IT seems I am to tell you something about the Mother – a bit of her life, a bit of her activities.

Well, the first part of her life, as you all know, the Mother passed in France, she was born in France, in Paris. So, naturally it was very often pointed out to her that she was French, she was European. To this, however, she was always protesting, saying, "I am not European, I am not French." It would indeed sound somewhat strange to say that her family came in fact from Egypt. Her parents, her father and mother went to France just a year before she was born, a year only. And in Egypt, her family, it seems, belonged to a very ancient Egyptian family – perhaps even to a royal family of Egypt, the Pharaos. So she is not European or French by blood although she was brought up as such. Strictly speaking, she would belong to the Middle East, that is to say, the portion joining east of Europe and west of Asia. It means the union of Europe and Asia, the two harmonised, and that reflects the character of Mother's life and its destiny.

As I said, she spent the first part of her life .in France. But why France? There is a meaning in the choice. We know now the meaning, the fundamental meaning of her life, her mission and her work. She came to bring a new light. She wanted a new world, not the old world with its old nature and old culture, but a new world, a new human

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race. She brought with her the new light that is to re-create, re-shape man and the world. What was the relation between the new man and France? For the new light to come and manifest, you have first to receive it in your mind, that is to say you must see and recognise that it is a new light and ask for it. And mind is the first or the topmost receptacle in man. You may remember here the opening line of Dhammapada containing the epitome of Buddha's teaching: "Manopubbangama dhamma" – mind is the foremost of all human functions. Mind surpasses all, embraces all. Now, the light as it comes down and enters you, the first thing it touches is your head, that is, your mind: you see it, you are conscious of it. France represents today just this mind of humanity at its best, the flowering of its culture and civilisation. She was born there so that the highest mind of the human race may receive that light through her. She passed her life there in the company of the elite, the most cultured people of the time, scientists, artists, poets, all of the highest and most refined status. She was there so that through her contact and association she could bring into them the new light. With this end in view she started a society, rather a group, and the name given to it was "Le cosmique". Cosmic means the whole world; in other words, what she was doing, what she was giving, was for the whole world, for all men, for East and West, for everybody. Also it means a cosmic or world-embracing consciousness. She was creating a new type of the mental world, through the highest mental development, to reach a still wider mind – beyond the individual egoistic mind. As I have said, the mind, the head, being the highest part in man, it is easy for man to receive the new light through his head first of all. You may remember here, in this connection, Sri Aurobindo's poem "The Golden Light": how it comes from above and first enters into the head, the brain. It illumines your thoughts, develops your understanding, widens it, deepens it and sharpens it. But understanding is not sufficient, you must love it,

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then only you begin to possess it. So the golden light enters your heart. Then it proceeds farther down towards a more concrete and active expression, it enters into the vital region as we call it. Lastly the golden light enters your feet, that is, possesses your physical limbs, it becomes concrete materially and present, as though solidified, in your very body: it builds the body beautiful.

The Mother thus brings the golden light into the head of humanity, the top rung of his consciousness, and that work of initiation, diksha, into the Life Divine she started in France. From France she went to Japan for the next stage of her work.. In Japan she came to the Far East. She spent five years, five long years in that country. Japan is the land of the Zen system of meditation, that is to say, a special way of entering into an inner consciousness, not a rational mental consciousness but a gaze inward into an occult and more sensitive region. The Japanese as a nation represent indeed a very sensitive vitality, an artistic vitality that seeks order and beauty in life, in the mode of living. For the golden light to manifest and have its play in the physical world and possess its body as it were, a vitality of this kind is necessary to acquire it and hold it. The Japanese wrestlers are well-known for their vital strength, self-controlled strength; usually they possess, almost all of them, you must have noticed, in pictures at least, a big tummy, and it is, they believe, the store-house of vital strength. This does not mean that r advise you to develop a big paunch, on the contrary. However, even in physical activities, more than the mere physical strength, the vital strength is necessary. Yes, the Japanese have a vital, strong, controlled, ordered, sensitive. You may remember one or two Prayers of the Mother in her Prières et Méditations. She speaks of the cherry-blossom which is the emblem of the Japanese artistic sense, the feeling for beauty, a purified sense-perception: not a rough and crude and violent (lower) vital, but a fine, a pleasant intimate feeling and orderly happiness, that

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is what the cherry-blossom means. Mother described also a vision of hers, a beautiful picture it was, a Japanese mother and her child: it was an image of the new child that was born in humanity. A new world is thus ushered in in the land of the cherry-blossom, the hew vital world, for all the world.

The Mother is creative consciousness; wherever she happens to be, wherever she is called upon to be, her very presence moves for creation, creating a new world and a new dimension of being and consciousness, according to the need of time and place. And it is a whole world she creates and her creation endures, for it is an added achievement in the evolution of the. human being.

To this end, a neat strong orderly vital world of which we were speaking, itself requires a competent body to support it and manifest it. The golden light must come into the feet. And that was the work she was doing here and it is for that that she created the Ashram. You all know the special emphasis she laid on physical education in order to prepare the body and senses to receive the golden light. She always said, physical education gives you the basis for the new consciousness, the new light, we must have a strong body, a beautiful body, a body that endures: for the new light is powerful, it is not merely light, it is force, one must be able to bear it and carry out its commands.

Indeed, she came here in order to give a shape, a concrete and physical form, an earthly body to this Divine Light. Now the body beautiful is not by itself an end and fulfilment; in order to secure it you must secure a beautiful vital. Not only so, for a fulfilment in the body and in the vital one must possess a mind beautiful. The physical education that the Mother has arranged for us here is to prepare us for the body beautiful. And the school that she has organised is for the cultivation of the mind. The cultivation of the mind, however, means not only storing it with information on various kinds of subjects, the study of books: it means a purification and clearance of the mind, the mental stuff itself, an

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elevation of consciousness to seek and recognise the new light. I have said that you are to receive the new light through the head at first, but through the heart also, and dynamically through your vital energy. You must not only see and recognise it, but love it and be devoted to it. And here comes the Mother's central work, her special gift, her grace to us. When you love a thing, you love, as it is said, through the heart, but there is love and love and there is a heart within the heart. True love, the love that is Divine, is within this inner heart which is your soul, the real being or person in you, and the soul coming out, coming to the front as we say, is the Mother's special Grace here, her gift to all of you, to each one of you here. She has given you your soul. I have often said that it is a special privilege here for each one of us, for each one of you, to carry this being, this inner being, this intimate person, the Divine Child who is you. It is this that is building your divine personality, it is this that will give you in the end a mind beautiful, a vital beautiful, a body beautiful – all that you need, all that is perfect and flawless in your life here in this world. You may remember, many of you, the famous line of Savitri that you must have heard from Mother's own lips:

"Built is the golden tower, the flame-child born."

She has built this tower of new life and the child is there: the Golden Child. This golden child is in every one of you. You must find it, recognise it, that is the goal of your life, the mission and fulfilment of all what you want to do and be on earth. Some of you surely must have felt in you the presence of this child. Some may have seen it even as the Divine Child in you. These things - visitations as they are called - usually come in dreams. At least I know of some who have seen them, who came and told me of their miraculous experience. It is a possibility for everyone and if you happen to see it you must recognise it, hold it, grasp

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it with all love and affection. The Mother is still living and active among us and her Presence is still there, even concretely, for each one of you has the Divine Child in you.

I end with a prayer, a prayer that I made to the Mother sometime ago, it is on behalf of the small children of our playground:

"Sweet Mother, your playground-children are angels. They have not become divine or godly, but they are angels, earthly angels. Keep them constantly under your eye, cradle them in your loving consciousness."

That was the prayer I made on your behalf to the Mother, and I am sure Mother has responded “Yes”.

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I BEGIN with a Sanskrit proverb: it is not exactly a proverb but a witty saying, half in jest, half in earnest. You will see however the significance it carries. Perhaps, there is a story hanging about it. You know that the Sanskrit pundits, perhaps all pundits, are proverbially supposed to be very unpractical. That is to say, they are so much engrossed in their study, in their books, in abstract things that they lose their sense of the material world, of the external things. So, once it seems, a pundit wanted to know what a pig was: "I have heard of a pig, a boar, what is it? I have not seen it." Someone answered: "It is an animal." "What kind of animal?" Then another pundit to show his erudition answered: "A pig is an enlarged mouse, a mouse become big – musika-vrddhi; or otherwise, it is an elephant become small, a diminution or reduction of an elephant – gaja-ksaya." Our pundit felt illumined and exclaimed, "Yes, yes, now I understand, now I understand."

So, taking up this image I may say that man also occupies an intermediate position in the order of creation: on one side he is an enlarged animal (not in body, however, always), a developed, elevated animal; on the other side he is a diminutive, a diminished god. The story is very interesting, how man has developed, how he has come out of the animal, you must have read something of this story of evolution; but more interesting is the other part of the story, how God or a god has reduced himself to the stature of a human being.

Long, long, long ago, in the earliest stage of creation, there

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were materially only dust particles, tiny dust particles or what looked like mere dust, everywhere (the Vedas say tucchyena abhvapihitam – covered all around with infinitesimals). There was no formation, no shape or various bodies as we see now: it was a vague cloud or mist, innumerable particles whirling about. That was how creation started. Then slowly, gradually, those particles began combining, coalescing; they began to condense, to have forms or shapes small or big, of various types. There was the first appearance of the sky with its starry battalions and then the earth emerged bearing a special character and destiny. I have spoken of the primeval or primary dust particles scattered about. But along with them, within each one, in another dimension, there were, strange to say, particles of light. We have come to know of the atomic and sub-atomic material particles, but of these light particles there has arisen just a suspicion only recently. This light, however, is not merely the material light, but the glow of consciousness. And the most momentous thing that happened was the growth and development of this light-particle along with the development of the material body of the dust. The material mass through many changes shaped into the body of sentient growths, living beings, animals and finally into the human body. Even so the original light particle, at the beginning no more than a flicker in the midst of surrounding darkness, hardly noticeable and distinguishable, slowly but irresistibly grew in clearness, in volume and in strength. It took many long years, many millions of years to develop into a clear shape. That was the centre, this light-particle was the heart of things, the heart of living beings and in man it underwent a strange transmutation. The light-particle, as I said, originally had no form, it was just a hazy speck. As it grew big, at a certain stage it began to take the shape of a flame. You have seen a candle flame which often has the form of a cone: a cone is a well-developed clear form. But as I said, when the human body appeared, this flame too changed into something

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like the human form, a tiny human form, a luminous embryo, as it were. You remember the famous Upanishadic line: angusthamatrah puruso' antaratma¹ – a purusha, a being or person of the size of the thumb. That was the first formation of the human soul, the original light particle became a person or a psychic being. In man, I said, there has been a miraculous transmutation – the light, the growing consciousness has learnt to look back upon itself, it has become self-conscious, has taken the first leap that would carry it into another region of growth and development. The personification, rather personalisation, of the light of consciousness, its farther and continuous growth, the greatening of the psychic being involves the whole inner story of human destiny. How does the light grow and develop? What are the forces, what are the agents that initiate and help in the growth and development of the spark into the being, and the being into higher beings? Life is the agent, life-forces are the artisans that do this work. Life means a series of experiences, impacts of the surrounding world upon yourself, your mind and body and sensation. These are like fuel that you pour into the flame, that feed and increase that flame. Life after life you have to gather these experiences that fortify and greaten the contents of your being and then there comes a time when this flame, this conscious being is so developed, so mature, so well-formed, that you begin to think of the life spiritual. When one is not content, not wholly content with ordinary life, yearns after something else, something greater, it means that the flame in you has reached a crucial stage and has to take a leap or bound into another dimension of life.

The aspiration for the spiritual life means that you have now a glimpse of the true person that you are within, the beautiful person within you of whom I have spoken so often to you. Through the spiritual life you develop that beautiful personality more and more and still more, until you become a being perfectly formed and fully grown. When a man

¹Shwetashwatara Upanishad: 3.13

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achieved the perfect form of the soul, he used to be called, in the ancient days, siddha-purusha – one who has attained the supreme realisation, the perfection. Siddha means achieved, consummated – the purpose of the normal human life has been 'fulfilled', you have reached the complete development of that inner light which was always within you, which you have been carrying and developing since time immemorial. Various are the ways, the chequered lives you have passed through, innumerable are the steps and stages difficult and different for you to have arrived at this perfection, and yet this is not the end, there is now a transference to another line of growth. To become perfect human beings is the first half of the human destiny, there is another half which is to become a god, to become a Divine person.

But from now on the procedure is different for we enter into another dimension or quality of reality. Here begins the world of the gods. The gods are, we may say, types of perfection. They have a consciousness quite different from that of the mind, it is not limited, it is global, each embodying a divine quality or qualities. Each is a special Power. On the human level the progress is that of a gradual movement forward and. upward, an ascension step by step. It is a movement of achievement or realisation by addition, accretion as it were. But you do not attain godhead or godhood in that way, in the same way as you seize and capture and possess a desired object: here you do not possess the gods, but they come and possess you, they descend and come into you. The Upanishad says: "He himself comes forward and unveils his own body." They are of such a different quality – different not only in degree but in kind, that you cannot by developing, increasing or amplifying the present attain that nature. That nature itself, as I said, is to descend and enter into you and make you its own mode of existence. Now, this is a new fulfilment for the human being to attain to the status of a god, to evolve oneself, to attune oneself so as to call by this affinity a divine being, a god, and to become a

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god. Sri Aurobindo speaks of the divine life, the Life Divine, the life of a god, it means that you become a god, not only realise the utmost human perfection possible as man but surpass man's humanity and call in and embody divinity. You may remember Ramakrishna making a distinction between two kinds of perfect human beings – one he calls Jivakoti, that is to say, human creatures who have the capacity to attain the final liberation. Usually, these humans are sufficient unto themselves, they do their own sadhana and attain siddhi and pass out. They do not come back. But the other category of beings who are called Ishwarakoti, that is to say, those who embody the divine nature, not only can save themselves but others also, they can bear the burden of imperfect human beings, they can go up and come down, pass from life to life even after liberation with ease, in order to continue the work of earth's global Freedom.

I have said, a god comes down and seizes you, you do not go up and take possession of a god. But perhaps it is only a mode of describing the same phenomenon. The god that you call upon to come into you is your presiding deity and it is there always over your head guiding you, helping you, befriending you throughout your cycles of spiritual evolution. This archetype of divinity that you are to become or that is to engulf you and be identified with you has been with you from the very beginning, coming closer and closer to you as you go on developing upward. Indeed the light-speck that you were originally, of which I spoke to you at the outset, is nothing but a spark of the same Divine Entity or Person come down into the material world.

A great and glorious example of man becoming a god is that of Narada, therefore he is called Devarshi, that is to say, a rishi, a spiritually perfect man developing, that is, metamorphosing himself into a god coming down and inhabiting, possessing, becoming a human being. The function or role of a god-man or Devarshi like Narada has been described beautifully in Savitri. He is an immortal still

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living, moving about in the ethereal spheres, often he comes down into the earthly atmosphere and takes part in the terrestrial movements by throwing into them his guiding light and loving solicitude. And yet Narada is not the last word of the human evolution. Because he is still in the end of the subtle world, he has not undergone the material bodily transformation, he has not yet arrived at the golden body of which Sri Aurobindo speaks, the receptacle of Life Divine. The divinely trans- formed human body is the next stage or consummation of human evolution.

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(I)

One of its legs she Swan does not lift.

as it soars upward out of the waters;

if perchance it lifted that also,

there would then neither today nor tomorrow,

nor would there be day nor night

nor would there be dawning any more.

Atharvaveda, 11.4.21

THUS the vedic Rishi. ¹

Even so when Mother withdrew physically form this earth we presumed that she did so with one foot only, the other foot she left planted here below for us to worship. Well, was that only a presumption or things have changed since?

Here on this earth, we know, a battle was raging is still raging between the Gods and Asuras: men are their agents and instruments. The battle is to decide the destiny of earth humanity. Mother was the leader of the divine army here. Now human beings are a very uncertain quantity. They themselves do not know on which side they are ranging. Some perhaps may know to extent but that

does not seem to count much in the actual reckoning of things.

Yes, the pity is that man does not know and yet so much, if not the whole thing, depends on him. For man as he is now is so far removed from godliness and so close to Asuras that the battle upon earth between Gods and Asuras seems to be an unequal game. Man by actual nature is asuric: it is through aspiration that he is trying to be godly but it seems he is now out of breath with his aspiration and has fallen back on his normal nature of the Asura.¹

Man enshrines in him the individualised Godhead, the personal Divine: the possibility of the incarnation of the Divine lies in him alone. Hence the struggle between Gods and Asuras for the possession of the human vessel.

It was the intention of the Mother to implant the Divine upon the turbid soil of normal humanity purifying it of its dross and suffusing it with the heavenly breath. If that is not done, then she will have no other choice but to leave the field altogether to the Asuras, in whatever camp or form they are, to fight it out among themselves and finally destroy themselves in the act even like the Yadavas of old after Krishna's retirement. Some Asuras may like to pre­tend to be divine precisely to "catch" the voting strength, so to say, of the human being who may still seem to have a prejudice or predilection for divine things; but the truth will be out and the pretenders will be compelled to disclose themselves exactly as they are.

Then only, consequent on the self-annihilation of the

¹ Sri Aurobindo in one of his private notes discloses that most of his disciples were Asuras, the bigger the disciple the greater the Asura. Perhaps they, impelled by a higher Call, came of themselves in order to surrender and be converted to the new life. It may be that that urge wore off in the end and had to be postponed for its fulfilment. It is significant what Sri Aurobindo says in his Hymn to Durga:

"0 Mother, give to our life and mind the Asura's strength, the Asura's energy and to our heart and intelligence a God's character and a God's knowledge."

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Asuras, can this earth be free and open for the incoming of the new race of beings born divine, not made. Whether any remnants of the human race will be left and in what condition, if any part of it could be incorporated or integrated into the new dispensation, is a mystery that will remain so till the actuality reveals it.

But I must not leave it at that for there is always hope and cheer, vistas of escape; the tunnel ends at last and at the end there is always the light. The Lord says indeed: I am Time, the Destroyer of the worlds – kiilo'smi lokaksayakrt – but he also declares in no uncertain terms his voice of assurance, the resounding bugle-call of his panchajanya the Divine Conch:

anityam asukham lokam imam prapya bhajasva mam.

...mamekam saranam vraja

aham tva sarvapapebhyo moksayiviimi mil suca.¹

(2)

A god is a single undivided being, even as an Asura is a single undivided being. But man is a divided dual being; on one side he is a soul, on the other he is predominantly a body complex. By his soul he is akin to the gods, by his external being he is neighbourly to the Asuras.

He is thus the link between Heaven and Earth. He is the twice-born, dvija: he is planted in the mud of eart­h – he has the proverbial feet of clay – and his head soars high,

¹ "To this ephemeral unhappy world you have come. Love me and turn to me."

Gila, IX. 33

"Take refuge in Me alone, I will deliver thee from all sin and evil, do not grieve."

Gita, XVIII. 66

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bathes in the sun's light. He is an "emergence" out of earth, a being of evolution; he is also an "immergence", a descent into earth from heaven: one part in him is godly, the other asuric. As the divine he is Brahman, as the Asura, Aham.

So man occupies a central place in the scheme of the universe. Above him are stationed the gods, the region of the higher mind and the heart, below him upon the earth rule the Asuras, the powers of the lower mind and the vital. In between is man, the intermediary being.

The gods and the Asuras are in eternal struggle for the mastery of the three worlds and it is curious to note that they both seek the help and aid of man. We know of legends in which human beings, kings and warriors, are invited by gods to come over to their side in the struggle. We have heard of the Raghus whose war-chariots drove right up to the heaven from the earth to come to the help of the gods- ­anakam ratham vartmanm (Kalidasa). Asuras however have a greater sway over man in a natural manner, because of man's earthly constitution. For the natural man is moved and controlled mostly by his external mind and vital; over him the earth's gravitation-pull holds almost complete sway. The world and men in their external life and action are the fief and domain of the Asura. They have to be reclaimed and remoulded. The possibility lies in the fact that along with the forces of gravitation there are forces of regeneration and elevation; only they seem to be slow in their action and not efficient enough under the present circumstances.

But man's destiny is not to be confined to this sphere of the triple world. He has a higher destiny transcending these lower worlds and that is being worked out elsewhere deep within him. He has a destiny which even the gods envy; for he has the Divine's own home in him. It is God himself who is implanted in him, in the cavern of his soul – it is his soul.

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I may leave you here. We have come to the door of the mystery of mysteries: there is the cavern where the great Being is installed – guhahitam gahvarestham – the supreme key to the solution and resolution of all problems, the attain­ment of divine perfection. It is for you to enter and find for yourself the final consolation. Even so I am reminded of the great poet and seer Dante who was led by Virgil to the for­midable door on which was inscribed in flaming letters the terrible heart-rending line:

"Give up all hope, you who enter here."

It is the door to eternal hell.

But I bring you to the luminous door on which is inscribed in. golden and gleaming letters the blissful line:

"Keep up all hope, you who enter here."

(3)

There are two realms – the physical realm of action and the subtle realm of feeling (bhava). It is not that the physical is the only real realm and the subtle is unreal or less real; the subtle may be equally real, even more real and concrete, even more physical, as it were. A physical blow is painful, but King Lear went mad because of a subtle blow, the blow of ingratitude which hit him more than the slashes of howling wild winds. One may forget the joy of physical embrace but there is a delight of sheer love, pure unshared love, an ex­quisite experience that remains indelibly puissant in the memory. The love of Dante for Beatrice is made of pure concentrated consciousness, has nothing physical in it, but it carried Dante in his peregrinations through all the worlds even to the very presence of God in heaven, to the presence

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of his divinised Beloved (in and with his very physical body, it is said).

You have to create the subtle world of feeling: it may be dwelling within you or enclosing -you, surrounding you, it may be immanent and circumambient – both are the same in that sphere of existence or consciousness. The outer world is more or less independent of you, you have not much control over it but the subtler ground is more pliant and plastic and obedient to your will and purpose. In the midst of all trouble and tribulation, even the greatest misery, this other realm you can build up to a great extent after your heart and make it the source of your life and delight. That can be your home of happiness and your celestial refuge. This realm will have as its basis love for the Mother, and at its apex, aspiration for her consciousness, and will be from base to apex entirely composed of the Mother's peace and quiet.

You can do it yourself, the capacity has been given to you – for the capacity is nothing else but the Mother's Presence.

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MOTHER told us long ago that our Ashram is an epitome of India. It represents all that is good in India and also all that is bad – all the bad qualities, her weaknesses, all that is crooked and false, dark and obscure. And the Ashram, being a concentrated centre of all that, represents them in a specially intense form.

Now the pressure from above has come to change and for that purpose all the dark points, all that is to be changed and rejected, have been exposed. They have been exposed everywhere – in the Ashram and also outside the Ashram, in the country in general the same defects and weaknesses, the same wrong movements.

In India, in the bigger field, the government is trying to check and control these movements by external means: to some extent it is necessary and so the Central Authority has been given that strength and capacity.

But the Ashram was made to be a conscious collective centre where these things should and must change from within, not under external compulsion, and that is why the Ashram was not given an authority strong enough to dominate or control them. Here, the change should be conscious and, as I said, from within.

And each one of us who are here in the Ashram is in turn

* Report of a private talk with Sri Nolini Kanta Gupta on 9 September, 1976.

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an epitome of the Ashram and all the good and bad elements and movements are in one way or other represented in him – even in the best ones the wrong movements can cast a shadow. So it is a task for everyone especially the so-called ‘best’ ones, that is, those who are more conscious, to detect and reject and change all that is wrong and false and develop all that is true and good, and thereby to change or help to change the very elements in Ashram-atmosphere as well as outside: that is the only solution and the only remedy – to cure the ills individually, personally in one's own consciousness. Then only a conscious collective consciousness can grow and develop in the Ashram with all these living and conscious units or cells and thereby change its own condition as well as the condition of India and also the condition of the world.

I say all this in view of the hard core, the strong seed that has to be formed out of which will sprout the future new creation. A centre should become such a seed, at least at its own centre, its own inmost centre; it must develop this inmost centre, its kernel, its living soul.

Mother also said that as India is a representative or an epitome of the world, – just in the same way as the Ashram is the epitome of India and each individual in his turn an epitome of the Ashram, – the world-problems will have to be solved in India. For India has the capacity and is destined to do so. When India solves her problems the world also will find its problems practically solved. And the Ashram is expected to show the way to the solution of India's problems. Can the Ashram rise up to play its role? At least that was the Mother's intention. It all depends upon its individual members.

Of course, we must remember, Mother's help is always there.

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You have been here for many many years, isn't it? – many many years. From your childhood you are here, isn't it? perhaps all of you. Some of you are going out, Some are likely to stay, some still undecided. If you are asked: 'What have you gained here by your long stay, for some, a very long stay?'... I can tell you what you have gained. It is not any outward thing, nor any of the things that you have learnt at school, the knowledge that you have gained here, it is not that, but something else. Be sure of that. You don't know perhaps yourselves, but that thing is there, within you. You have not passed your time in vain here: you have the Mother's touch.

Mother said many many times: "Whoever gets my touch, whoever has a second of true aspiration, true love for me, he is finished for this life, for all lives – he is bound to me. I have put a golden chain round his neck, his heart is bound eternally to me."

It is a thing nobody can see, you yourselves don't see; but it is a fact, it is there. The golden chain is there within your heart. Wherever you go, you drag that chain, it is a lengthening chain. How far you may go, it is an elastic chain, it goes on lengthening, but never snaps. In hours of difficulty, in hours of doubt and confusion in your life, you have that within you to support you. If you are conscious

* Addressed to the Final Year students of the Higher Course of Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, on

October 26, 1976.

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of it, so much the better; if you are not conscious, believe that it is there. The Mother's love, Her Presence is there always.

That is the thing I wanted to tell you… In the Upanishads there is a story. Once Narada - I suppose it is Narada - went to a Rishi to get initiation. The Rishi asked him: 'What have you learnt? What have you learnt in your life of a student now that you come to me?' Narada began to narrate all the vidyas that he had learnt during his education as a brahmachari,– all the shastras, even Dhanurvidya, all kinds of learnings. Then the Rishi said: 'All that is apara vidya, the inferior knowledge. Do you know Brahman?' 'No, sir, I do not know.' 'That is the thing to be known. Once that one thing is known, everything else is known.'

So I tell you, that one thing needful you have acquired, you have not to attempt to get it. You are fortunate, you are lucky, we are all very lucky; Mother called us here and She has given it of Her own Love, infinite Love, unasked, unconditionally. Whatever you are in your outward character and activities, that is not affected at all by the outer nature; it remains as it is, pure, unsullied.

Some of you were present at my talk on Dante....... I spoke of Dante's vision, it is a wonderful vision, – the vision of the mission of the Divine Mother.

Dante saw a globe of light in front of him. As he was standing before the Divine Trinity in the Empyrean, suddenly he saw revealed to him a luminous globe and, within that luminous globe, as if its reflection, its reflected image, circling, moving. And as he gazed into that circling light, he saw himself. He saw himself in that circling light: himself not as he saw himself, but as that circling divine Light saw him – its own image. 'I was there in the image as conceived by Him, not as conceived by me.'

In our language we can say that the luminous globe was the supreme Divine and, then, within it, the whirling circling

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light – that was the Creative Power, the Divine Mother in Her creative mood. And, within that, I was there as Her child, in my true reality, not as I see myself but as She sees me; in that image I saw myself.

Dante says that it was an experience as if he was looking into an Eye, a big ball of Eye; and in that Eye he saw reflected his image as the Divine sees him, not 'as I see myself,' – but 'my true self'… I say, that is the Image the Mother has left to you, within you. However much you may try, you cannot lose it; it will be there – till its fruition. Whenever, as I said, you feel discouraged, – naturally when you look at the world and its happenings, you feel very much distressed, disgusted, z –but there is another reality behind, it is the Mother's Presence that redeems all that. In any mood of depression, dejection, difficulty, always know that it is there in you to support you, to bring you peace and strength, and it is never failing. So many times She has said:

"Everything else fails in this world, I will never fail you."

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OBSERVATIONS AND NOTES

Observations

I

GRACE is the Divine made earthly and human. And that is our Mother.

The Mother's body was not meant to give us, to make a gift to us of a transformed human body, for our contemplation, our delectation. It had a more serious purpose.

It was to furnish the material stuff for the manifestation, the incarnation of the subtle Divine body preparing behind.

. Humanity in its present embodied manifestation cannot be immediately changed, transmuted into the supramental body. That body must descend or reveal itself or clothe itself with a new material substance. That new material substance was being prepared in the Mother's body which was the workshop, as it were, for the Divine body.

She has been building in this way not only a personal body of her own, the new Divine body, but also a 'generic' body for humanity at large out of which other personal bodies may be precipitated into the material forms of the material world - the two forming but one indivisible act.

The body that is being divinised can never suffer deterioration, neither in respect of its substance nor of its functionings.

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There can only be a re-orientation or transforming of the cells and of their functions.

Medicine in Mother's body is not for changing the body - helping its metabolism, but for the body to change the medicines so that these may acquire new properties. Indeed all that her body takes in, even as food, tends to undergo this divine chemical change. This forms another line of the process of transformation of Matter.

The Mind has been set aside, the vital withdrawn: the intermediary worlds do no longer interfere. The mere Matter, the Body, is now face to face with the Supramental (the Supreme).

One can be in contact with Her only through one's soul: even then the soul under the light or influence of the supramental has to refound or recreate its instruments once more – in the mind and vital the and the body – to be able to manifest and incarnate the new supramental revelation.

Mother's response to a prayer:

"I am always with you I shall never fail you in prosperity or in adversity, even when you sink I am with you I sink with you: I do not stand on the shore and merely look at you from a distance. I sink with you, I am in you: for I am you."

Keep your temperament always equal and happy: your

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consciousness will taste sweet to the Mother. Else, if you have a wry and embittered temperament, the consciousness will naturally taste bitter to the Mother.

II

Do not look with greedy eyes upon what others possess, if you do not want to lose even that which you possess.

Reduce the whole consciousness to the zero-point to the zero of consciousness, not the zero of unconsciousness. Then only the positive term, the Divine Consciousness, will begin to form.

The Divine Force does not act in vacuo. Here it acts in the midst of teeming ignorances: so the net result is at best half and half which is the present world.

The lesser half must know how to integralise itself in order that the Fullness may be full here below.

At a point one must go beyond strivings.

Do not strive or struggle, there must be no tension or tautness, it should be all relaxation.

Tranquillise yourself. Allow the Other to take your own

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place. Leave it all to That.

This too is not achieved but simply happens – through the Grace.

"Wherever you see hope, faith, courage, trust and tranquillity, there you will see Me."

Good rarely becomes better, bad easily becomes worse. Facile descensus Arno.

Suffering is the ransom paid by the Spirit for Nature's Ignorance.

Of all beings man is the most suffering. Animal's is the physical suffering alone while man has a threefold suffering: (I) physical (adhibhautika), (2) psychological (adhidaivika), (3) spiritual (aidhyatmika) – the spiritual suffering is the most painful.

Face the difficulty that is come to you, face it at once without delay. Try to resolve it then and there. If you avoid it, set it aside, it will come back to you with an inexorable insistence and a power infinitely greater. The difficulty will be much more difficult and the solution infinitely more painful.

Chastity (in woman particularly) does not mean faithfulness to one person (as it is generally supposed in India). It

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is not a physical act but an inner condition. Even as tapasya does not mean physical austerities, it is a mode of being, a movement of the consciousness.

Chastity is freedom from the physical and vital obsession, a natural and spontaneous self-control, in a pure ingathered steadiness.

The behaviour of others towards you will be correct in so far as your behaviour towards them is correct.

You cannot change the opinion of people by a counter opinion, you have to change it by a counter-fact.

Learn to' encircle your pain with the golden ring of a smile.

Bad thoughts act always instantaneously and the effects tend to become as bad as possible. Good thoughts remain inoperative, almost barren, even like the beautiful and ineffectual angel spoken of by Mathew Arnold, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain.

For good thoughts seldom have a vital basis, they are merely mental. While bad thoughts have this basis; indeed, they spring from that source.

The height and the depth are of equal measure; they have the same distance to travel, only the direction is different. In mathematical jargon, the tensor is the same, the vector different.

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If you fall to any depth, you can rise to the same height.

God has fallen from the Supreme Consciousness down into the abyss of inconscience: he is rising to the same peak with a new victory.

The destiny of man is governed and worked out by a Power beyond human calculation. That Power is dynamic today to a degree unknown heretofore. We have only to give ourselves up in the hands of that Power, allow it to act in us and around us - recognise its action and be grateful to the Divine Providence. That is the only way to deliverance out of this present turmoil. In that way lies our utmost happiness and the supreme achievement.

There is a core of tears in mortal things, said a Roman poet. There is a core of immortality in mortal things, says an Indian Rishi.

There is so much pain and suffering in the world. How can the world bear it? Because there is a perennial spring of delight behind. Each moment's pain is being washed away each moment by the upsurge of the healing waters of delight.

III

Do not say: "The load is too heavy for me"; say rather: "I have not yet learnt the way how to bear it."

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Moral idealism has not the necessary effective power. What is required is the Truth of the Spirit.

It is no longer the Age of Reason. That age has passed: it is dead and gone. One should be ashamed now of professing scepticism, agnosticism as the hallmark of culture and enlightenment or the aristocracy of the intellect. This is the age of the luminous faith and vision – the age of the Third Eye.

Falsehood is not the negation of Truth: it is the imitation of Truth, aping the Truth: it is the caricature of Truth.

The World is false not because it is non-existent, but because it exists in a wrong form. It is Maya, where the rope is taken for a snake.

Falsehood is Truth distorted (Vrjinam) – it is Truth but the life taken out of it, it is dead Truth and a wrong life put into it, it becomes Evil Truth.

Do not criticise, unless you know how to remedy the error you criticise.

Whenever there is an impulse in you to speak of the dark side of a thing, halt then and there, hold back and try to find the bright side, the complementary aspect – there is always a golden line edging the darkest cloud.

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Kindle not the Flame with the wet faggot of desire-energy. It evokes more smoke than light. Seek the Pure Consciousness abiding behind; that alone can bring out the pure light and strongest energy.

Any affirmation made by the mind and the senses as they are at present constituted must be suspected: it is bound to be altogether wrong or very partial and inadequate. Observe and wait for it to pass through the crucible of later experiences - invoking all the while the higher light to descend and intervene.

It is much easier to counter the bad will of the enemy than to butt the good will of the friends.

But the Divine knows how to circumvent all and turn everything to His own use in whatever guise it may appear.

If the Knowledge is not supported by the Will, the Know ledge also gets veiled gradually.

Likewise the Will too gets unsteady if it has not the light of Knowledge in it.

Both together form the twin Ashwins of the Veda who draw safely the chariot of the perfect human adhara.

Modern Knowledge speaks even of anti-matter which is the basis or beginning of a new creation of matter.

With the dissolution all around of the existing things, are we at that momentous critical point when the past fades

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into oblivion ushering in a new dawn of creation – turning the world as it were on a reverse gear?

A Power, a Presence has come down near to us upon earth and is moulding infallibly the earth-substance into something which it has been always aspiring for but has never attained till now in an appreciable degree. Today the possibility is an actuality before us.

We have assembled here so that each individual contributing his mite of sincerity and efficiency, a combined endeavour may create a wide and secure opening for the new Power and Presence to come to its own and possess a home in the material life here below.

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WHO is the Mother of Dreams? And what is a Dream, after all? Where is the world of dreams?

Dreams simply mean possibilities, whatever has not happened physically, materially upon earth till now, but can happen one day. This when translated in the human mind is termed imagination.

The Rishis spoke of three worlds, three states of being and consciousness. The waking state, the dream state and the sleep state. The waking state means the physical conscious­ness, the material reality, earth. The dream state means the inner consciousness, the world of subtler formations. It is called the mid-world. Further beyond is the sleep-world, where all outer formations and movements are stilled into their fundamental essences. These are the three stages of the manifestation or evolution of a transcendent Fourth beyond (Turiya). The Transcendent first throws itself out into es­sential types, original norms of creation, the generic pattern. It is concentrated being and consciousness (Prajna). It is the matrix of creation out of which sprout forth seedlings of an infinite variety. The seeds burst forth and scatter them­selves in multiple forms and in multiple directions, pursuing all lines and possibilities of growth and fruition; it is called Hiranyagarbha, the golden embryo. Last comes the actua­lity; the physical reality into which all the possibilities

* Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems (Cent. Ed., Vol. 5), p. 67.

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embody themselves one by one, become earthly facts and figures. It has been named Virat, the Vast, the Concrete.

The Mother of Dreams then is the divine intermediary, the supreme creative Force, the' Mother of Energy. The mighty dynamo fabricating and throwing out endless streams of possible and impossible things. Worlds and gods and men and creatures are all her children – built with her flesh and blood, inspired by her breath, moved by her gesture. But she is the Mother not only of the Shining Ones, but also of the Dark Ones. Calamity and prosperity, rise and fall are cadences in her enchanting symphony. She holds them all in her bosom and carries them forward through a variegated play, a chequered progressive evolution towards their highest and supreme Destiny upon this earth.

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NARAD's VISIT TO KING ASWAPATHY*

DEV ARSHI Narad, as usual, was sailing through the spaces, with his Vina, singing songs of innocence and joy. He was in the higher luminous heavens, the world of happiness, of light and delight, his heart full of divine felicity and his music echoing the music of his heart. Now he thought of coming down, into the lower spaces, regions nearer to the earth. And as he entered the earth atmosphere a change came over the tone and temper of his music. With the thickening of earthly shade, a darkness stole into the clear range of, his music and consciousness. Instead of peace and love and joy his music turned to themes of sadness and struggle and battle and doom – of great heroism and conquest and of the supreme fulfilment of human destiny. In and through this dark passage, there emerged slowly a new radiance, the advent of a new conquest for the human consciousness - the possibi­lity of man rising' from the animal to divinity.

Narad himself represents a divine consummation of the human being. He is a devarshi, that is to say, he has by his tapasya and spiritual growth surpassed his humanity and developed into a divine immortal being. Now his special work is to be a wandering angel - surveying the world, help it in its onward march, bring to mankind the aid for its forward march, so that it may battle successfully with the hostiles, overpower the hostiles and win the glory of divine immortality.

* Savitri (Cent. Ed., Vol. 29), Bk.VI, C.I, p. 415.

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LINES FROM Savitri

A seer was born, a shining Guest of Time.

For him mind's limiting firmament ceased above,

In the griffin forefront of the Night and Day

A gap was rent in the all-concealing vault;

The conscious ends of being went rolling back:

The landmarks of the little person fell,

The island ego joined its continent:

Overpassed was this world of rigid limiting forms:

Life's barriers opened into the Unknown.!

Notes:

Griffin = Golden Hawk

+

Winged Lion

The piercing eye of soaring aspiration

+

Upsurging energy of the pure vital

Remember Vishnu's Garuda

+

Durga's lion

With these twin powers you cross safely the borderland between the lower and the upper hemisphere - the twilight world (Night and Day) - Griffin is the guardian God of this passage - Dvarapalaka. '

1 Savitri (Cent. Ed., Vol. 28), Bk.I, C.3, p. 25.

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II

Then stretches the boundless finite's last expanse,

The cosmic empire of the Overmind,

Time's buffer state bordering Eternity,

Too vast for the experience of man's soul:

All here gathers beneath one golden sky:

The Powers that build the cosmos station take

In its house of infinite possibility;

Each god from there builds his own nature's world;

Ideas are phalanxed like a group of sums;

Thought crowds in masses seized by one regard;

All Time is one body, Space a single book:

There is the Godhead's universal gaze

And there the boundaries of immortal Mind:

The line that parts and joins the hemispheres

Closes in on the labour of the Gods

Fencing eternity from the toil of Time.¹

Notes:

Ideas are phalanxed like a group of sums;

Thought crowds in masses seized by one regard.

The image is that of the composition of an army or that of a mathematical series (e.g., arithmetical or geometrical pro­gression). It is composed of regularised units of different values (group of sums), but all measured and definite and pre­cise – e.g., in the case of an army – company, brigade, battalion, army – an ascending scale, the whole also form­ing one big unit, taken in at a glance – that is the nature of overmind vision.

Note, a unit is a summation or-sub-units – even the ulti­mate units are composites (masses, in case of bigger units)­ – e.g., molecule, atom, particle (nucleon), point.

¹ Savitri (Cent. Ed., Vol. 29), Bk, X, C.4, pp. 660-61.

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III

.I saw the Omnipotent's flaming pioneers

Over the heavenly verge which turns towards life

Come crowding down the amber stairs of birth;

Forerunners of a divine multitude

Out of the paths of the morning star they came

Into the little room of mortal life.¹

Notes:

The whole thing refers to the New Creation coming down from above – now down into the psycho-vital or physico-­vital or even the subtle physical plane. This New Crea­tion is the creation of the Divine Love – the Mother's Love.

Morning Star – Venus, Goddess of Love – embodying New Creation.

Amber colour representing a particular plane of con­sciousness. Yellow + red + a touch of brown – physico-vital or even subtle physical plane – the New Creation come down on that plane.

¹Savitri (Cent. Ed., Vol. 28), Bk.III, C.4, p. 343.

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DANTE is known as a great poet and also as a great seer: Sri Aurobindo mentions him as one of the very greatest. He names three as the supreme poets of Europe, of the very first rank: Homer of ancient Greece, Dante in the Middle Ages, and nearer to us, Shakespeare. Along with these Sri Aurobindo mentions also Valmiki of India. However I shall speak of Dante not so much as a poet but as a seer: as such he was a Traveller of the Worlds in the path of the life Divine in his own way; His poem is his autobiography. He speaks of his long journey, even like King Aswapathy in Sri Aurobindo's Savitri, as a traveller of the worlds. Dante describes his journey through the three worlds well-known in Christian theology. He begins in this way his great poem:

I was in the middle of my life's journey, suddenly one day unexpectedly I found myself in the very heart of a mighty forest. It is a wild, grim, frightful place – selva selvaggia ed aspra e forte.

Some of you may remember the description of the Dandaka forest in the Mahabharata, quoted so often by Sri Aurobindo, picturing the vast horror of the forest: vanam pratibhayam sunyam jhillikagananinaditam.¹ Likewise Dante also says that even now when he remembers the scene his heart is full of fear and shivering. However he continues his narration:

¹ "A void and dreadful forest ringing with the cricket's cry." (Sri Aurobindo)

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---

MA non so qual divin romor benigno

vada tonando nei mortali cuori

come canta divinamente il cigno,

lasciando il suo corpo nei freschi fiori.

Puri pensieri, d'un gran impeto il segno,

speranze benvenute, come cori

di voci amabili, fan l'uomo degno

del ciel, vincendo peccati e timori.

Sri Aurobindo

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An Italian stanza

I KNOW not what godly blissful sound

Goes thundering in mortal hearts

Like the swan singing divinely

When it leaves its body amongst fresh flowers.

Pure thoughts, mark of a great urge,

Welcome hopes, like a chorus of kindly voices,

Make man worthy of heaven,

Conquering all sin and fear.

Sri Aurobindo

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Lo, DAWN, the Beloved, appears in her gleaming young body. She impels all life on the path towards the goal. Fire, the Divine Force, is born to be kindled in man. Dawn drives away all Darkness and fulfils herself in creating Light.

She, the Goddess rises lifting her forward gaze towards the Vast, the Universal. She has put on the robe of Light and displays the white brilliance of her subtle norms of Truth. Heaven-gold. is her hue, her vision is all-round seeing: verily, she is the mother of the herd of brilliances of know­ledge, a leader of our bright days; her luminous body is disclosed.

The Goddess, All-Enjoyment she is: she comes carrying the Sun, the Eye of the Gods, bringing here the white Life­ steeds that have the perfect vision; she comes, the Goddess wholly revealing herself in the rays of the Sun. Behold her in her multiple divine riches, behold her manifest everywhere, in all things, behold her the Mother of Radiance.

All delight is within, all that is hostile to man is afar: so let it be in thy dawning. Build our pasture of infinity, illu­mined with Truth, build our home of delight freed from fear. Drive away all that divides and antagonises, bring to us all the wealth of the human soul, 0 Mother of Plenty, send forth into life all the plenitude of delight.

Goddess Dawn, manifest thyself in our hearts in the play of thy supreme Effulgence, widen the life of this embodied being. 0 Mother of Delight, give us stable impulsion. Give us that plenty whose wealth is the luminous herd of Truth, where range the chariots and horses of Life moving towards Infinity.

We are rich in those riches, we the steadfast aspirants. 0 Goddess, born in perfection, Daughter of Heaven! We foster Thee with our thought-streams and Thou too holdest in our bosom the knowledge won and the Vast and the Seas of Delight.

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Songs of Ramprasad

( I )

SAY what does it mean:

the eyes drip with tears (when one takes the name of Kali) ?

You have seen much, your. wisdom is great,

say for certain what it is.

One sense I make out: the body is but a sunken log!

The name Kali is a fire burning .on the tongue,

a fire that is flowing water, flooding water.

I meditate also upon the Lord and close my eyes

and wait for sleep to descend.

The Lord carries the Ganges on his head and

it is her clear stream.

The Guru commands, the holy spot between the eye-brows

is a place of pilgrimage surpassing others –­

It is the fruit that the confluent Ganga and Yamuna

bear together.

Prasad says, 0 my mind, this much I beg of you,

May I find a place near you on the bank of the confluence.

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( II )

I HAVE brooded over it

and I am utterly confused;

She in whose name one defies dark Time,

she at whose feet lies low the Supreme

in his pure whiteness,

why should she herself be black?

Many are the forms of blackness,

but here is a very marvel of blackness.

If you hold it in your heart,

the lotus there shall bloom and illumine all ­

Oh, she is dark and her name is Mother Darkness:

she is blacker than blackness.

But one who has seen that beauty is lost for good,

he will have no eye for any other beauty.

Amused and curious Prasad says: where was She,

such a lass!

Never saw her, only heard of her and yet the mind

has shot out and stuck into Her!

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IT is all well, it is all well:

If a speck of light from out of the sky

Just flitted into my room,

It were indeed a thing of unbounded joy.

But when the whole earth

Lies enveloped in darkness,

I for myself need no light,

Never into the tribe of jackals

Would a stag enter, its horns clipped and shorn.

I worship light

And I sing to Darkness:

This is no contradiction.

For the life I would fain touch

Still lingers on darkness' edge

And I must love Darkness

To reach out to that life.

Gopal Bhowmik

Page 71

ONCE more I turn to the gloomy river bank,

I turn to the embedded breeze here,

To the dense and intimate shade of the Bo-tree,

Once more I return to the darkness.

I have, O Darkness, lighted lights

Ever keener and keener;

And I have found no comfort there,

Nor consolation in that light.

O Darkness, I turn to thee, receive me.

Nirendranath Chakravarti

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FORWARD! ... March on, ever forward!

Mother's army we are! On to the battle for her final self-revealing!

If ourselves we do not fall back,

Who can stop our drive?

We are the bridge between earth and heaven, God's labour fulfilled.

Hard is the path, ever harder, but on we go with energy undaunted:

'We shall seize the all-swallower and lay him low at the feet of the All-victorious!

We shall never fail,

We spring from the Mother's Force:

On we drive over towering boulders of danger and difficulty!

Mother is our Home of Joy, Mother our Mantra;

Victory is ours, sleepless we shall battle and bring to Her the Victory.

We hurl our darts into the heart of age and death,

With steps unfaltering we march onward,

High we hoist the Mother's Flag, victorious and flaming over the world!

Aruna Devi

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SHED not tears of grief, Creeper of the glade!

Shall Heaven's salver simmering with fragrance'

Cast the unsleeping moments of the New Revelation,

as the rosy tint from a brush,

Upon the counter of the hardened miser that has

fallen from the Path?

Shall the branded arm of the harlot wear bracelets

that enshrine the echo of the whitest snows?

Shall the march of divine destinies, revealed

in the memory of the spotless Beyond,

Seek the gradient of a Beauty reeking with the cry of passion?

In silence the Creeper in her ascetic bareness closes her

eyes, vacant and tawny...

Out of the dream of the Night the Artisan has risen in his ecstasy,

And with the jet-black beauty of the benign and peerless divinity

He sets out in lotus hue the arbour of Life

That reaches out to the far heaven, touches the very front of Dawn.

Jyotirmala

Page 77

THY Grace I pray for, a Mother,

Within my heart,

Thy fadeless light

Upon my life's pathway.

O Infinite! O Eternal!

Golden image of love!

With Thy moonglow

Make my night blameless.

I pray for thy grace, a Mother,

Within my heart.

A new music lights festive lamps

Upon the stainless sky,

The cry of Thy flute

Weaves it into the sands of earth.

Creation's brush

Draws its heavenly callygraph

In deathless dawnings.

Awake! awake! my Dream-Queen.

O Mother, I pray for Thy Grace

Within my heart.

Robi Gupta

Page 79

WE are Mother's children,

We are Mother's children.

No less are we, let Death come, we shall win at ease.

Dangers we face on the way, and trample them under,

Our battle-cry dries up oceans, sways over mountains.

Sun and moon and stars move at Mother's word:

Children are we of this Mother; who calls us weak?

What is sin for us, what is heaven or hell ?

The work done, at eve-tide the Mother takes us in her lap.

Chandikananda Swami

Page 81

WHEREFORE this hurry?

The last bus about to start?

What does it matter?

What is the harm?

If the bus goes? there is the train;

If the train goes, there is the plane.

Even if that fails, where's the worry?

Stay down!

You will surely find a nook behind,

And perhaps your mind and many another thing, who knows what....

A dream or diving drowning sleep

Or red showers of Thought

Or a sudden wild gust hurtling through clattering windows

Or fleecy clouds flowing over Heaven's dome

Or a lone darkness echoing - OM OM OM.

Gouri Dharmapal

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Ego

SUNKEN deep down I lie, with my ego

Yet you ask where's the ego?

But it is the ego that has been since my birth

the glory of glories!

It is the mounting plenty to the penniless:

The more you buy up, the more it multiplies…

I am, I am, I am !

The great Eagle in its home one with its Rider ...

One gulpful it takes in its yawning beak

and is again agape for yet another ­–

I am, I am, we are – each and everyone.

Whatever it is – universal or familial or communal ­–

It always conjugates: I am, Lam, We are, We are ...

However universal, familial or communal

It is I, I, I.

That will come one day, possess and fulfil – the Supreme Cause

In answer to the slow-stepping Old Time – the Raven's caws.

Gouri Dharmapal

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WHEN Agni, the Flame awakes, all other gods awake –

Vayu and Soma and Indra and Aditi –

Aditi, the Mother, one and indivisible, and the Word inviolate.

All is burnt, burnt, burnt to ashes!

It is the same, the Fire and the offering and the offerer;

It is the same, the Energy above, the Energy below, the

Energy ascending, descending and surrounding.

It is the Self that is the sun, the cosmos, the Vast!

Master of the Cavern, Ruler of the House, Sovereign of the Heavens;

The universe is His bow and He draws it with a loud clang;

He is the commander, He is the Voice, OM.

Awake, O Word; awake, O wild Winds!

Awake, O Tempests; awake, Lightning!

Out of the ocean of the heart, awake, O Himalaya!

Awake, O dancing Beauties of Heaven!

Awake, O Supreme! O Supreme, awake, appear

Upon the waters of the Deluge, O Mental Being – Man and Woman!

Gouri Dharmapal

Page 87

I

SWEET MOTHER

(New Series)

The Golden Harvest

The poet-saint Ramprasad says:

“O my man, you do not know how to till!

If you knew! Oh, you have such a piece of land –

This human life of yours!

You could have reaped gold from it.”

Indeed this human body is the precious land from which one could reap a harvest of gold. For this body has the proud privilege of receiving the golden touch of the Divine materially and to hold it and maintain it. This materialisation of the Divine is the supreme alchemy of which the body is capable. There are other forms of union with the Divine, all forms of consciousness, of the mind, of the vital – subtle perceptions, thoughts, emotions, even sensations – all delightful but immaterial: even without the body they can be felt and experienced, they are true and real in their own authenticity. But the body brings in a new element, altogether different a phenomenon. It makes a thing living, real materially. The human body has this strange virtue of Touch – the body contact – which makes what is dead (matter) alive – mrtam kañcana bodhayanti (Rigveda). We know the biblical adage: "The proof of the pudding is in the eating thereof." This capacity of eating is the privilege of the body alone: only the body can supply this proof that makes a thing concretely real. Why did Ramprasad utter these words somewhat rough and uncouth to a civilised

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hearing? - "Oh Mother, I will eat you up, devour you, even as I do a plate of vegetable!" There is delight in devotion, there is joy in surrender, even ecstasy in love, but where is the inexplicable exquisiteness of utter oneness in the physical embrace – as for example, in Radha's experience?

Radha is the personification of the supreme global and integral identification of the Divine with the human, or rather the transfusion of the Divine Person into the substance of the human person. Radha says, every drop of blood, every particle of flesh in her body cries out for every drop of blood, every particle of flesh of Krishna's body. Radha has made, as it were, a fossil transmutation of her body replacing it bit by bit by Krishna's body. She feels she is none other than Krishna, even physically himself. It is an utter unity and identity - not merely in the Vedantic way, up there in Atman, but down here also: it is an infusion or immixture in Nature also. It is a kind of coalescence by fusion as of the sub-atomic particles (– the matrix, by the way, of the supreme incalculable energy). Because of this supreme union and identification, even down to the material body, Radha feels that her body is no longer her own but Krishna's and therefore utterly sacred. She cries out as the Vaishnava poet says: "O sister, when this body dies, do not burn it or throw it into the river, but keep it suspended on a branch of the tamal tree. Tamal has a dark hue, my Krishna is also of dark hue. I love Tamal because I love Krishna."

The earth, the body that has once received the touch of the earth-made body of the Divine never loses the virtue of that contact. That contact remains imbedded in the substance of the mortal human body: it abides there as a secret aroma, as the fragrance of a flower hidden in its pollens. So long as the flower lasts, the perfume' will last – even after, even when it has withered.

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In what does the human touch consist? What is the thing that is specially and particularly human and is not found elsewhere, what makes man human – not merely animal and not solely godly?

Well, it is the mortal element in immortality, mortality immortalised. An animal is mere mortality, a god solely immortality, man a bridge between the two, partaking of both. What makes mortality exquisite and poignant – as sacred indeed as immortality – is that which touched the great poet Virgil who found for it a mantra, almost a mantra, fairly well-known: "lacrimae rerum" – tears of things. There is in mortality a spring that brings forth tear-drops. There is a pathos in the very constitution of mortal things which tends to make the eye liquid as it were. A god is not given to shedding tears, a god is after all the still silent spirit, aloof and away, "beyond the little voice that prays".¹ One

¹I may quote here the lines of two poets who point to this Immortality that is aloof, beyond and indifferent, cold and callous:

"Like winds or waters were herº ways:

They heed not immemorial cries;

They move to their high destinies

Beyond the little voice that prays."

– A.E.

(º The One Will in the Cosmos)

"Nos destins ténébreux vont sous les lois immenses

Que rien ne déconcerte et que rien n'attendrit,

Vous ne pouvez avoir de subites clemencies

Qui dérangent le monde, Ô Dleu, tranquille esprit!"

– Victor Hugo

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may recall here the famous Mahabharata story: it is the swayamvara of princess Damayanti. Damayanti is to choose (that is to say, find out) her hero Nala from among the assembled gods who all aspired for the hand of the beautiful Damayanti. In order to confuse and baffle Damayanti all the gods put on the appearance of Nala. How to find out? How to distinguish? Damayanti was given clue by the winking eye: human eyes wink, a god's never wink. The still unwinking eye is a god's: the human eye blinks or twinkles. That is how Damayanti recognised her human partner.

And it is precisely winking, we may say, that brings out the tear-drop – this is the hallmark of human nature. Winking or blinking means time-bound, time-made, i.e., mortality, therefore inevitably, tearfulness; on the other hand unwinking means the unbroken even stretch of eternity, i.e., immortality. It is this weakness in a thing ephemeral that opens up a secret spring in the human soul. It is a feeling, an elemental feeling that comes naturally perhaps to a humanly divine being, a saint such for example as Buddha. In this case it was named compassion, karuna – one whose being melted in deep sympathy (karuna – karunardra). In the Christian tradition it was called "pieta" (although it is not pity exactly), it is the foundation of the Christian virtue, charity, which was originally named "caritas", it is an exquisite feeling which is crudely called fellow-feeling, it is a deeper sympathy now and then termed empathy, the feeling of intimate togetherness in the root sense. It is not love either which belongs to another category of human feeling. It is in a way the very core of love, love transmuted and subtilised into its very essence: that is per haps the utmost limit of divinisation that is possible for the human element. Beyond it is the Brahman - advaitam, aksaram, anantam, – sunyam – the de-humanised divinity. An exquisite instance of this almost divinised human element – this residuum of humanity raised and taken into

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---

divinity is given by Sophocles in his Antigone.¹ The very first words that Antigone utters addressing her sister express wonderfully this feeling I am trying to express here – this feeling of union and compassion in an exquisite beauty of expression: it has a tone of human frailty – the frailty with which Shakespeare condemns womanhood but a frailty which a divine being does not disdain to own or accept. It is the wonderful integrator of two, rather twin beats – not the subsumption, fusion or annihilation of either in a super-unity, but a close intermingling of two vibrations weaving a magic harmony.

How far can the human be divinised? The Divine as Avatara does become human, almost totally – in appearance at least. One may recall not only the impulses and passions, all the foibles and lapses, even misdeeds liberally recorded of Sri Krishna. But this does not mean that the human has been divinised in him, the Divine has only assumed the human character and qualities, it is after all a disguise, it is an assumption, the adhyaropa of Maya upon Brahman. The Divine is beyond the Maya. The question remains then how far can human remain human and yet be truly divinised. The feeling, the experience in the heart of the saintly human being which we have variously described as commiseration, 'caritas', 'karuna', seems to set the limit of divinisation. There is love of course, but it is a dangerous and ambiguous term. The central truth and reality of love is Ananda – ananda in the category of Sat-chit-ananda. But there I am afraid the human element gets dissolved.

The tear-drop in the eye of the Divine seems to be the supreme status of the human in the Divine. Can one go farther?

We have seen in our Mother the tear-drop, the mark of her Grace, transmuted into her smile – the smile that is supremely divine and supremely human, the utmost elevation of both becoming one.

¹ O lovely head of Ismene, common to both,

born of the same self.

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Throughout the ages whenever there has been a new creation on earth, or manifestation of a new consciousness in earthly atmosphere, it was always preceded by a stage of destruction and dissolution of the old. The dance of Shiva has its two aspects - the bliss of creation and also the joy of destruction – lasya and tandava – both have been equally necessary up till now – complementary to each other.

Destruction means destruction of the unnecessary, unfit, all that refuses to accept the new advent, obstructs it, tries to deny it, – all that is out of harmony with the inevitable new future. Earthly evolution is a march of progression if you fail to keep up with that speed you have to move out of the way, rather you are removed to make room for the next coming stage.

If you are in the older creation or at least are in love with it, attached to it, the destruction becomes painful even fearful and repulsive to you. But if you aspire for the new, are willing to participate in the dawning future, already belong to it, you feel the necessity of this destruction and welcome it to hasten the work and even rejoice in it. You enjoy the joy of destruction – at least Shiva does, the Divine Force does, it seems.

Something like that, in fact the same thing is happening now.

* A report of a private talk.

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Mahakali has started her work of preparation, of elimination – of destruction and dissolution – to clear the path of Mahalakshmi and Mahasaraswati, – the infinite, love and compassion of Maheshwari sanctions and supports it. The new creation, the new world that Mother built and is still building with so much love and care is ready – ready to manifest, to reveal itself in the material field, waiting for materialising on earth, but earth is not yet ready, rather man is not yet ready, he still refuses it, clings to its old dead world – and clings fast to it – he loves this game of falsehood and croockedness. Perhaps truth is too bright too compelling for his egoistic nature and obscure make-up – so he denies, obstructs as much as he can the new consciousness, the new reality. Mother out of her infinite love tried to take this denial on her own self, tried to convince and change as many elements as was possible – then, when nothing more could be done She withdrew leaving the field to her other aspect to do what was unavoidable – the breaking up of the old rigid world. It is a necessity for the ultimate good of earth and even man.

The work has started – call it the dance of Shiva, the tandava or the dance of Kali the fierce Mother – it has started and is proceeding faster and faster on its way. Destruction, dissolution, decomposition – yes that is the first result and we are already witnessing and participating in it, whether we like it or not. It is the Supreme Lord's decree – it is bound to happen. Those who cling to Truth survive, those who make alliance with Falsehood perish – man has no other way than to make a choice, consciously or unconsciously.

It is an inevitable stage, there is nothing to lament or grieve if you are an aspirant of Truth.

The next stage naturally will be the clearance of the debris – a thorough cleaning – elimination of all that was against the truth, the ruin of the dead world, the field will be cleared of all that is filthy and obscure. For then only the new reality

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will be able to come forward, Mother's mission will be fulfilled.

The new creation is already there – forming itself – whatever is happening now in the Ashram and outside, is happening so that it may come forward all the sooner. She is breaking the outer scaffolding within which the new reality has been established, or you may call it a dead shell that is being broken so that the new Reality may come out. It is Mother's action with her own Self. She has taken her Chhinnamasta form. All things She is destroying are her own selves – she is getting rid, as it were, of the old unutilisable limbs of her own body. We may remember Sri Aurobindo's lines:

"...the hour is often terrible, a fire and a whirlwind and a tempest, a treading of the winepress of the wrath of God; but he who can stand up in it on the truth of his purpose is he who shall stand; even though he fall, he shall rise again; even though he seem to pass on the wings of the wind, he shall return. Nor let worldly prudence whisper too closely in thy ear; for it is the hour of the unexpected."

The Hour of God

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The Mother says:

“Just see. Look at me. I am here come back in my new body, – divine, transformed and glorious. And I am the same mother, still human. Do not worry. Do not be concerned about your own self, your progress and realisation, nor about others. I am here, look at me, gaze into me, enter into me wholly, merge into my being, lose yourself into my love, with your love. You will see all problems solved, everything done. Forget all else, forget the world. Remember me alone, be one with me, with my love…. ”

¹One is reminded of Rabindranath Tagore's

Lo, from within our heart, 0 Mother, thou hast come forth in this wonder-form of yours!

I gaze and gaze and my eyes turn not aside.

Lo! The door of thy golden temple is flung wide open, 0 Mother! What a wonder-form I behold before me!

I gaze and gaze and my eyes turn not aside.

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When the Mother was giving collective meditation, in the playground for instance, along with those people assembled there around Her, a different kind of people also joined in and gathered – beings from other worlds, gods and angels.

The Divine in a physical human body upon earth – it is such a temptation for the disembodied beings in the other worlds; it was so great an opportunity to be near the physical aura of the Divine. It was indeed a privilege, the privilege of having a material body, the privilege possessed by human beings alone to come in touch with the divine material body! So these beings rushed down and tried to be as much near as possible to the earth, to bask in the delightful golden sunshine of the physical presence of the Divine upon earth.

Also it is said, when the Mother used to play on the organ, the same thing happened; there was a crowd of invisible listeners around Her; not only so, the Mother Herself revealed the secret, some beings, even departed musicians, also prayed to Her to be allowed to play on the organ through Her fingers – making the Divine their instrument instead of their being the Divine's instruments!

The Mother in Her body was such an abode of miracles.

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She is always there in that realm of the earth atmosphere from where she used to work even when here,- the same now as she was when in our midst. She is available in the same way – only we must know how to approach, to attune ourselves.

She is accessible to our prayer in the same way, even to our prayer most puerile and foolish – if it is genuine, spontaneous, simple and candid, spoken with a child's innocence. She has a ear even to our nonsense.

And yet...

There is some difference between Her being here in the body and Her not being in the body here. The value of her being here in the body we begin to find out and appreciate only when she is not in the body. The appreciation, should it be always behind the experience, should it come always too late!!

When the Avatar comes down, we know, there come down with Him a whole host of His comrades and followers. They

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form a unit, a nucleus, of the new creation that the Avatar initiates. The twelve apostles of Christ are famous. Chaitanya too had his group of Parshadas; nearer to us Ramakrishna with his Vivekananda-group, is familiar to us all.

But the greatest of them all was Sri Krishna who came down with a whole bevy of 16000¹ Gopikas – divine powers, emanations – Matrikas – to rule His new creation, His divine Lila. He was the lord of the Overmind, the cosmic manifestation. He cannot be satisfied with less than cosmic dimensions!

It is said the Avatar descends with His family repeatedly age after age pushing forward the Earth's march towards its divine goal.

Krishna is always conceived as a boy, quite a young boy. Krishna and Radha typify the love of a young boy and a young girl. The conception is to take love at its first flowering, at its earliest and purest expression. Later on with age and youth advancing, it becomes passion, dark and turbid: it grows in force and amplitude, in its own way, but soon it becomes a wild fury to end usually in a catastrophe. The Vaishnava poet says: when childhood and youth meet and unite², then there is born the true love, love Divine. The Vaishnava discipline is to keep and maintain love at this stage and mode; for early youth is the best time and age (vaya kaisorakam vayam). Love Krishna the boy, Jet your heart's yearning be moulded in the crystal clear limpid stream welling out of the pure spring of a new-born heart – that is the way of purifying the vital urge, keeping it ever pure.

1 16000 is a symbolic figure. 16 means full fullness – purnasya purnam; four represents completeness and square of four is complete completeness. The figure 1000 again means integrality, wholeness, cosmocity – infinity. Krishna consciousness is all this. Sahasrasirsa purusah.

2

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The Vedantin seeks to cut away the vital urge – the Purusha separating itself and keeping apart and aloof from the movements of Prakriti, – to push them away from or outside your field of consciousness. It is the path after all of rejection and forgetfulness.

The Tantric is a hero, he does not avoid or bypass the difficulty, he faces the vital urge but not in his own strength, his own individual capacity but invokes the Mother's help; he calls the Mother; the Divine Prakriti into himself so that she fights the battle for him; he simply lies quiet behind, perhaps like the Lord Shiva at her feet. The battle is fought by the Divine herself, the victory he enjoys – even like the victory of the gods given to them by the Divine U ma.

But the Vaishnava has followed the safer and a more pleasant line of approaching the problem seeking refuge in Balakrishna.

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A frail aspiring flame flickers out,

A little soul crosses over

the other Shore,

leaving its burning body.

It reappears as a bud of light,

a wave of music,

a blissful smile,

In the woodland of Heaven!

A creeper damsel seeking its

Kadamba-Shilter:

A darling, invited guest to

The festival of Rasa.

(Poème dansé par Yvonne Artaud)

L UI ET ELLE

L' ANGE MUSICIEN

quatre DIEUX ou DÉESSES

quatre ENFANTS

quatre SERVANTES

deux INITIÉS

LA MULTITUDE

L’ÊTRE NOUVEAU

Le Deux-en-Un

dans le cycle d'éternel retour d'une Manifestation

qui s'enrichit sans cesse,

– le Périple d'Or –,

joue tous leg rôles.

C'est Lui:

l'enfant, le voyageur, l'amant, le disciple,

le triomphateur, l'holocauste,

l'Un,

le Bien-Aimée.

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[Les scènes du Jeu terrestre

marquent differéntes circonstances

de leur multiple Rencontre

et ne se situent pas forcément dans line seule vie.]

L'Être Nouveau

apparaît,

au début d'un cycle,

camille leur manifestation

en un seul corps:

ACTE I : LA DESCENTE

SCÈNE I : LE DEUX-EN-VN

Danse du Périple d' Or

LUI Diadème de rêve!

ELLE Diadème de rêve!

LUI Arabesque de reve!

ELLE Arabesque de reve!

LUI Les univers!

ELLE Les univers!

LUI Leurs myriades d' étoiles !

Leurs myriades d' étoiles !

ELLE Leurs myriades d' étoiles !

LUI Ici passe la grande Voie du temps...

ELLE ...1a Voie des espaces...

LUI Nous nailS sommes égarés

et déjà la Nuit a jeté son gant d'or entre nous.

ELLE Son gant de soleils.

LUE Son gant de défi à la Lumière nôtre.

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Danse du Soleil Primordial

LUI La Nuit lentement nous distingue.

ELLE Deux couleurs confondues en leur source.

LUI La Nuit lentement nous écarte l'un de l'autre.

ELLE Comme le deux mains d'un corps.

LUI Quelle est cette force,

oh! douce, étrange force

qui nous sépare!

ELLE Nous sommes done, bien, Deux.

LUI Nous sommes done, bien, Deux.

Danse de la Contemplation

Danse de l’Étoile Double

LUI La Nuit nous éloigne l'un de l'autre.

ELLE Dérive de nébuleuses.

Dérive d'étoiles, de continents.

LUI Dérive d'atomes.

Danse de la Séparation Joyeuse

SCÈNE 2 : LA SÉPARATION JOYEUSE

LUI Mon beau Miroir!

Ma Toute-Beauté!

Ma Reine!

Nous allons plonger dans la Nuit éternelle.

C’est notre choix et notre bonheur.

Tels deux enfants joyeux

nous irons

jouer dans le jardin éternel de la Terre.

Vois, comme elle est belle!

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LUI Nous y sommes déjà.

Nous Y avons toujours été.

C'est nons qui jouons taus les rôles.

Mais pour cela, il rant nons séparer.

Prelim cette fleur,

en gage de ma Présence éternelle.

Danse de la Présence Éternelle

LUI Vois, comme la Terre est belle!

SCÈNE 3 : LES MONDES INTERMÉDIAIRES

premier tableau: Ie maude des dieux

LUI Ma Splendeur, je vans suis.

Quelle robe de lumière danse derrière vous!

Sur elle ma,barque repose,

tranquille ou affolée,

immobile ou tourbillonnante.

N'allez-vous pas vans retourner?

ELLE C'est vans qui me precedez!

LUI Voulez-vous arrêter la marche des étoiles,

suspendre la cascade dans sa chute,

pétrifier Ie vol de millions d'ailes!

ELLE Je veux retourner

dans notre beau séjour,

au-delà des mondes.

LUI Tous ces jeunes dieux

en route veTS la Terre.

Ils vont jouer là-bas nos beaux jeux !

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Nous avons choisi la Nuit d'or!

Viens!

deuxième tableau: les joyaux

ELLE Ces fleurs

et le manteau, la couronne,

la ceinture d'or de nos incarnations,

les sourires dansants de notre âme

nons attendaient ici.

Leur caresse suave nons enveloppe.

Danse des joyaux

Ici, tous sont des enfants.

Des yeux tout neufs,

un cœur tout neuf

pour regarder Ie maude.

Tout ce que nons avons vu taut de fois,

nons devons l'oublier.

Alors,

chaque chose s'offre à nons

pour être découverte.

Chaque cristal ouvre un maude de merveilles.

L'herbe, la rivière chantent de bonheur;

et chaque goutte d'eau contient Ie Bien-Aimé.

Et au lieu d'etre Dêux,

nons sommes des myriads

à nons aimer.

LUI Des myriades...

ELLE ...et des myriades,

des myriades, des myriades, des myriades, des myriades...

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SCÈNE 4 : L'INCARNATION

SERVANTE Du courage, Madame.

Il sera beau comme feu son père.

MÈRE J'ai tout Ie courage d'une reine

et d'une mère et d'une épouse

et d'une servante fidèle.

J'ai Ie courage d'une lionne,

d'tme prophétesse.

Danse au Berceau

MÈRE Je l'ai vu cette nuit,

grand et fort,

man enfant,

notre roi.

Il est taus ceux de sa lignée.

Il est la dynastic tout entière.

Il est la Terre, aussi,

et je ne saurais dire pourquoi.

Il est le recommencement de chaque chose.

Il est Ie Renouveau lui-même.

Qu'ai-je?

Est-ce que je parlais?

SERVANTE Du calme, Madame,

Vous Vous agitez !

MÈRE C'est le moment.

SERVANTE Eh! femmes!

Venez accueillir notre Roi!

RIDEAU

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ACTE II : LE JEU TERRESTRE

SCÈNE I : LA MÈRE ET L'ENFANT

MÈRE Vous touchez main tenant le dôme de vos pères

Vous avez atteint votre faîte.

Votre tendre corps, man enfant,

remplit l'arc de triomphe de sa destinée.

Je dais, line fois de plus,

couper Ie cordon qui ValiS liait à moi.

Vous êtes libre.

ENFANT Mère, ValiS me blessez.

Être votre enfant,

n' est-ce pas pour toujours?

MÈRE Je suis avec toi de toute éternité.

Mais d'une autre manière.

C'est en toi et partout

qu'il faut me trouver.

Il est temps d'aller

où tu dais.

ENFANT Un vent puissant et doux gonfle mes voiles

légères et lourdes de tout leur avenir.

Tous les voiliers du monde

accomplissent en moi leur splendide voyage.

Je suis déjà parti

et déjà de retour.

Et ceux que je rencontre ant un ancien visage;

je les reconnais taus.

MÈRE Ces ruisseaux de joie, de soleil, de baisers,

tes cheveux, man enfant,

ne les laisse pas collier à flats sur tes épaules;

ils s'accrocheraient aux ranees et aux roses.

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SCENE 2 : LES VOYAGEURS

premier tableau: l'arbre

LUI Un lit de pétales d'ombre, pour man repos.

une stèle, pour ma pensée.

line fief, pour man rêve.

Quel manteau de bonheur m'enveloppe,

avec Ie soir!

Arbre, ta sève

bat si doucement contre la mienne.

ARBRE Je t'attendais,

pour refermer sur toi mes bras de rêve avant la nuit.

As-tu un vœu à formuler?

LUI O arbre,

grand Androgyne sacré,

initie-moi à ton mystére.

ARBRE Vois, mes racines plangent

jusqu'à la source de la vie.

Celui qui petit y boire devient immortel.

Vois! mes ramures plangent dans l'infini;

je suis l'espace entire

que remplit Ie soleil.

En moi, les pierres, les fleurs, les animaux,

les enfants, les amants, les étoiles

chantent à jamais.

Je suis Ie Paradis que l'on croyait perdu.

Je suis l'antre de la s'orcière

et la demeure de la fee.

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LUI O arbre,

grand Androgyne sacré,

enfant de la Terre, amant du soleil, coule dans mes veines,

ô paradis, ô immortalite!

deuxième tableau: leg compagnons

LUI Quel luthier conçut

la vibrante colonne de nos corps,

où le vent pénètre de ses doigts musiciens,

que la forêt prolonge...

PÂTRE Chaque fleur, en nous,

se regarde éblouie.

Chaque étoile se reconnaît

au fond du lac d'or de nos yeux.

LUI Quand nous chantons,

même en plein jour,

la Lune et Vénus no us écoutent

et la grande Ourse et Arcturus et Capella.

L' Aventure est notre Fiancée secrete.

Elle nous attend, masquée,

au détour du chemin.

PÂTRE Elle est la Princesse lointaine.

D'elle nous venons,

de son château entre ciel et terre,

et vcrs elle,

la main dans la main,

- guerriers, bâtisseurs, compagnons, voyageurs éternels, éternels errants –, nailS cheminons.

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LUI Pâtre, man ami,

Quell luthier accorda

la lumineuse lyre de nos âmes,

pour que nous vibrions ensemble,

au meme souffle...

SCÈNE 3 : LES AMANTS

LUI II y a line heure à peine,

j'errais encore,

à l'aventure.

Mais chacun defies pas était sûr de lui-même.

Tu me faisais signe,

tu m'appelais,

ô man étoile.

une heure seulement,

au, de longs âges...

Nous avons vécu,

chanté, dansé ensemble,

sur ses chemins de sable, d'eau, de neige,

ses tapis de rocs, de mousses, de fougères,

toutes leg fêtes inoubliables de la Terre.

Le bonheur no us a invités,

dans ses grottes, ses palais,

ses champs de blé, ses champs de guerre.

Le bonheur, fidèle,

la vague ou la fleur dans ses bras,

l'outil, la tore he ou l'arme au poing,

la joie aux lèvres,

partout nous attendait.

Ce sourire,

c'est toi,

ma Bien-Aimée.

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ELLE Nous jouons ensemble,

unis dans line seule flamme,

la symphonie immense de I’Univers.

Des milliers de fête!, encore, no us appellent:

elles d'hier,

celles de demain,

celles de notre Rencontre éternelle.

lei-mêlle,

maintenant,

à jamais.

Scène 4 : leg lnitiés

LUI O mon doux Maître,

j'ai soif d'Èternité!

MAÎTRE Jete conduirai à ta Vérité éternelle.

LUI L'océan de la vie

étend sous moi ses grands lagons tranquilles

où le corail construit la vivante maison des heures, des minlltes.

Mais chaque scintil!ement des eaux brise la coquille de mon rêve. L'appel de l'Infini me déchire.

L'ivresse de l'Infini a prig possession de mon être.

La Terre et I'Vnivers chavirent.

Qui m'attend, là-bas?

Qui m'appelle?

MAÎTRE Toi-même.

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INITIÈ Le Bien-Aimé suprême.

INITIÈ (droit) L' Absolu.

INITIÈ (g) Sois pur de toute souillure!

Sois pur de taus tes arcs-en-del!

Rentre en ta Blancheur originelle!

INITIÈ (d) Rentre en ta Blancheur originelle!

INITIÈ (g) Sois pur de ton présent,

de ton passé et de ton avenir!

Rentre en ta Candeur originelle!

INITIÈ (d) Rentre en ta Candeur originelle!

INITIÈ (g) Meurs à toi-même!

INITIÈ (d) Meurs à toi-même!

MAÎTRE Deviens Toi-même!

Chant de l’Initiation

MAÎTRE Solitaire,

éternel,

rentre dans ta Splendeur originelle!

SCÈNE 5 : L'ADVERSAIRE

ELLE Mon époux, man frère,

nous nous sommes juté line inimitié éternelle.

C'est notre secret.

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Et nous void prêts à nous fonder

dans notre Unité.

La Terre, alarmée, chancelle sous nos pas.

Mon frère, mon époux,

pour respecter notre vœu,

il est juste que ValiS me tuiez.

LUI Ma sœur, man épouse,

vous avez choisi de vivre à mes côtés

comme line ombre impalpable, pour que je règne seul.

Mais c'est vous qui régnez.

La force de mes bras,

le pouvoir de mes yeux,

l'amour de man cœur,

c'est ValiS en moj.

Et si l'un de nous doit disparaître,

si Ie grand sacrifice de la separation

doit être line fois de plus consommé,

c'est moi, ma sœur,

qui partirai.

Accomplissez Ie geste

de nos pius secrètes épousailles.

ELLE Oh! man frère,

mon grand ennemi sacré,

ma main ne tremble pas,

mais ma raison défaille.

Vivons done, en moi,

et mourons en vous,

puis que c'est decide.

LUI Mourir par toi, pour toi,

m' annihiler dans l'éther

des recommencements du monde,

ô joie supreme

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d'aller par un chemin nouveau, tout vierge, Inconnu,

à ta rencontre.

RIDEAU

ACTE III : LE RETOUR

SCÈNE I : LA TRANSCENDANCE

ELLE Feu et feu et feu et feu!

Incandescence innommable,

vers qui l'univers ploie

tel un gigantesque banyan,

avec ses mHlions de branches

qui barattent Ie lait interstellaire

de leurs fouets d'or,

ses soleils radieux

et ses soleils noirs, fruits des ténèbres.

II ploie,

taus ses rayons recourbés vers leur Source

et ses fruits tombent dans la Lumière.

Mais là-bas s'allument encore

des milliards de soleils pour la Fête.

A. moi-même rendue,

à Moi-même identique!

Le banyan disparut, embrasé,

engouffré dans ce Moi

qui ne tolère rien que Soi-même.

Je suis la Joie de ma Joie,

la Vérité de mon Êttre,

l' Absolu de man inaltérable Entièreté.

Je suis 1'Un.

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J e suis l'Inadoré.

Mais la J oie de ma J oie

se trouve Elle-même.

Elle rompt la vertu de son identité.

Elle se dresse face à face.

Car, la Joie de ma Joie

c'est Ie Bien-Aimé.

Danse au Miroir

C' est ainsi,

à chaque instant,

que tout commence.

SCENE 2 : LE SERPENT DE L'INFINI

LUI Me voici revenu,

Absolu, Solitaire,

riche du déroulement innombrable de 1'Êttre.

C'est ici la fin

et Ie commencement du monde,

où je m'embrasse dans une extase éternelle.

Un, et Deux!

ô abîme infini!

Ma Source, ma Cible,

ma Joie qui m'attendait.

ELLE Ma Joie qui me revient.

LUI L' Autre s'unit à l'Autre.

ELLE Le Même avec le Même.

Quel parfum t'environne!

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L'océan, la forét, les jardins de la Terre

chantent dans ta chevelure.

LUI Dansent au creux de tes épaules;

et taus les peuples des créatures,

et l'homme glorifié.

ELLE O unique Tout, Moi unique

peuplé de ma totalité première et éternelle

comme d'étoiles inextinguibles,

je me mire partout en Moi-même,

jusque dans les cellules, les atomes.

Danse de l' accomplissement

LUI Rien ne sortit jamais

de man Identité intégrale.

En elle, quelque part,

- flacon de lumière, mimosa de rêve

­vibre I'Vnivers

où je danse,

multiplié,

pour la Joie de la Joie,

pour l' Amour de l' AT-our.

Danse de la Manifestation Éternelle

VOIX Qui sont ces deux?

Qui sont ces deux?

Les enfants aux yeux de soleil!

Les enfants aux yeux de soleil!

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SCENE 3 : LE DEVENIR

premier tableau: l'offrande

Danse du Piriple d' Or

LUI Des étoiles! Des étoiles!

ELLE Des étoiles!

LUI Tout l'univers est notre corps.

Nos cycles Ie renouvellent, Ie traversent

et chacun y dépose en secret son offrande.

ELLE Vois, camille la Terre est belle,

line toison d'or à nos pieds.

LUI Elle est l'obstinée, la rebelle;

notre corps de tocher, de miel et de parfuj,

notre corps d'oiseau,

notre corps de nuit, de colère.

ELLE Elle est notre défi à l'impossible.

LUI Si elle ne nous résistait pas,

comment pourrions-nous fêter les triomphes

de notre rencontre physique?

ELLE Chaque fois que nous la foulons,

elle, l'obstinée, la rebelle,

garde l'empreinte de nos pas.

LUI Ene ouvre les gorges incomparables de son corps.

Nous remontons le cours des âges,

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jusqu'aux mers inconscientes

où flotte l'anneau fragile de la Vie;

nous guérissons taus leg naufrages,

toutes leg souffrances, leg défaites.

Nous plongeons dans l'abîme de la Matière,

nous réveillons la cellule et l' atome;

alors la Terre vibre et s'embrase

et l'univers tout autour d' elle

offerte à la Joie de puis toujours.

ELLE Enfant de nos mystères.

Offrande inouïe de l'éternel Devenir.

deuxième tableau: la fête

LUI Navigateur sur leg grands courants inconnus

du temps et de l' espace;

ivl'e d'un air argenté

avec Ie condor,

au-dessus des cimes de neige;

fou de lumière avec la nova;

empreint d'une étrange massiveté

avec l'étoile naine;

rose, avec la nébuleuse;

rosi de printemps,

avec Ie cerisier;

seul avec l'homme

dans sa pirogue,

sur l'immensité océane;

seul,

et deux,

et tous;

émergé du gouge de la séparation et de l'inconscience;

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l'homme et la nature

l'homme et l'homme

dieu et dieu

pour la première fois, du fond d'un regard in carné,

se con temple.

ELLE D'homme à homme,

de rocher à rocher,

d'infini à infini

– miroir radieux des soleils,

miel incandescent de l'amour,

substance sacrée de l'orgie éternelle, –

­l'Eil éternel se regarde.

Le Vitrail adore

a ouvert la veine mystique de son cœur.

Et dans line tempête de féerie,

une neige d'amour, dejoie et de lumière

est venue doucement,

par leg chemins sam nombre,

couvrir, de son manteau tranquille,

les monts et leg vallons de la Terre.

Du fond de l'abîme des âges,

monte, avec ses peuples, ses troupeaux, ses forêts,

la grande migration de l'Extase.

– l'Un, l'Une, l'Unique

de l'éternel Devenir.

RIDEAU

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