva and Shakti. The Vaishnava takes a further step and transmutes Ananda into Love, a terrestrial humanised love.

An earlier form of this humanised love was given in Buddha's Compassion. The transcendent Delight (Ananda)

Page 182

was made terrestrial and human in Buddha. But Buddha's compassion was a universal feeling and had no personal frame as it were. Vaishnavism gave it a personal frame and a human form. Radha and Krishna are not figures of an allegory but concrete realities. Vrindavan is not merely the land of heart's desire, a garden of paradise but real habitation in a real and concrete consciousness and life. The human frame assumed by Radha and Krishna is not merely an assumption, an illusion but an eternal reality in an eternal domain. The gradation of the spiritual domains is thus sometimes given as (1) Brahmaloka of the Vedantin, (2) Shivaloka of the Tantrik and finally (3) Goloka of the Vaishnava.

The relation between the Supreme (over and above the creation) and the individual in the creation representing the creation is sometimes described in human terms to give it a concrete and graphic form. This relationship characteristically indicates the fundamental nature of the Reality it deals with. Thus in the Vedantic tradition the Supreme is worshipped as the Father (pita no asi). It is also a relation of Master and disciple, the leader and the led. Ii brings out into prominence the Purusha aspect of the Reality. In the Tantra the relation is as between Mother and child. The supreme Reality is the Divine Mother holding the universe in her arms. The indi­vidual worships and adores the Supreme Prakriti as a human child does. The Vaishnava makes the relation as between the lover and the beloved, and the love depicted is intensely vital and even physical, as intense and poignant as the ordinary ignorant human passion. It is to show that the Love Divine can beat the human love on its own ground, that is to say, it can be or it is as passionately sweet and as intensely intimate as any human love. It is why Bhakta Prahlad said to his beloved Vishnu "O Lord, what ordinary men feel and enjoy in and through their physical senses, may I have the same enjoyment in and through Thee."

Still the Vaishnava love in its concrete reality is a mani­festation in a subtle world, the world of an inner physical consciousness.

Therefore one more step has to be taken when the Divine Love will incarnate in its integral and absolute reality upon this physical earth in a concretely material frame.

Page 183

THE soul carries the body even like a corpse, says a scripture. It is a dead inert mass of inconscience weighing upon the conscious being that is behind. Such is the burden of life that the soul bears through its earthly existence. The image is beautifully delineated in the Indian legend of Shiva and Sati. Sati is dead, the bereaved Shiva goes about in anguish with the dead body of Sati flung upon his shoulder. Shiva is to be relieved of this burden, otherwise the creation will go to rack and ruin. The prayer went to Vishnu and Vishnu hurled his discus that cut to pieces the corpse of Sati-the pieces were fifty-two in number and each spot where a piece, a limb of Sati, fell became a great place of pilgrimage. Even so, the world in its inconscience lies heavy on the secret Consciousness that is behind. It lies almost smothered under the dead weight of the inconscient and the unconsciousness. But the Divine Grace has entered into the inertial mass and split it up, entered into each particle as a spark of consciousness to turn gradually the dead matter into a rising and evolving tier of consciousness.

Creation started orginally with an absolutely inconscient existence. It is the pressure of an indwelling spirit – the Grace descending into matter – that has forced matter to burst into, to flower into forms of light and consciousness. The pressure is ever-present and the flowering continues into higher and higher modes of the Divine Consciousness. The figure '52' of the mythological legend denotes perhaps the integral multiplicity of the manifested universe. We may suggest an interpretation just to satisfy a mental curiosity: 52=50+2; and 50 is 5 X 10. The number 5 is very well-known as representing the five planes of consciousness, and as there is a descending and an ascending movement in each level – that gives the number 10. And 5 times 10 is 50.

Page 184

This makes up the manifested creation. The remaining two are the Supreme Divine and his Shakti, or two unities at each end – the one above, the one below. This however may be considered as a playful calculation meaning to represent, as I said, a multiple integrality of existence.

The injunction is: you must die to the world if you want the life Eternal. Even so you must die to yourself if you want the Divine. The existing life which your ego has built up is a life of ignorance, misery and decadence. Death is indeed the natural and inevitable consequence; but this is a death in ignorance and bondage, it does not lead you to liberation and freedom. The dying that liberates is a conscious, deliberate movement of intelligence and will; dying to the world means withdrawing yourself from the world and turning within. Dying to yourself means withdrawing from your egohood and turning to the self, the being that is beyond. This withdrawal is to be done constantly and consistently in all the parts of the being. The mind is to move away from its thoughts, the vital from its desires and impulses and the body from its hunger and thirst. The first result of this withdrawal is a division of the being, an inner passive part and an outer active part. The inner part becomes gradually a mere witness and the outer part a mere mechanical functioning. When the withdrawal is so complete that the outer being or the world has no effect upon the inner, does not raise any ripple in it by its touch or contiguity then is accomplished the real death. Then it is said the outer existence, the material life does not continue long, it comes sooner or later to a dead stop. Thus the inner being is liberated completely and is freed into the life beyond, the Divine Existence, the Brahman. It is said that when each and every seed of the various elements that compose the being, that sprouts into the luxuriant tree of material life, when each and every seed is burnt up by the heat of mounting 'tapas', the force of aspiring consciousness, then there is no more chance or possibility of an ignorant earthly life, one is then naturally born into the Life of the Eternal. That is the final, the supreme death which is laya or pralaya.

To live away from life and consequently away from death is one thing, comparatively easy; but to live in life and consequently

Page 185

in death is another thing, somewhat more difficult. To withdraw oneself from the field of death and retire in the immutability beyond or some form of it is what was attempted in the ancient days. But there has been side by side always a growing tendency in man to stay here in this vale of tears under the shadow of death, to live dangerously and face the Evil and conquer it here itself; for death is not a mere negation an annihilation of the reality, it is only a mask put over the reality or is its obverse. Tear off or remove the disguise, you will see the smiling radiant Godhead behind.

The gold is there, the purest gold, but it is crusted over with dross. The dross is to be eliminated and the noble metal freed. Indeed each element of the being wherever and whatever it is, each corpuscle, mental, vital or physical is ambivalent – it is a polarised entity consisting of two parts or two ends, one pure, the other impure. The ancients thought that the whole creation is impure; the only pure substance is the Divine. The Sankhya posited clearly the demarcation between Purusha, the Conscious Being secreted above and behind and the entire Prakriti which is absolute unconsciousness. But as we have said, a new revelation has been slowly coming up which speaks of a different conclusion 'and a different destiny for man and the universe. Each element of the created universe has a double nature, it is both conscious and unconscious, it is both immortal and mortal. And furthermore, the two are not united or soldered together inextricably so that if one is eliminated the other gets eliminated automatically. Life and death appear to be bound together absolutely and eternally; in fact, however, it is not so. Even in life, Life can be established in its single pure reality free from the normal counterpoint of Death. Purusha is not the only conscious element in or above creation. Prakriti is not merely the unconscious being. The unconscious Prakriti is only the apparent aspect of the Higher Prakriti, the Para Prakriti, which is supremely conscious, for it is one with the Supreme Purusha.

This Higher Prakriti is the inner reality of each created cell of the universe. And it is always insisting and working for the elimination of its counterpart, the inferior Prakriti; and evolution, human or cosmic is nothing but the gradual corroding of the inferior Prakriti by the pressure of the Light-Energy

Page 186

of the Higher Prakriti. One day when this lower Prakriti is dissolved in this way in each cell, the fullness of the radiant manifestation, an embodiment of the Divine Reality will be realised upon this material earth made spiritual, in this human body made Divine.

Page 187

THE Divine attributes – such as Peace and Joy, Consciousness and Power, Freedom, etc. – each and all of them are self-existent realities, existing by themselves in their fullness and perfection. They are not mere qualities that are acquired by effort through gradual culture and development, they are not acquired piecemeal as other human possessions, material or mental. They are there near us, about us in their fullness and wholeness. We do not see them or seize them as there happens to be a veil in between. We need not strain and struggle, labour and sweat, go through all the pains of the world in order to find them, realise them. It is, as I say, a veil interfering. Remove the veil or even shift it a little, you have a glimpse of them in their full glory.

Brahman, the supreme Reality, is said to be of the same nature and its relation to the world is also of the same kind. Brahman is not there because the world is there. Brahman is not realised through a long process of negating experiences; it is not the sum of all negations, it is an immediate and absolute realisation. When the vision of the world-maya is not there, Brahman stands self-revealed in its absoluteness, then one realises that Brahman only exists, has existed and will exist; there is no maya, it not only does not exist, it never existed. Brahman alone is there always.

That is what the Upanishad also says. This experience cannot be acquired by mental knowledge and argumentation or study of books. Only when it reveals its own body then one stands before it face to face.

As of the Brahman, even so of the Brahman's qualities. They are various aspects, living aspects or personalities of the One Divine. The Vedas therefore consider them as Gods and

Page 188

Goddesses and give each one a name and a form. They are adored and worshipped as such so that they may enter into the worshipper and transmute him into something of His image. The Gods bring riches to man. But these riches are they themselves. Vasu is the richness of their substance, Ratna is the wealth of their delight.

Agni is the energy of consciousness, Varuna is the vastness of consciousness, Mitra is the harmony. Ila is the revelation, Saraswati inspiration, Bharati is the Goddess of the Divine Word.

In the mental world we meet abstractions, lifeless ideas, forms without a soul. In reality, however, all movements in man, all forces in nature are more than mere movements and forces, they are personalities, embodiments of conscious beings. Indeed the Puranic tradition has elaborated this conception almost to its extreme limit. Those people crowded the world with an infinite number of Gods and Goddesses. They speak of 33 crores of Gods. The earth is the playfield of all godlings.

In this way we come very far from the Supreme Brahman, the Mayavadin's inane Unity. The Puranic multiplicity is perhaps a corrective of the Vedantin's empty Absolute.

The Vedantin's negation of the world for the realisation of the Brahman, the Supreme Consciousness, is an effective way so far as it goes but it does not really negate the world. One only turns one's back to the world and says, "It is not there". We face the Sun and cast our shadow behind. The real solution is not to cut away or wipe off the shadow but instead of an obscure formulation, to make of it a luminous radiant image. The world is not abolished or eclipsed by the Sun but IS made luminous, in every particle a radiant and glorious body.

This transfiguration is possible, nay, inevitable, because the higher realities, the truth-expressions of the Supreme Consciousness are there always self-existent in their total purity and pressing down upon earth and displacing the lower mayic shadow-realities. We need not seek to pull down what is already descending of itself. One must be open and receptive and welcoming in tranquillity the descending Godheads.

Page 189

THE world of the mind is a vast field, even vaster it seems than the physical world. The physical world extends, science tells us, to millions of light-years. We may say practically, it is an infinite extension and mind is a thing which surrounds, envelops this measureless extension. Mind surpasses the physical on another count, that is to say, in respect of speed. A material body at its best travels at the speed of light, that is to say, in a second it goes about 200,000 miles (a little less). But thought does not meet any obstruction in respect of distance; whatever the distance, it reaches its goal immediately, it does not take account of time.

Perhaps because of its expansiveness and its speed, a Vedic Rishi sends up a prayer to it not to be so elusive, not to go away too far but to return and dwell in its home. Evidently the Rishi speaks of gathering and collecting together the dispersed uncontrolled thoughts and settling them in an ordered way in his consciousness. We must note, however, that mind and matter are two different categories and have different dimen­sions. Material space is not the same as mental space and the speed of light and the speed of thought are not commensur­able.

The mental world, the world of thoughts, is a world in itself It is autonomous. It moves in its own way with its own laws. We human beings, we believe that it is we who think, that is, produce or create our thoughts. We are the makers of our notions and ideas. But in reality it is not so. Thoughts, ideas, notions, all movements of the mind are self-existent realities. They go about or flow on like the waves of a vast sea. Human beings are mere instruments, receptacles that capture or seize some undulations of this vast ocean. Man is man, that is to say,

Page 190

a mental being, because in him the brain has developed to such an extent and in such a manner that it serves as antennae or as an aerial to receive vibrations from the mental world. Indeed the ordinary human mind is a sort of crossroads where all kinds of thoughts from all places meet, cross one another and make an ideal market place. In fact, an individual does not possess any thought-movement which can be called his own. He only catches a contagion. And like a contagion thought-movements pass from one person to another although one may think or feel that the movement is one's own.

In order to have one's own thought, in order to think by oneself, a long process of education and training is necessary. A growing personal individual consciousness is the first requisite and for that one must do what the Vedic Rishi I spoke of sought to do, gather the thoughts that one has, collect them, sift them and try to have a control over them. One must develop the habit of admitting certain thoughts and rejecting others. Thoughts that are useful, that carry light and peace­ fulness and happiness, are naturally those that are worth accepting. Those that are of a contrary nature should be pushed out. This is an exercise that develops the individual consciousness and the individual will.

Furthermore, one may try to recognise thoughts that are of a different category, that do not seem to belong to the accus­tomed level of consciousness but carry a vibration that is of elsewhere, in other words, thought-movements that filter through and come down from higher ranges of consciousness. It means an elevation of consciousness, your being rises into higher realities.

The true individual, the being who is capable of living and creating independently, is formed of a stuff that lies in these higher regions.

It is only when one has found one's individual self seated in the Divine centre secret behind, organised around the centre all lesser movements, marshalled them according to an inner law, that one becomes master of one's environment and creative in the true sense of the word.

Mind is a force, thought and energy but that can be truly and fully effective when it is organised, directed, that is to say, it becomes then a guided missile. In an ordinary mind the

Page 191

thoughts are, as I have said, dispersed, they go about in all directions, to all objectives and therefore their efficacy is at its minimum. It is like light. Light-energy becomes immensely, incredibly powerful when it is concentrated, gathered towards one point. It is in this way the light-ray nowadays is trying to replace the surgeon's knife.

Usually when we think of a person or a thing, our thought-­vibration reaches its object but because the vibration is diffuse – not polarised – it touches or just brushes its object very faintly without almost any reaction from it. An organised, truly individualised consciousness has its thought-movements too, so organised and controlled and directed that it moves with a clear and forceful momentum. A mental vibration, a thought-movement becomes fully dynamic, totally effective, however, when it gets its support from the vital. The vital too in an organised and individualised personality loses its capri­ciousness and lends its support to the directing consciousness.

Page 192

IT is true that mind in its natural state seeks the truth, seeks to know the fact, know what is what. But the difficulty is, it has its own criterion of truth, it has a mould and whatever does not fit into that mould is brushed aside or doubted as untruth. The most simple and the most categorical of its canons is that a thing is always itself and cannot be anything else (it is the famous logical law of identity and law of contradiction). One is always one and cannot be two. So by extension the mind affirms if the reality is one it cannot be also many. If the Brahman is there, the world cannot be, and if the world is there, Brahman cannot be. There begins also the unending theological dispute that either God has a form or He is formless. He cannot be both at the same time.

What the mind forgets or ignores is that the law of self-contradiction belongs exclusively to the finite. It does not hold good in infinity. The Infinite is infinite because it has trans­cended the laws and categories of the finite, even as Eternity has transcended the temporal. In the transcendental consciousness the reality is single and multiple at the same time, simultaneously (although the conception of time is not there at all); also God is both with form and without form at the same time. The mind may not be able to conceive it but the fact is that, for one can rise above the mind and see and experience the reality.

There are other dualities that are confusing to the mind. It is said two objects cannot occupy together the same spot or position. One object must drive out another to occupy its position. Obviously this is a truth belonging to the material world – for it is said matter is impenetrable. But this law, however valid in the material plane, becomes less and less applicable in regions subtler and less and less material. Two

Page 193

movements or two vibrations of consciousness, may exist together without annihilating each other's identity, being a total identity.

And there is a law, a law of scientific rational inquiry which they have posited and called the law of Parsimony which means that a simpler solution to a problem is always to be preferred to a complex solution. But if it means that a simpler truth is more true than a complex one then we would be on a doubtful and even dangerous ground. To find a simple truth one may be tempted to slice off truth, that is to say, reject or ignore or shut one's eyes to some forms or aspects of the truth, even those that belong to its very essence. In fact the real world is not a very simple thing, it is complex to its core. Contraries and even contradictories co-exist in the universe and they have to be equally accepted in an inevitably complex solution. Modern science is in such a delicate situation. How can the same thing be a particle and a wave at the same time? How can a point be also a line at the same time? How to reconcile, assimilate, synthetise electric energy and gravitational force which seem to be two distinct and incommensurable entities governing, between them, the universe in its ultimate analysis? In other fields also, social and political, there are ideologies, forces that run contrary to each other but claim equal allegiance of man­kind.

There are no unitary solutions to these problems; the unitary solutions are constructions of the mind that lead nowhere except in a merry-go-round. We have to rise out of the mind and go beyond and realise that unity in plurality or plurality in unity is a self-evident fact, somewhere else than in the mind.

Page 194

THE world is one, in fact and in potentia.

There is already a realised unity; that unity runs as the fundamental chord in and through differing and discordant notes. These different and discordant and even denying notes have to be re-conditioned, blended, harmonised; that is the effective and patent unity that lies in potentia and has to be brought forth in front. The world is one at bottom; it is to be made one upto the brim.

The material world is a factual unity. For it is one matter that exists everywhere; the same fundamental elements constitute, although in different degrees, the earth, the sun, the stars, the distant galaxies and the extragalactic rays. It is in the last analysis charges of electricity – infinitesimal and infinite charges of electric force, points of energy that form the entire creation – pullulating particles that fill the universe; but they are not isolated, disconnected, disunited, they are a continuum. This continuum was called 'ether' at one time, it is now called 'field'. This material unity consists in the one extension that turns and swirls into creases and eddies giving the impression of separativeness and disunity. The task of the scientist is to know how to recondition the swirling dispersing expanse so as to as similarise, polarise the disparate elements. That is the meaning of what the scientists are now handling as the 'laser' or 'maser' beams.¹

Likewise, the vital world is also one. It is one life that pulsates in and through all living formations – one sea as it were, swaying and heaving and breaking into innumerable waves and

¹ Laser: Light amplifications due to the stimulated emission of Radiation.

Maser: Multiple amplifications, etc.

The result is that the light ray cuts diamonds, bores rocks, welds metals, and works as a surgeon's knife.

Page 195

ripples. In spite of infinite variations there is one overall pattern that persists through the living creation. Anatomy and more clearly physiology links in a strange way even the plant and the animal and man. And in humanity if there is a great vital upsurge somewhere, it spreads its vibration far and wide like a seismic motion. And it is because of this vital unity that there arises the phenomenon known as contagion or pest and pestilence – that is to say, mass-movements are occasioned by one indivisible life-urge. A common suffering or a common elation is normal to human life.

The fundamental unity, here too, works through discord and disunion, battle and conflict, denial and negation. Here too the drive or purpose of progress and of evolution is towards the same polarisation, that is to say, reorientation, evocation of vibrations that are a pure or harmonious expression of the unity.

Coming next to Mind, the unity here too, is quite marked, clearly discernible. There is only one Mind that rules the myriad mentalities of this world. Thoughts and ideas are not

in reality personal creations, they are various formulations of the one universal Mind; they enter into and possess individual minds as receptacles, and no doubt in the process undergo particular modifications in their general character. It is a very common experience to see the same or very similar ideas and thoughts expressed by individuals (or groups) living far from each other, having practically no mutual contact. We have known of "independent discoveries" of the same truth or fact and innumerable instances of this kind has history provided for us. It is not a freak of nature that we find Socrates and Buddha and Confucious as contemporaries. Contemporaries also were India's Akbar, England's Elizabeth and Italy's Leo X. Also the year 1905 has been known as Annus Mirabilis, a year of seminal importance – the sowing of the seed of a new earth-life – significant for the whole human race, for the East and for the West, particularly for India, for Japan, for Russia and even for England. And today's world has indeed become a world of compact unity in human achievement and also alas, in human distress!

Now if one goes to the very source, the very root of the matter, the cardinal fact of unity is that of the supreme Consciousness,

Page 196

the original oneness of the one Divine Existence. It is the Ultimate One, inviolate, inviolable – ekam sat. That unity is transferred or translated or imaged on all the levels and strands of creation. That is the basic reality that holds together all tiered multiplicities. True, there has been side by side a movement of aberration, denial, disjunction in the multiple formulations and translations of the One. A reunion remains to be achieved conveying and embodying the basic unity.

The disturbing factor in the universal sway of unity is the sense of individualisation, the sense of ego. That is the dark ray that cuts across the radiant harmony and produces the apparent discordance and disunion with all its attendant and consequent evil and bale.

The sense of separated and isolated existence, the feeling of a closed system that one assumes in opposition to others is the Maya of which the Vedanta speaks. It is real so long as it is taken to be real. But it possesses no inherent or absolute reality. A re-orientation or a remodelling of the individual self is the way towards reestablishing in the forefront, the background unity. Egoism, as it happens to be now, is the broken-up and scattered unity. Polarisation means precisely re-ordering and re-orienting the dispersal movement of ignorance and bringing into a new purposeful existence the unity that already exists.

Page 197

CONSCIOUSNESS is liberty, unconsciousness is slavery. When you are unconscious you are a prey to all kinds of forces and beings outside yourself and over which you have no control. You are a plaything in the hands of any power or influence that seeks to possess you and when you are in such a state it is the undesirable powers that seek and secure hospitality in you. It is only when you become conscious that you begin to react to the outside forces that try to control you or utilise you.

In the lower creation it is always a play of divergent forces and the individual being is only a field, a passive field for the play of cosmic or collective forces. It is in man, with the awakening of an individual consciousness in him, that a movement of self-assertion, of willed reaction has started in nature, that is to say, one is no more content with playing the role of a slave executing helplessly what is demanded of him by an external agent but is now making his own terms and propositions. That is how man is man because he is creating his own self and his own environment.

Consciousness, however, is not mere consciousness, that is to say, awareness; it is also power, power for organisation and execution. It is unconsciousness that is or invariably leads to disorderliness, disorganisation and confusion. It is the light of consciousness that brings order out of chaos, gives an organised direction to forces moving at random and with no purpose. Man has started organising his life since he acquired the light of consciousness. He has been doing the yoga of the intelligent will (Gita's buddhi-yoga) since his advent upon earth. But even in man this force of light, the energy of consciousness is not fully operative because man is not fully conscious, he is

Page 198

only partially so. His mind is conscious and has developed into intelligence (a little strayed into intellectuality); but there are large domains in him that are wholly unconscious, that is to say, move in mechanical rounds, a passive slave of external impacts. I am referring to his vital being and his physical being. Even like the mind these too must admit into themselves the light of the consciousness in order to free themselves from the influence of other external forces and attain the sense of their own truth and self-fulfilment.

Indeed each part, even each constituent element of our being has an individuality of its own, a personal being and consciousness. And it is because it is not aware of that inner reality, because it has fallen unconscious, therefore it has entered into this life of bondage and slavery and mechanical existence. When life becomes conscious, the life-energy becomes luminous, the vital being gradually gains self-control and self-direction. Instead of being moved about by irresponsible and irrepressible desires and impulses it attains a clarity as to what it should desire and what it should effectuate; and along with that light secures the strength also to act up to the directions of that light.

The body too similarly can be filled with light and light-energy; instead of being wholly at the mercy of the physical environment, the natural conditions around or even subject to its own innate or atavistic suggestions, it can be aware of its true reality, its inner nature, its higher potentialities.

I have spoken of the light in the mind, the consciousness that has awakened there and has organised its activities as an autonomous unit. But we must not forget that it is only partially so. The autonomy is very limited, for a- good part of the human mind is far from being conscious, there is a part half-conscious and a part almost wholly unconscious. This hemisphere so to say is under the influence of the vital and the physical being with their unconscious and ill-organised influence. The true light comes from elsewhere, the mind in so far as it receives the light becomes conscious and proportionately autonomous. The light is always the spiritual light, the consciousness of the spirit which is above and beyond mind. Not only the mind but the vital too, and the physical too in order to be consciously organised and free and autonomous

Page 199

must know how to take in that light beyond the mind and bathe in its liberating influence.

In fact, education means precisely this instilling of the consciousness into the part that is sought to be educated. Usually the thing is done in a different way which is wrong, at least an inefficient way. By education we usually mean exercising, that is teaching some exercises mostly of memory on some subject in which one seeks education. It is more or less an exercise of mechanical repetition. Whether it is of the mind or of the body the procedure is the same. As the muscles of the body are sought to be strengthened and developed through repetitive exercises, the mental faculties too are put under a training that consists of similar repetitive exercises. To store the mind with as many kinds of information as possible, hammer all ingredients of knowledge into the brain cells-learning by rote as it is termed, this is what education normally means; but as I said, it is consciousness that is to be evoked in the mind and it is not done by mere mechanical exercises. Even the body does not reach its true perfection unless the exercises are attended with consciousness, awareness, a play of light into the movements of the body, into the limbs that participate in the play of the exercises. Naturally the vital does not need any exercise for its development, it is naturally exercised, much exercised. It has to be not exercised but exorcised, that is to say, purified and controlled. And that means the introduction of the pure light of consciousness into it.

I have laid stress on consciousness, but consciousness has three facets or steps. The first is simple consciousness, the next is self-consciousness and the last supra-consciousness. First you become conscious of a thing, next you become conscious that you are conscious of the thing, last something else is conscious in and through your consciousness.

Page 200

ALL knowledge is within you. Information you get from outside, but the understanding of it? It is from within. The information from outside gives you dead matter. What puts life into it, light into it is your own inner light.

All education, all culture means drawing this inner light to the front. Indeed the word 'education' literally means, 'to bring out.' Plato also pointed to the same truth when he said that education is remembrance. You remember what is imbedded or secreted with in, you bring to the light, the light of your physical mind, what you have within, what you already possess in your being and inner consciousness. Acquisition is not education. Indeed a miser is not a rich man, rich is he who knows how to utilise his wealth, even so a possessor of much information is only a carrier of loads.

True education is growth of consciousness. It is consciousness that carries the light and the power of the light. We are born upon earth with this consciousness at the centre of our being. And a growing child is nothing but a growing consciousness. Growth of consciousness means an increasing intensity and an increasing amplitude or wideness of the light. Unfortunately, placed as we are under the circumstances of life as it is, this light of consciousness is not allowed to grow in its natural and normal way. The external demands of life and the world put a pressure upon it which turns it away from its straight path. Things are demanded of this light or consciousness which do not belong to its nature, which are not an expression of its nature. As though it is twisted, tortured or smothered under utilitarian necessities.

The brain should be a flowering of this consciousness, a developing vehicle for the expression of the increasing consciousness.

Page 201

For that guidance is needed so that one may always turn within and look for that consciousness, feel it growing, and with one's will and thought and act help its growth and development. A brain is not developed by the mass of information that may be pressed into it. Informations are necessary but they should be presented in such a way that they serve as fuel, helpful fuel to the mounting fire; they must not be merely piled up upon and around the fire or be as so many wet faggots crushing it down with their weight. A true learner is one who seeks sincerely this inner consciousness which is one's own; the true teacher is one who knows how to lead the learner towards this inner light.

Page 202

EDUCATION is organisation. Mind's education means organisation of mental faculties. Organisation naturally involves development. The faculties in the normal and natural state are an undeveloped disorganised lot, a confused mass, – unformed, ill-formed ideas, notions, thoughts, form a jumble. They have no purpose, no direction, no common impulse or end, each runs in its own way. The mind's faculties such for example as attention, memory, discrimination, reasoning, cogent thinking have to be clear and efficient and learn how to work harmoniously for a common objective. In the process and for that purpose they have to be developed, that is to say each of them has to be strong, able, ample, concentrated. They have to present a united front and function towards an ever increasing consciousness and knowledge.

As for the mental faculties so for the faculties of the vital. The normal vital being in man is in a greater and perhaps more dangerous chaos. The impulsions, emotions, upsurges that belong to this domain have not so much to be developed or increased as to be purified, made conscious, yoked together in a common drive towards a harmonious dynamic realisation in life and life's achievements. And lastly the organisation in the physical body. The limbs of the body have not even growth, they do not move together in a balanced and rhythmic way. Some are unhealthy, some do not work, some others are overworked. These too have to be co-ordinated, each set in its place and made to function in unison with others. That is physical education and that too means perfect organisation.

We have said that organisation means working for a common end and common purpose. That comes from an opening into a deeper and higher level of being. We name it the soul.

The soul's purpose, the soul's destiny has to be achieved and fulfilled. An organised and educated mind and life and body means to be the best and the most perfect vehicle for the expression upon earth of the soul's consciousness.

Page 204

THE MOTHER says Love and Hate are at bottom the same thing. At the centre there is the same substance in both, it is the obverse and reverse of the same stuff. It is a vibration, it is a unique vibration, a vibration of extreme intensity, of extreme intimacy. At the centre there is this one single movement although at the periphery it becomes different, even contradictory. As the movement starts from the centre, and proceeds outward it differentiates itself, becomes more and more different, contrary, even contradictory to what it was at its origin. Hatred with all its most ugly features appears in the place of what was once a smiling beauty. Indeed, Love itself as we know it, as it is at the outside on the periphery, is equally a deformation and aberration like Hatred. Hatred kills but Love devours, vitally in man, literally in some of the lower species of animals. Human love and human hatred are both perversions, falsified expressions of another truth behind. It is human ignorance and prejudice that appreciates one and deprecates the other. Yet both have the same root, the flowering of the same seed or it is somewhat like the two opposite kinds of electricity – positive and negative. The two charges have opposite signs but they attract each other and although in the expression and action they are contradictory, they are both charges of electrical energy and therefore substantially they are one and the same.

We may extend this viewpoint and find the resolution of all contrariness and contradictoriness. Paradoxically one may say then all contradictions are an apparent illusion, all contradictions naturally and inevitably mean an inmost unity and identity. Even so the Brahman and the world or the Purusha and the Prakriti are apparent negations to each other, the duality is in the ordinary ignorant consciousness, but the two are one in the supreme indivisible consciousness.

Page 205

THE MOTHER says that there can be Love without Grace as there can also be Grace without Love, although the two are essentially one and the same.

Grace means gift, it is a gesture of the giving of boon from the Divine. The Divine gives out of His Plenitude what we want, what we need, what we should have, naturally as per His choice. The most obvious, the most external, superficial and concrete form of gift is what meets our physical material need. And protection is the most appreciated and the most readily available treasure. Protection in its larger sense, includes all kinds and modes of welfare from the most physical to the utmost spiritual. When the aspirant prays: 'Lead us not to temptations, give us purity and peace and truth,' God's answer is His Grace.

But instead of giving any boon, any treasure physical or material or even spiritual, however precious, instead of giving anything the Divine may give Himself to one who approaches Him; then it becomes something more than the Grace, it is Love, the Divine's Love – His own Self. It is His own substance, His own delight of being that He gives, not anything external or extraneous. One remembers the story of Arjuna and Duryodhana. Duryodhana approached Krishna and thought the utmost, the best that he could secure from Krishna was Krishna's battalions, for that seemed to him the most precious gift of all, for that is the thing he would need most in the coming battle. Arjuna asked for nothing else but Krishna Himself.

Grace is of Maheshwari, that is to say, it is the special attribute, a particular emanation of her own

self, it is a form of herself in an attitude that belongs particularly to her. Love is of Mahalaxmi it is her own special form and gesture. Or,

varying the image we may say Grace is Shiva, the benign white radiance on the supreme heights enveloping the creation in its calm immutable compassion; while Krishna is Love, the immortal delight dwelling in the heart of mortality.

Page 207

IT is said one must be free from human love if one is to enjoy Divine Love. But to be free is usually taken to mean to reject, to reject naturally by force, that is to say, to coerce, to repress and suppress. "But who can coerce a force of Nature?" the Gita asks. Indeed a force of Nature like human passion cannot be dominated or obliterated by force; it is sure to come back with a redoubled vigour. Nor can such an elemental feeling be overlooked, side-tracked or by-passed. This way also the element is sure to come back and catch you from behind.

The best way to tackle the thing is, as the Mother says, to go through it. To go through means to stand and face it and not run away from it. To go through does not mean, however, to satisfy or to indulge the urge – that makes you a slave of it more and more; you get all the more entangled and can never hope to be free. You stand and face in order to seize the truth, the reality of the thing you have to deal with. You have to purify it and clean it in order to remove the dust that covers the gold. If it is human love, to purify means to free it from selfishness, from egoistic desire, the sense of possession. Instead, you love simply for the joy of loving without any expectation or demand of return. You find in the end that this way of loving brings to you a greater delight, a new thrill and poignancy, proper to a pure feeling.

Indeed not only love but all human impulses and urges are to be dealt with in the same way. The Gita furnishes a beautiful and crucial example. The Gita teaches man to go through the field of activity and not to reject or avoid it. The whole of the Gita is an ideal lesson in the technique of going through. The Gita says, do not renounce work but dedicate it– not karmatyâga but karmanyâsa. What does this dedication mean?

The first step in the process of dedication is desirelessness – to do work without desire. It is usually thought that desire is the source and origin of work. If you have no desire, you have no need or impulse to work. But this is a very superficial view of things. The impulse for work springs from elsewhere, from a deeper and impersonal source. The true spirit in which you should work is, as the Gita enjoins, to do a work because it is a thing to be done, not because you desire it. So naturally you do not hanker for the fruit of your action. First then, no attachment to the action itself, then no attachment to the fruit that it brings. This can be done only when you are unselfish. Not only unselfishness but you have to go a step farther, to selflessness. So then there are these three stages in the process of dedication or purification. First to work without desire, without attachment to the result of the work. Then you will be able to see that you are an instrument only, the work is being done through you. At the beginning you are a desireless, unselfish doer of works, next you see yourself as a detached witness of your action and finally you see that the action happening in you is Nature working in you, Nature the instrument of the Divine. Finally yourself is no longer there, it is the Divine alone that is and acts.

What has been said of works is true of all activities in man, his thoughts, feelings, impulses, physical acts. It is the process of going through and meeting the reality beyond, which hides, encloses itself with all its envelopes or coverings which you pass through.

In fact it is to the Divine that the dedication has to be made. Dedication means offering. All works, says the Gita, have to be offered to the Supreme, that is the meaning of sacrifice, the sacrifice of works (Karmayajna), all works come from the Divine and they are to go back to Him, that is how they are purified and through them thus purified and elevated, man attains his goal, union with the Supreme. However, not works alone but each and every element of the human being – even love and passion and all the grosser urges – do come from the only one Source, the Divine. They become impure and distorted, muddy and poisonous when man seeks to appropriate, that is to say, misappropriate them as his own personal belongings. To give up the sense of ownership is the core of

dedication. You are not the possessor, the Divine is the only possessor. In fact, you also do not belong to yourself, you belong to the Divine. That is the ceremony of sacrifice you have to undertake – install the Divinity in all your parts and functions. That is how you purify and divinise your human elements. That is how you go through ignorance and mortality and arrive at knowledge and immortality.

Page 210

THE night is the background to the day or otherwise the day is the stage and the night the green room, that is to say, what­ever is expressed in the day, all your activities physical or mental, are in a large part determined or coloured by your activities at night in sleep. The day represents your conscious activities, products of choice and the exercise of conscious will, but of the night we are wholly unconscious and we have no control over its hidden activities. Even so, it exercises a tremendous influence on the life of the day. The mood, the rhythm in the sleep-state colours, as I say, very much the mood and rhythm of the active life of the day. The contrary also is true. For the nature of the day-life has an influence also on the nature of the night that follows.

As the day-life is consciously controlled, so also the night - life has to be controlled. Otherwise half of our life goes to waste. As we seek to utilise the day to our benefit we must know in the same way how to utilise the night. Indeed the night and the day must work together in union for a common purpose. The Vedic Rishi says, "The Night and the Day, although they look different, are of one mind."

To have control over the night one must, first of all, be conscious of what happens in the night, that is to say, one must remember the events that occur in sleep. Usually one forgets and cannot recall easily the experiences that one has gone through while asleep. The first exercise then is, as soon as you awake, to retain whatever happens to linger still in memory, and then with this as the leading string to go backward to happenings associated with it. Even otherwise when you cannot recall any particular happening or experience, you can begin your enquiry by noting the nature of the feeling that

the experiences have left on you, that is to say, you note whether you passed a good night or a bad night. A bad night means either a tamasic state or a disturbed state. Tamasic means when you get up you feel inert, heavy, dep­ressed, still feeling like going to sleep again. The disturbed state is one in which you feel agitated, unable to control, unable to do any organised work. Instead of this unhappy condition the night may bring to you peace and happiness, a positively pleasurable sensation. That is the first step of the discipline of what I may call night-control viz. to distinguish these two states and react accordingly through your conscious will. The next step would be to distinguish two other categories of the experiences. The one is the confused and chaotic condition in which sensations and ideas and impulsions are in a jumble, a meaningless whirl or otherwise you find your sensations or notions or impulsions moving in an organised and purposeful way. The first naturally brings you discomfort and sadness, the second, on the contrary, gives you a sense of uncommon happiness.

There are occasions when the dream experience comes to you with a clear authenticity as if you were taking part in a real drama. Everything is happening truly and undisputably exactly like a happening in the normal life. Indeed when it is happening you feel it is happening in your waking life. You find the difference only when you wake up. As a matter of fact it is a region very near to the material world running parallel to it. And at times we are lifted bodily as it were into it and the experiences and adventures we go through are very analogous to those in normal life. Still when we are awake and compare the two, we notice there is a difference in pattern and movement. Yet there are other experiences of quite a different nature. You feel and see, you are transported to a region made, it would appear, of elements of a different kind. The atmosphere gives a different feel from the earthly atmos­phere, there is a light which seems to have a different vibration, even the earth there, for the earth still exists, is made of different density and solidity. These are the worlds perhaps, which Sri Aurobindo refers to when he speaks of "the other earths." Beings and things have a happy, a pure beauty in their form and movement. This does not come to you merely as a thought

Page 212

---

or an imagination but a very concrete reality in which you live and move and have your being. your sleep-world is full of many worlds, rising tier upon tier like hills in a mountain range. Quite at the bottom is an almost physical, a subtle physical world and at the top is the world of the spiritual or psychic being or consciousness. You range through all of them in some way or other but you remember only partially and in snippets and you do not know which is which. It is by focussing your attention upon them and trying to distinguish the different modes of each in regard to your feeling and perception that you gradually begin to unravel them, untie the knots and spread out the threads separately.

Page 213

HUMAN language was born out of the necessity of inter-communication among human beings living together. The necessity naturally related to the physical life and its demands and requirements. Man being a mental being sought intercommunication through his mind. So mind yoked to the physical demands gave the first form and pattern to human speech.

Language in the beginning must have been an echo or a graphic expression of man's sense-bound mind. But as the mind developed, became more and more rational and intellectual, language also tended to become more and more abstract and. intellectualised. Even so at its best, language could be the vehicle and embodiment of man's mental and intellectual world.

But man moves on, his mind opens on new horizons, his consciousness is not tethered to sense-experiences nor even limited to the region of thought and ideation built or grown in accordance with the mode and schema of sense-experiences.

Man began to possess, to acquire intuitions and inspirations, that is to say, movements of consciousness that lie beyond the frame given by the sense-mind. These new perceptions could naturally be expressed with difficulty through what one may call the earth-nurtured or earth-bound language. The aerial luminous character of the mystic consciousness is always said to be beyond speech, beyond even mental formulation.

And yet poets, mystic poets have always sought to express themselves, to express something of their experience and illumination through the word, the human tongue. It is extremely interesting to see how a material, constructed or formed to satisfy the requirements of an ordinary physical life

is being turned into an instrument for luminous and effective communication and expression of other truths and realities in the hands of these seer-creators (kavi-kratuh). They take the materials from ordinary normal life, familiar objects and happenings but use them as images and allegories putting into them a new sense and a new light. Also they give a new, unfamiliar turn to their utterance, a new syntax, sometimes uncommon construction and novel vocabulary to the language itself so that it has even the appearance of something very irregular and twisted and obscure. Indeed obscurity itself in the expression, in the form of the language has often been taken as the very sign of the higher and hidden experience and illumination.

The Vedic rishis speak of the different levels of speech-the human language is only one form of speech, its lowest, in fact the crudest formulation. There are other forms of speech that are subtler and subtler as one rises in the scale of consciousness. The highest formulation of language, the supreme Word –vâk – is 'OM' – nâda – sabda-brahma. That is the supreme speech - vibration, the rhythmic articulation of the Supreme Consciousness Sachchidananda; the expression there is nearest to silence, almost merges into silence.

Our human language cannot expect to attain that supreme height of felicity of expression but wherever something of the vibration has been communicated to it by the magic hand of the creative poet, we have the 'mantra', the supreme, the mantric poetry.

Page 215

WHATEVER happens is for the best – under the circumstances, it must be added, for the best is the resultant of many forces pulling in all directions for and against and sideways. The best means whatever leads to the goal, to the ultimate good, the final reality, the Supreme, the Divine. The universe is so arranged, the divine dispensation acts in such a way that every event, every circumstance, whatever its appearance, always leads to the Supreme Goal. So it is said the way, whatever it is, straight or crooked, always guides you to your final realisation.

Only, in the progressive march, the best can always be bettered and must be bettered. In the earlier stages, when one is in ignorance and darkness lies about, the path is sure to be tortuous with ups and downs, aberrations and retrogressions, but as one advances and the consciousness grows the obscurity dissipates, gradually the path too straightens itself, becomes smooth and kindly. That is how the best at one moment, which may appear to the superficial consciousness, very bad or even the worst, is bettered – betterment means precisely this that one rises into a clearer consciousness, one moves along a straighter path, one takes a shorter and happier course to the Goal. This is true as much of the individual as of the world as a whole, for the world too, like the individual, moves inevitably towards its high destiny – the same as or parallel to that of the individual.

It is the best that happens always for nothing else can happen but it is a relative best, relative to the situation that the consciousness according to its status creates around. As the consciousness advances the nature of the best is also transformed.

There is an absolute best but that can happen only when the consciousness has arrived at, attained union with the Supreme Consciousness. In fact there is then no longer any path to traverse, the path has lapsed or merged into the goal, the path and the goal have become one. This does not mean that dangers and difficulties and pitfalls have to be accepted and welcomed but that they have to be faced in the right spirit as aids and helps necessary and inevitable at certain points of the journey. One must grow into the consciousness that will be able to see them as such, find their use and turn them into the good that lies behind or ahead.

Page 217

(1) THE SENSE OF EARTHLY EVOLUTION

Ignorance is usually equated with innocence. A child is ignorant, therefore he is innocent. Although it is said that ignorance of law is no excuse. Spiritually however, ignorance does not mean innocence. Ignorance or unconsciousness or inconscience – different degrees of the same thing – that is to say lack of consciousness, mean, at bottom, falsehood. It is through the ignorance that Maya, the great illusion, was born. Ignorance is false apprehension, it begins with the sense of separation, "I am other than the Divine." That is how Jiva is born in or through the ignorance. The world is separate from the Divine. That is how Matter is born as or in inconscience. And the creation appears as evil. This sense of separation is a falsehood for in reality nothing is separate from the supreme Consciousness, all is That.

To regain the Truth-sense, to move upward in the cycle of ignorance and falsehood towards this Truth-sense is the world-labour and also human labour.

Even in the state of separation under conditions of the in conscience and falsehood, in spite of all appearances the Unity, the Truth-consciousness remains intact behind. It is never effaced or obliterated.

The sense of earthly evolution is the gradual unfolding of the Divine, the Supreme Consciousness in and through the gradations of consciousness from the inconscience through unconsciousness and consciousness to supra-consciousness – Matter wholly transmuted into Light.

(2) GOD ABOVE AND GOD WITHIN

God is not only above or beyond the creation. He is also here

within the creation. He is not only over our head looking down upon us. He is within our heart inspiring us, enlightening us, loving us. This is the dynamic Divine, the Supreme Consciousness concealed within the apparent inconscience of the material existence. It is that which pushes creation upward in its evolutionary course. It is that which lies behind man's ignorance purifying his obscurity leading him to a more and more luminous revelation.

In the Vedic image above shines Surya, here below burns Agni. Both are aspects of the same Truth.

(3) EMPTYING AND REPLENISHMENT

The body is composed of cells, living cells. These cells from the standpoint of consciousness are desire-cells, that is to say particles of desire, concrete and consolidated packets of hunger and thirst. A string of such innumerable packets of hunger and thirst is life-the Buddha said. The cells are to be emptied completely. Emptiness of cells is Nirvana.

Not necessarily. For one may empty the cells of their obscure contents but replenish them with something of a purer order. This is a possibility we envisage and which we are working for. The Divine life empties the cells of desire but fills it with the energy of solar Light.

(4) EGO

To renounce is a greater delight than to enjoy.

To give is a greater joy than to take.

To love is a greater ravishment than to be loved.

In one it is the ego, man's self-centredness that limits, dilutes, and even perverts his happiness. In the other, it is precisely the egolessness that brings the pure felicity. For ego is hunger, hunger that is death, says the Upanishad.

It is the ego, the personal shift that cuts the Infinite, obscures the consciousness which otherwise in its natural condition is always the supreme bliss and beatitude.

It is the ego that turns reality into unreality, light into darkness, immortality into death.

And whatever the interim necessity and utility of the ego,

originally and also ultimately it has no space or standing. For originally and ultimately and absolutely, it is the Divine that exists in and through the Divine, moves in and through the Divine to the Divine.

It is the Divine that knows the Divine through the Divine.

It is the Divine that dynamises the Divine through the Divine.

It is the Divine that enjoys, loves the Divine through theDivine.

The Vedic Rishis declared the same truth, in their own language and imagery when they said "The sacrifice is made a sacrifice through the sacrifice".

(5) CONSCIOUSNESS AND DIMENSIONS OF VIEW

The material world is, as we all know, three-dimensional; it has a length, a breadth and a depth. In fact every material object is material because it has these three dimensions. That is what we knew till now. But Einstein has added another dimension to complete the picture of material reality. He says, time is the fourth dimension. For along with space, time also is to be taken into consideration for fixing or situating a physical object. Not space alone with its three dimensions determines the physical character of an object but time also has its share. A material object exists in space; it exists also in time. It occupies a portion of space and it occupies a portion of time. Indeed time, sometimes, becomes a more important factor; for it brings about a change in the spatial dimension.

But dimension, in reality, that is to say, the configuration it gives to an object is a function of consciousness. The four-dimensional aspect of material reality is given or projected by what we call the physical consciousness. Material time and material space are the two norms through which the physical consciousness deploys itself.

But physical consciousness, the consciousness that plays through the senses is only one form of it – the lowest, the most material formation. For there is a ladder of consciousness and in it we rise rung by rung to other– what are known as higher formulations.

As we rise we find that the dimensions increase in number.

Our consciousness, our being becomes more and more multiple. In the physical and material, our perception is limited to the four dimensions because of two factors – one, things are spaced out that is to say, they are separate and discrete from one another. We know the law of material space that two things cannot occupy the same space. Secondly, things or events are separated in time, that is to say, there is the law of succession. But in the higher regions, higher or subtler regions, this separation due to time and space loses much of its exclusive force. Things tend to coalesce, even to get identified with each other. The obstructions that time and space offer to intercommunication are minimised more and more as our consciousness or being soars up or dives down into deeper and deeper and higher and higher regions. The dimensions increase in number; that means we begin to apprehend things from many angles and sides at the same time, we have more and more a simultaneous view of the total or global reality of an object. So instead of a four-fold view of things we may have a fivefold, sixfold, tenfold, hundredfold view of things depending on our status of consciousness. In the highest status,–we call it Sachchidananda, the infinite and eternal consciousness-things attain infinite dimensions, all merged in the Ultimate's unitary consciousness.

Page 223

(1)

THE Prayers and Meditations of the Mother. It is Life Divine in song, it is Life Divine set to music – made sweet and lovely, near and dear to us – a thing of beauty and a joy for ever.

To some the ideal has appeared aloof and afar, cold and forbidding. The ascent is difficult involving immense pains and tiresome efforts. It is meant for the high-souled ascetic, not for the weak earth-bound mortals. But here in the voice of the Mother we hear not the call for a hazardous climb to the bare cold wind-swept peak of the Himalayas but a warm invitation for a happy trek back to our own hearth and home. The voice of the Divine is the loving Mother's voice.

The Prayers and Meditations of the Mother are a music, a music of the lyre – I say lyre, because there is a lyric beauty and poignancy in these utterances. And true lyricism means a direct and spontaneous outflowing of the soul's intimate experiences.

This wonder-lyre has three strings, giving out a triple note or strain: there is a strain of philosophy, there is a strain of yoga and there is a strain of poetry. We may also call them values and say there is a philosophical, a yogic and a poetic value in these contemplations. The philosophical strain or value means that the things said are presented, explained to the intellect so that the human mind can seize them, understand them. The principles underlying the ideal, the fundamental ideas are elaborated in terms of reason and logical comprehension, although the subject-matter treated is in the last analysis' beyond reason and logic. For example, here is true philosophy expressed in a philosophic manner as neatly as possible.

A quoi servirait l'homme s'il n'etait pas fait pour jeter un pont entre Ce qui est eternellement, mais qui n' est pas manifest!, et ce qui est manifesté, entre toutes les transcendances, toutes les splendeu-rs de la vie divine et toute l'obscure et douloureuse ignorance du monde matériel? L'homme est le lien entre ce qui doit étre et ce qui est; il est la passerelle jetée sur l' ab£me, il est le grand X en

croix, le trait d'union quaternaire. Son domicile véritable, le siége effectif de sa conscience doit être dans le monde intermêdiaire au point de jonction des quatre bras de la croix, là, où tout l'infini de l'impensable vient prendre forme prêcise pour être projetê dans l'innombrable manifestation. .¹

Or again

Q,ue de degrês dijfêrents dans la conscience! Il faudrait rêserver ce mot pour ce qui, dans un être, est illumine par Ta prêsence, s' est identifiê à, Toi et participe à, Ta Conscience absolue, ce qui est "paifaitement êveillê", comme dit le Bouddha.²

En dehors de cet êtal, il y a des degrês infinis ,de conscience descendant jusqu' à, l' obscuritê complête, la vêritable inconscience qui peut être un domaine pas encore touché par la lumiêre de ton amour (ce qui paraît improbable dans la substance physique), ou bien ce qui est, pour une raison d'ignorance quelconque, hors de notre rêgion individuelle de perception. ³

However, we note that the philosophical strain merges into the yogic, rather the yogic strain is already involved in the

¹ Of what use would be man if he was not made to throw a bridge between That which eternally is, but is not manifested, and that which is manifested; between all the transcendences, all the splendours of the divine life and all the obscure and sorrowful ignorance of the material world? Man is the intermediary between that which has to be and that which is; he is a bridge thrown over the abyss, he is the great X in the cross, the quaternary link. His true abode, the effective seat of his consciousness, should be in the intermediate world at the joining point of the four arms of the cross, where all the infinity of the Unknowable comes to take precise form for being projected into the multitudinous manifestation. .

² How many and different are the degrees of consciousness! This word should be reserved for that which, in a being, is illumined by Thy Presence, identifies itself with Thee and participates in Thy absolute Consciousness, for that which has knowledge, which is "perfectly awakened" as says the Buddha.

³Outside this state, there are infinite degrees of consciousness descending down to the complete darkness, the veritable inconscience which may be a domain not yet touched by the light of Thy divine love (but that appears improbable in physical substance), or which is by reason of some ignorance, outside our individual region of perception.

philosophical. Here is an obvious and clear expression of this strain:

Il faudrait que chaque jour, chaque instant, soil l'occasion d'une consécration nouvelle et plus complête; et non pas une de ces consêcrations enthousiastes et trêpidantes, suractives, Pleine de l'illusion de l'muvre, mais une consêcration profonde et silencieuse qui n' est pas forcêment apparente, mais qui pênêtre et transfigure toute action Il faudrait que notre esprit paisible et solitaire repose toujours en Toi, et que de ce pur sommet il ait la perception exacte des rêalitês, de la Rêalitê unique et êtemelle, derriêre les instables et fugitives apparences¹

We are given all the disciplines necessary for the growth of the spiritual life: the processes, the procedures that have to be followed – object-Lessons are given even for the uninitiated and for the very beginner, as well as instructions for those who aim at the highest heights thus:

Il est toujours bon de regarder de temps en temps en soi et de voir qu'on n'est et ne peut rien, mais il faut en suite tourner son regard vers Toi en sachant que Tu es tout et que Tu peux tout.

Tu es la vie de notre vie et

la lumière de notre être,

Tu es le maître de nos destinées.²

Indeed philosophy and yoga go hand in hand. Yoga is applied. philosophy. What is at first mentally perceived and recognised, what is accepted by the reason is made active and dynamic in life. The character embodies the abstract and general principles, the vital energy executes them, that is yoga. Philosophy brings in the light of consciousness, yoga the

¹ Each day, each moment, must be an occasion for a new and completer consecration;and not one of those enthusiastic and trepidant consecrations, overactive, full of the illusion of the work, but a profound and ¹ Each day, each moment, must be an occasion for a new and completer consecration; and not one of silent consecration which need not be apparent, but which penetrates and transfigures every action. Our mind, solitary and at peace, must rest always in Thee, and from this pure summit it must have the exact perception of realities, of the sole and eternal Reality, behind unstable fugitive appearances.

² It is always good to look within ourselves from time to time and see that we are nothing and can do nothing, but we must then turn our look towards Thee, knowing that Thou art all and that Thou canst do all.

Thou art the life of our life and

the light of our being,

Thou art the master of our destiny.

energy of consciousness. Here we have an expression of what may be caned "yogic philosophy".

II faut à chaque moment secouer le passé comme une poussière qui tombe, afin qu' elle ne salisse pas le chemin vierge qui, à chaque moment aussi, s' ouvre devant nous.¹

Once again we see emerging the third note, the note of poetry. In fact the Prayers and Meditations abound in the most beautiful poetry, what can be more beautiful, even more poetically beautiful than these cadences!

Ta 'voix est si modeste, si impartiale, si sublime de patience et de miséricorde qu' elle ne se fait entendre avec aucune auto rité, aucune puissance de volonté, mais comme une brise fraîche, douce et pure, comme un murmure cristallin qui donne la note d' harmonic dans le concert discordant. Seulement, pour celui qui sait écouter la note, respirer la brise, elle contient de tels trésors de beauté, un tel parfum de pure sérénité et de noble grandeur, que toutes les folles illusions s' évanouissent ou se transforment dans une joyeuse acceptation de la merveilleuse vérité entrevue.²

Or more beautiful than the beautiful simplicity of these lines!

Comme une flamme qui brûle silencieusement, comme un parium qui monte tout droit, sans vaciller, mon amour va vers Toi. .³

If one asks for a classical perfection, here is a line that is on a par with a Racinian verse

Mon coeur s'est endormi jusqu'au tréfonds de l'être. .4

¹ We must at each moment shake off the past like falling dust, so that it may

not soil the virgin path which, also at each moment, opens before us.

² Thy voice is so modest, impartial, sublime in its patience and its mercy that it does not make itself heard with any authority, any potency of will; it is like a cool, soft and pure breeze; it is like a crystalline murmur that imparts a note of harmony to a discordant concert. Only for him who knows how to listen to that note, how to breathe that breeze, it contains such a treasure of beauty and such a perfume of pure serenity and noble grandeur, that all extravagant illusions vanish or are transformed into a joyful acceptance of the marvellous truth that has been glimpsed.

³Like a flame that burns in silence, like a perfume that rises straight upward without wavering, my love goes to Thee. .

4 My heart has fallen asleep, down to the very depths of my being.

And here is a line flowing with all the milk and honey of the Romantic muse

Et les heures s'evanouissent comme des rêves invécus. .¹

which possesses furthermore the magic of an indefinable mysticism so rare in the French language. The mystic element gives a special grace and flavour, a transcendent significance serving as an enveloping aura to the whole body of these Prayers and Meditations.

One cannot, for example, but be bewitched by the mystic grandeur of this image :

0 Conscience immobile et sereine, Tu veilles aux confins dumonde comme un sphinx d' êternitê. Et pourtant à certains Tu livres Ton secret.²

In fact three notes blend together indissolubly and form what we call 'mantra' – even like the triple mystic syllable AUM

Once, in connection with Shakespeare, I said that a poet's language, which is in truth the poet himself, may be considered as consisting of unit vocables, syllables, that are as it were fundamental particles, even like the nuclear particles, each poet having his own type of particle, with its own charge and spin and vibrations. Shakespeare's, I said, is a particle of Life-energy, a packet of living blood-vibration, pulsating as it were, with real heart.- beat. Likewise in Dante one feels it to be a packet of Tapas – of ascetic energy, a bare clear concentrated flame-wave of consciousness, of thought-force. In the Prayers and Meditations the fundamental unit of expression seems to be a packet of gracious light – one seems to touch the very hem of Mahalakshmi.

The voice in the Prayers and Meditations is Krishna's flute calling the souls imprisoned in their worldly household to come out into the wide green expanses of infinity, in the midst of the glorious herds of light, to play and enjoy in the company of the Lord of Delight.

¹ And the hours pass like dreams unlived. .

² 0 serene and immobile Consciousness, Thou watchest on the boundaries of the world like a sphinx of eternity. And yet to some Thou givest out Thy secret.

(2)

We have spoken of the three notes or strains in the Prayers and Meditations. Apart from this triple theme which after all means mode or modulation in expression, there is a triplicity in depth. Along with the strains, there are strands. Besides the value or quality of the things, the thing itself is a composite reality containing different levels. It is not a single, unilateral, one-dimensional world, but it is multi-dimensional consisting of many worlds, one within another, all telescoped as it were, to form a single indivisible whole.

Now these prayers – who prays? And to whom? These meditations – who meditates? And who is the object of the meditation? First of all there is the apparent obvious meaning, that is on the very surface. It is the Mother's own prayers offered to her own beloved Lord. It is her own personal aspiration, the preoccupation of the individual human being that she is. It is the secret story, the inner history of all that she desires, asks for, questions, all that she has 'experienced and realised and the farther more that she is to achieve, the revelations of a terrestrial creature of the particular name and form that she happens to possess. Thus for example, the very opening passage of these prayers:

Quoique tout mon être Te soit théoriquement consacré, , ô Maître Sublime, qui est la vie, la lumière et I' amour de toute chose j' ai peine encore â appliquer cette consécration dans les détails.l1 m' a fallU Plusieurs semaines pour savoir que la raison de cette méditation écrite, sa légitimation, réside dans Ie fait de Te l' adresser quotidiennement. Ainsi je matérialiserai chaque jour un pen de la conversation que j' ai si fréquemment avec Toi,. je Te ferai de mon mieux ma corifession. .¹

But we notice immediately that these are not -exclusively personal, absolutely individual assertions. While speaking of

¹Although my whole being is in theory conscrated to Thee, O Sublime Master, who art the life, the light and the love in all things, I still find it hard to carry out this consecration in detail. It has taken me several weeks to learn that the reason for this written meditation, its justification lies in the very fact of addressing it daily to Thee. In this way I shall put into material shape each day a little of the conversation I have so often with Thee; I shall make my confession to Thee as well as it may be--..

herself, spontaneously she seems to be speaking on behalf of all men. The words that she utters come as it were, from the lips of all mankind. She is the representative human being. She gives expression to all that man feels or might feel but is not able or does not know how to express and articulate. Here is how she describes her function as a representative person – so beautifully, so poignantly

Alors j'ai pensé à tous ceux qui veillaient sur le bateau pour assurer et protéger noire route, et avec reconnaissance, dans leur C(Eur, j' ai voulu faire naêtre et vivre Ta Paix,. puis j' ai pensé a tous ceux qui, confiants et sans souci, dormaient du sommeil de l'inconscience, et avec sollicitude pour leurs misères, pitié pour leur souffrance latente s' éveillant en eux en même temps que leur réveil, j' ai voulu qu'un peu de Ta Paix habite leur cæur, et fasse naêtre en eux la vie de l'esprit, la lumière dissipant l'ignorance. Puis j'ai pensé, à tous les habitants de cette vaste mer, les visibles et les invisibles, et j' ai voulu que sur eux s' étende Ta Paix. Puis j' ai pensé à ceux que nous avions laissé au loin et dont l' affection nous accompagne, et avec une grande tendresse, pour tux j' ai voulu Ta Paix consciente et durable, la plenitude de Ta Paix proportionnée à leur capacité de la recevoir. Puis j' ai pensé à tous ceux vcrs qui nous allons, que des préoccupations erfantines agitent et qui se battent pour de mesquines compétitions d'intérêt dans l'ignorance et l'égoïsme,. et avec ardeur, dans une grande aspiration, pour eux, j' ai demandé la pleine lumiére de Ta Paix. Puis j'ai pensé à tous ceux que nous connaissons, à tous ceux que nous ignorons, à toute la vie qui s' élabore, à tout ce qui a changé de forme, à tout ce qui n' est pas encore en forme, et pour tout cela, ainsi que pour ce à quoi je ne puis penser, pour tout ce qui est présent à ma mémoire et pour tout ce que j'oublie, dans un grand recueillement et une muette adoration, j'ai imploré Ta Paix,¹

¹ I then thought of all those who were watching over the ship to safeguard and protect our route, and in gratitude, I willed that Thy peace should be born and live in their hearts; then I thought of all those who, confident and carefree, 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 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

or again:

Ce que j'ai voulu pour eux, avec Ta volonté, auxû moments où j'ai pu être en communion véritable avec Toi, permets qu'ils l'aient reçu en ce jour où, tâchant d'oublier les contingences extérieures, its se sont tournés vcrs leur pensée la plus noble, vcrs leur sentiment le meilleur. Q,ue la suprême sérénité de Ta sublime Présence s' éveille en eux.¹

But the .Mother is not merely a representative, she has become all men, the entire humanity itself. She has identified herself with each person in her being and consciousness, she is one with all, all are merged in her. Her voice utters the cry of the human collectivity. Mother's Prayers and Meditations are the prayers and meditations of man. Thus again:

. . il m' a semblé que j' adoptais tous les habitants de ce bateau, que je les enveloppais tous dans un égal amour, et qu' ainsi en chacun d' eux quelque chose de Ta conscience s' éveillerait. ²

She has so clearly and unequivocally expressed her oneness with all men. She mentions specially the miserable, the poor and afflicted mankind:

Lorsque j' étais enfant – vers l' âge de treize ans et pendant un an environ – tous les soirs dés que j' étais couchée, il me semblait que je sortais de mon corps et que je m' élevais tout droit au-dessus de la maison, puis de la ville, irès haul. Je me voyais alors vêtue d'une magnifique robe dorée, plus longue que moi;. et a mesure que je

____________:

egoism and ardently, in a great aspiration for them I asked for the plenty light of Thy Peace.I next

thought 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 in form, 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 eg ingathering and mute adoration, I implored Thy Peace.

¹ What I willed for them, with Thy will, at the moments when I could be in a true communion with Thee, grant that they may have received it on the day when, striving to forget external contingencies, they turned towards their noblest thought, towards their best feelings.

May the supreme serenity of Thy sublime Presence awake in them.

². . it seemed to me that I adopted all the inhabitants of this ship, and enveloped them in an equal love, and that so in each one of them, something of Thy consciousness would awake.

montais, cette robe s' allongeait en s' étendant circulairement autour

de moi pour former comme un toil immense au-dessus de la ville. Alors je vqyais de taus côtés sortir des hommes, des femmes, des enfants, des vieillards, des malades, des malheureux; its s' assemblaient sous la robe étendue, implorant secours, racontant leurs misères, leurs souffrances, leurs peines. En réponse, la robe, souple et vivante, s' allongeait vers eux individuellement, et dès qu'ils l' avaient touchée, its étaient consolés ou guéris, et rentraient dans leurs corps plus heureux et plus forts qu' avant d' en être sortis.¹

But her being and consciousness are not limited to mankind alone. She has identified herself with even material objects, with all the small insignificant physical things which our earthly existence deals with. This is how she takes leave of the house where she had lived, and the things it had sheltered, on the eve of a long journey:

Je les remercie avec reconnaissance de tout le charme qu'ils ant su donner extérieurement à noire vie; je souhaite que, s'il est dans leur destinée de passer pour plus ou mains longtemps en d' autres mains que les nôires, ces mains leur soient douces et sachant tout le respect que l' on doit à ce que Ton divin Amour, Seigneur, a fait surgir de l' obscure inconscience du chaos. ²

It is to be noted how even a material object is taken up, purified and transformed almost into a living being by the Mother's loving touch.

The same feeling of unity and oneness extends to the dumb

¹ When I was a child – about the age of thirteen and for about a year – every night as soon as I was in bed, it seemed to me that I came out of my body and rose straight up above the house, then above the town, very high. I saw myself then, clad in a magnificent golden robe, longer than myself; and as I rose, that robe lengthened, spreading in a circle around me to form, as it were, an immense roof over the town. Then I would see coming out from all sides, men, women, children, the old, the sick, the unhappy; they gathered under the outspread robe, imploring help, recounting their miseries, their sufferings, their pains. In reply, the robe, supple and living, stretched out to them individually, and as soon as they touched it, they were consoled or healed, and entered back into their body happier and stronger than they had ever been before coming out of it.

²I thank them with gratitude for all the charm they have been able to impart from the outside to our life; I wish, if they are destined to pass for a long or a brief period into other hands than ours, that these hands may be gentle to them and may feel all the respect that is due to what Thy divine Love, O Lord, has made to emerge from the dark inconscience of chaos. (3.3.1914)

plant world also: It is oneness not partial or vague but total and absolute:

Une grande concentration s' est emparée de moi et je me suis aperçue que je m'identijiais avec une fleur de cerisier; puis à travers cette fleur avec toutes les fleurs de cerisier; puis descendant plus profondément dans la conscience, en suivant un courant de force bleutée, je devins tout à coup le cerisier lui-même, dressant vcrs le ciel, comme autant de bras, ses innombrables branches chargées de leur offrande fleurie. J' entendis alors distinctement la phrase suivante:

"Ainsi tu t' es unit à l' âme des cerisiers et tu as pu de la sorte constater que c' est le Divin qui fait au ciel l' offrande de cette prière de fleurs." Lorsque je l'eus écrit, touts’effaça ;; mais main tenant le sang du cerisier coule dans mes veines, et avec lui une paix et une force incomparables; quelle différence y a-toil entre le corps humain et le corps d'un arbre? Aucune vraiment, et la conscience qui les anime est bien identiquement la même.¹

Indeed the Mother's voice is the voice of all men, all creatures, all beings, all things. She stands for the entire earth, not only so, she is the Earth itself; the total terrestrial being is embodied in her, earth's aspiration, and pain and yearning find utterance in her.

Le monde douloureux s' est agenouillé devant Toi, Seigneur, en muette supplication la matiére torturée se blottit à Tes pieds, son demier, son unique refuge; et en T'implorant ainsi, elle T'adore,

Toi qu' elle ne connait ni ne comprend! Sa prière s' élève comme le cri d'un agonisant; ce qui disparait sent confusément la possibilité

¹ A deep concentration seized on me, and I perceived that I was identifying myself with a single cherry-blossom, then through it with all cherry-blossoms, and as I descended deeper in the consciousness, following a stream of bluish force, I became suddenly the cherry-tree itself, stretching towards the sky like so many arms its innumerable branches laden with their sacrifice of flowers. Then I heard distinctly this sentence:

"Thus hast thou made thyself one with the soul of cherry-trees and so thou canst take note that it is the Divine who makes the offering of this flower-prayer to heaven."

When I had written it, all was effaced; but now the blood of the cherry-tree flows in my veins and with it flows an incomparable peace and force. What difference is there between the human body and the body of a tree? In truth there is none, the consciousness which animates them is identically the same.

de revivre en Toi,. la terre attend Ton arrêt dans une grandiose prosternation. . ¹

This is the second status of the Mother's being, the first is the personal and individual, the second is this collective and universal being. But she is not merely the universe, she is the Mother of the universe. Hers is not merely earth's prayer, but the prayer of the Mother of the earth. It is not merely the prayer of the universe but the prayer of the Universal Mother to the Supreme Lord for the deliverance of the universe, for the re-creation of the earth – Indeed, for the deliverance of herself for the re-creation of herself out of the present ignorant manifestation:

0 Mère, douce Mère que je suis, Tu es à la fois ce qui détruit et ce qui érige.

L'univers entier vie dans Ton sein de sa vie innombrable et Tu

vis dans Ie moindre de ses atomes immensément.

Et I' aspiration de Ton infinitude se tourne vcrs Cela qui n' est point manifesté, afin d'implorer toujours une plus compléte et plus parfaite mainifestation. "²

Or again:

Je suis les bras puissants de Ta miséricorde. Je suis la vaste poitrine de Ton amour sans limites.. Les bras one enveloppé la / terre douloureuse et la pressent tendrement sur Ie cmur généreux,. et lentement un baiser de suprême bénédiction est posé sur cet atome en conjlit.. Ie baiser de la Mère qui console et guéfrit. . ³

¹ This sorrowful world kneels before Thee, 0 Lord, in mute supplication; this tortured Matter nestles at thy feet, its last, its sole refuge; and so imploring Thee, it adores Thee, Thee whom it neither knows nor understands! Its prayer rises like the cry of one in a last agony; that which is disappearing feels confusedly the possibility of living again in Thee; the earth awaits Thy decree in a grandiose prostration.

² Mother, sweet Mother, who I am, Thou art at once the destroyer and the builder.

The whole universe lives in Thy breast with all its life innumerable and Thou livest in Thy immensity in the least of its atoms.

And the aspiration of Thy infinitude turns towards That which is not manifested to cry to it for a manifestation ever more complete and more perfect.

³ I am Thy puissant arms of mercy. I am the vast bosom of Thy limitless love. The arms have enfolded the sorrowful earth and tenderly press it to the generous heart; slowly a kiss of supreme benediction settles on this atom in conflict: the kiss of the Mother that consoles and heals.

And once more:

Toute la terre est dans nos bras comme un enfant malade qu'il faut guérir et pour lequel on a, ài cause même de sa faiblesse, une tendresse toute spéciale.¹

The triple status of the Mother, the individual, the collective and the transcendental (or, in other words, the personal, the universal and the supra-personal) has been condensed and epitomised in the magical note describing her first meeting with the Lord:

Peu importe qu'il y ait milliers d'êtres plongés dans la plus épaisse ignorance, Celui que nous avons vu hier est sur terre,. sa présence suffit à prouver qu'un jour viendra où, l'ombre sera trans- . formée en lumière, et où, effectivement, Ton règne sera instauré sur la terre.²

And the reality that Their manifestation upon earth has to establish, the supreme achievement of Their terrestrial existence is chanted, as it were, in these wonderfully mystic Sibylline-lines:

La mort a passé vaste et solennelle et tout s' est tu religieusement durant son passage. Une beauté surhumaine a pam sur la terre. Q,uelque chose de plus merveilleux que la plus merveilleuse félicité fait pressentir sa Présence.³

(3)

I have spoken of the triple status, the three levels of her ascending reality, these are in view of her manifestation of

¹ All the earth is in our arms like a sick child who must be cured and for whom one has a special affection because of his very weakness.

² It matters not if there are hundreds of beings plunged in the densest ignorance. He whom we saw yesterday, is here on earth; His presence is enough to prove that a day shall come when darkness shall be transformed into light, when Thy reign shall be indeed established upon earth.

.³ Death has passed, vast and solemn, and all fell into a religious silence during its passage.

A superhuman beauty has appeared on the earth.

Something more marvellous than the most marvellous bliss has made felt the impress of its Presence.

world-labour. There is however, yet another status beyond – beyond the beyond – It is the relation between the Supreme Lord and the Divine Mother in itself apart from their work, their purpose in manifestation, it is their own 'Lila' between themselves, exclusively their own. The delight of this exclusively personal play behind and beyond the creation sheds a secret aroma in and through all this existence here and it is also the source of the hidden magic that these utterances of the Prayers and Meditations contain, it is to this status surpassing all wonder that Sri Aurobindo refers so wistfully and so sweetly in those famous opening lines, in "A God's Labour':¹

I have gathered my dreams in a silver air

Between the gold and the blue

And wrapped them softly and left them there

My jewelled dreams of you.

The delight of delights, the purest delight that exists up there in its self-sufficiency overflows, spills as it were, and a drop of that nectar of immortality is what constitutes these universes here below.

Page 236

(1)

SAVITRI, the poem, the word of Sri Aurobindo is the cosmic Answer to the cosmic Question. And Savitri, the person, the Godhead, the Divine Woman is the Divine's response to the human aspiration.

The world is a great question mark. It is a riddle, eternal and ever-recurring. Man has faced the riddle and sought to arrive at a solution since he has been given a mind to seek and interrogate.

What is this universe? From where has it come? Whither is it going? What is the purpose of it all? Why is man here? What is the object of his existence?

Such is the mode of human aspiration. And Ashwapati in his quest begins to explore the world and see what it is, the way it is built up. He observes it rising tier upon tier, level upon level of consciousness. He mounts these stairs, takes cognisance of the modes and functions of each and passes on enriched by the experiences that each contributes to his developing con­sciousness. The ascent he finds is from ignorance to knowledge. The human being starts from the darkest bed of ignorance, the solid basis of rock as it were, the body, the material exis­tence. Ignorance here is absolute inconscience. Out of the total absence of consciousness, the being begins to awake and rise to a gradually developing – widening, deepening and heightening – consciousness. That is how Ashwapati advances, ascends from a purely bodily life and consciousness, to the next rung of the ladder, the first appearance and expression of life-force, the vital consciousness – energies and forms of the small lower vital. He moves on, moves upward, there is a growing light in

And mixed with the obscurity; ignorance begins to shed its hard and dark coatings one and gives place to directed and motivated energies. He meets beings and creatures appro­priate to those levels crawling and stirring and climbing, moved by the laws governing the respective regions. In this way Ashwapati passes on into the higher vital, into the border of the mental.

Ashwapati now observes with a clear vividness that all these worlds and the beings and forces that inhabit them are stricken as it were with a bar sinister branded upon their bodies. In spite of an inherent urge of ascension the way is not a straight road but devious and crooked breaking into by-lanes and blind alleys. There is a great corruption and perversion of natural movements towards Truth: falsehoods and pretensions, arrogance of blindness reign here in various degrees. Ashwapati sought to know the wherefore of it all. So he goes behind, dives down and comes into a region that seems to be the source and basis of all ignorance and obscurity and falsehood. He comes into the very heart of the Night, the abyss of consciousness. He meets there the Mother of Evil and the sons of darkness. He stands before

. . the gate of the false Infinite,

An eternity of disastrous absolutes ¹

Here are the forces that pull down and lure away to perdition all that man's aspirations and the world's urge seek to express and build of Divine things. It is the world in which the forces of the original inconscience find their primitive play. They are dark and dangerous: they prey upon earth's creatures who are not content with being vassals of darkness but try to move to the Light.

Dangerous is this passage for the celestial aspirant:

Where the red Wolf waits by the fordless stream

And Death's black eagles scream to the precipice. .²

He must be absolutely vigilant, absolutely on his guard, absolutely sincere.

¹ Sri Aurobindo: Savitri, Book II: Canto 8: p. 250. .

² Ibid: Book II: Canto 8: p. 260.

Here must the traveller of the upward way­ –

For daring Hell's kingdoms winds the heavenly route­ –

Pause or pass slowly through that perilous space,

A prayer upon his lips and the great Name.¹

But there is no escape. The divine traveller has to pass through this region. For it lies athwart his path to the goal. Not only so, it is necessary to go through this Night. For Ashwapati

Knew death for a cellar of the house of life,

In destruction felt creation's hasty pace,

Knew loss as the price of a celestial gain

And hell as a short cut to heaven's gates.²

Ashwapati now passes into the higher luminous regions. He enters regions of larger breath and wider movement – the higher vital and then into the yet more luminous region of the higher mind. He reaches the heavens where immortal sages and the divinities and the gods themselves dwell. Even these Ashwapati finds to be only partial truths, various aspects, true but limited, of the One Reality beyond. Thus he leaves all behind and reaches into the single sole Reality, the transcen­dental Truth of things, the status vast and infinite and eternal, immutable existence and consciousness and bliss.

A Vastness brooded free from sense of Space,

An Everlastingness cut off from Time. .

"A stillness absolute, incommunicable. .³

Here seems to be the end of the quest, and one would fain stay there ever and ever in that status

. . occult, impenetrable,­–

Infinite, eternal, unthinkable, alone.4

Ashwapati was perhaps about to be lured into that Bliss but

1 Ibid: Book II: Canto 7: p. 238.

2 Op. tit. Book II: Canto 8: p. 262.

3 Op. tit. Book III: Cantos 1-2: pp. 349; 351.

4 Op. tit. Book III: Canto 1: p. 350.

suddenly a doubt enters into him – there is a hesitation, a questioning; he hears a voice:

The ego is dead; we are free from being and care,

We have done with birth and death and work and fate.

O soul, it is too early to rejoice!

Thou hast reached the boundless silence of the Self,

Thou hast leaped into a glad divine abyss;

But where hast thou thrown self's mission and self's power?

On what dead bank on the Eternal's road? ¹

Ashwapati veers round. A new perception, a new conscious­ness begins to open within him. A new urge moves him. He has to start on a new journey, a new quest and achievement. The world exists neither as a Truth nor as an illusion in itself. It exists in and through the Mother of the worlds. There is a motive in its existence and it is her will that is being worked out in that existence. The world moves for the fulfilment of a purpose that is being evolved through earth-life and human­ - life. The ignorant incomplete human life upon earth is not the be-all and end-all of the life here. That life has to evolve into a life of light and love and joy perfect here below. Nature as it is now willl be transmuted into a new pure and radiant substance. Ashwapati is filled with this new urge and inspiredby this new vision. He sees and understands now the truth of his life, the goal that has to be achieved, the great dream that has to be realised here upon earth in and through matter. He sees how nature has been labouring ceaselessly and tirelessly through aeons through eternity onward. He is now almost impatient to see the consummation here and now. The divine Voice however shows him the wisdom of working patiently, hastening slowly. The Voice admonishes him:

I ask thee not to merge thy heart of flame

In the Immobile's wide uncaring bliss. .

Thy soul was born to share the laden Force;

Obey thy nature and fulfil thy fate:

Accept the difficulty and godlike toil,

¹Op. tit. Book III: Canto 2: p. 351.

For the slow-paced omniscient purpose live. .

All things shall change in God's transfiguring hour.¹

But the human flame once kindled is hard to put down. It seeks an immediate result. It does not understand the fullness of time. So Ashwapati cries out:

Heavy and long are the years our labour counts

And still the seals are firm upon man's soul,

And weary is the ancient Mother's heart.

Linger not long with thy transmuting hand

Pressed vainly on one golden bar of Time. .

Let a great word be spoken from the heights

And one great act unlock the doors of Fate."²

This great cry of the human soul moved the Divine Mother and she granted at last its prayer. She answered by bestowing of her motherly comfort on the yearning thirsty soul:

0 strong forerunner, I have heard thy cry.

One shall descend and break the iron Law. .

A seed shall be sown in Death's tremendous hour,

A branch of heaven transplant to human soil;

Nature shall overleap her mortal step;

Fate shall be changed by an unchanging will.³

And She herself came down upon earth as Ashwapati's daughter to undertake the human labour and accomplish the Divine work.

(2)

The Divine Mother is upon earth as a human creature. She is to change the mortal earth into an immortal paradise. Earth at present is a bundle of material inconscience. The Supreme Consciousness has manifested itself as supreme unconsciousness.

¹Op. cit. Book III: Canto 4: pp. 380; 386.

²Op. cit. Book III: Canto 4: pp. 390-391.

³Op. cit. Book III: Canto 4: pp. 391-392.

The Divine has lost itself in pulverising itself, scattering itself abroad. Immortality is thus entombed here below in death. The task of the incarnate Supreme Consciousness is to revive the death-bound divinity, to free the human consciousness in its earthly life from the obscurity of the material unconsciousness, re-install it in its original radiant status of the Divine Con­sciousness.

Such is Savitri's mission. This mission has two sessions or periods. The first, that of preparation; the second, that of fulfilment. Savitri, the human embodiment was given only twelve months out of her earthly life and in that short space of time she had to do all the preparation. She knew her work from her very birth, she was conscious of her nature and the mission she was entrusted with. Now she is facing the crisis. Death is there standing in front. What is to be done, how is she to proceed? She was told she is to conquer Death, she is to establish immortal life upon mortal earth. The Divine Voice rings out:

Arise, soul, and vanquish Time and Death.¹

Yes, she is ready to do it, but not for herself, but for her Love, the being who was the life of her life. Savitri is the Divine Consciousness but here in the mortal body' she is clothed in the human consciousness; it is the human consciousness that she is to lead upward and beyond and it is in and through the human consciousness that the Divine Realisation has to be express and established. The human Savitri declares: If Death is conquered, it is for the sake of Satya van living eternally with her. She seems to say: What I wish to see is the living Satyavan and I united with him for ever. I do not need an earthly life without him; with him I prefer to be in another world if necessary away from the obscurity and turmoil of this earth here.

My strength is taken from me and given to Death,

Why should I lift my hands to the shut heavens. .

Why should I strive with earth's unyielding laws

Or stave off death's inevitable hour?

¹ Op cit. Book VII: Canto 2: p. 539.

This surely is best to pactise with my fate

And follow close behind my lover's step

And pass through night from twilight to the sun. .¹

But a thunderous voice descends from above shaking Savitri to the very basis of her existence.

“And what shall thy soul say when it wakes and knows

The work was left undone for which it came?"²

Thus a crisis very similar to that which Ashwapati had to face now confronts Savitri also. Both of them were at the crossroads away from the earth in the pure delights of the heavens or in the world labouring on earth's soil. Savitri's soul was now revealed to her in its fullness. She viewed the mighty destiny for which she had come down and the great work she had to achieve here upon earth, not any personal or individual human satisfaction or achievement but a cosmic fulfilment, a global human realisation. The godhead in Savitri is now fully awake, established in its plenitude – the Divinity incarnate in the human frame. All the godheads, all the goddess-emanations now entered into her and moulded the totality of her mighty stature.

Here begins then the second stage of her mission,– her work and achievement, the conquest of Death. Only the Divine human being can conquer Death. Savitri follows Death step by step revealing gradually the mystery of death, his personality and his true mission, although the dark God thinks that it is he who is taking away Satyavan and Savitri along with him, to his own home, his black annihilation. For Death is that in its first appearance, it is utter destruction, nothing-ness, non-existence. So the mighty Godhead declares in an imperious tone to the mortal woman Savitri:

This is my silent dark immensity,

This is the home of everlasting Night,

This is the secrecy of Nothingness

Entombing the vanity of life's desires. .

Hopest thou still always to last and love?³

¹ Op. tit. Book VII: Canto 2: p. 539. .

² Op. cit. Book VII: Canto 2: p. 540.

³ Op. cit. Book IX: Canto 2: p. 661.

Indeed Death is not merely a destruction of the body, it is in reality nothingness, non-being. The moment being, exis­tence, reality manifested itself, established itself as a material fact, simultaneously there came out and stood against it, its opposite non-being, non-existence, non-reality; against an everlasting 'yes' there was posited an everlasting 'no'. And in fact, this everlasting No proves to be a greater effective reality, it has wound itself around every constituent atom of the universe. That is what has expressed itself in the material domain as the irreversible degradation of energy and in the mortal world it is denial and doubt and falsehood – it is that which brings about failure in life, and frustration, misery and grief. But then Savitri's vision penetrated beyond and she saw, Death is a way of achieving the end more swiftly and more completely. The negation is an apparent obstacle in order to increase, to purify and intensify the speed of the process by which the world and humanity is being remodelled and re­created. This terrible Godhead pursues the human endeavour till the end; until he finds that nothing more is to be done; then his mission too is fulfilled.¹ So a last cry, the cry of a desperate dying Death, pierces the universe and throws the final challenge to Savitri:

0 human claimant to immortality,

Reveal thy power, lay bare thy spirit's force,

Then will I give back to thee Satyavan.

Or if the Mighty Mother is with thee,

Show me her face that I may worship her;

Let deathless eyes look into the eyes of Death. .²

Death's desire, his prayer too is fulfilled. He faces Savitri but this is not the Savitri against whom he fought. Whose is this voice?

¹ We are reminded here of a parallelism in Goethe's conception of the role of Satan (the Negative Principle) in human affairs. Satan is not merely a destroying devil, he is a constructive angel. For it is he

Who must goad and tease

And toil to serve creation.

whenever

Man's efforts sink below his proper level.

² Op. cit. Book X: Canto 4: p. 745.

I hail thee almighty and victorious Death,

Thou grandiose Darkness of the Infinite. .

I have given thee thy awful shape of dread

And thy sharp sword of terror and grief and pain

To force the soul of man to struggle for light. .¹

What happens thereafter is something strange and tre­mendous and miraculous. Light flashed all around, a leaping tongue of fire spread out and the dark form of Death was burnt-not to ashes but to blazing sparks of light:

His body was eaten by light, his spirit devoured. ²

Thus Death came to his death – not to death in reality but to a new incarnation. Death returned to his

original divine Reality, an emanation of the Divine Mother.

A secret splendour rose revealed to sight

Where once the vast embodied Void had stood.

Night the dim mask had grown a wonderful face.³

In that domain of pure transcendent light stood face to face the human Savitri and the transformed Satyavan.

(3)

SAVITRI has entered into the deathless luminous world where there is only faultless beauty, stainless delight and an un­measured self-gathered strength. Savitri heard the melodious voice of the Divine:

You have now left earth's miseries and its impossible con­ditions, you have reached the domain of unalloyed felicity and you need not go back to the old turbulent life: dwell here both of you and enjoy eternal bliss.

But Savitri answered firm and moveless:

I climb not to thy everlasting Day,

Even as I have shunned thy eternal Night. .

¹ Op. cit. Book X: Canto 4: p. 747.

² Op. cit. Book XI: Canto I: p. 762. .

³ Op. cit. Book X: Canto 4: p. 749

Earth is the chosen place of mightiest souls;

Earth is the heroic spirit's battlefield. .

Thy servitudes on earth are greater, king,

Than all the glorious liberties of heaven.¹

Once more Savitri, even like Ashwapati, has to make a choice between two destinies, two soul-movements – although the choice is already made even before it is offered to her. Ashwapati had to abandon, we know, the silent immutable transcendent status of pure light in order to bathe in this lower earthly light. Savitri too as the prototype of human conscious­ness chose and turned to this light of the earth.

The Rishi of the Upanishad declared: they who worship only

Ignorance enter into darkness, but they who worship knowledge alone enter into a still darker darkness. This world of absolute light which Savitri names 'everlasting day' is what the Upanishadic Rishi sees and describes as the golden lid upon the face of the Sun. The Sun is the complete integral light of the Truth in its fullness. The golden covering has to be removed if one is to see the Sun itself-to live the integral life, one has to possess the integral truth.

So it is that Savitri comes down upon earth and standing upon its welcoming soil speaks to Satyavan as though consoling him for having abandoned their own abode in heaven to dwell among mortal men:

Heaven's touch fulfils but cancels not our earth. .

Still am I she who came to thee mid the murmur

Of sunlit leaves upon this forest verge. .

All that I was before, I am to thee still. .²

Voicing Satyavan's thought and feeling, all humanity, the whole world in joy and gratefulness, utters this mantra of thanksgiving:

If this is she of whom. the world has heard,

Wonder no more at any happy change.³

¹ Op. cit. Book Xl: Canto I: p. 770.

² Op. cit. Book XII: Canto: p. 808. .

³ Book XII: p. 812.

Page 246

---

(4)

IN her Prayers and Meditations the Mother says:

Comme l' homme n' a pas voulu du repas que j' avais préparé avec tant d' amour et de soin, alors j' ai invite le Dieu à le prendre.

Et mon Dieu, Tu as accepté mon invitation et Tu es venu T' asseoir à ma table,. et en change de ma pauvre et humble offrande Tu m' as octroyé la finale libération.¹

What is this banquet that she prepared for man and which man refused? It is nothing else than the Life Divine here below -the life of the Gods enjoying immortality, full of the supreme light and power, love and delight. Man refused because for him it is something too high, too great. Being a creature earth­bound and of small dimensions he can seize and appreciate only small things, little specks of a material world. He refused, first of all, because of his ignorance, he does not know, nor is he capable of conceiving that there are such things as immortal life, divinity, unobscured light, griefless love, or a radiant, tranquil, invisible energy. He does not know and yet he is arrogant, arrogant in his little knowledge, his petty power, in his blind self-sufficiency. Furthermore, besides ignorance and arrogance there is an element of revolt in him, for in his half ­wakefulness with his rudimentary consciousness, if ever he came in contact with something that is above and beyond him, if a shadow of another world happens to cross his threshold, he is not at peace, does not want to recognise but denies and even curses it.

The Divine Mother brings solace and salvation. For the Grace it is such a small and easy thing, it is a wonder how even such a simple, natural, inconspicuous thing could be refused by anybody.

If man finds no use for the gift she has brought down for him, naturally she will take it back and return it to Him to whom it belongs, for all things belong to the Supreme Lord,

¹ "Since the man refused the meal I had prepared with so much love and care, I invoked the God to take it.

My God, Thou hast accepted my invitation, Thou hast come to sit at my table, and in exchange for my poor and humble offering Thou hast granted to me the last liberation."

even She belongs to Him, as She is one with Him. The Gita says: there is nothing else than the Brahman in the creation – ­the doer, the doing and the deed, all are essentially He. In the sacrifice that is this moving, acting universe, the offerer, the offering and the offered, each and every element is the Brahman – brahmarpanam brahma havib.

This gesture of the Divine Mother teaches us also what should be the approach and attitude of human beings in all their activities. In all our movements we should always remem­ber Him, refer to Him, consider that in the last analysis each and every movement comes from Him and we must always offer them to Him, return them to the/ parent-source from where they come, therein lies freedom, the divine detachment which the individual must possess always in order to be one with Him, feel one's identity with Him.

(5)

MAN'S refusal of the Divine Grace has been depicted very beautifully and graphically in a perfect dramatic form by Sri Aurobindo in Savitri. The refusal comes one by one from the three constituent parts of the human being. First of all man is a material being, a bodily creature, as such he is a being of ignorance and misery, of brutish blindness. He does not know that there is something other than his present state of misfortune and dark fate. He is not even aware that there may be any­thing higher or nobler than the ugliness he is steeped in. He lives on earth-life with an earth-consciousness, moves mechani­cally and helplessly through vicissitudes over which he has no control. Even so the material life is not a mere despicable thing; behind its darkness, behind its sadness, behind all its infirmities, the Divine Mother is there upholding it and infusing into it her grace and beauty. Indeed, she is one with this world of sorrows, she has in effect become it in her infinite pity and love so that this material body of hers may become conscious of its divine substance and manifest her true form. But the human being individualised and separated in egoistic conscious­ness has lost the sense of its inner reality and is vocal only in regard to its outward formulation. It is natural for physical man

therefore to reject and deny the physical Godhead in him, he even curses it and wants to continue as he is. He yells therefore in ignorance and anguish:

I am the Man of Sorrows, I am he

Who is nailed on the wide cross of the Universe. .

I toil like the animal, like the animal die.

I am man the rebel, man the helpless serf. .

I know my fate will ever be the same,

It is my Nature's work that cannot change..

I was made for evil, evil is my lot;

Evil I must be and by evil live;

Naught other can I do, but be myself;

What Nature made, that I must remain.¹

The Divine glory manifests itself for a moment to the earthly consciousness but man refuses to be pulled out of its pigsty. The Grace with draws but in its Supreme Consciousness of unity and love consoles the fallen creature and gives it the assurance:

One day I will return , a bringer of strength. .

Misery shall pass abolished from the earth;

The world shall be freed from the anger of the Beast. . ²

The basic status or foundation of Man, in fact of creation, is earth, the material organisation. After the body, next comes the life and Life-power. Here man attains a larger dynamic being of energy and creative activity. Here too, on this level, what man is or what he achieves is only a reflection, a shadow, but mostly a misshapen resemblance, an aberration of the divine reality that hides behind, and yet half-reveals itself. That Godhead is the Mother's form of Might, we name it variously, Kali and Durga and Lakshmi, for it is Her Grace that is ultimately expressed and fulfilled in this world of vital power. I t is because of this realising power of the Mother that

Slowly the Light grows greater in the East,

Slowly the world progresses on God's road.

¹Book VII: Canto 4: pp. 574-6.

²Book VII: Canto 4: p. 576.

His seal is on my task, it cannot fail;

I shall hear the silver swing of heaven's gates

When God comes out to meet the soul of the world.¹

But man in the strength of his ignorance and arrogance does not recognise this Goddess. Human power, we have said, is a reflection, a shadow of the Divine Power but most often it is a deformed, a perverted Divine Power. Man is full of his egoistic vital self-confidence: he believes it is his own will that is realising all, all which is achieved here; whatever he has creater it is through the might of his own merit and whatever new creations will be done in the future will be through the Grace of his own genius. A mighty vital selfhood obscures his consciousness and he sees nothing else, understands nothing else beyond the reach of that limited vision. This is the Rakshasa, this is the Asura in man. Here is his philosophy of life:

I climb, a claimant to the throne of heaven.

The last born of the earth, I stand the first. .

I am God still unevolved in human form;

Even if he is not, he becomes in me. .

No magic can surpass my magic's skill.

There is no miracle I shall not achieve. ²

So this vital being in man in his Rakshasic hunger and Asuric self-conceit rejects the Divine Power that is in fact behind him too, supporting him. The Goddess, in the wake of her predecessor, goes back from where she came, leaving however a consoling word, assuring that one day she will return; she will bide her time. For one day,

The cry of the ego shall be hushed within,

Its lion-roar that claims the world as food,

All shall be might and bliss and happy force.³

In his body man is the beast, in the vital he is the Rakshasa and the Asura, he rises now into the mind. And in the mind

¹ Book VII: Canto 4: p. 579.

² Book VII: Canto 4: pp. 580-2.

³ Book VII: Canto 4: p. 583.

he is the human being proper, he has attained his own hu­manity. Here he has received the light of knowledge, a wider and deeper consciousness, he has unveiled the secret mysteries of Nature, brought to play hidden forces that were unknown and untapped. All these achievements have been possible for man because it is the Mother of Light that is behind and has come forward to shed something of her luminous presence around. But man has no inkling of the presence of this luminous Deity, his own light has been a screen in front of the inner divine light. It is not possible for the human mind to seize the higher light: his consciousness, his knowledge is too narrow, too superficial, too dull to comprehend what is beyond. This Divine Light is also a thing of delight, the consciousness it possesses is also the very essence of Joy and Felicity. But all that is occult to the human knowledge. Man considers Truth is his property, whatever truth is there his understanding can grasp it and bring it to play: Truth and Reality are commensurate with his own consciousness, his mental comprehension. What others speak of as realities of the spirit, truths transcendental, are an illusion and delusion. This is what is usually known as the scientific mind, the rational consciousness. An orthodox scientific mentality is in the first instance a thing of overweening self-confidence, of arrogant self-assertion. It declares in its formidable pride:

I have seized the cosmic energies for my use.

I have pored on her infinitesimal elements

And her invisible atoms have unmasked. .

If God is at work his secrets I have found.¹

This imperiousness in man seems however to be a sheer imperviousness: it is a mask, a hollow appearance; for with all his knowledge, at the end he has attained no certainty, no absoluteness. There is something behind, all the outer bravado he flourishes has a sense of helplessness, at times almost as pitiable as that of a child; for he finds at last

All is a speculation or a dream:

In the end the world itself becomes a doubt.²

¹ Book VII: Canto 4: p. 589.

² Book VII: Canto 4: p. 589.

It is true his survey of the universe, his knowledge of bound­less Nature and the inexhaustible multiplicities of creation have given him a sense of the endless and the infinite but he has not the necessary light or capacity to follow those lines of infinity, on the contrary, there is a shrinking in him at the touch of such vastnesses; his small humanity makes him desperately earth-bound, his aspiration follows the lines of least resistance:

Our smallness saves us from the Infinite.

In a frozen grandeur lone and desolate

Call me not to die the great eternal Death. .

Human I am, human let me remain

Til1 in the Inconscient I fall dumb and sleep.¹

Thus, this Goddess too, is rejected like her previous comrades, the Mother of Light, the Deity who is properly the guide and ruler of man's own destiny. Even she is refused but hers is not to complain, in tranquil quietness she brings comfort and hope to the troubled human mind and says she goes to come back in the fullness of her incarnation. She utters divinely:

One day I shall return, His hands in mine,

And thou shalt see the face of the Absolute.

Then shall the holy marriage be achieved,

Then shall the divine family be born.²

(6)

To the inconscient and ignorant human nature, Savitri, the Divine's delegate presents the powers and personalities that are behind man's present infirmities – these broken images of true realities lying scattered about in the front of existence. Man will be made conscious, he is being made conscious step by step precisely by such relations from time to time. The Vedic image is that of the eternal succession of dawns whose beginning no one knows, nor the end, that creation proceeds from light to light, from consciousnes to higher reaches of consciousness.

¹ Book VII: Canto 4: p. 590.

² Book VII: Canto 4: p. 591.

From the material life through the vital and the mental life he first reaches the spiritual life and finally the Life Divine. From the animal he rises to manhood, and in the end to Godhood.

But there are intermediaries. The fullness of the realisation depends on the fullness of the incarnation. The Evil in the body, the Evil in the vital, the Evil in the mind are, whatever their virulence and intransigence, subsidiary agents, for they serve only a mightier Lord. The first original Sin is Death, the God of Denial, of non-existence. That is the very source­ – fons et origo – the fount and origin of all the misfortune, the fate that terrestrial life involves. This demon, this anti-Divine has to be tracked and destroyed or dissolved into its original origin. This is the Nihil that negates the Divine – Asat that seeks to nullify Sat and that has created this world of ignorance and misery, that is to say, in its outward pragmatic form. So Savitri sees the one source and knows the remedy. Therefore she pursues death, pursues him to the end, that is, to the end of death. The luminous energy of the Supreme faces now its own shadow and blazes it up. The flaming Light corrodes into the substance of the darkness and makes of it her own trans­figured substance. This then is the gift that Savitri brings to man, the Divine's own immortality, transfusing the mortality that reigns now upon earth.

In view of the necessity of the age, for the crucial, critical and, in a way, final consummation of Nature's evolutionary urge, the Divine Himself has to come down in the fullness of His divinity; for only then can the earth be radically changed and wholly transformed. In the beginning the Divine once came down, but by sacrificing Himself, being pulverised, scattered and lost in the infinitesimals of a universal, material, un­consciousness. Once again He has to come down, but this time in the supreme glory of His victorious Luminosity.

This then is the occult, the symbolic sense of the Mother's gesture turning away from man with her gifts and returning to the Divine Himself, and inviting Him as the chief guest of honour upon this earth. Or, in the Vedic image, He is to come as the flaming front and leader of the journeying sacrifice that is this universal existence.

Page 253

WHY do we read the works of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother? And if we read them, how to read them?

Do we read for the sake of study? to know things? to acquire knowledge? That is a secondary aspect, a profit gained by the way. The real purpose of coming in contact with the words of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo is to become conscious, to acquire consciousness, to be more and more conscious, increase more and more the consciousness. To understand, that is to say, to seize by the mind, to grasp intellectually the writings of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo is rather difficult. The easier, the more right way would be to enter into the atmosphere of the world that they have created with their words, to feel the vibration that the words emanate. For the words that they have uttered are not mere words taken or found in the dictionaries, they are not mere sounds, dead syllables, they are living entities, symbols of consciousness, the consciousness of which I have just spoken. These symbols, being symbols of consciousness are luminous, they shed light all along, they are full of power and extend power all along, they have life and they are full of delight. It is this inner world that is behind the outer world of words that one has to be in touch with, be aware of, in the first instance, before one can have a mental understanding; in other words you must cultivate the right attitude, a turn of your consciousness in tune with the consciousness that has worked out the words of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. You have to take a plunge, as it were, dip into the waters, and be soaked in the caress of that element, to come in the living touch of the substance of words, go behind the meaning, if necessary, avoiding it even. You must contact the living sap, the rasa, that has poured itself out in the creation. If you have tasted

Page 254

of that, then – It has its own light – that will suffuse you auto­matically with its radiance; the delight of bathing in the living spring will formulate itself in rhythms of knowledge and true understanding.

At least such should be the basis of approach to the works of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. You may have possessed a rich intellectual apparatus, you may have all the information that sciences and philosophies have gathered, you may have perused the whole story of the evolution of human knowledge up to the present time, all these are lesser lights, they do not illuminate the light before which you stand. That light is shown and recognised by its own reflection or emanation in you, the little light that is in you, your soul.

Indeed, there have been instances where great intellectuals, famed savants found themselves bewildered before the simplest magic phrases of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. On the other hand, simpler minds with no burden of learning, nor pride of pedantry, with their pure streak of light in the depth of their consciousness were able to seize and unveil the secret sense.

Your mental understanding, your intellectual apprehension mayor will add to the joy of your discovery; one that is perhaps at the end or subsequently, when your brain, your physical reason has been washed by the flow of the inner light, when it has been made pure and plastic and docile.

In another way, to understand the Truth – the Truth that the words of the Mother or Sri Aurobindo express – you must start by living it, approaching it not merely through your mind, in fact not even through your heart, but possessing it in the very body. The Mother says, real understanding comes by the body-understanding. Indeed, the true aim of knowledge is not merely to know but to be.

Page 255

THE Mother says a professor, a true professor, must be truly a yogi. That is to say, a teacher, even a schoolteacher, one imparting what is called secular education, has to be nothing less than a yogi. The Indian term for teacher is 'guru' and 'guru' meant a teacher both spiritual and secular. This distinction of the two words is made by the modern spirit, it did not belong to the ancient culture. The secular knowledge was also considered a necessary part of the spiritual knowledge, that which prepared for it and led towards it. The 'apara vidya' or the 'vedangas' were but limbs of the supreme knowledge 'para vidya' and 'veda'.

A teacher has to be a yogi does not mean that he is to be a paragon of moral qualities, following, for example, the ten commandments scrupulously. Not to tell a lie, not to lose temper, to be patient, impartial, to be honest and unselfish, all these more or less social qualities have their values but something else is needed for the true teacher, something of another category and quality. I said social qualities, I might say also mental qualities. The consciousness of the teacher has to be other than mental, something deeper, more abiding, more constant, less relative, something absolute. Do we then prescribe the supreme Brahma-consciousness for the teacher? Not quite. We mean the consciousness of a soul, the living light that is within every aspiring human being. It is a glad luminousness in the heart that can exist with or without the brilliant riches of a cultivated brain. And one need not go so far as the vedantic Sachchidananda consciousness.

That is the first and primary necessity. When the teacher approaches the pupil, he must know how to do it in and through that inner intimate consciousness. It means a fundamental

Page 256

---

attitude, a mode of being of the whole nature rather than a scientific procedure: all the manuals of education will not be able to procure you this treasure. It is an acquisition that develops or manifests spontaneously through an earnest desire, that is to say, aspiration for it. It is this that establishes a strange contact with the pupil, radiates or infuses the knowledge, even the learning that the teacher possesses, infallibly and naturally into the mind and brain of the pupil.

Books and programmes are of secondary importance, they are only a scaffolding, the building within is made of a different kind of bricks. A happy luminous consciousness within is the teacher's asset, with that he achieves all; without it he fails always.

If the teacher is to be a yogi, the pupil on his side must be at least an aspirant. But I suppose a pupil, so long as he is a child, is a born aspirant. For, as the Mother says, a child's consciousness retains generally something of the pure inner consciousness for sometime at least until it is overshadowed by the development of the body and the mind in the ordinary normal way. Something of this, we know, has been expressed in the famous lines of the visionary English poet:.

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;

The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,

Page 257

---

of the teacher and the pupil, we generally confine ourselves to the mental domain, that is to say, aim wholly or mainly at the intellectual acquisition and attainment, and only sometimes as per necessity as it were we turn at most to the moral domain, that is to say, we look for the growth of character, of good manners and behaviour – social values as we have said. Here we have tried to bring into the educationist's view a more important, a much more important and interesting domain – a new dimension of consciousness.

Page 258

I SPOKE of consciousness and dimensions of consciousness. What then is consciousness itself? Well, we may begin by knowing what it is not, what is not consciousness. Not consciousness means the absence of consciousness, otherwise unconsciousness. You are conscious, conscious of things when you are aware, aware of their presence; when you are not aware, when you do not perceive, you are unconscious, you do not have consciousness. It is the difference between being asleep and being awake. When you are asleep things are lost, you become unconscious of them; when you are awake; things reappear and you are conscious of them. The difference is analogous to the difference of night and day. Night in its darkness swallows up things, annihilates them as it were, it is unconsciousness. The day dawning brings forth the things and gives their normal concrete form, tangible reality. It is consciousness. So we may say consciousness is light, and unconsciousness darkness. Consciousness is creation – unconsciousness annihilation.

But consciousness has two modes or status. First of all, when consciousness is the consciousness of things, when one is conscious of the existence of objects, this mode may be called objective consciousness, but consciousness may exist in itself without reference to any object of consciousness; the light is there, there is no object to illumine, it is self-luminous. This is consciousness in its essence, its own reality.

This essential consciousness is an unchanging reality existing everywhere in the universe but it expresses itself in different modes and apparent forms, its essential quality does not change but acquires a different colour and vibration in accordance with its degree and level of expression. For example, the body has a consciousness, life-force has a consciousness, mind has a

consciousness, and the levels above the mind, each has a consciousness. All these types or modes or, as I have said, dimensions of consciousness are essentially the same consciousness. The vessels are different, their shape and colour differ but they all hold as it were the same transparent, clear water. We all know the different movements of light, seen and unseen; but however much they differ in their vibration, all have the same speed of light. And it is always the same composition, as scientists have taught us a light particle is a fusion of an electron and a positron; even so consciousness is also an invariable entity.

Mother said of love the same thing as I have been saying of consciousness. She says, there is only one love, the divine love and 'none other. There are various expressions of that love according to the conditions in which it manifests, to the degree or status of being but everywhere it is the same divine love behind in essence. Because of inadequate expression it becomes blurred or faint and muddy but the living fire is there below the ashes. You have simply to shake off the outer coating to allow the inner reality to shine forth in its own nature.

Love in the mind, love in the heart, love in the vital, love in the physical, love human and animal are not negations of the Divine love, it is not that you have to reject, cut off these so-called inferior formulations of love, these do not necessarily deny or reject the Divine love in their heart of hearts; even there in their true reality, glows the pure Divine love. To reach the Divine love, to enjoy its divine ananda, it is not necessary to make a bonfire of these earthly goods and go beyond into the transcendent. Even here in this earthly mould the Divine love in its full purity can be established for it is already there behind and needs only earnest evocation.

Consciousness essentially is always and everywhere the same. Its own quality is unvarying but in its expression there is growth and development, an increase in intensity and amplitude. The light that your candle gives and the light that comes from the sun are not different in quality but they differ in expression or manifestation, because of the receptacle, the seat or abode of the light. The Vedic fire was lighted on a sacred altar, that is the seat for the God from where to manifest himself. There was a regular ceremony for the preparation

of the seat (Barhi) and the value and the success of the sacrifice depended largely on a proper preparation of the seat. The seat, the basic status also indicates that there is an ascending movement of the sacrifice. The sacrifice symbolises consciousness and radiant energy, mounting and travelling upward and forward; the progress or ascent of consciousness means bringing out its inherent potential strength that is behind and within and placing it in front as power of expression. As I have said, if consciousness in matter is like a light of single candle power, on the level of life it becomes a light of multiple candle power and in the mind this multiple power is again multiplied. In this way the consciousness finally attains its solar incandescence on the highest height of the being.

When we speak of the dimensions of consciousness, it means these different levels or status of ascending expression. They also form according to the mode of expression each one a world of its own. We may compare the mounting consciousness to a growing tree, it is the same sap-substance that appears at the outset as a seed, then as the seed opens out and develops it appears or throws up a stem or trunk and as it proceeds it throws up branches and higher up leaves and then flowers and fruit. Apparently however different and diverse these formulations, they are but expressions of the same sap-substance in the original seed. Even so an original seed-consciousness is the basis and essential reality of all the forms in the material universe.

It must now be apparent that consciousness is not merely consciousness, simple awareness, it is also power or energy. The Vedic word is cit-tapas, consciousness-energy. It is one indivisible, entity: consciousness is energy. It is not however in the sense as when we say knowledge is power: It does not mean consciousness has power or gives power, but consciousness is power. The nearer analogy would be with light-energy. Light, we know today, thanks to modern science, does not merely illumine, it energises, activises, moves things, that is to say, matter and material objects. The ray of light, we know now, acts even more effectively than the surgeon's knife. The inherent quality of light is energy. This energy has been discovered to be electro-magnetic energy, a photon (unit-light or light-unit) is, as we have said, an electro-magnetic quantum.

In the same way consciousness is also a vibration of energy. It is the self-impulsion of consciousness. This impulsion need not always go out, cast or spread itself abroad in outward expressions and activities, it may be a stilled self-contained impulsion. It is awareness pregnant with power. Consciousness is luminosity, consciousness is energy, consciousness is also delight. It may be said the very soul of consciousness is a happiness, a gladness absolute and inviolate, the delight which is love in its supreme mode.

Indeed, in the final account, we come back to the supreme mantra formulating the mystery of ultimate reality given by the ancients that we all know and repeat so often – sachchidananda.

Such then is the ultimate Truth or Reality: there is the Being or pure Existence with its norms or modes or functions or self-formulations as Consciousness-Force and as Delight. This triune entity is absolutely one and the same. What exists declares the Vedic Rishi, is one; it is called variously as Light and Infinity and Harmony and Delight.

Page 262

THE Mother says: there is only one Love, there are not two. And it is Divine Love. The difference arises only in its expression, in its application. In its essential quality and substance it is always the same. Take for example human love; stripped of the mere human element, love remains the same original thing. Because the old ascetic orders of spiritual discipline, in the main, considered love essentially and wholly earthy and human; they rejected this limb altogether, cut it out as undivine. But that is an error.

We do not regard love, even human love, as an error but a power, a force and energy. Love, even human love, is not to be amputated or rooted out but like gold as ore, it has to be purified. The work is hard but it is worth the trouble.

As a matter of fact, however, all the divine qualities – supernals as they have been sometimes called – are of that nature, that is to say, all are universal; they are never non -existent, they are never and can never be negatived. Divine Consciousness, Divine Delight, Divine Power, indeed, Divine Being – they each and all exist as absolute and unitary realities, that is to say, one without a second. Even like Divine Love, there is only one Divine Consciousness, one Divine Power, one Divine Bliss, one Divine Being, however various they may appear in outward name and form.

But the physical consciousness, the physical body, this very material frame have for us upon earth, a divine significance. They are not to be despised or thrown out. On the contrary, our object is to take special care of the body, to cleanse it of its outward dross, make it sound and free from disease, to immortalise it if possible. And it is possible notwithstanding the old teachings. In their nature as a matter of fact, the cells of

the body are immortal. Science today has discovered that each living cell is potentially deathless (a corn-seed of the age of the Pharaohs, unearthed from pre-historic tombs, they have succeeded in sprouting today). It is their aggregate and their milieu that cause wear and tear in the cells, exposing them to decay and disintegration. But in itself, each cell has an infinite. vitality. Thus the problem is, if one cell is essentially immortal, then how can they be made, in their collective life, to avoid conflict and decay, undergo rejuvenation and youthfulness.

Science in a practical way through material means tries to prolong life as far as possible, as for us, we are not limited to that necessity. What we have to do is to clean the energy which is now obscure in the material cell, make it luminous. The way is the way of consciousness. Every human being has in him the possibility, the capacity of making his own consciousness come forth, pure, transparent, luminous and then in and through that pure light charge the body too with a transfiguring force or energy. This material body of man has the marvellous advantage of being united, of being able to unite itself with the Supreme Consciousness. Indeed as through his consciousness man has the privilege of ascending to the supreme consciousness, even so in and through the same consciousness, the physical cell also has the privilege of establishing a contact with the Supreme Substance. What is true of man's mind and life is true also of the material cell. Even as life impulses and mental knowings can be uplifted and transfigured, these physical cells too may achieve the same transfiguration because in man all these elements share equally in the Divine Substance lodged there. Of the animal, the lower creation, we cannot say the same thing for it does not possess overtly the Divine element that dwells in man. This Divine Element is what we call the psychic consciousness, the Divine himself formed secretly or framed in matter. It is that which comes in contact with the human mental and the human vital and the human body, and succeeds in remoulding them in the Supreme Nature.

Of course, there was always in the ancient days also, in some disciplines or others, an aspiration, an urge to immortalise the body, but the means they adopted, the instruments they chose for the operation were indirect and secondary. It was either through the force of a luminous mind influencing the

body or through the pressure of concentrated vital force making the body an obedient and docile instrument. The former was the process followed by the Vaishnavas who envisaged a luminous body, the second was the aim of the Tantriks who sought to rejuvenate the body, possess it youthful and vigorous indefinitely. The Hatha yogis also in their turn through physico-vital exercises attempted to acquire a new body changing the modalities of the old. The ancient alchemists tried more material means, the use of alchemic substances for cleansing the body making it free from disease and, if possible, death. But the secret power lies in the body itself, that is, in the very self of the body, not anywhere else. The hidden consciousness lodged in the cell, the material cell, that is the key to the problem, that secret consciousness and its energy asleep in the cell, has to be awakened and brought into play. When the physical cell itself awakes and declares its purpose, the thing is done.

This secret consciousness-energy appearing as a material form is also intrinsically the delight of existence. Its other name is Divine Grace and Love.

Page 265

Here is a line from Savitri..

And paying here God's debt to earth and man.

What is this debt that God owes to earth and man? We understand the debt that man and earth owe to God, their creator. But how is God indebted to his creation? Besides we learn that God pays his debt through his representative, his protagonist upon earth, the aspiring human being.

First let us understand the mystery of God's debt to man. We know, in ordinary life a subordinate has a duty towards his superior, the lesser owes a debt to the greater. That is easily understood. Likewise the superior also has a duty to his subordinate, the greater has his duty to the smaller. The child owes a debt to his parents; no less is the debt that the parents owe to the child. The parents not only bring forth the child, but they have to bring him up, nourish, foster, educate and settle him in life. We know also, as the scriptures tell us, that there is a debt man owes to the gods. The paying of the debt is described in the institution of the sacrifice (yajna). It is through his sacrifice that man achieves what he has to achieve upon earth. It is the giving-of what one is and what one has – to the gods – the sacrifice mounts carrying the offering to the gods. But the sacrifice is not a mere one-sided movement, the sacrifice brings from the gods gifts for the man – material prosperity and spiritual fulfilment. Man increases himself in this way, but thereby increases the gods also. The offering that man brings in his sacrifice – all his possessions-his earthly possessions, but chiefly his possessions of the inner world, the wealth of his spirit, the virtues of his consciousness – all go to the gods and increase them, that is to say, they become more

Page 266

manifest and more powerful upon earth and in earthly existence and in the service of man.

The sacrifice going up to the gods as offered by man means the sadhana, the inner discipline that he follows by which he lifts up his being with its mental and vital and physical formulations to their higher and higher potencies upon earth. The dedication of the normal powers and faculties to the gods means purification and release from the bondages of ignorance and egoism. This serves to make the gods living to us, bring them near to our terrestrial life, to our normal consciousness. This is what is meant by increasing the gods – man's duty or debt to the gods. In answer there is a corresponding gesture from the gods, with their immortalising reality they dwell in us and fill our being with their godlike qualities, their light, their energy, their delight, their very immortality. Man increases the gods and the gods increase man and by their mutual increasing they attain the supreme increment, the Divine status, so says the Gita.

Now, we go beyond the gods, to the very origin, God himself, the Supreme. What is the debt that God, the Supreme, the Divine, owes to us human beings? We owe to God everything, our life, our very existence, our soul and substance given to us by him, then how is he indebted to us? What kind of debt he has incurred which he has to pay to his creature, the human being? Primarily because he is the Divine Father, he has to take charge of his own creation, see to its growth and fruition and fulfilment. Indeed that is the role of the Divine in us (and above us and around us): that is his work, the Divine Work. Since he has put us out of his consciousness (for a special experience of growth and development), it is also his work (and duty) to bring us back to him: after a process of self-separation a process of self-integration. Man, so long as he is a separate consciousness has to dedicate, lift up and unify this separative conscious being to the whole being and consciousness. This is how he discharges his debt to the Divine, and the answering grace of the Divine is the clearing of the debt which He owes to His creatures.

What has been said of man is equally applicable to earth. The destiny of man is the destiny of earth as also the destiny of earth is the destiny of man. For man is an earthly creature, is

Page 267

---

born out of earth and he grows with the growth of the earth; equally the earth grows with the growth of man.

In reality it is God's growth in man and earth that is reflected and embodied in the growth of man and earth. The debt spoken of is the debt of God himself to himself. In other words, it is a work, a mission that he has himself taken upon himself for his own mysterious delight of existence.

Earth moves forward through man who is its flowering and man moves forward through his representative, the higher man, who reveals and embodies still greater potentialities of God's creation, having the privilege of being so conscious as to contact the gods and God Himself – he is master of life-force (aswapati); he climbs to the summits and brings down upon earth the heavenly riches and the Divine Grace, which fulfils, transmuting all debits into credits.

Page 268

India has become the symbol representing all the difficulties of modern humanity.

India will become the land of the world's resurrection – the resurrection of a higher and truer life.

1.2.1968THE MOTHER

A great revelation of a great truth that concerns the whole world.

We know also that the earth is the symbol of the cosmic evolution. What creation means has been epitomised in earth's history: the earth has been chosen as the field and means of working out a cosmic plan. As the earth is the representative of the world, so India is the representative of the earth. For the evolution of the earth, India has been chosen as the channel and the laboratory; all problems confronting humanity are found as if gathered here. All that is solved here will be solved almost automatically in the world and the how of it will be shown. All difficulties are concentrated here because here there is a living consciousness which alone can solve them.

In the same way it may be said that our Ashram here is the symbol of all the difficulties that humanity faces, difficulties psychological and material, national and social. All varieties of contradictions and contraries, obstacles and impediments, ignorances and prejudices are here that confuse the issue and seek to delay the journey as much as possible, towards progress and new creation. This is because it is a place where there is behind the surface movements of negation, an aspiration and a supporting consciousness supreme in power and effectivity. The individuals here have to meet all kinds of difficulties so

that a way out of them may be discovered both in the individual nature and in collective achievement. .

We have here in the Ashram varieties of races and religions, all social types, samples of humanity as it were, each represent­ing a particular facet of human nature, a particular possibility and its own field of work. Not only with regard to outward work or enterprise, each one carries his own inner nature different from everybody else's, each one has his own psycho­logical assets and liabilities. In other words, each one under­takes the yoga of, understanding and purifying himself and finding out his particular role. Apart from that, here each one is not exclusively for himself, in fact, he is not himself only but is part and parcel of a living unity, in a larger whole.

Man carries the burden of his own sins, in a way; but in a truer sense he carries the burden of all. It is one single burden that lies equally upon everybody everywhere. Thus the burden of the universal movement is shared by all collectively in equal measure.^l This is true of mankind in general; but it becomes dynamically true here among us where there is a conscious effort on the part of individuals to uplift and change the human consciousness. It is however the privilege of each individual to deal with one's share in the whole in one's own way, that is to say, the individual has been given the freedom and the capacity to make the burden light or let it remain or grow more heavy. It must be remembered that behind the individual a greater conscious personality has emerged and taken its place to help, to guide and fulfil the individual's divine destiny: even so, behind the universal effort there is a divine helping hand growing more and more powerful and effective in its manipulation of earthly forces and events. The solution of the difficulties will come from there and that can be the only solution.

We, who are here, living under the very eye of the supreme transfiguring force and consciousness that is working out inexorably the destinies of the individual being, the national being and the being of humanity to their divine fulfilment, we who have the privilege of not merely witnessing but

¹ Sri Aurobindo says, "Even if our personal deliverance is complete, still there is the suffering of others, the world-travail, which the great of soul cannot regard with indifference. There is unity with all beings which something within us feels, and the deliverance of the others must be felt as intimate to its own deliverance."

collaborating in the mighty labour, however little it may be in our way, we can only bow down in thankfulness and grateful­ness in the silence of our hearts.

Page 271

The Mystery of the Five Elements

THE material world, as the ancient sages viewed it, is composed of five elements. They are, as we know, (I) earth (ksiti), (2) water (ap), (3) fire (tej), (4) air (marut), and (5) space or ether (vyom), mounting from the grossest to those that are more and more subtle. The subtlest, the topmost in the scale is space or ether. As we descend in the scale, each succeeding element becomes more and more concrete than the preceding one. Thus air is denser than space, fire is denser than air, water is denser than fire and earth is the densest of all – solidity belongs to earth alone. Water is liquid, fire gaseous, air is fluid, and ether is the most tenuous. Now this hierarchy can be considered also as a pyramid of qualities, qualities of matter and the material world tapering upward. The first one, the topmost, space, possesses the quality of sound or vibration; it is the field giving out waves that originate sound.¹ The next element is air, its special quality as found in the ancient knowledge is the quality of touch: it gives the sensation of touch, you can touch it, it touches you and you recognise its existence in that

¹ Science, that is modem Science, will perhaps demur a little; for Science holds sound to be the exclusive property of air, it is the vibration of air that comes to the ear as sound, Where there is no air, there is no sound. But Science itself admits now that sound audible to the human ear is only a section of a whole gamut of vibrations of which the ear catches only a portion, vibrations of certain length and frequency. Those that are outside this limit, below or above, are not seized by the ear. So there is a sound that is unheard. The poets speak of unheard melodies. The vibrations – the sound-vibrations – are in fact not merely in the air; but originally and fundamentally in a more subtle material medium, referred to by the ancients as vyom.. The air-vibrations are derivations or translations, in a more concrete and gross medium, of these subtler vibrations. These too are heard as sound by a subtle hearing. The very original seed-sound is, of course, Om, nada. That, however, is another matter.

Like inaudible sound, we know now, there is also invisible light. The visible light, as given in the spectrum, is only a section of the entire series of light-vibrations. There is a range above and one below – both are invisible to the normal physical eye.

way. Touch however is its own, its primary quality but it takes up also the quality of the previous, the subtler element, in order to become more and more evolved, more and more concrete, that is to say, in the material way. Air has thus a double quality, sound and touch – It is tactile, and it is sonorous. The third one, fire, has the quality of possessing a form; it has visibility in addition to the two qualities of the two previous elements, which it takes up: thus fire is visible, it can be touched – yes, it may burn also and it gives out sound. The fourth element, water, adds a fourth quality which is its own, namely, taste. Water has taste, very delightful taste to mortals. A Greek poet² says water has the best taste, hudor men ariston. So you can taste water, you can see its form, you can touch it, you can hear it gurgle. Coming to the last, earth has all these, qualities: in addition, what it has is, curious to say, smell. So you can hear earth's vibrations, you can touch it, see it, taste it – for some earth has a very savoury taste – but its own special quality is smell: it is odorous, it is sweet-scented. Kalidasa speaks with ecstasy of the strange scent that the earth emits when the fresh rains fall upon it.

So, the five senses open out to the five elements, each sense linked to its own element, each sense presenting a particular aspect of the material universe. Thus ether, the subtlest element, is present to the ear, the organ of hearing, air to the skin (twak) the organ of touch, the fire-element (radiant energy) to the eye, the liquid to the organ of taste, and earth is given over to smell. Earth is linked with smell, perhaps because it is the perfume of creation, the dense aroma of God's material energy. Also earth is the summation of all the elements and all the qualities of matter. It is the epitome of the material creation. The physical beauty of earth is well-known, the landscape and seascape, its rich variegated coloration, we all admire standing upon its bosom, but up in the air, in the wide open spaces earth appears with even a more magical beauty to which cosmonauts have given glowing tribute. But even this visible beauty pales, I suppose, before the perfume it emits which is its celestial quality, that can only be described indeed as the sweet-scented body of the Divine Substance.

The five elements are thus the five orders of material existence

² Pindar: Olympian Odes, ¹

viewed as correlates to the five senses of man. But they are also realities in their own right. They represent the fundamental principles underlying or characterising the nature of matter. Science speaks of the three states of matter-solid, liquid and gaseous. The five elements enumerate five states instead. Thus earth=solid, water=liquid, fire=gaseous or radiant, air = fluid, ether or space=etheric. A distinction is made between gaseous and fluid, fluid being still more dispersive and tenuous. We might take air as representing the ether spoken of in science and what we have been equating with ether may be termed the field – the gravitational field, for example, of our days.

The last two may, however, be represented somewhat differently. The Maruts may symbolise the region of the subtler or supra-electromagnetic forces – what are now called cosmic rays: they are waves or particles of such infinitesimal magnitude that some of them at least have only a mathematical substance or reality, a probability-point, although of calculable or incalculable energy! Vayu then would represent the fundamental field where these forces play – perhaps something like the Einsteinian field with its "corrugated" surface: or it is like the "Pradhana" of Sankhya, the original Prakriti or basic Nature before it burst out in its creative activity.

Again, the five elements are not merely substances or states and qualities of substance, but they are also forces and energies, material forces and energies-since we have confined ourselves to matter and the material world. Science (we are always referring to Science, we have to do so since we are dealing with and speaking from the standpoint of matter and material existence), Science has familiarised us with the various forms and types of forces and energies. They are, starting from the most patent and gross, going up to more and more subtle energies, first of all mechanical energy, then (2) chemical energy, (3) electrical energy, (4) gravitational energy, and finally (5) the field energy; the last two are perhaps not very clearly differentiated and distinguished, but still one may make the distinction. And this mounting ladder of energy with its various steps, with its five steps corresponds exactly to the old Indian quintet – earth, water, fire, air, space.

This is not to say that the ancients exactly knew the mysteries of modern scientific exploration. This only means

that there is a parallelism between the ancient and the modern knowledge. The scale or hierarchy, from the most concrete substance through the subtler ones, to the subtlest, representing the constitution of the material world as conceived by the ancient seers finds a close and curious echo in the picture that modern science has drawn of material existence.

It must be noted, however, that parallelism means similarity but also difference. The manner of approach to the reality, the way of expressing it is different in the east and in the west. The ancients express a truth or a fact symbolically, the moderns express it in a straightforward matter-of-fact way. The ancients used symbols; for they wanted a multiple way of expression, that is to say, a symbol embodying a movement refers at the same time to many forms of the same movement on different levels, along different lines, in diverse applications. It is like the multiple meanings of a verbal root in Sanskrit. The scientific terms, on the other hand, are very specific; they connote only one thing at a time. Each term with its specific sense is unilateral in its movement.

Now furthermore, the Great Five need not be restricted to the domain of matter alone as being its divisions and levels and functions, but they may be extended to represent the whole existence, the cosmos as a whole. Indeed they are often taken to symbolise the stair of existence as a whole, the different levels of cosmic being and consciousness. Thus at the lowest rung of the ladder as always is the earth representing precisely matter and material existence; next, water represents life and the vital movement; then, fire represents the heart centre from where wells up all impulse and drive for progression. It holds the evolutionary urge: we call it the Divine Agni, the Flame of the Inner Heart, the radiant Energy of Aspiration. The fourth status or level of creation is mind or the mental world, represented by air, the Vedic Marut; finally, Vyom or space represents all that is beyond the mind, the Infinite Existence and Consciousness. The five then give the chart, as it were, of nature's constitution, they mark also the steps of her evolutionary journey through unfolding time.

Page – 280

THE MOTHER says: "No big creation is possible without discipline". The true and original meaning of discipline is to be a disciple. And a disciple is one who learns, is ready to learn from a master. So the first requisite for a disciple or a learner is to obey. Obedience then is the beginning and the very basis of discipline. We know from ancient stories and legends how this discipline of obedience was exacted from a disciple or learner. For knowledge or learning was not considered at that time as a bundle of information to be acquired or collected by the pupil. It is not a mass of dead materials that is laid before the learner to possess and store; it is something living that the teacher passed from his consciousness into that of his pupil, and for the free passage of the knowledge from the master to the disciple, a passive, receptive mentality' and absolute obedience is an indispensable condition – a sine qua non. In the spiritual domain this was the procedure that was universally accepted and followed, although always in the name of individual freedom and free will protestant movements arose and flourished and traced their own way.

But obedience to a person is in the last analysis a symbol – symbol of obedience to a principle. The person signifies and embodies a principle, a law to which we render our obedience. In normal life it is these principles or laws that demand our obedience. These laws or rules are meant for the welfare of collective living and therefore individuals are expected to restrain or forego their personal impulses, their so-called liberties in order to live together in harmony. Discipline is meant exactly to control one's personal idiosyncracies, place them under the yoke of the common collective law. All laws or rules that make for a harmonious collective living, that is,

social or national welfare, are limbs of discipline. By submitting himself to such a process of self-abnegation the individual gains in self-control and self-mastery. But there are rules and rules, laws and laws. For that depends on the ideal or the purpose set before oneself. If the purpose is narrow,

limited, superficial, the rules are necessarily likewise, and although effective in a particular field, they have a restricting, even deadening effect on the consciousness of the individual. If discipline means obedience, the obedience must be to a larger and higher law, and the perfect discipline will come only from obedience to the highest law.

The heart of discipline then is the effort to surmount oneself. Instead of a lower self following the law of an inferior consciousness one is to rise to a higher level of consciousness and a greater law of being. Discipline thus is only another term for tapasya, replacing the lower law gradually by a higher and higher law.

Mother speaks of three lines of this higher law. First of all, the individual law which at its lowest and its most common form is the law of selfishness. It is the most elementary and superficial degree of consciousness when the being is confined to its own little person, confined mostly to its hungers and

desires, to its sense of possession and appropriation. The human being starts with- this addiction to selfishness but he moves towards a gradual enlargement and rearrangement of this sense of personal value and importance. Therefore he is given a family, a nation, a grouping more or less large in which he can find other selves to meet and learn to live with harmoniously. A collective life whether in a nation or in the family or in any other group formation demands a control over the selfish impulses and egoistic urges. That is the discipline, that is to say, the necessity of submitting the law of one's ego-self to the law of collective selves, needed for the realisation of a collective ideal. When you playa game you have to obey the rule of the game and you have to dovetail your movements into the movements of your comrades, you cannot move as you please but must integrate your gestures with those of others. Even so as a member of a particular family or as a citizen of a particular country you have to rearrange your personal habits and movements in accordance with a more

general and wider plan of living. The extent of this obedience depends upon the ideal that a particular collectivity pursues and the value of the obedience depends on the ideal thus pursued. And the largest collectivity is of course the human race, the humanity as a whole. The submission of the personal law to the law of humanity in general is also a discipline demanded of man but there too the value of the submission depends upon the exact nature of the humanity to which one is asked to submit. For as I have said, there are degrees of consciousness and levels of being mounting higher and higher in an increasing value in respect of width and intensity and essential character. For along with the widening of the consciousness there must be a heightening of it, a horizontal movement of the being must be supported or accentuated by a vertical movement. Even the widest consciousness, a consciousness one with the universe, as wide as creation itself, can still have a core of ego-sense left behind, however attenuated it may be; the ego-sense can be abolished only by a transcendence even of the universal consciousness and rise into the supra-conscious. And this brings us to the other line of discipline, the supreme discipline which means obedience not merely, not even to the cosmic law but to the transcendent Divine Law. Here the individual is absolutely, utterly, free from his little self, the minor self-law, he is totally merged in the Divine, his being and living becomes the Divine's own law of existence.

Discipline then is the obedience of a learner to an ever-expanding and ever-ascending law of consciousness and being, until the law of the supreme status is realised which is the law of divine living: it is the utter submission or total obedience to the Divine Himself, when one is identified with the Divine in being and nature, where Law and Person are one and the same.

Page 283

Effort and Grace

THERE are, we know, as Sri Aurobindo says, two powers which in their conjunction bring about the great consummation we aim at. It is personal effort from below and Divine Grace from above. The one prepares the field, the other fructifies and fulfils.

It has, however, always been declared that personal effort is not absolute in its effectivity, it is limited, relative and conditional: it does not by itself lead you to the final and supreme realisation; it takes you at the most to the threshold of Grace which follows up the work and brings it to its goal. Indeed it has also been said that personal effort itself is operative when inspired and impelled by the Grace from behind or from above. The Gita says in effect: By your effort and tapasya you are capable of withdrawing yourself from the mayic world of the senses, get detached from the sense-objects; but the secret attachment, the taste, the subtle interest for them goes only when the Supreme is visioned:

Raso’pyasya param drstva nivartate¹

The Upanishad also says: the highest is visible only when of its own accord It unveils itself:

Yamevaisa_ vrnute tena labhyah ²

The actual function or role of personal effort is that of a guide, like Virgil taking Dante through Hell and Purgatory and then arriving at the frontier of Paradise and there entrusting him into the hands of Beatrice. It is to give the preliminary

¹ The Gita: II, 59

² Katha UPanishad: II, 23

experiences, initiate into the basic mysteries in order to prepare the vessel that is to house the Supreme. The Supreme is not. amenable to your control whatever your effort may be, it is free, even eccentric – the wind bloweth where it listeth – the Grace goes wherever it chooses to go; it does not weigh or examine the amount of your preparation, it has its own manner of choosing. But the preparation that your personal effort effectuates is helpful for the working of the Grace not so much for its initial descent – It is, as I said, to prepare the adhar for holding, maintaining and establishing it.

We know too well:

Only a little the God-light can stay: . . .³

The whole problem is there: how to make the God-light stay here, stay here for ever. The higher light does come down, but fitfully, one is never certain of it. For it is as it were, "a scout in a reconnaissance from the sun." Here then is this special utility of personal effort, the service it can render,– to do the dredging, salvaging work. Personal effort with the egosense has been put there to find out and note the barriers and pitfalls, the faults and fissures in the human system, to overcome, remedy and correct them as far as possible. The human receptacle is normally impure and obscure, resistant and recalcitrant: the personal will and endeavour has to be called in to labour, to level and smoothen the field, breathe into it air and light. That is the work of the individual will, to make of the adhar a strong base, strong and capacious, to receive and hold the descent. The temple is to be made clean and pure and inviting so that when the deity arrives he will find a happy home for a permanent dwelling.

It must be noted however, in the last account the personal effort for self-purification and self-preparation is not altogether personal and mere effort; it is, as I have said, always supported and inspired by the secret presence and pressure of the higher Influence.

Still, personal effort on our part has a unique value in this sense that it means collaboration and goodwill and readiness of the being to fall in line with the cosmic work and the Divine

³ Sri Aurobindo: Savitri, Book 1, Canto I

plan: it signifies the assent of the lower consciousness to the working of the higher. What is required is conscious cooperation: unconscious cooperation is always there but it is, as it were, forced labour: does not the Lord declare to Nature

I will pursue thee across the century;

Thou shalt be hunted through the world by love,

Naked of ignorance' protecting veil. . .

Nowhere shalt thou escape my living eyes.4

Instead of the ill-will or unwillingness of the normal original ignorant being there comes about a change, a conversion to the light and truth. First the Inferno, then the Purgatory, finally there will be the Paradise. At the outset in the ignorance' the being withdraws, contracts, wriggles under the light touching it, its first impulse is to repel the newcomer. A conscious effort is a movement of correction against the instinctive reaction, it is a movement towards the right reaction of the being to the impact of the light. The whole being, the whole nature in all its parts and functions has to be corrected, re-oriented, gradually tempered and streamlined – polarised so that it is made one-pointed, supple and obedient and responsive. That is the process of fixing upon earth the fleeting Godhead.

Personal effort is thus a training in collaboration. From inertia and indifference, unwillingness and even positive hostility to rise into cooperation and comradeship, that is the discipline that personal effort gives to the mortal being, and then from cooperation and collaboration to union and identity with the Supreme Goal, effort merging into the spontaneous execution of the Divine Will, the personal melting into the impersonal Person – that is the consummation brought about by Grace.

4 Sri Aurobindo: Savitri, Book 11, Canto I

Page 286

Is there anything essentially wrong, evil in its very being and nature? Some religious traditions say, there is: Satan is such a thing, Ahriman is such a thing, and what else is maya or mara?

However that may be, the sense of something essentially wrong is the fount and origin of the moral sense. The moral sense stems from and lives on the sense of sin and guilt.

The sense of sin is the fundamental inspiration behind some religious disciplines, even the sense of something irrevocably bad or something irreparable; for that gives a stronger impetus, a more dynamic urge to the spur of the religious consciousness. The sense of something irreparable, a final doom, has before it the vision of an eternal hell, the Lord of hell and his hosts and his captives. Upon this basic picture of Hell has loomed out Dante's vision of Paradise.

The Indian consciousness did not consider anything essentially evil, anything irrevocably and eternally condemned to perdition. Even the Asura, the anti-Divine is viewed, in the last analysis of things, also as an aspect, a formation of the Divine himself. Diti and Aditi are sisters, twin aspects of the same Supreme Being. All the legends in narrating the life history of the Asura describe his end as a submission to the Divine Will and a merging in Him. An entire life of bitter hostility culminates in the same degree of love for the Divine. The process of enmity seems to have a deeper occult meaning conducive to the more perfect union with the Divine. We know in Savitri how Sri Aurobindo speaks of Death as only a mask of Immortality.

In fact, evil, as we usually know it, as human mind construes it, is only a misplacement of a thing, a thing not in its place – a thing need not be essentially wrong, it is wrong because it

is not in its right place. Even things considered reprehensible by the moral sense are not so when they are viewed from another standpoint.

The moral consciousness seeks to rescue man from the animal consciousness. Its effort is to be delivered from the inferior vital instincts and rise to something higher, genuinely human. It does that or tries to do that by cultivating a feeling of repulsion, even of horror towards things that are sought to be rejected, cast out. The feeling of repulsion, of revulsion and horror, is indispensable to the growth and maintenance of the moral feeling.

The Indian discipline, on the other hand, teaches that to rise to a higher state of consciousness one need not have, one must not have, any feeling of revulsion or hatred. There is no such thing as saintly hatred. One must be free from attachment to the movements of inferior nature, one must cultivate detachment from them, but not necessarily through hatred or horror. The spiritual discipline bases itself upon a sense of perfect equality.

When you have hatred or horror for a thing it means you are on the same plane with it, your consciousness is level with the consciousness of the opposite feelings. You have to rise above the status of the lower nature and this can be done only by a calm detachment, a quiet withdrawal. One need not entertain repulsion or hatred for animal life in order to rise superior to it, one automatically rises superior to it when one links oneself to the higher status, when one is imbued with the superior consciousness. The animal consciousness is not a wrong consciousness in itself, it is a life of the animal; the human consciousness may regard it as such and may still discover a superior consciousness looking at the movements of the lower world dispassionately, indifferently, or even appreciatively, for a thing of beauty is there even in the animal life, for the Divine is everywhere.

The moral impulse is towards a self-exceeding but this self-exceeding, I have said, is to be done in perfect equanimity, in absolute detachment and indifference. To rise in consciousness, from the physical and animal to the divine, means, of course, abandoning the inferior, reaching the higher: but 'inferior' does not mean something low, something to be

despised and reviled, but simply something to be passed over, transcended. And the ideal would be not only to surpass but to find out a secret parallelism between the two, discover the seed of the higher embedded even in the lower. The Indian discipline, including the school that advocates total rejection of the lower and enjoins simple detachment and separation, does not approve of any feeling of contempt or disgust.

The states of being or consciousness from the animal, or down from Matter itself up to the Supreme – abrahmastamba – constitute what is called a hierarchy. Hierarchy means a structure rising upward tier upon tier, step by step: it is a scale, as it were, of increasing values, only the values are not moral, they indicate only a measure, a neutral measure respecting position or a kind of mass content. As in a building where brick is laid upon brick, or stone upon stone, the one laid above is not superior to the one laid below; the terms inferior and superior indicate only the simple position of the objects. Even the system of the four social orders in ancient" India was originally such a hierarchy. The higher and lower orders did not carry any moral appreciation or depreciation. The four orders placed one above the other schematically denote only the respective social functions classified according to the nature of each, even as the human body represents such a hierarchy, rising from the feet at the bottom towards the head at the top. This is to say all objects and movements in nature are right when they are confined each to its own domain, following its own dharma of that domain. Thus one can be perfectly calm and at ease witnessing the catastrophies and cataclysms in nature, for one knows it is the dharma of material nature. Man terms them disasters for he judges them according to his own convenience. Even so, one should not be perturbed at the wild behaviour–man calls it wild – of wild animals. Likewise the gods in their sovereign tranquillity smile at the crudeness and stupidities of human beings. One has to lift oneself up, withdraw and stand high above all that one wishes to surpass and look at it, with a benign godly smile.

The world is a gradation of developing consciousness, of growing states or status of being. There is a higher and lower level in point of the measure of consciousness but that involves no moral judgement: the moral judgement is man's; it is

man's, one might almost say, idiosyncracy, that is to say, a notion that is a prop to help him mount the ladder. Though it might be necessary at a certain stage, in certain circumstances, it is not a universal or ineluctable law, not even in his personal domain. The growing consciousness is like the growing tree rising upward first into a trunk, then spreading out into branches, into twigs and tendrils, then in flowers and finally, in fruits. These are mounting grades of growth, but the growth above is not superior to the growth below. It is a one unified whole and each portion has its own absolute value, beauty and utility.

The modern mind has forgotten this lesson. It is terribly moral – I say moral, not immoral – Its immorality has found play, has almost been cultured so that its moral sense may remain intact. Its dislike and even abhorrence for things it chooses to call immoral is the ransom it pays for rescuing its sense of morality, and paradoxically this very abhorrence for unholy things has pushed it all the more into their grasp. This is the characteristic turn or twist of the modern consciousness, the perversity unkl1own to the ancient 'sinners'. Perversity means, you yield, not only yield, but take delight in the thing you dislike, detest or abhor even. In the vein of St. Augustine who said "I believe because it is impossible", 1 the modern consciousness says: I love because I hate.

A strange fascination for the forbidden fruit has gripped the modern mentality and the most significant part of the thing is that the forbidding comes from within oneself, not from any authority outside – It is self-forbidden. We are reminded here of the Kantian moral absolute – the categorical imperative. This is a gospel based upon the Christian and Semitic tradition, polished by the Greek (that is, Socratic) touch, quickened and sharpened by the intellectual and social stress of European Culture. India admitted no such moral absolute or mental categorical imperative. The urge of her spiritual consciousness was always to go beyond, beyond the dualities, beyond the trinities (the three gunas ) - all mental or scriptural rules and regulations. For her there is only one absolute – the transcendent, the Supreme Divine himself – the Brahman, nothing else, netaram.

¹ Credo quia impossibile is actually a phrase of Tertullian vide his De Carne Christi, V – though often ascribed to St. Augustine

The Indian spiritual consciousness considers the secular distinction of good and evil as otiose: both are maya, there must neither be attachment to the Good, nor repulsion from Evil, the two, dwandwas, belong to the same category of relativity, that is, unreality.

Indian artists and poets were steeped in that tradition, wholly inspired by that spirit. Orthodox morality often wonders, is even shocked at the frankness, the daring nonchalance in Indian art creations , – a familiar prudery would call it shamelessness and even vulgarity, but to the Indian view, 'the Brahmin and the cow and the elephant' are of equal value and merit. The movement conventional morality calls 'libidinous' has a nobler name in Indian tradition: it is adirasa, the first or primary delight of existence. As I have said, the modern consciousness finds it a horror and is therefore all the more fascinated by it and dives into it head foremost.

To cure the modern malady we have to go back again to something of the ancient mentality. We have to cultivate a consciousness, now forgotten and alienated but once natural to the human mind, the consciousness and status of a transcendence built with the sense of absolute calm, an equality, all serene and all englobing, that is God's consciousness.

Page 291

THE Life Divine is the life of Truth. It is based on Truth, it is Truth, body and substance – Truth absolute, pure and simple. But it may be asked as we are actually in the ignorant and half-ignorant consciousness, in a world of almost total falsehood, is it not necessary, is it not inescapable for us to accept the falsehood for the moment, in order to be able to work in the world and succeed? We have to live in an environment and move in it; if we try to go against it openly, how can we do it practically? As individuals we are infinitesimal particles and the mass of the whole will bear us down each one of us and crush us out of existence. Truth is all right, but the approach to it needs to be cautious and careful. If falsehood is clever we too have to be clever. In a game where success is the aim, diplomacy and strategy are not outlawed. You have to accept certain terms of your enemy in order that certain terms of yours might be accepted. You can move to success in this mixed world only through a process of give and take. An absolute saintly attitude is not a thing of practical politics. That is why, to keep their truth unsullied, the ancients abandoned this field of practical politics, retired to the forest or into the cosy laps of the hills.

Beware, this is the voice of the adversary trying to tempt you by confusing your mind. The path is straight and narrow, it is not wide and comfortable and strewn with roses. To find the Truth, to live the Truth we must begin by finding it in its purity and living it. As is the start, so is the end. Our steadfastness, our faithfulness must be unalloyed, our sincerity of utmost purity. It is Truth alone that leads to Truth, a compromise or semblance leads only to the untruth. Your diplomacy or duplicity may bring you the coveted result or

it may not; but surely it will put a layer of soot upon your soul, push you back one step more into your inconscience. And if you continue you may become the biggest success in the eyes of the world, but your soul will be nowhere, leaving behind perhaps only a hopeless sob in a wilderness. Has not the Mother said, "Even if there is a particle of falsehood in your expression – In your word or in your act – how can you hope to express the Supreme Truth?" Remember also the words of Sri Aurobindo: "Do not imagine that truth and falsehood, light and darkness, surrender and selfishness can be allowed to dwell together in a house consecrated to the Divine. The transformation must be integral, and integral therefore the rejection of all that withstands it."¹

You cannot elude falsehood or cajole or conjure it. You must stand face to face, gaze with unwinking eyes, the flame of Truth within you constantly ablaze.

If you say you are a small creature and yours a smaller light: your consciousness has not the dimensions of a heroic being, your light will be engulfed, swallowed up and lost in the vast and overwhelming gloom around. Yet small as you are, do what you can, the utmost possible for you; do not let your little flame be tarnished by any contrary or unworthy movement in you: be firm, keep it bright and trimmed. The surrounding darkness may engulf it but cannot smother it; for it is the everlasting, the Divine in you. The body, the flesh may not continue but the holy light remains. The outward frame may have to yield or dissolve in a material surrounding that was unready – not that the inner consciousness was unready. Indeed the passing body releases the light and it adds to the growing light in the earth's atmosphere. That is the central creed of the Christian martyr. The blood of the martyr is the cement of the Church. This truth of martyrdom, the sacrifice of the faithful was perhaps a necessity at a time when humanity had not risen high enough in consciousness and the earth's atmosphere was more opaque and dull than it is now. The one thing necessary at that stage was an uncompromising living faith, the pure light, the unvacillating flame, a spirit even though small standing against insurmountable odds – that was the way, the martyr's way to stand against the adversary.

¹ The Mother

We are in a somewhat different age under different circumstances. At least our aim is different. We stand firm full square against all temptations, all leaning towards compromise, in the faith and certainty that we shall conquer, we shall not go down but the odds against us shall be pushed back and eliminated. This is the age of Victory.

For two things have happened – two mighty happenings in earth's history, in the course of nature's evolution here: two unseen events that have new-oriented the destiny of earth and mankind. First of all human consciousness in its essential achievement has risen to a new level of consciousness, although not in the mass, nor generally even in individuals, but there has come a common acquiescence in the being to a higher status of living – proletarianism at its best means nothing else. Human nature has shed something of its mediaeval crudeness and obscurantism, separatism and selfishness; human mind has been more sharpened and polished and widened so as to receive easily the message of the cosmic rays. There has dawned in the atmosphere the perception or sense, of a higher, purer, more luminous and enlightened status of existence. That is, one may say, Nature's gift, the outcome of the millennial, the aeonic working of an aspiration inherent in matter towards light and order. That is the first event. The second one is more occult but more mighty and even devastating. It is the descent, the manifestation, the intervention of a new force here below. They who have seen it know and there is no question. The Veda has declared long ago: The Unseeing have not the Knowledge, those who have eyes possess the Knowledge.

Today, more than ever, only a little of this pure consciousness will bring you victory, not merely safety from a great perdition. Against the vast, what appears as the all-swallowing gloom of the external space, the inner space is now luminous, doubly luminous and powerful.

Page 294

THE Truth, the Supreme Truth cannot be expressed here below, neither in words, nor in mental ideas: It is inexpressible, indeterminable – anirvacaniy'am, anirdesyam. For, it exists, it is found only where the creation ceases to exist – prapancopasamam.

If it is asked how does then the world itself exist? has it not come out of the Truth? is it not an expression of the Divine? well, an easy answer is: Look at the world and see what kind of

expression it is. Is it a divine creation? What truth is there? In truth, it is an expression of falsehood, it is all an error. So it has been declared by the great sages of the past that this is a false creation; it is an illusion, a delusion. Why is it so? How is it so? Go beyond it, into the Truth beyond, you will know. Being in the illusion, how can you perceive that it is an illusion, or why or how is it an illusion? This is one way of looking at the problem, we may say, a very categorical or radical way. But there are other possibilities, other lines of approach.

This creation as an expression of the Divine Truth may not be altogether a falsehood. It is an inadequate expression, as it stands at present, as it has been till now; but it is a growing, a progressive expression. In other words, the instruments of expression, to start with, are not fully developed, they have to be developed; they are being developed, through the evolutionary movement of Nature, in the course of advancing time. Indeed evolution in Nature means that and a great deal of that.

Take for example, speech, which is a special organ of expression for man. Now, originally speech, that is to say, the vocabulary on man's tongue consisted of vocables related only

to the familiar objects around him, in the ordinary day to day movement of life. The field was narrow and limited, level to the ground. Observe the language also, the written language. The original written language started with images, pictorial diagrams: there was no alphabet but things and movements were presented, that is represented, almost actually. Thus for man a figure of man was drawn, that is to say, straight lines sticking out representing hands and legs and a dot for the head; the sun was a circle and so on. As consciousness grew and as the mind developed and reason became active, the images, the figures and the symbols gradually changed into more and more abstract signs. At first there was the pictogram, then the ideogram, and then, at the end, came the alphabet. Evidently, it appears, language could not develop so quickly as the consciousness or the mind did, for we see even in the earlier epochs of human civilisation and culture, man could and did come in contact with the Truth and Realities beyond his normal sense-bound consciousness. And the experiences the seers had on those levels were of such a kind that whenever they sought to express them, communicate them to others in the outward mind and speech, they had to take refuge in symbolism: they had to use the words of everyday life as signs and symbols pointing to other realities, other-worldly and unfamiliar. Thus, horse was to them life-force, cow the radiance of truth, the wind thought energies, the sun consciousness or Truth, night as ignorance, light as knowledge, wine (soma means both wine and moon) as delight and ecstasy, the sky as infinity or transcendence. And so on.

Indeed, that is the hiatus, the inadequacy that still cripples and stultifies the mind, the physical mind in its attempt to seize other realities beyond. It is the mind which gives the formal structure, the pattern of expression in the material frame. The mind being bound to the life of the ignorant and outgoing senses is constitutionally incapable of receiving or holding or expressing facts of the higher life, the life beyond – what we name as the spiritual or the divine. Not only so, the mind in trying to express the higher or supraterrestrial truths inevitably diminishes, dilutes, devalues, even negates and annuls them. The attempt through parables and allegories is the

story of the difficulty – the impossibility of expressing through the mind truths beyond the mind. We land into the weird and confused worlds of myths and mythologies, – myths and mythologies for example about popular Radha and Krishna, and Kali or Shiva. We are compelled to reduce to our human measures, to accentuate our human failings in order to present graphically to us the inexpressible intensities or extensions of the high experiences above. The Vaishnava lyrics or the songs of Solomon become to us high spiritual documents.

Man started his life on earth as an animal and is still continuing to be so in a large measure: his mental equipment also was almost wholly conditioned by the necessities of such a situation: his language, his culture even built upon an outward view of things, upon the mode and manner of his physical reactions to impacts of the gross outward world, the brute objects of physical life.

The liberation of the mind, at least the higher mind, as an instrument of expression for the human consciousness was achieved to a remarkable degree in the Upanishads generally, particularly in some, although the beginnings of it might be traced even in some of the earliest of the Vedic Riks. A serious and persistent attempt for this liberation was made later, in the age or rather ages of the Gita, the Mahabharata, the Darshanas. It was the rational spirit that impelled and inspired the Buddhist consciousness and in Europe it had its heyday in the age of Socrates and Plato. Those were intellectual ages and the intellect was trying to find and explore its own domain in its full and free power and sovereignty. And the human language too, as a necessary corollary was remoulded, remodelled, rationalised: it shook itself away as far as possible from the prejudices and prepossessions of the sense-bound mind. That is the inner story of the growth of language from the synthetic inflexional cohesive stage to its modern analytic discursive character.

Still, however, it is not easy to completely ignore or efface the influence of a concrete truth, a fact which is at the basis of human birth – the truth and fact of the body, of the external material objects. For example, how to express That which does not belong to this world, has not the measures of this body? The Upanishad has perforce to speak negatively of the

Supreme positive Reality. It has to say, "It is not this, it is not this, it is quite other than all this, it has no parallel here below although it is the source and origin of all this." We have found some positive words indeed – sat-cit-ananda; but the other key-word is a negative in structure – amrtam, not death. Immortality means not mortality, and ananta too is a negative expression. We remember the famous lines: Na tatra surya bhati etc.,¹ it is a supreme revelation, it is supremely evocative but it is built up of negatives. The Vedic rishis followed a different line, as I said; they did not evade or reject the materials of a physical life, they boldly grasped them and used them as signs, symbols, embodiments of other truths and realities. They accepted the sun, the moon, the stars, man and woman, even the normal activities of life but they gave these quite a different connotation. They filled them with a new depth and density, a higher specific gravity.

The instruments being inadequate, it was necessary to bypass them and take to an indirect way for expressing realities that are beyond them. Neither the language nor the mental concepts were the vessels that could hold the divine drink. And sometimes the result was not very happy.

The movement of freeing the consciousness from the hold of sense-perceptions has continued and has attained an unprecedented success. Rational mind, in order to find its autonomy has abstracted itself so much from the data of life experiences that it has become almost an esoteric domain. Mathematical logic of today has brought forth a language that has almost no kinship with either the popular or the aristocratic tongue. Modern science has so much sublimated the facts of life, the contents of experience, that it has become only a system of geometrical formulae.

The recoil from the brute facts of life, the concrete living realities has affected even the world of artistic creation. We are very much familiar with what has been called abstract art, that is to say, art denuded of all content. The supreme art today is this sketch of bare skeleton – even a skeleton, not in its organised form but merely dismembered bits strewn about. Even poetry, the art that is perhaps most bound to the sense pattern, as no other, so indissolubly married to sense-life, seems to be giving way to the new impact and inspiration.

¹ Katha Upanishad, 11.2.15

A poetry devoid of all thought-content, pure of all sentiment and understandable imagery is being worked out in the laboratory, as it were, a new poetry made of a bizarre combination of tones and syllables with a changed form too in regard to arrangement of lines and phrases. It is the pure form that is aimed at – the very essence, it is said, what is quintessential!

In other words, mind, that is to say, the rational mind on which stands man's superiority has now been so developed, developed along a single line, has specialised itself so much that it has almost defeated its own purpose. Today it has entered a cul-de-sac, a blind alley where it has bogged itself and does not know where and how to move.

The recoil from the normal, the rich and lush physico-mental expression of human consciousness and experience has been so radical and complete that it has catapulted us into an opposite extreme of bareness and nudity, at the most into a world of pure signs and symbols of notches and blotches, the disjointed mimics and inarticulate groans of a deaf and dumb man. The process of abstraction has gone so far that it has now been reduced to an absurdity. It has its parallel in the movement that led man away from the world of Maya to the Transcendent featureless Brahman. In either case the reason is that the link that joins the two ends could not be found – a living truth that is of the Transcendent, yet denying not, but affirming in a new manner the mayic existence. That is because man till now sought to create from a level of consciousness, by a force of consciousness that is not adequate to the task; for it belongs still to the mental region, to this inferior hemisphere although at present it seems to be the acme and topmost hemisphere in the scale. It is not an extension or intensification of the mind and its capacities that will solve the problem: a radical change in the very nature of the mind, a reversal of the mental consciousness – a turning of it inside out as it were, an opening out and up is needed to discover the true source of the Light. Therefore it has been said that man must transcend himself, find a new status in the other hemisphere. In fact there is a domain, a status of being and consciousness, a master-force which when revealed and made active will remould inevitably and spontaneously human creation and expression as a reality embodying the Highest. It is the world of Idea-Force which

Sri Aurobindo has named Supermind: it is beyond the mind, even the highest mind: it is the typal concentration of the Supreme Consciousness. It is the fulcrum for the Supreme Consciousness to create and express a new formulation of the Truth in the world of matter. The mind, the highest mind, in its attempt to grasp the Supreme Reality is prone to reject, annul and efface the Cosmic Reality. The Supermind has no need to do that. It links the two ends in a supreme and miraculous synthesis negating neither, giving the full value to each, for the two are united, concentrated in its substance. Thus is found the golden bridge uniting earth and heaven.

The physical mind, with its satellite, the human speech, must indeed be rescued from the thraldom of the animal life, the life of the ordinary senses. They should be put under the regimen of the new consciousness, the status of the Idea-Force. The action of that consciousness will create its own norm and pattern adequate for expressing and embodying suprasensuous realities. It will not have to depend upon allegories and parables, symbols and signs seized from ordinary life. What exactly this will be is difficult to say at present. Evidently there is likely to be an intermediary creation – a passage leading from the sensuous to the supra-sensuous, the higher not totally rejecting the lower or primitive formula, the lower not altogether englobing and swallowing the higher.

The mantra of Savitri wields a language and expresses a physical mind that already shows how the alchemy will be done or is being done: the transmutation of the ordinary experience into a supra-sensuous or the supra-sensuous embodying itself in the sensuous. The process is still in a state of transition, and as a sample of the process in action and a prefigure or for taste of the achievement, may be recognisable in the famous sonnet of Sri Aurobindo which I quote here in full and conclude.

THE GOLDEN LIGHT

Thy golden Light came down into my brain

And the grey rooms of mind sun-touched became

A bright reply to Wisdom's occult plane,

A calm illumination and a flame.

Page 300

Thy golden Light came down into my throat,

And all my speech is now a tune divine,

A paean-song of thee my single note;

My words are drunk with the Immortal's wine.

Thy golden Light came down into my heart

Smiting my life with Thy eternity;

Now has it grown a temple where Thou art

And all its passions point towards only Thee.

Thy golden Light came down into my feet:

My earth is now thy playfield and thy seat.²

² Collected Poems [Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library, vol. 5, p. 134]

Page 301

PART ELEVEN

The Opening Scene of "Savitri"

"IT was the hour before the Gods awake". Only when the Gods awake, does the light begin to appear on earth. Other­wise it is all night here, black, impenetrable and unfathomable. Indeed the very creation begins with the awakening of the Gods. When the Gods are asleep, it is the non-existence – tamaasit tamasa gudhamagre – 'in the beginning darkness was engulfed in darkness'. This is the asat, non-being, this is the acit, the inconscience, this is the blackest night. The Bible also speaks of a similar darkness – Job's terrible vision: "A land of darkness, as darkness itself; and of the shadow of death, without any order and where the light is as darkness."¹ The lamp of con. sciousness is not yet lit. The dark vacancy stretches across the path of creation yet to be, the light that is to come. This shadow is the negation of the light behind, it is the original of the creation. It is presented as the mere material universe appa­rently dead and dry, the utter inconscience with no sign of consciousness anywhere. And earth seems to be there part of it, a shadow within the shadow, a dark spot wheeling in a dark mass.

It is the pre-creation, one might say, the creation before the creation – the shadow creation. We know coming events cast their shadow before, as a kind of forewarning, foreboding: that is the dark messenger, the bright messenger will follow. For after all, it is His shadow –"And into the midnight his shadow is thrown."

The original inconscience is a non-existence, a nihil in which all existence is rolled up and dissolved, an infinite non-entity or zero. This is the zero here below, on the reverse side of the reality. But there is another zero up above and

¹ Book of Job, 10.21

beyond, beyond the superconsciousness, the Sunya, beyond Sachchidananda. In between is the world of night, the world of gestation where the Gods are asleep. When the Divine, the One indivisible existence felt the first stirring and was moved to create, he divided himself and cast himself as it were out of himself. And the Light and Consciousness of his Being forth­with leaped into darkness and inconscience. That is the involu­tion of the Supreme into material existence.

This original darkness is the womb of creation, it is some­thing akin to Hiranyagarbha of Indian tradition. The fiat has gone from the Supreme to resurrect this darkness – his alter-ego – and he sends down the messenger-light. So the Gods are about to wake, there is a stir in their slumber. The creation as manifestation begins when the first ray of light strikes the darkness. That is when the Gods open their eyes. But the spell of darkness returns and swallows up the light.

The earth too, one with the surrounding mass of darkness and inconscience is asleep and insentient. She has to wake up and start on her journey moving forward, unveiling her secret mysteries towards the supreme revelation, the Divine in­carnation in matter. The Gods are awake, in order to awaken the earth. A first ray is sent down and it touches as it were the sleeping Mother. The Divine Ray is just- like a finger of a child touching her mother trying, as it were, to persuade her to open her eyes and look at her child. The first ray, however, comes not as a caress to the inert being of darkness, it is a sharp prick, even a hard blow. Such is the first impact of light upon dead matter; and the light is thrown back, as an un­welcome intruder, into what it came from; and the darkness grovels in its old groove. The second stage comes when the impact is not felt as a pain or something totally foreign and strange; its touch is felt as something soothing, something that heals an eternal sore. But this too was not suffered long and the light has to go back again.

These are the successive dawns of which the Vedic Rishis speak, through which the light and consciousness in the dark inconscience gradually grows, increases in volume and strength. The continued descent of the light into earth brings about the change upon earth, that is called evolution, that is to say, the transformation of the dark inconscience here below into the

original Super-Light of which it was the shadow cast out because of the original separation from the Source.

Savitri represents one such divine dawn at a crucial moment of earth-life. She embodies creation's entire past and shows in her life how that past is transformed through the alchemy of Divine Grace to a glorious future – the inevitable destiny that awaits man and earth.

Page 307

As slow our ship her foaming track

Against the wind was cleaving,

Her trembling pennant still looked back

To that dear isle 't was leaving.

So loth we part from all we love,

From all the links that bind us,

So turn our hearts as on we rove,

To those we've left behind us.

THIS is not merely children's homesickness; it is a fundamental note of the human nature as it is at present constituted. We always look backward, we always are tied to our roots and it is with great difficulty and much effort that we advance and go forward or upward away from our origins. In a nobler language this is called tradition. Often tradition is made identi­cal with and taken for both life and culture. Denying the past is looked upon almost as refusing the source of life and light.

Viewed from another standpoint this harking back to the past, to the roots, as we say, is the greatest obstacle to human progress. Man progresses, indeed the whole creation advances, by breaking with the past. The leap from the mineral to the plant, from the inorganic to the organic, is the first and most significant break. Even so, are the progressive breaks from the plant to the animal and from the animal to man. In man too similar progressive, that is, radically progressive steps or leaps are recognisable. The ape man without tools and the first man with tools mark very different stages in human consciousness and life. And we have carried on more or less the same manner of progression till today. But against this forward movement of nature, there is a counter-pull backward. The

principle of inertia, of standing still, is of the very nature of matter, the basic fact of creation. The force of gravity, earth's pull, does not allow you to shoot up; it brings you down, and if you stand erect, the innate tendency of the body is to sit down or lie flat, 'obedient to the earth's attraction. This physical inertia acts also upon the mind, including the vital conscious­ness. This is translated in the consciousness as an attachment to the past, to what man has been familiar with. Conservation is the term in respect of physical Nature and atavism is its expression in human nature.

It is so difficult for man to leave the beaten track, for that means risk and danger; our thoughts and movements are all shaped in the mould of the past, we carry out what old habits have instructed us; any new thought, any new act we happen to come across we seek to link it to an antecedent or precedent, similar in kind or form. It is a never-ending succession, a causal chain that makes up our life, the present being always produced by its past. That means the present, and so also the future, is only another form or term of the past. What is not in the past is not in the present or the future, that is to say, such is the constitution of our consciousness and nature: there is a natural and inevitable faith and trust in the past, an extension of the past; there is only apprehension for the future, uncertainty in the present.¹ It was Buddha's signal achievement to uncover this great illusion, the illusion of an inexhaustible and inexorably continuing past, continuing into the present and into the future. He saw that to be is not conti­nuity but a sequence of discrete moments (and events). It is ignorance that finds a link between these entities; they are in reality absolutely separate and distinct from each other. If you can wake up from this ignorance as from a dream you will find they 'all disintegrate and disperse and end in nothing. The only reality is that Nothing. Shankara however says that it is not mere Nothing but Pure Existence, instead of an illusion of existences you have the original Existence, the absolute existence.

¹ It is not that the conscious intelligence of man is ignorant of the truth, his reason and higher perception surely sees and acknowledges it; but the life impulse that moves him, his spontaneous energy and instinct turns him away from a dyna­mic recognition of what otherwise should inspire his movements. The link with the past is of much greater strength than a possibility of the future.

The Upanishad speaks of the creation as a garland and all the elements of life – that are like precious jewels – are strung upon a secret thread. Indeed, it is not on nothing that this multiplicity which is the creation is standing and holding together. There is however a twofold secret thread – one that binds together a world of ignorance: that is the thread of ignorance which passes through, even keeps alive as it were, all the expressions and embodiments of the ignorance, pain and suffering, greed and hunger, egoism and selfishness and all forms of what is called evil. But it is the apparent world; even so, it is not pure delusion: it is a make-believe or falsehood which keeps behind

it the true, the real world. That world lies behind the mask, the present actual world; it is another world of light and truth, power and delight and purity. There the link that binds together the succession of events and realities is a golden thread of pure consciousness. The link of ignorance is, one may say, the iron link, and is open to rust and decay inevitably. It is the link that binds together the ordinary life of ignorance, that pulls always backward, clings to all that has gone by, seeks to extend the past into the present and the future, feels unhappy if that is disturbed.

In a new and higher life we are asked to discard that link and come out of it, to discover the other inner link, the link of light. That turns always to the future, directs all impulses and activities towards the realities that are to be.

These are then the two chains binding, each in its own way, our life movements, each building a whole with a special significance and fulfilment. They are two life- lines, as it were, a running parallel to each other. One, as I have said, is the normal mundane life, the other a transfigured spiritual life. The Upanishad, we know, speaks of the path of the Sun and the path of the Fathers – they roughly correspond to the two lines I have just spoken of. But the Upanishadic path of the Sun is a vertical ascension from the normal life-line into a transcendent beyond. What we meant was not an ascension beyond but a parallel growth in transformation, that is to say, what we referred to as the lower iron links are to be transmuted into the golden ones, without breaking or dissolving them. The problem is to find out the secret of this alchemy that transmutes the iron links into the golden ones. Psychologically

the Buddhist way is a great help even if it is not the unique and inevitable one towards that consummation. For it dislocates, disintegrates the chain that binds the being to the normal and ignorant life. It teaches one to see and feel life as separate and isolated 'moments', there being no real link between the moments; so if one is to live the truth of life one must learn to live from moment to moment without any thought from the past or of the future. The Biblical motto gains in this connection a deeper significance: sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. One does not carry on his shoulders the burden of the past moments nor a possible burden in the thought of the morrow. One becomes free, absolutely free, with no care but just the need of the moment to note and the immediate gesture to meet it.

That is a way, an effective way, for dissolving life, but we seek, as we have said, not dissolution or disintegration but integration – Integration into a higher integer, a greater reality. The lower chain dissolved, we have to find a new status beyond the dissolution. That is perhaps what the Upanishad indicated when it said: one has to traverse death through Ignorance (perception of ignorance) and then through Knowledge (perception of the Knowledge) to attain immortality. Buddha has led us across death, now we have to reach immortality. There is a higher line of Karma and a lower line running parallel, as I said, to each other – the lower (the iron chain) leads from death to death, the higher (the golden one) leads from life to life and from light to light.

The transference from the lower chain to the higher is to be effected by the consciosuness of nothingness (Shunyam) being filled or impregnated with the new consciousness of Immortality; for the units of the normal or ignorant. con­sciousness are themselves not wholly or essentially ignorant and mortal. They have in them what Buddha did not see or recognise – the immortal soul or self – as the Vedic Rishis said: that which is immortal in the mortal. What is mortal in the apparently mortal unit is the covering that hides the immortal nucleus. This covering is made of, as we know, the mental, the vital and the physical beings. These perish, that is to say, change; but that does not affect the immortal being within. Thus the consciousness is to be drawn away or detached

from the covering and hitched on to the unchanging reality within. That forms the golden link of the chain of immortality of the Supreme Light. The transference from the lower chain is to be effected through the consciousness of the luminous immortal divine unit. It is the Divine in man, familiarly called 'antaryamin.'

Naturally, the transference of the consciousness and being from the lower or surface line to the line that lies in a higher and deeper level does not mean, we must note, the rejection or annihilation of the lower in favour of the higher. The con­sciousness of the soul or self does not negate the consciousness of the body and the life and the mind. It only purifies, elevates, and transmutes them into its true and divine expression and embodiment.

To live in the soul is to live in eternity with the vision and inspiration of the eternal. It is living in the mind and the vital and the body that turns and binds one to the past renders one a slave to mortality.

The units of this higher chain of consciousness are free from all drag of the past or hold of the present: their being is turned automatically towards the future, the Great Event to which all creation moves; for that is the truth of its inmost reality: the inspiration of its movements comes from that intimate source. The units of one's own life, all its moments share in this freedom and this life-inspiration and all together form the wonderful harmony of the golden chain. The units are not separated or isolated from each other – freedom of the individual here does not mean isolation: it is a close union, indeed, it is an indivisible unity for all units, all individual formations are identical, for in a sense all are identified with the only reality, the one supreme consciousness.

The soul-consciousness is the golden thread running through the chain of light and when it comes forward and becomes dynamic it gradually engulfs and purifies what was its covering, the life, the mind and the body and reforms them in its own light and energy expressing and embodying its divine truth and fulfilment here below.

Page 312

(1)

MODERN science, modern applied science, has brought about and is bringing about more and more a big change in the earth atmosphere. It is not merely the dust and smoke, gases and fumes thrown out by the modern machineries from the earth into the sky that have been increasing ominously in volume, but the less patent vibrations that have been released by advanced scientific projects and experiments and that have been encircling the earth more and more in a tight embrace. A quiet and clean air was such a treasure for human beings; men have always longed for it as a necessity and also as a diversion, and it was so readily available. The saints and sages went up to mountain-tops and into deep forests and far away into open meadows for a full-breath draught of that heavenly element.

But now physically, materially, we know that the radio waves and innumerable other cosmic waves have been constantly, ceaselessly hammering, churning the earth-atmosphere all around us. Human bodies are immersed in a real turmoil. They are bathed in a whirlwind constantly. The nerves and tissues are being shaken from within to their very roots throughout one's life, day and night. There is no peace, no tranquillity upon earth; physical and material repose has altogether disappeared. The high hill-tops or mountain-sides do not help any more nor the ocean depths nor any African jungle nor even the Sahara desert.

The incidence of illness, of disequilibrium among human beings, is a pronounced phenomenon in modern age. Stability, steadiness, measure, all the qualities that made for a balanced sober life in the past are on the decline, have almost disappeared.

Ill-health, malaise, imbalance, physical and mental, are reigning supreme. And the million doctors upon earth are finding it difficult to heal their patients or even themselves.

Is that the reason why man has now become so eager to quit earthly atmosphere and soar up into starry spaces? In any case, the human body is now, at least by way of experiment, being shifted to other atmospheres, other modes of living. The important, the most significant thing however is not so much the discovery of new regions of the universe but new dimensions of the human body itself. No doubt this is just the beginning, but there are indications, pointers towards unthinkable possibilities in the future. Men are now training themselves to be inhabitants not of earth only but of distant places. It is a demonstration of developments on unusual lines for the body. At present to dwell or even to stay in unearthly regions, the earthly body has to be protected, buttressed, propped up, with much care and skill by a mechanical outfit – crude scaffolding after all. In the future, other simpler and natural ways will surely be found.

As we know, Nature has pushed up its secret consciousness to the human level and is still pushing it up, upward to levels of the higher man, towards the Superman. She has moulded the body for the jelly-fish and moved up through all the intermediaries to the human body. Man's body like his consciousness has to be remoulded in such a way as to be able to enclose and express the superman-consciousness. The rigid natural laws that bind down the body – the so-called natural laws of temperature and pressure, of respiration and circulation, of assimilation and rejection – have to be turned, obviated, neutralised so that man may be actually, physically a citizen of the world.

Now, the discipline that the physical body is made to undergo at present, in order to accustom itself to high flying, may one day point to the way for a new adaptation and disposition for the body. As it is, the disruption that has been made in the earth atmosphere because of Science's new adventure is also a way to acclimatising the human body to new conditions. The new conditions are becoming even more and more new and the body is being forced to follow suit. At the beginning the result is a rupture but that is the way towards a new disposition, a new dispensation.

(2)

. Showers, torrential streams of tiny infinitesimal particles – waves of invisible light, charges of electricity, all kinds of ultimate units of matter, are pouring down upon earth shrouding it, overwhelming it, drowning it, stifling it as it were. It is not merely a discovery of what has already been there, a static reality since time immemorial, but that they have been coming, arriving, adding ceaselessly to the volume already there and continuing to do so more and more as time advances. For it is said that these particles, cosmic rays, radio-waves, have been on their journey for such a long time from the very beginning of time that they are arriving only now into the earth atmosphere. And always there are others that are arriving, are continuing to arrive at every instant from farther and farther distances. The density and volume and the force of impact of this additional quantity of matter are ever on the increase and one does not know when and what will be the end. Not only so, not only the old existing particles but new particles, none can gainsay the probability, are also being created continuously, in the process. And suppose even some are destroyed, the loss is more than compensated by the creation of new ones, may be, of a different variety, with prospects of a new and novel development.

Thus the burden upon earth has been increasing – and the nature also of the burden is changing. The change is not perhaps very obvious today but the body has already been feeling it and expressing its reactions in the instability of the balance so long enjoyed by man. That is to say, the modern man physically lives or soon will have to live under a new set of circumstances and his physical body has to undergo a change commensurate with its habitat or it will have to disappear.

The cosmonauts are teaching us at least the possibility of a new, almost a revolutionary acclimatisation of the body, the capability of the human organs to follow a different rhythm of life in place of the old normal way. We know from the past history of the evolutionary stages of life that the advent of a

new species is signalled by a change in the conditions of living, and the change in the habitat involves a change in the form, the organs and functions of the body: that is what is meant by

the appearance of a new type of creature adapted to the new conditions. Even so today cosmic travels are forcing the human body to adapt itself to new conditions and it is a very conscious discipline. The change in the body of living beings in the previous stages is due to an unconscious pressure brought to bear upon it by an unconscious Nature. But now the situation is different: man is attempting consciously to surpass himself, he has begun to do it in the physical field with remarkable results and a great promise. True, there is another factor, indeed the major factor behind, within the inner consciousness of man and within the inner regions of the world. As I have said, it is a revolutionary change there that is forcing itself upon the outside and the surface of existence.

Thus there is a twofold process for the new man to establish himself here. First, of course, there is the psychological or inner change and reorganisation: man's attempt to reach a new status of being and consciousness not in the category of the mere mental but a supramental status. Its nature and character and formation is being probed into by the new spiritual seekers and aspirants. That work is being done from within outward, and from above downward. This however is supplemented, supported, effectuated or materialised by the other attempt from below going upward and from outside going inward. That is the way of science, of the pragmatic man. The one we may say somewhat philosophically, is the Purusha, the conscious being coming down; the other, Prakriti, pushing up, Nature driving upward or inward.

It is true the process of acclimatisation that Nature follows is a slow one and gradual though somewhat crude, in spite of scientific refinements and subtleties; yet it is a help and has an accumulated effect. We may just record the progress achieved in the mere outward mechanisation from Lindberg's transatlantic crossing to Borman-company's journey to the moon.

Just at present the appearances are slender but the cumulative effect of these slender forerunners in the long run, or, who knows may be in the short run, is sure to be tremendously obvious. It is expected that the human body itself will acquire new dispositions forced by outer circumstances, the newly developing environment and impelled by the inner stress of the descending consciousness with its formative power. The power

and action of the descending consciousness is outside our ken, it is easily overlooked – unknown and invisible to the normal mind. But in fact it is a great deal due to this element and. thanks to it, that man's phenomenal discoveries of today and miraculous successes have been and are being achieved in the physical field in such a quick and revolutionary manner. The Mother has plainly declared that the new world is already there built and ready and is pressing down upon the material cover and sooner rather than later will force it open and manifest itself.

Page 317

SUNAHSHEPA, the human creature, says the Vedic Rishi, is bound to the stake with three cords: one on the top, the second in the middle and the third below. Sunahshepa cries out to God Varuna to be freed from the triple bondage. The God is pleased and cuts the topmost cord and throws it upward, he cuts the middle cord and throws it on either side, he cuts the downmost cord and throws it downward. Thus Sunahshepa is freed through the Grace of King Varuna.

The three cords are the three limitations of being and consciousness in the normal human creature. There is a wall or barrier up in the mind which shuts out the higher levels of consciousness that are beyond the mind – the worlds of vision and revelation, of the Truth and the Vast. The middle knot shuts out the world around and abroad and limits the being to the ego, prevents the individual person from communicating with the Universal Being and Consciousness. It is the well known knot of the heart – hrdayagranthi – the crux and kernel of the egoistic consciousness. It centres the whole being on itself, limits it to itself, does not let it go out of itself to belong to the world-being. It is also the pull that prevents the being from diving down into its true personality, the psychic, and finding its union with the inner Divine. This egocentred knot has to be cut through and the thread to be scattered into the infinity of the deepest and of the widest being. The last barrier at the base of the human consciousness is the hard crust of the physical and the material being. It is closed to the regions behind, the occult sources of all external movements. This too

* A greater force than the earthly held his limbs,

Unwound the triple cord of mind and freed –

Sri Aurobindo: Savitri 1.5

has to be pulled down and thrown into the gulfs of non-existence – primal Prakriti, out of which they are born – so that the subliminal ranges of consciousness emerge and manifest themselves.

God Varuna is invoked because he is the Lord of the Vast Consciousness, he it is that opens out the passage and leads the human being into worlds of the Vast, the Truth – Ritam, Brihat – from mortality to immortality.

In other words, as we know, the mind, the life and the body form the triple cord of the human being and hedge it within the frame of its normal, narrow, uncertain, fumbling existence; and each of these three constituent parts of human nature has to be delivered from its own particular limitations and released into the broader reality.

These threefold limitations are repeated in each of the statuses of being or consciousness. Thus the mind has a mental being, a vital being and a physical being. So the mind has mental limitations and vital limitations and also physical limitations. The mind's mental limitations are its notions and concepts, constructed ideas and fabricated comprehensions. The mind bound by its reasoning faculties, its deductive system, its syllogistic scheme, all that scaffolding has to go if the new light is to penetrate and illumine it with the new consciousness. The mind has also a vital element, when it moves according to its inspiration, as it is called sometimes, but it is only an ignorant inspiration, it is only another name for "mood," for fancy. True inspiration is not a blind mental rush but something clear and steady and yet forceful and self­poised. Again, the mind has its physical element too: the physical mind is the mind controlled by the senses, the impressions of the senses; its structure is patterned according to the impact of the physical and material objects. A clear, free physical mind embodies the pattern of the movements of the higher consciousness, not of the sense-dominated consciousness.

Even like the mind, the vital too has its threefold knots according to the three elements that constitute it. First, there is a mind in the vital, it is called mental-vital, there is a vital in the vital, it is the vital proper, and there is a physical vital. The mental-vital means the field of sentiment and feeling and emotion, the vital proper is the field of passion, the intensity

and even ferocity of its urge, and finally, the physical vital, which is the field of outward impulsion and drive, the push towards physical act and execution. Last, the physical too has the same threefold knots, first in the mental physical, second in the vital physical and thirdly in the physical physical, that is, the physical proper. The mind in the physical is the purely brain operation, the primitive original percepts that brain-cells emanate. The vital in the physical means the record of the nerves, more or less that are sensations. Lastly, the physical physical means the most mechanical, the inertial reactions of matter.

All these triplicities have a familiar norm in the ordinary nature. And human consciousness is made up of them, in various formations and modulations.

These gradations are the various statuses of consciousness which the human being assumes in its relation with the world reality. In other words, they are the instruments through which human consciousness comes in contact with the universe. They are as it were windows upon the world through which contact is made and relation established with the objects of experience. But usually in the normal consciousness these windows are made a casement with bars and nets or even blinds over it which narrow and blur and even block the view. They are made into cords, as the Upanishad says, that blind and bind and stifle the consciousness. The cords have to be cut away, thrown out. As windows they have to be thrown wide open, open not merely outward towards the external object or reality but also inwardly to the realities, the worlds that lie within and above and beyond

Page 320

CONSCIOUSNESS, the normal consciousness we know, has various degrees of potency: its familiar form is the rational consciousness or intellect; then at a higher level, there is the intuitive consciousness and at a still higher level the visionary consciousness, that is, the consciousness that sees the Truth, and at the highest, the objectless consciousness, consciousness in itself or the sachchidananda consciousness.

Likewise unconsciousness too has its own various degrees. As consciousness rises up to higher and higher grades of consciousness, so unconsciousness too descends into lower and lower grades of unconsciousness. The first degree of unconsciousness is simple forgetfulness. It is the absence of consciousness, not the loss of consciousness. The consciousness is there but it is not apparent or expressed, it is held back for the time. One can recall it; it can be remembered and brought forward. The abeyance of consciousness, when it persists, when it amounts to a turn of nature, is called ignorance. Yet ignorance is not the negation of consciousness, it is clouded or veiled consciousness; it is not that the sun is set and gone but simply that it is behind the clouds, it is up in the sky but shrouded. This behind-the-veil consciousness is the subliminal consciousness or simply sub-consciousness. Sub-consciousness is a consciousness that is not dormant or asleep, stilled into silence, it is at work but behind the normal waking state – It is the swapna-state as the Indian sages termed it. Lower down is the state of unconsciousness proper. It is a still more diminished degree of consciousness, apparently a total absence of consciousness, not merely an abeyance or subsidence of consciousness, it is a lack of consciousness. The animal consciousness might be taken as an instance or expression of the ignorant consciousness, likewise the plant

consciousness parallels the subliminal consciousness – the Indian description of it is antahprajna. Next to it is the consciousness in the mineral, it is unconsciousness. By unconsciousness it is meant here naturally the absence of the mental consciousness: the presence or absence of consciousness means the presence or absence of the mental consciousness. There is a generic consciousness, consciousness in itself, or pure consciousness, which is imbedded in all created things, for creation itself is at bottom a vibration or pulsation of consciousness (vijnana-vijrmbhanam). There is a range or rung still further below with a still lesser degree- of consciousness: it is called the inconscient, which is a totally total, in depth and in extent, absence of consciousness. In the other degree that is above it, there is the probability of consciousness in the midst of apparent absence, here it is reduced almost to nothingness or to just a possibility: for, as I have said, some consciousness, the presence of Sachchidananda is always there everywhere in the core of things. Yet there is also an absolute negation and this has been termed Nescience, it is the zero of things, where there is no question of possibility or impossibility: it is the final and definite end, sunyam of the Buddhists, termed asat by the Vedantists.

Now, the curious and most interesting thing is that the end is not the end of things; for beyond the zero there is the minus sign and what does minus mean? I t does not mean mere negation, it means a reality – a negative real. It is a moot problem in philosophy – philosophers have questioned, argued, discussed at length about it – whether negation means only denial, just the contrary of affirmation. If affirmation means a real, negation means simply the unreal. It has been declared by competent authorities that negation, like affirmation, is also a reality but of the opposite sign. We know in mathematics the minus sign is as real as the plus.

The minus consciousness is something like the minus numerical figure. And indeed in its pure and essential reality, its ultimate, it has or is a figure – a very ominous figure – It is Death. And as such it becomes an altogether real, living entity, of the opposite sign as I said. This minus reality stretches downward and goes round and touches as it were, the back of the Supreme plus reality, 'the Supreme Consciousnes”. That is the negative infinite, the great shadow of the Infinite Light.

Page 322

---

The absolute Nescience is the mere reversal of the Supreme Consciousness, the everlasting Nay is the everlasting Yes turned inside out. Death making a right-about turn is Immortality.

Modern science speaks of anti-matter and the possibility of a world of anti-matter. A world of anti-matter seems to be self contradictory if it does not amount to be an absolute impossibility. The only possibility or plausibility is a world in which matter and anti-matter co-exist (as actually in the present world), but the miracle is that they do not cancel or annihilate each other producing an absolute zero; indeed, the two opposing Clements in their interaction through a process of continuous creation and destruction carryon the world ad infinitum.

But we are more concerned with the mystery of anti - matter which is the ultimate form of what we have called minus consciousness whose image, as I have said, is Death. Sri Aurobindo has described in Savitri how Death the unreal or the negative Being in its ultimate recession turns round and stands face to face with the Divine in His plenary light and power, merges into it and becomes one with it, for Death was nothing else than the Divine. Only when ignorance and unconsciousness (the negation) is thus transformed into its original essence and reality, it adds to it something, a quality which was not there, so to say, which is the fruition or summation of its long journey of material evolution. It is the delight of union, or fusion of two in place of mere unity – the delight of unity in multiplicity.

Page 323

THE seat of human consciousness, in fact of all consciousness, is the brain – the grey substance filling up the cranium. The brain constitutes man in his essential and characteristic substance and functioning.

I am speaking specially of the physical and material basis of mind and consciousness, for unless this basis is changed there can be no change in the structure of the being, and in the movement of outward life; even the consciousness would not change radically or permanently: a stable transformation can come only when the material stuff has undergone a reversal.

The human brain consists, as physiologists tell us, of three parts: (1) the frontal lobe, (2) the hub behind and (3) further down, a hidden part – they are as we know, the cerebrum, the cerebellum and the Bridge and the Medulla. Such is man's head, the cranium, the lodgings where human mind dwells and from where it moves and controls all man's dynamic behaviour.

The frontal lobe is the seat of intellect and intelligence: the topmost portion, the crown of the head is usually associated with the still higher functions of mind, tending towards intuition, direct knowledge, luminous vision, etc. The front proper, the forehead that is to say, is the seat of intellect proper, the discursive deductive rational mind. The section of the brain in the hind portion of the cranium is usually associated not with reason or understanding but with vital urges, impulsions, sentiments, passions, desires, etc.: the nervous knots there are the controlling agent of these lower functions of the mind; that is the control room, as it were, for all dynamism, for man's character and nature. And the part hidden or imbedded below houses the infra-impulses: the demands and needs that are

inherent mostly in the bodily functions, all the movements that are called forth in the wake of physical existence.

The question, the problem now is, how to change, purify these ranges of the mind or brain: to suffuse the cranium with a new functioning and organisation replacing the old order of the ordinary, more or less animal man

The usual Course followed is to call in the higher reality: the light and its power of organisation, that lie above, above the brain outside the cranium, to invoke the light, the transcendent light and power to descend and penetrate the brain-consciousness and work out there a process of purification and new organisation. This has been done with considerable success. This is the Vedantic way.

But, there is a but, that is to say, a limitation in this line. The higher consciousness is brought down, it descends, but normally it does not penetrate far enough; it penetrates only very partially, slowly, intermittently and in a gradually diminishing strength. The top region receives the light comparatively easily; the middle receives or is touched and influenced with great difficulty and after long travail, but the bottom portion is rarely connected or contacted, only nominally perhaps. In other words, if the higher mind, the intellect and intelligence is somewhat illumined with a new light from above and even if the higher vital comes under its influence in a general way, the lower vital comes hardly in its grasp. And the lowest region, the region of physical or nervous movements for all practical purposes lies outside the influence of the Higher or Transcendent Consciousness; that remains almost undisturbed, un-regenerated. To bring down the Higher Light there, behind and below the brain stuff, is a task very few have done or even attempted to do.

The Tantriks devised a different way, an about-turn way. Instead of trying to bring down the superior or the supreme consciousness into these lower darknesses, they sought to attack these from below, set a blazing fire below that would shoot up its tongues into those nether regions of the brain or mind. Instead of a force of light from above coming down, a force of fire is rocketed upward and made to strike as it were at the back of the lower masses of the mind. Now where to find this fire, this mounting tongue of a living flame? That is what the

Tantras have imaged in the concept of the Kundalini Shakti. There is a force, a mighty energy coiled and concentrated at the base of the spine holding it and supporting at its top, first, the subliminal region of the brain at the bottom, and over it the other two. There is a secret fire at the base of the human system. It is a fire as invoked by the Vedic Rishis: the tantriks view it as a coiled python – the universal nature-power, her massive ingathered creative energy. This energy is forceful and fierce because it is as much creative as it is destructive. That is the poison which the python carries, it is a poison in the ignorant state and unconsciousness, to the ignorant and the unconscious, but to the aspirant and the awakened and the luminous consciousness it begins to work as the immortalising draught – nectar.

The energy at the root of the spine is stored, as it is said, in the muladhara, the root, that is to say, in the root of the very material constitution of the human being. It is the concentrated energy in matter, indeed it is the energy of the mother earth. The Vedic Rishis speak of fire as being a deity of earth, as the Sun or the God of Light is the deity of the heaven. The earth-energy has to be awakened or kindled and it has to move upward and forward, piercing and burning and illumining all the inferior and denser regions of consciousness till it pierces through and enters into the head, and then goes beyond, into the supreme solar light. That is the image given in the Tantras calling it sat-chakrabheda.

The inferior parts of the brain are denser and darker than the superior. The lower it is, the denser and darker it becomes. I do not know if physically it is so, but the sensitivity, the vibrations there seem to point to such a direction. So it appears, it is not easy for the Light from above to penetrate, to penetrate to a great depth, to the bottom of the brain. It is not the Light from above but the fire from below, the flaming force of material consciousness that has to do the main or final work. For the light from above is mostly mental or mentalised, the very supreme Light does not descend easily, is not readily available: indeed it is ready and available only at the call of the fire below. Agni is therefore named 'hota,' one who calls the Divine down here below. It is the God here below that can call down the God above.

But how to awaken this God buried in matter, how is one to kindle this fire that apparently lies extinguished, the Vedic Rishis have a whole ritual of the process. They speak, first of all, of preparing the seat for Agni – barhi: it is the material casing of the body, and then one takes two pieces of the arani, species of wood or fuel, and rubs them one against the other till the fire leaps out. It refers to an aspiration, a concrete and concentrated aspiration that is breathed into the living cells, this breathing, adhmatam, is the concretising or embodying of the aspiration: it is the invocation that calls forth sleeping divinity.

The fire in fact is the aspiration in the body, the divine demand in the body and it kindles itself by its own self-pressure. The spreading of the barhi in the Vedic image means also the surrender and submission, the prostration of the bodily being. By namas, by constant obeisance the fire is to be tended; and a ceaseless refuelling has to be done by a ceaseless self-offering of all movements, especially all the automatic reactions of the physical that form the roots of the material existence.

The whole physical being if it is to embody a new life in a new organisation must concentrate at one point within itself and find or found there the Fire, the dynamic Divine Will in its most concrete reality – the body's self and soul: the yajamana, the human figure of the Divine here invoking, calling forth the godhead who leads the sacrificial journey through all the worlds and domains to the Supreme Heights.

We have said that fire is a denser and intenser force than light: while the light is likely to stop short or to dispense, the fire is apt to act fiercely and decisively with the denser or more refractory objects of existence, strands that are moved, as I have said, from the central control of the brain. Earth enshrines volcanoes; likewise the cells in the material body may be turned into little volcanoes if the Divine Flame is roused there in the intensive process of aspiration.

Earthly beings as we are, Agni, the earthly Godhead is the Deity we adore, he is the Lord of the Home, grhapati. He is the foremost of the gods and he goes in front of us purohita, Agni's flame rises towards Surya, the supreme Light, but first he must prepare the passage, burn down and clear the woodlands and marshes that intervene – the growths and formations in the past of the very substance of the being.

Thus, the head, the brain, must be built wholly of fire particles. The cranium will hold, as it were, a golden ball, rounded and fully formed, the golden egg, hiranyagarbha, out of which the new physical creation will emerge – something in the manner of the legendary Greek goddess Minerva, whole and entire, complete in arms and panoply, out of the head of Father Jupiter.

The Labours of the Gods:

The five Purifications

NOWDAYS we hear much of brain-washing. The other day, instead of brain-washing, I spoke of brain-ignition. That is to say, for a total reconstitution of the brain, for a new building of the physique of the new man, one has to transform the cells of grey matter into particles of fire, packets of burning energy. I said, the cranium being the control-room of physical existence and the brain being the controlling agent – the brain extending its range down the spinal column to its end at the last vertebra – this is the element that has to be treated and reorganised first and foremost if a physical reorganisation of human nature and behaviour is to be achieved. I explained – tried to explain – that this being the physical or material field, the first of the elements – ksiti or earth or matter – the God presiding over it, Fire, has to be invoked and its especial working carried out here.

The brain thus is the controller-general of the whole physical system of the human body. In particular, however, it is the controller and regulator of the physical mind and the senses (the six indriyas of Indian psychology). This is the province of the basic earth principle, this range of material matter over which the Fire is the presiding deity. There are, however, other provinces and units, co-lateral to the brain system and having special functions of their own. First of all, at the bottom of the scale, or rather the first step upward in the scale, – that is, after the vertebral pedestal – is the abdominal system which consists, as we know, of the three main operations: (i) digestion, (ii) evacuation, and (iii) generation, comprising, in other words, the stomach, the intestines, the liver and the spleen, the kidneys, the bladder, and finally, the sex glands. The glands indeed, here in this domain, are the operative

agent: and they have a special way of operation, namely, washing. If fire controls the most material, the earth-principle, it is water, apas, that is the god in this region of the vital functions. The Vedas speak of the purifying streams of the Sindhus and the Srotas; they speak of the underground stream of rasa which Sarama, the Hound of Heaven, crossed to' come over to our earth. Water, in fact, does the work appropriate to this region. It is the vital region in man and consists of functions attached to the vital activities. The vital in its ordinary and normal functions means desires and attachments, hunger and thirst, ties and bondages, urges and demands – these have to be cleared and washed out if there is to be healthy strength in the system, washed by spraying the pure vital fluid. Physiologically the enzymes and endocrine secretions are the physical formations or outer formulations of the hidden vital fluid. This indeed is the function of the deity, Soma, Pawamana Soma, the flowing stream of Delight, who in effect is the true presiding godhead here. For it is this section of the body that is the stage for our whole world of enjoyment – for the play of all our physical delights as well as of all our ailments and diseases. Purified, it is the giver of health and happiness leading ultimately to that Supreme Delight which is immortality, Life transfigured.

Above and next to this region of the viscera, on the other side of the diaphragm, is the region of the thorax, the chest cavity. It contains the ,most important of all human organs, the heart and the lungs, which means the respiratory and the circulatory systems, extending into the solar plexus; and the power that controls it is that of the third element Tejas, the pulsating, radiant energy. It is the energising heat, the warmth of will and aspiration, concentration in the heart; it is also Tapas. It is indeed a form of fire, fire in its essential substance, a quiet white flame against the robust red and crimson and purple fires of earth. It is the mounting urge of consciousness in its rhythmic poise of harmonious strength. And that is the god Aryama of the Vedas, the godhead presiding over the upward surge of evolution. From here comes not merely the drive to go forward, the secret dynamo that moves the being to its goal but also the vision that shows the way and the conditions under which the end is achieved or fulfilled. From

here too comes rhythm and the balance and the happy harmony of all movements in life. The calm heave of the lung sand the glad beat of the heart are the sign and symbol of a radiant animation.

We now come to the fourth domain, the domain of Marut; in the physical body it is the mouth, the throat, the tongue, the facial front in general. It is the field of expression, of articulation – Vak, the word is the symbol. Here is the alert, the mobile field, also a stage for the play, the outward display of all the significances that life movements carry in them, physical or psychological. Speech or utterance is the epitomised or concretised expression of the sense of life movement.

This region of the Marut can be linked to that where the Vedic Maruts rule and govern. The Maruts are called thought gods – thought-gods riding on the movements of life. They represent the aerial spirits or energies that lift, the human spirit from its purely vital and material coils into the rarer regions of pure thinking and light and consciousness, who spread and move further upward in the still farther and rarer regions of consciousness and energy.

Beyond is the fifth element, Vyom, the sphere overhead the Vast and the Infinite. That, of course, is the original source and status of the human being, where he gathers up all the elements in one indivisible perfect consciousness. That is the root of the Divine Tree of Existence which, as the Vedas say dwells up there, spreading downward all its branches, namely the other elements of the being.

Such then are the five operations of the divine alchemy with regard to the purification of the human vessel, somewhat in the manner of the ancients while treating the base metal; they are (I) burning, (2) washing, (3) brightening up or warming up or enlivening, (4) articulating i.e. giving an expression or a form of beauty and truth, and (5) setting the whole within or in reference to the frame of the Infinite and the Impersonal.

We have said that each element has its special function in relation to the human adhara, the fire burns in the earthly or material sheath, the water flushes and cleans the vitals, the radiant energy activises and regulates the cardiac domain – which in fact is the central knot of life – the air or wind, the breath of consciousness inspires the right expression in thought

Page 331

And speech and act, and finally, the vast limitless beyond is the ultimate reality embracing the rest of the being in its truth and love and delight. In reality, however, the elements in their essence are not exclusive of each other. Indeed they with their respective fields and functions are interchangeable, each one can do the work of any other or of all together. They function severally and collectively, and they intermingle and reciprocate in their functioning even like and following the example of the Vedic gods. Fire can ignite the brain or the vitals or the cardiac and the throat region or even the crown. The water as well can flush likewise the brain, the vitals, the thorax and the throat. The radiant energy of the heart, in its turn, can luminously animate and regulate the same fields and functions. The air or the Marut can sweep through and purify and dynamise each and everyone of the rest, give an inspired expression through man's face, – the frontal field and instrument. And it goes without saying that the Infinite, the Vast, lies behind and at the heart of all, without it nothing can exist or move. That is the supreme agent for creation and new creation – the Grace Divine.

All the different elements are but varied formulations of one and the same divine Creative Energy. Therefore the Vedic Rishi declares: It is all one single reality, the sages give it different names.

Page 332

THE Mother spoke once of the body being like a fortress, a strong shelter protecting you against enemy-attacks, the forces that are around roaming in the open spaces, the forces of physical and even moral disruption. The ancients used to refer to the body as a walled city the gates of which are to be carefully guarded. It is also compared to a temple, a firm structure wherein God is to dwell, which is to be kept always clean, trim and tidy. The body itself was worshipped as a holy thing almost as a Divinity by certain schools of spiritual discipline.

These are, so to say various dimensions of the body; one more, somewhat of a different category, may be added. The body is a battery, an accumulation of energy, of energy and consciousness, of energy-consciousness. We are all familiar with the modern concept of the material particle being con­centrated energy: it is tremendously concentrated and that is why it looks as though dead solidity. In reality its stilled high potency harbours almost an immeasurable force of creation and destruction.

The release of energy, material energy, in matter, is the business of Science and the scientist; the release of conscious­ ness, the energy of consciousness in matter is the business of yoga and the yogi. The tantrik discipline was in a large way occupied with this mystery. It found and developed -its own method and process and its success in its own field is also well recognised.

The body-content thus is essentially consciousness consoli­dated, crystallised. The problem then is how to release it. The first thing is that you must be conscious, you, that is to say, your body must be conscious, must be aware always of what

it is doing: living, moving, acting; the body must be doing all that consciously, almost voluntarily: there shall be no in­ voluntary movements. Each physical gesture must know itself by feeling itself in the act. It is not that the mind should know, the mind can have only a memory, but that the limb itself has to pursue its function knowingly, in full awareness. At the beginning there is inevitably a mixture of mental knowing but that is to be cleaned out and over passed

One is conscious, can be conscious only through conscious­ ness; consciousness is born through consciousness. It manifests, it grows through incubation, through self-centration. Energy energises itself, as the Upanishad says, tapas taptva. Energy is consciousness in movement and in moving it expresses itself, embodies itself. A muscle, for example, when moving, awakes to its own activity, the awakening is not confined to itself, but it extends gradually, extends to all its constituent cells and even to contiguous cells. The process in this way permeates the whole body and the entire material content of the body is filled with consciousness and with its radiant energy.

There is however a basic preliminary necessity, a prepara­tory condition: the first essential condition under which the body can be conscious of itself is its freedom, its absolute freedom. The body must be liberated wholly and entirely, it must feel its perfect freedom. As at present it is a slave: it never knows its own will, it is always under the orders of either the vital or the mind or both. Under the control of this dual masters – a cruel diarchy – the body has lost all its independent move­ments. The activities, almost all, of the present body are not really its own, they are expressions of an imposed will. In order to have and to be aware of its own wm the body must be freed from its alien imposition and as soon as it gains its freedom, it will know itself, learn itself, learn its own movements. It will gradually shred off all the wrong and distorted movements which form its present habits. We shall find that in itself the body is a sane entity and it is not in need of many things that have been suggested to it and instilled into it by forces that are outside it, almost foreign to it, the mental and the vital forces. The liberation will bring to it automatically the awareness of its own self, it will become, that is to say, conscious of itself and this consciousness will bring with it a pure and fresh

energy which is that of its true self. As in the case of a subject nation the very fact of liberation brings to it the energy of self-consciousness and an exhilarating delight in the expression of the newfound selfhood, even as also in the case of the indi­vidual human being when he is freed from serfdom and slavery and bondages, he attains, realises the dignity of self-conscious­ness and self-power, even so the material body too becomes illumined with its freedom and rejoices in its power and energy to express its own truth. The first effect of freedom after a long subjugation is likely to be a spell of erraticism, but that is sure to die away if there is a corrective central will.

The body-movements in the animal are more authentic and truthful for they are not subsidised and suborned by the vital and mental injunctions, and they are more ordered and controlled, not subject to idiosyncrasies that sway the human character. They are more free and more natural: the same essential freedom and authenticity and purity shall belong to the body natural of the highest mode of being and conscious­ness.

However, in this age, at the present time the human body is inevitably moving towards such a consummation – towards freedom and buoyancy and radiancy, a new valency, a new self-law. The individual efforts are more than supplemented by a Grace that is at work in a supreme effective manner: for this is the hour of God – "when even a little effort produces great results and changes destiny."

Page 335

To be immortal one must live in that which is immortal. One may be immortal outside and beyond the world and one may be immortal in the world upon the earth. The first is the immortality of Transcendence, of the Self, of Sachchidananda. The other is that of Immanence, of the Soul, the delegated Emanation in Matter upon earth. To be immortal here upon earth one must find that which is immortal here below. To be immortal in the body one must find that which is immortal in the body, and the body must become it integrally and absolutely.

It is the soul that is immortal upon earth and in the mortal being. For the life to be immortal here this soul has to be found not only in its own domain, in its own home, the central psychic behind and within the heart; but it must be found also in each and every part of the being – the soul in the mind, the soul in the vital, the soul in the body – the immortal in the mortalities, as the rishis used to say.

This then is the first necessity, one should awake in the central psychic being and then awaken the same psychic being in all the parts of the being that are now apparently soulless. With that consciousness in front one must face the question set by death and dissolution. Now, to start on the way one must get rid of all fear of death – one must not be afraid of it in the least or shrink from it even a jot or tittle. The attitude of perfect indifference must be there not only in the mind but also in the vital and in the body itself. All has to be in a block, solidly calm and still – udasina – seated above the contingencies.

The consciousness, the consciousness of every element must be of absolute passivity and integral neutrality: one must in

every limb leave it to the Divine to make the decision whether to continue or not to continue, must be equally happy in either case. No thought or movement of such a kind should be there that because immortality is the ideal to be achieved, therefore one must or can seek for it, try for it, that it is not wrong to make an effort towards it: instead one must learn to be absolutely indifferent, the supreme indifference taught by the Gita. And it must be a true indifference, with no arrière pensée, no notion in the background that as I am indifferent, as I do not care for gain and loss, therefore I shall automatically attain the desired immortality. In fact, this ‘I’ does not attain immortality. This 'I’ in whatever form is the very negation of immortality, it is mortality. As we have said, it is the immortal in the mortal that becomes the immortal, that is to say, manifests and embodies its immortality.

Even this is just the beginning, the very first step, the indispensable primary condition, Every part and element of the whole being, down to the material cells of the body itself must be filled with the soul's consciousness, a field suffused with the consciousness of the soul. Next there wil1 come the question of changing the very substance of the constituents. That is the final and crucial discipline. For a pervading soul­ consciousness may, by its pressure and influence, bring about the prolongation of life, even indefinitely, but immortality is assured only when the very substance of the material body is changed into its immortal essence.

Naturally however, the Supreme Grace is always there and if it chooses it can suspend or even cancel all laws and do things as it chooses, but that is a different matter.

Page 337

THE test of Truth is its impossibility. I believe because it is impossible; Credo quia impossibile. That is Saint Augustine.

There is a grain, why a grain, quite a lump of truth in this well-known saying of a great seeker of Truth. "Truth shall prevail? Is this true? Can it be true? It is impossible." There­fore it must be true. "God exists: is it an impossibility?" Therefore God does exist. "Shall we ever come out of the present darkness? Impossible!" We shall, therefore, come out, surely.

The possible, to our senses, is what is happening, now: the present fact is the truth and what is in absolute agreement with the present is the possible or the probable truth. Anything going against or not consonant with the actual is a doubtful or even a negative quantity, but in fact at every moment everywhere there are upsettings of the apparently sure present: unnatural things do happen more often than not. But we do not pay or do not want to pay as much attention to these.

Who believed that India would be free and Britain go out lock, stock and barrel? Who believe that the Czardom would disappear for ever? And the Hohenzollerns and the Hapsburgs, where are they now? And the great Hitler? Even a few years ago who would have believed that man would walk on the moon? And can you believe now that matter can exist and does exist as anti-matter? Not in vain has the mad, bad and sad poet sung: Mais ou sont done les neiges d' antan?¹

The physical mind has to be taught, it must learn its lesson, that at every step something new, something unforeseen un­predicted and unpredictable is waiting in front to confound it. And it must gain the perception, the discrimination to

¹ Villon: Where, 0 where are the snows of yesteryear?

recognise it, never to say, "Oh, it is natural, inevitable what is happening, there is nothing to wonder and dismiss the novelty of the thing as an illusion."

The spiritual realities are at your door: they are neither non-existent nor too distant. Freedom, Peace, Calm, Happi­ness, Delight, Joy, Health are all there as self-existent realities. You have only to turn – or tilt as the Mother says – your consciousness a little and you are in the very midst of the thing. Doubt, hesitation, merely casts a veil and blurs or blocks the view. God, Soul, Immortality, even these are equally available to the human consciousness in the same way. These are existen­ces of daily use, so to say, of "common neighbourhood," in the words of the poet – home truth.

A faith, necessarily a blind faith in these impossibles is its own authenticity, for it brings you immediately in direct contact with those apparently unseen intangible realities. It gives you automatically a sense of certainty, a radiant clarity in the consciousness, that no other approach to Truth or Reality can give you. You feel, you know it is the truth, there is no shadow of any questioning anywhere, it is self-luminous. "Is it not self-hypnotism?" a scoffer might allege. Self-hypnot­ism is a name: it is the power of consciousness to concentrate itself to such a degree that it can be changed into anything even into its opposite. Self-absorbed consciousness in one form at one extreme is the inconscient, at the other extreme it is the supra conscient Brahman. Consciousness is the power of being and it can give any form or name to the being – yo yatsraddha sa eva sah. One becomes whatever one's conscious­ness wants to become.

The ultimate verities are there indeed existing in themselves and the mind's attempt to question them, discuss them, judge them, doubt them, deny them is ludicrous. Even the mind's attempt to affirm them, assert them or seize them is equally vain and ludicrous. The Upanishadic seer declares clearly and unequivocally: tato vacha nivartante aprapya manasa saha – the word with all its effort cannot seize it, the mind cannot reach there, it turns back hopelessly. Therefore the seeker of the Truth is always advised from the very beginning and through­out to keep his mind quiet, vacate it, install there the simple faith, to wait and let the thing come of itself. These realities

Page 339

---

are not acquisitions or possessions or even achievements, they are living entities, personalities. At the right time they come to you, they enter into you and possess you. You do not reach out and possess them. Even so, it was said of Nachiketas that faith entered into him, and therefore he could meet Death and become his friend and confidant. The Upanishad finally says: it is when the Truth discloses its own body to the seeker, then only can the seeker see the Truth in its truth.

Mind's conceptions of the ultimate realities are very far from the actual truth. The mind has a conception of freedom or delight or even of consciousness; it has a conception of God and immortality, of infinity and eternity. But they are all its own creations more or less. The highest summits of the mind may get a glimpse or a reflection of those supernals but even as such they come only as an echo, an image, a faint replica of the actual thing. Freedom as it is in the Divine or with the Divine, Delight or Consciousness as they are of the Divine have an altogether different quality, a different mode of vibration from that which is available to mind on its lower levels. What the mind receives is a re-formation, more often a deformation of the original as you go farther down the scale. Only if the mind itself is changed in its substance, regains a translucent passivity then only can it see and see something of the secret glory of the higher realities.

Page 340

an unstable balance, an uncertain counter-poising of diverse and divergent elements. Also, it must be noted, that the higher and deeper the consciousness, the wider and the more comprehensive, the more the harmony becomes natural, spontaneous, faultless, perfect: and on the highest level the harmony becomes not merely union but indivisible unity.

That is the goal towards which a dedicated centre, that is to say, a spiritually aspiring group should move and labour. And that also is the primary work, the first and foremost for which the centre stands as the field. And this work can be done and has to be achieved through the discipline enunciated in just the previous, our third mantra – the fundamental attitude with which the work has to be done. It is said there that the work, consecrated work or service is the prayer of the body. Mind's prayer is expressed in words, body's prayer in-works. Work is the prayer in its dynamic and concrete form, it is the utterance of the physical, the language it knows in order to ask for and seek the union with the Divine. It is the holy ritual expressing and embodying in the physical, material life, one's adoration, one's adhesion to the ideal, to the deity one worships.

Work or service expressing harmonisation needs to be based, as I have said, upon a higher and higher consciousness. Work done as prayer is the best means of effecting an ascent in consciousness. This is the lesson that each individual of a centre must learn from the very outset and ever afterwards., He must always try to rise in consciousness, reach an ever higher status of being and from there let the work flow, as it were, from a spontaneous spring. As one rises in consciousness and being) naturally and inevitably this consciousness widens and one feels naturally and spontaneously kinship and union with all others. Work or service is then only a dynamic means of achieving and realising the sense of perfect unity of oneself with all other selves.

Work is not meant to- show or express one's capacity or skilfulness or cleverness, nor is it a mere mechanical execution of outward acts performing certain duties however conscien­tiously or meticulously. It is indeed a ritual of prayer and self­dedication, adhesion and surrender of the most dynamic and material parts of our being – the most unresponsive and in­sensible elements – to the One Divine Will.

And this brings us to the major, the cardinal mantra of a centre, the mantra which Sri Aurobindo gives about the constant and living presence of the Mother. The very core of a centre is this Presence. A centre grows and can grow perfectly only around the Mother's Presence and Consciousness. As the ideal for the individual is to be conscious of its central inner being and relate all its parts and all its movements to that central reality, organise itself in perfect harmony around this core of its being, even so a group-centre has to organise itself in perfect harmony around the central reality of the Mother: only so can it grow and grow harmoniously. Indeed a group, that is to say, a centre, like the individual can successfully grow into a living and harmonious dynamic Truth only when it has in its consciousness at every moment and in every movement of its life the never-failing Presence of the Divine Mother, for thus only a centre can become a divine embodiment and incarnation of the Supreme Mother for the expression and realisation of her truth upon this earth.

Page 343

I

Einstein's equation.

E=mc²

that is, Matter becomes energy when its mass is multiplied by the square of the velocity of light.

The new equation:

M=mc°°

that is, Matter is transformed into spiritualised energy (not merely mechanical energy as in Einstein) when its mass is multiplied by consciousness raised to the power of infinity.

II

Buddha's equation:

D°=O

that is, Desire raised to the power zero is zero=Nirvana.

Shankara's equation:

Dº= I (Sachchidananda)

Note: any quantity raised to the zero power is not zero but I.

X ª

Ex: xº=xª¯ª = – = I.

X ª

Page 344

To destroy is easy; to create, it is difficult.

The vital force destroys in its violence, it is the spirit that creates in its energy of consciousness.

The vital force is easily available to man. The spirit is a far cry.

And yet there is no other way out: if man is to be saved, that is the only way left before him.

If man's destiny is to fulfil – fulfil the purpose of creation, he will have to find out the way of the spirit. If in his present mood of perversity, he pursues blindly the urge that has possessed him, he will surely annihilate himself – willingly or unwillingly he will commit hara-kiri.

Fortunately for man, souls are there yet upon earth who have found the truth, souls that have declared unhesitatingly with the Upanishadic Rishi: "1 know this being luminous as the sun beyond all darkness"; and that truth will be out, burst forth and spread abroad. Or in the words of the Biblical son of man: "I am from above.. I am not of this world.. I am He.."¹

And in the end may it not be that the present ruins and ravages are merely a symptom or a resultant of the pressures that the forces of the new creation are exerting from behind or from above? It is always true, it is a fact that any creation, for that matter, any happening on the material plane is already prepared or pre-figured within or behind in a subtler region. We all know Gita's tremendous vision: "all these have already been slain by Me" – the battle is fought, won or lost in another world beforehand; what we see on the material level are only the debris, disjecta membra, of forms and limbs thrown down

¹ The Bible: St. John.

from there. Only the sweeping or clearing is being done here for the appearance and establishment of what already has been built up unseen behind the material curtain. Or as it is sometimes given as an illustration or example, the breakage is that of the surface shell due to the pressing emergence of the fully formed living creature within.

One creates through one's consciousness, not through one's hands. A true creation must have at its origin the true con­sciousness, and a true consciousness has always the power to create invincibly; for consciousness is identified with essential energy. Chit and Tapas are one and the same.

The seed of consciousness has to be sown in the field of our being, whether it is the individual or the collective being. How is it to be done? And who is to find the seed? There must be some one or even a few who are the prophets, pioneers or forerunners, who are the appointed missionaries. You or I may be elected as one if we choose to be so.

A vital force can create, but if it is not supported or inspired by something else, something inner, deeper and higher, the creation can be only an asuric (titanic) or rakshasik (demoniac) or even a pishachic (ghoulish) one, not a thing of light and happiness and harmony, but a thing made of obscurity and perversion, of pain and suffering: we saw in practice something of it – fortunately short lived – in the Hitlerian or Stalinian regime; a soulless mental or vital or physical being can create but a chaos.

In the deluge of Doomsday the Lord himself appears and holds aloft safe the supreme Knowledge, the matrix of a new creation – the divine Ark. Indeed those alone who have souls, who are made of the soul-consciousness, who are in effect, parts and points, centres of the divine Being, will survive and form the nucleus of the new humanity – the rest if they cannot be corrected or converted will naturally be extirpated annihilated or else relegated to a status of barbarism worse than the animal life. But we expect a better fate for mankind.

Today we call it – à la manière Churchill – our finest hour – for it is the hour when we have at our disposal the greatest opportunity to find our soul – even our God.

Page 346

THIS is an age of deluge and devastation and decomposition. Is this also the Doomsday?

Nature herself has started the process and man has lent his hand to hasten it. Or did man start it and Nature is hastening the work? Perhaps it is a vicious circle, but the outcome is the same.

Anyhow the question now is whether there is a remedy. How can Nature be made steady and how can man come out of the muddle?

For man the root-cause is that he is being imprisoned more and more, and circumstances of his life are such that he is losing all free movements and is being hemmed in on all sides. The walls are, as it were, pressing upon him, even to the point of suffocation. In all fields of life rules and regulations, restrictions and impediments are mounting high and are, becoming an unbearable burden more and more. Whichever way he turns a few steps lead to a dead wall, and he knocks his head against something hard and hostile and irremovable. Hence his natural urge is to knock more and more, to break and destroy and come out – that seems to be the only issue. Destroy and live dangerously – that is the one way left. In destroying what stands against you if you happen to destroy yourself it matters very little, you will be destroyed willy-nilly either way.

Indeed an urge to destroy pure and simple leads to self-destruction. Violence is a boomerang which turns back upon its own source. There is a joy in violence, perverse though it be, even when directed against oneself. Perhaps in the occult view it is the movement against oneself that is the secret source of the movement against others. The enormous increase in the incidence of suicides is a characteristic phenomenon of

our age. It is not explained merely by the force majeure of actual circumstances. A dark spirit broods over the waters of existence today which aims at the annihilation of consciousness itself, the one source of life and creation.

But may we not pause a little and consider whether that is the only choice, or the best choice – the rush for destruction? The whole past construction that now stands against man, against his farther progress, it is agreed, has to be broken down, thrown aside, but in what way? By mere physical force, brute force, by pushing and dashing and ramming from outside – well, perhaps the thing can be done, but destruction of form is not elimination of the life or spirit behind it. The past still in its present form continues because it maintains its own inner life and spirit. So long as that inner spirit is there you may break one form but another or many others will appear inspired by the same spirit. That is why the French proverb says: "The more it changes, the more it remains the same;"¹ For the truth is that destruction is not the aim, not even the destruction of what should be destroyed, the aim is the creation of a new spirit, change of the inner nature. Our attention should be focussed not on the outward form but on the inner norm. If there is a new norm within and a change of nature, the outer change of form will follow automatically. The old leaves will fall off, the dead branches break away and new leaves and flowers appear with a new sap flowing in. The shell breaks off automatically when the living creature within grows and is mature enough to come out.

On the contrary, the prison need not be altogether a prison, it may be an occasion, an opportunity for the human consciousness to make a break-through to create a new dimension. Here is then our immediate work – to conquer inner domains, the inner truths: for all truths are found first within the consciousness, established there before they become facts. So then let us harness our power and prowess, our aspiration and sincerity, all our life energy to the labour of the inner conquest. Let us stop awhile from the temptation and the urge for destruction and turn it round towards a higher inner adventure – that of construction. Yes, the truth that we want to see established in the outer world, let us establish it in ourselves,

¹ Plus ça change, Plus ça Teste Ie même.

Page 348

---

in each one of us, in our consciousness, in our impulses and activities. We always wanted liberty and equality and fraternity in the world at large, the ideal has not been realised because we did not care to realise it in the consciousness and life of each one of us. In the collective life of mankind that truth will alone become a fact which is a fact in the inner existence and consciousness of every human being.

The inner discovery is indeed a battle and here too a victory has to be won. It needs more than in any physical battle a complete contingent of courage and bravery, calm strength and persevering endurance, skill and energy to gain an absolute success. And there the field is free and vast, one can deploy oneself as largely as possible, move in any direction to any distance as one likes. It is no longer a prison, – it is a region where one meets one's soul.

The individual seems always to precede the society. What begins in and with the individual is spread abroad and established in wide commonalty. But this individual self-concentration does not mean that one should withdraw from the world and its activities and sit and settle within oneself, apart and aloof. It does not mean while you are in prison, to accept imprisonment, dig a cave there and go into mere meditation. In other words, to find the inner solution it is not necessary to escape from the world, go into the solitude of mountain-tops or into the depths of the forests, take to the path of total renunciation till you attain perfect siddhi and then turn back and share your light and leading with humanity. Some great souls have done this-Buddha and Christ and Vivekananda. And it is not for every man to try that path in the way they did. But even if the path is not easy, to some extent at least every one of us has to follow it; for we must remember our aim is not easy either. The pioneers have to accept the difficulty of the path. Pursuing the figure of the prison, of the dungeon, we may say, instead of trying to break it down because of the hopelessness of the attempt, or as the alternative: sit down quiet for the inner illumination to come; instead of that one may cut a tunnel under the wall. That should be the nature of our activity in our present situation.

The new truth, the new capacity you have to acquire in and through the activities of the normal life. It was what

Page 349

Sri Krishna taught to Arjuna. Arjuna was a representative of the common man, Arjuna was thought to be always in the yogic consciousness even while he was engaged in battle.

Thus we are at the world's finest hour, for it shall find its soul.

Page 350

Sri Aurobindo

I

From a certain standpoint Sri Aurobindo's message is very simple, almost self-evident. The sum and substance of all he says is that man is growing and has to grow in consciousness till he reaches the complete and perfect consciousness, not only in his individual but in his collective, that is to say, social life. In fact, the growth of consciousness is the supreme secret of life, the master key to earthly evolution.

Sri Aurobindo believes in evolution. Creation, according to him, has a purpose and man moves to a goal. That is nothing else than the unfolding of consciousness. Originally all was Matter, only dead Matter. At a certain stage out of Matter came Life: what was or appeared to be dead became alive. Thus the plant world was born-the first .primeval stirring of consciousness, a consciousness vague, blind, practically unconscious, yet moved by a newly acquired or awakened pulsation. There was again a period of gestation and incubation bringing out at the end a rudimentary Mind, a first conscious consciousness: so the animal was born. Consciousness is clearer and freer here, emerging into formulation: it is now instinct or sensibility and in its higher grades infused with a streak of spontaneous thinking. Sensuous mentality gave birth to Mind proper, that is thought, reflection and man appeared. A fully awakened consciousness, consciousness that can turn round upon itself is the characteristic marking out human consciousness.

Such then are the stages in the progression of consciousness; they are clearly observable and admitted practically on all hands. Only Sri Aurobindo points out two crucial characters

Page 351

of this movement. First: Matter, Life, Mind-Intelligence – these are not distinct or separate entities, one coming after another, the succeeding one simply adding itself to the preceding, coming we do now know from where. Not so, for something cannot come out of nothing. If life came out of Matter, it is because life was there hidden in Matter Matter was secretly housing, was instinct with life. That only can evolve which was involved. So, again, if Mind came out of life, it is because Mind was involved in life and therefore also in Matter although at a farther remove. Yet again, vital mind developed into Intelligence and consciousness proper, and it could be only because that too was its secret nature and hence the secret nature of Life and even brute Matter. Thus the whole chain of gradation is linked together indissolubly and the binding reality that runs through all is consciousness, overt or covert. It is indeed consciousness that lies at the root of existence – the basic substance, Matter is nothing but consciousness become unconscious; and the whole scheme or processus of the cosmos is the increasing manifestation and expression of that consciousness. Secondly, the other character is that at each cross-over, there is not only a rise in consciousness but also a reversal of consciousness, that is to say, the level attained turns back upon the preceding levels, influencing and moulding them as far as possible in its own mode and law of existence. When life appeared in Matter, wherever there was material life, the matter thus taken up by life behaved differently from dead matter: an organic body does not not follow the strict mechanicallaws of inanimate bodies. Likewise a life endowed with mind has a different functioning than mere life. And a body which houses a life and mind, which has, as it were, flowered into life and mind moves and acts in another way than an inert body or even a vitalised body. Man's intelligence and reason have reoriented or tend to reorient his vital instincts and reactions, even his bodily functions and forms. A conscious regulation, even refashioning of his life and body is the very essence of human consciousness, the urge of his nature, instead of a spontaneous laissez-faire movement of pure vitality or the mechanical go-round of the material base. These three major provinces or layers of consciousness – Matter, Life and Mind – man has taken up into himself and in the light of his consciousness

Page 352

---

– his Intelligence – has studied and classified them arranging them serially as the well-known sciences of Physics Biology and Psychology.

Now, Sri Aurobindo says, evolution marches onward and will rise beyond mind to another status of consciousness which he calls Supermind. In the earthly scheme there will thus manifest a new type, a higher functioning of consciousness and a new race or species will appear on earth with this new consciousness as the ruling principle. Out of the rock and mineral came the plant, out of the plant the animal, out of the mere animal man has come and out of man the Superman will come inevitably.

Standing on the mental plane, immured within the dimensions of Reason and mental intelligence, it is not easy to contemplate the type of consciousness that will be; even as it was difficult for the ape to envisage the advent of his successor, man. But certain characteristic signs, rudimentary or fragmentary movements of the higher status are visible in the mental consciousness even as it is: the ape likewise was not without a glimmer of Reason and logic, even the faculty of ratiocination that seems to be the exclusive property of man. There is, for example, a movement we call Intuition, so different from Reason to which even Scientists and Mathematicians acknowledge their debt of gratitude for so many of their discoveries and inventions. There is also the other analogous movement called Inspiration that rules the poet and the artist disclosing to them a world of beauty and reality that is not available to the normal human consciousness. Again, there is yet another group of human beings at the top of the ladder of evolution – mystics and sages – who see the truth, possess the truth direct through a luminous immediacy of perception, called Revelation. Now, all these functionings of consciousness that happen frequently enough within the domain of normal humanity are still expressions of a higher mode of consciousness: they are not the product or play of Reason or logical

intelligence which marks the character, the differentia of human consciousness.

But, as at present, these are mere glimmers and glimpses from elsewhere and man has no command or control over them. They are beyond the habitual conscious will, they come and go as

Page 353

they like, happy visitations from another world, they do not abide our question and are not at our beck and call. The Supermind, on the contrary, is in full possession of that consciousness of which these are faint beginnings and distant echoes. The Superman will be born when man has risen above his mind and emerged into the supramental consciousness.

One thing needs to be pointed out here: it is that man is expected to consciously transcend himself and deliver this supermanhood, for it is to be a conscious process, a labour of the wakeful will. That is the great difference which the new transition has brought in. So long evolution was a spontaneous and apparently unconscious process, moving slowly and inadvertently as things in nature normally move. Man rose out of the animal: he simply found himself man one day, there was no conscious effort, no previous knowledge of the change on the part of the animal undergoing the change Likewise the animal came out of its plant origin spontaneously and unwittingly: the plant too evolved out of the inert and inanimate matter through a natural process of slow mutation. But now at the stage of manhood consciousness has become fully conscious, self-conscious, and therefore its further ascension cannot but be conscious, ever more conscious, the result of deliberate energising. This is a process of self-transformation. It has. a method, a technique, a whole system of its own. The growth of consciousness, its culture and transformation is the end and purpose of all true education: its highest consummation, its supreme perfection is what is intended by Yoga, the mystic's system of inner discipline.

We say, then, supramentalisation of consciousness is the goal Nature is aiming at and man striving for: it is the next step that earth and man are taking in their evolutionary urge. Man, however, represents a very crucial stage – he is the dividing line between two hemispheres – two modes of consciousness, two types of creation. As I have said, up to man it is a natural spontaneous unreflecting unconscious evolution: with man it is conscious, deliberate, wilful evolution. What was being done behind the veil in ignorance will now be done openly in full knowledge. The very first result will be the shortening of the time factor. The conscious process increases the tempo, telescopes into decades or years a process or development that

Page 354

would take centuries or more otherwise; in man a growth is achieved in one life that would normally need several lives. The other characteristic result is that when the Supermind establishes itself, there is no more ignorance, it is all light and knowledge. Till the mental range, even at its highest heights it is a mixture of light and darkness, of knowledge and ignorance: there is always an element of doubt, uncertainty or partial perception: there is a groping, a trial and one moves at best from greater darkness to lesser shade. With the Supermind all that changes: the Superman lives always in the full daylight, in the zenith consciousness, in the plenitude of knowledge. He moves from light to light, knowledge to knowledge, no longer bound to the division and duality inherent in the present human consciousness. It may be that man may not at a bound reach the peak of the Supermind: for there are lower ranges, voluntary limitations of the Light, less absolute formulations of the perfect being through which man will have to pass for a greater enrichment of his nature and for the establishment of other orders of luminous existence upon earth. Sri Aurobindo has, in this connection, spoken of the Overmind and the Mind of Light. But these too lie beyond the border of mental twilight and are domains of Light, own delegates of Supermind.

It may not be out of place here just to mention a few characters proper to this supramental over-border consciousness. First of all, it is the seat and organon of complete knowledge: knowledge here is not the result of the deductive and inductive process of reason, it does not balance pros and cons and out of uncertain possibilities strike out an average probability: it is direct, straight, immediate, certain and absolute. Knowledge here comes by identity – the knower and the known are one and what is known is therefore self-knowledge, Secondly, the will too is not an effort or striving and struggling, but the spontaneous expression of the self-power of the consciousness; willing means achieving, one wills the inevitable truth for, knowledge and will too are one. Thirdly, it is the status of perfect delight, for one has passed beyond the vale of tears and entered the peace that passeth understanding, one has found that Joy is the source of creation and the truth of existence is held in Ecstasy.

Page 355

It is in other words at bottom the Vedantic status of Sat-chitananda (perfect Being, Consciousness-energy and Beatitude), but individualised serving as the basic reality of the world-life and existence: it is this that seeks to manifest and embody itself in its own dharma-supreme law-in and through the physical forms and modes of that life and existence. Beyond this it is not possible here to enter into the further mysteries of the Arcanum.

Lastly, another point and we have done. It is that all human efforts in the past in any realm or domain towards a higher life has been contributory to this supreme consummation that Sri Aurobindo envisages as coming or sure to come. It is very often asserted that human nature is irremediable and although we may try at a little amelioration of his instinctive life, especially as a social being, there can be no permanent or radical cure of the original sin of Ignorance and Inconscicnce with which his earthly nature is branded. Reformers, idealists, even saints and sages have seen and sought to counter the evil – some tried to get rid of it, others round it: but it is still there, as rampant as ever, apparently with no effect upon it. For one thing, evil was sought to be cured by its opposite, the good, but the good that belongs to the level of consciousness to which evil too belongs. In other words, we tried to deal with the world and treat it with the force of the Mind, even though in some cases, the mind was a high or even the highest spiritual mind. To touch the roots of the malady that extend into our deepest fibres, our most material being, dead inconscience, one must rise to the very source of consciousness, the creative truth-consciousness: the Supermind alone can transform the earth, transfigure the earthly life. In the second place, the past attempts did not all go in vain: they were preparations, the first ground-work, on various levels and in various domains of human life and consciousness where the light infiltrated, to whatever extent it may be and things, and forces were shaken and reshuffled to admit of other forces and inspirations; if nothing else, at least the possibility was created.

Sri Aurobindo's aim, we have said, is not an individual fulfilment, however glorious and successful it might be, and not merely the fulfilment of one limb only of the individual however deep and high. Sri Aurobindo embraced the whole

Page 356

man and the whole society. A fulfilled life in society upon earth – the highest and completest life possible, not only possible but inevitable to the human being-that is the work for which he laboured. Man's mind and intelligence, his life energy, his body-form are all taken up, purified of the lower formulation, remoulded into the mode and pattern of the supramental truth-consciousness: he becomes a complete, integral perfect being expressing and embodying in all his limbs and movements the supreme reality made of utter truth and knowledge and power and delight. This being his individual life, his collective or social life too would figure the same pattern. A new society in which men have found their soul and soul function is a harmonious, a unitary body, com posed of individuals who by living each one in his self live in all and living in all each one lives in his self. Likewise, an aggregate of such societies – a society of nations, as it is already called somewhat in a prophetic vein, – will also be an inherently harmonious and unified, even a unitary body too, since all these larger units will express through their corporate life each in its own special way the glory and greatness of the Divine Consciousness.

In this global reconstitution of the earth life, Sri Aurobindo gives India a great role – a mighty destiny and a heavy responsibility. For he considers India as the repository of the spiritual consciousness, the Guardian of Truth, as the Veda says, and in the new age of world unification her national being will act as the spearhead breaking into the old-world formations and signalling the shape of things to come.

II

"The poet of patriotism, the prophet of nationalism and the lover of humanity" he was, in the famous words of his advocate and friend and follower who stood for him before the bar of History for his cause, and not merely before a British Court of Justice. Indeed he was all that, but today we have to add another epithet and complete the description. For he is now the builder of the Life Divine. This was indeed the secret Truth that worked in him from behind and gave to these

Page 357

earlier preoccupations the reality and the beauty they attained and the fullness of their significance. He worked for human evolution, that was his life' mission. He thus formulates the stages of human evolution:

"Family, nationality, humanity are Vishnu's three strides from an isolated to a collective unity. The first has been fulfilled, we yet strive for the perfection of the second, to wards the third we are reaching out our hands and the pioneer work is already attempted".

But the supreme secret lies in Vishnu's fourth stride, from humanity to divinity. That is the goal of the evolution and that furnishes also the key to the solution of the problem. Whether in the matter of the family or the nationality or humanity in general there has been a stalemate, a stagnation, even a frustration; an effort towards progress seemed to lead more towards conflict, disharmony, away from what is beautiful and good and happy. That is bound to be. Man must reach his very highest and deepest, his absolute itself before he can arrive at perfection in the lower and the relative. Man must exceed himself if he is to fulfil himself. A new connotation has to be found for family and nationality and even humanity. That connotation, Sri Aurobindo says, is divinity.

We must understand however that there is divinity and divinity. There is a divinity that suffers, supports and transcends all that is existent. For it is the all-reality, all-consciousness, the ever-present and omnipresent Immutable behind the mutabilities of creation. That does not take part in the cosmic struggle, the universal urge of progress forward. Apart from the divinity that suffers, there is a divinity that shapes – and is shaped at the same time, shapes from behind and is shaped itself in front. This dynamic Divine Sri Aurobindo calls the supramental Divine or the incarnate Divine Mother.

In the inevitable course of evolution man is something that will be surpassed, not in the sense that he will be rejected and thrown out as an unnecessary element, like some of the prehistoric animals, no, he will still be at the head of earthly creation, but undergo a sea-change, as it were, and be transmuted into a divine creature.

Page 358

As at present man is a mental being, that is to say, it is his mind – his reason and intellect – that governs him and it is through that faculty that he governs the world. But mind is not the highest or the most powerful faculty in him, nor the last term of his consciousness. Beyond the mind there rise other powers of consciousness, tier upon tier, and man can go there, live there or bring them down into his normal life and change it into their pattern. The highest of these Sri Aurobindo calls the plane of Truth-Consciousness, the Supermind. It is the supreme luminous Power – the Light of lights – towards which the creation moves and by which the creation is moved in secret. It is the heart-centre of fulfilled harmony.

Man has been striving through his lesser powers, through the grace of the lower gods since his advent upon earth to arrive at a reconstruction of his life and surroundings. That is why he has never attained the full measure of success. Indeed a period of success or progress was always followed by a period of decline and retrogression, a so-called golden age by an age of iron. As a matter of fact today humanity finds itself terribly enclosed in a cage of iron as it were. The earth has become too small for his soaring capacities and multitudinous necessities – he is already thinking of a place in the moon! That is only the sign and symbol of an inner impasse to which he has arrived. The anguish of the human soul has reached its acme: the problems, social, political, educational, moral it is facing have proved themselves to be totally insoluble. Yes, he has run into a cul-de-sac, where he is caught as in a death-trap. No ordinary rational methods, half-way nostrums can deliver him any more. All the outer doors and issues are now closed for him; the only way is to turn inward, there lies the open road to freedom and fulfilment. That is the way to transcendence and surpassing. To attempt any other way is not only to try the impossible but to head straight towards doomsday.

The time then is now, for the time is ripe. It will not do to say that the way proposed is beyond the reach of the common man. He has neither the capacity nor the knowledge nor even the inclination or impulse to surpass himself, to do anything non-human. First of all, as I said, if man is to survive in any form, this is the only way and there is no second. Next, what do we know of the capacity and impulsion even of the common

Page 359

man? Even in a smaller scale and on the material level, have we not seen to what tremendous acts of heroism he can rise automatically, through what travails – tapasya – of concentrated effort he agreed to pass, simply because the occasion demanded it? Man's secret soul is greater than all the limitation of his outward frame.

That does not mean that the entire human race will wholly change over to the new life. All, without exception, are not expected to come up to the highest level of fulfilment. But that is not required, for the beginning at least. It is always the few pioneers, a select group of forerunners that form the foundation of a new creation A first snowball perhaps, but it moves and gathers others on the way and builds up larger and larger collectivities. At all crises of evolutionary cycles such beings inevitably appear, they are thrown up by Nature or they tome down from above and incarnate; especially it is so when Nature proposes to take a leap and not merely trudge and crawl.

It is the fulfilment of Nature that has to happen and is happening, the fulfilment of the inferior Nature in and through the higher divine Nature. Here we come perhaps to the very heart of the mystery. For till now, till almost yesterday, we may say in a general way, the spiritual life, any kind of divine life was considered possible only through battling with Nature, through a struggle upstream against the current of Nature. Indeed Nature was despised, feared, rejected as an enemy of the Spirit. But today the wheel seems to have turned full circle. The Spirit recognises the body as its counterpart and visible form, welcomes the body as its earthly figure and expression. The old antinomy has become obsolete, because the body too on its side recognises that it has not the structure and character that millennial ignorance gave it. The material particles that constitute the physical body are found to be after all not inert masses but quantas of energy, of luminous energy. The spiritual Light above demands nothing better for its earthly home.

This is symbolical of the collaboration that Nature is now offering to the Spirit. A new substance, made of light-energy emanating from Consciousness-Force, is now slowly-permeating the earth atmosphere, as the Mother declares and it is this

Page 360

that will serve as the basis of the new creation and give it its law and constitution. A new world built out of knowledge and vision and luminous power is destined to come, for man is no longer in love with his ignorance, but a divine afflatus is possessing him.

The new world has to be based on new foundations. The old world was built from outside with superficial cheap elements that lower Nature offers easily and profusely. It is body's needs, vital hungers assembled and arranged according to a plan supplied by mind's ideas and notions under the directive and compulsion of the ego, the sense or consciousness of one's separate individual existence as against others. The new world will start from the soul, the luminous divine element in man which is one with all and grow from within outward. It is as if the foundations are laid not below, but above – the tree of existence would branch out not from below upwards, but from above downward, in the image given by the ancient Rishis of India. The individual will therefore be not primarily a body housing secondary – or as it is sometimes called epiphenomenal – movements such as those of the mind and the vital limited and largely conditioned by it. The individual will primarily be a consciousness, a focus of energy-consciousness existing and acting in union and communion with all other similar individual foci, for all form one single undivided entity. The body and life and mind are moulded in the substance and rhythm of that sovereign consciousness. The hard egoism or self-centred ness, the gross animality that seem to be the very constitution of the human individual are dissolved into the soul's radiant urges.

The individual can be and is to be fulfilled in and through his soul – the presiding consciousness that has at its disposal the mind, the vital and the body as its instruments and means of expression, but which till now, because of an evolutionary necessity of growth and development, acted more as an obstruction or a veil than as an aid or a channel. When in the new consciousness the individual attains its soul-status, in other words, its divinity, then a reshaping and recasting of the lower limbs becomes possible and even inevitable. The soul-status means freedom, harmony, purity, knowledge, power, delight and immortality, absolute and inalienable.

Page 361

As individuals grow in this line, the social structure too is altered and transmuted. The harmony and fullness that individuals present are automatically represented in the collective grouping. Instead of a battling competitive society we have not merely a cooperative but a unitive community striving in a common aspiration towards a single unique achievement. For all individuals know and feel that they are but various limbs of the same organism, luminously and unfailingly functioning each in its and for its own appointment-expressing differently the one Light supreme.

And nations that are finding so difficult, almost impossible, to form a comity, that are in their disparate tendencies driving towards a catastrophe, perhaps annihilation, shall undergo a sea-change. The nation, the national being is also a reality, a divine reality that has to come to its own – that is to say, its own soul. For there is a collective soul, as well as an individual soul. It is the presiding deity, the norm of consciousness and being that works out the growth and evolution of a collectivity that has found a common life. This collectivity is also enlarging itself in wider and wider commonalty. As we see actually today the nation is tending towards and growing into the supranation or Commonwealth or Federation as it is termed politically.

The conception of the United States of the world is taking possession of the human mind; it is being applied and larger and more integrated collective groupings than the nation are developing; they may ere long become familiar realities. Such formations moving towards and effectuating the one indivisible humanity open out the possibility towards a superhumanity which will have to base itself on a new principle of organisation; for that must be a new mode of consciousness.

Even the family, the first unit of collective formation in humanity that has attained a fulfilled status, is yet capable of a remodelling, a transmutation in the higher supramental consciousness. The family instead of being built upon blood-relationship may surely have a different foundation in soul-kinship, in affinity of consciousness, comradeship in life-work. It means a total revolution, a reversal of nature, the roots being above instead of being below, as already referred to.

Such far-reaching changes may well be called for and inevitable if mankind is to be radically cured of all the illnesses of

Page 362

which it is till now a natural prey The full health of a divine body in its individual as well as its collective and global functioning is assured only when the human being is lifted out of its mental sheath and established in the supramenal status.

It is an adventure for the heroic soul, for the vanguards of humanity; but its fruition will spread abroad a benefit that even the common level shall share, even those that denied shall offer their accession and adhesion.

Page 363

This Great Earth, Our Mother

MAN'S soul is man's inalienable possession. And also it is his exclusive possession. He is the only created being that has a soul. It is, strange to say, an earthly gift and belongs to no other creature either in this world or other worlds and levels of existence. This earth is a miraculous object: it has qualities solely its own. A fundamental quality is that it grows: it is not static, it evolves, that is to say, changes in quality; it sprouts, germinates, brings forth objects and qualities that seem foreign, anomalous to its apparent and external nature. New modes of existence that were not there before appear as though from nowhere. Dead and dark soil or mud brings forth green shoots and that will grow in course of time into spreading branches and leaves, culminating in a beatiful panoply of foliage and fruit.

The soul grows out of the earth's soil, yet it is not a production or creation of earth. It is earth's gift, as I have said, but it is a gift to earth from somewhere up in heaven. However, it is inextricably woven into the very texture of earth and material existence. It is a spark of consciousness imbedded in an unconscious inert mass, the secret nucleus, as it were, behind the material sheath; from behind it enlivens, moves, directs, even illumines the apparently dead earth-element leading it towards a radiant destiny.

This growing embodied consciousness is, as I have said, earth's possession alone – growing, evolving, unfolding ever new dimensions of existence: it is not found elsewhere in the material universe. The rest of the universe is a play of the very original, mere material elements – the cosmic and other invisible rays that are in vogue nowadays with their multiple ranges have been acting in the same way since the beginning

Page 367

of the material creation till today. There is not another earth in this universe, materially because there is no water or water vapour elsewhere: water is life, the sap of life, the creative element. We know now the nature of moon-dust, – it is dry as dust, arid and brittle. Indeed the other heavenly bodies seem to possess nothing of the kind of earthly atmosphere.

All other beings or creatures within the frame of this material heaven do not breathe air; all other heavens lack precisely this earth-atomsphere: and they do not grow or change. Take for instance the legendary beings of the subtle worlds – fairies, elfs, spirits, gnomes, goblins – all are types, definite species, they do not change, alter their character or nature: they remain themselves, true to themselves throughout from beginning to end, they come up to us today with the same features that they had to the eyes of the men of prehistoric ages. Even the gods belong to the same category of immutability: they are each an eternal reality, an unchangeable norm, an ideal petrified so to say. They are not inconstant and fickle and ever-changing as mortals are. Asuras also have the same character. All these typal beings have to be broken before they can be moulded into another pattern. If any of them wishes to change or evolve into something else he has to come down on earth, enter into a human mould or take birth as a human being.

(2)

The soul, however, is not the self. We spoke of the material universe as something dead, unconscious and inconscient, but in reality there is a basic consciousness behind, upholding, maintining all and everything. That is the Self, Sachchidananda, Brahman. It is the static consciousness beyond time and space but standing behind as a support. This here moves but That does not move – grow or evolve. That is fixed, stagnant. The soul comes out – out of That in the ultimate analysis – in the process of the creation, the material creation and evolution.

The ultimate particles of matter, all behave uniformly, there is practically no individual variation. It is all a common general universal movement. The individuation begins with the living cells. Each living form starts with moving and reacting in its

Page 368

own characteristic manner and style. The one transcendent Consciousness, Sachchidananda, that is behind all seems here on the life plane to gather to a point or points, becomes diversified and concentrated at many centres. This concentration effectuates a deepening into so many whirlpools, as it were, and instead of a lateral and horizontal movement, a mere expansiveness, Nature starts as though a vertical movement. The process continues: a light, a fire enters into the earthly material creation which grows and throws out units gradually with a more and more specialised character. Earth is no longer an element merely general or universal in character, there begins a particularisation and individualisation. The first step towards individualisation is what may be termed individuation. With life upon earth, with the appearance of a living organism there entered into it the rudimentary psychic element or entity: as it grows it achieves first of all, as I have said, an individuation, an elementary individual form, as in the lower animals, and then in the higher animals it arrives at individualisation. With the emergence of conscious will, self-observation and self-direction in man, the mere psychic element or entity becomes an individuality, a psychic being, the person, the soul, and finally, a full-grown self-fulfilled person or personality becomes a deity, the soul becomes the Divine.

Such is the story of the evolution in the inner core of things. Along with this inner growth there is or there is to be a growth in the outer material level also. The growth of the psychic being or the soul radiates its influence into the mind and life and body forming its outer instrument for expression. These too must partake of the luminous nature of the soul, be intimate and identified with it for the integral fulfilment.

(3)

The Veda draws a graphic picture of the eternal stability, the sameness, almost the oppressive monotony of the material universe through millions and millions of aeons of its existence. The eternal recurrence without beginning and without end of the rising and setting of the sun and the stars, the inviolable law of Varuna, suffers no break or change. But when we look near

Page 369

at home, turn from our father the Heaven to our mother Earth and look a little more closely, a different picture emerges here: for here is the arena of the Vedic progressive sacrifice.¹

The earth is well-known for its force of gravitation, the force that pulls things downward and at best allows a horizontal trajectory, that is the apparent movement. But it also has another, a contrary movement, the anti-gravity force, the force of levitation and ascension. Earth, clay, never had a warm reception at the hands of spiritual persons or even of ordinary people who lay the whole blame upon this poor element for all the misfortunes of life here below-precisely because of the earth's gravitating pull. The earth is considered as the very nursery of sin; the consciousness of sin however began with the advent of man upon earth. The creation was governed at the beginning and for long by an eternal unchangeable law, and man came in as an intervention, a breach of the law; He came with the knowledge and force of division and distinction, that between the right and the wrong. He brought in him the will independent of the eternal law – to discover a law of his own. That has been called transgression; in the popular style, that is sin. Apart from the obloquy that the term sin carries with it, it is at bottom, however, the sense of ambiguity, the sense of choice, the sense of liberty. Man has been given this sense so that he may find out that the customary, the habitual, the millennial is not the only rhythm or line of movement but that he may look beyond and find other lines which open the way to progress, which are not bound to mere reiteration. A new sense of direction is behind the spirit of independence that appears as transgression or sin – it is this which the human consciousness aims at in the movement. It is an opportunity to move away and upward, to fresh dimensions of consciousness and being.

Progress takes place through a process of dialectics, that is to say, by way of choice between two opposites. The established harmony and uniformity becomes rigid and unalterable, has

¹ The rishi speaks of the young mother holding her child tight in her womb and not offering it to the father. * She does so as long as she is the inconscient Matter but as she grows conscious she starts making.

* The young Mother bears the boy pressed down in her secret being and gives him not to the Father. (V.1.2. Sri Aurobindo's translation.) The offering and the child grows more and more conscious with the consciousness of the Father: and it makes the Mother also, in her turn, grow more and more conscious.

Page 370

to be broken in order to start a move towards another harmony richer and higher, and this is done in the human consciousness by the growth of a free will in the individual that disobeys the established law. That is the great Disobedience of which Milton speaks so thunderingly in his famous epic poem and which is at the very centre of the Christian religion. It means a Fall: the sense of separation itself is a fall – a separate egoism standing out against all and everyone, including God Himself. But this has been necessary to replace the blind obedience of an automaton by the willing and happy collaboration of a free being. That is the psychic with its free choice. The choice lies, as the Upanishad says, between 'sreyas' and 'preyas'; the deliberate choice of the 'sreyas' by the psychic being at every step is the great dialectic movement of evolution through which the consciousness moves forward and upward towards the supreme reality. The initial separation, disobedience or sin is the price that the individual human being has to pay in order to move towards its final destiny, the freedom and the integrality of its supreme divine fulfilment. Egoism, the fount and origin of sin, is the mask, the camouflage over the visage of God, the Individual.

(4)

I have spoken of the sprouting virtue in the earth-element; the same has developed in man, the earth's child, to unforeseen dimensions. Earth's upward drive towards a greater harmony is in reality the working of the Godhead "Agni", the self-conscious energy that is secreted in the heart of all earthly existence. The Vedas say, the earth is the own home of Agni. Agni is an earthly Godhead, even as Indra is a godhead of the heavens. We spoke of water being the characteristic element imbedded, inextricably mixed with the earth. Water gives the necessary condition or element for the sprouting movement; but Agni is the agent, the initiating executive force, it is the concentrated energy of consciousness: in man it is the individualised spiritual element, therefore Agni is said to be the leader of the progressive sacrifice, adhvara yajña, the journey of ascent and evolution towards the final destiny.

The Earth gives her material body, her substance for the

Page 371

incarnation and establishment of the supreme state of the Transcendent – the Self or Sachchidananda – here below. And for the manifestation and expression through life and the senses she offers her secret conscious-force, the light-energy to incorporate the supreme Chit-tapas; but the Ananda of the Supreme she realises in a strange and piquant way. The delight that earth offers or embodies is of a special nature. It is the delight of taste.

Tasting, drinking, eating are properties said to be fundamental to the body, and they are no less applicable in the case of the soul. The Gods are memorable eaters and drinkers and a whole family of Rishis has been called Atris, that is to say, 'eaters'. It is said that these physical properites are only metaphorical or symbolical; when used in respect of the spiritual principles and realities they are used as mere tokens or indices because of the deficiencies of language, language being built out of material symbols. It is not quite so, for, as I have said, earth itself is not a mere symbol but a special concentration of Sat and it includes also concentrated Chit and Ananda.

The soul that is imbedded in earth or wedded to it acquires and enjoys these gifts of the earth and carries them forward and offers to the Supreme. The soul is the efflorescence of the earth and in that way it adds a new quality of fulfilment to the fulfilment of the Supreme, the Sachchidananda.

Annam means both Matter and food. Matter is the earthly food for the Spirit Supreme who has become it, losing Himself in it and regains it consciously and enjoys it in and through His earthly delegate the human soul.

Thus to recapitulate, the transcendent Spirit came down from above and stood behind the creation – stood behind for long. And then it advanced towards the front here upon earth: life appeared, the inorganic material particles became organised cells with the first incidence of an incipient consciousness and will. With its growth and the appearance of mind there grew the psychic element, the beginning of the individual, in the higher animal for example. And the psychic element with the growth of consciousness and will and individuality in man, developed into the psychic being which moves on towards the Divine impersonation on the earth. This is Earth's divine fulfilment in and through her earthly son, man. She clothes

Page 372

herself more and more with the developing psychic consciousness of man meeting the Divine Consciousness – finally incorporating in herself and as herself her lord, the Supreme Divine and in her individual formations his parts and portions to make the whole a divine Play.

Page 373

THE universe is a close-knit pattern in which each part, each point is inextricably linked with every other part and point. Each element acts and reacts upon every other: the karma of one is echoed and re-echoed in the karma of all others. An inevitable, inescapable mutuality rules the behaviour of the constituent entities of a whole; in other words, there is only one Force, one Presence that permeates all, even constitutes the All.

The material universe makes one single block of reality, homogeneous and indivisible. Modern knowledge has proved the fact to the hilt. It is one continuous extension like the ocean's rippling wet sheet. If you pull at one point the tension is felt in the whole at every other point. That is Einstein's gravitational field constituting the universe: a change of disposition at one point changes the disposition of the whole universe. The very character of this world is its rigorous determinism: the part is absolutely and completely a portion and parcel of the whole. Somewhat paradoxically one might say that the part is the whole, nothing but the whole, only on a reduced scale.

Viewed in this light all human endeavour, its achievements and realisations form a single collective activity: it is one force, one energy realising itself in and through many vehicles and instruments. Not even man's mental activity that seems so free and autonomous is outside the compass of the universal gravitational field where everything is appointed and determined in a compact tensile global unity.

Each individual human effort is in effect the total human effort canalised at a particular point through a particular receptacle. The unity of the whole does not consist in the

Page 374

combination, a summation of separate or independent units: the separate units on the surface are an illusion and valuation of individuals in this viewpoint is an anomaly, for in reality there are no individuals: they are but at the most the various limbs or functions of the same body, of the one and single person. Life as consciousness is one single surge: contagion (also in the good sense), permeation is its law.

Vicarious atonement, a phenomenon familiar and well known in the religious domain, finds a very simple meaning in this view and almost becomes a very natural human phenomenon. There is an inevitable interaction and interflow of psychological forces among individuals, it is no more a riddle to say that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children, nor that the virtues of the sons wash away the sins of the fathers; and that is how the Avatars automatically, inevitably take upon themselves and have to take upon themselves and bear the stigmata of suffering humanity. And that is how they embody and fulfil the total aspiration of all human beings. An avatar is thus an outburst of the earth's highest need of the hour. Indeed, however great an individual, his greatness is in reality the greatness of the world-spirit in him, and also contrariwise the smallness of an earthly being is the smallness of the universal being at a point, under a particular condition. In other words, the individual represents the weakest or the strongest link as the case may be, in the one single chain constituting the whole human race.

And yet, at bottom, it is not such an absolute determinism, this cosmos, however apparently it may prove itself to be so. It is found, actually, that behind and in and through this ineluctable fatalism there are aberrations, freaks that do not adhere to the common pattern. In the overall macrocosmic view the reign of the fixed law is perhaps absolute but in the microcosm of infinitesimals fissures appear, discrepancies show themselves. All strict calculations turn out in the end to be mere approximations, only they tend to become more and more approximate. It is like the asymptote or the race between the hare and the tortoise in the famous story – a mathematical puzzle – where the hare starting behind can never catch up with the tortoise however fast he may run. With the discovery of new factors (sometimes only a new way of calculation) the gap is

Page 375

sought to be reduced, but the approximation remains. For example, the bending of a ray of light from a star passing by the solar sphere is a subject for interesting calculation: between the figure as given by the Einstein equation and the actual measurement there is a difference, although slight, yet a difference. Such differences are usually explained by some kind of intervention and if that intervention does not fully explain it, another intervention is brought in, and still the hiatus continues. This is just an example. The ultimate particles of matter, points of electric charge (or no-charge), points of tension are incalculables; their position or velocity is an indeterminate, not because of the infinitesimal size of the quantum, their very nature is so; they are erratic in their own essence. And one can justifiably ascribe a kind of free will to these ultimate, almost immaterial material particles, although when they are in bundles or groups they behave quite reasonably and are very obedient to the law, but singly each possessess or is capable of possessing a free independent movement. There is a basis here of the spirit of independence that shows itself more clearly in the biological units, and of course, very overtly and patently in the human mental consciousness.

There seems to be an entity lying at the other end away from Matter, it is the Spirit, the individual Conscious Being. If Matter is Bondage, Law, Determinism, Spirit is Freedom, Liberty, Self-choice. That is the well-known duality – Purusha and Prakriti, that divide existence between themselves. Purusha is the conscient Being, and Prakriti the inconscient becoming. These dual realities are however not irrevocably distinct and separate incommensurables. They are not unbridgeable units foreign to each other. The conscient being infuses itself into the inconscient becoming and initiates a conscious movement in the unconscious field. Thus where there was the absolute determinism of matter, sparks from the free consciousness intervene and modify the settled balance. That is the inner sense of the aberrations that one observes in the play even of physical laws. It is just the beginning of the stress of consciousness in unconscious matter. That stress increases in the march of time, in the process of evolution; and the natural freedom of the subject impinges on the rigid law of the object making it more and more pliable and plastic, more and more malleable and

Page 376

even reversible. In man a balance is struck between freedom and bondage although apparently bondage overweighs freedom. In the higher evolved status of being man arrives and can arrive at yet greater degrees of freedom and in the end eliminate altogether the element of bondage and transmute it into the self-expressed rhythm of the higher consciousness. The supreme Divine Consciousness or Being is that where Nature's determinism is dissolved in the self-law of the All Spirit, the Divine Will becoming the law of the being.

The whole process of creation, the final goal of the Divine Lila is the liberation of Nature, Prakriti. Prakriti is born in Bondage as inconscient Energy. Prakriti itself is a prison-house made of, wholly made of unconsciousness. The conscious Being is there involved, imprisoned and suffers and is miserable. For the gloom of unconsciousness covers it and almost swallows it up. That is the immanent Godhead in creation and is in man his soul, an emanation and representative of the Godhead. As it is commonly understood, liberation means the release of the Godhead out of the prison escaping into the Transcendent. The riddle of this creation is therefore to be solved by this process of escape of the Conscious Principle from out of the unconscious covering beyond into the pure Consciousness – laya for the human being and pralaya for the creation. Actually the Upanishad gives graphically the direction to the human soul to pull himself out, out of the containing form: even as one draws the inner stem of a blade of grass out of its covering, for that which is Pure, Stainless is not here but out there.

But we have set before us a different process. The immanent Godhead, the Conscious Being imbedded, apparently lost in matter need not withdraw or depart elsewhere to be free and to be itself. We have already said the force of its consciousness has or can have a different function and is strong enough to carry out that function. Its very presence is sufficient to infuse its own light and freedom into the environing covering and gradually dissolve its dark ignorance. Man through his soul and self can liberate his ordinary ignorant nature: he not merely liberates himself from this nature but transmutes it into an expression and emanantion of the Divine Consciousness. Even so the cosmic Godhead buried in

Page 377

the universe grows, evolves and slowly spreads and establishes the radiance of its consciousness in the cosmic nature, makes this also the expression and embodiment of his conscious energy. That is the liberation or rebirth of nature, not its dissolution and extinction. Not extraction, but infiltration is the process.

The Divine Purusha descends into his own shadow and by his own light transmutes the dark silhouette into a luminous image, his very self concretised upon earth.

Page 378

THE Son of Man – the Avatar – suffers with and suffers for the suffering humanity. The Christ with his cross, Ramakrishna with his cancer, Socrates with the hemlock creeping up and benumbing his limbs and Mohammed being hunted from place to place are familiar and poignant pictures. "Verily, verily, the foxes have their holes, the birds their nests, but the son of man hath nowhere to lay his head."

And this is bound to be so, for it is the inexorable law of nature: one who has identified himself with Nature, ignorant nature, of which the ignorant and suffering humanity is part and parcel, one whose body and soul are in unison and union with the body and soul of all beings and creatures, made of the same stuff and substance cannot – and wants not to escape the general fate whatever it is. If misery be the badge of the human tribe, the Divine Man, the representative human being must wear that badge.

And yet there is a difference. In the case of the Divine Man it is a willing acceptance not an imposition or blind sub mission. Indeed, it is this difference that makes the unity of creation a progressive unity, instead of a static unity, a never-ending repetition, an eternal recurrence.

There is a consciousness above and a consciousness below: a consciousness above the ignorant nature and a consciousness within that nature. They are not, however, altogether distinct and incommensurable: it is the same consciousness with a double status as in the well-known figure of the two birds in in the Upanishad.

The Upanishadic standpoint declares that the being above is a silent witness, inactive, immobile, still. The one below is active and tastes of things both bitter and sweet, in other

Page 379

words, it takes part and is involved in the varied life-experiences. Certain lines of spiritual experience find that the being above is the reality, that the other is only an image, a reflection or illusion; and the image looks like a troubled image because it is, as it were, a reflection in the troubled waters of cosmic ignorance: dispel the ignorance, nothing remains but the transcendent Witness-Being, all alone. Such is the position of mayavada or illusionism. But there are other lines of experience giving a different view and a different realisation. Both the transcendent and the immanent are form of the same Reality, with different functions, standing on different levels. Thus, as we say, the one below is not a vain image, or a mere reflection, but a descent here in the manifestation, of the reality above. This is also as real as that, the other, only it functions differently. The descent means two things, a double operation, first, the assumption of ignorance: what was light becomes obscurity, what was vast and infinite becomes small and finite, what was straight becomes crooked, what was delight becomes pain, what was one and united becomes many and disparate, what was whole becomes fragmentary. The descending being in one part or facet turns into the exact opposite of what it was originally, it is a denial of itself; secondly, in another aspect or part of itself, in its essence and profundity, it remains unaltered, intact as it were with no change whatsoever in its nature and character. That is the immanent Godhead, the emanation, the extension or projection of the transcendent into the external material appearance. This immanent Godhead has its own function, it is the initiation of the ascent after the descent, in the vast field of an apparent total ignorance it is as it were the catalytic element introducing a reverse movement upward.

Left to itself, Nature, the inferior inconscient Nature would admit of no change, it would only repeat the past; it would be a circular or cyclic movement, at the most it would move in a horizontal line; no upward movement would be possible. It is only when the consciousness descends, sends a shaft of light into the dark inert mass below, uses it as a churning rod, that there occurs the stirring of a new creation; a new formation begins, a new content is added and a new disposition built up. To the human consciousness that appears as calamities

Page 380

and catastrophes. It is truly the great sacrificial horse in the Upanishadic image that shakes its limbs and the elements roar and thunder – the forward-marching galloping fiery force of a progressing Consciousness.

At the very outset the light descends as a shower of scattered glowing points into the heart of things, secreted and unobserved; that gives only just a basis for the progressive upward movement. It initiates a mere possibility. For a more effective power, for the dynamic upward drive other descents are necessary, descents of individual formations, individualities and personalities embodying the light and force of conscious ness. This becomes tangible when the light enters into the human creation. All men, all human formations are individualised specks of light cast into a material shape. And this shape bears all the stigma of inconscient nature. But it is the work and mission of the secret immanent light to corrode into the dense dark material and illumine and new create it. The whole suffering humanity presents the picture of a laboratory where a new laser beam is operating for the realisation of a renovated humanity.

Great souls, Avatars, are a necessity, an inevitability in the process of evolution and ascension, for they are individualisations, impersonations so to say, in whom the consciousness energy is massively stored and concretised for a greater and radical effective power of realisation. Inevitably this means as I have said the assumption of all the ills of nature; for the very purpose of incarnation is to purify the external nature, so that it becomes one with the inner being. So, all terrestrial human beings share in the impurity of the ignorant ordinary nature and share also, as secretly conscious entities although

outwardly almost absolutely unconscious, in the general work of progress and purification. But there are beings who come forward as conscious formations with the mission of uplifting, transmuting, divinising humanity.

The higher or deeper the source of the descending or manifesting Consciousness – for there are gradations or various statuses of it – the wider and vaster and more radical is its effective power for redeeming and changing the ignorant common nature, and also strangely, perhaps inevitably, the more intimate and poignant its participation in the travail of

Page 381

that nature – the participation extends not only to pain and suffering but to death also, for through death the path leads to resurrection and immortality. The Divine Himself in various forms comes down upon and into earth and pays by his pain and suffering for the sins and errors of humanity. That is the ransom he condescends to offer to the deity of ignorance, the reigning lord of the world for securing the freedom of man's soul. The divine emanations bear the burden of ignorance all the more so that the burden on others may be lightened, the pains less painful. Indeed, suffering humanity is also the suffering Godhead himself, suffering multifariously although ignorantly and unconsciously. There is an inner working of the secret godhead in order that the suffering may be gradually transmuted into something else, into the divine delight. The Godhead has taken up this task in order that the Divine may not remain Divine only in its essence and in the other, the transcendent status, but express itself also as the Divine in an earthly form, an earthly form cleared of all dross, made luminously beautiful.

Page 382

SHAKESPEARE in giving expression to a most poignant experience of human life says – we all know the most familiar and famous lines – in a most poignant manner:

The time is out of joint: O cursed spite,

That ever I was born to set it right! – ¹

The poignancy comes not so much from the fact that this is a "naughty world," a cruel world, an unending sea of troubles which you have to brave and bear and fight constantly against: it is not merely that the world is painful and dolorous and even wicked but that it wants to remain so; even if you want to lift it up, out of its maladies, it sinks down back again into its familiar mud, and brings down with it the daring physician. The world does not tolerate its saviour: for this crime it retaliates

upon whoever seeks to meddle in its affairs, brands him as an enemy of the people, puts him on the cross. The old law must continue, the wrongs must be preserved, and whatever good happens in spite of eveything must also be doomed and swallowed up by the wrong. The great poet declares again:

The evil that men do lives after them;

The good is oft interred with their bones;²

In the end all traces of good are wiped away: it is sheer black, bleak, cursed track, this creation.

Yes, if you want to cure this ailing and insane world, if you have the ambition to strike a wholesome light in this

¹ Hamlet, Act I, Sc. V.

² Julius Caeser, Act III, Sc. II.

Page 386

dismal darkness, if you exert yourself a little to turn it and set it on the right path, pour a little of goodwill in the mephistophelian stuff that the world is, well, your fate is Hamlet's – you create a yet greater desolation around you. That is the way out of this tragedy.

A celebrated scientist elated with the wonderful discoveries of modern science and its more wonderful promises of the future seems to have said that if he could get a foothold just outside the earth, he meant perhaps outside its gravitational field, he could as it were, twirl the earth upon his finger, with a little push dislodge it from its orbit and its axis. Well, what he said is true and prophetic but the foothold outside has to be outside the gravitational field, not of his physical existence, (the astronauts are trying it today), but outside his physical or normal consciousness. He has to rise above the physical, material status of his being. There is the error that Hamlet committed in spite of his cultured and enlightened mind: not through the enlightened mind alone but through the enlightened heart, through the enlightened vital, even through an enlightened physical consciousness, the remedy of the earthly malady has to be sought, not to meet violence with violence, not to be resentful, not to retaliate-that is what the Bible means when it says, "Resist not evil" – but rise in one's consciousness, above the dualities as the eastern wisdom says, seek a higher source from where springs the infallible energy of a purer light. The higher the consciousness, the more effective its action.

Rise in your being and consciousness and by your aspiration and realisation and contagion make others too rise. Then the world will find naturally and spontaneously its lever to shift its old and unhappy basic stand to something higher, greater – diviner.

The complete life is a full circle, one half only is visible to us, real to us: the other half is invisible like the far side of the moon. The ancients used to call these halves, one the higher half (Parardha) and the other the lower half (Aparardha)

Page 387

The lower half is the domain of death, the Upanishads declare, the higher half is the domain of immortality. As we start our journey upon earth we begin with the ordinary life, the life of death, and we pass through it gaining experience, growing in consciousness; and then when we have crossed the stage we enter into the domain beyond death and begin to learn, to partake of the life immortal.

Dante, the great Christian poet speaks likewise of a life in Hell and a life in Paradise, first, the tragedy, the life of sorrows, transmuted in the end into the Divine Comedy, the life of happiness and bliss. There is an intermediary passage in between through which the poet leads us from the one to the other: the transition is spoken of as a stage of purification through which one has to pass to shake off the human dross from his nature and put on and become in substance the noble metal.

It is to be noted that death does not mean literally or exclusively the physical event, disintegration and disappearance of the body: it is rather the symbol of the corrosive consciousness of the ordinary ignorant life. There is the ignorant consciousness making up the lower half circle of the integral life and there is the luminous consciousness making up the higher half circle. In between there is, as I have said, a border range which partakes of the nature of both. In psychological terms, the lower is the predominantly vital and physical ranges with a modicum of the mental shading into the higher mental. Up till here it is more or less the region of ignorance. Then comes the higher mind with its aspiring will: this is the purificatory agent – the purgatory – the crucible where forces are generated to stir and change and renovate the inferior sphere of our life. Indeed it is the region of the ajña-cakra in Tantric terminology: in modern terms you may call it the control-room, or in most modern lunar vocabulary, the command-module. It is from here that the first changes towards a higher and purer functioning are initiated in our lower limbs, the body, the vital and even the lower mental. Beyond is the overhead and overmental – and still higher ranges. The luminous consciousness, the touch of immortality begins with the overhead and the overmental. As we enter the overhead, we shake off the shadow of death upon us and our mortal nature. The Upanishad

Page 388

speaks of two kinds of knowledge that have to be known, two forms of consciousness that have to be acquired in order to become the full integral Divine being. First you have to know, to become aware of the existence of ignorance, the primal or primitive nature and through that awareness or knowledge probe into its character and movement and destiny. Ignorance, pure ignorance leads towards disintegration and death, but to be a ware of the ignorance is already a step towards enlightening the ignorance and redeeming it into knowledge. By this knowledge of the ignorance you release it from the grip of death; when you have the full consciousness of the ignorance you transcend the region of death, and free from death, free from ignorance you have the knowledge of knowledge and with the knowledge of knowledge, that is to say, with the full revelation of it you are one with Truth that is Immortality. The delight of immortality is love; love's own status and home is Paradise.

The Paradise, the svargyam lokam of the Upanishads is not necessarily utterly afar and aloof, sundered from this world. The kingdom of heaven instead of being wholly within and absolutely beyond can be and has to be brought out and down upon and into earth, established here below in the fullness of its own glory. That is the material epiphany, the transformation of the physical nature, the ultimate and inevitable destiny of earth and mankind.

Such is the full cycle of human life – in the beginning the birth in mortality and in ignorance, then a process of developing and purificatory consciousness, and then the entry into the full blaze of light and force of Consciousness leading to a rebirth and re-embodiment in immortality, transforming the ignorant death-bound body into the glorious luminous body upon material earth, the embodiment of love Divine.

Page 389

“The Hero and the Nymph”

A note on Kalidasa's "The Hero and the Nymph" (translated by Sri Aurobindo), staged at the Ashram Theatre on December 1st and December 3rd 1971.

The story of Kalidasa's "The Hero and the Nymph" is the eternal legend of the marriage of heaven and earth upon earth. The Heavenly Beauty can descend upon earth and be united to a human soul only, as it appears, under a malediction; for heaven and earth are normally understood to be opposites and contradictories. The malediction means that the union can happen under certain limitations. First of all, there is the limitation of time, that is to say, the union does not last long, it can be only for a more or less short duration: even the span of human life is too long for it. It is not in the nature of supreme love to linger long on our murky earth:

"Only a little the God-light can stay:"¹

Secondly the limitation is that of a mixture, a dilution. The quality and nature of Divine Love entering earth suffers an alteration, a diminution and pollution. It is mixed with baser elements of human nature. Kalidasa too mentions these – foremost of all is jealousy – jealousy that caught Urvasie like a wild fire and made her run helter-skelter and enter straight into the arms of self-oblivion and infra-consciousness – she turned into a soulless plant. Thirdly, the limitation that the very intensity and turbulence of passion bring – it is not only turbulence but turbidity, love gone mad, love becoming lunacy – that is Pururavas and his cry:

¹ Savitri, Book I, Canto I.

Page 390

"Halt, ruffian, halt! Thou in thy giant arms

Bearest away my Urvasie!.." ¹

This cry almost verges on King Lear's heart-rending frantic yell: "Blow, winds and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!"² relieved, one may say in Kalidasa, by his sheer poetry – but in Shakespeare also not less so, although in a different hue and tune. This tumult of the soul, the raging raving wild thing that man becomes – this seems to be, in Kalidasa, the price that mortality has to pay for a touch of divinity – it is the churning of the ocean that yields at last immortality. It may be suggested here that the queen is a foil, a hark back to wisdom and poise, to steadiness and normalcy. She symbolises also the consent of the mere human to the divine Dispensation.

A Shakespearean tragedy Kalidasa avoids by finding a way out of the impasse – a happy marriage between heaven and earth is possible if with heaven agreeing to come down upon earth, earth too on its side agrees to go up to heaven. The heavenly Bride can stay here on earth as companion to Pururavas only if Pururavas agrees to go up to heaven, consents to take up the gods' work.

The earthly mixture presumably gives to the pure heavenly love a zest, a strange homely taste which otherwise it could not have. The white diamond with this immixture of the earthly ray becomes as it were a ruby.

Here was a human soul, a rare human soul, a soul of beauty and bravery. Even on earth he was in the service of the gods and as a reward he was given the chance of lifting the divine trophy and treasuring it in his earthly home: he succeeded in possessing the treasure as he continued to be in the service of the Divine.

¹ Vikramorllasie, Act IV, Sc. II.

² King Lear, Act III, Sc., II.

Page 391

The human being is composed of three beings, his person is made of three persons – it is a trinity, a triptych as it were. The first is the external person whom we recognise by his name and form. It is indeed the physical body in and through which nature and character express themselves or try to express themselves as best they can. For the body, the material body is both an expression and a limitation, the body is not capable of expressing all that is behind it against which it acts as a dam with a few sluices to let something of the inner content flow out. This inner content means the vital world with its desires and impulses and various dynamisms and behind it there is also the mind, the mind with its own activities, its thoughts, ideas, imaginations; those two seek expression through the body taking the help of the senses. All this forms the outer personality of man – its sign and symbol is the material body.

Behind this physical person figured in physical body there is the subtle person and it expresses itself in a subtle body. The subtle body, because it is subtle, does not mean that it is formless. This too has a form which has not the rigidity of the material body, is not bound like the physical body in a contour of fixed unchangeable unchanging lineament. The form, supple and flexible, changes in shape and colour – like a mass of cloud according to the nature of its movements and activities and yet maintains its identity and is recognisable as a distinct person from others. Here the movements are free and almost unchecked and one can go far in the direction of the bad and the wrong as also towards the good and the beneficent. It is difficult for this person to make the choice. In the physical body such a choice is made by the mental will, in the

Page 392

subtle body the mental will if it remains intact is one among many forces of equal strength.

But the saving grace lies in the third person which is the Divine Person, man's true person and real identity. This is composed of true consciousness, true force, and the supreme truth of being, the delight and immortality. This is as we call it man's psychic being or soul.

This being made of light and power and delight is not a formless entity but a real being, a person and possesses a name and body, a Divine name and a Divine body recognisable in the same way as a physical body is recognised.

Now this Divine person is in us normally behind the veil almost inoperative acting or influencing only indirectly and can be and has to be brought forward and put in charge of the other personalities, over the head of the subtle body and the physical body. Then that true person will be the ruler and guide and control and choose and inspire the movements of the subtle personality and allow only the right and proper activities to pass through and express themselves in the physical body. In this way gradually the three persons will be integrated and unified in a single homogeneous perfect personality embodying and expressing only the Divine Truth.

We know the Divine himself has three such bodies or a triple status of his one existence. First, he is prajna, the being or consciousness that contains the fundamental or typal realities that form the very basis of creation. It is the nucleus or the seed enclosing all the starting points as in a tight knot, all future elaborations. These elaborations are made by the second status or person of the Trinity; it has the beautiful name Hiranyagarbha, the golden womb. Here are laid out all possiblities, all probabilities even, endless and infinite lines of development and progression of the forces of existence. Every possible thing is being brought forth and allowed to try its fate. Out of these multifarious possibilities only some are chosen to appear as physical or material realities. This choice is made by the third person of the Trinity, Virat. Each and every possibility in the Hiranyagarbha may have the chance to appear on the material plane but that means perhaps time and a particular creation, for evidently there are many creations or cycles of creations of different types, one following another after a

Page 393

pralaya as the ancients conceived the process.

The triple person, it may be noted, is psychologically co-related to the three well-known Upanishadic states of consciousness – one, sushupti (perfect sleep), two swapna (dream) and three, jagrat (wakefulness).

The triple human person, it is evident, exists as a movement parallel to the triple Divine person: it is an application of the latter to a special set of conditions, in a particular frame of reference. The human triplicity in other words is a specialisation of the Divine Triplicity.

Page 394

MAN is born free, – in his spirit, not in his body. The body is bound and all that is there in its frame of reference – the life and even the mind with their multiple movements. The spirit alone is free with all else that is there in its frame of reference. The mind and the life bound normally, because tied to the body-scheme attain the freedom of the spirit when linked to the spirit. The body is bound because it is bound to the ignorant material nature. The body too can attain freedom, the freedom of the spirit, when submitted to the spirit.

Freedom is a divine quality; it belongs to the Divine Consciousness. Nothing below that status is free or can be free – all are bound to the Cosmic Law, the inexorable law of Karma, the chain of global Causation. You are free when you are out of it and dwell with and in the Master of the causal ring.

God alone is free. You are free only when you are united with God and your will merges in His Will and His Will manifests in yours.

Freedom does not consist in doing as one likes but in doing what the Divine likes. In following your will you follow nature's will – nature's determinism; being part of nature in following nature's will you have an illusion that you are following your will and that you are freely choosing, whereas in following God's Will you follow truly your own will, for in God you are one with God – His Will your will, your will His.

Page 395

Man becomes the bodily creature when he cuts himself off from his spiritual nature which is his true nature. In isolating himself from the Master of nature, man becomes a slave of nature, this ignorant external nature. To attain freedom is to rise out of this lower status into the domain of the higher status which is man's own true nature, the Divine nature.

The body can be remoulded and reconstituted by the soul and self; the inferior nature can be rebuilt into the mode' of the higher nature; when this is done there is the reign of Supreme Liberty. The body's domain then in its formation becomes a free expression of the soul, the Divine Himself.

It is the freedom of the inner being that brings about the freedom in the outer life. The deeper the inner freedom, the truer and the more real is the outer freedom.

The outer freedom does not mean the power to do whatever one chooses to do. True outer freedom means to be able to choose the right thing to do. It means finding the Truth and following the rhythm of the Truth. When one is the Truth in one's being and infallibly expresses the Truth in becoming, when one is identified with Satyam and Ritam, there is founded the true freedom and its supreme status.

Freedom therefore is utter self-discipline; for it means following the rhythm of the Truth. To follow the rhythm of the Truth is to follow the Divine. In being obedient to the Divine Will one acts absolutely freely, for obedience here means complete identification with the Master.

The being one with the Divine Being, the consciousness one with the Divine Consciousness, the will one with the Divine Will – such is the condition and status of the perfect, absolute Freedom.

Page 396

DR. Faust, as you know, you must have seen him on our school stage, was a very learned man. His ambition was to acquire all knowledge, knowledge of all subjects, of all arts and sciences. But he wanted not only to be a doctor of theories but of practice also, not only a learned man but a man of power in addition – not only to know but to control. Universal nature was his field and he sought not only to measure and survey the outside but to probe into her deeper secret mysteries. In those days there was a line of inquiry pursued by savants that was called occultism. The occultist sought to discover the secret and subtle forces of nature through which one could influence and control outer and material things and happenings. In this field there were the alchemists whose attempt was to transform lead into gold, that is to say, manipulate forces and elements in nature in such a way that mere lead would be turned into pure gold. So, our Dr. Faust, in tune with these magicians as they were commonly known, ventured into this region to possess the power over the forces of nature. This control over nature could go to the extent of producing what we know as miracles, for example,

you ask for a thing, anything whatsoever, and it is there before you; you want to go some place, you will the thing and you are there like a flash of lightning. You can even make people do what you want to be done.

One day when Dr. Faust was deeply engaged in this interesting occupation, suddenly he saw standing in front of him a figure – a strange figure, black, robed in black, huge in stature – he was taken by surprise. Half in curiosity, half in fear he asked who he was. The figure answered: he was what Dr. Faust wanted, that is to say, he could give Faust whatever he wanted, he was that Power. Dr. Faust questioned him and he

Page 397

was answered that the person was indeed what he was claiming to be. Faust was to ask only to have the thing he wanted. Faust could have more and more knowledge, more and more power. Not only that, but something infinitely greater and more precious. Dr. Faust wanted to know what that was. "Infinite pleasure, infinite delight. You will never be sad or sorrowful, never suffer, I will give you perfect enjoyment." This ambitious greedy man swallowed the bait. Faust asked whether it was all true – what he was professing. The person answered: "More than what I have promised, I will give you. But it is give and take, you can take only when you give." "Give! What can I give? What have I got?" Oh! it is nothing, it is just a trifle. You won't ever know that you are giving. Ready?" "Ready? Yes, quite. But just tell me what it is?" "Oh! it is indeed nothing – your soul!" "Soul?" Faust did not know what the soul was. He nodded assent, strange to say, somewhat hesitatingly – although so eager and ardent till now. Take it then, he said.

In the meanwhile, somewhere in the background of his mind, he felt a little queer, just a twitch, felt the presence of something, even perhaps saw a figure deep inside or far off on the horizon. The other one that was talking to him was a dark black huge, even ominous shape. But this one, although some what vague, was robed in white and luminous, even soft like a moonbeam. The Doctor, a little stunned, gazed and gazed at the luminous spot, rubbed his eyes, heaved a sigh, and said: "It is nothing, just an illusion", but it was his soul visiting him to give him a warning. He however turned away and looked at the tempter and with a snatch of bravado delcared: "I am ready. Take my soul and give me all that you promise", and thus with his consent, through his free choice, the Devil approached him, opened his breast and took out his soul. As the operation was being done, he felt a great shadow, an infinite sadness invading him but he pushed it away and told his master: "Now bring me all that I want and all that you promised." Henceforth he virtually became lord of all things, he was taken to all kinds of worlds, offered all kinds of powers and all enjoyments, the asta-siddhi of our Indian yoga – levitation, gravitation, telekinesis – anima, laghima etc. – were within his grasp. Even then at times a great dissatisfaction rose within him as

Page 398

from a secret fount and he found himself unconsciously uttering "Oh God! Oh God!" And he used to glimpse at a distance that white vague moonlight-figure. But the Devil used to reappear immediately and threaten him: "You are going to lose everything, drive away all those illusions, be your normal self, come with me, I will show you greater miracles." He was taken to the world of beauty and beauties, the source of poignant delight, even the most poignant of all, a human physical love. He saw there rising before his eyes her who was the most beautiful woman in the world. Bewitched, beside himself, he cried out:

Is this the face that launched a thousand ships

And burnt the topless towers of Ilion?¹

It was the Helen of Troy. At the extreme end of the journey Satan was slowly dragging him on towards the brink from where, once down, there is no return. In the very midst of all superhuman ecstasy he felt, he was being burnt up and yearningly looked for the soothing moonlight-beam that he had left. The yearning was so intense and sincere that all at once he felt a cloud burst and the dark shape of the Devil scattered into bits and he rose from a dream as it were, a happy new-born soul.

I will tell you now the moral of it. Each one of us, each human being has, or rather is, a soul. In reality we have or are two beings – an external outside being with its outward body and heart and mind, with all their ordinary desire movements and within that as under a cover lies your true being, your soul, that is made not of desire but of Truth. The outer person of desire is made of ignorance and unconsciousness, the true person or soul is made of truth and consciousness. Always there is a struggle between the two, the inner being, your true divine being is always trying to express itself through the lower and outward limbs, impress itself upon them but normally with very little result. These outer limbs are more obedient to the world forces of ignorance and falsehood, their lord is the anti-Divine,

¹ These lines of Marlowe are often quoted by Sri Aurobindo as an example to show the height of poetic beauty which the English language is capable of expressing.

Page 399

whose name is Satan. A legend says that at the beginning of creation there was a wager between God and Satan. Satan said: "I am here to win away your children from you and make of them my slaves." God said: "My sons can never be your bond-slaves. You may test and try them, you may believe for a time you have won but your trials and ordeals only make them stronger in their inner being and they all come back to me."

The soul is never lost, there is no eternal hell.

But man, the human soul, has to go through hell, that is to say, through trials and tribulations and ordeals in order to reach heaven. We know there are innumerable legends to illustrate the point. You must have read, all of you, stories of saints, how they were tempted and obstructed by hostile forces, the armies of the undivine. The great Buddha before his illumination as he sat under the Bo-tree firmly resolved on pursuing in his inner consciousness the path of realisation till the very end, was surrounded – we should say today, 'gheraoed' – by all the varieties of dark forces, forces of ambition, of passion, of attachment, of enjoyment: they pleaded, they threatened, tried to draw him away by violence and trickery and temptation, but his was a great heroic soul, he refused all invitations and threats, unmoved he held fast to his resolution and in the end came out into the vast illumination. To the Christ too, the same thing happened. Satan came to him, showed to him all the luxury and grandeur and majesty that lay at his disposal if he would only consent to follow him. Christ only told him "Get thee behind, Satan" (Apage Satana) and he was free. In the Upanishads also, we know of the story of the boy Nachiketas who wanted to possess the truth, the Immortality, and Yama came to him or rather he came to Yam a and asked for these things. Yama, the King of Immortality, said in effect, a young boy like him need not strive for such abstract things that confuse the mind even of gods, "I will give you better things – these beautiful chariots and horses, the resounding musical instruments or these abounding riches and even these beautiful women – that take and be happy." You all know Nachiketas', the boy's answer: "Dear Sir, all these good things keep for your good self, let me have the one

Page 400

thing that I need, the Divine Knowledge." I am sure many of our children here will be bold enough to say as Nachiketas did.

In our Puranas too we see whenever and wherever the Rishis assemble and start doing tapasya, the hostiles – they are called rakshasas – rush in, try to break their tapasya, even kill them. The akshasas are the embodiments of the dark forces, agents and armies of the Devil himself. The Rishis had to seek refuge in the help of the gods, that is to say, take refuge in the strength and sincerity of their souls, that is the only way to safety and security, to the achievement of their goal.

I may dwell here upon a characteristic feature in the matter of rakshasas, they are a special type of hostile force. Rakshasas are well known for their greed for human flesh, the flesh of animals is the usual food for animals that take flesh excepting perhaps the Royal Bengal Tiger, even then it is said they do so only when compelled, but for the rakshasas the human flesh – nara mansa – is a supreme delicacy; sweet, very sweet indeed it is to the tongue of the rakshasa. But is it really sweet? Is there a special reason for such a predilection in them for human flesh? Here is an explanation. It occurs to me that human flesh is really sweet; the human body has been sweetened because it contains something which the other animals do not have, it is precisely the thing that we were talking about just now, because the human body enshrines a soul, and the soul is the source of all sweetness. Thus, since the body holds the soul in it, the body itself becomes sweet by contact or infusion. The rakshasas have come to know of it, that is to say, not the soul but the sweetness that the soul induces in the material flesh. There must be some truth in the suggestion. Consequently a rishi's body must be all the more appetising to the rakshasa, for it must contain a larger store of swetneess, a rishi's body enshrining a larger and greater soul in view of his rishihood.

Also we know there are some types or lines of sadhana in which the spiritual discipline, it is said, needs a human sacrifice, to complete the full course of such a discipline at the end one has to offer a human sacrifice – kill a human being – a young boy, because . .because he has a sweet soul.

We need not be shocked; after all, the phenomenon is symbolic. The rites represent a psychological operation. A human being, a young boy sacrificed means whatever is most developed

Page 401

in you, whatever is aspiring, whatever is beautiful, is offered to the Divine. In fact, all rituals and ceremonies, all pujas are symbolic, that is to say, representations on the physical plane of inner movements – spiritual efforts. It is true some of them, to us moderns, appear revolting and reprehensible but we must remember these ceremonies if they were physically practised were done milleniums ago when humanity was quite young and had not emerged very much out of the animal existence. The life in that early stage of consciousness had to pursue for bare subsistence a mode of living that is un-understandable to the consciousness of today. The human aspiration however was still present there and made use of these normal modalities of life to express and embody itself.

We leave it at that, but the point of the matter is this: the material, the physical life that is in your body is made interesting, even the body itself becomes not only living but beautiful because of the presence of the soul in it, embalming it, perfuming it. If you are able ever to meet it, contact it, touch it, you will find yourself wonderfully transmuted, you will carry yourself and spread abroad your own sweet scent like the scented deer. The body is called a temple, the habitation of the Divinity that is in you. Therefore it must be kept clean and pure – no dust from the intruding feet of Satan's brood nor any shadow from their presence should fall here. That other influence must always be shaken off. You must always love your soul, always remain in its embrace, then you will no longer be a mere human being but an angel, indeed a god.

And yet there is a still more mysterious mystery. Satan or his armies do not quite belong to the outside world apart from you, they are within you, at least their foothold is within you. In fact man is a twofold being, one half of him belongs to the Divine, the other half to the un-Divine. His nature is a twofold string, the two inextricably intertwined, there is a luminous ray and there is its shadwow, the shadow makes the light unstable, flickering, at times even completely obscures and eclipses it. The Hostile outside gains its strength and its hold upon you because of the obscurity within you; the greater the obscurity within the greater the dimension and power of the force outside. One has to dwell upon the luminous ray inside – which is what we have termed the soul – and slowly, or in

Page 402

proper time dissolve or dissipate the obscurity. In proportion as the obscurity within recedes, the darkness outside also retires and vanishes. And one sees in the end that it was only an illusion that seized us, and it was never there. We were and we are always a glorious sunshine. Only the experience through the Illusion has served to add a new dimension to the original Glory where we return.

Page 403

The Sunlit Path

THE modern, particularly the western mind captured by the rational or scientific spirit cannot but pursue the same line even in the domain of other and higher realities. The father and the great representative of the movement was Descartes, the very famous French thinker. To find the pure and unalloyed truth, he taught, one must keep away all possibility of error: so to dispel all doubt one must begin by doubting everything, to avoid being the dupe of imagination, delusion or hallucina­tion it is always safe to doubt everything. A second reflection, however, raises the question, but who doubts: it is I who doubt, the one who doubts is I; the doubter cannot be doubted, so he exists. Thus we arrive at the first undoubtable reality. But the irony of the argument is that even the doubter came to be doubted in the end: there is no guarantee that even the doubter is not an illusion. Thus we wander into a blind lane, a cul de sac: we knock our head against a dead wall.

Modern scientific agnosticism or scepticism has been thus compelled to modify a little the Cartesian way: not to doubt outright, but to accept a probability, a working hypothesis as it is called: to see how it works provisionally, whether it is or it is not contradicted by other elements. If it gives a cogent and consistent and unchallenged view of things then it can be with the largest amount of certainty accepted as true. Even then we are in a world of suppositions and relativities, only approximations and nowhere near the absolute truth. The hope of finding the pure absolute truth is deferred indefinitely and "hope deferred sickeneth the heart."

Absolute Truth, the spiritual reality cannot be attained in this way, the way of experimenting and questioning. The path of self-questioning, self-analysis, debate and discussion

Page 404

which is the inevitable outcome of rationalism and scientism leads, in the field of spiritual realities, only to self-torture. It drives you in a vicious circle through ceaseless struggle and unrest.

This is, we may say, the left-handed path towards the spirit, the path of the bar-sinister, that leads into, at least, through the dark night: this is usually, as I have said, the western, the rational mind's way, the way of scientism; but there is also the very ancient eastern or the Indian way, the way of the bar-dexter, the right-hand path. Sri Aurobindo often spoke of the sunlit path – the Upanishadic surya yana – or the golden path – hiranmaya vartma. Here the very first thing needed – the first and the must – is Faith; here you start by faith and not doubt, doubt inevitably heads towards perdition – samsayatma vinasyati, as the Gita says: it disperses and dissipates the con­sciousness, dissolves it like scattered clouds. Indeed you are not to try to prove the existence of God and reality; the kind of proofs collected by the theologians of Europe and which to them appear to be final and definitive – the fivefold proofs, scholastically named ontological, teleological etc., etc. – do not carry conviction to any sane and sincere inquirer. On the contrary, one should go the other way – the boot is on the other leg: it is the ultimate truth and reality that proves all other proofs and realities, we recall the famous Upanishadic phrase: "all other lights shine by that light" – tasya bhasa sarvamidam vibhati. You cannot by your own will and strength and endeavour attain the spiritual reality. When that chooses to unveil itself, then only your eyes have the vision of its own body.

The rational mind scoffs at faith and calls it blind. Yes, blind to the unrealities, open to the reality. In fact faith can be called blind only when the faith is in darkness and ignorance, faith is open-eyed when the faith is in the light.

To understand a little closely we have to distinguish things. The mind has a higher status: the higher mind is naturally receptive to the light and sufficiently aloof from a lower region of the mind itself which is not only limited but subject to up rushes from a still lower region, the vital, the source of passions and prejudices. It is the lower mind, the physical mind as it is called, which is the one obstacle that shuts out the light

Page 405

of true consciousness. The source of all doubt is here. The physical mind has its own role, a truer role; for it is the instru­mental consciousness that formulates things, gives a form – a name and local habitation to things. so that they possess a material existence but it transgresses its bounds when it chooses by itself the things to formulate, instead it should formulate only things presented to it, presented by a higher consciousness, presented, in other words, by faith.

The physical mind doubts, because it has not the criterion by which it can find and judge the reality, it must perforce seek the support of a higher faculty that can furnish or reveal the object to which it should give a form. By itself it moves bewildered in a tortuous never-ending maya, leading nowhere – if anywhere to regions still darker and dangerous – andham tamah pravisanti.. tato bhuya eva te.

God, truth, reality are not things to be proved or demons­trated. They are to be found, realised. They are accepted things, they have to be accepted. Only you are to find the means to approach them, know them, rea1ise them. Young Nachiketas spontaneously found the way, for the Grace descended and Faith entered into his pure heart and possessed him.

Page 406

Index

ADITI, 287

Agnl,189,221,280,327,371

Ahriman, 287

Akbar, 196

Algeria, 141

Amrita, 29

Arjuna, 206, 350

Aryama, 330

Ashram, the, 57, 118-9, 161, 269, 270, 390

Ashwapati, 237-41, 243, 246, 274

Asura, 250, 287, 368

Atris, 372

BEATRICE, 284

Beethoven, 273

Bharati, 189

Bible, the, 121, 305, 345n

– Book of Job, 305n

– St. John, 345n

Borman, 316

Brahma, 256

Brahman, 181-2, 185, 188-9, 193, 205, 290, 299, 339, 368, 385

Brindaban, 385

Britain, 338

Buddha, 52-3, 104-6,182-3,196,221, 225,309,311, 344,349,400

CHINA, 54

Christ, 349, 379, 400

Churchill, 346

Commonwealth, 362

Confucius, 196

Czardom, 338

DANTE, 228,284,287, 388

– The Divine Comedy, 388

Darshanas, 297

David-Neele, Alexandra, 142, 173

Diti, 287

Durga, 249

Duryodhana, 206

EINSTEIN, 222, 344, 374, 376

Elizabeth, 196

England, 117, 196

Esau, 121

Europe, 297, 383

FAR EAST, THE, 54

Faust, 397

France, 78, 141

GANGES, THE, 85n

George VI, 117

Gita, the, 173, 198,208-9,248, 267,272, 284, 297, 337, 345

Goethe, 244n

HAMLET, 387

Hapsburgs, the, 338

Helen, 399

Himalayas, the, 224

Hitler, 338

Hohenzollerns, the, 338 407

Page 407

ILA, 189

Ilion, 399

India, 32, 106, 143, 196, 269, 289-90, 338, 357, 361

Indra, 275, 371

Italy, 196

JACOB, 121

Japan, 54, 78, 196

Job, 305

Jupiter, 328

KALI, 80, 249, 297

Kalidasa, 278, 390-1

– Hero and the Nymph, 390

– Vikramorvasie, 39

1n Krishna, 134, 183, 206-7, 350 228, 297,

LAKSHMI, 249

Lear, 391

Leo X, 196

Lindberg, 316

MAETERLINCK, 71

– The Blue Bird, 71

Mahalakshmi, 206, 228, 297

Maheshwari, 206

Marlowe, 399n

Maruts, the, 279-80, 331-2

Mayavada,182

Milton, 371

Minerva, 328

Mitra, 189

Mohammed, 379

Mother, the, 29n., 205-6, 208, 224, 229, 231-6, 247, 249, 253-7, 260, 263, 269, 281-2, 293, 317, 333, 339, 341, 343, 360

– Prayers and Meditations, 224, 227-9, 231, 236, 247

NACHIKETAS, 340, 400

PARIS, 171, 173

Pashupati, 179

Pawamana Soma, 330

Pharaohs, the, 264

Pindar, 278n

- Olympian Odes, 278n

Plato, 201, 297

Poseidon, 383

Prahlad, 183

Pururavas, 390-1

RADHA, 134-5, 183, 297

Rakshasa, 250

Ramakrishna, 85n, 379

Russia, 196

SAHARA, 141, 313

Sankhya, 182, 186, 279

Sarama, 330

Saraswati, 189

Sati, 184

Satyavan, 242-6

Savitri, 242-6, 252-3, 307

Shakespeare, 228, 386, 391

– Hamlet, 386n

– Julius Caesar, 386n

– King Lear, 391n

Shankara, 104-5, 309, 344

Sindhus, 330

Shiva, 106, 182, 184, 207, 297

Socrates, 196,297, 379

Soma, 330

Sri Aurobindo, 3, 8,9, 29n., 42,46,51, 90, 101n., 105, 120, 135, 151, 163, 168,212,236-7,248, 254-5, 270n., 274, 276, 284, 285n., 286n., 287, 293, 300, 318n., 323, 341, 343, 351,353,355-9, 370n., 383-5, 390, 399n

– Collected Poems & Plays, 236n., 301n

– "A God's Labour", 236

– "Love and Death", 383

– "The Golden Light", 300

– Elements if Yoga, 101n

– Eric, 384

– Perseus the Deliverer, 383

Page 408

– Rodogune 384

– Savitri, 238-46n., 248, 249-52n., 266, 274, 276n., 286n., 287, 300, 318n., 323, 383, 390n

– The Mother, 293n

–Vasavadutta, 385

–Viziers of Bassora 385

Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, 32n

Srotas, 330

St. Augustine, 290, 338

Stone Age, 155

SunahsheIta, 318

Surra, 221, 327

TAGORE,97

Tantras, the, 182-3, 326

Tertullian, 290n

– De Carne Christi, 290n Troy, 399

UNITED STATES, THE, 362

Upanishads, the, 188, 221, 246, 272-3, 27.5, 284, 297, 310-11, 320, 334, 340,371,377,379, 388-9,400

– Katha, 284n., 298n

– Kena, 272

Urvasie, 390-1

VAISHNAVA, 183,265

Vaishnavism, 183

Varuna, 189,318-9, 369

Vedanta, 181, 197

Vedas, the, 188, 294, 330-1, 357, 369, 371

Villon, François, 338n

Virgil, 284

Vishnu, 106, 183-4, 358

Vivekananda, 349

Vrindavan, 183,

Vyom, 280, 331

WORDSWORTH, 257n

– Ode on the Intimations Immortality", 257n

Wu Wei, 144

YAMA, 400

Page 409