The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 10

THE AUTHOR

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by some of the most penetrating studies of the import of recent explorations of science. He has been editing two of the most important periodicals, in English and Bengali, published by the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry. He holds the position of Dean of the Faculty of Languages at the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education to which he is a constant inspiration.

Sisirkumar Mitra

Series One

Section One

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I

Cycles of Creation

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

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

The present major cycle aims, as I have said, at the manifestation of the Supermind and the installation of the supramental race. The cycle started, one does not know when, billions of years ago perhaps, but the principle of the creation seems to be clear enough. It has matter for its base, earth as its centre and man as its dynamic agent. For all we know there may be, there are other principles-and modalities of creation. One may well conceive of air,

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for example, as the basis of creation and some other heavenly body, an airy globe in a far-off galaxy, for example, being the basis of creation and an airy creature as the vehicle for the play based upon that principle. Even fire may be the basic principle of another creation and salamander-like beings its natural inhabitants. There may be quite other principles or modes of creation conceivable or inconceivable by the human mind. However, we speak now of the present terrestrial creation of which we human beings are representative participants.

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

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

The first step in this momentous movement has been taken, the first act achieved, for the supramental is now here established in the earth's atmosphere and is already percolating into general human consciousness. It is no longer a far-off object residing away in its own home, its higher transcendent status, but a concrete reality as

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something like earth's own. It is at work in this material envelope, this animal encasing of humanity and is vigorously transforming, demolishing and building, preparing the new structure.

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

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out-growing its grosser movements and instincts, controlling and guiding, modifying and utilising them to higher purposes (Pashupati) may well be a happy stage towards the final appearance of the supramental race wholly transcending the frame of animality, born and existing in the purely supramental way.

A supramentalised material universe or rather physical earth may itself put on a different, a radiant appearance and also the beings and creatures of the other levels of life and physical existence may also undergo a sea-change, but of that nothing need be or can be previewed at present.

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II

Beyond Vedanta

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

First, then, the total "and absolute dissolution of this creation of ignorance, the Creation which is ignorance, and attaining a status of nothingness, absolute annihilation, then in that blank void emerges the Residue, the One True Reality—a silent, infinite eternal immobility, a pure Existence. In the beginning the Non-Existence (Asat), then there arises the Pure Existence (Sat). That pure Existence is gradually found to possess or be Delight also. As Being is not the being in creation even so the Consciousness

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is not the normal or mental consciousness, and Delight too is not the joy of life; they are all of quite another quality and category.

In other words Purusha is given the exclusive reality, while Prakriti is negated, being identified with unconsciousness and ignorance, is relegated to a status of relative reality. Prakriti is considered as māyā, the illusory con-sciousness, the ignorance. Purusha is the Brahman, the Conscious Being, the One Absolute Pure Reality.

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

The Whole bifurcation between Tantra and Vedanta hinges upon one point. The Vedanta overlooked one term of the Truth and missed thereby a whole world of experience and reality. The central term of Vedanta is taken

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as Consciousness, Consciousness pure and simple. It omitted the fact that Consciousness is also Energy. That Chit is Tapas is the central principle in Tantra. The exclusive stress on Chit, Pure Consciousness, led to the realisation of the Pure Purusha as mere Witness, Observer, a passive consciousness. Subsequently it was also added that the Purusha is not merely a Witness, (sākṣī), but the Upholder (bhartā), even Enjoyer (bhoktā) of the world and creation; finally it was added also that the Purusha may be a creator also (kartā), but all this is somewhat outside the pale of orthodox Vedanta, Mayavada. Tantra equated Consciousness with Energy; for it Conscious Energy or Consciousness-Energy is the indivisible Mother-Reality.

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

An earlier form of this humanised love was given in Buddha's Compassion. The transcendent Delight (Ananda) was made terrestrial and human in Buddha. But Buddha's compassion was a universal feeling and had no personal frame as it were. Vaishnavism gave it a personal frame and a human form. Radha and Krishna are not figures of an allegory but concrete realities. Vrindavan is not merely the land of heart's desire, a garden of paradise but real habitation in a real and concrete consciousness and life. The human frame assumed by Radha and Krishna is not merely an assumption, an illusion but an etersal

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reality in an eternal domain. The gradation of the spiritual domains is thus sometimes given as (I) Brahma-loka of the Vedantin, (2) Shivaloka of the Tantrik and finally (3) Goloka of the Vaishnava.

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

Still the Vaishnava love in its concrete reality is a manifestation

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in a subtle world, the world of an inner physical consciousness.

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

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III

Life in and through Death

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

Creation started originally with an absolutely inconscient existence. It is the pressure of an indwelling spirit— the Grace descending into matter—that has forced matter to burst into, to flower into forms of light and consciousness.

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The pressure is ever-present and the flowering continues into higher and higher modes of the Divine Consciousness. The figure '52' of the mythological legend denotes perhaps the integral multiplicity of the manifested universe. We may suggest an interpretation just to satisfy a mental curiosity: 52=50+2; and 50 is 5x10. The number 5 is very well-known as representing the five planes of consciousness, and as there is a descending and an ascend-ding movement in each level—that gives the number 10. And 5 times 10 is 50. This makes up the manifested creation. The remaining two are the Supreme Divine and his Shakti, or two unities at each end—the one above, the one below. This however may be considered as a playful calculation meaning to represent, as I said, a multiple integrality of existence.

The injunction is: you must die to the world if you want the life Eternal. Even so you must die to yourself if you want the Divine. The existing life which your ego has built up is a life of ignorance, misery and decadence. Death is indeed the natural and inevitable consequence; but this is a death in ignorance and bondage, it does not lead you to liberation and freedom. The dying that liberates is a conscious, deliberate movement of intelligence and will; dying to the world means withdrawing yourself from the world and turning within. Dying to yourself means withdrawing from your egohood and turning to the self, the being that is beyond. This withdrawal is to be done constantly and consistently in all the parts of the being. The mind is to move away from its thoughts, the

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vital from its desires and impulses and the body from its hunger and thirst. The first result of this withdrawal is a division of the being, an inner passive part and an outer active part. The inner part becomes gradually a mere witness and the outer part a mere mechanical functioning. When the withdrawal is so complete that the outer being or the world has no effect upon the inner, does not raise any ripple in it by its touch or contiguity then is accomplished the real death. Then it is said the outer existence, the material life does not continue long, it comes sooner or later to a dead stop. Thus the inner being is liberated completely and is freed into the life beyond, the Divine Existence, the Brahman. It is said that when each and every seed of the various elements that compose the being, that sprouts into the luxuriant tree of material life, when each and every seed is burnt up by the heat of mounting 'tapas', the force of aspiring consciousness, then there is no more chance or possibility of an ignorant earthly life, one is then naturally born into the Life of the Eternal. That is the final, the supreme death which is laya

To live away from life and consequently away from death is one thing, comparatively easy; but to live in life and consequently in death is another thing, somewhat more difficult. To withdraw oneself from the field or death and retire in the immutability beyond or some form of it is what was attempted in the ancient days. But there has been side by side always a growing tendency in man to stay here in this vale of tears under the shadow or pralaya.

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of death, to live dangerously and face the Evil and conquer it here itself; for death is not a mere negation ah annihilation of the reality, it is only a mask put over the reality or is its obverse. Tear off or remove the disguise, you will see the smiling radiant Godhead behind.

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

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Prakriti is only the apparent aspect of the Higher Prakriti, the Para Prakriti, which is supremely conscious, for it is one with the Supreme Purusha.

This Higher Prakriti is the inner reality of each created cell of the universe. And it is always insisting and working for the elimination of its counter-part, the inferior Prakriti; and evolution, human or cosmic is nothing but the gradual corroding of the inferior Prakriti by the pressure of the Light-Energy of the Higher Prakriti. One day when this lower Prakriti is dissolved in this way in each cell, the fullness of the radiant manifestation, an embodiment of the Divine Reality will be realised upon this material earth made spiritual, in this human body made Divine.

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IV

Transfiguration

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

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

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there always.

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

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As of the Brahman, even so of the Brahman's qualities. They are various aspects, living aspects or personalities of the One Divine. The Vedas therefore consider them as Gods and Goddesses and give each one a name and a form. They are adored and worshipped as such so that they may enter into the worshipper and transmute him into something of His image. The Gods bring riches to man. But these riches are they themselves. Vasu is the richness, of their substance, Ratna is the wealth of their delight.

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

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

In this way we come very far from the Supreme Brahman,

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the Mayavadin's inane Unity. The Puranic multiplicity is perhaps a corrective of the Vedantin's empty Absolute.

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

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

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V

Mind and the Mental World

The world of the mind is a vast field, even vaster it seems than the physical world. The physical world extends, science tells us, to minions of light-years. We may say practically, it is an infinite extension and mind is a thing which surrounds, envelops this measureless extension. Mind surpasses the physical on another count, that is to say, in respect of speed. A material body at its best travels at the speed of light, that is to say, in a second it goes about 200000 miles (a little less). But thought does not meet any obstruction in respect of distance; whatever the distance, it reaches its goal immediately, it does not take account of time.

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

The mental world, the world of thoughts, is a world in itself. It is autonomous. It moves in its own way with

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its own laws. We human beings, we believe that it is we who think, that is, produce or create our thoughts. We are the makers of our notions and ideas. But in reality it is not so. Thoughts, ideas, notions, all movements of the mind are self-existent realities. They go about or flow on like the waves of a vast sea. Human beings are mere instruments, receptacles that capture or seize some undulations of this vast ocean. Man is man, that is to say, a mental being, because in him the brain has developed to such an extent and in such a manner that it serves as antennae or as an aerial to receive vibrations from the mental world. Indeed the ordinary human mind is a sort of crossroads where all kinds of thoughts from all places meet, cross one another and make an ideal market place. In fact, an individual does not possess any thought-movement which can be called his own. He only catches a contagion. And like a contagion thought-movements pass from one person to another although one may think or feel that the movement is one's own.

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

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that are of a contrary nature should be pushed out. This is an exercise that develops the individual consciousness and the individual will.

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

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

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

Mind is a force, thought and energy but that can be truly and fully effective when it is organised, directed, that is to say, it becomes then a guided missile. In an ordinary mind the thoughts are, as I have said, dispersed, they go about in all directions, to all objectives and therefore their efficacy is at its minimum. It is like light. Light-energy becomes immensely, incredibly powerful when it is concentrated, gathered towards one point. It is in this way the light-ray nowadays is trying to replace the surgeon's knife.

Usually when we think of a person or a thing, our

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

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VI

Beyond the Dualities

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

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

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for one can rise above the mind and see and experience the reality.

There are other dualities that are confusing to the mind. It is said two objects cannot occupy together the same spot or position. One object must drive out another to occupy its position. Obviously this is a truth belonging to the material world—for it is said matter is impenetrable. But this law, however valid in the material plane, becomes less and less applicable in regions subtler and less and less material. Two movements or two vibrations of consciousness may exist together without annihilating each other's identity, being a total identity.

And there is a law, a law of scientific rational inquiry which they have posited and called the law of Parsimony which means that a simpler solution to a problem is always to be preferred to a complex solution. But if it means that a simpler truth is more true than a complex one then we would be on a doubtful and even dangerous ground. To find a simple truth one may be tempted to slice off truth, that is to say, reject or ignore or shut one's eyes to some forms or aspects of the truth, even those that belong to its very essence. In fact the real world is not a very simple thing, it is complex to its core. Contraries and even contradictories co-exist in the universe and they have to be equally accepted in an inevitably complex solution. Modern science is in such a delicate situation. How can the same thing be a particle and a wave at the same time? How can a point be also a line at the same time? How to reconcile, assimilate, synthetise electric energy

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and gravitational force which seem to be two distinct and incommensurable entities governing, between them, the universe in its ultimate analysis? In other fields also, social and political, there are ideologies, forces that run contrary to each other but claim equal allegiance of mankind.

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

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VII

The World is One

The world is one, in fact and in potentia.

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

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

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scientists are now handling as the 'laser' or 'maser' beams^l Likewise, the vital world is also one. It is one life that pulsates in and through all living formations—one sea as it were, swaying and heaving and breaking into innumerable waves and ripples. In spite of infinite variations there is one over-all pattern that persists through the living creation. Anatomy and more clearly physiology links in a strange way even the plant and the animal and man. And in humanity if there is a great vital upsurge somewhere, it spreads its vibration far and wide like a seismic motion. And it is because of this vital unity that there arises the phenomenon known as contagion or pest and pestilence—that is to say, mass-movements are occasioned by one indivisible life-urge. A common suffering or a common elation is normal to human life.

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

Coming next to Mind, the unity here too, is quite marked, clearly discernible. There is only one Mind that rules the myriad mentalities of this world. Thoughts and

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

Maser: Multiple amplifications, etc

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

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

Now if one goes to the very source, the very root of the matter, the cardinal fact of unity is that of the supreme Consciousness, the original oneness of the one Divine Existence. It is the Ultimate One, inviolate, inviolable —ekam sat. That unity is transferred or translated or imaged on all the levels and strands of creation. That is the basic reality that holds together all tiered multipli­cities. True, there has been side by side a movement of

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aberration, denial, disjunction in the multiple formulations and translations of the One. A re-union remains to be achieved conveying and embodying the basic unity.

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

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

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Section Two

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VIII

Consciousness as Freedom

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

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

Consciousness, however, is not mere consciousness, that is to say, awareness; it is also power, power for organisation and execution. It is unconsciousness that is or invariably leads to disorderliness, disorganisation and.

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confusion. It is the light of consciousness that brings order out of chaos, gives an organised direction to forces moving at random and with no purpose. Man has started organising his life since he acquired the light of consciousness. He has been doing the yoga of the intelligent will (Gita's buddhi-yoga) since his advent upon earth. But even in man this force of light, the energy of conscious­ness is not fully operative because man is not fully con­scious, he is only partially so. His mind is conscious and has developed into intelligence (a little strayed into in-tellectuaUty); but there are large domains in him that are wholly unconscious, that is to say, move in mechanical rounds, a passive slave of external impacts. I am refer­ring to his vital being and his physical being. Even like the mind these too must admit into themselves the light of the consciousness in order to free themselves from the influence of other external forces and attain the sense of their own truth and self-fulfilment.

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

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secures the strength also to act up to the directions of that light.

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

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

In fact, education means precisely this instilling of the consciousness into the part that is sought to be educated. Usually the thing is done in a different way which is wrong, at least an inefficient way. By education we usually

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

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

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IX

Education as the Growth of Consciousness

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

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

True education is growth of consciousness. It is consciousness that carries the light and the power of the light. We are born upon earth with this consciousness at the centre of our being. And a growing child is nothing but a growing consciousness. Growth of consciousness means an increasing intensity and an increasing amplitude or wideness of the light. Unfortunately, placed as we are under the circumstances of life as it is, this light of consciousness

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is not allowed to grow in its natural and normal way. The external demands of life and the world put a pressure upon it which turns it away from its straight path. Things are demanded of this light or consciousness which do not belong to its nature, which are not an expression of its nature. As though it is twisted, tortured or smothered under utilitarian necessities.

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

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X

Education is Organisation

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

As for the mental faculties so for the faculties of the vital. The normal vital being in man is in a greater and perhaps more dangerous chaos. The impulsions, emotions, upsurges that belong to this domain have not so much to be developed or increased as to be purified, made conscious, yoked together in a common drive towards a harmonious dynamic realisation in life and life's achievements. And lastly the organisation in the physical body. The limbs of the body have not even growth, they do not move together

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in a balanced and rhythmic way. Some are unhealthy, some do not work, some others are overworked. These too have to be co-ordinated, each set in its place and made to function in unison with others. That is physical education and that too means perfect organisation.

We have said that organisation means working for a common end and common purpose. That comes from an opening into a deeper and higher level of being. We name it the soul. The soul's purpose, the soul's destiny has to be achieved and fulfilled. An organised and educated mind and life and body means to be the best and the most perfect vehicle for the expression upon earth of the soul's consciousness.

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Section Three

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XI

Beyond Love and Hate

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

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electrical energy and therefore substantially they are one and the same.

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

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XII

The Divine Grace and Love

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

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

But instead of giving any boon, any treasure physical or material or even spiritual, however precious, instead of giving anything the Divine may give Himself to one who approaches Him; then it becomes something more than the Grace, it is Love, the Divine's Love—His own Self. It is His own substance, His own delight of being that He gives, not anything external or extraneous. One remembers the story of Arjuna and Duryodhana. Duryodhana approached Krishna and thought the utmost, the best that he could secure from Krishna was Krishna's battalions,

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for that seemed to him the most precious gift of all, for that is the thing he would need most in the coming battle. Arjuna asked for nothing else but Krishna Himself.

Grace is of Maheshwari, that is to say, it is the special attribute, a particular emanation of her own self, it is a form of herself in an attitude that belongs particularly to her. Love is of Mahalaxmi, it is her own special form and gesture. Or, varying the image we may say Grace is Shiva, the benign white radiance on the supreme heights enveloping the creation in its calm immutable compassion; while Krishna is Love, the immortal delight dwelling in the heart of mortality.

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XIII

Go through

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

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

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of loving brings to you a greater delight, a new thrill and poignancy, proper to a pure feeling.

Indeed not only love but all human impulses and urges are to be dealt with in the same way. The Gita furnishes a beautiful and crucial example. The Gita teaches man to go through the field of activity and not to reject or avoid it. The whole of the Gita is an ideal lesson in the technique of going through. The Gita says, do not renounce work but dedicate it—not karmatyāga. What does this dedication mean? The first step in the pro­cess of dedication is desirelessness—to do work without desire. It is usually thought that desire is the source and origin of work. If you have no desire, you have no need or impulse to work. But this is a very superficial view of things. The impulse for work springs from elsewhere, from a deeper and impersonal source. The true spirit in which you should work is, as the Gita enjoins, to do a work because it is a thing to be done, not because you desire it. So naturally you do not hanker for the fruit of your action. First then, no attachment to the action itself, then no attachment to the fruit that it brings. This can be done only when you are unselfish. Not only unselfish­ness but you have to go a step farther, to selflessness. So then there are these three stages in the process of dedica­tion or purification. First to work without desire, with­out attachment to the result of the work. Then you will be able to see that you are an instrument only, the work is being done through you. At the beginning you are a desireless, unselfish doer of works, next you see yourself

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as a detached witness of your action and finally you see that the action happening in you is Nature working in you, Nature the instrument of the Divine. Finally yourself is no longer there, it is the Divine alone that is and acts.

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

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

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is how you purify and divinise your human elements. That is how you go through ignorance and mortality and arrive at knowledge and immortality.

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XIV

Night and Day

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

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

To have control over the night one must, first of all, be conscious of what happens in the night, that is to say

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one must remember the events that occur in sleep. Usually one forgets and cannot recall easily the experiences that one has gone through while asleep. The first exercise then is, as soon as you awake, to retain whatever happens to linger still in memory, and then with this as the leading string to go backward to happenings associated with it. Even otherwise when you cannot recall any particular happening or experience, you can begin your enquiry by noting the nature of the feeling that the experiences have left on you, that is to say, you note whether you passed a good night or a bad night. A bad night means either a tamasic state or a disturbed state. Tamasic means when you get up you feel inert, heavy, depressed, still feeling like going to sleep again. The disturbed state is one in which you feel agitated, unable to control, unable to do any organised work. Instead of this unhappy condition the night may bring to you peace and happiness, a positively pleasurable sensation. That is the first step of the discipline of what I may call night-control viz. to distinguish these two states and react accordingly through your conscious will. The next step would be to distinguish two other categories of the experiences. The one is the confused and chaotic condition in which sensations and ideas and impulsions are in a jumble, a meaningless whirl or otherwise you find your sensations or notions or impulsions moving in an organised and purposeful way. The first naturally brings you discomfort and sadness, the second, on the contrary, gives you a sense of uncommon happiness.

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

Your sleep-world is full of many worlds, rising tier upon tier like hills in a mountain range. Quite at the bottom is an almost physical, a subtle physical world and at the top is the world of the spiritual or psychic being or consciousness.

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You range through all of them in some way or other but you remember only partially and in snippets and you do not know which is which. It is by focussing your attention upon them and trying to distinguish the different modes of each in regard to your feeling and perception that you gradually begin to unravel them, untie the knots and spread out the threads separately.

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Section Four

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XV

The Evolution of Language

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

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

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

Man began to possess, to acquire intuitions and inspirations, that is to say, movements of consciousness that lie beyond the frame given by the sense-mind. These new perceptions could naturally be expressed with difficulty through what one may call the earth-nurtured or earthbound

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language. The aerial luminous character of the mystic consciousness is always said to be beyond speech, beyond even mental formulation.

And yet poets, mystic poets have always sought to express themselves, to express something of their experience and illumination through the word, the human tongue. It is extremely interesting to see how a material, constructed or formed to satisfy the requirements of an ordinary physical life is being turned into an instrument for luminous and effective communication and expression of other truths and realities in the hands of these seer-creators (kavi-kratuḥ). They take the materials from ordinary normal life, familiar objects and happenings but use them as images and allegories putting into them a new sense and a new light. Also they give a new, unfamiliar turn to their utterance, a new syntax, sometimes uncommon construction and novel vocabulary to the language itself so that it has even the appearance of something very irre­gular and twisted and obscure. Indeed obscurity itself in the expression, in the form of the language has often been taken as the very sign of the higher and hidden experience and mumination.

The Vedic rishis speak of the different levels of speech —the human language is only one form of speech, its lowest, in fact the crudest formulation. There are other forms of speech that are subtler and subtler as one rises in the scale of consciousness. The highest formulation of language, the supreme Word—vāk —is 'OM'—nāda —śabda-brahma. That is the supreme speech-vibration.

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the rhythmic articulation of the Supreme Consciousness Sachchidananda; the expression there is nearest to silence, almost merges into silence.

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

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XVI

The Relative Best

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

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

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towards its high destiny—the same as or parallel to that of the individual.

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

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

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XVII

Miracles - Their True Significance

Miracles are happenings where we see the result only without the process that leads to the result. It is like a mathematical problem where the solution only is given and not the gradual steps leading to the solution. The steps may be shortened or altogether suppressed, in the latter case it looks like a puzzle or a riddle or a paradox. We know of mathematical prodigies, we marvel at the capacity they show in performing formidable calculations for which an ordinary mind would need sheets of paper and considerable amount of time. But the prodigy can do it in the twinkling of an eye. He has a consciousness that can contain the whole process in a simultaneous grasp or speed through it like a lightning flash. Therefore the whole thing has the look of a miracle.

Usually, the name 'miracle' is given to something that seems to us "unnatural", that is to say, something that does not conform to the laws of nature or what we think to be the laws of nature. A man standing in the air without any support or squatting on the water—feats familiar to the yogis—are termed veritable miracles. The famous rope trick is a legendary miracle. Some of these miracles done by yogis are authentic facts. They apparendy seem to violate the prevailing so-called laws of nature, but if we knew the process, the mechanism behind the event

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because it is not apparent to the external logical mind, if we had a slightly different perception, the whole glamour of a miracle would fall to the ground.

A miracle is nothing but the intervention of a force from another plane of consciousness. It must be recognised at the very outset that the physical plane of existence is not the only reality, there are many other planes superimposed one upon another, each having its own special consciousness and power, its own laws of being and action. Obviously we all know apart from the material or physical being there is the vital being, the life-force and there is the mental being, the mind-force. And there are many other levels like these. A miracle happens, that is to say, a material formation behaves in an abnormal way because a force has come down from the vital region and has influenced or taken control of the material object. So the material object instead of obeying the material law is obliged to obey a vital law which is of a much greater potency. Yogis who do miracles possess this vital power, they have acquired it through a regular discipline and training. Spirit-calling, table-turning, even curing diseases and ailments in a moment and many other activities of the kind are manifestations of very elementary energies of life. From the occult point of view these are very crude and rudimentary examples of what a different kind of force can achieve on a different plane. Even the vital plane possesses deeper and higher energies whose action on the materiel plane is of deeper and higher category. A deeper or higher vital power can change radically your character and

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long-standing habits, help to mould them into a different, nobler and more beautiful pattern. The mind too is capable of performing miracles, a strong mental energy can dictate its terms to life and even to the body. Only the miracles here are not of a dazzling kind that astound or confound you. They have a subder composition, yet they belong to the same category. In the mind itself miracles happen also when a higher light, a superior consciousness —intuition, inspiration, revelation—descends into the normal mental working and creates there a thing that is abnormal in beauty and truth and reality. Thus for example, a matter of fact mind is seen turned into a fine poet or a workaday hand is transmuted into a consummate artist (as Mother has described).

A miracle can be said to be doubly a miracle; first of all, because it means an intervention from another plane, a superior level of being, and secondly because the process or the action of the intervention is not deployed or staged out but is occult and telescoped, the result being almost simultaneous with the pressure of the moving force.

The supreme miracle, the miracle of miracles happens when the Supreme, the Divine Himself descends and enters into this lower formation and gradually lifts it up in. an incredibly unforeseen way to its divine image.

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XVIII

Short Notes

(i) The sense of Earthly Evolution

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

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

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

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

(2) God above and God within

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

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

(3) Emptying and Replenishment

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

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of cells is Nirvana.

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

(4) Ego

To renounce is a greater delight than to enjoy.

To give is a greater joy than to take.

To love is a greater ravishment than to be loved.

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

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

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

And whatever the interim necessity and utility of the ego, originally and also ultimately it has no space or standing. For originally and ultimately and absolutely, it is the Divine that exists in and through the Divine, moves in and through the Divine to the Divine.

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

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

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

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

(5) Consciousness and Dimensions of View

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

But dimension, in reality, that is to say, the configuration it gives to an object is a function of consciousness. The four-dimensional aspect of material reality is given or projected by what we call the physical consciousness..

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Material time and material space are the two norms through which the physical consciousness deploys itself.

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

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

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consciousness. In the highest status,—we call it Sachchid-ananda, the infinite and eternal consciousness—things attain infinite dimensions, all merged in the Ultimate's unitary consciousness.

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Section Five

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XIX

Prayers and Meditations of the Mother

(I)

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

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

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

This wonder-lyre has three strings, giving out a triple note or strain: there is a strain of philosophy, there is a strain of yoga and there is a strain of poetry. We may also call them values and say there is a philosophical, a yogic

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and a poetic value in these contemplations. The philosophical strain or value means that the things said are presented, explained to the intellect so that the human mind can seize them, understand them. The principles underlying the ideal, the fundamental ideas are elaborated in terms of reason and logical comprehension, although the subject-matter treated is in the last analysis beyond reason and logic. For example, here is true philosophy expressed in a philosophic manner as neatly as possible.—"A quoi servirait l'homme s'il n'était pas fait pour jeter un pont entre Ce qui est éternellement, mais qui n'est pas mani-festé, et ce qui est manifesté, entre toutes les transcen-dances, toutes les splendeurs de la vie divine et toute l'obscure et douloureuse ignorance du monde matériel? L'homme est le lien entre ce qui doit être et ce qui est; il est la passerelle jetée sur l'abîme, il est le grand X en croix, le trait d'union quaternaire. Son domicile veritable, le siège effectif de sa conscience doit être dans le monde intermédiate au point de jonction des quatre bras de la croix, là où tout l'infini de l'impensable vient prendre forme precise pour être projeté dans l'innombrable manifestation..."¹

¹ Of what use would be man if he was not made to throw a bridge between That which eternally is, but is not manifested, and that which is manifested; between all the transcendences, all the splendours of the divine life and all the obscure and sorrowful ignorance of the material world? Man is the intermediary between that which has to be and that which is; he is a bridge thrown over the abyss, he is the great X in the cross, the quaternary link. His true abode, the effective seat of his consciousness, should be in the intermediate world at the:

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Or again

— "Que de degrés différents dans la conscience! II faudrait réserver ce mot pour ce qui, dans un être, est iUuminé par Ta présence, s'est identifié à Toi et participe à Ta Conscience absolue, ce qui est "parfaitement éveillé", comme dit le Bouddha.¹

"En dehors de cet état, il y a des degrés infinis de conscience descendant jusqu'à l'obscurité complète, la veritable inconscience qui peut être un domaine pas encore touché par la lumière de ton amour (ce qui paraît improbable dans la substance physique), ou bien ce qui est, pour une raison d'ignorance quelconque, hors de notre région individuelle de perception."²

However, we note that the philosophical strain merges into the yogic, rather the yogic strain is already involved in the philosophical. Here is an obvious and clear expression of this strain:

joining point of the four arms of the cross, where all the infinity of the Unknowable comes to take precise form for being projected into the multitudinous manifestation....

¹ How many and different are the degrees of consciousness! This word should be reserved for that which, in a being, is illumined by Thy Presence, identifies itself with Thee and participates in Thy absolute Consciousness, for that which has knowledge, which is "perfectly awakened" as says the Buddha.

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

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—"II faudrait que chaque jour, chaque instant, soit l'occasion d'une consecration nouvelle et plus complète; et non pas une de ces consécrations enthousiastes et tré-pidantes, suractives, pleine de l'illusion de l'ceuvre, mais une consécration profonde et silencieuse qui n'est pas forcément apparente, mais qui pénètre et transfigure toute action. Il faudrait que notre esprit paisible et solitaire repose toujours en Toi, et que de ce pur sommet il ait la perception exacte des réalités, de la Réalité unique et éternelle, derrière les instables et fugitives appa-rences."¹

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

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

Tu es la vie de notre vie et

la lumière de notre être,

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

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Tu es le maître de nos destinées."¹

Indeed philosophy and yoga go hand in hand. Yoga is applied philosophy. What is at first mentally perceived and recognised, what is accepted by the reason is made active and dynamic in life.The character embodies the abstract and general principles, the vital energy executes them, that is yoga. Philosophy brings in the fight of consciousness, yoga the energy of consciousness. Here we have an expression of what may be called "yogic philosophy".

— "Il faut à chaque moment secouer le passé com-me une poussière qui tombe, afin qu'elle ne salisse pas le chemin vierge qui, à chaque moment aussi, s'ouvre devant nous."²

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

— "Ta voix est si modeste, si impartiale, si sublime de patience et de miséricorde qu'elle ne se fait entendre avec

¹ It is always good to look within ourselves from time to time and see that we are nothing and can do nothing, but we must then turn our look towards Thee, knowing that Thou art all and that Thou canst do all.

Thou art the life of our life and

the light of our being,

Thou art the master of our destiny.

² We must at each moment shake off the past like falling dust, so that it may not soil the virgin path which, also at each moment, opens before us.

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aucune autorité, aucune puissance de volonté, mais com-me une brise fraîche, douce et pure, comme un murmure cristallin qui donne la note d'harmonie dans le concert discordant. Settlement, pour celui qui sait écouter la note, respirer la brise, elle contient de tels trésors de beauté, un tel parfum de pure sérénité et de noble grandeur, que toutes les folles illusions s'évanouissent ou se transforment dans une joyeuse acceptation de la merveilleuse vérité entrevue."¹

Or more beautiful than the beautiful simplicity of these lines!

—"Comme une flamme qui brûle silencieusement, comme un parfum qui monte tout droit, sans vaciller, mon amour va vers Toi..."²

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

—"Mon coeur s'est endormi jusqu'au tréfonds de l'être..."³

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

¹Thy voice is so modest, impartial, sublime in its patience and its mercy that it does not make itself heard with any authority, any potency of will; it is like a cool, soft and pure breeze; it is like a crystalline murmur that imparts a note of harmony to a discordant concert. Only for him who knows how to listen to that note, how to breathe that breeze, it contains such a treasure of beauty and such a perfume of pure serenity and noble grandeur, that all extravagant illusions vanish or are transformed into a joyful acceptance of the marvellous truth that has been glimpsed.

²Like a flame that burns in silence, like a perfume that rises straight upward without wavering, my love goes to Thee...

³My heart has fallen asleep, down to the very depths of my being.

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of the Romantic muse:—

—"Et les heures s'évanouissent comme des rêves in-vécus..."¹ which possesses furthermore the magic of an indefinable mysticism so rare in the French language. The mystic element gives a special grace and flavour, a transcendent significance serving as an enveloping aura to the whole body of these Prayers and Meditations.

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

—"O Conscience immobile et sereine, Tu veilles aux confins du monde comme un sphinx d'éternité. Et pour-tant à certains Tu livres Ton secret."²

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

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

¹And the hours pass like dreams unlived.

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

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consciousness, of thought-force. In the Prayers and Meditations the fundamental unit of expression seems to be a packet of gracious light—one seems to touch the very hem of Mahalakshmi.

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

(2)

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

Now these prayers—who prays? And to whom? These meditations—who meditates? And who is the object of the meditation? First of all there is the apparent obvious meaning, that is on the very surface. It is the Mother's own prayers offered to her own beloved Lord. It is her own personal aspiration, the preoccupation of the individual human being that she is. It is the secret

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story, the inner history of all that she desires, asks for, questions, all that she has experienced and realised and the farther more that she is to achieve, the revelations of a terrestrial creature of the particular name and form that she happens to possess. Thus for example, the very opening passage of these prayers:

¹"Quoique tout mon être Te soit théoriquement con-sacré, ô Maître Sublime, qui est la vie, la lumière et l'amour de toute chose j'ai peine encore à appliquer cette consécration dans les détails. Il m'a fallu plusieurs semaines pour savoir que la raison de cette méditation écrite, sa légitimation, réside dans le fait de Te l'adresser quotidiennement. Ainsi je matérialiserai chaque jour un peu de la conversation que j'ai si fréquemment avec Toi; je Te ferai de mon mieux ma confession..." (2.11.1912)

But we notice immediately that these are not exclusively personal, absolutely individual assertions. While speaking of herself, spontaneously she seems to be speaking on behalf of all men. The words that she utters come as it were, from the lips of all mankind. She is the representative human being. She gives expression to all that man feels or might feel but is not able or does not

¹ Although my whole being is in theory consecrated to Thee, O Sublime Master, who art the life, the light and the love in all things, I still find it hard to carry out this consecration in detail. It has taken, me several weeks to learn that the reason for this written meditation, its justification lies in the very fact of addressing it daily to Thee. In this way I shall put into material shape each day a little of the conversation I have so often with Thee; I shall make my confession to Thee as well as it may be... (2.11.1912)

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know how to express and articulate. Here is how she describes her function as a representative person—so beautifully, so poignantly:

¹"Alors j'ai pensé à tous ceux qui veillaient sur le bateau pour assurer et protéger notre route, et avec reconnaissance, dans leur cœur, j'ai voulu faire naître et vivre Ta Paix; puis j'ai pensé à tous ceux qui, confiants et sans souci, dormaient du sommeil de l'inconscience, et avec solhcitude pour leurs misères, pitié pour leur souffrance latente s'éveillant en eux en même temps que leur réveil, j'ai voulu qu'un peu de Ta Paix habite leur cœur, et fasse

¹ "I then thought of all those who were watching over the ship to safeguard and protect our route, and in gratitude, I willed that Thy peace should be born and live in their hearts; then I thought of all those who, confident and carefree, slept the sleep of inconscience and, with solicitude for their miseries, pity for their latent suffering which would awake in them in their own waking, I willed that a little of Thy Peace might dwell in their hearts and bring to birth in them the life of the Spirit, the light which dispels ignorance. I then thought of the dwellers of this vast sea, visible and invisible, and I willed that over them might be extended Thy Peace. I thought next of those whom we had left far away and whose affection is with us, and with a great tenderness I willed for them Thy conscious and lasting Peace, the plenitude of Thy Peace proportioned to their capacity to receive it. Then I thought of all those to whom we are going, who are restless with childish preoccupations and fight for mean competitions of interest in ignorance and egoism; and ardently, in a great aspiration for them I asked for the plenary light of Thy Peace. I next thought of all those whom we know, of all those whom we do not know, of all the life that is working itself out, of all that has changed its form and all that is not yet in form, and for all that, and also for all of which I cannot think, for all that is present to my memory and for all that I forget, in a great ingathering and mute adoration, I implored Thy Peace." (10.3.1914)

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naître en eux la vie de l'esprit, la lumière dissipant l'igno-rance. Puis j'ai pensé à tous les habitants de cette vaste mer, les visibles et les invisibles, et j'ai voulu que sur eux s'étende Ta Paix. Puis j'ai pensé à ceux que nous avions laissé au loin et dont l'affection nous accompagne, et avec une grande tendresse, pour eux j'ai voulu Ta Paix con-sciente et durable, la plénitude de Ta Paix proportionnée à leur capacité de la recevoir. Puis j'ai pensé à tous ceux vers qui nous allons, que des préoccupations enfantines agitent et qui se battent pour de mesquines compétitions d'intérêt dans l'ignorance et l'égoisme; et avec ardeur, dans une grande aspiration, pour eux, j'ai demandé la pleine lumière de Ta Paix. Puis j'ai pensé à tous ceux que nous connaissons, à tous ceux que nous ignorons, à toute la vie qui s'élabore, à tout ce qui a changé de forme, à tout ce qui n'est pas encore en forme, et pour tout cela, ainsi que pour tout ce à quoi je ne puis penser, pour tout ce qui est présent à ma mémoire et pour tout ce que j'oublie, dans un grand recueillement et une muette adoration, j'ai imploré Ta Paix." (10.3.1914)

Or again:

¹"Ce que j'ai voulu pour eux, avec Ta volonté, aux moments où j'ai pu être en communion véritable avec

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

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

(22.3.1914)

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Toi, permets qu'ils l'aient reÇu en ce jour où, tâchant d'oublier les contingences extérieures, ils se sont tournés vers leur pensée la plus noble, vers leur sentiment le meil-leur. Que la suprême sérénité de Ta sublime Présence s'éveille en eux." (22.3.1914)

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

¹"...il m'a semblé que j'adoptais tous les habitants de ce bateau, que je les enveloppais tous dans un égal amour, et qu'ainsi en chacun d'eux quelque chose de Ta conscience s'éveillerait." (8.3.1914)

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

²"Lorsque j'étais enfant — vers l'âge de treize ans et pendant un an environ — tous les soirs dès que j'étais

¹...it seemed to me that i adopted all the inhabitants of this ship, and enveloped them in an equal love, and that so in each one of them, something of Thy consciousness would awake. (8.3.1914)

²When i was a child--about the age of thirteen and for about a year—every night as soon as i was in bed, it seemed to me that i came out of my body and rose straight up above the house, then above the town, very high. i saw myself then, clad in a magnificent golden robe, longer than myself; and as i rose, that robe lengthened, spreading in a circle around me to form, as it were, an immense roof over the

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couchée, il me semblait que je sortais de mon corps et que je m'élevais tout droit au-dessus de la maison, puis de la ville, très haut. Je me voyais alors vêtue d'une magnifique robe dorée, plus longue que moi; et à mesure que je mon-tais, cette robe s'allongeait en s'étendant circulairement autour de moi pour former comme un toit immense au-dessus de la ville. Alors je voyais de tous côtés sortir des hommes, des femmes, des enfants, des vieillards, des malades, des malheureux; ils s'assemblaient sous la robe étendue, implorant secours, racontant leurs misères, leurs souffrances, leurs peines. En réponse, la robe, souple et vivante, s'allongeait vers eux individuellement, et dés qu'ils l'avaient touchée, ils étaient consolés ou guéris, et ren-traient dans leurs corps plus heureux et plus forts qu'avant d'en être sortis." (22.2.1914)

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

¹ "Je les remercie avec reconnaissance de tout le charme

town. Then I would see coming out from all sides, men, women, children, the old, the sick, the unhappy; they gathered under the outspread robe, imploring help, recounting their miseries, their sufferings, their pains. In reply, the robe, supple and living, stretched out to them individually, and as soon as they touched it, they were consoled or healed, and entered back into their body happier and stronger than they had ever been before coming out of it. (22.2.1914)

¹ I thank them with gratitude for all the charm they have been able

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qu'ils ont su dormer extérieurement à notre vie; je sou-haite que, s'il est dans leur destinée de passer pour plus ou moms longtemps en d'autres mains que les nôtres, ces mains leur soient douces et sachant tout le respect que l'on doit à ce que Ton divin Amour, Seigneur, a fait surgir de l'obscure inconscience du chaos." (3.3.1914)

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

The same feeling of unity and oneness extends to the dumb plant world also. It is a oneness not partial or vague but total and absolute:

¹"Une grande concentration s'est emparée de moi et

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

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

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

When I had written it, all was effaced; but now the blood of the cherry-tree flows in my veins and with it flows an incomparable peace and force. What difference is there between the human body and the body of a tree? In truth there is none, the consciousness which animates them is identically the same. (7.4.1917)

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je me suis aperÇue que je m'identifiais avec une fleur de cerisier; puis à travers cette fleur avec toutes les fleurs de cerisier; puis descendant plus profondément dans la conscience, en suivant un courant de force bleutée, je devins tout à coup le cerisier lui-même, dressant vers le del, comme autant de bras, ses innombrables branches chargees de leur offrande fleurie. J'entendis alors distinctement la phrase suivante:

"Ainsi tu t'es unie à l'âme des cerisiers et tu as pu de la sorte constater que c'est le Divin qui fait au ciel l'of-frande de cette prière de fleurs." Lorsque je l'eus écrit, tout s'effaÇa; mais maintenant le sang du cerisier coule dans mes veines, et avec lui une paix et une force incom-parables; quelle difference y a-t-il entre le corps humain et le corps d'un arbre? Aucune vraiment, et la conscience qui les anime est bien identiquement la même." (7.4.1917)

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

¹"Le monde douloureux s'est agenouillé devant Toi, Seigneur, en muette supplication la matière torturée se

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

(7.II.1915)

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blottit à Tes pieds, son dernier, son unique refuge; et en T'implorant ainsi, elle T'adore, Toi qu'elle ne connaît ni ne comprend ! Sa prière s'élève comme le cri d'un ago-jiisant; ce qui disparaît sent confusément la possibilité de revivre en Toi; la terre attend Ton arrêt dans une prosternation grandiose..." (7-11-1915)

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

^1" O Mère, douce Mère que je suis, Tu es à la fois ce qui détruit et ce qui érige.

L'univers entier vit dans Ton sein de sa vie innombrable et Tu vis dans le moindre de ses atomes immensément.

Et l'aspiration de Ton infinitude se tourne vers Cela qui n'est point manifesté, afin d'implorer toujours une

¹ Mother, sweet Mother, who I am, Thou art at once the destroyer and the builder.

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

And the aspiration of Thy infinitude turns towards That which is not manifested to cry to it for a manifestation ever more complete and more perfect. (31.8.1914)

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plus complète et plus parfaite manifestation." (31.8.1914)

¹"Je suis les bras puissants de Ta miséricorde. Je suis la vaste poitrine de Ton amour sans limites.... Les bras ont enveloppé la terre douloureuse et la pressent tendrement sur le cœur généreux; et lentement un baiser de suprême bénédiction est posé sur cet atome en conflit: le baiser de la Mère qui console et guérit..." (11.8.1914)

²"Toute la terre est dans nos bras comme un enfant malade qu'il faut guérir et pour lequel on a, à cause même de sa faiblesse, une tendresse toute spéciale." (14.10.1914)

The triple status of the Mother, the individual, the collective and the transcendental (or, in other words, the personal, the universal and the supra-personal) has been condensed and epitomised in the magical note describing 1er first meeting with the Lord:

³"Peu importe qu'il y ait des milliers d'êtres plongés dans

¹I am Thy puissant arms of mercy. I am the vast bosom of Thy limitless love.... The arms have enfolded the sorrowful earth and tenderly press it to the generous heart; slowly a kiss of supreme bene-diction settles on this atom in conflict: the kiss of the Mother that consoles and heals. (11.8.1914)

²All the earth is in our arms like a sick child who must be cured and for whom one has a special affection because of his very weakness.

(14.10.1914)

³It matters not if there are hundreds of beings plunged in the densest ignorance. He whom we saw yesterday, is here on earth; His presence is enough to prove that a day shall come when darkness shall be transformed into light, when Thy reign shall be indeed established upon earth. (30.3.1914)

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la plus épaisse ignorance, Celui que nous avons vu hier est sur terre; sa présence suffit à prouver qu'un jour viendra où l'ombre sera transformée en lumière, et où effectivement, Ton règne sera instauré sur la terre."

(30.3.1914)

And the reality that Their manifestation upon earth has to establish, the supreme achievement of Their terrestrial existence is chanted, as it were, in these wonderfully mystic-Sibylline-lines:

¹"La mort a passé vaste et solennelle et tout s'est tu religieusement durant son passage. Une beauté surhumaine a paru sur la terre. Quelque chose de plus merveilleux que la plus merveilleuse félicité fait pressentir sa Présence." (7.11.1915)

(3)

I have spoken of the triple status, the three levels of her ascending reality, these are in view of her manifestation, of world-labour. There is however, yet another status beyond—beyond the beyond—it is the relation between the Supreme Lord and the Divine Mother in itself apart from their work, their purpose in manifestation, it is their own 'Lila' between themselves, exclusively their own.

¹ Death has passed, vast and solemn, and all fell into a religious silence during its passage.

A superhuman beauty has appeared on the earth.

Something more marvellous than the most marvellous bliss has made felt the impress of its Presence. (7.11.1915)

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The delight of this exclusively personal play behind and beyond the creation sheds a secret aroma in and through all this existence here and it is also the source of the hidden magic that these utterances of the Prayers and Medita-tations contain, it is to this status surpassing all wonder that Sri Aurobindo refers so wistfully and so sweetly in those famous opening lines, in 'God's Labour':

I have gathered my dreams in a silver air

Between the gold and the blue

And wrapped them softly and left them there

My jewelled dreams of you.

The delight of delights, the purest delight that exists up there in its self-sufficiency overflows, spills as it were, and a drop of that nectar of immortality is what constitutes these universes here below.

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XX

Savitri

(i)

Savitri, the poem, the word of Sri Aurobindo is the cosmic Answer to the cosmic Question. And Savitri, the person, the Godhead, the Divine Woman is the Divine's response to the human aspiration.

The world is a great question mark. It is a riddle, eternal and ever-recurring. Man has faced the riddle and sought to arrive at a solution since he has been given a mind to seek and interrogate.

What is this universe ?From where has it come? Whither is it going? What is the purpose of it all? Why is man here? What is the object of his existence?

Such is the mode of human aspiration. And Ashwapati in his quest begins to explore the world and see what it is, the way it is built up. He observes it rising tier upon tier, level upon level of consciousness. He mounts these stairs, takes cognisance of the modes and functions of each and passes on enriched by the experiences that each contributes to his developing consciousness. The ascent he finds is from ignorance to knowledge. The human being starts from the darkest bed of ignorance, the solid basis of rock as it were, the body, the material existence. Ignorance here is absolute inconscience. Out

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of the total absence of consciousness, the being begins to awake and rise to a gradually developing—widening, deepening and heightening—consciousness. That is how Ashwapati advances, ascends from a purely bodily life and consciousness, to the next rung of the ladder, the first appearance and expression of life-force, the vital consciousness—energies and forms of the small lower vital. He moves on, moves upward, there is a growing light in and mixed with the obscurity; ignorance begins to shed its hard and dark coatings one by one and gives place to directed and motivated energies. He meets beings and creatures appropriate to those levels crawling and stirring and climbing, moved by the laws governing the respective regions. In this way Ashwapati passes on into the higher vital, into the border of the mental.

Ashwapati now observes with a clear vividness that all these worlds and the beings and forces that inhabit them are stricken as it were with a bar sinister branded upon their bodies. In spite of an inherent urge of ascension the way is not a straight road but devious and crooked breaking into by-lanes and blind alleys. There is a great corruption and perversion of natural movements towards Truth: falsehoods and pretensions, arrogance of blindness reign here in various degrees. Ashwapati sought to know the wherefore of it all. So he goes behind, dives down and comes into a region that seems to be the source and basis of all ignorance and obscurity and falsehood. He comes into the very heart of the Night, the abyss of consciousness. He meets there the Mother of Evil and the sons of

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darkness. He stands before

"...the gate of the false Infinite,

An eternity of disastrous absolutes."¹

Here are the forces that pull down and lure away to perdition all that man's aspirations and the world's urge seek to express and build of Divine things. It is the world in which the forces of the original inconscience find their primitive play. They are dark and dangerous: they prey upon earth's creatures who are not content with being vassals of darkness but try to move to the Light. Dangerous is this passage for the celestial aspirant:

"Where the red Wolf waits by the fordless stream And Death's black eagles scream to the precipice..."²

He must be absolutely vigilant, absolutely on his guard, absolutely sincere.

"Here must the traveller of the upward way— For daring Hell's kingdoms winds the heavenly route— Pause or pass slowly through that perilous space, A prayer upon his lips and the great Name."³

But there is no escape. The divine traveller has to pass through this region. For it lies athwart his path to the

¹Book II: Canto 8: P. 250.

²Bk. II: Canto 8: P. 260.

³Bk. II: Canto 7: P. 238.

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goal. Not only so, it is necessary to go through this Night. For Ashwapati

"Knew death for a cellar of the house of life,

In destruction felt creation's hasty pace,

Knew loss as the price of a celestial gain

And hell as a short cut to heaven's gates."¹

Ashwapati now passes into the higher luminous regions. He enters regions of larger breath and wider movement —the higher vital and then into the yet more luminous region of the higher mind. He reaches the heavens where immortal sages and the divinities and the gods themselves dwell. Even these Ashwapati finds to be only partial truths, various aspects, true but limited, of the One Reality beyond. Thus he leaves all behind and reaches into the single sole Reality, the transcendental Truth of things, the status vast and infinite and eternal, immutable existence and consciousness and bliss.

"A Vastness brooded free from sense of Space,

An Everlastingness cut off from Time...

"A stillness absolute, incommunicable..."²

Here seems to be the end of the quest, and one would fain stay there ever and ever in that status

¹Bk. II: Canto 8: P. 262.

²Bk. III: Cantos 1-2: Pp. 349; 351.

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"...occult, impenetrable,—

Infinite, eternal, unthinkable, alone."¹

Ashwapati was perhaps about to be lured into that Bliss but suddenly a doubt enters into him—there is a hesitation, a questioning; he hears a voice:

"The ego is dead; we are free from being and care,

We have done with birth and death and work and fate.

O soul, it is too early to rejoice!

Thou hast reached the boundless silence of the Self,

Thou hast leaped into a glad divine abyss;

But where hast thou thrown self's mission and self's power ?

On what dead bank on the Eternal's road?"²

Ashwapati veers round. A new perception, a new consciousness begins to open within him. A new urge moves him. He has to start on a new journey, a new quest and achievement. The world exists neither as a Truth nor as an illusion in itself. It exists in and through the Mother of the worlds. There is a motive in its existence and it is her will that is being worked out in that existence. The world moves for the fulfilment of a purpose that is being evolved through earth-life and human-life. The ignorant incomplete human life upon earth is not the be-all and end-all of the life here. That life has to evolve into a life of light and love and joy perfect here below. Nature as it

¹Bk. III: Canto I: p. 350.

²Bk. III: Canto 2: p. 351.

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is now will be transmuted into a new pure and radiant substance. Ashwapati is filled with this new urge and inspired by this new vision. He sees and understands now the truth of his life, the goal that has to be achieved, the great dream that has to be realised here upon earth in and through matter. He sees how nature has been labouring ceaselessly and tirelessly through aeons through eternity onward. He is now almost impatient to see the consummation here and now. The divine Voice however shows him the wisdom of working patiently, hastening, slowly. The Voice admonishes him:

"I ask thee not to merge thy heart of flame

In the Immobile's wide uncaring bliss...

Thy soul was born to share the laden Force;

Obey thy nature and fulfil thy fate:

Accept the difficulty and godlike toil,

For the slow-paced omniscient purpose live....

All things shall change in God's transfiguring hour."¹

But the human flame once kindled is hard to put down. It seeks an immediate result. It does not understand the fullness of time. So Ashwapati cries out:

"Heavy and long are the years our labour counts

And still the seals are firm upon man's soul

And weary is the ancient Mother's heart....

¹ Bk. III: Canto 4: pp.380; 386.

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Linger not long with thy transmuting hand

Pressed vainly on one golden bar of Time...

Let a great word be spoken from the heights

And one great act unlock the doors of Fate."¹

This great cry of the human soul moved the Divine Mother and she granted at last its prayer. She answered by bestowing of her motherly comfort on the yearning thirsty soul:

"O strong forerunner, I have heard thy cry.

One shall descend and break the iron Law...

A seed shall be sown in Death's tremendous hour,

A branch of heaven transplant to human soil;

Nature shall, overleap her mortal step;

Fate shall be changed by an unchanging will."²

And She herself came down upon earth as Ashwapati's daughter to undertake the human labour and accomplish the Divine work.

(2)

The Divine Mother is upon earth as a human creature. She is to change the mortal earth into an immortal paradise. Earth at present is a bundle of material in conscience. The Supreme Consciousness has manifested itself

¹ Bk. III: Canto 4: pp. 390-391.

² Bk. III: Canto 4: pp. 391-392.

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as supreme unconsciousness. The Divine has lost itself in pulverising itself, scattering itself abroad. Immortality is thus entombed here below in death. The task of the incarnate Supreme Consciousness is to revive the death-bound divinity, to free the human consciousness in its earthly life from the obscurity of the material unconsciousness, re-install it in its original radiant status of the Divine Consciousness.

Such is Savitri's mission. This mission has two sessions or periods. The first, that of preparation; the second, that of fulfilment. Savitri, the human embodiment was given only twelve months out of her earthly life and in that short space of time she had to do all the preparation. She knew her work from her very birth, she was conscious of her nature and the mission she was entrusted with. Now she is facing the crisis. Death is there standing in front. What is to be done, how is she to proceed? She was told she is to conquer Death, she is to establish immortal life upon mortal earth. The Divine Voice rings out:

"Arise, O soul, and vanquish Time and Death."¹

Yes, she is ready to do it, but not for herself, but for her Love, the being who was the life of her life. Savitri is the Divine Consciousness but here in the mortal body she is clothed in the human consciousness; it is the human consciousness that she is to lead upward and beyond and

¹ Bk. VII: Canto 2: p. 539.

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it is in and through the human consciousness that the Divine Realisation has to be expressed and established. The human Savitri declares: If Death is conquered, it is for the sake of Satyavan living eternally with her. She seems to say: What I wish to see is the living Satyavan and I united with him for ever. I do not need an earthly life without him; with him I prefer to be in another world if necessary away from the obscurity and turmoil of this earth here.

"My strength is taken from me and given to Death,

Why should I lift my hands to the shut heavens...

Why should I strive with earth's unyielding laws

Or stave off death's inevitable hour?

This surely is best to pactise with my fate

And follow close behind my lover's step

And pass through night from twilight to the sun..."¹

But a thunderous voice descends from above shaking Savitri to the very basis of her existence.

"And what shall thy soul say when it wakes and knows

The work was left undone for which it came?"²

Thus a crisis very similar to that which Ashwapati had to face now confronts Savitri also. Both of them were at the crossroads away from the earth in the pure delights.

¹ Bk. VII: Canto 2: p. 539.

¹ Bk. VII: Canto 2: p. 540.

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of the heavens or in the world labouring on earth's soil. Savitri's soul was now revealed to her in its fullness. She viewed the mighty destiny for which she had come down and the great work she had to achieve here upon earth, not any personal or individual human satisfaction or achievement but a cosmic fulfilment, a global human realisation. The godhead in Savitri is now fully awake, established in its plenitude—the Divinity incarnate in the human frame. All the godheads, all the goddess-emanations now entered into her and moulded the totality of her mighty stature.

Here begins then the second stage of her mission,— her work and achievement, the conquest of Death. Only the Divine human being can conquer Death. Savitri follows Death step by step revealing gradually the mystery of Death, his personality and his true mission, although the dark God thinks that it is he who is taking away Satyavan and Savitri along with him, to his own home, his black annihilaion. For Death is that in its first appearance, it is utter destruction, nothing-ness, non-existence. So the mighty Godhead declares in an imperious tone to the mortal woman Savitri:

"This is my silent dark immensity,

This is the home of everlasting Night,

This is the secrecy of Nothingness

Entombing the vanity of life's desires...

Hopest thou still always to last and love?"¹

¹ Bk. VII: Canto 2: p. 661.

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Indeed Death is not merely a destruction of the body, it is in reality nothingness, non-being. The moment being, existence, reality manifested itself, established itself as a material fact, simultaneously there came out and stood against it, its opposite non-being, non-existence, non-reality; against an everlasting 'yes' there was posited an everlasting 'no'. And in fact, this everlasting No proves to be a greater effective reality, it has wound itself around every constituent atom of the universe. That is what has expressed itself in the material domain as the irreversible degradation of energy and in the mortal world it is denial and doubt and falsehood—it is that which brings about failure in life, and frusration, misery and grief. But then Savitri's vision penetrated beyond and she saw, Death is a way of achieving the end more swiftly and more completely. The negation is an apparent obstacle in order to increase, to purify and intensify the speed of the process by which the world and humanity is being remodelled and re-created. This terrible Godhead pursues the human endeavour till the end; until he finds that nothing more is to be done; then his mission too is fulfilled.¹ So a last cry, the cry of a desperate dying Death, pierces the universe and throws the final challenge to Savitri:

¹ We are reminded here of a parallelism in Goethe's conception of the role of Satan (the Negative Principle) in human affairs. Satan is not merely a destorying devil, he is a constructive angel. For it is he

Who must goad and tease

And toil to serve creation.

whenever

Man's efforts sink below his proper level.

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"O human claimant to immortality,

Reveal thy power, lay bare thy spirit's force,

Then will I give back to thee Satyavan.

Or if the Mighty Mother is with thee,

Show me her face that I may worship her;

Let deathless eyes look into the eyes of Death..."¹

Death's desire, his prayer too is fulfilled. He faces Savitri but this is not the Savitri against whom he fought. Whose is this voice?

"I hail thee almighty and victorious Death,

Thou grandiose Darkness of the Infinite...

I have given thee thy awful shape of dread

And thy sharp sword of terror and grief and pain

To force the soul of man to struggle for light..."²

What happens thereafter is something strange and tremendous and miraculous. Light flashed all around, a leaping tongue of fire spread out and the dark form of Death was burnt—not to ashes but to blazing sparks of light:

"His body was eaten by light, his spirit devoured."³

Thus Death came to his death—not to death in reality but to a new incarnation. Death returned to his original

¹ Bk. X: Canto 4: p. 745.

²Bk. X: Canto 4: p. 747.

³Bk. X: Canto 4: p. 749.

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divine Reality, an emanation of the Divine Mother.

"A secret splendour rose revealed to sight Where once the vast embodied Void had stood. Night the dim mask had grown a wonderful face."¹

In that domain of pure transcendent light stood face to face the human Savitri and the transformed Satyavan.

(3)

Savitri has entered into the deathless luminous world where there is only faultless beauty, stainless delight and an unmeasured self-gathered strength. Savitri heard the melodious voice of the Divine:

You have now left earth's miseries and its impossible conditions, you have reached the domain of unalloyed felicity and you need not go back to the old turbulent life: dwell here both of you and enjoy eternal bliss.

But Savitri answered firm and moveless:

"I climb not to thy everlasting Day,

Even as I have shunned thy eternal Night....

Earth is the chosen place of mightiest souls;

Earth is the heroic spirit's battlefield...

Thy servitudes on earth are greater, king,

Than all the glorious liberties of heaven."²

¹ Bk. XI: Canto 1: p. 762.

² Bk. XI: Canto 1: p. 770.

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Once more Savitri, even like Ashwapati, has to make a choice between two destinies, two soul-movements—although the choice is already made even before it is offered to her. Ashwapati had to abandon, we know, the silent immutable transcendent status of pure light in order to bathe in this lower earthly light. Savitri too as the prototype of human consciousness chose and turned to this light of the earth.

The Rishi of the Upanishad declared: they who worship only Ignorance enter into darkness, but they who worship knowledge alone enter into a still darker darkness. This world of absolute light which Savitri names 'everlasting day' is what the Upanishadic Rishi sees and describes as the golden lid upon the face of the Sun. The Sun is the complete integral light of the Truth in its fullness. The golden covering has to be removed if one is to see the Sun itself—to live the integral life, one has to possess the integral truth.

So it is that Savitri comes down upon earth and standing upon its welcoming soil speaks to Satyavan as though consoling him for having abandoned their own abode in heaven to dwell among mortal men:

"Heaven's touch fulfils but cancels not our earth...

Still am I she who came to thee mid the murmur

Of sunlit leaves upon this forest verge...

All that I was before, I am to thee still..."¹

¹ Bk. XII: p. 808.

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Voicing Satyavan's thought and feeling, all humanity, the whole world in joy and gratefulness, utters this mantra. of thanksgiving:

"If this is she of whom the world has heard, Wonder no more at any happy change."¹

(4)

In her Prayers and Meditations the Mother says:

"Comme l'homme n'a pas voulu du repas que j'avais. préparé avec tant d'amour et de soin, alors j'ai invité le Dieu à le prendre.

Et mon Dieu, Tu as accepté mon invitation et Tu es venu T'asseoir à ma table; et en change de ma pauvre et humble offrande Tu m'as octroyé la finale libération."²

What is this banquet that she prepared for man and which man refused? It is nothing else than the Life Divine here below—the life of the Gods enjoying immortality, full of the supreme light and power, love and delight. Man refused because for him it is something too high, too great. Being a creature earth-bound and of small

¹ Bk. XII: p. 812.

² "Since the man refused the meal I had prepared with so much lover and care, I invoked the God to take it.

My God, Thou hast accepted my invitation, Thou hast come to sit at my table, and in exchange for my poor and humble offering Thou. hast granted to me the last liberation."

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dimensions he can seize and appreciate only small things, little specks of a material world. He refused, first of all, because of his ignorance, he does not know, nor is he capable of conceiving that there are such things as immortal life, divinity, unobscured light, griefless love, or a radiant, tranquil, invisible energy. He does not know and yet he is arrogant, arrogant in his Utile knowledge, his petty power, in his blind self-sufficiency. Furthermore, besides ignorance and arrogance there is an element of revolt in him, for in his half-wakefulness with his rudimentary consciousness, if ever he came in contact with something that is above and beyond him, if a shadow of another world happens to cross his threshold, he is not at peace, does not want to recognise but denies and even curses it.

The Divine Mother brings solace and salvation. For the Grace it is such a small and easy thing, it is a wonder how even such a simple, natural, inconspicuous thing could be refused by anybody.

If man finds no use for the gift she has brought down for him, naturally she will take it back and return it to Him to whom it belongs, for all things belong to the Supreme Lord, even She belongs to Him, as She is one with Him. The Gita says: there is nothing else than the Brahman in the creation—the doer, the doing and the deed, all are essentially He. In the sacrifice that is this moving, acting universe, the offerer, the offering and the offered, each and every element is the Brahman—brahmārpanam brahma haviḥ.

This gesture of the Divine Mother teaches us also

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what should be the approach and attitude of human beings in all their activities. In all our movements we should always remember Him, refer to Him, consider that in the last analysis each and every movement comes from Him and we must always offer them to Him, return them to the parent-source from where they come, therein lies freedom, the divine detachment which the individual must possess always in order to be one with Him, feel one's identity with Him.

(5)

Man's refusal of the Divine Grace has been depicted very beautifully and graphically in a perfect dramatic form by Sri Aurobindo in Savitri, The refusal comes one by one from the three constituent parts of the human being. First of all man is a material being, a bodily creature, as such he is a being of ignorance and misery, of brutish blindness. He does not know that there is something other than his present state of misfortune and dark fate. He is not even aware that there may be anything higher or nobler than the ugliness he is steeped in. He lives on earth-life with an earth-consciousness, moves mechanically and helplessly through vicissitudes over which he has no control. Even so the material life is not a mere despicable thing; behind its darkness, behind its sadness, behind all its infirmities, the Divine Mother is there upholding it and infusing into it her grace and beauty. Indeed, she is one with this world of sorrows, she has in effect become it in

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her infinite pity and love so that this material body of hers may become conscious of its divine substance and manifest her true form. But the human being individualised and separated in egoistic consciousness has lost the sense of its inner reality and is vocal only in regard to its outward formulation. It is natural for physical man therefore to reject and deny the physical Godhead in him, he even curses it and wants to continue as he is. He yells therefore in ignorance and anguish:

"I am the Man of Sorrows, I am he

Who is nailed on the wide cross of the Universe...

I toil like the animal, like the animal die.

I am man the rebel, man the helpless serf...

I know my fate will ever be the same,

It is my Nature's work that cannot change....

I was made for evil, evil is my lot;

Evil I must be and by evil live;

Naught other can I do, but be myself;

What Nature made, that I must remain."¹

The Divine glory manifests itself for a moment to the earthly consciousness but man refuses to be pulled out of its pig-sty. The Grace withdraws but in its Supreme Consciousness of unity and love consoles the fallen creature and gives it the assurance:

¹ Bk. VII: Canto 4: P.574-6.

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One day I will return, a bringer of strength...

Misery shall pass abolished from the earth;

The world shall be freed from the anger of the Beast... "¹

The basic status or foundation of Man, in fact of creation, is earth, the material organisation. After the body, next comes the life and Life-power. Here man attains a larger dynamic being of energy and creative activity. Here too, on this level, what man is or what he achieves is only a reflection, a shadow, but mostly a misshapen resemblance, an aberration of the divine reality that hides behind, and yet half-reveals itself. That Godhead is the Mother's form of Might, we name it variously, Kali and Durga and Lakshmi, for it is Her Grace that is ultimately expressed and fulfilled in this world of vital power. It is because of this realising power of the Mother that

"Slowly the Light grows greater in the East,

Slowly the world progresses on God's road.

His seal is on my task, it cannot fail;

I shall hear the silver swing of heaven's gates

When God comes out to meet the soul of the world."²

But man in the strength of his ignorance and arrogance does not recognise this Goddess. Human power, we have said, is a reflection, a shadow of the Divine Power but most often it is a deformed, a perverted Divine Power. Man is

¹ Bk. VII: Canto 4: P.576.
² Bk. VII: Canto 4: P.579.

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full of his egoistic vital self-confidence: he believes it is his own will that is realising all, all which is achieved here; whatever he has created, it is through the might of lis own merit and whatever new creations will be done in the future will be through the Grace of his own genius. A mighty vital selfhood obscures bis consciousness and he sees nothing else, understands nothing else beyond the reach of that limited vision. This is the Rakshasa, this is the Asura in man. Here is his philosophy of life:

"I climb, a claimant to the throne of heaven.

The last born of the earth, I stand the first...

I am God still unevolved in human form;

Even if he is not, he becomes in me...

No magic can surpass my magic's skill.

There is no miracle I shall not achieve."¹

So this vital being in man in bis Rakshasic hunger and Asuric self-conceit rejects the Divine Power that is in fact behind him too, supporting him. The Goddess, in the wake of her predecessor, goes back from where she came, leaving however a consoling word, assuring that one day she will return; she will bide her time. For one day,

The cry of the ego shall be hushed within,

Its lion-roar that claims the world as food,

All shall be might and bliss and happy force.²

¹ Bk. VII: Canto 4: P.580-2.
² Bk. VII: Canto 4: P.583.

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In his body man is the beast, in the vital he is the Rak-shasa and the Asura, he rises now into the mind. And in the mind he is the human being proper, he has attained his own humanity. Here he has received the light of knowledge, a wider and deeper consciousness, he has unveiled the secret mysteries of Nature, brought to play hidden forces that were unknown and untapped. All these achievements have been possible for man because it is the Mother of Light that is behind and has come forward to shed something of her luminous presence around. But man has no inkling of the presence of this luminous Deity, his own light has been a screen in front of the inner divine light. It is not possible for the human mind to seize the higher light: his consciousness, his knowledge is too narrow, too superficial, too dull to comprehend what is beyond. This Divine Light is also a thing of delight, the consciousness it possesses is also the very essence of Joy and Felicity. But all that is occult to the human knowledge. Man considers Truth is his property, whatever truth is there his understanding can grasp it and bring it to play: Truth and Reality are commensurate with his own consciousness, his mental comprehension. What others speak of as realities of the spirit, truths transcendental, are an illusion and delusion. This is what is usually known as the scientific mind, the rational consciousness. An orthodox scientific mentality is in the first instance a thing of overweening self-confidence, of arrogant self-assertion. It declares in its formidable pride:

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"I have seized the cosmic energies for my use. I have pored on her infinitesimal elements And her invisible atoms have unmasked... If God is at work his secrets I have found."¹

This imperiousness in man seems however to be a sheer imperviousness: it is a mask, a hollow appearance; for with all his knowledge, at the end he has attained no certainty, no absoluteness. There is something behind, all the outer bravado he flourishes has a sense of helplessness, at times almost as pitiable as that of a child; for he finds at last

"All is a speculation or a dream:

In the end the world itself becomes a doubt."²

It is true his survey of the universe, his knowledge of boundless Nature and the inexhaustible multiplicities of creation have given him a sense of the endless and the infinite but he has not the necessary light or capacity to follow those lines of infinity, on the contrary, there is a shrinking in him at the touch of such vastnesses; his small humanity makes him desperately earth-bound, his aspiration follows the lines of least resistance:

"Our smallness saves us from the Infinite.

In a frozen grandeur lone and desolate

¹ Bk. VII: Canto 4: P.589.
² Bk. VII: Canto 4: P.589.

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Call me not to die the great eternal Death...

Human I am, human let me remain

Till in the Inconscient I fall dumb and sleep."¹

Thus, this Goddess too, is rejected like her previous comrades, the Mother of Light, the Deity who is properly the guide and ruler of man's own destiny. Even she is refused but hers is not to complain, in tranquil quietness she brings comfort and hope to the troubled human mind and says she goes to come back in the fullness of her incarnation. She utters divinely:

"One day I shall return, His hands in mine,

And thou shalt see the face of the Absolute.

Then shall the holy marriage be achieved,

Then shall the divine family be born."²

(6)

To the inconscient and ignorant human nature, Savitri, the Divine's delegate presents the powers and personalities that are behind man's present infirmities—these broken images of true realities lying scattered about in the front of existence. Man will be made conscious, he is being made conscious step by step precisely by such relations from time to time. The Vedic image is that of the eternal

¹ Bk. VII: Canto 4: P.590.
² Bk. VII: Canto 4: P.591.

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succession of dawns whose beginning no one knows, nor the end, that creation proceeds from light to light, from consciousness to higher reaches of consciousness. From the material life through the vital and the mental life he first reaches the spiritual life and finally the Life Divine. From the animal he rises to manhood, and in the end to Godhood.

But there are intermediaries. The fullness of the realisation depends on the fullness of the incarnation. The Evil in the body, the Evil in the vital, the Evil in the mind are, whatever their virulence and intransigence, subsidiary agents, for they serve only a mightier Lord. The first original Sin is Death, the God of Denial, of nonexistence. That is the very source—fons et origo—the fount and origin of all the misfortune, the fate that terrestrial life involves. This demon, this anti-Divine has to be tracked and destroyed or dissolved into its original origin. This is the Nihil that negates the Divine—Asat that seeks to nullify Sat and that has created this world of ignorance and misery, that is to say, in its outward pragmatic form. So Savitri sees the one source and knows the remedy. Therefore she pursues death, pursues him to the end, that is, to the end of death. The luminous energy of the Supreme faces now its own shadow and blazes it up. The flaming Light corrodes into the substance of the darkness and makes of it her own transfigured substance. This then is the gift that Savitri brings to man, the Divine's own immortality, transfusing the mortality that reigns now upon earth.

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In view of the necessity of the age, for the crucial, critical and, in a way, final consummation of Nature's evolutionary urge, the Divine Himself has to come down in the fullness of His divinity; for only then can the earth be radically changed and wholly transformed. In the beginning the Divine once came down, but by sacrificing Himself, being pulverised, scattered and lost in the infinitesimals of a universal, material, unconsciousness. Once again He has to come down, but this time in the supreme glory of His victorious Luminosity.

This then is the occult, the symbolic sense of the Mother's gesture turning away from man with her gifts and retarning to the Divine Himself, and inviting Him as the chief guest of honour upon this earth. Or, in the Vedic image, He is to come as the flaming front and leader of the journeying sacrifice that is this universal existence.

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Series Two

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I

HOW TO READ SRI AUROBINDO AND THE MOTHER

Why do we read the works of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother? And if we read them, how to read them?

Do we read for the sake of study? to know things? to acquire knowledge? That is a secondary aspect, a profit gained by the way. The real purpose of coming in contact with the words of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo is to become conscious, to acquire consciousness, to be more and more conscious, increase more and more the consciousness. To understand, that is to say, to seize by the mind, to grasp intellectually the writings of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo is rather difficult. The easier, the more right way would be to enter into the atmosphere of the world that they have created with their words, to feel the vibration that the words emanate. For the words that they have uttered are not mere words taken or found in the dictionaries, they are not mere sounds, dead syllables, they are living entities, symbols of consciousness, the consciousness of which I have just spoken. These symbols, being symbols of consciousness are luminous, they shed light all along, they are full of power and extend power all along, they have life and they are full of delight. It is this inner world that is behind the outer world of words that one has. to be in touch with, be aware of, in the first instance, before

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one can have a mental understanding; in other words you must cultivate the right attitude, a turn of your consciousness in tune with the consciousness that has worked out the words of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. You have to take a plunge, as it were, dip into the waters, and be soaked in the caress of that element, to come in the living touch of the substance of words, go behind the meaning, if necessary, avoiding it even. You must contact the living sap, the rasa, that has poured itself out in the creation. If you have tasted of that, then—it has its own light—that will suffuse you automatically with its radiance; the delight of bathing in the living spring will formulate itself in rhythms of knowledge and true understanding.

At least such should be the basis of approach to the works of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. You may have possessed a rich intellectual apparatus, you may have all the information that sciences and philosophies have gathered, you may have perused the whole story of the evolution of human knowledge up to the present time, all these are lesser lights, they do not illuminate the light before which you stand. That light is shown and recognised by its own reflection or emanation in you, the little light that is in you, your soul.

Indeed, there have been instances where great intellectuals, famed savants found themselves bewildered before the simplest magic phrases of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. On the other hand, simpler minds with no burden of learning, nor pride of pedantry, with their pure streak of light in the depth of their consciousness were

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able to seize and unveil the secret sense.

Your mental understanding, your intellectual apprehension may or will add to the joy of your discovery; one that is perhaps at the end or subsequently, when your brain, your physical treason has been washed by the flow of the inner light, when it has been made pure and plastic and docile.

In another way, to understand the Truth—the Truth that the words of the Mother or Sri Aurobindo express— you must start by living it, approaching it not merely through your mind, in fact not even through your heart, but possessing it in the very body. The Mother says Teal

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II

A True Professor

The Mother says a professor, a true professor, must be truly a yogi. That is to say, a teacher, even a schoolteacher, one imparting what is called secular education, has to be nothing less than a yogi. The Indian term for teacher is 'guru' and 'guru' meant a teacher both spiritual and secular. This distinction of the two words is made by the modern spirit, it did not belong to the ancient culture. The secular knowledge was also considered a necessary part of the spiritual knowledge, that which prepared for it and led towards it. The 'apara vidaya' or the 'vedangas' were but limbs of the supreme knowledge 'para vidya' and 'veda'.

A teacher has to be a yogi does not mean that he is to be a paragon of moral qualities, following, for example, the ten commandments scrupulously. Not to tell a lie, not to lose temper, to be patient, impartial, to be honest and unselfish, all these more or less social qualities have their values but something else is needed for the true teacher, something of another category and quality. I said social qualities, I might say also mental qualities. The consciousness of the teacher has to be other than mental, something deeper, more abiding, more constant, less relative, something absolute. Do we then prescribe the supreme Brahma-consciousness for the teacher? Not

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quite. We mean the consciousness of a soul, the living light that is within every aspiring human being. It is a glad luminousness in the heart that can exist with or without the brilliant riches of a cultivated brain. And one need not go so far as the vedantic Sachchidananda consciousness.

That is the first and primary necessity. When the teacher approaches the pupil, he must know how to do it in and through that inner intimate consciousness. It means a fundamental attitude, a mode of being of the whole nature rather than a scientific procedure: all the manuals of education will not be able to procure you this treasure. It is an acquisition that develops or manifests spontaneously through an earnest desire, that is to say, aspiration for it. It is this that establishes a strange contact with the pupil, radiates or infuses the knowledge, even the learning that the teacher possesses, infallibly and naturally into the mind and brain of the pupil.

Books and programmes are of secondary importance, they are only a scaffolding, the building within is made of a different kind of bricks. A happy luminous consciousness within is the teacher's asset, with that he achieves all without it he fails always.

If the teacher is to be a yogi, the pupil on his side must be at least an aspirant. But I suppose a pupil, so long as he is a child, is a born aspirant. For, as the Mother says, a child's consciousness retains generally something of the pure inner consciousness for sometime at least until it is overshadowed by the development of the body and

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the mind in the ordinary normal way. Something of this, we know, has been expressed in the famous lines of the visionary English poet:

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;

The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar...

But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home:

Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing Boy...

But if the right teacher is found, that pure flame in the child's consciousness can be kept burning, can even be made to burn brighter and higher. A teacher too on his side in the presence of a pure child-flame in his pupil may profit by its warm touch; for the two by their intimate interaction grow together towards a greater fulfilment in both.

When we speak or think of education and consider the relation of the teacher and the pupil, we generally confine ourselves to the mental domain, that is to say, aim wholly or mainly at the intellectual acquisition and attainment, and only sometimes as per necessity as it were we turn at most to the moral domain, that is to say, we look for the growth of character, of good manners and behaviour— social values as we have said. Here we have tried to bring

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into the educationist's view a more important, a much more important and interesting domain—a new dimension of consciousness.

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III

Consciousness

I spoke of consciousness and dimensions of consciousness. What then is consciousness itself? Well, we may begin by knowing what it is not, what is not consciousness. Not consciousness means the absence of consciousness, otherwise unconsciousness. You are conscious, conscious of things when you are aware, aware of their presence; when you are not aware, when you do not perceive, you are unconscious, you do not have consciousness. It is the difference between being asleep and being awake. When you are asleep things are lost, you become unconscious of them; when you are awake, things reappear and you are conscious of them. The difference is analogous to the difference of night and day. Night in its darkness swallows up things, annihilates them as it were, it is unconsciousness. The day dawning brings for the things and gives their normal concrete form, tangible reality. It is consciousness. So we may say consciousness is light, and unconsciousness darkness. Consciousness is creation— unconsciousness annihilation.

But consciousness has two modes or status. First of all, when consciousness is the consciousness of things, when one is conscious of the existence of objects, this mode may be called objective consciousness, but consciousness may exist in itself without reference to any

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object of consciousness; the light is there, there is no object to illumine, it is self-luminous. This is consciousness in its essence, its own reality.

This essential consciousness is an unchanging reality existing everywhere in the universe but it expresses itself in different modes and apparent forms, its essential quality does not change but acquires a different colour and vibration in accordance with its degree and level of expression. For example, the body has a consciousness, life-force has a consciousness, mind has a consciousness, and the levels above the mind, each has a consciousness. All these types or modes or, as I have said, dimensions of consciousness are essentially the same consciousness. The vessels are different, their shape and colour differ but they all hold as it were the same transparent, clear water. We all know the different movements of light, seen and unseen; but however much they differ in their vibration, all have the same speed of light. And it is always the same composition, as scientists have taught us a light particle is a fusion of an electron and a positron; even so consciousness is also an invariable entity.

Mother said of love the same thing as I have been saying of consciousness. She says, there is only one love, the divine love and none other. There are various expressions of that love according to the conditions in which it manifests, to the degree or status of being but every where it is the same divine love behind in essence. Because of inadequate expression it becomes blurred or faint and muddy but the living fire is there below the ashes. You have simply

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to shake off the outer coating to allow the inner reality to shine forth in its own nature.

Love in the mind, love in the heart, love in the vital, love in the physical, love human and animal are not negations of the Divine love, it is not that you have to reject, cut off these so-called inferior formulations of love, these do not necessarily deny or reject the Divine love in their heart of hearts; even there in their true reality, glows the pure Divine love. To reach the Divine love, to enjoy its divine ānanda, it is not necessary to make a bonfire of these earthly goods and go beyond into the transcendent. Even here in this earthly mould the Divine love in its full purity can be established for it is already there behind and needs only earnest evocation.

Consciousness essentially is always and everywhere the same. Its own quality is unvarying but in its expression there is growth and development, an increase in intensity and amplitude. The light that your candle gives and the light that comes from the sun are not different in quality but they differ in expression or manifestation, because of the receptacle, the seat or abode of the light. The Vedic fire was lighted on a sacred altar, that is the seat for the God from where to manifest himself. There was a regular ceremony for the preparation of the seat (Barhi) and the value and the success of the sacrifice depended largely on a proper preparation of the seat. The seat, the basic status also indicates that there is an ascending movement of the sacrifice. The sacrifice symbolises consciousness and radiant energy, mounting and travelling upward and forward;

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the progress or ascent of consciousness means bringing out its inherent potential strength that is behind and within and placing it in front as power of expression. As I have said, if consciousness in matter is like a light of single candle power, on the level of life it becomes a light of multiple candle power and in the mind this multiple power is again multiplied. In this way the consciousness finally attains its solar incandescence on the highest height of the being.

When we speak of the dimensions of consciousness, it means these different levels or status of ascending, expression. They also form according to the mode of expression each one a world of its own. We may compare the mounting consciousness to a growing tree, it is the same sap-substance that appears at the outset as a seed, then as the seed opens out and develops it appears or throws up a stem or trunk and as it proceeds it throws up branches and higher up leaves and then flowers and fruit. Apparently however different and diverse these formulations, they are but expressions of the same sap-substance in the original seed. Even so an original seed-consciousness is the basis and essential reality of all the forms in the material universe.

It must now be apparent that consciousness is not. merely consciousness, simple awareness, it is also power or energy. The Vedic word is cit-tapas, consciousness-energy. It is one indivisible entity: consciousness is energy. It is not however in the sense as when we say knowledge is power. It does not mean that consciousness.

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has power or gives power, but conscousness is power. The nearer analogy would be with light-energy. Light, we know today, thanks to modern science, does not merely illumine, it energises, activises, moves things, that is to say, matter and material objects. The ray of light, we know now, acts even more effectively than the surgeon's knife. The inherent quality of light is energy. This energy has been discovered to be electro-magnetic energy, a photon (unit-light or light-unit) is, as we have said, an electro-magnetic quantum. In the same way consciousness is also a vibration of energy. It is the self-impulsion of consciousness. This impulsion need not always go out, cast or spread itself abroad in outward expressions and activities, it may be a stilled self-contained impulsion. It is awareness pregnant with power. Consciousness is luminosity, consciousness is energy, consciousness is also delight. It may be said the very soul of consciousness is a happiness, a gladness absolute and inviolate, the delight which is love in its supreme mode.

Indeed, in the final account, we come back to the supreme mantra formulating the mystery of ultimate reality, given by the ancients that we all know and repeat so often —saccidānanda.

Such then is the ultimate Truth or Reality: there is the Being or pure Existence with its norms or modes or functions or self-formulations as Consciousness-Force and as Delight. This triune entity is absolutely one and the same. "What exists, declares the Vedic Rishi, is one; it is called variously as Light and Infinity and Harmony and Delight.

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IV

Love and Love

The Mother says: there is only one Love, there are not two. And it is Divine Love. The difference arises only in its expression, in its application. In its essential quality and substance it is always the same. Take for example human love; stripped of the mere human element, love remains the same original thing. Because the old ascetic orders of spiritual discipline, in the main, considered love essentially and wholly earthy and human, they rejected this limb altogether, cut it out as undivine. But that is an error.

We do not regard love, even human love, as an error but a power, a force and energy. Love, even human love, is not to be amputated or rooted out but like gold as ore, it has to be purified. The work is hard but it is worth the trouble.

As a matter of fact, however, all the divine qualities— supernals as they have been sometimes called—are of that nature, that is to say, all are universal they are never nonexistent, they are never and can never be negatived. Divine Consciousness, Divine Delight, Divine Power, indeed, Divine Being—they each and all exist as absolute and unitary realities, that is to say, one without a second. Even like Divine Love, there is only one Divine Consciousness, one Divine Power, one Divine Bliss, one Divine

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Being, however various they may appear in outward name and form.

But the physical consciousness, the physical body, this very material frame have for us upon earth, a divine significance. They are not to be despised or thrown out. On the contrary, our object is to take special care of the body, to cleanse it of its outward dross, make it sound and free from disease, to immortalise it if possible. And it is possible notwithstanding the old teachings. In their nature as a matter of fact, the cells of the body are immortal. Science today has discovered that each living cell is potentially deathless (a corn-seed of the age of the Pharaohs, unearthed from pre-historic tombs, they have succeeded in sprouting today). It is their aggregate and their milieu that cause wear and tear in the cells, exposing them to decay and disintegration. But in itself, each cell has an infinite vitality. Thus the problem is, if one cell is essentially immortal, then how can they be made, in their collective life, to avoid conflict and decay, undergo rejuvenation and youthfulness.

Science in a practical way through material means tries to prolong life as far as possible, as for us, we are not limited to that necessity. What we have to do is to clean the energy which is now obscure in the material cell, make it luminous. The way is the way of consciousness. Every human being has in him the possibility, the capacity of making his own consciousness come forth, pure, transparent, luminous and then in and through that pure light charge the body too with a transfiguring force or energy.

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This material body of man has the marvellous advantage of being united, of being able to unite itself with the Supreme Consciousness. Indeed as through his consciousness man has the privilege of ascending to the supreme consciousness, even so in and through the same consciousness, the physical cell also has the privilege of establishing a contact with the Supreme Substance. What is true of man's mind and life is true also of the material cell. Even as life impulses and mental knowings can be uplifted and transfigured, these physical cells too may achieve the same transfiguration because in man all these elements share equally in the Divine Substance lodged there. Of the animal, the lower creation, we cannot say the same thing for it does not possess overtly the Divine element that dwells in man. This Divine Element is what we call the psychic consciousness, the Divine himself formed secretly or framed in matter. It is that which comes in contact with the human mental and the human vital and the human body, and succeeds in remoulding them in the Supreme Nature.

Of course, there was always in the ancient days also, in some disciplines or others, an aspiration, an urge to immortalise the body, but the means they adopted, the instruments they chose for the operation were indirect and secondary. It was either through the force of a luminous mind influencing the body or through the pressure of concentrated vital force making the body an obedient and docile instrument. The former was the process followed by the Vaishanavas who envisaged a luminous body, the

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second was the aim of the Tantriks who sought to rejuvenate the body, possess it youthful and vigorous indefinitely. The Hatha yogis also in their turn through physico-vital exercises attempted to acquire a new body changing the modalities of the old. The ancient alchemists tried more material means, the use of alchemic substances for cleansing the body making it free from disease and, if possible, death. But the secret power lies in the body itself, that is, in the very self of the body, not anywhere else. The hidden consciousness lodged in the cell, the material cell, that is the key to the problem, that secret consciousness and its energy asleep in the cell, has to be awakened and brought into play. When the physical cell itself awakes and declares its purpose, the thing is done.

This secret consciousness-energy appearing as a material form is also intrinsically the delight of existence. Its other name is Divine Grace and Love.

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V

God's Debt

Here is a line from Savitri:

"And paying here God's debt to earth and man."

What is this debt that God owes to earth and man? We understand the debt that man and earth owe to God, their creator. But how is God indebted to his creation? Besides we learn that God pays his debt through his representative, his protagonist upon earth, the aspiring human being.

First let us understand the mystery of God's debt toman. We know, in ordinary life a subordinate has a duty towards his superior, the lesser owes a debt to the greater. That is easily understood. Likewise the superior also has a duty to his subordinate, the greater has his duty to the smaller. The child owes a debt to his parents; no less is the debt that the parents owe to the child. The parent not only bring forth the child, but they have to bring him up, nourish, foster, educate and settle him in life. We know also, as the scriptures tell us, that there is a debt man owes to the gods. The paying of the debt is described in the institution of the sacrifice (yajña). It is through his sacrifice that man achieves what he has to achieve upon earth. It is the giving—of what one is and what one has —to the gods—the sacrifice mounts carrying the offering

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to the gods. But the sacrifice is not a mere one-sided movement, the sacrifice brings from the gods gifts for the man— material prosperity and spiritual fulfilment. Man increases himself in this way, but thereby increases the gods also. The offering that man brings in his sacrifice—all his possessions—his earthly possessions, but chiefly his possessions of the inner world, the wealth of his spirit, the virtues of his consciousness—all go to the gods and increase them, that is to say, they become more manifest and more powerful upon earth and in earthly existence and in the service of man.

The sacrifice going up to the gods as offered by man means the sadhana, the inner discipline that he follows by which he lifts up his being with its mental and vital and physical formulations to their higher and higher potencies upon earth. The dedication of the normal powers and faculties to the gods means purification and release from the bondages of ignorance and egoism. This serves to make the gods living to us, bring them near to our terrestrial life, to our normal consciousness. This is what is meant by increasing the gods—man's duty or debt to the gods. In answer there is a corresponding gesture from the gods, with their immortalising reality they dwell in us and fill our being with their godlike qualities, their light, their energy, their delight, their very immortality. Man increases the gods and the gods increase man and by their mutual increasing they attain the supreme increment, the Divine status, so says the Gita.

Now, we go beyond the gods, to the very origin, God

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himself, the Supreme. What is the debt that God, the Supreme, the Divine, owes to us human beings? We owe to God everything, our life, our very existence, our soul and substance given to us by him, then how is he indebted to us? What kind of debt he has incurred which he has to pay to his creature, the human being. Primarily because he is the Divine Father, he has to take charge of his own creation, see to its growth and fruition and fulfilment. Indeed that is the role of the Divine in us (and above us and around us): that is his work, the Divine Work. Since he has put us out of his consciousness (for a special experience of growth and development), it is also his work (and duty) to bring us back to him: after a process of self-separation a process of self-integration. Man, so long as he is a separate consciousness has to dedicate, lift up and unify this separative conscious being to the whole being and consciousness. This is how he discharges his debt to the Divine, and the answering grace of the Divine is the clearing of the debt which He owes to His creatures.

What has been said of man is equally applicable to earth. The destiny of man is the destiny of earth as also the destiny of earth is the destiny of man. For man is an earthly creature, is born out of earth and he grows with the growth of the earth; equally the earth grows with the growth of man.

In reality it is God's growth in man and earth that is reflected and embodied in the growth of man and earth. The debt spoken of is the debt of God himself to himself. In other words, it is a work, a mission that he has himself 10

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taken upon himself for his own mysterious delight of existence.

Earth moves forward through man who is its flowering and man moves forward through his representative, the higher man, who reveals and embodies still greater potentialities of God's creation, having the privilege of being so conscious as to contact the gods and God Himself—-he is master of life-force (aśwapati); he climbs to the summits and brings down upon earth the heavenly riches and the Divine Grace, which fulfils, transmuting all debits into credits.

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VI

India, the World and the Ashram

India has become the symbol representing all the difficulties of modern humanity. India will become the land of the world's resurrection—the resurrection of a higher and truer life.

1.2.1968

The Mother

A great revelation of a great truth that concerns the whole "world.

We know also that the earth is the symbol of the cosmic evolution. What creation means has been epitomised in earth's history: the earth has been chosen as the field and means of working out a cosmic plan. As the earth is the representative of the world, so India is the representative of the earth. For the evolution of the earth, India has "been chosen as the channel and the laboratory; all problems confronting humanity are found as if gathered here. All that is solved here will be solved almost automatically in the world and the how of it will be shown. All difficulties are concentrated here because here there is a living consciousness which alone can solve them.

In the same way it may be said that our Ashram here is the symbol of all the difficulties that humanity faces, difficulties psychological and material, national and social.

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All varieties of contradictions and contraries, obstacles and impediments, ignorances and prejudices are here that confuse the issue and seek to delay the journey as much as possible, towards progress and new creation. This is because it is a place where there is behind the surface movements of negation, an aspiration and a supporting consciousness supreme in power and effectivity. The individuals here have to meet all kinds of difficulties so that a way out of them may be discovered both in the individual nature and in collective achievement.

We have here in the Ashram varieties of races and religions, all social types, samples of humanity as it were, each representing a particular facet of human nature, a particular possibility and its own field of work. Not only with regard to outward work or enterprise, each one carries his own inner nature different from everybody else's, each one has his own psychological assets and liabilities. In other words, each one undertakes the yoga of understanding and purifying himself and finding out his particular role. Apart from that, here each one is not exclusively for himself, in fact, he is not himself only but is part and parcel of a living unity, in a larger whole.

Man carries the burden of his own sins, in a way; but in a truer sense he carries the burden of all. It is one single burden that lies equally upon everybody everywhere. Thus the burden of the universal movement is shared by all collectively in equal measure.¹ This is true of mankind

¹ Sri Aurobindo says, "Even if our personal deliverance is complete, still there is the suffering of others, the world-travail, which the great of soul cannot regard with indifference. There is unity with all beings which something within us feels, and the deliverance of the others must be felt as intimate to its own deliverance."

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in general; but it becomes dynamically true here among us where there is a conscious effort on the part of individuals to uplift and change the human consciousness. It is however the privilege of each individual to deal with one's share in the whole in one's own way, that is to say, the individual has been given the freedom and the capacity to make the burden light or let it remain or grow more heavy. It must be remembered that behind the individual a greater conscious personality has emerged and taken its place to help, to guide and fulfil the individual's divine destiny: even so, behind the universal effort there is a divine helping hand growing more and more powerful and effective in its manipulation of earthly forces and events. The solution of the difficulties will come from there and that can be the only solution.

We, who are here, living under the very eye of the supreme transfiguring force and consciousness that is working out inexorably the destinies of the individual being, the national being and the being of humanity to their divine fulfilment, we who have the privilege of not merely witnessing but collaborating in the mighty labour, however little it may be in our way, we can only bow down in thankfulness and gratefulness in the silence of our hearts.

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VII

The Mystery of the five Senses

The senses are the doors opening out on the external world for the consciousness to act and range abroad. That is the usual outward movement which is generally so much condemned by spiritual seekers. The doors and windows of the senses, whatever they are, all openings should be closed, shut up, hermetically sealed. One should then return within away from them, if one is to come into contact with the true consciousness, the true reality. Even the Gita says, the conscious being is seated in tranquility within, closing all the nine gates of the city, himself doing nothing nor causing anything to be done.

Well, that is one way of procedure in dealing with the senses. When you consider that the senses always pull you out, they always entice you to run after the sweet perishable goods of the world, invite you to the enjoyment of pleasure and pain, to all the dualities of a life of ignorance normally lived upon earth, then indeed the senses become terribly suspect. But this need not be so. The senses instead of being tempters leading you out into the ignorance may verily be inspirers calling you, guiding you inward. Instead of opening out on the world of maya they may open out on the world of light and truth.

How can that happen? The clue is given in one of the Upanishads. The Kena Upanishad says: This eye does not really see, there is an eye behind that sees, and so on

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with the other senses. Even this mind does not know, there is a mind of the mind that knows. That is the crucial point. With the eye of the eye one must see, with the hearing of an inner ear one must hear, and one must know by the mind of the mind. Instead of opening these windows and doors outward they should be opened inward, turned round about as it were like the flare of a lighthouse. Then instead of being instruments of illusory knowledge or maya as now, they become instruments of real knowledge, receptacles or transmitters of the truth and reality behind and above.

Indeed we say habitually, when speaking of spiritual realisation, that one sees the truth, one has to see the truth: to know the truth, to know the reality is taken to mean to see the truth, to see the reality, and what does this signify? It signifies what one sees is the light, the light that emanates from truth, the form that the Truth takes, the radiant substance that is the Truth. This then is the special character or gift of this organ, the organ of sight, the eye. One sees the physical light, of course, but one sees also the supraphysical light. It is, as the Upanishad says, the eye of the eye, the third eye in the language of the occultists. What we say about the eye may be equally said in respect of the other sense-organs. Take hearing, for example. By the ear we hear the noises of the world, its deafening cries and no doubt at times also some earthly music. But when the ear is turned inward, we listen to unearthly things. Indeed we know how stone-deaf Beethoven heard some of those harmonies of supreme beauty that are

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now the cherished possessions of humanity. This inner ear is able to take you by a process of regression to the very source of all sound and utterance, from where springs the anāhata vāk, the undictated voice, the nāda-brahman, the original sound-seed, the primary vibration. So the ear gives that hearing which reveals to you a special aspect of the Divine: the vibratory rhythm of the being, that matrix of all utterance, of all speech that mark the material expression of consciousness. Next we come to the third sense, that of smell. Well, the nose is not a despicable organ, in any way; it is as important as any other more aristocratic sense-organ, as the eye or the ear. It is the gate to the perfumed atmosphere of the reality. Even like a flower, as a lotus for example, the truth is colourful, beautiful, shapely, radiant to the eye; to the nostrils it is exhilarating perfume, it distils all around a divine scent that sanctifies, elevates the whole being. After the third sense we come to the fourth, the tongue. The mouth gives you the taste of the truth and you find that the Truth is sweetness, the delicious nectar of the gods: for the truth is also soma, the supreme rasa, amṛta, immortality itself. Here is Aswapathy's experience of the thing in Savitri:

In the nostrils quivered celestial fragrances,

On the tongue lingered the honey of Paradise.

Finally we come to the sense of touch. It is the last. But in another way, it is the first and the foremost—psychologically and chronologically—it is the most primary

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and primitive among the senses, as the eye comes last as the final stage in the course of the sensory evolution. The eye is the manifestation of a developed consciousness; perfectly developed eyes as in man represent a perfectly developed consciousness. But touch is the organ with which an organism starts its life-course. It is the only organ a living cell is given when it begins its forward journey. Plants are endowed with that organ and faculty and that only. It is the most generalised, the least specific, and the most sensitive of the organs. Touch gives a closer, more intimate, even more direct perception of the object, it is contact, it means identification, it means becoming and being. And it is through the touch, the sublimated and most intense physical contact, that you have the direct contact with the substance of the Supreme, his very body. For what is Sat up there is Annam here, both are the same identical thing in a dual aspect.

Continuing farther, if we go beyond the five senses, we have still another sense, it is mind, the sixth sense as the orthodox Indian view states. In this field too the same law we have been expounding holds good. Mind here is the chief instrument of knowledge: it is in and through the mind that man has knowledge; it is in and through the mind that the other five senses distil their perceptions allowing a coordinated picture of the sense-experiences. Now, to attain, to realise, to possess the Truth means, first of all, to know the Truth: for, knowing as we know, is the function of the mind. It is said, however, that the mind knows only the outward form of things, its knowledge is

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the knowledge of an outside world, elements of which are supplied by the senses. It is a Knowledge of or in Ignorance. The true knowledge,is not attained by the mind or through the mind. For the true knowledge, it is declared, the mind is to be expunged altogether or silenced at least. One must get away, one must withdraw from that play of activity and be far from it. True knowledge comes through revelations. It descends from above, it does not enter by a level side-door and it comes only when the mind is not there. But this also, as in the other cases, as in respect of the other senses, is an extreme view. Like the other senses the mind too can be turned inward or upward, made a receptive organ or instrument. When turned round, when it is the Mind of the mind, then there begins to appear the true knowledge. Then even this physical mind remains no more ignorant or obscure, it becomes trans-parept and luminous: it is able to bring its own gift, it can serve with its own contribution to the real knowledge; for it is the mind that gives a form and shape, a local habitation and a name to the higher truth, to the real light, to the true knowledge. It is the surūpa (beautiful and perfect form) chanted by the Vedic Rishis that the purified mind models for the Gods to inhabit—it is what the poets and prophets always aspire for in their creative consciousness.

But these separate senses with their separate qualities are not really separate. In the final account of things, the account held in the Supreme Consciousness, at the highest height, these diverse elements or movements are diverse

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but not exclusive of one another. When they find themselves in the supreme consciousness, they do not, like the rivers of which the Upanishads speak, move and merge into the sea giving up their separate individual name and function. These senses do maintain their identity, each its own, even when they together are all of them part and parcel of the Supreme Universal Consciousness. Only, they become supple and malleable, they intertwine, mix together, even one doing another's work. Also, as things exist at present, modern knowledge has found out that a blind man can see, literally see, through some part of his body; the sense of hearing is capable of bringing to you the vision of colours. And the olfactory organ can reveal to you the taste of things. Indeed it has been found that not only at the sight of good food, but in contemplating an extraordinarily beautiful scenery or while listening to an exquisite piece of music, the mouth waters. It is curious to note that Indra, the Lord of the gods, the Vedic lord of the mind and the senses, is said to have transformed the pores of his skin into so many eyes, so that he could see all things around at once, globally: it is why he was called Sahasralochana or Sahasraksha, one with a thousand eyes. The truth is that all the different senses are only extensions of one unitary sensibility and the variation depends on a particular mode of stress on the generalised sensibility.

This is what the Rishis meant when they named and represented even the senses as gods. The gods are many, each has his own attribute and function, but they form one

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indivisible unity.

The senses therefore are not merely externaliser but they are also internalisers. They are modes and movements That work separately and conjointly and present aspects of the Supreme Reality. These aspects are there in the very essence and the constitution of the One Truth, also they are projected outwards to manifest and embody those very elements in the material manifestation and incarnation of the Supreme Divine:

A magical accord quickened and attuned

To ethereal symphonies the old earthy strings... it made

The body's means the spirit's acolytes. Savitri, Book I: Canto 3: P.32

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VIII

The Mystery of the five Elements

The material world, as the ancient sages viewed it, is composed of five elements. They are, as we know, (i) earth (kṣiti), (2) water (ap), (3) fire (tej), (4) air (maruf), and (5) space or ether (vyom), mounting from the grossest to those that are more and more subtle. The subtlest, the topmost in the scale is space or ether. As we descend in the scale, each succeeding element becomes more and more concrete than the preceding one. Thus air is denser than space, fire is denser than air, water is denser than fire and earth is the densest of all—solidity belongs to earth alone. Water is liquid, fire gaseous, air is fluid, and ether is the most tenuous. Now this hierarchy can be considered also as a pyramid of qualities, qualities of matter and the material world tapering upward. The first one, the topmost, space, possesses the quality of sound or vibration; it is the field giving out waves that originate sound.¹

¹ Science, that is modern Science, will perhaps demur a little; for Science holds sound to be the exclusive property of air, it is the vibration of air that comes to the ear as sound. Where there, is no air, there is no sound. But Science itself admits now that-sound audible to the human ear is only a section of a whole gamut of vibrations of which the ear catches only a portion, vibrations of certain length and frequency. Those that are outside this limit, below or above, are not seized by the ear. So there is a sound that is unheard. The poets speak of unheard melodies.

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"The next element is air, its special quality as found in the ancient knowledge is the quality of touch: it gives the sensation of touch, you can touch it, it touches you and you recognise its existence in that way. Touch however is its own, its primary quality but it takes up also the quality of the previous, the subtler element, in order to become more and more evolved, more and more concrete, that is to say, in the material way. Air has thus a double quality, sound and touch—it is tactile, and it is sonorous. The third one, fire, has the quality of possessing a form; it has visibility in addition to the two qualities of the two previous elements, which it takes up: thus fire is visible, it can be touched—yes, it may burn also and it gives out sound. The fourth element, water, adds a fourth quality which is its own, namely, taste. Water has taste, very delightful taste to mortals. A Greek poet says water has the best taste, hudor men ariston. So you can taste water, you can see its form, you can touch it, you can hear it gurgle. Coming to the last, earth has all these qualities:

The vibrations—the sound-vibrations—are in fact not merely in the air; but originally and fundamentally in a more subtle material medium, referred to by the ancients as vyom. The air-vibrations are derivations or translations, in a more concrete and gross medium, of these subtler vibrations. These too are heard as sound by a subtle hearing. The very original seed-sound is, of course, Om, nāda. That, however, is another matter.

Like inaudible sound, we know now, there is also invisible light. The visible light, as given in the spectrum, is only a section of the entire series of light-vibrations. There is a range above and one below—both are invisible to the normal physical eye.

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in addition, what it has is, curious to say, smell. So you can hear earth's vibrations, you can touch it, see it, taste it—for some earth has a very savoury taste—but its own special quality is smell: it is odorous, it is sweet-scented. Kalidasa speaks with ecstasy of the strange scent that the earth emits when the fresh rains fall upon it.

So, the five senses open out to the five elements, each sense linked to its own element, each sense presenting a particular aspect of the material universe. Thus ether, the subtlest element, is present to the ear, the organ of hearing, air to the skin (twak) the organ of touch, the fire-element (radiant energy) to the eye, the liquid to the organ of taste, and earth is given over to smell. Earth is linked with smell, perhaps because it is the perfume of creation, the dense aroma of God's material energy. Also earth is the summation of all the elements and all the qualities of matter. It is the epitome of the material creation. The physical beauty of earth is well-known, the landscape and seascape, its rich variegated coloration, we all admire standing upon its bosom, but up in the air, in the wide open spaces earth appears with even a more magical beauty to which cosmonauts have given glowing tribute. But even this visible beauty pales, I suppose, before the perfume it emits which is its celestial quality, that can only be described indeed as the sweet-scented body of the Divine Substance.

The five elements are thus the five orders of material existence viewed as correlates to the five senses of man. But they are also realities in their own right. They represent

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the fundamental principles underlying or characterising the nature of matter. Science speaks of the three states of matter—solid, liquid and gaseous. The five elements enumerate five states instead. Thus earth=solid, water=liquid, fire=gaseous or radiant, air—fluid, ether or space=etheric. A distinction is made between gaseous and fluid, fluid being still more dispersive and tenuous. We might take air as representing the ether spoken of in science and what we have been equating with ether may be termed the field—the gravitational field, for example, of our days.

The last two may, however, be represented somewhat differently. The Maruts may symbolise the region of the subder or supra-electromagnetic forces—what are now called cosmic rays: they are waves or particles of such infinitesimal magnitude that some of them at least have only a mathematical substance or reality, a probability-point, although of calculable or incalculable energy! Vayu then would represent the fundamental field where these forces play—perhaps something like the Einsteinian field with its "corrugated" surface: or it is like the "Pradhana" of Sankhya, the original Prakriti or basic Nature before it burst out in its creative activity.

Again, the five elements are not merely substances or states and qualities of substance, but they are also forces and energies, material forces and energies—since we have confined ourselves to matter and the material world. Science (we are always referring to Science, we have to do so since we are dealing with and speaking from the standpoint

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of matter and material existence), Science has familiarised us with the various forms and types of forces and energies. They are, starting from the most patent and gross, going up to more and more subtle energies, first of all mechanical energy, then (2) chemical energy, (3) electrical energy, (4) gravitational energy, and finally (5) the field energy; the last two are perhaps not very clearly differentiated and distinguished, but still one may make the distinction. And this mounting ladder of energy with its various steps, with its five steps corresponds exactly to the old Indian quintet—earth, water, fire, air, space.

This is not to say that the ancients exactly knew the mysteries of modern scientific exploration. This only means that there is a parallelism between the ancient and the modern knowledge. The scale or hierarchy, from the most concrete substance through the subtler ones, to the subtlest, representing the constitution of the material world as conceived by the ancient seers finds a close and curious echo in the picture that modern science has drawn of material existence.

It must be noted, however, that parallelism means similarity but also difference. The manner of approach to the reality, the way of expressing it is different in the east and in the west. The ancients express a truth or a fact symbolically, the moderns express it in a straightforward matter-of-fact way. The ancients used symbols; for they wanted a multiple way of expression, that is to say, a symbol embodying a movement refers at the same time to many forms

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of the same movement on different levels, along different lines, in diverse applications. It is like the multiple meanings of a verbal root in Sanskrit. The scientific terms, on the other hand, are very specific; they connote only one thing at a time. Each term with its specific sense is unilateral in its movement.

Now furthermore, the Great Five need not be restricted to the domain of matter alone as being its divisions and levels and functions, but they may be extended to represent the whole existence, the cosmos as a whole. Indeed they are often taken to symbolise the stair of existence as a whole, the different levels of cosmic being and consciousness. Thus at the lowest rung of the ladder as always is the earth representing precisely matter and material existence; next, water represents life and the vital movement; then, fire represents the heart centre from where wells up all impulse and drive for progression. It holds the evolutionary urge: we call it the Divine Agni, the Flame of the Inner Heart, the radiant Energy of Aspiration. The fourth status or level of creation is mind or the mental world, represented by air, the Vedic Marut; finally, Vyom or space represents all that is beyond the mind, the Infinite Existeace and Consciousness. The five then give the chart, as it were, of nature's constitution, they mark also the steps of her evolutionary journey through unfolding time.

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IX

On Discipline

The Mother says: "No big creation is possible without discipline". The true and original meaning of discipline is to be a disciple. And a disciple is one who learns, is ready to learn from a master. So the first requisite for a disciple or a learner is to obey. Obedience then is the beginning and the very basis of discipline. We know from ancient stories and legends how this discipline of obedience was exacted from a disciple or learner. For knowledge or learning was not considered at that time as a bundle of information to be acquired or collected by the pupil. It is not a mass of dead materials that is laid before the learner to possess and store; it is something living that the teacher passed from his consciousness into that of his pupil, and for the free passage of the knowledge from the master to the disciple a passive, receptive mentality and absolute obedience is an indispensable condition — a sine qua non. In the spiritual domain this was the procedure that was universally accepted and followed, although always in the name of individual freedom and free will protestant movements arose and flourished and traced their own way.

But obedience to person is in the last analysis a symbol —symbol of obedience to a principle. The person signifies and embdies a principle, a law to which we render our

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obedience. In normal life it is these principles or laws that demand our obedience. These laws or rules are meant for the welfare of collective living and therefore individuals are expected to restrain or forego their personal impulses, their so-called liberties in order to live together in harmony. Discipline is meant exactly to control one's personal idiosyncracies, place them under the yoke of the common collective law. All laws or rules that make for a harmonious collective living, that is, social or national welfare, are limbs of discipline. By submitting himself to such a process of self-abnegation the individual gains in self-control and self-mastery. But there are rules and rules, laws and laws. For that depends on the ideal or the purpose set before oneself. If the purpose is narrow, limited, superficial, the rules are necessarily likewise, and although effective in a particular field, they have a restricting, even deadening effect on the consciousness of the individual. If discipline means obedience, the obedience must be to a larger and higher law, and the perfect discipline will come only from obedience to the highest law.

The heart of discipline then is the effort to surmount oneself. Instead of a lower self following the law of an inferior consciousness one is to rise to a higher level of consciousness and a greater law of being. Discipline thus is only another term for tapasyā, replacing the lower law gradually by a higher and higher law.

Mother speaks of three lines of this higher law. First of all, the individual law which at its lowest and its most common form is the law of selfishness. It is the most elementary

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and superficial degree of consciousness when the being is confined to its own little person, confined mostly to its hungers and desires, to its sense of possession and appropriation. The human being starts with this addiction to selfishness but he moves towards a gradual enlargement and rearrangement of this sense of personal value and importance. Therefore he is given a family, a nation, a grouping more or less large in which he can find other selves to meet and learn to live with harmoniously. A collective life whether in a nation or in the family or in any other group formation demands a control over the selfish impulses and egoistic urges. That is the discipline, that is to say, the necessity of submitting the law of one's ego-self to the law of collective selves, needed for the realisation of a collective ideal. When you play a game you have to obey the rule of the game and you have to dovetail your movements into the movements of your comrades, you cannot move as you please but must integrate your gestures with those of others. Even so as a member of a particular family or as a citizen of a particular country you have to rearrange your personal habits and movements in accordance with a more general and wider plan of living. The extent of this obedience depends upon the ideal that a particular collectivity pursues and the value of the obedience depends on the ideal thus pursued. And the largest collectivity is of course the human race, the humanity as a whole. The submission of the personal law to the law of humanity in general is also a discipline demanded of man but here too

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the value of the submission depends upon the exact nature of the humanity to which one is asked to submit. For as I have said, there are degrees of consciousness and levels of being mounting higher and higher in an increasing value in respect of width and intensity and essential character. For along with the widening of the consciousness there must be a heightening of it, a horizontal movement of the being must be supported or accentuated by a vertical movement. Even the widest consciousness, a consciousness one with the universe, as wide as creation itself, can still have a core of ego-sense left behind, however attenuated it may be; the ego-sense can be abolished only by a transcendence even of the universal consciousness and rise into the supra-conscious. And this brings us to the other line of discipline, the supreme discipline which means obedience not merely, not even to the cosmic law but to the transcendent Divine Law. Here the individual is absolutely, utterly, free from his little self, the minor self-law, he is totally merged in the Divine, his being and living becomes the Divine's own law of existence.

Discipline then is the obedience of a learner to an ever-expanding and ever-ascending law of consciousness and being, until the law of the supreme status is realised which is the law of divine living: it is the utter submission or total obedience to the Divine Himself, when one is identified with the Divine in being and nature, where Law and Person are one and the same.

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X

Effort and Grace

There are, we know, as Sri Aurobindo says, two powers which in their conjunction bring about the great consummation we aim at. It is personal effort from below and Divine Grace from above. The one prepares the field, the other fructifies and fulfils.

It has, however, always been declared that personal effort is not absolute in its effectivity, it is limited, relative and conditional: it does not by itself lead you to the final and supreme realisation; it takes you at the most to the threshold of Grace which follows up the work and brings it to its goal. Indeed it has also been said that personal effort itself is operative when inspired and impelled by the Grace from behind or from above. The Gita says in effect: By your effort and tapasyā you are capable of withdrawing yourself from the mayic world of the senses, get detached from the sense-objects; but the secret attachment, the taste, the subtle interest for them goes only when the Supreme is visioned:

Raso'pyasa param dṛṣṭvā nivartate (2.59.)

The Upanishad also says: the highest is visible only when of its own accord It unveils itself:

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Yamevaiṣa vṛṇute tena labhyaḥ (Katha: 2.23)

The actual function or role of personal effort is that of a guide, like Virgil taking Dante through Hell and Purgatory and then arriving at the frontier of Paradise and there entrusting him into the hands of Beatrice. It is to give the preliminary experiences, initiate into the basic mysteries in order to prepare the vessel that is to house the Supreme. The Supreme is not amenable to your control whatever your effort may be, it is free, even eccentric— the wind bloweth where it listeth—the Grace goes wherever it chooses to go; it does not weigh or examine the amount of your preparation, it has its own manner of choosing. But the preparation that your personal effort effectuates is helpful for the working of the Grace not so much for its initial descent—it is, as I said, to prepare the ādhār for holding, maintaining and establishing it.

We know too well:

"Only a little the God-light can stay..."

The whole problem is there: how to make the God-light stay here, stay here for ever. The higher light does come down, but fitfully, one is never certain of it. For it is as it were, "a scout in a reconnaissance from the sun." Here then is this special utility of personal effort, the service it can render,—to do the dredging, salvaging work. Personal effort with the ego-sense has been put there to find out and note the barriers and pitfalls, the faults and

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fissures in the human system, to overcome, remedy and correct them as far as possible. The human receptacle is normally impure and obscure, resistant and recalcitrant: the personal will and endeavour has to be called in to labour, to level and smoothen the field, breathe into it air and light. That is the work of the individual will, to make of the ādhār a strong base, strong and capacious, to receive and hold the descent. The temple is to be made clean and pure and inviting so that when the deity arrives he will find a happy home for a permanent dwelling.

It must be noted however, in the last account the personal effort for self-purification and self-preparation is not altogether personal and mere effort; it is, as I have said, always supported and inspired by the secret presence and pressure of the higher Influence.

Still, personal effort on our part has a unique value in this sense that it means collaboration and goodwill and readiness of the being to fall in line with the cosmic work and the Divine plan: it signifies the assent of the lower consciousness to the working of the higher. What is required is conscious cooperation: unconscious cooperation is always there but it is, as it were, forced labour: does, not the Lord declare to Nature

"I will pursue thee across the century;

Thou shalt be hunted through the world by love,

Naked of ignorance protecting veil...

Nowhere shalt thou escape my loving eyes."

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Instead of the ill-will or unwillingness of the normal original ignorant being there comes about a change, a conversion to the light and truth. First the Inferno, then the Purgatory, finally there will be the Paradise. At the outset in the ignorance the being withdraws, contracts, wriggles under the light touching it, its first impulse is to repel the new-comer. A conscious effort is a movement of correction against the instinctive reaction, it is a movement towards the right reaction of the being to the impact of the light. The whole being, the whole nature in all its parts and functions has to be corrected, re-oriented, gradually tempered and stream-lined—polarised so that it is made one-pointed, supple and obedient and responsive. That is the process of fixing upon earth the fleeting Godhead.

Personal effort is thus a training in collaboration. From inertia and indifference, unwillingness and even positive hostility to rise into cooperation and comradeship, that is the discipline that personal effort gives to the mortal being, and then from cooperation and collaboration to union and identity with the Supreme Goal, effort merging into the spontaneous execution of the Divine Will, the personal melting into the impersonal Person—that is the consummation brought about by Grace.

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XI

The Moral and the Spiritual

Is there anything essentially wrong, evil in its very being and nature? Some religious traditions say, there is: Satan is such a thing, Ahriman is such a thing, and what else is māyā or mārā?

However that may be, the sense of something essentially wrong is the fount and origin of the moral sense. The moral sense stems from and lives on the sense of sin and guilt.

The sense of sin is the fundamental inspiration behind some religious disciplines, even the sense of something irrevocably bad or something irreparable; for that gives a stronger impetus, a more dynamic urge to the spur of the religious consciousness. The sense of something irreparable, a final doom has before it the vision of an eternal hell, the Lord of hell and his hosts and his captives. Upon this basic picture of Hell has loomed out Dante's vision of Paradise.

The Indian consciousness did not consider anything essentially evil, anything irrevocably and eternally condemned to perdition. Even the Asura, the anti-Divine is viewed, in the last analysis of things, also as an aspect, a formation of the Divine himself. Diti and Aditi are sisters, twin aspects of the same Supreme Being. All the legends in narrating the life-history of the Asura describe his end

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as a submission to the Divine Will and a merging in Him. An entire life of bitter hostility culminates in the same degree of love for the Divine. The process of enmity seems to have a deeper occult meaning conducive to the more perfect union with the Divine. We know in Savitri how Sri Aurobindo speaks of Death as only a mask of Immortality.

In fact, evil, as we usually know it, as human mind construes it, is only a misplacement of a thing, a thing not in its place—a thing need not be essentially wrong, it is wrong because it is not in its right place. Even things considered reprehensible by the moral sense are not so when they are viewed from another standpoint.

The moral consciousness seeks to rescue man from the animal consciousness. Its effort is to be delivered from the inferior vital instincts and rise to something higher, genuinely human. It does that or tries to do that by cultivating a feeling of repulsion, even of horror towards things that are sought to be rejected, cast out. The feeling of repulsion, of revulsion and horror is indispensable to the growth and maintenance of the moral feeling.

The Indian discipline, on the other hand, teaches that to rise to a higher state of consciousness one need not have, one must not have, any feeling of revulsion or hatred. There is no such thing as saintly hatred. One must be free from attachment to the movements of inferior nature, one must cultivate detachment from them, but not necessarily through hatred or horror. The spiritual discipline bases itself upon a sense of perfect equality.

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"When you have hatred or horror for a thing it means you are on the same plane with it, your consciousness is level with the consciousness of the opposite feelings. You have to rise above the status of the lower nature and this can be done only by a calm detachment, a quiet withdrawal. One need not entertain repulsion or hatred for animal life in order to rise superior to it, one automatically rises superior to it when one links oneself to the higher status, when one is imbued with the superior consciousness. The animal consciousness is not a wrong consciousness in itself, it is a life of the animal; the human consciousness may regard it as such and may still discover a superior consciousness looking at the movements of the lower world dispassionately, indifferently, or even appreciatively, for a thing of beauty is there even in the animal life, for the Divine is everywhere.

The moral impulse is towards a self-exceeding but this self-exceeding, I have said, is to be done in perfect equanimity, in absolute detachment and indifference. To rise in consciousness, from the physical and animal to the divine, means, of course, abandoning the inferior, reaching the higher: but 'inferior' does not mean something low, something be despised and reviled, but simply some-thing to be passed over, transcended. And the ideal would be not only to surpass but to find out a secret parallelism between the two, discover the seed of the higher embedded even in the lower. In the Indian discipline including the school that advocates total rejection of the lower and enjoins simple detachment and separation, does not

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approve of any feeling of contempt or disgust.

The states of being or consciousness from the animal, or down from Matter itself up to the Supreme—ābrahma-stamba—constitute what is called a hierarchy. Hierarchy means a structure rising upward tier upon tier, step by step: it is a scale, as it were, of increasing values, only the values are not moral, they indicate only a measure, a neutral measure respecting position or a kind of mass content. As in a building where brick is laid upon brick, or stone upon stone, the one laid above is not superior to the one laid below; the terms inferior and superior indicate only the simple position of the objects. Even the system of the four social orders in ancient India was originally such a hierarchy. The higher and lower orders did not carry any moral appreciation or depreciation. The four orders placed one above the other schematically denote only the respective social functions classified according to the nature of each, even as the human body represents such a hierarchy, rising from the feet at the bottom towards the head at the top. This is to say all objects and movements in nature are right when they are confined each to its own domain, following its own dharma of that domain. Thus one can be perfectly calm and at ease witnessing the catastrophies and cataclysms in nature, for one knows it is the dharma of material nature. Man terms them disasters for he judges them according to his own convenience. Even so, one should not be perturbed at the wild behaviour—man calls it wild—of wild animals. Likewise the gods in their sovereign tranquillity smile

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at the crudeness and stupidities of human beings. One has to lift oneself up, withdraw and stand high above all that one wishes to surpass and look at it, with a benign godly smile.

The world is a gradation of developing consciousness, of growing states or status of being. There is a higher and lower level in point of the measure of consciousness but that involves no moral judgement: the moral judgement is man's; it is man's, one might almost say, idiosyncracy, that is to say, a notion that is a prop to help him mount the ladder. Though it might be necessary at a certain stage, in certain circumstances, it is not a universal or ineluctable law, not even in his personal domain. The growing consciousness is like the growing tree rising upward first into a trunk, then spreading out into branches, into twigs and tendrils, then in flowers and finally, in fruits. These are mounting grades of growth, but the growth above is not superior to the growth below. It is a one unified whole and each portion has its own absolute value, beauty and utility.

The modern mind has forgotten this lesson. It is terribly moral—I say moral, not immoral—its immorality has found play, has almost been cultured so that its moral sense may remain intact. Its dislike and even abhorrence for things it chooses to call immoral is the ransom it pays for rescuing its sense of morality, and paradoxically this very abhorrence for unholy things has pushed it all the more into their grasp. This is the characteristic turn or twist of the modern consciousness, the perversity unknown.

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to the ancient 'sinners'. Perversity means, you yield, not only yield, but take delight in the thing you dislike, detest or abhor even. In the vein of St. Augustine who said "I believe because it is impossible," the modern consciousness says: I love because I hate.

A strange fascination for the forbidden fruit has gripped the modern mentality and the most significant part of the thing is that the forbidding comes from within oneself, not from any authority outside—it is self-forbidden. We are reminded here of the Kantian moral absolute—the categorical imperative. This is a gospel based upon the Christian and Semitic tradition, polished by the Greek (that is, Socratic) touch, quickened and sharpened by the intellectual and social stress of European Culture. India admitted no such moral absolute or mental categorical imperative. The urge of her spiritual consciousness was always to go beyond, beyond the dualities, beyond the trinities (the three guṇas)—all mental or scriptural rules and regulations. For her there is only one absolute—the transcendent, the Supreme Divine himself—the Brahman, nothing else, netaram.

The Indian spiritual consciousness considers the secular distinction of good and evil as otiose: both are maya, there must neither be attachment to the Good, nor repulsion from Evil, the two, dwandwas, belong to the same category of relativity, that is, unreality.

Indian artists and poets were steeped in that tradition, wholly inspired by that spirit. Orthodox morality often wonders, is even shocked at the frankness, the daring

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non-chalance in Indian art creations,—a familiar prudery would call it shamelessness and even vulgarity, but to the Indian view, the Brahmin and the cow and the elephant' are of equal value and merit. The movement conventional morality calls 'libidinous' has a nobler name in Indian tradition: it is ādirasa, the first or primary delight of existence. As I have said, the modern consciousness finds it a horror and is therefore all the more fascinated by it and dives into it head foremost.

To cure the modern malady we have to go back again to something of the ancient mentality. We have to cultivate a consciousness, now forgotten and alienated but once natural to the human mind, the consciousness and status of a transcendence built with the sense of absolute calm an equality, all serene and all englobing, that is God's consciousness.

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XII

Cling to Truth

The Life Divine is the life of Truth. It is based on Truth, it is Truth, body and substance—Truth absolute, pure and simple. But it may be asked as we are actually in the ignorant and half-ignorant consciousness, in a world of almost total falsehood, is it not necessary, is it not inescapable for us to accept the falsehood for the moment, in order to be able to work in the world and succeed? We have to live in an environment and move in it; if we try to go against it openly, how can we do it practically? As individuals we are infinitesimal particles and the mass of the whole will bear us down each one of us and crush us out of existence. Truth is all right, but the approach to it needs to be cautious and careful. If falsehood is clever we too have to be clever. In a game where success is the aim, diplomacy and strategy are not outlawed. You have to accept certain terms of your enemy in order that certain terms of yours might be accepted. You can move to success in this mixed world only through a process of give and take. An absolute saintly attitude is not a thing of practical politics. That is why, to keep their truth unsullied, the ancients abandoned this field of practical politics, retired to the forest or into the cosy laps of the hills.

Beware, this is the voice of the adversary trying to tempt you by confusing your mind. The path is straight and

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narrow, it is not wide and comfortable and strewn with roses. To find the Truth, to live the Truth we must begin by finding it in its purity and living it. As is the start, so is the end. Our steadfastness, our faithfulness must be unalloyed, our sincerity of utmost purity. It is Truth alone that leads to Truth, a compromise or semblance leads only to the untruth. Your diplomacy or duplicity may bring you the coveted result or it may not; but surely it will put a layer of soot upon your soul, push you back one step more into your inconscience. And if you continue you may become the biggest success in the eyes of the world, but your soul will be nowhere, leaving behind perhaps only a hopeless sob in a wilderness. Has not the Mother said, "Even if there is a particle of falsehood in your expression—in your word or in your act—how can you hope to express the Supreme Truth?" Remember also the words of Sri Aurobindo: "Do not imagine that truth and falsehood, light and darkness, surrender and selfishness can be allowed to dwell together in a house consecrated to the Divine. The transformation must be integral, and integral therefore the rejection of all that withstands it."¹

You cannot elude falsehood or cajole or conjure it. You must stand face to face, gaze with unwinking eyes, the flame of Truth within you constantly ablaze.

If you say you are a small creature and yours a smaller light: your consciousness has not the dimensions of a heroic being, your light will be engulfied, swallowed up

¹ The Mother.

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and lest in the vast and overwhelming gloom around. Yet small as you are, do what you can, the utmost possible for you; do not let your little flame be tarnished by any contrary or unworthy movement in you: be firm, keep it bright and trimmed. The surrounding darkness may engulf it but cannot smother it; for it is the everlasting, the Divine in you. The body, the flesh may not continue but the holy light remains. The outward frame may have to yield or dissolve in a material surrounding that was unready—not that the inner consciousness was unready. Indeed the passing body releases the light and it adds to the growing light in the earth's atmosphere. That is the central creed of the Christian martyr. The blood of the martyr is the cement of the Church. This truth of martyrdom, the sacrifice of the faithful was perhaps a necessity at a time when humanity had not risen high enough in consciousness and the earth's atmosphere was more opaque and dull than it is now. The one thing necessary at that stage was an uncompromising living faith, the pure light, the unvacillating flame, a spirit even though small standing against insurmountable odds—that was the way, the martyr's way to stand against the adversary. That is why in the process the God-Man sacrificed himself.

We are in a somewhat different age under different circumstances. At least our aim is different. We stand firm full square against all temptations, all leaning towards compromise, in the faith and certainty that we shall conquer, we shall not go down but the odds against us shall be pushed back and eliminated. This is the age of Victory.

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For two things have happened—two mighty happenings in earth's history, in the course of nature's evolution here: two unseen events that have new-oriented the destiny of earth and mankind. First of all human consciousness in its essential achievement has risen to a new level of consciousness, although not in the mass, nor generally even in individuals, but there has come a common acquiescence in the being to a higher status of living—proletarianism at its best means nothing else. Human nature has shed something of its mediaeval crudeness and obscurantism, separatism and selfishness; human mind has been more sharpened and polished and widened so as to receive easily the message of the cosmic rays. There has dawned in the atmosphere the perception or sense, of a higher, purer, more luminous and enlightened status of existence. That is, one may say, Nature's gift, the outcome of the millennial, the aeonic working of an aspiration inherent in matter towards light and order. That is the first event. The second one is more occult but more mighty and even devastating. It is the descent, the manifestation, the intervention of a new force here below. They who have seen it know and there is no question. The Veda has declared long ago: The Unseeing have not the Knowledge, those who have eyes possess the Knowledge.

Today, more than ever, only a little of this pure consciousness will bring you victory, not merely safety from a great perdition. Against the vast, what appears as the all-swallowing gloom of the external space, the inner space is now luminous, doubly luminous and powerful.

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XIII

The Golden Bridge

The Truth, the Supreme Truth cannot be expressed here below, neither in words, nor in mental ideas: It is inexpressible, indeterminable—anirvacyam, anirdeśyath. For, it exists, it is found only where the creation ceases to exist—prapañcopaśamām.

If it is asked how does then the world itself exist? has it not come out of the Truth? is it not an expression of the Divine? well, an easy answer is: Look at the world and see what kind of expression it is. Is it a divine creation? What truth is there? In truth, it is an expression of falsehood, it is all an error. So it has been declared by the great sages of the past that this is a false creation; it is an illusion, a delusion. Why is it so? How is it so? Go beyond it, into the Truth beyond, you will know. Being in the illusion, how can you perceive that it is an illusion, or why or how is it an illusion? This is one way of looking at the problem, we may say, a very categorical or radical way. But there are other possibilities, other lines of approach.

This creation as an expression of the Divine Truth may not be altogether a falsehood. It is an inadequate expression, as it stands at present, as it has been till now; but it is a growing, a progressive expression. In other words, the instruments of expression, to start with, are not fully

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developed, they have to be developed; they are being developed, through the evolutionary movement of Nature, in the course of advancing time. Indeed evolution in Nature means that and a great deal of that.

Take for example, speech, which is a special organ of expression for man. Now, originally speech, that is to say, the vocabulary on man's tongue consisted of vocables related only to the familiar objects around him, in the ordinary day to day movement of life. The field was narrow and limited, level to the ground. Observe the language also, the written language.The original written language started with images, pictorial diagrams: there was no alphabet but things and movements were presented, that is represented, almost actually. Thus for man a figure of man was drawn, that is to say, straight lines sticking out representing hands and legs and a dot for the head; the sun was a circle and so on. As consciousness grew and as the mind developed and reason became active, the images, the figures and the symbols gradually changed into more and more abstract signs. At first there was the pictogram, then the ideogram, and then, at the end, came the alphabet. Evidently, it appears, language could not develop so quickly as the consciousness or the mind did, for we see even in the earlier epochs of human civilisation and culture, man could and did come in contact with the Truth and Realities beyond his normal sense-bound consciousness. And the experiences the seers had on those levels were of such a kind that whenever they sought to express them, communicate them to others in the outward

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mind and speech, they had to take refuge in symbolism: they had to use the words of everyday life as signs and symbols pointing to other realities, other-worldly and unfamiliar. Thus, horse was to them life-force, cow the radiance of truth, the wind thought-energies, the sun consciousness or Truth, night as ignorance, light as knowledge, wine (soma means both wine and moon) as delight and ecstasy, the sky as infinity or transcendence. And so on.

Indeed, that is the hiatus, the inadequacy that still cripples and stultifies the mind, the physical mind in its attempt to seize other realities beyond. It is the mind which gives the formal structure, the pattern of expression in the material frame. The mind being bound to the life of the ignorant and outgoing senses is constitutionally incapable of receiving or holding or expressing facts of the higher life, the life beyond—what we name as the spiritual or the divine. Not only so, the mind in trying to express the higher or supraterrestrial truths inevitably diminishes, dilutes, devalues, even negates and annuls them. The attempt through parables and allegories is the story of the difficulty—the impossibility of expressing through the mind truths beyond the mind. We land into the weird and confused worlds of myths and mythologies, —myths and mythologies for example about popular Radha and Krishna, and Kali or Shiva. We are compelled to reduce to our human measures, to accentuate our human failings in order to present graphically to us the inexpressible intensities or extensions of the high experiences

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above. The Vaishnava lyrics or the songs of Solomon become to us high spiritual documents.

Man started his life on earth as an animal and is still continuing to be so in a large measure: his mental equipment also was almost wholly conditioned by the necessities of such a situation: his language, his culture even built upon an outward view of things, upon the mode and manner of his physical reactions to impacts of the gross outward world, the brute objects of physical life.

The liberation of the mind, at least the higher mind, as an instrument of expression for the human consciousness was achieved to a remarkable degree in the Upanishads generally, particularly in some, although the beginnings of it might be traced even in some of the earliest of the Vedic Riks. A serious and persistent attempt for this liberation was made later, in the age or rather ages of the Gita, the Mahabharata, the Darshanas. It was the rational spirit that impelled and inspired the Buddhist consciousness and in Europe it had its heyday in the age of Socrates and Plato. Those were intellectual ages and the intellect was trying to find and explore its own domain in its full and free power and sovereignty. And the human language too, as a necessary corollary was remoulded, remodelled, rationalised: it shook itself away as far as possible from the prejudices and prepossessions of the sense-bound mind. That is the inner story of the growth of language from the synthetic inflexional cohesive stage to its modern analytic discursive character.

Still, however, it is not easy to completely ignore or

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efface the influence of a concrete truth, a fact which is at the basis of human birth—the truth and fact of the body, of the external material objects. For example, how to express That which does not belong to this world, has not the measures of this body? The Upanishad has perforce to speak negatively of the Supreme positive Reality. It has to say, "It is not this, it is not this, it is quite other than all this, it has no parallel here below although it is the source and origin of all this." We have found some positive words indeed—sat-cit-ānanda; but the other key-word is a negative in structure— amṛtam, not death. Immortality means not mortality, and ananta too is a negative expression. We remember the famous lines: "Na tatra sūrya bhāti etc.", it is a supreme revelation, it is supremely evocative but it is built up of negatives. The Vedic rishis followed a different line, as I said; they did not evade or reject the materials of a physical life, they boldly grasped them and used them as signs, symbols, embodiments of other truths and realities. They accepted the sun, the moon, the stars, man and woman, even the normal activities of life but they gave these quite a different connotation. They filled them with a new depth and density, a higher specific gravity.

The instruments being inadequate, it was necessary to by-pass them and take to an indirect way for expressing realities that are beyond them. Neither the language nor the mental concepts were the vessels that could hold the divine drink. And sometimes the result was not very happy.

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The movement of freeing the consciousness from the hold of sense-perceptions has continued and has attained an unprecedented success. Rational mind, in order to find its autonomy has abstracted itself so much from the data of life-experiences that it has become almost an esoteric domain. Mathematical logic of today has brought forth a language that has almost no kinship with either the popular or the aristocratic tongue. Modern science has so much sublimated the facts of life, the contents of experience, that it has become only a system of geometrical formulae.

The recoil from the brute facts of life, the concrete living realities has affected even the world of artistic creation. We are very much familiar with what has been called abstract art, that is to say, art denuded of all content. The supreme art today is this sketch of bare skeleton —even a skeleton, not in its organised form but merely dismembered bits strewn about. Even poetry, the art that is perhaps most bound to the sense-pattern, as no other, so indissolubly married to sense-life, seems to be giving way to the new impact and inspiration. A poetry devoid of all thought-content, pure of all sentiment and understandable imagery is being worked out in the laboratory, as it were, a new poetry made of a bizarre combination of tones and syllables with a changed form too in regard to arrangement of lines and phrases. It is the pure form that is aimed at—the very essence, it is said, what is quintessential!

In other words, mind, that is to say, the rational mind

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on which stands man's superiority has now been so developed, developed along a single line, has specialised itself so much that it has almost defeated its own purpose. Today it has entered a cul-de-sac, a blind alley where it has bogged itself and does not know where and how to move.

The recoil from the normal, the rich and lush physico-mental expression of human consciousness and experience has been so radical and complete that it has catapulted us into an opposite extreme of bareness and nudity, at the most into a world of pure signs and symbols of notches and blotches, the disjointed mimics and inarticulate groans of a deaf and dumb man. The process of abstraction has gone so far that it has now been reduced to an absurdity. It has its parallel in the movement that led man away from the world of Maya to the Transcendent featureless Brahman. In either case the reason is that the link that joins the two ends could not be found—a living truth that is of the Transcendent, yet denying not, but affirming in a new manner the mayic existence. That is because man till now sought to create from a level of consciousness, by a force of consciousness that is not adequate to the task; for it belongs still to the mental region, to this inferior hemisphere although at present it seems to be the acme and topmost hemisphere in the scale. It is not an extension or intensification of the mind and its capacities that will solve the problem: a radical change in the very nature of the mind, a reversal of the mental consciousness—a turning of it inside out

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as it were, an opening out and up is needed to discover the true source of the Light. Therefore it has been said that man must transcend himself, find a new status in the other hemisphere. In fact there is a domain, a status of being and consciousness, a master-force which when revealed and made active will remould inevitably and spontaneously human creation and expression as a reality embodying the Highest. It is the world of Idea-Force which Sri Aurobindo has named Supermind: it is beyond the mind, even the highest mind: it is the typal concentration of the Supreme Consciousness. It is the fulcrum for the Supreme Consciousness to create and express a new formulation of the Truth in the world of matter. The mind, the highest mind, in its attempt to grasp the Supreme Reality is prone to reject, annul and efface the Cosmic Reality. The Supermind has no need to do that. It links the two ends in a supreme and miraculous synthesis negating neither, giving the full value to each, for the two are united, concentrated in its substance. Thus is found the golden bridge uniting earth and heaven.

The physical mind, with its satellite, the human speech, must indeed be rescued from the thraldom of the animal life, the life of the ordinary senses. They should be put under the regimen of the new consciousness, the status of the Idea-Force. The action of that consciousness will create its own norm and pattern adequate for expressing and embodying supra-sensuous realities. It will not have to depend upon allegories and parables, symbols and signs seized from ordinary life. What exactly this will be is.

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difficult to say at present. Evidently there is likely to be an intermediary creation—a passage leading from the sensuous to the supra-sensuous, the higher not totally rejecting the lower or primitive formula, the lower not altogether englobing and swallowing the higher.

The mantra of Savitri wields a language and expresses a physical mind that already shows how the alchemy will be done or is being done: the transmutation of the ordinary experience into a suprasensuous or the supra-sensuous embodying itself in the sensuous. The process is still in a state of transition, and as a sample of the process in action and a prefigure or fortaste of the achievement, may be recognisable in the famous sonnet of Sri Aurobindo which I quote here in full and conclude.

The Golden Light

Thy golden Light came down into my brain

And the grey rooms of mind sun-touched became

A bright reply to Wisdom's occult plane,

A calm illumination and a flame.

Thy golden Light came down into my throat,

And all my speech is now a tune divine,

A paean-song of thee my single note;

My words are drunk with the Immortal's wine.

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Thy golden Light came down into my heart

Smiting my life with Thy eternity;

Now has it grown a temple where Thou art

And all its passions point towards only Thee.

Thy golden Light came down into my feet

My earth is now thy playfield and thy seat.

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